Category: Bullying

Donald Trump’s rhetorical style is straight out of middle school. He’s like an eighth-grade girl.

Trump’s Super Bowl interview was 8 minutes of pettiness and empty braggadocio

Presidents giving interviews before Super Bowls has become a tradition — Barack Obama fielded questions about Benghazi and his detractors; Donald Trump has answered questions about immigration and the turnover on his staff.

While the questions can be tough, given the spirit of the day, these interviews aren’t always the most rigorous of exercises. But Trump found himself before an exceptionally friendly interviewer this time around, sitting down with Fox News’s Sean Hannity ahead of the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers.

Their conversation was less of an interview than an opportunity for the president to attack his enemies unchecked for just over eight minutes — railing against Democrats who impeached him, making bizarrely incorrect claims about the 2020 Democratic presidential field, and even making height jokes about former New York City mayor of and presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg.

When asked about whether he’d be able to work with Democrats following his impeachment, Trump replied that he wasn’t sure, saying, “I see the hatred — they don’t care about fairness, they don’t care about lying,” a statement that could not be heavier with irony given Trump’s own well documented difficult relationship with the truth.

Hannity nodded as Trump went on, saying, “the whole thing was nonsense,” that it was “very, very unfair,” and that “my family suffered because of all this, and many other families suffered also.”

Trump did not address his role in pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political rivals, or the White House’s refusal to cooperate in the impeachment inquiry. Instead, he accused Democrats of impeaching him in hopes of brightening their 2020 prospects, saying, “They just want to win; it doesn’t matter how they win.”

In a lightning round, in which Hannity encouraged the president to say the first thing that came to mind, Trump attacked Democratic presidential candidates.

“Look at Sleepy Joe, what’s going on with him? He’s having a hard time,” Trump said of former Vice President Joe Biden. He accused Sen. Elizabeth Warren of being a liar, saying, “I call her ‘Fairy Tale’ because everything’s a fairy tale … this woman can’t tell the truth.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Trump claimed, is a “communist” who got married in Russia. The claim prompted Hannity’s only attempt to correct the president; the Fox News personality reminded him that Sanders actually took a trip to the then-Soviet Union shortly after his marriage, and that he wasn’t married there.

Trump did, however — as he has recently done on Twitter — claim the Democratic National Committee is not being fair to Sanders, seeming to reference reports of some disquiet among certain Democrats about Sanders’s recent rise in the polls by claiming the Democratic Party is “rigging it against him,” echoing discord following the 2016 Democratic primary.

He had perhaps his harshest words for Bloomberg. He again criticized the DNC while speaking of Bloomberg, arguing it was unfair the party changed the debate rules in a manner that seems to benefit the mayor, before attacking Bloomberg for being short. (Bloomberg is about 5-foot-8.)

“He wants a box for the debates, why should he be entitled to that?” Trump said. “Does that mean everyone else gets a box?”

He leveled similar attacks against Bloomberg Sunday morning on Twitter, writing, “Many of the ads you are watching were paid for by Mini Mike Bloomberg. He is going nowhere, just wasting his money, but he is getting the DNC to rig the election against Crazy Bernie.”

Bloomberg’s campaign responded with a statement that reads: “The president is lying. He is a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan.”

The president did make some positive statements — about himself.

He claimed that thanks to his hard work, “there’s a revolution going on, I mean a positive revolution,” particularly among minority communities, whose lives he said have become better under his watch.

He also took credit for a strong economy, for having done a “tremendous job” assisting China in its fight against the coronavirus, and summed up his time in office like this: “Nobody’s made achievements like we’ve made, so many different things.”

These sorts of statements aren’t new, or even unexpected from the president — he talks like this all the time on Twitter, at his rallies, and at press conferences. However, this marks the first time he has been able to deliver such statements unchecked before such a large and diverse audience — everyone watches the Super Bowl, not just Trump fans or journalists.

