Category: Unpresidential

Trump’s bizarre ‘cleanest air’ argument for ignoring climate change

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The White House’s release last Friday of a report detailing the expected effects of climate change didn’t exactly get buried in the way the administration may have hoped. In the days since its release, news outlets have dug into the extensive document, identifying the scale of threat posed by the warming climate and, unavoidably, noting the tension between its forecasts and the indifference of President Trump.

Both he and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders were asked about the report Monday.

Sanders, conducting her fourth daily news briefing since the end of August, was asked why Trump didn’t feel a responsibility to protect the environment.

“Well, the president’s certainly leading on what matters most in this process, and that’s on having clean air, clean water. In fact, the United States continues to be a leader on that front,” she said, later adding, “The biggest thing that we can do is focus on how to make sure we have the cleanest air, the cleanest water, and the president is certainly doing that and certainly leading on that front.”

In an interview with The Washington Post, Trump reiterated that argument.

“You look at our air and our water and it’s right now at a record clean,” he said. “But when you look at China and you look at parts of Asia and when you look at South America, and when you look at many other places in this world, including Russia, including — just many other places — the air is incredibly dirty. And when you’re talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small. And it blows over and it sails over.”

This appears to be the line, then: We don’t need to address climate change because we are focused on preserving our “record clean” air and water.

So let’s evaluate that.

During his interview with The Post, Trump claimed to be one of a group of people who “have very high levels of intelligence, but we’re not necessarily such believers.” On the campaign trail, Trump used to offer a different set of credentials to deny the existence of global warming: his shelf covered with awards for his environmental consciousness.

“By the way, I won so many environmental awards, shockingly. No, it’s true,” Trump said during a speech in December 2015.

It wasn’t true, it seemed. Our fact-checkers dug into the claim, finding one award given to one of his golf clubs in 2007 and another given in appreciation after he donated land to Westchester County that he was blocked from turning into a golf course.

In that speech in 2015, Trump continued to make the case for how he would focus his environmentalist energies.

“And you know what I want to do? I want really immaculate air. I want clean, crystal water,” he said. “I want a lot of things. Okay? I want a lot of things.”

That was his refrain for months. We want clean air. We want clean water. Often, the ante would be upped: We want the cleanest air. We want the cleanest water.

A month or two ago, somewhat suddenly, Trump started declaring that particular mission accomplished.

“We withdrew the United States from the job-killing, income-killing Paris climate accord. That was costing our country,” Trump said in September. “And we have the cleanest air now in the world. We have the cleanest water. Remember this. I’m an environmentalist. I want crystal-clean water. I want crystal-clean air.”

Talking about hurricanes in October, Trump said: “I live in Florida to a large extent and spend a lot of time in Florida, and we had a period of time where we went years without having any major problem. And then you have a problem and it goes in cycles, and I want absolutely crystal-clear water and I want the cleanest air on the planet and our air now is cleaner than it’s ever been.”

A month ago, there was this celebratory tweet.

As is often the case with the medium-quality infographics Trump shares on social media, this one is incorrect. It uses one metric for air cleanliness — the density of fine particulate matter in the air — and asserts that the United States’ air is the cleanest by that metric, according to the World Health Organization.

But the WHO’s data show that the United States’ air isn’t the cleanest on that metric. In North America, Canada’s air has lower levels of that size of particulates. So does the air in Estonia, Finland and Iceland in Europe. And in Brunei and Australia. On this one metric, the United States’ air is relatively clean, but it’s not the cleanest.

Trump may have been pointing to a news release from the Environmental Protection Agency this year touting the cleanliness of the air, but that report didn’t compare the United States to other countries and, ironically, showed an increase in particulates last year.

The improvements the country has experienced since the 1970s, of course, are heavily a function of the Clean Air Act, a bill that Trump not only isn’t responsible for but that his administration has worked to weaken.

