Shortly after departing Dayton, OH after visiting victims of Sunday’s mass shooting, President Donald Trump attacked the city’s mayor and one of Ohio’s senators.
In a pair of tweets while en route to El Paso, the president ripped Sen. Sherrod Brown(D-OH) and Dayton mayor Nan Whaley for comments they made in a news conference following the president’s visit Wednesday afternoon.
“Just left Dayton, Ohio, where I met with the Victims & families, Law Enforcement, Medical Staff & First Responders,” Trump wrote. It was a warm & wonderful visit. Tremendous enthusiasm & even Love. Then I saw failed Presidential Candidate (0%) Sherrod Brown & Mayor Whaley totally … misrepresenting what took place inside of the hospital. Their news conference after I left for El Paso was a fraud. It bore no resemblance to what took place with those incredible people that I was so lucky to meet and spend time with. They were all amazing!”
Just left Dayton, Ohio, where I met with the Victims & families, Law Enforcement, Medical Staff & First Responders. It was a warm & wonderful visit. Tremendous enthusiasm & even Love. Then I saw failed Presidential Candidate (0%) Sherrod Brown & Mayor Whaley totally…..
….misrepresenting what took place inside of the hospital. Their news conference after I left for El Paso was a fraud. It bore no resemblance to what took place with those incredible people that I was so lucky to meet and spend time with. They were all amazing!o
In the news conference, Brown (who never officially declared himself a candidate for the presidency) said this when asked why he reversed course on taking part in Trump’s visit to Dayton, after originally balking.
“I didn’t want to in any way encourage the president’s racist talk and divisive talk,” Brown said. “I came because Mayor Whaley asked me to come.”
Whaley was critical of Washington at large, talking about what she views as the dim prospect of gun control legislation being enacted.
A 29-year-old Georgetown man was led away from U.S. Bank Arena during President Donald Trump’s visit to chants of “Lock him up!” Thursday night after punching an anti-Trump protester.
The brief confrontation was recorded and quickly posted to Facebook. It showed a man, identified by police as 29-year-old Dallas Frazier, climb out of a red pickup truck and repeatedly strike 61-year-old protester Mike Alter in the head, our news partner WCPO-TV in Cincinnati reported.
Alter, who spoke to WCPO, said the protest had been peaceful until Frazier arrived.
Frazier, who was in the pickup’s passenger seat, began shouting at protesters standing on one side of Broadway Street as it drove by. Then, Frazier got out, WCPO reported.
According to police documents, “suspect exited the vehicle, stated ‘you want some,’ then struck the victim multiple times in the face.” He is in the Hamilton County Justice Center and faces an assault charge.
Cincinnati police Lt. Steve Saunders told WCPO that Frazier was the only person arrested Thursday night in relation to the Trump rally. Saunders said he was not aware of any other fights or rally-related incidents requiring police intervention.
President Donald Trump is pressuring General Motors to reopen the Lordstown, Ohio manufacturing plant that recently closed and put 1,700 people out of work. The president issued a series of tweets over the weekend and on Monday morning, urging GM to immediately begin discussions with the auto union.
Mr. Trump tweeted over the weekend and through Monday morning about his frustration with the plant’s closure, claiming that “car companies are all coming back to the U.S.” and touting the U.S. economy as “the envy of all.” On Sunday night, he disclosed in a tweet that he had vented his frustrations during a conversation with the company’s CEO, Mary Barra.
“I am not happy that it is closed when everything else in our Country is BOOMING,” Mr. Trump wrote. “I asked her to sell it or do something quickly. She blamed the UAW Union — I don’t care, I just want it open!”
The union is the United Automobile Workers, which represents the employees who lost their jobs in the Lordstown closure. Trump had previously told a UAW leader, David Green, to “get his act together and produce” for the Lordstown workers. Green didn’t respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Workers at the Lordstown plant worked their last shift earlier this month. More than 3,300 hourly workers were laid off indefinitely, representing about 7 percent of GM’s hourly U.S. employees. The cuts come as the automaker enjoyed a near-record $12 billion profit last year.
