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Viral Portrait of Trump ‘Crossing the Swamp’ Sets off Internet Firestorm

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Painter Jon McNaughton, a Utah resident with a record of creating artwork about President Donald Trump and his administration that has already brought him praise from Trump supporters and angry criticism from Trump opponents, has unveiled his latest piece. . .

McNaughton’s updated version of that iconic image shows Trump and his inner circle aboard a rickety boat, navigating a crossing of the Washington “swamp.”

According to McNaughton’s website, the other figures are, from left: United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, first daughter Ivanka Trump, National Security Advisor John Bolton, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway (she’s hard to see), and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

The symbolism is obvious. Just as George Washington led a small army to fight against the seemingly invincible British empire during the American Revolution, Trump and his band of cabinet secretaries are battling the seemingly impregnable swamp of Washington, D.C. . .

(Read more from “Viral Portrait of Trump ‘Crossing the Swamp’ Sets off Internet Firestorm” HERE)

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Trump Supporters Score Huge Federal Win After Being Attacked in Sanctuary City

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A lawsuit by Donald Trump supporters attacked after a campaign event in San Jose, California, back in the summer of 2016 can proceed with a lawsuit against the city, under a ruling by a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the lawsuit alleges that police officers in the sanctuary city deliberately exposed the Trump backers to danger as they were filing out of the building where the June 2016 rally was held.

“After the rally at the McEnery Convention Center, police directed those in attendance to leave from a single exit. There, according to the lawsuit, they were ordered to head out onto a street where hundreds of anti-Trump protesters were waiting, even though a safer route and other exits were available,” the Chronicle reported.

“Twenty plaintiffs in the suit said they were beaten or struck by objects thrown by the protesters, and one plaintiff said an officer told her that police had been instructed not to intervene. The plaintiffs said police arrested three people for allegedly assaulting officers, but no one for attacking Trump supporters.”

The judges ruled that if what the supporters allege in the lawsuit is accurate, “the officers acted with deliberate indifference to a known and obvious danger” and “violated the Trump supporters’ constitutional rights.” (Read more from “Trump Supporters Score Huge Federal Win After Being Attacked in Sanctuary City” HERE)

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Watch: Reporter Makes Absurd Claim About Trump Rally After Getting Criticized

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CNN’s Jim Acosta complained on Wednesday evening about the way he was treated yesterday during President Donald Trump’s rally in Tampa, Florida, claiming that he felt like he “wasn’t in America anymore.”

Appearing on HLN with host S.E. Cupp, Acosta recounted his experience at the recent Trump rally where he was mocked and Trump supporters chanted “CNN Sucks!” while he was on camera.

“Honestly, it felt like we weren’t in America anymore,” Acosta said. “I don’t know how to put it any more plainly than that.” . . .

“He is whipping these crowds up into a frenzy to the point where they really want to come after us,” Acosta complained. “My sense of it is that these opinions these folks have at these rallies, they’re shaped by what they see in the primetime hours of Fox News and what they hear from some conservative news outlets that just sort of give them this daily diet of what they consider to be terrible things we do over here at CNN.”

(Read more from “Watch: Reporter Makes Absurd Claim About Trump Rally After Getting Criticized” HERE)

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New Poll Finds Dem Would Beat Trump in Hypothetical Matchup

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Former Vice President Joe Biden would beat President Trump in a hypothetical 2020 matchup, according to a new poll.

Politico/Morning Consult found Biden would be 7 points ahead of the current commander in chief, with 44 percent of registered voters saying they’d support the former VP compared to 37 percent who said they’d vote to reelect Trump.

Registered Democrats favored a generic candidate over Biden by 9 points, with 89 percent saying they would vote for a generic Democrat compared to 80 percent who said they would vote for Biden. . .

“Biden never by himself could ever do anything. President Obama took him, made him vice president and he was fine. But you go back and look at how he succeeded in running, when he ran two or three times, I don’t think he ever … broke one. He was at the … 1 percent or less level,” Trump added. . .

