Anthony Scaramucci Cartoons

Scaramucci sees family separations as potential pitfall for Trump

Anthony Scaramucci says the family separation issue has left former colleague Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a "tough position."  (Associated Press)

President Donald Trump may lose support with voters if he doesn't address the family-separation controversy in the nation's immigration policy, Anthony Scaramucci warned.
The former White House communications director discussed the Trump administration’s controversial policy Saturday during an appearance on “The Issue Is” on Fox 11 in Los Angeles.
Since being implemented in May, the controversial policy has resulted in approximately 2,000 children being separated from their parents.
Scaramucci told host Elex Michaelson that Trump may need to rethink the policy.
“My recommendation is, let’s fix this immediately because what we have to stand for in our society is American values,” Scaramucci said.
“I recognize that people should not break the law, but there’s a lot of desperate people that want to enter this country and we have to take a humane approach to those people.”

“I recognize that people should not break the law, but there’s a lot of desperate people that want to enter this country and we have to take a humane approach to those people.”

On Saturday he tweeted, "Separating innocent children from their families is not the Christian way, the American way, nor what @POTUS wants. Congress must act to stop this madness."
Scaramucci also said the policy has placed White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a "tough position" of having to defend it. He spoke about a Bible passage that Sanders recently used in one such defense.
“I think the biblical reference she was trying to say was more to upholding the law, and less so to separating people from their children,” he said.
Scaramucci also addressed the lingering legal troubles of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manfort and Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, claiming both were “getting dunked in the court of public opinion.”

"We need more civility and less civil war; more discourse and more coarseness."
- Anthony Scaramucci

“I don’t know the facts of the case,” Scaramucci said of Manafort's alleged witness tampering, which landed him behind bars this week, “but if Paul did that … I think it’s pretty aggressive.”
He added, “The stuff that seems to be happening to Paul is not campaign-related, it goes back 10 or 12 years.”
Scaramucci also criticized what he described as Trump’s seeming abandonment of Cohen, who is entangled in a legal battle with porn actress Stormy Daniels over an alleged payoff of $130,000 during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“The isolation strategy is not a good one. People can figure out what they can do to help Michael,” Scaramucci said.
He ended the interview with a plea for less hostility between people of differing political viewpoints.
“We need more civility and less civil war; more discourse and less coarseness,” he said.
Scaramucci's tenure as White House communications director lasted a tumultuous 11 days last July. He was fired after audio from a phone conversation between him and a writer for the New Yorker magazine went public, in which Scaramucci lambasted former White House officials Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon.

Bernie Sanders won't endorse own son's US House candidacy

U.S. House candidate Levi Sanders, left, and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., take a walk in Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., April 7, 2016.  (Associated Press)

If Bernie Sanders doesn’t receive a Father’s Day card on Sunday, the reason might not be hard to figure out.
The U.S. senator from Vermont has declined to endorse his son Levi Sanders, 49, a candidate for a U.S. House seat in New Hampshire, according to reports.
“He’s on his own,” the elder Sanders told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Thursday night, adding that he doesn’t like “dynastic politics.”

"He's on his own."

Some say they are not surprised, because the elder Sanders has a long history of being stingy with political endorsements.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., his wife Jane Sanders, and his son Levi Sanders arrive at a primary night rally in Essex Junction, Vt., March 1, 2016.  (Associated Press)

In the mid-1980s, for example, Sanders declined to do more to aid what has evolved into Vermont's Progressive Party. Then last winter he declined to help his stepdaughter, Carina Driscoll, run for the mayor's office in Burlington, Vt., which Sanders himself once held.
“This is a fancy dance that Bernie has done, but it's not recommended for anyone else," said Garrison Nelson, a University of Vermont political science professor emeritus. “This is a testament to Bernie’s uniqueness as a political actor.”

