Category: Ill-Tempered

Trump decided against White House statement praising McCain

President Trump decided against releasing an official White House statement on Sen. John McCain following his death, two administration sources confirmed to Fox News.

The statement would have praised him for his decades of service and his heroism as a Vietnam War POW. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and other senior aides all had pushed for such a statement, which would have called McCain a “hero.”

The president, however, rejected the statement and instead issued a brief tweet Saturday night following the legendary Arizona Republican senator’s death.

The tweet said, “My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain. Our hearts and prayers are with you!”

The decision on the statement was first reported by The Washington Post.

Trump’s decision speaks to the longstanding feud between the two men, dating back to when Trump, as a candidate, said McCain was not a war hero and seemed to fault him for being captured during the Vietnam War. McCain endured five years in captivity, an experience that later shaped his views, as a senator, on interrogation techniques. Known as the Senate’s “maverick,” McCain often bucked party ideology, earning him praise on Democratic side of the aisle and sometimes criticism from his own party – but he remained an influential voice even through his battle with brain cancer. He twice ran for president and was the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2008.

Tributes to McCain, meanwhile, poured in from other world leaders and statesmen including former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

“Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did. But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own,” Barack and Michelle Obama said in their statement.

“In an era filled with cynicism about national unity and public service, John McCain’s life shone as a bright example. He showed us that boundless patriotism and self-sacrifice are not outdated concepts or clichés, but the building blocks of an extraordinary American life,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement.

McConnell also announced that McCain will lie in State at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

[Fox News]

Trump Slams Democrats Over Mollie Tibbetts Death: Their Policies Are ‘Spilling Very Innocent Blood’

Speaking at an Ohio Republican State Party fundraiser in Columbus Friday evening, President Donald Trump invoked the death of Mollie Tibbetts to slam Democrats on immigration.

Shortly after saying the Republican party “stands strongly behind ICE,” Trump then brought up how “they charged an illegal alien in the murder of a college student Mollie Tibbetts.

“Everybody loved her. Everybody that met her loved her,” Trump said. “And the father was saying she’s coming back, she’s coming back… This went on for a long time. When they found out that it was this horrible, illegal immigrant that viciously killed her, all of a sudden that story went down. They didn’t want to cover it the way it should have been covered. But what happened to Mollie was a disgrace.”

He added “Our hearts go out. We mourn for Mollie’s family.”

Tibbetts family has said publicly they do not want her death politicized.

Yet, Trump did not stop at Tibbetts’ tragedy to make his point.

He then mentioned the death of an elderly homeless woman in New York City who was allegedly beaten to death by an undocumented immigrant who Trump said “was not supposed to be in this country” and a rape of a young child in the “sanctuary city” of Philadelphia also allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant.

“Democrat immigration policies are destroying innocent lives and spilling very innocent blood,” he concluded. “We believe that any party that puts criminal aliens before American citizens should be voted out of office, not into office.”

The audience applauded.

[Mediaite]

Trump Threatens FBI Over Hillary Clinton Emails: ‘I May Have To Get Involved’

President Donald Trump on Saturday issued a chilling warning to the FBI, accusing the agency of ignoring “tens of thousands” of Hillary Clinton’s emails and warning that he “may have to get involved.”

His tweets came less than an hour after similar ones criticizing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, adding fodder to their monthslong feud and fueling fresh rumors that Sessions’ days in office are numbered.

Trump has been lashing out at the Justice Department all week after his former campaign chair Paul Manafort was found guilty on numerous corruption charges as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference. Manafort’s conviction came shortly after Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations, implicating the president in election interference.

Trump and his allies have long used the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state as a way to discredit the Justice Department, particularly as the special counsel investigation has come to fruition.

The president blames Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe in May 2017, which ultimately lead to Mueller’s appointment.

Sessions on Thursday fired back in one of his strongest rebukes of the president to date.

“The actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,” he said.

