Category: Bullying

Donald Trump’s rhetorical style is straight out of middle school. He’s like an eighth-grade girl.

Trump attacks NASCAR and Bubba Wallace over Confederate flag banning, noose incident

President Donald Trump on Monday took aim at NASCAR’s Darrell “Bubba” Wallace, a prominent Black driver, falsely claiming on Twitter that the sport’s recent anti-racist stance had lowered its television ratings.

“Has @BubbaWallace apologized to all of those great NASCAR drivers & officials who came to his aid, stood by his side, & were willing to sacrifice everything for him, only to find out that the whole thing was just another HOAX?” Trump tweeted. “That & Flag decision has caused lowest ratings EVER!”

Utilizing his Twitter account on Monday to criticize NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag and separately two sports teams considering changing their names, Trump demonstrated his eagerness to make his views on race a central part of his re-election campaign amid the growing national conversation after George Floyd’s death on May 25 in police custody.

In a statement posted on his Twitter page, Wallace framed his response as advice to young people, saying, “All the haters are doing is elevating your voice and platform to much greater heights!”

“Last thing, always deal with hate being thrown at you with LOVE!” he said. “Love over hate every day. Love should come naturally as people are TAUGHT to hate. Even when it’s HATE from the POTUS.. Love wins.”

NASCAR drivers have rallied to support Wallace. NASCAR Cup Series driver Tyler Reddick tweeted in response to Trump, “We don’t need an apology.”

“We did what was right and we will do just fine without your support,” he continued. The tweet was later deleted.

NASCAR released a statement saying the organization “continues to stand tall with Bubba.”

“We are proud to have Bubba Wallace in the NASCAR family and we commend his courage and leadership,” the statement said.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Fox News said Trump’s tweet was part of a “broader point” about the “rush to judgment.”

“The president is merely pointing out that we have to let facts come out before we rush to judgment,” she said.

Reporters grilled McEnany over the tweet during Monday’s press briefing, questioning her about Trump’s claim that banning the Confederate flag was bad for ratings.

McEnany said Trump was not taking a stance on the Confederate flag nor whether it was a good or bad decision for NASCAR to ban it. Instead, McEnany argued that that “NASCAR men and women” are “being called racist” and that Trump was defending them.

“He stands against the demonization of Americans and he stands firmly on the side of preserving our history,” she said.

Asked whether a Confederate flag would be permitted at a Trump rally, McEnany said the campaign does not allow flags other than official Trump campaign gear into rallies. Trump campaign national deputy press secretary Courtney Parella confirmed the policy to NBC News, saying, “We do not permit rally attendees to bring their own signage or displays of any kind and only allow approved rally signs inside our events.”

Speaking with Fox News Radio, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and a prominent Trump ally, said he didn’t think Wallace “has anything to apologize for.”

“You saw the best in NASCAR,” he said. “When there was a chance that it was a threat against Bubba Wallace, they all rallied to Bubba’s side. So I would be looking to celebrate that kind of attitude more than being worried about it being a hoax.”

Since NASCAR announced a ban on the Confederate flag last month, the sport has seen a boost in television ratings. Overnight ratings following the sport’s June race at Martinsville, Virginia, which immediately followed the banning announcement, were up 104 percent over a comparable 2019 race.

The Talladega race in Alabama later in June, where the noose incident Trump referred to happened, rated as the most-watched Monday contest in years. NASCAR has also benefited from being one of the few live events on TV, as most other sports remain idled in the U.S. due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Before Talladega, a door-pull rope shaped like a noose was found in Wallace’s assigned garage, raising questions about whether it had been placed there intentionally in response to his outspokenness in support of banning the Confederate flag at NASCAR events. Fellow NASCAR drivers marched alongside his car in a show of unity afterward. The FBI investigated the incident and ruled out a hate crime, citing video evidence showing the rope was in the stall months before it was assigned to Wallace. NASCAR released a photo of the rope to dispel the idea it was a hoax.

