Cummings: ‘No Idea Why President Trump Would Make Up a Story About Me Like He Did Today’

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Rep. Elijah E. Cummings swatted away President Trump’s claim that the Baltimore Democrat wouldn’t meet with him after repeated calls from the White House.

Trump made the comment during a wide-ranging news conference Thursday and speculated that Cummings may have been dissuaded from coming to the White House for political reasons, perhaps by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), whom Trump dismissed as a “lightweight.”

“I have no idea why President Trump would make up a story about me like he did today. Of course, Senator Schumer never told me to skip a meeting with the President,” Cummings said in a statement.

Trump said Cummings “was all excited and then he said, ‘Well, I can’t move, it might be bad for me politically. I can’t have that meeting.’ ”

Trump continued: “But he probably was told by Schumer or somebody like that — some other lightweight. . . . He was probably told: ‘Don’t meet with Trump. It’s bad politics.’ And that’s part of the problem with this country.”

The musings came in response to a question about whether Trump would meet with the Congressional Black Caucus — of which Cummings is a high-profile member — to discuss crime in poor, urban areas.

The 11-term congressman and ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said he planned to talk to Trump about the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs.

But first, he said, he wanted to finalize a proposal he has been working on with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to allow the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices — a concept that Cummings says Trump has supported.

“I also sincerely have no idea why the President made this claim in response to an unrelated question about the Congressional Black Caucus. I am sure members of the CBC can answer these questions for themselves,” the congressman’s statement said.

Cummings noted that prescription drugs affect “every American family — not just people of color.”

The congressman told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday afternoon that his office is working on setting up a meeting. “We’re looking forward to it,” he said. “I’m excited about meeting with the president. He’s my president, and I’m excited about meeting with him.”

Minutes after Trump’s news conference concluded, the Oversight Committee announced that Cummings had joined Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other Democrats in calling for a review of how the president and his staff handled sensitive national security materials at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., resort.

In a letter, the lawmakers asked the Government Accountability Office to determine whether protocols were followed and to provide an accounting of taxpayer costs related to Trump’s stay at his private club, which he has dubbed the “Winter White House.”

(h/t The Washington Post)

Trump Winery Seeks More Foreign Help

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A Virginia winery owned by President Trump’s son Eric has requested permission to bring in nearly two dozen foreign workers, according to a new report.

The Trump Winery in Virginia is seeking 23 workers from overseas to plant and harvest grapes there this spring, BuzzFeed reported Thursday.

The Department of Labor published a request from the winery, which is also known as Trump Vineyard Estates LLC, earlier that day.

Thursday’s posting says potential workers will earn $11.27 hourly working at the 1,300-acre estate from April 3 to as late as Oct. 27.

The workers are being sought using the federal H-2A visa program, which permits U.S. employers to hire foreign agricultural laborers for temporary work as long as no qualified Americans want the jobs instead.

The H-2 visa program has brought more than 100,000 foreigners into the U.S. annually since 2003, BuzzFeed reported, and the initiative has benefited businesses relating to the Trumps.

BuzzFeed added that companies owned by President Trump or bearing his name have sought to hire at least 286 foreign workers since he launched his White House run in June 2015.

Many laborers now work as servers and housecleaners at Mar-a-Lago, the report said, Trump’s luxury resort in Palm Beach, Fla., that Trump has dubbed “the winter White House.”

Stores in the Washington, D.C., area have reportedly been selling out of bottles of wine that bear the president’s name since he entered office.

(h/t The Hill)

Trump Asked a Black Reporter If the Congressional Black Caucus Are “Friends of Yours”

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President Trump’s press conference Thursday had many unbelievable moments. But one of the most shocking was an exchange in which Trump asked a black reporter to set up a meeting for him with the Congressional Black Caucus, and asked if the caucus members were “friends” of hers.

April Ryan, the White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks in Baltimore, asked Trump whether he would include the Congressional Black Caucus in conversations about his “urban agenda” for the “inner city.”

