Morning Joe
Watergate journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Friday said they have concerns after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, with Woodward saying the document points to a crisis in President Donald Trump’s administration and Bernstein seeing it as evidence of a coverup.
“The government can’t pause and take months to thrash it out, Woodward told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I believe from reporting that there is a governing crisis in the Trump administration.”
With North Korea, the Chinese trade and tariff debate, and the immigration questions, the “Trump administration really just doesn’t work [as] all the people who have more experience are gone,” Woodward added. “I worry about a crisis.”
And if that happens, Trump doesn’t “have a strategy on any of these issues, and he does not now have a team that can work together, said Woodward.
The campaign ” knew and happily welcomed” Russia’s aid, he added, which means the continuing threat of Russian interference is “very real.”
Meanwhile, Bernstein told CNN’s “New Day” that he believes the report shows that there is “no question that this has been a vast presidential coverup” and Congress must be able to see all the facts in the document “without the kind of muddled water” that Attorney General William Barr provided with his descriptions.
“The cover-up is in the 10 or 11 areas that the special prosecutor laid out as possible or likely obstructions of justice,” he added. “When you add it all up you get a picture in which the two parts of the report fuse together and it is a picture of an administration and a presidency and a campaign that crosses boundaries such as we have never seen with the possible exception of Watergate.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
It’s important to have somebody who will “put the president to his proofs” and to challenge him on his stances, former two-term Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, who has announced his primary challenge against President Donald Trump, said Tuesday.
“You ask him some questions, like, why do you think it’s good to insult our military allies, why do you praise dictators?” Weld told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Is it because you wish the United States was more dictatorial? I’m afraid that might be the case. Why are you so angry about everything all the time?”
Weld, who also ran for vice president on the 2016 Libertarian party ticket headed by Gary Johnson, said his plan is to enlarge the electorate by targeting independents, millennials, female voters and others, as he did when he ran for governor in Massachusetts.
He also struck back at people who say they don’t like Trump’s style, but they do like his substance.
“It’s not style when you’re as angry all the time and uncurious as this president is,” said Weld. “For example, the president insists that global warming is a hoax. Well, does he think those scientists who did those measurements are making money off the deal and lying about the results of the scientific examination? It just betrays a lack of homework and not really thinking ahead about what to do.”
Weld also said as president, he’d push for the education displaced workers need in the wake of new technology, including making community college free for them.
Source: NewsMax Politics
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries Friday said that despite divided opinions among his party’s members strides have been made during Democrats’ first 100 days as the majority party in the House this year, adding that lawmakers are united on healthcare reform.
“We were elected in part to be a check-and-balance on an out-of-control executive branch, and we’re going to continue to take that oversight responsibility seriously,” the New York Democrat told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Primarily, we’ve been focused on kitchen-table pocketbook issues trying to get things done on behalf of the American people and to bring our democracy to life.”
The first 35 days as a majority party, Democrats faced a “reckless” government shutdown, said Jeffries, but were able to end that successfully without giving President Donald Trump “a dime of taxpayer dollars to do it.”
In addition, Democrats were able to enact a bipartisan border security agreement, and also to increase pay for federal employees, said Jeffries.
There are differences of opinion, said Jeffries, but “we embrace that diversity.”
“We’ve consistently come together to get 218 votes to move legislation onto the floor of the House of Representatives,” said Jeffries. “We’ll continue to do that, and we’ll continue to focus on the two primary things over the next 100 days that we said we wanted to get done for the American people, lowering healthcare costs, with an emphasis on driving down the high cost of life-saving prescription drugs, and moving closer toward and enacting a real infrastructure plan.”
He also said he believes the Democratic caucus is united under Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership.
“There’s a singular principle on health care that brings us all together,” said Jeffries. “In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, every single American should have access to high-quality affordable healthcare.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
The problems at the southern border can either be solved or used for political reasons, and President Donald Trump is “hell-bent on playing politics with it,” by pushing out key members of the Department of Homeland Security such as outgoing secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Sen. Jon Tester said Tuesday.
