OCTOBER 4 AND 5, 2019
NEWS AND VIEWS
IT IS CLEAR TO MANY THAT TOO MANY IN THE
MEDIA HAVE BEEN LITERALLY FAILING TO MENTION SANDERS IN STORIES FEATURING ALL
FOUR OF THE CONTENDERS. SO SILLY. IF THE FREE PRESS WANTS TO APPEAR TO BE FAIR
AND THEREFORE TRUTHFUL, THEY WOULD AVOID THOSE TACTICS. THE WASHINGTON POST
CAN'T BE THE GREATEST IF THEY ARE BECOMING SLEEZEBAGS. SEE WHAT THEOUTLINE.COM
HAS TO SAY. I ALSO NOTICED RECENTLY, I BELIEVE IT WAS IN A NYT ARTICLE, THAT
BOTH SANDERS AND WARREN WERE SCRUPULOUSLY GIVEN A TITLE, BUT NOT THAT OF
SENATOR. IT WAS MR. AND MS.
Bernie Sanders is still running for
president
It just took a blocked artery for the
political media to notice.
By Shuja Haider
OCT—04—2019 04:51PM EST
If this election season is causing you
heartburn, you are not alone. On Wednesday, the Bernie Sanders campaign
announced that the Vermont Senator had checked into a Las Vegas hospital with
“chest discomfort.” An artery blockage required the insertion of two stents and
the cancellation of upcoming appearances, though the campaign reported Sanders
was “in good spirits.” The news was met with level heads online, as every
debt-ridden college student in America began googling “can you donate your own
heart.”
Predictable responses followed from his
competitors in the Democratic Primary. Elizabeth Warren had dinner delivered to the Sanders
campaign headquarters. Marianne Williamson announced she
would be administering her customary medical regimen of prayer and good vibes.
Even aspiring debate nemesis John Delaney offered a boilerplate
statement of good will.
To be fair to the 78-year-old candidate,
running for President seems exhausting. Participation in elections has been
known to cause a whole array of symptoms, ranging from terrifying bloodshot eyes to speaking in tongues. Sanders has
consistently challenged doubters of his physical or mental acuity to “follow me
around the campaign trail,” but the scrutiny directed at his fitness for the
Presidency has not been limited to his health — it’s part of a larger political
context. If there has been any benefit to his brief health scare, it was that
it served as a reminder to the press of the Senator’s existence. “We have
figured out what it takes Bernie to get media coverage,” Intercept editor Ryan
Grim tweeted.
Sanders himself complained not long ago
that the political media, particularly the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post ignored or
disfavored his campaign, a charge that was met with widespread
protesting-too-much from defensive journalists. But when you look at the
record, it’s hard to conclude that the claim is wrong. The paper’s house
“fact-checker” has gone through circus-worthy contortions to debunk the
Senator’s statements, while, as FAIR has documented extensively, its
reporting has often taken care to editorialize. On Friday, a viral video
detailed the numerous ways in which corporate media has
treated his campaign with condescension. It’s nothing new — in 2016, according
to an analysis from the Tyndall
Report, Donald Trump’s campaign got nearly ten times as much
coverage on network television as Sanders, not to mention more than twice as
much as Hillary Clinton.
The so-called adults in the room seem to
have adopted a strategy: Don’t talk about him, and maybe he’ll go away.
“Harris, Warren tie for third place in new 2020 Dem poll, but Biden still
leads,” read a Politico headline in July. Take a
guess who was in second. CNN’s Harry Enten tweeted a poll, asking “Where do you stand on who
you think is the candidate most likely to be the Dem nominee?” The choices were
Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and “Someone else.” After 44,127
votes, “someone else” won. Enten’s CNN colleague Chris Cilizza recently tweeted, “Aside from Biden and Warren,
who do you see as the 3rd person with a real chance to be the nominee? I say
Buttigieg as of right now.” Politico’s most recent poll, conducted by Morning Consult, has Sanders leading
Buttigieg by 14 points.
At the second Democratic debate, CNN
moderator Jake Tapper posed a question to erstwhile Colorado governor John Hickenlooper,
echoed on the channel’s chyron: “Do you believe Senator Sanders is too
extreme to beat President Trump?” This question becomes particularly
interesting in light of the widely stated — if sometimes reluctant — support
for Medicare for All among most Democratic candidates this season. In 2016,
Hillary Clinton proclaimed that single-payer healthcare would “never, ever come
to pass.” The assumptions underlying Tapper’s question may show why there has
been reluctance in some quarters to bring Bernie Sanders up at all.
Among the three frontrunners, Joe Biden
has required the least argument in his favor, with his name recognition and
record as Vice President carrying him to the top of the polls in spite of his
almost total lack of coherence and sense. But let’s talk about why
Warren, who consistently polls about the same as Sanders, has been almost
universally embraced by the mainstream media as the sole alternative.
He is either not “electable,” or too
“extreme,” even though he has held a political office within the US government
for decades.
While Biden is the establishment candidate,
in many ways Warren inherits the mantle of the previous Democratic nominee,
a self-proclaimed “progressive who gets
things done.” (Not to mention that, were she to win the election, she would
finally be America’s first woman president.) Without question, her
progressive bona fides are far more convincing than those of HIllary Clinton —
in fact, they once put her at odds with the then-New York Senator, regarding
a bankruptcy bill that favored banks over borrowers. Today,
her mantra, “I have a plan for that,” is a convenient shorthand for her
credentials.
It’s one that has endeared her to some
unlikely supporters, too. “I clearly don’t agree with everything she says, but
I do give her credit for getting things done,” said Tom Nides, a Morgan Stanley
vice chairman, to the Los Angeles Times. As it turns out, some of
her supposed enemies on Wall Street have warmed to Warren as an alternative to
Sanders. As Politico reports:
Several
executives who have negative feelings about Warren also said that while it
might be hard to ever support Sanders in a general election, for fear that he
would try and blow up the entire capitalist system, they could probably come
around to backing the Massachusetts senator against Trump.
Venture investor and former Obama adviser
Robert Wolfe calls Warren “preferable for many reasons,” citing her support for
“fair capitalism.” She provides an outlet for moderates who see Sanders as a
mirror image of Trump. “Capitalist Elizabeth Warren has the right antidote
to socialism and Trumpism,” says a headline in Business Insider, offering an endorsement
for Warren from Josh Barro. At a conference for the centrist Third Way think
tank — whose president, Joe Cowan, once called Sanders an “existential
threat to the future of the Democratic party” — Warren was cited as a saving grace for the
party against the encroaching left.
It’s not insignificant that Warren has
declined to rule out the possibility of taking corporate donations, were she to
become the eventual nominee. Warren herself has noted the danger in accepting
funding from the financial sector, having witnessed its effect on HIllary
Clinton. As she wrote in her memoir, on Clinton’s
vote for the bankruptcy bill:
Campaigns
cost money, and that money wasn’t coming from families in financial trouble.
Senator Clinton received $140,000 in campaign contributions from banking
industry executives in a single year, making her one of the top two recipients
in the Senate. Big banks were now part of Senator Clinton’s constituency. She
wanted their support, and they wanted hers
Sanders, meanwhile, persists in making Wall
Street his enemy. “I don’t think billionaires should exist,” he recently told
the New York Times, while announcing an
aggressive wealth tax. “Maybe Bernie Sanders shouldn’t exist,” said Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of private
equity firm Blackstone, in response. It’s hard not to conclude that this
opposition, from the most powerful people in America outside of Washington, is
what puts the Bernie Sanders candidacy beyond the pale for many observers. He
is either not “electable,” or too “extreme,” even though he has held a
political office within the US government for decades.
Even so, he’s a self-described socialist,
who has not taken corporate donations, who has announced his intentions to make
Wall Street his enemy and eradicate billionaires, who has allied himself with
organized labor and an insurgent left movement, whose support for Palestinian
human rights and his opposition to American foreign military adventurism far
surpasses any of his competitors. That’s something no living presidential
nominee has offered in a single package. It puts him out of the bounds of
political acceptability — for Wall Street, the Democratic Party establishment,
and the political media.
For Donald Trump’s part, he sees the
element represented by Sanders as his biggest threat. The Daily Beast has reported that in
private, he made the rare acknowledgment of a viable opponent, telling “friends
and donors that running against ‘socialism’ in a general election may not be
‘so easy’ because of its populist draw, according to four Republicans and
sources close to Trump who’ve heard him say this over the past several months.”
But when Trump said, in his State of the
Union address, “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a
socialist country,” Elizabeth Warren joined in a standing ovation. Bernie Sanders
did not. Warren, for all her progressive credentials, does not represent the
threat to the normal order that Sanders does.
As for his health, Bernie Sanders is in
recovery, and his campaign has promised his attendance at the next Democratic
debate on October 15. He has not missed the opportunity to make the personal
political, tweeting about his condition the
night after his hospitalization:
Thanks
for all the well wishes. I'm feeling good. I'm fortunate to have good health
care and great doctors and nurses helping me to recover. None of us know when a
medical emergency might affect us. And no one should fear going bankrupt if it
occurs. Medicare for All!
The situation could be a mixed blessing. The
disproportionate coverage of Trump’s 2016 campaign undoubtedly had something to
do with his eventual victory. Even if Bernie Sanders gets his way and his
illness leads to a brief burst of coverage for his policy proposals, the
media’s attentions are probably too fickle to linger. But what is undeniable
at this point is how much his presence has affected the party, with competitors
forced to either adopt the same rhetoric previously dismissed as extreme, or
render themselves irrelevant.
Some commentators have claimed that were
Sanders to win, he would never manage to enact any of his extreme, unrealistic
policies — unlike his more moderate opponents. But the thought experiment that
imagines Bernie Sanders as an ineffectual President has already granted him an
achievement that eluded his predecessor: winning the Presidential election.
While media pundits and political operatives want to downplay this possibility,
his adversaries, including the wealthiest Americans and the leaders of the
Republican party, are preparing themselves for the worst.
BERNIE IS OLD IN ONE WAY, HE COULD HAVE A
HEART ATTACK, BUT BIDEN IS OLD IN ANOTHER. WE DEMS MUST BE WARY OF INCORPORATING
OUR OWN MENTALLY SLOW CANDIDATE INTO THE PRESIDENCY. FIGURE IN WITH THAT THE
SNIFFING OF LADIES' HAIR AND A POSSIBILITY OF SOME POSSIBLE DIRT ON ITS' WAY
FROM THE UKRAINE. $50,000 A MONTH IS A GOOD SALARY FOR ANY KIND OF WORK AT ALL.
SEE THE NPR ARTICLE BELOW ON HUNTER VIDEN.
BESIDES, PART OF WHAT IS WRONG WITH TRUMP,
ALONG WITH HIS LACK OF A HEART OR RECOGNIZABLE CONSCIENCE, IS THE FACT THAT HE
IS EITHER NOT FULLY SANE IN ANY WAY AT ALL, OR HE IS ACTUALLY SENILE ALREADY. LET'S
DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE.
I USED TO JOKE THAT I WOULD VOTE FOR A
DONKEY IF THE DEMOCRATS RAN HIM, BUT NOT EVERYBODY WILL DO THAT. AT THIS POINT
OF A POTENTIAL CRACK IN THE PARTY THAT WILL MAKE IT TOO WEAK TO WIN AN
ELECTION, THE "SUPERDELEGATES" HAD BETTER GO AHEAD AND PARDON THE
SINNERS SANDERS AND WARREN AND THE DOZEN OR SO OTHERS. THERE IS A VOTING BLOC
OUT THERE WHO ARE VERY DEFINITELY "SOCIAL DEMOCRATS," OR SOMETHING
SIMILAR, AND THE DEMS HAVE BEEN VOTING WITH THEM UP TO NOW.
MY MAIN FEAR IS NOT GETTING PRESIDENT TRUMP
AND HIS APPOINTEES OUT OF ALL OF THEIR POSITIONS THROUGHOUT THE GOVERNMENT, AND
THE LEGISLATORS IN BOTH HOUSES WHO HAVE SUPPORTED HIM OR FEARED TO CROSS SWORDS
WITH HIM; SO THAT WE OF THE "LEFT" CAN SAFELY WALK OUT OF THE PARTY
IF NEED BE. EXCEPT FOR THAT POSSIBILITY OF MORE TRUMP VICTORIES, I AM READY TO
DO IT NOW.
Biden Was Asked About Segregation.
His Answer Included a Record Player.
The former vice president’s solution for
inequality in schools touched on giving teachers a raise and playing a record
player at night so children could hear more words.
Video
CreditCreditRuth Fremson/The New York Times
Sept. 12, 2019
The record of former Vice President Joseph
R. Biden Jr. on race and school desegregation once again came to the forefront
during a Democratic debate, this time focusing on a comment he had made in 1975 on
inequality: “I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300
years ago.”
Mr. Biden — who had been confronted in
July’s debate over his record on busing in a tense exchange with Senator Kamala Harris —
smiled broadly but seemed taken aback by the question from the ABC
correspondent Linsey Davis on Thursday.
His response rambled, discussing a record
player and invoking his current wife and his deceased wife — who both worked as
teachers — then ended with a reference to a figure who had come up in an earlier,
unrelated question: President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.
“Well, that was quite a lot,” Julián
Castro, the former housing secretary, quipped in response to Mr. Biden’s
answer.
The exchange began when Ms. Davis, pointing
out Mr. Biden’s past comment, asked him whether he currently thinks Americans
need to repair the legacy of slavery in the United States.
DAVIS: Mr.
Vice President, I want to come to you and talk to you about inequality in schools
and race. In a conversation about how to deal with segregation in schools back
in 1975, you told a reporter, “I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my
father and grandfather, I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for
the sins of my own generation, and I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay
for what happened 300 years ago.” You said that some 40 years ago. But as you
stand here tonight, what responsibility do you think that Americans need to
take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?
BIDEN: Well,
they have to deal with the — look, there’s institutional segregation in this
country. And from the time I got involved, I started dealing with that.
Redlining, banks, making sure we are in a position where — look, you talk about
education. I propose that what we take the very poor schools, the Title I
schools, triple the amount of money we spend from $15 to $45 billion a year.
Give every single teacher a raise to the $60,000 level.
Number two, make sure that we bring in to
help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that
come from home. We have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America
today. It’s crazy. The teachers are — I’m married to a teacher, my deceased
wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them. Make sure that every
single child does, does in fact, have 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds go to school. Not
day care, school.
We bring social workers into some and
parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not that they
don’t want to help, they don’t know what — they don’t know quite what to do.
Play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the
record player — on at night, make sure that kids hear words, a kid coming from
a very poor school — a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer
spoken by the time we get there.
DAVIS: Thank
you, Mr. Vice President.
BIDEN: No,
I’m going to go like the rest of them do, twice over. Because here’s the deal.
The deal is that we’ve got this a little backward. And by the way, in
Venezuela, we should be allowing people to come here from Venezuela. I know
Maduro. I’ve confronted Maduro. Number two, you talk about the need to do
something in Latin America. I’m the guy that came up with $740 million, to see
to it those three countries, in fact, changed their system so people don’t have
a chance to leave. Y’all acting like we just discovered this yesterday.
“Well, that was quite a lot,” said Mr.
Castro, before recalling his own childhood in a segregated neighborhood in San
Antonio.