But Ryan used the abbreviation “CBC” for the Congressional Black Caucus at first — and Trump didn’t appear to know what she was referring to.

“Am I going to include who?” he asked.

Ryan clarified: “Are you going to include the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — ”

“Well, I would,” Trump interrupted. “I tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting? Do you want to set up the meeting?”

“No, no, no, I’m just a reporter,” Ryan said.

“Are they friends of yours?” Trump asked.

Ryan replied, before Trump cut her off again, “I know some of them, but I’m sure they’re watching right now — ”

“I would love to meet with the Black Caucus,” Trump said. “I think it’s great, the Congressional Black Caucus, I think it’s great.”

As it turns out, the CBC asked Trump for a meeting weeks ago and never heard back:

Trump seems to have assumed that just because Ryan was black and asked a question about the CBC, she would know the caucus members personally and be able to set up a meeting with them. Trump’s question also reveals a basic ignorance of how reporters do their job.

As my colleague Jenée Desmond-Harris has explained, Trump has a big problem with racially stereotyping black people. He seems almost incapable of mentioning black Americans without also mentioning the “inner city,” which he strictly describes as a blighted, crime-ridden hellscape. But that association is not only racist stereotyping — it also doesn’t reflect how black Americans really live.

(h/t Vox)

 

Trump Slams 9th Circuit Court, Which Blocked His Immigration Ban, As ‘In Chaos’

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During his first solo press conference as commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump on Thursday slammed the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals as being “in chaos” and “in turmoil.” The 9th Circuit Court ruled unanimously to block Trump’s ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim nations earlier this month.

Trump vowed to appeal the court’s ruling in Thursday’s press conference; he had previously vacillated on whether his administration would issue a brand new executive order on immigration or appeal the current order all the way to the Supreme Court.

Trump has been criticized in recent weeks for his apparent attempts to undermine the American judiciary system, with his own Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch calling Trump’s repeated attacks on judges’ integrity “demoralizing.” On Thursday, Trump said he’d “heard” that 80 percent of the 9th Circuit Court’s decisions are overturned — a claim that is patently false, and which Snopes debunked here.

(h/t The Week)

Media

Trump Reportedly Being Kept in the Dark About Sensitive Intelligence Due to Concerns About Leaks

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U.S. intelligence officials’ mistrust of President Donald Trump is so acute that they have withheld information from him, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing current and former officials familiar with the matter.

The information withheld includes the sources and methods used to collect the intelligence, according to the newspaper.

The report comes amid Trump’s claims that intelligence agencies have leaked information to undermine him. In a tweet on Wednesday, Trump blasted the intelligence community for leaks.

And in tweets on Thursday, Trump lashed out at the media.

“Any suggestion that the U.S. intelligence community is withholding information and not providing the best possible intelligence to the president and his national security team is not true,” the Office of Director of National Intelligence said in a statement to the Journal.

The White House said it does not have evidence this is actually happening, the Journal said.

Withholding some information from presidents is not new for intelligence agencies, but the difference in Trump’s case is that the decision to refrain from sharing sensitive intelligence stemmed from concerns about leaks or compromises, the Journal reported.

To read more, check out the full Wall Street Journal report.

(h/t CNBC)

Trump Ally With Zero Experience to Review Intelligence Agencies

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President Trump is planning to ask a member of his economic advisory council to lead a review of the U.S. intelligence community, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

According to the newspaper, Stephen Feinberg, a co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, has informed his company’s shareholders that he is currently considering a move to join the Trump administration.

Feinberg also maintains strong ties to top Trump officials, including chief strategist Stephen Bannon and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who is also President Trump’s son-in-law.

Both officials declined to comment on The New York Times report.

Top intelligence officials told the Times they fear that the businessman is being prepped for a position within the intelligence community.

