President Donald Trump called for “quick justice” and “strong justice” for terror suspects in the wake of the deadly New York City attack.
We have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. They’ll go through court for years. At the end, they’ll be — who knows what happens. We need quick justice, and we need strong justice. Much quicker and much stronger than we have right now, because what we have right now is a joke, and it’s a laughing stock. And no wonder so much of this stuff takes place.
Tuesday’s terror attack in New York was the city’s deadliest since 9/11. Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov drove a rented van down a bike path, law enforcement sources have said. The attack killed six victims instantly, while two others died later. New York politicians and officials quickly labeled the incident a terror attack.
As Vox points out, this is verifiably false pretty much from top to bottom.
There is no evidence that US courts are unable to prosecute terrorism suspects in a timely fashion. The opposite: Since 9/11, more than 620 individuals have been convicted on terrorism charges in 63 separate federal courts, according to a May 2017 count by Human Rights First. None of these terrorists have broken out of prison, and none of the courts have suffered retaliatory attacks.
Moreover, the US already tried to set up an alternative system — the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that George W. Bush established after 9/11 — and it was a disaster.
Military courts are well equipped to try US service members who violate military laws, but aren’t set up to deal with complex and wide-ranging constitutional and classification issues raised by major terrorism prosecution. This makes them slower and puts verdicts on less sure legal footing. In the same time span that civilian courts convicted 620 individuals on terrorism charges, military commissions convicted a grand total of eight people.
President Trump on Saturday hit at documentary filmmaker Michael Moore following reports his anti-Trump Broadway show was closing after a 13-week run that fell short of its potential gross.
“While not at all presidential I must point out that the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close. Sad!” Trump tweeted.
While not at all presidential I must point out that the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close. Sad!
BroadwayWorld.com, a website that tracks Broadway ticket sales, pegged the show’s final gross at about $4.2 million.
In its first full week, “The Terms of My Surrender” grossed $456,195. But the show’s earnings gradually sank in the weeks that followed, before seeing a surge in its final weeks.
However, the show, as Trump claims in his tweet, was not forced to close.
Playbill fact-checked the president’s tweet writing: “While the show was not a box-office front-runner (grossing less than half of its potential most weeks and drawing in a capacity hovering in the mid 70 percentile), it did play its fully scheduled run.”
The anti-Trump, one-man show began previews at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre on July 28, and paid tribute to the liberal director’s career in film and political activism.
Moore has been an outspoken critic of Trump throughout his campaign and presidency, and in August led his Broadway audience through Manhattan to protest the president at Trump Tower over his remarks following the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.
President Donald Trump insulted the parents of children dressed in Halloween costumes during an Oval Office event.
“I can not believe the media produced such beautiful children,” Trump said of the photo-op when young kids of White House journalists visit in costume.
The comments came the same week Trump claimed he is not uncivil because he went to an Ivy League school.
“Do you know they are?” Trump asked as he pointed to the reporters against the sounds of motor-driven cameras clicking away.
“They’re the friendly media, that’s the press,” Trump told the children, one of whom started to cry.
“Are you going to grow up to be like your parents?” Trump asked one young girl. “Hmmmmm? Don’t answer, that can only get me in trouble, that question.”
“Nah, you have wonderful parents, right?” Trump reassured.
As President Trump began to hand out souvenirs, he again returned to his fixation on the media.
President Donald Trump blasted Tom Steyer on Friday, calling the Democratic megadonor “wacky” and “totally unhinged.”
“Wacky & totally unhinged Tom Steyer, who has been fighting me and my Make America Great Again agenda from beginning, never wins elections!” Trump tweeted Friday morning.
Steyer, a California billionaire activist, is launching a $10 million national ad campaign calling for the president’s impeachment. The 60-second TV spot began running last week, according to Forbes.
The ad played Friday morning on “Fox & Friends,” likely catching the president’s eye.
