All indications are that he never intended to go through with the meeting; the podium in the Rose Garden had those signs up already, reporters were summoned last minute, and he claimed that his little speech was pre-planned and Democrats purposely re-scheduled their meeting during or right before it, when there is no sign anybody outside the WH knew he planned this.
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Good looks? Um, wut?
Attorney General Bill Barr should resign over his conduct before Congress, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Wednesday, calling the attorney general a “personal attorney” for President Donald Trump.
The California Democrat said he hesitates to "call Bill Barr the Attorney General."
"I think Bill Barr has all the duplicity of Rudy Giuliani without all the good looks and general likability of Rudy Guliani," Schiff said during the Center for American Progress 2019 Ideas Conference Wednesday. "The most dangerous thing, I think, that Bill Barr has done is basically say that a president under investigation can make the investigation go away if he thinks its unfair which, by the way, means the other 14 investigations firmed up through other offices he can also make go away."
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Judge says Deutsche Bank, Capital One can give Trump financial records to House Democrats
A federal judge in New York City on Wednesday said Deutsche Bank and Capitol One can turn over financial documents related to President Donald Trump and his businesses in response to subpoenas from House Democrats.
The judge’s ruling rejected arguments by lawyers for Trump, his three older children, and the Trump Organization that the subpoenas should be quashed.
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Buckle up. Reuters just reported that Deutsche Bank will comply!
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Here’s what the President of the United States plastered on his podium when addressing the nation. Un-effing-believable.
As long as Trump is going to so shamelessly debase the office of the presidency, one Twitter user thought this might be more appropriate:
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Putin out-prepared Trump in key meeting, Rex Tillerson told House panel
Former secretary of state Rex Tillerson told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Russian President Vladimir Putin out-prepared President Trump during a key meeting in Germany, putting the U.S. leader at a disadvantage during their first series of tête-à-têtes.
The U.S. side anticipated a shorter meeting for exchanging courtesies, but it ballooned into a globe-spanning two-hour-plus session involving deliberations on a variety of geopolitical issues, said committee aides, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Tillerson’s seven-hour closed meeting with the committee.
“We spent a lot of time in the conversation talking about how Putin seized every opportunity to push what he wanted,” a committee aide said. “There was a discrepancy in preparation, and it created an unequal footing.”
[…]
Committee aides peppered the former oilman with questions about the 2017 session in Hamburg. Unlike in Helsinki last summer, when Trump met with Putin without other officials present, Tillerson attended the Hamburg meeting, giving him rare insight into the two leaders’ interactions. Experts said the disparity in preparation was unsurprising but risky given Putin’s depth of experience and savvy.
“Putin is a very nimble adversary who’s been at this for 20 years now,” said Andrew Weiss, a Russia scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The Hamburg meeting sounds like it was one of Putin’s wildest dreams: a freewheeling backroom-style conversation with a U.S. president.”
[…]
Tillerson told the committee that he believed there was more the United States needed to do to counter Russia on the global stage, said a person who was in the room.
[…]
Committee aides said that Tillerson refrained from openly disparaging the president but that his inability to answer certain questions was revealing.
In one exchange, Tillerson said he and the president “shared a common goal: to secure and advance America’s place in the world and to promote and protect American values.”
“Those American values — freedom, democracy, individual liberty and human dignity — are the North Star that guided every action I took at the State Department,” Tillerson said, according to a person in the room.
[…]
Upon questioning, Tillerson clarified that although he and the president shared the same goal, they did not share the same “value system.”
When asked to describe Trump’s values, Tillerson said, “I cannot,” the person said.
“Just as matter of fact, he stated that he couldn’t or wouldn’t unpack the president’s values for us,” a committee aide said.
[…]
Committee staffers were interested in how Middle East foreign policy was made, asking detailed questions about Kushner and Elliott Broidy, a top fundraiser and ally of Trump whose office was raided by federal investigators last year in a search for records about his dealings with Trump administration associates. Broidy has ties with the United Arab Emirates, a Persian Gulf ally that has worked closely with Kushner and has aligned itself with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
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A key congressional committee has already gained access to President Donald Trump’s dealings with two major financial institutions, two sources familiar with the House probe tell NBC News, as a court ruling Wednesday promised to open the door for even more records to be handed over.
Wells Fargo and TD Bank are the two of nine institutions that have so far complied with subpoenas issued by the House Financial Services Committee demanding information about their dealings with the Trump Organization, according to the sources. The disclosures by these two banks haven’t been previously reported. Both TD Bank and Wells Fargo declined to comment for this story.
Wells Fargo provided the committee with a few thousand documents and TD Bank handed the committee a handful of documents, according to a source who has seen them. The committee, led by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., is especially interested in the president’s business relationship with Russia and other foreign entities.
