Tag: Donald Trump

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Iran: Trump White House Is ‘Mentally Retarded’

"Idiotic and outrageous" is how Iran's President Hassan Rouhani characterized Donald Trump's sanctions against Supreme Leader Aytollah Ali Khanenei. Rouhani also described the White House as “afflicted by mental retardation.”
Donald Trump

“Idiotic and outrageous” is how Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani characterized Donald Trump’s sanctions against Supreme Leader Aytollah Ali Khanenei.

Rouhani also described the White House as “afflicted by mental retardation.”

From USA Today:

Rouhani noted that Western banking restrictions are unlikely to affect Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, saying the 80-year-old leader of the Islamic Revolution isn’t getting rich off of Western bank accounts. Imposing sanctions on Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif doesn’t equate with Trump’s stated willingness to negotiate without preconditions, Rouhani added.

“You sanction the foreign minister simultaneously with a request for talks” he would lead, Rouhani said. “The White House is afflicted by mental retardation and does not know what to do.”

The sanctions, issued less than a week after Iran shot down a U.S. drone, will block transactions involving any property or other assets Iran’s leaders hold in the USA, the White House said.

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Gallup: Trump Lags Behind Modern Presidents In Approval

Donald Trump

Gallup polling shows Donald Trump lags behind most other modern presidents in terms of approval ratings.

The approval ratings reported here are based on Gallup Daily tracking averages for President Donald Trump in 2017 and 2018, and periodic multi-day polls for Trump starting in 2019.

As you can see from the graphic below via Gallup, Trump’s current approval stands at 43 percent.

His highest rating to date in the Gallup poll was 46 percent in April, and his lowest was 35 percent in December 2017.

Click image to enlarge

Compared with previous presidents at this point in their presidency, though, Trump lags behind just about every modern president except Jimmy Carter who was mired in the Iran hostage crisis and a terrible economy.

Barack Obama garnered 46 percent approval at this point; George W scored 63 percent; Bill Clinton, even with impeachment looming, had 47 percent approval.

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Trump: “We Were Cocked And Loaded” Before Calling Off Iran Strike

Donald Trump

President Trump tweeted Friday morning that the United States military was “cocked and loaded” for a strike against Iran on Thursday night, but that he reversed himself 10 minutes to ‘go time’ after a general informed him 150 people would probably die in the attack.

I believe the two phrases Glorious Leader was mangling were “locked and loaded” and “guns were cocked.”

From the New York Times:

The president said in a series of tweets just after 9 a.m. that he was prepared to retaliate against three sites in Iran for that country’s shooting down an American drone, but that he was “in no hurry.” He indicated that the death of 150 Iranians would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

It was unclear why Mr. Trump would have been getting information about possible casualties so late in the process of launching military action. Such information is typically discussed early in the deliberations between a president and national security officials.

Trump also indicated that new sanctions have been imposed on Iran, but didn’t go into detail.

Folks on both sides of the political spectrum criticized Trump for the strike and reversal.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt: “The failure to respond to this kind of direct provocation that we’ve seen now from the Iranians, in particular over the last several weeks, could in fact be a very serious mistake.”

And in the Twitterverse:

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New Florida Poll Shows Biden Would Beat Trump 9+

A new poll of Florida voters from Quinnipiac University shows former Vice President Joe Biden leading Donald Trump by 9 points in a hypothetical head-to-head match up 50% - 41% respectively.
Donald Trump (L) Joe Biden (R)

I know, I know, it’s way early but I always find polls (from reputable firms) interesting to gauge the mood of voters.

A new poll of Florida voters from Quinnipiac University shows former Vice President Joe Biden leading Donald Trump by 9 points in a hypothetical head-to-head match up 50% – 41% respectively.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders would trump Trump by 6 points, 48% – 42% respectively.

