Category: Bullying

Donald Trump’s rhetorical style is straight out of middle school. He’s like an eighth-grade girl.

Terror Expert Critical of Trump Advisor Was Threatened Legal Action By White House

An embattled White House terrorism advisor whose academic credentials have come under widespread fire telephoned one of his main critics at home Tuesday night and threatened legal action against him, Newsweek has learned.

Sebastian Gorka, whose views on Islam have been widely labeled extremist, called noted terrorism expert Michael S. Smith II in South Carolina and expressed dismay that Smith had been criticizing him on Twitter, according to a recording of the call provided to Newsweek.

“I was like a deer in the headlights,” Smith, a Republican who has advised congressional committees on the use of social media by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and al-Qaeda, tells Newsweek. “I thought it was a prank. He began by threatening me with a lawsuit.”

Gorka apparently used his personal cell phone, with a northern Virginia area code, rather than making the call from his White House office or government-issued cell phone, where it would be officially logged, Smith says. The terrorism expert says he suspected Gorka “was trying to conceal the call.”

Smith says he did not begin recording the call until after Gorka allegedly threatened to sue Smith. In an email to Newsweek, Smith said that, “Gorka asserted my tweets about him merited examination by the White House legal counsel. In effect, he was threatening to entangle me in a legal battle for voicing my concerns on Twitter that he does not possess expertise sufficient to assist the president of the United States with formulating and guiding national security policies.”

Gorka did not respond to an email requesting comment.

Smith has been a regular contributor to think tank and TV discussions on terrorism, particularly the use of social media by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State militant group. Last year Foreign Policy magazine included him in its list of “100 Leading Global Thinkers.”

Smith has kept up a steady stream of jabs at Gorka since he learned that the Hungarian born, British-educated terrorism specialist had been hired by President Donald Trump’s top adviser Steve Bannon. Both Bannon and Gorka came from the far-right Breitbart News, where Bannon was editor-in-chief and Gorka was national security editor. On his Twitter page, Gorka describes himself as “deputy assistant to the 45th president of America” and an “Irregular Warfare Strategist.”

His views on the “global jihadist movement,” as he calls it, align with a small cadre of right-wing observers who depict Islamist militants and extremists as being driven principally by passages from the Koran, rather than by government repression, or sectarian, tribal, political or economic factors.

On Tuesday, Smith tweeted that Gorka “doesn’t know the enemies’ ideologies well enough to combat them.” In an earlier tweet directed at Trump, Smith wrote: “You are endangering the lives of Americans by hiring fake ‘terrorism experts.’”

Gorka earned his doctorate from a Hungarian university in 2008 and “a few months later landed a faculty job at the College of International Security Affairs (CISA), a new Pentagon-funded school that was still working toward accreditation,” The Washington Post reported. According to an online biography, he is also an associate fellow at the Joint Special Operations University, at the U.S. Special Operations Command, and holds the Major General Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University Foundation, which was funded by Thomas Saunders III, a major Republican Party donor and chairman of the conservative Heritage Foundation. The program’s current director, James Howcroft, also a retired Marine colonel, told Politico that Gorka only “periodically delivered lectures or served as a seminar leader.”

The White House advisor was clearly wounded by Smith’s taunts. “Why is this vitriol popping out of you, every day now?” Gorka asked Smith in his call. ”I look at your Twitter feed once or twice a day and it’s half a dozen tweets about me, and I’ve never even met you.”

“Wow,” Smith responded. “Are you defeating jihad by monitoring or trolling my Twitter feed?”

Gorka expressed puzzlement several times that he was being attacked “by someone who’s never met me.”

“I’ve never met you and I’ve never attacked you,” he said to Smith, his voice rising in frustration and anger. “And your Twitter feed is an incessant berating of my professional acumen. Put yourself in my shoes, Mr. Smith. Have you done that? How would you like it if someone you’ve never met, daily and professionally attacked you?”

“Happens all the time,” Smith responded. Generally speaking, academics and journalists laboring in the field of public policy expect to be criticized for their views.

“It’s not happened to me,” Gorka said, “I can tell you. Maybe you can show me some trick on how you deal with it. This is the first time ever.”

In fact, questions about Gorka’s views and credentials to speak authoritatively on Islam and terrorism were severely criticized in lengthy feature articles in The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal in recent days. He also received a wave of unfavorable publicity in January 2016 when he was arrested for trying to pass through a TSA checkpoint at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. carrying a loaded handgun. He was charged with a misdemeanor and sentenced to six months probation.