On Monday morning, Mr. Trump reiterated his support for the Lordstown plant to reopen quickly.
“General Motors and the UAW are going to start ‘talks’ in September/October. Why wait, start them now!,” he tweeted. “I want jobs to stay in the U.S.A. and want Lordstown (Ohio), in one of the best economies in our history, opened or sold to a company who will open it up fast!”
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.”
Donald Trump bragged about his prowess in defeating the Republicans who oppose him, saying at an Ohio rally that he “destroys” the careers of GOP politicians who dare defy him.
“How do you get 100 percent of anything? We always have somebody who says ‘I don’t like Trump, I don’t like our president, he destroyed my career,’ ” Trump said.
“I only destroy their career because they said bad things about me and you fight back and they go down the tubes and that’s OK,” he added.
Trump didn’t name names, but he’s on a winning streak in GOP primaries, as candidates he’s backed have repeatedly defeated those he sided against.
The most notable example was Rep. Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor who lost a GOP primary for reelection to his House seat earlier this summer.
Trump tweeted his opposition to Sanford on election day, needling him over a past controversy in which he disappeared from public view to, according to his staff, hike the Appalachian Trail. Sanford, married at the time, was actually in Argentina seeing a woman with whom he was having an affair.
Trump also recently backed Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp over Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle in a GOP primary, and saw Kemp win.
But Trump hasn’t always been on the winning side. He backed former Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) last year but saw Roy Moore pull off a primary victory.
Still, the recent successful primary picks have put Trump’s stamp further on the GOP, suggesting it has become Trump’s party.
Two GOP senators who have repeatedly criticized Trump, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, are also not running for reelection.
During a raucous rally in Ohio that hit on a number of familiar themes from his earlier rallies, President Donald Trump once again took swipes at the media, calling MSNBC “disgusting” and prompting a chant of “CNN sucks.”
“They had this false report that I was supporting somebody else and they were right,” he said before laughing, “It was fake news.”
“They were right and I was supporting somebody else, Steve Stivers but he’s in a totally different district. Did they apologize…”
Then turning to the media bullpen, Trump asked, “Did you apologize for that mistake?”
That prompted loud boos and chants of “CNN sucks” from the crowd.
Finally, continuing on with his story only after the anti-CNN chants died down, Trump continued on, taking another media jab: “So, I heard that Troy was like my second choice. I said he was my first choice. He has always been the one I want to win. It’s always dangerous when you do this…They give us false records.”
The mistake Trump was referring to a tweet he sent out on August 2 calling for people to get out and vote for Stivers, who is not on the special election ballot.
Despite calling for the media to apologize during the rally, that tweet — sent by Trump — has since been deleted.
Trump has deleted his tweet telling people to vote for Stivers on the wrong day pic.twitter.com/nRU9iWgjOP
Yet, as it turns out Trump’s call for the apology was just the warm-up. Later on during the same Ohio rally, Trump once again hit on the media, calling out CNN and MSNBC by name and once again sparking a fierce reaction from the crowd.
“MSNBC is so corrupt. It is so disgusting, so disgusting. I would say almost worse,” Trump said, prompting boos for the media from the crowd.
Then after praising Fox News — even calling out Fox News personalities by name — Trump said to the sycophant and loud crowd, “CNN is down at the bottom of the totem pole. MSNBC isn’t even close [to Fox].”
President Trump on Saturday renewed his jab at the “elite,” saying that his election to the presidency was “driving them crazy.”
“You are the elite. You’re smarter than they are … you’ve got everything going … the elite? They’re more elite than me?” Trump said while addressing a campaign rally crowd in Ohio, where he is seeking to help Republican Troy Balderson ahead of a special election for the House on Tuesday.
