Category: Bullying

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

Trump fumes about Cuomo, New York A.G. over state investigations

President Donald Trump on Monday accused New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of using the state’s attorney general, Letitia James to target his businesses for political purposes, claiming in an afternoon tweet storm that the state sues “for everything” and is “always in search of a crime.”

“It is very hard and expensive to live in New York,” Trump began. “Governor Andrew Cuomo uses his Attorney General as a bludgeoning tool for his own purposes. They sue on everything, always in search of a crime. I even got sued on a Foundation which took Zero rent & expenses & gave away more money than it had.”

Speaking on a conference call with reporters, Cuomo said Monday that he had not yet seen Trump’s tweets, but added “nothing that man can say can surprise me.”

“He says the most absurd things,” Cuomo said, adding that Trump’s “strength is not fact or truth.”

Hillary Clinton also fired back, defending the Clinton Foundation and noting that the New York Attorney General had found that the president’s own foundation engaged in a “shocking pattern of illegality.”

The governor said the only person who has increased taxes on the state is the president, through his tax bill’s elimination of state and local tax — known as SALT — deductions for higher-taxed states.

“He doesn’t understand how government works,” Cuomo said, adding that “maybe his attorney general is a tool” and noting that the New York attorney general is elected.

“His suggestion that it’s my attorney general is incorrect,” he said.

Of the state investigation, Cuomo said of Trump, “If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to worry about.”

James tweeted soon after on Monday afternoon, saying that as “the elected AG of NY, I have a sworn duty to protect & uphold state law.”

“My office will follow the facts of any case, wherever they lead,” she continued. “Make no mistake: No one is above the law, not even the President. P.S. My name is Letitia James. (You can call me Tish.)”

Late last year Trump’s charitable foundation agreed to dissolve and give away its assets to other nonprofit organizations as a result of the New York attorney general probe, which began under Eric Schneiderman. At the time, Schneiderman’s successor as attorney general, Barbara Underwood, said the nonprofit had exhibited a “shocking pattern” of illegality.

That deal did not stop the civil lawsuit Underwood filed against the foundation last year from proceeding. The New York attorney general’s office continued to seek nearly $3 million in restitution and additional fines as part of the suit, as well as a ban on Trump’s leading a New York nonprofit for the next decade and placing one-year bans on the charity’s other board members, which include the president’s adult children.

Trump has repeatedly clashed with Schneiderman through the years and later publicly criticized Underwood and James, claiming their investigations were politically motivated. The office has led significant investigations into not only his charity, but also into Trump University, the president’s defunct real estate education venture.

Shortly after her election in November, James, a Democrat, vowed to “use every area of the law” to probe Trump, his family and associates, and his business. The office of attorney general has sweeping investigatory and prosecutorial powers to do just that.

Earlier this year, James subpoenaed Trump’s banks, seeking information about the Trump Organization and the president’s finances. Trump dismissed those efforts as “presidential harassment” and tweeted that James “openly campaigned on a GET TRUMP agenda.”

James opened that probe, a civil inquiry, after Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney, testified to Congress in February that Trump inflated the worth of his assets in financial statements that he provided to banks to secure loans.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that people and businesses are leaving New York state in record numbers. It’s true that people are leaving New York state in record numbers — according to Census data — but it’s hard to gauge departing businesses. There’s some anecdotal evidence that some businesses might be leaving the Big Apple, but there is also evidence that more than 10,000 businesses open and close each year in the state

[NBC News]

Trump snarls back at Kamala Harris and Jimmy Carter in overseas press conference

According to a report from the Washington Post, Donald Trump snapped back at former President Jimmy Carter who questioned the legitimacy of his presidency and took some shots at Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) over her debate performance which garnered rave reviews.

In a speech following the G-20 conference, Trump called Carter a “terrible president” and pushed back at the former president for suggesting that Russia helped get him elected in 2016.

“Russia, Russia, Russia,” Trump exclaimed at the post-Group of 20 press conference. “He’s a Democrat and that’s a typical talking point.”

Turning to Harris — who saw her Democratic presidential nomination prospects rise after she took on former Vice President Joe Biden over his student bussing comments — Trump attempted to diminish her big night.

“‘She’s been given too much credit for what she did. It wasn’t that outstanding,’ Trump said. ‘He was hit harder than he should have been hit.’ Asked his own position on busing to desegregate public schools, Trump said he was developing a policy related to the issue that would be revealed in four weeks but declined to elaborate,” the Post reports.

You can read more here

[Raw Story]

Trump jokes to Putin they should ‘get rid’ of journalists

Donald Trump joked with Vladimir Putin about getting rid of journalists and Russian meddling in US elections when the two leaders met at the G20 summit in Japan.