One of his most influential critics is Cindy Storer, a leading former CIA expert on the relationship between religious extremism and terrorism.

“He thinks the government and intelligence agencies don’t know anything about radicalization, but the government knows a lot and thinks he’s nuts,” Storer was quoted as saying in the Post.

Smith asked Gorka why he didn’t telephone Storer, “who called you nuts in the Washington Post,” to complain. Gorka responded that Storer’s remark wasn’t “in a Twitter feed that is being sent to people on Capitol Hill.”

Gorka’s scholarship has also come under scrutiny by Mia Bloom, an expert on “transcultural violence” at Georgia State University. “He doesn’t understand a fraction of what he pretends to know about Islam,” Bloom was quoted as saying by the Journal. Bloom has participated in TV appearances with Gorka and at a panel last year at the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Nor has Gorka—who does not speak Arabic and has never lived in a Muslim-majority nation, according to news accounts—submitted any of his articles for review in scholarly journals, says Lawrence P. Rubin, associate editor of Terrorism and Political Violence, the leading journal in that field.

“Gorka has not submitted anything to the journal in the last five or so years, according to my records and we have never used him as a reviewer,” Rubin tells Newsweek. “We would not have used him as a reviewer because he is not considered a terrorism expert by the academic or policy community.”

A government expert on Middle East radical movements, who asked not to be named for fear of being fired, tells Newsweek she was disturbed to hear Gorka suggest at a talk he gave in Israel a few years ago that he knew of a “specific person in the [Obama White House] who was deliberately misleading the government” on terrorism issues. “He said he wouldn’t name the person on stage but would provide the particulars” privately to anyone there who wanted to know, she said. Noting the audience was full of potential adversaries, she called Gorka’s remark “‘beyond the pale.”

Several times during his call with Smith, Gorka invited him to the White House to hash out their differences “face to face, man to man,” as he put it in one exchange. They set a tentative date for March 8.

But Smith warned Gorka that “in absolute fairness to you, what you will hear is that I have very serious concerns about our national security,” and in particular Gorka’s role “as an adviser to the president of the United States.”

“If you make a devastating case, then so be it,” Gorka said.

“So be it?” Smith answered. “Then what, you’ll acknowledge you’re out of your league?”

Yeah, absolutely,” Gorka said. “Bring it on.”

Late Wednesday, Gorka withdrew his invitation.

“Given your statements for the latest attack piece and continued disparaging Tweets against not only myself but the administration and the President,” Gorka wrote Smith, “consider your invitation to meet withdrawn.”

Media

Non-Lawyer Stephen Miller Told US Attorney How to Defend Travel Ban, Report Says

White House aide Stephen Miller, who does not have a law degree, told a federal attorney how his office should defend the president’s controversial travel ban on seven Muslim-majority nations, The New York Daily News reports.

The executive order, signed Jan. 27, quickly faced legal challenge from non-citizens who already had visas. This included two detained Iraq men, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq and Hameed Khalid Darweesh, and their case landed in a Brooklyn federal court. A federal law enforcement official reportedly told the Daily News that on Jan. 28, Miller called up Robert Capers, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and told him how he had to defend the policy.

The Eastern District declined to comment on this report when the Daily News reached out to them. We reached out to a White House spokesperson for comment.

The federal attorneys faced a setback. In court on Jan. 28, Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Riley argued that the hearing was scheduled too soon.

“This has unfolded with such speed, we haven’t had an opportunity to address any of the important legal issues,” she said.

The judge issued a temporary stay of the order. The policy has also gotten tied up in other federal courts nationwide, so Trump has promised a new EO.

Harry Siegel, the Daily News columnist who wrote the report, wasn’t sanguine about all this.

“That’s not how it works, since the legal issues the ongoing suits raise won’t all just disappear when Trump issues a new order,” he wrote. “But it shows how hard it is to distinguish sloppiness from nastiness, clumsiness from willful disruption, in this terribly new, terribly different administration led by a President with no prior governing experience.”

His article echoes other reports that claim the Trump administration failed to inform Congress and relevant federal agencies before releasing the EO, leading to disorganization. The president has denied these reports.

“The media is trying to attack our administration because they know we are following through on pledges that we made, and they’re not happy about it, for whatever reason,” he said at a Thursday press conference. “I turn on the news and I see stories of chaos. And yet it is the exact opposite. The administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.”