Expect to see many more polls like this in the weeks and months to come. Of course you remember that just days before the 2016 presidential election pollsters and statisticians put Clinton’s odds of winning between 75 and 99 percent. So take these surveys with a grain of salt. (Read more from “New Poll Finds Dem Would Beat Trump in Hypothetical Matchup” HERE)

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The Bible Trump’s New VA Secretary Chose to Be Sworn in on Tells You Everything You Need to Know

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. . .During the swearing-in ceremony, Trump said of [Robert] Wilkie:

Robert Wilkie is the proud son of an Army veteran, an artillery officer raised on the base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. That’s a great place. On his daily walk to high school with the woman who is now his wife, he passed by the Fayetteville VA hospital, which bore the inscription: “The Price of Freedom is Visible Here.” It made a big impact. It was a price Robert saw firsthand through his own father, who was gravely injured in combat during the Vietnam War.

Robert went on to serve as an officer in both the Air Force and the Navy, then as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs, and as Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. Robert also serves with distinction as Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

During the swearing-in ceremony, Wilkie produced a worn-looking Bible. The Bible had an incredible story to it, which Wilkie shared with his audience.

“The Bible that I will take my oath on reminds me of the 100th anniversary of the end of the war to end all wars,” Wilkie said, referring to WW1, “It was a Bible taken into battle by my wife’s grandfather who had probably never ventured beyond three or four counties in North and South Carolina. But by the time he was 18, he was marching up the Champs-Élysées into the cauldron of the Meuse-Argonne.” (Read more from “The Bible Trump’s New VA Secretary Chose to Be Sworn in on Tells You Everything You Need to Know” HERE)

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Trump Fired Back Hard After the Koch Network Says It Won’t Endorse as Many Republicans

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After Koch network political organization Americans for Prosperity announced it wouldn’t support the Republican candidate in a key Senate race, President Donald Trump fired back on Twitter on Tuesday morning.

Trump tore into the powerful Koch brothers, saying he didn’t need their support or money for political success. . .

Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, singled out Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) as an example of the type of Republican the organization would no longer be supporting, saying his record on financial issues was inconsistent. . .

Trump’s response to the Koch network criticism of GOP lawmakers was to say the Koch brothers were overrated and not respected by “real” Republicans.

“I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas,” Trump wrote. “They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more. I made them richer. Their network is highly overrated, I have beaten them at every turn. They want to protect their companies outside the U.S. from being taxed, I’m for America First & the American Worker — a puppet for no one. Two nice guys with bad ideas. Make America Great Again!” (Read more from “Trump Fired Back Hard After the Koch Network Says It Won’t Endorse as Many Republicans” HERE)

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Here’s Another Big Fact the Obama Administration Hid to Pass Obamacare

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Over the weekend, Politico ran a report about how a “Trump policy shop filters facts to fit his message.” The article cited several unnamed sources complaining about the office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and its allegedly politicized role within the current administration.

One of the article’s anonymous sources called ASPE’s conduct over the past 18 months “another example of how we’re moving to a post-fact era.” Richard Frank, a former Obama appointee and one of the few sources to speak on the record, said that he found the current administration’s “attack on the integrity and the culture of the office…disturbing.”

For all its focus on the Trump administration, the Politico article omitted another key story—one I told its reporter about last week, but did not make it into the article. During the early years of the Obama administration, ASPE lay at the heart of the failure of the CLASS Act, a $70 billion Obamacare program.

As a congressional staffer conducting oversight of the CLASS Act in 2011-12, I reviewed thousands of pages of e-mails and documents from the months leading up to Obamacare’s passage. Those records strongly suggest that ASPE officials, including Frank, withheld material facts from Congress and the public about CLASS’s unsustainability, because full and prompt disclosure could have jeopardized Obamacare’s chances of passage. . .

The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, or CLASS for short, intended to provide a voluntary insurance benefit for long-term care. Included as part of Obamacare, the program never got off the ground. In October 2011, HHS concluded it could not implement the program in an actuarially sound manner; Congress repealed the program entirely as part of the “fiscal cliff” deal enacted into law in the early days of 2013. (Read more from “Here’s Another Big Fact the Obama Administration Hid to Pass Obamacare” HERE)

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Maxine Waters Responds Defiantly to Trump’s Threat to Shut Down the Government

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Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) responded with scorn and defiance to a tweet from President Donald Trump threatening to shut down the government if his border wall wasn’t funded by Congress. . .

