Category: Attack a Citizen

Trump Rages Against ‘Gutless’ White House Official Who Wrote Stunning NYT Op-Ed

President Donald Trump tore into the anonymous source who penned the shocking New York Times op-ed from a senior White House official who admitted to trying to “stop” the president.

Speaking at a White House event on Wednesday, Trump raged against the unnamed person.

“Nobody has ever done in less than a two-year period what we have done,” he said. “So when you tell me about some anonymous source within the administration, probably who’s failing, and probably here for all the wrong reasons…”

Trump pivoted from there to blast the Times. But later, he doubled back to what he termed the “gutless editorial.”

“So if the failing “The New York Times” has an anonymous editorial — can you believe it?” Trump said. “Anonymous. Meaning gutless. A gutless editorial.”

In the Times op-ed, the unnamed official wrote that they and others within the Trump administration are working to “stop” the president.

“The dilemma — which [Trump] does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations,” the official wrote. “I would know. I am one of them.”

[Mediaite]

Donald Trump’s response to Meghan McCain’s eulogy for her dad is a MAGA tweet

Perhaps the most biting part of Meghan McCain’s eulogy for her father Sen. John McCain during Saturday’s memorial was when she went straight for President Trump’s slogan.

“The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great,” she said as part of a speech that routinely took jabs at Trump.

People in the room clapped and social media erupted. You can read her entire speech.

Meghan gave one of several eulogies in McCain’s honor Saturday when a who’s who of Washington and the world gathered at the National Cathedral for his memorial service.

President Trump was not invited and decided instead to spend time at the Trump National Golf Club in Loudoun County, Virginia, amid a morning of tweets criticizing the Department of Justice and the FBI and threatening Canada.

Hours later, though, Trump seemingly responded on Twitter with a signature-style message to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Reviews of his response were mixed.

[USA Today]

Trump shares video accusing Google of not promoting his State of the Union addresses

President Trump on Wednesday shared a video that showed Google advertising former President Obama’s State of the Union speeches but not his, escalating his battle with the tech giant over what he claims is bias against conservatives.

Trump shared the video with the caption “#StopTheBias.”

“For years, Google promoted President Obama’s State of the Union on its homepage. When President Trump took office, Google stopped,” the video reads, followed by a montage showing Google’s home page the night of each State of the Union speech dating back to 2012.

But Google said the search engine did promote Trump’s 2018 State of the Union speech on the Google homepage. The search engine acknowledged that it did not promote the speech in 2017.

“We have historically not promoted the first address to Congress by a new President, which is technically not a State of the Union address,” a spokesperson told The Hill. “As a result, we didn’t include a promotion on google.com for this address in either 2009 or 2017.

Trump has in recent days taken on Google as part of broader attacks on social media companies over what he claims is anti-conservative bias.

“I think Google and Facebook and Twitter, I think they treat conservatives and Republicans very unfairly,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

He demurred when asked if he would consider regulating Google and other companies.

“We just want fairness. We’re just going to see,” Trump said.

The president first took aim at Google on Tuesday, when he sent a series of early morning tweets characterizing Google’s search results as being biased against the president and other conservatives, a claim the company promptly rejected.

“Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media,” Trump wrote. “In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out,” Trump tweeted.

The president did not cite evidence for his claim, but appeared to be referencing a study that originated on the conservative blog PJ Media. The author acknowledged that the results are “not scientific.”

Trump’s criticism of technology companies comes as other Republicans in Congress, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), have accused technology firms of being biased against conservatives.

McCarthy quickly shared Trump’s video on Wednesday.

[The Hill]

Reality

Google homepage linking to the GEOTUS address from The_Donald

Trump Takes Aim at Google, Claims Search Results ‘RIGGED’ Against Him: ‘Illegal?’

President Donald Trump unleashed some unusually early morning tweets on Tuesday, citing a report from a conservative website to rip Google for allegedly biased search results.

Trump first claimed that “Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media.”

“In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD,” he continued. “Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out.”

Trump then asked if the search results were “Illegal”, before elaborating: “96% of… results on ‘Trump News’ are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous.”

“Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good,” he added. “They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!”

