Category: Trump Administration

Duluth airport refused to host Pence event after Trump rally flouted safety rules

After Trump event flouted safety rules, vice president had to move to Hibbing. 

DULUTH – Local airport officials told Vice President Mike Pence he could not host a campaign event on their premises in late October after President Donald Trump flouted state health guidelines while holding a rally there weeks earlier.

In an Oct. 22 e-mail to the Duluth Airport Authority’s (DAA’s) seven-person board of directors, the airport’s executive director said he’d learned that Pence planned to host a rally in Duluth on Oct. 26.

“The Trump Campaign is in breach of their previous agreement with the DAA on a couple of significant items,” Tom Werner wrote. “Therefore, I will not allow the event to take place at our airports.” Continue reading.

GOP breaks with Trump firing of cyber chief: Adds to ‘confusion and chaos’

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Several Senate Republicans are pushing back on President Trump‘s decision to fire Chris Krebs, a top cybersecurity official, in a rare break with the administration.

The reactions from GOP senators, who generally are careful to stick closely to Trump, range from those offering support for Krebs to those openly breaking with Trump’s decision to fire him.

“It’s the president’s prerogative but I think it just adds to the confusion and chaos, and I’m sure I’m not the only one that would like some return to a little bit more of a — I don’t even know what’s normal anymore. We’ll call it the next normal,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and an adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Continue reading.

The president is golfing and exercising White male privilege

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Few images capture the position of privilege from which the president operates better than the ones that depict him at his golf club in Virginia. In several of the pictures, he isn’t playing the game — or even holding a club — but rather simply tooling around the course like a feudal lord in a golf cart with his personalized campaign baseball cap pulled low.


These aren’t depictions of a sportsman or a statesman. For Donald Trump, who has recently turned golfing into his prime presidential duty second only to tweeting, they are portraits of a reckless man in full — specifically a man full of himself.

Trump is the unmasked duffer clutching the wheel of a golf cart, zipping over knolls while his caddie — also unmasked — hangs off the back. Trump has noted that these outings are an efficient form of exercise — practically medicinal, which is about as accurate as saying that being borne up the side of a mountain on a donkey is a form of good-for-you cardio. Continue reading.

How Twitter and Facebook plan to handle Trump’s accounts when he leaves office.

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Many world leaders generally have wider latitude on Twitter and Facebook because their comments and posts are regarded as political speech that is in the realm of public interest. But what will happen to President Trump’s accounts on the social media platforms when he leaves office?

At Tuesday’s hearing, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, said the company would no longer make policy exceptions for Mr. Trump after he leaves office in January. During Mr. Trump’s time as a world leader, Twitter allowed him to post content that violated its rules, though it began adding labels to some of the tweets starting in May to indicate that the posts were disputed or glorified violence.

“If an account suddenly is not a world leader anymore, that particular policy goes away,” Mr. Dorsey said. Continue reading.

Wayne County Republican who asked to ‘rescind’ her vote certifying election results says Trump called her

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DETROIT — President Trump called a GOP canvassing board member in Wayne County who announced Wednesday she wanted to rescind her decision to certify the results of the presidential election, the member said in a message to The Washington Post on Thursday.

“I did receive a call from President Trump, late Tuesday evening, after the meeting,” Monica Palmer, one of two Republican members of the four-member Wayne County canvassing board, told The Post. “He was checking in to make sure I was safe after hearing the threats and doxing that had occurred.”

The call came after an hours-long meeting Tuesday in which the four-member canvassing board voted to certify the results of the Nov. 3 election, a key step toward finalizing President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Continue reading.

Top cybersecurity official ousted by Trump

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President Trump ousted Christopher Krebs, the top U.S. cybersecurity official, on Tuesday evening, disagreeing with Krebs’s statement affirming the security of the 2020 election.

Trump, who has refused to accept his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the presidential election earlier this month, said on Twitter that Krebs had been terminated “effective immediately.” Trump said a recent statement by the cyber chief about the security of the election was “highly inaccurate” and claimed, without evidence, that “there were massive improprieties and fraud — including dead people voting.”

“Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, ‘glitches’ in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more,” the president wrote. “Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.” Continue reading.

Trump allies fear Giuliani may be conning the president into a doomed legal fight: report

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No attorney has done more to fight the results of the 2020 presidential election than former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has been claiming that President Donald Trump — not President-elect Joe Biden — is the real winner. He says Trump was deprived of a victory by rampant voter fraud, which Giuliani has offered no credible proof of. The fees that Giuliani charges as Trump’s personal attorney are not cheap, and according to New York Times reporters Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman, Giuliani recently asked for $20,000 per day.

Schmidt and Haberman report, “The request stirred opposition from some of Mr. Trump’s aides and advisers, who appear to have ruled out paying that much…. A $20,000-a-day rate would have made Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who has been Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer for several years, among the most highly compensated attorneys anywhere.”

Giuliani, however, flatly denies asking for that amount. The Trump attorney told the Times, “I never asked for $20,000. The arrangement is, we’ll work it out at the end.” And Giuliani insists that anyone who told the Times that he wanted $20,000 per day “is a liar, a complete liar.” Continue reading.

Democratic anger rises over Trump obstacles to Biden transition

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Democrats and public health officials are furious at President Trump for obstructing President-elect Joe Biden’s transition to the White House, warning that the Trump administration is endangering lives and threatening national security by refusing to cooperate with the incoming administration. 

The president-elect has warned that “more people may die” because he’s been blocked from coordinating the coronavirus vaccine rollout and other public health measures with Trump’s team, which is moving ahead on its own.

Biden aides routinely point to the 9/11 Commission report to warn that national security is at risk as the president-elect continues to be shut out of government intelligence briefings. The 9/11 report determined that the drawn out legal battle between former President George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election left a temporary power vacuum that al Qaeda was able to exploit in planning its terror attack against the U.S. Continue reading.

Trump orders Pentagon to pull 2,500 troops from Afghanistan and Iraq

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President Trump has ordered the Pentagon to pull 2,500 U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq by mid-January, acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller announced Tuesday.

The Defense Department will cut the number of troops in Afghanistan from 4,500 to 2,500 and the number of forces in Iraq from 3,000 to 2,500 by Jan. 15, days before Trump is set to leave office.

“I am formally announcing that we will implement President Trump’s orders to continue our repositioning of forces” from Afghanistan and Iraq, Miller told reporters at the Pentagon. Continue reading.

Vegas may be betting on a post-presidential divorce, but Melania Trump seems all in for her husband.

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Bookies started taking bets on Election Day as gamblers considered a question on many people’s minds: Will Melania Trump dump her husband when he is no longer president?

Soon after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, Jimmy Kimmel even made a spoof of “The Bachelorette.” In it, a woman steps out of a limo to meet a roomful of nervous suitors. The camera pans from her stiletto heel, up her sparkly gown, to her familiar face — it’s Melania Trump! (Her head superimposed on the body of the actual Bachelorette.)

Is Melania Trump really looking forward to being rid of President Trump as much as tens of millions of Americans are? Or is it just another fantasy that Trump critics are projecting on a first lady who has succeeded in shrouding her true self in mystery? Continue reading.