[Huffington Post]

Kellyanne Conway Claims CNN ‘Interfered in the Election’

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has accused CNN of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by reporting on several women’s misconduct allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump. In a tense Thursday-night interview with CNN host Chris Cuomo, Conway repeatedly dodged questions about new evidence that Trump lied to the public when he claimed to have no knowledge of a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Instead, Conway railed against CNN for its “screaming graphics” and “phony polls” during the election. “Every single night, CNN was featuring another woman with another story. You played the Access Hollywood tape constantly, thinking it would hurt the candidate, he would never be elected,” she said. “CNN interfered in the election daily,” Conway said, by reporting on allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump by multiple women. She went on to blast the network for focusing on the Russia investigation, supposedly at the expense of covering the opioid crisis. “Zero [people] died because of impeachment. Zero [people] died because of collusion,” she said.

[The Daily Beast]

Media

Trump: Impeach me and the market crashes

In an interview with Fox & Friends, he said the market would crash and “everybody would be very poor”.

He was speaking after Michael Cohen, his ex-lawyer, pleaded guilty to violating election laws and said he had been directed to do so by Mr Trump.

Mr Trump has rarely spoken about the prospect of being impeached.

Correspondents say it is unlikely Mr Trump’s opponents would try to impeach him before November’s mid-term elections.

Why does Trump say the market would crash?

“I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job,” Mr Trump told Fox and Friends.

“I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”

Pointing to his head, he said: “Because without this thinking, you would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse.”

[BBC]

Media

 

Trump Bemoans ‘Persecuted White Farmers’ in South Africa

President Trump says he has instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into alleged violence against white farmers in South Africa and the government’s alleged seizure of their land after watching a Fox News report on the subject. Citing Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s statement that the “South African government is now seizing land from white farmers,” Trump tweeted that he’s asked Pompeo to “closely study” the matter, which he said involves the “large scale killing of farmers.” The comments, which appear to fuel claims by right-wing groups that the South African government is waging war against whites, seemed to be an abrupt change of subject from perhaps the biggest blow to Trump’s White House so far: the conviction of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the plea deal by his longtime fixer Michael Cohen earlier this week. The State Department has yet to comment on Trump’s tweet, but in a statement cited in the same Fox News report Trump was referencing, the State Department noted that South Africa’s land redistributions are being carried out through “an open process including public hearings, broad-based consultations, and active civic society engagement.” Most of South Africa’s land belongs to a white minority two decades after apartheid ended.

[The Daily Beast]

Reality

How does a specific white genocide conspiracy theory about white farmers being murdered in South Africa pushed by the white supremacist groups AfriForum and Identity Evropa, where the white supremacist podcasts White Rabbit Radio and Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance both had episodes dedicated to, end up being tweeted out by Donald Trump?

Oh he watched it on white supremacist Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show.

The reality is, as with the vast majority of conspiracy theories, it is simply not true.

Yes there are farmers being murdered in South Africa and each one is sad and tragic, but since Trump is talking about the data then we have to look at the data. Murder rates among African farmers have drastically declined over the past decades and there are no stats that say they happened for racial reasons.

The last time there was large scale tracking in South Africa of murders of farmers by race, 33% of victims were black.

Also, South Africa’s has a high murder rate, of 34.1 per 100,000 people, that number is far lower in the rural areas.

 

Trump blames Sessions for Cohen pleading guilty to campaign finance fraud in rambling Fox News interview

President Donald Trump on Wednesday pointed the finger at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not doing enough to stop his former “fixer” Michael Cohen from pleading guilty to campaign finance charges.

During an interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, Trump admitted that it would have been a little “dicey” had he ordered Cohen to make an illegal campaign contribution that would be hush money for women who allegedly had affairs with him.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday pointed the finger at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for not doing enough to stop his former “fixer” Michael Cohen from pleading guilty to campaign finance charges.

During an interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, Trump admitted that it would have been a little “dicey” had he ordered Cohen to make an illegal campaign contribution that would be hush money for women who allegedly had affairs with him.

