Tag: Donald Trump

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Donald Trump Averages 12 Lies A Day

Donald Trump

After fact-checking and crunching the numbers, the Washington Post reports that Donald Trump has averaged 12 lies a day since taking office.

Whether you want to call them outright lies, exaggerations or unfounded boasts, the current occupant of the Oval Office has some serious issues with the truth.

As of June 7, his 869th day in office, the president has made 10,796 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement the president has uttered.

The president crossed the 10,000 threshold on April 26, and he has been averaging about 16 fishy claims a day since then. From the start of his presidency, he has averaged about 12 such claims a day.

About one-fifth of these claims are about immigration, his signature issue — a percentage that has grown since the government shut down over funding for his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, his most repeated claim — 172 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and repairs of existing barriers as “a wall.”

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Podcast: Tres Gay Tony Awards, Trump Says No To Pride Flags, Restaurant Cancels Lesbian Couple’s Wedding Dinner, ROZES Drops New Single “Call Me”

In this week's podcast: • The Tony Awards were a tres gay affair • The Trump administration is rejecting requests from US embassies around the world to fly Pride flags • A gun scare involving a straight couple was the apparent cause for a panicked stampede at DC Pride • A Missouri restaurant cancelled a wedding rehearsal dinner reservation after finding out the couple were of the same sex • Out artist ROZES drops her new single “Call Me” in time for Pride Month All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report podcast

In this week’s podcast:

• The Tony Awards were a tres gay affair

• The Trump administration is rejecting requests from US embassies around the world to fly Pride flags

• A gun scare involving a straight couple was the apparent cause for a panicked stampede at DC Pride

• A Missouri restaurant cancelled a wedding rehearsal dinner reservation after finding out the couple were of the same sex

• Out artist ROZES drops her new single “Call Me” in time for Pride Month

All that and more in this episode of The Randy Report podcast

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NY Times: Trump “Unsettles The Settled”

The New York Times, in reporting on Donald Trump's 'last minute' escape from implementing tariffs on Mexico, notes the pattern Donald Trump seems to have in his negotiations that end up with - who else? - him looking like a hero for a mess he created in the first place.
Donald Trump

The New York Times, in reporting on Donald Trump’s ‘last minute’ escape from implementing tariffs on Mexico, notes the pattern Donald Trump seems to have in his negotiations that end up with – who else? – him looking like a hero for a mess he created in the first place.

These are often dramas of his own making, with him naturally the hero. He stakes out maximalist positions and issues brutal ultimatums to compel action, arguing that extreme problems demand extreme tactics. At times, though, it can seem like little more than smoke and mirrors substituting for serious policymaking, a way of pretending to make progress without actually solving the underlying problem.

“This is a pattern we’ve seen since the first days of this administration,” said Ned Price, a former C.I.A. official who worked on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council staff and is now director of policy at National Security Action, a progressive foreign policy advocacy organization.

“The president manufactures a crisis, galvanizes his base around the challenge, leaves the definition of success undefined, pretends to play hardball and, lo and behold, finds a solution that entails little more than window-dressing, if that,” Mr. Price said. “For Trump, it’s a win-win.” But “the loser tends to be the American people, oftentimes Trump’s base first and foremost,” he added.

As I, and many other people smarter than me, noted already, the ‘deal’ Trump announced with Mexico is actually a collection of prior agreements with our southern neighbor assembled to look like a wholly new agreement.

It’s not.

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NY Times: US/Mexico Agreement Was Not ‘Last Minute’ But Agreed To Months Ago

Donald Trump

Late Friday evening, Donald Trump enthusiastically announced that his threat of a tariff war with Mexico had been avoided.

Trump faced intense pressure from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers to not implement the tariffs. So, you can imagine why he was so proud of the ‘last minute’ agreement.

But was it?

The New York Times is reporting that much of the new ‘deal’ was agreed upon months ago according to officials from both the U.S. and Mexico familiar with the progress of the deal.

It would appear that the Trumpster’s tweets were basically theater.

Friday’s joint declaration says Mexico agreed to the “deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border.” But the Mexican government had already pledged to do that in March during secret talks in Miami between Kirstjen Nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, and Olga Sanchez, the Mexican secretary of the interior, the officials said.

The centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s deal was an expansion of a program to allow asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their legal cases proceed. But that arrangement was first reached in December in a pair of painstakingly negotiated diplomatic notes that the two countries exchanged. Ms. Nielsen announced the Migrant Protection Protocols during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee five days before Christmas.

And over the past week, negotiators failed to persuade Mexico to accept a “safe third country” treaty that would have given the United States the legal ability to reject asylum seekers if they had not sought refuge in Mexico first.

It was unclear whether Mr. Trump believed that the agreement truly represented new and broader concessions, or whether the president understood the limits of the deal but accepted it as a face-saving way to escape from the political and economic consequences of imposing tariffs on Mexico.

Having threatened Mexico with an escalating series of tariffs — starting at 5 percent and growing to 25 percent — the president faced enormous criticism from global leaders, business executives, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and members of his own staff that he risked disrupting a critical marketplace.

After nine days of uncertainty, Mr. Trump backed down and accepted Mexico’s promises.

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New Poll Shows Five Democrats Would Beat Trump

A new national poll by Ipsos/Reuters shows several Democratic candidates beating Donald Trump in hypothetical head-to-head matchups:

A new national poll by Ipsos/Reuters shows several Democratic candidates beating Donald Trump in hypothetical head-to-head matchups:

Biden 47% (+13)
Trump 34%

Sanders 44% (+9)
Trump 35%

Warren 40% (+4)
Trump 36%

Harris 39% (+3)
Trump 36%

Buttigieg 37% (+2)
Trump 35%

Click the link to see much more of the results.

