White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer got into a heated debate with reporters on Tuesday when they confronted him with President Donald Trump’s accusations about them producing “fake news.”
When asked by a reporter to list an example of “fake news,” Spicer pointed to one tweet by a BBC reporter that incorrectly claimed that Trump was not wearing a translation earpiece while talking with foreign leaders over the weekend.
When the BBC reporter realized his mistake, he issued a public correction less than two hours later, although this wasn’t enough to stop Spicer from chastising him regardless.
“On Friday, the president was having a great discussion at the G7 and someone from the BBC, and ultimately an incoming reporter for the New York Times retweeted that the president was being rude by disrespecting the Italian prime minister,” Spicer complained. “When in fact, you all in all of the meetings watched the president with that one earpiece that’s been used by all the other presidents… That’s just fake!”
Reporters in the room pushed back, however, by noting that the one reporter’s false tweet did not generate any stories at major newspapers and was quickly corrected.
“I was asked to give an example, and I did it,” a testy Spicer shot back.
When another reporter again pointed out that one false tweet from a BBC reporter didn’t drive news coverage for the president’s trip, Spicer chided them for saying the tweet wasn’t a big deal.
“Well, thank you, I appreciate it, you get to decide what is big and what is not,” Spicer said sarcastically. “A lot of things have been pushed out based on unnamed unaccountable sources that is very troubling.”
President Trump on Saturday claimed that money was “beginning to pour in” to NATO, just two days after he gave a speech scolding allies for not paying their fair share at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
“Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in- NATO will be much stronger,” Trump tweeted Saturday.
Trump’s wording misrepresents how NATO is organized by suggesting that nations pay the alliance; each nation funds its own defense spending under the NATO umbrella. There is not a specific fund money would be pouring into.
Trump has frequently assailed the treaty organization as “unfair” to the U.S., arguing that other member states have long failed to uphold their defense spending commitments. Only five NATO countries — the U.S., Greece, Estonia, the U.K. and Poland — have met the treaty’s agreement that countries spend at least 2 percent of their annual GDP on defense by 2024.
Trump reiterated that sentiment while speaking to NATO allies this week, saying the members “must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations.”
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said in an interview Wednesday that having “the wrong mindset” contributes to poverty.
“I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind,” the retired neurosurgeon said during an interview with SiriusXM Radio released on Wednesday evening. “You take somebody that has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there. And you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you could give them everything in the world, they’ll work their way right back down to the bottom.”
The former 2016 presidential candidate, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and confirmed to his Cabinet post in March, argued parents can help prevent their kids from developing the “wrong mindset.”
“A lot of it has to do with what we teach children,” he said. “You have to instill into that child the mindset of a winner.”
He went to say that “there’s also a poverty of spirit. You develop a certain mindset.”
Carson said the government can provide help to those in need.
“I think the majority of people don’t have that defeatist attitude, but they sometimes just don’t see the way, and that’s where government can come in and be very helpful,” he added. “It can provide the ladder of opportunity, it can provide the mechanism that will demonstrate to them what can be done.”
President Trump’s budget proposal includes deep cuts to education but funds a new push for school choice.
When pressed by representatives at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing on the budget, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos declined to say if, when or how the federal government would step in to make sure that private schools receiving public dollars would not discriminate against students.
She repeatedly said that decisions would be left to school districts and parents.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) stressed that Milwaukee’s school voucher program has resulted in years of failure. When he pressed DeVos on whether the federal government would hold recipients of public money accountable, DeVos punted.
“Wisconsin and all of the states in the country are putting their ESSA plans together,” said DeVos, referring to the Every Student Succeeds Act, a school accountability law. “They are going to decide what kind of flexibility … they’re allowed.”
“Will you have accountability standards?” Pocan asked.
“There are accountability standards,” DeVos said. “That is part of the ESSA legislation.”
That’s not true. ESSA’s regulations state that the law’s accountability rules do not apply to private schools.
@Joy_Resmovits No. As stated by ED in its NPRM for ESSA regs: ESSA's accountability reqs do NOT apply to private schools, only public schools. pic.twitter.com/V5f4apCbER
Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) asked DeVos about a Christian school in Indiana that gets state dollars through a voucher program but explicitly states that gay students may be denied admission. “If Indiana applies for funding, will you stand up and say that this school is open to all students?” Clark asked.
DeVos said states make the rules.
