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PoliGAF 2017 |OT4| The leaks are coming from inside the white house

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B

BreezyLimbo

Banned
Oh my god one of the republican candidate for Californias governship, travis douchebag, is on a tv interview atm, and he says we have to run our state like a business

Fuuuuuck

Offffffffffff

Just fuck off
 
W

whyamihere

Banned
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/22/heidi-heitkamp-north-dakota-239805

WAHPETON, N.D. — Heidi Heitkamp still remembers the first time she led the Senate in the Pledge of Allegiance after her surprising win in 2012. How hard it was to get the words out.

“I can’t get through it because I’m too emotional,” she recalls to dozens of gangly teenagers graduating from the American Legion’s Boys State program. “How could a middle-aged, kind of a chubby woman, be standing in the United States Senate?”

The 61-year-old Heitkamp survived a brutal bout with cancer amid a failed 2000 campaign for governor, then ran for the Senate 12 years later in a Republican-dominated state. And now she is staring down an exceedingly difficult reelection campaign in a state where President Donald Trump is beloved.

Though every Democrat from the oil patch in Williston to bustling Fargo is banking on Heitkamp running, winning and reviving the party in this state, the plain-spoken, stridently moderate Democratic senator is months away from making it official. That’s in part because she’d far rather govern than spend 15 months talking about her campaign. But she says she's also undecided.

“There’s days I have doubts ... I mean this is a hard life. Actually, the happiest I am is on days like today,” she says on a sparkling June day as she crisscrosses the state’s southeastern corner. “You know, I haven’t made up my mind.”

A few minutes later, she’s convincing herself she must run again: Would her replacement care as much as she does about Native American children or changing the minds of Democrats who criticize fossil fuels?

“I think: What value do I add in the Senate? Why am I important to the institution? Not just to North Dakota,” she says. “I’m a very effective advocate for North Dakota. That’s easy.”
Click to expand...

Trump won North Dakota by 36 points, but Washington is a surprisingly cozy place right now for Heitkamp. She met with Trump about a Cabinet position in December, visited the White House three times since and speaks regularly to Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus and top economic adviser Gary Cohn, lately pestering Priebus to get the Export-Import Bank in high gear to help North Dakota’s economy.

“[Steve] Bannon’s on my side on this,” she says with satisfaction.

Heitkamp is plainly chummier with Trump than she was to President Barack Obama, whom she outran by more than 10 points in 2012 and “didn’t really have a relationship with,” she says. And in the Senate, she’s “much closer” with new Democratic leader Chuck Schumer than she was with former leader Harry Reid, who she opposed as party leader in 2014.

Democrats say when Heitkamp decides to buck the party, they don’t even bother trying to change her mind.

“It’s a complete waste of time trying to twist Heidi Heitkamp’s arm,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois.

Her independence, and her closeness to Trump, will be a boon if she does run again. Republicans respect Heitkamp, and Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said she will enter as the favorite.

But North Dakotans, Republicans say, will ultimately side with Trump’s party over Heitkamp’s.

“Donald Trump is as popular as ever in North Dakota,” said a Republican senator who has viewed recent polling. “If the election was held today we’d win, plain and simple.”

Today, Schumer is pushing her to soon announce for reelection and is offering major assistance from the party. People close to her insist she’s running again, noting her $1.6 million in fundraising in the first quarter of the year.
Click to expand...

North Dakota is booming, but it’s still a state of just 750,000. And Heitkamp’s outsized personality is her greatest asset.

Like Democrats Jon Tester in Montana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heitkamp is a senator today and could win reelection because her state is small enough that everyone seems to know her.

“Heidi has a personal connection with people. She has a wonderful personality, she’s a delightful conversationalist,” admits Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), an upbeat and outspoken lawmaker weighing a run against her. “Politics in North Dakota is a personal thing.”
Click to expand...

On this Friday’s 10-hour tour, her first stop is with Joel Heitkamp, her brother and a talk show host and former state Democratic lawmaker. Heidi guest-hosted the show during George W. Bush’s presidency. If the call lines went dead, she’d bring up Bush’s plans to privatize Social Security to rile folks up.
Click to expand...

