WASHINGTON — John Kerry’s bid to save one of his most significant accomplishments as secretary of state took him to New York on a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago, where, more than a year after he left office, he engaged in some unusual shadow diplomacy with a top-ranking Iranian official.

He sat down at the United Nations with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss ways of preserving the pact limiting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It was the second time in about two months that the two had met to strategize over salvaging a deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration, according to a person briefed on the meetings.

With the Iran deal facing its gravest threat since it was signed in 2015, Kerry has been on an aggressive yet stealthy mission to preserve it, using his deep lists of contacts gleaned during his time as the top US diplomat to try to apply pressure on the Trump administration from the outside. President Trump, who has consistently criticized the pact and campaigned in 2016 on scuttling it, faces a May 12 deadline to decide whether to continue abiding by its terms.

 
 

ROBERT MUELLER: UNMASKED
 
by Congressman Louie Gohmert
 
Robert Mueller has a long and sordid history of illicitly targeting innocent people that is a stain upon the legacy of American jurisprudence. He lacks the judgment and credibility to lead the prosecution of anyone.
 
I do not make these statements lightly. Each time I prepared to question Mueller during Congressional hearings, the more concerned I became about his work ethic. Then as I went back to begin compiling all that information in order to recount personal interactions with Mueller, the more clearly the big picture began to come into focus. At one point I had to make the decision to stop adding to this or it would turn into a far too lengthy project. My goal was to share some first-hand information as other Republican Members of Congress had requested, adding,
“You seem to know so much about him.” This article is
prepared from my viewpoint to help better inform the reader about the Special Prosecutor leading the effort to railroad President Donald J. Trump through whatever manufactured charge he can allege. Judging by Mueller's history, it doesn't matter who he has to threaten, harass, prosecute or bankrupt to get someone to be willing to allege something
—
anything
—
about our current President, it certainly appears Mueller will do what it takes to bring down his target, ethically, or unethically, based on my findings.

Conservatives Saturday night and Sunday criticized the tenor and character of the White House Correspondents’ dinner after comedian Michelle Wolf ripped into Trump administration officials.

Wolf stunned the crowd at Saturday night’s dinner with biting jokes about President Trump and his White House, including top aides like counselor Kellyanne Conway and press secretary Sarah Sanders, who attended the dinner in his stead.

Trump, as he did in 2017, skipped the dinner in order to hold a campaign rally in Washington, Mich.

Many Washington conservatives felt the dinner was unnecessarily cruel toward Conway and Sanders, and other Republicans.

“My wife @mercedesschlapp and I walked out early from the wh correspondents dinner. Enough of elites mocking all of us,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, in a Twitter post.

Wolf also told a joke about abortion that outraged conservatives.

The joke centered on Vice President Mike Pence's anti-abortion position.

“He thinks abortion is murder,” Wolf said, “which, first of all, don’t knock it ‘til you try it — and when you do try it, really knock it. You know, you’ve got to get that baby out of there. And yeah, sure, you can groan all you want. I know a lot of you are very anti-abortion. You know, unless it’s the one you got for your secret mistress."

Comedian Rob Schneider believes that 'Saturday Night Live' is beginning to beat a dead horse with their sketch jabs at the Trump administration.

The 54-year-old who got his big break with NBC's comedy series in the 1990s, feels the show has gotten its point across when it comes to its disdain for Trump.

'The fun of 'Saturday Night Live' was always you never knew which way they leaned politically,' he told the New York Daily News.

'You kind of assumed they would lean more left and liberal, but now the cat's out of the bag they are completely against Trump, which I think makes it less interesting because you know the direction the piece is going.'

Imagine, if you will, a cabal of government employees expecting one person to easily win the presidential election, and then the other candidate, the one they couldn’t fathom leading the country, actually wins. Now imagine those government employees aren’t slogging away in the mailrooms of various departments, but they are the upper-echelon of the nation’s intelligence agencies and they resolve to cripple the newly-elected president anyway they can. You don’t have to imagine it, it happened. And we appear to be living in the aftermath of that effort.