Category: Trump Administration

Questions swirl at Pentagon after wave of departures

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Is it a coup, a push to withdraw from Afghanistan or just some petty score settling?

That’s the question that has swirled in defense circles amid a wave of firings and resignations at the Pentagon that saw the ouster of the Defense secretary and installation of several aides seen as loyalists of President Trump.

The shakeup has led Trump’s critics to sound the alarm, with Democratic lawmakers and others fearful of what the Pentagon’s new leadership will try to push through in Trump’s remaining two months in office. Continue reading.

Missing From State Plans to Distribute the Coronavirus Vaccine: Money to Do It

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The government has sent billions to drug companies to develop a coronavirus shot but a tiny fraction of that to localities for training, record-keeping and other costs for vaccinating citizens.

With the prospect that a coronavirus vaccine will become available for emergency use as soon as next month, states and cities are warning that distributing the shots to an anxious public could be hindered by inadequate technology, severe funding shortfalls and a lack of trained personnel.

While the Trump administration has showered billions of dollars on the companies developing the vaccines, it has left the logistics of inoculating and tracking as many as 20 million people by year’s end — and many tens of millions more next year — largely to local governments without providing enough money, officials in several localities and public health experts involved in the preparations said in interviews.

Public health departments, already strained by a pandemic that has overrun hospitals and drained budgets, are racing to expand online systems to track and share information about who has been vaccinated; to recruit and train hundreds of thousands of doctors, nurses and pharmacists to give people the shot and collect data about everyone who gets it; to find safe locations for mass vaccination events; and to convince the public of the importance of getting immunized. Continue reading.

Militia Groups, Conspiracy Theorists Rally In D.C. For Election Loser Donald Trump

President Donald Trump briefly waved to the crowd from his motorcade on his way to go golfing.

Demonstrators as part of a “Million MAGA March” swarmed Washington, D.C., on Saturday in a show of support for President Donald Trump, whose loss to President-elect Joe Biden was determined exactly a week ago.

The protest didn’t quite live up to its name, however.

A few thousand Trump supporters ― many of them unmasked ― did show up to Freedom Plaza in a show of solidarity with the president, who has spent the last week desperately seeking to overturn the results of the election by falsely claiming widespread voter fraud, but the number of marchers fell way short of the “more than one million” falsely touted by the Trump administration on Saturday afternoon.  Continue reading.

After thousands of Trump supporters rally in D.C., violence erupts when night falls

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President Trump’s supporters had celebrated for hours on Saturday, waving their MAGA flags and blaring “God Bless the U.S.A.” as they gathered in Washington to falsely claim that the election had been stolen from the man they adore. The crowd had even reveled in a personal visit from Trump, who passed by in his motorcade, smiling and waving.

But that was before the people who oppose their hero showed up and the mood shifted, growing angrier as 300 or so counterprotesters delivered a message the president’s most ardent backers were unwilling to hear: The election is over. Trump lost.

On stark display in the nation’s capital were two irreconcilable versions of America, each refusing to accept what the other considered to be undeniable fact. Continue reading.

Defense secretary sent classified memo to White House about Afghanistan before Trump fired him

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In the run-up to the election, President Trump’s tweet saying that all U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be “home by Christmas!” raised alarm among senior U.S. officials who had been working on a more gradual withdrawal.

The existing plan, tied to precarious negotiations with the Taliban insurgent group to sign a peace deal with the Afghan government, had not yielded the progress that American officials wanted. While the Pentagon was on its way to reducing the number of troops to fewer than 5,000 this month, negotiations appeared to stall and the Taliban continued to launch attacks across the country.

After consulting with senior military officers, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper sent a classified memo to the White House this month expressing concerns about additional cuts, according to two senior U.S. officials familiar with the discussion. Conditions on the ground were not yet right, Esper wrote, citing the ongoing violence, possible dangers to the remaining troops in the event of a rapid pullout, potential damage to alliances and apprehension about undercutting the negotiations. Continue reading.

Fox News forced to correct legal scholar over humiliating and debunked election error claim

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A legal scholar on Fox News attempted to spew a debunked claim about election errors on Friday, and even the network’s conservative anchors had to stop him in his tracks. 