“It creates more turmoil and, quite frankly it appears to me that the president is using this as a political tool for the next election,” the Montana Democrat told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We need to work together to solve it.”
Tester, who recently visited the border, commented that a processing center he visited was not the “best of conditions,” but at the same time, there a “ton a folks’ coming across the border, especially families, and processing must be sped up.
He further said Trump is wrong in pulling aid away from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador because that money is vital to improving conditions in those countries in hopes of keeping people from leaving them.
“I can’t imagine a mother and her son or daughter wants to take a three-or-four-week trek through Mexico to get to the southern border,” Tester said. “Let’s do what we can do to keep them in their home countries. Instead, the president cuts aid to these countries, doing the opposite of what needs to be done.”
However, Tester said he does think that if the administration gives Congress a plan of where it wants to go, solutions can be reached.
Tester also discussed the growing 2020 presidential race, saying that he thinks someone must be found who will speak to the issues of rural America, including infrastructure and tariffs.
Source: NewsMax Politics
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said Friday she’s running for president because she wants to “fight back” against President Donald Trump and how he has “destroyed the moral fabric” of who the United States is as a country.
“I think what the voters want is someone who’s authentic, someone who does the right thing, fighting for the right things, someone that wants to serve and put others first,” the New York Democrat told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “What I’ve shown in my career I do take on the tough fights.”
She said she thinks the Democratic base is looking for bold ideas, but they may not agree with all of hers, including a plan for paying for college through national public service or time in the military.
“It’s an expansion of the GI Bill,” she said, adding that it is a better solution to making college more accessible and affordable.
Biden has said he’ll change his behavior and that is important, said Gillibrand, but there is still no reason why women can’t “tell their truth and their value and what’s happened to them.”
When Biden decides to run, it will be up to him to sort out the issue, said Gillibrand, but for everyone else, it allows women to be heard and valued.
“You can have both conversations,” she said. “You just have to be clear about what’s what.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
Rep. Tim Ryan, who on Thursday joined the widening number of Democrats seeking the 2020 presidential nomination, said Friday he believes he can bring back people who voted for Donald Trump, and that he’ll win in several Midwest states while representing the working class.
“The country is divided and I believe I can heal it,” the Ohio Democrat told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I got a lot of voters who President Trump go,t and I think we can bring those folks back into the fold. I can win Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.”
Ryan, whose home district in the Youngstown area has been hit hard by layoffs in the auto industry, said the United States needs an industrial policy and is losing to China on electric vehicles, solar power and more.
Ryan said the problems with the economy are not new, but he wants to push forward to make sure the United States has its place as technology emerges.
“We’re going to figure out how we go from two million electric vehicles to 30 million,” said Ryan, noting he’ll be speaking with the auto industry. “I want those made in the United States, I want the charging stations made in the United States.”
The congressman also discussed his foreign policy experience, noting that he has been a member of the House Armed Services Committee and currently sits on the House Appropriations Committee’s Defense Subcommittee.
“The most patriotic thing we could do was start listening to each other and respecting each other, and then we can project force into the world,” said Ryan. “We have to outcompete China.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
It’s “past time” for Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen to resign her post after her lack of action concerning the Mexican border, Rep. Victoria Escobar said Monday.
“This is an administration led obviously by the president that only knows how to use government to create chaos and to create problems instead of solving problems,” the Texas Democrat told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” and he has installed as his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security someone also deeply uninterested in addressing or solving any of our great challenges and who instead wants to be his head cheerleader for cruelty.”
Escobar said she held back on calling for Nielsen’s resignation after the deaths of two children in U.S. custody, but last week, the DHS was “corralling families, thousands of children” behind fencing in El Paso, Texas.
“Kids, moms, parents, families were sleeping in the dirt on the ground in a way that is worse than how we treat animals in this country,” said Escobar. “They were corralled off with chain-link fencing with concertina wire above it, as if these are people who are trying to escape and not families who arrived at our doorstep seeking help.”