Steyer opens the ad narrating over clips of the president and a shot of North Korea. He says that Trump has brought the U.S. “to the brink of nuclear war” with North Korea and is “accused of obstructing justice” with his May firing of then-FBI Director James Comey and “of violating the Constitution by taking money from foreign governments and threatening to shut down news organizations that report the truth.”
“If that isn’t the case for impeaching and removing a dangerous president, then what has our government become?” says Steyer, speaking directly into the camera and identified onscreen as an “American Citizen.” “I’m Tom Steyer, and, like you, I’m a citizen who knows it’s up to us to do something. It’s why I’m funding this effort to raise our voices together and demand that elected officials take a stand on impeachment.”
Steyer adds that a Republican-led Congress “once impeached a president for far less, yet today people in Congress and his own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger who’s mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons, and they do nothing.”
He asks Americans to join him and tell their member of Congress “they have a moral responsibility to stop doing what’s political and start doing what’s right.”
“Our country depends on it,” he warns.
The ad encourages viewers to sign a petition at NeedToImpeach.com.
Immediately after tweeting about Steyer, Trump thanked Fox News’ morning show for its coverage.
“Thank you @foxandfriends,” Trump tweeted, just one minute after his tweet about Steyer. “Really great job and show!”
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) admonished President Trump on Tuesday to stop interfering in the debate over tax legislation and said his volatility could lead the United States into war, prompting a slew of Twitter insults from the president and renewing a long-simmering feud just hours before he is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill.
“I would just like him to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something that’s constructive,” Corker said on Good Morning America, referring to the debate over restructuring the tax code. “If you start taking things off the table before you get started, you make it very difficult.”
Trump returned fire by insulting Corker on Twitter, saying the retiring senator “couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee.”
“Isn’t it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn’t get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!” the president tweeted.
The feud lays bare tensions between Trump and congressional Republicans that are already complicating GOP efforts to advance tax cuts, the party’s last-ditch attempt at a major policy accomplishment this year.
Trump has promised changes to the tax code will not affect tax-deferred retirement plans, the mortgage interest deduction or the deduction for charitable contributions. Republicans like Corker, one of the GOP’s most vocal Trump critics, say these promises raise expectations prematurely while making it more difficult for lawmakers to make up the revenue that will be lost to tax cuts.
The strained relations between the president and Republican senators, which go far beyond Trump’s fight with Corker, add uncertainty to the GOP’s effort to cut taxes and enact other policy priorities.
President Trump on Saturday referred to a Democratic congresswoman as “wacky” and said she “is killing the Democrat party.”
His comments are the latest response to a controversy that Trump’s Saturday morning tweet is now stretching into its fifth day.
Trump also offered faint praise to the “Fake News Media” for covering the story of his feud with Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) over a phone call to a military family following the death of a soldier in Niger.
“I hope the Fake News Media keeps talking about Wacky Congresswoman Wilson in that she, as a representative, is killing the Democrat Party!” he tweeted.
I hope the Fake News Media keeps talking about Wacky Congresswoman Wilson in that she, as a representative, is killing the Democrat Party!
Wilson earlier this week described a Tuesday phone conversation between Trump and the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in Niger. Trump initially called Wilson “wacky” in a Thursday tweet, accusing her of lying about the content of the call after “secretly” listening in.
Wilson was in a car with the fallen soldier’s family when Trump called, and the family confirmed her description of the call, which took place on speakerphone.
Wilson said the president told the widow her late husband “knew what he signed up for … but when it happens it hurts anyway.” Johnson’s mother told The Washington Post that the president disrespected the family with his call.
The White House later appeared to confirm what Trump said during the call but has accused Wilson of politicizing a “sacred” issue.
“It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation. Absolutely stuns me. I would have thought that was sacred,” White House chief of staff John Kelly said Thursday.
He went on to slam the Florida lawmaker for taking credit for securing “$20 million” in funding for a FBI field office in Miami in 2015, saying it demonstrated her true nature.
“A congresswoman stood up, and in a long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money — the $20 million — to build the building, and she sat down, and we were stunned,” Kelly said.
Wilson pushed back, calling Kelly’s accusations “crazy” and said that the building “was funded long before I got to Congress.”
