Tag: Donald Trump

Posted on

President George W. Bush On Trump: “We’ve Seen Nationalism Distorted Into Nativism”

Speaking in New York City today, former President George W. Bush took a not-too-veiled slap at Donald Trump’s extreme nationalist policy positions.

Just a few excerpts:

“Argument too easily turns into animosity. Disagreement escalates into dehumanization.”

 “We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism. We need to recall and recover our own identity.”

 “Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”

 “It means that bigotry and white supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the American creed, and it means the very identity of our nation depends on passing along civic ideals.”

 “Bullying and prejudice in our public life … provides permission for cruelty and bigotry.”

 “The only way to pass along civic values is to live up to them.”

There’s a lot more packed into even just this one minute clip below.

Posted on

NBA Coach/Air Force Veteran Gregg Popovich: Donald Trump “Is A Soulless Coward”

Coach Gregg Popovich

San Antonio Spurs’ five-time NBA championship-winning coach Gregg Popovich, an Air Force veteran, recently called a reporter after hearing the Donald Trump’s remarks explaining why he hadn’t mentioned the four US soldiers killed in an ambush in Niger.

For the record, Trump said, “President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls, a lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to call when it’s appropriate, when I think I’m able to do it.”

Popovich apparently had had enough. Speaking to Dave Zirin of The Nation, the coach said, “I want to say something, and please just let me talk, and please make sure this is on the record.”

Here is his statement via The Nation:

“I’ve been amazed and disappointed by so much of what this president had said, and his approach to running this country, which seems to be one of just a never-ending divisiveness. But his comments today about those who have lost loved ones in times of war and his lies that previous presidents Obama and Bush never contacted their families are so beyond the pale, I almost don’t have the words.”

According to the reporter, Popovich paused, and then continued.

“This man in the Oval Office is a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others. This has of course been a common practice of his, but to do it in this manner—and to lie about how previous presidents responded to the deaths of soldiers—is as low as it gets. We have a pathological liar in the White House, unfit intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically to hold this office, and the whole world knows it, especially those around him every day. The people who work with this president should be ashamed, because they know better than anyone just how unfit he is, and yet they choose to do nothing about it. This is their shame most of all.”

Posted on

Washington Post: Several Gold Star Families Have Not Heard From Donald Trump

Based on Donald Trump’s claim earlier this week that he had spoken to “every” family of fallen soldiers during his administration, The Washington Post did some research and have found at least 4 families that have not heard from Trump.

In all, seven Gold Star families contacted by The Post said they have had phone conversations with Trump. Most said they appreciated the gesture.

Four families said they have not received a call and were upset. One said Trump had not called but that they knew the late soldier would not want his death politicized.

Euvince Brooks’s son, Sgt. Roshain E. Brooks, 30, was killed Aug. 13 in Iraq. He has not heard from the White House. The president’s claim this week that he had called every military family to lose a son or daughter only upset the Brooks family more.

Brooks said that after watching the news on Tuesday night he wanted to set up a Twitter account to try and get the President’s attention.

“I said to my daughter, ‘Can you teach me to tweet, so I can tweet at the president and tell him he’s a liar?’” he said. “You know when you hear people lying, and you want to fight? That’s the way I feel last night. He’s a damn liar.”

Additionally, during a phone call to a grieving father, Trump promised to send the man a check for $25,000 and said he’d direct his staff to establish an online fundraiser for the family.

According to the father, neither happened.

Posted on

Trump Denies Telling Grieving Widow “He Knew What He Was Signing Up For”

Donald Trump

Repeating her allegation that Donald Trump told a grieving military widow that “he knew what he was signing up for,” Congresswoman Frederica Wilson told the Washington Post today there were other witnesses in the car that overheard the comment.

The widow was Myeshia Johnson, whose husband Sgt. La David T. Johnson was gunned down along with three other soldiers in Niger on October 4.

Last night the news broke that Trump had told Johnson’s widow, Myeshia Johnson, “He knew what he was signing up for, but I guess it hurts anyway.” This was according to Wilson, who late yesterday told The Post that she had overheard the call on a speakerphone while riding in a limousine with Johnson when Trump called, and that this exchange made the widow cry. This is what Trump claims was “fabricated,” which now has reporters speculating that Trump may have a recording or an official transcript.

But Wilson said in our interview she is sticking by the story, and she asserted that there were other witnesses in the car, including the driver and the aunt and uncle of the deceased soldier. “I was not the only one in the car,” she said.

“Mr. Trump is crazy,” Wilson told me. “He’s a liar. He’s proven to be a liar.” She said she was more “concerned about the circumstances around his death” than about what Trump said.

When I pressed Wilson on whether she was sticking by her account that she heard Trump say, “he knew what he was signing up for,” she said “yes.”

When I reiterated that Trump claims to have proof otherwise, she said, “How about you go get that proof and call me back?”

Trump disputed the allegation:

Today, the mother of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, corroborated Congresswoman Wilson’s account confirming she was present for the call.

“President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband,” Jones-Johnson said.

Trump recently alleged that while he has called “every” fallen soldier during his presidency, President Obama and other past presidents didn’t make the same efforts.