According to the paper, Feinberg’s only national security experience stems from his company’s involvement with a private security company and two gun manufacturers.

The possible review of intelligence agencies comes in the wake of Trump’s renewed feud with the intelligence community over leaks that led to the ousting of national security adviser Michael Flynn.

“From intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked; it’s criminal action. It’s a criminal act, and it’s been going on for a long time before me, but now it’s really going on,” Trump said Wednesday.

“The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by ‘intelligence’ like candy. Very un-American!” the president also tweeted.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), on Wednesday formally asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to further investigate the leaks.

“We have serious concerns about the potential protection of classified information here. … The release of classified information can, by definition, have grave effects on national security. In light of this, we request that your office begin an immediate investigation into whether classified information was mishandled here,” the lawmakers wrote.

(h/t The Hill)

 

Trump Signs Repeal of Transparency Rule for Oil Companies

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President Trump signed legislation Tuesday to repeal a controversial regulation that would have required energy companies to disclose their payments to foreign governments.

The legislation is the first time in 16 years that the Congressional Review Act (CRA) has been used to repeal a regulation, and only the second time in the two decades that act has been law. It is the third piece of legislation Trump has signed since taking office three weeks ago.

It is the start of one front in an aggressive deregulatory effort that the Trump administration and the GOP Congress are undertaking to roll back Obama-era rules on fossil fuel companies, financial institutions and other businesses that they say have suffered for the last eight years.

The resolution repeals a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule written under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

It was meant to fight corruption in resource-rich countries by mandating that companies on United States stock exchanges disclose the royalties and other payments that oil, natural gas, coal and mineral companies make to governments.

At a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, Trump said the legislation is part of a larger regulatory rollback that he and congressional Republicans are undertaking with the goal of economic and job recovery.

“This is a big signing, very important signing,” Trump said, flanked at his desk by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and other lawmakers.

“We’re bringing back jobs big league. We’re bringing them back at the plant level, we’re bringing them back at the mine level. The energy jobs are coming back,” he continued. “A lot of people going back to work now.”

Trump then asked Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), the measure’s lead sponsor, to speak about it and regulatory reform in general.

“Over 20 years, there’s been 56,000 rules that have been put in place, with very little legislative input or oversight, and it’s time that changed,” he said.

The administration and congressional allies say the SEC rule imposes massive, unnecessary costs on United States oil, natural gas and mining companies, putting them at a significant competitive disadvantage to foreign companies that do not have to comply.

“Misguided federal regulations such as the SEC rule addressed by H.J.R. 41 inflict real cost on the American people and put our businesses, especially small businesses, at a significant disadvantage,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said earlier Tuesday.

“It’s a priority for the Trump administration to fix our broken regulatory system so that it enhances American productivity and well-being without imposing unnecessary costs and burdens,” he said.

“Signing this joint resolution is one more step toward achieving this goal.”

The House passed the repeal measure earlier this month, followed shortly by the Senate.

Democrats and supporters of the SEC rule see the rollback as a victory for corruption.

“The rule they’re trying to repeal protects U.S. citizens and investors from having millions of their dollars vanished into the pockets of corrupt foreign oligarchs,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said earlier this month. “This kind of transparency is essential to combating waste, fraud, corruption and mismanagement.”

Supports argued in part that if the United States takes a leading role on foreign payment transparency, other major nations would follow.

Exxon Mobil Corp., whose former CEO Rex Tillerson is now secretary of State, was one of the most vocal opponents of the rule, along with other major oil companies.

The SEC is still obligated under the Dodd-Frank law to write some form of a transparency rule for extractive industries.

But under the CRA, the agency can never publish any rule that is “substantially the same” as the one that has now been overturned.

Both chambers of Congress have also passed a CRA resolution to overturn the Interior Department’s stream protection rule for coal mining, and Trump supports the repeal.

The House has passed numerous other regulatory repeal measures under the CRA, including ones on methane pollution and gun ownership, and the Senate is likely to take up at least some of them.

