Monday, June 29, 2020
Trump Fights the Last War
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/trump-fights-the-last-war/
The president reasons:
“Based on decisions being rendered now, this list is more important
than ever before (Second Amendment, Right to Life, Religious Liberty,
etc.).” Lest we miss the characteristically Trumpian subtlety, he adds,
“VOTE 2020!”
If you needed a laugh to get you through
just-another-day-at-the-Apocalypse, our “Conservative” president then
proceeded to post no fewer than 21 tweets describing the combined
hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure spending he plans to
shovel out to states he hopes to win in November.
By the way, with Trump in the White House and the McConnell-led
Republican Senate having slyly buried periodic public debates over the
debt limit, the nation is now over $26 trillion in the red. If you’re
keeping score, that’s an increase of over $6 trillion since January 20,
2017. Obama spending was unprecedented, but Trump is on pace to exceed
it. And don’t tell me about the unforeseen coronavirus crisis; debt was
already accumulating mountainously before the lockdown, and the
president keeps saying more infrastructure spending is imperative — it
may be the only thing he and congressional Democrats can agree on.
The point being that the president is not a conservative, in the
sense either of political ideology or temperament. He has some
conservative sensibilities and has mastered some right-wing tropes. But
he’s not a conservative thinker wedded to a conservative policy agenda.
That’s hardly a revelation. He’s not wired to think in those terms. He’s
not a progressive, either.
As the pandemic rages, Trump indulges his obsessions
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/29/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-russia/index.html
"If wearing masks is important, and all
the health experts tell us that it is in containing the disease in 2020,
it would help if from time to time the President would wear one to help
us get rid of this political debate that says if you're for Trump, you
don't wear a mask, if you're against Trump, you do," the Tennessee
Republican said on CNN's "Inside Politics."
Russian Bounty Report Seems Like the Kind of Thing Trump Should’ve Known, GOP Says
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/russian-bounty-report-seems-like-kind-of-thing-trump-shouldve-known-gop-says
Conservative commentator David Frum noted that the story being reported by the Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal “doesn’t mean it’s certainly true.” What it does mean, Frum wrote
on Twitter, is that “very credible people in [the] U.S. intelligence
service are angry and alarmed. Angry and alarmed enough to provide
evidence to three leading media sources.” In addition to Trump’s denial,
Frum cited former Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell’s claim that he never “heard” of the bounties and that of John Ratcliffe, the office’s current director, who tweeted that he had never “briefed” the president. But, he added,
“it’s also not impossible” for these three officials to be “telling a
version of the truth,” noting the possibility that “the information was
withheld from Trump by briefers who have learned not to upset him”—given
previous reports
of Trump staff keeping Russia-related things from the president so as
not to piss him off—as well as “that Grenell during his tenure at ODNI
was simply not doing the work.” Frum remarked it to be “noteworthy” that
no denials have come from the Pentagon, the C.I.A., or the National
Security Council, all of which the Times said declined to comment.
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Trump retweets video of supporter shouting 'white power'
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53212685
In the tweet, which was later deleted, the president thanked "the
great people of The Villages" - referring to the retirement community
north-west of Orlando where the rally took place. "The Radical Left Do
Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you
soon!!!," he wrote.
The video included in the tweet showed a Trump
supporter in a golf cart raising a clenched fist and shouting "white
power". He appeared to be responding to a protester calling him a racist
and using profanities. Other anti-Trump protesters shouted "Nazi" and
other accusations at the rally-goers.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said the president "did not hear the
one statement made on the video" but saw "tremendous enthusiasm from
his many supporters".
Top conservatives demand answers on reports Russia paid Taliban to kill US troops
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/top-congressional-conservatives-demand-answers-from-white-house-on-reports-russia-paid-taliban-to-kill-us-troops
One of the top Republican lawmakers in the House joined on Sunday a growing list of legislators calling on the Trump administration to explain what it knew about the reports that Russian intelligence agents offered to pay bounties to Afghan militants who killed U.S. troops in the country.
House Republican Conference chair Liz Cheney of
Wyoming tweeted on Sunday morning that if the reports in the New York
Times about the bounties is true, then the White House needs to explain
what it knew about the intelligence and how it responded. Cheney, the
third-ranking Republican in the House, specifically focused on the
denials by both Trump and White House staff that neither the president
nor Vice President Pence were briefed on the matter, and asked for more
information on why this is the case.
"If reporting about Russian
bounties on US forces is true, the White House must explain: 1. Why
weren’t the president or vice president briefed?" Cheney tweeted. "Was
the info in the PDB? 2. Who did know and when? 3. What has been done in
response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?"
Panicking Trump tries to change the subject
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/27/opinions/trump-tries-to-change-the-subject-coronavirus-statues-ghitis/index.html
With the prospect of losing reelection by a landslide, Trump views any acknowledgment of the pandemic disaster as another mark against him. So, he not only lies about it himself,
he sent Vice President Mike Pence to do a more elegant version of his
misleading claims. Pence, appearing Friday for the first time in almost
two months with the White House Coronavirus Task Force, claimed against
all evidence, "all 50 states," are "opening up safely and responsibly." He told Americans, "we've all seen
encouraging news as we open America again," misleadingly saying the
upsurge in cases is "a reflection of a great success in expanding
testing."
White House admits Trump was involved in firing of top US attorney after Trump claimed he wasn't
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/22/politics/trump-us-attorney-fired/index.html
The White House on Monday admitted that President Donald Trump was involved in the removal of US Attorney Geoffrey Berman after Trump had claimed he was "not involved" in the process this weekend.
Speaking
at the White House Monday, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump
was "involved in the sign-off capacity" as she sought to explain the
removal of Berman as a simple swap that would allow Jay Clayton,
chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to take the post.
How Donald Trump's Mistakes Became Joe Biden's Big Breaks
https://time.com/5858837/donald-trump-joe-biden-luck/
It’s unusual for the challenger to be a clear favorite for the
presidency at this stage in the election. Only three candidates have
beaten an incumbent President since Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated
Herbert Hoover in 1932, and the last time any candidate had such a large lead at this phase in the race was
Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign almost 25 years ago. The only thing
more remarkable than Biden’s advantage is how little he’s had to do to
get it.
“Trump is just constantly serving up wins
for him,” says Democratic strategist Jess Morales Rocketto. “All he has
to do is nothing.”
Trump's brother fails in bid to block niece's tell-all book
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/25/trump-brother-robert-niece-mary-memoir-book
An attempt to block publication of a book claiming to tell the inside
story of the Trump family by the US president’s niece has been dismissed by a court in New York.
Queens county surrogate court judge Peter Kelly said on Thursday
“several improprieties” in the filing by Robert Trump, the president’s
younger brother, meant the bid to stop the book was “fatally defective”.
Ted Boutros, an attorney for Mary Trump, said in a statement: “The
court has promptly and correctly held that it lacks jurisdiction to
grant the Trump family’s baseless request to suppress a book of utmost
public importance and concern.
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