Some Democrats did better than Trump but within the statistical margin of error:

• Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren 47% to Trump’s 43%

• California Sen. Kamala Harris 45% to Trump’s 44%

• Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke 45% to Trump’s 44%

• Mayor Pete Buttigieg 44% to Trump’s 43%

Also from the survey:

• Democrats back Joe Biden 91 – 3 percent versus Republicans backing Trump 90 – 7 percent.

• Florida voters are not hip on impeaching Trump 62 percent against versus 32 percent who support.

• 54 percent of Florida voters say they are better off today than they were in 2016; 23 percent say they are worse off.

• But Trump’s approval rating is still upside down: 44% approval versus disapproval at 51%.

On the Democrats side, Joe Biden has a huge lead among his fellow contenders garnering 41 percent.

It drops a lot to the second place with Sanders getting 14 percent, Warren 12 percent, Buttigieg 8 percent and Harris scoring 6 percent.

While Trump won Florida’s 29 electoral votes in 2016, he beat Hillary Clinton by only 1.2 points – 49 percent to 47.8 percent respectively. So anything along the lines of this poll is devastating for Trump.

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King Trump Displeased As White House Staffer Coughs While He Was Speaking

During an interview segment with George Stephanopolous of ABC News, Donald Trump stopped mid-sentence and asked for a 're-shoot' of his answer because his chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, coughed in the background.
King Trump was displeased when his chief of staff coughed during an interview

During an interview segment with George Stephanopolous of ABC News, Donald Trump stopped mid-sentence and asked for a ‘re-shoot’ of his answer because his chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, coughed in the background.

As he was answering a question regarding his financial records, Trump stopped – as if on a television set.

“And let’s do that over, he’s coughing in the middle of my answer,” Trump told Stephanopoulos.

“I don’t like that, you know, I don’t like that,” Trump said in reference to the coughing, with clear disdain.

“Your chief of staff,” Stephanopoulos asked.

“If you’re going to cough, please leave the room,” said Trump. “You just can’t, you just can’t cough. Boy oh boy…”

Even at the end of the interview, Trump revisited “the cough.”

On Twitter, Washington Post reporter Jackie Alemany shared a message from a former Trump campaign staffer:

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Trump’s Own Polling Shows Him Trailing Joe Biden In Critical Swing States

ABC News has obtained data from Donald Trump's own internal campaign polling that shows him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in critical battleground states.
Donald Trump

ABC News has obtained data from Donald Trump’s own internal campaign polling that shows him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in critical battleground states.

According to the numbers:

Biden leads Trump by 16 points in Pennsylvania, 10 points in Wisconsin, and 7 points in Florida.

In deep red state Texas, Trump leads Biden but by only 2 points.

Until Trump’s narrow wins in both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the two states had voted for the Democratic presidential candidate for decades. Trump cannot afford to lose either of those states as well as Florida.

Earlier this week, Trump denied that such polling exists.

ABC News reports it did not obtain any data on early matchups against other candidates.

The New York Times was first to report the existence of the internal polls.

The Trump campaign told ABC News the data is real but pushed back saying the numbers were old. The campaign apparently claimed that since that polling they’ve seen “huge swings” in Trump’s favor.

In related news, a new poll by EPIC-MRA of Lansing out today shows Biden leading Trump by 11 points 52%-41%.

Michigan was another traditionally blue state that went for Trump in 2016, but by less than 1 percentage point.

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Trump: White House Counsel Don McGahn Lied To Mueller

In a newly-released segment from ABC News, Donald Trump says he was never going to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller during the two-year investigation.
Donald Trump

In a newly-released segment from ABC News, Donald Trump says he was never going to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller during the two-year investigation.

When George Stephanopolous notes Trump’s own White House counsel Don McGahn testified under oath that Trump said in private that he wanted Mueller gone, Trump shuts George down saying McGahn lied.

