It’s still early, but President Trump hasn’t fired anybody today. It’s time to Get More Smarter! If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of a visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show.
► President Trump on Tuesday fired the man in charge of the investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. If you’ve watched, read, or heard any news since last evening, you are probably aware that FBI Director James Comey is out of a job. As the Washington Post reports, Trump’s decision to fire Comey is backfiring bigly:
To put it mildly, the optics of firing Comey are terrible. Trump looks like he does not actually want to get to the bottom of Russia’s interference in the U.S. election and the potential wrongdoing of his own staffers.
In one of the hastily-arranged damage-control interviews, deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders made an especially revealing statement that underscored why so many people are worried. Asked by Tucker Carlson on Fox News how Comey’s termination will impact the Russia investigation, she replied: “I think the bigger point on that is, ‘My gosh, Tucker, when are they gonna let that go?’ It’s been going on for nearly a year. Frankly, it’s kinda getting absurd. There’s nothing there.” “It’s time to move on,” she added. “Frankly, it’s time to focus on the things the American people care about.”
As Sanders pretended on Fox that the Russian probes have found nothing, CNN reported that federal prosecutors – as part of the ongoing Russia probe – have now issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
President Trump is apparently steaming mad about all of this. Trump supporters have been busy trying to spin Comey’s firing as totally-not-a-scandal, though nobody is really buying what they’re selling (see: Anderson Cooper with Kellyanne Conway on CNN Tuesday night):
► Colorado Democrats, including Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Denver), are calling for a special prosecutor to take over Comey’s Russia investigation. Colorado Republicans, meanwhile, have been relatively quiet about Comey’s firing. Senator Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) finally issued a statement Wednesday morning that was almost entirely focused on finding the next FBI Director. From the Denver Post:
Gardner, a Republican, thanked Comey for his service and said there were thousands of immensely qualified FBI agents.
Uh, okay…but how about the fact that Trump just fired the man in charge of investigating him? Anything on that, Senator?
Congressman Mike Coffman (R-Aurora) also declined to call for a special prosecutor/investigator, but did manage to admit that the timing of Comey’s ouster is a little weird while pointing out that the sky is blue and the grass is green:
“I think it may create the appearance that Comey was fired due to his role in the investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”
“I think it may create the appearance…” You figured this one out all by yourself, eh?
► The Colorado legislature has reached the end of the 2017 session. We’ll have plenty of wrap-up coverage on the legislative session here at Colorado Pols, including rundowns on charter school funding, the Hospital Provider Fee, and who is pointing fingers at whom.
Get even more smarter after the jump…
► The Colorado Independent has more on how House Republicans in the state legislature were able to kill off a pipeline-safety bill crafted in the wake of a deadly explosion in Firestone last month.
► John Tomasic of the Colorado Statesman reports on the silly chest-pounding taking place among supporters of Propositions 107 and 108 regarding Unaffiliated voters participating in partisan primaries.
► Condominium builders are still griping that a construction-defects “compromise” in the state legislature wasn’t more one-sided in their favor.
► Senator Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) voted in favor of scrapping an Obama-era rule regulating the release of methane gases on public lands. Fortunately for those of us who like to breathe relatively-clean air, Gardner’s Senate colleagues did not agree with him.
► Speaking, er, writing of Gardner, the Colorado Senator is one of 13 Republicans who are charged with crafting some sort of Trumpcare-like legislation now that the House has approved its disaster of a bill. The Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, will apparently release its score of the GOP healthcare legislation sometime during the week of May 22.
► New poll results show that American voters are absolutely not pleased with Trumpcare 2.0. As Politico reports:
Only 38 percent of voters approve of the GOP-drafted health care bill, the new poll shows — down from 42 percent last week, prior to the House’s party-line vote to advance the measure. Forty-four percent of voters disapprove of the bill, up significantly from 37 percent last month.
In fact, voters have a more positive opinion of the law the new legislation seeks to supplant: Half of voters now approve of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, while 42 percent disapprove.
Opposition to the Republican bill is more forceful than support for the measure — a gap driven by greater relative intensity among Democrats than Republicans.
► You won’t be surprised to hear that the oil and gas industry spends heavily in favor of Republicans in Colorado elections — but you might be taken aback by the amount of money being funneled into GOP political operations.
► Arizona Sen. John McCain expects more shoes to be dropped in the wake of President Trump’s decision to fire James Comey.
► State Sen. Vicki Marble (R-Fort Collins) is facing ethics charges after it was revealed that she hosted a “town-hall” forum that was paid for by the oil and gas industry. Marble’s Senate district includes the town of Firestone, by the way.
► There was another massive explosion on Tuesday related to oil and gas drilling near Greeley. Fortunately, it appears that there were only minor injuries as a result.
► A journalist was arrested in West Virginia for yelling questions at Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.
► FBI agents around the country are quite upset at the firing of Director James Comey.
► President Trump might try to take your weed after all.
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donnie “Milhous” trump scores again!
Paging Spicey…
(NOT from The Onion)
Sean Spicer reportedly hid in White House bush after Comey Announcement
When you put it this way, it (should be) kinda hard to ignore the implications…
" President Trump on Tuesday fired the man in charge of the investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. "
How the import of this can be ambiguous even to our resident partisan absolutists I cannot fathom.
Gerbils, et al, explained:
The story from the Summit Daily about the explosion near Greeley returns a 404.
Don't know why they pulled it. Didn't see a retraction, and the twit of the story is still in their feed.
Fortunately, our benevolent overlords at Google cached the story for us.
Trump serves up another reeking helping of "I don't give a f*ck what you think."
Yesterday, after firing the man in charge of the Russia/Trump collusion investigation, Trump invited Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak to a secret meeting at the White House, along with, apparently, retired and current Secretaries of State Kissinger and Tillerson.
The Russian media was invited. The American press was not. Did they discuss the Russia / Trump business deals, and whether Comey's firing would stop investigation of same? . No, of course not. According to Lavrov, speaking through the embassy, they discussed "Russia-US cooperation, Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and t/ Israeli-Palestinian conflict were discussed in DC."
This is a tweet from @RusEmbedUSA showing Trump shaking hands with Kislyak, with whom fired foreign agent /NSA mole Michael Flynn met with during the campaign last year.
After the meeting was over, the American press was invited in to the Oval Office, according to NPR. No briefing was conducted. All photos and information about the content of the meetings were obtained through Russian media tweets.
The puppet strings are all out in the open now – Trump's not even trying to hide them anymore. This is not going to be the new normal. We need to keep calling for an independent special prosecutor, keep pressing for impeachment, keep resisting.
ps. Twitchy (one of our troll’s go-to news sources) ‘splains how all those photos of the meeting got out on Russian media: “They tricked us”. No, really?
http://bit.ly/2r5h62n