THIS VERY CONCRETE NEW FACTOR OF SANDERS'
POSSIBLE REPEATED ILLNESS, WILL PROBABLY PLAY INTO OUR MAKING A DECISION ON WHICH
CANDIDATE TO BACK. WILL IT HURT SANDERS AND PROMOTE WARREN? IF IT DOES, WILL
SHE BE SUBJECT TO A TORRENT OF NEW ABUSE FROM ANTI-PROGRESSIVE SOURCES? ONE
ARTICLE REFERRED TO BERNIE AS DEFLECTING MOST OF THAT HATE STORM FROM WARREN. POLITICO
HAS GIVEN A GOOD RUNDOWN OF POSSIBLE CHANGES THAT WE MAY SEE.
Democratic
front-runners get new scrutiny after Sanders heart procedure
Vermont senator’s hospitalization ‘couldn’t
have come at a worse time,’ said one Democratic strategist.
By DAVID SIDERS
10/03/2019 07:20 PM EDT
PHOTOGRAPH -- Democratic presidential
candidate Bernie Sanders | Scott Eisen/Getty Images
Bernie Sanders’ hospitalization with a
blocked artery this week finally forced the Democratic Party to confront a
lingering fact: All three of its presidential front-runners are
septuagenarians, and two are older than Donald Trump — himself the oldest
person ever to take office.
For Sanders, the immediate effect of the
incident — a blockage requiring two stents — was to sideline the
78-year-old senator until further notice, with rest for what an adviser called
“the next few days.”
But the broader implications were also
thrust into plain view: In a Democratic primary that was once expected to break
along generational lines, a whole crop of younger contenders has fallen so
far back that — even with an aging, top-tier contender laid up — it would take
an upset for the party to mount a generational argument against Trump next
year.
Biden, Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren
— the youngest of the three at 70 — are pulling nearly three-quarters of the
primary electorate’s support in national polling. And even if Sanders stumbles,
no younger alternative is likely to benefit.
Instead, it is Sanders’ friend and fellow
progressive, Warren, who might be poised to gain.
If the Vermont senator remains off the
campaign “for any substantial period of time,” said Paul Maslin, a top
Democratic pollster, Warren stands to draw from his pool of support,
strengthening a candidate who has already surged ahead of Biden, the former
vice president, in some polls.
How
much does age matter for the 2020 presidential election?
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“If he’s truly in a position where he
can’t campaign for a while,” Maslin said, “I think we’re starting to move into
a situation where we’re going to have a new front-runner, and then everything
changes … I guarantee you she will have all guns aimed at her, and she’s going
to get tested, sooner rather than later probably.”
A similar calculation was already making the
rounds among Democratic strategists and donors hours after Sanders was
hospitalized.
One Wall Street executive involved in
Democratic Party politics said news of Sanders’ hospitalization reverberated at
least incrementally in the financial markets. “I think one of the reasons the
markets went down today is not only because of the jobs numbers and softness in
manufacturing. I think there’s a feeling that this helps Warren.”
For decades, Democrats tended to reward
youth in their presidential nominating contests. And when the party selected
Hillary Clinton in 2016, it learned what conservative media could do with a
candidate in her late 60s and a case of pneumonia.
“It actually did work, and it was a
Facebook effort to actually target on these particular issues: on sickness, age,”
said Amanda Renteria, national political director of Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “What’s
different this year is the seriousness and the gravity of what’s going on
around the world does give, I’ll say, qualifications and experience a different
weight than in the past, more than in 2016. And I think that by and large has
altered this conversation about age.”
Philippe Reines, a longtime Clinton
confidant said that in the current primary, “Democrats have been thinking about
age, and have not been concerned about it … It’s not like anyone thinks Biden
and Sanders are spring chickens. But that clearly hasn’t been a concern. And it
clearly isn’t a problem.”
Sanders’ wife, Jane, released a statement on
Thursday saying that her husband was “up and about,” spending much of the
previous day “talking with staff about policies, cracking jokes with the nurses
and doctors, and speaking with his family on the phone.”
“His doctors are pleased with his progress,
and there has been no need for any additional procedures,” she wrote. “We
expect Bernie will be discharged and on a plane back to Burlington before the
end of the weekend. He'll take a few days to rest, but he's ready to get back
out there and is looking forward to the October debate.”
Still, the episode startled Sanders’
supporters.
“Everything’s good, except Bernie’s stents,”
said Jeff Cohen, co-founder of RootsAction.org, an online activist group that
supports Sanders said Wednesday, just after Sanders’ hospitalization was
announced.
Cohen said he trusts medical professionals'
assessment “that this is not a big thing” and expects him to return to the
campaign soon. But if he is sidelined, Cohen said, it could increase pressure
on Warren.
“There are many of us that feel that Bernie
is the heat shield — that Bernie has attracted so much of the negative coverage
it has helped Warren,” he said. “If it wasn’t for Bernie in there, Warren would
be getting far more negative press … It would not surprise me if Warren
authentically wants Bernie back on the trail soon for that same reason.”
In many ways, Sanders remains on firm
ground. On Tuesday, his campaign announced that he had raised more than $25
million in the year’s third quarter, a staggering sum. And advisers to several
of his competitors believe Sanders has a floor that won’t not [sic] fall below
15 percent even if Warren surges higher.
One Democratic strategist said that after
his hospitalization, “I could imagine his supporters bear-hugging him even
harder.”
The problem for Sanders is that he has
been struggling to broaden his support, not energize voters who already favor
him. In his effort to “start showing growth,” the strategist said, his
hospitalization “couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
On Wednesday, Drudge Report’s all-red headline about Sanders
read, “Bernie Heart Scare! All Events Canceled.”
Repeatedly this week, Sanders’
competitors said they expected him to be “back to Bernie.”
“I assume you’ve heard the news about
Bernie — that he’s had a medical incident, and I know everyone here wishes him
well, wants to see him strong and back on the trail as soon as possible,”
Warren said at a forum in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
When she was asked at a second event,
“How you feeling?” Warren replied, “It’s better to be in the fight than on the
sidelines.”
FILED
UNDER:
Sanders
after Trump calls Ocasio-Cortez a 'wack job': It will be 'a real pleasure
defeating you'
PHOTOGRAPH -- SANDERS SPEAKING © Greg Nash
Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) came to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's defense on
Thursday night after President Trump called the New York
Democrat a "wack job" on Twitter.
"It's going to be a real pleasure
defeating you," Sanders tweeted in response to Trump's post.
Ocasio-Cortez also responded to Trump's tweet,
writing "better than being a criminal who betrays our country," an
apparent reference to his call asking Ukraine's president to investigate
leading Democratic presidential contender Joe
Biden.
Trump made his comment after a woman
attending an Ocasio-Cortez town hall said
that the lawmaker's support of the Green New Deal was not enough and that
she should campaign on "eating babies."
The progressive Democrat tweeted about
the woman, saying, "I was concerned there was a woman in crisis & want
to ensure we treat the situation compassionately."
"This person may have been suffering
from a mental condition and it’s not okay that the right-wing is mocking her
and potentially make her condition or crisis worse. Be a decent human being and
knock it off," Ocasio-Cortez added.
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have been
close allies, and two have worked together on
a few pieces of legislation.
Sanders and Biden are among more than a dozen
people competing for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Sen.
Bernie Sanders plans to attend October debate after hospitalization
Oct 3, 2019, 9:08 PM ET
COMING UP -- Who is Bernie Sanders?
As Sen. Bernie Sanders recovers
from a heart procedure to
clear a clogged artery, his campaign promises he will be on the debate stage in
less than two weeks.
"Bernie is up and about. Yesterday, he
spent much of the day talking with staff about policies, cracking jokes with
the nurses and doctors, and speaking with his family on the phone. His doctors
are pleased with his progress, and there has been no need for any additional
procedures," Jane Sanders said in a statement Thursday afternoon. "We
expect Bernie will be discharged and on a plane back to Burlington before the
end of the weekend. He'll take a few days to rest, but he's ready to get back
out there and is looking forward to the October debate."
Prior to Jane Sanders' statement, ABC News
asked about his attending the debate and a campaign official said, "He
will be at the debate."
Sanders is scheduled to take the stage with
11 of his 2020 Democratic primary
rivals on Oct. 15.
Heidi Gutman/Walt Disney Television
Democratic presidential candidate Sen.
Bernie Sanders speaks during the third Democratic primary debate of the 2020
presidential campaign season in Houston, Texas, Sept. 12, 2019.more +
Campaign officials have remained
tight-lipped while the Vermont senator recovers at a Las Vegas hospital. He was
hospitalized on Tuesday following a closed-door grassroots fundraiser.
Sanders had chest pains before being taken
to the hospital, according to a statement from Sanders' campaign senior adviser
Jeff Weaver. The campaign would not say if the senator suffered a heart attack.
His wife traveled to Nevada to be with him
at the hospital.
Jane Sanders spoke outside of Desert Springs
Hospital on Thursday, saying her husband was "doing great."
"It’s exciting that he’s gonna be out
of here tomorrow or the next day," she said. "We’re gonna be home on
the weekend. He’s been spending the last couple of days just having a good time,
talking to people -- friends and family."
She did admit that his schedule is
"crazy," but also added, "the man never stops."
Andrew Burton/Getty Images
Democratic presidential candidate Sen.
Bernie Sanders shakes hands with audience members after speaking at a campaign
rally at Great Bay Community College on Feb. 7, 2016, in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire.more +
Sanders was scheduled to make campaign stops
in California and Iowa in the coming days, however, campaign officials said
those campaign stops are canceled until further notice.
Sanders’ surrogates will be on the campaign
trail in his absence. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, a campaign
co-chairwoman, was headed to New Hampshire for three campaign events and
Rep. Ro Khanna, a fellow
campaign co-chairman, will make stops in Iowa over the weekend.
This comes at a critical time in the race,
the Sanders campaign just announced raising $25.3 million before the Federal
Election Commission’s quarterly deadline. The campaign had shaken up staff in
Iowa and New Hampshire. The staffing changes, according to campaign officials,
aimed to put the campaign in the best position to win in early states.
It is unclear when Sanders will make a full
return to the campaign trail and if he will be able to return to the aggressive
pace his campaign had before he was hospitalized. It was typical for Sanders to
attend as many as five campaign events a day.
ABC
News' Chris Donato and Armando Garcia contributed to this report.
Facebook’s
Zuckerberg sympathizes with Bernie Sanders’s take on billionaires: ‘No one
deserves to have that much money’
PUBLISHED
THU, OCT 3 2019 7:15 PM EDT
UPDATED
THU, OCT 3 2019 8:53 PM EDT
POINTS
- Mark Zuckerberg live streamed a
surprise Q&A session with Facebook employees on Thursday after audio
from an earlier meeting was leaked.
- He addressed a range of topics,
including taking on views of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
- The Verge on Tuesday published audio
and transcripts from previous Q&A sessions.
Facebook
founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaves a meeting with Senator John Cornyn (R-TX)
in his office on Capitol Hill on September 19, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Zuckerberg is making the rounds with various lawmakers in Washington today.
Samuel
Corum | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg made the surprising call to live-stream an employee Q&A
session to the public on Thursday after recordings from a similar meeting
in July were leaked and published earlier this week.
Zuckerberg addressed a range of topics and
even waded into political views expressed by presidential candidates Bernie
Sanders and Elizabeth
Warren. He was also asked which types of fake news Facebook tries to
prevent and how the San Francisco Bay Area’s housing crisis is impacting the
company.
Asked to respond to Sen. Sanders’s comment
that billionaires should not exist, Zuckerberg
offered an unexpected viewpoint, considering his Facebook ownership makes him
worth over $69 billion.
“I understand where he’s coming from,”
Zuckerberg said. “I don’t know that I have an exact threshold on what amount of
money someone should have but on some level no one deserves to have that much
money.”
Sen. Warren has taken more of a direct
attack on Facebook, claiming that the company should be broken up. The Verge on Tuesday published audio
and transcripts from a Q&A session in which Zuckerberg blasted
Warren’s plan and said he’d “go to the mat” and fight it.
Zuckerberg said on Thursday that he
stands by all the content in the leaked recording, but he added, “let’s try not
to antagonize her further.”
In announcing the public
session, Zuckerberg wrote in a post that he thought “it
would be good to show everyone what these Q&As are like.” He said that
he thinks an intern leaked the contents of the prior Q&A because it was a
session for interns.
He compared himself to a robot that needs
recharging and joked during the live stream, “At this point, I do such a bad
job at interviews that what do we have to lose?”
Zuckerberg took some questions addressing
the business.
He said that more than 80% of the people
using the company’s new dating service come back each week, but he declined to
share a precise number of users.
Asked how Facebook prioritizes which
category of false information to tackle, Zuckerberg said that the
objective is to stamp out “complete and obvious hoaxes.”
“When we talk about misinformation, a lot of
people focus on a statement that isn’t clear if it’s a shade of true or
partially false,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff that people say that is
completely false. That’s the thing that I’m really focused on and making sure
that we [stop].”
With a massive headquarters in Menlo Park,
California, Facebook is now primarily growing its workforce outside of the Bay
Area, Zuckerberg said.
“The housing prices are way up, the traffic
is bad,” he said. “There’s a lot that we are trying to do to help build more
housing and alleviate traffic constraints, but for the near term it’s going to
be building up those other hubs.”
TO READ THE TEXT MESSAGES THEMSELVES, GO TO
THIS WEBSITE. THE ALL CAPS IN THE TITLE LINE AND ELSEWHERE WITHIN THE ARTICLE
ARE NOT MINE. I'VE BEEN TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH THIS, AND NOW THE IRS
WHISTLEBLOWER ISSUE, BY LISTENING TO MSNBC'S RACHEL MADDOW, BUT I JUST CAN'T DO
WITHOUT SOMETHING IN PRINT. HERE IS A LITTLE SUMMARY.
TEXT
MESSAGES SHOW THE TRUMP-ZELENSKY CALL HAD JUST ONE GOAL — AND IT WAS ANYTHING
BUT ROUTINE
October 4 2019, 3:59 p.m.
Kurt Volker, center, a former special envoy
to Ukraine, is escorted as he leaves a closed-door interview with House investigators
at the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 3, 2019. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
NEWLY
RELEASED text messages between State Department officials provide the
clearest evidence yet that President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not “routine,” and that it was organized
specifically to pressure the Ukrainian government to undertake politically
motivated investigations.
The White House’s reconstruction of the July 25 call
released earlier this month showed Trump asking Zelensky for a “favor” and
repeatedly pressing him to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden for “corruption.” The
readout galvanized calls for Trump’s impeachment, but it didn’t explain how the
call came about in the first place.
The intelligence community whistleblower
complaint that first drew attention to the call suggested that Trump’s request
came in the midst of an ordinary diplomatic exchange. “The officials I spoke
with told me that participation in the call had not been restricted in advance
because everyone expected it would be a ‘routine’ call with a foreign leader,”
the complaint reads.
But text messages from Kurt Volker, the
State Department’s former special representative for Ukraine negotiations, say that
the “most important” priority for Trump’s phone call with Zelensky was getting
the Ukrainian leader to commit to an investigation of the Bidens.
“Most imp[ortan]t is for Zelensky to say
that he will help investigation — and address any personnel issues — if there
are any,” Volker texted Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European
Union, on July 19, less than a week before the call took place, according
to text messages released Thursday night by
House investigators.
Document: U.S. Congress
On July 22, three days before the
Trump-Zelensky call, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani spoke with Andrey
Yermak, a top adviser to Zelensky. Later that day, Volker texted that “Rudy is
now advocating for a phone call” between Trump and the Ukrainian president.
Giuliani’s push for the call suggests that it was in line with his goal of
digging up dirt on the Bidens.
On the morning of July 25, before the
Trump-Zelensky call, Volker texted Yermak, strongly implying that a future
White House visit for Zelensky was conditional on the Ukrainian president
committing to an investigation of “‘what happened’ in 2016,” an apparent
reference to a widely debunked conspiracy theory alleging
Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election.