It also isn’t surprising that Hannity — who is good friends with Trump — did not try to correct him, except for his remark about Sanders. But the fact that this all ought to have been expected does not make it any less disturbing that the president of the United States was given almost 10 minutes to address the nation, and spent it not answering pressing questions of national concern but attacking his rivals in incredibly petty ways.

[Vox]

Trump praises Pompeo for confrontation with NPR reporter: ‘You did a good job on her’

President Donald Trump on Tuesday praised Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for his testy confrontation with an NPR journalist last week, saying Pompeo “did a good job on her.”

The remark — which drew raucous laughter in the East Room — came after Trump offered appreciation for Pompeo at the rollout of the White House’s Middle East peace plan.

Pompeo received a standing ovation at the event, leading the president to say, “Whoa,” as Pompeo waved to the room. “That was very impressive, Mike.”

“That reporter couldn’t have done too good a job on you yesterday,” Trump said. “I think you did a good job on her, actually.”

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly has alleged Pompeo exploded at her after an interview on Friday, shouting and swearing in his private living room at the State Department after she asked a series of probing questions about Ukraine.

Pompeo then reportedly asked aides to provide a blank map and made the host of “All Things Considered” point out the Ukraine, the country at the center of the Trump impeachment drama.

“Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?” Pompeo allegedly asked.

Kelly said he used the F-word in that moment and at other points in their conversation. The journalist, who has a master’s degree in European Studies from Cambridge University, said she correctly identified Ukraine.

Pompeo issued his own statement on Saturday accusing Kelly of lying and suggesting the reporter said the post-interview conversation would be off the record. Pompeo also said Kelly pointed to Bangladesh instead of Ukraine.

In an op-ed published Tuesday night in The New York Times, Kelly reflected on the now-infamous interview, hoping to draw focus back to the contents of the exchange. Before asking about Ukraine, Kelly asked Pompeo a number of questions on U.S. foreign policy in Iran. In her op-ed, Kelly wanted to emphasize the risky escalations between the two countries that have manifested in strikes on military targets and heated threats.

“The point is that recently the risk of miscalculation — of two old adversaries misreading each other and accidentally escalating into armed confrontation — has felt very real,” she wrote. “It occurs to me that swapping insults through interviews with journalists such as me might, terrifyingly, be as close as the top diplomats of the United States and Iran came to communicating this month.”

Tensions escalated Monday when veteran NPR reporter Michele Kelemen was removed from the list of reporters authorized to fly with Pompeo on his trip to Eastern Europe.

The State Department Correspondents’ Association condemned Kelemen’s removal in a statement on Monday, saying her exclusion was in retaliation for Pompeo’s exchange with Kelly. The White House Correspondents’ Association also responded Tuesday, calling the “punitive” action taken against NPR “outrageous and contrary to American values.”

“The WCHA calls on the State Department to reverse this ill-conceived decision,” the statement said. “We stand with our colleagues at NPR and the State Department Correspondents’ Association.”

[Politico]

State Department Bars NPR Reporter from Flying with Pompeo

The State Department has denied a National Public Radio reporter a seat aboard Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s plane for an upcoming trip to Europe and Central Asia, the decision coming a few days after Pompeo lashed out at another NPR reporter.

NPR said in a statement Monday that correspondent Michele Kelemen wasn’t given a reason for being barred from the flight. The State Department declined to comment.

The State Department Correspondents’ Association said the decision to deny Kelemen a seat on Pompeo’s plane led it to conclude that “the State Department is retaliating” against NPR. The group asked the agency to reconsider and allow Kelemen to join Pompeo.

In an interview Friday, Pompeo responded testily when NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly asked him about Ukraine and, specifically, whether he defended or should have defended Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador in Kyiv whose ouster figured in President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

Kelly said that after the NPR interview she was taken to Pompeo’s private living room, where he shouted at her “for about the same amount of time as the interview itself” and cursed repeatedly.

Pompeo responded Saturday that Kelly had “lied” to him, and he called her conduct “shameful.” NPR said it stood by Kelly’s reporting.

