BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER
& CROOKED MEDIA

Monday, April 30, 2018

—Who do you think?

BREAKING

The New York Times obtained a list of questions Special Counsel Robert Mueller wants to ask President Trump, after Mueller provided the list to Trump’s lawyers.

ISN'T IT IRANIC

It would be a historic achievement and great politics if President Trump gets North Korea to abandon its nuclear program, but Trump’s obsession with destroying President Obama's legacy—and the Iran nuclear deal in particular—might make that harder.

Trump has made no secret of his desire to terminate the Iran deal, and will decide by May 12 whether the U.S. will remain a party to it. Supporters of the deal have hoped to convince  Trump that withdrawing from the Iran deal days before sitting down with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un would be self-sabotaging. They believe that Kim will be less likely to enter into an agreement with the United States if he sees us failing to honor previous commitments.

Unfortunately, Trump appears to believe the opposite, because he’s so smart. In a Rose Garden press conference Monday, Trump said he thinks the possibility that the U.S. will abrogate the Iran deal "sends the right message" to North Korea.

Also on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a propaganda presentation, recycling old intelligence about Iran's nuclear program to give Trump political cover to pull out of the agreement. Trump welcomed it. "What's happening today," Trump said, "has really shown that I’ve been 100 percent right.”

Late Breaking: In an official statement Monday night, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Netanyahu’s presentation confirms that “Iran has a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program that it has tried and failed to hide from the world.” The statement was false. Nuclear arms inspectors have certified Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal, and even Netanyahu acknowledged evidence in his presentation that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program years ago.

Amid fierce pushback, the White House attributed the confusion to a typo, and that the statement was supposed to read, “Iran had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program.” It is good that they withdrew the statement, but their explanation doesn’t withstand scrutiny. The original statement uses the word “has” twice, strongly suggesting an intent to mislead the global public into believing Iran had covertly reactivated its nuclear weapons program in direct defiance of the agreement.

It should frighten everyone that not one but two nuclear negotiations are captive to Trump’s ego.

CLOSED MIC NIGHT 

Comedian Michelle Wolf couldn’t care less that the mainstream media claimed to be scandalized by her set at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner this weekend.

“I didn't want to cater to the room,” Wolf told NPR. “I wanted to cater to the outside audience...I wouldn't change a single word that I said.”

From Brian: The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a corrupt spectacle at its best. This weekend’s dinner harmed the media as an institution even more than usual by demonstrating that many journalists are so easily intimidated by bad-faith conservative criticism that they’ll abandon their professional mission—truth-seeking—when conservatives object to holding the Trump administration to account for its lies.  

While this was happening in D.C., Trump held a rally in Washington, MI where he did his standard, actually scandalous, incitement routine. This time he bullied a sitting senator, Jon Tester (D-MT), for airing whistleblower allegations about Admiral Ronny Jackson, despite the fact that Jackson withdrew his nomination to run the Department of Veterans affairs and was removed from his post as the president’s physician.

The real scandal is what’s considered scandalous and what’s not.

Read →

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly reportedly calls Trump an “idiot” in front of demoralized staffers, and paints himself as a lonely pillar of sanity standing between the country and catastrophe. He also makes sexist comments that have upset female aides. The good news for Kelly is that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held on to his job for eight months after calling Trump a “fucking moron,” before Kelly fired him while he was on the toilet. How long until Trump’s simmering resentment over the story boils over and Trump fires Kelly by tweet from the 14th green? Stay tuned!

Remember the caravan of Central American migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. that Trump couldn’t stop tweeting about a few weeks ago? Nearly 200 people in the group finally reached the southern border on Sunday, where they were turned away by border officials who said they had “reached capacity,” and were made to wait in Mexico.

“There’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) of the corporate tax cuts he voted for after everyone told him this would happen. Marco discovered gun control when it got more popular and discovered he didn’t like corporate tax cuts after they got less popular. That’s so odd.

This morning, two suicide bombers in Afghanistan’s capital killed at least 31 people, including nine journalists who had arrived on the scene following the first attack.

Stormy Daniels is officially suing Donald Trump for defamation. Trump’s lawyers will defend him right after they finish defending themselves.

Betsy Devos’ Department of Education will send $600 million in disaster assistance to Puerto Rico. You read that right.

The Trump campaign has spent nearly $228,000 on Michael Cohen’s legal expenses. If those expenses stemmed from matters related to Stormy Daniels, it’s yet another indication that the hush money he paid her violated campaign finance law.  

Actress Ashley Judd is suing disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein for defamation, sexual harassment, and violating California’s “Unfair Competition” law to harm her career after she rejected his advances.

Documents show that the Charles Koch Foundation donated large sums of money to George Mason University in exchange for influence over faculty hiring and firing decisions. It’s almost as if moneyed interests and corporate power are a bigger threat to speech and academic freedom than student protests.

On Pod Save the World: Tommy talks with the political director of the ACLU, Faiz Shakir, about Gina Haspel’s nomination to lead the CIA, and the controversy surrounding her involvement in Bush-era torture.

Listen →

Also two renowned pundits met at Crooked HQ today. Look out for the interview on tomorrow’s Pod Save America.

On sale at the NRA’s annual meeting this week: Pistols that are disguised as cell phones. It has been one month since Sacramento police killed Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man whose cell phone officers claim they mistook for a gun. From Pod Save the People host DeRay Mckesson: I’d be dead in 0.2 seconds for carrying this.

Also at the NRA’s annual meeting later this week: President Trump, for the third year in a row, this time amid allegations that Russians used the group to funnel money to the Trump campaign in 2016. After the Parkland school massacre, Trump publicly accused lawmakers of being afraid of the NRA, right before he walked back what he said and Congress did nothing.

Women of color in the Time’s Up movement have joined calls for major record labels, streaming services, and Ticketmaster to sever ties with musician R. Kelly. The long list of allegations against Kelly include marrying a girl under 18 years of age, assault, and statutory rape. He was indicted in 2002 on 21 counts of making child pornography, but a jury acquitted him in 2008.

Kelly’s spokesperson responded: “R. Kelly supports the pro-women goals of the Time’s Up movement. We understand criticizing a famous artist is a good way to draw attention to those goals—and in this case, it is unjust and off-target." Keep it.

“We believe if the election were held today, we would keep the House of Representatives."

—House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is literally retiring instead of facing voters in this year’s midterm elections.

Actress Claire Foy, the star of Netflix’s The Crown, is getting $275,000 in back pay after an uproar over the fact that her male co-star took home a larger paycheck than she did. Now can we all get some back pay for paying attention to ROYAL NONSENSE?

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