The president appears to be referencing a report by conservative blog PJ Media, which claimed that “96 Percent of Google Search Results for ‘Trump’ News Are from Liberal Media Outlets.”

The report tested out results from searching “Trump” in the news section of Google, analyzing the results using Sharyl Attkisson‘s “media bias chart.” The report looked at the first 100 items that appeared, and found that supposedly “left-leaning sites” made up “96 percent of the total results.” CNN — one of the highest trafficked news websites in the world — appeared the most frequently by a “large margin”, the report said, while conservative websites like National Review or Breitbart did not.

[Mediaite]

Reality

The author of the report has since distanced herself from the claims, calling them “not scientific” and “based on only a small sample size” of 100 results.)

Trump Blasts Cohen: ‘Flipping’ to Get a Plea Deal ‘Almost Ought to Be Illegal’

During his extensive interview with Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, President Trump praised Paul Manafort while tearing Michael Cohenapart for implicating for implicating him in his campaign finance violations.

Even though Cohen’s secretly-record audio of Trump indicates that his ex-boss was involved in his 2016 hush money schemes, Trump insisted that he only found out about the payments “later on.” After complaining that this wasn’t a violation of campaign finance law because the money “came from me,” and he also said ” almost everybody that runs for office has campaign violations, but what Michael Cohen pled to weren’t even campaign related. They weren’t crimes.”

To that point, Earhardt asked him why Cohen accepted a plea deal with federal prosecutors if what he did wasn’t illegal. After saluting Manafort – who was found guilty in his trial this week – because he didn’t flip, Trump said that such deals like the one Cohen made shouldn’t be allowed.

“This whole thing about flipping, they call it. I know all about flipping, for 30, 40 years I have been watching flippers. Everything is wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go. It almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair, because if somebody going to spend five years like Michael Cohen or 10 of 15 years in jail because of a taxicab deal, because he defrauded some bank. Campaign violations are considered not a big deal, frankly. But if somebody defrauded a bank and he is going to get 10 years in jail or 20 years in jail but if you can say something bad about Donald Trump and you will go down to two years or three years, which is the deal he made, in all fairness to him, most people are going to do that. And I have seen it many times. I have had many friends involved in this stuff. It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal. You get 10 years in jail. But if you say bad things about somebody, in other words make up stories, they just make up lies…They make up things and now they go from 10 years to they’re a national hero. They have a statue erected in their honor. It’s not a fair thing. But that’s why he did it. He made a very good deal. For what he did.”

[Mediaite]

Trump cites ‘massive’ Obama campaign finance violation.

President Donald Trump suggested Wednesday that the campaign finance violations his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to in federal court are equivalent to campaign finance violations committed by Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign.

“If you look at President Obama, he had a massive campaign violation, but he had a different attorney general, and they viewed it a lot different,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business.

Earlier Wednesday the president had tweeted: “Michael Cohen plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!”

But there is no comparison, experts told NBC News. Cohen’s admitted campaign finance law violations are indeed a crime, and they are not similar to the campaign finance violations made by Obama’s 2008 campaign. Election law experts said that more minor violations are treated as regulatory or civil matters, while egregious and willful campaign finance violations are treated as criminal acts — no matter who the attorney general is.

“What Michael Cohen has admitted to doing is absolutely a crime,” said Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor who is now of counsel at Rottenberg Lipman Rich P.C.

Cohen, who was Trump’s longtime lawyer, pleaded guilty to violating two campaign finance rules — willfully causing a corporate finance violation and making an excessive campaign contribution. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and involved hush-money payments to two women who said they had relationships with Trump.

[NBC News]

Trump slams Cohen, lauds Manafort after twin legal blows

U.S. President Donald Trump, in tweets about the stunning legal setbacks involving two of his former lieutenants, on Wednesday attacked the one who has turned on him and defended the one who has remained loyal.

Trump lashed out at former longtime lawyer Michael Cohen in a Twitter post by saying the campaign finance violations Cohen pleaded guilty to in federal court in New York on Tuesday were “not a crime” – even though prosecutors and Cohen agreed that they were. Trump made the claim without offering any evidence.

In another tweet, Trump said, “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen.”

