Category: Ill-Tempered

Trump calls on Omar to resign over remarks condemned as anti-Semitic

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President Trump on Tuesday called on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to resign for comments on Israel that were criticized as anti-Semitic.

“I think she should either resign from Congress or she should certainly resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” Trump said of the freshman lawmaker.

Omar apologized on Monday for suggesting that U.S. support for a Jewish state is the result of money flowing from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an influential pro-Israel lobbying group.

The comments were quickly condemned by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders. But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told Roll Call that Omar would not be stripped of her committee assignments. 

The president said Omar’s comments are “deep seated in her heart” and called her apology “lame.”

Trump was similarly critical of Omar on Mondaynight but had stopped short of calling on the congresswoman to step down.

“I think she should be ashamed of herself,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.  

Asked at the time what an appropriate response would be for Omar, Trump said, “She knows what to say.”

Omar prompted criticism from members of both major parties on Sunday evening when she retweeted journalist Glenn Greenwald’s response to a story about House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) promising “action” toward the Minnesota lawmaker and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) over their alleged anti-Semitism.

She captioned that retweet with the message, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” referring to money.

Conservatives have touted GOP leaders’ decision last month to strip Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) of his committee assignments after he questioned why the term “white supremacist” is offensive, contrasting it to Democrats’ response to Omar.

But some Democrats have called Republicans’ punishment for King too little too late, pointing out that the Iowa lawmaker has made inflammatory comments about Hispanic immigrants for years.

[The Hill]

Trump: ‘Some of the Most Dishonest People in Media Are the So-Called Fact-Checkers’

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President Donald Trump used part of his Monday night rally in El Paso, TX to rail against a particular branch of the media: fact checkers.

As Trump slammed former president Barack Obama‘s “you can keep your doctor” promise from the Affordable Care Act, he accused fact-checkers of never calling out the falsity of that claim.

“Where are the fact-checkers? Some of the most dishonest people in media are the so-called ‘fact-checkers’…That didn’t turn out to be what he said.”

Trump’s remarks come after he got on Twitter earlier today and parroted Fox News opinion host Jesse Watters who said “the fact-checkers have become fake news.”

To put some perspective on Trump’s complaints, Politifact has figured that approximately 70 percent of Trump’s political statements are factually-challenged to varying degrees, plus Washington Post‘s fact-check finds that Trump has made 8,158 false or misleading claims throughout his presidency so far.

[Mediaite]

Trump Taunts Protesters at Rally: ‘Go Back Home to Mommy’

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President Donald Trump‘s rally in El Paso was repeatedly interrupted by protesters.

At one point, Trump was talking about passing Veterans Choice when the crowd started booing at a protester in the crowd.

“USA, USA, USA!” the crowd chanted as Trump looked on from the podium.

Then, Trump said this, taunting the protestor: “Where do these people come from? Where do they come from? They go back home to mommy. They get punished when they get home.”

At another point in the rally, another protester — the fourth according to journalist Brandon Waltons — caused another interruption, prompting Trump to ask if there was any place more fun to be than a Trump rally.

[Mediaite]

Trump Quotes Inane Media Criticism From Fox News Host Jesse Watters: ‘So True!’

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President Donald Trump quoted a mind-numbingly inane piece of media criticism from a Fox News host Monday morning in an attempt to undermine fact-checkers.

Jesse Watters, who hosts a Saturday night show on Fox News, kicked off last week’s iteration with a lazy generalization: “The media fact-checkers are lying to you.”

Watters’ dismissal of fact-checkers relied on reports that Trump’s recent false claims about violent crime in El Paso were false. Watters took issue with a specific headline from Vox, which he called a “distortion.”

“The fact-checkers have become fake news,” he declared confidently.

Trump parroted the remark on Twitter Monday, calling it “So True!”:

Fact checkers can slip up — we’ve chronicled bad fact-checking on this very site — but to dismiss the entire practice as “fake” is, of course, remarkably stupid. There’s no doubt why Watters is taking aim at fact-checkers, however, and why the president is parroting his attack. The Washington Post‘s running fact-check found that in his first two years in office, Trump made a mind-blowing 8,158 false or misleading claims. That’s an average of 5.9 PER DAY.

