Category: Petty

Trump says NBA player Stephen Curry no longer invited to White House

President Trump on Saturday said the “invitation is withdrawn” for Stephen Curry to visit the White House because the NBA All-Star “is hesitating.”

“Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team,” he tweeted. “Stephen Curry is hesitating,therefore invitation is withdrawn!”

Golden State Warriors guard Curry said this week he didn’t want the team to visit the White House to celebrate their NBA championship title.

“I don’t want to go,” Curry told reporters on Friday. He said in June he “probably” wouldn’t go to the White House, and this week said he didn’t think the team should go either.

Managers said they will discuss the decision as a team in an open forum. It was unclear whether the president would bar the entire team from the White House, or just Curry. A formal White House invitation has not been issued, but the NBA has been communicating with the White House about a visit, according to ESPN.

Curry said his reasons for not wanting to visit the White House were “that we basically don’t stand for what our president has said, and the things he hasn’t said at the right time,” according to SF Gate.

“By not going, hopefully it will inspire some change for what we tolerate in this country and what we stand for, what is accepted and what we turn a blind eye toward,” he said.

“It’s not just the act of not going. There are things you have do on the back end to push that message into motion,” he continued. “You can talk about all the different personalities that have said things and done things from [Colin] Kaepernick to what happened with Michael Bennett to all sorts of examples of what has gone on in our country that has led to change. We’re all trying to do what we can, using our platforms, our opportunities, to shed light on it. I don’t think not going to the White House will miraculously make everything better. But this is my opportunity to voice that.”

Trump on Friday again spoke out against Kaepernick, an NFL player Trump has criticized multiple times in the past.

The president argued people should protest players that don’t stand for the national anthem, as Kaepernick has done, by leaving games.

“When people like yourselves turn on television and you see those people taking the knee when they are playing our great national anthem – the only thing you could do better is if you see it, even if it’s one player, leave the stadium,” Trump said at a rally in Alabama. “I guarantee things will stop.”

Fox News coverage of Curry’s resistance could have motivated Trump’s Saturday morning tweet. Trump is a known fan of Fox News coverage.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/352029-trump-withdraws-white-house-invitation-to-stephen-curry

 

Trump Slams McCain Blocking Obamacare Repeal: ‘Honestly, Terrible’

President Donald Trump slammed Sen. John McCain for opposing efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, vowing at a Friday campaign rally for an Alabama Senate candidate that Republicans would succeed on health care “eventually.”

The crowd booed as Trump said the opposition from McCain, R-Ariz., who announced on Friday that he would vote against the latest GOP health care bill, was “terrible, honestly, terrible” when he cast the deciding vote against an earlier measure.

“That was a totally unexpected thing,” Trump told the crowd.

The president went on to say that McCain’s opposition was “sad.”

“It was sad,” Trump said. “We had a couple of other senators, but at least we knew where they stood. That was really a horrible thing, honestly. That was a horrible thing that happened to the Republican Party.”

“It’s a little tougher without McCain’s vote, but we’ve got some time,” Trump said, acknowledging the difficulty in passing the Senate health care bill before a critical September 30 deadline. “We are going to do it, eventually.”

The boisterous arena rally recalled the heady days of Trump’s insurgent 2016 campaign. Thousands of supporters in the stands reprised chants of “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton and “build the wall,” and erupted in cheers when the president called North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “little Rocket Man.”

But this time, Trump came as the president, using his first big endorsement trip outside of the Beltway to tout the establishment’s favored candidate in the heated special election to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Trump’s all-out support for interim Sen. Luther Strange, R-Ala., who is trying to close his gap in polls ahead of Tuesday’s GOP runoff election, is a political gambit, which the president acknowledged.

“I’m taking a big risk,” Trump said. “Luther Strange is our man.”

Challenger Roy Moore is an anti-establishment favorite, backed by many of Trump’s most prominent supporters — including Ben Carson, Trump’s HUD Secretary.

Trump said critics had given Strange “a bum rap.” And he praised the senator’s loyalty in the health care battle, recalling that Strange asked for nothing in return for his support to repeal Obamacare — unlike McCain and other unhelpful GOP senators.

“They are not doing a service to the people that they represent,” Trump said.

Democrats are as rare in Alabama as Louisiana State fans, but Trump warned that Moore, a controversial religious fundamentalist, would have “a very good chance of not winning in the general election” later this year.

If Strange pulls off a come-from-behind-win, Trump will get the credit and an infusion of political capital with elected Republicans when he needs it most.

“Our research indicates that he is the decisive factor,” said Steven Law, the president of the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC tied to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that has spent almost $8 million backing Strange.

