The first quarter of 2019 was a smash hit for bulls. Capitulating central banks, record buybacks flushing the system with artificial liquidity, constant jawboning by dovish central bankers and permanent promises of progress on a China trade deal, and a collapsing yield picture bringing back TINA (there is no alternative) all of which produced a relentless 3 month move higher back in equities that rendered any fundamental issues of slowing growth, earnings and even a yield curve inversion irrelevant and erased the losses of a disastrous Q4 of 2018.
Liquidity and central banks rule, nothing else matters. Optimism is back and hope is pervasive that 2019 will replay the earnings recession case of 2016 meaning that all bad news is priced in, any slowdown will be temporary and markets will resume their 10 year bull trend with new highs to come.
Yet, bulls have not proven their case. So far lower highs on all key indices risking major potential topping patterns and hence the upcoming earnings season may serve as a key pivot for markets in the weeks ahead. Dovish central banks have been fully priced in by markets and the liquidity of buybacks will at least temporarily disappear during the buyback blackout window.
Favoring bulls in April is, generally speaking, positive seasonality especially in the early part of the month, but Q1 earnings reports will also serve as a key test of how significant the global slowdown is and how pervasive any spillover may bleed into the next few quarters. As earnings estimates have come down significantly during Q1, companies may even surprise to the upside, but it is the revisions to their outlooks that may serve as a key decision node for investors who have priced in little risk into equities other than a few select sectors.
A China deal and even perhaps a miracle relief on Brexit continue to serve as potential upside triggers to outlooks keeping many sellers on the sidelines as many are expecting a further pop in equities especially if a positive China deal were to come to fruition.
Bears have managed to keep price below the January 2018 highs as well as the long term 2009 trend line, but are also running out of time as a confirmed break above the January 2018 highs could set markets on a path to at least retest the highs or make new highs.
Hence the time period in April into May sets up for decision time for markets.
Risk to markets: The rally off of the December lows remains untested and uncorrected with plenty of open gaps below while indices have formed specific patterns that could be interpreted as bearish. Indeed the rally has been so steep that it will require ever higher prices to avoid a confirmed break of these patterns. Due to the vertical nature of this rally these patterns are at risk of breaking to the downside if markets were to experience just a few days of downside. As these patterns are very large sizable downside and an increase in volatility could emerge on a confirmed break of these patterns.
Timing matters as structurally bulls have not been able to confirm a resumption of the larger bull trend hence April may be a key month and bulls can hardly afford a down month.
I’m discussing technicals and select key charts in the video below:
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via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2OAqdUM Tyler Durden
As Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 took off in perfect, cloudless conditions on at 8:37 on March 10, it would take less than two minutes for all hell to break loose with the Boeing 737 Max 8 with 157 people on board.
Two minutes after it departed from Addis Ababa’s highland airport on its scheduled one hour and 40 minute shuttle to Nairobi, things began to go very wrong, according to the Wall Street Journal.
At 8:39, with the jet just 450 feet above the ground, its nose began to pitch down. First Officer Ahmednur Mohamed radioed the control tower to report a “flight-control problem.”
Captain Yared Getachew, a veteran with over 8,000 flight hours, fought to keep the plane’s nose up. One minute later at 8:40, “the oscillation became a wild bounce, then a dive,” according to the WSJ.
“Pitch up, pitch up!” said one pilot to the other before the radio went dead.
At 8:44 the 737 Max 8 crashed into a field 30 miles from the airport, instantly killing everyone on board.
This reconstruction of the final moments of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302, described in new detail by people close to the crash investigation, airline executives and pilots, paints a picture of a catastrophic failure that quickly overwhelmed the flight crew.
The black boxes have reinforced the emerging consensus that the anti-stall MCAS system is to blame, and that the misfiring system is at the heart of both the Ethiopian Airlines crash and the October Lion Air 737 Max 8 crash off the coast of Indonesia less than five months earlier in which the stall-prevention system activated due to an erroneous sensor reading which pushed the plane’s nose down, killing all 189 people on board.
The day before the Lion Air crash, an off-duty pilot flying in the jumpseat of the same plane was able to talk pilots through powering off the MCAS system as it began to exhibit the same malfunction.
Right after the Ethiopian Airlines jet lost radio contact and fell off the radar, it was becoming clear that the plane had crashed.
