Category: Anti-American

Trump Takes Another Jab at Ex-49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick

President Donald Trump on Monday reprised his attacks on former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, telling supporters in Kentucky that “they like when people actually stand for the American flag.”

Standing before a cheering throng at the Exposition Center in Louisville, Trump referenced a report published Friday that anonymously quoted National Football League officials discussing Kaepernick’s slumping prospects as a free agent. Some loathed the police brutality-fueled protest that saw Kaepernick — and others — take a knee during the national anthem last season.

Others feared a backlash from their fans. Still others feared the president himself.

Or, as Trump put it during his Louisville rally: “They don’t want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump. Do you believe that?”

The crowd roared and Trump, grinning, continued.

“I said, if I remember that one, I’m going to the people of Kentucky because they like when people actually stand for the American flag.”

This is well-trod territory for Trump. During the campaign, he described Kaepernick as disrespectful, the protest as “a sad thing” and suggested that the quarterback move abroad.

“Maybe he should find a country that works better for him,” he told a radio host in August, according to The Hill.

Director Spike Lee, meanwhile, has come to the quarterback’s defense. In an Instagram post on Sunday, the two posed for a selfie while Lee described the league’s apparent disinterest as “subterfuge” and “skullduggery.”

“What Crime Has Colin Committed?” Lee wrote. “Look At The QB’s Of All 32 Teams. This Is Some Straight Up Shenanigans, Subterfuge, Skullduggery And BS.”

(h/t NBC News)

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcUeJHLnIss

Trump Campaign Approved Adviser’s Trip to Moscow

Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski approved foreign policy adviser Carter Page’s now-infamous trip to Moscow last summer on the condition that he would not be an official representative of the campaign, according to a former campaign adviser.

A few weeks before he traveled to Moscow to give a July 7 speech, Page asked J.D. Gordon, his supervisor on the campaign’s National Security Advisory Committee, for permission to make the trip, and Gordon strongly advised against it, Gordon, a retired naval officer, told POLITICO.

Page then emailed Lewandowski and spokeswoman Hope Hicks asking for formal approval, and was told by Lewandowski that he could make the trip, but not as an official representative of the campaign, the former campaign adviser said. The adviser spoke on the condition of anonymity because he has not been authorized to discuss internal campaign matters.

The trip is now a focus of congressional and FBI investigations into Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election.

Lewandowski told POLITICO he did not recall the email exchange with Page, but he did not deny that it occurred.

“Is it possible that he emailed me asking if he could go to Russia as a private citizen?” Lewandowski said Tuesday. “I don’t remember that, but I probably got 1,000 emails a day at that time, and I can’t remember every single one that I was sent. And I wouldn’t necessarily remember if I had a one-word response to him saying he could do something as a private citizen.”

Hicks declined to comment. But a former campaign official said campaign officials did not discuss Page’s planned trip before he left for Moscow.

“No one discussed the trip within the campaign and certainly not with candidate Trump directly,” said the former campaign official.

The official pointed to a July statement from Hicks that declared that Page was in Moscow in a private capacity and was not representing the campaign. That statement came in response to media reports from Moscow about Page’s presence there.

Both Lewandowski and the White House official cast Page as a minor character on the periphery of the campaign, who was a foreign policy adviser in name only.

“I’ve never met or spoken to Carter Page in my life,” Lewandowski said.

Gordon and Page had no comment on whether the Trump campaign officially sanctioned the trip, which has drawn the attention of investigators from the FBI and congressional committees investigating possible Trump campaign ties with Russian officials before the election.

And while Page has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in connection with his Moscow visit, it is now drawing increased scrutiny as a result of new disclosures about his contact two weeks later with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Just days after Kislyak talked to Page, Gordon and a third campaign official, WikiLeaks disseminated thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee’s servers — a hack that U.S. intelligence later attributed to the Russian government.

