Tag: tweet

Donald Trump Jr. Shares Fake Clip of President Shooting “CNN” Out of the Sky

President Trump’s oldest son, 39-year-old Donald Trump Jr., posted a doctored clip from the 1986 movie “Top Gun” to his social media accounts Saturday, in which his father is portrayed as a fighter pilot shooting down a jet emblazoned with the CNN logo.

“One of the best I’ve seen,” the Trump son said, reposting the video to Twitter and Instagram from a user called @OldRowOfficial.

In the fake video, Mr. Trump is seen positioning his aircraft to aim at a fighter jet labeled “CNN.” Mr. Trump pulls the trigger, and the target explodes mid-air.

This latest post from the Trump son comes as his father continues waging a war against “fake news,” particularly CNN. Last week, the president shared an altered video of himself beating down a WWE wrestler with the “CNN” icon on his face.

Donald Trump Jr. has taken the role of defending his father and sister Ivanka Trump amid intense White House scrutiny.

The Trump son chimed in Saturday after Ivanka Trump sat in for her father at a G-20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, sparking criticism that such a move could be inappropriate.

The eldest Trump son and his brother, Eric Trump, are running their father’s vast business empire while Mr. Trump is in office.

Concerns over the Trump family’s involvement in his presidency continue to lurk. Initially, Ivanka Trump said she would keep a private role apart from the White House, but she has since taken an official — albeit unpaid — position on staff, and continues to have an active role in White House policy discussions, such as at the G-20 meeting Saturday.

On Saturday, Mr. Trump said Ivanka’s life would be easier if she wasn’t his daughter.

[CBS News]

Trump: ‘Everyone’ at G-20 talking about Podesta not giving server to authorities

At this week’s G-20 summit in Germany, one subject the world’s most powerful leaders are discussing is why Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman did not cooperate with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials as they investigated cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee, President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter Friday morning.

“Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!” Trump wrote on Twitter Friday morning. He did not explain why Podesta, who did not work for the DNC, would have been responsible for its email server.

Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the DNC, noted that discrepancy in a post to Twitter, linking to Trump’s post and writing that “1) Podesta never ran the DNC. 2) DNC worked with FBI to kick out Russians. Worked with DHS. 3) Putin make you tweet this before mtg?”

Amid the months-long swirl of reporting surrounding Russia’s efforts to interfere in last year’s presidential election, as well as allegations that Trump associates may have colluded with Russia in those efforts, the president has sought to cast blame on the DNC, former President Barack Obama and others for not doing enough to stop the hacking.

And while he has eagerly accused Obama, the DNC and Podesta of negligence or worse, the president has stopped short of outright blaming Russia for launching the campaign of cyberattacks. Instead, he has said only that he thinks Russia was involved, but that other nations and individuals could have been involved as well.

Trump said Thursday at a press conference that “nobody really knows for sure” if Russia was behind the campaign of cyberattacks, even though the intelligence community he leads as president has expressed certainty that the Kremlin is to blame.

The president is scheduled to meet Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the pair’s first face-to-face meeting since Trump’s election. The White House has not said whether or not Trump plans to bring up Russia’s campaign of election-year cyberattacks.

[Politico]

Reality

At this week’s G-20 summit, Donald Trump again attacked an American while on foreign soil.

Two issues here:

  • Podesta worked for the Clinton campaign and did not work for the DNC, so he would not have been responsible for its email server.
  • Reporting about the DNC hack shows the FBI never asked for the servers. (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/russia-hack-election-dnc.html)

Trump tweets a video of him wrestling ‘CNN’ to the ground

President Trump posted a short video to his Twitter account Sunday in which he is portrayed wrestling and punching a figure whose head has been replaced by the logo for CNN.

The video, about 28 seconds long, appears to be an edited clip from a years-old appearance by Trump in WrestleMania, an annual professional wrestling event. The clip ends with an on-screen restyling of the CNN logo as “FNN: Fraud News Network.”

Cartoonish in quality, the video is an unorthodox way for a sitting president to express himself. But Trump has ratcheted up his attacks on the media in recent days — assailing CNN and crudely insulting the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — while defending his use of social media as “modern day presidential.”

