Category: Petty

’Lock her up!’: Trump leads Iowa rally in a chant against California senator after saying he didn’t want to ‘slander’ her

During President Donald Trump’s Council Bluffs, IA rally he quickly threw shade at Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) over the Brett Kavanaugh scandal.

Trump claimed that Feinstein leaked Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s information, which sparked the entire sexual assault scandal.

“What about Feinstein, that’s a beauty,” Trump said.

“Did we leak the documents,” Trump said as he mocked her.

As Trump continued to joke about Feinstein, the crowd began to shout, “lock her up, lock her up.”

“I don’t want to get sued … but 98 percent she did it,” Trump said.

[Raw Story]

Reality

Trump ‘likes Taylor Swift 25% less’ after political post

Taylor Swift’s endorsement of two Democrats for the upcoming US mid-term elections has sparked a huge response – including from President Donald Trump.

Mr Trump has told reporters he likes “Taylor’s music about 25% less now”.

The singer-songwriter, 28, had previously deliberately steered clear of politics, but said events in “the past two years” had changed her mind.

Her latest comments were praised by many – but also sparked a fierce backlash from Republican supporters.

Swift broke her silence on politics on Sunday, publicly endorsing two Democrats in Tennessee, her home state, in a post on Instagram, where she has 112m followers.

“In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now,” she wrote.

A Buzzfeed News report quotes Vote.org’s Kamari Guthrie, who says the site has seen a “registrations spike specifically since [her] post” in Tennessee, and also a bump in voter registration nationwide.

Swift particularly criticised Republican Senate nominee Marsha Blackburn for her voting record on gender equality.

“Her voting record in Congress appals and terrifies me,” she wrote, citing the politician’s votes against equal pay and domestic violence legislation.

Speaking on Monday, Mr Trump said Ms Blackburn was “doing a very good job” in Swift’s home state.

“She’s a tremendous woman,” he said. “I’m sure Taylor Swift doesn’t know anything about her.”

In previous tweets posted in 2012, the US President had described Swift as “fantastic” and “terrific”, and had thanked her for taking a picture with him.

Swift’s post has been “liked” more than 1.6m times since she shared it on Sunday, including by model Chrissy Teigen, singer Katy Perry and actress Reese Witherspoon.

However, she has attracted criticism from conservative commentators and Republicans.

“What I used to love about Taylor Swift is she stayed away from politics,” Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative student organisation Turning Point, told Fox News on Monday.

Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee criticised her “attitude”, and said Swift had “[come] down from her ivory tower to tell hardworking Tennesseans” how to vote.

Swift did not publicly back any candidate in the 2016 election when other stars like Beyonce and Lady Gaga hit the campaign trail on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

In 2012, Swift told Time magazine she didn’t talk about politics “because it might influence other people”.

“I don’t think that I know enough yet in life to be telling people who to vote for,” she said at the time.

[BBC News]

Trump calls Kavanaugh allegations a ‘hoax set up by the Democrats’

President Trump said Monday that he expects a lot of Democratic voters to support Republican candidates in the upcoming midterms because of how the party’s lawmakers handled sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“The main base of the Democrats have shifted so far left that we’ll end up being Venezuela. This country would end up being Venezuela. I think a lot of Democrats are going to be voting voting Republican on Nov. 6,” Trump told reporters at the White House before departing for a law enforcement event in Florida.

The president seized on the specter raised by some liberals of impeaching Kavanaugh, who was confirmed to the Supreme Court on Saturday after being accused by three women of sexual misconduct and facing questions from Democrats about his judicial temperament.

Trump dismissed the allegations against Kavanaugh — including that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when the two were in high school — as “a hoax that was set up by the Democrats.”

He later blasted allegations from Julie Swetnick that Kavanaugh was present at parties where high school boys got girls drunk so they could be “gang raped,” calling them “made up,” “fabricated” and “a disgrace.”

“And now they want to impeach him,” Trump said. “I think it’s an insult to the American public. I think you’re going to see a lot of things happen on Nov. 6 that would not have happened before.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said last week on the eve of Kavanaugh’s confirmation that Democrats would investigate the sexual misconduct allegations against the judge if the party reclaimed the majority in the House.

Nadler did not comment on the possibility of impeaching Kavanaugh, and other Democratic lawmakers have refrained from discussing that prospect, or indicated they have no intention to pursue it in the near future.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Dele.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called impeachment discussions “premature,” while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said it “would not be my plan” to impeach the Justice.

