Category: Not Factual

Trump suggests arresting Adam Schiff for ‘treason’

President Donald Trump and his allies on Monday ratcheted up their campaign against Rep. Adam Schiff as the White House’s Ukraine scandal entered its second week — with Trump again suggesting the House Intelligence chairman committed treason.

Locked in a defensive crouch and staring down an impeachment inquiry, Trump continued to batter the California Democrat for allegedly mischaracterizing his July phone call with newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to Congress and the American people,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for Treason?”

During Trump’s conversation with Zelensky, the president urged his foreign counterpart to work with Attorney General William Barr to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.

After Schiff offered a knowingly exaggerated version of the call’s transcript before a meeting of his committee last Thursday, conservative commentators and Republican lawmakers were quick to castigate the congressman on social media and cable news.

The president was unwilling to drop the issue Monday afternoon, complaining about Schiff’s remarks to reporters in the Oval Office following a swearing-in ceremony for his new Labor secretary, Eugene Scalia.

“Adam Schiff — representative, congressman — made up what I said. He actually took words and made it up,” Trump said, as Scalia’s family looked on. “The reason is, when he saw my call to the president of Ukraine, it was so good that he couldn’t quote from it. Because there was nothing done wrong. It was perfect.”

Trump previously demanded Sunday that Schiff be “questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason,” and claimed that his “lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber.”

Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, kept up that line of attack Monday, charging that Schiff “didn’t embellish” but instead “lied about” the memo the White House released last week summarizing the Zelensky call.

“He stood in front of the American people with millions of people listening and he lied,” Giuliani told the Fox Business Network. “He put on a stupid phony show, just like he lied when he said he had direct evidence of Russian collusion.”

Eric Trump, the president’s son, also assailed Schiff on Monday, telling the hosts of “Fox & Friends” that the congressman “is exactly why we need term limits in this country” and adding: “He’s a total disgrace.”

[Politico]

Trump demands to meet whistleblower, warns of ‘big consequences’

President Trump on Sunday evening railed against the whistleblower and other individuals at the center of a growing scandal involving his phone call with Ukraine’s president, warning there could be “big consequences.”

“Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called “Whistleblower,” represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way. Then [Rep. Adam] Schiff made up what I actually said by lying to Congress,” Trump said in a series of tweets.

“His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber,” he continued, before adding that he wants Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, “questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.”

“In addition,” he added, “I want to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION, but also the person who illegally gave this information, which was largely incorrect, to the ‘Whistleblower.’ Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!”

[The Hill]

Trump rages at ‘unlawful impeachment’ and vows to come after lawmakers in ’50 Trump type Districts’

President Donald Trump kept up his steady drumbeat of retweeting posts from the RNC and fans of his presidency on Sunday morning, using a video produced by the Republican Party to call the pending impeachment proceedings “unlawful.”

Linking to a video posted by GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, where she wrote, “This is just the beginning of an all-out fight to defend our democracy & our president,” and targeted Democratic lawmakers in GOP districts, Trump added, “Will happen to all of those seeking unlawful impeachment in 50 Trump type Districts. We will win big!”

You can see the video below:

[Raw Story]

Trump launched crazed late night Twitter rant — spreading 22 RNC oppo research attacks

President Donald Trump is facing an impeachment inquiry after admitting he solicited foreign election interference in his search for opposition research to help his 2020 re-election bid.

With his efforts backfiring, Trump on Saturday evening relied on the Republican National Committee for opposition research — known as oppo research — to attack his opponents.

After starting the day with an unhinged attack on Democrats, the president went to Trump National Golf Club, but instead of returning to the White House refreshed after a day on the links, the president posted more unsubstantiated attacks on Democrats that received swift criticism.

It was after 10 p.m. Eastern that the president spread a massive amount of oppo research on Democrats to his 65 million Twitter followers.

Here are the RNC opposition research tweets Trump retweeted after 10 p.m.