There are plenty of other metrics that could be used to measure air quality — other particulates, ozone, sulfides, nitrates. But none of those is related to the looming problem of climate change, which stems largely from the release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Saying that you’re addressing environmental problems by ensuring clean air while ignoring greenhouse gas emissions is like saying that you cook only healthy food, pointing at the lack of food-poisoning complaints but ignoring that your meals all contain 400 percent of the daily recommended allotments of fat and salt.

Trump’s assessment of what “environmentalism” entails is, like many other aspects of his political understanding, rooted in an archaic, pre-1990s sense of the term. The environmental challenge faced by President Richard Nixon was dense smog choking U.S. cities, like producing food laced with salmonella to continue the analogy above. Nixon oversaw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Over time, the more significant threat of climate change has become obvious — but less tangibly. That affords more political leeway to ignore the problem should one seek to do so.

Trump seeks to do so, and has a new, odd talking point he deploys to that end.

[Washington Post]

Trump: US to ‘begin cutting off’ aid to countries associated with migrant caravan

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President Trump on Monday said that the U.S. will begin to cut off or reduce aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador as citizens of those countries flee for the U.S. as part of a so-called caravan of migrants.

In a trio of tweets, the president escalated his rhetoric surrounding the group of migrants, declaring a national emergency as they approach the border and claiming that “unknown Middle Easterners” had joined the group.

Trump, in the tweets, did not offer any evidence for the charge that people from the Middle East were among those crossing the border.

“Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them,” Trump wrote in a tweet.

“Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National [Emergency]. Must change laws!”

Trump had previously threatened to cut off aid to those countries if they did not act to stop their citizens from fleeing. It’s unclear if Trump will take unilateral action to reduce foreign aid, as Congress is not scheduled to return to Washington until after the midterm elections.

Experts have noted that human rights laws restrict actions a government can take to prevent its citizens from leaving its borders.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill about plans to cut foreign aid or to declare a national emergency.

[The Hill]

Trump Claims Without Evidence ‘Unknown Middle Easterners Are Mixed In’ With Immigrant Caravan

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President Donald Trump — in full midterms push — claimed on on Monday that “Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” with the caravan of Central American immigrants making its way to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Like many of the president’s unfounded tweets, this one was likely inspired by Fox & Friends, which has given wall-to-wall coverage of the caravan on Monday, with guests repeatedly suggesting that ISIS and other Islamic terror groups could be infiltrating the group.

“Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States,” Trump wrote. “Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!”

The Fox & Friends coverage that appears to have inspired Trump’s tweet about “unknown Middle Easterners” is based on comments by Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales that authorities have arrested 100 people suspected to be involved with terror, over some period of time, in his country. Watch Pete Hegseth bring that up in the video above, and make the leap to tie that comment to the caravan of immigrants.

Per ABC News:

[Mediaite]

The Trump administration reportedly wants the government to revoke civil rights protections from transgender people

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The Trump administration is weighing making its biggest attack on transgender rights yet in a maneuver that would strip federal recognition of the gender identity of some 1.4 million Americans — and require genetic testing in some cases to match a person’s gender with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Erica Green, Katie Benner, and Robert Pear of the New York Times reported on Sunday that the Department of Health and Human Services is floating a memo that would establish the legal definition of sex under Title IX — the federal civil rights law that bans discrimination in education on the basis of gender — that would render immutable the sex of a person at birth. In other words, the government would not recognize a person’s gender other than the one based on their genitalia when they’re born.

Per the Times:

The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.

According to the Times, it would “eradicate federal recognition” of some 1.4 million transgender Americans.

HHS is preparing to formally present the new definition to the Justice Department before the end of the year, and if the department decides the change is legal, it could be enforced across Title IX laws and government agencies, including the Departments of Education, Justice, Health and Human Services, and Labor.

The effects could be far-reaching — it could impact which locker rooms and bathrooms transgender students could use as well as which sports teams students join or what happens to single-sex classes, the Times points out. If enacted, it could even require some people to produce DNA tests as part of their educational experience — an unprecedented step to enforce a biological definition of gender.

The Trump administration has been terrible on transgender rights

The Obama administration worked to advance transgender rights and loosen federal regulations to allow for more gender fluidity — including defining gender identity as protected by Title IX. President Donald Trump and his administration have taken steps to reverse that.