[Mediaite]

Trump again confuses climate with weather in tweet attacking Amy Klobuchar

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Donald Trump attacked Amy Klobuchar on Sunday, in a tweet that appeared to demonstrate a lack of understanding about climate change.

The Democratic senator had announced that she was running for the presidency earlier that day, in a speech delivered as snow fell around her in Minneapolis. 

“As your president, I will look you in the eye. I will tell you what I think. I will focus on getting things done. That’s what I’ve done my whole life,” she told a crowd of people gathered at a park along the Mississippi River.

The Minnesota senator added that on her first day as president she would have the US rejoin the Paris climate agreement, which Mr Trump withdrew the country from in 2017.

“Well, it happened again,” the president wrote on Twitter.

“Amy Klobuchar announced that she is running for President, talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures.”

“Bad timing. By the end of her speech she looked like a Snowman(woman)!”

Conflating weather and climate change is a common error and Nasa has a webpage dedicated to distingushing the two.

“The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time,” it states.

“Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere ‘behaves’ over relatively long periods of time.”

Mr Trump has a long history of spreading incorrect information about climate change, despite the wealth of information available.

His tweet came just three weeks after another one in which he discussed forecasts of heavy snow.

“Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now,” the 72-year-old said. 

Mr Trump also once claimed that climate change was a Chinese hoax, invented to hurt US exports.

Ms Klobuchar responded to his mockery on Twitter by saying that science supported her policies.

“Science is on my side,” she wrote, addressing the president. 

[The Independent]

Trump says Democrats ‘cannot legitimately win’ 2020 presidential election

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Donald Trump has claimed the Democratic Party “cannot legitimately win” the 2020 presidential election, in an angry tweet condemning congressional oversight of his administration.

“The Democrats in Congress yesterday were vicious and totally showed their cards for everyone to see,” Mr Trump tweeted on Saturday morning.

“When the Republicans had the Majority they never acted with such hatred and scorn! The Dems are trying to win an election in 2020 that they know they cannot legitimately win!”

The US president’s comment, in response to a grilling of his acting attorney general by the House judiciary committee, echoed similar ones he made in 2016 when he threatened to not accept the results of the “rigged” presidential election should he have lost.

Ned Price, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama, accused Mr Trump of launching an early bid to sow doubts about the legitimacy of next year’s vote.

“The first two sentences are laughable. The third is frightening—especially the use of the adverb “legitimately”, he tweeted.

“He’s setting the stage, months in advance, to be able to say the 2020 election was stolen. It’s fair to start asking whether Trump would cede power peacefully.”

Prominent lawyer and Trump critic David Leopold accused the president of attacking “the legitimacy of the 2020 election which he increasingly expects to lose”.

“That’s what thugs in power do,” he added.

Sam Vinograd, a former director on the National Security Council, said Mr Trump was aligning with Russia in “undermining confidence” in American democracy.

Mr Trump went on to claim on Twitter, without providing evidence, that America would be in recession if he had lost the election to his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

“We have a great economy DESPITE the Obama Administration and all of its job killing Regulations and Roadblocks,” he wrote. “If that thinking prevailed in the 2016 Election, the U.S. would be in a Depression right now! We were heading down, and don’t let the Democrats sound bites fool you!”

The president’s outburst came the day after Matthew Whitaker, the acting attorney general, was repeatedly pressed by judiciary committee members on his relationship with the White House and his views on Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation.

Mr Whitaker, an appointee of Mr Trump, at one point caused the committee and audience members to gasp in disbelief when he avoided answering a question from the chairman by telling him his time had run out.

“Mr Chairman, I see that your five minutes is up,” he said in response to Jerrold Nadler.

The heated exchange arrived after the committee chairman asked Mr Whitaker whether he had “ever been asked to approve any request or action to be taken by the special counsel”.

[Independent]

Trump: Adam Schiff is a ‘Political Hack’ with ‘No Basis’ In Sharing House Intel Transcripts With Mueller

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President Donald Trump blasted Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) during a cabinet room press spray, calling the Californian Democrat a “political hack.”

On Wednesday morning Schiff announced plans to share more than 50 transcripts of committee interviews with the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller as he continues to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts to influence the general election of 2016.

