Category: Unpresidential

Trump tears into ’60 Minutes’ after segment with whistleblower Bright

President Trump took aim at CBS News and its flagship news magazine program, “60 Minutes,” on Sunday after the program interviewed whistleblower Rick Bright, former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).

In a tweet, the president excoriated CBS and its “third place anchor, @NorahODonnell,” whom he accused of “doing everything in their power to demean our Country, much to the benefit of the Radical Left Democrats.”

“Tonight they put on yet another Fake “Whistleblower”, a disgruntled employee who supports Dems, fabricates stories & spews lies. @60Minutes report was incorrect, which they couldn’t care less about. Fake News!” he tweeted.

“This whole Whistleblower racket needs to be looked at very closely, it is causing great injustice & harm. I hope you are listening [Sen. Susan Collins.] I also hope that Shari Redstone will take a look at her poorly performing gang. She knows how to make things right!” Trump added. Redstone is the chairwoman of ViacomCBS.

Bright, who last week slammed the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 crisis during testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, told CBS News that he was not “disgruntled,” as Trump has described him, but instead was frustrated with the administration’s response to the virus threat.

“Remember, the entire leadership was focused on containment. There was a belief that we could contain this virus and keep it out of the United States,” he said. “Containment doesn’t work. Containment does buy time. It could slow. It very well could slow the spread. But while you’re slowing the spread, you better be doing something in parallel to be prepared for when that virus breaks out. That was my job.”
“I am not disgruntled,” Bright added. “I am frustrated at a lack of leadership. I am frustrated at a lack of urgency to get a head start on developing lifesaving tools for Americans. I’m frustrated at our inability to be heard as scientists. Those things frustrate me.”

Bright told the House committee last week that “unprecedented illness and fatalities” would occur if the U.S. coronavirus response does not improve in upcoming months, and cast doubt on predictions that the U.S. would see a COVID-19 vaccine developed in the next year and a half.

[The Hill]

Trump interrupts PGA to blame Obama for the COVID-19 crisis

Former President Barack Obama may have been out of office for three years, but the 2019 coronavirus was somehow made worse by him, according to President Donald Trump. 

Interrupting the PGA on Sunday, NBC interviewed Trump over the phone, where he name-dropped golfers claiming that he knew them. Then he quickly turned from hoping to bring back sports to blaming Obama for the crisis.

According to Trump, he was left woefully unprepared due to Obama, who left office in 2017. Trump has not yet revealed what he spent the subsequent three years doing if there was such a lack of resources. During Trump’s first two years in office, the Republican Party ran the House, Senate, and White House.

COVID-19 is so named because it stands for coronavirus found in 2019. Obama had been out of office for just under three years during the discovery of the coronavirus. No tests could be invented for coronavirus three years before the virus existed, though Trump seems confused by the timeline about when he took over the White House and when the COVID-19 crisis began.

[Raw Story]

Media

The President Says He “Can’t Get Enough” of His Supporters Harassing the Press

On Thursday, Kevin Vesey, a TV reporter for News12 Long Island, visited a local protest against the remaining restrictions put in place by New York to stem the spread of the coronavirus, filing a studiously restrained segment for broadcast.

But on Twitter, he decided to share a small piece of raw footage showing how he was harassed by the demonstrators as he went about his job of capturing their demands and relaying them to a wider audience. The footage circulated widely among journalists on Thursday and Friday, often accompanied by laments about the protesters’ targeting of Vesey. In under a minute, the video captures him being called “traitor,” “hack,” “disgusting,””the enemy of the people,” and, inevitably, “fake news.” All are, of course, phrases President Donald Trump has deployed against journalists who cover his administration.

On Friday night, the President himself retweeted the video, mimicking a chant the protestors had shouted: “Fake news is nonessential.” On Saturday morning, he retweeted it again, endorsing his supporters’ harassment by calling them “great people” and claiming that “people can’t get enough of this.” 

Vesey shared the footage with his Twitter followers because it made him alarmed. Trump shared the footage with his Twitter followers because it made him proud. 

[Mother Jones]


Trump Downplays Need for Coronavirus Vaccine at His Own Big Vaccine Announcement

President Donald Trump downplayed the need for a coronavirus vaccine at his coronavirus vaccine press briefing on Friday, claiming that if a vaccine does not happen, the virus will still “go away at some point.”