Soon after taking office, the Trump administration sent out a letter officially revoking Obama-era guidance on protecting trans students in federally funded schools, saying it was federal overreach. Trump has sought to ban transgender people from serving in the military, rescinded a memo protecting trans workers, and stripped protections for trans prisoners. It has also worsened protections for transgender people in health care.

Trump on the campaign trail said he would embrace LGBTQ people and said he would “fight” for them while Hillary Clinton would bring in “more people that will threaten your freedoms and believes.” But as Vox’s German Lopez pointed out, he’s done quite the opposite:

As president, Trump has acted more or less how you would expect a typical anti-LGBTQ Republican to act. Maybe that reflects his own opinions. Maybe it reflects the views of the people he’s surrounded himself with in his administration, including Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, both of whom have very long histories of anti-LGBTQ causes.

This new assault on transgender people — and one that includes genetic testing — is just the latest chapter.

[Vox

]

Trump Rails Against Migrant Caravan in Twitter Tirade: ‘A Disgrace to the Democrat Party’

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Donald Trump launched a Twitter attack Sunday against a growing Central American migrant caravan hoping to enter the U.S., stating he plans to block it.

“Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Souther (sic) Border,” he wrote Sunday afternoon. “People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away. The courts are asking the U.S. to do things that are not doable!”

The Commander-in-Chief then followed-up on that post with a frustrated message calling the caravan “a disgrace to the Democrat Party,” adding, “Change the immigration laws NOW!”

The group of migrants, which has swelled to 5,000 according to the Associated Press, intends to reach the U.S., having overcome efforts by Mexican officials to thwart it.

In a bold assertion made yesterday, Trump told reporters “in many cases, these are hardened criminals.”

The president has been increasingly outspoken on immigration as the November midterms loom.

[Mediaite]

Trump says US is ending decades-old nuclear arms treaty with Russia

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President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the US is pulling out of the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, a decades-old agreement that has drawn the ire of the President.

“Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years,” Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One to leave Nevada following a campaign rally.

“And I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out. And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we’re not allowed to,” he said. “We’re the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we’ve honored the agreement.

“But Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement. So we’re going to terminate the agreement. We’re gonna pull out,” he said of the agreement, which was signed in December 1987 by former President Ronald Reagan and former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev.

Following the announcement, Russia’s state-run news agency, RIA Novosti, reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to discuss the decision with US national security adviser John Bolton when he visits Russia this week.

According to the report, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said, “It’s likely that an explanation from the US will be required following the latest scandalous statements.”

What is the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty?

The treaty forced both countries to eliminate ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between approximately 300 and 3,400 miles. It offered a blanket of protection to the United States’ European allies and marked a watershed agreement between two nations at the center of the arms race during the Cold War.

Former State Department spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby, a CNN military and diplomatic analyst, explained that the treaty “wasn’t designed to solve all of our problems with the Soviet Union,” but was “designed to provide a measure of some strategic stability on the continent of Europe.”

“I suspect our European allies right now are none too happy about hearing that President Trump intends to pull out of it,” he said.

Why leave the agreement now?

The Trump Administration has said repeatedlythat Russia has violated the treaty and has pointed to their predecessors in the Obama administration who accused Russia of violating the terms of the agreement.

In 2014, CNN reported that the US had accused Russia of violating the INF Treaty, citing cruise missile tests that dated to 2008. CNN reported in 2014 that the United States at the time informed its NATO allies of Russia’s suspected breach.

However, it wasn’t until recently that NATO officially confirmed Russia’s activity constituted a likely violation.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said earlier this month that the military alliance remained “concerned about Russia’s lack of respect for its international commitments, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the INF Treaty.”

“This treaty abolishes a whole category of weapons and is a crucial element of our security,” Stoltenberg said, speaking at a defense ministers’ meeting. “Now this treaty is in danger because of Russia’s actions.”

He continued, “After years of denials, Russia recently acknowledged the existence of a new missile system, called 9M729. Russia has not provided any credible answers on this new missile. All allies agree that the most plausible assessment would be that Russia is in violation of the treaty. It is therefore urgent that Russia addresses these concerns in a substantial and transparent manner.”