As two air force helicopters prepared to lift off to search for ET302, pilots on the airport runway were getting restless.
Lazarus Kuol was in line for departure, preparing to take off on his single-engine turboprop aircraft on a medevac flight to the southwestern city of Jinka. He was due to collect two Chinese patients and bring them back to Addis Ababa for treatment.
The waiting pilots, listening to the control tower’s shared frequency, heard the operators discuss an emergency and order all aircraft to remain grounded, while two incoming planes were told to delay landing. The tower had lost contact with ET302. Maybe it was a communication problem, Mr. Kuol thought, or maybe they made an emergency landing on the flat farmlands southeast of the capital. –Wall Street Journal
A relative of a crash victim throws dirt in her face in grief. PHOTO: MULUGETA AYENE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“When I went to the site, the plane was completely below ground,” said Ethiopian Airlines Chief Executive Tewolde Gebremariam. “At that time, we knew there were no survivors.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2U5mtRc Tyler Durden
As Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 took off in perfect, cloudless conditions on at 8:37 on March 10, it would take less than two minutes for all hell to break loose with the Boeing 737 Max 8 with 157 people on board.
Two minutes after it departed from Addis Ababa’s highland airport on its scheduled one hour and 40 minute shuttle to Nairobi, things began to go very wrong, according to the Wall Street Journal.
At 8:39, with the jet just 450 feet above the ground, its nose began to pitch down. First Officer Ahmednur Mohamed radioed the control tower to report a “flight-control problem.”
Captain Yared Getachew, a veteran with over 8,000 flight hours, fought to keep the plane’s nose up. One minute later at 8:40, “the oscillation became a wild bounce, then a dive,” according to the WSJ.
“Pitch up, pitch up!” said one pilot to the other before the radio went dead.
At 8:44 the 737 Max 8 crashed into a field 30 miles from the airport, instantly killing everyone on board.
This reconstruction of the final moments of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302, described in new detail by people close to the crash investigation, airline executives and pilots, paints a picture of a catastrophic failure that quickly overwhelmed the flight crew.
The black boxes have reinforced the emerging consensus that the anti-stall MCAS system is to blame, and that the misfiring system is at the heart of both the Ethiopian Airlines crash and the October Lion Air 787 Max 8 crash off the coast of Indonesia less than five months earlier in which the stall-prevention system activated due to an erroneous sensor reading which pushed the plane’s nose down, killing all 189 people on board.
The day before the Lion Air crash, an off-duty pilot flying in the jumpseat of the same plane was able to talk pilots through powering off the MCAS system as it began to exhibit the same malfunction.
Right after the Ethiopian Airlines jet lost radio contact and fell off the radar, it was becoming clear that the plane had crashed.
As two air force helicopters prepared to lift off to search for ET302, pilots on the airport runway were getting restless.
Lazarus Kuol was in line for departure, preparing to take off on his single-engine turboprop aircraft on a medevac flight to the southwestern city of Jinka. He was due to collect two Chinese patients and bring them back to Addis Ababa for treatment.
The waiting pilots, listening to the control tower’s shared frequency, heard the operators discuss an emergency and order all aircraft to remain grounded, while two incoming planes were told to delay landing. The tower had lost contact with ET302. Maybe it was a communication problem, Mr. Kuol thought, or maybe they made an emergency landing on the flat farmlands southeast of the capital. –Wall Street Journal
A relative of a crash victim throws dirt in her face in grief. PHOTO: MULUGETA AYENE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“When I went to the site, the plane was completely below ground,” said Ethiopian Airlines Chief Executive Tewolde Gebremariam. “At that time, we knew there were no survivors.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UnhZoq Tyler Durden
Following reports over the weekend warning about a “system-wide collapse” along the southern border as a surge in asylum-seeking migrants has overwhelmed Customs and Border Protections’ detention centers and strains municipal resources, Trump acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney warned during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week” that President Trump’s threat to close the southern border this week should absolutely be taken seriously.
The Mexican peso tumbled Friday afternoon after Trump tweeted that he would close the border unless Mexico took steps to stop Central American migrants traveling through its territory, before telling a group of reporters that he would shut the border “for a long time” if nothing is done.
Responding to a question about whether Trump was serious about closing the border, Mulvaney affirmed that it would take “something dramatic” for him not to do it. Even former Obama officials have come forward to talk about the burgeoning crisis at the border, and the fact that the situation isn’t a “made up emergency” has now been well established.
