Tag: liar

Trump Curses Out Democrats on Live Television: ‘Defrauding the Public With Ridiculous Bullsh*t!’

As President Donald Trump tore into the Russia investigations throughout his frenzied speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Thursday night, he surely offended television censors at one point by cursing out Democrats for their “ridiculous bullshit.”

“So the Russia hoax proves more than ever that we need to finish exactly what we came here to do: Drain the swamp,” Trump said to wild cheers. He then exclaimed: “The Democrats have to now decide whether they will continue defrauding the public with ridiculous bullshit, partisan investigations, or ways they will apologize to the American people and it join us to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.”

Never a dull moment.

[Mediaite]

Trump says GOP senators are working on an Obamacare replacement and it will be ‘spectacular’

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that a team of GOP senators is ready to give health care another shot after nearly a decade of promising and failing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

But he added the caveat that he’s in no rush to get it done.

Trump resurrected the issue this week after the Justice Department, in a court filing Monday, said it supported the full elimination of President Barack Obama‘s signature legislative achievement. The president’s assertion that Republicans would become “the party of health care” surprised some Republicans, who thought they’d missed their chance to replace the law.

Republicans experienced an embarrassing defeat during Trump’s first year in office when they failed to make good on their campaign promise to end Obamacare. The closest they got to dismantling it was to eliminate the penalty on people who didn’t purchase health care.

Instead, the White House used executive actions to chip away at the law, while 20 governors from red states challenged it in court.

Trump named Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rick Scottof Florida as the point people on Capitol Hill crafting the legislation.

“They are going to come up with something really spectacular,” Trump told reporters before heading off to a political rally in Michigan.

Trump also claimed that Republicans “will take care of preexisting conditions better than they’re taken care of now.”

The law makes it illegal for health insurers to deny coverage or raise rates on anyone with a preexisting or current illness. Trump did not expand on how it would be improved.

Trump also sounded triumphant about a lawsuit brought by 20 red states to rule Obamacare unconstitutional. A federal judge in Texas ruled in December that the entire law hinged on the fee imposed on people without health insurance. Since Congress eliminated that mandate in its tax bill, the law is no longer constitutional, the judge ruled. An appeal on that case is pending.

According to Trump, those opposed to the ACA are “winning in the courts.”

Democrats campaigned on this issue in November, warning voters that if the courts invalidate the law, then all of its most popular provisions, like protections for people with preexisting conditions, would go down with it.

The law has become increasingly popular with the public, and Democrats credit voters’ concerns about health care for their winning back the House.

Cassidy, one of the three senators Trump named, was also the architect of a replacement bill in 2017 that would have provided block grants to states to allow them to set the guidelines for their insurers. The Senate never voted on it.

All three have been separately working on health care-related legislation, but Trump claims he has asked them to take on the larger endeavor.

Cassidy and Barrasso were both medical doctors. Scott ran a hospital company, which, notably, was fined $1.7 billion for Medicare fraud when he was at the helm.

Trump said he’s not in a rush to get to health care because he’s waiting to see what the courts will decide. Democrats, who are elated to be talking about health care, argue the exact opposite, and say there should be a replacement in place if the ACA is dismantled because otherwise people lose the consumer protections in the law.

[Chicago Tribune]

Trump: I’ve Taken Better Care of Puerto Rico Than ‘Any Living Human Being’

President Donald Trump is dismissed criticisms from Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló on of how his administration has handled the island’s recovery from Hurricane Maria.

Trump took questions from reporters on his way out of the White House on Thursday, during which, he was asked about those who’ve said his administration hasn’t done enough to help the Puerto Rico. The question comes amid reports from a recent luncheon where supposedly Trump grumbled that Puerto Rico is getting too much aid while they continue to recover from the devastation caused by Maria in 2017.

“I have taken better care of Puerto Rico than any man ever,” Trump proclaimed. “Puerto Rico has been taken care of better by Donald Trump than by any living human being.”

Trump continued by taking shots at Rosselló and San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz,, saying “they don’t know how to spend the money. They are not spending it wisely, but I’m giving them more money than they have ever gotten.”