Moscow’s failure to adhere to the agreement was also addressed in the most recent Nuclear Posture Review published by the Defense Department in February, which said Russia “continues to violate a series of arms control treaties and commitments.”

“In a broader context, Russia is either rejecting or avoiding its obligations and commitments under numerous agreements and has rebuffed U.S. efforts to follow the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with another round of negotiated reductions and to pursue reductions in non-strategic nuclear forces.”

What does this mean for US security?

Pulling out of the treaty could provoke a similar arms race across Europe akin to the one that was occurring when the agreement was initially signed in the 1980s.

“I don’t think we’re at the stage right now that if we pull out of the INF Treaty, you’ve got to go sort of build a bunker in your backyard,” Kirby said.

“I don’t think we’re at that stage at all,” he said. “But I do think, if we pull out, we really do need to think about how we are going to, right now because we don’t have the same capability as the Russians have with this particular missile. How are we going to try and counter that? How are we going to try and help deter use of it on the continent of Europe?”

How does China work in all of this?

Administration officials believe the treaty has put the US at a disadvantage because China does not face any constraints on developing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in the Pacific and it does not allow the US to develop new weapons.

Trump, speaking with reporters on Saturday, referenced China when explaining his reasoning for pulling out of the agreement.

“Unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say, ‘Let’s really get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons.’ But if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable,” Trump said.

In 2017, the head of US Pacific Command, Adm. Harry Harris, told Congress that approximately 95% of China’s missile force would violate the INF Treaty if they were part of the agreement.

“This fact is significant because the U.S. has no comparable capability due to our adherence to the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia,” Harris said in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

National security adviser John Bolton is expected to discuss the treaty with Russian officials on his trip to Moscow next week.

Kirby said he thinks the Russians will be OK with the decision.

“This gives Putin an excuse to just continue doing what he’s doing, only doing it more blatantly,” Kirby said.

Outspoken Russian senator Alexey Pushkov tweeted Sunday that the “United States is bringing the world back to the Cold War” in reaction to Trump’s decision, which he called a “massive blow to the entire system of strategic stability in the world.”

Senior Russian lawmaker Konstantin Kosachev warned on his Facebook page that “the consequences would be truly catastrophic.” However, he said it’s not official that the US has pulled out of the INF, saying “it’s still possible to consider Trump’s statement as continuous blackmail rather than a completed legal act.”

[CNN]

Trump spreads fake story that Californians are ‘rioting’ to escape ‘sanctuary cities’

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During a stump speech for Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) in Nevada on Saturday, Donald Trump made a bizarre claim about Californians “rioting” that appears to be a complete fabrication.

While attacking Heller’s opponent Jackie Rosen and “low IQ” Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the president claimed both women voted “in favor of deadly sanctuary cities.”

“A lot of people in California don’t like [sanctuary cities] either,” Trump said. “They’re rioting now, they wanna get out of their sanctuary cities.”

He again reiterated that people in sanctuary cities, or municipalities that refuse to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport undocumented immigrants under this president’s aggressive policies, want to “get out.”

Toronto Star Washington correspondent Daniel Dale pointed out the comments on Twitter and said the president was lying.

“This Trump lie is quite something,” Dale noted. “The president is now inventing nonexistent domestic riots.”

“The ‘rioters,’ in this fictional Trump story, are people who stand with him on the issue, not leftists or illegal immigrants or Soros employees or something,” the reporter added. “It is weird.”

[Raw Story]

Media

Trump Calls Tallahassee ‘One of the Worst & Most Corrupt’ Cities in America

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President Donald Trump tweeted out his support for a Republican candidate that also took a swipe at Tallahassee, Florida.

Trump supports Ron DeSantis, the Republican congressman running for governor in Florida against Democrat Andrew Gillum. Gillum is the mayor of Tallahassee, and Trump tweeted a dig at the city this morning:

“His opponent runs one of the worst & most corrupt cities in USA!”

