Posts posted by Francisco 2.0
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13 minutes ago, Homercles said:
Since there’s literally nothing I can do except vote, I remind myself that I’m positive history will not be kind to the right/GOP/MAGA crowd just like they weren’t to the nazis, kkk, Nixon, etc.
One can hope.
One can also have full realization that the founding fathers assumed that man would have decency once elected and or appointed/approved by Senate. Once decency was removed from the equation, then all bets are off.
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I'm so happy these stupid fuckers are getting played like this:
QuoteSen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) was among the first Republicans to argue that Donald Trump had learned a valuable lesson as a result of the Ukraine scandal. During a Meet the Press interview, Chuck Todd told the Indiana Republican "This president, as you know, he's going to take acquittal and think, 'I can keep doing this.'"
Braun disagreed. "I don't think that," the GOP senator replied, adding, "I think he'll put two and two together. In this case, he was taken to the carpet."
QuoteIn the days that followed, a variety of Senate Republicans echoed the sentiment. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), for example, saidover the weekend, "I would think he would think twice before he did it again." Around the same time, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) added, in reference to Trump, "I think that he knows now that ... he needs to go through the proper channels."
QuoteYesterday, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said that she, too, believes that the president "has learned from this case" and that he "will be much more cautious in the future." The Maine Republican, facing a tough re-election fight, added, "The president has been impeached. That's a pretty big lesson."
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Spoiler
President Trump’s company charges the Secret Service for the rooms it uses while protecting Trump at his properties. The charges have been as high as $650 per night for a Mar-a-Lago Club hotel room, or $17,000 a month for a cottage at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster.
Who pays these bills? U.S. taxpayers. That means Trump has a business arrangement with his own government. But the details of that relationship remain largely hidden.
The only glimpses of this spending have come out via Secret Service records, released after public records requests. But these documents are often cryptic, giving few details.
This is how The Washington Post sought to unravel the mysteries in these documents, and to report the true extent of what Trump’s company has charged taxpayers.
Since Trump took office, he has visited his own properties on 342 days. Secret Service agents come with him. And Trump’s company charges them. Last November, in response to a public records request from the group Property of the People, the Secret Service released a list of 56 payments it had made to Trump’s companies. All were from 2017. But the list was cryptic. It didn’t say what the Secret Service had been charged for. In some cases, it didn’t even say which Trump property had been paid.
The Post tried to decode this list. One surprise: at least 20 of the payments to "Trump National Golf Club" — worth $63,700 — weren’t to a golf club at all. Other documents, already released, showed they were payments to Mar-a-Lago. The Post learned that many of them were hotel bills for $650 per night — a rate far higher than the usual limits on federal hotel spending. There is no legal limit on what the Secret Service may spend on hotel rooms while its agents are protecting the president.

In four other cases, the dollar amount was a giveaway: All included a tax of 6.875 percent, which was the sales tax in New Jersey in 2017. That pointed to Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, which is the only Trump property in New Jersey that he has visited as president.
But many of the payments on this list remain mysterious. If you have information about these charges — or any other instances where taxpayer funds were used to pay the president’s company — contact Post reporter David Fahrenthold at fahrenthold@washpost.com.
Documents
These receipts have been redacted by the Secret Service, and they contain notations giving the reason for the redactions. The most common notation is "(b)(7)(e)," which refers to a section of the U.S. Code that allows the government to redact information about the "techniques and procedures" of law enforcement agencies.
July 31, 2017 | Bedminster, N.J.
A receipt from the files of the Secret Service showing the rental of a cottage at Trump’s Bedminster golf club for the month of July. The rate is $17,000 for the month, plus New Jersey’s 6.875 percent sales tax. Trump only spent seven days at the club that month, but the Secret Service still paid for days he wasn’t there. The handwriting in this document is original, written by the Secret Service. The Trump Organization says this rate is below what it could get on the open market, given that the the cottage has three bedrooms.

Sept. 4, 2017 | Bedminster, N.J.
A receipt from the files of the Secret Service showing the rental of a cottage at Trump’s Bedminster golf club for the month of August, plus four days of September. The rate is $17,000 per month, plus New Jersey’s 6.875 percent sales tax. The handwriting in this document is original, written by the Secret Service. The Trump Organization says this rate is below what it could get on the open market, given that the the cottage has three bedrooms.

Oct. 1, 2017 | Bedminster, N.J.
A receipt from the files of the Secret Service showing the rental of a cottage at Trump’s Bedminster golf club for the month of September, minus four days that had been paid for in a previous bill. The rate is $17,000 per month, plus New Jersey’s 6.875 percent sales tax. Trump spent 10 days at the club that month, but the Secret Service still paid for days he wasn’t there. The handwriting in this document is original, written by the Secret Service. The Trump Organization says this rate is below what it could get on the open market, given that the the cottage has three bedrooms.

February 2017 | Palm Beach, Fla.
Receipts released by the Secret Service showing charges paid to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in February — his first trip to Mar-a-Lago as president. Three of the receipts are in increments of $650, the amount that Trump’s company charged the Secret Service for each night in a Mar-a-Lago guest room. The other receipt is for $3,510; it is unclear what this charge is for. The Trump Organization has said that the current rate being charged for these rooms is "substantially lower," but did not say what it was.

February 2018 | Palm Beach, Fla.
Receipts released by the Secret Service showing charges paid to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in February. The receipts show Trump’s club charged $396.15 per night for guest rooms, less than the year before. One possible explanation: The 2018 receipts list the Secret Service as an "honorary member" of Mar-a-Lago, which may come with a discount.

September 2016 to January 2018 | Washington, D.C.
This document, released by the Department of Homeland Security, shows expenditures by the Secret Service’s Washington Field Office ("WFO") and Dignitary Protection Division ("DPD") at Trump’s hotel. The document does not give reasons for these expenditures. Some of them occur on days when Trump visited the hotel, but most do not.

January to June 2017 | Various
This document, released by the Secret Service after a public records request from the group Property of the People, contains listings of Secret Service credit card purchases at Trump properties. The documents give a sense of the scale of this spending: more than $250,000 in just Trump’s first five months in office. But it provides little clarity about why the money was spent and what rates were charged. This document was the spark for The Post’s reporting on this topic — showing how little was known about this business relationship between Trump and his own government.

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Quote
Fox News’ own research team has warned colleagues not to trust some of the network’s top commentators’ claims about Ukraine.
An internal Fox News research briefing book obtained by The Daily Beast openly questions Fox News contributor John Solomon’s credibility, accusing him of playing an “indispensable role” in a Ukrainian “disinformation campaign.”
QuoteThe document also accuses frequent Fox News guest Rudy Giuliani of amplifying disinformation, as part of an effort to oust former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, and blasts Fox News guests Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova—both ardent Trump boosters—for “spreading disinformation.”
The 162-page document, entitled “Ukraine, Disinformation, & the Trump Administration,” was created by Fox News senior political affairs specialist Bryan S. Murphy, who produces research from what is known as the network’s Brain Room—a newsroom division of researchers who provide information, data, and topic guides for the network’s programming.
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Donald Trump 2020
in Cloak Room