White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday offered a cryptic explanation for President Trump’s incomplete, misspelled tweet that went viral overnight.
“The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant,” Spicer told reporters.
The spokesman’s refusal to admit Trump made a mistake prompted laughter from members of the media at the White House.
Spicer said he wasn’t concerned about the president posting confusing tweets late at night.
Shortly after midnight, Trump tweeted, “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.”
The message unleashed a torrent of reactions from Twitter users who tried to define the term – or simply made fun of it.
Trump deleted the tweet shortly before 6 a.m., and posted a new message that read, “Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’ ???”
Who can figure out the true meaning of "covfefe" ??? Enjoy!
Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that “a team of lawyers” may soon review Donald Trump’s social-media missives as the White House tries to grapple with the Russia scandal.
If that was the plan, it doesn’t appear to be going well. This morning, for example, the president published some tweets about the controversy that didn’t do Trump World any favors:
“So now it is reported that the Democrats, who have excoriated Carter Page about Russia, don’t want him to testify. He blows away their case against him & now wants to clear his name by showing ‘the false or misleading testimony by James Comey, John Brennan…’ Witch Hunt!”
Trump was apparently watching a Fox News segment this morning, which led to this little outburst.
And that’s a shame, because the president’s tweets are problematic for a variety of reasons.
For example, Trump, apparently quoting a letter Page sent to lawmakers seemed to argue this morning that the former directors of the FBI and the CIA delivered “false or misleading testimony” while under oath. That’s a pretty dangerous thing for a president to allege publicly without any evidence.
What’s more, Trump’s tweet follows Page’s claim that his interview with the House Intelligence Committee has been delayed, but it’s unclear if that interview had ever been scheduled in the first place.
But perhaps the most salient detail is Trump’s insistence that Carter Page has information that “blows away” the Democrats’ “case against him” in the Russia scandal. This, of course, leads to an awkward question: how exactly would the president know that?
A year ago, during the presidential campaign, Trump personally singled out Page, by name, as one of only a handful of people who were advising him on matters of foreign policy. That became highly problematic: the FBI has investigated Page as a possible agent of Russia.
The more controversial Page became, the more eager Team Trump became to put distance between Page and the president. Sean Spicer told reporters during the transition period, for example, “Carter Page is an individual whom [Trump] does not know.” The Washington Postadded this morning people close to the president have insisted that Trump and Page “never met.”
And yet, there was the president this morning, not only defending Page, but making the case that Page has important, exculpatory information. I’ll look forward to the explanation as to how and why Trump has reached this conclusion.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer got into a heated debate with reporters on Tuesday when they confronted him with President Donald Trump’s accusations about them producing “fake news.”
When asked by a reporter to list an example of “fake news,” Spicer pointed to one tweet by a BBC reporter that incorrectly claimed that Trump was not wearing a translation earpiece while talking with foreign leaders over the weekend.
When the BBC reporter realized his mistake, he issued a public correction less than two hours later, although this wasn’t enough to stop Spicer from chastising him regardless.
“On Friday, the president was having a great discussion at the G7 and someone from the BBC, and ultimately an incoming reporter for the New York Times retweeted that the president was being rude by disrespecting the Italian prime minister,” Spicer complained. “When in fact, you all in all of the meetings watched the president with that one earpiece that’s been used by all the other presidents… That’s just fake!”
Reporters in the room pushed back, however, by noting that the one reporter’s false tweet did not generate any stories at major newspapers and was quickly corrected.
“I was asked to give an example, and I did it,” a testy Spicer shot back.
When another reporter again pointed out that one false tweet from a BBC reporter didn’t drive news coverage for the president’s trip, Spicer chided them for saying the tweet wasn’t a big deal.
“Well, thank you, I appreciate it, you get to decide what is big and what is not,” Spicer said sarcastically. “A lot of things have been pushed out based on unnamed unaccountable sources that is very troubling.”
President Trump on Saturday claimed that money was “beginning to pour in” to NATO, just two days after he gave a speech scolding allies for not paying their fair share at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
“Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in- NATO will be much stronger,” Trump tweeted Saturday.
Trump’s wording misrepresents how NATO is organized by suggesting that nations pay the alliance; each nation funds its own defense spending under the NATO umbrella. There is not a specific fund money would be pouring into.