“When Jeh Johnson said it’s a crisis, I hope people now believe us. A lot of folks in the media…Democrats didn’t believe us a month ago, two months ago, when we said what was happening at the border was a crisis: a humanitarian crisis, a security crisis,” he said.
“One hundred thousand people coming across the border this month…that is a crisis,” he added.
Mulvaney was referring to figures from the border patrol that 100,000 migrants, many of whom were traveling in families, crossed the southern border in March, which would be a new record. Last week, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan warned that the agency’s resources had reached a “breaking point”, and called on Congress to act to authorize more resources for the border patrol and customs enforcement at the border.
Trump previously threatened to close the border in November and December, though the markets mostly shrugged these off as idle threats. But as more mainstream media outlets cover the rapidly deteriorating situation with an increasing sense of urgency, the pressure is mounting on Trump to hold to his anti-immigration principles and take immediate action.
Though any order to close the border will almost certainly elicit lawsuits to try and reverse it.
Nine months ago, as US Treasury yields were drifting lower from a seven-year high reached in May of last year, we pointed out a curious development in the market for US sovereign debt that to our complete lack of surprise had been overlooked by the mainstream financial press: In April and May, Russia’s central bank liquidated $81 billion in Treasurys, nearly its entire holdings.
The drop was so significant, that Russia fell off the Treasurys list of the 30 or so largest Treasury holders. And in the months that have followed, as the US has imposed more economic sanctions and feuded with Putin over the fate of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, Vladimir Putin has turned instead to alternative reserves as the country’s de-dollarization push continued.
Over the same period of time, Russia was a conspicuously large buyer of Chinese yuan, as Goldman Sachs noted (and as we highlighted well earlier today), helping contribute to a spike in yuan buying by reserve managers last year, as the IMF pointed out in a recent report.
But given the yuan’s still-limited convertibility, it has its limitations as a reliable reserve for foreign central banks. Which is probably why Moscow has relied on another reserve option that’s popularity has endured for most of the history of human civilization: Gold.
Data from the Russian central bank cited by Bloomberg show that its gold reserves have nearly quadrupled over the past ten years, and that 2018 marked the most “ambitious year yet” for Russia gold-buying, which coincided with the Central Bank of Russia’s mass-dumping of its Treasury holdings.
And in a rare, if muted, acknowledgement from the American financial press that de-dollarization is a contemporary threat that should be taken seriously, BBG said that “analysts, who have coined the term de-dollarization, speculate about the global economic impacts if more countries adopt a similar philosophy and what it could mean for the dollar’s desirability compared with other assets, such as gold or the Chinese yuan.”
While Russia’s dependence on exporting commodities like gold means it must continue to depend, at least in part, on the greenback (three-quarters of Russia’s $600 billion of trade is conducted in dollars, per BBG), this voracious gold buying is setting an example for other countries – in the west as well as in the east. Last year, Russia’s gold buying outstripped its gold production for the first time. And as relations with the US continue to deteriorate as longstanding arms control treaties are torn up and belligerent rhetoric spouted by both Trump and Putin, the Russian central bank might start importing more gold, which could have a positive impact on the global price.
Per two analysts, Russia has ingle-handedly “put a floor” under the price of gold. Though some suspect that, since the CBR is now a known quantity in international gold markets, it would need to markedly accelerate its purchases to have a material impact on the price. Though few expect Russia to stop buying now.
Central bank buying has helped “strengthen gold from a weak hand to a strong hand” and supported gold prices in recent years, according to Ronald-Peter Stoeferle, managing partner at Liechtenstein-based asset manager Incrementum AG. Bullion has risen more than 20 percent since the start of 2016. It traded up 0.5 percent at $1,297.15 per ounce at 12:40 p.m. in London.
“If it wasn’t for Russia’s central bank, last year would have been the worst year for gold buying in a decade, so it helped put a floor on the price,” said Adrian Ash, head of research at gold brokerage BullionVault Ltd. “However, Russian buying is now well known so it would take a significant increase in their purchases to materially impact the gold price.”
But perhaps the most notable aspect of Putin’s rhetoric about de-dollarization is how it’s apparently influencing leaders of states that are still – at least nominally – friendly toward the US. French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview late last year that Europe is too dependent on the greenback,declaring it “an issue of sovereignty” (this from one of the most ardently pro-EU politicians on the Continent). And last year, Poland and Hungary surprised the market by making the first substantial purchases of gold by EU member states in more than a decade.