Trump is hugely popular in deep-red Alabama, gushing, “It’s nice to go places where people love you.”

Richard “Gator” Payne, the former commander of the local Purple Heart chapter, acknowledged he didn’t know much about Strange, but said Trump’s endorsement was enough for him. “I’m for Trump, and if Trump’s for Strange, then I’m for Strange,” he said.

[NBC News]

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC98X74pzdo

Trump Takes a Jab at the Emmys After Threatening to ‘Destroy North Korea’ in First UN Speech

Two days after celebrities threw verbal jabs at President Donald Trump during the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards, Trump fired back at his critics with a tweet.

“I was saddened to see how bad the ratings were on the Emmys last night – the worst ever,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday evening.

“Smartest people of them all are the “DEPLORABLES,” Trump said, referencing a term Hillary Clinton used to describe some of Trump’s supporters during the contentious 2016 election.

Though the 2017 Emmys ratings were not “the worst ever” as Trump described, they averaged 11.4 million viewers, about 100,000 more than in 2016 – the show’s all-time low, according to Variety.

During the awards Sunday night, Trump bore the brunt of several jokes made by its host, comedian Stephen Colbert and several other celebrities who won awards that night.

“Unlike the presidency, Emmys go to the winner of the popular vote,” Colbert joked at one point, referring to the results of the US presidential election.

Trump’s comments about the Emmys came just hours after he delivered a fiery speech before the United Nations General Assembly in New York, in which he threatened the US could “totally destroy North Korea” if its nuclear aggressions continue.

[Business Insider]

Reality

Let’s also remember that Donald Trump once said during a debate the Emmys were “rigged” because he never won one for Celebrity Apprentice.

Also he tweeted that the Emmys were last night, but his tweet was on a Tuesday and the Emmys aired on Sunday.

Trump Complained That the Emir of Kuwait’s Plane Was Longer Than His, Continuing Peculiar Obsession With Size

Donald Trump has an undeniable obsession with size—of everything from crowds to, well, body parts. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the president reportedly couldn’t help but note with displeasure that a Kuwaiti leader’s plane was bigger than his.

Emir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah was in Washington Thursday for talks with Trump over shared security interests and the ongoing fight against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in the region. According to Politico, Trump marveled at the jet the Kuwaiti ruler flew in on. During a later meeting with congressional delegations from New York and New Jersey, Trump is even said to have complained that the emir’s plane was longer than his own.

It is not clear whether Trump was referring to his personal private jet or Air Force One. However, as Air Force One is similar in length to the Boeing 747-400 that carries the emir, Trump likely was referring to his Boeing 757 personal plane, which is about 75 feet shorter than the Kuwaiti ruler’s.

Trump’s recent discussions of size have not been limited to aircraft. Addressing the back-to-back hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the president has almost seemed to be marveling at their size and scope.

“Hurricane looks like largest ever recorded in the Atlantic!” he tweeted, with an exclamation point for good measure, as Irma barreled through the Caribbean en route to Florida Wednesday.

Addressing Harvey, which caused devastating floods in Texas, Trump tweeted in block caps that the rainfall was “HISTORIC.”

The hurricanes inspired more size-based ponderings by the president. While in Texas during the aftermath of Harvey, Trump addressed a group of hurricane survivors gathered outside a firehouse with the comforting words “What a crowd, what a turnout.”

He also returned to a familiar object of his obsession with size: his hands. While serving food to victims of the hurricane in Houston, Trump joked that his hands were “too big” to fit in the plastic gloves he was given. The moment harked back to a famous dispute with Florida Senator Marco Rubio during last year’s Republican primary.

“He’s like 6’2″, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2″,” Rubio said at a rally in response to being derided as “little Marco” by the eventual GOP nominee. “And you know what they say about men with small hands? You can’t trust them.”

Trump couldn’t help but take the bait.

“Look at those hands, are they small hands?” Trump said in response, holding his hands up for all to see. “And, he referred to my hands—‘if they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.”

Could there be a link between Trump’s apparent need to defend the size of his manhood and his apparent insecurity about the length of his plane? We couldn’t possibly say.

[Newsweek]

Scaramucci Threatens to ‘Fire Everybody’ to Stop White House Leaks

President Donald Trump’s newly appointed communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, said Tuesday that he is prepared to “fire everybody” in the White House communications shop in order to put an end to embarrassing internal leaks.

The financier and longtime Trump surrogate is eager to shake up the communications shop, which has been dominated by former Republican National Committee staffers loyal to White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, a former RNC chairman.

