Trump went off on the grandmother of a member of ‘The Squad’ in unhinged Twitter rant

While on vacation at his New Jersey golf club, President Donald Trump took to his favorite social media platform for another attack on a woman of color in Congress.

The commander-in-chief blasted Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — and her grandmother.

Trump had demanded that Israel deny Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) entry into the country. The two are the first two female Muslims elected to Congress.

Isreal initially caved to Trump’s demand, but offered Tlaib limited access to visit her grandmother.

Tlaib responded that she refused to allow Israel to “humiliate me and my family.”

“Visiting my grandmother under these oppressive conditions meant to humiliate me would break my grandmother’s heart. Silencing me with treatment to make me feel less-than is not what she wants for me – it would kill a piece of me that always stands up against racism and injustice,” Tlaib said.

Trump was livid.

“Rep. Tlaib wrote a letter to Israeli officials desperately wanting to visit her grandmother. Permission was quickly granted, whereupon Tlaib obnoxiously turned the approval down, a complete setup,” Trump claimed, neglecting to mention that he had urged Israel deny approval or that there were onerous conditions placed on the approval.

“The only real winner here is Tlaib’s grandmother. She doesn’t have to see her now!” Trump added.

Trump the claimed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was jealous that other members of The Squad were in the spotlight.

“Like it or not, Tlaib and Omar are fast becoming the face of the Democrat Party. Cortez (AOC) is fuming, not happy about this,” Trump claimed, without offering any evidence.

[Raw Story]

Trump encourages Israel to ban Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib

President Trump tweeted Thursday that it would show “great weakness” if Israel were to allow Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to enter the country during an upcoming congressional delegation visit on Friday.

“It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep.Tlaib to visit. They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds. Minnesota and Michigan will have a hard time putting them back in office. They are a disgrace!”

Why it matters: As Axios’ Jonathan Swan and I previously reported, Trump has privately been telling advisers that he thinks Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should use an anti-boycott law to bar the two freshman congresswomen over their support for the BDS movement. In response to our story, the White House said that Trump didn’t pressure Israel in any way and that Israel can do whatever it wants.

The state of play: Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer had previously said Israel would allow Tlaib and Omar to enter, but Netanyahu — a staunch Trump ally who is facing an election in the fall — is now reconsidering as a result of pressure from the president.

  • According to Israeli officials, Netanyahu is trying to find a solution that will address the pressure from the White House but will not totally bar Omar and Tlaib.
  • As of 5 a.m. EDT, no decision had been made. One of the possibilities floated would be allowing the congresswomen to enter Israel but limiting their movements only to the Palestinian Authority.
  • Another option is to allow them in on humanitarian grounds. An Israeli official told me that if Tlaib filed a humanitarian request to visit her relatives, the Israeli government will consider it favorably.

[Axios]

Update

One hour after Trump’s tweet:

Trump Shares Racist Tucker Carlson Clip Amid White Supremacy Controversy

President Donald Trump retweeted a racist clip of Fox News Host Tucker Carlson, who’s facing backlash for claiming the notion of a white supremacy problem in the U.S. is “a hoax” created by the left and the media.

The video ― created by The Daily Caller, a conservative news site that Carlson co-founded ― features the Fox host discussing and questioning the legitimacy of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) prior marriage, immigration status and name. Omar, an American citizen, was born in Somalia and immigrated to the U.S. as a child.

The “sham marriage” that Carlson refers to is a popular right-wing conspiracy theory that Omar married her brother in order to bypass U.S. immigration laws. There is no evidence that indicates this is the case, and the theory originated from an anonymous internet forum post in 2016. 

Omar has denied the claim and provided a timeline of her marital history. In 2018, she showed a reporter from the Minneapolis Star Tribune images of her father’s immigration documents, which did not list her former husband among his children.

But this is not the first time that the president has drawn attention to the unsubstantiated theory.

“Well, there is a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother,” Trump told reporters last month, before adding: “I know nothing about it.”

Trump has a history of engaging in or promoting racist attacks that question the legitimacy of the congresswoman’s status as an American. He has claimed that Omar hates America and said that she, alongside three other progressive Democratic congresswomen, should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Carlson currently faces public backlash for claiming that white supremacy is not a threat in America just days after a shooter killed 22 people and injured dozens more at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The shooter reportedly penned a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto before driving nine hours to the largely Hispanic border town.

