The podcast is back for the second week in a row!  We tried out a little Facebook Live broadcast and the gremlins seemed to attack us for it. We had some minor audio issues but hopefully we now have them ironed out for the future.

Featured in today’s podcast:

• OMG! Where to start?
• Cabinet confirmation hearings & Russian involvement w/ US politics & Trump’s misfirings
• Cabinet:
  • Betsy DeVos (Education)
    • Using vouchers, supporter or privatizing education
  • Tillerson
    • Exxon ties Russia
    • Medal of Friendship from Putin
  • Get involved: http://www.openprimaries.org/ 
• Russian interference
  • Blackmail? Briefing as of yet uncorroborated but source seems legit
  • Business dealings and debts to Russian corporations?
• Real estate holdings create conflict of interest (more on that later)
• Misfirings
  • Press conference
  • Business holdings conflicts of interest
  • Pushing boundaries of nepotism laws (Clintons created precedent using Hillary to spearhead health care reform efforts)
• Facebook Post Fact Checking:
  • 1. Trump fires all Ambassadors and Special Envoys, ordering them out by inauguration day. [Per Snopes, ambassadors and special envoys resigning at the beginning of a new administration is commonplace]
    2. House brings back the Holman rule allowing them to reduce an individual civil service, SES positions, or political appointee’s salary to $1, effectively firing them by amendment to any piece of legislation. We now know why they wanted names and positions of people in Energy and State. [Holman Rule was reinstated. Per WaPo: it empowers a member of Congress to single out an employee or program for a direct cut in funding, however, approval of that act together majority House and Senate]
    3. Senate schedules 6 simultaneous hearings on cabinet nominees and triple-books those hearings with Trump’s first press conference in months and an ACA budget vote, effectively preventing any concentrated coverage or protest. [Per NY times, Trump triple books the cabinet hearings and press conference for Wednesday 1/11/17]
    4. House GOP expressly forbids the Congressional Budget Office from reporting or tracking ANY costs related to the repeal of the ACA. [Per the Washington Examiner: The house passed the rules for 115th Congress, including a measure to prevent the Congressional Budget Office from reviewing whether a repeal of ACA would increase spending]
    5. Trump continues to throw the intelligence community under the bus to protect Putin, despite the growing mountain of evidence that the Russians deliberately interfered in our election. [Politico: Trump labeled new findings a “political witch hunt,” while the report was unable to discern any quantitative effect on the election]
    6. Trump breaks a central campaign promise to make Mexico pay for the wall by asking Congress (in other words, us, the taxpayers) to pay for it. [WaPo: Trump shifts plans, will fund wall via Congress, Trump tweets “Mexico [will] pay a little later so it can be built more quickly”]
    7. Trump threatens Toyota over a new plant that was never coming to the US nor will take jobs out of the US. [Regarding new plant construction, Trump tweeted: “Toyota Motor said will build a new plant in Baja, Mexico, to build Corolla cars for U.S. NO WAY! Build plant in U.S. or pay big border tax.” Issue is, Baja plant already exists and the new plant is in Guanajuato, which broke ground in Nov http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-toyota-idUSKBN14P27S]
    8. House passes the REINS act, giving them veto power over any rules enacted by any federal agency or department–for example, FDA or EPA bans a drug or pesticide, Congress can overrule based on lobbyists, not science. Don’t like that endangered species designation, Congress kills it.  [Lots and lots of spin from both sides on this one. On one hand, committees and agencies have the ability to pass new rules in the federal gov’t. The REINS Act requires Congress’ blessing to for those rules to become permanent. For those opposed to new laws and federal rules being passed to frequently, awesome. To those worried about lobbyists getting their filthy hands on this process, watch out. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/26]
• Trump twitter

Download the episode directly:  20170113_OMR_V302_President_Deflect.mp3 (51 MB)

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