On Friday, Jonathan Turley, who famously defended the president during impeachment, appeared on Fox & Friends where he discussed a false theory surrounding the Dominion voting machines. According to Turley, “thousands” of President Donald Trump’s votes in Michigan were switched to President-elect Joe Biden in Michigan — another claim the president is pushing to undermine his election defeat to his Democratic opponent.

Turley claimed the software had been used in multiple states including “half of the districts in Michigan” as he suggested that the “vulnerable” software may have impacted the outcome of the election. He made clear he believed mistakes may be the result of “human error.” 

However, a Fox News co-host pushed back as he noted that he also researched Trump’s claim. He explained that the glitch did not impact or compromise the vote count in any way. Like Trump’s arguments, Turley’s claims were also confirmed to be unfounded.  Continue reading.

In Trump’s final days, a 30-year-old aide purges officials seen as insufficiently loyal

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Over the past week, President Trump has axed his defense secretary and other top Pentagon aides, his second-in-command at the U.S. Agency for International Development, two top Homeland Security officials, a senior climate scientist and the leader of the agency that safeguards nuclear weapons.

Engineering much of the post-election purge is Johnny McEntee, a former college quarterback who was hustled out of the White House two years ago after a security clearance check turned up a prolific habit for online gambling.

A staunch Trump loyalist, McEntee, 30, was welcomed back into the fold in February and installed as head of personnel for the Trump White House.. Since the race was called for President-elect Joe Biden, McEntee has been distributing pink slips, warning federal workers not to cooperate with the Biden transition and threatening to oust people who show disloyalty by job hunting while Trump is still refusing to acknowledge defeat, according to six administration officials. Continue reading.

White House official admits the administration is still pretending Biden didn’t win

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White House trade adviser Peter Navarro claimed on Friday that White House officials are still operating as if President Donald Trump will remain in office for a second term despite him losing the presidential election to President-elect Joe Biden. 

During an appearance on Fox Business, Navarro revealed how post-election day-to-day operations are occurring at the White House. Navarro’s remarks appear to confirm numerous reports circulating about the Trump administration’s stance on Biden winning the election. According to them, he did not win at the election at all. In fact, Navarro and others are continuing to blatantly disregard the outcome of the election.

“We are moving forward here at the White House under the assumption there will be a second Trump term,” Navarro said on Friday morning. Continue reading.

Trump faces around two dozen legal threats leaving office — and he’s getting desperate

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President Trump has only made one brief public appearance since the election was called for Joe Biden, and his Twitter feed is filled with conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud, which state elections officials have repeatedly rejected. His refusal to concede has complicated President-elect Biden’s transition, and senior Republicans have mostly aligned behind Trump or stayed silent as he continues his desperate legal campaign to overturn the election results in several key states that won Biden the presidency. New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer says Trump has a lot at stake due to the litany of lawsuits and criminal investigations he faces. “He has many reasons to be concerned,” she says. “If he leaves the White House, he’s going to lose the immunity that goes along with being president.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The number of Americans hospitalized due to COVID-19 has more than a doubled in the past week as infections soar to record numbers across the nation. On Thursday, a staggering 163,000 new cases were reported — a new world-shattering record. The U.S. death toll has topped 242,000. Despite the surge, President Trump is largely ignoring the crisis, letting the virus rip through the country. Continue reading.

John Kelly criticizes Trump over delay of Biden transition

“It’s about the nation,” Trump’s former chief of staff says in an interview with POLITICO. The wait “hurts our national security.”

President-elect Joe Biden should start receiving intelligence briefings, and the delay in allowing the transition to officially get started is damaging U.S. national security, President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly told POLITICO in an exclusive interview.

“You lose a lot if the transition is delayed because the new people are not allowed to get their head in the game,” Kelly said Friday. “The president, with all due respect, does not have to concede. But it’s about the nation. It hurts our national security because the people who should be getting [up to speed], it’s not a process where you go from zero to 1,000 miles per hour.”

“Mr. Trump doesn’t have to concede if he doesn’t want to, I guess, until the full election process is complete. But there’s nothing wrong with starting the transition, starting to get people like the national security people, obviously the president and the vice president-elect, if they are in fact elected, to start getting them [up to speed] on the intelligence,” he said. Continue reading.