Trump Monitor Podcast Episode 1: Obstruction of Justice

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

Go to the Dinner!

Here is my take on the recent news that Trump has decided to skip the Correspondents' Dinner: change your course and go to it!

Alternative Facts

Yesterday Press Secretary Sean Spicer lashed out at the media for it's report of the attendance numbers at Trump's inauguration Friday.  To put the numbers in perspective let's do this:

• 1993 (Clinton): 800,000
• 1997 (Clinton): 250,000
• 2001 (Bush): 300,000
• 2005 (Bush): 400,000
• 2009 (Obama): 1.8 Million
• 2013 (Obama): 1 Million
• 2017 (Trump): 250,000 (estimated)

It's Official: Trump is #45

IT happened...

IT will be burned into my memory forever...

IT was 12:15...

For every IT I am talking about I am referring about the Inauguration.  At 12:15 while my third class of the day was winding down I had the Inauguration on my laptop and I witnessed Donald Trump on my little video window get sworn in to become the 45th President of the United States of America.

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?

Quick Muse: Fake News

Fake News played a huge roll in the 2016 election.  Even in the technological age where we can go and verify our sources with ease we still fall for news articles that are made to be seen as real when all it was is a giant hoax.  It's not like this is a new thing of course, but the feeling that we are becoming more gullible and susceptible to the articles we read on a daily basis.  There was a time where it was funny to see who would read an article from The Onion and post it as fact, but we now have articles out there that are published as truth and have caused dire consequences.

People need to understand that they need to check their sources as any person writing a paper for a class should and yes, popular news outlets do post bogus things from time to time and they need to be shown their errors when it happens.  

What bothers me is that some news outlets refuse to own up to their fake news and instead like to finger point towards the other news companies.  Let's look at Breitbart.  Breitbart has been caught by Vice News of posting a fake election map that only showed a small percentage of Democratic support.  Breitbart did admit the map was bogus, but they still continue to tweet that the left posted more fake news than they or other right wing/alt-right news agencies did. 

With so much focus on fake news it does bring every news article posted under scrutiny, but that does bring a positive to it: journalists have to be more on it to bring facts that can be backed up if their work is ever brought up for debate.  Yes, you still should not believe everything you read, say, and hear, but you have to make sure you do your research when you post, share, and talk.