“That’s a no,” Clark said. Then she asked what if a school doesn’t accept black students.
“Our [civil rights] and Title IX protections are broadly protective, but when our parents make choices,” DeVos started.
“This isn’t about parents making choices,” Clark interrupted. “This is about the use of federal dollars.”
After a few more rounds like this, DeVos said that her “bottom line” is that “we believe that parents are best equipped to make decisions for their schooling.”
Clark said she was shocked by this response.
DeVos’ staff later came to her defense, saying that the line of questioning in the hearing concerned a “theoretical voucher program” and indicated a “misunderstanding” about the federal government’s role in education.
“When States design programs, and when schools implement them, it is incumbent on them to adhere to Federal law,” DeVos’ press secretary Liz Hill said in an email. “The Department of Education can and will intervene when Federal law is broken.”
President Trump on Monday landed in Israel and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has referred to Trump as a “true friend” of Israel.
Trump’s friendship with the Jewish state is apparently so grounded, so pure, that he would never take its name in vain — or, say, mention it to Russian officials while disclosing classified intelligence that Israel had gathered. He interrupted his otherwise successful photo opportunity with Netanyahu to say so:
Trump just said he never mentioned Israel in his meeting w/ Russians.
Trump had never been accused of revealing Israel by name as the source of the sensitive information; in fact, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster took to the White House lectern last week to defend Trump’s disclosure by saying the president “wasn’t even aware of where that information came from.” Israeli officials had also declined to confirm that Israel had gathered the information Trump discussed with the Russians.
Rather, Trump was under fire for sharing the intelligence information in the first place — which, even if he did blab, he definitely didn’t say the information was from Israel, who knows where it came from, and he decided to defend himself against that claim while standing next to the country’s prime minister for some random and unrelated reason.
On Thursday, The Economist released a lightly edited transcript of the interview, where Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn were also present.
While talking about his tax reform plan, Trump used the phrase “priming the pump” and claimed that he came up with it “a couple of days ago.” Except that the phrase dates back to the early 19th century, according to, you know, the dictionary.
Trump asked the editors from The Economist if they had had heard of the expression “prime the pump” and whether they understood it.
The Economist editors repeatedly assured him they had heard of it and even told him that the phrase was “very Keynesian.”
Trump asked again, “Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just… came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good.”
But it turns out the only way Trump came up with this phrase a couple days ago is if he is a time traveler.
Merriam-Webster — which has been known to troll the president frequently — explained that “pump priming” has been used to refer to government investment expenditures since at least 1933.
'Pump priming' has been used to refer to government investment expenditures since at least 1933. https://t.co/VfkGwwzZRC
Last night, President Trump spoke with Lester Holt in an interview for NBC News. It’s truly a jaw-dropping conversation for a number of reasons, but there’s one important lie that everyone seems to have missed. Trump said that he didn’t know Michael Flynn in 2015. This simply isn’t true.
Lester Holt: Did you know that [Flynn] had received payments from the Russian government, that he had received payments from the Turkish government?
Donald Trump: No, but Obama perhaps knew, because he had clearance from the Obama administration, and this is something they never want to report. He had clearance from the Obama administration—the highest clearance you can have. And I think it’s a very unfair thing that the media doesn’t talk about that. You know, you’re talking about 2015. I don’t know that I knew him in 2015.
Putting aside for a minute the fact that Obama fired Flynn and that Obama even advised Trump not to hire him, it’s important to recognize that Trump is lying about not knowing Flynn in 2015.
In fact, Donald Trump first met with Michael Flynn in August of 2015, just two months after Trump announced he’d be running for president. But you don’t have to take my word for it. We know Trump met with Flynn in August of 2015 because Flynn told us.
From the February 27, 2017 issue of the New Yorker:
In August, 2015, Flynn went to New York to meet Trump for the first time. They were scheduled to talk for thirty minutes; the conversation lasted ninety. Flynn was deeply impressed. “I knew he was going to be the President of the United States,” he told me.
Got all that? Trump said in the interview last night that he didn’t think he knew Flynn in 2015. But he definitely did. Not only that, but by early 2016, Trump was being advised by Flynn on foreign policy matters during the campaign.
You really have to watch the entire interview from last night. It’s so bizarre, not least because Trump explained that he was going to fire FBI Director James Comey regardless of any recommendation made by the Justice Department. That directly contradicts two days of claims by his communications team.
