Tag: bully

Trump claims Obama kept migrants ‘wrapped in foil’ in cages: ‘We do a much better job’

President Donald Trump, is apparently trying to deflect criticism of his administration’s separating more than 2,000 migrant children from their parents by suggesting that former President Obama did worse.

Trump tweeted Saturday morning that President Obama kept immigrants “in cages, wrapped in foil,” pushing a Drudge Report headline that linked to an article that ran in The Daily Caller, a conservative media outlet.

The Daily Caller article was posted on Tuesday, when public outrage over the family separations was at a height. On Wednesday, the president signed an executive order to end the policy and keep migrant parents and children together.

The Obama administration also used detention facilities for migrants who crossed the border illegally but it did not engage in widespread family separations.

[ABC News]

Trump Suggests Negative Media Coverage of The North Korea Summit is ‘Almost Treasonous’

In an exclusive interview set to air Saturday night on TBN, former Arkansas governor and 2016 presidential candidate Mike Huckabeesat down with President Donald Trump.

In what will likely be a wide-ranging interview, part of the conversation was focused on Trump’s recent summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, which Trump insists was widely successful.

However, CNN supervising producer Steve Brusk flagged this portion of their exchange.

After telling Huckabee he and the North Korean dictator came to a “wonderful agreement,” Trump took the opportunity to blast “fake news.”

“It’s a shame that the fake news covers it the way they do,” Trump told Huckabee. “Honestly, it’s really, it’s almost treasonous you want to know the truth.”

This marks Trump’s fourth sit-down since the June 12 summit in Singapore. The president had previously spoken with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Fox News’ Sean Hannity, and Special Reportanchor Bret Baier.

[Mediaite]

Media

Trump Claims Melania’s Jacket Was About ‘The Fake News Media’: She Knows ‘How Dishonest They Are’

Earlier today, First Lady Melania Trump was spotted wearing a jacketsaying “I DON’T REALLY CARE DO U” en route to visit detained migrant children. It was a curious choice and it’s unclear why she wore it in the first place, but as a spokeswoman for the First Lady insisted, there was no “hidden message.”

Well, no one apparently told the President:

Yes, President Trump is claiming that the First Lady’s jacket was reallya statement about the “Fake News Media,” tweeting, “Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares!”

So… there was a hidden message?

[Mediaite]

Rally crowd chants ‘CNN sucks’ after Trump rips media

The crowd at President Trump‘s Wednesday campaign rally in Duluth, Minn., erupted into chants of “CNN sucks” after the president ripped the news media.

“So we’ve created 3.4 million new jobs since Election Day,” Trump told the crowd of supporters.

“And I’ve said before if I would have said that to you during the campaign, those very dishonest people back there, the fake news. Very dishonest,” he continued to boos from the crowd.

“They would have said he’s exaggerating,” Trump said to chants of “CNN sucks.”

The White House has a very tense relationship with the press, which Trump has repeatedly dismissed as “fake news.”

The president was at the rally to support Republican candidate Pete Stauber, who shared the stage with the president for a short time.

“Like President Trump, I love this country. I love our freedoms. And I love our Constitution,” Stauber said.

Trump was joined at the event by Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), and Rep. Jason Lewis (R-Minn.).

The rally comes hours after Trump gave into bipartisan pressure, and signed an executive order intended to end family separations at the southern border.

[The Hill]

Media

Trump blames ‘fake news’ media for aiding smugglers, human traffickers

President Trump on Tuesday blamed yet another entity for the growing immigration crisis on the U.S. southern border: the news media.

During a speech to a small-business group in Washington, Trump said the “fake news” reports about children being separated from their families at the border are aiding human traffickers.

“They are helping these smugglers and these traffickers like nobody would believe,” Trump said of the media. “They know exactly what they’re doing.”

The president accused news outlets of covering child separations more than congressional hearings about an inspector general report about the Hillary Clinton email probe “because those hearings are not good for them.”

