Woodward's Tapes, Trump's Covid Admissions & a Homicide Prosecutor's Take on Criminal Liability

Bnei Brak mayor apologizes for 'bad joke' train video

 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/287018

 Bnei Brak Mayor Avraham Rubinstein issued an apology Thursday evening in response to the uproar over a video in which an actor pretended to block haredi passengers from boarding a train from the predominantly-secular city of Bat Yam.

"I am sorry for the way things happened, in particular I am sorry for the damage to the good name of the railway workers and the Transportation Ministry," Rubinstein said.

The video was commissioned by the Bnei Brak municipality through a public relations office, with the aim of protesting the removal of the city from the light rail programs in the Gush Dan region.

The actor stood between the haredi passengers and the train, physically preventing them from boarding, and proclaimed: "Haredim, do not board!"

Trump Shouts Political 'Hit Job' Despite Woodward's Taped Interviews | The 11th Hour | MSNBC

Why Would Trump Agree To Speak With Woodward? | Morning Joe | MSNBC

Joe: Trump Knew But He Lied To You And Your Family | Morning Joe | MSNBC

US official claims pressure to downplay intelligence reports

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54096520

 An intelligence analyst at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said he was put under pressure to downplay the threat of Russian interference in the 3 November election as it "made the president look bad".

In a whistleblower complaint, Brian Murphy said he had been demoted for refusing to alter reports on this and other issues such as white supremacy.

The directives were illegal, he said.

The White House and DHS have both denied the allegations.

US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election but President Donald Trump has rejected allegations that his election victory was influenced by Russia, at times questioning findings from his own agencies.

 Mr Murphy says he was under pressure from the White House to exaggerate the number of migrants with links to terrorism at a time when the administration was implementing tougher measures to halt the flow of undocumented migrants reaching the US-Mexico border, and making the case for a wall.

 

Trump's historic dereliction of duty laid bare

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/10/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-bob-woodward-book/index.html

 It matters who the president is.

Millions of lives and livelihoods depend on the character, competence, altruism and integrity of the person in the Oval Office -- whatever their party or ideology. But President Donald Trump -- as he devastatingly revealed in his own voice to Bob Woodward -- met the great crisis of his age with ineptness, dishonesty and an epic dereliction of duty. Rarely have a president's actions -- or inaction -- and individual decisions on such a critical issue been so consequential and so exposed in his own time -- in this case in taped interviews with The Washington Post reporter for his new book, "Rage."

Throughout history, presidents responded to moments of great trial by leveling with the American people about often-dire challenges, but also summoned a collective sense of mission toward a less perilous destination.

 The fallout from the Woodward bombshells just 54 days before the election goes beyond White House palace intrigue. Trump's own narrative of the crisis has now been shattered. His frequent complaints that no one could have foreseen the magnitude of the challenge from Covid-19 are shown to be flagrantly untrue. Woodward reports that Trump was told by his national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, on January 28 that the virus would be the greatest national security threat of his presidency.

The President has spent months slamming China, which he accuses of knowingly exporting the virus to the US to harm the American economy after he earlier showered Beijing with praise for its handling of the situation. But he makes clear in the conversation on February 7 that he understood the severity of the virus -- and much of his information seems to have been coming from a conversation the day before with none other than Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The White House has spent months denying that Trump downplayed the pandemic -- only for the President to confirm it on a Woodward tape.

 

A Striking Reversal: Trump’s Attacks on the Military and Defense Contractors

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/us/politics/trump-military.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

President Trump mounted a public attack unusual even for him over the Labor Day weekend, accusing his military leadership of advocating war “so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”

Even for a president who has never hesitated to contradict himself for political advantage, it was a remarkable shift. His questioning the patriotism and judgment of America’s military leaders, even accusing them of pursuing global conflicts to profit the military-industrial complex, marked an election-year shift in which he has turned against two of the remaining institutions he spent most of his first term embracing as pillars of his “America First” policy.

 Mr. Trump himself has consistently championed American arms sales, forgiving Saudi Arabia for the killing of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the high civilian death toll from the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen — justifying it because the country buys billions of dollars annually in American weapons.

 As one of these officials noted, Mr. Trump’s critique of the military-industrial complex was not an effort to embrace a warning that President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued in his famed 1961 farewell address — an apolitical moment, since Eisenhower was leaving office.

Instead, one former senior defense official said, Mr. Trump appeared angry at the Republican national security officials who last month publicly declared that he was a danger to the Constitution, and especially at military contractors who were not donating more to his strapped campaign or, in his view, sufficiently grateful for how he has defended their sales. Mr. Trump never considered limiting sales to Saudi Arabia even after the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was implicated in international investigations of the Khashoggi killing.

 “Trump has lost the right and authority to be commander in chief,” said Anthony C. Zinni, a retired four-star Marine general who commanded American forces in the Middle East. “His despicable comments used to describe the honorable men and women in uniform, especially those who have given the last full measure, demonstrated the lack of respect for those he is charged to lead. He must go.”