As she’s shuttled from Fargo to Wahpeton to Mapleton to Casselton and finally to Valley City, Heitkamp grows more serious when discussing her state’s challenges. She hates the White House’s budget’s agriculture cuts and believes they’d devastate North Dakota. But she carefully blames White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, not the president.

“I call it the Mulvaney budget, not the Trump budget,” she says, diverging from Democratic talking points.

After meeting Trump face-to-face three times and talking frequently with his top staffers, she wants to use her White House connections to prod Trump to take a softer view on trade. She doesn’t talk about the scandal-plagued White House, and says Democrats concentrate too much on Trump’s ties to Russia. She believes, however, that there is a global leadership void with Trump as president.

At Mapleton's Horsch farm equipment factory she receives her first and only Trump question of the day from Ryan Johnson, an employee moving to Kindred, North Dakota, who wants to know what the president is really like.

“He’s very much committed to working people,” Heitkamp concludes.

That’s not the answer liberal activists are looking for, but it underpins her brand. Heitkamp is not part of the Democrats’ “resistance” and she has no plans to join it.

“There is a part of Heidi that has a very progressive streak,” says former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.). “And there is a part that respects the conservative side of issues.”

A self-described conservative Republican, Johnson says he’s likely to support Heitkamp. Informed she just won over a Trump voter, Heitkamp shrugs and hops in the car to Country Kitchen in Casselton for lunch with local leaders.
Click to expand...

After surviving cancer, Heitkamp learned to measure the days to maximize her time on earth. Campaigning isn’t at the top of her list.

“I calculated how many hours I’d have to be awake and do something until the age of 80. And when I think about: Do I want to do this thing?” Heitkamp says. “It’s this highly competitive, really aggressive environment ... And so, do you want to do it? Do you want to invest your time in that?”

And though her schedule on this day contains zero political events, the looming Senate race won’t ever truly recede. After revving up the Boys State grads, she’s approached by Rick Berg, the former House member she beat in 2012, who tells her: “You even motivated me.”
Click to expand...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to avoid a competitive election, advising Trump to pluck Heitkamp from the Senate and make her Agriculture secretary, according to a source with knowledge of the conversation. In a transition meeting with Trump, Cramer told him that if he picked Heitkamp: “I’ll be a senator in 90 days” and would win in 2018.

Trump replied: “Why don’t you just run in two years if you want to do that?” A few days later, Heitkamp announced she’s staying in the Senate.

And that leaves Heitkamp in a most unique political situation, a one-woman North Dakota Democratic Party simultaneously shouldering national Democratic hopes of eventually taking back the Senate. Her future amounts to a crucial test of whether the Democrats’ big tent still stands.

Paradoxically, Trump’s win may have eased Heitkamp’s path to reelection, as mid-terms often devastate the president’s party. And if being a Democrat is dragging her down, it’s not immediately apparent here.

Her most pointed interaction comes at the end of the day at Red Pepper, a local joint famous among inebriated college students. An elderly man spies Heitkamp from a booth. When they make eye contact, he tells her: “I’ve got beef with you.”

He’s mad that Heitkamp has her boat dock in the Missouri River back home in Mandan and that he’s not allowed to put his in. He threatens to change his party registration in protest.

As she walks to the car, Heitkamp notes that in North Dakota, voters don’t register by party anyway.
Click to expand...
 
B

Beer Monkey

Member
skullmuffins said:
yeah. I think it's true that the email chain was new while the existence of the meeting itself was already known for a while.
Click to expand...

If they already knew about the meeting from completely different surveillance other than email there's probably a whole ton more that the other surveillance caught. And now the email chain gives justification on warrants on other emails involving Goldstone, Veselnitskaya et al. It's all good. The amount of evidence they have and have yet to even collect would be staggering.

Good lord these people are dumb as fuck. Having meetings in the Trump Tower and planning them via regular email.

