Tag: Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Americans across the country wish that Donald Trump would reveal his secret to staying so young and vibrant, the nation’s personal trainers have confirmed. According to Tracy Klugian, a fitness professional in St. Louis, “not a day goes by” without one of his clients requesting a physical regimen that will give him or her the youthful appearance and mental sharpness that have made Trump the envy of millions. “Clients will come in and say, ‘Make me as young and vibrant as Donald Trump,’ ” Klugian said. “I have to warn them that that’s setting the bar very, very high.” Having analyzed Trump’s fitness habits, Klugian has theorized that his startling youthfulness and off-the-charts vibrance might be the result of eight hours that he devotes each day to “Executive Time.” “Lifting the remote, putting it down, lifting it again, and then tweeting is an exercise routine that very few people could keep up for one hour, and Trump does it for eight,” he said. “I tell my clients, if you want to be as young and vibrant as Donald Trump, you’re going to have to put in that kind of time.” Klugian said that he was also putting clients on a “Trump diet,” consisting entirely of hamburgers and Coke, to give their bodies the fuel necessary to complete the gruelling remote-lifting-and-tweeting workout. But the personal trainer said that he urges his clients not to be discouraged if, even after adopting Trump’s rigorous exercise routine and diet, they fail to achieve Trump’s physical perfection. “At the end of the day, Donald Trump has found the Fountain of Youth, and also the Fountain of Vibrance,” he said.

Erin Schaff for The New York Times WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans see the special counsel’s report — with its stark evidence that President Trump repeatedly impeded the investigation into Russian election interference — as a summons for collective inaction. Republicans in the upper chamber, who would serve as Mr. Trump’s jury if House Democrats were to impeach him, reacted to the report’s release with a range of tsk-tsk adjectives like “brash,” “inappropriate” or “unflattering.” Only Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, called out the president’s behavior as “sickening.” Yet no Republican, not even Mr. Romney, a political brand-name who does not face his state’s voters until 2022, has pressed for even a cursory inquiry into the findings by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that the president pressured senior officials, including the former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II and the former attorney general Jeff Sessions, to scuttle his investigation. “I consider this to be, basically, the end of the road,” said Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, who once tried to thwart Mr. Trump’s presidential nomination and now serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has the authority to investigate Mr. Mueller’s findings. “But there is a difference between unflattering and something that can and should be prosecuted.” Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, has been as critical in private of Mr. Trump’s actions as Mr. Romney has been in public, but he, too, said it was time to move on. “While the report documents a number of actions taken by the president or his associates that were inappropriate, the special counsel reached no conclusion on obstruction of justice,” Mr. Portman said in a statement. That is factually accurate; in releasing his findings a week ago, Mr. Mueller laid out about a dozen instances in which the president may have obstructed justice, but he left it to Congress to reach that conclusion, counseling “that Congress has authority to prohibit a president’s corrupt use of his authority.” House Democrats responded by ramping up committee investigations, kicking off what is likely to be a long, rending intraparty debate over impeachment. Next week, a bipartisan group of eight Senate and House leaders are scheduled to review an unredacted version of Mr. Mueller’s findings when they return from their spring recess. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, said he had no plans to investigate — and has even suggested that if he pursues a new inquiry it would be to focus on allegations that federal law enforcement agencies conducted surveillance of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. But he added that Mr. Trump had “every right to feel good” about Mr. Mueller’s report. “When is it appropriate to misuse power so that you’re using your federal assets to go after a political opponent?

WASHINGTON—Insisting she was not culpable for the inexplicable contents of her spoken communications, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defiantly claimed Friday that she doesn’t know where the voice comes from when she opens her mouth. “Listen, I don’t control where these words come from, okay? When I open my mouth, they just start pouring out of me automatically,” said a combative Huckabee Sanders, contending that she cannot be held responsible for the eerie, guttural rumbling that originates in her gut and slowly works its way up to her mouth, resulting in a disturbing oratory operating outside of her conscious awareness. “It’s detestable that the press would pin the words that come out of my mouth on me. Don’t you dare question my motives by blaming me for this mysterious force using my voice to communicate with the media. Is it a demon? A machine? Could it be a tiny woman living inside my vocal cords? I don’t have the answer. All I know is that when I open my mouth, the world goes dark and then I’ll come to later with no memory whatsoever of what just happened.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Reacting to the journalist April Ryan’s call for her to be fired, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said, on Friday, that she has been the victim of the media’s “widespread anti-liar bias.” “From their obsession with fact-checking to their relentless attacks on falsehoods, the media have made no secret of their bias,” Sanders said. “It’s open season on liars in America.” “This is media hypocrisy at its very worst,” she added. “The same journalists who advocate freedom of speech want to take that freedom away from anyone whose speech consists entirely of lies.” “This is nothing more or less than a direct attack on the lying life style,” she said. “You take away my right to lie and you take away my ability to earn a living.” Kellyanne Conway, the White House senior counsellor, spoke out in support of Sanders, telling reporters, “An attack on one liar is an attack on all liars.” “Our country has seen some dark days, from the Bowling Green Massacre to the bugging of the White House microwave,” she said. “But this might be the darkest.”

