Tag: tweet

Trump says NBA player Stephen Curry no longer invited to White House

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President Trump on Saturday said the “invitation is withdrawn” for Stephen Curry to visit the White House because the NBA All-Star “is hesitating.”

“Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team,” he tweeted. “Stephen Curry is hesitating,therefore invitation is withdrawn!”

Golden State Warriors guard Curry said this week he didn’t want the team to visit the White House to celebrate their NBA championship title.

“I don’t want to go,” Curry told reporters on Friday. He said in June he “probably” wouldn’t go to the White House, and this week said he didn’t think the team should go either.

Managers said they will discuss the decision as a team in an open forum. It was unclear whether the president would bar the entire team from the White House, or just Curry. A formal White House invitation has not been issued, but the NBA has been communicating with the White House about a visit, according to ESPN.

Curry said his reasons for not wanting to visit the White House were “that we basically don’t stand for what our president has said, and the things he hasn’t said at the right time,” according to SF Gate.

“By not going, hopefully it will inspire some change for what we tolerate in this country and what we stand for, what is accepted and what we turn a blind eye toward,” he said.

“It’s not just the act of not going. There are things you have do on the back end to push that message into motion,” he continued. “You can talk about all the different personalities that have said things and done things from [Colin] Kaepernick to what happened with Michael Bennett to all sorts of examples of what has gone on in our country that has led to change. We’re all trying to do what we can, using our platforms, our opportunities, to shed light on it. I don’t think not going to the White House will miraculously make everything better. But this is my opportunity to voice that.”

Trump on Friday again spoke out against Kaepernick, an NFL player Trump has criticized multiple times in the past.

The president argued people should protest players that don’t stand for the national anthem, as Kaepernick has done, by leaving games.

“When people like yourselves turn on television and you see those people taking the knee when they are playing our great national anthem – the only thing you could do better is if you see it, even if it’s one player, leave the stadium,” Trump said at a rally in Alabama. “I guarantee things will stop.”

Fox News coverage of Curry’s resistance could have motivated Trump’s Saturday morning tweet. Trump is a known fan of Fox News coverage.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/352029-trump-withdraws-white-house-invitation-to-stephen-curry

 

Trump Falsely Claims Americans With Pre-Existing Conditions Are Guaranteed Coverage Under New Health Bill

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President Donald Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill are trying to assure Americans their latest effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) covers people with pre-existing conditions.

Both the president and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who with Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) is co-sponsoring the health care bill known as the “Graham-Cassidy plan,” took to Twitter to defend the legislation, expected to be up for a vote on the Senate floor next week. “I would not sign Graham-Cassidy if it did not include coverage of pre-existing conditions. It does! A great bill,” Trump wrote Wednesday night. “Repeal & Replace.”

Graham quoted the president’s tweet later Wednesday, adding that any claims his bill doesn’t cover those with pre-existing conditions should be called “#FakeNews on steroids!”

Unlike former President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law, however, the new Republican bill would not guarantee coverage for people living with pre-existing conditions. Instead, the Graham-Cassidy plan would disproportionately harm sick people and Americans living with a variety of medical factors, who could see their insurance costs soar if the legislation were to pass.

The bill would allow states to opt to waive Obamacare rules requiring basic health benefits, essentially cutting protections for sick people in an effort to keep premiums from rising. The waivers allow states to charge more for health insurance offered to people with pre-existing conditions—including cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s (or dementia), cerebral palsy and even pregnancy, among other medical factors that could have resulted in denied coverage prior to Obamacare—while continuing to receive federal block grant funding.

Experts say the bill could raise health care costs for those with pre-existing conditions to a point where insurance would be virtually unaffordable for millions of people.

The Graham-Cassidy plan would allow states to more easily gut protections for sick people than the previous Senate bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act, as well as the House’s failed effort, the American Health Care Act. The earlier Senate bill would have let states request a reduction from the federal government in what was considered “essential health benefits,” while the House bill would have allowed states to charge more for people living with certain pre-existing conditions when searching for insurance.

The new bill—seen by House Majority Leader Paul Ryan as “our best, last chance” to repeal Obamacare—has received criticism from the even health care industry, which said it would damage existing benefits and do little to reduce insurance premiums that continue to tick upward for millions of Americans.

“The Graham-Cassidy plan would take health insurance coverage away from millions of people, eliminate critical public health funding, devastate the Medicaid program, increase out-of-pocket costs and weaken or eliminate protections for people living with pre-existing conditions,” Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Democrats are warning that if a sudden vote on the legislation is held before the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) can issue a full report on it, there could be serious implications for years to come.

