Tag: Michael Bloomberg

Trump’s Colorado rally featured an extended meltdown over 30 seconds of critical Fox News coverage

Leave a comment

President Donald Trump devoted an inordinate amount of time during his rally on Thursday in Colorado Springs to complaining about a Fox News segment that few of the attendees were likely to have seen, featuring commentary from a journalist most of them had probably never heard of.

The roughly 20-minute display was remarkably petty — and it wasn’t the only one of that sort Trump made in Colorado Springs. But it was also an illustration of the complete, blind loyalty that Trump expects from Fox News.

At issue was commentary made earlier in the day on Neil Cavuto’s show by A.B. Stoddard, who works as an associate editor at the political news and polling aggregation outlet RealClearPolitics. Stoddard panned Mike Bloomberg’s performance in Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate, but did so by taking a shot at Trump.

“I think that Donald Trump had disastrous debate performances. Many answers were so cringeworthy you just couldn’t even believe he was still standing on the stage — and he’s president,” she said — the implication being that despite Bloomberg’s rough night, his campaign isn’t over yet, just like Trump’s wasn’t after his bad showings.

Even though he’s traveling in Nevada, Arizona, and California this week, Trump apparently saw Stoddard’s comments and lashed out at everyone involved — including former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who now serves on Fox Corporation’s board.

“Could somebody at @foxnews please explain to Trump hater A.B. Stoddard (zero talent!) and @TeamCavuto, that I won every one of my debates, from beginning to end,” the president tweeted. “Check the polls taken immediately after the debates. The debates got me elected. Must be Fox Board Member Paul Ryan!”

Trump was still seething hours later. Minutes into his rally in Colorado Springs, he brought up Fox News and denigrated Cavuto, saying “nobody likes him.” He falsely claimed Cavuto has “taken” the place of former Fox News afternoon host Shepard Smith (though he seemed unable to remember Smith’s name), then alluded to the segment with Stoddard (though he couldn’t seem to remember her name either) and said, “wait a minute — I won every debate. It’s true.”

“I said, ‘Nobody’s allowed to do that. You can’t do that.’ We’re at enough of a disadvantage with the fake news. You know, they make up 90 percent of the stories,” continued Trump, as his fans took the cue to start booing the assembled media.

But that wasn’t all. Trump spent much of the next 15 minutes harping on the segment and trying to debunk Stoddard’s claim about him not doing well in the debates by reading off random polls from 2016.

“Look at this — ‘Trump 70 percent,’ next one is 18 percent, next one is 7, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1,” Trump read off a sheet of paper, before tossing it away. “‘Trump didn’t do well in the debates!’ See — they’re fake news.”

“Here’s another one, Trump kicked ass.”

By the end of his rant, Trump was conflating various conspiracy theories, blending a number of them into a single incoherent attack on his perceived enemies.

“They want to take you out. They want to change the results. They got caught spying — let’s say it like it is, right? — they got caught spying on our election, fake news. Hey, fake news: take your cameras for a change, and show them the room, and show them behind you,” Trump said.

The point Trump was trying to make was twofold: Polls indicate his debate performances were actually good (this is not true), and the highest-rated shows on Fox are ones that basically don’t allow hosts or guests to be critical of him.

But for someone who was unaware of the backstory, the president’s remarks must have sounded like nonsensical ramblings. Even for someone who was, the extended meltdown over a 30-second clip of commentary on a relatively obscure afternoon show was bizarre.

Trump Deletes Tweet Calling Bloomberg ‘TOTAL RACIST’ Over Very Same Stop & Frisk Policy He Backed in 2016

Leave a comment

President Trump ripped 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg as a “total racist” after audio released Tuesday from a 2015 speech showed the former mayor unapologetically defending his controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy, which targeted young men of color.

“WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!” the commander-in-chief tweeted early Tuesday along with a link to the audio clip.

Within minutes, the tweet had been taken down.

In leaked audio of Bloomberg’s speech, the Democrat sounded defiant in his acknowledgment of how the policy targeted minority kids in minority neighborhoods, arguing that they were targeted “because that’s where all the crime is.”

“Ninety-five percent of murders, murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops,” Bloomberg said.

In late 2016, then-candidate Trump called for a nationwide stop-and-frisk policy during an interview with Fox News, saying the program “worked very well” for New York City.

“I would do stop-and-frisk. I think you have to. We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well and you have to be proactive and, you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically,” the then-GOP nominee told the network.

“You understand, you have to have, in my opinion, I see what’s going on here, I see what’s going on in Chicago, I think stop-and-frisk. In New York City it was so incredible, the way it worked.

“Now, we had a very good mayor, but New York City was incredible, the way that worked, so I think that could be one step you could do,” he added.

Upon entering the Democratic primary contest in November, Bloomberg apologized for his controversial policing policy.

A spokesperson for Bloomberg’s campaign could not immediately be reached by The Post for comment on Trump’s tweet.

Trump’s Super Bowl interview was 8 minutes of pettiness and empty braggadocio

Leave a comment

Presidents giving interviews before Super Bowls has become a tradition — Barack Obama fielded questions about Benghazi and his detractors; Donald Trump has answered questions about immigration and the turnover on his staff.

While the questions can be tough, given the spirit of the day, these interviews aren’t always the most rigorous of exercises. But Trump found himself before an exceptionally friendly interviewer this time around, sitting down with Fox News’s Sean Hannity ahead of the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers.

Their conversation was less of an interview than an opportunity for the president to attack his enemies unchecked for just over eight minutes — railing against Democrats who impeached him, making bizarrely incorrect claims about the 2020 Democratic presidential field, and even making height jokes about former New York City mayor of and presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg.