Scaramucci confirmed to POLITICO early Tuesday that he planned to start by dismissing assistant press secretary Michael Short at a morning meeting, but that move was apparently delayed.

Short, who initially said Tuesday that he hadn’t yet been informed of any decision, resigned Tuesday afternoon.

Short’s ouster is Scaramucci’s first warning shot to White House aides who have been perceived as disloyal to the president. In an echo of Trump’s not-so-subtle warning to Jeff Sessions about his status as attorney general, Scaramucci’s vow to “fire everybody” is a warning to staffers perceived as leakers.

“I’m going to fire everybody, that’s how I’m going to do it,” Scaramucci said to reporters outside of the White House on Tuesday. “You’re either going to stop leaking or you’re going to be fired.”

He claimed to have the full authority of the president to clean out the communications shop and put his own stamp on the team. A source close to Scaramucci said that he’s planning to bring in people from the corporate communications world in addition to conservative broadcast stars.

Scaramucci also told reporters outside the White House that it “upsets” him that Short would find out about any changes to his employment through the media.

“This is the problem with the leaking,” he said. “This is actually a terrible thing. Let’s say I’m firing Michael Short today. The fact that you guys know about it before he does really upsets me as a human being and as a Roman Catholic.”

He has pledged to put a stop to the leaks that have flowed out of the White House, especially those that have come from the press operation.

Scaramucci earlier said to POLITICO that Short would be the first dismissal of many, if he’s not able to stop the leaks coming out of the communications and press shop.

“I’m committed to taking the comms shop down to Sarah [Huckabee Sanders] and me, if I can’t get the leaks to stop,” Scaramucci told POLITICO.

During his first day in the White House on Monday, Scaramucci met with current communications staffers and warned about leaks coming from the office. “I offered amnesty in the meeting, but that decision is above my rank,” Scaramucci added.

Short said he had not been involved in any leaks. “Allegations I ever leaked anything are demonstrably false,” Short said.

Short is expected to be the first in a wave of staffers closely aligned with Priebus to be shown the door.

He was closely aligned with press secretary Sean Spicer, who resigned on Friday after Scaramucci was appointed to the communications role. Short was scorned by many of his colleagues for quitting the Trump campaign, only to rejoin as a White House staffer because of Priebus.

In a story often retold by campaign staffers, they arrived at Trump Tower one morning, months before the election, to see Short’s computer left open on his otherwise empty desk.

The next time he was seen by former campaign staffers was in January, on their first day in the White House, where some were stunned to learn that they were going to have to work alongside him or for some of the press assistants subordinate to him.

Short said he had been on a part-time assignment from the RNC and decided to return to Washington “to do my real job.” He added: “I never ceased working on behalf of the ticket.”

Scaramucci said in remarks to reporters Friday that he couldn’t guarantee who will remain in the press shop, aside from social media director Dan Scavino and communications strategist Hope Hicks, both longtime aides to Trump. He also named Sanders to succeed Spicer as press secretary.

Spicer was in the White House on Monday but spent most of the day alone in his office, according to people who were in the building.

[Politico]

Trump Told Theresa May He Won’t Visit UK Until He’s Sure He’ll Get a Warm Welcome

U.S. President Donald Trump petulantly informed U.K. Prime Minister Teresa May that he won’t be making any official state visits to her country unless she can guarantee that people will be nice to him, according to reports.

“I haven’t had great coverage out there lately, Theresa,” Trump told May in a private conversation that was transcribed by aides and reported by senior diplomats to British newspaper The Sun.

May replied stiffly, “Well, you know what the British press are like.”

“I still want to come, but I’m in no rush,” Trump reportedly said to May. “So, if you can fix it for me, it would make things a lot easier.”

“When I know I’m going to get a better reception,” the president said, “I’ll come and not before.”

One of the Sun’s sources said that May “tried to explain she has no power to dictate how newspapers and media might decide to cover his visit.”

“After all,” the individual said. “We are not North Korea.”

Trump, the source said, simply would not agree on a date for a state visit until “people support him coming.”

Trump has been an object of scorn and derision to the majority of the British public. His ham-handed attempts to bend local laws to accommodate a Trump golf course in Scotland have alienated and angered locals. The U.K. Parliament featured a lively debate earlier this year over whether Trump should not only be disinvited from state visits, but whether he should be banned from the country altogether.

[Raw Story]

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 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 Blocks National Veteran Group on Twitter

On Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump started out the day as he has in the past: by tweeting criticisms of the news media and courts that have blocked his travel ban.

