Trump says he has freedom of speech, just like everyone else.

Speaking to reporters at the White House after delivering remarks on healthcare, Trump denied that his tweet smearing the reputation of Maria Yovanovitch amounted to witness intimidation.

“I don’t think so at all,” Trump said of the witness intimidation allegations. “I have the right to speak; I have freedom of speech, just like other people do.” He called the impeachment inquiry “a disgrace” and “an embarrassment to our nation.”

The president claimed Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee, was more guilty of witness tampering. “Tampering is when a guy like shifty Schiff doesn’t let us have lawyers,” Trump said, referring to longstanding congressional procedure

Also in today in Trump:

Donald Trump intervened in three military justice cases on Friday, issuing pardons in at least two of them.

Some Pentagon officials have expressed concerns that the president’s actions will undermine the military justice system, according to the Washington Post. From the report:

The service members involved were notified by Trump over the phone, said the U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. Army Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, who faced a murder trial scheduled to begin next year, took the phone call and was informed he would receive a full pardon, said his lawyer, Phillip Stackhouse.

In additon to Golsteyn, the other cases involve former Special

On this already full day, Trump is also finding new ways to trample human rights.

The Trump administration announced on Wednesday a plan to eliminate a federal court agreement and replace it with a regulation that would allow the government to indefinitely detain migrant children with their parents.

Of course it did. When there’s an opportunity for rich white people to torture impoverished brown people, Trump’s your man.

By replacing the agreement, known as the Flores settlement, the government could dramatically expand family detention and increase how long children are held in custody. The government would also have more power to determine the standards of care for children and families in custody.

The Trump administration has prioritized ending the

More overt noisy shameless bullying racism from the monstrous president of the US.

….As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2019

Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States. No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!

— Donald

Trump is feeling bumptious today. He did a shout-fest with reporters on the driveway again today, in which he shouted that it was the Democrats who caused the drowning of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria on Monday.

Then he shouted that Mueller committed a crime.

Donald Trump, without offering evidence, on Wednesday directly accused former special counsel Robert Mueller of committing a crime, saying Mueller had illegally “terminated” FBI communications as part of his Russia investigation.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

“Mueller terminated them illegally. He terminated all of the emails. … Robert Mueller terminated their text messages together. He terminated them. They’re gone. And that’s illegal. That’s a crime,” Trump said in an

Jake Tapper on Trump’s pardoning war criminals:

2/“… It sends the worst possible message from the very top to everyone still fighting – the Rules of Engagement are just annoying suggestions – do whatever you want and the CinC will pardon you because nothing matters anymore. These war crimes weren’t close calls….

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) May 19, 2019

4/ “… When this sort of flippancy comes from the very top, discipline crumbles….President Trump is telling everyone in uniform to shoot now – get pardoned later.”

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) May 19, 2019

Precisely.… Read the rest

The Fire fighters’ union responds:

As Californians struggle to recover from a series of devastating wildfires, the president of the United States has launched another impulsive, reckless and uninformed tweet threatening to halt federal funding dedicated to helping fire fighters keep their communities safe.

“This is yet another unimaginable attack on the dedicated professionals who put everything on the line, including their own homes, to protect their neighborhoods,” says Harold Schaitberger, General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters. “While our president is tweeting on the sidelines in DC, our fellow Americans 3,000 miles to the west are mourning loved ones, entire communities have been wiped off the map and thousands of people are still trying to

Yes, Trump really did say he has “ordered FEMA to send no more money” – not will order but has ordered.

Whether the president even has the authority to rescind FEMA funding that has already been approved remains unclear. Guidelines for the way federal dollars flow after the president declares a national disaster, [as] he did after devastating wildfires in California this year, are outlined in the Stafford Act, said Rafael Lemaitre, the former director of public affairs for FEMA under the Obama administration.

“I’m not aware of any mechanism where you can say, ‘I’m undeclaring a state of disaster,” Lemaitre said.

Or, probably, of any president who would want to, until now.

Individual assistance dollars help victims find temporary

Oh my god.

CBS Los Angeles reports:

President Donald Trump Wednesday announced that he has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stop sending wildfire relief money to California.

In an early morning tweet, Mr. Trump blamed the state’s forest management for its recent slew of historically-large wildfires which have leveled entire communities up and down the state.

“Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forrest (sic) fires that, with proper Forrest (sic) Management, would never happen,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!”

I’m knocked breathless.

He has GOT to … Read the rest

It’s Thursday. Trump has four more days to go Even More Racist, but he’s set himself a high bar today.

It is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country. Vote Republican now! https://t.co/0pWiwCHGbh pic.twitter.com/2crea9HF7G

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

Allyson Chiu at the Post:

Pinned at the top of President Trump’s Twitter feed Wednesday was a video. The man on the screen has a shaved head and a mustache and long chin hair. Smiling, he announces, “I killed f‐‐‐— cops.”

The man is Luis Bracamontes, a twice-deported Mexican immigrant who was given the death penalty in April for killing two California law enforcement officers in 2014. At the time of the shootings, Bracamontes

More from the Trump files: last month he phoned Duterte to tell him “awesome job with all the extrajudicial killings, dude.”

President Trump praised President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines in a phone call last month for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem” in the island nation where the government has sanctioned gunning down suspects in the streets. Mr. Trump also boasted that the United States has “two nuclear submarines” off the coast of North Korea but said he does not want to use them.

Did he boast about his dick size at the same time?

There’s a Philippine transcript of the call which was circulated yesterday by the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs. A senior administration official … Read the rest

Human Rights Watch has bumped the US up on its list of global threats. Why? Trump, of course.

Eight days before Mr. Trump is to be sworn in as president, the human-rights advocacy group declared that his path to power, in a campaign marked by “misogynistic, xenophobic and racist rhetoric,” could “cause tremendous harm to vulnerable communities, contravene the United States’ core human rights obligations, or both.”

HRW rebuked the Bush administration over torture, but like everyone who is paying attention, they see Trump as far worse.

Kenneth Roth, the organization’s executive director, said in an interview: “This is a more fundamental threat to human rights than George Bush after 9/11. I see Trump treating human rights as a

Trump is urging Republicans to HURRY UP and repeal the ACA, so that 20 million people can be stripped of their health insurance RIGHT AWAY.

The rich dude who has never had to worry about health insurance for a day in his life is in a big hurry to take it away from people who don’t have much money, because he’s just that kind of guy.

The rich dude who cut off benefits from the family health plan that were paying for the medical care of his nephew’s seriously ill little boy can’t wait to throw 20 million people off health insurance.

The rich scumbag is a rich scumbag, and he’s ten days from being president of the US.

Republicans

Shaun King at the Daily News (sorry) has more on Allen West and Trump.

The Facebook post evidently wasn’t a problem for President-elect Donald Trump.

West — who previously met with Vice President-elect Mike Pence and a team of Trump’s top national security appointees — visited Trump Tower on Monday for additional meetings.

Of course it wasn’t a problem. Trump isn’t “politically correct.” That’s all we need to know about such things. It’s “politically correct” to refrain from saying Muslims should be exterminated. It’s “politically correct” to look askance at people who say Muslims should be exterminated. It’s bravely defiant and un”politically correct” to do such things and to reward others who do them.

Even if Allen West did