“The whole thing is a scam,” he told members of the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

The president also took aim at Mexico, accusing America’s southern neighbor of not doing enough to stop illegal border crossings.

“They come up through Mexico — Mexico does nothing for us,” Trump said. “They could stop it. They have very strong laws. Try staying in Mexico for a couple days see how long that lasts.”

The explosive remarks are the latest sign Trump is not backing down from his administration’s “zero tolerance” stance on illegal immigration, despite growing opposition at home and around the world.

Roughly 2,000 children have been separated from family members as a result of his administration’s decision to prosecute almost everyone who crosses the southern border illegally and jail them while awaiting trial.

The children are placed in juvenile detention facilities near the border because they cannot be held in custody with their adult guardians.

Trump is scheduled to meet with House Republicans later on Tuesday afternoon to discuss immigration measures slated for floor votes this week.

The president said he would be briefed on the proposals and then is “going to make changes” to them. That comment appeared to undercut his own staff, who said last week the president would sign both measures.

The president said he wants Congress to grant him “the legal authority to detain and properly remove families together as a unit,” a provision included in legislation written by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“We have to be able to do this,” he said. “This is the only solution to the border crisis.”

He also questioned the need for more judges to handle immigration cases, something supported by lawmakers in both parties and his own Justice Department.

“I don’t want judges,” he said. “I want border security. I don’t want to try people. I don’t want people coming in.”

Trump also offered a confusing justification of the practice of separating children from their families at the border, something his top aides have also struggled to defend.

“I don’t want children taken away from parents,” Trump said, blaming the problem on a tangled web of “Democrat-supported loopholes” in immigration law he said he wants to close.

But in the next sentence, Trump said the separations are the intended consequence of a policy meant to deter illegal immigration.

“When you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children away,” he said.

His comments reflect the contradictory remarks offered by members of his own team.

Department of Health and Human Services official Steve Wagner told reporters on Tuesday that “the new policy will result in a deterrence effect and we certainly hope parents stop bringing kids on this dangerous journey.”

That came one day after Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsensaid she finds it “offensive” for reporters to suggest the child separations are an intended effect of the administration’s policy.

[The Hill]

Youngest migrants held in ‘tender age’ shelters

Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas, The Associated Press has learned.

Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis. The government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, where city leaders denounced the move Tuesday.

Since the White House announced its zero tolerance policy in early May, more than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, resulting in a new influx of young children requiring government care. The government has faced withering critiques over images of some of the children in cages inside U.S. Border Patrol processing stations.

Decades after the nation’s child welfare system ended the use of orphanages over concerns about the lasting trauma to children, the administration is standing up new institutions to hold Central American toddlers that the government separated from their parents.

“The thought that they are going to be putting such little kids in an institutional setting? I mean it is hard for me to even wrap my mind around it,” said Kay Bellor, vice president for programs at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which provides foster care and other child welfare services to migrant children. “Toddlers are being detained.”

Bellor said shelters follow strict procedures surrounding who can gain access to the children in order to protect their safety, but that means information about their welfare can be limited.

By law, child migrants traveling alone must be sent to facilities run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services within three days of being detained. The agency then is responsible for placing the children in shelters or foster homes until they are united with a relative or sponsor in the community as they await immigration court hearings.

But U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ announcement last month that the government would criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the U.S.-Mexico border illegally has led to the breakup of migrant families and sent a new group of hundreds of young children into the government’s care.

The United Nations, some Democratic and Republican lawmakers and religious groups have sharply criticized the policy, calling it inhumane.

Not so, said Steven Wagner, an official with the Department of Health and Human Services.

“We have specialized facilities that are devoted to providing care to children with special needs and tender age children as we define as under 13 would fall into that category,” he said. “They’re not government facilities per se, and they have very well-trained clinicians, and those facilities meet state licensing standards for child welfare agencies, and they’re staffed by people who know how to deal with the needs — particularly of the younger children.”