But the example points to the danger of viewing politics as a team sport. Rabid fans can only be appeased by victory. If your political reference points are decency, character and a commitment to the common good, the president is an ongoing disaster. If you believe that politics is the zero-sum struggle between cultural teams or tribes, then you want the most vicious bully on your side. There is no serious argument for Trump based on his own virtues. Yet there is also a deeper level of harm to national ideals. It is unusual, says Chua, “to have both an extremely diverse, multiethnic population (BEG ITAL)and(END ITAL) a strong overarching national identify capable of binding the people together.” This source of strength also makes America especially vulnerable to identity politics of left or right. When the overarching identity is weakened by declaring human differences to be primary, or when some subgroup of lighter-skinned people claims exclusive ownership of our national ideals, something rare and valuable moves toward history’s disturbing norm of tribalism. It is playing with a form of fire that has burned time after time, through nation after nation. These are the stakes when citizens become fans and turn the honorable calling of democratic politics into a destructive game.

In short, the right and the left are seeing the president they always thought was there. April 10, 201901:36 There's nothing wrong with Trump using the powers granted to him by the Constitution or Congress' cession of authority to the executive, Rachel Bovard, policy director at the Conservative Policy Institute, said. "Congress has plenty of authority to take their authority back and they haven’t. And they believed, as many liberals do now, that the president's party in Congress was far too willing to let the executive run roughshod over the legislative branch. There’s abuse of legitimate power. Those were legitimate powers that have gone unused by the Bush and the Trump administrations and that progressives would want to utilize if we take back the White House." Rather than a question of policy, it's a matter of politics and law that leaves no room for the possibility that it was legitimate both to investigate the Trump operation's ties to Russia and questions about the obstruction of justice, and for Mueller to find no evidence of a conspiracy with Russia. From the South Lawn of the White House, the seat of executive power, Trump told reporters Wednesday that former government officials involved in starting and pursuing the investigation into his campaign were guilty of "treason" — a crime punishable by death — at nearly the same time Attorney General William Barr was telling Congress he believes the Obama administration spied on Trump's campaign. Zelizer noted that Trump's allegations are made without producing evidence and that he uses the standing of his office to put them into the public discussion. It remains to be seen what comes of the Barr investigation into the investigators.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday sentenced Republican political consultant Samuel Patten to 36 months of probation, 500 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine in a case spun out of U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. Patten, 47, pleaded guilty in August to communicating with U.S. lawmakers and news media organizations on behalf of a Russia-aligned political party in Ukraine called the Opposition Bloc without disclosing that work to the Justice Department, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), among other offenses. Patten is a former business partner of Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national indicted by Mueller and accused of having ties to Russian intelligence. In Patten’s guilty plea he also admitted to arranging for a U.S. citizen to act as a straw purchaser to pay $50,000 for four tickets to the inauguration of Republican President Donald Trump on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch, who reimbursed Patten through a Cypriot account. Patten, who spoke briefly at the hearing, said he “fully recognized” that he committed serious criminal conduct. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Patten’s violation of FARA was “not a mere technicality” and undermined the democratic process. You didn’t try to justify them, and you didn’t try to blame them on anyone else,” Berman Jackson said to Patten, adding “that doesn’t happen everyday in this courtroom.” Berman Jackson said the acceptance of responsibility was one reason Patten received a much lighter sentence than former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Patten’s lawyer had asked for a sentence of probation, saying his case was unlike other FARA prosecutions, which have typically involved a lobbyist attempting to conceal the identity of the client and the source of funds. Federal prosecutors in Washington, who started investigating Patten after receiving a referral from Mueller, said in a court filing on Monday that Patten met or spoke with government investigators on the phone nine times. Patten’s case has sparked interest in Washington amid a widening crackdown by the Justice Department on undisclosed lobbying.