White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sidestepped questions about the validity of chief of staff John Kelly’s claim that Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida had bragged about securing funds for an FBI field office in 2015.
“[Kelly] said there was a lot of grandstanding,” Sanders said during Friday’s White House press briefing. “He was stunned she had taken that opportunity to make it about herself.”
When pressed as to whether Kelly could elaborate further, Sanders said he “addressed that pretty thoroughly yesterday.”
But the reporter noted that the money was secured before Wilson was in Congress, which prompted Sanders to invoke Kelly’s military career.
“If you want to go after General Kelly that’s up to you but I think that if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that’s something highly inappropriate,” Sanders said.
After Wilson suggested that President Donald Trump was inappropriate on a phone call with the widow of a US Special Forces soldier killed in Niger, Kelly criticized the Democratic congresswoman in an attempt to clarify the White House’s account of the call.
On Friday, the South Florida Sun Sentinel released a video of Wilson’s speech, which showed that she did not brag about securing the buildings funds, but did boast about rushing through Congress the renaming of the building in honor of two fallen FBI agents, Jerry L. Dove and Benjamin P. Grogan.
Old tweets posted by President Trump in which he attacked generals resurfaced Friday after the White House said it was “inappropriate” to criticize them.
I was never a fan of Colin Powell after his weak understanding of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq = disaster. We can do much better!
Sanders shuts down Q on Kelly: "If you want to get into a debate with a 4-star marine general, I think that's highly inappropriate" pic.twitter.com/jF5pyafI4B
President Donald Trump complained Thursday that the “fake media doesn’t want to follow” news related to an Obama-era sale of uranium deal involving the Russian government, resurfacing an issue he spoke of often on the campaign trail to attack Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn’t want to follow!” the president wrote online Thursday.
The controversy, which centers around a 2010 sale that put the Russian government in control of more than 20 percent of the U.S. uranium supply, made its way back into the spotlight this week when the Senate Judiciary Committee opened a fresh investigation on the matter. That probe was triggered by a story published by The Hill reporting that the FBI had uncovered Russian nuclear officials were engaged in an array of illegal activities in the U.S., including bribery, extortion and kickbacks.
Trump often used the uranium deal during last year’s presidential campaign in an effort to paint Clinton as corrupt, pointing to donations made to the Clinton Global Initiative as an indication that she approved the sale to appease donors.
But while the State Department was one of the agencies involved in approving the uranium deal, both the Clinton campaign and officials from the department have said that the former secretary of state was not involved in the approval process because such matters did not rise to her level within the department.
As Vox points out, the political reason Trump is embracing both of these stories is clear enough: He’s trying to cast Russia-related dirt on both Democrats and the FBI (which he views as part of a “deep state” unfairly persecuting him), to try to discredit the investigation as a whole, and to change the subject from the question of whether any of his associates colluded with the Russian government during the campaign
President Trump, in a personal phone call to a grieving military father, offered him $25,000 and said he would direct his staff to establish an online fundraiser for the family, but neither happened, the father said.
Chris Baldridge, the father of Army Cpl. Dillon Baldridge, told The Washington Post that Trump called him at his home in Zebulon, N.C., a few weeks after his 22-year-old son and two fellow soldiers were gunned down by an Afghan police officer in a suspected insider attack June 10. Their phone conversation lasted about 15 minutes, Baldridge said, and centered for a time on the father’s struggle with the manner in which his son was killed.
“I said, ‘Me and my wife would rather our son died in trench warfare,’ ” Baldridge said. “I feel like he got murdered over there.”
Trump’s offer of $25,000 adds another dimension to the president’s relations with Gold Star families, an honorific given to those whose loved ones die while serving in support of the nation’s wars. The disclosure follows questions about how often the president has called or written to grieving military families.
The Washington Post contacted the White House about Baldridge’s account on Wednesday morning. Officials declined to discuss the events in detail.
But in a statement Wednesday afternoon, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said: “The check has been sent. It’s disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the President, and using it to advance the media’s biased agenda.”