[Associated Press]

Trump suggests immigrant kids he’s holding hostage are crisis actors

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that the immigrant children being held at detention facilities in the United States are being trained to lie in order to gain unlawful entry into the country.

While speaking at the National Federation of Independent Business, Trump defiantly said that he would not be changing his administration’s policies on separating immigrant children from their families.

Specifically, Trump said that immigrant children were coached to make false statements about the reasons they are fleeing their home countries to gain entrance to the United States.

“They tell these people exactly what to say,” Trump alleged. “They say, ‘Say the following.’ They write it down. ‘I am being harmed in my country. My country is extremely dangerous. I fear for my life.’”

Trump then said that such statements were “given to them by lawyers who are waiting for them to come up” to the United States.

Finally, Trump said that refugees fleeing violence in their home countries were simply lying about the reasons for wanting to come to the United States.

“They’re not coming for that reason,” he said. “They’re coming up for many other reasons.”

[Raw Story]

Media

Trump loses temper over border wall funding

President Donald Trump is getting frustrated with his administration’s own demands for border wall funding.

In a private meeting regarding the wall Monday, Trump fumed to senators and his own staff about the $1.6 billion the Senate is planning to send him this fall, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Trump wants the full $25 billion upfront and doesn’t understand why Congress is going to supply him funds in a piecemeal fashion — even though that’s how the spending process typically works.

“He’s focused on border security. And like all presidents, he wants it done now. But we’re part of the legislative process. It’s slower and deliberate,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who met with Trump.

The president said at the meeting that if Congress doesn’t give him the resources he needs for border security, he will shut down the government in September, according to one of the people familiar with the meeting. He did not give a specific number, but has been fixated on getting the $25 billion in a lump sum.

In fact, the $1.6 billion figure came from Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who attended the meeting. Mulvaney submitted the request to Congress earlier this year, though the administration has since upped its ask to $2.2 billion.

Senate Democrats offered to provide $25 billion in border wall funding earlier this year in return for giving 1.8 million young undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship. But Trump and most Republicans rebuffed that proposal to salvage the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Democrats are unlikely to provide $25 billion for Trump’s wall absent a much broader immigration deal.

Trump’s renewed focus on the border wall comes amid rising pressure to end his administration’s policy of separating families that cross the border illegally. The “zero tolerance” policy shift has been roundly criticized by lawmakers in both parties, but Trump has blamed Congress for inaction on immigration.

“Now is the best opportunity ever for Congress to change the ridiculous and obsolete laws on immigration. Get it done, always keeping in mind that we must have strong border security,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning.

GOP lawmakers are loath to see a government shutdown on their watch just weeks before the midterm elections.

“It’s probably an overwhelming belief in the House and the Senate, especially the Senate, that government shutdowns aren’t good for anybody,” Shelby said.

The Appropriations Committee began working to pass its Homeland Security bill on Tuesday. Democrats seem unlikely to change course and agree to add more border security money for the president.

“We’ve got the bill and we’re moving forward and I think we’re going to get good bipartisan support for it. I think it’s a good bill that will keep our borders safe,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), ranking member of the Homeland Security appropriations committee.

On Monday, GOP Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Shelby both tried to explain to Trump that the Senate is merely meeting Mulvaney’s request and has to cut a bipartisan deal with Democrats. The Senate needs 60 votes to pass a spending bill, so Republicans would have to find at least nine Democratic votes.

“We’re going to make a down payment on that working together,” said Capito, chairwoman of Homeland Security spending panel.

But Trump has not been mollified. He raised his voice several times in Monday’s meeting with Mulvaney, White House staffers and the senators, insisting he needs the full $25 billion — an unlikely outcome in the narrowly divided Senate.

Shelby said he views $1.6 billion as a floor in negotiations, which could increase if Democrats want to do some horse-trading.

[Politico]

Trump Calls Female Reporter ‘So Obnoxious,’ Tells Her to Be Quiet At Least 5 Times

On Friday, President Donald Trump told a female reporter to be quiet at least five times. He also called her “so obnoxious.”

