A resource for journalists and for shutting down your crazy uncle.
On Wednesday night, President Donald Trump quoted Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs’ attack on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for cutting interest rates — ironically, something that he has spent the past several months demanding that Powell should do:
Trump has been at odds with Powell ever since he appointed him to the role in 2018, accusing him of trying to stifle the economy.
President Donald Trump lambasted CNN’s Don Lemon as “dumb” and “stupid” after the Democratic debate moderator asked questions about the president’s “bigotry” on Tuesday.
Trump called Lemon, who is black, “the dumbest man on television” on Twitter Wednesday, an insult he has used against the CNN anchor in the past.
The president also insisted he is “the least racist person in the world,” appearing to quote himself. In the last month, he has unleashed racist attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color, as well as Rep. Elijah Cummings and the predominantly black city of Baltimore.
Lemon asked a series of questions regarding the current administration and race during Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate on CNN.
He asked former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, and later former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, about Trump’s race baiting: “President Trump is pursuing a reelection strategy based in part, on racial division. How do you convince primary voters that you’d be the best nominee to take on President Trump and heal the racial divide in America?”
O’Rourke responded that we should “call his racism out for what it is, and also talk about its consequences.”
“It doesn’t just offend our sensibilities to hear him say ‘send her back,’ about a member of Congress, because she’s a woman color, because she’s a Muslim-American, doesn’t just offend our sensibilities when he calls Mexican immigrants ‘rapists and criminals,’ or seeks to ban all Muslims from the shores of a country that’s comprised of people from the world over, from every tradition of faith,” said the Texan.
Lemon also asked Sen. Amy Klobuchar what she’d “say to those Trump voters who prioritize the economy over the president’s bigotry?”
Klobuchar responded that “there are people that voted for Donald Trump before that aren’t racist; they just wanted a better shake in the economy. And so I would appeal to them,” before adding: “I don’t think anyone can justify what this president is doing.”
Trump’s attack on Lemon echoed comments from right-wing commentators, including Fox News’ Howard Kurtz and Laura Ingraham, who questioned why Lemon would say Trump “traffics in racial division.”
O’Rourke tweeted Wednesday that “Donald Trump is a racist,” alongside a video of his response to Lemon’s question.
President Donald Trump once again complained tonight about Fox News covering a protester at his Jamestown speech this morning.
A Virginia state legislator interrupted the president’s speech in protest of Trump’s “racism and bigotry.”
Trump complained directly to Roberts during a Q&A with reporters this afternoon. Roberts subsequently responded to the president on air saying, “In my 1:00 report, we did not show anything from the president’s speech because we were focused in that report on the ongoing feud between the president and Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland and the fallout from that, but it should be pointed out that in our 11:00 hour the Fox News Channel carried that speech in its entirety.”
Whether or not Trump saw that from Roberts, he’s clearly still steamed.
Trump was asked by C-SPAN’s Steve Scully about his tweets on Baltimore and whether he is a uniter as president.
Trump went from talking about the “tremendous divide” between the parties to decrying the “Russian hoax” and defending Mitch McConnell to touting his administration’s accomplishments.
“But they read the tweets,” Scully said. “Do they think you’re a uniter as president?”
Trump said he “wouldn’t need to” tweet if the press covered him fairly.
And then he complained about Fox:
“There was one protester who stood up… he held up a sign and he said whatever he said. Something… I don’t need publicity, Steve, at all, but I just thought it was so terrible, and it was on Fox with John Roberts. He talked about the protester for almost an entire segment of that. And I said isn’t that a shame. One guy stands up, not an impressive person, he stood up and he got all of this –– he took the whole thing away. One person.”
[Mediaite]
President Donald Trump sat down with C-SPAN’s Steve Scully for an interview that ended up touching on the media in a few different ways.
As Scully asked the president about his Twitter habits and whether he regrets it, Trump talked about using Twitter as a tool to communicate directly with the people and hit back at the “dishonest” news.
He called CNN “100 percent negative” and then went on a tear against NBC:
“NBC is negative. I made a lot of money for NBC with The Apprentice. It was a tremendous success at a time when they didn’t have any successes. But they forgot about that very quickly. And they wanted to extend me… I wanted to run for president, I think I’ve done a great job.”
[Mediaite]
President Donald Trump on Tuesday grew visibly angry after a reporter informed him that a recent poll showed that the vast majority of black Americans believe he is a racist.
While talking with reporters on the White House lawn, one reporter asked the president why 80 percent of black voters in a Quinnipiac poll said that he was racist. The same poll also showed that 89 percent of black voters said they would “definitely” not vote for Trump in 2020.
The president responded by blaming the reporter.