(h/t LawNewz)

Update

“Stephen Miller did not speak to Robert Capers,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters said Tuesday, two days after this story was published. “They have never spoken to one another.”

Trump son-in-law tells Time Warner of CNN concerns

President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, recently met with CNN’s parent company Time Warner and mentioned the cable news network’s coverage of the administration as slanted.

During the meeting at the White House, Kushner expressed concerns about what the administration considers is CNN’s unfair coverage of the President to Gary Ginsberg, Time Warner’s executive vice president of corporate marketing and communications, two persons familiar with the situation said. One of the persons said that topics of the discussion included Israel and Kushner made a joking reference to CNN’s perceived anti-Trump coverage.

Trump disparaged CNN during his press conference Thursday while taking a question from CNN’s senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta noting “the hatred coming from other people on your network.”

The president has made clear his disdain for CNN. A month ago, during Trump’s first full press conference after being elected, he called CNN a peddler of “fake news” because the network had produced a story reporting that the U.S. intelligence officials had presented Trump and President Obama with a “dossier” of unverified, but potentially compromising information about the president-elect that Russian operatives claimed to have.

What makes the CNN-Time Warner situation so sticky is AT&T’s pending $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner. During the campaign, Trump criticized the merger because the resulting company would have too much market power. “AT&T is buying Time Warner, and thus CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration,” he said in October.

However, post-election meetings with administration officials left AT&T executives with confidence about passage, The Financial Times reported in December, citing persons familiar with the situation.

Trump and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson did not discuss the merger when they met last month, the company said. But Stephenson last week told CNBC he expects the deal to pass Justice Department scrutiny and close by the end of the year. And the subject of the merger reportedly did not arise during Kushner’s recent meeting with Time Warner, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the meeting.
AT&T, Time Warner and CNN declined comment on the meeting.
But two CNN analysts — Republican strategist and commentator Ana Navarro and Van Jones, a former adviser to President Obama — responded to the report on Twitter. Navarro noted that Kushner “who’s supposed to achieve Middle East peace, is complaining about me to CNN,” in a tweet.
Jones used some lyrics from Drake’s song Energy — “Got a lotta people tryna drain me of this energy.” — then added, “But y’all know @CNN has our backs. Do you? RT if yes! (@jaredkushner, u can RT, 2!).”
Both sides in this situation should tread carefully, says John Coffee, a law professor and and director of the Center on Corporate Governance at Columbia Law School. “Time Warner is extremely vulnerable to pressure in this context — although the slightest application of pressure would backfire explosively,” he said. “Trump really cannot afford another fiasco right now when his administration keeps stumbling over itself. Thus, we may be witnessing another self-inflicted wound that is about to occur.”

(h/t USA Today)

 

Cummings: ‘No Idea Why President Trump Would Make Up a Story About Me Like He Did Today’

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings swatted away President Trump’s claim that the Baltimore Democrat wouldn’t meet with him after repeated calls from the White House.

Trump made the comment during a wide-ranging news conference Thursday and speculated that Cummings may have been dissuaded from coming to the White House for political reasons, perhaps by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), whom Trump dismissed as a “lightweight.”

“I have no idea why President Trump would make up a story about me like he did today. Of course, Senator Schumer never told me to skip a meeting with the President,” Cummings said in a statement.

Trump said Cummings “was all excited and then he said, ‘Well, I can’t move, it might be bad for me politically. I can’t have that meeting.’ ”

Trump continued: “But he probably was told by Schumer or somebody like that — some other lightweight. . . . He was probably told: ‘Don’t meet with Trump. It’s bad politics.’ And that’s part of the problem with this country.”

The musings came in response to a question about whether Trump would meet with the Congressional Black Caucus — of which Cummings is a high-profile member — to discuss crime in poor, urban areas.

The 11-term congressman and ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said he planned to talk to Trump about the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs.

But first, he said, he wanted to finalize a proposal he has been working on with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to allow the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices — a concept that Cummings says Trump has supported.

“I also sincerely have no idea why the President made this claim in response to an unrelated question about the Congressional Black Caucus. I am sure members of the CBC can answer these questions for themselves,” the congressman’s statement said.

Cummings noted that prescription drugs affect “every American family — not just people of color.”