Unlike the allegations being levied against Trump, however, Obama was not found to have had any part in failing to report the donations, and the donations in question were not being used to pay out hush money to ex-mistresses.

Despite this, however, Trump said that the two cases were very similar — and then took a veiled shot at Sessions.

“He had a massive campaign violation,” Trump claimed. “But he had a different attorney general, and they viewed it a lot differently.”

[Raw Story]

Trump rips New York Times: ‘They’re like lunatics’

President Trump on Wednesday complained that much of the press won’t give him positive coverage, singling out The New York Times as “lunatics.”

Trump told “Fox & Friends” host Ainsley Earhardt that “80 percent” of the media is fake news, and as a result is the “enemy of the people,” an insult he frequently lobs at journalists.

“If I do something well, it’s not reported. Other than in the 20 percent,” Trump said in an interview that will air Thursday.

“I mean, The New York Times cannot write a good story about me,” he continued. “They’re crazed. They’re like lunatics.”

Trump has had a long-strained relationship with the press since he hit the campaign trail in 2015. He often derides negative coverage as “fake news,” and singles out organizations including the Times, CNN, NBC News and The Washington Post.

[The Hill]

 

 

Trump Blasts Cohen: ‘Flipping’ to Get a Plea Deal ‘Almost Ought to Be Illegal’

During his extensive interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, President Trump praised Paul Manafort while tearing Michael Cohenapart for implicating for implicating him in his campaign finance violations.

Even though Cohen’s secretly-record audio of Trump indicates that his ex-boss was involved in his 2016 hush money schemes, Trump insisted that he only found out about the payments “later on.” After complaining that this wasn’t a violation of campaign finance law because the money “came from me,” and he also said ” almost everybody that runs for office has campaign violations, but what Michael Cohen pled to weren’t even campaign related. They weren’t crimes.”

To that point, Earhardt asked him why Cohen accepted a plea deal with federal prosecutors if what he did wasn’t illegal. After saluting Manafort – who was found guilty in his trial this week – because he didn’t flip, Trump said that such deals like the one Cohen made shouldn’t be allowed.

“This whole thing about flipping, they call it. I know all about flipping, for 30, 40 years I have been watching flippers. Everything is wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go. It almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair, because if somebody going to spend five years like Michael Cohen or 10 of 15 years in jail because of a taxicab deal, because he defrauded some bank. Campaign violations are considered not a big deal, frankly. But if somebody defrauded a bank and he is going to get 10 years in jail or 20 years in jail but if you can say something bad about Donald Trump and you will go down to two years or three years, which is the deal he made, in all fairness to him, most people are going to do that. And I have seen it many times. I have had many friends involved in this stuff. It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal. You get 10 years in jail. But if you say bad things about somebody, in other words make up stories, they just make up lies…They make up things and now they go from 10 years to they’re a national hero. They have a statue erected in their honor. It’s not a fair thing. But that’s why he did it. He made a very good deal. For what he did.”

[Mediaite]

Trump Says ’80 Percent’ of News Media is ‘Enemy of the People’

During a previewed portion of his interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, President Donald Trump elaborated on how just much of the political press he considers the “enemy of the people.”

SPOILER ALERT: Most of it.

When asked if the press is the enemy of the people, Trump answered “no, not at all, but the fake news is, and the fake news is comprised of – it’s a lot – it’s a big chunk. Somebody said what’s the chunk? I said 80 percent. It’s a lot. If I do something well, it’s not reported other than in the 20 percent.”

That’s a 10 percent decrease from the 90 percent of the media Trump was trashing about a month ago.

Trump also particularly dug into The New York Times during the interview, saying the paper “is crazed. They are like lunatics.”

Trump recently attacked the paper when it released a groundbreaking report that White House counsel Don McGahn has been cooperating with Robert Mueller‘s investigation for the last several months.

[Mediaite]

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