As they sat for photographs at the start of their first formal meeting in nearly a year, the US president lightheartedly sought common ground with Putin at the expense of the journalists around them in Osaka.

“Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia but we do,” Trump said.

To which Putin responded, in English: “We also have. It’s the same.”

Twenty-six journalists have been murdered in Russia since Putin first became president, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), many of them investigative reporters scrutinising governmental abuses.

Trump has frequently referred to the press as the “enemy of the people” and in February the CPJ expressed concern about the safety of journalists covering Trump rallies, where they have been the target of derision and abuse from the president and his supporters. It is a year to the day since five Capital Gazette employees were killed in their newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland. The shooting led to the organisation Reporters Without Bordersadding the US to its list of the five deadliest countries for journalism.

It was the first meeting between the two men since a summit in Helsinki last July, and since the publication of a report by the special counsel Robert Mueller, which found Russia had interfered extensively in the 2016 US presidential election, but found insufficient evidence that the Trump campaign had conspired with Moscow.

When journalists asked Trump just before he left for Japan what he would like to talk to Putin about, he told them it was “none of your business”. As they sat alongside each other, a reporter asked whether he was going to tell Putin not to meddle in the 2020 election.

Trump said: “Yes, of course I will,” drawing a laugh from Putin. Then, without looking at Putin, Trump said briskly: “Don’t meddle in the election, please,” and then repeated the phrase with a mock finger wag as Putin and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, smiled broadly.

Relations between the two countries have been sour for years, worsening after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and backed Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian war. In a recent television interview, Putin said relations between Moscow and Washington were “getting worse and worse”.

Trump has sought better relations with Putin to tackle a host of issues, including his goal to rein in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. On Friday, he emphasised the positives.

“It’s a great honour to be with President Putin,” Trump said. “We have many things to discuss, including trade and including some disarmament.”

Trump and Putin had been scheduled to meet at the end of November at the last G20 in Buenos Aires, but Trump cancelled the meeting as he flew to Argentina, citing Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian navy ships and sailors. The two spoke informally at the event. The Ukrainian sailors have still not been freed.

“We’ve had great meetings. We’ve had a very, very good relationship,” Trump said on Friday. “And we look forward to spending some very good time together. A lot of very positive things are going to come out of the relationship.”

In May, the two leaders had their first extensive phone conversation in months. Trump said they talked about a new accord to limit nuclear arms that could eventually include China. Russia is under punitive sanctions imposed by the US and the EU and wants them lifted.

Trump’s critics have accused him of being too friendly with Putin and castigated him for failing to publicly confront the Russian leader in Helsinki over Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 election.

In an interview with the Financial Times on Thursday, Putin claimed Trump’s victory in 2016 and the rise of nationalist-populist movements in Europe signalled the death of liberal policies in the west.

“[Liberals] cannot simply dictate anything to anyone just like they have been attempting to do over the recent decades,” he said. “The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.”

Trump later held talks with Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. “He is a special man, doing very well, very much loved by the people of Brazil,” Trump said, smiling broadly. For his part, Bolsonaro told the US president: “I have been a great admirer of you for quite some time, even before your election. I support Trump, I support the United States, I support your re-election.”

[The Guardian]

Trump asks lawyers if they can delay 2020 Census in response to SCOTUS ruling

President Trump tweeted on Thursday that he has asked lawyers to delay the 2020 Census in response to a Supreme Court decision that will temporarily block the administration from adding a citizenship question.

Seems totally ridiculous that our government, and indeed Country, cannot ask a basic question of Citizenship in a very expensive, detailed and important Census, in this case for 2020. I have asked the lawyers if they can delay the Census, no matter how long, until the United States Supreme Court is given additional information from which it can make a final and decisive decision on this very critical matter. Can anyone really believe that as a great Country, we are not able the ask whether or not someone is a Citizen. Only in America!

Why it matters: It’s unclear what power Trump has to delay the Census, but it’s significant that the White House is considering additional legal action in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Per the Constitution, the Census is required to occur every 10 years.

Trump Blows Up at U.S. Soccer Star Megan Rapinoe for Spurning Invite to ‘F*cking’ WH: ‘Should Never Disrespect Our Country’

President Donald Trump blasted U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe on Wednesday in response to her statement that she’s “not going to the f*cking White House.”

Rapinoe has drawn significant attention for protesting during the national anthem — and, while addressing her protest in a series of comments to Eight By Eight Magazine, she expressed doubt that Trump will invite the U.S. women’s soccer team to the White House. In response, Trump got on Twitter and did that thing he does.

[Mediaite]

Trump: Tech companies, not Russia, trying to ‘rig the election’

President Donald Trump today suggested tech giants like Google and Twitter are the greatest threat to the integrity of the 2020 presidential election — and said anti-conservative bias among the companies had a greater impact in 2016 than Russian meddling.

