President Trump is still privately questioning the authenticity of former President Obama’s birth certificate, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
A senator, who asked not to be named, told The Times that Trump is having difficulty moving on from his past claims that Obama wasn’t born in the United States.
Trump led the “birther” movement against Obama, claiming for years that the former president was born outside of the U.S.
Obama eventually released his birth certificate to counter Trump’s claims.
Trump said that Obama was born in the U.S. during a campaign stop last year.
Trump advisers reportedly told The Times that Trump has continued to talk about conspiracy theories that aren’t based in fact since taking office.
The newspaper first reported last week that Trump has been questioning the authenticity of the “Access Hollywood” tape that features audio of him bragging about groping and kissing women without their consent.
Trump acknowledged that it was him on the tape when it was first released last year and apologized for the comments.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to say if Trump thinks the tape is fake at a press briefing Monday.
“The president addressed this, this was litigated and certainly answered during the election by the overwhelming support for the president and the fact he’s sitting here in the Oval Office today,” Huckabee Sanders said Monday.
“He’s made his position on that clear at that time, as have the American people in support of him.”
Asked why Trump would choose to use a phrase that many people find offensive, Sanders said that “what most people find offensive is Senator Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career.” She added that seeing Trump’s use of “Pocahontas” as a racial slur was a “ridiculous response,” because it was not.
“I don’t believe that it is appropriate for [the president] to make a racial slur, or anybody else,” Sanders said, but “I don’t think that it is [a racial slur] and I certainly don’t think that was the president’s intent.”
Warren is one of Trump’s most outspoken critics in the Senate, and for years, Trump has relished referring to her as “Pocahontas,” a reference to Warren’s claim that her family has Native American heritage.
At the White House on Monday, Trump told the veterans, who were “code talkers” in World War II, “You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who, they say, was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.” As soon as Trump said it, the room fell silent.
Sanders, however, claimed that Trump’s respect for the veterans was reflected more in his actions than necessarily in his words.
“The president certainly finds an extreme amount of value and respect for these individuals. He’s constantly showing ways to honor those individuals,” she said.
Warren, however, was less forgiving. Responding to Trump’s remarks on MSNBC, the Massachusetts Democrat said it is “deeply unfortunate that the president of the United States cannot even make it through a ceremony honoring these heroes without having to throw out a racial slur.”
Later Monday, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said the remark was unfortunate.
“In this day and age, all tribal nations still battle insensitive references to our people. The prejudice that Native American people face is an unfortunate historical legacy,” Begaye said in a statement.
While the Navajo Nation appreciated the honor and recognition bestowed upon its “code talkers,” Begaye said, it does not want to be a part of this “ongoing feud” between the senator and the president.
President Donald Trump, during an event at the White House honoring Navajo code talkers Monday, referenced his nickname for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, “Pocahontas,” a label he has long used about the Massachusetts Democrat.
“I just want to thank you because you are very, very special people. You were here long before any of us were here,” Trump said. “Although, we have a representative in Congress who has been here a long time … longer than you — they call her Pocahontas!”
He then turned to one of the code talkers behind him, put his left hand on the man’s shoulder and said: “But you know what, I like you. You are special people.”
Trump did not name Warren.
The comment, met with silence from event attendees, revives an insult the President has long thrust upon Warren but restated during a high-profile meeting with the Native American war heroes.
“It is deeply unfortunate that the President of the United States cannot even make it through a ceremony honoring these heroes without having to throw out a racial slur. Donald Trump does this over and over thinking somehow he is going to shut me up with it. It hasn’t worked out in the past, it isn’t going to work out in the future,” Warren told MSNBC shortly after Trump’s remark.
Pocahontas was a historical figure from the 17th Century and using her name in an intentionally disparaging way insults native peoples and degrades their cultures. The largest Native American advocacy group has said that is why it has condemned the President’s usage in this manner.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday the use of “Pocahontas” was not a racial slur and that it “certainly was not the President’s intent” to use a racial slur.
“I don’t believe that it is appropriate” to use a racial slur, Sanders said during her daily briefing, but added that she didn’t think Trump’s comment was such a slur.
Sanders then targeted Warren, saying that “the most offensive thing” was Warren claiming to be Native American.
“I think Sen. Warren was very offensive when she lied about something specifically to advance her career, and I don’t understand why no one is asking about that question and why that isn’t constantly covered,” Sanders said.