In its statement Monday, the correspondents’ group said Kelemen “is a consummate professional who has covered the State Department for nearly two decades. We respectfully ask the State Department to reconsider and allow Michele to travel on the plane for this trip.”

Ben Wizner, director of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement: “The State Department cannot retaliate against a news outlet because one of its reporters asked tough questions. It is the job of reporters to ask the tough questions, not be polite company.”

[Snopes]

Donald Trump Tweets His Defense by Attacking AOC

President Donald Trump’s lawyers, who launched his defense at his impeachment trial in the Senate Saturday morning, have claimed that they will respond substantively to Democrats’ methodical case for why the president should be removed from office. But shortly before the Senate convened for the first day of the White House defense, the president teed up the proceedings with a tweet strong on name calling and short on evidence. 

His targets include two lawmakers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Alexandra  Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who have no role in the impeachment trial. Trump also posted tweets quoting Fox Business News host Lou Dobbs praising him. 

Trump’s defenders thus far have not disputed the facts of the case against him. Senate Republicans have complained about comments by Democratic impeachment managers and launched attacks on President Obama’s foreign policy and other topics that are at best tangental. Trump’s lawyers on Saturday have said they will focus on Vice President Joe Biden’s actions related to Ukraine in 2016, and that the president did “nothing wrong. White House counsel Pat Cipollone promised in his opening remarks that Trump’s team will focus on evidence that the House impeachment managers did not include. But their boss appears to have another strategy.

[Mother Jones]

Trump issues veiled threat at NPR after Pompeo blow-up with reporter over Ukraine

President Donald Trump issued a veiled threat against National Public Radio on Sunday morning, just days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went on an expletive-filled rant at an NPR reporter that she revealed to the public afterward.

On Sunday, the president retweeted Fox News host Mark Levin who argued, “Why does NPR still exist? We have thousands of radio stations in the U.S. Plus Satellite radio. Podcasts. Why are we paying for this big-government, Democrat Party propaganda operation.”

To which the president added, “A very good question!”

You can see the tweet below:

[Raw Story]

Trump says lead impeachment Democrat Schiff has not paid ‘price, yet’

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the Democratic lawmaker leading the impeachment case against him, Representative Adam Schiff, has “not paid the price, yet” for his actions, a statement Schiff said he viewed as a threat.

The vitriol from Trump against Schiff and other Democrats followed three days of their arguments in his impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate on charges he abused the power of his office by pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival, and then tried to obstruct an investigation by Congress.

“Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!” Trump said on Twitter.

Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if he took the Republican president’s social media post as a threat, Schiff said, “I think it’s intended to be.”

As lead impeachment manager, Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, played a central role in Democrats’ efforts to paint Trump’s behavior as dangerous to democracy the Republican-led Senate, where Trump is likely to be acquitted.

While some Republican senators said Schiff had been effective, most appeared unswayed. The lawmaker from California, a former federal prosecutor, has been a regular target of attack from Trump and Trump’s Republican supporters in Congress.

Some Republican senators took umbrage at Schiff’s more pointed comments, including that the president could not be trusted to do the right thing for the country and that Republican senators were under extreme pressure to acquit Trump.

Schiff said on NBC he was making the argument “that it’s going to require moral courage to stand up to this president.”

“This is a wrathful and vindictive president,” he said. “I don’t think that there’s any doubt about it and if you think there is, look at the president’s tweets about me today, saying that I should pay a price.”

Trump regularly levels personal attacks against political opponents. His broadsides against Schiff have included “pencil neck” and “liddle.” Critics accuse Trump of using an anti-Semitic trope in referring to the Jewish lawmaker as “shifty.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Trump’s Twitter post. Representatives for Schiff said they had nothing to add to the congressman’s comments.

TRUMP’S DEFENSE

White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham told Fox News Channel she had not spoken to Trump about the tweet but, “I think he means he hasn’t yet paid the price with the voters.”