Document: U.S. Congress
In Trump’s call with Zelensky later that
day, in addition to pressuring him to investigate the Bidens, the U.S.
president asked Zelensky to “get to the bottom” of a CrowdStrike server* he
falsely alleged was in the Ukraine.
The texts released by investigators also
contain protests from Bill Taylor, the top American diplomat in the U.S.
embassy in Kiev. On multiple occasions, Taylor asked Sondland and Volker, both
Trump appointees, whether diplomatic channels or military aid was being
leveraged to press Ukraine to push politically motivated investigations.
In one text, Taylor relayed to Sondland
something a Zelenksy aide had told him: that “President Zelensky is sensitive
about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington
domestic, reelection politics.”
One contrast revealed in the texts is
between the response of Taylor, a veteran State Department employee, and
that of Sondland and Volker, both political appointees. Sondland was a major donor to Trump’s campaign, while
Volker previously served as U.S. ambassador to NATO before leaving for the
private sector in 2009. Taylor is a longtime diplomat who served in both the
George W. Bush and Obama administrations.
On September 1, after Trump canceled a
scheduled visit to Poland where he was scheduled to meet with Zelensky, Taylor
texted: “Are we now saying that security assistance and a [White House] meeting
are conditioned on investigations?” Sondland responded: “Call me.”
Document:
U.S. Congress
Republican talking points have focused
on denying that there was an explicit quid pro quo in Trump’s phone call, even
though the White House readout has him saying, “The United States has been
very, very good for Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily”
and asking for a “favor.” But Taylor’s texts indicate that, as the top U.S. diplomat
in Ukraine, he interpreted Trump’s message as an invitation to trade a
politically motivated investigation for U.S. assistance and a White House
visit.
During a conversation later in September,
Taylor reiterated that he thought the notion of such a trade was inappropriate.
“As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for
help with a political campaign.” Sondland responded that Taylor was “incorrect
about President Trump’s intentions” and “the President has been crystal clear
no quid pro quo’s [sic] of any kind.”
WAIT!
BEFORE YOU GO on about your day, ask yourself: How likely
is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news
outlet if The Intercept hadn’t done it? Consider what the world of media would
look like without The Intercept. Who would hold party elites accountable to the
values they proclaim to have? How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice,
and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters weren’t on the
beat? The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not
easy, cheap, or profitable. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news
outlet. We don’t have ads, so we depend on our members — 35,000 and counting —
to help us hold the powerful to account. Joining is simple and doesn’t need to
cost a lot: You can become a sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a
month. That’s all it takes to support the journalism you rely on.
CONTACT
THE AUTHOR:
a CrowdStrike server* -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrowdStrike
CrowdStrike
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
CrowdStrike
Holdings, Inc. is a cybersecurity technology company based
in Sunnyvale,
California. It provides endpoint security, threat
intelligence, and cyberattack response services.[1] The company has been involved
in investigations of several high profile cyber-attacks,
including the Sony Pictures hack,[2] the 2016
Democratic National Committee email leak, and the Democratic
National Committee cyber attacks.[3]
CrowdStrike was co-founded by George Kurtz (CEO),[4][5] Dmitri Alperovitch (CTO),[6] and Gregg Marston (CFO,
retired) in 2011.[7][8] In 2012, Shawn Henry, a
former Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI) official who led both the FBI's criminal and cyber divisions,
was hired to lead sister company CrowdStrike Services, Inc., which focused on
proactive and incident response services.[9] In June 2013, the company
launched its first product, CrowdStrike Falcon.[10] The company became known
for providing threat intelligence and attribution to nation state actors[11] that are conducting
economic espionage and IP theft.[12]
IF WILLIAM BARR SURVIVES THIS WITH HIS
POSITION INTACT, I WILL BE VERY UPSET. HE PROBABLY WON'T, THOUGH.
TRUMP-UKRAINE
CALL PUTS ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR IN THE HOT SEAT
THE
SUMMARY OF A call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky released on Wednesday not only confirmed reports that Trump
repeatedly pressured the foreign leader to uncover damaging information about
former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, but also thrust Attorney
General William Barr into the center of a rapidly unfolding scandal.
In the July call, Trump urged Zelensky to
follow up with Barr, as well as with the president’s personal attorney, Rudy
Giuliani. “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the
prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can
do with the Attorney General would be great,” Trump said, according to the
summary. On four separate occasions, according to the document, Trump said that
his “Attorney General” or “Attorney General Barr” would call Zelensky about the
matter.
The document released Wednesday was not a
verbatim reproduction of the call. A footnote in the transcript describes it as
“the notes and recollections of Situation room duty and [National Security
Council] policy staff assigned to listen and memorialize the conversation in
written form as the conversation takes place.”
It’s unclear what role, if any, Barr played
in Trump and Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt about Biden, who is now a
Democratic presidential candidate, but any involvement by the attorney general
would represent an extraordinary political intervention by the nation’s top law
enforcement official. It also raises questions about whether the Justice
Department’s suppression of a whistleblower complaint may have had the
effect of shielding Barr.
Although the call summary appears to show
that Trump believes Barr would personally involve himself in the attempt to
pressure Zelensky, Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec quickly issued
a statement on Wednesday denying that
Barr had ever spoken to Trump about it.
“The President has not spoken with the
Attorney General about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former
Vice President Biden or his son,” Kupec said. “The Attorney General has not
communicated with Ukraine — on this, or any other subject. Nor has the Attorney
General discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy
Giuliani.”
Democrats in Congress have already begun
calling for Barr to recuse himself from any matter involving the whistleblower
complaint or related oversight investigations. “The President dragged the
attorney general into this mess,” House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler said.
“At a minimum, Barr must recuse himself until we get to the bottom of this
matter.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the call summary and “the Justice
Department’s acting in a rogue fashion in being complicit in the President’s lawlessness
confirm the need for an impeachment inquiry. Clearly, Congress must act.”
House Democrats are already investigating
whether Trump used his office to pressure the Ukrainian government to
investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy
company while his father was vice president. Trump has suggested without
evidence that Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire a top prosecutor
because he was investigating Hunter Biden’s company for corruption, but anti-corruption experts have said that
the vice president’s intervention made the company more, not less likely to be
prosecuted.
Barr’s Justice Department has already played
a role in suppressing the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s interactions
with Ukraine. Trump’s acting director of national intelligence took the unusual
step of consulting with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel about
whether to disclose the complaint. The Justice Department advised that he
should not, even though Congress has passed a law requiring
the director to automatically transmit claims the inspector general deems
“credible” and of “urgent concern.”
On Wednesday, the Office of Legal Counsel
released a memo explaining its decision,
which argues that the complaint does not relate directly to misconduct within
the intelligence community or by an intelligence agency. Rather, it says, the
complaint “arises out of a confidential diplomatic communication between the
President and a foreign leader that the intelligence-community complainant
received secondhand.” The opinion concludes that it therefore does not involve
an “urgent concern,” and so the law, as written, does not require it to be sent
to Congress.
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary
Committee in May, Barr denied that Trump had ever pressured him to investigate
someone. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris,
D-Calif., asked “if the president or anyone at
the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of
anyone.” After pausing, Barr responded: “I’m trying to grapple with the word
‘suggest.’ There have been discussions of matters out there. They have
not asked me to open
an investigation.”
Barr was also asked by Sen. Chris Coons,
D-Del., whether a presidential campaign needed to notify the FBI when a foreign
government offered dirt on an opponent. After pausing, Barr replied, “If a
foreign intelligence service does, yes.”
If the summary of Trump’s call with Zelensky
is accurate, this would not be the first time Trump has sought Justice
Department intervention against his political opponents.
Last year, the New York Times reported that Trump had told his White
House counsel Donald McGahn he wanted to order the Justice Department to
prosecute his former election opponent, Hillary Clinton, and FBI Director James
Comey. In response, McGahn directed his staff to produce a memo saying that
Trump lacked the authority to order a prosecution and that asking for a Justice
Department investigation could trigger a backlash that could lead to
impeachment.
CONTACT
THE AUTHOR:
WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS! THIS MAN, OUR
PRESIDENT, HAS ANOTHER WHISTLEBLOWER PROBLEM, THIS TIME INVOLVING THE IRS.
SOMEONE AT THE IRS, WITH OR WITHOUT URGING OR BRIBES FROM THE HIGHEST OFFICER
IN OUR LAND, HAS MISHANDLED THE ANNUAL AUDIT OF TRUMP'S TAX RECORDS. THAT'S
ONE MORE ARTICLE OF IMPEACHMENT. AS NASTY AS THAT IS, IT ISN'T AS BAD AS ASKING
/ DEMANDING FAVORS OF A FOREIGN LEADER IN THE FORM OF DELIVERING SOME KIND OF
"DIRT" ON BIDEN, HIS PROBABLE OPPOSITION FOR 2020. IT'S THE SAME PLOT
OF AN ALMOST IDENTICAL PLAY TO 2016. IT SICKENS ME.
TRUMP'S CORRUPTION (HIS NEW FAVORITE WORD,
PROBABLY BECAUSE ELIZABETH WARREN IS NOW USING THAT CLASSIC TERM AND IT SEEMS
TO BE WORKING FOR HER), IS GROWING LIKE THOSE INTERTWINED VINES AND FLOWERS IN
OLD ART AND SCULPTURE. EVERY DAY A NEWS SUBJECT ON HIS MISDEEDS COMES TO LIGHT.
I CAN'T KEEP UP WITH IT ALL ANYMORE, BUT THAT'S WHY I'LL STILL KEEP COLLECTING
THE NEWS AND THROWING IN MY TWO CENTS WORTH OF COMMENTARY.
The
other whistleblower controversy dogging Team Trump
10/03/19 10:54 AM—UPDATED 10/03/19
11:07 AM
By Steve Benen
PHOTOGRAPH -- The White House is seen under
dark rain clouds in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2015.
Photo
by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty
Rachel sat down with Stephen Colbert this
week, and the host asked about other major stories of note that the public
isn’t necessarily hearing about because of the focus on Donald Trump’s
impeachment crisis. Their exchange reminded me that I
hadn’t yet written about a story I’ve been meaning to mention.
MADDOW:
There’s another whistleblower.
COLBERT:
Whaaa? What is this other whistleblower?
MADDOW:
The intelligence community whistleblower who came forward that led to this
impeachment scandal is one thing. Just before that, we got very quiet word in a
court filing – that nobody put out a press release about – from the Ways and Means
Committee that said, “By the way, we’ve had a whistleblower come forward to say
there’s been improper influence by the administration on the handling of
President Trump’s tax returns at the IRS.” So that’s the other whistleblower.
We don’t know what’s going to happen with that.
COLBERT:
That is a whistle I would like to listen to.
This isn’t a story that’s generated a lot of
attention, at least not yet, but it has quite a bit of potential.
The Internal Revenue Service is
responsible for conducting an annual audit of the president’s tax returns – a
post-Watergate reform that’s applied to every modern president – which
ordinarily wouldn’t be especially notable.
But as the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell noted in a column this week, according to House
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.), an anonymous
whistleblower over the summer offered credible allegations of “evidence of
possible misconduct,” specifically “inappropriate efforts to influence” the
audit of Trump’s materials.
To be sure, there’s a lot about this we
don’t know, and it’s tough to gauge the validity of the accusations without
more information. All kinds of key details – the nature of the complaint, who
allegedly acted inappropriately, how the whistleblower came to learn of the
alleged misconduct, his or her possible motivations, etc. – aren’t yet
available to the public.
Maybe something will come of this, maybe
not. Either way, it’d be good to find out.
Meanwhile, there’s an ongoing court fight
underway in which the House Ways and Means Committee is demanding Trump’s tax
returns, which Trump and his attorneys are fighting furiously to keep secret
for reasons unknown. Neal told reporters this week that the
existence of the whistleblower may affect the case.
The Democratic committee chairman added
that the issue surrounding the whistleblower complaint is in the hands of the
House General Counsel, “and I’m probably not going to say any more about that.”
Trump
envisioned border moat ‘stocked with snakes or alligators’
10/02/19 11:00 AM—UPDATED 10/02/19
11:04 AM
By Steve Benen
PHOTOGRAPH -- U.S. Border Patrol agents look
for immigrants crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico (L), to the United States at
dusk on July 24, 2014 near Mission, Texas.
Photo
by John Moore/Getty
In Barack Obama’s first term as president,
Republicans issued a challenge to the Democratic White House: increasing border
security would open the door to a bipartisan reform package. Obama accepted the
offer at face value and significantly increased
border security.
With this in mind, the Democratic president
traveled to El Paso in May 2011 for a speech on immigration policy, and
he explained at the time, “We have gone
above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they
supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement. All the
stuff they asked for, we’ve done.”
Obama added, however, that GOP officials
were complaining anyway. “Maybe they’ll need a moat,” he said to laughter. “Maybe they want
alligators in the moat. They’ll never be satisfied.”
Obama’s joke came to mind while reading
a newly published report from the New York Times on Donald Trump’s
zealotry on border policy.
Privately,
the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a
water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek
a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could
pierce human flesh.
After
publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the
president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a
meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to
slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.
Among the things I found amazing about
this was the idea of aides “seeking a cost estimate.” I’m trying to imagine
assorted officials in the West Wing, making calls and poking around online,
trying to figure out what it would cost to buy a bunch of snakes and alligators
for a moat, all in the hopes of satisfying their strange boss.
But as amusing as this may seem, it’s the
other part of the excerpt that’s far more serious: Trump encouraged those
around him to do things the law would not allow them to do.
In fact, this new report from
the New York Times featured
a variety of examples of presidential indifference toward legal limits. In one
instance, Trump reportedly told then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen
Nielsen to speed up the construction of border barriers. “[S]he said they
needed permission from property owners,” the article noted. “Take the land, Mr.
Trump would say, and let them sue us.”
It brought to mind recent remarks from
former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who told an audience about the kind of
instructions he’d receive from Trump. “So often, the president would say,
‘Here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it,’” Tillerson explained. “And I would have to say to him,
‘Mr. President I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way.
It violates the law.’”
Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s
report, of course, is also filled with examples of Trump
directing people to take legally dubious actions.
As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes added last night, in response to
the latest Times report, “The president is fundamentally and unalterably
lawless.” If you’re one of those folks who chanted, “Rule of law” during
Trump’s 2016 campaign rallies, I have some very bad news for you.
Postscript: Trump, for what it’s worth, has denied the accuracy of the latest
reporting. Of course, Trump has also denied all sorts of other reports, many of
which proved to be true.
OBVIOUSLY, SINCE TODAY IS ONLY 10/2, THE
DATE OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS NOT 10/19/19. OTHERWISE, READ ON.
Secretary
of State Pompeo tries to block. TRANSCRIPT: 10/19/19, The Rachel Maddow
Show.
10/01/19 09:00 PM
Guests:
Chris Murphy
Transcript:
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: That`s ALL IN
for this evening.
“THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW” starts right
now.
Good evening, Rachel.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Good
evening, Chris. Thanks, my friend.
HAYES: You bet.
MADDOW: Much appreciated.
Thanks to you at home for joining us this
hour.
As has been the case over this past – really
over the past week, the news
again today seems to be developing by the
hour. This has been a remarkable
news day. There`s a lot to get to tonight.
Let`s jump right in.
I want to start with the surprise news that
I think nobody saw coming until
it happened late this afternoon. It`s
news from the State Department.
Late this afternoon, there was an unexpected
announcement from a number of
committees in Congress that they had been
alerted by the long time
inspector general from the State Department
that he believed he needed to
come talk to them immediately.
