Trump Damage Report – 12/19/2017

Closing up the internet, firing Mueller, by the book, pardon cover, EPA “media monitoring”, how’s your 401k?, a lack of reading, Moscow lists, and smash & grab in America.  All this and more in your daily Trump Damage Report for Tuesday, December 19th, 2017.

• Trump wants to “close up” the internet, CNN reports. HIS WORDS, VERBATIM: “We’re losing a lot of people because of the Internet,” Trump said. “We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.”
• Could Trump fire Mueller, and how would it work?, CNN asks.  No, not really. And terribly.
• Trump’s team meeting with Mueller’s office is poised to ratchet up tensions, The Washington Post reports.  Mouse, meet cat.
• The FBI routinely abuses its powers, but the Trump investigation has been by the book, The Intercept reports.  That’s because every little iota of possible impropriety would be blown out of proportion by the insane Fox News propagandists.
• The real reason that Trump allies are attacking Mueller is quite plain, Politico reports.  It’s to provide cover for possible pardons.
• The Trump administration is calling out North Korea’s hackers, while remaining oddly quiet about Russia’s, The Daily Beast reports.
• Trump’s EPA is going to end a controversial contract with a conservative “media monitoring” firm, The Washington Post reports.  The government and our tax dollars have been paying to conduct “opposition research” against the American free press.
• Trump asks “How’s your 401k?”, but most voters don’t have one, Bloomberg reports.
• A propagandist at Fox News floats a conspiracy theory that the FBI might have planned to assassinate Trump, Media Matters reports.
• Conservatism can’t survive Donald Trump intact, David Frum offers at The Atlantic.  That’s because fascism and conservatism are not mutually exclusive.  A little bit of the prior ruins what’s left of the latter.
• Trump talked about rescinding Gorsuch’s nomination, The Washington Post reports.  This was when Gorsuch was critical of Trump’s comments regarding the judiciary.
• The Trump administration admits that Trump probably didn’t read his own national security strategy, PoliticsUSA reports.  Trump doesn’t read.
• Who are we as a country? Time to decide, says Sally Yates at USA Today.  The rule of law is facing a precarious challenge, particularly if Trump decides to eliminate Mueller.
• The Trump tax heist got worse: now the top 1% gets 83% of the gains, Vox reports.  And at a cost of only a few trillion dollars to the national deficit!
• The Trump administration issued a list that’s freaking out everyone in Moscow, Politico reports.  The list was ordered by Congress of Russians who are the “most significant senior foreign political figures and oligarchs in the Russian Federation”.  Some of these people do not want their names known.
• CEOs aren’t waiting for the Trump tax heist to pass, they’ve already started pocketing the windfall, The Intercept reports.  $70.2 billion in stock buybacks have occurred since the tax heist was announced.
• People are outraged about the Trump tax heist’s “Corker Kickback”, and Time tells us why.  Long story short, the bill extremely enriches real estate businesses, of which Corker owns one.
• We’re witnessing the wholesale looting of America, Vox reports.  Smash and grab time for the Trumpists and their enablers.