At the same time, Trump on Twitter praised former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted on Tuesday of multiple counts of fraud, as a “brave man” for not cooperating with federal authorities.

Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges of tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations. He told a federal court in Manhattan that Trump directed him to arrange payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election to silence two women who said they had affairs with Trump.

Fox News released excerpts of an interview conducted with Trump on Wednesday in which the president said he knew of the payments “later on” but did not elaborate.

After first denying that he knew anything about the payments, Trump earlier this year acknowledged that he reimbursed Cohen for payments he made in late 2016 to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Daniels has alleged she had a relationship with Trump.

The president has insisted he paid Cohen out of personal funds and that the payments were not intended to benefit his campaign but to resolve a personal matter.

“They’re weren’t taken out of campaign finance. That’s a big thing,” Trump said in the Fox interview. “They didn’t come out of the campaign; they came from me.”

[Reuters]

Reality

This is a lie.

Trump was heard on a secret recording by Michael Cohen proving he knew at the time illegal hush payments were being made.

Trump accuses de Blasio of stealing campaign slogan

President Trump on Tuesday accused New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio of ripping off his reelection campaign slogan.

The president lobbed the accusation at his longtime Democratic foe after the mayor spoke at a Brooklyn event in front of a sign that read “Promises Made, Promises Kept,” a phrase Trump has used at his campaign-style rallies.

“Bill DeBlasio, the high taxing Mayor of NYC, just stole my campaign slogan: PROMISES MADE  PROMISES KEPT! That’s not at all nice. No imagination!” Trump tweeted.

A de Blasio spokesman denied that the mayor was copying Trump, noting that the slogan has been used by many politicians.

“This is stupid,” spokesman Eric Phillips told the New York Daily News. “It is not novel rhetoric.”

Elected officials used the phrase “Promises Made, Promises Kept” for years, dating back to Michigan Gov. John Engler (R), who served in the 1990s, and Chicago’s mayor in the 1980s, Harold Washington (D).

Former President Obama also used the slogan during his 2012 reelection race.

Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” was also used by former President Reagan.

De Blasio and Trump have long been enemies, with the New York mayor likening the president to a “third-world dictator” and the president calling the mayor “pathetic.”

[The Hill]

Trump considered revoking Obama’s security clearance last year but was talked out of it by McMaster.

At the time, some of Trump’s most fervent supporters in the White House saw former Obama Administration officials as powerful enemies who threatened the new President’s rule, and they agitated for punishing them by revoking their security clearances. The idea was rebuffed by the national-security adviser at the time, H. R. McMaster, who signed a memo extending the clearances of his predecessors at the N.S.C., Republicans and Democrats alike. As Trump stepped up his public and private attacks on Obama, some of the new President’s advisers thought that he should take the extraordinary step of denying Obama himself access to intelligence briefings that were made available to all of his living predecessors. Trump was told about the importance of keeping former Presidents, who frequently met with foreign leaders, informed. In the end, Trump decided not to exclude Obama, at the urging of McMaster.

[The New Yorker]

Trump Threatens to Pull Clearance For CNN’s Phil Mudd After Seeing Him on TV: He’s ‘In No Mental Condition’

President Donald Trump is adding CNN contributor Philip Mudd to the list of intelligence officials who might lose their security clearance for criticizing him.

Mudd, a former CIA officer, attracted a lot of attention last week over his explosive showdown with pro-Trump commentator Paris Dennard. The two debated whether Trump is using security clearance revocation to punish his foes, and Mudd blew up after Dennard accused officials like him of profiting from their clearance by securing media commentary positions.

As it were, Fox News’ Sean Hannitymade fun of Mudd’s “complete meltdown” on his show tonight, and obviously, Trump was watching.

Should Mudd’s clearance actually be pulled, you can add it to the list of Trump’s decisions influenced by Fox News programming.

[Mediaite]

Reality

Our part-time-president Donald Trump was busy watching Fox News during his “Executive Time” when he saw Fox play a CNN clip of former intel official Philip (not “Phillip”) Mudd becoming visibly frustrated with a lying Paris Dennard.

Trump has added Mudd to his authoritarian-style “enemies list” and threatened to pull his security clearance.

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