No connection between any of those three events has been alleged publicly or confirmed. But on Tuesday, Page confirmed that he is one of about a dozen individuals and organizations contacted by the Senate Intelligence Committee and asked to preserve relevant materials for its investigation into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.

“I will do everything in my power to reasonably ensure that all information concerning my activities related to Russia last year is preserved,” Page said in a letter to committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.).

In his letter, Page again denied any wrongdoing and repeated his claims that former officials of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other Democrats have been spreading false information about the trip and Page’s other connections to Russia.

Page’s trip to Moscow has been the subject of intense speculation for months, but many of the details remain cloudy.

A longtime oil and energy industry consultant, Page had already spent considerable time in Russia before making the trip, most recently as founder and managing partner of the Global Energy Capital investment and consulting firm, which specializes in Russian and Central Asian oil and gas business.

The firm’s website says Page has been involved in more than $25 billion of transactions in the energy and power sector and that he spent three years in Moscow, where he was an adviser on key transactions for Russian state-owned gas company Gazprom and other energy-related companies.

Page has insisted that he was in Moscow to give a commencement address at the New Economic School there based on his scholarly research, and that his visit was “outside of my informal, unpaid role” on the Trump campaign. He also said he had divested any stake in Gazprom and that he had “not met this year [2016] with any sanctioned official in Russia despite the fact that there are no restrictions on U.S. persons speaking with such individuals.”

But last September, top congressional lawmakers were briefed on suspected efforts by Russia to meddle in the election. Soon after, then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada asked FBI Director James Comey to investigate meetings between a Trump official, later identified as Page, and “high ranking sanctioned individuals” in Moscow that he believed were evidence of “significant and disturbing ties” between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Trump campaign officials took steps to distance themselves from Page, who had been publicly identified as an adviser as recently as Aug. 24. He announced Sept. 26 that he was taking a leave of absence from the campaign, saying the accusations were untrue but causing too much of a “distraction.”

But even after Russia was linked to the hacking effort against Democrats, the Trump campaign did not seek to question Page about his trip, the campaign adviser said.

Asked what Page did while in Moscow, the adviser said, “I have no idea. I didn’t want to know.”

The adviser also said he was not aware of anyone else on the campaign who discussed the trip with Page, either to glean any foreign policy insight from him or to determine whether any damage control was needed based on his contacts.

“Nobody talked about it. It was such an ugly topic. Even when I saw him at the convention, I didn’t talk to him about it,” the adviser said, adding that some in the campaign had expressed concern that any public appearances in Moscow by Page would send a bad message.

The campaign fired Lewandowski on June 20, before Page took the trip. Paul Manafort, who replaced Lewandowski as manager and later became chairman, said he had no knowledge of any aspect of Page’s trip, including whether Lewandowski or anyone else approved it.

In recent days, Page’s contact with Russians resurfaced with news reports that he, Gordon and senior Trump campaign adviser Sen. Jeff Sessions all engaged in discussions with Kislyak at an event on the sidelines of the GOP convention.

Page has declined to comment on what they discussed, saying it was private, while Gordon characterized the conversations as harmless efforts to improve U.S.-Russia ties.

The former campaign adviser on Tuesday said Page and the ambassador had a lengthy discussion and that they were at times joined by Gordon and two other ambassadors from the region. The adviser did not know whether Page or Kislyak initiated the conversation.

(h/t Politico)

Trump Again Calls Media ‘Enemy of the People’

President Trump turned his speech before a conservative convention into a full-throated attack on journalism Friday, saying some reporters make up unnamed sources for “fake news” and again describing them as “the enemy” of the American people.

“A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are — they are the enemy of the people,” Trump told the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

While praising some reporters as honest, and pledging fealty to the First Amendment, Trump claimed that “the fake news media doesn’t tell the truth.” He said reporters should not be allowed to use anonymous sources, and “we’re going to do something about it.”

The president did not elaborate on what that “something” might be, beyond general criticism.

