Posts Tagged ‘ Trump ’

Ordered to target financial weaknesses

Jun 24th, 2017 11:52 am | By

Trump might have to testify in court about Trump “University” after all.

If the ninth circuit court of appeals – one of two courts that ruled against Trump’s travel ban in June – decides in her favor, Simpson intends to sue the president independently for fraud, which she hopes could see him give evidence before a jury.

“I believed in a jury trial,” Simpson told the Guardian. “It looked like we had such a strong case for trial after seven years of litigation.”

Simpson, a bankruptcy attorney who took courses at Trump University in 2010, had planned to sue on her own before learning of, and joining, one of the three class action suits.

She wasn’t told about the settlement … Read the rest



Early morning venting session

Jun 24th, 2017 9:55 am | By

The Post looks in the windows of the White House again and finds a lot of people worrying about how to manage the angry Toddler in Chief.

President Trump has a new morning ritual. Around 6:30 a.m. on many days — before all the network news shows have come on the air — he gets on the phone with a member of his outside legal team to chew over all things Russia.

The calls — detailed by three senior White House officials — are part strategy consultation and part presidential venting session, during which Trump’s lawyers and public-relations gurus take turns reviewing the latest headlines with him.

Again, it’s interesting and significant that three senior people were willing to tell … Read the rest



Sit right here in front, Al

Jun 23rd, 2017 3:20 pm | By

Eleven months ago, the Secret Service was investigating one Al Baldasaro.

The Secret Service is investigating a Donald Trump adviser who said in a radio interview that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton should be “shot for treason” on a “firing line.”

Al Baldasaro, a New Hampshire representative who serves on Trump’s veterans’ coalition and as a Trump delegate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, said in an interview with a Boston talk radio host that Clinton should pay for the 2012 Benghazi attack.

“She is a disgrace for any, the lies she told those mothers about their children that got killed over there in Benghazi,” he said on the Jeff Kuhner Show Tuesday. “She dropped the ball

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It wasn’t very stupid

Jun 23rd, 2017 11:33 am | By

The Post gives us the transcript of that Fox interview where Trump confirms that he tweeted about “tapes” and Comey in order to put pressure on him.

EARHARDT: Great. Big news today, you didn’t have — you said you didn’t tape James Comey. Do you want to explain that? Why did you want him to believe that you possibly did that?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I didn’t tape him. You never know what’s happening when you see that the Obama administration, and perhaps longer than that, was doing all of unmasking and surveillance and you read all about it. And I’ve been reading about it for the last couple of months about the seriousness of the — and horrible situation with

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The world narrowed to a single self

Jun 23rd, 2017 9:48 am | By

Trump goes on Fox and admits lying, bullying, pressuring, obstructing, you name it.

President Trump appeared to acknowledge on Friday in an interview that his tweet hinting of taped conversations with James B. Comey was intended to influence the fired F.B.I. director’s testimony before Congress, and he emphasized that he committed “no obstruction” of the inquiries into whether his campaign colluded with Russia.

The interview, with “Fox & Friends,” was shown one day after the president tweeted what most people in Washington had already come to believe: that he had not made recordings of his conversations with Mr. Comey.

He was talking about the possibility of tapes, you see, just as mobsters have always been talking about the possibilityRead the rest



A dozen terminological inexactitudes

Jun 22nd, 2017 5:14 pm | By

The Times tallied up Trump’s lies at his “rally” yesterday.

President Trump returned to familiar rhetorical territory during a raucous campaign-style rally in Iowa on Wednesday night, repeating exaggerations and falsehoods about health care, jobs, taxes, foreign policy and his own record.

Other than that, it was all aboveboard.

He lied about all insurance companies fleeing Iowa. He lied about his glorious reign so far.

He exaggerated his legislative accomplishments.

Mr. Trump has signed nearly 40 bills into law, but it’s hard to argue, as he did, that any were “really big.”

The 14 bills rolling back Obama-era rules did signal a significant shift in regulatory policy, but are not considered major pieces of legislation. Three others named federal

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So it was a threat then

Jun 22nd, 2017 1:50 pm | By

Trump tweeted today that nyah nyah he didn’t make any tapes of Comey haha fooled you.

