“What happened was Jeff Sessions, he was the one that instituted the zero-tolerance process on the border that resulted in both people being detained and the family separation,” Kelly said. “He surprised us.” ... “The president still says ‘wall’ – oftentimes frankly he’ll say ‘barrier’ or ‘fencing,’ now he’s tended toward steel slats," Kelly said. "But we (moved away from) a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it.” ... “Illegal immigrants, overwhelmingly, are not bad people,” Kelly said. “I have nothing but compassion for them, the young kids.” ... He said the job was arduous and he often clashed with Trump over policy. But he was determined to stay through the 2018 midterm elections.
Trump gave away 80% of what he wanted without getting anything in return.
It's political malpractice.
Even worse, he's shut down the government now over the remaining 20% at the most politically inopportune time, having nothing left to bargain with.
The time to have done this was when Republicans were in control of Congress, in January 2017, or February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, January 2018, February . . ..
Forgive us for thinking he was never serious about The Wall, at all.
The Wall is now and may always have been simply a political tool, like opposition to abortion. He stopped being serious about it in August 2016 after the immigration issue secured him the nomination, when this "advisor", Kellyanne Conway, came on board from the Ted Cruz campaign, which likewise was never serious about The Wall. Ted had one throwaway line about immigration in his entire speech announcing his candidacy, that's it. It was Trump who completely blindsided him and the rest of the Republican field with the issue. But ever since it's only red meat for the base. He never made it a priority, and fired the only person actively pursuing immigration reform in his administration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions. That's how unimportant The Wall has been to the president.
The Wall riles up the news, keeping Trump in it, that's all.
I believe the president has already compromised. He originally asked for $25 billion. The House is at $5.6 billion. They did their job. The Senate has to come back. It is a modest investment.
The only other explanation than the one below is that Trump isn't really serious about The Wall and never has been, and is only interested in how he can play the politics of The Wall.
Opposition to the wall within Trump’s own administration has prevented progress on this issue, which is wildly popular with the GOP’s conservative base and is the consequence of the president surrounding himself with establishment advisers who have worked to thwart his populist agenda from within. For example, after being briefed on the concept of selling USDA commercial paper to pay for border security, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s then-Chief of Staff Heidi Green shot down the idea by curtly stating, “The secretary does not want the wall.”
[T]he $5 billion the House has approved for a border wall would be enough for about 215 miles of barrier. Less than half of that — about 100 miles, mostly in South Texas — would be frontier that doesn't already have a fence. The rest would go to replace older, less-effective fencing or to build secondary fencing. ...
Senior officials from the Homeland Security Department briefed journalists Friday afternoon on what the proposed $5 billion could accomplish. Their estimate of 215 miles' worth of new and replacement fencing works out to more than $23 million a mile, on average. That's far higher than the nearly 700 miles of barrier already in place along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Most of that was authorized under President George W. Bush, in the Secure Fences Act of 2006. The Government Accountability Office issued a report in 2009 that put the initial cost per mile at $2.8 to $3.9 million. But that was in urban areas, where roads were already in place. Some of the replacement fencing installed during the Trump administration has cost about $8 million a mile. The more remote the area, the higher the cost. Homeland Security officials insisted that comparisons are inappropriate. "Every mile of border is different," said one official. "It depends on the terrain" and other factors.
Since Trump took office, Congress has approved $341 million for 40 miles of replacement fencing and new gates in San Diego, New Mexico and West Texas, plus gates in the Rio Grande Valley to close gaps between existing fence. Of that, 34 miles is complete.
Earlier this year, Congress provided an additional $1.375 billion for about 84 miles of new and replacement border barrier. That includes levee wall in the Rio Grande Valley, with construction expected to start in February, plus some new wall construction in that area of South Texas, along with replacement barrier in Arizona and California. ...
When Congress authorized wall funding earlier this year, it restricted construction to designs already in use.
Neither Meadows nor Limbaugh (Ted Cruz supporter) really want the wall.
And Trump obviously doesn't either, otherwise he wouldn't have treated the issue like he has, in sharp contrast to his campaign for president.
Here's the grifter today taking money from you suckers:
Nancy doesn’t even run the House yet, and she’s out there saying Trump couldn’t get the votes — and he did, and it was because of Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan and the Freedom Caucus. They did their special order earlier this week and they let the president that know they would have his back. It’d be easy for the president to think that he’s isolated, but it was I think a very important thing that they did to make it a point to go to the floor of the House and special orders to make sure that everybody knew — not just the president — that they, significant number of Republicans in the House, would have his back.
The criminal justice reform bill passed the Senate 87-12 on Tuesday and the House 358-36 on Thursday and awaits the president's signature.
He could hold it hostage to get what he wants on the wall today even though he supports the bill, but Congress has the votes to override his veto, 66 in the Senate and 287 in the House.
Worse still, a government shutdown tonight would shut down Homeland Security and the State Department only, both of which are kind of critical to controlling immigration in any event, wall or no wall.
The president has yet to come anywhere near mastering the art of getting what he wants in DC.
