Category: Ill-Tempered

Defiant Trump resumes attacks on ‘Morning Joe’ hosts, despite bipartisan criticism

A defiant President Donald Trump resumed his attacks on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Saturday morning, calling Scarborough “crazy” and Brzezinski “dumb as a rock,” despite days of bipartisan criticism over his initial attacks on the pair earlier this week.

“Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika are not bad people, but their low rated show is dominated by their NBC bosses. Too bad!” Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers rebuked Trump’s attacks on the hosts Thursday after he slammed Brzezinski’s intellect, questioned her sanity and mocked her appearance.

“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came… to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” Trump wrote in a series of tweets.

On Friday, Scarborough and Brzezinski responded to Trump’s attacks with an opinion piece in The Washington Post titled “Donald Trump is not well.”

“America’s leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president,” they wrote. “We have our doubts, but we are both certain that the man is not mentally equipped to continue watching our show, ‘Morning Joe.'”

During their Friday “Morning Joe” broadcast, Scarborough and Brzezinski also accused Trump and his White House of using the possibility of a hit piece in the National Enquirer to threaten them and change their news coverage, to which Trump responded on Twitter by calling that accusation “FAKE NEWS. He called me to stop a National Enquirer article. I said no! Bad show.”

But Scarborough said he has proof of White House threats earlier this year; he replied to Trump by tweeting, “Yet another lie. I have texts from your top aides and phone records.”

A White House official suggested to CNN that nothing untoward occurred, saying Scarborough called Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, about the Enquirer story before it was published. The official said Kushner told Scarborough to call the President. The official denied there was ever any offer from Kushner of a quid pro quo — in other words, softer coverage in exchange for spiking the Enquirer story.

The White House did not return a request for comment on Trump’s latest tweet on Saturday.Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump’s initial attack at Thursday’s White House press briefing, saying, “Look, the American people elected a fighter. They didn’t elect somebody to sit back and do nothing.” She added that Trump “fights fire with fire.”

Sanders also said on Fox News that Trump was responding to liberal bullying when he tweeted about the MSNBC host.

“I don’t think that the President’s ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn’t push back,” she told the network Thursday. “There have been an outrageous number of personal attacks not just to him but people around him.”

First lady Melania Trump also stood by her husband’s remarks about the hosts.
“As the first lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder,” the first lady’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement to CNN on Thursday.

When asked about Trump’s initial tweets during a House Republican news conference Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan responded, “Obviously I don’t see that as an appropriate comment.

He added: “What we’re trying to do around here is improve the tone, the civility of the debate. And this obviously doesn’t help do that.”

[CNN]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump Tweets Shocking Assault on Brzezinski, Scarborough

On Thursday morning, while MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was on the air, Trump posted a pair of hateful tweets about co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

MSNBC responded with this statement: “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”

The president’s deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, defended the tweets by saying Trump was responding to the “outrageous attacks that take place” on “Morning Joe” and other shows.

Trump refuses to be “bullied,” Sanders said on Fox News. “This is a president who fights fire with fire.”

Trump’s tweets in the 8 a.m. hour on Thursday said that “Morning Joe” is “poorly rated” (it’s not) and that the hosts “speak badly of me” (that’s true). He called both hosts disparaging names.

Trump claimed that Scarborough and Brzezinski courted him for an interview at Mar-a-Lago around the New Year’s Eve holiday.

“She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” the president wrote.

He actually said yes, according to accounts of their meeting. Trump, Scarborough and Brzezinski mingled with guests and had a private chat.

For the record, photos from Mar-a-Lago do not show any blood or bandages on Brzezinski’s face.

Stunned commenters on social media noted that Trump targeted both hosts with his barbed tweets, but only opined on the physical appearance of the woman involved.

Democratic commentator Maria Cardona, speaking on CNN, said it was part of a pattern of misogynistic behavior by Trump.

“We should not normalize this,” she said, calling it “unacceptable and unpresidential.”

Lawmakers immediately condemned the president’s tweets, as well.

“Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, tweeted.

But First Lady Melania Trump spoke up in defense of her husband.

“As the First Lady has stated publicly in the past, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder,” her communications director Stephanie Grisham said in response to reporters’ questions.

Melania Trump has previously said that as First Lady she wants to focus on the problem of cyberbullying.