Trump is likely referring to the ongoing FBI investigation into corruption in Tallahassee, which has become the subject of one of DeSantis’ ads. A spokesperson for Gillum responded to DeSantis by saying the Democratic candidate is “not a subject of the FBI investigation.”

[Mediaite]

Trump Insists Russian Hackers ‘Probably Liked Hillary Clinton Better than Me’

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During a press opportunity in Scottsdale, AZ on Friday, President Donald Trump was asked about the indictment of a Russian national accused of influencing the election.

Trump promptly suggested that it had nothing do with his campaign, and if anything, the hackers probably liked Hillary Clinton more.

“Nothing to do with my campaign,” Trump said.  “All the hackers, and all of the everybody that you see, nothing to do with my campaign. If they are hackers, a lot of them probably liked Hillary Clinton better than me. Now they do. Now they do. But you know, they go after some hacker in Russia, oh, had nothing to do with my campaign.”

Trump’s comments come on the same day as the Justice Department indicted a woman for interference in the midterm elections.

Elena Khusyaynova was charged with sowing discord in the United States by pushing misinformation on divisive political issues. It is the first case of a foreign national being indicted for interfering in the upcoming midterms.

[Mediaite]

Trump baselessly claims Democrats are behind migrant caravan

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Donald Trump thrust a caravan of migrants heading toward the US border into the midterm election campaign, saying at a rally on Thursday night that the race will be “an election of the caravan”.

A group that now numbers about 3,000 people has left Honduras and has reached Guatemala’s border with Mexico, with the ultimate goal of reaching the US – infuriating Trump.

“It’s going to be an election of the caravan. You know what I’m talking about,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Missoula, Montana, declaring his intention to use the migrants’ journey as a bludgeon against Democratic candidates.

There is evidence that Trump’s use of the caravan as a campaign issue may be effective among the Republican base. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 75% of voters who intend to vote for a Republican congressional candidate consider illegal immigration a “very big” problem for the country.

That makes it the top-rated issue for Republican leaning voters. By contrast, only 19% of voters supporting a Democrat called illegal immigration a very big problem. Democratic voters instead called gun violence, the affordability of healthcare and college education, government ethics, the gap between the rich and poor, and a host of other issues very big problems.

Trump claimed, without any supporting evidence, that Democrats were behind the caravan, and raised conspiracy theories that the Central Americans had been paid to come to the United States for political reasons.

“Now we’re starting to find out – and I won’t say it 100%, I’ll put a little tiny question mark at the end. But we’re probably not going to need it, but we have the fake news back there,” he told the crowd, adding a familiar jab at news reporterscovering his campaign appearances.

“A lot of money’s been passing through people to come up and try to get to the border by election day, because they think that’s a negative for us. Number one, they’re being stopped. And number two, regardless, that’s our issue.”

Trump appeared to be referring to a video postedby the Florida representative Matt Gaetz, which he claimed showed women and children being given cash to “storm the US border @ election time”. He suggested without evidence that the source could be “Soros? US-backed NGOs?” referring to George Soros, an American billionaire who is the frequent subject of rightwing conspiracy theories.

A journalist who interviewed people on the ground where the video was taken reported that local merchants had collected money and given it out as aid to migrants. He located the site in Guatemala, not Honduras as the congressman had claimed.

Gaetz later posted a tacit correction, saying he had believed the video was taken in Honduras because it was sent to him by a Honduran official.

Speaking of Democrats, Trump said: “They wanted that caravan. And there are those who say that caravan didn’t just happen. It didn’t just happen.”

Trump threatened on Thursday to close the US-Mexico border and deploy the military if caravan members approach the frontier.

The Mexican government said it was in touch with members of the caravan, some of whom have arrived at the country’s southern border seeking refuge, and will process any legitimate claims for entry in an orderly manner. Mexican officials have said that anyone who enters illegally will be subject to deportation.

Despite the extremist campaign trail rhetoric, the Trump administration has supported a Mexican government plan to work with the United Nations refugee agency to deal with the caravan, USA Today reported.

[The Guardian]

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