Category: Bullying

Donald Trump’s rhetorical style is straight out of middle school. He’s like an eighth-grade girl.

Trump Takes a Jab at the Emmys After Threatening to ‘Destroy North Korea’ in First UN Speech

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Two days after celebrities threw verbal jabs at President Donald Trump during the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards, Trump fired back at his critics with a tweet.

“I was saddened to see how bad the ratings were on the Emmys last night – the worst ever,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday evening.

“Smartest people of them all are the “DEPLORABLES,” Trump said, referencing a term Hillary Clinton used to describe some of Trump’s supporters during the contentious 2016 election.

Though the 2017 Emmys ratings were not “the worst ever” as Trump described, they averaged 11.4 million viewers, about 100,000 more than in 2016 – the show’s all-time low, according to Variety.

During the awards Sunday night, Trump bore the brunt of several jokes made by its host, comedian Stephen Colbert and several other celebrities who won awards that night.

“Unlike the presidency, Emmys go to the winner of the popular vote,” Colbert joked at one point, referring to the results of the US presidential election.

Trump’s comments about the Emmys came just hours after he delivered a fiery speech before the United Nations General Assembly in New York, in which he threatened the US could “totally destroy North Korea” if its nuclear aggressions continue.

[Business Insider]

Reality

Let’s also remember that Donald Trump once said during a debate the Emmys were “rigged” because he never won one for Celebrity Apprentice.

Also he tweeted that the Emmys were last night, but his tweet was on a Tuesday and the Emmys aired on Sunday.

Trump Retweets GIF of Him Hitting Clinton With Golf Ball

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President Donald Trump retweeted an edited video Sunday morning that showed him swinging a golf club and appearing to hit his former presidential campaign rival Hillary Clinton with a golf ball.

The animated GIF image Trump retweeted spliced together footage of Trump taking a swing on a golf course with footage of Clinton tripping and falling as she boarded a plane in 2011 as secretary of state. The footage is edited to make it appear as though Clinton is hit in the back with a golf ball before her fall.

The tweet revealed a President still reverting to his old social media habits, namely, those likely to earn him quick criticism, less than two months after retired Gen. John Kelly took over as White House chief of staff.

While Kelly has not sought to stop Trump from tweeting, he has encouraged the President to allow him to vet the tweets before posting them — a request Trump has sometimes acquiesced to.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday about the President’s tweet and whether Kelly was aware of it.

The tweet, which came as Trump prepares to head to New York for a critical round of powerhouse diplomacy with world leaders at the United Nations, followed a week during which Clinton reemerged in the spotlight as she promoted her new book, “What Happened,” about the 2016 campaign, reviving her fiercest criticisms of Trump and his supporters and reigniting the debate about her stunning, unanticipated loss.

Trump slammed Clinton over her new book earlier this week too, tweeting that she “blames everybody (and every thing) but herself for her election loss.”

Trump’s Sunday morning Twitter post was one of more than a half-dozen supporters’ tweets the President retweeted Sunday before 8:30 a.m.

Those other tweets included an image predicting Trump would win every state for reelection in 2020, another showing Trump hauling US companies that have outsourced manufacturing abroad and a tweet claiming that “only true Americans can see that president Trump is making America great.”

[CNN]

Trump Mocks ‘Rocket Man’ Kim Jong-Un as Advisers Issue Warnings

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Top advisers to Donald Trump on Sunday warned North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programs and stop threatening America and its allies, or face destruction.

They did so after Trump tweeted about a phone call to South Korean president Moon Jae-in, and appeared to mock Kim Jong-un.

“I spoke with President Moon of South Korea last night,” the US president wrote. “Asked him how Rocket Man is doing. Long gas lines forming in North Korea. Too bad!”

The latest bellicose language from Washington came just days after North Korea fired another ballistic missile, which overflew Japan, and Kim boasted that such efforts would continue as his country neared its goal of “equilibrium” in military force with the US.

Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the United Nations, said North Korea was starting to “feel the pinch” of being “economically strangled” as recent sanctions have caused the country to be “cut off from the world”. But, she said, diplomatic and other non-military options were running out.