Via Politico:

President Donald Trump is challenging his former White House counsel’s testimony to Robert Mueller, asserting that he never even so much as suggested firing the special counsel. In an interview with ABC News, the president suggested that Don McGahn told Mueller of Trump’s supposed directive that he be fired in order to save face.

“The story on that very simply, No. 1, I was never going to fire Mueller. I never suggested firing Mueller,” Trump said. Pressed on why McGahn would have told Mueller’s team during his more than 30 hours of voluntary interviews of the multiple times the president sought to have the special counsel removed, Trump pushed back.

“I don’t care what he says, it doesn’t matter,” he argued. “That was to show everyone what a good counsel he was.”

Note how Trump cuts George off – “…Excuse me…”

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Trump On Foreigners Offering Dirt On Opponents: “I Think I’d Take It”

Donald Trump admits he’d accept dirt on political opponents from foreign countries

Holy crap!

From ABC News:

Asked by ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos in the Oval Office on Wednesday whether his campaign would accept such information from foreigners — such as China or Russia — or hand it over the FBI, Trump said, “I think maybe you do both.”

“I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump continued. “If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent’ — oh, I think I’d want to hear it.”

President Trump lamented the attention on his son, Donald Trump Jr., for his role in the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. Stephanopoulos asked whether Trump Jr. should have taken the Russians’ offer for “dirt” on then-candidate Hillary Clinton to the FBI.

“Somebody comes up and says, ‘hey, I have information on your opponent,’ do you call the FBI?” Trump responded.

“I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen a lot of things over my life. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do,” Trump continued. “Oh, give me a break – life doesn’t work that way.”

When Stephanopolous points out that the FBI director says you should report such contact, Trump says flatly, “The FBI director is wrong.”

This is why Trump has been incredulous at the allegations leveled at him. I think in Trump World he honestly doesn’t see anything wrong with accepting aid from a foreign country in an election (which in the United States IS illegal).

Watch below.

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Trump Tells Aides To Deny His Own Polling Showing Him Trailing 6 Democrats

Donald Trump

No surprise, but when Donald Trump gets bad news – even from inside his own campaign – he just jumps over to Earth 2 and lives in his own reality.

From the New York Times:

After being briefed on a devastating 17-state poll conducted by his campaign pollster, Tony Fabrizio, Mr. Trump told aides to deny that his internal polling showed him trailing Mr. Biden in many of the states he needs to win, even though he is also trailing in public polls from key states like Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

And when top-line details of the polling leaked, including numbers showing the president lagging in a cluster of critical Rust Belt states, Mr. Trump instructed aides to say publicly that other data showed him doing well.

Trump then took to Twitter to lie saying his internal polling shows “the best numbers WE have ever had.”

In reality, a new Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday showed Trump trailing six Democratic White House hopefuls nationally:

In hypothetical head-to-head matchups, former Vice President Joe Biden trumped Trump by 13 points, 53 percent to 40 percent.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) beat Trump 51 percent to Trump’s 42 percent.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) ahead of Trump 49 percent to 41 percent.

Sen. Elizabeth Warrant (D-MA) up 49 percent to Trump’s 42 percent.

Both Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Cory Booker (N-NJ) topped Trump by 5 points, 47 percent to 42 percent.

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Fox & Friends Aghast At John Dean’s Use Of Nicknames For Donald Trump On Twitter

During this morning’s iteration of Fox & Friends, co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt were busy as bees attacking former Nixon White House counsel John Dean for testifying before Congress on Monday.

Media Matters noted how especially offended by how Dean has referred to Donald Trump on Twitter:

KIMLEADE: Listen to how he describes Donald Trump: Demeaning Don. Deadbeat Don. Demagogue Don. He calls him Deranged Don. Those are just some of the things included in his 970 tweets. But yet Jerry Nadler said…

EARHARDT: Almost 1,000 tweets. Who has time for that?

Wow. Almost 1,000 tweets? Wow.

And what kind of person uses insulting nicknames to attack on Twi….oh. Wait a second.

Ahem…