“Thus far, every version of Republicans’ effort to repeal and replace the ACA has meant higher health costs, millions of hard-working Americans pushed off coverage, and key protections gutted with devastating consequences for those with pre-existing conditions,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter Monday to CBO Director Keith Hall. “A comprehensive CBO analysis is essential before Republicans force a hasty, dangerous vote on what is an extreme and destructive repeal bill.”

So, while those with pre-existing conditions wouldn’t have their insurance suddenly ripped away, the Graham-Cassidy plan could make it increasingly difficult for sick Americans to afford any insurance at all. Until the CBO is able to fully assess the latest Republican-led attempt to overhaul the nation’s health care system, the bill’s total impact will remain unknown.

[Newsweek]

Reality

The key section lies in the bill’s rules for state waivers from many regulations in the Affordable Care Act (starting at page 8 in the bill.) If a state says it “intends to maintain access to adequate and affordable health insurance coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions,” then it can allow insurance companies to charge sick people more than healthy ones.

Trump Takes a Jab at the Emmys After Threatening to ‘Destroy North Korea’ in First UN Speech

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Two days after celebrities threw verbal jabs at President Donald Trump during the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards, Trump fired back at his critics with a tweet.

“I was saddened to see how bad the ratings were on the Emmys last night – the worst ever,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday evening.

“Smartest people of them all are the “DEPLORABLES,” Trump said, referencing a term Hillary Clinton used to describe some of Trump’s supporters during the contentious 2016 election.

Though the 2017 Emmys ratings were not “the worst ever” as Trump described, they averaged 11.4 million viewers, about 100,000 more than in 2016 – the show’s all-time low, according to Variety.

During the awards Sunday night, Trump bore the brunt of several jokes made by its host, comedian Stephen Colbert and several other celebrities who won awards that night.

“Unlike the presidency, Emmys go to the winner of the popular vote,” Colbert joked at one point, referring to the results of the US presidential election.

Trump’s comments about the Emmys came just hours after he delivered a fiery speech before the United Nations General Assembly in New York, in which he threatened the US could “totally destroy North Korea” if its nuclear aggressions continue.

[Business Insider]

Reality

Let’s also remember that Donald Trump once said during a debate the Emmys were “rigged” because he never won one for Celebrity Apprentice.

Also he tweeted that the Emmys were last night, but his tweet was on a Tuesday and the Emmys aired on Sunday.

Trump Retweets GIF of Him Hitting Clinton With Golf Ball

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President Donald Trump retweeted an edited video Sunday morning that showed him swinging a golf club and appearing to hit his former presidential campaign rival Hillary Clinton with a golf ball.

The animated GIF image Trump retweeted spliced together footage of Trump taking a swing on a golf course with footage of Clinton tripping and falling as she boarded a plane in 2011 as secretary of state. The footage is edited to make it appear as though Clinton is hit in the back with a golf ball before her fall.

The tweet revealed a President still reverting to his old social media habits, namely, those likely to earn him quick criticism, less than two months after retired Gen. John Kelly took over as White House chief of staff.

While Kelly has not sought to stop Trump from tweeting, he has encouraged the President to allow him to vet the tweets before posting them — a request Trump has sometimes acquiesced to.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday about the President’s tweet and whether Kelly was aware of it.

The tweet, which came as Trump prepares to head to New York for a critical round of powerhouse diplomacy with world leaders at the United Nations, followed a week during which Clinton reemerged in the spotlight as she promoted her new book, “What Happened,” about the 2016 campaign, reviving her fiercest criticisms of Trump and his supporters and reigniting the debate about her stunning, unanticipated loss.

Trump slammed Clinton over her new book earlier this week too, tweeting that she “blames everybody (and every thing) but herself for her election loss.”

Trump’s Sunday morning Twitter post was one of more than a half-dozen supporters’ tweets the President retweeted Sunday before 8:30 a.m.

Those other tweets included an image predicting Trump would win every state for reelection in 2020, another showing Trump hauling US companies that have outsourced manufacturing abroad and a tweet claiming that “only true Americans can see that president Trump is making America great.”

[CNN]

Trump Mocks ‘Rocket Man’ Kim Jong-Un as Advisers Issue Warnings

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Top advisers to Donald Trump on Sunday warned North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programs and stop threatening America and its allies, or face destruction.