“If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behavior, if the United States has to defend itself or defend its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed,” the former South Carolina governor told CNN’s State of the Union. “We all know that and none of us want that. None of us want war. But … something is going to have to be done.”

North Korea will be high on the agenda at the UN general assembly in New York this week, after the UN security council voted unanimously for further sanctions. Asked about Trump’s description of such measures as merely “small steps” towards a solution of the North Korea problem, Haley said: “Everybody in the international community sees what a big deal it is.”

CNN host Dana Bash asked if Trump’s now infamous pledge to respond to any action against the US mainland or its territories with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” was an empty threat. She said it was not and that responsibility for any stepping up of action against North Korea now lay with the Pentagon and defense secretary James Mattis.

“We are trying to use every diplomatic possibility … [but] we have pretty much exhausted all the things we can do at the security council at this point,” Haley said. “I’m perfectly happy kicking this over to General Mattis now, because he has plenty of military options. We wanted to go through all the diplomatic options to get their attention first and if that doesn’t work, General Mattis will take care of it.”

National security adviser HR McMaster told ABC’s This Week Kim Jong-un would “have to give up his nuclear weapons because the president has said he’s not going to tolerate this regime threatening the United States and our citizens with a nuclear weapon”.

Asked if that meant Trump would launch a military strike in the event that North Korea did not comply, as it has shown no sign of doing, McMaster said: “He’s been very clear about that, that all options are on the table.”

The only concession was given by secretary of state Rex Tillerson, who said on CBS’s Face the Nation that the US still “seeks a peaceful solution” to the North Korean crisis. Pressure on the regime was “designed to bring North Korea to the table for productive and constructive dialogue”, he said.

But Tillerson also warned that “we do not have much time left” and said that if efforts to talk were to fail: “Our military option is the only one left.”

“We have tried a couple of times to signal to them that we are ready if they are ready [to talk], but they only thing they do is fire more missiles,” Tillerson said.

Trump is making his first appearance at the UN general assembly, giving a speech on Tuesday morning. He has called the world body weak, incompetent, bad for democracy and no friend of the US.

Haley said Trump would arrive on a “new day” at a UN more committed to action and reform under a new secretary general, António Guterres.

[The Guardian]

 

 

Trump Attacks ESPN After Anchor Calls Him a White Supremacist

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President Trump has a new target in the media — ESPN.

The president said on Twitter on Friday morning that ESPN “is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers. Apologize for untruth.”

He was apparently referring to ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, who in a recent tweet said that “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.”

Hill’s assertion caused an uproar, particularly in conservative media circles, where ESPN’s political bent has been a point of contention for years.

Wall Street analysts and ESPN executives generally agree that ESPN’s subscriber losses are primarily a result of cost-conscious consumers and a changing business model.

But the president, through his tweet on Friday, sided with the conservative commentators who say it’s really liberal bias that is poisoning ESPN and dragging down the business.

His call for an apology is also noteworthy. Hill addressed the controversy earlier this week, but pointedly did not apologize for her “white supremacist” statement. She only expressed regret for painting ESPN in an unfair light.

ESPN said in a followup statement that the network accepted her apology.

The network clearly wants to move on — but Trump might make that more difficult.

Neither Hill nor ESPN immediately responded to the president’s Friday morning tweet, and ESPN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hill, an African American woman, has been an outspoken critic of Trump all year long. The current controversy erupted on Monday night she called him a “bigot,” a “threat” and a “white supremacist” on Twitter.

The next day, as people who were outraged by the tweets demanded action from ESPN, the network said that Hill’s tweets “do not represent the position of ESPN.”

“We have addressed this with Jemele and she recognizes her actions were inappropriate,” the network said.

When White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked about it on Wednesday, she said Hill’s criticism of the president should be considered a “fireable offense by ESPN.”

The next day, on Fox News, Sanders reiterated this: “I think it was highly inappropriate, and I think ESPN should take actions. But I’ll leave that up to them to decide, and I’ll stay focused on my day job.”

ESPN had 90 million subscribers as of September 2016, the most recent numbers it has reported. That’s down 2 million from a year earlier and down from a high of 100 million in 2010.

