Trump Monitor Podcast Episode 1: Obstruction of Justice

The first episode of the TMB Podcast is out now!  Check it out below:

Total Not Recall

For the Sessions testimony you can watch it here.

I know this is Thursday and the Jeff Sessions hearing was on Tuesday, but there was a lot to process and go over both visually and mentally.  For one thing I was right that Sessions would be the guy that would take the "bullet" for Trump in this hearing.  He wasn't going to answer a lot of questions, but the way he tried to dodge the questions actually made it worse for Trump instead of saving his face.  Let's get down to the big parts of the hearing....

Intelligence

Donald Trump was recently given intel on the Russian hacking situation and of course seemed to scoff at the notion that this could be a possibility.  He even went on the defensive (again) accusing NBC of knowing more information on certain matters of intelligence than he had known:

How did NBC get "an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?" Who gave them this report and why? Politics!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

I am asking the chairs of the House and Senate committees to investigate top secret intelligence shared with NBC prior to me seeing it.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017

Even after the fact that the intelligence report, given by both the FBI/Department of Homeland Security as well as another report from the Director of National Intelligence saying that Vladimir Putin "sought to help" Trump win the 2016 election he still goes on to tweet this:

Intelligence stated very strongly there was absolutely no evidence that hacking affected the election results. Voting machines not touched!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2017

Come on now Donald!  You have two separate reports going against you and you are going to tweet a lie to cover yourself?  You can't.  The government will always post public reports (albeit with a lot of classified details left out) and you can't contradict what they find.  He is factual with the voting machines part, but the hacked emails definitely did play a factor into swaying the vote towards him instead of Hillary Clinton.  As a businessman he can ignore facts, but as a politician and soon-to-be President of the United States of America he can't and if he does he will be scrutinized by both his peers and the voting citizens of America.

Russian Sanctions and How They Will Affect Trump

For the joint FBI-DHS report on Russian hacking click here.

In a report released after a joint investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) they noted that there were two notable cyber attacks on the Democratic Party; one in the summer of 2015 and another in the spring of 2016.

For his response President Obama issued new sanctions yesterday against Russia in concerns of Russian involvement in the 2016 US election.  In an executive order he has given all Russian diplomats in the United States 72 hours to leave the country as well as shutting down two Russian Government-owned compounds that are located in Maryland and New York.  Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, has decided to not play tit-for-tat and will not force American diplomats in Russia to vacate.

This whole saga leads to a bigger question: What effect does this have on Trump and Republicans?