The White House stood by Kelly’s criticism despite newly released video showing he misrepresented her remarks.
“As Gen. Kelly pointed out, if you are able to make a sacred act like honoring American heroes all about yourself, you are an empty barrel,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday.
“If you don’t understand that reference, I’ll put it a little more simply — as we say in the South, all hat no cattle,” she added.
Wilson is known in Congress for her ornate hats.
“I feel very sorry for him because he feels such a need to lie on me and I’m not even his enemy,” Wilson told The New York Times of Kelly on Friday. “I just can’t even imagine why he would fabricate something like that. That is absolutely insane. I’m just flabbergasted because it’s very easy to trace.”
She has promised to keep pressing the administration for answers on what happened in Niger, which is now the subject of an investigation by the Pentagon and the FBI. Militants ambushed the U.S. soldiers in the incident, and questions linger about the quickness of the U.S. response.
“I will always speak up for my constituents…and the truth!” Wilson tweeted Friday night.
President Donald Trump on Thursday again rebutted a Florida congresswoman’s account of a call between him and the widow of a soldier killed in Niger, accusing her of listening in on the conversation and telling a “total lie” to the media.
“The Fake News is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson(D), who was SECRETLY on a very personal call, and gave a total lie on content!” the president tweeted late Thursday.
The comments come as another direct rebuke of Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida, who on Tuesday said that during a call with the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, Trump had said that “he knew what he signed up for … but when it happens, it hurts anyway.”
Trump on Wednesday morning quickly denied the claims, saying Wilson “totally fabricated” the comments and that he had “proof” to the contrary — proof he has yet to unveil. Wilson returned fire by calling Trump “a liar” and saying that the conversation had been put on speakerphone and overheard by four witnesses.
“The sad part about it is, he didn’t know La David’s name,” Wilson told POLITICO on Wednesday.
Cowanda Jones-Johnson, the mother of the soldier’s mother, told The Washington Post Wednesday that she was present during the call and that she stood by Wilson’s description.
The White House said Wednesday that it did not have a recording of the conversation.
The nasty exchange between public officials ignited a furor over the White House’s response to fallen military officers, just days after Trump insinuated that his predecessors had not always extended the same courtesies to military families while in office.
White House chief of staff John Kelly on Thursday delivered an impassioned defense of the president’s conversation with the Johnson family, but also didn’t deny that Trump uttered the words that Wilson said he used. Kelly did rebuke Wilson, calling her “selfish” for criticizing the president’s words during a condolence call.
“I was stunned when I came to work yesterday morning and brokenhearted at what I saw a member of Congress doing,” he told reporters at the White House press briefing. “A member of Congress who listened in on a phone call from the president of the United States to a young wife — and in his way tried to express that opinion that he’s a brave man, a fallen hero.”
President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon that he found it “frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write.”
Asked later whether he believed there “should be limits on what the press should write” — which would likely conflict with the First Amendment, which guarantees both free expression and a free press — Trump said, “No. The press should speak more honestly.”
Still, his comment raised eyebrows, especially because it was the latest remark in a string of heightened attacks Trump has leveled against the press in recent days.
Just Wednesday morning, Trump had tweeted that media companies which report critically on him should be punished by having their television station licenses revoked.
In a tweet, the president decried the supposed “fake news coming out of NBC and the Networks.” He asked, “At what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”
Trump seems to have been furious over an NBC News report that said he wanted a tenfold increase in the U.S.’ nuclear arsenal. Earlier in the morning he claimed the story was “pure fiction” and “made up to demean.”
Trump’s veiled threat may contribute to the increasingly chilly atmosphere journalists in the U.S. are working under during his administration. But his threat is essentially toothless.
First of all, there is no single license for NBC or any other national television network. Licenses are granted to individual local stations — and NBC doesn’t even own most of the stations that broadcast its content across the country. And it is extremely unusual for any station’s license to be taken away for any reason, much less for a political vendetta.
The licenses for local television stations are subject to review by the Federal Communications Commission every eight years.
