Category: Unpresidential

Trump says exclusion of Romney from task force shows he’s still holding a grudge

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President Trump on Sunday said he intentionally left Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) off his congressional task force on reopening the U.S. economy amid the coronavirus, acknowledging it shows he still holds a grudge over the senator’s impeachment vote.

The president included every Republican senator on the task force except Romney, who voted to convict Trump for abuse of power. Asked if his exclusion shows he’s still holding a grudge, Trump said, “Yeah, it does.”

“I’m not a fan of Mitt Romney,” Trump said, adding, “I don’t really want his advice.”

The White House on Thursday released the members of its “Opening Up America Again Congressional Group.” The list included nearly 70 senators, including all 52 of Romney’s GOP colleagues in the chamber.

A spokeswoman for Romney and a source familiar confirmed that the GOP senator was not asked to take part in the task force. Romney is a former governor, private sector executive and presidential candidate.

Romney was the only GOP senator to vote for one of the articles during the Senate impeachment trial earlier this year. Trump has repeatedly referenced the vote in chiding Romney, at one point swiping at the Mormon senator’s use of religion to explain his reasoning for the vote.

There has been animosity between the two dating back years. After courting his support in 2012, Romney was fiercely critical of Trump during the 2016 campaign.

The two appeared to reconcile, with Trump considering Romney for a Cabinet post and endorsing his Senate bid in 2018. But the relationship appears to have deteriorated beyond repair with the impeachment vote.

[The Hill]

Trump lashes out at CBS reporter asking tough questions

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President Donald Trump appeared to play it cool at first when he was pressed by CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang on Sunday, asking about the slow response to the coronavirus crisis.

“If you look at what I did banning china from coming in,” Trump began.

“Not American nationals,” she cut in, to mention the 40,000 people who were allowed back into the U.S. from China.

“Nice and easy. Nice and easy. Relax. We cut it off. Everybody was amazed that I did it. We had 21 people in a room. Everybody was against it but me. Dr. Fauci said had I not done that, perhaps tens of thousands and maybe much more than that people would have died. I was very early, very, very early. And we just saw, you saw Bret Baier making a statement. They had a debate well into February and not even mention — it wasn’t mentioned, the Democrats, we were very early. I’m the president, and you know what I just did?”

He then asked her how many people had died by the time Trump had intervened. In fact, no one knows how many people with COVID-19 died or were even infected because there was no testing.

“So do you acknowledge –” she began again before he snapped at her again.

“Keep your voice down!” Trump shouted.

[Raw Story]

Media

Trump Blows Up at CNN Reporter Grilling Him for Self-Praise After More Than 40,000 Coronavirus Deaths: ‘You People are So Pathetic!’

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President Donald Trump repeatedly stormed at CNN reporter Jeremy Diamond for questioning his self-praise while the coronavirus continues to ravage the country.

During his latest press conference at the White House, Trump read praise of himself from the Wall Street Journal and played two clips of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo offering positive comments about the federal response. These clips were cherry-picked, however, for Trump declined to roll any footage of Cuomo calling for greater federal action on the crisis, nor the governor’s requests for more health resources.

When Diamond got to ask his question, he started off by noting that the U.S. has now exceeded 40,000 deaths from the virus. To that point, Diamond asked Trump “can you explain why you come out here and you are reading clips and showing clips of praise for you and your administration? Is this really the time for self-congratulations?”

Trump claimed to have been directing praise to the health workers on the front lines of treating the pandemic, but Diamond noted that “the clip you played and what your read earlier was praising you.”

As Diamond once again brought up the 40,000 dead Americans, Trump switched gears to call the reporter “fake news” and said “they were excoriated by people like you who don’t know any better because you don’t have the brains with you were born with.”

“It’s not about me. Nothing is about me,” Trump grumbled.

“You are never going to treat me fairly, many of you, and I understand that. I don’t know, I got here with the worst more unfair press treatment in the history of the United States for president. They did say Abraham Lincoln had very bad treatment too.”