Trump said this week that he has “called every family of somebody that’s died, and it’s the hardest call to make.” At least 20 Americans have been killed in action since he became commander in chief in January. The Washington Post interviewed the families of 13 and found that his interactions with them vary. About half had received phone calls, they said. The others said they had not heard from the president.
In his call with Trump, Baldridge, a construction worker, expressed frustration with the military’s survivor benefits program. Because his ex-wife was listed as their son’s beneficiary, she was expected to receive the Pentagon’s $100,000 death gratuity — even though “I can barely rub two nickels together,” he told Trump.
The president’s response shocked him.
“He said, ‘I’m going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000,’ and I was just floored,” Baldridge said. “I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had it recorded because the man did say this. He said, ‘No other president has ever done something like this,’ but he said, ‘I’m going to do it.’ ”
The president has faced worsening backlash since details emerged of his phone call Tuesday with the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, who was killed Oct. 4 alongside three other U.S. soldiers in Niger. After not addressing the incident for 12 days, Trump on Monday falsely claimed that previous presidents never or rarely called the families of fallen service members. In fact, they did so regularly.
President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon that he found it “frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write.”
Asked later whether he believed there “should be limits on what the press should write” — which would likely conflict with the First Amendment, which guarantees both free expression and a free press — Trump said, “No. The press should speak more honestly.”
Still, his comment raised eyebrows, especially because it was the latest remark in a string of heightened attacks Trump has leveled against the press in recent days.
Just Wednesday morning, Trump had tweeted that media companies which report critically on him should be punished by having their television station licenses revoked.
In a tweet, the president decried the supposed “fake news coming out of NBC and the Networks.” He asked, “At what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”
Trump seems to have been furious over an NBC News report that said he wanted a tenfold increase in the U.S.’ nuclear arsenal. Earlier in the morning he claimed the story was “pure fiction” and “made up to demean.”
Trump’s veiled threat may contribute to the increasingly chilly atmosphere journalists in the U.S. are working under during his administration. But his threat is essentially toothless.
First of all, there is no single license for NBC or any other national television network. Licenses are granted to individual local stations — and NBC doesn’t even own most of the stations that broadcast its content across the country. And it is extremely unusual for any station’s license to be taken away for any reason, much less for a political vendetta.
The licenses for local television stations are subject to review by the Federal Communications Commission every eight years.
It would not be possible for Trump or his allies to challenge all of the licenses held by NBC in one fell swoop. Individuals who reside in the areas the local channel airs would have to submit complaints to the FCC.
There is precedent for political allies of a president challenging local licenses. It happened under Richard Nixon in the 1970s, when a friend of Nixon’s tried to take over a license held by the Washington Post. Nixon’s ally did not succeed in his bid.
Short of gross misconduct on the part of a challenged station, it’s unlikely any other such attempt now would be successful either.
“Whatever other legal problems [NBC parent] Comcast may have, this is not one of them,” Andrew Jay Schwartzman, an attorney who works at the Georgetown University Law Center and specializes in telecommunications law, told CNN. “Comcast knows full well that the FCC will never, ever, deny its license renewal applications.”
The FCC is technically an independent body, not subject to the president’s orders. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai — who is a Republican appointed to his current post by Trump — said in March that his job is not to be a “political actor.”
“It is simply to be somebody at the FCC who, as I said, is administering the laws of the United States,” Pai said. “I’m simply not going to wade into that kind of political debate.”
Neither Pai nor an FCC spokesperson immediately responded to requests for comment about Trump’s tweet. But former FCC officials were quick to skewer the president.
“To me it’s just incomprehensible that because of the content of NBC News that somehow their license would be at risk,” Alfred Sykes, a Republican who served as chairman of the FCC under George H.W. Bush, told The Wrap.
“This madcap threat, if pursued, would be blatant and unacceptable intervention in the decisions of an independent agency,” echoed Michael Copps, a Democrat who served as FCC commissioner under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, in a statement to HuffPost. “The law does not countenance such interference. President Trump might be happier as emperor, but I think the American people would strip him of his clothes on this issued.