The National Congress of American Indians — the largest and oldest group representing Native Americans — has condemned Trump’s use of “Pocahontas” to deride Warren, noting that the famed Native American was a real person whose historic significance is still important to her tribe, the Pamunkey Indian Tribe in Virginia.
“We cannot and will not stand silent when our Native ancestors, cultures and histories are used in a derogatory manner for political gain,” Jacqueline Pata, the group’s executive director, said earlier this year after Trump called Warren “Pocahontas” at a speech before the National Rifle Association.
Conservatives have previously criticized Warren for claiming that she is part Native American, and the senator’s heritage became an issue during her Senate campaigns.
Trump has seized on the attacks and has regularly called Warren “Pocahontas.” The attack dates back to his 2016 campaign.
“Pocahontas is at it again,” he tweeted in June 2016. “Goofy Elizabeth Warren, one of the least productive U.S. Senators, has a nasty mouth. Hope she is V.P. choice.”
He added, “Crooked Hillary is wheeling out one of the least productive senators in the U.S. Senate, goofy Elizabeth Warren, who lied on heritage.”
And earlier this month, he added, “Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, lead by the legendary Crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the Primaries! Lets go FBI & Justice Dept.”
He has also used the nickname privately.
Sources told CNN earlier this year that during a meeting with senators at the White House, Trump taunted Democrats by saying “Pocahontas is now the face of your party.”
Trump has routinely given his political opponents nicknames, but the slight against Warren is one of his most culturally insensitive.
Warren says she is, in fact, part Native American, citing “family stories” passed down through generations of her family.
“I am very proud of my heritage,” Warren told NPR in 2012. “These are my family stories.
This is what my brothers and I were told by my mom and my dad, my mammaw and my pappaw. This is our lives. And I’m very proud of it.”
The legitimacy of Warren’s heritage has been widely debated and Scott Brown, her 2012 Senate campaign opponent, has even suggested Warren take a DNA test to prove her heritage.
Harvard Law School in the 1990s touted Warren, then a professor in Cambridge, as being “Native American.” They singled her out, Warren later acknowledged, because she had listed herself as a minority in an Association of American Law Schools directory.
Critics seized on the listing, saying that she received preferential treatment for questionable Native American heritage. Warren contends that her career was never furthered because of her Native American genealogy.
President Trump took a shot at the news media on Monday ahead of a busy week that could help determine the fate of his agenda.
“We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me),” Trump tweeted. “They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY!”
We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY!
Trump also mocked NBC’s “Morning Joe” for airing a pre-taped segment the day after Thanksgiving.
“The good news is that their ratings are terrible, nobody cares!” he wrote.
The president’s messages come one day after he returned from South Florida, where he spent Thanksgiving with his family.
Trump made five trips to his golf courses and took repeated jabs at the media on Twitter over the holiday weekend.
His latest shots come just hours before he is set to meet with members of the Senate Finance Committee to discuss their push to pass a major tax-reform bill.
Senators are hoping to approve the legislation in the coming days in an effort to send a finished product to Trump’s desk before Christmas. But some Republicans in the upper chamber are not yet satisfied with the bill.
Congress must also race to pass a funding bill before Dec. 8 in order to avoid a government shutdown.
President Donald Trump on Saturday blasted CNN, calling it a source of “fake” news and comparing it unfavorably to its competitor Fox News.
“@FoxNews is MUCH more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly,” he said on Twitter. “The outside world does not see the truth from them!”
.@FoxNews is MUCH more important in the United States than CNN, but outside of the U.S., CNN International is still a major source of (Fake) news, and they represent our Nation to the WORLD very poorly. The outside world does not see the truth from them!
CNN’s communications team fired back minutes later, tweeting, “It’s not CNN’s job to represent the U.S to the world. That’s yours. Our job is to report the news. #FactsFirst.”
It's not CNN's job to represent the U.S to the world. That's yours. Our job is to report the news. #FactsFirst 🍎
Trump’s remarks come at a significant time for the media outlet, whose parent company Time Warner is merging with AT&T in an $85 billion deal. The Department of Justice has sued to block the merger, and legal experts have speculated that Trump’s previous comments about CNN may be brought up during the litigation.
CNN is a frequent target of Trump’s ire, and he has labeled the network “fake news,” “dishonest,” “disgusting” and “ratings challenged” in the last several months alone.
Trump’s Saturday tweet also marked the second time in as many days that Trump lashed out at a major media outlet on Twitter. On Friday, he went after TIME Magazine, claiming he “took a pass” at being named its “Person of the Year.”
“Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named ‘Man (Person) of the Year,’ like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot,” Trump tweeted. “I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!”
The magazine shot down at Trump’s claim shortly afterward, tweeting that “the President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6.”
What Donald Trump did today was give dictators around the globe validation on their own attacks on a free and open press.
No, really. This is what dictators do.
While almost every dictator from Mao Zedong, to Joseph Stalin, to Adolf Hitler has branded some part of the population as an enemy of the people, its specific application to the free press has more recent examples.
In September 2014 the head of the military junta that rules Myanmar said the media was constantly: “condemning and providing false information again, with some truths omitted, some issues exaggerated, and some news reported without scrutiny.”
In 2007, Hugo Chavez shut down the RCTV and then made a televised address, on all channels, in which he branded the media group Globovision his next ‘enemy of the state.
In 1997 Russian state media named Noyaya Gazeta-Mir Ludei (The New Newspaper-World of People), a small 15-member of staff paper that scrutinised the actions of the regional government, was called ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘enemy of the state’.
President Trump slammed the National Football League on Friday for not implementing penalties for players who protest during the national anthem.
Trump said Friday the “hemorrhaging” NFL has allowed players to become “the boss.” His comments follow Thanksgiving games in which New York Giants defensive end Olivier Vernon knelt during the anthem.
“Can you believe that the disrespect for our Country, our Flag, our Anthem continues without penalty to the players. The Commissioner has lost control of the hemorrhaging league. Players are the boss!” Trump tweeted Friday morning.
Can you believe that the disrespect for our Country, our Flag, our Anthem continues without penalty to the players. The Commissioner has lost control of the hemorrhaging league. Players are the boss! https://t.co/udXP5MR8BC
A handful of players have continued to kneel during games as the NFL season enters its 12th week.
Trump, who had criticized players who kneel as a form of protest during the campaign, in September suggested NFL owners should fire players who kneel rather than stand during the national anthem. The comments, at a rally, started a feud between Trump and the players who began protesting in unity during the anthem at games.
The NFL said last month it has no plans to implement a ban on kneeling during the anthem. NFL spokesman Joe Lockhart said the commissioner planned to speak to the teams and owners “about how to use our platform to both raise awareness and make progress on issues of social justice and equality in this country.”
President Donald Trump on Thursday offered a bizarre but familiar response to a tweet with an article from The Washington Post’s liberal-leaning Plum Line blog suggesting that he criticizes prominent black people to play on racist sentiment within his base.
The article’s author, Greg Sargent, tweeted, “Trump regularly attacks high-profile African Americans to feed his supporters’ belief that the system is rigged for minorities,” to which Trump responded, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
Earlier this week, Trump went after LaVar Ball — the father of LiAngelo Ball, one of the three UCLA basketball players released from detention in China after Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month — on Twitter.
After Ball refused to thank Trump for the president’s role in the release of the three players, who were accused of shoplifting from several stores in China, Trump called Ball an “ungrateful fool” and compared him to a “poor man’s version of Don King.”
Sargent’s article linked this to Trump’s other criticisms of well-known black people in sports and politics, calling it “a gratuitously ugly pattern.” It ended by suggesting that Trump engages in a “pattern of race-baiting” that “might be designed to resonate with” his supporters.
Throughout his career, Trump has gone after dozens of politicians, media personalities, and sports stars of many races, but his response to Sargent’s tweet was bizarre because, minutes later, he tweeted the same thing on its own.
Trump has previously tweeted things erroneously. For example, in late October, he wished a happy birthday to Lee Greenwood, the singer who wrote “God Bless the USA,” but tagged another Lee Greenwood who appeared to have protested Trump’s immigration ban.
Trump could have been unaware of a new UI change to the Twitter app, where if you are viewing a tweet the “new tweet” button won’t create a new tweet but issue a reply. But this tweet hasn’t been deleted.
President Donald Trump took to Twitter to continue to rail against LaVar Ball, the father of a UCLA basketball player who was detained for shoplifting in China.
At 5:25 am, ET, Trump rehashed his beef with Ball, who has been reluctant to thank the President for his role in his son’s release from China.
“It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence – IT WAS ME. Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair,” Trump tweeted in part.
It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence – IT WAS ME. Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair. Just think..