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Special thanks to @dragonfly9 @Keaton_James and @Windthin for helping me keep up this thread today. Today was crazy and you guys brought your A-Game.
Pats on the back to everyone and cheers 
to @macro and @missjava for all the likes 
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Thanks to you @anon95374541 for working your magic as always. Today was another freakishly fast moving moment-to-moment sh#t storm and am also grateful to the above mentioed WTFJHT devotees. You guys rock…
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@anon95374541 A real big thanks to you all over there from me. Following from a distance I just don’t know how you can stand it.
Talk of the most transparent President ever! Yep! you don’t have to be Superman to see through all his lies and obstruction.
That diatribe in the Rose Garden made my roses here blush! They are bright red now - before they were pink. 
Kia kaha, Kia māia, Kia manawanui
Be strong, be brave, be steadfast
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I wish I was at a distance to this circus!
And as one who mostly follows these threads, thank you to everyone who’s getting it all posted. It’s greatly appreciated.
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I follow what is going on because even though a lot of what happens is confined to the US in other ways it has impacts world wide. My wife and daughter are currently travelling in Scotland, and will be there for a few weeks more. But they will be travelling back via Dubai in the Persian Gulf - right next to where the tension is hottest. Thanks John Bolton for keeping me awake at night wondering if they will be safe. More than one airliner has been shot down flying over, or near a war zone.
And the trade war will not just impact America and China, it will have flow on effects to all other countries. NZ was one of the first countries to enter into a FTA with China and the trade war will impact us as well.
But perhaps what causes me the most anguish is the senseless pursuit of BAU, and the cancelation by Trump, of the USA’s commitment the Paris Agreement. Even though it was but a teeny tiny step along the path to the world community beginning to tackle the serious question of escalating GHG’s, it was an agreement that had taken years to achieve, and was trashed overnight by an environmental vandal. The recent lack of commitment to dealing with plastic pollution is another example in point. These decisions are not just confined to America, they have world wide implications. Trudging along a beach in Panama ankle deep in plastic, and finding plastic in the deepest depths of the ocean, highlights my point.
There are few from America who have found a bolt hold down here.
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Here’s Joyce Alene’s take (former prosecutor and MSnBC commentator). I agree with the keeping the 'I 'word out of reach of T…and doing every possible thing to investigate him. Rattle him basically.
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T tantrum notes
“They want to impeach me over acts that they did”
“Dems have no achomlishments [sic]”
Ok Pal…keep digging
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A key congressional committee has already gained access to President Donald Trump’s dealings with two major financial institutions, two sources familiar with the House probe tell NBC News, as a court ruling Wednesday promised to open the door for even more records to be handed over.
Wells Fargo and TD Bank are the two of nine institutions that have so far complied with subpoenas issued by the House Financial Services Committee demanding information about their dealings with the Trump Organization, according to the sources. The disclosures by these two banks haven’t been previously reported. Both TD Bank and Wells Fargo declined to comment for this story.
Wells Fargo provided the committee with a few thousand documents and TD Bank handed the committee a handful of documents, according to a source who has seen them. The committee, led by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., is especially interested in the president’s business relationship with Russia and other foreign entities.
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Yup…right side up!
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T is moving away from his Deutsche Bank dealings and moving his banking concerns down to Florida. A whole lot of CYA going on…
With his relationship with Deutsche Bank under increasing scrutiny, President Donald Trump, in a move not previously reported, has recently shifted some of his banking business from this global institution to a small and relatively new bank in South Florida. As Democrats in Congress have requested information from Deutsche Bank about its dealings with Trump—the firm has loaned him billions over the years—he appears to have closed his brokerage accounts with the German company and has deposited millions of dollars in the Coral Gables–based Professional Bank, which last year gave Trump an eight-figure loan to buy a property adjacent to his private club Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s burgeoning business ties to Professional Bank comes amid escalating tensions between Trump and Deutsche Bank. Democrats have subpoenaed the German banking giant for financial records relating to Trump and his family. The bank has said it will abide by a court order to do so, but Trump, his children, and his company have filed a lawsuit trying to block Deutsche from turning over documents. On Wednesday, a federal judge in New York declined to block the subpoenas, but the Trumps are likely to appeal.
…
Trump currently has four outstanding Deutsche Bank loans, all of them through its private bank. And when he came into office, he had at least [two](6-13-16-OGE-Certified) brokerage accounts with Deutsche Bank.
But personal financial disclosures filed by Trump covering 2017 and 2018 show that Trump no longer holds these accounts. The White House did not respond to a request for comment concerning when and why Trump shuttered them. A Deutsche Bank spokesperson declined to comment.
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When there are prepared notes, it’s not impromptu. I wish the media would be more precise. (I think the printed signs were the first clue)
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