Tag: Trump hypocrisy

Trump Press Secretary Admits She Has Voted 11 Times By Mail

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany made the case for allowing more people to vote by mail during the November election when she defended her decision to cast absentee ballots 11 times in the past 10 years.

“Absentee voting has the word absent in it for a reason,” McEnany said in a press statement on Wednesday. “It means you’re absent from the jurisdiction or unable to vote in person.”

Health experts have warned that in-person voting during this pandemic inevitably means a high risk of infection, making it difficult or impossible for many people to do it. Continue reading.

White House Orders Staff to Wear Masks as Trump Misrepresents Testing Record

New York Times logoAt a news conference, the president reiterated that he would not wear a mask himself and again exaggerated the availability of testing for the coronavirus.

>WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday ordered all West Wing employees to wear masks at work unless they are sitting at their desks, an abrupt shift in policy after two aides working near the president — a military valet and Katie Miller, the vice president’s spokeswoman — tested positive for the coronavirus last week.

In an internal email obtained by The New York Times, people who work in the cramped quarters around the Oval Office were told that “as an additional layer of protection, we are requiring everyone who enters the West Wing to wear a mask or face covering.”

>Asked at a Rose Garden news conference whether he had ordered the change, Mr. Trump — who did not wear a mask and has repeatedly said he sees no reason to — said, “Yeah, I did.” But officials said the new requirement was not expected to apply to Mr. Trump or to Vice President Mike Pence. Continue reading.

Trump tore into Obama in 2016 for playing golf — now those attacks have blown up in his face

When Donald Trump was running for president in 2015 and 2016, he spent a lot of time criticizing President Barack Obama for playing so much golf — insisting that Obama could have been more productive if he had spent more time in the White House. But Robert Maguire, research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), reported in a Friday morning tweet that Trump has now surpassed Obama in the amount of time spent golfing as president. And Maguire illustrates his point by posting a hilarious video in which candidate Trump railed against Obama’s golf habit in 2015 and 2016.

Maguire, in his Friday morning tweet, writes that in December 2015, “candidate Trump criticized Obama” for having “played 250 rounds of golf” during his seven years as president. But Maguire quickly adds, “Trump is making his 251st taxpayer-funded visit to one of the golf resorts he still profits from and said he wouldn’t visit if elected.”

Maguine also tweets, “In less than three years in office, Trump has almost surpassed Obama’s eight-year golf tally, which Trump relentlessly criticized on the campaign trail in 2016 (as the video shows).” Continue reading

Will Trump Follow His Own ‘Order’ To Stop Selling Chinese Products?

From duffel bags to ties, to plush robes in his hotels, Trump manufactures quite a list of products in China, despite a demand on Friday that American companies stop working with the country.

“Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China,” Trump bellowed on Twitter Friday morning.

Yikes. That’s going to be quite a dilemma for the Trump organization, Trump hotels, and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka.

Here are just a few Trump-branded items manufactured in China, according to a July 2018 NBC News report:

View the complete August 23 article by Dan Desai martin on the National Memo website here.

‘If you’re a good worker, papers don’t matter’: How a Trump construction crew has relied on immigrants without legal status

Washington Post logoOSSINING, N.Y. — For nearly two decades, the Trump Organization has relied on a roving crew of Latin American employees to build fountains and waterfalls, sidewalks and rock walls at the company’s winery and its golf courses from New York to Florida.

Other employees at Trump clubs were so impressed by the laborers — who did strenuous work with heavy stone — that they nicknamed them “Los Picapiedras,” Spanish for “the Flintstones.”

For years, their ranks have included workers who entered the United States illegally, according to two former members of the crew. Another employee, still with the company, said that remains true today.

View the complete August 9 article by Joshua Partlow and David A. Fahrenthold on The Washington Post website here.

Trump attacks ‘Radical Left’ for boycotting, a tactic he has repeatedly advocated

Washington Post logoPresident Trump on Tuesday night came to the defense of Home Depot, calling those who choose not to shop at the home improvement retailer because of financial ties between its billionaire co-founder, Bernard Marcus, and his presidential campaign “vicious and totally crazed.”

He painted Marcus, 90, as a victim of left-wing Democrats wielding “one of their often used weapons.”

If boycotting is a tactic favored by the left, it is a predilection shared by Trump. In his time as president and as a private person, he has repeatedly advised consumers to shun brands he says have slighted him personally, interfered with his agenda or harmed the national interest.

View the complete July 10 article by Isaac Stanley-Becker on The Washington Post website here.

Qatar has ties to Iran, but Trump eyes ‘investments’ ahead of talks with emir

President didn’t mention Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan during dinner for al-Thani

ANALYSIS — Escalating a name-calling feud with your closest ally’s envoy to your government and threatening another with trade penalties is an unconventional way to build a coalition. But amid tensions with Iran, President Donald Trump is doing just that.

The U.S. leader is slated to meet privately Tuesday afternoon with Qatar’s ruling emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in the Oval Office. The duo will have no shortage of things to discuss, from how to combat Iran’s increasingly aggressive actions related to its nuclear program to Qatar’s ongoing spat with some close American allies.

But before his meeting with al-Thani, the president appeared to have woken up fired up. He posted tweets continuing to slam Sir Kim Darroch, the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Washington, after cables leaked over the weekend of the British diplomat describing Trump and his administration as “clumsy and inept.”

View the complete July 9 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

‘I Don’t Run It’: Trump Responds to Reports of Undocumented Workers at His Properties

New York Times logoAfter months of silence, President Trump responded on Friday to reports that the Trump Organization has employed dozens of undocumented immigrants by saying that he doesn’t know whether the organization does or not.

“I don’t know because I don’t run it,” Mr. Trump said when asked if he was confident that undocumented immigrants were no longer working at his golf courses. “But I would say this: Probably every club in the United States has that because it seems to be, from what I understand, a way that people did business.”

The New York Times first reported in December that Victorina Morales, a Guatemalan undocumented immigrant, and several others living in the country unlawfully, had been employed at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., where Mr. Trump was heading on Friday.

View the complete July 5 article by Nicolas Bogel-Burroughs and Miriam Jordan on The New York Times website here.

Trump admits he lacks exit strategy for an Iran war

Candidate Trump harshly criticized ‘stupid wars’ in Middle East that U.S. couldn’t untangle

President Donald Trump admitted Tuesday he has no plan for how to get out of war with Iran if one breaks out, even though he campaigned on ending protracted American wars in the Middle East that he long has called “stupid.”

Hours after he responded to insults by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani by warning him of “obliteration” if a shooting conflict starts, CQ Roll Call asked Trump this during an unrelated event in the Oval Office: “Do you have an exit strategy for Iran, if war does break out?”

Trump, who called off a retaliatory military strike Thursday following Iran’s shootdown of an American spy drone in disputed waters, had his third hawkish warning for Iran of the day.

View the complete June 25 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Melania Trump’s parents would have struggled to come to the U.S. under Trump’s immigration plan

President Trump’s proposed plan to overhaul the U.S. immigration system would have made it more difficult for his in-laws to migrate to the United States.

First lady Melania Trump, who immigrated from Slovenia in 1996 for modeling, likely brought her parents over through a family unification process that Trump wants to limit, immigration experts say.

The president announced Thursday the contours of a plan that would include increasing the percentage of highly skilled immigrants and decreasing the number of those sponsored by family members living lawfully in the United States.

View the complete May 17 article by Colby Itkowitz on The Washington Post website here.