It was the latest in a series of attacks that, critics said, are designed to undermine coverage of Trump’s troubles in office, including investigations into possible links between his campaign associates and Russians during last year’s presidential election.

The sustained attacks show “how worried he is about the repeated reports of chaos, incompetence, and potential wrongdoing inside his administration,” said Matthew Miller, a spokesman for President Barack Obama’s Justice Department. “His problem, though, is with the facts, not the media, and he’s only making his problem worse the more he runs away from it.”

In his speech to the annual gathering of conservative activists known as CPAC, Trump also thanked them for their support and touted an agenda that includes tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, a military build-up, a still-to-be-defined replacement for Obama’s health care law, and “border security” that includes travel restrictions from Muslim countries and a proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Our victory was a win for everyone who believes it’s time to stand up for America, to stand up for the American worker and to stand up for the American flag,” Trump said.

The crowd also lapped up his attacks on the media, which came on the same day that he and aides disputed a CNN story that White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus spoke to the FBI about media reports on the investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.

In assailing anonymous sources and so-called “fake news,” Trump discussed specific stories and news organizations in general terms, at one point describing CNN as the “Clinton News Network.”

The White House also deploys anonymity from time to time. Less than two hours before Trump criticized the use of anonymous sources and said all sources should be named, an administration official provided a briefing on condition he not be identified.

Some analysts said Trump’s constant attacks on the press are designed to undermine the public’s faith in institutions in general and the media in particular, as well as to generate doubt about negative stories regarding the administration.

Liz Mair, a Republican consultant involved in a “Never Trump” campaign last year, said attacking the media at a forum like the Conservative Political Action Conference is the easiest way for Trump to unite conservatives who might otherwise oppose him over issues like entitlement spending, free trade, and limited government.

“CPAC has been trying to normalize Trump as a ‘conservative’ for years now, but the fact is, Trump continues to have precious little in common, philosophically, with Burke, Kirk, Reagan, Goldwater or Thatcher,” Mair said.

William McRaven, the retired admiral who planned the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, said this week that Trump’s attacks on the media may also be undermining democracy itself.

“The president said the news media is the enemy of the American people,” McRaven, now chancellor of the University of Texas system, said in a speech. “This sentiment may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”

Trump first made the “enemy” claim in a tweet a week ago, and he criticized coverage of that incident during his remarks Friday at CPAC.

“In covering my comments, the dishonest media did not explain that I called the ‘fake news’ the enemy of the people,” he said. “The ‘fake news.’ They dropped off the word ‘fake.’ And all of a sudden the story became the media is the enemy.”

In that Feb. 17 tweet, Trump said: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”

Trump said he is not “against the media,” and “there are some great reporters around,” but there are also “terrible, dishonest people” in the business.

“I love the First Amendment — nobody loves it better than me,” Trump said at one point. “Nobody — I mean, who use its more than I do?”

(h/t USA Today)

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAJhcc5ke7k

Trump Defends Putin: ‘You Think Our Country’s So Innocent?’

President Donald Trump appeared to equate US actions with the authoritarian regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview released Saturday, saying, “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”

Trump made the remark during an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, saying he respected his Russian counterpart.

“But he’s a killer,” O’Reilly said to Trump.

“There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump replied.

A clip of the exchange was released Saturday and the full interview aired Sunday before the Super Bowl.

It was an unusual assertion coming from the President of the United States. Trump himself, however, has made similar points before.
“He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country,” Trump told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in December 2015.

He continued, “I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe, so you know. There’s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, a lot of killing, a lot of stupidity,” Trump said.
Russia would “prefer to receive apologies from such a respected TV company” following O’Reilly’s remarks, according to Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

“We think that such words from a correspondent of the Fox News network are unacceptable, offensive, and we would, honestly, prefer to receive apologies from such a respected TV company,” Peskove said in a response to a CNN question during a telephone news conference. “As to the statement of the US president, in this case I would prefer to leave it without any comment.”

US Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, called Trump’s claim false.

“This is the second time Trump has defended Putin against the charge that he’s a killer by saying in effect that the US is no better or different,” Schiff told CNN. “This is as inexplicably bizarre as it is untrue. Does he not see the damage he does with comments like that, and the gift he gives to Russian propaganda?”

In the interview with O’Reilly, Trump noted that just because he respects someone “doesn’t mean I’m going to get along with them.”

“He’s a leader of his country and I say it’s better to get along with Russia than not, and if Russia helps us in the fight against ISIS, which is a major fight, and Islamic terrorism all over the world, a major fight — that’s a good thing. Will I get along with them? I have no idea,” Trump said.

Trump and Putin spoke on the phone last Saturday, and the two discussed cooperation in the fight against ISIS, among other areas.

(h/t CNN)

Media

CEO of Russia’s State Oil Company Offered Trump Adviser, Allies a Cut of Huge Deal If Sanctions Were Lifted

A dossier with unverified claims about President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia contained allegations that Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russia’s state oil company, offered former Trump ally Carter Page and his associates the brokerage of a 19% stake in the company in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on Russia.

The dossier says the offer was made in July, when Page was in Moscow giving a speech at the Higher Economic School. The claim was sourced to “a trusted compatriot and close associate” of Sechin, according to the dossier’s author, former British spy Christopher Steele.

“Sechin’s associate said that the Rosneft president was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered Page and his associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft,” the dossier said. “In return, Page had expressed interest and confirmed that were Trump elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted.”

Four months before the intelligence community briefed Trump, then-President Barack Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden, and the nation’s top lawmakers on the dossier’s claims — most of which have not been independently verified but are being investigated by US intelligence agencies — a US intelligence source told Yahoo’s Michael Isikoff that Sechin met with Page during Page’s three-day trip to Moscow. Sechin, the source told Yahoo, raised the issue of the US lifting sanctions on Russia under Trump.

Page was an early foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign. He took a “leave of absence” in September after news broke of his July trip to Moscow, and the campaign later denied that he had ever worked with it.

Page, for his part, was “noncommittal” in his response to Sechin’s requests that the US lift the sanctions, the dossier said. But he signaled that doing so would be Trump’s intention if he won the election, and he expressed interest in Sechin’s offer, according to the document.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump suggested the sanctions could be lifted if Moscow proved to be a useful ally. “If you get along and if Russia is really helping us,” Trump asked, “why would anybody have sanctions if somebody’s doing some really great things?”

Page has criticized the US sanctions on Russia as “sanctimonious expressions of moral superiority.” He praised Sechin in a May 2014 blog post for his “accomplishments” in advancing US-Russia relations. A US official serving in Russia while Page worked at Merrill Lynch in Moscow told Isikoff that Page “was pretty much a brazen apologist for anything Moscow did.”

Page is also believed to have met with senior Kremlin internal affairs official Igor Diveykin while he was in Moscow last July, according to Isikoff’s intelligence sources. The dossier separately claimed that Diveykin — whom US officials believe was responsible for the intelligence collected by Russia about the US election — met with Page and hinted that the Kremlin possessed compromising information about Trump.

It is unclear whether Isikoff’s reporting is related to the dossier, which has been circulating among top intelligence officials, lawmakers, and journalists since mid-2016.

A scramble for a foreign investor

After mid-October, the dossier said, Sechin predicted that it would no longer be possible for Trump to win the presidency, so he “put feelers out to other business and political contacts” to purchase a stake in Rosneft.

Rosneft then scrambled to find a foreign investor, holding talks with more than 30 potential buyers from Europe, the US, Asia, and the Middle East. The company signed a deal on December 7 to sell 19.5% of shares, or roughly $11 billion, to the multinational commodity trader Glencore Plc and Qatar’s state-owned wealth fund. Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund is Glencore’s largest shareholder.