In a speech Saturday at a faith rally in Washington, Trump was met with cheers when he referred to CNN as “garbage journalism” and said: “The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House. But I’m president, and they’re not.”

The wrestling video stirred criticism, disbelief, and dumbfoundedness. Some journalists denounced its portrayal of violence as dangerous, saying it could incite attacks or threats against media employees.

“I think it is unseemly that the president would attack journalists for doing their jobs, and encourage such anger at the media,” said Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times.

The administration did not respond to a request for comment. Trump’s homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, defended the video when he viewed it for the first time during a broadcast interview with Martha Raddatz of ABC News. “No one would perceive that as a threat,” Bossert said. “I hope they don’t.”

“He’s a genuine president expressing himself genuinely,” Bossert added.

CNN criticized Trump for posting the video. “It is a sad day when the president of the United States encourages violence against reporters,” the network said in a statement.

“Instead of preparing for his overseas trip, his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, dealing with North Korea, and working on his health care bill, he is involved in juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office,’’ the statement said. “We will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his.’’

Asked about the video on ABC, Governor John Kasich, Republican of Ohio, said he hoped Trump’s family would talk to him and say, ‘‘Knock it off.’’ He added, “the coarseness doesn’t help anybody.’’

Rallies for and against Trump were held in several cities Sunday.

Demonstrators hoisting signs and chanting anti-Trump slogans marched through downtown Los Angeles to urge Congress to impeach the president. Organizers said they believe the president has violated the Constitution and obstructed justice. A smaller group of Trump backers rallied outside the police headquarters.

Supporters and opponents clashed in Austin, Texas, at a march by a group calling for impeachment.

A version of Trump’s video appeared last week on a Trump-dedicated page on the message board site Reddit, a popular meeting ground for Trump supporters.

The CNN logo is superimposed on what appears to be the head of Vince McMahon, a wrestling magnate and a friend of Trump, who in his prepresidential years often appeared as a guest on wrestling shows.

Trump’s fans on Reddit were exuberant about what they viewed as validation from the country’s most powerful man. “I love this,” wrote a user identified as American_Crusader. “You know he saw it, chuckled, and knew he could control the media narrative for days by hitting the ‘post’ button. So he did.”

The president’s allies say his attacks on the media are justified, arguing that the president is merely defending himself from coverage that his supporters view as biased. Trump’s war of words with CNN is especially popular with his voter base.

Media advocates, however, have raised alarms about a recent spate of arrests and assaults on working journalists, including a high-profile episode in which a Montana congressional candidate, Greg Gianforte, assaulted a reporter for The Guardian, breaking his glasses. Gianforte, who won a House seat, later apologized to the reporter.

Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, condemned the wrestling video as a ‘‘threat of physical violence against journalists.’’

“Targeting individual journalists or media outlets, on-or off-line, creates a chilling effect and fosters an environment where further harassment, or even physical attack, is deemed acceptable,” said Courtney Radsch, the advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Trump posted the wrestling tweet just as prominent Republicans began appearing on the major Sunday news programs.

On CNN, Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, accused the president of “weaponizing distrust” toward the media.

But Tom Price, the health and human services secretary, bristled when asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about Trump’s antimedia remarks. “This is really remarkable,” Price said. “Your program — a program with the incredible history of ‘Meet the Press’ — and that’s what you want to talk about?”

[Boston Globe]

Defiant Trump resumes attacks on ‘Morning Joe’ hosts, despite bipartisan criticism

A defiant President Donald Trump resumed his attacks on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Saturday morning, calling Scarborough “crazy” and Brzezinski “dumb as a rock,” despite days of bipartisan criticism over his initial attacks on the pair earlier this week.

“Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika are not bad people, but their low rated show is dominated by their NBC bosses. Too bad!” Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers rebuked Trump’s attacks on the hosts Thursday after he slammed Brzezinski’s intellect, questioned her sanity and mocked her appearance.

“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came… to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” Trump wrote in a series of tweets.

On Friday, Scarborough and Brzezinski responded to Trump’s attacks with an opinion piece in The Washington Post titled “Donald Trump is not well.”

“America’s leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president,” they wrote. “We have our doubts, but we are both certain that the man is not mentally equipped to continue watching our show, ‘Morning Joe.'”