So the next time you hear an analyst on CNBC categorically dismiss the notion that the loss of the dollar’s reserve currency status isn’t something that markets should take seriously (even as several crediblevoices have warned that it should be), you’d do well to remember this chart.
Nothing lasts forever.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2OAZjvX Tyler Durden
Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Saturday that America has a “crisis” at the southern border, and that the number of apprehensions exceed anything he encountered during his time serving under former President Barack Obama.
“By anyone’s definition, by any measure, right now we have a crisis at our southern border,” he said on “Cavuto LIVE.”
“According to the commissioner of [Customs and Border Protection], there were 4,000 apprehensions in one day alone this past week, and we’re on pace for 100,000 apprehensions on our southern border this month.”
“That is by far a greater number than anything I saw on my watch in my three years as Secretary of Homeland Security,” he said.
Johnson’s remarks come after President Trump this week accused Mexico of doing nothing to stop the illegal immigration flow to the U.S. and threatened to close to southern border next week.
….through their country and our Southern Border. Mexico has for many years made a fortune off of the U.S., far greater than Border Costs. If Mexico doesn’t immediately stop ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States throug our Southern Border, I will be CLOSING…..
….the Border, or large sections of the Border, next week. This would be so easy for Mexico to do, but they just take our money and “talk.” Besides, we lose so much money with them, especially when you add in drug trafficking etc.), that the Border closing would be a good thing!
The SEC can play this motherf***king tape in court.
Marshaling his Trumpian knack for distraction, Tesla CEO Elon Musk dropped his first rap single on SoundCloud, an unexpected release that, as at least one twitter wit pointed out, appeared to be calibrated to distract from Tesla’s Q1 Model 3 deliveries (due out this week), and Musk’s myriad other problems (like the SEC suing to hold him in contempt of court for violating the agency’s restrictions on his twitter activity).
The song, titled “RIP Harambe”, was dedicated to the 17-year-old gorilla who was shot and killed by a Cincinnati Zoo worker in 2016 after grabbing a three-year-old boy who fell into his pen. Since his untimely death, Harambe has become a popular meme and even inspiring an online movement (“Dicks out for Harambe”).
The song, released under Musk’s “record label”, Emo G Records, features Musk rapping a catchy, if heavily autotuned, chorus.
“RIP Harambe, sipping on some Bombay/We on our way to heaven, Amen, Amen/RIP Harambe, smoking on some strong, hey/In the gorilla zoo/And we thinking about you.”
The song had been played more than 200,000 times as of Sunday afternoon.
“No media (T.V. Radio, etc.) Black Press Only!” read a sign posted on the door of Bolton Street Baptist Church, the Savannah Morning News reported.
White reporters were denied entry to a meeting to discuss an upcoming mayoral race in Georgia, while black reporters for at least two television stations and the publisher of the black-owned Savannah Tribune newspaper were allowed into the meeting.
Reporters who got inside were prohibited from taking photos, video or audio recording, according to Stephen Moody, an African-American reporter with WJCL who attended the event.
AP reports that Mayor Eddie DeLoach is seeking re-election this fall. He became Savannah’s first white mayor in 20 years after winning the 2015 campaign.
Elections for Savannah’s top office are nonpartisan, meaning all candidates who qualify end up on the November ballot.
Savannah Alderman Van Johnson, one of three black mayoral candidates to have announced campaigns so far, spoke at the meeting about his campaign for mayor, said groups have the right to determine how they assemble. Johnson said afterward he:
…relayed “my vision for an inclusive Savannah, a progressive Savannah.”
Asked by WTOC-TV about only black reporters being allowed inside, Johnson said:
“It’s not my meeting. Again, I was asked to come give a statement, and so I came and I gave a statement.”
Regina Thomas, a former Georgia state senator and one of the incumbent mayor’s black challengers, skipped the church gathering Wednesday. She said the meeting appeared divisive and was scheduled too early in the campaign.
Former Savannah Mayor Edna Jackson declined to comment before going inside, as did Chatham County Commissioner Chester Ellis.
“This is not my idea,” Ellis said.
The question is – is it racist? And what would happen if Trump hung a sign at The White House “white press only”? Yeah, we know, that’s totally different!!