The inspector general of the State
Department, it`s a man named Steve
Linick. He`s been there several years.
He was there before the Trump
administration came into office. He`s
been a long time in that job.
And today, we think without warning, he told
a bunch of key committees in
both the house and the Senate that he needs
to come see them immediately,
tomorrow, because he needs to show them some
documents that they need to
see. Multiple congressional sources
telling NBC News that the inspector
general reached out to Congress with what
the committees describe as a,
quote, urgent request to brief the
committees about documents related to
the State Department and Ukraine.
Now, there are, of course, impeachment
proceedings under way against the
president right now having to do with his
own involvement with Ukraine.
Toward that inquiry, the State Department
has been subpoenaed. State
Department officials have been summoned to
testify in those proceedings.
But the inspector general from that
department coming forward on his own to
say, uh, I`ve got something you should see
here, urgently, that`s new and
absolutely unexpected. The I.G. is
expected to give that briefing to
Congress tomorrow, again, at his
request. It`s expected to be delivered in
a classified setting, so behind closed
doors. It may ultimately include a
lot of people, though. The I.G. has
notified the Intelligence Committee in
the House and the Intelligence Committee in
the Senate, the Foreign
Relations Committee in the House, and the
Foreign Relations Committee in
the Senate, the Oversight Committee in both
the House and the Senate, the
Appropriations Committee in both the House
and the Senate. So that`s eight
committees that he`s notified, four in the
House, four in the Senate, he
wants to brief the members of those
committees plus committee staff.
Now, what does he have to tell them and why
does he have to do it with such
urgency and why in this why, we absolutely
do not know. But it`s quite
possible that he`s doing this on his own
say-so with no permission from
anybody else. “The Washington Post”
points out tonight that as the State
Department`s inspector general, he is
independent. He specifically, quote,
does not have to seek Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo`s approval to approach
the Hill with information, especially if the
information is not classified.
Now, in terms of what these documents are
that he`s going to hand over, the
inspector general has reportedly told the
committees that he obtained these
documents he`s going to show them from the
acting legal adviser of the
State Department. The acting legal
adviser of the State Department is a
Trump appointee who has only been in that
job since June. He was sort of a
controversial hire because he was very
inexperienced. Usually being the
top legal adviser at the State Department is
a really big deal, that you
got to kind of have a Yoda in, like somebody
who`s a real authority.
In this case, the person who is the acting
legal adviser to the State
Department, somebody who is quite junior,
who hasn`t been – who hasn`t
been practicing law for very long at all and
was therefore controversial
for taking that job. These documents
derive from that person. The
inspector general says these documents
relate to the State Department and
Ukraine.
So that`s what we know. Beyond that,
we don`t know anything.
I should also point out that the timing here
is unusual and interesting.
Congress is on recess right now,
right? Most members of Congress are home
in their districts. So, for the
inspector general to come forward and say,
hey, eight members, eight committees of
Congress, I need to brief you on
this stuff urgently right now, I`m coming to
the Hill tomorrow, this has to
be an urgent enough matter, according to the
inspector general, that he
believes it can`t wait until all the members
of Congress return back to
Capitol Hill after the recess is over.
So, in any case, this is going to happen
tomorrow, even though Congress is
on recess. If you are a member of
Congress or a senator and you are on one
of these eight committees in the House or
the Senate that`s been notified
today with this surprise announcement from
the inspector general that he
needs to talk to you immediately, if you`re
one of the people on those
committees, call your office. I know
you`re home, but it sounds like you
might unexpectedly have to be at work
tomorrow.
One senator who sits on both the Foreign
Relations Committee and the
Appropriations Committee is going to be
joining us in a moment, maybe we
can figure out a little more about what`s
going on here from him. But this
was an unexpected twist in this story
today. And it comes at a time when
the head of the State Department, when
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is
sort of sizzling under a very hot and very
unflattering spotlight.
Last night, we got the revelation that was
first reported in “The Wall
Street Journal” that Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo was actually on the
call. He was listening in on the call
for which President Trump is now
going to be impeached. It`s that call
to Ukraine where President Trump
asked that country`s government for help
against his potential Democratic
opponent in the next election. He`s
going to be impeached for that.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was listening
in on that call.
We learned that last night. It was
first reported in “The Wall Street
Journal.” After we learned that last
night, this morning, Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo sent a letter to House
Democrats, basically telling them
to bug off in their investigation. The
House had announced plans to depose
several State Department officials who are
potential witnesses to what`s
been going on between the president and
Ukraine, witnesses in this now-
ongoing impeachment proceeding against the
president.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo`s letter
today essentially threatened
Congress that he might not allow those State
Department officials and ex-
State Department officials to actually give
those depositions, actually to
give that testimony.
The three House committee chairs who had
asked for those depositions, who
are overseeing this part of the
investigation, they responded to Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo by basically saying,
no, no, no, no, no, and
especially not from you, Mike, no.
They told him this today.
Quote; Secretary Pompeo, you were reportedly
on the call when the president
pressed Ukraine to smear his political
opponent. If true, Secretary
Pompeo, you are now a fact witness in the
House impeachment inquiry. You
should immediately cease intimidating
department witnesses in order to
protect yourself and the president.
Any effort to intimidate witnesses or
prevent them from talking with Congress,
including State Department
employees, is illegal and will constitute
evidence of obstruction of the
impeachment inquiry.
In response, Congress may infer from this
obstruction that any withheld
documents and testimony would reveal
information that corroborates the
whistleblower complaint. The
committees are operating pursuant to our
long-established authorities as well as the
impeachment inquiry. We are
committed to protecting witnesses from
harassment and intimidation and we
expect their full compliance and that of the
Department of State.
So, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, himself
now an important witness in the
series of events for which President Trump
is going to be impeached, he is
threatening to block the State Department
officials, these other witnesses,
from speaking to the House about what they
have seen. Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo has not been successful, at
least yet, in blocking all the
testimony that he apparently wants to
block. It was confirmed earlier
today that Trump`s former special envoy to
Ukraine, Kurt Volker, will
appear as scheduled this Thursday, the day
after tomorrow, for his
deposition. Kurt Volker abruptly
resigned from his envoy position last
week after he was named in the
whistle-blower complaint and just after he
learned he wanted – sorry, that the House
wanted to depose him in this
matter.
But he`s not the only State Department
official that we are expecting to
testify. We learned today that the
former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine,
Marie Yovanovitch, she also reportedly plans
to go ahead with her
deposition despite threats from Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo today.
Ambassador Yovanovitch was scheduled to be
deposed tomorrow. We have since
learned that she has made arrangements with
the House, her legal time has
made arrangement with the House that instead
of testifying tomorrow, she
will speak to the House committees next
week, on Friday next week, October
11th.
So the news is sort of coming fast
now. In terms of the logistics
surrounding how the testimony from the State
Department officials is going
to be handled, what we believe is that
they`re going to be staff-led
interviews which means they`ll be conducted
by probably staff lawyers on
the Intelligence and Oversight and Foreign
Affairs Committees. That
probably means the questioning will be a
little bit better than if the
questioning were led by just members of the
committees.
No offense to the members of the
committees. I`m just saying, when you
have one person questioning somebody for a
longer period of time with the
ability to do follow-ups and they`re a
trained lawyer whose only job is to
do these things and not get reelected in the
process, staff lawyer
questioning tends to go better than
questioning by members of Congress.
Sorry.
Beyond that, House Democrats have declined
to say whether or not the
transcripts from these depositions will be
publicly released at any point.
They have not indicated whether these
depositions will be taped or whether
they will just be transcribed. So,
lots of variables still at play here.
And if you step back from the immediate
developments of the day, we`ve
still got the broader question of what
exactly the president was trying to
get from Ukraine. We know that
President Trump is likely to be impeached
now for having tried to enlist Ukraine to
help him in his 2020 reelection
effort. But there was also this very
live issue of the president, the
Trump White House, we`re starting to learn
perhaps a broader swath has been
trying in part through this pressure
campaign with the Ukraine, they`ve
been trying to go not just forward to
Trump`s reelection campaign in 2020,
they`ve been going back to the 2016
election, to try to basically
relitigate whether or not President Trump`s
campaign chair really was
taking secret money from pro-Russia interest
in Ukraine and whether not the
basic question is true of whether or not
Russia interfered election.
The U.S. government, U.S. intelligence
community, has confirmed, has
decided, has declared in no uncertain
circumstances that Russia interfered
in our election. The Trump White
House, President Trump himself and, we
are increasingly learning, members of the
Trump administration are trying
to query that or trying to muddy that or
trying to essentially undo that
declaration by the U.S. government that
Russia attacked our election to try
to benefit Trump.
That`s part of what`s going on by this
effort by Attorney General Bill
Barr. Bill Barr and the president
contacting world leaders to get them to
participate in a Justice Department inquiry
that the White House is hoping
might essentially exonerate Russia for the
2016 election attack. It would
undermine the U.S. intelligence community`s
conclusion that Russia carried
out that attack.
Yesterday, we got that stunning report from
“The Washington Post” that
Attorney General Bill Barr is handling this
personally. That`s how
independent this is from the president`s
appointees, right? The
president`s hand-picked attorney general is
personally traveling the globe,
trying to get foreign governments to give
him help in this inquiry into the
origins of the Russia investigation which
the White House hopes will
discredit the U.S. intelligence agencies`
examination of Russian
interference in the 2016 election.
And what remains this sort of big question
mark over this whole thing is
that relitigating that, trying to make it
seem like maybe Russia didn`t
interfere in our 2016 election, it`s true
that that does indirectly benefit
President Trump, right? He would like
history to say he won the 2016
election without an asterisk on it, without
help from a foreign actor which
he got from Russia.
So, indirectly, the president benefits from
that. But the entity this most
benefits, obviously, is Russia, because
Russia has been sanctioned for the
attack on the 2016 election. If the
U.S. government under President Trump
is now going to announce that we no longer
officially believe that Russia
did it, we no longer officially conclude as
a government that Russia
carried out that attack – well, then, there
goes the basis for our
government sanctioning the Russian
government as punishment for that
attack. Russia`s sanctioned for
attacking us in 2016. Trump and Barr and
others appear to be trying to undo the
grounds on which those sanctions
were laid.
The other grounds on which Russia is being
sanctioned by our government and
others is their invasion of Ukraine and
their ongoing war with Ukraine.
And it would appear that the Trump
administration has been trying to make
headway on that front for Russia too.
“The New York Times” made kind of an
offhand reference to that this weekend when
they reported that President
Trump has, quote, quietly been urging a deal
that would pave the way for a
removal of Western sanctions on Moscow over
their ongoing conflict in
Ukraine. Obviously, the removal of
those Western sanctions is, quote, long
a goal of President Putin`s.
I mean, President Trump himself said as much
back in August when he was
asked whether or not he planned to invite
the Ukrainian president to the
White House. He said at the time,
quote, I think he`s going to make a deal
with President Putin and he will be invited
to the White House. Meaning,
yes, I would like Ukraine and Russia to make
a deal, I would like the
Ukrainian president to go make a deal with
Vladimir Putin. Then that guy
can come to the White House.
Why does the U.S. president want Ukraine to
make a deal with Russia over
Russia having invaded them? Well, any
deal between Ukraine and Russia that
settled that matter would be the basis for
U.S. and international sanctions
against Russia being dropped. So this
is something that the White House
has been pushing for. Obviously, the
way that President Trump has been
behaving toward Ukraine means that any such
settlement right now between
Ukraine and Russia would be more on Russia`s
terms than it otherwise would
be, right?
I mean, Ukraine is in a newly weak position
if they newly cannot count on
U.S. military aid, if they newly cannot
count on U.S. support and public
shows of support, things like meetings with
the White House, invitations to
the White House. These are things the
Trump White House has actively
withheld from Ukraine repeatedly since Trump
took office.
But Ukraine is further weakened by these now
public indications that their
new Ukrainian president is a sort of
supplicant to the president of the
United States and trying to get that
support. That makes him look weak
too. So, the United States in multiple
ways has weakened Ukraine, put them
in a weaker negotiating position than they
used to be in vis-a-vis the
United States, while Russia has been putting
increasing pressure on Ukraine
to come to the table right now to do a deal
right now.
Well, today, the other big surprise news of
the day, today the Ukrainian
government took a major step toward doing a
deal with Moscow, to settle the
war that started when Russia invaded their
country. Ukraine today signed
accords that will allow the Russian-occupied
areas in Eastern Ukraine to
hold elections and potentially be granted a
special status so that they`re
different from the rest of Ukraine and
presumably would have some ongoing
Russian influence unlike the rest of Ukraine
that has not been occupied by
Russian-backed forces.
As “The A.P.” puts it, quote: The election
agreement was seen as the final
hurdle between a summit between Ukrainian
President Zelensky and Russian
President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of
France and Germany who have
helped mediate peace talks. There are
already protests in the Ukrainian
capital tonight, hundreds of people
demonstrating against what they see as
this new and unexpected capitulation to
Russia after Russia has been waging
war in Ukraine for five years. The
Ukrainian president today was also put
back on his heels having to defend against
accusation that`s for some
reason he`s suddenly making excessive
concessions to Russia.
Resolution of the Ukraine and Russia war,
especially on Russia`s terms,
where they get to keep Crimea and they get
to continue to exercise their
own foreign influence over the whole eastern
swath of Ukraine they`ve been
occupying – I mean, that`s Russia winning
the war. That`s what Russia has
been looking for, not only to win that war
but to win it in such a way that
it will end U.S. sanctions and international
sanctions against them for
their aggression against Ukraine because
their aggression against Ukraine
has now been settled, they got what they
wanted and Ukraine gave in. And
it looks like it`s happening sooner rather
than later. It looks like it is
happening as of today.
Joining us now is Ben Rhodes, former deputy
national security adviser under
president Obama.
Mr. Rhodes, thank you for making time to be
here tonight, I really
appreciate it.
BEN RHODES, FORMER DEPUTY NATIIONAL SECURITY
ADVISER UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA:
Thanks, Rachel.
MADDOW: Let me just ask you, first of
all, obviously you`re a much better
subject matter expert on these things than I
am. Let me ask you if
anything that I summed up today seems wrong
or if you`d put a different
cast on it.
RHODES: No. I think that`s
right, Rachel. Essentially we are – the
Trump administration trying to dictate the
terms of a solution that would
be very much to Putin`s liking. Yes,
there has been a framework in place
for some time for there to be a resolution
that could involve snap
elections in regions, Luhansk and Donetsk in
Eastern Ukraine that have been
invaded by Russia that could involve special
status for them.
But the context here matters. The
context is you have the president of the
United States and President Trump, who does
not care at all about Ukraine`s
sovereignty and does not care that Ukraine
is part of a broader strategy by
Putin to interfere in Western democracies,
interfere in their politics,
most acutely in Ukraine where they`ve had
troops on the ground backing
these separatist advisers, pouring in
military equipment to Eastern
Ukraine, where we should note thousands of
people have been killed. This
is a real war with real lives and real
suffering on the ground.
And at the same time, we`ve seen this
information war in the United States
and Europe emanating from Putin.
President Trump wants to basically
whitewash that information war from history,
as you said, and he`s
literally pressuring, as we saw him do
sitting next to the president of
Ukraine when he said sit down with Putin and
work it out, pressuring
Ukraine to essentially accept the terms that
Moscow I think would prefer
for the resolution of this conflict.
MADDOW: In terms of those terms that
Moscow would prefer, let me ask you
about that, because I realize that the war
in Ukraine has not been a
hugely, you know, front page story for the
American public for a long time.