A spokesperson for NBC declined to comment.
Trump has increased his attacks on the media in the past week. Last week, he urged the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate news outlets for publishing supposed “fake” stories. Over the weekend, he hinted it was perhaps time for a law that would require broadcasters to give equal time to both sides of the political debate when discussing public policy.
“At what point are we going to silence media critical of the President?” tweeted Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “When we cease to have a First Amendment and a democratic government.”
Kellyanne Conway claims she doesn’t use the term “fake news,” saying her beef with the media is “incomplete coverage.”
“I’m a person in the West Wing who’s never actually uttered the words ‘fake news,’ ‘enemy of the people,’ ‘opposition party,’” Conway, a White House senior adviser, said Wednesday during a discussion at Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women summit in Washington.
“I don’t speak that way,” Conway said, responding to a question from Fortune’s Pattie Sellers about whether the president’s tweeting has added to “division and rancor” across the country.
Trump, who has used “fake news” to describe media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, has recently turned his ire on NBC News following its reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson once referred to him as a “moron.”
After NBC published a follow-up story on Wednesday claiming the insult came when Trump told officials he wanted to increase the military’s nuclear arsenal tenfold, the president lashed out on Twitter, going so far as to suggest challenging NBC’s license to broadcast.
With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!
“I think we need a full and free press in our nation, of course,” Conway said.
“But with that freedom comes responsibility,” she said. “So my grievance is never about fake news. I talk about incomplete coverage.”
“What I’m concerned about is that this president — and I hear this from people who did not vote for him and from people who don’t always cover him fully and fairly either — so there is a concern they’ve literally never seen a president covered this way,” Conway said.
When pressed on whether she’s ever used the term “fake news” — a phrase made famous by Trump on the campaign trail to rail against media coverage — Conway repeated, “I don’t speak that way.”
President Donald Trump angrily lashed out at NBC News over its report that he wanted to dramatically increase the United States’ nuclear arsenal by threatening to go after the network’s broadcasting license.
“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License?” Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning. “Bad for country!”
With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!
The president also said that NBC “made up a story that I wanted a ‘tenfold” increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal,” which he described as “pure fiction, made up to demean.”
Fake @NBCNews made up a story that I wanted a "tenfold" increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal. Pure fiction, made up to demean. NBC = CNN!
According to the original NBC report, Trump “said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest ranking national security leaders.” The president was reportedly incensed by a chart showing that the U.S. has actually been reducing its nuclear arsenal since the late 1960s.
According to NBC’s sources, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron” after this particular meeting. Additionally, the sources claim both Tillerson and the joint chiefs of staff pushed back against Trump, and told him why it would be unwise to start a massive nuclear arms race.
The president’s and the government’s power in this area could be limited anyway. According to the FCC’s own guidelines, the commission only licenses individual broadcast stations, not entire “TV or radio networks (such as CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox).”
President Donald Trump wrote online Tuesday that “Liddle'” Sen. Bob Corker had been unwittingly recorded by The New York Times, the newspaper to which the prominent Republican lawmaker offered a scathing criticism of the president.
“The Failing @nytimes set Liddle’ Bob Corker up by recording his conversation. Was made to sound a fool, and that’s what I am dealing with!” Trump tweeted Tuesday, pinning a diminutive nickname to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In an interview published Sunday by the Times, Corker (R-Tenn.) said Trump is treating the presidency “like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something” and expressed concern that the president could put the nation “on the path to World War III.” Corker, once under consideration to be Trump’s secretary of state, told the Times that the president “concerns me” and “would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation.”
Despite the president’s assertion that Corker was unaware he was being recorded, excerpts from the interview’s transcript indicate that the senator knew the conversation was on the record. Jonathan Martin, the Times reporter who interviewed Corker, wrote online that two of the senator’s aides had sat in on the phone call and “made sure after it ended that I was taping, too.”