Trump has frequently assailed the treaty organization as “unfair” to the U.S., arguing that other member states have long failed to uphold their defense spending commitments. Only five NATO countries — the U.S., Greece, Estonia, the U.K. and Poland — have met the treaty’s agreement that countries spend at least 2 percent of their annual GDP on defense by 2024.
Trump reiterated that sentiment while speaking to NATO allies this week, saying the members “must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations.”
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said in an interview Wednesday that having “the wrong mindset” contributes to poverty.
“I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind,” the retired neurosurgeon said during an interview with SiriusXM Radio released on Wednesday evening. “You take somebody that has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there. And you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you could give them everything in the world, they’ll work their way right back down to the bottom.”
The former 2016 presidential candidate, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and confirmed to his Cabinet post in March, argued parents can help prevent their kids from developing the “wrong mindset.”
“A lot of it has to do with what we teach children,” he said. “You have to instill into that child the mindset of a winner.”
He went to say that “there’s also a poverty of spirit. You develop a certain mindset.”
Carson said the government can provide help to those in need.
“I think the majority of people don’t have that defeatist attitude, but they sometimes just don’t see the way, and that’s where government can come in and be very helpful,” he added. “It can provide the ladder of opportunity, it can provide the mechanism that will demonstrate to them what can be done.”
President Trump’s budget proposal includes deep cuts to education but funds a new push for school choice.
When pressed by representatives at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing on the budget, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos declined to say if, when or how the federal government would step in to make sure that private schools receiving public dollars would not discriminate against students.
She repeatedly said that decisions would be left to school districts and parents.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) stressed that Milwaukee’s school voucher program has resulted in years of failure. When he pressed DeVos on whether the federal government would hold recipients of public money accountable, DeVos punted.
“Wisconsin and all of the states in the country are putting their ESSA plans together,” said DeVos, referring to the Every Student Succeeds Act, a school accountability law. “They are going to decide what kind of flexibility … they’re allowed.”
“Will you have accountability standards?” Pocan asked.
“There are accountability standards,” DeVos said. “That is part of the ESSA legislation.”
That’s not true. ESSA’s regulations state that the law’s accountability rules do not apply to private schools.
@Joy_Resmovits No. As stated by ED in its NPRM for ESSA regs: ESSA's accountability reqs do NOT apply to private schools, only public schools. pic.twitter.com/V5f4apCbER
Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) asked DeVos about a Christian school in Indiana that gets state dollars through a voucher program but explicitly states that gay students may be denied admission. “If Indiana applies for funding, will you stand up and say that this school is open to all students?” Clark asked.
DeVos said states make the rules.
“That’s a no,” Clark said. Then she asked what if a school doesn’t accept black students.
“Our [civil rights] and Title IX protections are broadly protective, but when our parents make choices,” DeVos started.
“This isn’t about parents making choices,” Clark interrupted. “This is about the use of federal dollars.”
After a few more rounds like this, DeVos said that her “bottom line” is that “we believe that parents are best equipped to make decisions for their schooling.”
Clark said she was shocked by this response.
DeVos’ staff later came to her defense, saying that the line of questioning in the hearing concerned a “theoretical voucher program” and indicated a “misunderstanding” about the federal government’s role in education.
“When States design programs, and when schools implement them, it is incumbent on them to adhere to Federal law,” DeVos’ press secretary Liz Hill said in an email. “The Department of Education can and will intervene when Federal law is broken.”
President Trump on Monday landed in Israel and met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has referred to Trump as a “true friend” of Israel.
Trump’s friendship with the Jewish state is apparently so grounded, so pure, that he would never take its name in vain — or, say, mention it to Russian officials while disclosing classified intelligence that Israel had gathered. He interrupted his otherwise successful photo opportunity with Netanyahu to say so:
Trump just said he never mentioned Israel in his meeting w/ Russians.
Trump had never been accused of revealing Israel by name as the source of the sensitive information; in fact, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster took to the White House lectern last week to defend Trump’s disclosure by saying the president “wasn’t even aware of where that information came from.” Israeli officials had also declined to confirm that Israel had gathered the information Trump discussed with the Russians.
Rather, Trump was under fire for sharing the intelligence information in the first place — which, even if he did blab, he definitely didn’t say the information was from Israel, who knows where it came from, and he decided to defend himself against that claim while standing next to the country’s prime minister for some random and unrelated reason.
On Thursday, The Economist released a lightly edited transcript of the interview, where Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn were also present.
