Tag: Trump authoritarian impulses

Trump Essentially Dares Brennan to Sue Over Stripped Clearance

The following article by John T. Bennett was posted on the Roll Call website August 20, 2018:

President wants former CIA director’s ‘records, texts, emails and documents’

President Trump and his legal team are essentially daring former CIA Director John Brennan to sue the president over a terminated security clearance. Credit: Chris Maddaloni, CQ Roll Call

Donald Trump on Monday essentially dared former CIA Director John Brennan to sue him over the security clearance the president revoked last week.

Trump ordered Brennan’s security clearance turned off after the former Barack Obama aide and Cabinet official harshly criticized the sitting president, even dubbing his performance last month alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin as “treasonous.”

Brennan told MSNBC Friday night he is “thinking” about taking Trump to court over the matter, saying, “As you can imagine, a number of lawyers have reached out to say there is a very strong case here, not so much to reclaim mine but to prevent this from happening in the future. And so, I am thinking about what it is that I might want to do.”

Donald Trump orders Pentagon to plan military parade to rival pomp and ceremony of France’s Bastille Day

The following article by the Foreign Staff of the Telegraph was posted on their website February 7, 2018:

Donald Trump admires a military parade in Paris last year Credit: AFP

Donald Trump has asked for a large-scale military parade, an unconventional move that has drawn comparisons between the US President and dictators such as Kim Jong-un.

Mr Trump – who has long toyed with the idea of a parade in Washington that would showcase American muscle and underscore his role as commander-in-chief – made the request to top Pentagon officers, who are looking for a date.

“President Trump is incredibly supportive of America’s great service members who risk their lives every day to keep our country safe,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. Continue reading “Donald Trump orders Pentagon to plan military parade to rival pomp and ceremony of France’s Bastille Day”

Carl Bernstein: Trump’s Behavior Is More ‘Egregious’ Than Nixon’s

The following article by Chris Sosa was posted on the AlterNet website December 4, 2017:

The president isn’t even trying to mask his authoritarian impulses.

Veteran reporter Carl Bernstein, best known for his journalism during President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that President Donald Trump’s “authoritarian” behavior is more blatant than Nixon’s abuse of power.

“Richard Nixon is a criminal president who abused his authority in secret throughout his presidency and had to leave office because of it,” Bernstein explained. “Donald Trump, by contrast, is a president of the United States who has claimed authoritarian powers for himself and exercised them not in secret but openly, and now because of that it looks like he may well have obstructed justice, among other possibily illegal acts.”

Trump’s behavior is arguably worse than Nixon’s before the former president fired the special prosecutor, an example Trump may choose to follow as the Russia investigation inches further into his inner circle.

“The conduct of Donald Trump in office as we’ve seen it publicly is much more egregious than we publicly saw Nixon’s conduct certainly up to the time that he fired the special prosecutor in the Saturday Night Massacre,” Bernstein said.

View the post here.