The Senate confirmed Kavanaugh on Saturday afternoon in a 50-48 vote, with one GOP senator absent and another voting “present.” Every Democrat opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination except for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

[The Hill]

Media

Trump on why he mocked Christine Blasey Ford: ‘I had to even the playing field’

President Trump said late Saturday  that he mocked Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, because he needed to “even the playing field.”

Trump discussed Kavanaugh’s confirmation during an on-air call with Fox News host Jeanine Pirro after his rally in Kansas.

Pirro said that Trump was “disciplined” after Ford’s allegations came out and asked him why he decided mock her during a rally last Tuesday.

“You went off script and some people said you were extremely unkind to Christine Ford,” Pirro said.

“But what was it that got you to pivot from your restraint about her and to fight for Kavanaugh at that point?” she asked.

“Well, there were a lot of things happening that weren’t correct, they weren’t true and there were a lot of things that were left unsaid,” Trump responded. “And I thought I had to even the playing field. It was very unfair to the judge, and now I can very nicely say Justice Kavanaugh. It was a very unfair situation.”

[The Hill]

Media

Trump Rails Against ‘Radical’ Democrats: They ‘Have Turned into An Angry Mob’

President Donald Trump started off his MAGA rally in Kansas on Saturday by praising Republicans and railing against the “radical” Democrats who he said have turned into an “angry mob.”

“I want to thank our incredible Republican senators refusing to back down in the face of the Democrats shameless campaign of political and personal destruction,” he began, before pointing fingers at “radical Democrats” for launching “a disgraceful campaign to resist, obstruct, delay, demolish and destroy right from the beginning.”

The crowd booed.

He added: “Brett Kavanaugh is a man of great character and intellect. He is a totally brilliant scholar who has devoted his life to the law. He is a loving husband, a devoted father, and a faithful public servant and he always has been.”

Then after calling what Kavanaugh endured at the hands of the Democrats “unthinkable,” Trump said: “The radical Democrats have turned into an angry mob, you saw that today with this screaming and the shouting, not from the 200 people or, you know what, those people couldn’t fit in the front row. Look what we have here tonight.”

His comments echo an earlier tweet where Trump referred to the protests outside the Supreme Court.

[Mediaite]

Trump promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theory on Twitter

The anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that George Soros, a wealthy Hungarian-American businessman who has donated millions of dollars to progressive causes, is paying people to protest President Donald Trump is a staple of the conservative ecosystem.

Last week, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham tweeted “SOROS STRIKES AGAIN” after Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) was confronted in a Senate elevator by survivors of sexual assault.

Now the President of the United States is getting in on the anti-Semitic action, claiming that protests against his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, were “Paid for by Soros and others” in a Friday tweet.

This was the first time Trump has mentioned Soros on Twitter, per the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale. However, The Atlantic’s David Frum noted Soros was one of the “three identifiable “faces of international finance”” featured in a 2016 Trump campaign ad that was widely criticized for its anti-Semitic overtones.

The Washington Examiner’s Dave Brown noticed that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) floated the conspiracy theory about Soros paying Kavanaugh protesters during an appearance on Fox Business less than 90 minutes before Trump’s tweet.

Ana Maria Archila, one of the sexual assault survivors who was filmed confronting Flake last week, responded to Trump’s tweet in a statement, saying, “No one can pay for someone’s lived experiences.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, “The Hungarian Jewish billionaire, Holocaust survivor and philanthropist figures prominently in anti-Semitic tweets, with claims that he directly uses his largess to fund false flag events. One noteworthy allegation claims that Soros was responsible for the deadly ‘Unite the Right’ rally in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va. Other tweets refer to his Jewish heritage in pejorative terms and claims that he’s trying to undermine Western civilization.”

ThinkProgress’ Casey Michel recently explained the anti-Semitism behind conservatives’ Soros conspiracy theories:

Of course, as with most conspiracies, there’s a far darker reality lurking behind the notion that Soros is responsible for all the ills facing down nationalist movements. While most of those pushing Soros-based conspiracies don’t come out and say that Soros is evil because he’s Jewish, it doesn’t take much sleuthing to discern the anti-Semitism behind the conspiracies. Between the imagery of Soros pulling strings to the fact that Soros has effectively replaced “the Rothschilds” as the go-to for any conspiracy about an international cabal thwarting the people’s will, it’s not hard to catch the bigotry lacing the rising conspiracies about Soros.

Conservatives have a history of attempting to smear survivors of traumatic events as paid “crisis actors.” Sexual assault survivors’ attempts to confront Kavanaugh’s supporters have not been received well by Republicans.

