Hasta La Gadget!

Trevor Noah isn’t finished picking apart President Donald Trump’s first trip abroad.

A day after he criticized Trump for signing a $110 billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia, “The Daily Show” host picked up where he left off by criticizing the president’s version of what went down last week.

During Wednesday’s episode, Noah slammed Trump’s administration for claiming that the president’s international trip went extremely well, despite reports that suggest the opposite.

Noah pointed to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who said during a press briefing Tuesday that the nine-day tour was an “incredible, historic trip,” a “truly an extraordinary week for America” and a “semi-revolution.”

“Not only is the administration ignoring all the criticism of the trip, they’re basically saying it was the greatest presidential trip of all time,” Noah said after airing a highlight reel of Spicer’s rave reviews.

The comedian argued that the White House’s strategy of creating an entirely new narrative is not much different than what an authoritarian regime would do.

“To try and understand what Trump and his administration are doing, all we need to do is turn our gaze to authoritarians,” Noah explained. “You look at other leaders in the world who share his personality.”

He then compared Trump and his administration to North Korea dictator Kim Jong Un and the isolated country’s state-run media agency, using as an example their insistence that Kim never needs to use the restroom because “his body is so well-calibrated.”

“This type of propaganda is normal in a place like North Korea,” Noah said. “But here in America it’s weird because Trump is trying to create his own little North Korea while the rest of us are like, ‘Yo! We’ve got the internet. We know the truth!’”

“The Daily Show” host tied his argument back to Trump’s confusing “convfefe” tweet and how Spicer refused to admit that the president posted it in error.

“Trump didn’t screw up in Europe, he succeeded historically,” Noah said, emphasizing Trump’s skewed narrative. “He didn’t fall asleep while tweeting. He humiliated his enemies. Covfefe isn’t a typo. It’s a fantastic new word.”

Watch the full takedown in the video above.

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It has been years in the making, but parent can finally have some amount of reprieve. Between 2011 and 2016, more than $70 million worth of purchases have been made on Amazon. None of them made by the account owners. Instead, they were unwittingly made by their offspring, leading to an investigation and eventual charges by the FTC. Now the … Continue reading

President Donald Trump has granted ethics waivers to at least 17 of his top White House aides, including chief strategist Steve Bannon, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, in addition to four former lobbyists.

The waivers, released by the White House late Wednesday but granted on various dates, undermine Trump’s campaign pledge to “drain the swamp” in Washington.

They also reveal a president who is granting ethics waivers at an unusually rapid pace. The 17 senior White House appointees were all granted waivers in the past four months. His predecessor, Barack Obama, granted that same number of waivers to his top staff over the course of his eight years in office. 

The waivers allow those covered under them to be exempt from some of the restrictions imposed by Trump’s executive order on ethics, which he signed just days after taking office. Most involve allowing contact with former clients and employers.

According to White House lawyers, each of these waivers is justified because the administration’s “need for the covered employee’s services outweighs the concern” that he or she might put their own financial interests above the interests of the nation.

Conway’s waiver, for example, permits her to meet and communicate with former clients of her consulting firm. Priebus’ waiver allows him to interact with the Republican National Committee, of which he is a former chairman.

White House Counsel Don McGhan was one of six lawyers who joined the Trump administration from the law firm Jones Day. All six of them were granted a limited waiver to “participate in communications and meetings with Jones Day.”

Another waiver allows all Trump executive appointees to communicate with news organizations. The language of this waiver covers Bannon, who was executive chairman of the far-right site Breitbart News until he joined the Trump campaign last year. Without the waiver, Bannon would be barred from meeting with Breitbart.

In addition to the boldfaced names, four staffers were granted waivers to deal with issues they recently worked on as lobbyists in the private sector.

Shahira Knight, who is a special assistant for tax and retirement policy, was a lobbyist for Fidelity Investments before joining the administration. Andrew Olmem, who does financial policy, was a lobbyist for big banks and lenders.

Michael Catanzaro, recently hired as one of Trump’s top energy advisers, was a lobbyist for oil and gas companies. Knight, Olmem and Catanzaro are all members of Trump’s National Economic Council, which is headed by former Goldman Sachs boss Gary Cohn.

The fourth lobbyist granted a waiver is Joshua Pitcock, who serves as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence. Pitcock was a lobbyist in Indiana before joining the Trump administration.

Other officials granted waivers include Daniel Epstein, who is permitted to interact with his former employer, Cause of Action Institute, the watchdog group backed by the conservative Koch brothers; Rene Augustine, who is allowed to work on hiring White House staff despite having a number of politically sensitive financial holdings; Chris Herndon, the head of White House IT, who is permitted to interact with his former employer, a government IT contractor; and Claire Murray, who received a waiver allowing her to communicate and meet with her former employer, the law firm Kirkland & Ellis.

In a statement Wednesday to The Washington Post, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the release of the waivers reflects “the president’s commitment to the American people to be transparent.”

“The White House Counsel’s Office worked closely with all White House officials to avoid conflicts arising from their former places of employment or investment holdings,” Walters said. “To the furthest extent possible, counsel worked with each staffer to recuse from conflicting conduct rather than being granted waivers, which has led to the limited number of waivers being issued.”

Staffers who agreed to recuse themselves from working on issues that posed potential conflicts of interest did not need to apply for ethics waivers.

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The New York Mets issued an apology on Wednesday after Mr. Met flipped off fans following a 7-1 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers.

Twitter user Tony T said he was “reaching over for a high five” when the iconic mascot responded not with five fingers… but one:   

Mr. Met doesn’t have five fingers. He has four, so technically he cannot flip the middle one. But given the panache with which he delivered the gesture, he was certainly not inviting fans to step right up and greet the Mets. 

The team quickly apologized: 

Mr. Met may have just been expressing some frustration for a team that entered the season with high hopes then dropped to 23-28. The Mets have had to contend with a series of injuries as well as an incident in which star pitcher Matt Harvey was suspended for not showing up for a game earlier in May. (Harvey had been out late the night before and played golf in the morning.)  

The gesture went viral online and landed the mascot on the back page of the New York Daily News:  

The team said the person involved in the incident won’t be appearing as Mr. Met again, The Associated Press reported. On Twitter, fans were largely united behind the mascot: 

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Lawrence O’Donnell told audiences Wednesday that he will be staying at MSNBC for “the next couple of years,” ending weeks of speculation about the longtime host’s future at the network.

Last month, sources told Yashar Ali in an article for HuffPost that network executives had not been in touch with the “Last Word” host as his contract neared its expiration. The lack of negotiation with a highly rated anchor like O’Donnell was considered unusual, as competing networks could lure talent away with counter-offers.

O’Donnell put those rumors to rest, addressing his future at the network both on the air and on Twitter. 

“I will be sitting right here talking about the James Comey hearing and everything else that happens next week and everything that happens for the next couple of years,” O’Donnell said. 

O’Donnell, who has a 10 p.m. prime-time slot, brings in the second-highest ratings for MSNBC, after Rachel Maddow. He’s been on the network since its inception and has hosted “The Last Word” since 2010.

A vocal opponent of President Donald Trump for years, O’Donnell often used his airtime to address public Twitter feuds he had with the former “Celebrity Apprentice” host. Trump has called for NBC to fire O’Donnell and threatened to sue him for questioning his wealth. But the MSNBC host has continued to rail against the president night after night, recently calling him “the laziest, most ignorant president in history.”

MSNBC did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Wednesday. 

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