[Raw Story]

Trump blasts ‘savages’ — Ocasio-Cortez, three other women of color, Schiff, Nadler

President Donald Trump blasted six members of the House of Representatives as “savages” on Saturday morning.

“Savages” began to trend on Twitter following the president’s post, which comes amid an impeachment inquiry over his dealings with Ukraine.

Some Twitter users pointed out that Trump’s latest broadside against Democrats focused on four women of color as well as the two heads of committees helping to lead the impeachment inquiry — Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, who chairs the Judiciary Committee and Adam Schiff of California, who leads the Intelligence Committee.

“AOC plus 3” apparently refers to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, and the three other members of the so-called “squad” of progressive congresswomen: Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, an immigrant from Somalia; Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, who is black; and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who is of Palestinian descent.

The three are among at least 225 House Democrats who now support some type of impeachment action.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry this week following claims that the president might have withheld aid to Ukraine to pressure officials there to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.

Biden is currently a front-runner in the race for the Democratic nomination for president.

Trump has described the impeachment inquiry as “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT” and “A total Witch Hunt Scam by the Democrats!” on Twitter.

His Saturday morning broadside came a day after Schiff — as well as Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., chairman of the Oversight Committee — wrote a letter demanding that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo turn over documents related to Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

[NBC News]

Trump Blasts CNN for Chyron Typo; Reveals He Doesn’t Know Difference Between a Hyphen and an Apostrophe

Watch out CNN graphics team, you are on notice!

In a curiously focused complaint aimed at what he derided as “Low ratings” CNN, President Donald Trump took serious issue with the network’s handling of a tweet of his that ripped Rep. Adam Schiff, and cited what appeared to be a chyron typo as an example of “how dishonest the LameStream Media is.”

Trump tweeted:

At issue is a Trump tweet published Thursday after the House Intel Committee Chair led a hearing featuring Acting DNI Joseph Maguire regarding a whistleblower complaint that raised “urgent concerns” over Trump and his phone call with the Ukrainian president.

Trump’s source material tweet?

It seems that CNN, however, claimed that Trump misspelled “little” as “liddle.” The word “liddle” however, is not a word found in any reputable dictionary, though the Commander in Chief is clearly using a unique spelling on purpose, as he has used that term before.

The other problem for Trump is that CNN did not include his use of an apostrophe at the end of his made up word, though perhaps, unfortunately, he misidentified the punctuation mark. It is not a “hyphen” as he alleges, it is an apostrophe. He also spelt “describing” wrong.

[Mediaite]

White House press secretary says daily briefings aren’t coming back any time soon

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Monday that she is not likely to conduct a White House press briefing anytime in the near future, deriding the once-regular sessions as an act of “theater” for reporters seeking “to get famous” during the televised news conferences.

“Not right now,” Grisham told the hosts of “Fox & Friends,” when asked whether the White House will resume its daily press briefing, a longstanding practice under President Donald Trump’s predecessors.

“I mean, ultimately, if the president decides that it’s something we should do, we can do that, but right now he’s doing just fine,” she continued. “And to be honest, the briefings have become a lot of theater. And I think that a lot of reporters were doing it to get famous. I mean, yeah, they’re writing books now. I mean, they’re all getting famous off of this presidency. And so, I think it’s great what we’re doing now.”

Grisham, who has rarely participated in on-camera interviews since becoming press secretary in June, praised her boss as “his own best spokesperson” and claimed he is “the most accessible president in history, as all of the media knows” — citing Trump’s frequent informal gaggles with the White House press corps.

Grisham also suggested that reporters’ criticisms of the president’s previous press secretaries, Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, played a role in Trump’s decision to discontinue the briefings.

“I think that it’s so important that, you know, the spokesperson for the president can adequately speak to his policies and get his message out there, and I think the president saw that that’s not what was happening,” she said. “It had become, again, theater, and they weren’t being good to his people. And he doesn’t like that. He’s very loyal to his people, and he put a stop to it.”

