Category: Unpresidential

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]

Trump calls Rep. Joe Crowley a ‘slovenly man’ who ‘got his ass kicked’

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President Donald Trump mocked the No. 4 House Democrat, Rep. Joe Crowley of New York, for losing in a primary to 28-year-old first-time candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday.

“A slovenly man named Joe Crowley got his ass kicked by a young woman who had a lot of energy,” Trump said. “She had a lot of energy. I guess he didn’t see it. They couldn’t find him.”

Trump was speaking at a campaign rally in Fargo, North Dakota, Wednesday night. He was promoting Rep. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, in his challenge to Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.

The President also begged Democrats to keep Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California on as House minority leader and he highlighted Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who recently urged activists to publicly confront Trump officials.

“Please keep Maxine Waters on the air as your face and your mouthpiece for the Democrat party,” Trump said.

[CNN]

Trump taunts Crowley moments after losing Democratic primary

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President Trump slammed Joe Crowley just minutes after the Democratic congressman lost a primary to a political novice.

“Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election,” Trump tweeted Tuesday night.

“In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!”

Crowley lost to Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who believes in universal health care, a federal jobs guarantee, and the abolition of ICE.

[New York Post]

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.

Trump threatens Harley-Davidson: If it moves operations overseas, ‘they will be taxed like never before!’

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President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday that Harley-Davidsonwill be “taxed like never before” if the motorcycle maker moves production overseas. He claimed that the iconic U.S. company was using increased trade tensions as an excuse to justify planned changes in manufacturing.

“A Harley-Davidson should never be built in another country-never! Their employees and customers are already very angry at them. If they move, watch, it will be the beginning of the end – they surrendered, they quit! The Aura will be gone and they will be taxed like never before!” Trump said in a tweet.

Harley said Monday it was moving some production overseas due to increased costs from the EU’s retaliatory tariffs against the Trump administration’s duties on steel and aluminum. No production will be moving to Europe as a result of the tariffs, according to the company. Harley’s overseas manufacturing plants are in Brazil, India, Australia and Thailand.

[CNBC]

Trump Bashes ‘Lowlife’ Colbert, ‘Lost Soul’ Fallon, and ‘No Talent’ Kimmel in Surreal Rally Speech

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During his rally in South Carolina, Donald Trump went on a surreal tangent in which he hit the late night comedians from each of the big three networks.

For the last few days, Trump has been complaining about Fallon with regard to the infamous 2016 interview in which the NBC funnyman ruffled the then-candidate’s hair. Fallon has expressed regret for how he humanized Trump amid his various political controversies, and Trump responded by complaining about his hair being messed up.

When Trump brought this up on Monday night, he sarcastically remarked that Fallon is “going to lose all of us” for being sorry about the interview. He went on to trash Stephen Colbert as a “lowlife,” and said Jimmy Kimmel is “terrible” has “no talent.”

“Honestly, are these people funny?” Trump asked. “I can laugh at myself. Frankly, if I couldn’t, I’d be in big trouble. But they’re no talent. They’re not talented people.”

After Trump told a really dismissive story about the time he went on Kimmel’s show, he called Fallon a “lost soul” and bragged about how he gave him a ratings boost by appearing on his program. He continued to say that Fallon “really hurt himself” by apologizing, and then he eventually worked in a complaint about how Arnold Schwarzenegger ruined The Apprentice.

[Mediaite]

Sanders: Harassment of Trump supporters ‘unacceptable’

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White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday pushed for respectful political discourse in the aftermath of her dismissal from a Virginia restaurant over the weekend.

Sanders addressed the incident at the start of Monday’s press briefing, saying she and her husband “politely left” The Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., after she said she was asked to leave “because I work for President Trump.”

“We are allowed to disagree but we should be able to do so freely and without fear of harm,” she said. “And this goes for all people regardless of politics.”

“Healthy debate on ideas and political philosophy is important, but the calls for harassment and push for any Trump supporter to avoid the public is unacceptable,” she said.

“America is a great country and our ability to find solutions despite those disagreements is what makes us unique,” she added before launching into a list of President Trump’s accomplishments.

 

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/394021-sanders-on-fallout-of-restaurant-incident-harassment-of-trump

 

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