Tag: Donald Trump

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Trump Claims “Total Vindication” By Nunes Memo But The Facts Prove Otherwise

Taking to Twitter this morning, Donald Trump claimed the now-infamous Nunes memo “totally vindicates” him and his campaign of any wrong doing asserting yet again that the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is an “American disgrace.”

It’s not clear if Trump actually read the memo he authorized to be released. If he had, he would have seen the sentence that read “The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Peter Strzok.”

So the FBI was already investigating the Trump campaign before the Carter Page FISA warrant was issued.

Additionally, the FISA warrant was re-upped three times after it’s initial issuance. Different judges (appointed by Republicans presidents) approved these along the way.

The full memo can be read here.

Here’s how the Twitterverse responded.

And just for extra credit, can we through in this tweet from White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders? She had no idea how right she was at the time…

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Donald Trump Attacks FBI & Justice Department

In anticipation of authorizing the release of the now-infamous “Nunes memo,” Donald Trump took to Twitter to attack the top folks at the Justice Department and FBI.

You know, those people Trump himself appointed.

From The Washington Post:

The Nunes memo is a document created by the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) that alleges the FBI abused its surveillance authority, particularly when it sought a secret court order to monitor a former Trump campaign adviser. The FBI and the Justice Department had lobbied strenuously against its release. On Wednesday, the FBI had said it was “gravely concerned” that key facts were missing from the memo.

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Surprise! Trump Exagerrates The Size Of His SOTU Viewership

Donald Trump

You could see this one coming a mile away.

This morning, Donald Trump tweeted this self-congratulatory missive: “Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history. @FoxNews beat every other Network, for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart!”

But this turns out to be another game of “alternative facts” for the Trump administration.

Here are the stats for previous presidents giving their first SOTU addresses:

• Barack Obama: 48 million on 11 outlets in 2010
• George W. Bush: 52 million on 8 outlets in 2002
• Bill Clinton: 45.8 million on 4 outlets in 1994

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Trump’s State Of The Union Address Draws Millions Fewer Viewers Than Obama

Now, we all know how Donald Trump loves good TV ratings.

“The most! The best! The bestest!”

With that in mind, I’m betting the Trumpster won’t be pleased to know that his first SOTU address pulled in fewer viewers by the millions than Barack Obama’s first SOTU.

Via Variety:

Viewership of President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address is down slightly in the Nielsen ratings compared to his first televised address to Congress last February as well as President Barack Obama’s first such address.

On broadcast, Tuesday’s coverage of the speech drew 7.1 million viewers on NBC, 7 million on CBS, 5.4 million on ABC, and 3.6 million on Fox for a combined 23.1 million viewers.

On cable, Fox News led by a wide margin with 11.5 million viewers tuning into the network’s coverage of the speech. CNN was second with 3.1 million, with MSNBC drawing 2.7 million. That means that President Trump’s address drew 40.4 million viewers across broadcast and cable

Obama’s first State of the Union in 2010 drew 48 million viewers across broadcast and cable, while his first address before a joint session of Congress in February 2009 drew 52.4 million viewers. That means that Trump trailed Obama’s first State of the Union by approximately 16 percent in total viewers.

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Stormy Daniels Handles Jimmy Kimmel Appearance With Aplomb

As promised, after Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address last night, porn star Stormy Daniels made a lengthy appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

The appearance, obviously, was Kimmel’s attempt to see if he could get anything out of Daniels regarding an alleged sexual relationship she might have had back in 2006 just months after Melania Trump would have given birth to Trump’s third son, Barron.

InTouch Weekly recently published a 5,500 word interview that had been conducted back then but never released.

Several sources say Daniels was paid $130,000 near or after the end of the 2016 election in “hush money.”

Now, all that aside, the fun here is watching Daniels navigate the Kimmel mine-field. Will she slip up? Will she say anything?

My take is: she’s a smart girl, and charming. She handles herself well and comes across as confident and composed.

One of the better quotes from the interview comes when Kimmel asks what she thought of Donald Trump inviting three of Bill Clinton’s accusers to one of the 2016 presidential debates.

Her take? “Dirty. And I know a lot about dirty. Even I wouldn’t do that.”

Kimmel also asked the entertainer if she actually signed a document that purports to deny the alleged affair to which she responded with a smile, “I don’t know. Did I? It doesn’t look like my signature, does it?”

The segment is fluff but there’s a sense of fun to the whole thing. Good for her for handling it so well.

Watch below.

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Jimmy Fallon’s “Donald Trump” Preps For 1st “State Of The Union” Address

Jimmy Fallon’s “Donald Trump” gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the Trumpster’s prep before his first State of the Union address.