Schiff told reporters what he plans to share, which “includes transcripts that the special counsel and Justice Department have not had access to and a great many that they have, but have not been allowed to use for particular purposes including in prosecutions for false statements, obstruction, or perjury or any other like offense.”

When Trump was asked to comment on this recent development news that the House Intelligence Committee, of which Schiff is chair, voted on Wednesday to provide transcripts from dozens of witness interviews to the office of the Special Counsel,  the commander in chief replied “He has no basis to do that, he’s just a political hack who’s trying to build a name for himself.”

Trump continued “no other politician has to go through that…it’s called presidential harassment.”

Lawmakers approved of the release in a bipartisan voice vote in a closed-door meeting according to Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX.)

[Mediaite]

‘KEEP OUT!’: Trump tells non-Americans to stay out of the country in border tweet

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President Donald Trump’s latest tweet about the border outright told all foreigners to “KEEP OUT!”

“With Caravans marching through Mexico and toward our Country, Republicans must be prepared to do whatever is necessary for STRONG Border Security. Dems do nothing. If there is no Wall, there is no Security. Human Trafficking, Drugs and Criminals of all dimensions – KEEP OUT!” He wrote in a corrected tweet after misspelling “dimensions.”

[Raw Story]

Trump says his top intel chiefs groveled before him after contradicting him during Senate testimony

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In a major interview with the New York Times, President Donald Trump claimed that both CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats groveled before him after he chewed them out for contradicting him during Senate testimony.

While delivering an intelligence briefing to the Senate, Coats said that North Korea had not moved to dismantle its nuclear program, that ISIS had not been defeated, and that Russia was likely to try interfering with American elections again in 2020 — all in direct contradiction to statements made by Trump.

However, Trump claims that both Haspel and Coats swore they didn’t contradict him and tried to blame the media for any confusion.

“I said, ‘What is that all about? Second of all, third of all, you know how well we’re doing with North Korea, what’s that?’” Trump said. “They said, ‘Sir, our testimony was totally mischaracterized.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ And when you read their testimony and you read their statements, it was mischaracterized by the media.”

Reporter Maggie Haberman then interrupted to ask Trump how the media had mischaracterized their testimony.

“It was really very different when I read it,” Trump said of the testimony transcripts. “Because I came in here saying what is this? You mean you’re — because one of the things they said very strongly, according to, was that Iran is, essentially, a wonderful place. And I said, ‘It’s not a wonderful place, it’s a bad place, and they’re doing bad things.’ And they said, ‘We agree.’ I said, ‘What do you mean you agree. You can’t agree –‘ And they said the testimony was totally mischaracterized.”

[Raw Story]

Trump tweets ex-Starbucks CEO Schultz lacks ‘guts’ to run for president

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President Donald Trump wrote online on Monday that former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz “doesn’t have the ‘guts’ to be president,” lashing out at the coffee mogul who said over the weekend that he is weighing an independent 2020 bid for the White House.

“Howard Schultz doesn’t have the ‘guts’ to run for President! Watched him on @60Minutes last night and I agree with him that he is not the ‘smartest person.’ Besides, America already has that! I only hope that Starbucks is still paying me their rent in Trump Tower!” the president wrote on Twitter Monday morning.

During a pre-taped interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, Schultz told journalist Scott Pelley he was “seriously thinking of running for president.” Though he characterized himself as “a lifelong Democrat,” Schultz said he would run as a “centrist independent outside of the two-party system,” criticizing both Democrats and Republicans for failure to meet the needs of the American people.

Many, including former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, a Democrat who announced his own 2020 campaign on Jan. 12, warned that an independent candidate like Schultz could boost Trump’s reelection chances by siphoning voters away from a Democratic candidate.

In recent decades, candidates running independent campaigns for president have caused a stir, but never come close to winning. Billionaire Ross Perot placed third in 1992 with 19 percent of the vote, enough that many have credited him with drawing support from then-incumbent President George H.W. Bush, allowing President Bill Clinton to unseat him.

In 2000, Consumer advocate Ralph Nader ran as the Green Party’s presidential candidate, pulling enough votes from Democrat Al Gore to help President George W. Bush secure the presidency in that year’s razor-thin election.

[Politico]

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