“I was relieved just like many others to know that it wasn’t targeted towards me,” Wallace told Craig Melvin on NBC’s “TODAY” last month. “But it’s still frustrating to know that people are always going to test you and always just going to try and debunk you, and that’s what I’m trying to wrap my head around now.”

As a politician, Trump’s history with NASCAR dates to early in his presidential campaign when he won the endorsement of the sport’s top leadership. At this year’s Daytona 500, Trump took the presidential limo on the track as a pace car before the race began. And at this weekend’s Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis, one driver began racing in a fully decked-out pro-Trump branded car. He crashed a few laps into the race.

This weekend, Trump delivered a lengthy speech on defending statues from being removed or torn down and has increasingly bashed protesters.

Recent tweets have also gotten the president into hot water, such as when he promoted and then deleted a video showing an apparent Trump supporter shouting “white power.”

The White House said he didn’t hear the comment when he posted.

[NBC News]

Trump Vows to Veto Defense Bill Over Amendment to Rename Military Bases Named After Confederates

President Donald Trump vowed to veto a $740 billion defense spending bill unless Congress drops a proposed amendment to rename U.S. military bases named after Confederate leaders.

As the country faces ongoing social unrest over the death of George Floyd, the public debate continues on whether Confederate figures deserve to be publicly honored with statues or major instillations bearing their names. Amid these calls for racial justice, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has proposed an amendment for the Defense Authorization Bill that would require the names of Confederate leaders to be completely scrubbed from several military bases over the next 3 years.

Trump has repeatedly defended monuments honoring Confederates in recent weeks, and on Tuesday night, he used his racially-charged insult for Warren again while promising to veto the bill if her amendment gets through.

[Mediaite]

Trump Slams Fox News for Hiring Former DNC Chair Donna Brazile: ‘Where Are You Roger Ailes?’

President Donald Trump took yet another swipe at Fox News for hiring Democratic pundits, this time former DNC Chair Donna Brazile.

Brazile trended on Twitter after getting into it with co-hosts on The Five Tuesday afternoon. In response to one tweet saying Brazile should not be on Fox News, the president went after Fox in a tweet referencing the infamous CNN debate questions controversy and invoking the late Roger Ailes.

“She gets fired by @CNN for giving Crooked Hillary the debate questions, and gets hired by @FoxNews. Where are you Roger Ailes?” Trump tweeted.

UPDATE: After some Twitter comments remarking upon how Ailes is dead, the President of the United States actually tweeted a clarification that “I know better than anyone that my friend Roger Ailes died 3 years ago”:

[Mediaite]

Trump Tweets Video of St. Louis Couple Aiming Guns at Protesters

President Donald Trump on Monday retweeted a widely scrutinized video of a St. Louis couple aiming guns at a protest march.

The couple, who are White, stood in front of their home, both armed with guns, shouting back and forth with a march that included Black Lives Matter protesters, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. One of the people was aiming a gun directly at demonstrators, who were marching on the home of Mayor Lyda Krewson to demand her resignation after she read aloud names and addresses of protesters who wanted to cut police funding.

Trump retweeted the ABC News video without comment, appearing to endorse the couple’s stance. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Sunday, Trump retweeted a video of his supporters arguing with critics in Florida, including one who shouted “white power.” Trump later deleted his tweet, and the White House said he hadn’t heard the phrase.

The president on Monday also retweeted a series of wanted posters from U.S. park police seeking to identify people suspected of vandalizing statues near the White House.

[Bloomberg]



Trump Tweets, Thanks Florida Supporter Chanting ‘White Power’

Donald Trump tweeted a video of someone in a golf cart shouting the racist slogan, “White Power” and others yelling, “Fuck Trump” on Sunday morning. The video was originally posted by the Twitter handle Fifty Shades of Whey, which noted that the seniors of The Villages in Florida were “protesting against each other.” Trump was seemingly unaware that those protesting against him, who were holding up signs that accused him of racism, were apparently also residents of The Villages. Nevertheless, the president thanked area denizens in his post, writing, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!”