Critics say Trump uses his Twitter account as a powerful megaphone to bully people.

Observers also expressed a lot of skepticism about Trump’s Thursday morning claim that he doesn’t watch “Morning Joe” anymore.

The president is known to watch all the major morning shows, including the programs on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC’. He sometimes calls up pro-Trump guests to thank them for their remarks on the shows.

Trump had a friendly, jovial relationship with “Morning Joe” during the presidential campaign, but it turned sour over time.

At one point he called Brzezinski “very insecure” and threatened to expose her off-screen relationship with Scarborough.

Brzezinski and Scarborough were dating at the time, and they are now engaged.

Thursday’s anti-media tweets were astonishing — and part of a pattern.

On Tuesday his main target was CNN. Trump reveled in the fact that three CNN journalists resigned on Monday after their Russia-related story was retracted.

On Wednesday Trump went after two of the nation’s biggest newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post.

He mangled the facts several times, but his overall message came through loud and clear: Do not trust the people who are trying to hold my administration accountable.

Brzezinski responded to Trump Thursday morning with a tweet of her own, mocking him with a reference to “little hands,” a reference to a disparaging idea about him that has circulated for years.

Mark Kornblau, the head of PR for NBC News and MSNBC, also weighed in on Twitter, saying, “Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, ‘it is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States.'”

[CNN]

 

Trump: Obama Didn’t ‘Choke,’ He ‘Colluded or Obstructed’

President Trump on Monday said President Obama took no action against Russia for its actions in the 2016 election because he expected Hillary Clinton to win.

Trump concluded that Obama had not “choked” in taking no action against Russia, as a senior administration official told The Washington Post. Instead, Trump said Obama had “colluded” or “obstructed.”

“The reason that President Obama did NOTHING about Russia after being notified by the CIA of meddling is that he expected Clinton would win…..and did not want to ‘rock the boat,’ ” Trump tweeted. “He didn’t ‘choke,’ he colluded or obstructed, and it did the Dems and Crooked Hillary no good.”

“The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling. With 4 months looking at Russia … under a magnifying glass, they have zero ‘tapes’ of T people colluding. There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should be given apology!” he added.

Trump’s accusations come as he is facing multiple investigations into whether his campaign colluded with Russia during the election. The U.S. intelligence community concluded that Moscow interfered in the U.S. election specifically to help Trump win.

The Justice Department, FBI and Senate and House Intelligence committees are probing possible links between Trump’s team and the Kremlin.

Trump in an interview last week criticized Obama over Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, accusing the former president of doing “nothing.”

“Well I just heard today for the first time that Obama knew about Russia a long time before the election, and he did nothing about it. But nobody wants to talk about that,” Trump told “Fox and Friends Weekend.”

“The CIA gave him information on Russia a long time before they even – before the election. And I hardly see it. It’s an amazing thing,” Trump continued.

The Obama administration is facing fresh criticism after The Washington Post reported that Obama was slow and cautious in responding to Russian election interference.

Some officials were reportedly wary of taking action before the election, which was dominated by Trump making claims on the campaign trail of the election being “rigged” against him.

[The Hill]

 

Trump Blames Obama for Not Doing More to Bring Otto Warmbier Home Sooner

President Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to blame former President Barack Obama for not bringing Otto Warmbier home from North Korea sooner.

“It’s a disgrace what happened to Otto,” Trump said to reporters. “It’s a total disgrace what happened to Otto.”

“It should never, ever be allowed to happen. And frankly, if he were brought home sooner, I think the results would have been a lot different. He should have been brought home that day.”

Trump added that he had spoken with Warmbier’s family.

When asked if Obama had done enough to secure Warmbier’s release during a June 16 press conference, Otto’s father, Fred, echoed Trump’s sentiments saying the results “speak for themselves.”

Warmbier, a student at the University of Virginia, was detained in March 2016 after North Korean officials accused him of attempting to steal a propaganda poster from his hotel. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

US officials negotiated his release earlier this month, though Warmbier was in a coma by the time he arrived in the US. While North Korean officials said he had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism, US doctors who examined Warmbier said he suffered severe neurological trauma while in detention and showed no traces of the toxin.

Warmbier died at age 22 on Monday.

The White House released a statement on Monday offering Trump and first lady Melania’s “deepest condolences” to Warmbier’s family.