…LaVar, you could have spent the next 5 to 10 years during Thanksgiving with your son in China, but no NBA contract to support you. But remember LaVar, shoplifting is NOT a little thing. It’s a really big deal, especially in China. Ungrateful fool!
Trump called Ball an “ungrateful fool,” adding that getting his son home is “a really big deal.”
The tweets come after Ball said Monday in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo that he didn’t know what the President had done to get his son and two other UCLA basketball players out of China.
After Ball’s refusal to thank Trump in an interview with ESPN a few days after the players’ release, the President said he should have left the three players in jail.
LaVar Ball’s 39 most amazing lines on Donald Trump in Monday’s CNN interview
“Did he help the boys get out? I don’t know. … If I was going to thank somebody I’d probably thank President Xi (Jinping),” Ball said Monday night when asked about his back-and-forth with the President by CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
“It wasn’t like he was in the US and said, ‘OK, there’s three kids in China. I need to go over and get them.’ That wasn’t the thought process,” he told Cuomo.
Ball suggested Trump, who frequently brought up the conversation he had with Xi about the release during a trip to Asia, should stay quiet.
“If you help, you shouldn’t have to say anything,” he said. “Let him do his political affairs and let me handle my son and let’s just stay in our lane.”
President Donald Trump continued to target NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and LaVar Ball, criticizing both in a series of tweets Wednesday.
Trump bashed a plan, as reported by The Washington Post, that would keep NFL teams in the locker room during the national anthem, saying it is “almost as bad as kneeling.”
The NFL is now thinking about a new idea – keeping teams in the Locker Room during the National Anthem next season. That’s almost as bad as kneeling! When will the highly paid Commissioner finally get tough and smart? This issue is killing your league!…..
According to the Post, some NFL owners believe that the league will change its policy during the offseason and keep players in the locker room to prevent demonstrations during the anthem. The Post report cites sources “familiar with the league’s inner workings.”
Players did not typically stand on the sideline for the national anthem until 2009, when the NFL changed its policy to bring the teams out before “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick launched the wave of protests during the anthem last season when he kneeled to protest police brutality against African-Americans and other inequality.
Trump has criticized Kaepernick on multiple occasions and made claims that players who protest during the anthem should be suspended or released.
Along with his tweet about the national anthem, Trump added fuel to his developing rivalry with Ball.
The president appeared to take full credit Wednesday for intervening on behalf of three UCLA men’s basketball players, including Ball’s son LiAngelo Ball, after they were arrested and accused of shoplifting during a team trip to China.
Doug Jones is a career prosecutor, famous for his role in convicting Ku Klux Klan members and terrorists. Roy Moore is a theocratic demagogue, famous for nullifying court orders and (allegedly) sexually harassing and assaulting so many teenage girls, he got himself banned from the Gadsden Mall.
On Tuesday, president Trump suggested that Alabamians should vote for Moore over Jones in the state’s upcoming special Senate election – because the alleged sexual predator’s rival was “soft on crime.”
“He’s terrible on the border, he’s terrible on the military,” Trump said of the Democratic Senate Tuesday. “I can tell you, you don’t need someone who’s soft on crime like Jones.”
Sometimes, it feels like the Trump administration’s overriding ambition is to prove that every liberal “caricature” of the American right was correct. With its health-care and tax plans, the White House confirmed that fiscal conservatism isn’t driven by a desire to reduce the deficit, but by a passion for increasing inequality. Meanwhile, with his vulgarity and (alleged) sexual predation, Trump has validated the notion that (much of) American religious conservatism is less concerned with upholding traditional sexual morality than subjugating women.
And now, with his remarks on the Jones-Moore race, the president has affirmed the left’s decades-old contention that “law-and-order” conservatism isn’t animated by a reverence for the rule of law, so much as reactionary rage at challenges to the social order – which is to say, the social hierarchy, (which is to say, in most cases, white supremacy).
Trump had already lent credence to this argument, when he pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, after Maricopa County’s favorite proto-fascist had directly subverted law and order, by refusing to honor a legally-binding court order. But at least in that case, there was a halfway coherent (if completely wrong and racist) argument that the Arpaio’s refusal to abandon racial profiling was motivated by a concern for countering violent crime.
But now, Trump has shed that fig leaf. If the president believes that an alleged, serial sexual abuser of teenage girls (who wants to deport law-abiding undocumented immigrants) is “tougher on crime” than a lifelong prosecutor (who has little interest in deporting law-abiding, undocumented immigrants) than what, do you suppose, he means by crime?