The congressman told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday afternoon that his office is working on setting up a meeting. “We’re looking forward to it,” he said. “I’m excited about meeting with the president. He’s my president, and I’m excited about meeting with him.”

Minutes after Trump’s news conference concluded, the Oversight Committee announced that Cummings had joined Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other Democrats in calling for a review of how the president and his staff handled sensitive national security materials at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., resort.

In a letter, the lawmakers asked the Government Accountability Office to determine whether protocols were followed and to provide an accounting of taxpayer costs related to Trump’s stay at his private club, which he has dubbed the “Winter White House.”

(h/t The Washington Post)

White House Reporter Accuses Trump Aide Omarosa Manigault of Bullying Her

A longtime White House reporter says that President Trump’s aide Omarosa Manigault “physically intimidated” her when they got into an argument in the West Wing last week, according to The Washington Post.

The reporter, April Ryan of the American Urban Radio Networks, said that the former star of “The Apprentice” intimidated her in a way that could have invited involvement by the Secret Service.

“She stood right in my face like she was going to hit me,” Ryan told the Post. “I said, ‘You better back up.’ . . . She thought I would be bullied. I won’t be.”

She added that Manigault made verbal threats and claimed that she was one of several black journalists that the White House has “dossiers” on, the Post reports.

The report said there were others who witnessed their argument, which the report said was tied to emails that Manigault sent Ryan during the election race last year. In one email, she sent a link to a story that listed names of journalists that Hillary Clinton’s campaign supposedly wanted to influence, which included Ryan.

“This story suggests that as a reporter, you are (or were) a paid Clinton surrogate,” Manigault wrote in the email, according to the Post. “I pray this is not true! This could be hurtful to your legacy and the integrity of your work.”

Minutes later, Manigault reportedly sent a second email: “Protect your legacy!! You have worked too hard to have people question your ethics as a journalist. People talking trash about the reporters on that list having NO integrity. It’s hurtful to hear people say those things about you.”

The report said that the two women used to be friends and Manigault even asked Ryan to be a bridesmaid in her upcoming wedding, but Ryan has declined that offer.

(h/t CBS News)

CNN Fact Checks Trump Lie Within Seconds Of His Twitter Attack On Chris Cuomo

President Trump on Thursday blasted CNN, saying host Chris Cuomo didn’t ask Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) during an earlier interview about the Connecticut senator’s “long-term lie” of serving in the Vietnam War.

“Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave ‘service’ in Vietnam,” the president tweeted.

“FAKE NEWS!”

Cuomo immediately addressed Trump’s tweet on the air, with the network re-broadcasting the beginning of Cuomo’s interview with Blumenthal, when Cuomo asked Blumenthal about misrepresenting his military record in the past.

In response to the question, Blumenthal defended his statements that Judge Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, expressed concern to him about the president’s attacks on federal judges.

“Really, the first point that I made in the interview,” Cuomo said on CNN.

“The president, with all due respect, is once again off on the facts. And that’s not something that any of us have any desire to say on a regular basis, but it keeps being true,” Cuomo continued.

“Fake news is the worst thing that you can call a journalist. It’s like an ethnic disparagement. We all have these ugly words for people. That’s the one for journalists.”

Cuomo said the president keeps doubling down when the facts “don’t favor his position.”

“Once again, he doubles down when he’s wrong,” he said.

Trump has repeatedly said he doesn’t watch CNN, but his tweet came shortly after the Blumenthal interview aired Thursday morning.

Trump was referring in his tweet to a controversy during Blumenthal’s 2010 Senate campaign.

In 2010, Blumenthal held a press conference during which he said he had misspoken about his service in the Vietnam War. He was in the Marine Corps Reserves for six years during the war. He said during the news conference in 2010 he meant to say “during Vietnam” but instead said he served “in” Vietnam.

“On a few occasions I have misspoken about my service, and I regret that and I take full responsibility,” Blumenthal said at the 2010 press conference, according to a Washington Post report. “But I will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to our country.”

A report last year found that Trump has received five deferments from the military draft during the Vietnam War. He was granted one medical and four education deferments, which kept him out of the conflict.

(h/t The Hill)

Media

Trump Falsely Accused Senator of Misrepresenting Gorsuch Criticism

President Donald Trump falsely accused a Democratic senator Thursday of misrepresenting his Supreme Court nominee’s words, according to several familiar with the incident.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Wednesday that Judge Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s nominee, told him he found Trump’s attack on a federal judge on Twitter “disheartening” and “demoralizing.”

