Tag: Donald Trump

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Trump Takes 10th Trip To The Golf Course In 8 Weeks As Prez

President Trump took his 10th trip to a golf course today in Florida.

His travels this weekend to his Mar-a-Lago resort mark his fifth in 8 weeks in office as president.

Estimates put each trip to Mar-a-Lago at a cost of about $3 million to the American taxpayers.

The irony here is that Trump relentlessly criticized President Obama for taking time off.

Let’s take a trip in the way back machine just to underline the hypocrisy:

And just a few more, courtesy of NBC News editor Bradd Jaffy:

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Wild And Wilder: White House Alleges UK Spied On Trump For Obama, UK Slaps Back

Donald Trump’s allegation that President Obama ordered “surveillance” on Trump during the presidential campaign continues to get even more unbelievable.

On Thursday, during a White House press briefing, spokesman Sean Spicer cited comments by Fox News contributor Andrew Napolitano asserting a British spy agency was involved in the alleged surveillance of Donald Trump during the presidential campaign.

Napolitano had stated on-air that President Obama had asked Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, the intelligence collection agency known as the GCHQ, to surveil Mr. Trump.

Said Sean Spicer:

“Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the N.S.A., he didn’t use the C.I.A., he didn’t use the F.B.I., and he didn’t use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ. What is that? It’s the initials for the British intelligence spying agency. So simply, by having two people saying to them, ‘The president needs transcripts of conversations involved in candidate Trump’s conversations involving President-elect Trump,’ he was able to get it and there’s no American fingerprints on this.”

The British government immediately denied the allegation on Thursday in a statement issued by the spy agency, labeling the assertions “nonsense” and “utterly ridiculous.”

Today, President Trump was asked about the kerfuffle at a press event with German Chancellor Angela Merkel by a German reporter. Trump answered, “We said nothing. All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn’t make an opinion on it. You shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”

Shortly after Trump’s comments, Fox News’ Shepard Smith issued this strongly worded statement from his network: “Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary. Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time in any way, full stop.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper has clearly had just about all the BS he can handle from Trump. Tapper opened his show on CNN thusly:

“In a fevered effort to try to force this outlandish claim into something remotely resembling – passably, perhaps, maybe – the truth, the White House appears actually willing to repeat another wild accusation that potentially could alienate our nation’s most important ally.

“Does smearing British intelligence make your family more safe? No? So why is the White House doing it? What is the White House defending here? Because it damn sure isn’t national security or American credibility before the world.”

How does any of this “make America great again?”

Watch Tapper below:

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Today In Awkward Body Language

President Trump with German Chancellor Angela Merkel today at the White House.

How about that body language?

At the :50 mark, catch Merkel ask Trump, “Do you want to have a handshake?”

No reply from Trump.

No handshake, no smiles, no nothing.

#awkward

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Trump Considers Legal Action Over MSNBC Reporting On 2005 Tax Returns

(photo: Gage Skidmore)

According to Fox Business News, Donald Trump’s personal lawyers are considering legal action against MSNBC and Pulitzer Prize winning author David Cay Johnston for reporting on two pages of the president’s 2005 tax return on the network’s Rachel Maddow Show this past Tuesday.

Trump’s tax returns were published Tuesday by DCReport.org, a website operated by David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter. They were simultaneously aired on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

Legal experts say any case would be a long-shot given First Amendment protections for journalists and an important Supreme Court precedent that dates back to the famous 1971 “Pentagon Papers” case. Trump would also have to show that the journalists were complicit in stealing his tax returns—which both Johnston and Maddow have denied.

“Trump’s lawyers could try and sue but they will get the crap kicked out of them in court,” said veteran white collar attorney Stanley Arkin. “It’s the First Amendment. What are they going to sue them for? Stealing the returns? Nobody made any money out of it. Nobody was bribed.”

White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks would neither confirm nor deny the president’s interest in a possible lawsuit against MSNBC or Johnston.

In a statement, MSNBC told FOX Business: “There is no legal prohibition against journalists publishing these tax returns. It is protected by the First Amendment and Supreme Court precedent.

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Tweet Of The Day: Hillary Clinton

Democratic political consultant Philippe Reines, who worked for the Hillary Clinton campaign, today tweeted, “Russians spy. Health Care is complicated. Diplomacy is exhausting. Who knew?”

Seeing the tweet, Hillary trolled Trump with a four-word reply, “Things I learned today.”

Bravo.