While Trump’s dislike of Cruz is well-established by now, it was believed for some time that he and Rosselló were on decent terms with each other. However, Rosselló recently gave an interview to CNN where he said Trump has not provided the disaster relief he promised the island, with his administration blowing off repeated requests.

[Mediaite]

Trump Holds Victory Lap at First Rally After Mueller Submits Report: ‘The Russia Hoax is Finally Dead’

President Donald Trump came out firing against the media, Democrats, and his other opponents at the start of his rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan — the first since Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his report on the Russia investigation.

“After three years of lies and smears and slander, the Russia hoax is finally dead,” Trump exclaimed to the raucous crowd. “Total exoneration, complete vindication.”

“Robert Mueller was a god to the Democrats until he said no collusion, they don’t like them so much right now,” he added.

Trump continued to call the 2016 investigation of Russia’s election interference a “crazy,” “sinister effort” by Democrats and the “fake news” media to “undermine our historic election victory and to sabotage the will of the American people.” He also called it a ploy by the “corrupt establishment” to “illegally regain power by framing innocent Americans.”

While the attorney general’s summary of the Mueller report said it did not find sufficient evidence of conspiracy, it did not make a determination on whether the president obstructed justice. That was left up to AG William Barr, who cleared the president on obstruction.

[Mediaite]

Trump administration doubles down on opposition to Puerto Rico funding

The White House doubled down Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s comments opposing disaster funding for Puerto Rico, drawing outrage from Democratic members of Congress and raising questions about the administration’s rationale.

On Tuesday, Trump told Republican legislators at a closed-door Capitol Hill meeting that Puerto Rico had gotten too much money to rebuild after Hurricane Maria. The amount “is way out of proportion to what Texas and Florida and others have gotten,” Trump said, according to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who was in the room.

On Wednesday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere told NBC News that while Puerto Rico is on track to receive tens of billions of dollars in unprecedented aid, “the Trump administration will not put taxpayers on the hook to correct a decades-old spending crisis that has left the island with deep-rooted economic problems.”

Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., who is Puerto Rican, blasted the administration’s comments in a statement.

“The President’s remarks as reported in the media have at long last laid bare the central reason for his Administration’s callous response to Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico,” said Velázquez, “namely that he does not value the lives of millions of American citizens who reside there.”

“For the President to vocally oppose and target aid to the most vulnerable in Puerto Rico is shameful, heartless and inexcusable,” the congresswoman added.

In September of 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico; its aftermath led to the deaths of at least 2,975 people and made it the deadliest U.S. natural disaster in a century. Trump has not yet publicly acknowledged or mourned the victims of the catastrophe following the revised figures.

On Wednesday, a White House official told NBC News on background some of the reasons why the administration was opposed to more spending.

But in doing so, the administration got some facts wrong.

The official said that the Puerto Rican government had not yet submitted a plan to fix the island’s power grid. However, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced on Tuesday that he’s ready to sign into law a bill approved by the Puerto Rican legislature that would determine how the island plans to privatize its public power authority, known as PREPA, and expand renewable energy.

The bill has been in the works for over a year, when the island’s government first announced its plans to privatize at least part of its power authority.

An official also said that Puerto Rican officials have mismanaged disaster funds that have been received.

The claim is not new; since last year, Trump has repeatedly asked Congress to stop providing relief and reconstruction money to Puerto Rico.

[NBC News]

Trump says wind power doesn’t work because ‘it only blows sometimes’

President Trump late Wednesday repeated his opposition to wind power, pushing a misleading claim that it would not work as an energy source because the wind “only blows sometimes.”

The president made the comments during a phone interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, as part of his remarks on how his presidency has been “tougher … on Russia” than any other past presidents.

“It’s what we have done with energy and oil and gas. That’s all competition from, for Russia,” Trump said. “You look at the Ukraine. You look at so many different levels. You look at our military.”

“You look at the fact that we would have been powered by wind, which wouldn’t have worked by the way because it only blows sometimes and lots of problems come about.”

The comment echoes Trump’s repeated past criticisms of wind power. Just one week earlier, he mocked the concept of wind power by mimicking a man telling his spouse: “Turn off the television darling, please. There’s no wind, please turn off the television quickly.”

The Department of Energy explains on its website that power grids are designed to accommodate variability from energy generation sources, such as wind and solar, without having to rely on “backup” energy sources.

