Category: Not Factual

Trump Lied About Parents Of Korean War Vets, Now He’s Lying About Returned Bodies

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Having already invented “thousands” of parents who begged him to bring home the bodies of their Korean War veteran children, President Donald Trump is now inventing hundreds of such repatriations that haven’t actually happened.

The return of the remains of American service members who were killed in that war has become a major “victory” Trump likes to claim from his June 12 meeting in Singapore with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

“It was the last thing I asked,” he told a gathering of Nevada Republicans on Saturday. “I said, ‘Do you mind, would I be able to get the remains back of all those great heroes from so many years ago?’ And he said, ‘I will do that.’ And you probably read, they have already done 200 people. Which is so great.”

On Monday, Trump told a rally audience in South Carolina: “We’re getting the remains of our great heroes back.”

The only problem: No remains have yet been returned, and it is unclear when that might happen. “We have not yet physically received them,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, but said that he is “optimistic” it would take place “in the not-too-distant future.”

That explanation was not sufficient for Iraq War veteran Will Fischer, with the progressive veterans group VoteVets.

“It’s beyond the pale to lie about remains of fallen service persons already being returned, when they, in fact, haven’t been,” Fischer said. “Remains like these aren’t some prize, where you can make up some big fish stories. These are troops who died in war, and whose families have had no closure. He disrespected Gold Star families during the campaign, and he’s doing it now.”

[Huffington Post]

Trump Demands Mueller Team Disclose Any Conflicts of Interest

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Donald Trump wants Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller to list any conflicts he and members of his team have in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“When is Bob Mueller going to list his Conflicts of Interest?” Trump said in a Twitter posting Thursday. “Why has it taken so long? Will they be listed at the top of his $22,000,000 Report…And what about the 13 Angry Democrats, will they list their conflicts with Crooked H? How many people will be sent to jail.”

In follow-up post, the president said allies were being “persecuted” and facing charges that are old or unrelated to the election. “What is going on in the FBI & DOJ with Crooked Hillary, the DNC and all of the lies? A disgraceful situation!”

While Trump and supporters often cite how many Democrats are on Mueller’s team, the special counsel is a longtime Republican.

Trump’s latest attacks on Mueller come as the White House announced that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold their first bilateral summit July 16 in Helsinki, Finland, as they try to reverse a downward spiral in relations that’s been exacerbated by findings of Russian election meddling.

The White House and the Kremlin disclosed details of the meeting in simultaneous statements issued a day after U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton was in Moscow for talks.

Trump has pushed for improving the relationship, inviting Putin to the White House in a March phone call after the Russian leader’s re-election to a fourth term as president. The mere fact of the summit is a boost to Kremlin efforts to ease its international isolation, though officials have played down hopes for any breakthrough.

[Bloomberg]

Trump casts doubt on Russian election meddling ahead of Putin summit

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President Donald Trump continues to cast doubt on US intelligence assessments that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential contest, just as his aides announced details of his upcoming summit talks with President Vladimir Putin.

“Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday morning. He went on to question why US law enforcement agencies weren’t investigating other perceived influences on the election, which he has repeatedly said was rigged for his opponent Hillary Clinton.

“Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t Shady James Comey and the now disgraced FBI agents take and closely examine it? Why isn’t Hillary/Russia being looked at? So many questions, so much corruption!” he wrote.

The President’s tweet was sent roughly a half hour before the White House announced the two leaders will meet on July 16 in Helsinki, Finland, where they will “discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues.”

Trump’s summit with Putin is likely to draw criticism from the US President’s domestic critics, who accuse him of currying favor with Putin, and jitter US allies, who fear Trump will take a less hawkish position with Russia on issues like the annexation of Crimea and military exercises near the Russian border in eastern Europe.

The summit takes place four days after a NATO meeting in Brussels, where Trump will meet leaders of US military allies. NATO members were worried that if the summit with Putin had taken place earlier, Trump might have agreed to something with the Russian leader that they would have been forced to go along with.

[CNN]

Trump Follows Up Promise to Impose “LAW AND ORDER” With Complaint That His Friends Are Being Prosecuted for “Old” Crimes

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Today in Stupid News, the president went on a rant about the importance of “LAW AND ORDER” (capitalization his), went to sleep, then woke up and began complaining about the (Republican) law-enforcement officials who are prosecuting his friends and advisers for laundering money and lying to federal authorities. In chronological order:

Some notes:

• Activists in Portland have blockaded an ICE office, and one activist posted personal information about seven ICE employees that included at least some phone numbers and home addresses.