But it has been something for which there`s
been some bipartisan accord in
Washington and in fact some continuity
between the Obama administration and
the Trump administration, particularly in
the way that Congress was
reacting to this, in the way that Congress
was trying to show support for
Ukraine.
Do you think it`s fair to say that the U.S.
government sort of until
recently was essentially shoring up
Ukraine`s position, they were
bolstering them in terms of their
negotiating position vis-a-vis Russia but
that that turned under President Trump and
that our lack of support for
Ukraine of late may have put them in a worse
bargaining position with Putin
as they headed into this agreement
today?
RHODES: Yes, Rachel. You have to
understand, it`s very important, that
assistance that President Trump was
leveraging with the president of
Ukraine, when he said essentially do me a
favor if you want this
assistance, is literally a lifeline to
Ukraine. They depend on our
economic and military assistance to be able
to sustain themselves in the
face of this Russian onslaught.
So, the first thing is, he`s taking taxpayer
dollars and using it to
pressure the president of a country that`s
literally been invaded to do his
bidding and investigate his political
opponents.
The second thing that`s really interesting
here, Rachel, is the officials
that you mentioned, Volker the envoy and our
previous ambassador, they were
part of that kind of bipartisan consensus.
Traditional Foreign Service
officer and the ambassador, who the
president of the United States agreed
with the president of Ukraine, said she was
problematic. Mike Pompeo
removed her early from her position when she
was carrying out that
bipartisan policy. Volker is someone
who`s been associated with John
McCain in the past.
Those people are on the outs. Those
people were clearly uncomfortable with
that Rudy Giuliani was up to in Ukraine and
what Donald Trump was up to in
Ukraine. They represented that
bipartisan policy and it`s not a surprise
to me that they`re the first people who are
going to testify in front of
that impeachment inquiry.
The last thing, Rachel that`s really
important is the Republicans used to
be more hawkish about this. The
criticism we got in the Obama
administration from people like Lindsey
Graham was we weren`t doing enough
to support Ukraine. Now, all these
Republicans have done a 180, saying
there`s nothing wrong with this call
transcript.
It`s a window into the cynicism of the
Republican Party. How much they
flipped on this issue just to protect
Trump.
MADDOW: And, Ben, as we go forward and
head into these next couple of days
with Mike Pompeo essentially threatening
that he`s going to try to block
those officials you were just describing
from speaking to Congress, we
don`t exactly know how this is going to go
with these depositions and when
they`re going to happen and who exactly is
going to show up and how much
the State Department is going to do to try
to block them from doing this.
How do you expect that that`s going to –
that that`s going to roll out
over this next week or so as Congress tries
to get testimony from those
folks? Do you feel like the State
Department is in a position where they
can block their officials from showing
up?
RHODES: I don`t think so,
Rachel. And there are two things here. One is
this is very important because it shows that
the corruption of the Trump
foreign policy wasn`t just in that phone
call from President Trump. It was
infecting the State Department like a
cancer.
He was literally directing officials of the
State Department, he or Mike
Pompeo, to play ball with Rudy Giuliani, to
set up meetings for Rudy
Giuliani, not a U.S. official, but the
president`s personal
representatives, people who had his campaign
interests, were aided and
abetted by the U.S. Department of State
which is supposed to work for the
American people, not the Trump
campaign. So, this gets at the fact of the
broader corruption of our foreign policy in
DOJ as you said with Bill Barr,
and at the State Department with Mike
Pompeo.
And I think what you`ll see is the State
Department has officials who are
uncomfortable with that conduct and perhaps
the inspector general is one of
those people if he saw, again, documents
that he`s uncomfortable with, he`s
gone to Congress. Certainly, the
people who have already agreed to testify
are uncomfortable.
But also, the State Department answers to
Congress. This is a co-equal
branch of government. The State
Department is funded by congress. The
State Department knows that Congress will be
there after President Trump,
whether that`s after an impeachment inquiry
or an election or whenever it
is.
And so, look, I`ve been on the other side of
this. When Mike Pompeo was in
the House, I testified in front of one of
his endless Benghazi committee
hearings, even though I was a White House
official. When you have the
power of Congress in an impeachment inquiry
in particular, you can compel
testimony. And I`m sure that there are
a lot of people at the State
Department who would like nothing more than
to say their piece in front of
Congress rather than go down with this
ship.
MADDOW: Ben Rhodes, former deputy
national security adviser under
President Obama – Ben, I really appreciate
you making time to be here
tonight. Thanks for your time.
RHODES: Thanks, Rachel.
MADDOW: All right. Miles of news
ahead, piles of news ahead. Senator
Chris Murphy will be joining us tonight,
lots to ask him.
Also, I`m going to show you the part of my day
that made me laugh out loud
to the point of giddiness, I was very grateful.
I`ll share it with you,
coming up next.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, “THE LATE SHOW WITH
STEPHEN COLBERT”: As I`ve said
to you many times before, that I think that
you are America`s premier
explainer.
MADDOW: Oh.
COLBERT: Something complicated going
on in the day, you come out –
(APPLAUSE)
COLBERT: And you – and as I said
before, you lay the story out like parts
on a lawn and then put it together and say
this is how the engine works.
Are you at all frustrated that the present
scandal is so damn simple?
Let me lay out the parts. Trump called
Ukraine, and I`m done.
MADDOW: Yes, exactly. Yes, you
can`t even like, you can`t even sleuth
your way through it too, because in order to
find out that Trump called
Ukraine what we had to do is ask Trump, did
you call Ukraine? And he said,
yes, here`s the evidence.
So, there wasn`t even like a whodunit, how
can we prove it. It`s over. I
mean, there is stuff to explain, like why
did this happen in Ukraine and
why did he think he could get that and
what`s going to happen to Ukraine?
I mean, there`s other contextual stuff that
I could make long segments
about.
But in terms of whodunit, he done it and he
admits it and now he`s going to
be impeached for it.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
COLBERT: That`s interesting.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: So I`m going to be on “The
Late Show with Stephen Colbert” later
tonight. It went great. Stephen
Colbert is very, very good at his job.
It was very kind of him to have me on
tonight, I was super happy to do
that. You should watch that.
I`m also going to be on the “Today” show on
NBC tomorrow morning. And then
I`m also going to be on “The View” on
Thursday. Pray for me. I`m doing
all of these interviews in other places on
other people`s shows, which is
not a thing I typically do.
But the reason I`m doing them all is because
this book that I wrote has
just come out today. I have spent more
than the last year writing it. It
is finally out. And I promise to you
as a viewer of the show that I will
not spend every waking minute on TV talking
about it.
You can get the book if you want. It`s
all right if you don`t. I promise
I will not harangue you about it. But
today on the occasion of the book
coming out that conversation with Mr.
Colbert tonight made me realize that
there is actually one thing that is in the
book that I feel like I should
put on TV just as news because I think it
explains some of what`s going on
with the Trump impeachment right now and
it`s something that is probably
worth knowing in the news as it is
developing right now.
So this is it. As I talked about with
Stephen Colbert tonight, it is just
unavoidable that the thing for which Trump
is going to be impeached is a
sort of open and shut case. He called
Ukraine, he asked them to provide
him some help with this Joe Biden problem he
thinks he might have for 2020
for his reelection. He admits doing
it. The White House has provided us
the proof that he did it. It`s kind of
open and shut.
And you can`t solicit help from a foreign
government for your reelection
campaign, and that`s what he did. So,
the core thing here is very simple.
He did it, he admits it, we have the proof,
he is going to be impeached for
it.
And to a certain extent, maybe that is all
any of us will ultimately need
to know. But if you have wondered at
all why it is that Trump thought he
could get something from Ukraine to use
against Joe Biden in the 2020
election, it turns out there is a funny
story there that might get more
important as this goes on.
So the president`s lawyer, I guess, Rudy
Giuliani goes on TV now and he
says, look, I`ve got this document, I`ve got
the evidence against Joe
Biden, what Trump was asking Ukraine for to
help in his reelection, I`ve
got it now, I`ve got the dirt on Joe Biden
from Ukraine.
Well, this is the document that Giuliani has
been waving around. It is a
statement and as it says on the first page,
it is a statement, quote, made
at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry
Firtash for use in legal
proceedings in Austria. This is the
document. This is the stuff. This is
the allegations they want to use against Joe
Biden, they`ve got it.
It`s a statement that says Joe Biden
definitely did terrible things that
have all been disproven, but nevertheless
they should be definitely
mainlined right on to the Fox News channel
and other news organizations
should spend a bunch of time looking into
them with front-page stories and
the president should definitely base his
re-election campaign around these
disproven allegations the same way he based
his election campaign in 2016
around the documents and materials stolen on
his behalf by Russian
intelligence and posted online by
WikiLeaks.
So, that`s how they are running, this
right? It`s not just that the
president solicited help for the 2020 campaign
from Ukraine. His personal
lawyer says, I`ve got it, I`ve got what we
were asking for and this is what
we`re going to run our campaign
around.
Factually, as I say, these claims against
Joe Biden have not just been
debunked. They have been revealed as
outright lies. They`re constructed
lies that have been created for the purposes
of trying to give Trump
something to use against Biden and the
Democrats to get reelected next
year.
But why is it that the form they`re coming
in is this statement that has
been provided to this guy, Dmitry
Firtash? Why is this manufactured smear
against Joe Biden, which is now going to
lead to the president`s
impeachment, why has it been provided to
President Trump and Rudy Giuliani
by, quote, lawyers acting for Dmitry
Firtash?
So here is the part that I think is helpful
in the book because it`s about
that guy, all right? It`s from page –
sorry, from page 231, chapter 19.
Quote: Putin`s team in the Kremlin was
delighted to utilize a man with
Dmitry Firtash`s special skills and talents
to shape Ukraine to its liking,
to turn it from its increasingly worrying
flirtation with the West, with
the European Union, with oh god, maybe even
NATO.
They cut Dmitry Firtash a sweetheart deal in
Ukraine. Firtash was given
the exclusive right to buy gas from Russia
to sell to Ukraine, at a very
large profit, about $800 million a year,
clear profit in 2007 alone.
Firtash`s company wasn`t making anything, it
wasn`t even necessarily moving
anything, it wasn`t really doing anything at
all except getting paid.
Ukraine could just as easily have bought the
gas with no middleman and no
markup. But Putin wanted both the
middleman and the markup because Dmitry
would turn out to be handy, and so would the
assurance of fantastical
corruption at the very heart of the
Ukrainian state and so would the
prospect of all the richest and most
powerful and influential people in
Ukraine being dependent on Russia`s every
whim. It cost the Russian gas
company Gazprom a pretty penny straight out
of Russian government coffers.
But it was worth it. Firtash would
have plenty of cash to spread around to
shape Ukraine in ways that Putin would
appreciate.
Some of that cash went back to Moscow as
tribute. But even more of it went
to prop up a pro-Kremlin political party,
the Party of Regions, which meant
that a whole bunch of that money ended up in
the bank accounts of the
mercenary American political operative Paul
Manafort.
And then the next few pages, 232, 233, 234,
are about how not that long
ago, before he was in prison, before he was
running President Donald
Trump`s campaign, Paul Manafort cooked up a
scheme in Ukraine where a
politician came in and said, hey, this gas
deal where this guy is being
paid all this money to sell gas between
Russia and Ukraine, this is a
corrupt deal. That guy doesn`t need to
be there. Why are we paying this
middleman $800 million a year in pure profit
when we could instead just buy
the gas directly without him in there taking
all that money?
There was a politician who came into office
promising to get rid of that
deal. In response, Manafort engineered
an elaborate effort in Ukraine to
smear that politician for that. It`s
the woman there in the white coat.
They literally got her locked up in Ukraine
for her efforts to try to undo
that corrupt deal which the Kremlin had set
up for this guy Dmitry Firtash.
She ran for office saying she would clean up
that corruption. She went
right at that deal, she undid that deal, and
then they prosecuted her for
some vague allegation that she had something
to do with the famously
corrupt business of importing natural gas
into Ukraine from Russia.
Yes, that is fantastically corrupt, and she
did have something to do with
it. She tried to clean it up. So
they prosecuted her and said she was the
corrupt one.
And that`s how corruption can be really
useful. Corruption isn`t always a
cancer. Corruption isn`t always a
stain. Corruption is something they
sometimes make happen on purpose.
It can be really useful to unscrupulous and
predatory political figures.
That`s why you might want to create it on
purpose and why Russia, in fact,
has gone out of their way to do so in
Ukraine, which has led to the
situation in which our president is now
going to be impeached for his
dealings with Ukraine.
I mean, the basic idea is if you`ve created
a tar pit of corruption
somewhere, one of the things that gives you
is not only the ability to
control the people who are in that tarry
mess. It`s the ability to make
new allegations of corruption against anyone
who even brushes by that mess
that they`ve deliberately created,
right? You can weaponize that against
anyone.
So, I think this is helpful to see, that
before they ever tried to throw
corruption charges at Joe Biden for the
great crime of him standing up on
behalf of the U.S. government against
corruption in Ukraine, before they
ever tried running this playbook that
they`re trying to run right now
against Joe Biden in Ukraine, they ran it
the exact same way in the exact
same country against another politician who
posed a threat to a pro-Putin
politician who had been advised by Paul
Manafort. It`s the exact same
play.
And then, as now, they used the Kremlin`s
guy in Ukraine, Dmitry Firtash.
They used him to run the play the first time
against that Ukrainian
politician who they locked up. And
they are using that same guy, Dmitry
Firtash, again to try to sell this same
playbook, this time against Joe
Biden.
When we found out a couple of weeks ago that
Dmitry Firtash had signed up
two lawyers who are potted plants, fixtures
on the Fox News Channel, who
have Trump`s ear but otherwise don`t provide
much of a legal service to
anyone, it was weird, right? Why is
Dmitry Firtash signing up those two
Trumpy lawyers? Oh, it`s because
they`re going to try to Tymoshenko Joe
Biden. They`re going to do that exact
same thing they did to that
politician in Ukraine, except this time
they`re going to do it to Joe
Biden. They`re running the exact same
plot using the exact same people.
Honestly, it`s uncanny. It is a total
rerun. The second time they`re
running it is now. The first time they
ran it is in the book that I nearly
killed myself writing over this past year
which finally came out today.
And I will not bug you about it any more
than this.
But as of today, it is finally out
there. You can see for yourself if you
want to just skip to this part, the dry run
for what they`re doing to Joe
Biden right now. You can start at
chapter 19.
All right. Lots more to come
tonight. We`ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: When the whistle-blower
complaint was released to the public last
week, we got, of course, the whistleblower`s
allegation that President
Trump was abusing the power of his office to
try and enlist a foreign
country to help him against his potential
Democratic opponent in the 2020
election. But we also got this
surprise sort of bonus allegation from the
whistleblower that the White House had been
hiding records of the
president`s calls and meetings, including on
high security computer systems
that are very restricted and that are only
supposed to be used for things
like records of top secret covert
actions.
Well, if the White House has been
submarining or potentially destroying
records of the president`s troubling calls
and behavior in order to try to
keep him from getting in trouble for those
calls and that behavior, that
may become a problem for the Trump
administration in federal court
tomorrow.
This was a surprise today. This
morning, a watchdog group called CREW
requested an emergency order in federal
court in D.C., this related to a
suit they filed back in May. But the
emergency order they were looking for
was pursuant to recent revelations about the
behavior of the Trump White
House. CREW asked the court to compel
the administration to preserve all
records of President Trump`s calls and
meetings with foreign leaders,
because suddenly now there`s a question as
to how those records are being
treated, right?