It would not be possible for Trump or his allies to challenge all of the licenses held by NBC in one fell swoop. Individuals who reside in the areas the local channel airs would have to submit complaints to the FCC.
There is precedent for political allies of a president challenging local licenses. It happened under Richard Nixon in the 1970s, when a friend of Nixon’s tried to take over a license held by the Washington Post. Nixon’s ally did not succeed in his bid.
Short of gross misconduct on the part of a challenged station, it’s unlikely any other such attempt now would be successful either.
“Whatever other legal problems [NBC parent] Comcast may have, this is not one of them,” Andrew Jay Schwartzman, an attorney who works at the Georgetown University Law Center and specializes in telecommunications law, told CNN. “Comcast knows full well that the FCC will never, ever, deny its license renewal applications.”
The FCC is technically an independent body, not subject to the president’s orders. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai — who is a Republican appointed to his current post by Trump — said in March that his job is not to be a “political actor.”
“It is simply to be somebody at the FCC who, as I said, is administering the laws of the United States,” Pai said. “I’m simply not going to wade into that kind of political debate.”
Neither Pai nor an FCC spokesperson immediately responded to requests for comment about Trump’s tweet. But former FCC officials were quick to skewer the president.
“To me it’s just incomprehensible that because of the content of NBC News that somehow their license would be at risk,” Alfred Sykes, a Republican who served as chairman of the FCC under George H.W. Bush, told The Wrap.
“This madcap threat, if pursued, would be blatant and unacceptable intervention in the decisions of an independent agency,” echoed Michael Copps, a Democrat who served as FCC commissioner under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, in a statement to HuffPost. “The law does not countenance such interference. President Trump might be happier as emperor, but I think the American people would strip him of his clothes on this issued.
A spokesperson for NBC declined to comment.
Trump has increased his attacks on the media in the past week. Last week, he urged the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate news outlets for publishing supposed “fake” stories. Over the weekend, he hinted it was perhaps time for a law that would require broadcasters to give equal time to both sides of the political debate when discussing public policy.
“At what point are we going to silence media critical of the President?” tweeted Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “When we cease to have a First Amendment and a democratic government.”
President Donald Trump angrily lashed out at NBC News over its report that he wanted to dramatically increase the United States’ nuclear arsenal by threatening to go after the network’s broadcasting license.
“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License?” Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning. “Bad for country!”
With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!
The president also said that NBC “made up a story that I wanted a ‘tenfold” increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal,” which he described as “pure fiction, made up to demean.”
Fake @NBCNews made up a story that I wanted a "tenfold" increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal. Pure fiction, made up to demean. NBC = CNN!
According to the original NBC report, Trump “said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest ranking national security leaders.” The president was reportedly incensed by a chart showing that the U.S. has actually been reducing its nuclear arsenal since the late 1960s.
According to NBC’s sources, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron” after this particular meeting. Additionally, the sources claim both Tillerson and the joint chiefs of staff pushed back against Trump, and told him why it would be unwise to start a massive nuclear arms race.
The president’s and the government’s power in this area could be limited anyway. According to the FCC’s own guidelines, the commission only licenses individual broadcast stations, not entire “TV or radio networks (such as CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox).”
President Trump in a new interview offered to compare IQ tests with Rex Tillerson after reports that the secretary of State had called him a “moron.”
“I think it’s fake news, but if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests,” Trump told Forbes in an interview published Tuesday.
“And I can tell you who is going to win.”
Tillerson called Trump a “moron” and considered leaving the administration, according to an NBC News report earlier this month.
In a press conference last week, Tillerson denied he ever considered leaving the administration.
He did not directly deny that he called Trump a “moron,” but the State Department later said the report wasn’t true.
Trump tweeted last week that his secretary of State never threatened to resign, referred to the report as “fake news” and called for NBC News to apologize.
The relationship between Trump and Tillerson has reportedly grown more tense in recent months.
Trump said Saturday he sometimes wishes Tillerson would “be a little tougher.”
