Tag: Donald Trump

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WSJ: Trump Pressed Ukraine President 8 Times To Investigate Biden’s Son

The Wall Street Journal (backed by ultra-conservative and Donald Trump ally Rupert Murdoch) is reporting that in a July phone call Trump “repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, urging Volodymyr Zelensky about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, on a probe, according to people familiar with the matter.” Giuliani had been pressing the Ukraine government to look into any overlap with Mr. Biden’s diplomatic dealings with Ukraine, as well as Hunter Biden’s involvement in a gas company there. “He told him he should work with him [Giuliani] on Biden and that people in Washington wanted to know” whether the allegations were true or not, one of the people told the Journal. It’s stunning that, after being investigated for over two years regarding his campaign encouraging Russia to aid in his 2016 election, Trump would openly press another foreign country to become involved in smearing his possible 2020 political opponent. Last night, during an appearance on CNN, Giuliani denied – then 10 second later admitted – asking the government of Ukraine to look into Joe Biden and his son. Hillary Clinton tweeted the clip adding, “The president asked a foreign power to help him win an election. Again.”

In a Q&A in the Oval Office today, Trump told reporters “it doesn’t matter” what he discussed with the president of Ukraine. Since the story by the WSJ is behind a paywall, check out the report on the new details from CNN:

In Iowa, Biden blasted Trump’s assertion that hi

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Trump: You Can’t Impeach Me Because I’ve Done A ‘Great’ Job

From CNN:

The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a resolution defining the rules of the panel’s impeachment investigation, the first vote the committee has taken related to the potential impeachment of President Donald Trump.

The party-line vote came as House Democrats have struggled to define the committee’s probe, with Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler saying the committee is conducting an impeachment inquiry, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are refraining from calling it that.

Thursday’s vote, which does not need to be approved by the full House, gives Nadler the ability to deem committee hearings as impeachment hearings. It allows staff to question witnesses at those hearings for an hour after members conclude, gives the President’s lawyers the ability to respond in writing to public testimony and allows the committee to collect information in a closed setting.

Trump responded via Twitter asserting he can’t be impeached because he’s done such a “good (great!) job:”

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Buttigieg On #SharpieGate: “I Feel Sorry For The President”

Democratic White House hopeful Mayor Pete Buttigieg was asked about Donald Trump’s #SharpieGate incident where he had appeared to have drawn a circle on a National Weather Services map to include the state of Alabama as a possible Hurrican Dorian target. “I feel sorry for the president, and that is not the way we should feel about the most powerful figure in this country,” said Buttigieg. “Somebody on whose wisdom and judgment our lives literally depend. I don’t know who felt it necessary to pull out a sharpie and change the map. “I don’t know if it was one of his aides believed they had to do that to protect his ego. No matter how you cut it, this is unbelievably sad state of affairs for our country. If our presidency is not in good shape, then our country is not in good shape. “On one level it’s laughable, on another it is exactly why we’ve got to do something different.”

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Trump Will Campaign For Anti-Trans ‘Bathroom Bill’ Candidate In NC

Donald Trump has announced he will campaign at a night-before rally for Republican candidate Dan Bishop (above with Trump) for Congress in a special election in North Carolina. Because, of course… Bishop, among other things, was the author of the hateful, anti-transgender ‘bathroom bill’ in the Tar Heel state. Via The Charlotte Observer:

President Donald Trump will hold a rally in Fayetteville on Sept. 9, the night before a special congressional election in the 9th District.

The Trump campaign announced the rally Tuesday, fulfilling a promise he made in a tweet last week to return to the state to campaign for Republican Dan Bishop. Trump will rally at the Fayetteville Regional Airport at 7 p.m.

Bishop faces Democrat Dan McCready and two third-party candidates in the special election. The election was called after allegations of election fraud caused state officials to nullify the election last fall. The seat has been vacant since January.

You’ll recall the special election is being held because the ‘winner’ from the 2018 election was found to have hired election ‘influencers’ who took and threw away ballots to swing the election to the Republican.

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Trump Tells Supporters Fox News “Isn’t Working For Us Anymore”

In the world of Donald Trump, complete and unwavering loyalty is not only expected but demanded.

When Fox News aired an interview with the communications director for the Democratic National Committee, he lashed out at the right-leaning network telling his 64 million followers to “start looking for a new News Outlet.”

“The New @FoxNews is letting millions of GREAT people down!” Trump wrote in a series of tweets. “We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1166711517536030720

From the Washington Post:

His tweets followed an interview of Xochitl Hinojosa, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee, in which she discussed next month’s Democratic presidential debate, among other things.

In his tweets, Trump said Hinojosa had been “spewing out whatever she wanted with zero pushback” from anchor Sandra Smith.

Trump also complained about commentators who appear regularly on Fox, including former DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile and left-leaning pundit Juan Williams, as well as anchor Shepard Smith, who has been critical of Trump at times.

Democrats have repeatedly accused Fox News of having far too sympathetic coverage of Trump and his administration, with some likening it to state-run television.

A Fox News spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s tweets.

Guy Benson, a Fox News contributor, clapped back on Twitter, writing, “We don’t work for you.”

