2020 Begins! Wonkagenda For Mon., Jan. 28, 2019

Kamala's kickass speech and ANOTHER Trump shutdown. Your morning news brief!

Dominic Gwinn

Jan 28, 2019

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Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things wemaybe talking about today.

Surrounded by an estimated 20,000 people, California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris kicked off her 2020 presidential campaign in Oakland. In a rousing and inspiring speech, Harris touched on sexism, racism, police brutality, and economic inequality, pledging to create debt-free college and a Medicare for All system. SWOON! And SHIRTS! [ Video ]

Mick Mulvaney ran around the Sunday shows to threaten ANOTHER government shutdown if nobody gives Trump a goddamn wall to "defend the nation" from the duct taped Messicans wandering around the desert, and also to threaten an invasionof COMMUNIST Venezuela. Mulvaney boasted that Trump will get his goddamn wall money "with or without Congress," but declined to say who in flyover country would suffer when Trump starts looking for the cash.

Trump has a new interview with the WSJ where he calls his threats to declare a national emergency and force the military to build his goddamn wall about "50-50." The rest is just sentence fragments and filler quotes since Trump has the attention span of a coked-out weasel.

Maggie Haberman gossips that Jared Kushner took on Trump's shutdown in the exact same way he set out to create peace Middle East: filling in his incomprehensible ignorance with old School House Rock tapes. According to the Times, Kushner relied on Stephen Miller to mansplain immigration, and was confident Democrats would eventually give Trump money for his goddamn wall.

Even though the federal government has (temporarily) reopened, federal workers shouldn't expect to get their back pay until Friday or Saturday at the earliest as employees have to first dig through a deluge of backlogs. Meanwhile, almost a million contractors and hired guns -- people our increasingly privatized government relies upon -- are screwed, and shouldn't expect any back pay.

Ultra rich dickhead Steve Mnuchin wants to end government control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so that real estate tycoons can murder the consumer housing protections ensured by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to Politico. Good thing we have all those financial regulations preventing Wall Street dickheads from collapsing credit markets (again)...

The only thing Trump has built for Puerto Rico is a wall blocking congressionally approved disaster relief a year after two hurricanes devastated America's exploited island colony. But never fear, exploited non-voting US citizens, Sen. Marco Rubio has appeared with an angry letter letting Congress know how angry he is!

As Trump starts his third year in office, a new WaPo/ABC News poll shows very LOW RATINGS across a wide range of public opinions, ranging from job-approval to how people view himas a person,doubting his empathy, honesty, and ability to negotiate. SAD.

When Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz looks at Donald Trump he must think that any rich asshole can buy their way into the White House, so he's engaged in a massive PR blitz ahead of a potential 2020 presidential run. He's currently speaking to every media outlet he can find, blithering to the NY Times about a "broken political system," and complaining on 60 Minutes about all the commies coming to eat his money and give healthcare to the poors. Fearing four more years of Trump, media wizards and talking heads are aghast at the prospect of Schultz running as an independent centrist candidate, and are quick to note that America runs on Dunkin. [ 60 Minutes ]

The ATF and the sheriff's office in Maricopa County, Arizona, have announced that an audit has discovered as many as 50 guns missing from the sheriff's office, ranging from automatic weapons to shotguns. In addition, Sheriff Paul Penzone has since suspended a local posse of insane clowns hunting migrants after discovering only four of 235 posse members had even completed their mandatory certification tests, including background checks, psych exams, pee tests, and firearms qualifications exams.

Trump's trade war has accidentally started a cyber war with China. American officials are now begging what allies are left to ban a major Chinese telecom, Huawei, while tech companies race to push out the next generation of wireless networks. Hopefully our robot overlords will show mercy.

British companies are sick of the Brexit bollocks, and thousands of big names are getting ready to leave the UK in the event of a "no-deal" scenario. With Parliament set to take negotiations away from British Prime Minister Theresa May, the head of the European Commission has reportedly offered a permanent customs union in exchange for a soft border with Ireland. The EU has refused to cede any ground to May or Brexit supporters, and now even the Speaker of the House of Commons is adding fuel to a Brexit delay, or even a second referendum.

Maggie Haberman is Habermansplaining how #MeToo has hurt all the dudes who boss women around. They're afraid to have a vagina around in fear that they do something to a female colleague who doesn't understand their bro code.

Emily Jane Fox has some gossip about Hope Hicks in Hollywood , but I didn't read the story because I don't give a fuck. I'm sure it's fascinating.

Historically racist Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King held his first town hall since being called out for his white supremacy (for once). King defended his white supremacist views,as well as Justice Rapey McPrivilege, then agreed with a supporter who told him to "push back" against "reverse racism toward the white European man who founded this country," and asked him to "take the sting" out of "racism."

Roger Stone went on CNN and Stephanopoulos to bitch, moan, and gaslight peopleabout getting arrested for lying to Congress about HIS EMAILS in the Trump-Russia scandal. The self-described "rat fucker" tried to pin his ALLEGED crimes on Paul Manafort's former protege, Rick Gates, and called the FBI raid on his house "gestapo tactics."

Jerome Corsi tells Jake Tapper that he'd be happy to throw Roger Stone under the bus, IF he's subpoenaed. Jerome Corsi snitching on Roger Stone as Roger Stone snitches on Rick Gates (which really means Paul Manafort) is everything we want it to be.

SNL's cold open featured Steve Martin playing Roger Stone BEGGING for a pardon.