During a televised Oval Office fracas last week, Pelosi challenged Trump
by saying he did not have the votes for wall money in the House. It
turns out he did.
WaPo spins this, chalking it up to 1) Russian voter suppression of stupid people (pretty damn condescending!); 2) Republicans (!) dredging up Hillary's own 1996 statement that blacks = super predators to suppress their vote (naw, she's not racist); 3) Obama wasn't on the ballot, suppressing the black vote!
But why blame blacks, WaPo? Kinda racist of you to put it all on them, especially in Michigan and Pennsylvania. 2.8 million others stayed home, too, you know. Their votes count just as much as black votes, don't they? Don't they? Well let's hear it for the young, disaffected voters for Bernie in the primaries! They didn't show up either, apparently. Why? They also found Hillary quite revolting. Trump revolted them too, but that goes without saying. What matters is the Democrat candidate suppressed all these votes, but WaPo and the Democrats, but I repeat myself, just can't bring themselves to utter this truth.
Anyway, it's nice of WaPo, and The New York Times, finally getting around over a year and a half later to pointing out what we were pointing out only days after Election 2016:
Exit polling suggests that black voters made up 12 percent of the electorate in 2016, down slightly from 2008 and 2012. Trump’s claim that many black voters stayed home ... is correct. ...
Eleven percent of black Obama 2012 voters stayed home. ...
In 2016, black turnout was down eight points from 2012, helping
contribute to that lower percentage that black voters made up of the
overall electorate. ...
About 5 million white Obama 2012 voters supported Trump; about 1.6 million black voters stayed home.
There were fewer than ten seats retired by Republicans which flipped to the Democrats.
Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of the deal. If Trump couldn't pass his agenda with control of everything, he won't in this Lame Duck, and certainly not next year when Pelosi runs the show in the House.
Republicans are dead. Trump is dead. Justin Raimondo is dead. But only Justin Raimondo knows it.
All the news plays at the top of the hour is Judge Sullivan saying that General Michael Flynn sold out his country, not mentioning Sullivan immediately backtracked on his insinuations that Flynn committed treason.
Damage done.
Sullivan got his first affirmative action appointment from Ronald Reagan.
This reaction to the sentencing hearing yesterday suggests Flynn is going to jail, eventually.
This isn't about a crime; it's about criminalizing a foreign policy opinion different from the establishment's opinion, elections be damned.
The rule of law is dead if your lawyer can't and won't keep a confidence, if we let an unelected appointee of an unelected appointee usurp the powers reserved to duly elected constitutional officers go on a fishing expedition and illegally search and seize the confidential papers of citizens supposedly protected under the Fourth Amendment.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan had ordered
the special counsel to turn over all government documents and
“memoranda” related to the questioning of Flynn, after his attorneys
claimed the FBI had discouraged him from bringing a lawyer to his
fateful Jan. 24, 2017 interview with agents at the White House. ...
Apart
from a new memo from Mueller's team defending the FBI's handling of the
interview -- and saying nothing about the way it was conducted “caused
the defendant to make false statements to the FBI” -- the filing
included a January 2017 memo on Flynn from then-FBI Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe and a "302" (a document memorializing
interviews) detailing a July 19, 2017 interview with then-FBI agent
Peter Strzok. Strzok, one of two agents who interviewed Flynn, described
that meeting in the document, filed Aug. 22 of that year.
But not included in the filing was an original 302 from the period of the January 2017 Flynn interview.
It's
unclear whether the document exists. However, the Strzok interview file
appeared to repeatedly refer to a 302 drafted after the Flynn
interview. "Strzok conducted the interview and [REDACTED] was primarily
responsible for taking notes and writing the FD-302," one section said.
Another said that throughout the interview, Flynn did not give any
indication of deception and only hedged once, "which they documented in
the 302."
James Trusty, a former senior Justice Department
official who now works as a criminal defense attorney at Ifrah Law,
predicted Sullivan would notice that the 302 submitted Friday is dated
seven months after the Flynn interview took place.
“Judge Sullivan
has a well-established history of taking on discovery issues head-on,”
Trusty said. “So providing a seven-month-old FBI 302 is absolutely going
to be a red flag for the judge, and I can’t imagine there are not going
to be questions tomorrow about whether there are contemporaneous notes,
or a contemporaneous report, that is in the FBI’s possession.” ...
Strzok was removed from the Russia probe in late July 2017 -- just
days after he apparently gave the interview that formed the basis for
the 302 in Mueller's filing -- for his apparent anti-Trump bias. No
audio recording or other documentation of Flynn's comments to the FBI
have been produced. ...
Last week, Comey was asked how the FBI agents ended up at the White
House to interview Flynn in the first place. Comey’s response provided
new details about the circumstances that fueled criticism of the
bureau’s conduct:
“I sent them,” Comey said in a panel discussion
with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, and added that it was “something I
probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a
more…organized administration.”
The interview was arranged directly with Flynn, he explained, acknowledging this was not standard procedure.