But he also took time to block the Twitter account of VoteVets.org, an organization that represents around 500,000 U.S. military veterans and their families.

Trump first tweeted that the “Fake News Media has never been so wrong or so dirty” and accused journalists of using “phony sources to meet their agenda of hate.”

VoteVets.org responded to Trump in a tweet that said, “You’re describing your road to the White House to a T” and accusing the president of “colluding with an adversary of the United States,” in reference to concerns about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Will Fischer, director of government affairs for VoteVets, told NBC News that he had written the tweets criticizing Trump when the account was suddenly blocked.

“He has no interest in hearing any type of dissent,” said Fischer.

VoteVets.org has been critical of Trump before, most recently in a television ad featuring a veteran of the war in Afghanistan speaking directly to the president about stripping healthcare from vets.

“There’s not an issue being debated that doesn’t affect military families and vets,” said Fischer. “There are nearly 2 million veterans and their spouses on Medicaid. 500,000 veterans are served by Meals on Wheels each year.”

“This is part of a long narrative of Trump’s disregard for veterans and military families,” Fischer said of the blocking.

“Trump only wants to surround himself with Yes-men,” said Fischer, citing a video of Monday’s cabinet meeting in which the attendees praised Trump in an effusive way that was mocked by some.

It’s not the first time the president has blocked his critics on social media. Also on Tuesday, he blocked noted science fiction and horror novelist Stephen King, Center for American Progress fellow Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, and March for Truth organizer Jordan Uhl.

The president appeared to go on a blocking spree throughout the day, also blocking former Guantanamo Bay guard Brandon Neely. In a tweet about being blocked by Trump Tuesday, Neely suggested the president could be “blocking all veterans.”

So many people have been blocked from reading or responding to the president’s tweets that the hashtag #BlockedByTrump began to take off on Tuesday. Because Trump has blocked so many users, there are several other accounts — like @subtrump and @unfollowtrump — that retweet all of his posts on the platform.

Trump’s blocking has caused concern in legal circles, where some have raised questions about whether it could be illegal for a sitting U.S. President to intentionally hide his statements from members of the public.

On June 6, attorneys from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sent a letter to Trump asking him to unblock users. The letter says that an elected president’s Twitter account is a “designated public forum” — similar to a school board or city council meeting — and blocking Americans from seeing and responding to it based on their viewpoints is a violation of the First Amendment.

That same day, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that Trump’s tweets are “considered official statements by the president of the United States.”

The Knight First Amendment Institute is currently soliciting submissions from other people who have been blocked by the president.

Fischer said that he wasn’t very surprised about VoteVets.org getting the president’s block treatment.

“If the campaign taught us anything,” said Fischer, “It’s that the days of disbelief and shock are over.”

[NBC News]

 

 

Trump Pretends Chuck Schumer Secretly Met With Putin

President Trump on Friday attacked Democratic calls for a probe into his contacts with Russia, tweeting a past photo of Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We should start an immediate investigation into @SenSchumer and his ties to Russia and Putin. A total hypocrite!” Trump tweeted.

The 2003 photo shows Schumer and Putin eating doughnuts during Putin’s trip to New York to attend the opening of a Russian gas company’s station.

Pro-Trump blog Gateway Pundit resurfaced the photo late Thursday, questioning “Where’s the outrage?” And the conservative website Drudge Report made the photo its lead image earlier Friday.

The Senate Democratic leader responded to Trump’s tweet, saying he would “happily talk” about his contact with Putin while pressing Trump on whether he would do the same.

Schumer and other Democrats have repeatedly called for an independent investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday said he would recuse himself from Russia probes after it was revealed that he spoke with Russia’s U.S. ambassador twice during last year’s campaign, then denied speaking with Russians during his Senate confirmation hearings.

Democrats have said his recusal isn’t enough and have called for a special prosecutor to handle any Russia investigations.

Schumer has called on Sessions to resign and wants a probe conducted by the Department of Justice’s inspector general to determine if the former Alabama senator compromised an investigation into Russia’s intervention in the election.

Sessions isn’t the only Trump ally to receive backlash for meeting with the Russian envoy, Sergey Kislyak. Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn was ousted last month for misleading White House officials about his conversations with the Russian diplomat.

But Trump clarified that he didn’t ask for Flynn’s resignation over the fact that he discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador before Trump took office, but because Flynn misled Vice President Pence about the interaction.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

No one is saying representatives of the United States government can’t meet with Russian diplomats or Vladimir Putin, that is a total misdirection. Trump’s aides keep saying they haven’t met with the Russians, and later it turns out they have lied, sometimes under oath, which is a crime.

 

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