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HOclG3 Tyler Durden
The former Nevada state assemblywoman who accused Joe Biden of creepy behavior in 2014 said on Sunday that she wants the former VP and possible 2020 Democratic presidential contender to “acknowledge that it was wrong.”
Eva Longoria (left), Joe Biden, Lucy Flores
Lucy Flores claimed in a Friday Op-Ed in The Cut that Biden crept up behind her at a 2014 political event, grabbed her shoulders, ‘inhaled’ her hair, and then planted a “big slow kiss” on the back of her head.
On Sunday, Flores recounted the incident on CNN‘s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper, stating that amid the chaos and energy of the event, Biden “very unexpectedly and out of nowhere,” Biden “put his hands on my shoulders, get up very close to me from behind, lean in, smell my hair, and then plant a slow kiss on the top of my head.”
Former Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores alleges Joe Biden kissed the back of her head in 2014 at a campaign rally: “It was shocking because you don’t expect that kind of intimate behavior, you don’t expect that kind of intimacy from someone so powerful.” https://t.co/mgUK3jZBfFpic.twitter.com/1wXq8XMSOv
Biden responded to the allegations at 3AM on Sunday through communications director Bill Russo, saying in a statement: “In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once – never – did I believe I acted inappropriately.”
Apparently Biden hasn’t seen footage of himself gently caressing children’s faces or trying to kiss them in front of their parents, or groping women from behind.
Flores responded to Biden’s statement, saying that Biden’s ‘intentions’ don’t matter in comparison to the “women on the receiving end of that behavior,” adding “this isn’t the first time, and it wasn’t the only incident where he was acting inappropriately with women.” She also noted the many documented photos and videos of Biden creeping on people.
Lucy Flores: “Part of the reason why I decided to finally say something is because those behaviors were not being taken very seriously. … I just can’t imagine that there was never a situation where someone said to him, ‘Mr. Vice President, you probably should stop doing that’” pic.twitter.com/6Vt5m5DHrE
When asked what she was looking for from Biden, Flores said “Of course I want him to change his behavior. And I want him to acknowledge that it was wrong. And I want this to be a bigger discussion about how there is no accountability structure within our political space. … We are not protected in politics.”
Lucy Flores: “Of course I want him to change his behavior. And I want him to acknowledge that it was wrong. And I want this to be a bigger discussion about how there is no accountability structure within our political space. … We are not protected in politics” #CNNSOTUpic.twitter.com/WgrPz6iPzk
When asked by MSNBC‘s Chuck Todd about the allegations, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said he “knows nothing” about them, but that “Certainly one allegation is not disqualifying, but it should be taken seriously.”
WATCH: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) says he “knows nothing” about allegations over former VP Joe Biden’s behavior. #MTP#IfItsSunday@SenatorDurbin: “Certainly one allegation is not disqualifying, but it should be taken seriously.” pic.twitter.com/38mOTcdtdM
For the past two years, it’s been Trump and Russian collusion all the time, every day, and everywhere we see media bias. Some outlets were more egregious than others in subjecting their audiences to relentless chatter about what they believed to be true, rather than merely reporting the news. Among the many “journalists” who espoused the Democratic Party position on the Mueller investigation, some especially boisterous voices stood out from the crowd. So, in a rather non-scientific study, Liberty Nation republishes a few comments that were quite simply over the top.
But before we get to that, a few salient words of summation are in order. The first come from David Harsanyi who wrote the following for The Federalist:
“Perhaps it was Watergate envy, or bitterness over Donald Trump’s victory, or antagonism towards Republicans in general – or, most likely, a little bit of all the above. But now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has delivered his report on Russian collusion, it’s clear that political journalists did the bidding of those who wanted to delegitimize and overturn Trump’s election.”
A hostile media environment has yielded much unnecessary angst and vitriol. While some are willing to backtrack their comments a bit, others are holding fast to their original remarks. According to Brent Baker, Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center, CNN has used the mantra “does not exonerate” 120 times a day since the Mueller probe ended. And MRC’s Rich Noyes wrote that for “roughly three minutes a night, every night, for an astonishing 791 days,” the media has been poking this mystical Russian bear which has turned into – in the president’s words – a Collusion Delusion.
