Tag: Trump selfishness

Trump and Melania left Biden a security ‘headache’ because they didn’t want to be bothered: report

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According to a report from CNN, serious security upgrades were required at the White House before Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, but he left them for his successor Joe Biden when he assumed the Oval Office because the former president and his wife Melania didn’t want to deal with the mess and inconvenience of construction.

Facing security threats against the White House — and prior to the invasion of the Capitol building on Jan 6th by far-right insurrectionists — the Secret Service recommended improvements on the grounds that included “substantial upgrades to its future security apparatus, updates that would include digging deeply and extensively, from the upper main driveway to the lower, across acres of pristine green grass.”

With the Secret Service working in tandem with the National Park Service to put together a plan for the multimillion-dollar overhaul, it was left to Trump to give the go-ahead with the assurance it would be done in phases to avoid a massive upheaval on the grounds. Continue reading.

‘I don’t think he cares about winning’: McConnell ally realizes Trump is all ‘about himself’

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and former President Donald Trump exchanged barbs this week as their feud deepened. But some GOP strategists have realized that Trump may just be in it for himself, the Associated Press reported.

The conversation for the last several years from analysts has been about Trump’s selfishness, as the Milwaukee Independent described it, or his constant need for self-promotion, as biographer David Cay Johnston explained. 

Leading GOP strategists described the exploding feud between the former Republican president and the Senate’s most powerful Republican as, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a direct threat to the party’s path to the House and Senate majorities in next year’s midterms. Continue reading.

Here’s how to fight back against Trump’s destruction of the Post Office

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Back in 2017, the Republican National Committeeannounced four finance chairmen. One of those was Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn, since forced to resign under allegations of sexual misconduct. The next was Elliot Broidy, who told a foreign government he could get the Justice Department to drop a graft investigation—if he was paid $75 million. Number three was some guy named Michael Cohen who … has a new book, so that’s cool. The last of the four was Louis DeJoy, top Republican fundraiser and current postmaster general engaged in sinking the service through blatant sabotage.

With Trump refusing to even consider a bill that would provide necessary funding, and DeJoy meeting with Republican leaders to give them both an assurance that the Post Office won’t be prepared to handle the election, as well as smoothing the road for the old Republican dream of privatizing a government service guaranteed by the Constitution, it may seem like there’s little that can be done, especially considering the ticking clock between now and Election Day. But there are ways to turn up the heat and turn this problem around. Continue reading.

A Maine factory says it will have to discard all coronavirus swabs made during Trump’s factory tour

Puritan Medical Products, a medical swab manufacturer, says it will have to discard all of the swabs made in the background of President Donald Trump’s visit to the factory on Friday.

While workers on the factory floor wore lab coats and personal protective equipment, Trump did not wear a mask while touring the facility or visiting with employees.

In a statement to USA TODAY, Puritan did not disclose either its reasoning for dumping the coronavirus swabs or the number of coronavirus tests that would be lost.  Continue reading.

Trump missed call on Ukraine aid to play golf — on the same day whistleblower complaint was filed

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump missed a conference call with top officials about his order to freeze military aid to Ukraine to play golf with professional player John Daly on the same day that the whistleblower complaint which triggered his impeachment was filed.

Trump’s decision set off a frenzy behind the scenes as some aides scrambled to justify the move, while others pushed to change his mind, according to an extensive New York Times report detailing what happened inside the administration following the president’s directive.

Trump first asked to freeze the aid in June. The order led Russel Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, to search on Google for a right-wing Washington Examiner article, which appears to have prompted Trump’s decision. Continue reading

‘Deep inside, Donald Trump is a very empty and sad person’: Psychologist John Gartner warns the president is on the verge of a ‘hypomanic episode’

AlterNet logoThe first week of public impeachment hearings against Donald Trump in the House of Representatives has concluded. Despite the obsessive efforts of Trump’s Republican Party minions, his personal spokespeople and the right-wing disinformation media, the facts are clear: Multiple witnesses independently report that Donald Trump abused the power of the presidency for personal gain in an effort to bribe and extort the president of Ukraine into aiding his re-election campaign.

As documented by Robert Mueller’s report, the Ukraine scandal is part of a long pattern by Donald Trump and his supplicants to seek out foreign assistance to subvert American democracy, with the goal of first installing Trump in power and then keeping him there.

During their public testimony, career State Department officials George Kent and Bill Taylor reported that military aid to Ukraine was delayed until that country’s government agreed to Trump’s demands to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden for “crimes” which they did not commit.

View the complete November 18 article by Chauncey DeVega from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

The Mueller report: A profile of a president willing to sell out his country

It’s hard to come to any conclusion other than Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office.

When Attorney General William Barr provided a brief, four-page summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation on March 22, it was obvious there were more questions remaining than answers. The full report was rumored to have clocked in at well over three hundred pages and Barr’s summary left much to be desired as to just what Mueller had uncovered. The message that Donald Trump would not be charged with offenses directly relating to Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and that the Department of Justice had decided not to file charges of obstruction of justice, was met by celebration with some and puzzlement by others.

Having finally had a chance to look at an initial, redacted version of the report, Americans got a chance last Thursday to see for themselves just what horrors Attorney General Barr had been trying to bury for his president. In Mueller’s 448-page detailed narrative of his investigation, we saw the story of a campaign deeply steeped in Russian efforts to undermine our free and fair elections and a president attempting to or actively breaking the law to cover it up.

Continue reading “The Mueller report: A profile of a president willing to sell out his country”