“This is a testament to Bernie’s uniqueness as a political actor.”
- Garrison Nelson, political science professor emeritus, University of Vermont

For his part, Levi Sanders -- a legal services analyst who is one of 11 seeking the Democratic nomination to fill the seat held by retiring U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter -- has joked that rather than being Bernie Sanders' son, he is the son of the fourth cousin of Larry David, the co-creator of “Seinfeld” who has portrayed Bernie Sanders on “Saturday Night Live.”
But since the father-son political relationship has drawn recent attention, Levi Sanders has gone quiet on the matter.
Levi Sanders is portraying himself as a progressive campaigning for tuition-free college, health care for all and sensible gun legislation. The first two issues were central to his father's latest presidential campaign.
His campaign said in a statement Saturday that he also believes in equal pay for women and "a minimum wage allowing people to work 40 hours a week without living in poverty."
But Levi Sanders’ campaign has struggled to gain traction, partly due to a crowded field for the Sept. 11 primary. Levi Sanders has raised only about $11,500 through March, according to the latest campaign finance reports.
Many have said Levi Sanders has done little to build support among the grassroots progressives who supported his father.
Several analysts questioned whether an endorsement from his father would make all that much difference.

Hillary Clinton tells grads of pricey San Francisco school about her troubled youth

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks in New York City, April 6, 2017.  (Associated Press)

Blame it on the bullies?
In a surprise appearance Friday, Hillary Clinton delivered a commencement address to graduates of San Francisco's exclusive Hamlin School.
Media reports said Secret Service personnel whisked the former Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. secretary of state into the all-girls private school -- where tuition is $34,500 per year.
"Tuition includes lunch and snack," the school's website says.
Once inside, Clinton spoke about her own experiences being bullied while growing up in suburban Chicago, as well as the need to be “courageous in a world dominated mainly by men,” graduate Alexa Tabibian told San Francisco's KGO-TV. The event was closed to the media.
“I never thought I’d ever get to see her in person and it was just so great,” Tabibian said.
As Clinton recalled of her youth, in a YouTube video posted by the school: "As I would go out looking to play, the kids who were already there would circle around me, bully me, knock me to the ground, and I would get up and run crying into the house. This went on for weeks. It was a pattern of our lives."
She then described being forced to fight another girl.
"Accidentally, one of my arms touched the girl and she fell over, and so I was now part of the neighborhood -- and she became my best friend growing up."

"Accidentally, one of my arms touched the girl and she fell over, and so I was now part of the neighborhood -- and she became my best friend growing up."

Ryan Froeb, another eighth-grader, told the station that Clinton’s anti-bullying message resonated with her own experiences.
“It was striking,” the eighth-grader said. “I didn’t know she had those hardships of bullying. I have gone through some bullying as well and that connection just really touched my heart.”
Some said Clinton’s message also touched on her 2016 presidential election loss to Donald Trump, KGO reported.
Details about how Clinton’s appearance was arranged or how much she was paid – if at all – were unknown.
Clinton said her close friend, Susie Tompkins Buell, has a granddaughter who was among the graduates.
The previous night, Clinton appeared at the Hyatt Regency in san Francisco to address the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the Chronicle reported.
Other attendees included former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and survivors of February's massacre in Parkland, Fla., who discussed the need for gun control, the report said.

Happy birthday, Mr. President! Media give Trump the gift of bad journalism that makes him look good

