Reddit Politics Summary Wednesday Jan 3rd 18

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This is a digest of the top posts on reddit/r/politics over the last 24 hours.
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Trump Tower meeting with Russians 'treasonous', Bannon says in explosive book

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• Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, reportedly based on more than 200 interviews with the president, his inner circle and players in and around the administration, is one of the most eagerly awaited political books of the year.
• Soon after, Wolff writes, Bannon remarked mockingly: "The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers.
• Bannon went on, Wolff writes, to say that if any such meeting had to take place, it should have been set up "in a Holiday Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire, with your lawyers who meet with these people".

Trump 'Psychologically Unfit,' Nuclear Tweet Is Grounds for Impeachment, Former Bush Ethics Lawyer Says

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• Congress needs to deal with one of them and the UN Security Council needs to deal with the other," attorney Richard Painter wrote on Twitter, referring to Trump and Kim.
• Other critics also weighed in on Trump’s tweet Tuesday, which was followed just minutes later by another post with mysteriously capitalized words, "I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o’clock.
• said his father "looked as if he had seen a ghost," when he found out he won the presidency, according to an excerpt from journalist Michael Wolff’s book published Wednesday in New York Magazine.

Comey: Where are the voices of leaders who know independent DOJ, FBI 'essential to our liberty?'

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Protesters accuse Twitter CEO of being 'complicit' after Trump nuclear button tweet

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• "Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, has enabled @realDonaldTrump from his first dog whistles in the birther movement to his latest nuclear pissing contest," Resist SF wrote in the Facebook event. "Twitter is endangering the world and breaking its own terms of service to do it.

“You own this.” Dem challenger slams Paul Ryan for enabling Trump nuke threat.

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• This law, passed immediately after 9/11 and still in effect today, gives the president authority to launch military strikes effectively anywhere. Barbara Lee to last year’s Defense Appropriations Bill, which would have terminated the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. Bryce is referring to an amendment by California Rep.

Trump blasts ex-aide Bannon, says he has lost his mind

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• The Guardian published excerpts of the book in which Bannon predicts that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will "crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV" over the president’s son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016.
• He blamed him for the loss of a Republican Senate seat in Alabama in a special election last month and accused him of leaking to news reporters while he served as the White House chief strategist.
• "Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was," Trump said.

Donald Trump's Son Suggests Ellen DeGeneres Is Running A "Shadow Government"

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• It refers to a shadow network that lurks within the government bureaucracy with the goal of undermining the democratically elected government, in this case the Trump administration.
• Guests on Fox & Friends have falsely suggested that President Barack Obama is operating a secondary government from his Washington, D.C., home and that Hillary Clinton is in actuality the "shadow president," of the United States.
• "I can’t have someone who I feel is not only dangerous for the country and for me personally as a gay woman but to the world.

Fox & Friends host delivers racist attack on Mueller grand jury

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• Both Kilmeade’s comments on Wednesday and the incendiary Post interview are the latest in a long line of attempts by conservatives to undermine the ongoing Mueller investigation, which centers on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and recently handed down several charges against former Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
• Their claim hinged on a series of private text messages from 2016 between senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page, in which the two discussed their mutual dislike of then-candidate Trump. One month later, congressional Republicans also called for an investigation into the Russia probe itself, arguing that the personal political beliefs of two former staffers proved the investigation had been tainted from the start.

Bannon: Zero chance that Trump didn't know about son's Russian meeting

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• So far, Manafort and one of his associates, Richard Gates, have been indicted as a result of that investigation. They are facing charges of money laundering and tax evasion, among other allegations.

2018 Calendar of Primaries

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• In some purple and red states, Republican legislatures have been toying with the idea of voter-roll purges for things as trivial as address changes, potential repeat registrations , or arbitrary inactivity periods; i.e. not participating in the most recent election/voting opportunity marks you "inactive," whether a primary or otherwise.
• I don't think they understand how they are just as anti-intellecutal as the right when they turn down educated candidates for "Justice Democrats", which should mean, I'm a democrat who cares about Justice, maybe even "I want to reform the justice system." Instead its always some idiot who got pissed off by ONE singular wedge issue and now wants "change" but doesn't know how to get it.
• I am really thrilled that you have decided to vote democrat, imho its the only sane choice atm, and one of the great dangers is too many thinking that voting their conscience has only upsides and no inherrent dangers, in this extraordinary situation and political climate, but that is in the end a personal choice.