Not to mention the fact that Trump claims Comey asked for the two of them to have dinner, a meeting at which Trump asked if he was under investigation by the FBI. Trump says that Comey assured him that he was not. President Trump also claims that Comey told him over the phone on two other occasions that he wasn’t under investigation.
Needless to say, if Trump’s story is true, it’s all highly illegal and unethical for a sitting president to ask the head of the FBI if he’s under investigation. There’s no way to explain this one away.
If Trump survives the fallout from this week—between firing the man who was leading the investigation against him to the poor optics of meeting with Russian officials the very next day—it’s safe to say that he’s going to serve his full term as president.
It doesn’t get much worse than this for Trump. But he seems to be lying his way through it with little resistance from the only people who can do anything about it: Congressional Republicans.
Trump claims the media is not reporting that perhaps Obama knew Flynn had received payments from Russia and Turkey. But they did. Just a few days prior Sally Yates sat in front on Congress and told America yes the Obama administration knew of this and they tried to warn the Trump people, who did not taken them seriously because she was a “political opponent.”
Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it’s “time to move on” from the inquiry into alleged links between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.
Speaking just hours after Trump suddenly fired FBI Director James Comey, who had been leading the investigation, Sanders told Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson that while the probe would continue without the director, in her view it had already run its course.
“I think the bigger point on that is, my gosh Tucker, when are they going to let that go?” Sanders said. “It’s been going on for nearly a year.”
“Frankly, it’s kind of getting absurd. There’s nothing there. We’ve heard that time and time again. We’ve heard that in the testimonies earlier this week. We’ve heard it for the last 11 months. There is no ‘there’ there,” Sanders said.
“It’s time to move on and frankly it’s time to focus on the things the American people care about,” she added.
Although Sanders said that the investigation should be “let go,” she denied Comey’s firing would disrupt it.
“You will have the same people that will be carrying it out to the Department of Justice. The process continues both I believe in the House and Senate committees and I don’t see any change or disruption there,” she said.
President Trump on Monday attacked the media, saying the “fake news” rarely talks about the fact that his former national security adviser received a security clearance from the Obama administration.
“General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration – but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that,” the president tweeted Monday.
General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration – but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that.
Last month, White House press secretary Sean Spicer deflected blame for the firestorm surrounding Michael Flynn, saying he received his security clearance from the Obama administration.
Spicer signaled support for a Defense Department investigation into payments Flynn received from foreign groups in 2015, but he blamed former President Obama’s team for clearing him.
“My only point is when Gen. Flynn came into the White House, he had an active security clearance that was issued during the Obama administration with all the information that’s being discussed that occurred in 2015,” Spicer told reporters.
Spicer also brushed aside the notion the president has regrets over hiring Flynn, saying he “made the right decision at the right time.”
He added that Trump’s transition team and White House staff trusted the work of the previous administration.
“Why would you rerun a background check on someone who was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency that had and did maintain a high-level security clearance?” he asked.
Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was fired after her refusal to back the president’s controversial immigration order, is expected on Monday to give her account of the warnings she gave to the White House regarding Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.
(h/t The Hill)
Reality
Just hours before Sally Yates is set to testify before Congress about Michael Flynn, Trump took to Twitter to attack President Obama for giving Flynn “the highest security clearance,” but did not mention that Obama also fired Flynn.
President Trump attacked the news media Friday night on Twitter over perceived negative coverage of the House GOP’s passage of legislation aimed at repealing and replacing ObamaCare.
“Wow,the Fake News media did everything in its power to make the Republican Healthcare victory look as bad as possible,” Trump tweeted. He also predicted the Republican plan would be “far better” than the Affordable Care Act.
Wow,the Fake News media did everything in its power to make the Republican Healthcare victory look as bad as possible.Far better than Ocare!
In a second tweet, Trump questioned why the news media “rarely reports” that ObamaCare “is on its last legs and that insurance companies are fleeing for their lives?”
“It’s dead!” Trump declared, reiterating a longstanding position.
Why is it that the Fake News rarely reports Ocare is on its last legs and that insurance companies are fleeing for their lives? It's dead!
Maybe the Republicans should have put forth a bill that didn’t kick 24 million people off of healthcare, raise rates for the elderly, and allow insurance companies to discriminate based on preexisting conditions?
The reality is, when the CBO had a chance to score the first version of Trumpcare, it was very clear the insurance markets are stable. This idea that Obamacare is in a “death spiral” is pure fiction.
