ModerateRepublican

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Let me tell you what just got reported, because you will not believe it until you see it laid out.

The Trump administration cut a billion-dollar tungsten deal with Kazakhstan. Tungsten is the metal we need for missile warheads, fighter jets, and computer chips. Trump himself got on the phone to close it. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick worked it from the inside, sending letters, leaning on the Kazakh president, lining up as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing.

Within weeks of those negotiations, investors tied to a firm partly owned by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump took a 20% stake in an entity connected to the very same Kazakhstan project their father was negotiating. Around that same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm run by Lutnick’s own sons, raised $210 million for a partner in the deal and pocketed the fees.

The fathers set the policy. The sons cashed in.

Six days after the Trump sons and their partners moved their money, Lutnick signed the final deal.

The reporting found one or both families have financial ties to at least 14 companies working with the government on critical mining deals.

The total federal funding flowing toward those companies tops $8.9 billion.

This is your tax money.

It is supposed to secure our supply chains and protect our troops, not pad the portfolios of the President’s children and the Commerce Secretary’s children.

This is the most corrupt administration in American history. It is not close.

We must keep digging, and keep asking the questions they do not want asked. Republicans in Congress are unwilling to lift a finger. Mike Johnson is running a protection racket.

Either we will end the corruption, or the corruption will be the end of us.

https://t.co/yFOl7zvOhC

[ModerateRepublican @Modr8_1104]

@DecodingFoxNews Why in the world does Fox keep Kilmeade?

[ModerateRepublican @Modr8_1104]

@KellyScaletta Even with all the documentation that has to be provided to get a real ID, the real ID won’t be sufficient to prove citizenship for voting.

[ModerateRepublican @Modr8_1104]

@RapidResponse47 And most importantly, a golf course. Seriously??

[James Henry @Jameshenry1970]

You dont need 32 Years Experience as a Painter to see this is Not Vandalism @GuntherEagleman @WhiteHouse

This is what I mean when I say look at the failure pattern. The edges are irregular and the coating appears to be releasing beyond one small spot.
A blade may lift material that has already failed but it does not explain why a properly bonded system is coming loose in broad, uneven sections.
Release the prep logs, primer/topcoat system, cure schedule, thickness readings, and independent inspection. Taxpayers deserve facts, not excuses.

#ReflectingPool #CoatingFailure #AdhesionFailure #Delamination #SurfacePreparation #QualityControl #IndependentInspection #ReleaseTheRecords #TaxpayerTransparency #Accountability #FactsMatter #UnionTrades

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

A note to my friends who still back Trump:

I am not here to dunk on you. I am writing because you have a working brain, and this story insults it.

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool got a $14 million paint job. Shortly thereafter the water turned green and the new “American flag blue” coating started peeling off the bottom in sheets. Trump says vandals did it. He claims, without evidence, that someone took a knife and cut a 300-foot slit, a number that grew to 350 feet while he was still talking.

Back on May 4, Trump bragged about that same coating and said, if you had a knife, you could not even cut it, so strong, like powerful rubber. He cannot have it both ways.

And the green water?

A George Mason scientist tested it and found ordinary, non-toxic algae, the kind that blooms in any shallow sunny pool. To fight it, crews dumped hydrogen peroxide into the water.

Hydrogen peroxide is also a paint stripper.

That, not sabotage or vandalism, is the obvious reason the paint came off. They wrecked their own paint job, then blamed phantom vandals for it.

The lone "vandal" they paraded is a 67-year-old Olympian who touched a flap of paint already peeling on its own.

Here is the thing. If they will look you in the eye and lie about something this small, something you can see with your own eyes, ask yourself what else they are lying to you about.

Again, you have a working brain. People like Karoline Leavitt are counting on you to stay loyal instead of exercising independent thought.

Prove them wrong.

[James Henry @Jameshenry1970]

As a DC9 union painter with 30+ years in coatings, I’m looking at the failure not a conspiracy theory.
When a coating is lifting off in large sheets like this, that points to an adhesion failure: improper surface preparation, contamination left behind, the wrong coating system, poor recoat timing, or water introduced before the system fully cured.

A quality two-part epoxy system can perform well but the product is only as good as the prep and application. The substrate has to be properly profiled/cleaned, the specified primer or first coat applied correctly, recoat windows followed, and the full system allowed to cure before being put back into service.

That is not “vandals.” That is a coating failure that deserves a real independent inspection and an explanation of exactly what system was specified and how it was applied.

#Coatings #Epoxy #SurfacePreparation #PaintFailure #UnionPainter #QualityControl #Accountability #ReflectingPool
#Properpreperation #Elonmusk
#DonaldTrump #Donaldtrumpjr
@krassenstein @EdKrassen @eddsmitty @LucasSa56947288 @adammocklerr @harryjsisson @acnewsitics @Acyn @Bakari_Sellers

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

The irony of Republicans controlling all branches of government while

bankrupting the country, starting a war, sending money to fraudulent programs, violating the Constitution, giving corporations immunity...

but arguing that the biggest problem we have is “stolen elections.”

[Molly Ploofkins @Mollyploofkins]

Video captures the moment vandals caused a 350-foot gash in the Reflecting Pool's sealant

[Brian Tyler Cohen @briantylercohen]

“Let’s be honest about what this is. Donald Trump hired a company that was not qualified, they did a shoddy job, and because he has such a fragile ego, now Donald Trump has to play make believe that, in fact, this was the work of 'elusive vandals'... this is all just bad community theater."

h/t @Elex_Michaelson @CNNTheStoryIs

[ModerateRepublican @Modr8_1104]

@WhiteHouse Because hiring an inexperienced vendor through a no-bid process, then driving a motorcade across it, would not be factors in this Trump sh*tshow 🤡

[ModerateRepublican @Modr8_1104]

@PressSec But driving a motorcade across the reflecting pool would not be destructive ??
#ReleaseTheEpsteinFilesNOW

[NB 🌘🦉🇺🇸🕊️ @galactic_dust83]

@RapidResponse47

[ModerateRepublican @Modr8_1104]

@WhiteHouse @POTUS Another corrupt grift by trump. If trump had any morals, he would gift it back to the US when he leaves. Keeping it is so wrong.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Nichols: He really thought that he was going to collapse the Iranian regime and then walk through the streets of a free Tehran while they were dedicating a statue to him. He was on a sugar high from toppling the president of Venezuela. His popularity was cratering, the economy was going in the wrong direction. And I think like a lot of autocrats, he said, a splendid little war in the Middle East where I emerge the hero will be great. 

And now he's admitting they blackmailed me with the international economy, and I'm paying the blackmail because I have to.

[ModerateRepublican @Modr8_1104]

@RandPaul Sorry but no. Those attacking Trump have criticized him from day 1 for starting the war.

[Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump]

The deal with Iran will go down as one of the most incompetent ever made. The U.S. lost on virtually every point. We just don't win anymore!

[Travis Akers 🇺🇸 @travisakers]

Wait until you hear what your dad did…

[ModerateRepublican @Modr8_1104]

@Interior That’s a pretty low bar. I’d prefer to see trump deliver on his 10 year old campaign promise for better healthcare.

[ModerateRepublican @Modr8_1104]

@AdamKinzinger I pray for that every day. Ukraine deserves its sovereignty and a return to everyday free life. Even innocent Russia citizens deserve for the deaths to stop.