Well, this afternoon they got a hearing
before a federal judge in D.C.,
Judge Amy Berman Jackson. And check
this out, at that hearing a lawyer for
the Justice Department told the court that
she couldn`t immediately commit
to assuring the judge that the
administration would preserve records of the
president`s conversations or any records
about how they handled those
documents. But the judge, according to
reporting from Zoe Tillman of
“BuzzFeed News”, appeared to be somewhat
displeased if not startled by this
– the inability of the Justice Department
lawyer to give that kind of
assurance.
The judge gave the Justice Department until
exactly tomorrow to commit to
not destroying any of the records of the
president`s calls and behavior or
risk the judge making a formal ruling on the
request for an emergency order
in a way that, quote, one side might not
appreciate. The judge is hinting
that unless the Justice Department gives
assurances that no records will be
destroyed and all records will be preserved
about how these things are
being handled, she will produce an order
tomorrow in federal court in
Washington that the administration is not
going to like.
I mean, we will find out for sure
tomorrow. But like I said, this growing
pile of breaking news has just kept growing
over the course of the day. We
have the perfect guest to help us shovel out
from some of it. Senator
Chris Murphy is going to join us live,
next.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: I want to go back to our top
story tonight, the surprise news
breaking late in the day today that the
inspector general from the State
Department today, surprise, reached out to
multiple congressional
committees with what those committees
described as an urgent request to
come up to “The Hill” and brief those
committees about documents related to
the State Department and Ukraine.
Again, this is a request to Congress by the
inspector general of the State
Department. This is an independent
official. He does not need anyone`s
permission to do this. But we really
don`t know what it is that he so
urgently thinks Congress needs to see what
he`s got, and they need to see
it right away despite the fact that Congress
in fact is on recess right
now.
Joining us is Senator Chris Murphy of
Connecticut. He`s a member of the
Foreign Relations Committee, also the
Appropriations Committee, two
committees that have been alerted by this
inspector general he has stuff he
believes they need to see.
Senator, thank you for your time
tonight. I appreciate it.
SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): Thanks for
having me.
MADDOW: I know that you are away from
Washington yourself. I know that
you`ve also been able to follow this news a
little bit. Can you tell us
anything else about this request from the
State Department inspector
general that he wants to show documents to
your committees?
MURPHY: Yes, no, I can`t,
unfortunately. I`m waiting to receive that
briefing just like everyone else is. I
mean, listen, this is a moment for
patriots to step up to the plate. This
is a moment for people who have
information inside the administration who
can give us a fuller picture as
to how broad and deep this corruption was,
to come to Congress.
And so, I think we all will be eager to hear
what this new information is.
Maybe it helps us to fill out a picture for
us as we head into this
inquiry.
MADDOW: On the Foreign Relations Committee,
of course, you have keen
interest in the behavior of the State
Department and the secretary of
state. Mike Pompeo is trying to block
State Department officials and even
a recently resigned State Department
official from giving depositions to
the impeachment inquiry even though those
officials in most cases would
seem to be direct fact witnesses to some of
what`s gone on here.
I mean, I know that you`re an
institutionalist when it comes to these
agencies and these parts of our
government. I just – I wonder if you
believe that Mike Pompeo is within his
rights to try to block these
officials from giving testimony given
particularly the fact that he himself
may be a fact witness to what happened
here?
MURPHY: So, he absolutely is not
within his rights to block this
testimony. The House or the Senate has
the ability to compel testimony
from these individuals because of the
wrongdoing that they may have been a
part of or witnessed. It is frankly
rich for the secretary of state to be
making these totally un-based claims about
intimidation of State Department
employees given the fact that the inspector
general has issued a scathing
report of Secretary Pompeo, making clear
that for years, Secretary Pompeo
and before that Secretary Tillerson, have been
engaged in a campaign of
trying to root out and punish civil servants
inside the State Department
that are not political supporters of
President Trump.
Of course, though, Rachel, this testimony is
important. Eventually, the
courts, I think, will require these State
Department officials to come
before the House, but it is not necessary
given that we have a confession
of guilt. We have the president in a
transcript admitting to doing
something that is likely illegal, that is
fundamentally corrupt, and that
should subject him to impeachment.
And so, what we`re trying to get through all
these witnesses coming before
the House is a fuller picture of how big
this scandal is that may, in the
end, convince Republicans to come on board
and support a process that right
now has been started by the Democrats in the
House.
MADDOW: Beyond what the president did,
and it seems like now the likely
prospect he will be impeached for it, the
bigger lens picture on what he
was doing vis-a-vis Ukraine is he was really
weakening Ukraine, that the
U.S. has stood up for Ukraine since they got
invaded by Russia 5 1/2 years
ago. That we have been a real stalwart
ally for them as they have tried to
resist Russia, not only taking part of their
country but occupying another
big swath of their country. The
president`s actions have been seen as
weakening them and putting them in a worse
negotiating position with regard
to Russia.
Now, there is news today that the Ukrainian
government is moving ahead with
a deal to basically – I mean, I`m sure
there`s lots of different ways to
look at this, but it seems like to sort of
reify what Russia has done, to
let them settle with Ukraine and letting
them keep Crimea and with
elections scheduled in Eastern Ukraine so
that those parts of Ukraine may
ultimately be subject to permanent Russian
influence as well.
This was a surprise to me today. I
don`t know if you`ve been following
this so closely that you knew this was
coming?
MURPHY: Well, I mean, it`s no secret
that Zelensky in his campaign ran on
two promises. One, that he was going
to continue the fight against
corruption, and two, that he was going to
try to seek to bring peace into
Eastern Ukraine.
The problem with the timing of Trump`s
announcement that he was suspending
aid to Ukraine was that it came right at the
moment where Zelensky needed
Trump to play bad cop. Zelensky needed
Trump to be tougher than ever on
Russia so that Zelensky could reach out and
try to get some accommodation,
to try to provide a path forward to settle
accounts with Russia in Eastern
Ukraine and push the Russian army out.
Trump fundamentally weakens Zelensky`s hand
by telegraphing to Putin that
we may be pulling up stakes. So,
Zelensky needed, after the election, to
deliver on his promise of sitting down and
having some discussion with
Russians. But there is no way he got
an optimal deal with Putin because
Putin saw that at this moment, this critical
moment for Zelensky, the
United States was pulling away.
MADDOW: Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut
– sir, thank you for your
time this evening. I really appreciate
it.
MURPHY: Thanks, Rachel.
MADDOW: All right. We`ll be
right back. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MADDOW: Programming notes –
programming notes, plural. First thing I`m
very excited to tell you about is that
former Democratic presidential
nominee, former secretary of state, former
senator, former first lady,
Hillary Clinton, is going to be here
tomorrow, here live in studio for the
interview. I am very much looking
forward to this conversation. It is
always interesting to talk with Secretary
Clinton.
At this moment, there is almost nobody I
would rather speak with since the
House opened impeachment proceedings into
President Trump over what he has
done with Ukraine to try to enlist them
basically in helping his re-
election effort against the Democrats in
2020. Hillary Clinton has been
pretty outspoken about President Trump`s
behavior and what she describes as
her support for the impeachment proceedings
against him. That was not a
given. But she supports those
impeachment proceedings and she has been
articulate and raised very interesting
issues about that.
Secretary Clinton, of course, has also
herself been central to the story
about Trump and Russia and Ukraine from the
beginning. She, of course, is
the one who Russian President Vladimir Putin
meant to disadvantage in her
run for president in 2016. Yes,
Vladimir Putin tried to install Donald
Trump as president of the United States, but
more than that, the Russian
effort in the 2016 election both boosted
Trump and boosted anybody who was
in the running, running against Hillary
Clinton who would have the chance
to either beat her or undermine her chances
of winning the White House or
effectively governing once she was
there.
Hillary Clinton is now also the target of a
reinvestigation that has newly
been ratcheted up by the State Department
under President Trump. They
literally have started investigating her
e-mails again. They started doing
so last month, or I guess in August, which
is roughly the same time the
Trump administration found out about the
whistle-blower complaint, about
President Trump`s behavior toward Ukraine.
The response of the State Department was to
start to reinvestigate
Hillary`s e-mails. And they`re doing
that right now. But I`m delighted to
say she will be with us in studio tomorrow
night. I`m really looking
forward to that.
I also want to tell you that, as I mentioned
earlier, I`m going to be a
guest on “The Late Show with Stephen
Colbert” tonight. That`s 11:00 p.m.
Eastern on CBS.
And then because who needs to sleep, I`m
going to be on the “Today” show
tomorrow morning on NBC, I think around at
8:30 Eastern.
But that Hillary Clinton interview tomorrow
night would be keeping me up
overnight anyway in terms of prepping for
it.
All right. It`s been a big day.
Thanks so much. Thanks for being so nice
about the launch of my book. We`ll see
you again tomorrow.
Now, it`s time for “THE LAST WORD WITH
LAWRENCE O`DONNELL”.
Good evening, Lawrence.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT
BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY
BE UPDATED.
END
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"TRUMP IS ON THE RUN. THEY NEED TO
CHASE HIM DOWN. . . THEY MUST ACT AND ACT QUICKLY," MOORE STRESSED. ALSO, NOTICE
THE NUMBER OF VIEWS, SHARES AND SAVES OVER A ONE DAY PERIOD AND THE 10 POINT POLLING
SHIFT FROM A PRO-TRUMP POSITION TO A DEAD TIE ON THE QUESTION OF IMPEACHMENT IN
ONE WEEK SINCE THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS.
Michael Moore Says Dems Finally Have
'President Donald Trump On The Run' With Impeachment
Oct
1, 2019
14:45 DURATION
696,889 views
10K974 SHARESSAVES
Activist and filmmaker Michael Moore joins
MSNBC’s Ari Melber to discuss the Democrats’ approach to their impeachment
inquiry of Donald Trump. Moore criticizes Democrats rebuttal to the Ukraine
scandal, arguing “all the candidates right now need to be unified and coming at
this full force,” adding there is “no need to wait” to take down Trump. In this
exclusive interview, Moore criticizes Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden,
celebrates the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ “Abbey Road,” and shout outs
Hollywood actor and producer Robert DeNiro. Aired on 10/01/19.
Trump claims Schiff 'helped write'
whistleblower complaint – live
Trump
makes speculative claim after report whistleblower approached House
intelligence committee for advice on how to file complaint
LIVE Updated 16m
ago
Play Video 1:25
'Are you talking to me?': furious
Trump takes aim at journalist over Ukraine question – video
Wed 2 Oct 2019 20.32 EDT
- 29m agoEvening summary
- 1h agoJustice Department intervenes in lawsuit over a
subpoena of Trump's tax returns
- 1h agoFacebook blocks Trump ad promoting conspiracy
theory, citing profanity
- 2h ago2020 Gun Safety Forum wraps up
- 3h agoTrump admin expands plan to collect DNA from
migrants in detention
- 4h agoState Department IG reportedly briefing Congress
on "political retaliation" over Ukraine
- 5h agoTrump claims Schiff 'helped write' complaint
Justice
Department intervenes in lawsuit over a subpoena of Trump's tax returns
Lawyers with the Justice Department urged a
federal judge to delay ruling on whether or not Donald
Trump should be made to turn over his tax returns as part of a
criminal probe by the Manhattan district attorney.
The justice department appeared to side with
Trump in his ongoing efforts to skirt a grand jury subpoena seeking tax records
from his longtime accounting firm.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance
Jr. is seeking the records as he investigates the Trump
Organization’s involvement in hush-money payments made to pornographic actor
Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal.
More from the AP:
Five
Washington Justice Department lawyers and officials were listed as submitting
arguments that pertained to procedural matters. They said the judge should
“support interim relief as necessary to allow for appropriate briefing of the
weighty constitutional issues involved.”
The
Justice Department lawyers said U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero should
retain jurisdiction of the case, rather than let a state court decide any
issues. Vance, a Democrat, has said any dispute should be decided in state
court.
Trump’s
lawyers have said the investigation is politically motivated and the quest for
his tax records should be stopped because he is immune from any criminal probe
as long as he is president.
Attorneys
for Vance counter that Trump’s immunity should not interrupt a probe that
includes a look into the actions of individuals and businesses other than
Trump, especially since the statute of limitations is in play.
Congress
is authorized by the Constitution to investigate presidents and remove them
from office, but the law is unclear as to whether a sitting president can be
indicted and prosecuted in a state or federal court.
Facebook
blocks Trump ad promoting conspiracy theory, citing profanity
Julia Carrie Wong
The Guardian’s Julia Carrie Wong reports
from San Francisco:
Facebook has blocked a Donald
Trump campaign advertisement that promoted a false conspiracy
theory about Joe Biden and Ukraine. The company said it took the ad down
because it violated Facebook’s policies, but not because the 30-second video spot
is misleading. Instead, Facebook blocked the ads because they contain
profanity.
The video spot, which can be viewed on
YouTube here,
falsely claims that Joe Biden “promised Ukraine a billion dollars if they fired
the prosecutor investigating his son’s company”. As the Guardian and fact-checkers have pointed out
repeatedly, this is a mischaracterization of Biden’s role in US foreign policy when
he was vice president.
The video uses a snippet of audio of Biden
discussing Ukraine during a 2018 appearance before the Council on Foreign
Relations, when he said, “If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting
the money. Well son of a bitch, he got fired.” The editing makes it appear that
Biden is admitting to extorting Ukraine on behalf of his son, rather than
carrying out the Obama administration’s foreign policy. The Washington
Post Fact Checker column wrote of this
speech: “Biden is certainly being self-congratulatory here. But, as noted,
Biden’s action was coordinated with other major players in the region and
celebrated at the time because Shokin was widely seen as a failure.”
The video spot, which can be viewed on
YouTube here,
falsely claims that Joe Biden “promised Ukraine a billion dollars if they fired
the prosecutor investigating his son’s company”. Photograph: The Guardian
Facebook has faced criticism in recent days
over its policy not to apply fact-checking to
political ads. Versions of the ad were viewed by more than 1m Facebook users
before they were taken down, according to data from the Facebook political ad
archive.
“Our systems disapproved the ads because
they contain profanity,” a Facebook spokesperson said by email. “We have
reached out to the campaign to let them know they must edit it before it can
run again.”
Indeed, new versions of the ad with the
same misleading narrative are now running with the word “bitch” bleeped out.
The Facebook spokesperson did not
immediately respond to questions about why the ads were only “disapproved” by
the company’s systems after being viewed more than 1m times.
Updated at 7.29pm EDT
One of the last democratic holdouts on
the impeachment issue, New York representative Max Rose has expressed his
support for the inquiry.
A majority of House democrats have
already said they support the Trump-Ukerakine impeachment inquiry.
Rep. Max Rose, at a town hall in Staten
Island, says he supports an impeachment inquiry. He had declined to endorse
it previously, and was one of the last Democratic holdouts.
2020
Gun Safety Forum wraps up
Abené Clayton
Beto O’Rourke pushed for his assault
weapon buyback program during the forum. Photograph: John Locher/AP
The Guardian’s Abené Clayton reports from
Las Vegas:
The 2020 gun forum is wrapping up with
Senator Kamala Harris as the last candidate to take the stage alongside
moderator and MSNBC host Craig Melvin.
The crowd was filled with representatives
from national violence prevention groups like March for Our Lives, Giffords Law
Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and Moms Demand Action as well as community
organizers from Chicago and New Orleans who were there to be a visible force
for addressing the community violence that is often overlooked in the national
gun conversation.
Nine of the top candidates spoke; Bernie Sanders did not attend because he
is recovering from a heart surgery.
Each candidate commented on The October 1
mass shooting in Vegas where a gunman killed 58 people, and they all emphasized
their support of assault weapons bans and background checks.