U.S. Senator James Lankford, a Republican, likened Trump’s comment to those of Democrats who say Republicans will pay a price at the ballot box for supporting Trump or will pay a price in the future as they are held accountable.

“I don’t think the president is trying to be able to do a death threat here or do some sort of intimidation,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Both of them are saying the American people will speak on this.”

Another House impeachment manager, Democrat Zoe Lofgren, told CNN Trump should “get a grip” and be more presidential. “The president has a tendency to say things that seem threatening to people,” she said.

Trump’s team of lawyers began their defense on Saturday, arguing Democrats’ efforts to remove the president from office would set a “very, very dangerous” precedent in an election year.

Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump’s legal team, told “Fox News Sunday” the conduct described in the Senate trial did not amount to an impeachable offense. He shrugged off a recording first reported on Friday in which Trump told Lev Parnas, an associate of his lawyer Rudolph Giuliani, he wanted to see the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, fired.

“The president has full authority to fire an ambassador,” Dershowitz said.

During the House of Representatives impeachment hearings last month, witnesses described Giuliani as leading efforts to pressure Ukraine on investigating former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 Democratic candidate, and his son Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

Yovanovitch was seen as resisting those efforts and was recalled in May.

[Reuters]

Trump Goes Off on ‘Mini Mike Bloomberg’ After Fox & Friends Airs Attack Ad

President Donald Trump fired back at Democratic candidate Michael Bloomberg in response to his new campaign ad — airing on Fox & Friends — slamming the president’s behavior as “erratic and out of control.”

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade interviewed Bloomberg’s 2020 campaign manager Kevin Sheekey who took aim at Trump’s military accomplishments and why Bloomberg would be a more stable commander-in-chief: “It’s not all about spending money… so throwing money at a problem is not leadership.”

Trump, who refers to the billionaire as “Mini Mike Bloomberg,” tweeted following the ad that the presidential hopeful and former New York City mayor “is playing poker with his foolhardy and unsuspecting Democrat rivals.”

“The fact is, when Mini loses, he will be spending very little of his money on these “clowns” because he will consider himself to be the biggest clown of them all – and he will be right!,” President Trump blasted.

Galia Slayen, national spokeswoman for the 2020 Bloomberg campaign, responded to Trump’s tweet by asking if the attacks on “mini” Mike Bloomberg is set to become “a morning routine.”

[Mediaite]

“Birth tourism” is Trump’s next immigration target

The Trump administration has a new target on the immigration front — pregnant women visiting from other countries — with plans as early as this week to roll out a new rule cracking down on “birth tourism,” three administration officials told Axios.

Why it matters: Trump has threatened to end birthright citizenship and railed against immigrant “anchor babies.” The new rule would be one of the first tangible steps to test how much legal authority the administration has to prevent foreigners from taking advantage of the 14th Amendment’s protection of citizenship for anyone born in the U.S.

  • “This change is intended to address the national security and law enforcement risks associated with birth tourism, including criminal activity associated with the birth tourism industry,” a State Department official told Axios.
  • The regulation is also part of the administration’s broader efforts to intensify the vetting process for visas, according to another senior administration official.

The big picture: “Birth tourists” often come to the U.S. from China, Russia and Nigeria, according to the AP.

  • There’s no official count of babies born to foreign visitors in the U.S., while the immigration restrictionist group Center for Immigration Studies — which has close ties to Trump administration immigration officials — puts estimates at around 33,000 every year.

How the new regulation would work: It would alter the requirements for B visas (or visitor visas), giving State Department officials the authority to deny foreigners the short-term business and tourism visas if they believe the process is being used to facilitate automatic citizenship.

  • It’s unclear yet how the rule would be enforced — whether officials would be directed to consider pregnancy or the country of the woman’s citizenship in determining whether to grant a visa.
  • Consular officers who issue passports and visas “are remarkably skilled at sussing out true versus false claims,” the senior official said.
  • “The underlying practical issue is that very few people who give birth in the U.S. got a visa for that specific purpose. Most people already have visas and come in later,” according to Jeffrey Gorsky, former chief legal adviser in the State Department visa office.