“You know why? Because the fake news doesn’t report it properly,” Trump said. “People like you! Fake news does not report it properly! If the news reported it properly, the right way, like instead of a statement like you just made, if the news reported it properly for all of the things I’ve done for African-Americans… I think I’d do very well with the African Americans!”
President Donald Trump inadvertently amplified the QAnon conspiracy theory on Tuesday when he tagged a random supporter in the middle of a Twitter binge.
“We should immediately pass Voter ID to insure the safety and sanctity of our voting system,” Trump wrote. “Also, Paper Ballots as backup (old fashioned but true!). Thank you!”
Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey decided to look into who Trump tagged when he wrote that tweet, and it just so happens that @Voteridplease is an account which promotes QAnon.
[Mediaite]
The three largest U.S. airlines presumed that President Donald Trump would take their side in a ferocious, yearslong dispute with Persian Gulf-based airlines — if they could just get his attention.
They got his attention, by way of TV ads the president saw on Fox News. But when Trump finally gathered executives from both sides of the dispute this month in the Oval Office for a heated, “Apprentice”-worthy showdown, he ultimately sided against them.
During an hour-long session, the president ribbed American Airlines CEO Doug Parker over his company’s flagging stock price, asking why it’s so low at a time when the stock market is surging. He scolded Delta Airlines, whose CEO Ed Bastian did not attend, for buying billions in planes from the European firm Airbus while Qatar Airways is buying its jets from Chicago-based Boeing Co.
And he repeatedly harped on Bastian’s absence, questioning how he could be a no-show after his airline — more than any other — had been fanning the flames of the fight.
“The president kept going back to it,” one person who attended the meeting told NBC News. “There was a lot of yelling.”
The meeting was a stark illustration of the president’s freewheeling decision-making style, particularly in areas like U.S. business where he is most confident in his own instincts.
It was also a steep blow to Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, who found himself on the losing end of a tug of war with national security adviser John Bolton, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and others in Trump’s White House.
This account draws on interviews with 10 individuals, including senior Trump administration officials, airline officials, congressional aides and others who attended or were briefed on the unusual July 18 meeting.
Those individuals, who spoke anonymously because the meeting was intended to be kept private, said nobody knew what the president would do when he sat the CEOs or their representatives from both sides of the dispute down in front of the Oval Office’s Resolute desk and asked them one by one to make their case.
For more than four years, the “Big Three” U.S. carriers — American, Delta and United Airlines — have been waging a bitter battle with Qatar Airways and two Emirati airlines over flights between the U.S. and the lucrative European market. The U.S. carriers argue that the Mideast airlines are heavily government-subsidized and are undercutting them by offering below-market fares on flights that never stop in the Middle East.
Most recently, they’ve turned their focus to Air Italy, which added new flights between Milan and the U.S. after Qatar Airways bought a 49 percent stake. The U.S. carriers say it’s a scheme to circumvent restrictions in the U.S.-Qatar “Open Skies” agreement on civil aviation.
Navarro, Trump’s hard-charging trade adviser known for his staunch protectionist views, has kept the issue alive in the White House after overseeing agreements last year to resolve previous grievances by the U.S. airlines, several administration officials said.
But as the Qataris and the U.S. airlines clashed anew this year over Air Italy, Navarro’s campaign thrust him into conflict with the rest of the White House. It drew the attention of Bolton, who enlisted Kudlow and other agencies to wrest back oversight of the issue from Navarro, people familiar with his efforts said.
[NBC News]
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats repeatedly found his warnings about the threat posed by Russia suppressed by the White House, The New York Times reported Sunday amid his resignation from the post.
According to The Times, Coats has often found himself at odds with President Donald Trump over Russia, a situation that worsened in recent months.
Coats saw Russia as an adversary to the US, The Times wrote, and pushed for closer cooperation with European countries to counter it, but the White House did not agree.
Several times Coats saw his language on the Kremlin’s activities watered down by the White House, according to The Times.
A secret report by Coats on Russia’s attempt to interfere in the 2018 midterms by spreading disinformation was reportedly altered by the White House. A public statement on Coats’ conclusions contained less critical language than the original, The Times said.
A former senior intelligence official told The Washington Post that Coats felt marginalized on national security issues by the president and had come to see his departure as inevitable.
According to reports, Trump had been discussing replacing Coats for months.
Trump has long faced scrutiny for his warm comments on Russia and his changing positions on whether Russia interfered to help him secure his 2016 election victory.
Robert Mueller concluded in the special counsel’s Russia investigation that there was insufficient evidence to charge the president or his aides with criminally conspiring with Russia in 2016.
Trump in a tweet Sunday announced that Coats would step down in mid-August and nominated Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas as his replacement.
In his tweet, he thanked Coats for his service but offered him no praise.
“The intelligence community is stronger than ever and increasingly well prepared to meet new challenges and opportunities,” Coats wrote in his resignation letter, citing the recent appointment of an official charged with countering foreign election interference.