If President Donald Trump’s administration was “truly interested” in stemming the flow of Central American families to the United States, he’d act as the Obama administration did, as it sent then-Vice President Joe Biden to visit and hold accountable presidents from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, said Escobar.
“It was a combination of investment and accountability, she said. “Once this administration was sworn in the accountability ended and now we’re seeing the investment end as well and we wonder why there are more people rushing to our front doorstep.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
Sen. Amy Klobuchar Thursday outlined a $1 trillion infrastructure plan that would put extensive focus on the nation's bridges, roads, and more, saying that the work could be financed through changes to the Republican business tax cut plan that she believes went "way too far."
"[President] Donald Trump has put out a mirage," the Minnesota Democrat and 2020 presidential candidate told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "He claims he wants to do something on infrastructure and has identified maybe $200 billion at most."
Klobuchar said her plan addresses bridges, roads, rail, public transit and "doing something" about the nation's water infrastructure, including on locks and dams, in the wake of extensive flooding in the Midwest states.
She also is proposing completing broadband services in the nation's rural areas by 2022 through her plan.
The senator said her plan would be funded, in part, by raising corporate tax rates of 21 percent passed in 2017 back up to 25 percent, to "save about $400 billion that you could put into infrastructure."
In addition, other $150 billion could be brought in by changing "the way that they did the overseas taxes," said Klobuchar. "I have a number of other ways to pay for this that brings us to a trillion."
Klobuchar outlined the seven-point plan in a Medium post that called for channeling $650 billion in federal funding into the plan, as well as in returning the Obama-era's "Build America Bonds."
She also said in her plan that she wants to do "something real about climate change," without listing specifics about what that would involve.
Source: NewsMax Politics
There can be bipartisan agreement on keeping Russia or another country from interfering in U.S. elections, but "they always go back to [President Donald] Trump didn't have any involvement," Rep. Ro Khanna said Tuesday.
"We know that the Russians wanted Trump to win and we know that they hacked our emails and they manipulated social media," the California Democrat told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"I mean tomorrow, imagine if some foreign power wanted to elect someone on the far left. This is really not a partisan issue. And there are some very, very basic things we can do. Let ads be disclosed on the internet. Let's have coordination between our intelligence agencies and technology."
Khanna appeared on the program with former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos, after the trio wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post warning about election interference.
McFaul commented that Americans should thank special counsel Robert Mueller and his team for their investigation, which while clearing Trump did point to Russian interference in the 2016 race.
Stamos added that Russia "played us" in 2016, and now their playbook is out there and available to other U.S. adversaries.
"Just this morning, my colleagues at Facebook announced they took down another 500 fake accounts and pages that look like they belong to the government of Iran, so we can't just worry about the Russians," he said.
Source: NewsMax Politics
It's time to "move on" past special counsel Robert Mueller's report, Sen. John Kennedy said Tuesday while adding he'd like to tell President Donald Trump to "leave it alone."
"I would say to the president very gently, when you get what you want, leave it alone," the Louisiana Republican told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "It's okay to have an unexpressed thought, and I said yesterday, and I don't mean any disrespect, but don't be a meathead about this, and I would say this to my Democratic colleagues as well as my Republican colleagues."
Kennedy also said he thinks Attorney General William Barr is a "straight shooter" and he'll release the full Mueller report at some time.
"It's an academic issue because the report is going to leak anyway," said Kennedy. 'The only question is whether it's going leak in part or in toto. But I trust the American people to figure this out."
He said he's worried the arguments will continue on, but "what if we focused all of the effort and emotion and passion that we focused on this subject to reducing the cost of health insurance in America? Imagine what we could do."
Kennedy said the calls for continuing investigations are "just one party trying to score points against another," but he does think Trump should declassify all documents about the FBI's involvement in the 2016 election. After that, "then we can talk about more hearings."
Meanwhile, even though the report clears Trump, there is still the matter of Russian interference in U.S. elections, said Kennedy, and he expects other countries such as China to also interfere in upcoming races.
Source: NewsMax Politics
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