“I have better everything than they have,” Trump said to roars from the crowd.
“I became president and they didn’t,” he said to more cheers and applause, for which he paused.
“And it’s driving them crazy,” he said to louder applause.
It’s not the first time Trump has brought up the “elite” as an opponent.
Trump had previously derided the elite at campaign rallies in Minnesota and North Dakota, calling the group “stone cold losers” at a June rally in Fargo, N.D.
“I’m smarter than they are. I became president and they didn’t. And I’m representing the best people on earth, the deplorables,” Trump said at another June rally in Duluth, Minn., referencing the term former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton used to describe then-candidate Trump’s base during the 2016 campaign.
Trump, speaking at his third campaign rally of the week, visited Ohio to boost Balderson in his bid to represent the state’s 12th District.
Balderson is in a dead heat with Democrat Danny O’Connor in a district that Trump won by 11 points in 2016.
President Trump brought Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on stage at his rally in Ohio on Saturday night, giving the conservative lawmaker a public boost as he runs for Speaker of the House.
“Jim Jordan, how great is he?” Trump said, before bringing the lawmaker on stage.
The crowd chanted “Speaker of the House” as Jordan stood on stage.
Trump’s public nod of camaraderie with the conservative Republican, a regular presence on cable television who has criticized special counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation and backed the impeachment of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, was also notable given the controversy dogging Jordan surrounding allegations he knew of sexual abuse while serving as a wresting coach at the Ohio State University.
Jordan has denied that he knew of instances of abuse. Some past wrestlers from the program have backed him, while others say he either knew or had to have known of the allegations.
Once Jordan took the stage, he rattled through a list of Trump’s accomplishments, including deregulations, nominating Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
“What a great defender he’s been, what courage,” Trump said after Jordan left the stage. “He’s a brave, tough cookie along with some of his friends.”
(CNN) When I started college at 19, I was timid and unsure of the big world ahead of me.
Fast-forward two years later and I felt like a different person: More confident, more self-assured and more determined than ever to pursue a degree in journalism after a high school hobby grew into a full-fledged passion.
The positive changes were remarkable, and I credit much of my transformation to one thing: My education at a community college.
Sadly, though, community colleges don’t hold much value, at least if you listen to President Donald Trump. Last week, during a speech at an Ohio training facility for construction apprentices, he spoke of his desire to return to the days of vocational schools while simultaneously underscoring the valuable role community colleges play in society.
“I don’t know what that means, a community college,” Trump told the crowd in Richfield, Ohio. “Call it vocational and technical. People know what that means. They don’t know what a community college means.”
In the world of Trump quotes, this was a pretty blink-and-you-missed it one, but his words were misguided at best and incredibly destructive at worst. For Trump to display such casual ignorance shows a disregard that is nothing short of a grave disservice to the people who seek a quality education there.
And the number of people who do is not a small one in the slightest. According to the College Board, which tracks trends in higher education, in 2014 more than 40% of all undergraduate students were enrolled in a community college.
So what exactly does “community college” mean? Many things to many people. Different things to different people. It means a chance for a single parent who works full-time to take night classes and work toward a degree. It means someone who’s retired can experience the excitement of continuing education classes. It means someone fresh out of high school can save money on tuition and explore their options while taking general education classes at a two-year college.
My community college education gave me a solid foundation right from the beginning. It gave me room to grow, to learn about myself and to develop skills — both academic skills and life skills — that I would carry with me even after I left those hallowed halls and found myself in the “real world.” And things like smaller class sizes and more one-on-one interaction with instructors made me realize that solid foundation was unique; I doubt I would have had the same experience if I started at a four-year university right out of high school.
And I doubt I’d be the writer I am today if it weren’t for the time I spent as a staff writer (and later, editor-in-chief) of my college’s student newspaper. I was able to get hands-on experience in all facets of newspaper production, from writing to interviewing sources to editing to design, as well as learning leadership skills that extended far beyond the classroom.