“This is a hoax, just like the Russia hoax,” Carlson said on Tuesday of the notion that white supremacy was a major threat in the U.S. “It’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power. That’s exactly what’s going on.”

Fox News and Carlson have lost several advertisers, including Long John Silver’s, Nestlé and HelloFresh, in the aftermath of his claim.

When the president was asked on Wednesday if he was concerned about the rising threat of white supremacy, he told reporters he was concerned about all hate groups, “whether it’s white supremacy, whether it’s any other kind of supremacy.”

[Huffington Post]

Trump Attacks Ohio Senator After Leaving Visit to Dayton Shooting Victims: ‘Failed Presidential Candidate (0%)’

Shortly after departing Dayton, OH after visiting victims of Sunday’s mass shooting, President Donald Trump attacked the city’s mayor and one of Ohio’s senators.

In a pair of tweets while en route to El Paso, the president ripped Sen. Sherrod Brown(D-OH) and Dayton mayor Nan Whaley for comments they made in a news conference following the president’s visit Wednesday afternoon.

“Just left Dayton, Ohio, where I met with the Victims & families, Law Enforcement, Medical Staff & First Responders,” Trump wrote. It was a warm & wonderful visit. Tremendous enthusiasm & even Love. Then I saw failed Presidential Candidate (0%) Sherrod Brown & Mayor Whaley totally … misrepresenting what took place inside of the hospital. Their news conference after I left for El Paso was a fraud. It bore no resemblance to what took place with those incredible people that I was so lucky to meet and spend time with. They were all amazing!”

In the news conference, Brown (who never officially declared himself a candidate for the presidency) said this when asked why he reversed course on taking part in Trump’s visit to Dayton, after originally balking.

“I didn’t want to in any way encourage the president’s racist talk and divisive talk,” Brown said. “I came because Mayor Whaley asked me to come.”

Whaley was critical of Washington at large, talking about what she views as the dim prospect of gun control legislation being enacted.

“I’m not holding my breath,” she said.

[Mediaite]

Trump responds to reports of Cummings’s Baltimore home being robbed: ‘Too bad!’

President Trump responded early Friday to reports that Rep. Elijah Cummings’s (D-Md.) Baltimore home was broken into, tweeting that the reported incident was “really bad news” and “too bad!”

“Really bad news! The Baltimore house of Elijah Cummings was robbed. Too bad!” Trump tweeted.

Trump’s early morning remark came just days after he sent more than a dozen tweets criticizing the House Oversight and Reform Committee chairman, accusing Cummings of being a “brutal bully” and saying his district, which includes parts of West Baltimore, was “rat and rodent infested” and a “very dangerous & filthy place” where “no human being would want to live.”

His attack on the longtime Democratic lawmaker was seen as the latest in a line of statements aimed at minority members of Congress, which some Democrats have denounced as racist.

Trump has insisted on multiple occasions that he is the “least racist person anywhere in the world.” 

Cummings has spoken out against Trump repeatedly on various issues surrounding his administration and chairs a committee that has pursued aggressive investigations into the Trump administration.

The burglary, which police said occurred early Saturday morning, reportedly happened just hours before the president’s initial tweet about Cummings.

“At this time, it is unknown if any property was taken from the location,” a spokesman for Baltimore police told news outlets on Thursday.

[The Hill]

Donald Trump Accused of racism, Then blasts black congressman as racist

Facing growing accusations of racism for his incendiary tweets, President Donald Trump lashed out at his critics Monday and sought to deflect the criticism by labeling a leading black congressman as himself racist.

In the latest rhetorical shot at lawmakers of color, Trump said his weekend comments referring to Rep. Elijah Cummings’ majority-black Baltimore district as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live” were not racist. Instead, Trump argued, “if racist Elijah Cummings would focus more of his energy on helping the good people of his district, and Baltimore itself, perhaps progress could be made in fixing the mess.”

“His radical ‘oversight’ is a joke!” Trump tweeted Sunday.

After a weekend of attacks on Cummings, the son of former sharecroppers who rose to become the powerful chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Trump expanded his attacks Monday to include a prominent Cummings defender, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was traveling to Baltimore to hold a press conference in condemnation of the president.

“Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score,” Trump tweeted ahead of the press conference, adding that the civil rights activist and MSNBC host “Hates Whites & Cops!”

Trump appeared to dig a deeper hole even as a top White House aide sought to dismiss the controversy by describing Trump’s comments as hyperbole. Two weeks ago, Trump caused a nationwide uproar with racist tweets directed at four Democratic congresswomen of color as he looked to stoke racial divisions for political gain heading into the 2020 election.

Trump noted that Democratic presidential contender and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders had “recently equated” parts of Baltimore to a “third world country” in 2015 comments.

“I assume that Bernie must now be labeled a Racist, just as a Republican would if he used that term and standard,” Trump tweeted Monday.

Sanders tweeted back that “Trump’s lies and racism never end. While I have been fighting to lift the people of Baltimore and elsewhere out of poverty with good paying jobs, housing and health care, he has been attacking workers and the poor.”

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, on Monday called the president’s comments “just outrageous and inappropriate.” Hogan, the new chairman of the National Governors Association, said he recently gave an address at the NGA about the angry and divisive politics that “are literally tearing America apart.”

“I think enough is enough,” Hogan said on the C4 Radio Show in Baltimore. “I mean, people are just completely fed up with this kind of nonsense, and why are we not focused on solving the problems and getting to work instead of who’s tweeting what, and who’s calling who what kind of names. I mean, it’s just absurd.”

Michael Steele, the state’s former lieutenant governor who went on to serve as the national chairman of the Republican National Committee, said it was “reprehensible to talk about the city the way” Trump did, but he hoped the attention would elevate the conversation about how to help urban areas, and he invited the president to be a part of the conversation.

“Put down the cellphone and the tweeting and come walk the streets in this community so that you can see firsthand the good and the difficult that needs to be addressed, and let’s do it together,” Steele told the radio show.

Speaking in television interviews on Sunday, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Trump was reacting in frustration to the Democrats’ unrelenting investigations and talk of impeachment. He said Trump swung hard at Cummings and his Baltimore district because he believes such Capitol Hill critics are neglecting serious problems back home in their zeal to unfairly undermine his presidency.

“I understand that everything that Donald Trump says is offensive to some people,” Mulvaney said. But he added: “The president is pushing back against what he sees as wrong. It’s how he’s done it in the past, and he’ll continue to do it in the future.”

Mulvaney, a former congressman, said he understood why some people could perceive Trump’s words as racist.

Mulvaney said Trump’s words were exaggerated for effect — “Does the president speak hyperbolically? Absolutely” — and meant to draw attention to Democratic-backed investigations of the Republican president and his team in Washington.

He asserted that Trump’s barbs were a reaction to what the president considered to be inaccurate statements by Cummings about conditions in which children are being held in detention at the U.S.-Mexico border.

At a hearing last week, Cummings accused a top administration official of wrongly calling reports of filthy, overcrowded border facilities “unsubstantiated.”

“When the president hears lies like that, he’s going to fight back,” Mulvaney said.

The president has tried to put racial polarization at the center of his appeal to his base of voters, tapping into anxieties about demographic and cultural changes.

Cummings is leading multiple investigations of the president’s governmental dealings. In his direct response to Trump on Twitter, Cummings said: “Mr. President, I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors. It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents.”

Cummings has also drawn the president’s ire for investigations touching on his family members serving in the White House. His committee voted along party lines Thursday to authorize subpoenas for personal emails and texts used for official business by top White House aides, including Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.

Earlier this month, Trump drew bipartisan condemnation following his call for Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan to get out of the U.S. “right now.” He said that if the lawmakers “hate our country,” they can go back to their “broken and crime-infested” countries.

All four lawmakers of color are American citizens and three of the four were born in the U.S.

[Associated Press]

Trump bashes Mueller for ‘ineptitude,’ slams ‘sick’ Democrats backing impeachment

President Trump on Saturday criticized renewed calls for impeachment among some Democrats following former special counsel Robert Mueller‘s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee this week. 

“The Dems are now coming out of shock from the terrible Mueller performance, and are starting to spin impeachment all over again,” Trump tweeted. “How sick & disgusting and bad for our Country are they. What they are doing is so wrong, but they do it anyway. Dems have become the do nothing Party!”