Spicer was widely mocked for his combative and sometimes stumbling performances during the daily White House news briefings, which memorably became a subject of parody by actress Melissa McCarthy on “Saturday Night Live.”

Sanders oversaw the end of the daily briefings amid mounting questions from journalists regarding her credibility. She opted to develop a regular presence on cable news programs, especially “Fox & Friends,” where she would bludgeon the president’s detractors.

Grisham has been largely reluctant to advocate on-air for the administration’s priorities, but she weighed in Monday on the controversy surrounding Trump’s summer conversation with Ukraine’s president that is quickly consuming the White House and Capitol Hill.

“The president made it very clear he did absolutely nothing wrong. This is just another reason for Democrats and for the media to attack and look for things that just aren’t there,” she said.

The Wall Street Journal initially reported on Friday that Trump urged newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy roughly eight times during a July 25 phone call to work with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son.

Trump confirmed Sunday that he discussed Biden, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, during his call with Zelenskiy.

“The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place,” he told reporters outside the White House. “Was largely the fact that we don’t want our people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine.”

[Politico]

Trump Admits He Talked to Ukraine About Joe Biden

U.S. President Donald Trump appears to have admitted Sunday that he did talk to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about unsubstantiated corruption allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.

The admission came after days of news reports, allegations, stonewalling, and denials about claims that the president threatened to withhold military aid to Ukraine as leverage to force Zelensky to launch a probe that could damage one of his main rivals in next year’s election.

“The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place, was largely the fact that we don’t want our people like Vice President Biden and his son [contributing] to the corruption already in Ukraine,” Trump told reporters Sunday.

But the president insisted that he did “absolutely nothing wrong” in the call, adding that the conversation was “perfect.”

The president once again leveled the same unsubstantiated allegations against Biden on Twitter on Sunday night:

Trump’s concession came only after the Wall Street Journal reported that the president had pressed Zelensky up to eight times to work with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate allegations against Biden and his son.

Trump and his allies have claimed, without providing any evidence, that Biden used his position as vice president to pressure Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating possible criminal charges against Biden’s son Hunter, who was on the board of Burisma Holdings, a major Ukrainian energy company.

There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son, and a Ukrainian prosecutor general said in May that the company did not violate Ukrainian law by having Hunter Biden in a paid position on its board.

The phone call with Zelensky, which formed part of a complaint by an intelligence community whistleblower, took place on July 25. That was prior to the U.S. approving $250 million in military aid to Ukraine, though CNN reports that this was not explicitly mentioned during the call and Trump said Sunday there was “no quid pro quo” in his calls for an investigation.

The White House and the Department of Justice have so far refused to release the transcripts of the call despite demands to do so from Congress.

[Vice]

U.S. sanctions Iran’s central bank, fund after Saudi oil attack

The United States on Friday imposed another round of sanctions on Tehran, including on Iran’s central bank and a development fund, following last week’s attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia that Riyadh and U.S. officials have blamed on Iran.

President Donald Trump outlined the action to reporters at the White House on Friday after first announcing his plan for further sanctions earlier this week on Twitter. 

Iran denies involvement in the attacks, which initially halved oil output from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest petroleum exporter. Responsibility was claimed by Yemen’s Houthi movement, an Iran-aligned group fighting a Saudi-led alliance in Yemen’s civil war.

Analysts cast doubt on how hard the new measures would hit Tehran given that earlier sanctions have already dried up Iranian oil revenues and cut Iranian banks’ ties to the financial world.

And Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called on the Pentagon to present Trump with a wide range of options that would punish Iran and warned that the United States has “lost deterrence” with Tehran. 

The fresh sanctions target the Central Bank of Iran, the National Development Fund of Iran and Etemad Tejarate Pars Co, an Iranian company that U.S. officials said is used to conceal financial transfers for Iranian military purchases, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

“These are the highest sanctions ever imposed on a country,” Trump said. “It’s too bad what’s happening with Iran. It’s going to hell, doing poorly, practically broke, they are broke,” he said. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Washington had now cut off “all source of funds to Iran.”