“A shutdown, a government shutdown isn’t good for either party. Nobody looks good when one happens,” said anchor David Gura. “How did you react to what the president tweeted this morning? How real a threat do you think it is we could be facing a government shutdown in the fall?” . . .

“He’s not going to shut down anything,” she claimed. “As a matter of fact, people will remember that he said he was going to build this wall, and he was going to make Mexico pay for the wall. They said they weren’t going to pay for anything.”

“Now he wants the American citizens to pay for this wall,” Waters continued, “American citizens are not going to pay for this wall.”

“He’s not going to shut down the government,” she concluded, “and we are not going to be intimidated by his bluffing and his bullying.”

(Read more from “Maxine Waters Responds Defiantly to Trump’s Threat to Shut Down the Government” HERE)

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Trump Asked If He Has a ‘Red Line’ on Border Funding — His Response Invokes Obama

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By The Daily Caller. President Trump answered tough questions about his border wall and immigration plan Monday at the White House during a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giuesppe Conte. . .

“Are you saying you would be willing to shut the government down in September if it does not fully fund $25 billion for the border wall and also deliver the immigration priorities that you listed in your tweet? Or are you leaving some room for negotiation there?” [Saagar] Enjeti asked. Earlier Monday, Trump threatened shutting down the government in a tweet:

. . .

As a follow up, Enjeti asked “Is the $25 billion a red line for you?” The Trump administration is requesting $25 billion for the creation of a border wall.

Trump took the opportunity to dunk on his predecessor President Obama in the response.

“I have no red line unlike President Obama. I just want great border security. Okay?” Trump said. (Read more from “Trump Asked If He Has a ‘Red Line’ on Border Funding — His Response Invokes Obama” HERE)

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Trump Praises Italy’s Immigration Policies

By Reuters. U.S. President Donald Trump praised Italy’s increasingly hard-line approach to immigration on Monday, at the start of a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at the White House.

“I agree very much with what you are doing with respect to migration, and illegal immigration, and even legal immigration,” Trump told Conte in the Oval Office. “He has taken a very firm stance on the border, a stance that few countries have taken. And frankly he is doing the right thing in my opinion.”

Conte took office last month promising to bring radical change to Italy, including more generous welfare provision and a crackdown on immigration.

Immigration was a major election issue after an influx of hundreds of thousands of mostly African asylum seekers. Italy has seen more than 650,000 migrants reach its shores since 2014.

Conte has said his government would end “the immigration business.” (Read more from “Trump Praises Italy’s Immigration Policies” HERE)

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MSM: Therapists Claim Anxiety Disorders Are Being Caused by Trump

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By The Blaze. Mainstream media outlets are promoting a story that claims therapists are treating more patients for anxiety because of the words and actions of President Donald Trump. . .

The alleged disorder supposedly affects both Trump supporters and non-supporters, and is related to some of his policies and tweets, according to reports.

In a piece that sounds more like satire, Canada’s CBC News cites several therapists who say their patients are afraid Trump may “blow us all up.”

“There is a fear of the world ending,” Washington, D.C., therapist Elisabeth LaMotte told the news outlet. “It’s very disorienting and constantly unsettling.”

The supposed stress and collective anxiety is referred to as “Trump Anxiety Disorder,” abut there is no official diagnosis. (Read more from “MSM: Therapists Claim Anxiety Disorders Are Being Caused by Trump” HERE)

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In a Divided U.S., Therapists Treating Anxiety Are Hearing the Same Name Over and Over: Donald Trump

By CBC. “Is he gonna blow us all up?”

So inquired one of Elisabeth LaMotte’s patients recently, fretting out loud about the volatility of U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions during a therapy session at her Washington practice.

It was a rhetorical question — one that predated Trump’s threats of a showdown with Iran this week. But if the question wasn’t meant in earnest, the politically induced anxiety LaMotte is hearing about from her clients certainly is, says the founder of the D.C. Counselling and Psychotherapy Center.

She refers to it as a “collective anxiety” among patients who feel on edge about how potentially dire the president’s decisions could be.

“There is a fear of the world ending,” she said. “It’s very disorienting and constantly unsettling.” (Read more from “In a Divided U.S., Therapists Treating Anxiety Are Hearing the Same Name Over and Over: Donald Trump” HERE)

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