These are confusing times. Everyone’s a potential Russian agent. Facts can no longer be trusted. People keep putting Newt Gingrich on TV. Nothing about our current world makes sense. So it's understandable that even Donald Trump might have a hard time getting a handle on things.
Over the past month, Trump has asked no fewer than 15 questions of the world on Twitter. Sure, as the president he has access to one of the most sophisticated intelligence operations in the world, but why listen to legions of experienced civil servants when you have thousands of accounts named Deplorable Mike at your disposal?
Still, just in case Trump has yet to find the answers he's looking for, we've answered every question he's asked online for the month of June.
This particular tweet came in response to the terror attacks the previous night in London, in which eight people died. The tweet itself seems to be part of a debate? But setting that aside: If the UK's gun control laws weren't as strict as they are, and the attackers had gotten their hands on automatic weapons, the death toll could have been significantly higher. It's also worth noting that, in 2013, 33,636 people died from gun violence in the US. During that same time period in the UK, 144 people died from gun violence.
Anyway, sure, I noticed.
As a matter of fact, fired FBI director Comey's "leaks" were perfectly legal. They weren't even leaks. As Stephen M. Kohn, a partner in the whistleblower-rights law firm Kohn, Kohn, & Colapinto wrote in The Washington Post, "Was the information classified or secret as a matter of a federal law? Absolutely not. Did he reveal a matter of public interest? Yes. Did Comey have a right to expose these facts anonymously? Yes." Any anonymous, non-classified leak that's a matter of public concern is recognized and protected as free speech by the Supreme Court.
WIRED has reached out to Jim Acosta of CNN for comment on where his apology is, and we will update if and when we hear back???
Here's at least one answer Trump will like: The reason we are discussing Donald Trump's potential crimes instead of Hillary Clinton's potential crimes is that, ever since January 20, Donald Trump has been the president. And there's still 1,299 days left to go.
Not really a question in the traditional sense but yes, "they" (presumably Democrats) do talk about obstruction. They do so because, according to James Comey’s sworn testimony, Donald Trump pressured Comey to stop investigating former national security adviser Mike Flynn for alleged ties to foreign powers.
A satellite figure to an investigation pressuring the person in charge of that investigation is, of course, exactly what many Republicans have accused Bill Clinton of doing with Loretta Lynch.
As for the hammer and bleach, a 2016 FBI report did note that a Clinton aide recalled "two instances where he destroyed Clinton’s old mobile devices by breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer." Later, House Select Committee on Benghazi chair Trey Gowdy revealed that Clinton's lawyers used BleachBit, a free program that "shreds files to prevent recovery," according to its website (computer security expert Jonathan Zdziarski told CNN that the software was relatively "amateur"). Either way, the FBI found no evidence that Clinton's team had "intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information."
As luck would have it, Trump actually got his answer the next day thanks to a major report in The Washington Post. Obama didn't "stop" Putin's cyber campaign to influence the US election because once the tampering had already occurred, the Obama administration wanted to avoid accusations of attempting to influence the election themselves. And because Obama assumed Hillary Clinton would win, he didn't think that the consequences of a full-throated, public retaliation would warrant the accompanying criticism.
This is a good question! When former Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson testified before Congress earlier this month, Johnson expressed frustration that, after the hack had occurred, "the DNC did not feel it needed DHS’ assistance at that time."
According to DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson, DHS hadn't reached out until August of 2016—long after the hack had already been made public. In a statement, Watson noted that "the DNC has been in regular contact with the FBI for many months and the FBI confirmed the DNC has provided all the information it needed to make its assessment. The DNC was contacted by DHS months after the DNC worked closely with the FBI to remedy the intrusion. The DNC then provided DHS with detailed information about the intrusion."
Continuing on the same theme: According to a statement from the DNC, "the DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI's Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice's National Security Division, and US Attorney's offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC's computer servers." James Comey, however, said back in January that there were "multiple requests at different levels" but that "ultimately what was agreed to is the private company would share with us what they saw." That private company was CrowdStrike.
Please see three answers up. Or get all the way through the Washington Post story.
Hard to forget a catchy slogan like that. This promise from Obama didn't turn out as advertised. But that doesn't mean the GOP's plan would be an improvement. Health care expenditures have increased since the 1960s—that probably won't change, says Victor Rodwin, professor of health policy and management at NYU. The Affordable Care Act, though, did increase "the role of federal government regulation to protect what is in the health insurance plans—the benefit package—and to stop insurers in the individual market from refusing to insure those with pre-existing conditions. The ACA also increased Medicare taxes on the wealthy to help finance greater coverage for those who are less well off."
The GOP's Trumpcare replacement plan would eliminate these taxes and reduce subsidies, which would result in 22 million more people losing their health insurance over the next decade. But again, definitely remember the catchphrase.
Please see two answers up.
Sort of. They didn't want to open themselves up to claims of partisanship, which you will learn if you take a look one answer up.
Technically, no, she is not allowed to "collude," or more specifically, to violate the DNC's impartiality clause. Of course, the only reason Trump is bringing this up at all is because he's been fielding his own accusations of collusion. But while critics accused Clinton of working with her own political party, after emails revealed that DNC officials clearly favored the Clinton campaign over that of Bernie Sanders, the Trump campaign has been accused of colluding with a foreign power to affect the outcome of the US election. Not exactly comparable.
The story Trump refers to here went online without going through CNN's own internal review process. And because CNN could not be 100 percent confident that the story would have meet its editorial standards, they decided to remove it entirely. If anything, CNN's retraction and the subsequent resignations should confirm that their other stories aren't "phony." One would expect a lot more resignations if they were.
Hard to prove a negative. But we can at least confirm that NBC, CBS, ABC, the failing New York Times, The Washington Post, and Fake News CNN continue to exist.