No wonder Trump shit his fucking pants when his chore boy Devin Nunes told him that existing surveillance had hit the Trump Tower (as it rightfully should when targeting these Russians since they fucking did their business there).
 
P

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
skullmuffins said:
@yashar

On CNN, @SenatorLankford says the Senate Intelligence Committee found out about the Don Jr/Russian lawyer meeting in April.

edit: from Kushner's updated forms


hmm.
Click to expand...

So CNN's report the FBI didn't know was garbage.

ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
If collusion is patriotic, plz steal Trump's tax returns, Germany.
Click to expand...

I brought this point up a while back. What if the democrats in 2018 work with China in the exact same way and tip the election? What will the response be to that? The whole "collusion is fine" line of defense is a terrible way to go.
 
R

Random Human

They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
The CNN story was so weird because why would sources close to that investigation possibly leak something like that. "It's news to us!"

Unless they were trying to play dumb 🤔
 
A

Autodidact

Banned
“There’s days I have doubts ... I mean this is a hard life. Actually, the happiest I am is on days like today,” she says on a sparkling June day as she crisscrosses the state’s southeastern corner. “You know, I haven’t made up my mind.”

A few minutes later, she’s convincing herself she must run again: Would her replacement care as much as she does about Native American children or changing the minds of Democrats who criticize fossil fuels?
Click to expand...

Queen of the North playin' the fuckin' game.

Plinko said:
So CNN's report the FBI didn't know was garbage.
Click to expand...

CNN has always been and will always be garbage. I hate that Trump has forced us to defend their honor.
 
W

whyamihere

Banned
Aaron Strife said:
I don't think Heitkamp would have taken the Cabinet position even if she was offered it, but still a smart move to act like she was interested.

Manchin, Heitkamp and Tester are all very shrewd, know their states and at this rate I'm expecting all three of them to hang on.
Click to expand...

60/28 favorables.

Everyone knows her.

North Dakota is one of the most elastic states in the country.

I think she can do it.
 
S

Spoiled Milk

Banned
RumbleHumble said:
I think you misread a cue from my post. That wasn't what I was trying to imply, but I could see how someone could read it that way.
Click to expand...
Oh my bad :p

Okay fun conspiracy for PoliGAF. RumbleHumble and Random Human posted one after another just now. RumbleHumble and Random Human are both compound nicks composed of an r word and an h word. Neither have avatars. RumbleHumble joined in October of 2016. Random Human joined in November of 2016.
 
N

NihonTiger90

Member
AP's cybersecurity correspondent, Raphael Satter, just tweeted this:

Raphael Satter‏Verified account
@razhael

The long-dormant account of CyberBerkut, alleged to be linked 2 Kremlin, comes alive & begins tweeting about links between Clinton & Ukraine
Click to expand...

https://twitter.com/razhael/status/885078590215389184

They aren't even trying to hide the connections anymore. This was Huckabee Sanders' exact line at today's off-camera press briefing.
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
whyamihere said:
60/28 favorables.

Everyone knows her.

North Dakota is one of the most elastic states in the country.

I think she can do it.
Click to expand...
I'll re-register in Fargo just to help out.

~~~SMASH CUT: ELECTION NIGHT 2018~~~

"And Heidi Heitkamp wins in a landslide, 70% to Kid Rock's 30% who was the Republican candidate in every state this year. Democrats' sweep of Arizona, Nevada and Texas would have given them the majority if not for Amy Klobuchar's tragic defeat by one vote"
 
S

Spoiled Milk

Banned
Aaron Strife said:
I'll re-register in Fargo just to help out.

~~~SMASH CUT: ELECTION NIGHT 2018~~~

"And Heidi Heitkamp wins in a landslide, 70% to Kid Rock's 30% who was the Republican candidate in every state this year. Democrats' sweep of Arizona, Nevada and Texas would have given them the majority if not for Amy Klobuchar's tragic defeat by one vote"
Click to expand...
You have to be a resident of a state to run as senator :(
 
T

timetokill

Banned
BreezyLimbo said:
Oh my god one of the republican candidate for Californias governship, travis douchebag, is on a tv interview atm, and he says we have to run our state like a business

Fuuuuuck

Offffffffffff

Just fuck off
Click to expand...