I know it’s waaaaaay early, but I always find it interesting to see what folks might be thinking.

In truth, the next real shakeup will be the first Democratic debates on June 26/27.

Will anyone make a gaffe or suddenly have a shining moment?

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Tweet Of The Day: Mars Is NOT Part Of The Moon

The Twitterverse is scratching its head over a tweet from Donald Trump (I know, not really a rare occasion) in which he says the Moon is part of Mars.
Using this photo because it makes as much sense as Trump saying the Moon is part of Mars

The Twitterverse is scratching its head over a tweet from “Extremely Stable Genius” Donald Trump (I know, not really a rare occasion) in which he says the Moon is part of Mars.

Note: the Moon is definitely NOT a part of Mars.

“For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!”

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Trump Administration Rejecting Requests To Fly Pride Flags At US Embassies

NBC News reports that the Trump administration is rejecting requests from U.S. embassies to fly the rainbow pride flag on embassy flagpoles during LGBTQ Pride Month.

NBC News reports that the Trump administration is rejecting requests from U.S. embassies to fly the rainbow pride flag on embassy flagpoles during LGBTQ Pride Month.

The U.S. embassies in Israel, Germany, Brazil and Latvia are among those that have requested permission from Trump’s State Department to fly the pride flag on their flagpoles and have been denied, diplomats said.

Although the pride flag can and is being flown elsewhere on embassy grounds, including inside embassies and on exterior walls, the decision not to allow it on the official flagpole stands in contrast to President Donald Trump’s claim to be a leader in supporting LGBTQ rights overseas.

Trump’s administration has announced a campaign to decriminalize homosexuality overseas and this month issued a tweet and formal statement to “celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made.”

The denials to U.S. embassies have come from the office of the State Department’s undersecretary for management, Brian Bulatao, a longtime associate of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who also worked for him at the CIA. Under State Department policy, embassies that want to fly the flag on their flagpoles are expected to obtain permission from Washington.

There’s irony in that one of the embassies being told ‘no’ is in Germany. Donald Trump’s Ambassador to Germany, openly gay Richard Grenell, is supposedly leading the international campaign to end the criminalization of homosexuality around the world.

The Obama administration had no problem allowing pride flags to be flown during Pride Month.

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Trump Claims Trans Soldiers ‘Take Massive Amounts Of Drugs’

Donald Trump, currently on a three-day state visit to the UK, defended his ban on transgender soldiers in the U.S. military by lying about the ‘massive’ cost of hormone treatment.

Trump sat down with his old pal and former winner of Celebrity Apprentice, Piers Morgan, on iTV’s Good Morning Britainto chat for an hour on a range of subjects.

While mentioning the president’s recent tweet acknowledging Pride Month, Morgan wondered how the same Donald Trump could also support the new military policy that went into effect April 12 that bans anyone who is openly transgender or has transitioned from joining the military.

Only service members who were already enlisted, and diagnosed with gender dysphoria prior to the new policy, may serve in the military openly as their gender identity.

“They take massive amounts of drugs, they have to, and you’re not allowed to take drugs, you’re in the military, you take an aspirin,” defended Trump. “And they have to after the operation, they have to, they have no choice.”

The president, who famously avoided serving in the military himself, went on to claim that taking hormone treatment would “break rules and regulations.”

He also complained about “massive amounts of people” enlisting and then transitioning during their service in order to get free surgical procedures.

“Massive amounts of people going in and then asking for the operation, and the operation is $200,000, $250,000, and they have to take large amounts of drugs for that for whatever reason, large amounts, and you can’t do that,” explained the president.

However, Trump’s statement about the costs for transgender medical care is patently false.

According to MilitaryTimes, the Pentagon spent $8 million on transgender health care since 2016. That figure represents a tiny fraction of the military’s $50 billion health care budget.

And while Trump finds $8 million for trans soldiers’ healthcare to be untenable, he doesn’t seem to mind the $84.2 million the defense department spent in one year on erectile dysfunction medications.

When Morgan mentioned this fact, the Trumpster claimed he didn’t know that.

“It is what it is,” Trump replied.

Morgan tried to point out that many trans military members have been honored with medals for valor and achievement, but Trump didn’t care.

“I’m proud of them, I think that’s great,” said Trump, brushing the comment aside. “But you have to have a standard, and you have to stick by that standard, and we have a great military and I want to keep it that way.”

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Trump Pretends UK Protesters Showed Up To Support Him

You can barely see any protesters, huh?

Donald Trump, once again living in his own private reality, told his followers he “kept hearing” about “massive” rallies protesting his visit to London, but claims everyone was there to support him.

#liar

Check out his tweet followed by video footage of the protests:

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Senate Republicans Are NOT Happy About Trump’s Mexican Tariffs

Donald Trump 

Senate Republicans appear to be on a collision course with their own president over Donald Trump’s announced plans to place big ticket tariffs on imports from Mexico.

Via The New York Times:

Republican senators sent the White House a sharp message on Tuesday, warning that they were almost uniformly opposed to President Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on Mexican imports, just hours after the president said lawmakers would be “foolish” to try to stop him.

“I want you to take a message back” to the White House, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, told the lawyers, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Cruz warned that “you didn’t hear a single yes” from the Republican conference. He called the proposed tariffs a $30 billion tax increase on Texans.

Texas would be hit the hardest by the proposed tariffs on Mexican products, followed by Michigan, California, Illinois and Ohio, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

A 25 percent tariff would threaten $26.75 billion of Texas imports. “We’re holding a gun to our own heads,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called the tariffs “a distraction:”