Earlier Sunday, Trump and Corker launched criticisms at each other via Twitter, with Trump firing the first salvo, writing that “Corker ‘begged’ me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said ‘NO’ and he dropped out (said he could not win without my endorsement).” In another post, Trump added that the Tennessee senator “also wanted to be Secretary of State, I said ‘NO THANKS.’ He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal!”
Corker quickly responded with his own online post, writing that “it’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”
The feud between the two men seemed to grow slowly in recent weeks as Corker, who has announced he will not seek reelection in 2018, grew increasingly public with his criticisms of the president. In a particularly sharp barb last week, Corker praised Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and White House chief of staff John Kelly as “those people that help separate our country from chaos.”
President Donald Trump on Saturday continued to criticize NBC News over the network’s reporting that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called him a “moron” earlier this summer, and its subsequent reporting on chaos that engulfed the administration in its wake.
“More.@NBCNews is so knowingly inaccurate with their reporting,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “The good news is that the PEOPLE get it, which is really all that matters! Not #1”
Since the report, Trump has said he has total confidence in Tillerson.
Tillerson scheduled a rare press conference Wednesday where he denied that he had to be talked into staying on the job, while not explicitly denying he used the “moron” epithet. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert later added that the secretary would never use such language.
The president has repeatedly denied the Tillerson report, characterizing it as “fake news.”
Reality
Trump believes the report was “fake news” because NBC never confirmed the report with him. However, Rex Tillerson specifically never denied calling Trump a “fucking moron” and if one were to read the NBC article, Tillerson made the comment behind his back, so how could Trump even be aware of Tillerson’s comment to confirm it?
President Donald Trump mused Saturday morning about whether he and his fellow Republicans should receive equal time on TV due to what he sees as consistently unfair coverage from late-night comedians.
“Late Night host are dealing with the Democrats for their very “unfunny” & repetitive material, always anti-Trump! Should we get Equal Time?” Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday.
He later added: “More and more people are suggesting that Republicans (and me) should be given Equal Time on T.V. when you look at the one-sided coverage?”
Trump appears to be referencing the FCC’s “equal time” rule, which has been applied to broadcast TV and radio stations and locally originated cable TV. The rule requires broadcasters to treat legally qualified political candidates fairly both in free air time from appearances and paid advertising, with exemptions for programs like newscasts.
The president also seemed to be inferring that the equal time provision would apply to commentaries, like Kimmel’s monologues on health care, which have lambasted the president and Republicans.
Jimmy Kimmel, host of ABC’s late night show, responded to the president on Twitter by jokingly agreeing that Trump should have more time on TV, if he did one thing: quit the presidency.
“You should quit that boring job – I’ll let you have my show ALL to yourself #MAGA,” Kimmel wrote.
Trump sent this tweet after watching a segment on Fox News on the exact same subject.
Reality
Two things, first, Trump is on television every day. CNN, MSNBC, Fox, CBS, ABC, Bloomberg, and every other new station can’t stop talking about him.
And second, the Equal time rule has to do only with political candidates, Trump might be talking about the “Fairness Doctrine” which itself only deals with the discussion of controversial issues. Of course this difference is something a President should know.
U.S. President Donald Trump offered cryptic remarks Thursday night while posing for photos with military leaders, saying the gathering might represent “the calm before the storm.”
He made the comments among senior military leaders and their spouses in the White House State Dining Room ahead of a dinner expected to include the discussion of a range of national security issues.
“You guys know what this represents?” Trump asked assembled members of the media. “Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.”
Asked repeatedly by reporters to clarify his comments, Trump said, “You’ll find out.”
During a meeting with military leaders earlier in the afternoon, Trump said his administration was focused on “challenges that we really should have taken care of a long time ago, like North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, ISIS, and the revisionist powers that threaten our interests all around the world.”
During those remarks, the president also appeared to issue a vague threat toward the regime in North Korea, which has antagonized the U.S. president with a series of nuclear and ballistic-missile tests.
“We cannot allow this dictatorship to threaten our nation or our allies with unimaginable loss of life,” Trump said. “We will do what we must do to prevent that from happening. And it will be done, if necessary — believe me.”
