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President Trump has no plans to dismiss White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway

In this April 30, 2019 photo, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway talks with reporters outside the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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UPDATED 1:20 PM PT — Friday, June 14, 2019

Allegations of misconduct against Kellyanne Conway come to a head, following claims of Hatch Act violations. In an interview Friday, the president declared he has reviewed Conway’s alleged misconduct and will not fire the White House counselor despite calls from a government watch dog group to do so.
“No, I’m not going to fire her, I think she’s a terrific person, she’s a tremendous spokesperson,” he stated. “She’s been loyal…she’s just a great person.”
The remarks came after the Office of Special Counsel sent an official report to the White House Thursday, urging Conway be removed from the federal government. U.S. officials alleged Conway repeatedly violated the lesser-known Hatch Act, which is a law prohibiting federal officials from using their authority to interfere with or sway elections.
The 17 page document reportedly outlined more than half a dozen television interviews and tweets from Conway, which reportedly violated the act by projecting opinion on current presidential candidates in her official capacity. However, the president said he received a very strong briefing on the matter and “based on” what he’s seen believes she should not be dismissed.
“I would certainly not think based on what I saw yesterday — how could you do that?” he asked “They have tried to take away her speech, and I think you’re entitled to free speech in this country.”
The White House has called the counsel’s allegations “deeply flawed” and argued the law was applied too broadly in Conway’s case, which potentially interferes with First Amendment rights.
Conway has firmly denied these violations and called them “political fuel” back in May.
“We’ve got outside groups who have political agendas trying to file actions against me…doesn’t make them true and it doesn’t make them relevant,” she stated.
Moving forward, the House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on Conway’s actions June 26th. It’s unclear whether she will appear amid the president’s ongoing refusal to allow current and former White House advisers to testify to Congress.

Sean Spicer: Press blaming Sarah Sanders for their reduction in airtime

Three Years Later and the Liberal Media is still CRYING.

Outgoing White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is getting undue criticism because a reduction in daily briefings doesn't give TV reporters more personal airtime, a Sanders predecessor claimed Friday.
President Trump is one of the best-accessible presidents when it comes to engaging with reporters and their critiques are unfounded, Sean Spicer said on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle."
"The president has been so much more accessible and engages so much more" than past presidents, Spicer said. "I think the briefings serve a utility. They should occur, but maybe not on a daily basis."
"As you saw with Sarah, she's out there ... all the time on camera, talking to the press," Spicer added. "They don't like it as much because it doesn't work as well for their cable contracts and their YouTube views and things like that."
Spicer claimed that reporters prefer formal White House press briefings because, "They can make it about them."
He and fellow guest Ari Fleischer -- who served as press secretary under former President George W. Bush -- added that the job of press secretary is so much more than just holding briefings and making public statements.
"There is a facilitation of access and interviews to other government officials, to information that's coming in and out of the White House, whether it's personnel, events or policies. So, the press office is very busy all day long," Spicer said.
Fleischer said a good press secretary is a "happy warrior" who is close to the president and will stand by him.
On Thursday, Trump announced that Sanders will be leaving her position at the end of the month.
"After 3 1/2 years, our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the Great State of Arkansas," Trump said.
"She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas - she would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!"

Trump thanks Marsha Blackburn for blocking 'blatant political stunt' bill

President Trump on Friday thanked U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., for blocking a bill that she called a “blatant political stunt.”
The bill, known as the Foreign Influence Reporting in Elections Act, was proposed by U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and required unanimous consent, the Tennessean of Nashville reported.
“Thank you Senator @MarshaBlackburn for fighting obstructionist Democrats led by Cryin' Chuck Schumer,” the president tweeted. “Democrats continue to look for a do-over on the Mueller Report and will stop at nothing to distract the American people from the great accomplishments of this Administration!”
The bill was prompted by remarks Trump made during an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in the Oval Office this week where the president said he would be willing to listen if a foreign government came to his campaign with “dirt” on an opponent.
“I think I'd take it," Trump said. "If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI."
In a "Fox & Friends"" interview on Friday, Trump clarified himself, saying he would “of course, report dirt to the FBI.”
"My colleagues on the left tried to rush this legislation through the Senate without giving it a chance for the careful consideration and debate needed to address such an important issue,” Blackburn said in a statement Thursday, according to the Tennessean. “Of course action needs to be taken to protect the integrity of our elections, but let’s do this the right way."
Russians attempted to offer dirt on Hillary Clinton to the Trump campaign in 2016, the Mueller report found, but nothing came of it.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw dings ex-Obama aide Ben Rhodes for doubting US link of Iran to tanker attack

Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas slammed former top Obama adviser Ben Rhodes for questioning U.S. claims that Iran attacked oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz and downplayed the threat from the regime.
Rhodes, a leading figure within the Obama administration who pushed for the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, suggested the U.S. official assessment of the tanker attacks shouldn’t be taken for granted, saying only an international investigation can get to the bottom of the incident.
“This definitely feels like the kind of incident where you'd want an international investigation to establish what happened. Huge risk of escalation,” Rhodes said in a tweet.
This prompted a stark rebuttal from Crenshaw, the freshman congressman and former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, who blasted Rhodes for downplaying the danger posed by the Iranian regime and doubting the intelligence community.
“So, do or don’t believe the Intel community? And you’re not really a trusted source to weigh in on Iran,” Crenshaw wrote in a tweet. “You sold the public the falsehood of a moderating Iranian regime - using your media ‘echo chamber’ (your words)- & ignoring the true danger Iran presents in the region.”
“I’ve been watching for years as Iran moves weapons to proxies around the region, looking for opportunities to destabilize & wreak havoc, and then claim innocence. This is not new. And the Administration is right to strengthen our regional presence as a deterrence,” Crenshaw added.
Crenshaw refers to Rhodes’ now-infamous comments that the administration’s foreign policy team built an “echo chamber” of experts to help sell the controversial Iran nuclear deal.
“We created an echo chamber,” Rhodes told the New York Times Magazine in 2016 when asked about arms-control experts that appeared at think tanks and were then used as sources for hundreds of reporters – whom the article described as “clueless.”
Of those experts, Rhodes said: “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blamed Iran for the "blatant assault" on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman earlier Thursday.
In a news conference, Pompeo said: “This assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping, and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication.”
He charged that Iran was working to disrupt the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz and this is a deliberate part of a campaign to escalate tension, adding that the U.S. would defend its forces and interests in the region, although he did not elaborate.
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U.S. officials released a video Friday supposedly showing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard removing an unexploded limpet mine from one of the vessels.
The black-and-white footage, as well as still photos released by the U.S. military’s Central Command on Friday, appeared to show the limpet mine on the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous, before a Revolutionary Guard patrol boat pulled alongside the ship and removed the mine, Central Command spokesman Capt. Bill Urban said.