The “11th hour deal” was “so last minute,” Reuters reported, “that it appeared it would not close in time to meet the government’s deadline for booking money in the budget from the sale.”

The purchase amounted to the biggest foreign investment in Russia since US sanctions took effect in 2014. It showed that “there are some forces in the world that are ready to help Russia to circumvent the [West’s] sanction regime,” said Lilia Shevtsova, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House.

“In Russia we have a marriage between power and business, and that is why all important economic deals need approval and the endorsement of the authorities,” Shevtsova said. “This was a very serious commercial deal that hardly could have succeeded without the direct involvement of the Kremlin.”

The privatization deal was funded by Gazprombank, whose parent company is the state-owned Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Page holds investments in Gazprom, though he claimed in a letter to FBI Director James Comey in September that he sold his stake in the company “at a loss.” His website says he served as an adviser “on key transactions” for the state-owned energy giant before setting up his energy investment fund, Global Energy Capital, in 2008 with former Gazprom executive Sergei Yatsenko.

There is no evidence that Carter played any role in the Rosneft deal. But he was back in Moscow on December 8 — one day after the deal was signed — to “meet with some of the top managers” of Rosneft, he told reporters at the time. Page denied meeting with Sechin, Rosneft’s CEO, during that trip but said it would have been “a great honor” if he had.

The Rosneft deal, Page added, was “a good example of how American private companies are unfortunately limited to a great degree due to the influence of sanctions.” He said the US and Russia had entered “a new era” of relations but that it was still “too early” to discuss whether Trump would be easing or lifting sanctions on Moscow.

Page’s extensive business ties to state-owned Russian companies were investigated by a counterintelligence task force set up last year by the CIA. The investigation, which is reportedly ongoing, has examined whether Russia was funneling money into Trump’s presidential campaign — and, if it was, who was serving as the liaison between the Trump team and the Kremlin.

The dossier claims that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort asked Page to be the liaison. That claim has not been verified. Manafort served as a top adviser to a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine from 2004 to 2012 and emerged as a central figure in both the dossier and the intelligence community’s early inquiries into Trump’s ties to Russia.

(h/t Business Insider)

Trump Praises Putin Over US Sanctions From Election Interference

After the Obama administration’s tough new sanctions against Russia put the president-elect in a vulnerable political position at home, in his own party and abroad, Donald Trump chose to respond in familiar fashion – with praise for Vladimir Putin.

The president-elect has repeatedly spoken approvingly of Putin and called for closer relations with Russia. On Friday, he used Twitter to applaud Putin’s restrained response to the expulsion by the US of 35 diplomats and the closure of two Russian compounds.

The tweet, like many from Trump that seem calculated to shock and offend, caused a predictable media furore. However, it probably will have done nothing to alleviate the difficult political position in which Trump now finds himself.

The president-elect has been consistently skeptical about the US intelligence consensus that Russia ordered cyber-attacks on Democratic party targets as a way to influence the 2016 election in his favor – the reason for Obama’s new sanctions. At one point, he suggested the culprit might have been China, another state or even a 400lb man in his bedroom.

On taking office in January, Trump might therefore be expected to simply end the Obama sanctions. And as president, he could do so; presidential orders can simply be repealed by the executive branch.

But the situation is not that simple. If Trump did choose to remove the sanctions, he would find himself at odds with his own party. Senior Republicans in Congress responded to the Obama sanctions by identifying Russia as a major geopolitical foe and criticizing the new measures only as a case of too little too late. Some promised a push for further measures in Congress.

Trump may therefore choose not to reverse the new sanctions. If so, he will find himself at odds with the man he so constantly praises.

On Friday, the Kremlin responded to the moves, including the expulsion of 35 suspected intelligence operatives and the closing of two Russian facilities in the US, with a shrug. Putin, it seems, is willing simply to wait until Trump moves into the Oval Office. Trump’s tweet suggested he is too.