Along the way, he gets advice and support from “Kellyanne Conway” and “Barack Obama.”

Jimmy’s really mastered the way Donald takes a sip of water LOL.

Watch below.

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Tourism To The U.S. Declines Under Trump At A Cost Of $4.6 Billion, 40K Jobs Lost

Tourism to the United States has noticeably declined since Donald Trump became president according to an analysis by the U.S. Travel Association.

Studying data from the Commerce Department (3.3% drop in travel spending; 4% decline in inbound travel), the USTA says the slump amounts to a cost of $4.6 billion in lost revenue and 40,000 jobs.

The “Trump slump,” as it’s come to be known, began soon after the Donald took office.

The losses also bump the U.S. down on the list of popular destinations from the number two spot (now held by Spain) to number three. France is reportedly the number one destination in international travel.

Travel experts point to Trump’s proposed travel bans, anti-immigration language, and heightened security measures to have put a damper on attracting foreign visitors to the U.S.

(source)

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Seth Meyers To Trump: “Ask Your Wife What It’s Like To Be Married” To A Loser!

Late Night with Seth Meyers

Seth Meyers addressed the recent news that President Trump attempted to fire Robert Mueller just weeks into the Special Counsel’s investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. According to sources, White House legal counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit if Trump moved forward in firing Mueller.

Meyers was in prime form as he ticked off the latest news from Trump Land.

• “Amazing. Trump is mad that he’s being investigated for obstruction of justice so his plan to get out of it is to obstruct justice. If Trump was the captain of the Titanic, his plan would be to hit a second iceberg.”

• “Why does he keep going out of his way to interfere with the investigation? There are two possible answers.”

“One, he’s guilty. Or two, he asked the FBI director for a pledge of loyalty, he asked him to stop his investigation into Michael Flynn, fired the FBI director, admitted he fired him because of the Russia investigation, bragged to the Russians that he did it because of the Russia investigation, pressured the attorney general not to recuse himself, pressured the heads of the intelligence agencies to intervene and tried to fire the special counsel who took over the Russia investigation…because he’s innocent?”

• Meyers also touched on reports that Trump called Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe (now pushed out of his job) the day James Comey was fired. Trump was angry that Comey flew home to Washington DC on a federal plane.

During the call, Trump “turned on McCabe, suggesting he ask his wife how it feels to be a loser—an apparent reference to a failed campaign for state office in Virginia that McCabe’s wife made in 2015.”

Said Meyers, “You told him to ask his wife what it’s like to be a loser?! You should ask your wife what it’s like to be married to one!”

Watch the segment below.

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CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin Apologizes For “False Equivalences” Between Trump/Clinton During 2016 Election

Speaking to Larry Wilmore on his “Black on the Air” podcast, CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin apologized for his part in drawing “false equivalences” between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.

“And I hold myself somewhat responsible for that. I think there was a lot of false equivalence in the 2016 campaign. That every time we said something, pointed out something about Donald Trump — whether it was his business interests, or grab ’em by the p–––y, we felt like, ‘Oh, we gotta, like, talk about — we gotta say something bad about Hillary.’ And I think it led to a sense of false equivalence that was misleading, and I regret my role in doing that.”

The Washington Post has more:

On the one hand, media organizations in the run-up to November 2016 exposed and covered the hard-to-count scandals and outrages that Trump had generated over decades as a self-absorbed real-estate mogul: the thousands of lawsuits, the mistreatment of women, the ambient lies, the racism, the stiffing of contractors, Trump University, the false promises of charity and much, much more. On the other hand, those same media organizations pounded away at Hillary Clinton’s email story. And many of them — CNN prominently included — gave Trump generous helpings of airtime for the rallies early in his campaign.

A study by Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy found that in the campaign’s final months, the media’s aggregate coverage performed pretty much as Toobin described to Wilmore. “When journalists can’t, or won’t, distinguish between allegations directed at the Trump Foundation and those directed at the Clinton Foundation, there’s something seriously amiss. And false equivalencies are developing on a grand scale as a result of relentlessly negative news. If everything and everyone is portrayed negatively, there’s a leveling effect that opens the door to charlatans,” wrote Thomas Patterson in the Shorenstein study.

As we all know, the daily, incessant pounding on Hillary about her emails – when nothing illegal had been found despite several congressional investigations – helped push her numbers down.

As well, unfounded allegations about the Clintons somehow making money from the Uranium One deal which, in truth, was approved by not Hillary but nine different agencies unanimously. The Clintons take no money from anything related to the Clinton Foundation.

But if you keep repeating what Hillary haters want to hear like a used-car salesman, you see what happens.

Listen below.