[The Daily Beast]

Update

Trump deleted the tweet and claimed he wasn’t aware. This is problematic for two reasons. First, the “white power” chant occurs in the first few seconds of the video. Second, why is a President sharing content without vetting it?

Trump targets individual anti-racism protesters in post-golf tweetstorm

The leader of the free world went after individual anti-racism protesters on Saturday.

Trump escalated his war on protesters by posting “attempt to identify” wanted posters of protesters who allegedly vandalized a statue of former President Andrew Jackson.

The statue is in Lafayette Square, which was the scene of the gassing of peaceful protesters so Trump could hold a photo-op posing with a Bible.


[Raw Story]

Trump claims Bolton was against a coronavirus shutdown, but had already left months before

Jim: Later in the interview, President Trump brings Bolton back up himself. Here’s the exchange.

Mr. Bender: You’ve talked about holding China accountable for coronavirus. Do you think they sat on that information about the virus in order to tank other economies around the world?

Mr. Trump: They did something because if you look, they had very little outbreak, although now they seem to have an outbreak in Beijing, which is interesting, as of yesterday. But everybody knew they had it. I acted very early. I closed our country to China.14

By the way, Bolton disagreed. He thought we shouldn’t do it, okay? He didn’t think and you know, I was in a room full of people. You were there. And of the people, I don’t know of anybody that thought I should do it. That was a decision I made because I was seeing and hearing that China has a big problem.

Bolton and Trump had a very public blow-up and Bolton either quit or was fired months before Trump partly closed traffic from China. Perhaps confused as a result, Bender asks a follow-up:

Mr. Bender: Did you consult with Bolton on coronavirus?

Mr. Trump: No. I lost respect for Bolton’s intellect fairly early in the process.

Perhaps the president’s memory is faulty, or perhaps he’s just making things up.

[National Review]

Trump administration sues Bolton over memoir

The Trump administration on Tuesday filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent John Bolton from publishing a highly anticipated memoir describing his 17 months serving as President Trump’s national security adviser.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Bolton’s book, due to be released on June 23, contains classified information that stands to compromise national security if published before a government review is completed.

“[Bolton] regularly came into possession of some of the most sensitive classified information that exists in the U.S. government,” the lawsuit states. “Within two months of his departure from government service, defendant had negotiated a book deal allegedly worth about $2 million and had drafted a 500-plus page manuscript rife with classified information, which he proposed to release to the world.”

The Department of Justice asked the court to declare that Bolton’s account of his time as a top Trump adviser from April 2018 to September 2019 violated his nondisclosure agreement.

The lawsuit also seeks to stop Bolton from disclosing contents from his memoir without U.S. government permission and to order his publisher, Simon & Schuster, to “retrieve and dispose of” any copies of the book held by third parties. Bolton’s attorney Chuck Cooper has denied that the book contains classified material.

“We are reviewing the Government’s complaint and will respond in due course,” Cooper said in an emailed statement early Monday. 

Simon & Schuster dismissed the lawsuit as “nothing more than the latest in a long running series of efforts by the Administration to quash publication of a book it deems unflattering to the President.” 

 “Ambassador Bolton has worked in full cooperation with the NSC in its pre-publication review to address its concerns and Simon & Schuster fully supports his First Amendment right to tell the story of his time in the White House to the American public,” the publishing company said in a statement. 

The move had been expected since Monday when reports surfaced that the administration was eyeing a lawsuit to prevent publication of the memoir, titled “The Room Where It Happened,” and comes exactly one week before it is due for public release. The book is said to offer a scathing account of the White House from the former national security adviser’s point of view.

“If he wrote a book, I can’t imagine that he can because that’s highly classified information,” Trump told reporters on Monday when asked about plans to file a lawsuit.