So, without further ado, here are Liberty Nation’s top 10 outrageous media statements about President Trump, his alleged connections with Russia, and a 2016 election conspiracy. This is by no means the be-all and end-all of verbal high crimes and misdemeanors by media elites, but a few of these remarks are real head-shakers.
Number 10: Carl Bernstein, CNN Commentator
“I think the media, the press, has done one of the great reporting jobs in the history, especially of covering a presidency by the most news organizations. Look, let’s look at where disinformation and mistakes and lies have come from. Hasn’t come from the press, it’s come from the President of the United States. And those around him.”
Number 9: Chuck Todd, NBC News
The following is a compilation of Todd using the word “crime” in connection with Trump four times in just one episode of Meet the Press.
“You have the justice department, if you will, in the Southern District of New York, pretty explicitly implicating the president in a crime. Do you believe there is already enough to start an impeachment inquiry? … The one means to dealing when a president commits crimes is through the impeachment process. If you don’t go through it, isn’t this a way of Congress saying ‘yes, he committed some crimes but politically it’s uncomfortable so you know if you are popular enough or if you have a big enough base you can get away with committing crimes.’”
Number 8: David Corn, Mother Jones
“In 2016, Vladimir Putin’s regime mounted information warfare against the United States, in part to help Trump become president. While this attack was underway, the Trump crew tried to collude covertly with Moscow, sought to set up a secret communications channel with Putin’s office, and repeatedly denied in public that this assault was happening, providing cover to the Russian operation. Trump and his lieutenants aligned themselves with and assisted a foreign adversary, as it was attacking the United States. The evidence is rock-solid: They committed a profound act of betrayal. That is the scandal.”
Number 7: Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer
“[W]e have dramatic evidence of collusion” in addition to “a motive” so we, therefore “have the proof all we need of a scandal that’s arguably worse than Watergate.”
Number 6: Aaron Blake, The Washington Post
“Is there more to the Manafort-Russia ties than we know? Could Carter Page’s own Russia ties have been pursued in a way we simply haven’t heard about? What about George Papadopoulos’s talks with a Russia-allied professor who said Russia had ‘dirt’ on Clinton? Maybe it has something to do with Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Kremlin-backed banker at a National Rifle Association convention? Or the elder Trump’s broader efforts to do business in Russia, through his then-attorney Michael Cohen — possibly including a supposed proposal to give Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse in a proposed Trump Tower Moscow?
Mueller has made a concerted effort not to reveal his hand — either publicly, in filings like the Papadopoulos plea deal, or in the questions he has asked witnesses who might leak. Given that, it’s entirely possible there’s a line of inquiry that we’re completely unaware of or know very little about.”
Number 5: Dan Rather, MSNBC Commentator
“A political hurricane is out there at sea for him [Trump]. We’ll call it Hurricane Vladimir, if you will.”
Number 4: Chris Matthews, MSNBC Host
“Mueller reminds me of the starfish which gets itself tightly around the clam and uses all its stuff to weaken and pry open the clam. Now, this is a battle to the death as far as the clam is concerned. If the starfish is able to open him [Trump] even a little bit, he can get him open all the way, and that’s it of course for the clam. He’s the starfish’s lunch.”
Number 3: Joy Behar, The View
“I think they’re all going to end up together in prison and maybe that’s a good thing.”
Number 2: Joe Scarborough, MSNBC Host
“Anybody that writes an op-ed and suggests that Donald Trump has not put himself directly in the target of an obstruction charge is just fooling themselves and some very, very stupid, ill-informed readers.”
Number 1: John Sipher And Steve Hall, The New York Times Op-Ed Contributors
“We like to think of ourselves as fair-minded and knowledgeable, having between us many years of experience with the C.I.A. dealing with Russian intelligence services. It is our view not only that the Russian government was running some sort of intelligence operation involving the Trump campaign, but also that it is impossible to rule out the possibility of collusion between the two.”
And
“However, perhaps the most telling piece of information may be the most obvious. Donald Trump himself made numerous statements in support of Russia, Russian intelligence and WikiLeaks during the campaign. At the same time, Mr. Trump and his team have gone out of their way to hide contacts with Russians and lied to the public about it. Likewise, Mr. Trump has attacked those people and institutions that could get to the bottom of the affair. He fired his F.B.I. Director James Comey, criticized and bullied his attorney general and deputy attorney general, denigrated the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and assails the news media, labeling anything he dislikes ‘fake news.’ Innocent people don’t tend to behave this way.”