I really wish interviewers would just reply with, "Following that logic, if we run it like a business then we have to look at revenue and profits. The state's revenue is entirely through taxes: so with that in mind, how are you planning to maximize taxes?"
 
R

Random Human

They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
The Clinton "defence" is everything wrong with how Trump and his inner circle handle a crises: it's not actually a defence of anything and just lets the email wound fester, but because the most deranged members of his cult eat it up, they probably think this is all very clever.
 
R

RumbleHumble

Banned
Spoiled Milk said:
Oh my bad :p

Okay fun conspiracy for PoliGAF. RumbleHumble and Random Human posted one after another just now. RumbleHumble and Random Human are both compound nicks composed of an r word and an h word. Neither have avatars. RumbleHumble joined in October of 2016. Random Human joined in November of 2016.
Click to expand...

YOU CAUGHT ME!
 
B

Brawly Likes to Brawl

Member
Random Human said:
The Clinton "defence" is everything wrong with how Trump and his inner circle handle a crises: it's not actually a defence of anything and just lets the email wound fester, but because the most deranged members of his cult eat it up, they probably think this is all very clever.
Click to expand...

It's to be expected from a party that been all about obstruction and deflection for a decade.

BTW, has NYT's third bomb dropped yet?
 
S

SatelliteOfLove

Member
timetokill said:
I really wish interviewers would just reply with, "Following that logic, if we run it like a business then we have to look at revenue and profits. The state's revenue is entirely through taxes: so with that in mind, how are you planning to maximize taxes?"
Click to expand...

You should be a reporter/interviewer. Missing followups is an epidemic.
 
W

whyamihere

Banned
CAN'T WAIT

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/12/trump-legal-immigration-cuts-240478

Donald Trump and his aides are quietly working with two conservative senators to dramatically scale back legal immigration — a move that would mark a fulfillment of one of the president's biggest campaign promises.

Trump plans to get behind a bill being introduced later this summer by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) that, if signed into law, would slash in half the number of legal immigrants entering the country each year by 2027, according to four people familiar with the conversations. Currently, about a million legal immigrants enter the country annually, and that number that would fall to 500,000 over the next decade.

The senators have been working closely with Stephen Miller, a senior White House official known for his hawkish stance on immigration. The issue is also a central priority for Steve Bannon, the president's chief strategist, who has several promises to limit immigration scribbled on the walls of his office.
Click to expand...

"Senator Cotton knows that being more deliberate about who we let into our country will raise working-class wages, which is why an overwhelming majority of Americans support it. He and Senator Perdue are working with President Trump to fix our immigration system so that instead of undercutting American workers, it will support them and their livelihoods," said Caroline Rabbitt, a Cotton spokeswoman.

The reintroduction of the bill is likely to mark the beginning of an important battle within the GOP between immigration hawks, now led by Cotton, who will be acting with the backing of the White House, and dovish lawmakers such as Arizona’s John McCain and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham.

Lawmakers like Cotton, who has inherited the hardline mantle long held by Miller’s former boss, Jeff Sessions, now the attorney general, argue that low-skilled immigrants decrease job opportunity and suppress wages for native-born workers — particularly those on the lower-end of the income scale. Graham and his allies say that the overall economy benefits from the ready availability of cheap labor.

The last time Republicans seriously attempted to curb legal immigration was over two decades ago, in 1996, when a Republican Congress led by Newt Gingrich pressured President Bill Clinton to include a provision that slashed legal immigration in a broader immigration reform package. It was ultimately dropped from the bill, though, after Clinton faced opposition from some of the country’s top business leaders.
Click to expand...

The Cotton-Perdue legislation would also mark a broader shift away from the current immigration system, which favors those with family currently in the U.S., and toward a merit-based approach. It would, for example, increase the number of green cards — which allow for permanent residency in the U.S. — that are granted on the basis of merit to foreigners in a series of categories including outstanding professors and researchers, those holding advanced degrees, and those with extraordinary ability in a particular field.