On Fox, it’s a popular talking point that those subscriber losses are due to rampant liberal bias. There’s little evidence to support that theory.

As the monthly cable bundle has become more and more expensive, and streaming has become more popular, some homes have dropped the big bundles that include ESPN, the priciest channel on cable. Others have discontinued cable altogether and turned to streaming services.

The vast majority of U.S. homes continue to pay for cable, including ESPN. But the cutbacks have put pressure on ESPN and other sports networks.

To address this, ESPN is planning to roll out a direct-to-consumer streaming service next year.

[CNN]

White House: ESPN anchor that called Trump racist should be fired

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An ESPN anchor who called President Trump a white supremacist should be fired, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday.

“That is one of the more outrageous comments that anybody could make and certainly is something that is a fireable offense by ESPN,” Sanders said.

ESPN has reprimanded Jemele Hill, an African-American woman who co-hosts a show called “SC6 with Michael and Jemele,” for a string of tweets sent out over the weekend calling Trump and his supporters white supremacists.

An ESPN anchor who called President Trump a white supremacist should be fired, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday.

“That is one of the more outrageous comments that anybody could make and certainly is something that is a fireable offense by ESPN,” Sanders said.

ESPN has reprimanded Jemele Hill, an African-American woman who co-hosts a show called “SC6 with Michael and Jemele,” for a string of tweets sent out over the weekend calling Trump and his supporters white supremacists.

In a statement, ESPN sought to distance itself from Smith’s remarks.

“The comments on Twitter from Jemele Hill regarding the president do not represent the position of ESPN,” the network said. “We have addressed this with Jemele and she recognizes her actions were inappropriate.”

But many on the right are fuming, believing that it is the latest in a string of incidents that reveal ESPN’s liberal bias.

Sanders on Tuesday defended Trump, saying that he had met recently with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is black, and other “highly respected leaders in the African-American community” and that he is “committed to working with them to bring the country together.”

“That’s where we need to be focused, not on outrageous statements like this one,” Sanders said.

[The Hill]

Reality

You know who else thinks Donald Trump is a white supremacist? Congress. Who a few days after passed a resolution forcing Trump to officially denounce white supremacy.

In any event, Sarah Huckabee Sanders at best was highly inappropriate to user her federal position to influence private employment decisions, and at worse she may have broken the law.

This law essentially states certain government employees — including the president, vice president and “any other executive branch employee” — are prohibited from influencing the employment decisions or practices of a private entity (such as ESPN) “solely on the basis of partisan political affiliation.”

Breaking this law can lead to a fine or imprisonment up to 15 years — possibly both — and could lead to disqualification from “holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”

 

Trump Calls Democrats a Slur in Proclamation Congratulating Himself For ‘Bipartisan Outreach’

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President Donald Trump’s White House used what Democrats consider a slur for the party in a proclamation of “bipartisan” cooperation on Wednesday.

A statement released by the White House titled “Readout of President Donald J. Trump’s Bipartisan Dinner with Senators” referred to the GOP’s opposition as “Democrat Senators.”

However, the party’s official title is The Democratic Party, but Republicans often slur Democrats by truncating the last two letters.

“President Donald J. Trump met with Republican and Democrat Senators to discuss advancing the Administration’s legislative priorities,” the statement said. “The President asked the bipartisan group of Senators to help deliver tax cuts for American families, which is essential to economic growth and prosperity.”

“Through bipartisan outreach efforts like this, President Trump is demonstrating his commitment to fulfilling his promises,” the statement added. “This meeting was highly productive, and will spur constructive discussion moving forward.”

Read the entire statement below.

[Raw Story]

Donald Trump’s EPA Is Now Attacking Journalists

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On Saturday, Associated Press journalists Jason Dearen and Michael Biesecker reported at least five toxic, Houston-area Superfund sites in the path of Hurricane Harvey had been deluged with floodwater, potentially distributing the assorted nasty things contained within across a much larger geographical area. The AP report noted while its reporters were able to access the sites via boat, the Environmental Protection Agency was not on scene, and did not provide a timeline for when its staff would be able to visit them.