Maybe that’s why, some six years after I graduated, I found myself walking those old, familiar halls of my community college once again. Only this time, I was no longer a student, but an adjunct faculty member. I was back as the faculty adviser to the student newspaper — yes, the same newspaper I worked on when I was a student. I was training the next generation of student journalists. In a way, it felt like everything was falling into place just as it should. It felt like everything had come full circle and I was home again.
That is the power and meaning of community college. Because everything I learned in those couple years have molded and shaped me into the person I am today. I’ve carried those lessons with me.
My community college turns 50 this year. Its longevity speaks volumes, as do the memories I’ve carried with me for almost two decades.
As Alia Wong wrote recently in “The Atlantic,” the erroneous assumption Trump made in his speech “was that community colleges and vocational schools haven’t been able to and can’t exist alongside each other — a misunderstanding that further underappreciates an already underappreciated component of American education.”
Maybe that’s the beauty of it right there: Community colleges serve a variety of purposes, all of which benefit our present and future. Education, in all its forms, is never a waste of time. Taking steps to learn something and to better yourself is always a worthwhile endeavor. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
President Donald Trump wasn’t — and, apparently, still isn’t — happy that Democrats in Congress didn’t stand to applaud him in his State of the Union address last week.
“They were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, ‘treasonous.’ I mean, Yeah, I guess why not? Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean they certainly didn’t seem to love our country that much.”
“The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign’s family.”
Trump loyalists will dismiss all of this as much ado over nothing. He was joking! He didn’t even say that it was treasonous! He was just agreeing with people who said it was treasonous!
Fine. Also, wrong. And missing the point in a major way.
The point? It’s this: Not standing during applause lines for the State of the Union isn’t treasonous or un-American. Not even close.
If it was, all of the Republicans in that chamber are treasonous and un-American as well because when former President Barack Obama would tout his accomplishments in office — as Trump was doing last Tuesday night — lots and lots of Republican legislators would sit on their hands while the Democratic side of the aisle erupted in cheers. And so on and so forth for every president before him (and after).
Then there is the fact that the specific “treasonous” instance Trump was referring to had to do with his touting of historically low African-American unemployment — a bit of a cherry-picked fact based off of a single month’s economic report. By the time the new report for January came out last Friday, black unemployment had ticked up almost a point and was no longer close to a historic low.
Treason is Benedict Arnold. (Side bar: Read Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Valiant Ambition” about Arnold and George Washington.) Treason isn’t refusing to applaud when the President of the United States thinks you should.
Like with many things Trump says or tweets, there’s a natural tendency to just shrug it off. To do that, however, is to miss something very important — and concerning — at work here.
What Trump is saying is that dissent — which is what Democrats are doing when they choose not to clap for a line in his speech — is traitorous and/or un-American. That if these non-clappers really loved the country, they would be applauding when he touted how low black unemployment had dipped under his tenure.
If you think that’s totally OK, flip the script. Put a Democratic president in office. And have him or her chastise Republicans as treasonous because they didn’t applaud for the fact that something close to universal health care has been achieved. Would that be a reasonable charge? Or is it possible that while Republicans agree that more people having health insurance is a good thing, they fundamentally disagree with the way in which it was implemented?
You don’t have to imagine it. Because that’s what happened during several of President Obama’s State of the Union addresses. Except that Obama never suggested those non-clapping Republicans didn’t love America.
Even the suggestion of criminalizing dissent should send a chill down the spine of anyone who counts themselves as a fan of democracy. The right to dissent — without fear of retribution — sits at the heart of what differentiates America from authoritarian countries around the world.
When you have a president float the idea that not clapping at moments when he believes clapping is appropriate sends a very powerful message to the country about how we do (and should) deal with those who disagree with us. And that goes for whether he was “joking” or not.
It’s a very bad message — no matter whether you agree with Trump or not.