They did so after Trump tweeted about a phone call to South Korean president Moon Jae-in, and appeared to mock Kim Jong-un.

“I spoke with President Moon of South Korea last night,” the US president wrote. “Asked him how Rocket Man is doing. Long gas lines forming in North Korea. Too bad!”

The latest bellicose language from Washington came just days after North Korea fired another ballistic missile, which overflew Japan, and Kim boasted that such efforts would continue as his country neared its goal of “equilibrium” in military force with the US.

Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the United Nations, said North Korea was starting to “feel the pinch” of being “economically strangled” as recent sanctions have caused the country to be “cut off from the world”. But, she said, diplomatic and other non-military options were running out.

“If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behavior, if the United States has to defend itself or defend its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed,” the former South Carolina governor told CNN’s State of the Union. “We all know that and none of us want that. None of us want war. But … something is going to have to be done.”

North Korea will be high on the agenda at the UN general assembly in New York this week, after the UN security council voted unanimously for further sanctions. Asked about Trump’s description of such measures as merely “small steps” towards a solution of the North Korea problem, Haley said: “Everybody in the international community sees what a big deal it is.”

CNN host Dana Bash asked if Trump’s now infamous pledge to respond to any action against the US mainland or its territories with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” was an empty threat. She said it was not and that responsibility for any stepping up of action against North Korea now lay with the Pentagon and defense secretary James Mattis.

“We are trying to use every diplomatic possibility … [but] we have pretty much exhausted all the things we can do at the security council at this point,” Haley said. “I’m perfectly happy kicking this over to General Mattis now, because he has plenty of military options. We wanted to go through all the diplomatic options to get their attention first and if that doesn’t work, General Mattis will take care of it.”

National security adviser HR McMaster told ABC’s This Week Kim Jong-un would “have to give up his nuclear weapons because the president has said he’s not going to tolerate this regime threatening the United States and our citizens with a nuclear weapon”.

Asked if that meant Trump would launch a military strike in the event that North Korea did not comply, as it has shown no sign of doing, McMaster said: “He’s been very clear about that, that all options are on the table.”

The only concession was given by secretary of state Rex Tillerson, who said on CBS’s Face the Nation that the US still “seeks a peaceful solution” to the North Korean crisis. Pressure on the regime was “designed to bring North Korea to the table for productive and constructive dialogue”, he said.

But Tillerson also warned that “we do not have much time left” and said that if efforts to talk were to fail: “Our military option is the only one left.”

“We have tried a couple of times to signal to them that we are ready if they are ready [to talk], but they only thing they do is fire more missiles,” Tillerson said.

Trump is making his first appearance at the UN general assembly, giving a speech on Tuesday morning. He has called the world body weak, incompetent, bad for democracy and no friend of the US.

Haley said Trump would arrive on a “new day” at a UN more committed to action and reform under a new secretary general, António Guterres.

[The Guardian]

 

 

Trump’s Latest Post-London Tweet Storm Didn’t Wait For the Facts

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Even as British police were still sorting out exactly what had happened in the London Underground on Friday morning, President Donald Trump was using the incident to prove a point.

“Another attack in London by a loser terrorist.” he tweeted. “These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!” Added Trump: “The travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific-but stupidly, that would not be politically correct!”

The travel ban, of course, is Trump’s executive order aimed at blocking people from six majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States, a necessary step in combating terrorism, according to the President. But, at least in the early stages of this London investigation, there is no evidence to suggest where the attackers hailed from or what their motives were. All we know, according to British police, is that it is being investigated as a terrorist incident.

Asked about Trump’s tweet that the London tube attack was perpetrated by people known to the security services, British Prime Minister Theresa May said it is “never helpful for anyone to speculate on what is an ongoing investigation.”

Trump’s willingness to jump to conclusions about the London incident stands in stark contrast to his defense of his unwillingness to fully condemn the white supremacists and neo-Nazis behind the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last month.

Trump, who initially (and repeatedly) said that there were violent people on both sides in Charlottesville, attributed that response to a desire to gather all the facts before offering an opinion. (Yes, I know this doesn’t make a ton of logical sense.)

“I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement,” Trump explained to reporters. “The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement. But you don’t make statements that direct unless you know the facts. It takes a little while to get the facts.”

It’s impossible to square “you don’t make statements that direct unless you know the facts” to what Trump did Friday morning in regard to the London attack.
What’s clear from a look at the way Trump has responded to a series of high-profile incidents — primarily terror attacks — since being elected President is that he is more than willing to leap on them well before all the facts are known if they reinforce something he already believes. If they go against his views, he is far less willing to do so.