But such provocative words could not distract the media and public from another domestic concern for Trump – the growing perception that his predecessor has acted to his disadvantage.

“The sanctions were clearly an attempt by the Obama administration to throw a wrench into – or [to] box in – the next administration’s relationship with Russia,” said Boris Zilberman, a Russia expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“Putin, in part, saw through that and sidestepped it by playing good cop to [Russian foreign minister Sergey] Lavrov and the [state] Duma, who were calling for a reciprocal response.”

Trump will also face pressure from intelligence agencies, which have concluded that Moscow ordered the election cyber-attacks.

“There is now a public record of what Russia did and why they did it,” said Zachary Goldman, executive director of New York University Law School’s Center on Law and Security, referring to a joint Department of Homeland Security and FBI report issued on Thursday.

“Even if the sanctions can be unwound, you can’t make that public statement go away.”

Goldman also noted an international element to the situation facing Trump. It is important to note, he said, that the new executive order enables Obama and his successors to take retaliatory action against efforts to influence elections held by “allies and partners”. Germany and France will hold elections in 2017.

On a call with reporters on Thursday, a senior White House official said the US had “every indication” that Russia would continue to pursue such cyber-attacks.

‘All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions’
On the same call, officials expressed confidence that the political risk of appearing to cave in to Moscow would prevent any future administration from unwinding the sanctions.

“If a future president decided that he wanted to allow in a large tranche of Russian intelligence agents, presumably a future president could invite that action,” a senior official said.

“We think it would be inadvisable. As my colleague just said, these diplomatic compounds were being used for intelligence purposes. That is a direct challenge to US national security, and I don’t think it would make much sense to reopen Russian intelligence compounds.”

 

Trump Sides With Putin to Insult Americans

President-elect Donald Trump late Friday publicly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for attacking Trump’s former Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

In a striking statement that seems to further align Trump with Putin, the incoming U.S. president tweeted that he agreed with the Russian leader’s assessment that Clinton and the Democratic Party generally have not shown “dignity” following widespread losses in the November election.

“So true!” Trump tweeted of Putin’s comments, apparently referencing statements the Russian made at his year-end news conference.

Trump’s expressed admiration of Putin came only hours after he released to the media a warm letter the Russian sent him. The Friday night tweet sparked cries of alarm from former U.S. officials and other Trump critics on social media.

In Putin’s letter, dated Dec. 15, the Russian leader wrote that he hopes he and Trump can act “in a constructive and pragmatic manner” following the Jan. 20 inauguration. Trump was pleased with the correspondence, saying in a statement Friday, “A very nice letter from Vladimir Putin; his thoughts are so correct.”

Trump has long spoken admiringly of Putin and what he considers the Russian president’s strong leadership qualities. Some of Trump’s incoming advisers have past connections to Putin and the Russian government, including Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state nominee, and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the White House national security adviser designee.

Trump has so far rejected the conclusions of the CIA, FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia intervened in the 2016 campaign in part to help Trump secure the White House. The agencies believe Russia is responsible for the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails as well as the private emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Evan McMullin, a Republican former CIA operative who ran unsuccessfully against Trump as an independent candidate, called Friday night for Republican leaders to condemn Trump’s “alliance” with Putin.

(h/t Washington Post)

 

Trump Calls For Jailing, Revoking Citizenship of Flag-Burners

Trump humps American flag

Burning an American flag should be a crime, President-elect Donald Trump wrote Tuesday morning on Twitter, perhaps punishable by a forfeiture of U.S. citizenship or a year in jail.

“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!” Trump wrote in a post to his social media account.

Laws prohibiting the burning or desecration of the flag have been struck down by the Supreme Court, most recently in 1990, because they were found to have violated the First Amendment of the Constitution, which protects freedom of speech. A 1958 Supreme Court decision rejected the practice of stripping U.S. citizenship as a form of criminal punishment, on the grounds that it violates Eighth Amendment protections against “cruel and unusual punishment.”