(image via Flicker/WhiteHouse)

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Trump Has Suggested Nuking Hurricanes

Axios is reporting that Donald Trump (above) has suggested on more than one occasion to national security officials that the U.S. bomb hurricanes with nuclear weapons.

During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” according to one source who was there.

“They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?” the source added, paraphrasing the president’s remarks.

Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said something to the effect of, “Sir, we’ll look into that.”

Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government intervene before they make landfall.

The briefer “was knocked back on his heels,” the source in the room added. “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f—? What do we do with this?'”

Axios’s Jonathan Swan notes the concept of bombing hurricanes isn’t a ‘Trump original,’ as the question has been raised before going back as far as the Eisenhower administration. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have published a fact sheet which addresses the flawed idea. One issue the researchers mention, among many, is radiation fallout. From the fact sheet: “Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems.” The Trumpster denied suggesting such things it on Twitter, so that pretty much confirms he said it. https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1165918301932916736?s=21

(lead image: public domain/White House Flickr stream)

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Joe Walsh Announces Challenge To Trump For GOP Nomination

Calling Mr. Trump ‘completely unfit,’ former Congressman Joe Walsh, a conservative radio host, says he will launch a television-centric strategy to try to rattle a media-obsessed president. Walsh announced his candidacy during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1165613529455562752 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1165618693386244097 From the New York Times:

“We’ve got a guy in the White House who is unfit, completely unfit, to be president and it stuns me that nobody stepped up,” Mr. Walsh said in announcing his candidacy, claiming that “everyone” in the Republican Party believes Mr. Trump is not fit for the job.

Mr. Walsh’s decision to announce his candidacy on television, aides said, is a preview of a television-centric strategy designed to rattle a television-focused president with a rare challenge from within the party.

Despite Mr. Walsh’s claim that many Republicans share his belief that Mr. Trump is unfit to serve, most polls show the president’s approval rating among Republican voters is consistently in the high 80s.

Mr. Walsh stands virtually no chance of wresting the Republican presidential nomination away from Mr. Trump. But he framed his long shot primary challenge as a moral imperative to offer an alternative to Mr. Trump, and said that he is jumping in because “somebody needs to step up.”

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Trump: I Don’t Have A ‘Messiah Complex’

Donald Trump (above) raised eyebrows this week referring to himself as ‘the chosen one’ when answering questions from the press regarding the current trade war with China. Explaining his position that previous American presidents didn’t tackle China’s behavior when negotiating trade deals with Beijing, Trump said:

“President Clinton, President Bush, and President Obama and others should have done this long before me. My life would be much easier, although I enjoy doing it. But my life would be much easier if I just said, ‘Let China continue to rip off the United States.’ But I can’t do that.”

Finishing his thought, he looked up to the sky and said, “Somebody had to do it. I am the chosen one.” But on Saturday, Trump ranted on Twitter that he was just joking. “When I looked up to the sky and jokingly said ‘I am the chosen one,’ at a press conference two days ago, referring to taking on Trade with China, little did I realize that the media would claim that I had a ‘Messiah complex.’” he said in the tweet.

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Trump To Supreme Court: It’s Ok To Fire Employees For Being LGBTQ

The Trump administration, in its never-ending campaign against LGBTQ rights, has filed a brief in support of allowing private companies to legally fire employees based solely on their sexual orientation. The Trump administration, in its never-ending campaign against LGBTQ rights, has filed a brief in support of allowing private companies to legally fire employees based solely on their sexual orientation. From Dominic Holden at Buzzfeed News:

An amicus brief filed by the Justice Department weighed in on two cases involving gay workers and what is meant by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination “because of sex.” The administration argued courts nationwide should stop reading the civil rights law to protect gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers from bias because it was not originally intended to do so.

That view conflicts with some lower court rulings that found targeting someone for their sexual orientation is an illegal form of both sex discrimination and sex stereotyping under Title VII. Those courts have found, to illustrate the point, that a gay man wouldn’t be targeted if he were instead a woman dating a man; thus he faced discrimination because of his sex.

But the administration said in its brief Friday that Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination only prohibits unequal treatment between “biological sexes,” as it argued last week in a related brief against transgender rights, in which the Justice Department said companies should be able to fire people because they are transgender as well.

Earlier this week, the Donald sidestepped a question about his administration’s position on the cases claiming he has deep support from LGBTQ Americans. “I think I’ve done really very well with that community,” said Trump citing his endorsement by the conservative LGBTQ group Log Cabin Republicans. “They like the job I’m doing.” The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the cases beginning October 8.

(lead image: public domain via Flickr/White House)

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Trump Joked About Trading Puerto Rico For Greenland?

From the New York Times:

In the latest only-in-Trumpland episode skating precariously along the line between farce and tragedy, the president of the United States on Wednesday attacked the prime minister of Denmark because she will not sell him Greenland — and found the very notion “absurd.”

But while Mr. Trump has long derided nation-building, his flirtation with nation-buying turned out to be more serious than many originally thought. He has been talking privately about buying Greenland for more than a year and even detailed the National Security Council staff to study the idea.

At one point last year, according to a former official who heard him, he even joked in a meeting about trading Puerto Rico for Greenland — happy to rid himself of an American territory whose leadership he has feuded with repeatedly.