Tag: Trump

Trump takes direct aim at China as known U.S. infections double and criticism mounts

Washington Post logoPresident Trump took direct aim at China on Thursday for allowing the spread of the coronavirus that has sickened Americans, shut down much of daily life and pushed the U.S. economy toward recession, while deflecting criticism that his administration was caught flat-footed by the outbreak.

The president dug in on his use of the term “Chinese virus” to describe the novel coronavirus that was first detected in Wuhan, China, late last year and did not rule out directing economic retaliation toward Beijing.

“Thank you all for being here, and we continue our relentless effort to defeat the Chinese virus,” Trump said near the top of his combative appearance before reporters at the White House. Continue reading.

Federal judges postpone emergency meeting on Barr’s political interference after Trump tweets at them

AlterNet logoA group of judges have reportedly cancelled an emergency meeting on possible political corruption at the Justice Department after President Donald Trump tweeted about the event.

The Federal Judges Association was set to discuss political interference by Trump and Attorney General William Barr. According to CNN, a decision was made on Wednesday afternoon to postpone the meeting.

A spokesperson for the group did not offer an immediate explanation and did not say if a new meeting had been scheduled. Continue reading.

Soleimani killing deepens distrust between Trump, Democrats

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) bitterly complained that President Trump left her and other congressional leaders out of the loop before taking out Iran’s top general in a surprise airstrike Thursday.

Trump and his allies seem just fine with that.

Distrust between Trump and Pelosi is at an all-time high. Just two weeks ago, Pelosi led House Democrats in a mostly party-line vote to make Trump just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached. Now, Pelosi and Trump’s congressional allies are locked in a standoff over the shape of the Senate impeachment trial, preventing it from moving forward as Trump demands a speedy acquittal. Continue reading

GOP congressman blasts Trump for quoting evangelical pastor’s ‘civil war’ threat: ‘This is beyond repugnant’

AlterNet logoAppearing on Fox News on Sunday, Robert Jeffress — one of President Donald Trump’s far-right white evangelical sycophants — asserted that Trump’s impeachment could cause “a Civil War-like fracture” in the United States. Trump repeated Jeffress’ assertion on Twitter — and got an angry response from a fellow Republican: Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.

Jeffress, pastor at the First Baptist Church in Dallas, is a prominent figure on the Christian Right. And during his Sunday appearance on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends,” Jeffress insisted to co-hosts Pete Hegseth and Jedediah Bila that Trump has done nothing to deserve impeachment and attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for supporting an impeachment inquiry — stressing, “I do want to make this prediction this morning: if the Democrats are successful in removing the president from office, I’m afraid it will cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal.”

On Twitter, Trump quoted Jeffress and zeroed right in on the Civil War part:

View the complete September 30 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Kushner owns lots of Baltimore-area apartments. Some are infested with mice.

Washington Post logoIn a now-viral tweetstorm on Saturday, President Trump characterized Rep. Elijah E. Cummings’s Baltimore-based congressional district as a “rodent infested mess” where “no human” would want to live.

His criticism rang with a particular irony in Baltimore County, where presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner owns more than a dozen apartment complexes that have been cited for hundreds of code violations and, critics say, provide substandard housing to lower-income tenants.

In an interview Saturday, Baltimore County Executive John A. Olszewski Jr. condemned Trump’s comments as “an attack on basic decency.”

View the complete July 28 article by Rebecca Tan on The Washington Post website here.

United Nations Blasts Migrant Detention Centers For ‘Damage’ To Children

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet slammed the current state of facilities used by the Trump administration to detain migrants families.

“As a pediatrician, but also as a mother and a former head of State, I am deeply shocked that children are forced to sleep on the floor in overcrowded facilities, without access to adequate healthcare or food, and with poor sanitation conditions,” Bachelet, a former president of Chile, said in a statement released on Monday.