(h/t The Hill)

Trump Says Flynn Was Treated Unfairly, A Day After Spicer Said He Was Fired Because of a Lack of Trust

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President Trump  criticized the intelligence community and the media Wednesday for the news reports that ultimately led to national security adviser Michael Flynn’s resignation Monday night, less than four weeks into his White House tenure.

“I think he’s been treated very, very unfairly by the media — as I call it, the ‘fake media,’ in many cases — and I think it’s really a sad thing that he was treated so badly,” Trump said at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I think in addition to that, from intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked.”

Trump added that the leaks were a “criminal action, criminal act.”

The president was responding to a question from the Christian Broadcasting Network about whether he thinks that recent reports concerning Russia — that Flynn misled government officials, including now-Vice President Pence, about conversations Flynn had with the Russian ambassador involving sanctions, as well as news that members of the Trump campaign had repeated contact with Russian intelligence officials — could undermine the goal of preventing a nuclear Iran.

His response, in which he defended Flynn as a “wonderful man,” added confusion to the White House’s account of Flynn’s dismissal and conflicted with his press secretary’s assertion that Trump fired Flynn.

“People are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton,” Trump said. “I think it’s very, very unfair what’s happened to General Flynn, the way he was treated, and the documents and papers that were illegally — I stress that — illegally leaked. Very, very unfair.”

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer emphasized that Trump asked Flynn to resign because he could no longer be trusted, particularly after misleading Pence about discussing with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak sanctions put in place by the Obama administration.

“The evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances is what led the president to ask for General Flynn’s resignation,” Spicer said during his press briefing.

Spicer told reporters Wednesday afternoon that he didn’t see a need to “square” his earlier comments with the president’s praise of Flynn of earlier in the day.

“The president is very clear that Gen. Flynn has served this country, both in uniform and here, with distinction,” he said. “There’s a clear difference between his commitment to caring about this country and the trust the president had to execute those jobs.”

Trump’s comments at the news conference followed a blitz of angry tweets Wednesday morning over Flynn’s departure and what Trump said were leaks from intelligence agencies.

The direct slam against the leaks suggested deepening struggles within the Trump White House as it faces growing questions — and possible congressional probes — about how and when the president and other top officials dealt with the disclosures that Flynn conducted private outreach with Russia’s ambassador before Trump took office. Intercepts showed that Flynn discussed U.S. sanctions in a phone call with the ambassador — a conversation topic that Flynn first denied and then later said he could not recall.

Trump’s ire over the insider tips to journalists also contrasted with his indirect praise of the disclosure of leaked internal emails from the Clinton campaign made public by WikiLeaks during the lead-up to the election.

Trump tried to brush off the mounting pressures on his administration as a diversion by opponents, even though senior Republican lawmakers have indicated that investigations into Russian contacts will be expanded. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said it was “highly likely” that the events leading to Flynn’s departure would be added to a broader probe into alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election.

“This Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign,” Trump tweeted Wednesday.

The president was referring to recent stories by the New York Times and The Washington Post. Both outlined questionable — and potentially illegal — contact between his aides and Russia.

An article posted by the New York Times late Tuesday reported that members of his presidential campaign team, as well as other Trump associates, were repeatedly in contact with senior Russian intelligence officials during the campaign. And several articles by The Post reported that Flynn had misled administration officials, including Pence, about his discussions with the Russian ambassador to the United States over sanctions before Trump was sworn in.

(h/t Washington Post)

 

Trump Was Asked a Question About Anti-Semitism. His Answer Was About the Electoral College.

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The final question of Wednesday’s joint news conference between the leaders of the United States and Israel was directed at President Trump and focused on anti-Semitism. Here’s the question, and Trump’s answer, courtesy of the New York Times’s Sopan Deb:

The question was centered on the rise in anti-Semitic attacks since Trump won in November and what he would say to allegations that his administration “is playing with xenophobia and maybe racist tones.” It’s a tough question, without doubt, but also one that has a relatively simple answer. Rep. Don Beyer (Va.) offered his version of that answer on Twitter shortly after the Trump presser.