Nearly two-thirds of all Americans “feel exhausted by the news,” according to a new Pew Research Center study. After this past week, who could blame them?
The fallout from the G-7 summit in Canada, the summit between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in Singapore, battles on immigration, and the report by the Justice Department inspector general of FBI conduct in the Hillary Clinton email investigation were just a few of the big stories of the week.
Toss in a temper tantrum by CNN staffers in the White House press room. Add in an F-bomb-tossing celebrity and it was an ideal birthday week for a president who wars with the media. President Trump turned 72 on Thursday.
The week was capped off by the Justice Department IG report about possible political bias at the FBI. It’s doubtful anyone in official Washington thought the IG would say there was bias. That would have set off more fireworks than D.C. sees on the nation’s birthday. It still came close, despite the protestations of many in the media.
Even The Washington Post wrote that the report “castigated former FBI director James B. Comey” “and found that other senior bureau officials showed a ‘willingness to take official action’ to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.” The paper added this would all help Trump’s narrative and that “the report provides chapter upon chapter of fresh ammunition for his attacks on the FBI.”
The Post’s editorial board declared: “It is not the report President Trump wanted. But there is enough in it for him and his allies to twist and cherry-pick that its actual findings are likely to be lost in partisan noise.”
The New York Times editorial board called the report “something of a dud.”
Then there were the hot tweets, like this one from NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, complete with similar wording as the Post: “The cherry picking of this report is likely to only compound the credibility damage for the FBI and DOJ, even as the report itself, taken in full, is a good faith attempt to restore credibility. But political agendas are going to prevent some from providing FULL context. #sad.” Note, also, the mocking use of the Trump signature term, “sad” at the end.
Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce was already opining before he even finished reading the report, admitting: “I’ve only read a chunk of it at this point,” but declaring it an “honest report.” Then he claimed “the executive branch is lying its a-- off about the report.”
Or there’s this tweet by CNBC Editor at Large John Harwood, commenting on a Trump tweet: “Justice IG report found no evidence that Strzok’s disdain for Trump or any other improper consideration affected conduct of Clinton email investigation,” Harwood wrote.
Only Harwood was trumped by CNN Justice Reporter Laura Jarrett, who tweeted that he was wrong. “Here's the problem - it's messy. While the IG found no evidence that bias affected the *specific* investigative actions reviewed pre-July 2016, he *does not* have confidence that the delay in reviewing the Weiner laptop emails was ‘free from bias.’”
Thank Wall Street Journal Columnist Kimberley Strassel for added clarity in a tweet thread that began: “1) Don't believe anyone who claims Horowitz didn't find bias. He very carefully says that he found no "documentary" evidence that bias produced ‘specific investigatory decisions.’ That's different #IGReport.”
2. Friends with Benefits: One item from the IG report deserves special note because it directly involves journalists. “The IG expressed ‘profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered our review,’” wrote The Daily Caller’s Joe Simonson.
He said the report “identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters.”
So how did journalists work the FBI? The perked FBI staffers ended up “improperly receiving benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events.”
Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway posted a graphic showing the connections between one reporter and so many FBI sources that it looked like a Ferris wheel.
3. Give Peace a Chance:  President Trump’s on-off-on meeting with Kim Jong Un finally happened. Journalists, who thought President Obama’s deal with Iran and rapprochement with Cuba were cool, suddenly disliked peace talks.
Some in the media went all out. Forget peace, they wanted a religious war. Over on MSNBC, the theme was that the GOP had turned into a cult.
“Hardball” host Chris Matthews teased: “Anyway, the Republican Party becoming more like a cult than a political party? Boy, that’s hard news for the Republicans. You’re in a cult. This is Jonestown?”
Matthews compared the GOP to a cult that killed more than 900 people in "revolutionary suicide" and also murdered Rep. Leo J. Ryan.
Perhaps Matthews was watching his own network. “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough was only slightly less insane with his “cult” comment. “Primary voters in the Republican Party have devolved into a Trumpist cult,” he whined.
Leading up to the summit, CBS Correspondent Bianna Golodryga criticized Trump, saying “the self-proclaimed dealmaker-in-chief has so far proven to be more of a deal-breaker.”
Afterward, Time magazine Contributing Editor Jon Meacham engaged in Clintonian newspeak. “Just because something hasn't happened before, doesn't mean it's historic,” he told MSNBC.
Speaking of history, that’s a big part of what’s wrong with all this reporting and commentary. It’s inconsistent with past presidential outreach to dictators.
Take CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto. Sciutto tweeted a blast at Trump for meeting with North Korea. “.@realDonaldTrump is smiling next to a man who runs a gulag jailing some 200,000 North Koreans and who oversaw the sinking of a South Korean Navy ship killing 46 & the hacking of Sony North America,” he wrote.
Only The Washington Examiner’s Becket Adams noticed a wee bit of inconsistency in Sciutto’s approach to bad guys. When Sciutto worked for Obama’s State Department, he took a more positive note of friendship. “Recall that in 2014, as Obama restored the U.S.' formal relations with Cuba, Sciutto’s tone was decidedly different. Reverential, even,” wrote Adams. Here’s that tweet from 2014. “The call that changed half a century of division: POTUS speaking with #Cuba Pres. Raul Castro yesterday.”
You might say, Sciutto is only technically a former Obama staffer.
4. Get Him a Bar of Soap: Star actor and liberal loon Robert De Niro kicked off the week with four letters the left loves. DeNiro was a presenter at the “72nd Annual Tony Awards” on CBS and he F-bombed. “I’m gonna say one thing, f--- Trump!" and “It’s no longer ‘Down With Trump,’ it’s ‘F--- Trump.'”
No, it’s not a surprise that those in the entertainment industry hate Trump. That much was obvious from the standing ovation and the support from celebs like Mark Hamill, Kathy Griffin and Rosie O’Donnell that he received.
What is surprising is how even MSNBCer Scarborough gets it and the Hollywood left doesn’t. Here’s Joe warning them: “People that applauded De Niro's statement last night don't understand that they are helping Donald Trump's re-election every time they do something like that, they don't understand.”
Blow out the candles, Mr. President. Thanks to the left, this birthday was lit.