During their Friday “Morning Joe” broadcast, Scarborough and Brzezinski also accused Trump and his White House of using the possibility of a hit piece in the National Enquirer to threaten them and change their news coverage, to which Trump responded on Twitter by calling that accusation “FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show.”

But Scarborough said he has proof of White House threats earlier this year; he replied to Trump by tweeting, “Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records.”

A White House official suggested to CNN that nothing untoward occurred, saying Scarborough called Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, about the Enquirer story before it was published. The official said Kushner told Scarborough to call the President. The official denied there was ever any offer from Kushner of a quid pro quo — in other words, softer coverage in exchange for spiking the Enquirer story.

The White House did not return a request for comment on Trump’s latest tweet on Saturday.Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump’s initial attack at Thursday’s White House press briefing, saying, “Look, the American people elected a fighter. They didn’t elect somebody to sit back and do nothing.” She added that Trump “fights fire with fire.”

Sanders also said on Fox News that Trump was responding to liberal bullying when he tweeted about the MSNBC host.

“I don’t think that the President’s ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn’t push back,” she told the network Thursday. “There have been an outrageous number of personal attacks not just to him but people around him.”

First lady Melania Trump also stood by her husband’s remarks about the hosts.
“As the first lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder,” the first lady’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement to CNN on Thursday.

When asked about Trump’s initial tweets during a House Republican news conference Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan responded, “Obviously I don’t see that as an appropriate comment.

He added: “What we’re trying to do around here is improve the tone, the civility of the debate. And this obviously doesn’t help do that.”

[CNN]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump Accidentally Confesses to Blackmail Scheme Against Morning Joe Hosts

President Donald Trump on Friday fired back at the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe program.

Specifically, the president responded to allegations that the White House asked co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski to apologize personally to Trump for their negative coverage of him in exchange for him telling the National Enquirer to back off of a negative story planned about the couple.

“Watched low rated Morning Joe for first time in long time,” Trump said. “FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show.”

Joe Scarborough quickly shot back at Trump on Twitter — and claimed that he had a paper trail to back up his version of events.

“I have texts from your top aides and phone records,” he wrote. “Also, those records show I haven’t spoken with you in many months. Why do you keep lying about things that are so easily disproven? What is wrong with you?”

In a Washington Post editorial published Friday, Scarborough and Brzezinski revealed that the White House earlier this year contacted them about a purportedly scandalous story that would soon be published in the National Enquirer, whose boss David Pecker is a longtime Trump ally.

“This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked,” they revealed. “We ignored their desperate pleas.”

[Raw Story]

Trump Endorses Repeal-First Strategy if Health Care Deal Not Reached

As Senate negotiations continue over the stalled Republican health care bill, President Donald Trump Friday morning called on senators to pass a simple repeal of Obamacare now and focus on replacing it later this year if no deal is reached.

Trump’s tweet came just after Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., sent a letter to the White House urging the president to support a repeal-first, replace-later strategy if there is no agreement by the time senators return from their week-long Fourth of July recess on July 10.

The idea has been floated by some Republicans since a planned Senate vote on the GOP Better Care Reconciliation Act was postponed Tuesday because leaders were unable to secure the 50 GOP votes needed to pass it.

Sasse has been working quietly with the White House on the idea, according to a Senate Republican aide who said the administration was receptive to the idea.

“You campaigned and won on the repeal of Obamacare. So did every Republican senator. We should keep our word,” Sasse wrote in the letter.

“On the current path, it looks like Republicans will either fail to pass any meaningful bill at all, or will instead pass a bill that attempts to prop up much of the crumbling Obamacare structures,” he added. We can and must do better than either of these — both because the American people deserve better, and because we promised better.”

Sasse also asked the president to call on Congress to cancel its scheduled month-long August recess to work on a replacement bill for a Labor Day vote. “After we gave our word to repeal and replace Obamacare’s monstrosity,” he said, “we should not go back to our states during August as the American people struggle under fewer choices and skyrocketing costs. We should remain in D.C. at work.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has publicly been advocating starting the idea of starting with a full Obamacare repeal publicly for two weeks, quickly retweeted the president and added his support.

Sasse has kept a low profile throughout the negotiations on health care, refusing to comment or publicly engage on the bill.