“The United States once again condemns the brutality of the North Korean regime as we mourn its latest victim,” the statement reads.

Warmbier’s family also released a statement on Monday announcing his death.

“It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost — future time that won’t be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds,” the statement reads. “But we choose to focus on the time we were given to be with this remarkable person.”

[Business Insider]

Reality

Former President Barack Obama has issued a statement about Otto Warmbier, the American college student who died this week, days after being released from North Korea in a coma after more than a year in captivity.

“During the course of the Obama Administration, we had no higher priority than securing the release of Americans detained overseas,” Obama spokesman Ned Price said in the statement. “Their tireless efforts resulted in the release of at least 10 Americans from North Korean custody during the course of the Obama administration.”

Added Price, who was National Security Counsel spokesperson during Obama’s administration: “It is painful that Mr. Warmbier was not among them, but our efforts on his behalf never ceased, even in the waning days of the administration. Our thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Warmbier’s family and all who had the blessing of knowing him.”

Trump says he is under investigation, lashes out at Justice Department

President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday that he is under investigation in the probe into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election.

He also appeared to criticize Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is seeking to determine whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice, following the president’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey, who had been leading the investigation of Russian interference, The Washington Post reported this week.

Rosenstein wrote the memo that suggested that Trump fire Comey over his handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State. Trump later contradicted his administration’s rationale, saying he had been thinking about the Russia investigation when he fired Comey.

In a striking testimony before Congress last week, Comey said he believed Trump had sought to persuade him to drop an investigation into then National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia.
Trump’s acknowledgement of the reported obstruction of justice investigation came after a series of tweets in which he renewed his assertions that he is the subject of a “witch hunt.”

The Washington Post cited unidentified officials when it reported Mueller is investigating Trump. Rosenstein issued a statement on Thursday warning Americans to “be skeptical of anonymous allegations.”

“Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous ‘officials,’ particularly when they do not identify the country — let alone the branch or agency of government — with which the alleged sources supposedly are affiliated,” Rosenstein said.

A senior Justice Department official told NBC News that no one pushed Rosenstein to issue the statement.

“This was 100 percent Rod. He’s tired of reading all these stories based on anonymous sources claiming to know what the Justice Department and the FBI are doing,” the official said.

[NBC News]

 

Trump Tweets His Frustration with Russia Investigation

President Donald Trump is beginning his day with a stream of tweets defending his record and lashing out at the investigation into Russian interference in the election.

In a two-part tweet posted before 7 a.m. Sunday, Trump wrote: “The MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN agenda is doing very well despite the distraction of the Witch Hunt.”

He continued by saying: “Many new jobs, high business enthusiasm …massive regulation cuts, 36 new legislative bills signed, great new S.C.Justice, and Infrastructure, Healthcare and Tax Cuts in works!”

“Witch hunt’ is how Trump characterizes the probe into Russia’s election interference and possible ties to his campaign associates.

Trump advisers describe the president as increasingly angry over the investigation, yelling at television sets carrying coverage and insisting he is the target of a conspiracy.

[ABC News]

Trump: I am calling it a ‘TRAVEL BAN!’

President Trump early Monday made clear the intent of a blocked executive order on immigration now being appealed to the Supreme Court.

“People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!” he tweeted.

Trump also said in a series of tweets that the Department of Justice (DOJ) should have fought for his original order, instead of the “watered down, politically correct version” submitted to the Supreme Court.

He said the DOJ should ask for an expedited Supreme Court hearing for the “watered down Travel Ban” and then seek a “much tougher version.”

Trump in his final tweet on the subject said his administration is “EXTREME VETTING” people now coming into the U.S.

“The courts are slow and political!” he added.

Administration officials had rejected the characterization of Trump’s executive order as a travel ban, instead saying it was a vetting system to keep America safe.

Trump over the weekend reignited the debate over the topic following a London terror attack in which seven people were killed and almost 50 others injured.

In a tweet on Saturday, Trump renewed his call for the courts to approve his revised executive order, which would temporarily bar nationals from six predominately Muslim countries from entering the U.S. and suspend the acceptance of refugees for 120 days.

“We need to be smart, vigilant and tough,” Trump said. “We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”

The Trump administration issued its original travel ban in January. That order, which was blocked by the courts, was met with backlash and protests across the country.