The only piece of gun control that was not
universally accepted by candidates was the mandatory assault weapon buyback
program that Beto O’Rourke has been pushing. During his time on the forum stage
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg voiced his disagreement over the feasibility of
Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke’s proposed federal assault weapon buyback
program Buttigieg referred to it as “a shiny object” that could distract
lawmakers from accomplishing other gun control goals.
O’Rourke told reporters after his time on
stage: “How in the world can you say that to survivors of mass shootings? I was
really offended by those comments.”
Buttigieg “represents a kind of politics
that is focused on poll testing and focus groups before arriving to a
conclusion”, O’Rourke added. “I think our politics has to be about doing the
right thing.”
Updated at 7.23pm EDT
Trump
admin expands plan to collect DNA from migrants in detention
The administration is moving forward with
plans to collect DNA from hundreds of thousands of immigrants in federal custody
and enter into a national criminal
database, according to multiple reports.
The Justice Department is developing
regulations that would allow immigration officers to collect genetic
information from most migrants detained at the border and at federal
facilities. This would expand a pilot program that uses rapid DNA technology to
collect data from families suspected of child trafficking.
Once DNA is collected, it would be
transferred to an FBI’s database currently used to store information about
people accused or convicted of serious crimes.
Elizabeth Warren sent her 2020 opponent
Bernie Sanders’ campaign team dinner, in a gesture of goodwill as Sanders
recovers from heart surgery.
big thank you to @TeamWarren
for sending dinner to our dc headquarters. the team is very grateful (and
started with the cookies first).
Apprently, there were cookies.
OCTOBER 5, 2019
NEWS AND VIEWS
Bernie Sanders had a heart attack this week,
campaign says
Doctors diagnosed Sanders, 78, with a
myocardial infarction, a medical term for heart attack.
03:25 /06:09
Oct. 4, 2019, 6:53 PM
EDT / Updated Oct. 4, 2019, 9:11 PM EDT
By Dennis Romero and Shaquille Brewster
Sen. Bernie Sanders was discharged from a
Las Vegas hospital Friday after suffering a heart attack earlier in the week,
his campaign said.
Asked how he was feeling as he left the
Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center, Sanders told NBC News "great. I
feel great."
In a video posted Friday on Twitter, he echoed
that sentiment: "I'm feeling so much better."
Hello everybody! We’re in Las Vegas. I’m
feeling so much better.
Thank you for all of the love and warm wishes that you sent me.
See you soon on the campaign trail.
Thank you for all of the love and warm wishes that you sent me.
See you soon on the campaign trail.
The Vermont independent senator, 78, was
hospitalized Tuesday after experiencing chest pains at a campaign stop in
Nevada. He was treated for what his 2020 presidential campaign described at the
time as a blockage in one artery.
But a statement from Sanders' doctors
released through the campaign on Friday said Sanders "was diagnosed with a
myocardial infarction," a medical term for a heart attack.
"The Senator was stable upon arrival
and taken immediately to the cardiac catheterization laboratory, at which time
two stents were placed in a blocked coronary artery in a timely fashion,"
the doctors' statement said. "All other arteries were normal."
They said he's made good progress in his
recovery "and was discharged with instructions to follow up with his
personal physician.”
In a statement, Sanders said, "After
two and a half days in the hospital, I feel great, and after taking a short
time off, I look forward to getting back to work."
Ehtisham Mahmud, chief of cardiology at
the UC San Diego School of Medicine, said Sanders' three-day hospitalization
indicates he "probably had a small heart attack."
"They require really a very short
recovery time," he said.
Cardiologist Karol Watson of the David
Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA said she would usually recommend patients who
have had minor heart attacks stay away from returning to their normal schedule
for about two weeks, sometimes longer.
"Don’t jump right back into whatever
caused the heart attack in the first place," she said.
How will Bernie Sanders' heart attack impact
his candidacy?
Bernie Sanders is right. It's time to
abolish medical debt
Healthcare is a human right and medical debt
is a moral abomination. That’s why we raised money to eradicate it
Fri 4 Oct 2019 06.00 EDT Last modified on Sat 5 Oct
2019 04.24 EDT
In 2012, an activist-led project called the
Rolling Jubilee grabbed international headlines by raising enough money online
from small dollar donations to buy and eradicate almost $15m of medical debt.
As
Trump's lies reach new heights, has the media reached a tipping point?
I was part of the group that spearheaded the
effort. We sent letters to thousands of people across the country telling them
their debts had been erased, no strings attached.
Why did we do it? The answer is simple: healthcare
is a human right and medical debt is a moral and political abomination. In the
richest country in the world, it is obscene that millions of people are pushed
into poverty and insolvency because they had the bad luck of getting sick and
needing to see a doctor.
Last week, the presidential candidate Bernie
Sanders followed in the Rolling Jubilee’s footsteps. His campaign made
history by declaring that $81bn of past-due
medical debt belonging to more than 46 million people would be wiped out should
he win the White House. Under a Sanders administration, “the federal government
will negotiate and pay off past-due medical bills in collections that have been
reported to credit agencies”.
Sanders also proposed that the IRS
“review the billing and collection practices of the nearly 3,000 non-profit
hospitals to ensure they are in line with the charitable care standards for
non-profit tax status, and take action against those who are not”.
Thrilled as we are to see a presidential
candidate proposing to scale up the basic premise of our scrappy activist
project to the national level, we believe that buying medical debt is not
necessarily the best approach. Why should debt holders’ property rights be
respected when the debts in question are immoral to begin with?
One reason debt collectors are notorious for
desperate, high pressure and deceptive tactics is because the vast majority of
medical debt in collections is already out of statute. There is no legal force
these collectors can appeal to in order to compel payment on out-of-statute
debt, which is why many hospitals and collectors end up writing this debt off.
What’s more, as many as 94% of debts cannot be
substantiated in court because creditors lack the necessary paperwork. (This is
why the Debt
Collective has created a debt dispute tool that anyone can use,
free of charge, to challenge any debt currently in collection, including
medical bills. If you take the time to dispute your debts, there’s a good
chance the collector will back off and you won’t have to pay.)
Sanders knows this. That’s why, under his
plan, the government would “[p]rohibit the collection of debt beyond the
statute of limitations”. But that raises a question: why not take that logic
further - and effectively prohibit the collection of all medical debt?
The
US hospitals suing the poor over bills they can't afford
The secondary market for medical debt only
exists because the state enforces the legitimacy of the debts in courts of law.
The government should start to treat medical debt the way it treats debts to
the mafia, which is to say that such debts have no legal legitimacy. If the
state stopped defending the property rights of predators, the problem of
medical debt would disappear.
We need a method of debt cancellation that
refuses to compromise with vultures who profit from suffering. That said, if
government officials insist on purchasing medical debts in order to erase them,
they should do it in a way that paves the way for more wide-scale debt relief
for those who desperately need it.
Consider an idea from the British
journalist Grace Blakely. In her book Stolen: How to Save the World From
Financialization, she proposes a new public banking system that could buy
various kinds of debts, imposing a haircut on private banks and creditors, in
order to refinance them at dramatically reduced interest rates or even write
them off entirely. Variations of this idea could be used to address not only
the problem of unpayable healthcare costs but the broader crisis of American
consumer debt, ranging from mortgages to credit cards to payday loans.
Just last year, the Debt Collective executive
director, Laura Hanna, a veteran of the Rolling Jubilee, advised the New
York state assemblyman Ron Kim on a plan to redefine debt as property under
eminent domain law. This brilliant conceptual leap would allow public
officials working at the state level to reimagine ways to protect their
constituents from bad financial actors.
Last year, 8 million people were pushed into
poverty because of medical expenses. The personal stories told at a recent
Sanders-hosted town hall were gut-wrenching: a beloved wife who died of colon
cancer, avoiding treatment because of the expense; a $40,000 bill for an
ectopic pregnancy that didn’t even require an overnight stay; families
rationing life-saving medicine such as insulin between ill parents and young
children.
Any truly permanent solution to our medical
debt crisis must tackle the problem at the root. No one should have to choose
between life-saving medical care or food and shelter, and in countries with
free and universal healthcare, medical debt doesn’t exist.
In the meantime, we can back candidates who
accurately diagnose the problem of medical debt and are willing to fight for
indebted Americans who need help. Sanders’ plan gets us closest to a cure.
- Astra Taylor is the author of Democracy
May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, an organizer with the Debt
Collective, and the Puffin Foundation/Economic Hardship Reporting Project
fellow
Topics
The
US hospitals suing the poor over bills they can't afford
Methodist University hospital in Tennessee
is among facilities wielding courts as a hammer against struggling patients
Wendi
C Thomas of MLK50
Thu 27 Jun 2019 05.00 EDT
In
July 2007, Carrie Barrett went to the emergency room at Methodist University
hospital, complaining of shortness of breath and tightness in her chest. Her
leg was swollen, she’d later recall, and her toes were turning black.
Given her family history, high blood pressure
and newly diagnosed congestive heart failure, doctors performed a heart
catheterization, threading a long tube through her groin and into her heart.
Her share of the two-night stay: $12,109.
Barrett, who has never made more than $12 an
hour, doesn’t remember getting any notices to pay from the hospital. But in
2010, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare sued her for the unpaid medical bills,
plus attorney’s fees and court costs.
Since then, the nonprofit hospital system
affiliated with the United Methodist Church has doggedly pursued her, adding
interest to the debt seven times and garnishing money from her paycheck on 15
occasions.
Barrett, 63, now owes about $33,000, more
than twice what she earned last year, according to her tax return.
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“The only thing that kept me levelheaded was
praying and asking God to help me,” she said.
She’s among thousands of patients the
massive hospital has sued for unpaid medical bills. From 2014 through 2018,
Methodist filed more than 8,300 lawsuits, according to an MLK50-ProPublica
analysis of Shelby county general sessions court records. Older cases like
Barrett’s, which dates back nearly a decade, remain on the court’s docket.
Other hospitals in Memphis, Tennessee,
and around the country also sue patients. According to a study published on
Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found
more than 20,000 debt lawsuits filed by Virginia hospitals in 2017. More than
9,300 garnishment cases occurred that year, and nonprofit hospitals were more
likely to garnish wages.
But Methodist’s aggressive collection
practices stand out in a city where nearly one in four residents live below the
poverty line.
Its handling of poor patients begins with a
financial assistance policy that, unlike many of its peers around the country,
all but ignores patients with any form of health insurance, no matter their
out-of-pocket costs. If they are unable to afford their bills, patients then
face what experts say is rare: a licensed collection agency owned by the
hospital.
Lawsuits follow. Finally, after the hospital
wins a judgment, it repeatedly tries to garnish patients’ wages, which it does in
a far higher share of cases than other nonprofit hospitals in Memphis.
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Its own employees are no exception. Since
2014, Methodist has sued dozens of its workers for unpaid medical bills,
including a hospital housekeeper sued in 2017 for more than $23,000.
That year, she told the court, she made $16,000.
She’s in a court-ordered payment plan, but in the case of more than 70 other
employees, Methodist has garnished the wages it pays them to recoup its medical
charges.
Nonprofit hospitals are generally exempt
from local, state and federal taxes. In return, the federal government expects
them to provide a significant community benefit, including charity care and
financial assistance.
Methodist does provide some charity care –
and pegs its community benefits as more than $226m annually – but experts faulted
it for also wielding the court as a hammer.
“If Warren Buffett walks in and needs a
heart valve procedure and then stiffs the hospital, then yes, you should sue
Warren Buffett,” said John Colombo, a University of Illinois College of Law
professor emeritus who has testified before Congress about the tax-exempt
status of nonprofit hospitals. “I can’t think of a situation in which thousands
of your patients would fit that.”
Several nonprofit hospitals don’t sue
patients at all, such as Bon Secours hospitals in Virginia, which stopped
pursuing debt suits in 2007, and the University of Pittsburgh medical center,
which includes more than 20 facilities.
Some of Methodist hospital’s cousins –
health systems affiliated with the United Methodist church – also don’t sue
patients. That’s the case with Methodist Health System, which operates four
hospitals in the Dallas area. The collection policy of the seven-hospital
Houston Methodist system states: “At no time will Houston Methodist impose
extraordinary collection actions such as wage garnishments”, liens on homes, or
credit bureau notification.
“We are a faith-based institution and we
don’t believe taking extraordinary measures to seek bill payments is consistent
with our mission and values,” a Houston Methodist spokesperson said by email.
Methodist Le Bonheur, which says it is the
second largest private employer in Shelby County, boasts on its website that
it’s committed to a “culture of compassion.” Last year, Fortune magazine ranked
the hospital among the 100 Best Companies to Work For.
Methodist declined repeated requests to
interview its top executives.
Instead it sent a statement that said,
“Outstanding patient debts are only sent to collections and then to court as a
very last resort, and only after continued efforts to work with the patients
have been exhausted.”
“We strongly believe in providing
exceptional care to all members of the community –regardless of ability to
pay.”
Beverly Robertson, who served on Methodist’s
board from 2003 to 2012, said she was surprised to learn from a reporter about
the hospital’s collection practices. During her lengthy tenure, she said, board
members were never informed about the lawsuits against patients.
“I wish I’d known some of this,” said
Robertson, president and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber and previously
executive director of the National Civil Rights Museum.
A view of Methodist University
hospital in Memphis. Photograph: Andrea Morales/ProPublica
Lawsuits
and garnishments
Between 2014 and 2018, more than 163,000
debt lawsuits were filed in Shelby county general sessions court, primarily by
debt buyers, auto loan companies and hospitals.
Only one plaintiff, Midland Funding, which
buys unpaid debt, sued more frequently than Methodist. (Midland declined to
comment.)
Methodist filed more than 8,300 lawsuits,
compared with more than 6,700 filed by its competitor Baptist Memorial Health
Care and just over 1,900 by Regional One Health, the county’s public hospital.
St Jude children’s research hospital, also headquartered in Memphis, doesn’t
bill families for care not covered by insurance.
With $2.1bn in revenue and a health system
that includes six hospitals, Methodist leads the market: in 2017, it had the
most discharges per year and profits per patient, according to publicly
available data analyzed by Definitive Healthcare, an analytics company.
Methodist says it has “a hospital in all four quadrants of the greater Memphis
area, unparalleled by any other healthcare provider in our region”, plus more
than 150 outpatient centers, clinics and physician practices.
The number of lawsuits Methodist files isn’t
out of proportion to its size, at least compared to Baptist or Regional One.
But where it does stand out is the share of cases in which it seeks a wage
garnishment order, an action that can upend the lives of low-wage defendants.
A court-ordered garnishment requires that
the debtor’s employer send to the court 25% of a worker’s after-tax income,
minus basic living expenses and a tiny deduction for children under 15. The
court then sends that payment to the creditor.
Methodist secured garnishment orders in 46%
of cases filed from 2014 through 2018, compared with 36% at Regional One and
20% at Baptist, according to an analysis of court records by MLK50 and
ProPublica. It is unclear what explains this difference.
Turning to the legal system to settle debts
is a choice, not a mandate, said Jenifer Bosco, staff attorney at the National
Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit focusing on consumer law for low-income and
other disadvantaged people. “A lot of medical debts are just handled through
the collections process,” she said. “Certainly some end up in court, but it
seems like this hospital is especially aggressive.”
Financial
assistance required, but is it offered?
The Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s
signature healthcare legislation, is best known for expanding access to health
insurance coverage. But it also imposed new requirements on nonprofit
hospitals, namely that they have charity care policies and share them with
patients.
But the rules do not specify how generous those
policies must be – and Methodist is among the least generous in the state,
according to MLK50-ProPublica’s review of policies at Tennessee nonprofit
hospitals.