California Dreamin Cartoons

Former Trump attorney: DOJ report not nearly tough enough given Comey's 'appalling behavior'

President Trump's former personal attorney John M. Dowd told Fox News that the Justice Department watchdog's report on the FBI's actions in the Clinton email investigation wasn't nearly tough enough on fired FBI Director James Comey.
In the report released Thursday, Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz called Comey "insubordinate" and deviating from "well-established department policies."
Dowd told Fox News in an email, "The clear evidence of his usurpation of power, violation of his oath of office and material false statements to the public and the Congress all to conceal his own misconduct warranted a criminal referral of Comey’s conduct. The finding of no bias was ludicrous. The OIG findings support the President’s decision to fire Comey."
He also told Fox News that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Special Counsel Robert Mueller "allowed their relationship with Comey over the years [to] blind them to his obvious appalling behavior. I was shocked that Mueller chose not to investigate the President’s accuser before investigating the President, who you will recall was 'not under investigation' according to the sworn testimony of Comey. As a result, the authenticity and legality of the Mueller investigation is in serious question and should no longer be honored."
Trump himself told Fox News' Steve Doocy on "Fox & Friends," "I think Comey was the ringleader of this whole den of thieves."
Letters newly obtained by Fox News, which were written in the summer and fall of 2017, revealed Dowd and another Trump attorney, Marc Kasowitz, had deep reservations about Comey's credibility as the main witness, called Witness #1, in the ongoing Russia collusion probe that started shortly after Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017.
In a blistering 13-page letter hand-delivered to Mueller on June 27, Kasowitz elaborated his concerns about Comey, whom he called "Machiavellian," after the former FBI director testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Kasowitz wrote Comey was an "FBI director unbounded by law and regulation, driven by his own interests and emotions, willing to provide embellished and incorrect testimony..."
Pushing back on Comey's promise to the president of "honest loyalty" as FBI director, Kasowitz wrote that Comey was "surreptitiously leaking to civilians his privileged and confidential conversations with the President, or misappropriating and disseminating his confidential FBI memos or their contents about those meetings."
Neither the DOJ nor the office of the special counsel commented on the letters when contacted by Fox News.
New details of Comey's reliance on his friend and go-between leaker to the media, Columbia law professor Daniel Richman, were revealed in a footnote of the OIG report.
Fox News reported about Richman's rare approval for special government employee clearance by Comey in April.
Fox News reached out to Richman for comment on the new OIG report, but he did not respond.
In the new email to Fox News, Dowd called Comey's relationship with Richman "deceitful" and "a complete disrespect and subversion of the normal processes we rely on the govern the FBI/DOJ."
In the letter that Dowd wrote on September 1, 2017 to Rosenstein, there was a direct request for a "Federal Grand Jury Investigation of Former FBI Director James B. Comey." Dowd wrote, "It appears the fix was in, a cover-up is in place and the reputations of the FBI and the Department of Justice are tarnished and hang in the balance."
Specifically, Dowd charged in in the letter that "Director Comey drafted his unauthorized, improper and dishonest conclusion to the Clinton e-mail investigation three months before the clearly superficial and inadequate investigation was conducted."
STATE DEPARTMENT CONTRACTORS DETAIL HOW CLINTON AND HER TEAM IGNORED SECURITY RULES
Fox News learned that the DOJ acknowledged Dowd's letter but took no further action.
Meanwhile, hours after the OIG report was released, Comey accepted the findings and was active on Instagram -- posting a picture of himself with a giant gnome statue in Iowa. He tweeted the photo Friday.