As Trump continued to wax on about he’s “remaking the playbook,” there was a moment when he said there were “almost 40,000” deaths, which prompted Diamond to note that it’s over 40,000.

“Oh, more than. Okay. Good. Correct me,” Trump said in sarcastic bitterness. After touting that the body count could’ve been worse, he bashed Diamond again by saying “you just don’t have the sense to understand what’s going on.”

Later in the press conference, Diamond drew Trump’s ire again when he brought up the president’s past praise for China’s coronavirus response and asked “were you duped by President Xi?” Trump deflected by responding “you and the Obama Administration” were the duped ones, and then he digressed into his trade dealings with China.

After Trump steamrolled over Diamond’s follow-up questions and claimed “nobody was tougher before the deal ever on China than Trump,” he said “you people are so pathetic at CNN” and then shifted into attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

As Trump moved on despite Diamond’s efforts, he ended it with “your ratings are so bad because you are pathetic. Your ratings are terrible. You have got to get back to real news.”

[Mediaite]

Trump says Fox, Chris Wallace ‘on a bad path’ after Pelosi appearance on network

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President Trump criticized Fox News and host Chris Wallace on Sunday, saying they are “on a bad path” after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appeared on “Fox News Sunday” for the first time since 2017.

The president in a tweet also called the Speaker “an inherently ‘dumb’ person.”

“She wasted all of her time on the Impeachment Hoax,” he tweeted, referring to Pelosi.

“She will be overthrown, either by inside or out, just like her last time as ‘Speaker,’” he added. “Wallace & @FoxNews are on a bad path, watch!” 

Fox announced last week that Pelosi would appear on its Sunday morning political talk show to “discuss the current state of the U.S. amid the coronavirus pandemic, negotiations to revive the small business loan program and much more.”

During her “Fox News Sunday” appearance, the Speaker said Trump “gets an F” on coronavirus testing. She also said National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci’s testing recommendation “hasn’t been done.”

Trump has defended his administration’s testing efforts, saying during a briefing on Saturday that U.S. capacity is “fully sufficient” to begin reopening the economy. He tweeted Sunday that he was “right on testing” just like he was “right on Ventilators.”

Pelosi also was interviewed on ABC’s “This Week,” where she said, “Frankly, I don’t pay that much attention to the president’s tweets against me.” 

[The Hill]

Trump Plugs His Golf Courses During Coronavirus Pressconference

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“My wonderful place in Florida, in Miami, Doral” — Trump works in a second plug for a property he still owns and profits from

Trump Calls For People to ‘LIBERATE’ Swing States With Democratic Governors in Alarming Tweetstorm

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President Donald Trump called on Americans to “LIBERATE” states run by Democratic governors, Friday, following protests over state coronavirus lockdowns.

In a series of Twitter posts, President Trump wrote, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!”, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”, and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”

Trump’s posts came just minutes after Fox News aired a segment on protests in Minnesota against the coronavirus lockdown.

Fox News has also reported on similar protests in Michigan and Virginia.

One Michigan protester told Fox News that residents feel “oppressed” by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s coronavirus lockdown orders, and said, “What we are really asking for is for her to stop talking about what is essential and non-essential and just start looking at what is safe and what is unsafe. We know there are certain businesses and workers that should be able to safely get back to work right now.”

Protesters held signs which read, “LET US WORK,” “END THE LOCKDOWN,” and “WE WILL NOT COMPLY.”

[Mediaite]

Donald Trump falsely claims Nancy Pelosi deleted video telling people to go to Chinatown

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President Donald Trump joined conservative supporters in accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of covering up her visit to San Francisco’s Chinatown in late February.

“Crazy Nancy Pelosi deleted this from her Twitter account. She wanted everyone to pack into Chinatown long after I closed the BORDER TO CHINA. Based on her statement, she is responsible for many deaths. She’s an incompetent, third-rate politician!” Trump tweeted April 16.