Shepard Smith Cartoons

Fox News in the Future?

Rupert Murdoch’s Liberal-ish Son Takes a Shot at Fox News

Rupert Murdoch poses with his sons, Lachlan and James, at his 2016 wedding at St. Bride's Church in London.

Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

 

 James Murdoch, son of Fox News founder and conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, is planning to invest around $1 billion in media companies—possibly including a liberal-leaning outlet. As the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, the 46-year-old, a former 21st Century Fox chief who is also expected to use his more-than-$2 billion haul from the sale of the company’s entertainment holdings to Disney to fund a comic-book publisher, has long played the role of black sheep of the Murdoch dynasty: left-leaning and, according to The New York Times, “increasingly troubled by Fox News” in the age of Donald Trump. But the possibility of funding a rival to the right-wing empire that made his father a household name could represent a new course for the younger Murdoch—and a complication of the Murdoch legacy.

Sources with “direct knowledge” of James’s plans told the Financial Times that he “wanted to distance himself from the conservative media outlets controlled for decades by his father but had yet to decide how exactly he would invest in the news media.” They added that he was eyeing a range of options, and that the process was “at an early stage.” (The F.T. could not immediately reach James Murdoch for comment.) The potential move would in part reflect the complex family dynamics between Rupert, James, and Lachlan Murdoch, the latter of whom recently took over at Fox. James had long sought to run the company, but struck out on his own last year after the reins were handed to his brother.

The report also embodies shifting political attitudes among a new generation of Murdochs. Rupert, the right-wing kingmaker, is a close ally of the president—a regular Fox News viewer who at times has seemed to use his office to help the network and hurt its rivals. But Lachlan, now the chair of the Fox Corporation, is a libertarian conservative who “doesn’t like Trump,” as one of his associates told my colleague Gabriel Sherman. That has some MAGA fans inside Fox concerned that the older Murdoch will lead the network in a less Trumpian direction. Trump himself has in recent days expressed disappointment in his beloved channel, tweeting Tuesday that it was “weird” to see Bernie Sanders in a Fox-hosted town hall, and questioning the network’s hiring of former Democratic National Committee interim chair Donna Brazile. “What’s with @FoxNews?” Trump asked, slipping in a telltale “we” in his earlier tweet.Of course, any changes in the network’s direction under Lachlan are likely to be minimal compared to what his brother might have planned. “Lachlan is not James,” a Fox News staffer told Sherman last month. James, whom the BBC once described as having been regarded “as the brightest of the Murdoch brood but . . . also something of a rebel,” has often seemed to reject the politics his surname evokes. He has long been active on climate issues and has given money to the Clinton Foundation. He and his wife, a progressive who worked for the Clinton Climate Initiative and reportedly pushed for the ouster of former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, fund liberal-leaning causes like voting rights and climate science through their Quadrivium Foundation. And, according to The New York Times, the younger Murdoch began to “object to what he felt [Fox News] had evolved into at certain hours: a political weapon with no editorial standards or concern for the value of truth and a knee-jerk defender of the president’s rhetoric and policies.” Whether James Murdoch is toying with the idea of funding a liberal outlet out of personal conviction, or as a reaction to family drama, is unclear. Either way, the result would be the clearest repudiation of his family empire yet.

Andrew McCabe celebrates Sarah Sanders' exit from White House: 'I have to say I will not miss her'

Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe welcomed the news of the White House departure of Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, saying he "will not miss her" during an appearance on MSNBC.
President Trump announced on Thursday that Sanders will be leaving the administration at the end of the month, expressing his hope that she will run for governor in her homestate of Arkansas.
"After 3 1/2 years, our wonderful Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving the White House at the end of the month and going home to the Great State of Arkansas," Trump tweeted. "She is a very special person with extraordinary talents, who has done an incredible job! I hope she decides to run for Governor of Arkansas - she would be fantastic. Sarah, thank you for a job well done!"
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace asked McCabe to weigh in on Sanders' exit, specifically the revelation in the Mueller report where she admitted that she was not being truthful about what she suggested was the lack of the bureau support for then-FBI Director James Comey following his firing.
“You know, I knew at the time it was completely false,” McCabe responded. “It was also obvious that it was very important to the president and to his staff that we all adopt that false narrative that the FBI was happy about the fact that Jim Comey was fired, and that gleeful agents and employees were calling over to the White House to express that. Never happened, completely false from the beginning, so to see that admission in the Mueller report was enormously satisfying. I have to say I will not miss her after she departs the White House.”
Wallace laughed, boasting how her show was the first on MSNBC to ban Sanders from appearing.
“So, I literally and figuratively will not miss her, either,” Wallace added.