Now the EPA, which is under the control of Donald Trump appointee and longtime EPA hater Scott Pruitt, has fired back with one of the administration’s favorite tactics: smearing the messenger. In an extraordinary statement that appeared on the agency’s website on Sunday, the EPA called the AP report “misleading” and attacked Biesecker’s “audacity” and credibility.

“Here’s the truth: through aerial imaging, EPA has already conducted initial assessments at 41 Superfund sites—28 of those sites show no damage, and 13 have experienced flooding,” the EPA wrote.

Notably, the EPA tried to bury that its “initial assessment” was conducted with “aerial images,” not actual on-site assessments, and that the agency had failed to visit at least 11 possibly storm-damaged Superfund sites as of Saturday. That is completely in line with the original AP report.

“Administrator Pruitt already visited Southeast Texas and is in constant contact with local, state and county officials,” the statement continued. “And EPA, has a team of experts imbedded with other local, state and federal authorities, on the ground responding to Harvey – none of which Biesecker included in his story.”

“Unfortunately, the Associated Press’ Michael Biesecker has a history of not letting the facts get in the way of his story,” the EPA continued. “Earlier this summer, he made-up a meeting that Administrator Pruitt had, and then deliberately discarded information that refuted his inaccurate story—ultimately prompting a nation-wide correction. Additionally, the Oklahoman took him to task for sensationalized reporting.”

(Biesecker did not make up the story, which is that Pruitt met with Dow CEO Andrew Liveris before deciding not to ban Dow’s chlorpyrifos pesticide, but instead issued a correction regarding the length of said meeting.)

In a followup statement, EPA Associate Administrator Liz Bowman claimed the AP was “once again” attempting to “mislead Americans” by “cherry-picking facts,” and slammed the report as “yellow journalism.” The statement also links to far-right website Breitbart, one of the president’s favorite websites.

Since the EPA did not actually contest any of the facts in the AP article, this looks an awful lot like petty retaliation against journalists for having the temerity to report on things like the EPA’s response to an environmental catastrophe—or any number of other things, like Pruitt’s extremely sketchy ties to the climate change denial movement, war on environmental science or plans to eliminate huge numbers of EPA staff.

Going after reporters might please the big, stupid and extremely petty man in the Oval Office. But that’s precisely because responding to bad publicity by doubling down and smearing critics is the way a child would handle things. Never mind the toxic waste potentially spread all around Houston—a bunch of Trump appointees’ egos are the real victims here.

[Gizmodo]

Trump Lawyer to Reporter: ‘Are You on Drugs?’

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White House special counsel Ty Cobb exchanged a lengthy series of emails with a reporter this weekend in which he called the press “rabid” and asked of the reporter, “Are you on drugs?”

Business Insider reported the exchange between Cobb, who represents President Trump in the ongoing Russia election meddling investigation, and the outlet’s reporter Natasha Bertrand.

Cobb reportedly emailed the publication to complain about a story written about White House counsel Don McGahn and Trump. The story reported an early draft of a letter detailing Trump’s reasoning for firing FBI Director James Comey. The letter was recently provided to special counsel Robert Mueller.

Cobb ripped the story, calling it “exaggerated and/or fictionalized” in a lengthy email.

“Rabid though the press may be on the issue, the original memorandum of the president’s thoughts in letter form, the related Department of Justice analysis (which was first initiated before the President independently memorialized his thoughts), the subsequent conclusions of the Department of Justice, and the ultimate summary of each in the final termination letter are quite consistent and focus on the former director’s usurpation of powers and other erratic and inexplicable conduct,” Cobb wrote, according to Business Insider.

Bertrand then responded to Cobb, asking why Trump didn’t send the original letter draft to Comey.

“Are you on drugs? Have you read anything else on this???” Cobb replied.

The original draft of the letter, written by Trump and adviser Stephen Miller, reportedly complained that Comey wouldn’t publicly say that Trump was not personally under investigation in the ongoing Russia probe.

Trump fired Comey in May with a shorter letter that cited the recommendations of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, that Comey be terminated over his handling of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of State.

Cobb was named as White House special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation in July.

[The Hill]

Eric Trump predicts CNN won’t cover Trump Harvey donation hours after network report

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President Trump’s son Eric Trump tweeted on Thursday that CNN wouldn’t report on his father’s pledge to donate $1 million to Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.