It all happened during Trump’s whirlwind media blitz on Friday and with plenty of cameras nearby was all caught on tape.

Video of the incident shows Trump singling out CBS News correspondent Weijia Jiang and telling her to be quiet at least five times, according to Jiang’s account.

Then, when she pressed POTUS on not calling out North Korea’s human rights violations he put his hand out towards her face and turned his head away.

Then he told another reporter,” she’s so obnoxious.”

Trump then threw in another scolding “quiet” for good measure.

Jiang talked about what happened on Twitter, giving it a somewhat positive spin, writing, Trump “told me I was obnoxious and to be quiet at least 5x, but to his credit he did answer plenty of our questions.”

The White House, which has been increasingly adversarial towards the press, has not commented on the incident or otherwise remarked on Trump’s behavior towards Jiang.

[Mediaite]

Trump demands credit for getting along with Kim Jong Un

President Donald Trump continued to defend his budding relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Monday, demanding credit for his role in making “initial steps toward a deal” by establishing a personal rapport with the young dictator during last week’s summit in Singapore.

“If President Obama (who got nowhere with North Korea and would have had to go to war with many millions of people being killed) had gotten along with North Korea and made the initial steps toward a deal that I have, the Fake News would have named him a national hero!” Trump tweeted.

Amid lingering skepticism over North Korea’s commitment to complete denuclearization in the wake of the Singapore summit, Trump has aggressively pushed the idea that Kim is sincere in his intentions and that the two leaders were able to develop a unique chemistry.

It’s a conviction South Korean officials share. South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-Nam said Monday in Washington that any diplomatic progress should be credited to the connection that Trump and Kim established through an “unprecedented top-down approach” to negotiations.

“The actors for this top-level diplomacy are completely different leaders as compared to the past,” Lim told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Moreover, the personal chemistry between them has been unique as well.”

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, asked about Trump’s praise for Kim, suggested the President is as willing to use carrots as he would be — if necessary — to use sticks. “If you try to play Trump or back out, there’s going to be a war and nobody wants war,” Graham told CNN.

Trump’s claims to a cozy relationship may reflect an effort to butter-up Kim “to make it easier to get a better deal,” Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio told CNN last week.

Indeed, the administration hopes that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo can build on that rapport to create substantial movement toward denuclearization.

But sources have told CNN that there is nothing to suggest that North Korea has begun destroying its missile launch sites, despite Trump’s repeated claims to the contrary and his declaration last week that the country is no longer a nuclear threat.

Harry Harris, Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to South Korea, said last week that North Korea continues to be a nuclear threat and that major military exercises should be paused to give Kim a chance to prove whether he is “serious.”

Trump announced in Singapore that the US would suspend “war games” with South Korea and Japan, taking Seoul, Tokyo, lawmakers and parts of the US military by surprise.

Additionally, several US defense officials said that, so far, there is no indication that Kim has made good on his promise to return the remains of prisoners of war and soldiers declared missing in action during the Korean War — something Trump has repeatedly said the two leaders agreed upon during their meeting.

These officials also cautioned that a lengthy DNA verification process would be needed when and if any remains are returned to the US.

In South Korea, however, the prism is different. Discussions center less on Trump’s achievements or lack of them, or his failures to live up to his own word, and more on the possibilities his summit opened up — in particular his new relationship with Kim.

While critics continue to suggest that Trump failed to secure concrete concessions from North Korea — including guarantees related to verifiable irreversible denuclearization and ending human rights abuses — South Korean officials have publicly credited the US President for facilitating the signing of the Panmunjom declaration and the Singapore statement, despite questions over specific terms.

“President Trump has made an unprecedented strategic decision to meet face-to-face with the leader of the DPRK,” Vice Foreign Minister Lim said, noting that Trump accounted for cultural considerations in dealing with Kim by showing him “due respect” and treating “him as a leader of a state.”

[CNN]

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