November 22, 2016 10:38 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Tuesday (November 22)

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• by: Colorado Pols

We’re dreaming…of a sleeting…Thanksgiving… It’s time to Get More Smarter with Colorado Pols. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of a visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show.

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► “Lock her up!” Nah, that was just talk, says Donald Trump. From the Washington Post:

President-elect Donald Trump has decided that he won’t seek criminal investigations related to former rival Hillary Clinton’s private email server or her family foundation, a senior Trump adviser said Tuesday

Trump’s apparent decision, conveyed by former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,’’ is a change from his campaign rhetoric, in which he issued incendiary calls for a special prosecutor to reopen the FBI’s closed investigation of Clinton’s use of a private server while serving as secretary of state and had also urged investigations of allegations of corruption at the Clinton Foundation. He nicknamed the Democratic nominee “Crooked Hillary” and encouraged chants of “Lock her up!” at his rallies.

Trump’s decision to pursue or not pursue a criminal investigation from the Oval Office would be an extraordinary break with political and legal protocol, which holds that the attorney general and FBI make decisions on whether to conduct investigations and file charges, free of pressure from the president.

For all of those Trump supporters out there who are upset that their candidate is backing away from this particular campaign pledge…well, get used to it (you, too, Breitbarters).

Perhaps Trump realized that it wouldn’t look good to go after Clinton when his own Trump Foundation had just admitted to breaking IRS rules on “self-dealing.”

► Elsewhere, Trump presided over a bizarre meeting with top executives and journalists from several media outlets on Monday. As The New York Post reports, the meeting did not go well:

“Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong.’ He addressed everyone in the room calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,” the source said…

…The meeting was off the record, meaning the participants agreed not to talk about the substance of the conversations.

The hour-long session included top execs from network and cable news channels. Among the attendees were NBC’s Deborah Turness, Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, ABC’s James Goldston, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz.

And that was just yesterday. As the Washington Post explains, Trump’s media tirade continued on Tuesday:

President-elect Donald Trump escalated his long-standing battle with the media on Tuesday, canceling a meeting at the New York Times and blasting the publication on Twitter hours after he criticized TV journalists at another contentious sit-down. But as mercurial as he has been known to be, he later changed his mind and agreed to the meeting.

Trump had scheduled two meetings with the publisher and journalists from the Times on Tuesday, including one on-the-record session. But the president-elect, who frequently attacked the paper during his campaign, suddenly canceled the events in a series of tweets.

“I cancelled today’s meeting with the failing @nytimes when the terms and conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment. Not nice,’’ Trump wrote to his nearly 16 million followers on the micro-blogging site. “Perhaps a new meeting will be set up with the @nytimes,’’ he continued. “In the meantime they continue to cover me inaccurately and with a nasty tone!’’

Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the United States!

► Former Congressman and two-time gubernatorial loser Bob Beauprez is reportedly being considered for Interior Secretary in Donald Trump’s administration. This is the same Bob Beauprez who once said that his plan for dealing with wildlife and oil and gas drilling was to teach elk to learn to migrate somewhere else.

Get even more smarter after the jump…

IN CASE YOU ARE STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Amendment T is going down to defeat after all. The proposal to remove a slavery reference from the Colorado Constitution failed in a very close vote that now appears to be beyond the margin for a potential recount.

► Congressman Ed Perlmutter (D-Jefferson County) says he is backing Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan for House Minority Leader over Nancy Pelosi.

► A limited number of tickets for Donald Trump’s Presidential inauguration are available through the office of Senator Cory Gardner (R-Yuma). We’re a little surprised that Gardner’s office has access to any tickets for the inauguration; Gardner, after all, was among the Republican elected officials who called on Trump to drop out of the race for President less than two months ago. Trump is known to have a long memory for those who were not supportive of his Presidential bid.

► Donald Trump is going to be our next President, and no amount of bellyaching about the Electoral College is going to change this fact. Still, it is interesting to see that Democrat Hillary Clinton continues to increase her sizable lead in the popular vote; with plenty of votes still waiting to be tallied, Clinton has more than a 1.7 million-vote lead over Trump.

As Vox reports, perhaps Democrats should consider this a mandate from the voters.

► Colorado Democrats will hold a majority control in the State Board of Education for the first time in 42 years after Rebecca McClellan was finally declared the winner in a tight race for a BOE seat from CD-6.

► Undocumented students in Boulder County are worried about the prospect of being deported once Donald Trump moves into the White House.

► Calvin Shivers has been appointed as the new head of the Denver office of the FBI.

► According to a new survey, 59% of voters believe that Donald Trump should delete his Twitter account. From Politico:

Since his surprise win against Clinton earlier this month, Trump has both said that he intends to be “restrained” in his use of social media and gone against that promise. Since the election, he has used the platform to dismiss reporting from The New York Times, censure protesters who have taken to the streets to voice their anger about his election and demanded that the cast of the musical “Hamilton” apologize for its statement to Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

► If you are a federal government employee who voted for Donald Trump for President…you might be kicking yourself for awhile. 

► “Hail Trump!” say alt-right/neo-nazi supporters.

OTHER LINKS YOU SHOULD CLICK

► North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory refuses to concede his re-election bid to Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper on account of imaginary voter fraud.

► Rust Belt Democrats had a specific reason for abandoning Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

ICYMI

► A panel of three federal judges ruled on Monday that 2011 redistricting changes in Wisconsin constituted illegal gerrymandering.

Don’t forget to check out The Get More Smarter Show. You can also Get More Smarter by liking Colorado Pols on Facebook!