Are three Californias better than one? Voters will face that question in November

Are three Californias better than one?

An initiative to break America’s most populous state into three smaller states gathered more than the required 402,468 signatures and earned the right this week to a spot on the Nov. 6 state election ballot. Californians will get to vote then on whether they want to break up after 168 years as a single state.
The last time America saw a new state carved out of an existing one was in 1863, when West Virginia was separated from Virginia in the midst of the Civil War. California was only 13 years old as a state at that time.
Now, after many failed attempts to consider splitting up the Golden State, voters will be faced with a proposal in November that would create states called Southern California (with 12 counties), Northern California (with 40 counties), and California (made up of Los Angeles County and the five counties north on the Central Coast).
Under the proposal, each of the new states would have about a third of the existing state population of nearly 40 million people.
If the “yes” vote wins, Congress will still have the final say under Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution. And there, the idea will likely die.
Breaking up California has been the hobby of a Silicon Valley billionaire and cryptocurrency guru Tim Draper. Draper has tried twice before and failed, spending some $10 million so far in his quest over the past seven years.
Draper’s main complaint is that Los Angeles effectively runs California. He says that a “large number of elected representatives from a small part of our state” dominates decision-making.
Apparently Draper hasn’t heard the breaking news that California is a representative democracy where each resident gets one vote. So, yes, the 4 million people in the City of Los Angeles and the 10.2 million people in Los Angeles County get to elect more state legislators and members of the U.S. House than the residents of a small town of 10,000 people.
Other California activists are seeking to place a secession measure on the 2020 ballot – a move that would likely boost the voter turnout against President Trump and his political allies.
There are three hurdles to the plan to break up California.
The first is the voters themselves. Northern Californians complain about Southern Californians and don’t want to “give” them any of “their” water. Southern Californians – some two-thirds of the state – largely ignore the North. Elite coastal liberals are largely despised by the working-class inland residents.
And everybody hates Los Angeles – even most of the people who live there.
But that doesn’t mean Californians will vote to break up. It’s an ugly, co-dependent relationship – but it’s still a relationship.
Were the ballot proposition to pass, it would face two more obstacles.
First, state or federal courts would likely be asked to rule on whether the people, acting in their capacity as the state Legislature via a ballot initiative, meet the U.S. constitutional requirement set in Article IV, Section 3 requiring the “Consent of the Legislatures.” California legislators are unlikely to easily give approval to reduce their power.
Second, both houses of Congress would have to sign off on the deal. Here, both major political parties have items of concern.
Republicans would almost certainly see Democrats adding a net of at least two more U.S. senators to their count. No less than four of the six senators from three new California states would probably be Democrats, compared to two senators today.
But on the negative side for Democrats, one of the two new California states – Southern California – would tilt red. This would make the national Electoral College map more difficult for a Democratic candidate to win the presidency.
Further, at least 98 U.S. senators from the other 49 states would likely take a dim view of four more senators joining their deliberative body and thus diluting their own power.
California’s dominant Democrats, with well-heeled political consultants close by their side, are already looking to raise millions of dollars to defeat the state-splitting ballot measure.
There’s also the question of what kind of precedent the breakup of one state would set for the breakup of others. What’s to stop other states – especially those with big populations – from breaking up as well? Do we really need 80 or 100 states in our country, each its own governmental bodies and bureaucracies? Should a state be allowed to divide into many states to boost its representation in the U.S. Senate?
The main argument offered against the trisection of California is that it would cost billions of dollars and would mean, among other things, the specter of students paying out-of-state tuition for many of the state’s colleges and universities.
In addition, corporations – already under a heavy state and local tax and regulatory strain -- would suddenly be faced with a multiplication of bureaucratic hassles.
The truth is that breaking California into three states makes for interesting political theater, but  after the ballots are cast in November, the only winners will be the consultants who worked on the “yes” and “no” campaigns.
And the thought of a breakup really happening is probably just a case of California Dreamin’.
Chuck DeVore is a vice president with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and served in the California State Assembly from 2004 to 2010.