‘Wow!’ CNN’s Anderson Cooper is appalled by the real reason Trump went to St. John’s Church

AlterNet logoOn Monday evening, President Donald Trump appeared to cause mass disruption and chaos as federal police cleared peaceful protesters with forceful tactics outside the White House ahead of his walk to the nearby St. John’s Church.

And when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins told Anderson Cooper on air of the reported reason behind this move, the host was shocked and appalled.

“Sources are telling my colleague Kevin Liptak that, in part, the reason the president made this trip outside the gates of the White House — a really rare trip, where you do not often see the president walk out of the front door of the White House, walk across Lafayette Square, to St. John’s — was driven, in part, that he was upset by coverage of the fact that he had been rushed to the underground bunker on Friday night during the protests that you saw breaking out here, in front of the White House,” she said. Continue reading.

White House portrait ceremony may be the latest casualty of the political divide

The traditional White House portrait unveiling may be skipped for the first time in decades amid bad blood between Trump and Obama.

WASHINGTON — It’s been a White House tradition for decades: A first-term president hosts a ceremony in the East Room for the unveiling of the official portrait of his immediate predecessor that will hang in the halls of the White House for posterity.

Republican presidents have done it for Democratic presidents, and vice versa — even when one of them ascended to the White House by defeating or sharply criticizing the other.

“We may have our differences politically,” President Barack Obama said when he hosted former President George W. Bush for his portrait unveiling in 2012, “but the presidency transcends those differences.” Continue reading.

Trump just blew up his ally’s own defense of firing a key watchdog

AlterNet logoRepublicans have been struggling to defend President Donald Trump’s crusade against administration inspectors general, a tactic to shut down independent scrutiny that the GOP undoubtedly would have decried under a Democratic White House. And on Monday, Trump admitted that he knew nothing of the reasoning behind his latest firing, completely blowing up the defense given just the day before by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

In an interview on Sunday, Johnson had defended Trump’s right to fire inspectors general. It’s important for inspectors general to have independence from the departments they investigate — in the case of the recently fired IG Steve Linick, the State Department — but not from the president, he said.

“I think their independence needs to remain within their agencies,” Johnson said. “They work and serve the president of the United States. So I take a slightly different view in terms of what they should be independent from. They need to retain their independence within the agencies, so they can do inspections and investigations and provide that to their leadership, but primarily to the president.” Continue reading.

Trump gives a pathetic excuse for not preparing for a pandemic: ‘I have a lot of things going on’

AlterNet logoIn an interview with ABC News’ David Muir, President Donald Trump admitted Tuesday that he didn’t do enough to prepare for a pandemic before the outbreak of COVID-19, claiming he was distracted by the investigations into his conduct.

Muir, reacting to Trump’s repeated false claims that the Obama administration left the stockpile shelves bare of equipment that is needed during a pandemic, asked why the president didn’t fill those shelves.

“You’re three years into your first term,” Muir said. “You’re now applying for the job again. What did you do when you became president to restock those cupboards that you say were bare?” Continue reading.

Trump says he will block coronavirus aid for U.S. Postal Service if it doesn’t hike prices immediately

Washington Post logoThe president said the postal agency should quadruple its package delivery prices and said he will stop congressionally approved funding

President Trump said Friday he would not approve an emergency loan for the U.S. Postal Service if it did not immediately raise its prices for package delivery.

“The Postal Service is a joke,” Trump told reporters responding to a Washington Post report on the Treasury Department’s plans to extract concessions from USPS in exchange for a line of credit Congress approved to aide the agency during the coronavirus pandemic. “The Post office should raise the price [of package delivery] four times.”

Trump recently signed a law that allowed the cash-strapped agency to borrow $10 billion from the Treasury Department. The Post has reported that the White House wants to force changes at the Postal Service as part of the terms of the loan. Continue reading.