“Let me tell you, they’re trying to rig the election,” Trump said in a phone interview on Fox Business. “That’s what we should be looking at, not that witch hunt, the phony witch hunt.”

Charging Google with being “totally biased” in favor of Democrats and fomenting “hatred for the Republicans,” Trump downplayed Russia’s 2016 social media manipulation: “You know, they talk about Russia because they had some bloggers—and by the way, those bloggers, some of them were going both ways. They were for Clinton and for Trump.”

Lawmakers, academics and U.S. intelligence officials are in broad agreement that Russia mounted a vast online disinformation campaign ahead of the 2016 election with the aim of inflaming American political and social tensions, supporting Trump’s candidacy and depressing Democratic voter turnout.

Trump’s comments reiterated claims that he and other prominent Republicans have made alleging that tech companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter are biased against conservatives and deliberately stifle their accounts and content. The companies flatly deny these allegations.

His criticisms came immediately after an extended broadside against Twitter for allegedly blocking people from following his account on the site, a claim the president has made repeatedly without evidence.

Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A Google spokesperson said, “We build our products with extraordinary care and safeguards to be a trustworthy source of information for everyone, without any regard for political viewpoint,” noting the company’s publicly available criteria for determining the quality of search results.

[Politico]

Trump mocks Fed’s Powell: ‘He’s trying to prove how tough he is’

President Donald Trump on Wednesday flayed the chairman of the Federal Reserve, mocking Jerome Powell’s insistence that he won’t bow to political pressure when determining monetary policy.

“We have a man that doesn’t do anything for us,” Trump said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria,” contrasting Powell’s decision to hike interest rates with the policies of places like China and Europe.

Trump has repeatedly hammered Powell over his rate hikes, prompting the Federal Reserve chairman to say in a speech on Tuesday that he would resist the political pressure emanating from the White House and the president’s Twitter feed.

A day after Trump accused Powell of acting like a “stubborn child” for not cutting interest rates last week, Powell defended the central bank’s insulation from politics — a signature facet of the U.S. financial system — saying that Congress aimed to avoid “the damage that often arises when policy bends to short-term political interests.”

Trump argued to host Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday that Powell “should’ve never raised the [interest] rates to the level that he raised them,” complaining that the Fed was constraining economic growth. And when Bartiromo brought up Powell’s remarks, the president responded with ridicule.

“So now he’s trying to prove how tough he is because ‘he’s not gonna get pushed around,’” Trump said mockingly. “Here’s a guy — nobody ever heard of him before, and now, I made him, and he wants to show how tough he is.”

And though Powell has halted rate hikes for the time being, saying last week that the Fed stands ready to cut rates, Trump continued to ratchet up his criticism. “Let him show how tough he is — he’s not doing a good job,” Trump said, adding that he was being “nice about it.”

Trump constantly complains that Powell has not pursued the easy money policies employed by countries like China, claiming that Beijing devalues its currency to keep the U.S. from negotiating trade deals on a level playing field.

His frequent criticisms have fueled rumors that Trump may try to fire or demote Powell, something he denied Wednesday even as he insisted he has the right to do so.

“I have the right to demote him, I have the right to fire him,” Trump said.

He then said the Fed is doing the opposite of what the European Central Bank under President Mario Draghi is doing and joked: “We should have Draghi instead of our Fed person.”

Draghi, whose term at the ECB ends on Oct. 31, earlier this month said that if the eurozone’s economic situation deteriorates in the coming months the bank would announce further stimulus measures.

The euro dropped 0.2 percent against the dollar within minutes of Draghi’s remarks, which caught the attention of Trump, who tweeted: “Mario Draghi just announced more stimulus could come, which immediately dropped the Euro against the Dollar, making it unfairly easier for them to compete against the USA. They have been getting away with this for years, along with China and others.”

Shortly after Trump added: “European Markets rose on comments (unfair to U.S.) made today by Mario D!”

[Politico]

Trump Stuns Maria Bartiromo By Accusing Mueller of Crimes in Wild Rant: ‘That’s Illegal! That’s a Crime!’

President Donald Trump railed against Robert Mueller’s upcoming testimonythroughout his interview with Fox Business on Wednesday, but towards the end, he cranked it up to 11 and went off on a tangent accusing the special counsel of numerous crimes.

Trump once again accused the FBI of improperly spying on his campaign before lashing into “the two pathetic lovers” Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.

“Well, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page wrote everything down, so we’ve got all the texts,” Bartiromo said.