Trump, who campaigned on restoring coal jobs to the U.S., has long opposed wind turbines based on a number of arguments, including saying that the “windmills” will decrease property values and that turbines are a “killing field” for birds.

The Energy Department also notes that bird deaths from wind turbines are rare and pale in comparison to bird deaths from collisions with buildings and declining habitats from infrastructure development.

According to a new study released this week by a nonpartisan think tank, solar and wind power are on track to phase out coal as cheaper energy alternatives within the next few years.

[The Hill]

Reality

Trump slams media for coverage of investigations into ‘all time favorite duly elected President’

President Trump tore into the media over its coverage of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which concluded without sufficient evidence that the president’s campaign had colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. 

“The Fake News Media has lost tremendous credibility with its corrupt coverage of the illegal Democrat Witch Hunt of your all time favorite duly elected President, me! T.V. ratings of CNN & MSNBC tanked last night after seeing the Mueller Report statement. @FoxNews up BIG!” Trump tweeted Tuesday evening. 

Trump and his conservative allies on Capitol Hill and in the media seized on Attorney General William Barr’s announcement that Mueller found no evidence of collusion, using it to slam mainstream outlets for what they said was speculative reporting that implied Trump’s guilt.

“The Mainstream Media is under fire and being scorned all over the World as being corrupt and FAKE. For two years they pushed the Russian Collusion Delusion when they always knew there was No Collusion. They truly are the Enemy of the People and the Real Opposition Party!” Trump tweeted early Tuesday morning. 

The president has long had an acrimonious relationship with the press, often hammering outlets that reported negative news of the White House as “fake news” and at times even speculating whether he should revoke the press credentials of certain publications’ employees.

Fox News, a staunch defender of the president in its primetime hours, saw a boost in its viewership in the aftermath of the Mueller news, more than quadrupling CNN’s ratings.

[The Hill]

Trump on Mueller report: ‘Complete and total exoneration’

President Trump on Sunday claimed “complete and total exoneration” after the Justice Department announced special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found no evidence of collusion with Russia and criticized the probe as an “illegal takedown that failed.”

In his first response to the conclusion of the investigation, a seemingly angry Trump went on the offensive, bemoaning that “so many people have been so badly hurt” by Mueller’s investigation and calling for a new probe to “look at the other side.”

“It’s a shame that our country had to go through this. To be honest, it’s a shame that your president has had to go through this,” Trump told reporters in West Palm Beach, Fla. before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington.

“This was an illegal takedown that failed and hopefully somebody’s going is to be looking at the other side,” the president added. “So it’s complete exoneration. No collusion, no obstruction.”  

Trump’s 87-second statement, which he delivered on the tarmac of Palm Beach International Airport, came minutes after he tweeted: “No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!”

The president’s comments broke an unusually long period of silence, as Trump’s attorneys and advisers urged him to keep a low profile until Mueller’s conclusions were announced after the investigation ended last Friday.

But Trump and his allies were eager to take a victory lap after Attorney General William Barr released a four-page letter on Sunday afternoon summarizing Mueller’s findings from his 22-month probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, which had cast a cloud over Trump’s presidency.

White House lawyers Pat Cipollone and Emmet Flood briefed Trump on Barr’s letter inside his private quarters at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where he spent the weekend surrounded by a larger-than-usual cadre of advisers in anticipation of the report’s release. The White House has not been given access to Mueller’s full report, aides said.

Despite his gruff demeanor while speaking to reporters, spokesman Hogan Gidley said the president was in a “really good mood” and spent the flight to Washington watching television, making calls and talking to staff.

“He’s just very happy with how it all turned out,” Gidley told reporters aboard Air Force One.

In a paper statement issued minutes after the letter was sent to Congress, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Mueller “did not find any collusion and did not find any obstruction” and called the findings “a total and complete exoneration of the president of the United States.”

While Barr’s summary said Mueller did not find that the Trump campaign “conspired or coordinated with” Moscow’s efforts, the special counsel did not determine whether the president obstructed justice during the probe.

Barr wrote that Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and he decided there was not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump violated obstruction laws.

Nonetheless, Trump’s lawyers and political supporters called the end of the investigation a clear-cut vindication.