Adam Schiff put out a statement saying what bullshit that is.

If … Read the rest



Trump loves all people

Jun 22nd, 2017 10:10 am | By

In the least surprising news of the century, Trump told the people at his latest “rally” that he doesn’t want poor people working for him.

The US president told a crowd on Wednesday night: “Somebody said why did you appoint a rich person to be in charge of the economy? No it’s true. And Wilbur’s [commerce secretary Wilbur Ross] a very rich person in charge of commerce. I said: ‘Because that’s the kind of thinking we want.’”

Of course it is. He wants the kind of thinking that sees rich people as miraculous geniuses who deserve to be infinitely rich because of their massive talent and genius and hard work and genius and ontrapranooryal spirit. He wants the kind of … Read the rest



More beryllium for the people

Jun 21st, 2017 2:47 pm | By

I saw Senator Warren warning us about a Trump de-protection move.

The Hill has more:

[The] AFL-CIO, a leading labor group, fears the Trump administration is planning to roll back a hard-fought worker protection finalized under President Obama.

The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) completed a review last week of a proposed rule that the Labor Department submitted on the occupational exposure to beryllium.

In January, just days before President Trump was sworn into office, the Obama administration issued a final rule reducing the permissible exposure limits

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Unidirectional loyalty

Jun 20th, 2017 10:24 am | By

Robert Reich on Trump’s insistence on loyalty at the expense of integrity:

Last Monday, the White House invited reporters in to watch what was billed as a meeting of Trump’s Cabinet. After Trump spoke, he asked each of the Cabinet members around the table to briefly comment.

Their statements were what you might expect from toadies surrounding a two-bit dictator.

“We thank you for the opportunity and blessing to serve your agenda,” said Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. “Greatest privilege of my life, to serve as vice president to a president who’s keeping his word to the American people,” said Vice President Mike Pence.

Reich points out that when he was sworn in as Clinton’s Labor Secretary he pledged … Read the rest



The way forward

Jun 20th, 2017 9:36 am | By

Guy Harrison on Facebook:

Please don’t hate, disown, or ostracize rabid Trump supporters. Yes, it may be necessary to maintain some distance for comfort’s sake. But if you turn your back on them you are no better than the Scientologists and Mormons who shun their friends and relatives for waking up. The most committed Trump supporters are lost and afraid, as we all are to some degree. That’s where their anger and prejudice come from. They aren’t aliens. They aren’t evil. And it’s not helpful to dismiss them as hopelessly crazy and stupid. Yes, they hitched their wagon to an incompetent lunatic of a leader, but they are still part of “us”. We are a bunch of inventive, neurotic

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What we notice and what we ignore

Jun 19th, 2017 10:20 am | By

Philip Bump at the Post notices Trump’s Twitter silence about Finsbury Park:

Donald Trump tweeted about the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 about 3½ hours after they occurred. The following month, he tweeted about the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., 90 minutes after the violence began. It took fewer than 12 hours from the time an EgyptAir flight went missing in May 2016 for Trump to speculate publicly that the attack was terror-related. More than a year later, it’s still not clear what happened to the plane.

When terrorists drove a van into a crowd on London Bridge earlier this month, Trump tweeted about the need to be “smart, vigilant and tough” even before authorities identified

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The yearning for dominance and praise

Jun 18th, 2017 5:37 pm | By

David Remnick on the cesspit that is Trump’s white house.

The yearning in the character of Donald Trump for dominance and praise is bottomless, a hunger that is never satisfied. Last week, the President gathered his Cabinet for a meeting with no other purpose than to praise him, to note the great “honor” and “blessing” of serving such a man as he. Trump nodded with grave self-satisfaction, accepting the serial hosannas as his daily due. But even as the members declared, Pyongyang-style, their everlasting gratitude and fealty to the Great Leader, this concocted dumb show of loyalty only served to suggest how unsustainable it all is.

The reason that this White House staff is so leaky, so prepared to

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Exciting the unstable

Jun 18th, 2017 3:47 pm | By

Dayum, talk about one-sided…

Peggy Noonan has a think piece at the Wall Street Journal deploring all this uncontrolled rage.