While talking about his tax reform plan, Trump used the phrase “priming the pump” and claimed that he came up with it “a couple of days ago.” Except that the phrase dates back to the early 19th century, according to, you know, the dictionary.
Trump asked the editors from The Economist if they had had heard of the expression “prime the pump” and whether they understood it.
The Economist editors repeatedly assured him they had heard of it and even told him that the phrase was “very Keynesian.”
Trump asked again, “Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just… came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good.”
But it turns out the only way Trump came up with this phrase a couple days ago is if he is a time traveler.
Merriam-Webster — which has been known to troll the president frequently — explained that “pump priming” has been used to refer to government investment expenditures since at least 1933.
'Pump priming' has been used to refer to government investment expenditures since at least 1933. https://t.co/VfkGwwzZRC
Last night, President Trump spoke with Lester Holt in an interview for NBC News. It’s truly a jaw-dropping conversation for a number of reasons, but there’s one important lie that everyone seems to have missed. Trump said that he didn’t know Michael Flynn in 2015. This simply isn’t true.
Lester Holt: Did you know that [Flynn] had received payments from the Russian government, that he had received payments from the Turkish government?
Donald Trump: No, but Obama perhaps knew, because he had clearance from the Obama administration, and this is something they never want to report. He had clearance from the Obama administration—the highest clearance you can have. And I think it’s a very unfair thing that the media doesn’t talk about that. You know, you’re talking about 2015. I don’t know that I knew him in 2015.
Putting aside for a minute the fact that Obama fired Flynn and that Obama even advised Trump not to hire him, it’s important to recognize that Trump is lying about not knowing Flynn in 2015.
In fact, Donald Trump first met with Michael Flynn in August of 2015, just two months after Trump announced he’d be running for president. But you don’t have to take my word for it. We know Trump met with Flynn in August of 2015 because Flynn told us.
From the February 27, 2017 issue of the New Yorker:
In August, 2015, Flynn went to New York to meet Trump for the first time. They were scheduled to talk for thirty minutes; the conversation lasted ninety. Flynn was deeply impressed. “I knew he was going to be the President of the United States,” he told me.
Got all that? Trump said in the interview last night that he didn’t think he knew Flynn in 2015. But he definitely did. Not only that, but by early 2016, Trump was being advised by Flynn on foreign policy matters during the campaign.
You really have to watch the entire interview from last night. It’s so bizarre, not least because Trump explained that he was going to fire FBI Director James Comey regardless of any recommendation made by the Justice Department. That directly contradicts two days of claims by his communications team.
Not to mention the fact that Trump claims Comey asked for the two of them to have dinner, a meeting at which Trump asked if he was under investigation by the FBI. Trump says that Comey assured him that he was not. President Trump also claims that Comey told him over the phone on two other occasions that he wasn’t under investigation.
Needless to say, if Trump’s story is true, it’s all highly illegal and unethical for a sitting president to ask the head of the FBI if he’s under investigation. There’s no way to explain this one away.
If Trump survives the fallout from this week—between firing the man who was leading the investigation against him to the poor optics of meeting with Russian officials the very next day—it’s safe to say that he’s going to serve his full term as president.
It doesn’t get much worse than this for Trump. But he seems to be lying his way through it with little resistance from the only people who can do anything about it: Congressional Republicans.
Trump claims the media is not reporting that perhaps Obama knew Flynn had received payments from Russia and Turkey. But they did. Just a few days prior Sally Yates sat in front on Congress and told America yes the Obama administration knew of this and they tried to warn the Trump people, who did not taken them seriously because she was a “political opponent.”
Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it’s “time to move on” from the inquiry into alleged links between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.
Speaking just hours after Trump suddenly fired FBI Director James Comey, who had been leading the investigation, Sanders told Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson that while the probe would continue without the director, in her view it had already run its course.
“I think the bigger point on that is, my gosh Tucker, when are they going to let that go?” Sanders said. “It’s been going on for nearly a year.”
“Frankly, it’s kind of getting absurd. There’s nothing there. We’ve heard that time and time again. We’ve heard that in the testimonies earlier this week. We’ve heard it for the last 11 months. There is no ‘there’ there,” Sanders said.
“It’s time to move on and frankly it’s time to focus on the things the American people care about,” she added.
Although Sanders said that the investigation should be “let go,” she denied Comey’s firing would disrupt it.
“You will have the same people that will be carrying it out to the Department of Justice. The process continues both I believe in the House and Senate committees and I don’t see any change or disruption there,” she said.