The Associated Press reports they have found two military families who say they never heard from Trump after their family member died serving the country. The mother of Army Spec. Etienne Moore, 22, said she received neither a call nor a letter from the president.

Posted on

Trump Twitter Rant Bounces Likes A Pinball From One Subject To Another

Donald Trump has had quite the schizophrenic 12 hours on Twitter bouncing back and forth between “fake news” rants (Forbes reported his wealth dropped $600 million), attacking the latest bipartisan fix to Obamacare (he says he can’t support it), renewed attacks on Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey and another slap at kneeling NFL players.

The Trumpster must have been flipping channels a lot!

Posted on

Donald Trump Politicizes Military Death Of His Chief Of Staff’s Son

Donald Trump doubled down on his completely false accusation that President Obama ignored the families of fallen military service members today by politicizing the death of Chief of Staff John Kelly’s son who was killed in action in 2010.

“You could ask General Kelly if he got a call from Obama,” Trump said.

While it’s not clear that President Obama called Kelly by phone to offer condolences, CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reports the retired general and his wife joined first lady Michelle Obama at her table during a White House breakfast for Gold Star families in 2011.

For the most part, Kelly has kept the loss and his grief private.

From Raw Story:

Second Lt. Robert Kelly was killed at age 29 while leading a platoon in Afghanistan in November 2010, and his father delivered a speech four days later about military sacrifices and the troops’ growing isolation from society.

His father has largely avoided speaking publicly about his family’s loss since then, and asked the Marine Corps officer who introduced him ahead of that impassioned speech not to mention his son.

“We are only one of 5,500 American families who have suffered the loss of a child in this war,” Kelly told the Washington Post six years ago. “The death of my boy simply cannot be made to seem any more tragic than the others.”

For Trump to bring up such an intensely private matter for his Chief of Staff to try and score political points against Obama is beyond the pale.

Posted on

John McCain To Donald Trump: “I Have Faced Tougher Adversaries”

Sen. John McCain

Last night in Philadelphia, six-term Republican Sen. John McCain was honored with the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal for a lifetime of service and sacrifice to the country.

In accepting the award, McCain spoke of his two decades of military service including his 5+ years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He also addressed the current fractured political landscape today in Washington.

“To abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems,” he said, “is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

Clearly the “half-baked, spurious nationalism” was a jab meant for Donald Trump.

Trump being Trump, the president felt the need to slap back this morning during a radio interview with WMAL in Washington saying, “I’m being very, very nice but at some point, I fight back and it won’t be pretty.”

McCain, having survived over five years as a prisonoer of war in Vietnam and currently facing brain cancer, had a simple response to the president: “I have faced tougher adversaries.”

FTW!

Trump and McCain have had a long history of acrimony going back to the last presidential campaign when Trump claimed McCain was not a war hero because he was captured in Vietnam.

This past summer, it was McCain’s “no” vote in the Senate that torpedoed Trump’s last try at repealing Obamacare.

On the other end of the class spectrum, Barack Obama – who faced McCain in the 2008 presidential election – congratulated McCain on being honored:

(source)

Posted on

Donald Trump’s Wealth Drops By A Whopping $600 Million

Forbes is reporting that the value of Donald Trump’s wealth declined so much in 2016 that he dropped 92 spots on the list of richest people in America.

A tough New York real estate market, a costly lawsuit and an expensive presidential campaign all contributed to the declining fortune of the 45th president. After months of digging through financial disclosures and public property records and conducting dozens of interviews, Forbes now estimates POTUS’ net worth at $3.1 billion, down from $3.7 billion a year ago. He drops to No. 248 in the ranks of the richest people in America, down from No. 156 in 2016.

The biggest hit was to Trump’s real estate portfolio, which is weighted heavily toward New York City. Values of several Manhattan properties, particularly those on or near Fifth Avenue, have dropped, shaving nearly $400 million off his fortune.

Some of his golf properties, including ones in Miami, Ireland and Scotland, have also declined in value, as some would-be guests stayed away, apparently offended by the president’s politics and bombast. Trump’s cash pile is down an estimated $100 million since last year, after he spent $66 million on his campaign and $25 million settling a lawsuit over Trump University. As always, we refined our estimates based on new information uncovered during months of reporting.

Posted on

Trump Lies Claiming Obama “Didn’t Make Calls” To Families Of Fallen Soldiers

Speaking at a press briefing with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Rose Garden at the White House today, Donald Trump outrageously claimed that Barack Obama and other presidents didn’t contact the families of fallen soldiers in the past.

Trump was answering a question as to why he hadn’t addressed the deaths of 3 Green Berets in Niger on October 4.

From CNN:

“I felt very, very badly about that,” Trump said during a press availability in the Rose Garden. “I always feel badly. It is the toughest calls I have to make are the calls where this happens, soldiers are killed.”

Trump claimed that past presidents — including Barack Obama — hadn’t written or called the families of slain service members, though Obama spoke publicly during his term about his many interactions with the families of Americans killed in action.

Later, Trump backtracked on the claim slightly, saying “I was told that he didn’t often.”

Trump’s comments today are his first since the Green Berets died on October 4. Many have wondered why the long silence from a president who is never far from his Twitter feed.

Watch Trump’s comments below.