The president also bashed Mueller’s “display of ineptitude & incompetence.”

After the former special counsel’s Wednesday testimony, some Democrats joined calls for an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and others doubled down on past calls.

Democratic Reps. Lisa Blunt Rochester (Del.), Katherine Clark (Mass.), Peter DeFazio (Ore.), John Garamendi (Calif.), Annie Kuster (N.H.), Mike Levin (Calif.) and Lori Trahan (Mass.) signaled their support for impeachment after the testimony. A total of 99 House Democrats have indicated support for an inquiry. 

Other Democrats, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, continued to not push for an inquiry

“Whatever decision we make in that regard would have to be done with our strongest possible hand, and we still have some outstanding matters in the courts,” Pelosi said at a press conference after the hearing. 

Mueller in his testimony reiterated that his team did not “reach a determination as to whether the president committed a crime” but said that Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice after he leaves office. 

[The Hill]

Trump calls Cummings’ district a ‘disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess’

President Donald Trump lashed out against House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., on Saturday, saying his Baltimore district was “far worse” than the southern border.

The attack came days after the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena personal emails and texts of top White House aides, including Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner.

Trump did not refer to the committee’s decision and instead attacked the civil rights icon.

“Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States,” Trump wrote. “Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!”

“The Border is clean, efficient and well run, just very crowded,” Trump said, adding that Cummings’ district is “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

Cummings responded via Twitter.

“We have rats all over the country,” said Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young. “We have two-legged rats.”

City Council President Brandon Scott, who was joined by all four women on the council, implored the president to better fund federal programs under the Department of Housing and Urban Development that he says would improve life in Baltimore.

“Stop tweeting,” he said, “let’s start working.”

On Thursday, Cummings said the committee has obtained “direct evidence” that Ivanka Trump, Kushner and other top aides were using personal accounts for official business in violation of federal law and White House policy.

[NBC News]

Trump Quotes Fox & Friends Celebration: Mueller Hearing ‘Changed Everything’ … Trump ‘Wins’

President Donald Trump and Fox & Friends celebrated together on Thursday morning in response to Robert Mueller’s less-than-stellar appearance before Congress.

Mueller drew headlines when he stated that his special counsel report showed how Trump welcomed Russian election interference in 2016, that the president was not exonerated on obstruction of justice, and that Trump could be charged with a crime once he’s out of office. However, the special counsel’s constant referrals to his written words, inability to answer certain questions, and shaky performance dashed expectations that he would breathe life into an impeachment groundswell.

As Fox & Friends recapped the hearings, Ainsley Earhardt said it was “clear he was not in charge of his investigation” and his testimony “changed nothing.” Brian Kilmeadefollowed up by remarking on the setbacks to the possibility of impeachment, and Steve Doocyremarked that Mueller “did not know what was in his own report.”

Trump was clearly watching this morning, because he quote-tweeted the trio’s 6 a.m. opening segment, during which Earhardt said, “Yesterday changed everything, it really did clear the President. He wins.”

The curvy couch continued to break down the “disaster” of a hearing and call it “a great day for the president,” Kilmeade especially tore into Mueller for punting on many of the questions that came his way. When he arrived at the obstruction of justice matter, he said “I think you could sum up the obstruction part of the Mueller report: Trump being Trump.”

“Even if you did not rob the bank, if they are going to investigate you for robbing the bank, you got to wonder why are they questioning everyone around me for something I didn’t do? What does Trump do? He fights you every step of the way…If you say something wrong, he will call you out, and that’s what this.”

[Mediaite]

Trump blasts ‘bonkers’ media spewing ‘Radical Left Democrat views’

President Trump on Monday lashed out at the media, targeting The Washington Post in particular, as he remained fixated on coverage of his ongoing attacks on four progressive congresswomen.

In a series of tweets, the president claimed the “Mainstream Media” has “gone bonkers” and accused the media of pushing “Radical Left Democrat views.” 

“It has never been this bad,” Trump tweeted. “They have gone bonkers, & no longer care what is right or wrong. This large scale false reporting is sick!”

“Fake News Equals the Enemy of the People!” he added.

For a second straight day, Trump pushed back on a Washington Post story recounting the fallout of his incendiary tweets targeting Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley. He went on to decry “fake news” as “the Enemy of the People.”

[The Hill]

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