But there’s no evidence Pelosi ever tweeted that video of herself in Chinatown. So she could not have deleted it, as Trump said.

The video Trump tweeted is 17 seconds long, a snippet of a Feb. 24 report by KPIX, a San Francisco Bay Area CBS affiliate. Pelosi in the KPIX report is shown walking through San Francisco’s Chinatown District and encouraging people to visit its shops and restaurants, which were seeing a decline in business since the coronavirus outbreak began in China.

At the time, KPIX reported, there were no active cases of coronavirus in San Francisco. There were 21 active cases in California, but they were in hospital isolation or in quarantine.

Pelosi says in the video: “You should come to Chinatown. Precautions have been taken by our city. We know that there is concern about tourism, traveling throughout the world, but we think it’s very safe to be in Chinatown and hope that others will come.”

We wondered if Trump was right that Pelosi deleted that video from her Twitter account. PolitiFact’s fact-checking process includes asking a person who makes a claim for the evidence that supports their statement. So we asked the White House press office and Trump’s re-election campaign for the date of the original post, which account posted it, and when it was deleted. We did not get any information.

Pelosi’s office told PolitiFact that they never posted the video that Trump claimed was deleted.

We did our own digging and found no trace of the video posted from her account.

Politwoops, a project of ProPublica, tracks deleted tweets by elected officials. According to that tracker, @SpeakerPelosi’s latest five deleted tweets span from Feb. 22 to April 13. Not one is about going to Chinatown.

We also reviewed what Pelosi’s Twitter page looked liked since Feb. 24, based on the history saved by Wayback Machine, an initiative of the Internet Archive. The archived pages of Pelosi’s Twitter account do not show the video Trump tweeted. (Wayback Machine did not have archives of the page as they looked on Feb. 24-26, but any deletion of that video would presumably be more recent.)

Trump suggests that Pelosi is hiding her actions from Feb. 24. But a transcript of her comments that were captured in Trump’s video appear on both her House Speaker website and congressional website. As of April 16, the Chinatown visit was one of the featured photos in the homepage of her congressional website.

Pelosi’s Twitter page currently has a video of her Feb. 24 visit to Chinatown. It shows her making a fortune cookie. Text accompanying the video says: “It was a pleasure to try my hand at making fortune cookies at the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory (with a little guidance from owner Kevin Chan, of course). The message inside? ‘United We Stand.’”

On Feb. 25, she posted a series of tweets saying Americans needed a coordinated response to the coronavirus and that the House would advance a funding package “that fully addresses the scale and seriousness of this public health crisis.”

It’s worth noting that throughout January and most of February, U.S. officials said that the coronavirus risk to the American public was low and that they were not seeing community spread of the virus. By Feb. 25, there were 53 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States and no deaths, according to data compiled by the World Health Organization.

On Feb. 28, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doctor said it was possible that a reported case in California “could be the first instance of community spread — meaning the illness was acquired through an unknown exposure in the community.” But it could also be that the patient was exposed through contact to a traveler who was infected, said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. The immediate risk to the general American public remained low, she said.

The cancelling of mass gatherings was not yet common in the United States in February, the CDC noted in an April report.

Trump’s messaging around this time also did not suggest that people avoid large crowds. The same day of Pelosi’s trip to Chinatown, Trump tweeted: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”Our ruling

Trump tweeted that Pelosi deleted a video of her telling people to go to Chinatown.

Pelosi on Feb. 24 did encourage people to go to Chinatown in San Francisco. But we found no trace of her posting or deleting the video Trump shared.

At the time of Pelosi’s remark, U.S. health officials said the risk of the coronavirus was low to the American public since they had no reports of community spread. Trump during this time also said the virus was under control in the United States.

Neither the White House nor Trump’s re-election campaign provide evidence to support Trump’s claim. In the absence of evidence, we rate this claim False.