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Maryland: Trump’s New Immigration Executive Order Blocked By 2nd Federal Judge

Hours after a federal judge in Hawaii ruled President Trump’s revised executive order on immigration from Muslim-majority countries is unconstitutional, a second federal judge in Maryland ruled the same.

From the New York Times:

The rulings were a second major setback for Mr. Trump in his pursuit of a policy that he has trumpeted as critical for national security. His first attempt to sharply limit travel from a handful of predominantly Muslim countries ended in a courtroom fiasco last month, when a federal court in Seattle halted it.

Mr. Trump issued a new and narrower travel ban, affecting six countries, on March 6, trying to satisfy the courts by removing some of the most contentious elements of the original version.

But in a pointed decision that repeatedly invoked Mr. Trump’s public comments, Judge Derrick K. Watson, of Federal District Court in Honolulu, wrote that a “reasonable, objective observer” would view even the new order as “issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion, in spite of its stated, religiously neutral purpose.”

In Maryland, Judge Theodore D. Chuang echoed that conclusion hours later, ruling in a case brought by nonprofit groups that work with refugees and immigrants, that the likely purpose of the executive order was “the effectuation of the proposed Muslim ban” that Mr. Trump pledged to enact as a presidential candidate.

In the Maryland case, Judge Chuang, who was also appointed by Mr. Obama, declined to block the entire executive order from going into effect, but ruled that the most important section — banning travel from half a dozen countries — could not be enforced. His decision cited Mr. Trump’s public comments to conclude that there were “strong indications that the national security purpose is not the primary purpose for the travel ban,” and that Mr. Trump may have intended to violate the constitutional prohibition on religious preferences.

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Trump Officially Backpedals On “Wire Tapping,” Meant “Surveillance”

At a heated White House press briefing, Sean Spicer had a near melt-down over what he feels is “unfair” coverage of President Trump’s assertion that President Obama personally ordered a wire tap on Trump’s phones in Trump Tower.

Spicer attempted to distort the bipartisan statement issued today by the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Senate Intelligence committee which read, “Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016.”

So, to be clear, both the Senate and House Intelligence committees have announced they see no evidence of any surveillance by the U.S. of Donald Trump.

As expected, Spicer finally began backpedaling by saying what Trump meant when he tweeted “wire tapp” was “surveillance.”

To be exact, in two separate tweets Trump specifically said “tapping my phones:”

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Trump’s First Budget Beefs Up Defense, Slashes Most Domestic Programs

President Trump released his first budget proposal today, and it’s big on defense spending while sharply cutting just about every other government agency.

Here’s my long and short of it –

Winners:

• Defense Department – hefty 10% increase (additional $52 billion for warships and fighter jets)

• Homeland Security – 7% increase (additional $2.8 billion for 500 Border Patrol agents and 1,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel)

• Veterans Affairs – 6% increase (additional $4.4 billion primarily for veterans’ health care)

Losers:

• Environmental Protection Agency – cut 31% (cutting ALL climate change research)

• State Department – cut 29% (big cuts at United Nations)

• Agriculture Department – cut 21% (broad cuts to the National Forest System; eliminates loan and grant programs for water and sewage systems)

• Labor Department – cut 21% (scales back job training programs aimed at helping seniors and unemployed)

• Education Department – cut 14% (eliminates before- and after-school and summer programs; Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, which helps college students with the greatest need for financial aid, would also be eliminated)

• Cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services would target the National Institutes of Health, the U.S’s major medical research facility

Would eliminate entirely:

• the National Endowment for the Arts

• the National Endowment for the Humanities

• the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

• the Institute of Museum and Library Services

• the Community Development Block Grant program which funds Meals on Wheels

More info at the New York Times.

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Federal Judge Blocks Implementation Of Trump’s Immigration Executive Order 2.0

The new executive order was set to go into effect tonight at midnight until a federal judge in Hawaii ruled the ban is unconstitutional.

Unless a higher court rules otherwise (think the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals) the order will be blocked.

From CNN:

A federal judge in Hawaii has blocked President Donald Trump’s new travel ban on Wednesday afternoon, hours before the ban was set to go into effect.

This ruling means that travelers from six Muslim-majority countries and refugees will be able to travel to the US.

The Trump administration took over a month to rewrite the travel ban order after multiple federal courts blocked its implementation last month.

Unlike the previous executive order, the new one removed Iraq from the list of banned countries, exempted those with green cards and visas, and removed a provision arguably prioritizes certain religious minorities.

Despite this changes, US District Court Judge Derrick Watson concluded that the new executive order still failed to pass legal muster.