That’s when Trump went wild and claimed there were more exchanges between the Strzok and Page that Mueller concealed. Bartiromo tried multiple times to interject with a question, but the president charged along:

“Wait till you see the rest of their – here’s the problem, Robert Mueller, they worked for him, and two lovers were together and they had texts back-and-forth, e-mail back-and-forth…Mueller terminated them illegally. He terminated the emails, he terminated all stuff between Strzok and Page, you know, they sung like you’ve never seen. Robert Mueller terminated their text messages together, he terminated them. They’re gone! And that’s illegal! That is a crime!”

Bartiromo nodded along, a little perplexed, before asking why the alleged crimes had not been discussed in courts. Trump responded “I guess it will be, and the Republicans know it.”

“Can you imagine what they said – how stupid they are – can you imagine what they said, these stupid lovers,” Trump continued. “He’s trying to show what a big man he is making statements, and she is back to him ‘oh yes darling, yes darling.’ How stupid they were, this was a love serenade going on.”

Bartiromo tried once more to ask why no one has seen this after Trump gave Attorney General William Barr clearance to declassify, but the president switched gears — grumbling about his approval ratings getting bogged down by “phony charges.”

[Mediaite]

Trump accuses Democrats of inaction on border security hours after House passes funding bill

President Donald Trump complained Wednesday that congressional Democrats “won’t do anything at all about border security” hours after the House passed a funding package worth billions of dollars to address the humanitarian crisis at the nation’s southern border.

Trump accused Democrats, as he often does, of supporting “open borders,” and said their immigration policies would lead to “violent crime, drugs, and human trafficking.” His attack on Democrats comes as his administration has faced withering criticism in recent days amid reports of poor treatment for migrants, including minors, at detention facilities along the border.

“Too bad the Dems in Congress won’t do anything at all about Border Security. They want Open Borders, which means crime. But we are getting it done, including building the Wall! More people than ever before are coming because the USA Economy is so good, the best in history,” Trump wrote in a pair of tweets early Wednesday.

“Democrats want Open Borders, which equals violent crime, drugs and human trafficking. They also want very high taxes, like 90%. Republicans want what’s good for America – the exact opposite!,” he continued.

The $4.5 billion package for the border, which passed the House almost entirely along party lines, includes strict conditions requiring private detention facilities to meet certain standards of care or risk losing their government contracts. It marks the second time in two days that progressive leaders forced changes to the legislation, despite reluctance to give Trump any funds for his immigration agenda. The House package does not address provisions in asylum law, on which the White House has blamed the influx of migrants.

“Too bad the Dems in Congress won’t do anything at all about Border Security. They want Open Borders, which means crime. But we are getting it done, including building the Wall! More people than ever before are coming because the USA Economy is so good, the best in history,” Trump wrote in a pair of tweets early Wednesday.

“Democrats want Open Borders, which equals violent crime, drugs and human trafficking. They also want very high taxes, like 90%. Republicans want what’s good for America – the exact opposite!,” he continued.

The $4.5 billion package for the border, which passed the House almost entirely along party lines, includes strict conditions requiring private detention facilities to meet certain standards of care or risk losing their government contracts. It marks the second time in two days that progressive leaders forced changes to the legislation, despite reluctance to give Trump any funds for his immigration agenda. The House package does not address provisions in asylum law, on which the White House has blamed the influx of migrants.

Trump has demanded sweeping changes to asylum law, in exchange for permanently calling off mass deportation raids. The administration’s plans to begin deporting thousands of undocumented immigrants was delayed for two weeks on Saturday — the latest threat by Trump to take tough action.

The Trump administration has also requested an emergency stay from a federal court that would allow the Defense Department to start building a border wall in Arizona and New Mexico with $1 billion in funding.

In the hours leading up to passage of the bill, Pelosi argued that Democrats needed to stand behind their plan to combat the humanitarian crisis, rather than bicker over Trump and his immigration policies.

Both parties have decried recent reports of the horrific conditions at the border, where multiple migrant children have died and others have been held in unsanitary conditions, often without access to basic necessities like toothbrushes and soap.

[Politico]

Trump Says U.S. Was ‘Cocked And Loaded’ Before He Called Off Strike On Iran

President Trump confirmed that he approved a strike on Iran on Thursday after it shot down a U.S. drone but called off the operation after the initial moves were underway. Trump said he canceled the attack after being told 150 people would likely be killed.

“We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die,” Trump said in a series of tweets Friday.

Upon hearing the projected toll, Trump said, he decided that the strike was not “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.” The president said he put a halt to the operation 10 minutes before the strike was set to begin.

Trump’s pullback was first reported by The New York Times, which described how — even as late as as last as 7 p.m. ET Thursday — military and diplomatic officials were still expecting an attack to proceed.

“Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down,” the Times reported, citing multiple senior Trump administration officials.

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