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday sentenced Republican political consultant Samuel Patten to 36 months of probation, 500 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine in a case spun out of U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. Patten, 47, pleaded guilty in August to communicating with U.S. lawmakers and news media organizations on behalf of a Russia-aligned political party in Ukraine called the Opposition Bloc without disclosing that work to the Justice Department, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), among other offenses. Patten is a former business partner of Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national indicted by Mueller and accused of having ties to Russian intelligence. In Patten’s guilty plea he also admitted to arranging for a U.S. citizen to act as a straw purchaser to pay $50,000 for four tickets to the inauguration of Republican President Donald Trump on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch, who reimbursed Patten through a Cypriot account. Patten, who spoke briefly at the hearing, said he “fully recognized” that he committed serious criminal conduct. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Patten’s violation of FARA was “not a mere technicality” and undermined the democratic process. You didn’t try to justify them, and you didn’t try to blame them on anyone else,” Berman Jackson said to Patten, adding “that doesn’t happen everyday in this courtroom.” Berman Jackson said the acceptance of responsibility was one reason Patten received a much lighter sentence than former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Patten’s lawyer had asked for a sentence of probation, saying his case was unlike other FARA prosecutions, which have typically involved a lobbyist attempting to conceal the identity of the client and the source of funds. Federal prosecutors in Washington, who started investigating Patten after receiving a referral from Mueller, said in a court filing on Monday that Patten met or spoke with government investigators on the phone nine times. Patten’s case has sparked interest in Washington amid a widening crackdown by the Justice Department on undisclosed lobbying.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images WASHINGTON — Lawyers for Gregory B. Craig, a White House counsel in the Obama administration, expect him to be indicted in the coming days on charges related to his work for the Russia-aligned government of Ukraine. The case against Mr. Craig, 74, stemmed from an investigation initiated by the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. In a summary of the inquiry, Attorney General William P. Barr said that the special counsel’s team had concluded that there was no evidence that President Trump or his aides “conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The case against Mr. Craig is related to the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which the Justice Department is prioritizing in part because of scrutiny related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation. Mr. Manafort, who went on to become Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, was sentenced last month to seven and a half years in prison on charges brought by Mr. Mueller’s team related to obstruction of justice and violations of FARA, as well as banking and tax laws stemming from his work in Ukraine. After the report was released, and Mr. Craig was quoted discussing it in an article in The New York Times, the Justice Department unit that oversees FARA reached out to Skadden Arps to ask why the firm and its lawyers had not registered as foreign agents for the Ukrainian government. Prosecutors cast doubt on Mr. Craig’s claim in a settlement reached in January between the Justice Department and Skadden Arps. Under that settlement, the firm avoided prosecution in the matter in exchange for an agreement to pay $4.6 million, to retroactively register its Ukraine work under FARA, to beef up its compliance processes and to cooperate with government investigations of the work on behalf of Ukraine. Neither Mr. Craig nor the journalist are identified by name in the settlement. Mr. Craig’s lawyers have argued that he was not required to register his work under FARA because he was not doing public relations for the Ukrainian government. In a statement on Wednesday, they said he “repeatedly refused requests that he participate in Ukraine’s media and lobbying campaign to promote the Tymoshenko Report.” Rather, they say he spoke to The Times to correct the Ukrainian Justice Ministry’s claims that the report cleared Mr. Yanukovych of accusations that he directed the prosecution of Ms. Tymoshenko for political purposes.

WASHINGTON—Saying they are now convinced the candidate is overwhelmingly qualified to lead the country, a majority of Americans have shifted their support to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in the 2020 presidential race since learning he is a millionaire, a Pew Research Center poll found Wednesday. “I have my reservations about his policies, but if the guy’s a millionaire, he must know what he’s doing,” said Cleveland-area voter Glenn Mannix, 48, echoing the sentiments of 68% of the voting populace, who were reportedly impressed upon discovering the royalties Sanders has earned on sales of his books has pushed his net worth to seven figures. “Anyone who’s smart enough to make a million dollars has got to have some pretty great ideas about how to move our country in the right direction. You don’t get to be that rich and successful without having a really good head on your shoulders. The man has my vote!” According to the poll, the remaining 32% of voters agree with all of Sanders’ policies, but said they cannot bring themselves to cast their ballot for someone who owns three homes.