What we are living through in America is not only a division but a great estrangement. It is between those who support Donald Trump and those who despise him, between left and right, between the two parties, and even to some degree between the bases of those parties and their leaders in Washington. It is between the religious and those who laugh at Your Make Believe Friend, between cultural progressives and those who wish not to have progressive ways imposed upon them. It is between the coasts and the center, between those in flyover country and those who decide

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And then stood like this

Jun 17th, 2017 5:23 pm | By

Joe Biden was on Fresh Air the other day. There was this one bit that started with Twitter…

GROSS: So, like, what are the rules for communication? Like, ’cause he – is it OK – did you have social media when you were vice president? And, like, what rules were you expected to follow?

BIDEN: Not that old. Yes, I…

(LAUGHTER)

BIDEN: I had social media.

GROSS: I thought they take that stuff away from you.

BIDEN: I have social media – had it. And we have millions of people following us. But there’s a difference between using the modern media and the means of communication than there is being irresponsible or irrational in the way you do it and

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He is strained by the demanding hours of the job

Jun 17th, 2017 12:17 pm | By

What will happen if Trump runs out of Justice Department people to fire? Will the gears just freeze and everything stop and time come to an end?

Since taking office, the Trump administration has twice rewritten an executive order that outlines the order of succession at the Justice Department — once after President Donald Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to defend his travel ban, and then again two months later. The executive order outlines a list of who would be elevated to the position of acting attorney general if the person up the food chain recuses himself, resigns, gets fired or is no longer in a position to serve.

In the past, former Justice Department officials

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Congress must unite to stop him – but will it?

Jun 17th, 2017 10:20 am | By

Adam Schiff said a thing yesterday about Trump’s possible plans to fire Mueller.

It has become clear that President Trump believes that he has the power to fire anyone in government he chooses and for any reason, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller. That is not how the rule of law works, and Congress will not allow the President to so egregiously overstep his authority.

If President Trump were to try to replicate Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre by firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in addition to Mueller, Congress must unite to stop him – without respect to party, and for the sake of the nation.

Congress can defend our system of checks and balances by passing an independent counsel law

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Ka-ching

Jun 17th, 2017 7:45 am | By

The political or public relations side of things may be going unsmoothly for Don, but the money-making side is flourishing. More gold-plated bathtubs for Don, and that’s what matters.

President Trump says he’s received tens of millions of dollars in income from the golf courses and resorts whose profile he boosted during frequent visits since taking office, according to filings released Friday by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.

Being president is turning a big big profit. All he has to do is visit one of his resorts and the cash just pours in. It’s such a brilliant wheeze.

Properties that Trump frequently visited as president saw the largest boost in income. Trump claimed more than $37 million in

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He believes the rule of law doesn’t apply to him

Jun 16th, 2017 2:55 pm | By

Also…Trump’s lawyer has hired a lawyer. No really.

President Donald Trump’s longtime attorney and adviser Michael Cohen has hired a lawyer to represent him in the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Cohen told CNN on Friday.

Cohen, who serves as Trump’s personal attorney, hired Stephen Ryan, a partner at the DC-based law firm McDermott, Will and Emery, to handle inquiries related to the investigations into Russian meddling in the election. News of the hire comes two weeks after Cohen was subpoenaed by the House intelligence committee as part of the committee’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Next week Trump’s lawyer’s lawyer will hire a lawyer and it will keep on this way … Read the rest



Picking them off

Jun 16th, 2017 2:34 pm | By

But hey, Rosenstein may have to recuse himself anyway.

ABC News is reporting that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “has privately acknowledged to colleagues that he may have to recuse himself from” his role as Acting Attorney General for the Department’s Russia Investigation. (Recall that Rosenstein assumed that role when Attorney General Sessions recused himself earlier.)  Rosenstein’s involvement in the case has grown untenable for many reasons. Most importantly, the substance of the investigation has apparently developed to include a potential obstruction of justice focus on the President in connection with (among other things) the President’s discussions with and firing of James Comey. In that matter, Rosenstein may be a witness because of his role in the firing, and thus

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