The London attack Friday morning is, to Trump, yet more evidence of the existential threat posed by terrorism — and proof of how politicians obsessed with political correctness refuse to properly acknowledge that threat. (Remember that Trump blasted London Mayor Sadiq Khan back in June for allegedly underselling the threat of terrorism.)

History has shown that Trump is ready and willing to seize on any bit of evidence that proves his point on terrorism — whether or not that evidence actually proves his point on terrorism. In the immediate aftermath of an incident in the Philippines in June, Trump noted that “it is really pretty sad what is going on throughout the world with terror.” It turned out that the Philippines event was a robbery, not a terror incident.

By contrast, Charlottesville was not in Trump’s belief wheelhouse. Because of his suspicion of the mainstream media and what he believes to be the cult of political correctness, his instincts in the wake of the violence was to avoid jumping to the conclusion that the blame lay with the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who had gathered to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. That, in Trump’s mind, was the story the media wanted you to believe; he was convinced there was more to it.

Of course, there really wasn’t — despite Trump’s ongoing attempts to prove that he was right all along and that “both sides” were violent.

In short: Trump is more than willing to jump to conclusions when he can comfortably fit an incident like what happened in London this morning into his existing world view.

It’s a selective outrage. And Trump deploys it very, very selectively.

[CNN]

Reality

Even as British police were still sorting out exactly what had happened in the London Underground on Friday morning, Donald Trump was using the incident to prove a point that we should bar Muslims from entering the United States.

Now contrast Trump’s rush to judgement over the possibility of an Islamic terror attack with his comments after Charlottesville last month were Nazis killed and injured protesters. Trump refused to condemn, or even mention white supremacy, instead claiming he needs to wait for the facts to come in.

Trump Attacks ESPN After Anchor Calls Him a White Supremacist

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President Trump has a new target in the media — ESPN.

The president said on Twitter on Friday morning that ESPN “is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming). People are dumping it in RECORD numbers. Apologize for untruth.”

He was apparently referring to ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, who in a recent tweet said that “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.”

Hill’s assertion caused an uproar, particularly in conservative media circles, where ESPN’s political bent has been a point of contention for years.

Wall Street analysts and ESPN executives generally agree that ESPN’s subscriber losses are primarily a result of cost-conscious consumers and a changing business model.

But the president, through his tweet on Friday, sided with the conservative commentators who say it’s really liberal bias that is poisoning ESPN and dragging down the business.

His call for an apology is also noteworthy. Hill addressed the controversy earlier this week, but pointedly did not apologize for her “white supremacist” statement. She only expressed regret for painting ESPN in an unfair light.

ESPN said in a followup statement that the network accepted her apology.

The network clearly wants to move on — but Trump might make that more difficult.

Neither Hill nor ESPN immediately responded to the president’s Friday morning tweet, and ESPN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hill, an African American woman, has been an outspoken critic of Trump all year long. The current controversy erupted on Monday night she called him a “bigot,” a “threat” and a “white supremacist” on Twitter.

The next day, as people who were outraged by the tweets demanded action from ESPN, the network said that Hill’s tweets “do not represent the position of ESPN.”

“We have addressed this with Jemele and she recognizes her actions were inappropriate,” the network said.

When White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked about it on Wednesday, she said Hill’s criticism of the president should be considered a “fireable offense by ESPN.”

The next day, on Fox News, Sanders reiterated this: “I think it was highly inappropriate, and I think ESPN should take actions. But I’ll leave that up to them to decide, and I’ll stay focused on my day job.”

ESPN had 90 million subscribers as of September 2016, the most recent numbers it has reported. That’s down 2 million from a year earlier and down from a high of 100 million in 2010.

On Fox, it’s a popular talking point that those subscriber losses are due to rampant liberal bias. There’s little evidence to support that theory.

As the monthly cable bundle has become more and more expensive, and streaming has become more popular, some homes have dropped the big bundles that include ESPN, the priciest channel on cable. Others have discontinued cable altogether and turned to streaming services.

The vast majority of U.S. homes continue to pay for cable, including ESPN. But the cutbacks have put pressure on ESPN and other sports networks.

To address this, ESPN is planning to roll out a direct-to-consumer streaming service next year.

