Former Justice Department spokesman and MSNBC analyst Matt Miller predicted Fox News Sean Hannity will “fold like a cheap suit” and side with Donald Trump on his show tonight after the president’s failure to obtain border wall funding.
“I have a prediction by the time 9:00 tonight rolls around, Sean Hannity is going to fold like a cheap suit, he’s going to have gotten the message,” Miller guessed “It’s pretty clear this train is leaving the station, Sean Hannity is going to get on board — he’s not going to leave Donald Trump out there hanging by himself.”
The analyst made the prediction during a panel discussion on the importance of Hannity siding with Trump, since Ann Coulter has already condemned the president for caving to Democrats’ demands.
Deadline: White House host Nicolle Wallace began the discussion by knocking Trump for “losing on substance and on tactics” during and after the shutdown, despite all his confident comments on securing government funding for the wall.
NBC News political reporter Heidi Przybyla chimed in by pointing to Hannity’s vital role in the funding conversation.
“The question, the only question at this hour, is will Sean Hannity also buy into it?” Przybyla asked. “He’s already lost Ann Coulter, but I imagine that there will be some consultations going on between the president and Sean Hannity and at some point he will buy in, too, and declare this a victory.”
Producers then played a segment of Hannity’s show where the host can be seen mocking the $1.3 billion in border security funds, saying it’s “not even a wall” and demanding that “any Republican that supports this garbage compromise… [will have to] explain [themselves].”
“The president on line three — ‘Sean, please don’t call it a garbage compromise, it’s all I could do, Sean, please,’” Wallace joked in response to the Hannity segment. “I don’t have words for how ridiculous that was.”
The Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff gave the number one cable news host some credit, saying he “is correct about the politics here, which is the Democrats functionally demolished Trump on this border wall question.”
“You know you’re in trouble politically when Sean Hannity isn’t attacking me and he isn’t attacking the press and he isn’t attacking the Democrats, but the Republicans,” Wallace concluded.
John Oliver visited with Stephen Colbert on Monday night and he had some thoughts about surviving Trump in the White House.
“We just passed the midpoint in Trump’s hopefully first and only term, and some say the end is in sight,” Colbert said.
Oliver warned against such optimism.
“To say we’re halfway through his presidency, I think, is to ignore the concept of a second term possibility,” he stressed. “We are two to six years away from the end of his presidency.”
The audience loudly booed.
Oliver then said the Constitution gives us an endpoint.
“We all have a finish line like in a marathon that we can try and stumble over, be covered in a cape and have someone say, ‘you really shouldn’t have done that,'” he continued on.
“Which is to stay alive till January 21, 2025?” Colbert asked.
Oliver said that is exactly what he meant but there is one person who really had to be mindful of outlasting Trump.
“I think that’s what we all have to do, all of us especially Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” Oliver stressed.
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John Dowd, the former top lawyer for Donald Trump‘s defense team, gave an interview where he tore into Special Counsel Robert Mueller while insisting that the president will be cleared in the end.
Dowd spoke for the premiere of ABC News’ “The Investigation” a new podcast dedicated to tracking the ongoing developments into Mueller’s probe on Russian collusion and obstruction of justice. The way he sees it, Dowd doubts there will ever be a public report on Mueller’s assessment, and the investigation is “one of the greatest frauds this country’s ever seen.”
“I know exactly what [Mueller] has. I know exactly what every witness said, what every document said. I know exactly what he asked. And I know what the conclusion or the result is…There’s no basis. There’s no exposure. It’s been a terrible waste of time.”
Dowd left Trump’s legal team in March 2018 amid reports that he was frustrated with the president for ignoring his advice on how to legally handle Mueller. The departure happened over disagreements on how cooperative Trump and his team should be with the probe, and during the podcast, Dowd railed against the idea of Mueller leading Trump into a perjury trap if they ever speak to each other.
From ABC.
Dowd said he did not believe Trump would intentionally lie to the Mueller team, but that he would lose track of key details in the swirl of a massive amount of material he had to digest as president every day.
“In my questioning him or talking to him, you know, first question, easy. Second question, easy. Third question, he wasn’t sure. And he doesn’t like being unsure. So he’ll guess,” Dowd said. “There’s your trap, right there. It’s not whether he lies or not… It’s not a matter of integrity. It’s overload.”
The interview went on with Dowd shrugging off Mueller’s indictments for numerous Russian officials and the guilty pleas he obtained from several former advisers in Trump’s orbit. He topped it off by saying the probe will have no merit as far as Trump is concerned.
“If I was supervising Mueller, [I would] tell him to ‘knock it off, get it done,” said Dowd. “Your job is to find out if there’s collusion or there was obstruction, and the answer’s ‘no,’ so let’s get on with it.”
Former White House aide Cliff Sims — the author of a tell-all Team of Vipers — appeared on CNN Tuesday morning with his lawyer to explain why he’s suing President Donald Trump, who he claims is attempting to silence him.
“My first amendment rights as a government employee cannot be infringed upon by an NDA,” Sims told CNN’s John Berman. “I certainly didn’t want to do this, I’m probably the least litigious person you can imagine, I’ve never sued anybody in my life, but I was backed into a corner by some legal action the Trump folks took and so I felt like I needed to be able to stand up for myself.”
