BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER
& CROOKED MEDIA

Thursday, April 5, 2018

—One of many pick-up lines from eligible bachelor Don Jr.

BUT HAVE YOU TRIED THE COQ AU VIN?

Scott Pruitt should've been fired by now. (Yes, that applies to half the cabinet, but hey.) When White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called the EPA administrator to not fire him earlier this week, he warned Pruitt that the scandals needed to stop. Since then:

• At least 5 EPA officials were demoted, reassigned, or requested new jobs when they complained about Pruitt’s conduct and spending.

• Pruitt claimed his lobbyist landlords didn’t have business before the EPA, which they did.

• He asked his security detail to flip on his car’s emergency sirens so he could make it to dinner. Wee ooo wee ooo! The administrator needs num nums for his tum tums!

• One of his deputies, Samantha Dravis, resigned from the agency. (The likely backstory here is bananas and a bit disturbing.)

• Oh, also, there’s a real estate scandal. What a week!

If Kelly had meant what he said, Pruitt would’ve been out already. But because Trump and Republicans (and the Kochs! Don’t forget those guys!) want an EPA administrator who's in the pocket of big polluters, they are mostly rallying around Pruitt, with the exception of a few Republican House members who’ve called on him to resign. Tom Daschle wasn’t allowed to join the Obama cabinet because he failed to list a driver on his taxes! Quaint!

FOX IS TRUMP'S ONLY ADVISOR NOW

Here are some things that probably wouldn’t have happened if Trump didn’t watch cable news all day:

• He ordered National Guard troops to the southern border based on an erroneous report on Fox and Friends, and promises to keep them there indefinitely.

• He is stoking a trade war with China.

• He is elevating his favorite media personalities (John Bolton, Larry Kudlow) at the expense of people with expertise, ethics, and judgment.

Fox News’ grip on the presidency is even starting to freak out Trump’s White House enablers, per Axios' Mike Allen: "[T]he president is filling time by watching Fox, and by eating dinner with people who feed his ego and conspiracy theories, and who drink in his rants ... Trump’s closest confidants speak with an unusual level of concern, even alarm, and admit to being confused about what the president will do next—and why. This is different than a few months ago, when they were more bemused and supportive."

He’s also reprising his repeatedly debunked claims of widespread election fraud and of immigrants from south of the border being rapists. “Yesterday it came out where this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump falsely stated in West Virginia today. According to the Washington Post, “The only mentions of rape with regard to the caravan in recent days, in fact, refer to criminal behavior that the migrants have been trying to escape in their home countries or along the route.”

Trump’s going back to the classic hits. Mueller got you down? Pruitt in a jam? When life hands you lemons, make racist comments to please your base.

New York City police shot and killed a mentally ill black man yesterday afternoon because they thought he had a gun. It was a metal pipe. From Keep It co-host Kara Brown: “I feel like the public could understand meeting what they perceived as a violent threat with a warning shot or something aiming just to bring him down. These cops lose any chance of not looking like murderous cowards when they do shit like this.”

Trump says he didn't know Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 days before the presidential election. This would mean Cohen committed fraud, which would likely free Daniels from her nondisclosure agreement. Daniels’ lawyer is doing his “how lucky am I?” thing.

Teachers in Oklahoma protested for a fourth straight day, continuing a 110-mile walk to the state capital, where they are demanding higher wages. Republican Governor Mary Fallin said their protests were like “having a teenage kid that wants a better car,” which is a nice reminder:  Don’t compare teachers to whiny teens because it will not go well for you.

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spent $12 million in taxpayer money on consultants to reorganize the State Department. Seems like it really worked!

Thousands of Google employees signed a petition asking the company to end its partnership with the Pentagon to improve A.I. and image-recognition technology that could eventually be used for drone strikes. A.I. exists for one purpose: targeted advertisements.

Robert Mercer backed a group that used Facebook and Google to target swing voters with anti-Muslim ads. Open Secrets asked the group, Secure America Now, for its tax records, and someone from the group’s accounting department (accidentally?) sent the documents, unredacted. And there was Robert Mercer and his $2 million! Never hurts to ask, kids!

The U.S. surgeon general issued a nationwide advisory for more people to receive access and training to use naloxone, an overdose-reversing drug. This is the first nationwide advisory the office has issued in 13 years.

Anchorage introduced voting by mail, resulting in the highest election turnout in the Alaskan city’s history.

On Crooked Conversations: Is Trump’s invitation to Russian President Vladimir Putin a good idea? Tommy and New Yorker’s Robin Wright grapple with that question. (Spoiler: No, no it’s not.) Plus, more on Gaza, Syria, Bolton, and Wright’s recent visit to North Korea.

Listen →

The number of women running for the House in 2018 is up to 309 across both parties, setting a record. Nearly three-quarters of potential women congressional and gubernatorial candidates this year are Democrats.

Krish Vignarajah, the only woman gubernatorial candidate in Maryland, on running for the first time: “I didn’t grow up being told time and time again ‘You look like you could be the next governor’... People are going to say to you, ‘You don’t look the part,’ to which you just say back, ‘This is what the part looks like.’”

Thinking about getting in the game?  Learn more about what it takes to run →

Republicans have warned Trump that starting a trade war with China will hurt them in the coming elections, because retaliatory tariffs will target parts of the country that handed him the White House in 2016. By announcing another $100 billion in potential tariffs today, Trump made it clear he’s not listening.

(Source: Bloomberg)

The ISIS Files. Journalists from the New York Times made astonishing discoveries at abandoned ISIS offices: thousands of files that revealed how ISIS ran their government and controlled so much land for so long. Still no proof Obama founded ISIS, though.

Read →

Today we learned MTV's Jersey Shore was called “Macaroni Rascals” in Asia and we’re starting a rebranding petition.

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