“I will consider every conversation with me as president highly classified. So that would mean if he wrote a book and if the book gets out, he’s broken the law and I would think he would have criminal problems,” Trump added, later claiming he hadn’t viewed the book’s contents.

The memoir’s release has been delayed for months as a result of a prepublication review process spearheaded by the White House National Security Council (NSC) that began when Bolton submitted the book for review in late December.

According to the Justice Department’s complaint, NSC official Ellen Knight had completed her review of Bolton’s book around April 27 “and was of the judgment that the manuscript draft did not contain classified information.” Knight informed Bolton that the process remained ongoing when he asked for an update thereafter, the complaint states.

It says that Michael Ellis, NSC’s senior director for intelligence, subsequently began a review of the manuscript on May 2 and raised concerns it contained classified information. An NSC attorney sent Bolton’s attorney Chuck Cooper a letter on June 8 saying the draft contained classified information and that the manuscript could not be published until the review was completed, after press reports said that Bolton planned to release the book on June 23.

After receiving that letter, Cooper penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal accusing the White House of a “transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton, in violation of his constitutional right to speak on matters of the utmost public import.” 

The memoir is expected to contain details about Trump’s interactions with Ukraine related to his impeachment by the House of Representatives last December. Bolton has been an extremely controversial figure as a result of his refusal to testify before the chamber.

The former national security adviser later said he would testify before the GOP-controlled Senate if served a subpoena, but the upper chamber ultimately voted to bypass witnesses and eventually acquitted Trump of the impeachment charges in two largely party-line votes.

[The Hill]

Trump relaunches attack on 75-year-old protester who suffered fractured skull

Martin Gugino, the 75-year-old protester who suffered a fractured skull after being shoved to the ground by police in Buffalo, has once again become the target of President Donald Trump’s ire.

As flagged by CNN fact checker Daniel Dale, Trump told the Wall Street Journal this week that Gugino was a “professional agitator” who had put himself in harm’s way when he confronted officers during a protest against police brutality.

“I don’t like to see people hurt,” the president said. “But he put himself right into the midst of the soldiers. These police, they meant business. They were walking and he puts himself right there. And you could tell they knew him. They knew him. But he’s had a long history. Too bad he had to get hurt.”

Gugino is a longtime antiwar activist in the area, though there is no evidence that he is part of antifa or that he deliberately provoked police into shoving him to the ground, as the president has alleged.

Gugino is recovering from his wounds in an undisclosed location, as his attorney said this week that he has received several death threats since a video of him cracking his skull on the sidewalk after being shoved by an officer went viral.

[Raw Story]

Trump threatens protesters ahead of Tulsa rally

President Donald Trump threatened to crack down on protesters expected to show up at his campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday, the first such event since the coronavirus pandemic sidelined his campaign schedule.

“Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis,” Trump tweeted on Friday. “It will be a much different scene!”

Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said Trump was referring to “destructive” protesters, noting that buildings have been burned, looted, and vandalized during recent demonstrations against police brutality.

“These things are unacceptable,” she said. “And we will not see that in Oklahoma.”

The president’s tweet came hours after Tulsa mayor G. T. Bynum imposed a curfew, citing expected rally crowds of more than 100,000, planned protests and the civil unrest that has already erupted in the city and around the nation this month.

Trump drew widespread and bipartisan criticism for his last interaction with protesters, when U.S. Park Police and other law enforcement agencies used force to clear Lafayette Square near the White House so the president could pose with a Bible in front of the historic St. John’s Church.

The latest threat also drew fire.

William Kristol, former editor of The Weekly Standard, posted on Twitter that the constitutional right “of protesters are the same in Tulsa as elsewhere in the US. So are the 1A rights of Trump supporters. It’s up to OK and Tulsa authorities to follow the law and protect all citizens. But what Trump’s doing is inciting his followers to extra-legal action.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., accused Trump of “threatening peaceful protesters standing up for justice.”

[USA Today]

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