While dozens of hospitals offer free or
highly discounted care that helps shield low- and middle-income patients,
regardless of insurance status, from crushing debt, Methodist does not.
That’s especially problematic for people
with high-deductible health insurance plans, defined by the IRS as those with
deductibles over $1,350 for an individual and over $2,700 for a family.
Methodist said it is required by insurers to
collect co-payments and deductibles. That said, the hospital added: “We know
some insured patients have high copays and deductibles that place a financial
burden on the patient. As a mission-driven organization, we will work with
these patients seeking assistance.”
Methodist’s financial assistance policy is
outdated, said Michele Johnson, executive director of the Tennessee Justice
Center, which advocates for expanded healthcare access.
“Methodist’s rules were written at a time
when there was just not this epidemic of underinsured people in the state,”
Johnson said. “The reality has changed faster than their policy has changed.”
Methodist said it offers 0% interest payment
plans for insured and uninsured patients who have trouble
paying their bills but only offers those before court action commences.
Methodist also noted that it provides an automatic 70% discount to those who
identify as uninsured and free care to patients at or below 125% of the federal
poverty guidelines, which for a single adult would be just over $15,600.
Uninsured patients who earn more than that, but less than twice the poverty
limit, are also eligible for discounts.
“We are committed to working with all patients
who are struggling with medical expenses. Our desire is to work with patients
early in the process to set up a payment plan that meets their individual
need,” the hospital said in a statement.
The hospital’s contentions, however, do not
match the text of its financial assistance, billing and collections policies or
the frequently asked billing questions on the hospital’s website. None of those
mention interest-free payment plans.
Methodist, like its peers, also gets
assistance from the state of Tennessee to help offset its costs for providing
uncompensated care. In the first three months of 2019, the state gave more than
$31m to qualifying hospitals. Of that, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare’s
hospitals received nearly $5m, according to a quarterly report submitted to the
Tennessee general assembly.
For years, nonprofit hospitals that sue
hundreds of patients have been the subject of investigative reports and
lawmakers’ scrutiny.
Aggressive debt collection practices are
“contrary to the philosophy behind tax exemption”, Grassley wrote in a
September 2017 op-ed for the medical and science news outlet Stat.
“Such hospitals seem to forget that tax exemption
is a privilege, not a right. In addition to withholding financial assistance to
low-income patients, they give top executives salaries on par with their
for-profit counterparts.”
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In 2017, Methodist paid its president and
CEO, Dr Michael Ugwueke, $1.6m in total compensation. That same year, Gary
Shorb, the hospital’s CEO from 2001 to 2016, earned more than $1.2m for serving
as Ugwueke’s adviser. In 2018, the hospital brought in $86m more than it spent,
according to an end-of-year revenue bond disclosure statement.
Debt
that will follow her to the grave
During her January court hearing, Barrett
was ordered to pay $100 a month to Methodist toward her debt.
If she’d had a chance, she said, she would
have told the judge she was perpetually late on her utility bill and sometimes
she’s had to let her car insurance lapse because she can’t afford it.
Between February and May, Barrett managed to
make her payments on time, by shorting other bills and relying on payday loans.
But this month, she missed her payment due date.
If Methodist doesn’t add any interest to
Barrett’s debt and she pays as ordered, she will pay it off in 330 months.
She will be 90 years old.
Not long after her day in court, Barrett
filed her 2018 taxes.
She made $13,800.
“It’s in the hands of God now,” she said.
“There’s only so much I can do,.”
To
read a longer version of this story, please visit MLK50 or ProPublica.
ProPublica
news applications developer Lylla Younes and research reporter Doris Burke
contributed to this report.
- This article was produced in partnership with MLK50, which is a
member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. You
can sign up for ProPublica’s Big
Story newsletter to receive more stories like this.
WILL WE SEE THE CORPORATE DEMOCRATS TRYING
TO STIFLE THE STUDENT VOTE, AS THE REPUBLICANS DO THE BLACKS? THEY ARE VERY
LIKELY GOING TO HAVE TO SETTLE FOR ONE PROGRESSIVE OR ANOTHER, I THINK. PETE
BUTTIGIEG OR BETO O'ROARKE ARE NOT REALLY FAMILIAR ENOUGH TO THE AMERICAN
PEOPLE TO WIN EASILY AS PRESIDENT -- THOUGH AS VICE PRESIDENT HE PROBABLY COULD.
I COULD VOTE FOR EITHER HIM OR O'ROURKE IN THAT SPOT.
COLLEGE
STUDENTS OVERWHELMINGLY REJECT JOE BIDEN, EMBRACE BERNIE SANDERS: POLL
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders maintained
his polling lead ahead of all 2020 Democratic presidential candidates among
college students, while former Vice President Joe Biden was overwhelmingly
ignored, according to a recent survey.
Sanders stood atop the latest Chegg/College
Pulse weekly poll of Democrat and Democrat-leaning
U.S. college students with 30 percent of support. He was followed by Massachusetts
Senator Elizabeth Warren with 26 percent, and Andrew Yang, who at 10
percent had the most consistent week-over-week increases in backing. Trailing
back in single digits was Biden, who has seen his support among liberal college
students fall dramatically from 23 percent in March to just nine percent this
week.
Sanders has led the poll every week since
March, although support for Warren and Yang has more than quadrupled and
tripled, respectively, for their campaigns.
The weekly poll of more than 1,500 U.S.
college students showed Warren picking up three percentage points since last
week as Sanders held steady for the third week at 30 percent. Sanders' highest
polling percentage was in March when he held onto exactly one-third of support
(33 percent) before dipping to his lowest of 24 percent in May, and again in
late July before rebounding.
Biden has steadily lost support among
Democratic college students since early July and now sits in the bottom rung of
candidates who only have single-digit support. When the Chegg/College Pulse
weekly polling began in March, Biden held on to 23 percentage points before
dropping off dramatically between late June and early July.
Warren has seen the largest increase in
support since the college student poll started last spring, having more than
quadrupled her support from just 6 percent in March to now 26 percent. Last
week, Warren surpassed Biden as the Democratic front-runner in several polls,
including a four percentage-point lead over him in the latest
Economist/YouGov weekly tracking survey.
Sanders was the only other candidate to receive double-digit support in that
survey.
Sanders maintained his spot atop the Chegg/College
Pulse weekly poll when race, gender or sexual orientation are factored in to
the data. However, respondents who described themselves as a "Strong
Democrat" supported Warren over her Independent Senate colleague by a
five-point lead of 36 to 31 percent.
Falling behind Sanders, Warren, Yang and
Biden in the poll to round out the top five is South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete
Buttigieg, with 7 percent; former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke with 4
percent; and California Senator Kamala Harris with 3 percent, a drop of one
point.
All the other remaining candidates
received less than 1 percent of support from Democrat-leaning college students.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders maintained
his polling lead of all 2020 Democratic candidates among college students,
while former Vice President Joe Biden was overwhelmingly ignored in the latest
survey.WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
HERE'S A LITTLE INFORMATION ABOUT BUTTIGIEG
FROM WIKIPEDIA. HE WAS THIRD THIS WEEK.
Pete
Buttigieg 2020 presidential campaign
The 2020 presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of
South Bend, Indiana, began with the formation of an exploratory
committee for the Democratic
nomination on January 23, 2019. The campaign was officially
launched on April 14, 2019.[2][3] Buttigieg is the first openly gay Democratic candidate for
president.[4]
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Pete
for America
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Campaign
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Candidate
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Affiliation
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Status
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Headquarters
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Key people
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Slogan
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It's
time for a new generation of American leadership
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Website
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Buttigieg's major policy positions include
abolition of the United
States Electoral College, support for single-payer healthcare, labor unions, universal
background checks for guns, protecting the environment by way of
addressing climate change,
a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, overturning the Citizens United ruling, and passing a
federal law banning discrimination against LGBT
people.[5]
OCTOBER 6, 2019
NEWS AND VIEWS
Published
on
Sunday,
October 06, 2019
by
Attorneys
Say They Now Represent 'Multiple Whistleblowers' With Knowledge of
Trump-Ukraine Call
One of the whistleblowers has
"first-hand knowledge" about Trump's call with Ukraine's leader,
according to attorney Mark Zaid.
by
PHOTOGRAPH -- President Donald Trump listens
to President of Finland Sauli Niinisto during a press conference in the East
Room at the White House on Wednesday on October 2, 2019 in Washington, D.C.
(Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
This is a developing story...
Check back for updates...
Attorneys representing the intelligence
official who filed the formal complaint about President Donald Trump's call
with Ukraine's leader confirmed Sunday that they now represent "multiple
whistleblowers" who have decided to come forward to detail potential
misconduct by the U.S. president.
"I can confirm that my firm and my team
represent multiple whistleblowers," Andrew Bakaj, the lead attorney for the
original whistleblower, tweeted Saturday. "No further comment at this
time."
Mark Zaid, part of the legal team
representing the first whistleblower, told ABC Sunday that his firm is representing a second
whistleblower with "first-hand knowledge" about Trump's call with the
Ukrainian leader, during which the U.S. president pushed for an investigation
into former Vice President Joe Biden.
The call is at the center of the impeachment
inquiry House Democrats launched last month.
"I can confirm this report of a second
whistleblower being represented by our legal team," Zaid tweeted in
response to ABC's story. "They
also made a protected disclosure under the law and cannot be retaliated
against. This WBer has first-hand knowledge."
Our work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share
widely.
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CARD
PAYPAL ACT BLUE
I KNOW THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER IS A CONSERVATIVE
PUBLICATION, BUT THIS STORY LOOKS INTERESTING AND POSSIBLY IMPORTANT. EXPECT
VERBAL DIGS AT BOTH WARREN AND SANDERS ALONG WITH, HOPEFULLY, SOME USEFUL
INFORMATION. WHEN IN DOUBT, FACT-CHECK.
Two French economists from Berkeley advising
Warren and Sanders on wealth tax
by Nihal Krishan
|
October 06, 2019 12:00 AM
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have the
same two outside advisers to thank for shaping their wealth tax proposals:
University of California, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.
Each Democratic presidential candidate
wants to tackle wealth inequality by raising trillions of dollars in revenue
from taxing the wealth — in addition to the income — of millionaires and
billionaires, an idea that is backed up by research from Saez and Zucman.
There are competing explanations for the
rise in inequality. Those on one side argue that wealth concentration is
natural as a result of globalization, technology gains, and economic growth,
which give enormous rewards to the smartest, innovative, and most hardworking
people. Drastically increasing tax rates, they say, would discourage innovation
and hurt the economy.
The other camp sees rising inequality as
unfair, immoral, and a threat to society.
Saez and Zucman are firmly in the second
camp.
From France
Saez, 46, and Zucman, 32, are both originally
from France and have each worked in the past with Thomas Piketty, the famous
French economist whose research on wealth and income inequality made him a
best-selling author. By using new sources of data, such as individual tax
records, Piketty reshaped the debate about inequality and wealth taxes.
Piketty's central argument in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century,
published in 2013, is that inequality is a central feature of capitalism and,
if not checked, could rise inexorably.
In the United States, Saez and Zucman have
assumed the mantle of leading exponents of Piketty-style economic policies. The
pair have researched tax havens, the government’s lack of taxation of wealth,
and how those factors impacts wealth distribution overall.
Zucman, in a May profile that described him
as The Wealth Detective Who Finds the Hidden Money of the Super Rich, said that
he took up the cause of exposing economic inequalities during an internship at
a French brokerage firm, when he was tasked with writing commentary for clients
about changes within the global economy. He had just finished his education at
the Paris School of Economics, where he’d studied under Piketty.
He came across data that showed billions
of dollars moving from large economies into smaller ones, such as Bermuda, the
Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Such places have been known for
hosting "offshore accounts" for big corporations and the wealthy.
Zucman thereafter became a critic of the use of tax havens by corporations and
the rich. He gained prominence in public policy debates on tax evasion after
the Panama Papers revelations.
Their Philosophy
Zucman's research has focused on
quantifying phenomena like tax evasion and determining what policy failures
might be responsible. He is also known for offering remedies for tax evasion
through the proper evaluation and taxation of wealth. Saez has gained prestige
through research on income inequality and tax policy, which helped him become a
MacArthur Fellow in 2010. In 2009, he won the prestigious John Bates Clark
Medal, awarded to the American economist under the age of 40 who is judged to
have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.
They argue that globalization doesn’t work
if it results in lower taxes for the rich and for multinational companies and
higher taxes for retirees and small businesses left behind. They also believe
economic inequality is harmful for democracy.
“I think that extreme inequality certainly
poses a very serious threat for democratic institutions. It’s hard to say what
really is too extreme,” Zucman said in an interview with the University of
Chicago’s Stigler Center.
Zucman points to the reform of banks in
Switzerland and elsewhere that used to be offshore destinations for tax evasion
in the past decade as evidence his ideas can work. He says that initially there
was much skepticism that the global financial system could actually reduce tax
evasion by forcing banks to send information to tax authorities in other
countries. Now, "that’s the law," Zucman told the Stigler Center.
The two economists have also referred to
previous periods of relative economic equality in the U.S. for examples of the
kind of policy regimes they would like to see, noting the fact that the top
income tax rate was above 90% in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Saez and
Zucman have also been publicly supportive of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's
proposal of a 70% tax rate for incomes above $10 million.
“The U.S. used to see itself as much more
equal than Europe in the 19th century. That’s what Tocqueville, when he came to
the U.S., he celebrated the American egalitarian ethos in some sense,” Zucman
told the Stigler Center.
Warren and Sanders are aiming for a dramatic
reduction in inequality using the wealth tax idea boosted by the two
economists.
Sanders' wealth tax plan would would raise a
$4.35 trillion over 10 years, Saez and Zucman estimated, to pay for programs
such as "Medicare for all" and universal child care. It would apply
to households with a net worth above $32 million, which is about 180,000
households — the top 0.1% — starting at a 1% tax rate and rising to 8% for
married couples with more than $10 billion in wealth.
In contrast, Warren’s plan would raise
approximately $2.75 trillion over a decade, also by Saez and Zucman's
estimates, by levying a 2% wealth tax on assets worth more than $50 million,
and a 3% tax on fortunes worth more than $1 billion. Saez and Zucman reckon the
tax would hit approximately 75,000 families.
Since they advise both campaigns, Saez and
Zucman compared both wealth tax proposals in a recent analysis.
In 2018, Bill Gates was worth roughly $97
billion. If Warren’s tax had been in place since 1982, Gates would have been
worth just $36.4 billion, according to Saez and Zucman. Under the Sanders tax
plan, Gates’ net worth would be a comparatively tiny $9.9 billion.
Pushback
The concept of a wealth tax has generated
some controversy among economists.
For instance, Larry Summers, the former
president of Harvard University and economic adviser to President Barack Obama,
has called Saez and Zucman’s estimates for the revenues generated by the wealth
tax “naively high.”
One possibility is that, instead of paying
the tax, the über-wealthy would strategically give their money away to
charities, reducing the tax base. "It seems important to account for the
fact that the wealthy (and their tax planners) will inevitably be motivated to
limit tax liability," Summers and another professor argued in June.
More generally, other economists say that it
would be difficult for the government to accurately assess the value of the
assets of the rich, given the ability of wealthy families to hire tax lawyers
to engage in complicated planning to avoid levies. Warren’s wealth tax plans
“work very poorly in practice,” Columbia’s Kopczuk said. “There is a reason why
many countries get rid of wealth taxes.”
So far, at least 15 European countries have
tried wealth taxes. All but four, though, have repealed them, most recently
Saez's and Zucman’s homeland of France.
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