The idea was considered by Republican leaders at the beginning of this year when Trump took office but it was quickly dropped when they realized it would be too politically difficult to replace Obamacare outside the reconciliation process where the Senate would need the support of Democrats to pass a replacement.

Senate Republicans continue to discuss a way forward in the health care bill, considering changes to appear both moderates and conservatives to get the support of 50 of 52 Republicans.

[NBC News]

 

Trump Tweets Shocking Assault on Brzezinski, Scarborough

On Thursday morning, while MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was on the air, Trump posted a pair of hateful tweets about co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

MSNBC responded with this statement: “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”

The president’s deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, defended the tweets by saying Trump was responding to the “outrageous attacks that take place” on “Morning Joe” and other shows.

Trump refuses to be “bullied,” Sanders said on Fox News. “This is a president who fights fire with fire.”

Trump’s tweets in the 8 a.m. hour on Thursday said that “Morning Joe” is “poorly rated” (it’s not) and that the hosts “speak badly of me” (that’s true). He called both hosts disparaging names.

Trump claimed that Scarborough and Brzezinski courted him for an interview at Mar-a-Lago around the New Year’s Eve holiday.

“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” the president wrote.

He actually said yes, according to accounts of their meeting. Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski mingled with guests and had a private chat.

For the record, photos from Mar-a-Lago do not show any blood or bandages on Brzezinski’s face.

Stunned commenters on social media noted that Trump targeted both hosts with his barbed tweets, but only opined on the physical appearance of the woman involved.

Democratic commentator Maria Cardona, speaking on CNN, said it was part of a pattern of misogynistic behavior by Trump.

“We should not normalize this,” she said, calling it “unacceptable and unpresidential.”

Lawmakers immediately condemned the president’s tweets, as well.

“Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, tweeted.

But First Lady Melania Trump spoke up in defense of her husband.

“As the First Lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder,” her communications director Stephanie Grisham said in response to reporters’ questions.

Melania Trump has previously said that as First Lady she wants to focus on the problem of cyberbullying.

Critics say Trump uses his Twitter account as a powerful megaphone to bully people.

Observers also expressed a lot of skepticism about Trump’s Thursday morning claim that he doesn’t watch “Morning Joe” anymore.

The president is known to watch all the major morning shows, including the programs on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC’. He sometimes calls up pro-Trump guests to thank them for their remarks on the shows.

Trump had a friendly, jovial relationship with “Morning Joe” during the presidential campaign, but it turned sour over time.

At one point he called Brzezinski “very insecure” and threatened to expose her off-screen relationship with Scarborough.

Brzezinski and Scarborough were dating at the time, and they are now engaged.

Thursday’s anti-media tweets were astonishing — and part of a pattern.

On Tuesday his main target was CNN. Trump reveled in the fact that three CNN journalists resigned on Monday after their Russia-related story was retracted.

On Wednesday Trump went after two of the nation’s biggest newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post.

He mangled the facts several times, but his overall message came through loud and clear: Do not trust the people who are trying to hold my administration accountable.

Brzezinski responded to Trump Thursday morning with a tweet of her own, mocking him with a reference to “little hands,” a reference to a disparaging idea about him that has circulated for years.

Mark Kornblau, the head of PR for NBC News and MSNBC, also weighed in on Twitter, saying, “Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, ‘it is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States.'”

[CNN]

 

Trump posts misleading tweet about Medicaid spending under the Senate Republican healthcare bill

President Donald Trump took exception Wednesday with a Democratic argument regarding Medicaid funding in the new GOP healthcare bill.

“Democrats purposely misstated Medicaid under new Senate bill – actually goes up,” Trump tweeted with a chart.

One of the biggest criticisms of the Senate healthcare bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA), has been the projected cuts to future Medicaid spending under the legislation, which the Congressional Budget Office said would lead to 22 million fewer Americans being insured by 2026.

Trump’s tweet echoes an argument from Republicans that says the legislation doesn’t cut Medicaid spending.

But critics of the legislation note that the projected increase in funding from the federal government will be lower than the current projected rate of increase. This could have serious consequences for Medicaid recipients and state budgets.

Currently, the federal government provides states with a percentage of their Medicaid funding based on a formula of how much a state actually spends. Under the BCRA, states would receive a set amount of money based on the number of people on Medicaid in that state.