Within a half-hour, Gorsuch spokesman Ron Bonjean, who was tapped by the White House to head communications for Gorsuch, confirmed that the nominee, Gorsuch, used those words in his meeting with Blumenthal. Several other senators, including Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, later relayed similar accounts of Gorsuch forcefully criticizing Trump’s public attacks on the judiciary branch.

And on Thursday, Blumenthal said on MSNBC Gorsuch specifically told him he “should feel free to mention what I said about these attacks being disheartening and demoralizing.”

But none of that stopped Trump from firing off a shot against Blumenthal — and at the same time raising questions about the coherence of the White House’s messaging.

“Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had (major lie), now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.

Gorsuch’s criticism came in response to Trump’s recent criticism of federal judges who have ruled against his immigration ban or appear poised to do so, in particular in reference to one of the President’s tweets slamming one of those judges as a “so-called judge.”

“The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!” Trump tweeted last Saturday.

But White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday Trump “absolutely” stands by his selection of Gorsuch, as well his own past comments about the federal judges who are hearing arguments over the legality of his immigration executive order.

“No, the President doesn’t have any regrets,” Spicer said during his daily press briefing.

“He has no regrets,” Spicer repeated, saying that Gorsuch’s remarks weren’t referring to any specific federal judge or court.

Bonjean had confirmed Gorsuch called Trump’s tweet about the “so-called judge” “disheartening” and “demoralizing” in his conversation with Blumenthal.

Blumenthal, meanwhile, stood by his accounting of Gorsuch’s comments, telling CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day” Thursday morning he “absolutely and accurately” stated what Gorsuch told him.

“I think that the President needs to hear from Judge Gorsuch about exactly what he is saying to myself and Senate colleagues,” Blumenthal said. “Maybe he simply hasn’t been informed and that’s the reason for his tweet.”

Former GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who is helping shepherd Gorsuch’s nomination on the Hill said in a statement Thursday Gorsuch has told senators “he finds any criticism of a judge’s integrity and independence disheartening and demoralizing.”

Ayotte added the judge has made clear he “could not comment on any specific cases and that judicial ethics prevent him from commenting on political matters.”

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska also confirmed Thursday that Gorsuch criticized Trump’s attacks on the federal judge in a meeting with him as well.

Sasse said Gorsuch “got pretty passionate” about the topic, particularly when he asked Gorsuch about Trump’s “so-called judge” tweet.

“This is a guy who welled up with some energy. He said any attack on any brothers or sisters of the robe is an attack on all judges. He believes in an an independent judiciary,” Sasse said Thursday morning on MSNBC.

(h/t CNN)

Melania Trump Plans to Cash-in on Trademarks, Files New Lawsuit

First lady Melania Trump said in a lawsuit Monday that her lucrative personal brand was damaged by an online article that alleged she worked as an escort in the 1990s.

The suit, filed in New York Supreme Court, said the Mail Online, in its August article hit just as Trump was about to enter the White House and embark on a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person.”

More explicitly, the suit claims the article “impugned her fitness to perform her duties as First Lady of the United States.”

It references several pending “multi-million dollar business relationships” for clothing, shoes, jewelry cosmetics and perfume.

Indeed, records show the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted a trademark to “MELANIA” in 2013 for cosmetics.

On Jan. 17, just days before the inauguration, the office signed off on protecting “MELANIA” for a line of jewelry. Both are held by solely by Melania Trump and registered to her address in Trump Tower.

Trademarks protect words, names and symbols for goods and services that are tied to the source of those goods. Trademarks, unlike patents, can be renewed forever as long as they are being used in commerce.

The Mail Online retracted its article and faced another defamation suit from Trump, which was dismissed in Maryland last week.

Trump also sued Maryland blogger Webster Tarpley, who made similar claims about the first lady’s past. Tarpley agreed to apologize and provide a “substantial sum” in a settlement reached Tuesday, said Donna McBride, Trump’s Maryland-based attorney.

Beverly Hills attorney Charles Harder issued a statement on behalf of Trump, along with the retraction from Tarpley on Tuesday:

“I posted an article on August 2, 2016 about Melania Trump that was replete with false and defamatory statements about her. I had no legitimate factual basis to make these false statements and I fully retract them. I acknowledge that these false statements were very harmful and hurtful to Mrs. Trump and her family, and therefore I sincerely apologize to Mrs. Trump, her son, her husband and her parents for making these false statements.”