Trump pulled the United States out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran last year and ramped up sanctions to strangle oil exports, a mainstay of the economy. The move dismantled part of former President Barack Obama’s legacy and upset U.S. allies who were party to the agreement, which was designed to restrict Tehran’s pathway to a nuclear bomb in exchange for sanctions relief.

Amir Paivar, a London-based market analyst, said that while targeting a central bank seems important the latest move was mostly cosmetic.

“Iran’s oil export proceeds are usually deposited in Central Bank accounts around the world, therefore the bank has central importance,” Amir Paivar, a London-based market analyst said. 

“But with Iran’s oil exports at a minimum, and with global banks not working with Iranian counterparts, designating the Central Bank again is little more than cosmetic.”

Trump’s wide range of sanctions are part of a U.S. campaign to increase economic pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program and regional ambitions and was championed by former national security adviser John Bolton, who was ousted this month.

Previous U.S. sanctions have also targeted Iran’s foreign minister, its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, space agencies, and various networks Washington has said helped boost Iran’s nuclear program, among others.

“Regardless of transparent attempts to shift blame, the evidence points to Iran—and only Iran,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement following the announcement.

[Reuters]

Pentagon will deploy US forces to the Middle East after attack on Saudi Arabia oil facilities

The Pentagon will deploy U.S. forces to the Middle East on the heels of strikes on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced Friday.

“The president has approved the deployment of U.S. forces which will be defensive in nature and primarily focused on air and missile defense,” Esper said, adding that Saudi Arabia requested the support. “We will also work to accelerate the delivery of military equipment to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to enhance their ability to defend themselves,” he added.

President Trump has said that it “certainly looks” as if Iran appears to be responsible for the attack, but that he wants to avoid war.

Esper reiterated that the United States does not seek a conflict with Iran and called on Tehran to return to diplomatic channels. He also said that there could be additional U.S. deployments if the situation were to escalate.

On Thursday, the Pentagon called the recent strikes on the Saudi Arabian oil facilities as “sophisticated” and represented a “dramatic escalation” in tensions within the region.

“This has been a dramatic escalation of what we have seen in the past. This was a number of airborne projectiles, was very sophisticated, coordinated and it had a dramatic impact on the global markets,” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said, adding that the strike is an international problem.

A CNBC crew visiting the Khurais site that was attacked saw melted pipes and burnt areas which crews were busy repairing. Officials said that 30% of the facility was back up and running within 24 hours, and that full production at Khurais would be reached before the end of September.

The strikes on the world’s largest crude-processing plant and oil field forced the kingdom to shut down half of its production operations. What’s more, the event triggered the largest spike in crude prices in decades and renewed concerns of a budding conflict in the Middle East. All the while, Iran maintains that it was not behind the attacks.

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry said that drone and missile debris recovered by investigators shows Iranian culpability. Saudi coalition spokesman Col. Turki al-Maliki said during a press briefing in Riyadh that all military components retrieved from the oil facilities “point to Iran.”

The latest confrontation follows a string of attacks in the Persian Gulf in recent months.

In June, U.S. officials said an Iranian surface-to-air missile shot down an American military surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran said the aircraft was over its territory. Hours later, Trump said Iran made a “very big mistake” by shooting down the spy drone. The downing came a week after the U.S. blamed Iran for attacks on two oil tankers in the Persian Gulf region and after four tankers were attacked in May.

The U.S. in June slapped new sanctions on Iranian military leaders blamed for shooting down the drone. The measures also aimed to block financial resources for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Though Trump has threatened to bring military action or even “fire and fury” against American adversaries, he has also said he does not want to throw the U.S. into another prolonged military conflict. In a tweet Tuesday, Trump called his measured response to the strikes “a sign of strength that some people just don’t understand!”

[CNBC]

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