 “Just as he is endlessly frustrated by a media that will not bend to his whim, he’s frustrated by a military that takes an oath to the Constitution and not to the president,” he said.

 

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Trump goes on the attack --against the military

 https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/judge-andrew-napolitano-trump-attacks-the-military

 I was appalled at the allegations against President Donald Trump leveled in a recent article in The Atlantic. The article claimed that the president referred to American soldiers killed in World War I and buried in France as “losers” and “suckers.” It also offered that the president is disdainful in general of military personnel who have been captured by the enemy or killed in combat.

 I am loyal to my friends, but foremost I am loyal to the truth. So, when special counsel Robert Mueller made allegations about the unlawfulness of Trump’s behavior in the White House, it was my job at Fox to explain that the allegations offered that Trump committed numerous criminal acts of obstruction of justice while president.

 In the history of the U.S., no general has started a war. Trump himself has ordered his generals to attack Iran, Iraq and Syria without congressional authorization. None of the generals did so on his own.

Then, as if to pour gasoline on this fire, an unprovoked Trump offered this gem: “I'm not saying the military’s in love with me, the soldiers are, the top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”

  Does the president have a cavalier attitude about the truth? Does he mean what he says? Is his presidency -- in his own mind -- showmanship or reality? I don’t know the answers to these questions, and it troubles me to be asking them. But the voters will answer in November.

White House asked DOJ to defend Trump in defamation case, Barr says

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics/barr-carroll-trump-defamation/index.html

 The White House asked the Justice Department to take over the defense of President Donald Trump in a defamation lawsuit filed by a woman who has accused Trump of sexual assault in the 1990s, Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday.

Because Trump addressed and denied the accusations by E. Jean Carroll while serving as president, Barr said, the federal government is allowed to step in.

The attorney general also said politics is to blame for the reaction to the Justice Department paying for Trump's defense and possibly killing the lawsuit.

CNN legal analyst and University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck said Barr's comments are misleading when it comes to the President.

 "Yes, DOJ 'frequently' seeks to take over tort claims against federal employees," Vladeck said. "But there's no 'frequent' history of doing so when the defendant is the President -- or of waiting as long as DOJ did here to invoke the statute."

 

 

Bill Bar Again Tries to Protect & Defend Donald Trump, This Time in E. Jean Carrol Defamation Suit

Here's *exactly* why Donald Trump talked to Bob Woodward so much

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics/why-trump-talked-to-woodward/index.html

 Trump has two Achilles heels in politics and life. The first is that he cares so desperately about how people think of him and remember him that he is willing to do almost anything to impact his legacy. The second is that he believes far too much in his own ability to persuade. Woodward (and the book he has produced) cuts at both of the heels.

For all the attacks he lobs at the media, there is NO president who has more closely followed how he is covered and treated by the press than Trump. And it's not even close. He is a voracious consumer of cable news as well as print newspapers. Cable TV has long been the lens through which he views the world and, since being elected president, the way that he analyzes -- in real time -- how he thinks he is doing. 

 That obsession with perception has naturally lead Trump into forever hunting out ways to cement his legacy in office. Whether that's the almost farcical attempt to buy Greenland or his fascination with the possibility of his face being added to Mount Rushmore, Trump has shown a unbending focus on creating and preserving his legacy. (Trump thinks like a real estate developer; he goes big!)

 In short: Woodward is writing the history of each president as it happens. He is the most recognizable and famous political journalist in the country. When Bob Woodward says he wants to write about you -- even if you are a billionaire businessman or the president of the United States -- you are flattered. And you see opportunity, because if you can convince Woodward that the coverage of you is unfair and biased and that you are really doing a great job, well, then, maybe history starts remembering you the way you want it to.

 Which means that Trump was essentially poking at his own weakest spots with every single word he uttered to Woodward. And yet, he couldn't stop himself.

White House and Trump campaign scramble to respond to Woodward revelations

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics/trump-woodward-fallout-coronavirus/index.html

 Journalist Bob Woodward's new book "Rage" sent shockwaves across Washington on Wednesday that left the White House, Trump campaign and congressional Republicans scrambling to react to revelations that President Donald Trump concealed what he knew early on about how dangerous and deadly the coronavirus was.

A source close to the Trump campaign told CNN many were shocked by the President's comments so early about how deadly coronavirus is, noting that the President kept that information from his own campaign.

"Hard to say fake news when there is audio of his comments," a Trump campaign adviser said.

Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, said in response to Woodward's reporting that if the President had made the decision earlier on to explain the dangers of coronavirus and the threat of the virus, it could have made "a little bit of a difference."

"A little bit of alarm about the seriousness early on could have made a little bit of a difference," Rubio said. "Getting people to think earlier on about some of the protective things we ultimately had to put in would have been better looking back."

 

 

Rage by Bob Woodward - Trailer