[Politifact]

Donald Trump Threatens to Close Congress Unilaterally

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At his coronavirus press conference on Wednesday, President Donald Trump issued a stunning threat-slash-promise-slash-constitutional fantasy. Complaining that Democrats were blocking his judicial appointees, the president said that the Senate should either end its current pro forma session and come back to Washington amidst a pandemic to approve his appointees or officially adjourn so that he can make recess appointments. “The Senate has left Washington until at least May 4,” Trump said. “The Constitution provides a mechanism for the president to fill positions in such circumstances, the recess appointment it’s called. The Senate’s practice of gaveling into so-called pro forma sessions where no one is even there has prevented me from using the constitutional authority that we’re given under the recess provisions. The Senate should either fulfill its duty and vote on my nominees or it should formally adjourn so that I can make recess appointments.”

“If the House will not agree to that adjournment,” he continued, “I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress. The current practice of leaving of town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam what they do.”

Trump is likely referencing Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution, which provides that the president can “on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.” Does he have the power to actually do this, though? According to this 1964 article from the New York Times the Senate Parliamentarian issued an opinion in that year, regarding presidential authority to adjourn Congress: “The answer is yes—but only under, certain unusual circumstances. These conditions are so limited that a President has never exercised the power to adjourn Congress.”

The clause as written seems to require that the president can only force the Senate to adjourn “in Case of Disagreement between them,” which suggests that it operates in cases where the House and Senate disagree about a date for adjournment. But the House and Senate have already agreed on a date: Jan 3, 2021.

Trump, it seems, needs Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a majority of Senators to come back to Washington to adjourn the Senate, which would then trigger a disagreement with the House of Representatives, as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would presumably then refuse to adjourn. On Wednesday, McConnell’s office said that he had spoken with Trump about the recess appointment question, but also indicated that he would not be altering Senate rules to get Trump his appointments. If McConnell were to adjourn along a party-line vote—possibly blowing up the filibuster in the process—theoretically, Trump would then adjourn the two disagreeing bodies. Recess appointments under this scheme would last only until January of 2021, but it would still be an unprecedented power grab. As historian Michael Beschloss tweeted, “Wilson, Taft and FDR were all urged to adjourn Congress and all refused.”

“They know they’ve been warned and they’ve been warned right now,” Trump said. “If they don’t approve it, then we’re going to go this route and we’ll probably be challenged in court and we’ll see who wins.”

Indeed, if Trump did manage to get Senate Republicans to go along with this plan, one wonders what the conservative-controlled Supreme Court might do. In 2014, the Supreme Court validated the legitimacy of holding pro forma sessions for the purpose of preventing recess appointments in NLRB v. Noel Canning, but that case did not involve the use of this unprecedented mechanism by a president. It would be challenged on a number of fronts.

“It is unclear that we have an extraordinary occasion in the sense that the Framers were using it,” University of Richmond School of Law Carl Tobias told me in an email. “It is not surprising that the provision has never been invoked, because no president has ever found the existence of an extraordinary occasion that warranted exercise of this power, even [though] the [United States] had the Civil War and two declared World Wars, while the House and Senate have always been able to agree on a time to adjourn.”

It’s possible that the move is also just intended as a feint to distract from Trump’s disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the spiraling economy. “Trump desperately wants to change the subject—away from the pandemic he’s so badly handled that’s killing Americans and toward this,” Georgetown Law professor Josh Geltzer told me. “It’s important to explain why he is out of step with American constitutional traditions. But it’s also important not to let him change the focus at this critical time.”

Ultimately, the real concern is that someone has advised President Trump that he has the power to adjourn Congress and he’s building an argument for it; his White House Counsel and Justice Department are doubtless crafting the fanciful legal scaffolding right now. As is often the case when the president makes broad claims about untested constitutional authority, the worry is less that he will adjourn Congress tomorrow, and more that he is recreationally floating insane notions, bolstering them with in-house analysis, and laying the groundwork for emergency powers he may someday seek in earnest. It’s happened before and there is no reason it can’t happen again.