[CNN]

Trump’s Social Media Director Tweets a Fake Irma Video, Is Fact-Checked by Miami Airport

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Fake images and videos of Hurricane Irma that are making the rounds on social media can fool anyone, including, apparently people who are actually working at tracking the storm. The White House’s own director of social media, Dan Scavino Jr., sent out a tweet that he thought showed massive flooding at the Miami International Airport as a way to demonstrate how President Donald Trump’s administration was keeping track of Irma’s devastation. The problem? The video was not actually of the Miami airport.

Miami International Airport quickly replied to Scavino’s tweet to inform him that the video did not depict the situation at the airport. Scavino thanked the Miami Airport for the information and said he would delete the video. Scavino deleted the tweet about 30 minutes after he posted it without ever publicly admitting that he tweeted out a fake piece of news.

Several people on Twitter were quick to point out that the video Scavino claimed showed flooding at Miami airport was actually footage of flooding at Mexico City’s airport from several weeks ago.

[Slate]

Trump Returns to False Tax Claim as He Pushes For Reform

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As part of a push for tax reform, President Trump bemoaned that the United States is the most heavily taxed nation on Earth.

That’s not true.

Trump is traveling to North Dakota to deliver a speech Wednesday afternoon on the importance of streamlining the tax code and easing the burden of taxes on citizens and businesses. In an early morning tweet, he promoted this trip and promised that under his administration the U.S. would no longer be “the highest taxed nation in the world.”

This statement is completely false. According to 2015 data from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), taxation accounted for 26.4 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product (GDP). This was lower than the average for the 35 nations in the OECD (34.3 percent) and in some cases far lower than comparable countries (45.5 percent in France, for instance).

In April 2016, the Pew Research Center concluded that U.S. tax bills are below the average for developed nations by examining OECD data dating back to 2001. It calculated “national-level income taxes plus mandatory social-insurance contributions as a percentage of gross income” for four different family types: a single working parent, a single working person without children, a married couple with two children where both parents work, and a married couple with two children where only one parent works. In all cases, the U.S. was below the average.

Trump has repeatedly touted this false claim. For instance, in a heated exchange with “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd in May 2016, Trump said, “We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Our businesses pay more taxes than any businesses in the world. That’s why companies are leaving.” He also repeated the falsehood during debates and speeches.

PolitiFact rated Trump’s claim that the U.S. is “the highest taxed country in the world” as false in February 2016 after a Republican primary debate. The fact-checking website concluded that the U.S. “is far from the most taxed nation in the world, whether it’s an advanced industrialized economy or not.”

The website repeated its assessment on Wednesday after Trump’s tweet.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a public-policy think tank, also rated Trump’s claim as false: “Notwithstanding our high corporate tax rate, the U.S. is not close to being the highest-taxed country in the world.”

The corporate income tax rate in the U.S. is high, at 35 percent, but the effective corporate tax rate — after accounting for deductions and tax breaks — is 18.6 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Determining which country has the highest tax rate is complicated and depends on the data researchers examine. Using data from OECD, Investopedia reported that Portugal has the highest tax rate for people with high incomes (61.3 percent); Belgium has the highest level for average-earning single people without children (42 percent); and Turkey has the highest levy for average-earning married couples with two children where only one spouse works (25.8 percent). And according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, Argentina’s total tax rate is an extraordinary 137.3 percent.

[Yahoo]

Trump Says He Will Revisit DACA Decision If Lawmakers Don’t Act

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President Trump said Tuesday that he would revisit his decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program if lawmakers are unable to pass legislation on the matter in the next six months.

“Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!” he wrote on Twitter.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday morning that the Trump administration would rescind the Obama-era program, which shielded certain young undocumented immigrants from deportation.

The administration said, however, that DACA would be phased out over the next six months, a delay intended to give lawmakers time to pass legislation addressing the issue.

Trump defended the decision to rescind the program earlier Tuesday, saying that the six-month delay would give lawmakers “a window” to act.

“As I’ve said before, we will resolve the DACA issue with heart and compassion — but through the lawful democratic process,” he said.

Several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have already expressed support for the DREAM Act, which would grant young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children reprieve from deportation. The DREAM Act was first introduced in 2001.

[The Hill]

Reality

Donald Trump’s reasoning for kicking DACA over to Congress was that the president does not have the legal authority to unilaterally enact prosecutorial discretion (which he does). But what Trump is saying now is that if Congress doesn’t act within his time frame then he will unilaterally enact prosecutorial discretion.

So then why did he pass the buck to Congress in the first place?

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