The Washington Post reported in January 2017 that people were paid to attend Trump’s campaign launch announcement.

[ThinkProgress]

Trump Attacks Democrats For Treatment of Brett Kavanaugh: ‘VICIOUS AND DESPICABLE’

Piggybacking off of comments he’s made at rallies over the past two nights, President Donald Trump is attacking Democrats for what he deems to be “VICIOUS AND DESPICABLE” treatment of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

In a Wednesday morning tweet, the president — again liberally using capital letters — shredded Democrats for their handling of the Kavanaugh nomination.

“I see it each time I go out to Rallies in order to help some of our great Republican candidates,” Trump wrote. “VOTERS ARE REALLY ANGRY AT THE VICIOUS AND DESPICABLE WAY DEMOCRATS ARE TREATING BRETT KAVANAUGH! He and his wonderful family deserve much better.”

The new tweet comes after Trump’s widely condemned remarks at a Tuesday night rally in Mississippi in which he mocked Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford.

[Mediaite]

Trump makes fun of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford for not remembering the night of her alleged assault: ‘I only had one beer!’

During a Mississippi rally for Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), President Donald Trump made fun of Brett Kavanaugh accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford for not remembering details about the night of her alleged assault 36 years ago.

“I had one beer!” the president said, mocking Ford’s insistence that she wasn’t as inebriated as Kavanaugh at the time of the alleged sexual assault.

He then proceeded to mock the woman’s back-and-forth questioning with prosecutor Rachel Mitchell, responding “I don’t remember” to questions about the time and location of the incident.

“I had one beer, that’s the only thing I remember,” Trump said, continuing to make fun of Ford. “A man’s life is in tatters. A man’s life is shattered.”

[Raw Story]

Media

Angry Trump tries — and fails — to shut down CNN’s Kaitlan Collins for asking about Brett Kavanaugh

President Donald Trump on Monday angrily tried to shut down CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins for trying to ask him a question about embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

During a press conference about Trump’s renegotiated trade deal with Canada and Mexico, Collins tried to squeeze in a question about Kavanaugh — and Trump frantically tried to shut her down.

“Don’t do that!” the president exclaimed. “Excuse me, do you have a question on trade?”

Nevertheless, Collins persisted.

“You’ve already answered several questions on trade…” Collins began.

“Don’t do that, that’s not nice!” Trump again interrupted.

The president then tried to get some other reporter to ask a question about his trade deal — but Collins kept talking.

“You said the FBI should interview whomever they believe is appropriate,” Collins said.

“Does that include Julie Swetnick, the third accuser? And can you promise to release the full findings when they finish the report, Mr. President?”

[Raw Story]

Media

Trump to press: ‘I consider you a part of the Democrat Party’

A combative President Trump initially deflected questions about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during a White House press conference on trade, and also accused reporters of working for the Democratic Party.

During an extended attack on Democrats for their handling of Kavanaugh, Trump accused the media of taking the party’s side.

“I consider you a part of the Democrat Party,” Trump said.

Trump shot down questions three times from reporters on Kavanaugh following remarks in the Rose Garden, instead demanding they first ask questions about the newly negotiated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

He signaled he would eventually take questions on Kavanaugh, but didn’t do so until almost an hour into the press conference.

“What does that have to do with trade?” he said when asked by ABC reporter Cecilia Vega about his tweets on Kavanaugh. “I don’t mind answering the question, but I’d like to do the trade questions, too.”

“We’ll do the Kavanaugh questions,” he told another reporter shortly after.

When a third reporter sought to ask him about Kavanaugh — and from CNN, one of the president’s usual media targets — Trump grew irritated.

“Don’t do that,” Trump told CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins when she tried to ask about reports the White House had put limits on the FBI investigation into sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh. “Excuse me, do you have a question on trade?”

When Collins persisted, Trump directed another reporter to be given the microphone and ask a question on trade.

When he agreed to take questions on the controversy surrounding his Supreme Court pick, Trump criticized reports that the White House had not allowed the FBI to interview accuser Julie Swetnick as inaccurate.

Trump insisted he was deferring to the Senate on the investigation, saying he wants it to be “comprehensive” but completed quickly.

Throughout the news conference, Trump continued to squabble with reporters and accuse the press of misleading coverage, charges that have become a hallmark of Trump’s presidency. He accused the press of treating him “unbelievably unfairly.”

“You’ve had enough,” Trump told Collins at a later point, refusing to take another question from her about Kavanaugh.

[The Hill]

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