In a 5-4 decision in 1989, the Supreme Court upheld the right of protesters to burn the flag, with the late Justice Antonin Scalia siding with the protesters. He later said he based his ruling on a “textual” reading of the Constitution.

“If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag,” Scalia said in 2015 in Philadelphia. “But I am not king.”

A 2005 bill that would have reinstituted a ban on flag burning was co-sponsored by Hillary Clinton, then a senator from New York. That legislation was unsuccessful.

A constitutional amendment that would allow the government to ban flag desecration has been proposed multiple times but has never passed. It was last voted down in 2006 in the Senate, where current Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and former Democratic presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee, then a Republican, were among three GOP lawmakers to vote against it. Then-Sen. Clinton also voted against it.

McConnell disagreed sharply with Trump’s tweet when asked about it during a press availability on Tuesday.

“The Supreme Court has held that that activity is a protected First Amendment right, a form of unpleasant speech, and in this country we have a long tradition of respecting unpleasant speech. I happen to support the Supreme Court’s decision on that matter,” McConnell said.

Some protesters upset with Trump’s Election Day victory have set fire to American flags at demonstrations throughout the country. At Hampshire College, a small school in western Massachusetts, administrators removed the American flag from campus after protesters there burned one, according to WWLP-TV. That decision prompted a protest of more than 1,000 people, many of them veterans, upset with the school’s decision.

Jason Miller, Trump’s senior communications adviser, struggled to defend the president-elect’s post in an interview on CNN’s “New Day” just minutes after the tweet appeared online. He refused to concede that flag burning is constitutionally protected speech, insisting that it should be illegal even as he tried in vain to pivot to the announcement of Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) as Trump’s pick to be secretary of health and human services.

“Chris, flag burning is completely ridiculous. And I think you know that and I think the vast majority of Americans would agree,” Miller told CNN anchor Chris Cuomo.

“But legal,” Cuomo interjected.

“But Chris, it’s completely ridiculous. And I don’t think there’s a big universe of people out there who support flag burning. It’s terrible and it’s despicable,” Miller replied.

The two continued in circles for several more rounds of back-and-forth as Cuomo tried to pin down Trump’s spokesman on the issue of flag-burning before Miller finally succeeded in turning the interview to Price’s selection, telling his interviewer that “flag burning should be illegal. End of story. Let’s get in and talk about how we’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare and these fantastic picks that the president-elect announced this morning.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) readily acknowledged during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that flag burning is constitutionally protected free speech, telling panelist Willie Geist that “we’ll protect our First Amendment” even though he does not agree with the practice.

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), asked about Trump’s tweet in a separate “New Day” interview, said, “I love my flag, and I love what it stands for, and I hate those who want to go out and burn it.” Still, Duffy added: “The court is probably right that we want to protect those people who want to protest and their right to actually demonstrate with disgracing our flag even though so many of us who love our country and love our flag object to it.”

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), a libertarian-leaning member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, also took issue with Trump’s flag-desecration stance, writing on his own Twitter account that “Nobody should burn the American flag, but our Constitution secures our right to do so. No president is allowed to burn the First Amendment.”

Trump received a modicum of support from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Armed Services Committee chairman with whom he clashed throughout his presidential run. As he made his way through a Capitol Hill office building, McCain told CNN that “I do not approve of burning the flag. I think there should be some punishment, but right now, the Supreme Court decision is that people are free to express themselves that way.”

McCain declined to offer any further comment on Trump’s social media post, telling a CNN reporter that the president-elect’s bombast is a distraction from the work he faces on Capitol Hill.

(h/t Politico)

Trump Suggests Curtailing First Amendment

During an interview with CBS Miami, Donald Trump said he’d like to change the nature of the First Amendment in order to make it easier to file libel lawsuits against the media.