Robert Mueller’s alleged “Conflicts of Interest” don’t exist. It is true that some (but not all) of the prosecutors working for him are or have been registered Democrats, but he and all the other people in supervisory roles related to the special counsel investigation are Republicans. (James Comey was also a Republican until recently.)

Meanwhile, all three of the former Trump advisers/cronies (Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and Rick Gates) who have pleaded guilty in Mueller’s investigation pleaded guilty specifically to lying to investigators after the 2016 election˘, and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is charged with crimes committed over a period that ranges from 2006 until this year.

In other words, if the oldest crime being looked at by Mueller were a person, it would be 12 years old. That’s not very old! Stupid millennial-aged crimes, with their entitlement and their Justin Bieber and their falling within the statute of limitations!

[Slate]

Trump’s IRS nominee didn’t disclose properties in Trump-branded hotel

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President Donald Trump’s pick to run the IRS, tax lawyer Chuck Rettig, owns properties at the Trump International Hotel Waikiki and Tower.

He’d previously disclosed his 50 percent stake in a pair of Honolulu rental units, but not their specific location. That detail was discussed later, at a June 21 meeting with congressional staff, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO.

Trump typically gets fees on sales for licensing his name.

The document was circulated Wednesday to Senate Finance Committee members ahead of their hearing on Rettig’s nomination, scheduled for Thursday.

“The nominee did disclose these properties, but not their location,” the memo said of Rettig’s original answers to financial disclosure questions that ask nominees to list assets and sources of income that exceed $1,000.

The revelation about the Trump-branded hotel seems certain to come up when Rettig testifies.

“Committee staff raised this at the nominee’s June 21st due diligence meeting,” the memo said. “The nominee plans to provide more detail on his Committee Questionnaire to include the full name of the property.”

[Politico]

Jeff Sessions jokes about separated families to laughing crowd

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions cracked a joke about the administration’s immigration chaos, and was greeted with laughs at the idea of separated families.

Sessions spoke Tuesday to a crowd at the conservative-leaning Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, and accused critics of his “zero tolerance” immigration policy of hypocrisy.

“These same people live in gated communities, many of them, and are featured at events where you have to have an ID to even come in to hear em speak. They like a little security around themselves,” he said.

“If you try to scale the fence they’d be even too happy to have you arrested and separated from your children.”

The last line brought laughs and a few cheers from the audience in Los Angeles, which was greeted with protests by those who see the separation of children from their undocumented parents as inhumane.

After first insisting that Congress deal with the problem, President Trump signed an executive order amid the outrage reversing the policy he put in place in April, allowing children to remain with their parents for 30 days.

The fates of those families that have already been separated have hung in limbo with limited action from the federal government, though on Tuesday a federal judge ordered authorities to reunite the loved ones within 30 days.

That order, in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit in California, also ordered an injunction against future family separations.

[New York Daily News]

Media

Reality

Poll after poll found massive disapproval with the Trump administration’s cruel policy of indefinitely separating children from their families as a deterrent to future immigration. So this is not the “lunatic fringe” but the vast majority of Americans.

Even Sessions’ joke is lie and based on a complete misunderstanding of our justice system.

If you take a Criminal Justice 101 class, you will learn the primary intention of incarcerating people for crimes is because they have harmed our society and as a form of punishment they are forced to rectify that harm. Removing that individual from their family is a side-effect. Have you ever heard the term, “he’s paid his debt to society?” That is what we are talking about.

Trump, separating families, is their primary intent.

Sarah Sanders: ‘Just Because You Aren’t Seeing a Judge Doesn’t Mean You Aren’t Getting Due Process’

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders offered an intriguing defense of Donald Trump on Monday when asked about his apparent call for the country to disregard due process when dealing with illegal immigrants.

It’s been over a week since the last White House press briefing, so Sanders was buried under an avalanche of questions regarding the president’s rescinded policy of taking migrant children away from their parents at the U.S. southern border. As Trump railed against immigration laws and people “[invading] the country” over the weekend, he tweeted at one point that immigrants need to be sent back where they came from “with no Judges or Court Cases” involved.

When CNN’s Jeff Zelany asked Sanders if Trump was saying illegal immigrants have no right to due process, she defended the president by saying that current laws allow for the deportation of illegal aliens without having to go through court.

“Thousands of illegal aliens are removed every month without seeing an immigration judge as a result of procedures in current law including voluntary removal and expedited removal. Just because you don’t see a judge doesn’t mean you aren’t receiving due process. The president is focused on securing our borders and reforming our immigration system to prevent the crisis at the border from betting worse.”

