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Are you for or against Oprah running for president?
PRESIDENT OPRAH?
A close friend of Oprah’s says she’s giving serious thought to running for president in 2020. It’s been interesting to see the reactions online from folks on the left — people are definitely divided.
Many, like me, see Oprah as eminently qualified (though I worry about her lack of political experience — more on that in a bit), while others seem so burned by the Trump experiment that they really really really don’t want to see another celebrity running for president in their lifetime.
Here’s my take: I like Oprah, a lot. She’s smart, successful (unlike Trump, she’s ACTUALLY a successful billionaire), has shown throughout her life a desire to help others, and she’s likable. And I can’t stress that least part enough. Americans like to vote for people they like. It’s the old “someone you’d like to drink a beer or go to dinner with” standard. And Oprah’s got it, and then some.
The one concern I have, and it’s a major one, is Oprah’s lack of political experience, and particularly experience in Washington. Knowing how to play the Washington game is crucial to getting anything done (or blocking bad things) in this town. That lack of experience hurt Bill Clinton in his first few years, it hurt Barack Obama at the beginning, and (thankfully) it’s hurting Donald Trump now. You really need to know how to work this town in order to be successful, it’s a very particular knowledge. So that’s the big downside I see of an Oprah candidacy. Still, consider me pleasantly intrigued and favorably disposed.
We discuss the Oprah candidacy at the end of our latest podcast, you can listen for free here.
FEINSTEIN RELEASES FUSION GPS TRUMP-RUSSIA TRANSCRIPT
Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein made some news this week when she released the transcript of the closed-door Senate testimony of the man who runs Fusion GPS, the research firm that compiled the Trump-Russia “Steele Dossier.” Congressional Republicans have been shamelessly trying to discredit the dossier, and the entire Trump-Russia investigation, by claiming, among other things, that the entire dossier is Russian disinformation, and that Fusion and the Democrats are the real Russian collaborators! Lindsey Graham even asked the Justice Department to investigate the author of the Christopher Steele, for lord knows what crimes.
In response, Fusion cofounder Glenn Simpson has publicly defended his firm’s work, and recently called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to make public his testimony. The Republican chairman of the committee, Chuck Grassley, who is a total Trump sycophant, refused — so Diane Feinstein released it herself. Grassley is now claiming that this will cause future witnesses to fear speaking with the committee, which is ludicrous since it’s the witness himself who asked that his testimony be released.
And boy what that testimony showed. First, it showed that Grassley’s staff’s only goal is to obstruct the investigation and defend Trump. Second, we learn a LOT about the Steele dossier, including the fact that the entire investigation began as an effort to discern how much Trump was really worth. No one had any inkling that Trump was colluding with Russia to undermine our democracy, and that wasn’t the point of the research at all. But that’s where the facts led. The firm’s leaders became so horrified about what they found that they took it upon themselves, as good Americans, to contact the FBI, since they were concerned that an enemy of the United States (Russia) may have blackmailed a major presidential candidate (Trump).
So it’s understandable why the GOP didn’t want the transript released — it only buttresses the crediblity of Fusion GOP, and the case against Trump.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Not only did the folks at Fusion provide the info to the FBI, but they say they also provided it to the NYT, among other media outlets. Yet, a few months later, the NYT wrote, incredibly, only days before the election, that the FBI had seen no evidence linking Trump to the Russians. When in fact, the FBI had seen a lot of evidence and the New York Times knew it. Then why did the Times publish that story falsely exonerating Trump with one week to go to the election? You’ll have to ask them.
WON’T YOU PLEASE SUPPORT MY WORK THIS YEAR?
As many of you know, I moved back to DC this past year from New York City so that I could redouble my efforts to take on, and down, Donald Trump. I’ve formed an LLC, and a new organization, AMERICAblog Action, to help with those efforts, and have been growing my email action list with the express purpose of turning the Congress a lovely Democratic blue in November. If you can support my efforts with a generous donation, I would very much appreciate it.
Please support my work with a $25 donation.
AND PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO OUR POLITICAL PODCAST
Also, our new podcast (basically a radio show you listen to online), the UnPresidented Podcast, is doing really well in just these few short months since we launched. We’re asking folks to subscribe for a minimum $5/month donation, but you can still check out our free episodes (which are more or less every other episode). Here’s a particularly good snippet from our recent episode about Trump’s disastrous recent interview with the NYT, in which he claimed nearly two dozen times that he didn’t collude with Russia.
If you like that snippet, you can hear the entire episode here for a $5/month premium subscription. I really want to build the podcast this year, and we have some big-name guests coming soon, so please do subscribe and help support progressive media.
And a lot of you did subscribe in the last two weeks. Thank you so much for that!
ISSA IS TOAST
Oh, I almost forgot. Late breaking news as I’m writing this update: uber-conservative GOP congressman Darrell Issa has just announced he’s not running for re-election this November. Issa was already expected to have a hard time getting re-elected, and now he’s called it quits. This is because a growing number of Republicans recognize that it’s going to be very difficult to hold on to control of the US House in the wake of Trump’s historic unpopularity. So this is great news for Democrats, and one more piece of evidence of a growing Democratic wave for the congressional mid-term elections in November 2018.
With that in mind, as part of my stepped up election advocacy this year, I’m going to be continually providing you opportunities to donate in important races that we can win. Here are two you can help right now:
1. Help stop racist “sheriff” Joe Arpaio in Arizona. He’s just announced he’s running for the US Senate, and we have a real chance at winning this seat. You can donate to the eventual Democratic candidate here.
2. Donate to Randy “Iron Stache” Bryce, the blue collar ironworker taking on GOP US House Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin. Bryce is another Dem with a serious chance of unseating Ryan, which would be simply delicious, considering Ryan’s sycophantic defense of Donald Trump. Please support his campaign here.
Thanks, JOHN
PS For those who read this far, check out my interview, from 2008, with Star Wars goddess Carrie Fisher. It’s only 5 minutes long, and on video, and it’s pretty funny. She was an amazing lady.
And you can subscribe to my political update emails here.
Twitter: @aravosis
Facebook. My personal page, AMERICAblog, UnPresidented Podcast
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