Sims’ lawyer Bradley Moss argued that former federal employees “cannot be censored” from speaking out about their time in the White House after leaving — if the information they divulge is not classified. Moss noted that while Sims signed an NDA during the campaign, the additional one he signed in the White House is “unprecedented” for an administration.
“I wanted to stand up and say that I’m not going to be pushed into a corner, I’m not going to be bullied on this and stand up for myself,” Sims said. “That’s what we teach our kids to do when bullies are coming after them. Like I said, this is certainly not something I wanted to do, something I planned to do. But being backed into a corner, I’m not going to cower.”
According to the New York Times, in his lawsuit, Sims is “alleging that [Trump] used his campaign organization as a ‘cutout’ to improperly seek retribution against former employees and keep them from invoking their First Amendment rights.” Trump’s campaign, per the Times, had filed an arbitration claim against Sims earlier this month for allegedly violating the NDA he signed in 2016.
Just south of Tampa, Fla., students at the Manatee School for the Arts (MSA) roam the hallways past an armed combat veteran who is constantly looking out for threats. By the end of February, another one will be manning a guard shack at at the school's entrance.
39-year-old Harold Verdecia, a former infantryman in the US army who completed tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, patrols the hallways of Manatee strapped with a 9mm Glock 19X and a Kel-Tec "Bullpup" rifle, according to the Herald Tribune.
Photo: Tiffany Tompkins/Bradenton Herald
Verdecia isn’t there to get to know the kids, break up fights or do the typical community-policing that school resource officers typically do, said MSA Principal Bill Jones.
Verdecia has one job: Stop an active shooter. -Herald Tribune
"When seconds count, (Palmetto police) are only a few minutes away," says Principal Jones - who has gamed out the nightmare school shooter scenario in exacting detail. He's also justified Verdecia's use of a semi-automatic rifle instead of just a handgun.
"We’re not looking for a fair fight," Jones said in an interview cited by the New York Times. "We’re looking at an overwhelming advantage."
With a shooter just 100 feet away, there aren't many officers who could take the suspect down with a handgun, according to Jones. With a rifle, however, Verdecia could make that shot with hollow-point bullets designed to flower on impact and shred the shooter's internal organs instead of exiting his body and hitting someone else.
In order to become a guardian, Verdercia completed the 144-hour training course that the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office ran for the school district, plus additional training to be qualified to carry the rifle. District general counsel Mitch Teitelbaum said while school district guardians are trained using 9-millimeter Glocks, charter schools have the freedom to arm their guardians with other weapons.
Despite his status as perhaps the most lethal guardian in Manatee County, Verdecia is soft spoken and quietly dedicated to his task. He estimated he walks 9 miles a day, patrolling the vast campus.
Jones said Verdecia earns more than $50,000 a year, plus benefits, to protect the more than 2,000 students at MSA. He is hoping to hire another guardian soon, and Jones was reviewing applications in his office on Thursday. -Herald Tribune
To protect himself from incoming fire, Verdecia wears body armor.
To hire Verdecia and his new co-worker, MSA took advantage of a law passed by Florida lawmakers in the wake of last February's shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School requiring all schools to have armed security. Most districts achieved this through a combination of school resource officers and guardians - and most just carry handguns, according to the Herald Tribune. Principal Jones justifies the decision to arm Verdecia with a rifle. "It’s just a much more effective weapon than the handgun is."
Security expert Michael Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International, says he is not aware of any other school guards who carry long guns, though it is commonplace in some foreign countries.
"It’s not something that we typically advise our clients to do for a variety of reasons," said Dorn, noting that someone might knock the officer out and take the weapon, and it's not as easy to subdue and handcuff someone while carrying a rifle.
Not everyone agrees with MSA's approach to school safety, according to the Herald Tribune.
"You don’t walk around with an assault rifle strapped to your chest in a school. That is not the normal policy of police agencies," said retired police chief Walt Zalisko, who now owns a Daytona Beach-based global investigative group and police management consulting business.
Zalisko said it is best practice to keep rifles locked up within a police car or in a secure location, and he said guardians or school resource officers are more effective when they are able to regularly engage with students, rather than viewing their job as solely stopping a mass shooter.
“His job is to protect the kids, and he can do that with a handgun, but it is also to form positive relationships,” Zalisko said. “Develop information on who may have drugs or weapons. There is a lot involved.” -Herald Tribune
Principal Jones, meanwhile, said he has worked closely with Palmetto Police Chief Scott Tyler to develop MSA's guardian program - efforts which Tyler has given his blessing.
"Assault rifles, whether you are for them or against them, are prolific in our society," Tyler said. "Lord knows how many assault-type rifles are out there. So why would we not want the school guardian to have parity with that potential threat?"
Jones says that most people have responded positively to Verdecia's presence on campus aside from occasional complaints, and that Verdecia's status as a former combat veteran has had a lot to do with it.
"I wouldn’t hire anybody who hadn’t been shot at and fired back," said Jones. "I need someone who has been in that situation."
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