During his time as director of national intelligence, Coats had publicly contradicted Trump on the president’s claims regarding Russia and North Korea.
In a statement released after Trump’s summit in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July 2018, Coats rebutted the president’s apparent acceptance of Putin’s claim that Russia had not interfered in the 2016 election.
At a national security conference in Colorado last year, Coats reacted with incredulity when told Trump had invited Putin to the White House at the summit.
“That’s going to be special,” he remarked.
And in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, Coats contradicted Trump’s claims that North Korea no longer posed a threat because of his summits with its leader, Kim Jong Un.
President Donald Trump and Fox & Friends celebrated together on Thursday morning in response to Robert Mueller’s less-than-stellar appearance before Congress.
Mueller drew headlines when he stated that his special counsel report showed how Trump welcomed Russian election interference in 2016, that the president was not exonerated on obstruction of justice, and that Trump could be charged with a crime once he’s out of office. However, the special counsel’s constant referrals to his written words, inability to answer certain questions, and shaky performance dashed expectations that he would breathe life into an impeachment groundswell.
As Fox & Friends recapped the hearings, Ainsley Earhardt said it was “clear he was not in charge of his investigation” and his testimony “changed nothing.” Brian Kilmeadefollowed up by remarking on the setbacks to the possibility of impeachment, and Steve Doocyremarked that Mueller “did not know what was in his own report.”
Trump was clearly watching this morning, because he quote-tweeted the trio’s 6 a.m. opening segment, during which Earhardt said, “Yesterday changed everything, it really did clear the President. He wins.”
The curvy couch continued to break down the “disaster” of a hearing and call it “a great day for the president,” Kilmeade especially tore into Mueller for punting on many of the questions that came his way. When he arrived at the obstruction of justice matter, he said “I think you could sum up the obstruction part of the Mueller report: Trump being Trump.”
“Even if you did not rob the bank, if they are going to investigate you for robbing the bank, you got to wonder why are they questioning everyone around me for something I didn’t do? What does Trump do? He fights you every step of the way…If you say something wrong, he will call you out, and that’s what this.”
[Mediaite]
The United States and Guatemala have reached a deal that has the potential to end most asylum seekers’ ability to seek protection at the US-Mexico border.
Under an agreement announced Friday afternoon, asylum seekers who travel through Guatemala on their way to the United States would be returned to Guatemala and forced to seek protection there. That would largely block Salvadorans and Hondurans from receiving asylum in the United States, as well as large numbers of asylum seekers from around the world who travel by land to the US border after flying to South America. Instead, only Mexicans and Guatemalans would be able to seek protection at the border.
The agreement would not apply to children who arrive at the border alone and would remain in effect for two years, according to a copy released by the Guatemalan government (in Spanish).
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said on a press call that he expects the deal, which is known as a safe third country agreement, to take effect in the next few weeks. Earlier this month, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court blocked President Jimmy Morales from unilaterally signing such an agreement. It is still not clear how Morales’ administrations plans to get around that.
Beyond that it is unclear how Guatemala—which has become the leading sending country of migrants to the United States under Trump—plans to provide refuge for the thousands of asylum seekers who could arrive from El Salvador, Honduras, and elsewhere. As the Washington Post‘s Mexico and Central America bureau chief, Kevin Sieff, pointed out on Twitter, Guatemala doesn’t exactly have much recent experience handling asylum claims.
The deal, if it goes into effect, would be one of Trump’s two most important efforts to undermine the asylum system. The other is the Remain in Mexico program, which is forcing thousands of asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are pending in US immigration courts. Combined, the two policies could block the vast majority of asylum seekers who come to the southern border from entering the United States. People who fly or travel by sea to the United States would still be eligible to apply for asylum. (The problem for asylum seekers, particularly those who aren’t wealthy, is that it is often impossible to get a visa to fly to the United States, which is why people turn to smugglers instead.)
McAleenan said that by requiring people to apply for asylum in Guatemala, the agreement would “increase the integrity of the [asylum] process, keep vulnerable families that are really economic migrants out of the hands of smugglers, and allow us to reach those with asylum claims more expeditiously.”
Morales was supposed to come to the White House on July 15 to sign a safe third country agreement, but the trip was canceled at the last minute in response to the Constitutional Court decision. Trump responded to the Guatemalan court decision this week by threatening to impose tariffs on Guatemala and ban Guatemalans from entering the United States.
Like Trump, Morales is a former television personality who ran for president in 2015 as a political outsider. Since then, Morales has worked aggressively to undermine a renowned UN-backed anti-corruption commission that has targeted members of his family. His administration also has gone out of its way to please Trump, moving its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem immediately after the United States did. The Trump administration has been largely silent about Morales’ efforts to undermine the rule of law in Guatemala.