Zeleny continued to press Sanders by asking her if immigrants who are deported this way don’t get a chance to appeal for asylum or make their case before a judge.

[Mediaite]

Reality

On one hand we have the Constitution, which makes it very clear due process applies to anyone on American soil.

This was reaffirmed in the 2001 Supreme Court decision Zadvydas v. David (533 US 678): “the Due Process Clause applies to all persons within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful or unlawful.”

But on the other hand we have expedited removal where a person does not see the inside of a courtroom and a low-level immigration officer simply deports a person without any due process. Expedited removal is only allowed to be applied to undocumented immigrants without any documentation, not on asylum seekers which we are mostly seeing today, and has historically been used only on individuals who are repeat offenders.

But the law has been used more and more over the past several years, for example 44 percent of all removals from the United States were conducted through expedited removal in 2013.

Media

Trump Warns Maxine Waters Over Call to Harass Administration Officials

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President Donald Trump on Monday warned Rep. Maxine Waters to “be careful what you wish for,” two days after the California congresswoman urged supporters to harass members of the Trump administration in public places.

Referring to Ms. Waters as an “extraordinarily low IQ person,” Mr. Trump tweeted Monday: “She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement.” He added: “Be careful what you wish for Max!”

At an event in Los Angeles Saturday, Ms. Waters sought to rally the crowd against Trump administration officials. “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd,” she said. “And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

On Friday night, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked by the owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., to leave. Tweeting about the incident Saturday, Ms. Sanders said she was asked to leave “because I work for @POTUS” and that she “politely left.”

“Her actions say far more about her than about me,” she added. “I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.” She also addressed the matter at Monday’s press briefing, saying: “We are allowed to disagree, but we should be able to do so freely and without fear of harm.”

Mr. Trump defended his press secretary on Monday, calling her a “fine person.”

Last week, protesters chanted “Shame!” at Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen while she was dining at a Mexican restaurant, hours after she defended the White House’s zero-tolerance policy that resulted in the separation of thousands of immigrant children from their families at a briefing with reporters.

[Wall Street Journal]

Reality

The same day his press secretary called for civility from his opponents, Donald Trump insulted, then threatened Congresswoman Maxine Waters with physical harm.
Trump also completely misrepresented Ms. Waters’ comments, who never called to harm Trumpers.

Trump to Jimmy Fallon: ‘Be a man.’ Late-night host answers with donation to help migrants.

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President Donald Trump is telling “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon to “be a man” and stop “whimpering” about the personal anguish he felt over the backlash he received after messing up Trump’s hair during a 2016 campaign appearance on the late-night talk show.

Fallon recently told The Hollywood Reporterthat he “made a mistake” on the Sept. 15, 2016, episode and would do it differently.

During that interview with the presidential candidate, Fallon thanked Trump “for giving us the material that we are doing” and said he has been “amazing to follow” because “you say some shocking things that I cannot even believe.”

“But I’m trying not to anyway,” Trump replied.

Fallon’s latest comments, however, didn’t appear to sit well with Trump.

The president tweeted Sunday:

Fallon responded on Twitter with a nod to the plight of young immigrants caught up in administration policies.

The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, is the largest immigration legal services provider in Texas. The organization is on the front lines of the immigration battle in Texas.

[NBC News]

Update

Jimmy Fallon rebutted Trump’s claim that he called him:

“And he said he called and said, ‘Monster ratings.’ First of all, I’ve never called this human in my life. I don’t have his number, I don’t want his number,” Fallon continued. “I’ve never said ‘monster ratings.’ I don’t know what he’s talking about. By the way, Donald, I don’t know if you’ve seen my ratings the past two years, you didn’t help my ratings. But, really, thanks a lot. Thanks for nothing.”

 

Trump claims Obama kept migrants ‘wrapped in foil’ in cages: ‘We do a much better job’

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President Donald Trump, is apparently trying to deflect criticism of his administration’s separating more than 2,000 migrant children from their parents by suggesting that former President Obama did worse.

Trump tweeted Saturday morning that President Obama kept immigrants “in cages, wrapped in foil,” pushing a Drudge Report headline that linked to an article that ran in The Daily Caller, a conservative media outlet.

The Daily Caller article was posted on Tuesday, when public outrage over the family separations was at a height. On Wednesday, the president signed an executive order to end the policy and keep migrant parents and children together.

The Obama administration also used detention facilities for migrants who crossed the border illegally but it did not engage in widespread family separations.

[ABC News]

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