Trump spoke with Jim DeFede on Sunday, and he was asked about whether he feels that “too much protection” is given to the free press. Trump affirmed his belief on this issue, stating that America should lean towards the United Kingdom’s system for libel because it gives people who sue media agencies “a good chance of winning.”

“Our press is allowed to say whatever they want and get away with it. And I think we should go to a system where if they do something wrong… I’m a big believer tremendous believer of the freedom of the press. Nobody believes it stronger than me but if they make terrible, terrible mistakes and those mistakes are made on purpose to injure people. I’m not just talking about me I’m talking anybody else then yes, I think you should have the ability to sue them.”

Under English law, defamatory statements are assumed to be false, and the burden of proof lies with the defendant to show that their statement is true. While Trump talked about this system, Trump said that the American press is never compelled to apologize, and that “they can say anything they want about you or me and there doesn’t have to be any apology.”

Trump’s relationship with the media has been complicated to say the very least. Throughout his campaign, Trump blacklisted news agencies for months, ranted about “dishonest” journalists numerous times, and has threatened to expand libel laws as president.

Recently, the litigious Trump has threatened to sue The New York Times for publishing his old tax information. He has also made similar legal threats to sue the women accusing him of sexual abuse, along with media outlets giving them coverage.

(h/t Mediaite)

Media

CBS Miami

At Third Debate, Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results If He Loses

Donald Trump does not respect the democratic process.

A defiant Donald Trump used the high-profile setting of the final presidential debate here Wednesday night to amplify one of the most explosive charges of his candidacy: that if he loses the election, he might consider the results illegitimate because the process is rigged.

Questioned directly as to whether he would accept the outcome should Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton prevail on Nov. 8, Trump demurred. “I will keep you in suspense,” the Republican nominee said.

When given a chance to clarify his remarks by host Chris Wallace, Trump simply repeated his refusal to say for certain that he would accept the results of the election.

Clinton called Trump’s answer “horrifying,” saying he was “talking down our democracy.”

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

With his leading of the racist birther movement and his refusal during the third debate, this is the third consecutive presidential election that Donald Trump tried to de-legitimize.

In order to understand just how anti-democracy and anti-American Trump’s stance is, we need some historical context.

The United States of America is credited as the very first time in the recorded history of the world a peaceful, election-based transfer of political power of the premier from one political party to another. The entire world watched as America’s election of 1800 became a bitter and ugly fight between incumbent President John Adams and challenger and fellow founding father Thomas Jefferson. People in Europe, who lived under monarchies and theocracies for centuries, assumed this would be the point where America’s experiment with democracy would fail. But when President Adams lost and peacefully conceded total and complete power to Jefferson, it placed the rest of the world is disbelief, and led as an example for every election that followed.

(Side note, I’m a fan of Roman history and there were many instances where individuals were made dictator, usually to help stop an invading group, and then peacefully stepped down when their term as dictator was up. It was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus who first began this tradition, who many statesmen modeled themselves after including George Washington who insisted his paintings and sculptures were to be inspired from those of Cincinnatus.)

2000 Election

Many of Trump’s surrogates have pointed to the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore as a recent example of one candidate not conceding to another.

Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, “Al Gore had already conceded the election to George W. Bush in 2000, Chris, we remember the night well. And then he called to retract his concession, and it went on for six weeks, it went all the way to the United States Supreme Court.”

But what Conway and the other supports are deceitfully neglecting to mention is in 2000, we had a perilously close popular vote in the state of Florida which triggered an automatic machine recount of ballots in the state. Only after that recount showed the race even closer than it was previously—just 327 votes separated the two candidates out of 6 million votes total across the state—did Gore opt to pursue a hand recount in four counties, a right granted to him by Florida law.

The day after the Supreme Court ordered the state of Florida to stop its recount of ballots on December 12, 2000, Al Gore conceded the race and called George W. Bush to congratulate him on his victory.

This is absolutely and unequivocally nothing like Trump refusing to accept the results of the election should he lose.

Media

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