“Detaining a child even for short periods under good conditions can have a serious impact on their health and development — consider the damage being done every

View the complete July 8 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

Judge sides with Congress in subpoena fight over Trump records

A federal district court judge in Washington sided Monday with Congress in President Donald Trump’s lawsuit to block lawmakers from getting eight years of his financial records from an accounting firm.

The 41-page ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta in favor of the House Oversight and Reform Committee was not unexpected, and his ruling describes sweeping congressional power to subpoena records for what appears on its face to be a valid legislative purpose.

Trump’s lawyers are expected to appeal the ruling and extend the case.

View the complete May 20 article y Todd Ruger on The Roll Call website here.

Trump’s White House decides it’s above the law — just like Nixon’s did


The White House has decided it’s going to stonewall every single effort Democrats make at performing their constitutional oversight responsibilities of the executive branch. As Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings writes in the Washington Post, the White House hasn’t handed over a single document to his committee.

I serve as chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, the primary investigative body in the House of Representatives. I have sent 12 letters to the White House on a half-dozen topics — some routine and some relating to our core national security interests. In response, the White House has refused to hand over any documents or produce any witnesses for interviews.

The White House also hasn’t made a single official available to testify to the panel, which is investigating the process the White House used to grant security clearances to people who were reportedly rejected for those clearances by career professionals. It’s an urgent matter of national security on which the White House is completely blocking Congress.

View the complete March 20 article by Kerry Eleveld of the Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

A Mar-a-Lago Weekend and an Act of God: Trump’s History With Deutsche Bank The headquarters of Deutsche Bank

As President Trump delivered his inaugural address in 2017, a slight woman with feathered gray hair sat listening, bundled in a hooded white parka in a fenced-off V.I.P. section. Her name was Rosemary T. Vrablic. She was a managing director at Deutsche Bank and one of the reasons Mr. Trump had just taken the oath of office.

It was a moment of celebration — and a moment of worry for Ms. Vrablic’s employer.

Mr. Trump and Deutsche Bank were deeply entwined, their symbiotic bond born of necessity and ambition on both sides: a real estate mogul made toxic by polarizing rhetoric and a pattern of defaults, and a bank with intractable financial problems and a history of misconduct.

View the complete March 18 article by David Enrich on The New York Times website here.

Conservative media want you to believe Trump has been “tough” on Russia. They’re not telling the full story.

The following article by Nick Fernandez was posted on the Media Matters website July 26, 2018:

Secretary of State Pompeo echoed right-wing media talking points on Trump’s toughness. In reality, Trump has undercut a number of actions Congress and his administration have tried to take against Russia.

Credit: Melissa Joskow, Media Matters

Following President Donald Trump’s disastrous bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, the president’s administration flacks and conservative media lackeys quickly scrambled to his defense, arguing that Trump has been “tough” in his “actions against Russia” and rattling off a series of actions he has taken since 2017 that supposedly support such a claim. The president himself and administration officials have also parroted the talking points in an attempt to dispel the idea that he is somehow in the pocket of the Russian government. But a closer look at the actions Trump shills have pointed to reveals a foreign policy that is more concerned with posturing for media than being “tough” in the face of Russian aggression.

On July 16, Trump met with Putin for a meeting behind closed doors in which no other American — except an interpreter — was present, and they emerged more than two hours later to give a wide-ranging press conference. When asked whether he holds the Russian government accountable for its multifaceted interference campaign during the 2016 elections, Trump repeatedly denied Russia’s involvement, saying, “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia. (The president would later claim to have gotten “would” and “wouldn’t” confused.)

To counter the deluge of negative press in the wake of the meeting, right-wing media and administration officials pointed to various foreign policy and military responses to Russian aggression that the United States and its allies have undertaken during Trump’s presidency to argue that the president’s “actions” actually “have been tough.” About a week after the bilateral meeting, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo echoed Trump’s conservative media defenders as he faced senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, insisting Trump “has taken a truckload of punitive actions against Moscow” and that he has been “tough on Russia” as president. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeated the meme, as did the president himself.

View the complete article here.