The president then issued a revised ban in March aimed at defusing the controversy and defeating court challenges.

Last week, the Trump administration appealed lower-court decisions to block the revised ban to the Supreme Court.

In a statement last week, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said the department had “asked the Supreme Court to hear this important case and [is] confident that President Trump’s executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism.”

“The president is not required to admit people from countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism,” the statement said, “until he determines that they can be properly vetted and do not pose a security risk to the United States.”

Over the weekend, some Republicans echoed the president’s renewed calls for his travel ban following the London attack, while other lawmakers appeared to disagree with Trump and instead called for inclusion and community.

[The Hill]

 

 

Trump Raged at Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas In Bethlehem Meeting: ‘You Lied To Me’

President Trump reportedly lashed out at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in their meeting in the West Bank city of Bethlehem last Tuesday.

“You tricked me in D.C.! You talked there about your commitment to peace, but the Israelis showed me your involvement in incitement [against Israel],” he allegedly said to Abbas, according to Israel’s Channel 2 broadcaster, which cited a U.S. official present at the meeting. It said the Palestinian delegation were shocked by the outburst.

The Israeli government blames the Palestinian leadership and Abbas’s Fatah faction for inciting violence among young Palestinians, who from September 2015 onward launched a series of violent and deadly attacks with knives, guns and vehicles in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The Palestinians say it is Israel’s military occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank that pushed them to violence. The violence slowed in mid-2016.

At their meeting in Washington on May 3, Trump told Abbas to end incitement and “resolve” a Palestinian policy of paying the families of Palestinians convicted of terror offenses under Israeli law. Abbas said “we are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Abbas’s remarks were “not true” as his Palestinian Authority names “schools after mass murders of Israelis.”

Trump is earning a reputation for lecturing world leaders. In February, he reportedly shouted on a call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about a refugee settlement deal reached with his predecessor, Barack Obama.

“When you hear about the tough phone calls I’m having, don’t worry about it. Just don’t worry about it. They’re tough,” he said at a prayer breakfast the day after the call. “We’re taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It’s not going to happen any more.”

Trump arrived in Bethlehem on Tuesday for a whistlestop meeting with Abbas with security at its highest level in the West Bank city. He had met with Netanyahu a day earlier. He said that with “ determination, compromise, and the belief that peace is possible,” Israelis and Palestinians could make a deal.

In Bethlehem, shops shuttered and Palestinian security forces lined the main roads as Palestinians held a “Day of Rage” in solidarity with hunger-striking prisoners, who have since stopped that strike. The pair held a joint press conference at the city’s presidential palace but, despite visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Trump passed on visiting the Church of the Nativity, the alleged birthplace of Jesus.

Publicly, Trump was kinder about his Palestinian counterpart, saying he was a willing peace partner. “I truly believe if Israel and the Palestinians can make peace, it will begin a process for peace in the Middle East,” Trump said during the conference. “Abbas assures me he is ready to work toward that goal in good faith, and Netanyahu has promised the same. I look forward to working with these leaders toward a lasting peace.”

Abbas said the Palestinians would work for peace but their “fundamental problem is with the occupation and settlements and the failure of Israel to recognize the state of Palestine as we recognize it.” He said their problem was not with “Judaism.”

[Newsweek]

Trump Wants ‘Goddamned Steam,’ Not Digital Catapults on Aircraft Carriers

Navy officials were “blindsided” on Thursday, a spokesman told me, by President Donald Trump’s suggestion that he has convinced the Navy to abandon a long-planned digital launching system in favor of steam on its newest aircraft carrier.

In a wide-ranging interview with Time magazine, Trump described his disgust with the catapult system known as Electro-Magnetic Aircraft Launch System, nicknamed EMALS, aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford. (Time has published only excerpts from the interview, not a full transcript.) The president described wanting to scrap EMALS, a key technological upgrade at the center of the multibillion-dollar carrier project, and return to steam.

I said, “You don’t use steam anymore for catapult?” “No sir.” I said, “Ah, how is it working?” “Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air.”

It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said—and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said, “What system are you going to be—” “Sir, we’re staying with digital.” I said, “No you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.”

