monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Half of Republicans say they think Trump is a 'genius'

A Michigan man was arrested after an FBI investigation, accused of threatening to travel to Atlanta to commit mass murder at CNN headquarters.

According to federal court documents, 19 year-old Brandon Griesemer made 22 calls to CNN about a week ago.

It began with claims of "fake news" and ended with threats of violence.

Meet Brandon Griesemer, the 19 year old Michigan man who I referred to in the post below. He lives in suburban Detroit and made a series of calls to CNN headquarters in Atlanta threatening mass murder as payback for “fake news.” “Fake news. I’m coming to gun you all down. **** you, fuckin’ ni****rs.”

Here are the key passages from the FBI affidavit tied to his arrest...

Tony Perkins: Trump Gets ‘a Mulligan’ on Life, Stormy Daniels
The Family Research Council head says that evangelical conservatives are willing to overlook Trump’s past behavior so long as he delivers for them on policy.

Perkins knows about Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who claimed, in a 2011 interview, that in 2006 she had sex with Trump four months after his wife Melania gave birth to their son Barron. He knows of the reports that she was paid off to keep the affair quiet in the waning weeks of the 2016 election. He knows about the cursing, the lewdness and the litany of questionable behavior over the past year of Trump’s life or the 70 that came before it.

“We kind of gave him—‘All right, you get a mulligan. You get a do-over here,’” Perkins told me in an interview for the latest episode of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast.

Weigh a paid-off porn star against being the first president to address the March for Life, and a lot of evangelical leaders insist they can still walk away happy.

Evangelical Christians, says Perkins, “were tired of being kicked around by Barack Obama and his leftists. And I think they are finally glad that there’s somebody on the playground that is willing to punch the bully.”

What happened to turning the other cheek?, I ask.

“You know, you only have two cheeks,” Perkins says. “Look, Christianity is not all about being a welcome mat which people can just stomp their feet on.”

FRUM: Here’s what the Russians have achieved. 1) They blocked from office a capable and effective foreign-policy president who understood them, their aims and how to build effective coalitions against them. 2) They gained a president who for reasons of vanity or worse has left the country vulnerable and exposed to further attack. 3) They gained a president who is smashing apart America’s alliance structures. What intelligent South Korean can look for protection to the United States when its president regularly tweets that it is to China, not the United States, that South Korea should look for protection — and who is contemplating sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Korean lives to protect mainland U.S.A.? 4) The Russians gained a United States that operates in ways they are comfortable with — open to corruption and oligarchy — and they have scored points for the argument that democracy is a joke and a fraud. 5) They have helped install a racial provocateur who identifies every stress point in American political culture and inflames it to the point that the United States polarizes and paralyzes … I could go on

Except it isn't over, it is time to see if McConnell lives up to his word, or if he lied to get the democrats to cave.

Democrats agreed to end their filibuster even though the funding bill failed to address the fate of the young immigrants brought to America illegally as children, the so-called Dreamers. In return, McConnell promised to allow debate and a vote within 30 days on bills aimed at resolving the Dreamers' status.

There are enough votes in the moderate middle in the Senate to pass a fix for the Dreamers. With the president's sustained support, such a bill could even go further, addressing key questions of border security and the status of 12 million other immigrants here illegally.

Trump has said he'd be willing to embrace such a compromise. Now he must show he meant it, and work to make it happen.

The media mogul Rupert Murdoch has long coveted Sky, the British satellite broadcaster, and he has made multiple attempts over several years to take over the company. On Tuesday, a British regulator beat him back, provisionally rejecting 21st Century Fox’s bid to buy Sky.

The decision, part of a protracted battle to win regulatory approval for the deal, is the latest blow to 21st Century Fox’s efforts to acquire the 61 percent of Sky that it does not already own. It also changes the calculus of Mr. Murdoch’s agreement last month to sell most of his entertainment empire — including the existing stake in Sky — to the Walt Disney Company.

The British regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, argued that Mr. Murdoch, who is executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, would have too much control over Britain’s media landscape if the deal for Sky went through. It said the $16.3 billion move was “not in the public interest.” The fate of the bid is now in the hands of Britain’s culture minister, Matt Hancock, who must rule by May 1 on whether to let it proceed.

It must have been a heady experience for [Billy] Graham. “Nixon showed his friendliness to me in many personal ways,” he later recalled. “He came to our home on the mountain. He often referred to the pineapple tea my mother served him when he visited her. . . . In our games of golf together, he was always willing to coach me. . . . He remembered birthdays.” In Graham’s view, Nixon was “a modest and moral man with spiritual sensitivity.” He “held such noble standards of ethics and morality for the nation.”

Graham was in denial about Watergate until the last. When he finally read through the Watergate tape transcripts — including profanity, political corruption, lying, racism and sexism — Graham remembers becoming physically ill. He said later of Nixon: “I wonder whether I might have exaggerated his spirituality in my own mind.” Graham’s biographer William Martin quoted a close Graham associate who was more blunt: “For the life of me, I honestly believe that after all these years, Billy still has no idea of how badly Nixon snookered him.”

...Add to this something that could never be said of Nixon: the credible accusation that Trump paid hush money to a porn star to cover up an affair.

And what is Franklin Graham’s reaction? “We certainly don’t hold him up as the pastor of this nation and he is not. But I appreciate the fact that the president does have a concern for Christian values, he does have a concern to protect Christians whether it’s here at home or around the world, and I appreciate the fact that he protects religious liberty and freedom.”

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Jeff Sessions was questioned for several hours last week by the special counsel’s office as part of the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election and whether the president obstructed justice since taking office, according to a Justice Department spokeswoman.

The meeting marked the first time that investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, are known to have interviewed a member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet.

The spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, confirmed that the interview occurred in response to questions from The New York Times.

A Democratic Mississippi state lawmaker has proposed a new bill to place the Ten Commandments in every school. It’s clearly unconstitutional.

The CMA has provisionally found that Fox taking full control of Sky is not in the public interest due to media plurality concerns, but not because of a lack of a genuine commitment to meeting broadcasting standards in the UK.

LOU DOBBS (HOST): I can’t understand why Christopher Wray was permitted to even with a straight face to suggest those had been lost and why they, I can’t understand why the U.S. Marshalls haven’t been dispatched to the Justice Department and FBI to sequester everything and to at least take into custody the top people who are responsible for the operations of those organizations.

What I really would like is that kindergartners need to be told not to commit adultery.