Those admitted to the U.S. on the basis of merit have accounted for less than 10 percent of all legal immigrants over the past 15 years, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute and the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration Yearbook, and Trump pledged as a presidential candidate to shift the U.S. to a merit-based immigration system.

Miller is also working with Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) to put new limits on sanctuary cities and has convened meetings at the White House on limiting refugees.
Click to expand...

A senior White House official described the moves as part of a broader reorganization of the immigration system. The official said the White House particularly wanted to target welfare programs and limit citizenship and migration to those who pay taxes and earn higher wages.

"In order to be eligible for citizenship, you'll have to demonstrate you are self-sufficient and you don't receive welfare," the senior administration official said.

"You're going to reduce low-skilled immigration substantially, which will protect American workers and recent immigrants themselves," this person said.

The move to curtail legal immigration would not only mark the partial fulfillment of one of the president's most controversial campaign promises, but — with the future of the Obamacare repeal bill in doubt — it would provide a badly needed political victory to a White House that has been unable to escape accusations of collusion with Russia during the presidential campaign.

A second White House official said the push was real — "but it's a difficult one in the current Congress, and we know that."
Click to expand...

Trump praised the virtues of the merit-based models of Canada and Australia in his remarks to a joint session of Congress in late February. "Switching away from this current system of lower-skilled immigration, and instead adopting a merit-based system, we will have so many more benefits," he said. "It will save countless dollars, raise workers' wages, and help struggling families — including immigrant families — enter the middle class."
Click to expand...

COOL.
 
UberTag

UberTag

Member
Autodidact said:
CNN has always been and will always be garbage. I hate that Trump has forced us to defend their honor.
Click to expand...
How is Trump forcing that issue exactly? Can't we just make the case that they're NOT Fake News but otherwise ratings-driven trash?

The political environment may be highly polarized but that doesn't mean one has to get in bed with CNN just because they serve as Donald's whipping boy of choice.

Trump is a garbage president and CNN is a garbage network. They deserve each other.
 
W

whyamihere

Banned
Mark Pryor 2002: 54/46 win

02ARSenateCounties.PNG


Mark Pryor 2008: 80/20 win (Dems fielded no candidate, 20% was the Green candidate)

Arkansas_Senate_Election_Results_by_County%2C_2008.svg


Mark Pryor 2014: 57/39 loss (he didn't even cross 40%!)

Arkansas_Senatorial_Election_Results_by_County%2C_2014.svg


Weeeee Tom Cotton

EDIT: oh no the Green Party candidate who ran against Pryor in 2008

rebekah-kennedy.jpg
 
P

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
"Senator Cotton knows that being more deliberate about who we let into our country will raise working-class wages
Click to expand...

This makes absolutely zero sense.

My only experience with Tom Cotton is seeing his inane ramblings at the Comey hearings, so I'm not surprised he feels this way.
 
N

NeoXChaos

Member
Ogodei said:
All of the Trump-state Dems would have been, and maybe even a few of the narrow-win Clinton states like Kaine.
Click to expand...

It's only a matter of time till Republican's eventually win the Romney 5. Hopefully by then Democrats will have found new seats to replace those with.
 
A

Autodidact

Banned
NeoXChaos said:
It's only a matter of time till Republican's eventually win the Romney 5. Hopefully by then Democrats will have found new seats to replace those with.
Click to expand...

Georgia at least should be a promising prospect by 2020. Michelle Nunn performed quite respectably in 2014, and it's only gotten bluer since.
 
H

Hindl

Member
Plinko said:
This makes absolutely zero sense.

My only experience with Tom Cotton is seeing his inane ramblings at the Comey hearings, so I'm not surprised he feels this way.
Click to expand...

I mean that's consistent with the "They took our jobs!" mantra. Get rid of immigrants and honest, hard-working AMERICANS will get those jobs. Once you have that logic it makes sense
 
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