This is but one step in the administration’s plans to make it harder for people from other countries to benefit from birthright citizenship.

  • “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” the senior official said. “Just the legal recognition that this is improper and wrong and not allowed is a significant step forward.”
  • The plans to address the use of B visas for birth tourism were included in the latest version of the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.
  • Immigration experts expect there to be a similar rule for Customs and Border Protection to go along with the State Department’s regulation.

What to watch: Most of Trump’s major immigration moves have been met with lawsuits. If the regulation leaves it to officers’ discretion to ensure that B visas aren’t used for birth tourism, it would be difficult to challenge in court, according to Lynden Melmed, an attorney and former chief counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

  • “State Department officials have all the discretion in the world to deny people visas,” said Sarah Pierce of the Migration Policy Institute. Foreign nationals who are outside the U.S. and have not yet received visas “don’t have a lot of legal standing.”
  • But specific restrictions that could keep out non-birth tourism visitors — such as pregnant women coming to the U.S. for business, etc. — would be legally questionable, according to Melmed and Gorsky.

[Axios]

Trump to New York City: If a storm comes, don’t look at me, get a mop!

New Yorkers worried that global warming might flood the city should get mops, President Trump says.

The Queens native — famed for supporting walls that keep immigrants out — on Saturday ripped the idea of a seawall to protect the city from calamities like 2012′s Hurricane Sandy, which caused massive devastation.

“A massive 200 Billion Dollar Sea Wall, built around New York to protect it from rare storms, is a costly, foolish & environmentally unfriendly idea that, when needed, probably won’t work anyway,” Trump tweeted. “It will also look terrible. Sorry, you’ll just have to get your mops & buckets ready!”

A seawall is one of five proposals considered by the Army Corps of Engineers to protect the greatest city in the world from storms that could become more frequent with climate change.

Besides the Mexican border wall, Trump is also fine with seawalls that protect one of his golf courses in Ireland.

Trump last year changed his official residency from New York to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. He hasn’t said whether he’d like a seawall to protect the oceanfront portion of that property.

[New York Daily News]

Trump promotes violence in support of white supremacist rally in Virginia

President Donald Trump slammed Virginia Democrats over several gun violence prevention measures they’re looking to pass in the state, as a white supremacist group gears up to protest at an annual gun rights rally outside the state capitol. 

“Your 2nd Amendment is under very serious attack in the Great Commonwealth of Virginia,” the president tweeted on Friday evening. “That’s what happens when you vote for Democrats, they will take your guns away. Republicans will win Virginia in 2020. Thank you Dems!” 

Trump’s tweet came shortly after law enforcement arrested three suspected white supremacists in Maryland and Delaware who had allegedly talked about opening fire at Monday’s pro-gun rally.

The suspects belong to a violent white-supremacist group called “the Base,” whose aim is “to accelerate the downfall of the US government, incite a race war and establish a white ethno-state,” according to an affidavit filed in Georgia court, as The Wall Street Journal reported.

Several other members of the Base were arrested throughout the country this week on different charges. 

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, announced Wednesday that the state would temporarily ban firearms in Capitol Square prior to Monday’s rally, citing the arrests and threat of a shooting. 

Gun rights groups appealed Northam’s decision, but a federal appeals court judge upheld the temporary gun ban on Thursday, writing that “the Second Amendment right to bear arms is not unlimited.” 

“This is the right decision,” Northam said in a Thursday statement about the ruling. “These threats are real — as evidenced by reports of neo-Nazis arrested this morning after discussing plans to head to Richmond with firearms.”

Virginia Democrats, who control both the state house and senate, are working on passing several gun regulations, including background checks on gun sales, a law that would allow authorities to confiscate a gun from someone they believe is a danger to themselves, a ban on firearms in government buildings. 

Tens of thousands of pro-gun protesters are expected to gather outside the state capitol building in the annual Lobby Day protest.

[Business Insider]

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