“So proud!!! Let’s see if @CNN or the #MSM acknowledges this incredible generosity. My guess: they won’t… “  Eric Trump tweeted with a link to a Fox News story.

Three hours earlier, CNN tweeted its coverage of Trump’s pledge, which was announced during Thursday’s White House press briefing.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Trump’s pledge on Thursday. Trump has yet to finalize what group the money will go to.

“He’s actually asked that I check with the folks in this room since you are very good at research and have been doing a lot of reporting into the groups and organizations that have the best and most effective in helping and providing aid and he would love some suggestions from the folks here and I would be happy to take them,” Sanders said.

Sanders also said she did not know if the donation would come from Trump himself or the Trump Foundation.

“I know that the president, he said he was personally going to give, I don’t know the legal part of exactly that but he said his personal money so I would assume that comes directly from him,” she said.

[The Hill]

Reality

We should be skeptical of Trump’s generosity. For years Trump used his charity as a scheme funneling other people’s money into his own pockets, and during the campaign claimed for four months that he donated one million dollars to veterans charities, but lied about it the entire time, only handing the money over once he was caught.

Trump: I Pass a Lot of Bills. Also, the Democrats Won’t Let Me Pass Bills.

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See if you can spot the contradiction in these two tweets President Trump posted Friday morning.

Eight Democrats control the Senate, he warns, meaning that the Republican majority must end the filibuster to pass legislation.

Eleven minutes later, a different story: In seven months, Trump’s seen unprecedented success, including … passing a lot of legislation.

This is not the first time Trump’s tried to have it both ways on legislation.

On July 11, this tweet:

And on July 17: “We’ve signed more bills — and I’m talking about through the legislature — than any president, ever,” he said.

Those can’t both be true, by definition. You can’t pass “more bills … than any president ever” if there are “no votes” on the bills.

This is in part a byproduct of one of Trump’s best-known personality traits, his tendency toward hyperbole. Nothing that’s good is anything less than great and beautiful in Trump’s eyes; nothing that’s bad is anything more than terrible or the worst. There’s no average day in the Trump presidency, just days jostling each other at the very top and very bottom of the spectrum. (Or, really, just at the very top.) And so it is not the case that Trump is in the middle of the pack in terms of legislation passed, he’s the best.

It’s also a byproduct of another of Trump’s well-known characteristics: Nothing is his fault. He did once tell the nation that he alone could fix what was broken in Washington, that what was needed was a dealmaker, who could come in, crack skulls and get a negotiated resolution. But making deals in Congress isn’t like making deals in Trump Tower. There are no one-on-one negotiations, just 52-on-1 negotiations with the Republican caucus in the Senate, with 52 people who represent diverging constituencies and interests. Whether Trump’s dealmaking skills weren’t overhyped, it’s clear that he’s met his match in Congress.

Remember: The most spectacular failure by the Republicans so far this year was on the health-care bill that only needed 50 votes. Trump’s signed no major legislation into law, and the one bill that would have met that definition failed independently of any need to overhaul the filibuster.

That’s not the story that Trump wants to tell. He wants to blame the failure on the Democrats — and, secondarily, on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who’s earned his own disapproving tweets from Trump in recent weeks. Whatever happened that was bad, Trump would like us to know, it certainly wasn’t the fault of Donald J. Trump.

So we end up with weird moments like Friday morning, a president who is both bragging about his unprecedented success and lamenting the unprecedented obstruction that’s preventing him from doing his job.

As Cornell Law professor Josh Chafetz noted on Twitter, neither of those claims is true. He’s signed more bills than some presidents and less than others. The filibuster makes consensus-building trickier, but rifts within his own party in both the House and the Senate are the bigger initial stumbling block.

But, again, most of America by now takes this in stride. We know Trump exaggerates and lies and misrepresents; we know that his hyperbole is just that. We know that the president wants to be hailed as the best and to have all of his failures blamed on someone else. For better or worse, we’ve come to terms with it.

Just as we’ve come to terms with Trump’s now-expected early morning tweets containing internal contradictions. One more day in the world of 2017.

[Washington Post]

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