Beyer is a Democrat, but his suggested answer is one that almost any politician of either party would do well to give. Simple, straightforward and clear.

That was not the answer Trump chose to go with. Not even close.

Instead, Trump spent several sentences — 49 words, to be exact — recalling that he had won 306 electoral votes in the 2016 election when people said he couldn’t even win 220 or 221. “And there’s tremendous enthusiasm out there,” he added. (I didn’t count that sentence in the 49 words; if you do, you wind up with 55 words dedicated to his victory.)

He then segued into a sort-of-but-not-really answer to the question he was asked — REMINDER: It was about the rise of anti-Semitic attacks since he has been elected — by promising that “we are going to have peace in this country” and “we are going to stop crime in this country.”

Those would be two notable achievements. But neither gets to the root of the question Trump was asked: What does he say to a Jewish community around the world and in the United States that is worried about the rise of anti-Semitic attacks since his victory?

Trump’s coup de grace came when he cited the fact that his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, and their children are Jewish. Trump’s intent is clear: I care deeply about the Jewish people and loathe anti-Semitism for lots of reasons but one big one is because it hits so close to home for me. Why not say that? As it was, it looked like Trump was just pointing out Jewish people he was related to.

And his final words didn’t even seem to match that sentiment: “I think a lot of good things are happening and you’re going to see a lot of love. You’re going to see a lot of love. Okay?”

Um, okay?

(h/t Washington Post)

 

Kellyanne Conway Tweets Love to White Supremacist

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Late Monday, coming off a long evening of responding to Gen. Mike Flynn’s resignation as national security adviser, senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway found solace in a tweet from a user named Lib Hypocrisy:

Conway not only retweeted the message but also wrote, “Love you back,” and wished her “Hapless Haters” a happy Valentine’s Day.

But there was just one problem: Lib Hypocrisy is an explicit promoter of white nationalism and other bigotry. This is evident from the account’s profile, which includes the hashtags “#WhiteIdentity” and “#Nationalist.” It features a cartoon image connoting Pepe the Frog, the adopted mascot of the racist “alt-right” movement, and a shout-out to Geert Wilders, the far-right Dutch politician who wants to shut down mosques.

These are some of Lib Hypocrisy’s recent tweets and retweets:

Asked about her retweet of Lib Hypocisy by BuzzFeed on Tuesday, Conway implied that she hadn’t been in control of her account at the time. She said she “obviously” had no idea who Lib Hypocrisy was, adding, “I denounce whoever it is.” The tweets were soon deleted.

Conway’s move continues a long-standing pattern of Trump and his inner circle engaging with white nationalists and then claiming ignorance when confronted about it—as Mother Jones documented in multiple investigations since last summer. Other such “mistakes” include:

  • Trump failing to disavow support from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke when asked about it repeatedly on CNN, and then blaming a “bad earpiece.”
  • Trump appointing a white nationalist leader as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, and then blaming a “database error” for the move.
  • Trump tweeting an image of himself superimposed over a picture of WWII-era Waffen-SS soldiers, and then blaming a mistake by an intern.
  • Gen. Michael Flynn sharing a #NeverHillary tweet that said, “Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore,” and then claiming it was a mistake.

Those are just the cases in which Trump and his backers have backpedaled. There are many other similar instances in which they haven’t even bothered to explain or apologize:

The most charitable interpretation of this behavior is ineptitude. Regardless, the result is clear: According to one study of 10,000 Twitter accounts that followed Trump, more than a third also followed the account of at least one prominent booster of white nationalism—a movement now widely regarded as having a direct line into the Oval Office.

(h/t Mother Jones)

 

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