In other words, federal funding would grow in raw terms as the US population grows and the total number of people on Medicaid increases, but the amount per person would not be as generous as the current system.

The chart below shows the difference:

Also, the BCRA would end the Medicaid expansion program under the Affordable Care Act, the law better known as Obamacare, which would represent another significant decrease from the current path of funding.

The Congressional Budget Office projected that federal funding for Medicaid would decrease by $772 billion over the next 10 years compared to the current system.

According to analyses from The Brookings Institution, The Kaiser Family Foundation, and the CBO, the formula for the Medicaid growth rate under the BCRA would lead to increased financial stress on states and detrimental outcomes for Medicaid recipients.

[Business Insider]

Reality

Vox fixed the chart:

 

 

Trump on CNN Retraction: ‘What About All the Other Phony Stories They Do?’

President Trump blasted CNN early Tuesday after the network retracted a story published last week tying a top Trump ally to a Russian investment bank.

“Wow, CNN had to retract big story on ‘Russia,’ with 3 employees forced to resign,” Trump tweeted.

“What about all the other phony stories they do? FAKE NEWS!”

The president’s comments come after three CNN staffers resigned following the network’s retraction.

Thomas Frank, the author of the story, Eric Lichtblau, an editor in the CNN investigative unit that ran the story, and Lex Haris, who oversaw the unit, have all left CNN, the network reported Monday.

The retracted story connected Anthony Scaramucci, a top proponent of Trump, to a Russian investment fund run by a bank controlled by the Kremlin.

“In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story’s publication,” a spokesman said Monday.

An internal CNN investigation reportedly found normal editorial processes weren’t followed in the stories editing and publication.

Trump often hits on CNN and refers to stories from the network as “fake news.”

Trump early Tuesday also retweeted a modified image of the network’s logo that refers to CNN as FNN, or the Fake News Network.

[The Hill]

Reality

So if Trump wants to play the morality game, when is he or his staff going to resign over the phony stories he pushed? Because by the time of this article we’ve cataloged 312 complete lies from Trump since his campaign began.

Some examples of phony stories by Trump include:

  • Claiming his inauguration crowd sizes were the largest of all-time.
  • Claiming Barack Obama “wiretapped” him.
  • Claiming he had “tapes” of his private conversation with James Comey where he asked to drop the FBI’s Russia investigation.
  • Claiming at various rallies and in interviews for over four months that he donated $1 million dollars to veterans charities, cutting a check only when a journalist uncovered his lie.
  • Claiming he did not personally know reporter Serge Kovaleski, after telling people “Now the poor guy, you should see this guy,” then mocked his disability.
  • Claiming “thousands and thousands” of people in New Jersey cheered during the 9/11 terror attacks.
  • Claiming President Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

You can take the high road and resign at any time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump Says He Doesn’t Have Tapes of His Conversations With Comey

President Donald Trump said he doesn’t have recordings of his conversations with then-FBI Director James Comey, capping weeks of speculation about whether such tapes exist.

“With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea whether there are ‘tapes’ or recordings of my conversations with James Comey,” Trump said Thursday in a pair of statements on Twitter, “but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings.”

Trump himself raised the question of whether he was taping his Oval Office conversations when, days after firing Comey on May 9, he blasted out a series of tweets suggesting the existence of tapes as a way to try to deter the ousted FBI chief from talking to reporters.

“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump wrote. He concluded with a tweet calling the investigation into Russian interference in the election and his campaign’s possible involvement a “witch hunt,” asking, “when does it end?”

Trump raised the possibility of tapes in a strategic fashion to ensure that Comey told the truth, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election has sought information on whether the tapes exist. The panel sent a letter on June 9 to White House Counsel Don McGahn requesting information on whether recordings of Comey’s conversations with Trump exist and, if they do, for copies to be turned over by Friday.

Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, warned the White House Thursday that “time is running out” to meet the Friday deadline.

The president has promised to answer the question soon. He ended a news conference on June 9 with a cliff-hanger about the tapes: “I’ll tell you about that over a very short period of time.” He said in the same news conference that reporters would be disappointed with his answer — suggesting that there are no tapes.

[Bloomberg]

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