“As we have stated from the very beginning, there was no collusion and no obstruction,” Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekulow, Jane Serene Raskin and Marty Raskin said in a statement. “This is a complete and total vindication of the president.”

Asked why Trump claimed total exoneration when Barr’s letter was ambiguous on the question of obstruction, Gidley said “prosecutors don’t exonerate, they prosecute. They don’t prove a negative. That’s just silly.”

Trump’s complaints about a lengthy investigation that “hurt” many people also renewed questions about whether he may pardon Mueller’s targets who pleaded guilty to or were convicted of crimes, namely his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The president has repeatedly refused to rule out a pardon for Manafort, who was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for a raft of financial and lobbying-related crimes.

Democrats in Congress on Sunday vowed they would push to make public more information related to the investigation, ensuring the political battle over the probe will continue for weeks, if not months longer as the 2020 election nears.

“Attorney General Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement. “He is not a neutral observer and is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report.”

Pelosi and Schumer added that “the American people have a right to know” the contents of Mueller’s full report, and not just Barr’s summary.

Trump’s reelection campaign manager, Brad Parscale, accused Democrats who said there was collusion of taking the nation “on a frantic, chaotic, conspiracy-laden roller coaster for two years, alleging wrongdoing where there was none.”

“Democrats lied to the American people continually, hoping to undo the legitimate election of President Trump,” said Parscale.

Trump’s campaign sought to capitalize politically on the Barr letter, blasting out a video message attacking Democrats for their collusion allegations and urging supporters in a text message to donate to the campaign.

“Congratulations @POTUS @realDonaldTrump Today you won the 2016 election all over again. And got a gift for the 2020 election. They’ll never get you because they’ll never ‘get’ you,” tweeted White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.

Congressional Democrats demanded that the Justice Department release Mueller’s full report, along with underlying evidence, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said he would call on Barr to testify before Congress.

Nadler tweeted Barr’s testimony was important to hear “in light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department,” related to the obstruction question.

“While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” Mueller wrote in his report, according to Barr.

[The Hill]

Trump: George Conway ‘A Wack Job’

President Trump on Wednesday escalated his attacks on George Conway, calling him a “whack job” who is doing a “disservice” to his wife, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.

“I don’t know him. He’s a whack job, there’s no question about it,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before traveling to Ohio.

The president added that Conway’s Twitter attacks are “doing a tremendous disservice to a wonderful wife.”

“Kellyanne is a wonderful woman and I call him Mr. Kellyanne,” Trump continued, repeating what he appears to believe is an insult to refer to Conway by his wife’s first name.

“It isn’t—except perhaps to the extremely juvenile and boorish,” Conway responded to a reporter who asked why it is an insult. “What I really wouldn’t want to be called is “Individual-[ ].”

Federal prosecutors made apparent references to Trump as “Individual-1” in its indictment of former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

The comments came just hours after Trump tweeted that Conway is a “stone cold LOSER” and a “husband from hell” who is “jealous of his wife’s success.”

“You. Are. Nuts,” Conway tweeted in response before repeating his claim that the president suffers from mental illness or a personality disorder. “You seem determined to prove my point.  Good for you! #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder.”

This week’s back-and-forth between Trump and George Conway has elevated what had previously been a family feud watched by Washington insiders into the mainstream consciousness.

Kellyanne Conway defended the president’s attacks on her husband, telling Politico that Trump is within his rights to respond when accused of having mental problems.

“He left it alone for months out of respect for me,” Conway said. “But you think he shouldn’t respond when somebody, a non-medical professional accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down?”

Despite Trump’s claim he does not know George Conway, the two men do have a personal history that pre-dates their Twitter feud.

Trump considered tapping Conway, a high-powered appellate lawyer, to lead the Justice Department’s civil division in 2017 but Conway said he took himself out of consideration, citing the president’s attacks on the department over the Russia investigation.

In a 2006 letter obtained by The Washington Post, Trump praised Conway’s legal skills used in a dispute at Trump World Tower in New York.

“I wanted to thank you for your wonderful assistance in ridding Trump World Tower of some very bad people,” Trump to Conway. “What I was most impressed with was how quickly you were able to comprehend a very bad situation.”