When asked about whether he’d be able to work with Democrats following his impeachment, Trump replied that he wasn’t sure, saying, “I see the hatred — they don’t care about fairness, they don’t care about lying,” a statement that could not be heavier with irony given Trump’s own well documented difficult relationship with the truth.

Hannity nodded as Trump went on, saying, “the whole thing was nonsense,” that it was “very, very unfair,” and that “my family suffered because of all this, and many other families suffered also.”

Trump did not address his role in pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political rivals, or the White House’s refusal to cooperate in the impeachment inquiry. Instead, he accused Democrats of impeaching him in hopes of brightening their 2020 prospects, saying, “They just want to win; it doesn’t matter how they win.”

In a lightning round, in which Hannity encouraged the president to say the first thing that came to mind, Trump attacked Democratic presidential candidates.

“Look at Sleepy Joe, what’s going on with him? He’s having a hard time,” Trump said of former Vice President Joe Biden. He accused Sen. Elizabeth Warren of being a liar, saying, “I call her ‘Fairy Tale’ because everything’s a fairy tale … this woman can’t tell the truth.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Trump claimed, is a “communist” who got married in Russia. The claim prompted Hannity’s only attempt to correct the president; the Fox News personality reminded him that Sanders actually took a trip to the then-Soviet Union shortly after his marriage, and that he wasn’t married there.

Trump did, however — as he has recently done on Twitter — claim the Democratic National Committee is not being fair to Sanders, seeming to reference reports of some disquiet among certain Democrats about Sanders’s recent rise in the polls by claiming the Democratic Party is “rigging it against him,” echoing discord following the 2016 Democratic primary.

He had perhaps his harshest words for Bloomberg. He again criticized the DNC while speaking of Bloomberg, arguing it was unfair the party changed the debate rules in a manner that seems to benefit the mayor, before attacking Bloomberg for being short. (Bloomberg is about 5-foot-8.)

“He wants a box for the debates, why should he be entitled to that?” Trump said. “Does that mean everyone else gets a box?”

He leveled similar attacks against Bloomberg Sunday morning on Twitter, writing, “Many of the ads you are watching were paid for by Mini Mike Bloomberg. He is going nowhere, just wasting his money, but he is getting the DNC to rig the election against Crazy Bernie.”

Bloomberg’s campaign responded with a statement that reads: “The president is lying. He is a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan.”

The president did make some positive statements — about himself.

He claimed that thanks to his hard work, “there’s a revolution going on, I mean a positive revolution,” particularly among minority communities, whose lives he said have become better under his watch.

He also took credit for a strong economy, for having done a “tremendous job” assisting China in its fight against the coronavirus, and summed up his time in office like this: “Nobody’s made achievements like we’ve made, so many different things.”

These sorts of statements aren’t new, or even unexpected from the president — he talks like this all the time on Twitter, at his rallies, and at press conferences. However, this marks the first time he has been able to deliver such statements unchecked before such a large and diverse audience — everyone watches the Super Bowl, not just Trump fans or journalists.

It also isn’t surprising that Hannity — who is good friends with Trump — did not try to correct him, except for his remark about Sanders. But the fact that this all ought to have been expected does not make it any less disturbing that the president of the United States was given almost 10 minutes to address the nation, and spent it not answering pressing questions of national concern but attacking his rivals in incredibly petty ways.

[Vox]

Trump repeats Ukraine conspiracy theory and more debunked lies on 53-minute “Fox & Friends” call

Leave a comment

President Trump spent 53 minutes of his Friday morning on the phone with the hosts of “Fox & Friends” — his latest call-in to one of his favorite TV shows.

Driving the news: President Trump spent a chunk of the interview repeating a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election. “That’s what the word is,” he claimed without evidence.

  • The debunked conspiracy theory — frequently referred to as CrowdStrike, the security firm at its center — is based on the idea that Ukraine was complicit in the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee to create false electronic records that Russia was behind the hacking.
  • Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, said during his impeachment hearing that the Crowdstrike conspiracy theory is “a Russian narrative that President Putin has promoted.”
  • Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top Russia adviser, said during her impeachment hearing that the conspiracy theory is “a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

Worth noting: Trump also said that Crowdstrike is owned by “a very wealthy Ukrainian,” but it’s actually a publicly-traded company. Its largest outside shareholder is Warburg Pincus, a New York City private equity firm from which Trump plucked one of his top economic advisors.

Impeachment-related highlights:

  • The president once again slammed former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, claiming she was “not an angel.” During her impeachment testimony , she agreed that it was Trump’s prerogative to fire ambassadors at will, but asked, “What I do wonder is why was it necessary to smear my reputation also?”
  • Trump said that during a Senate impeachment trial he only wants House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to testify more than Hunter Biden.
  • Trump said that he knows “exactly” who the Ukraine whistleblower is — and insinuated that the “Fox & Friends” hosts did as well — prompting them to attempt to steer the conversation away from the topic live on air.

Other highlights:

  • Trump predicted that Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t pass the USMCA trade deal, despite it being a priority for some Democratic lawmakers ahead of 2020.
  • He tried to find a middle ground between supporting pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong and not offending Chinese President Xi Jinping as the U.S. attempts to close a “phase one” trade deal with China. “We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I’m also standing with President Xi,” he said.
  • Trump denied rumors surrounding his health after a surprise visit to Walter Reed National Medical Center last weekend, calling it “fake, disgusting news.”

2020 lightning round:

  • Joe Biden: “I don’t know if Joe can make it mentally. He’s off.”
  • Pete Buttigieg: “I don’t see him dealing with President Xi. I don’t see him dealing with Kim Jong-un. But maybe he is.”
  • Elizabeth Warren: “I think Pocahontas has come up from the embers.”
  • Michael Bloomberg: “I think his time has come and gone.

[Axios]

Reality

There was multiple fact checks some could only refer to this call as “bananas.”

Media