[Slate]

Trump announces U.S. will halt funding for WHO over coronavirus response

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President Trump announced Tuesday that the U.S. is placing a hold on funding to the World Health Organization for 60–90 days over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, pending a review.

Driving the news: Trump accused the WHO of “severely mismanaging and covering up” the coronavirus crisis, adding that the U.S. “has a duty to insist on full accountability.”

  • “With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have deep concerns whether America’s generosity has been put to the best use possible,” Trump said at a briefing in the Rose Garden.
  • “If we cannot trust them, if this is what we will receive from the WHO, our country will be forced to find other ways to work with other nations to achieve public health goals.” 

By the numbers: The WHO’s 2018–2019 budget was about $6 billion, and the U.S. is by far the biggest donor of any country, contributing more than $400 million to the organization last year.

  • “American taxpayers provided between $400 million and $500 million per year to the WHO. In contrast, China contributes roughly $40 million a year, or even less,” Trump said Tuesday.
  • “As the organization’s leading sponsor, the United States has a duty to insist on full accountability. One of the most dangerous and costly decisions from the WHO was its disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations.”

Behind the scenes: Trump has been fuming for days about what he sees as the WHO’s botched response to the pandemic and its deference to China.

  • “The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look,” Trump tweeted last week.
  • Trump’s national security team has rallied behind him, believing that the U.S. needed to go beyond public statements and make the WHO feel some pain for its missteps, according to officials involved in the internal discussions.
  • Our thought bubble: The decision gives Trump somebody else to blame and a way to deflect from his own missteps in handling the virus.

Details: Below are some of Trump’s specific complaints, which he said led him to his decision to freeze U.S. funding:

  • “The WHO failed to adequately obtain, vet and share information in a timely and transparent fashion. … The WHO failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable.”
  • “The WHO failed to investigate credible reports from sources in Wuhan that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts. There was credible information to suspect human-to-human transmission in December 2019, which should have spurred the WHO to investigate.”
  • “Through the middle of January, it parroted and publicly endorsed the idea that there was not human-to-human transmission happening, despite reports and clear evidence to the contrary. “
  • “The delays the WHO experienced in declaring a public health emergency cost valuable time, tremendous amounts of time.”
  • “The inability of the WHO to obtain virus samples to this day has deprived the scientific community of essential data.”
  • “The WHO has not addressed a single one of these concerns nor provided a serious explanation that acknowledges its own mistakes, of which there were many.”

Background: Over the past week, officials within the White House’s Office of Management and Budget have been working on a menu of options for how to snub the WHO. Trump administration officials told Axios the options fall along two tracks.

  • The most likely route is to reprogram U.S. funding that was allocated to the WHO, moving it to other international organizations that can administer it for comparable purposes, officials said.
  • A more dramatic, but less likely, approach is to send a rescissions package to Congress, rescinding from the federal budget funds already allocated to WHO. A similar approach was adopted in 2017 when the U.S. cut $285 million from its funding to the United Nations.
  • Trump did not reveal on Tuesday which mechanism he will use to halt funding to the organization.

What they’re saying: António Guterres, secretary-general of the UN, to which the WHO reports, said in a statement, “Now is a time for unity in the global battle to push the COVID-19 pandemic into reverse, not a time to cut the resources of the … WHO, which is spearheading and coordinating the global body’s efforts.”

[Axios]

Trump accuses governors of ‘mutiny’ as tensions mount over reopening

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President Donald Trump compared strain between himself and a group of governors to the film “Mutiny on the Bounty,” as tensions mounted over when and how to reopen economies amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch,” Trump said in a tweet. “Especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain,” he added.

Trump addressed his comments to the “Democrat Governors,” after a group of six eastern states on Monday said they would jointly develop a plan to reopen the region’s economies and schools. After the announcement, Massachusetts, which is led by a Republican, joined the effort.

The governors of California, Oregon and Washington announced similar plans. Those states are led by Democrats.

Monday, Trump asserted he had authority to open states, a claim that drew fire from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, among others.

[MarketWatch]

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