Trump added that Conway had “a truly great voice,” which he said is “certainly not a bad asset for a top trial lawyer!”

[The Hill]

Trump retweets QAnon conspiracy theorist, via Larry the Cable Guy, to slam the TSA

From a QAnon conspiracy theorist to actor James Woods to comedian Larry the Cable Guy to the leader of the free world. Thus travels information in the age of Twitter and President Trump, who took a late-night swing at a familiar punching bag — the Transportation Security Administration — via a nearly two-year-old video spread by a character on the far fringes of the Internet.

“Not a good situation!” Trump tweeted on Tuesday just before midnight about the clip of a young man subjected to a very thorough pat-down by a TSA agent.

Trump’s critique of the TSA, an agency he has lashed out at repeatedly on the campaign trail, is hardly extreme. The video he retweeted garnered millions of views and sparked outrage back in March 2017 after a woman named Jennifer Williamson filmed her son, who she said had a sensory processing disorder, at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

But the source who belatedly brought the video to Trump’s attention, through a winding path of Twitter celebrities, is likely to raise new questions about where a president fond of spreading conspiracy theories gets his information.

The video was reshared on Monday by a Twitter account called Deep State Exposed, which is operated by Jeremy Stone, a follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Stone’s twitter bio includes the phrase “WWG1WGA,” shorthand for “Where We Go One We Go All,” a rallying cry for the bizarre theory that ties together the Pizzagateconspiracy and a supposed “deep state” plot to control American politics. Stone soon added a follow-up tweet to the viral video claiming that “TSA goes out of their way to hire high school dropouts with an inclination for sexual perversion. It’s mind control!!!”

On his Twitter feed, Stone regularly mixes fake Hillary Clinton quotes with truly odd conspiracies. The next clip posted after the video retweeted by the president was a piece of shaky cellphone footage suggesting that empty Walmarts are being used as “CONCENTRATION CAMPS SET TO HOUSE AMERICAN CITIZENS!!”

Tuesday night was not Trump’s first brush with that account’s particular brand of paranoia. The Twitter bio for Deep State Exposed boasts of nine retweets from the president. The feed made headlines in September 2017 when Trump reshared a meme from the account about Hillary Clinton’s book “What Happened.”

Stone’s latest presidential nod of approval tapped into a long-simmering point of anger for Trump: the TSA and the American airport experience in general. In May 2016, Trump complained that the TSA was “falling apart.” At the Republican National Convention two months later, Trump called the agency a “total disaster”and promised that he would “fix TSA.” Yet, among Trump’s budget moves was a proposal in 2017 to slash TSA’s funding to help pay for his border wall.

At rallies and in interviews, Trump also routinely complains that America’s airportsare “like from a third-world country.”

So it’s no surprise that the video of the young man in Dallas undergoing an intense body search would resonate. James Woods, an actor turned conservative social media activist who has been suspended from Twitter in the past for sharing a hoax, helped spread the clip by tweeting it with the simple phrase, “Uh…”

Larry the Cable Guy, a stand-up comedian famed for his “Git-R-Done” catchphrase, then weighed in, calling the video “Absolutely ridiculous!”

“How many times do you have to feel a kid up to figure out he’s not a threat? This is infuriating and hard to watch,” the comedian tweeted, which caught the president’s eye hours later. Donald Trump Jr. also joined in the outrage, calling the video “sickening.” (Deep State Exposed quickly thanked the president’s son for the retweet, adding in a fake Hillary Clinton quote for good measure.)

As for TSA, the agency in 2017 defended its handling of the viral pat-down at the Texas airport, noting that the procedure took “approximately two minutes” and “was observed by the mother and two police officers who were called to mitigate the concerns of the mother.” The agency even wrote a lengthy blog post titled “TSA Mythbuster: The Rest of the DFW Pat-down Story” to combat blowback from the incident.

“TSA allows for a pat-down of a teenage passenger, and in this case, all approved procedures were followed to resolve an alarm of the passenger’s laptop,” spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein told The Post at the time. “The passengers were at the checkpoint for approximately 45 minutes, which included the time it took to discuss screening procedures with the mother and to screen three carry-on items that required further inspection.”

[Washington Post]

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