In a bid to dismiss the case, attorneys for Tarpley mounted a SLAPP defense — arguing it was a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation since it inhibited Tarpley’s First Amendment rights to free speech. Maryland, like many other states, has an anti-SLAPP law to prevent those suits.

That law became an issue for Donald Trump in his threats against outspoken critics before and during the campaign.

Tarpley’s attorney’s argued since Melanie Trump is a public figure, the bar for defamation is much higher and requires “actual malice.”

(h/t USA Today)

Trump Blasts Nordstrom for Dropping Ivanka’s Clothing Line

President Donald Trump on Wednesday blasted luxury department store Nordstrom for dropping his daughter Ivanka Trump’s label, a move that drew immediate criticism for further blurring the line between Trump’s administration and his family’s businesses.

“My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning.

Nordstrom had announced on Feb. 3 that it would stop carrying Ivanka Trump’s label due to its performance.

“We’ve said all along we make buying decisions based on performance,” Nordstrom said in a statement to The Associated Press. “We’ve got thousands of brands— more than 2,000 offered on the site alone. Reviewing their merit and making edits is part of the regular rhythm of our business.”

While Nordstrom contends the decision was solely a business one, the publicly traded company has delved into the Trump administration’s controversial moves.

Nordstrom had issued an internal statement in support of immigrants following Trump’s executive order temporarily barring immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries just three days before dropping Ivanka Trump’s line.

The move also comes amid a broader #GrabYourWallet hashtag calling for a boycott of all Trump products.

Some Trump critics immediately pounced on Trump’s tweet, holding it up as further evidence that Trump is not respecting what should be a firewall between the White House and his sprawling business empire.

Norm Eisen, a former Obama administration ethics czar, called the move “outrageous” on Twitter and said Nordstrom should consider suing under the California Unfair Competition Law, which forbids “any unfair” business act.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) also replied to Trump’s tweet, by “CC”ing the Office of Government Ethics.

Casey’s press secretary Jacklin Rhoads said in an emailed statement that the senator “feels it is unethical and inappropriate for the President to lash out at a private company for refusing to enrich his family.”

The Office of Government Ethics and Nordstrom did not immediately return calls for comment.

Executive branch employees are forbidden from using their positions to promote any corporation, although the president is technically exempt. There does not appear to be an applicable rule that addresses the president impugning a company.

Trump also retweeted his tweet on his official @POTUS account, which reaches 15.1 million followers. By comparison, Trump’s @realDonaldTrump account reaches 24.2 million followers.

The president had pledged to fully step away from his private businesses, but he has also said he will not sell the companies nor will he place his assets in a blind trust while serving as president.

Instead, Trump has said his company will not enter into new foreign deals and will appoint an ethics adviser who must approve any new domestic deals in writing.

The president has also proven his desire and ability to influence companies through Twitter. He has regularly blasted corporations including Carrier, General Motors and Toyota, accusing them of moving jobs and production overseas. Lockheed and Boeing have also drawn his ire over the price tag associated with their defense contracts.

On Wednesday, Nordstrom’s stock took a brief fall following Trump’s tweet, from $42.69 per share at 10:50 a.m. to $42.50 at 10:55 a.m. However, it has since risen to $43.14 as of 12:30 p.m.

(h/t Politico)

‘We’ll Destroy His Career,’ Trump Quips About a Texas State Senator at Odds With a County Sheriff

President Trump on Tuesday quipped that he’d be willing to “destroy” the career of a Texas state senator who has been feuding with a local sheriff.

Sheriff Harold Eavenson of Rockwall County was among a group of law enforcement officials from across the country who met with Trump, Vice President Pence and several senior staff members at the White House.

During a portion of the meeting that a press pool was permitted to observe, Eavenson complained that a senator from his state was offering asset forfeiture legislation that Eavenson thinks would aid Mexican drug cartels.

“Who is the state senator? Want to give his name? We’ll destroy his career,” Trump said, prompting laughs from the room.

Eavenson, who is in line to become president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, declined.

“The sheriffs are good people,” Trump said earlier as he welcomed the group to the White House. Trump, who has been heavily critical of the media in recent weeks, told the sheriffs they don’t get the news coverage they deserve.

(h/t Washington Post)

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