What is digital? To answer the president’s question without getting into too many 0s and 1s, “digital” means using a computer to make something happen. You know, the same sort of machine that connects us all to the cyber. Are you still with me, or should we get Einstein over here? (I mean, Einstein has done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.) EMALS isn’t just computer-based but uses a linear induction motor. That motor—which uses electric currents to activate a magnetic core—propels a carriage down a track to launch an aircraft, rather than using a steam piston drive to pull the aircraft.

Despite Trump’s technological leanings—he’s TV obsessed, he was a semi-early adopter of the web, and he has a preternatural sense for Twitter drama—his question about “digital” calls to mind his apparent cluelessness about cyber security.

It’s not that EMALS has been a smashing success. Cost and schedule overruns have given the Navy carrier project a reputation for being “one of the most spectacular acquisition debacles in recent memory,” as Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, put it in 2015. “And that is saying something.” The construction of three Ford-class aircraft carriers has swelled from $27 billion to $36 billion in the last 10 years.

But the problems with the Ford-class carrier program are more organizational than technological—a common theme among infrastructural megaprojects. McCain blamed “misalignment of accountability and responsibility in our defense acquisition system” and the vast bureaucracy of defense acquisition systems, which span multiple offices and program managers.

Trump seems to have seized on the project’s bad reputation without appreciating—or at least without clearly articulating—the complexities of moving from steam to digital.

The steam-powered catapult systems that are being replaced have been used to launch airplanes from U.S. carriers for some six decades now. Not only are steam systems harder to maintain than electrical ones; they have a lower upper-limit during combat—meaning electrical systems can launch more aircraft in a shorter amount of time. Electrical systems can also better handle smaller aircrafts and drones compared with steam. Steam systems also put more stress on airframes, and make them more prone to corrosion. Not only that, but carriers themselves are exceedingly vulnerable to attack—meaning outfitting them with the modern defense systems is a priority.

The goal for the upgraded system is to use carriers to create “an operational honeycomb of interconnected forces with reach, range and lethality against air, sea, space, and land-based targets,” as Robbin Laird and Ed Timperlake wrote for the website Breaking Defense in 2015.

Despite some high-profile failures in early testing, EMALS is now nearly complete and ready for sea trials. It represents one of three major initiatives in the Navy’s push to go upgrade its weapons systems for the digital era.

Trump’s insistence on steam is perhaps bewildering, but also consistent with some of his other views about technology. After all, the president has repeatedly talked about returning to America’s golden age of manufacturing—an idea that’s laughable, if regrettable, to anyone who has looked closely at the forces driving the global economy. Among them: the rise of automation, which promises to dramatically transform the way humans work across multiple industries, and which Trump has all but ignored.

Then again, for a man who is clearly concerned with hugeness, you’d think Trump might appreciate EMALS: In working order, the system can launch anything from the sleekest drone to the sturdiest F-35, and it blasts through the technological limits imposed by steam. Trump has demonstrated a fondness for super carriers, and has said he plans to increase the U.S. fleet from 10 to 12.

He hasn’t, however, indicated how he plans to pay for that. The cost of a single new, Ford-class carrier—about $11 billion without cost overruns—would eat up nearly 20 percent of Trump’s proposed defense budget increase, Reuters reported in March.

The Navy says it is scrambling to figure out how to address the president’s concerns. A spokesman said it will issue a statement on Thursday afternoon, and figure out talking points for Naval leaders should the question come up at public events.

In the meantime, Trump might do well to worry more about the signature infrastructure promise of his own campaign, than a near-complete military project he doesn’t seem to understand.

(h/t The Atlantic)

Trump just blasted the wrong court for ‘blocking’ his sanctuary cities order

President Donald Trump lashed out again at the American judiciary for blocking a piece of his agenda.

Except on Wednesday, he got his court wrong.

In a morning tweet, he blamed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for blocking his order to withhold funding from so-called sanctuary cities. He called the ruling “ridiculous” and signaled that his administration will appeal by saying “see you in the Supreme Court.”

The problem: Tuesday’s ruling did not come from the 9th Circuit. It was made in federal district court in San Francisco.
Earlier this year, the 9th Circuit did block Trump’s executive order restricting travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus also targeted the appeals court in comments to reporters Tuesday, according to The Hill.

Politico, which first pointed out Trump’s error, noted that the 9th Circuit would hear the case next if the Trump administration appeals.

(h/t NBC News)

1 … 91 92 93 94 95 … 100