“We think we are going to have a vaccine in the pretty near future, and if we do, we are going to really be a big step ahead,” President Trump declared. “And if we don’t, we are going to be like so many other cases where you had a problem come in. It’ll go away at some point, it’ll go away.”

“It may flare up and it may not flare up, we’ll have to see what happens, but if it does flare up we’re going to put out the fire and we’ll put it out quickly and efficiently,” he continued.

After being asked how long a vaccine could take, President Trump said, “We hope to be able to do something by the end of the year or shortly thereafter, but again, it’s not solely vaccine-based. Other things have never had a vaccine and they go away. So, I don’t want people to think that this is all dependent on vaccine.”

“But a vaccine would be a tremendous thing, and I will tell you, therapeutically, or therapeutics, what’s going on there is equally as impressive,” the president added.

During the briefing, President Trump also said, “I just want to make something clear. It’s very important. Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back.”

This week, World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Program Executive Director Dr. Mike Ryan, however, warned, “This virus just may become another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away. HIV hasn’t gone away.”

[Mediaite]


Truck horns blare during Trump’s Rose Garden press conference

President Trump‘s Rose Garden press conference on Friday was scored to the sound of blaring truck horns as drivers nearby protested for fair wages.

The horns, which could be heard clearly from Constitution Avenue outside the White House, persisted throughout the president’s remarks on his administration’s efforts to speed the development and production of a coronavirus vaccine.

The horns were audible for close to 30 minutes, prompting Trump to acknowledge them. He claimed they were a “sign of love” for his presidency. 

“And you hear that outside, that beautiful sound? Those are truckers that are with us all the way. They’re protesting in favor of President Trump, as opposed to against,” he said.

“That’s the sign of love, not the sign of your typical protest,” Trump added. “So I want to thank our great truckers.”

The protest coincided with Trump’s press conference to detail Operation Warp Speed, a government-wide initiative to speed the timeline to produce a coronavirus vaccine.

The demonstration by truckers mirrored one from earlier this month in which drivers lined the street near the White House and laid on their horns to protest low shipping rates, which drivers say are making it difficult to make a living wage..

Truckers are facing economic hardship as the economy contracts due to the pandemic, and The Washington Post reported that freight brokers have imposed low rates, further driving down their wages.

Congress has not provided targeted relief for the trucking industry, though Trump hosted truck drivers at a White House event last month to praise drivers for supporting U.S. commerce and supply chains amid the pandemic.

[The Hill]

State Department watchdog ousted

State Department Inspector General Steve Linick has been fired, according to a senior administration official and a congressional aide.

Linick, a Justice Department veteran appointed to the role in 2013 by then President Barack Obama, is the latest of a slew of inspectors general to be ousted in recent months.

He played a minor role in the House of Representatives’ impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, ferrying a trove of documents to lawmakers that had been provided to the State Department by Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer.

A State Department spokesperson said that Amb. Stephen Akard, a former career Foreign Service officer, “will now lead the Office of the Inspector General at the State Department,” noting that Akard was previously confirmed by the Senate as head of the department’s Office of Foreign Missions

[Politico]

Trump says coronavirus testing ‘overrated,’ claims fewer cases if no testing

While health officials continue to stress the importance of testing as the key to controlling the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested testing is “overrated.”

Speaking to employees at an Owens & Minor Inc. OMI, -3.00% medical-supply plant in Allentown, Pa., Trump said testing might be the problem.

“So we have the best testing in the world,” Trump said. “It could be the testing’s, frankly, overrated? Maybe it is overrated.”

The country has more than 1.4 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, but Trump said that’s only because the U.S. has carried out more tests.

“We have more cases than anybody in the world, but why? Because we do more testing,” Trump said. “When you test, you have a case. When you test you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases. They don’t want to write that. It’s common sense. We test much more.”

Many on social media were quick to point out the obvious flaw in the president’s logic.

[Market Watch]

Trump attacks whistleblower Bright as ‘disgruntled employee’

President Trump on Thursday criticized health official Rick Bright and said he should “no longer” be working for the federal government shortly before the whistleblower was slated to testify before a House panel about the Trump administration’s response to the novel coronavirus.

Trump tweeted that he had never met nor heard of Bright and claimed that the former federal vaccine doctor was “not liked or respected” by people whom the president has consulted, labeling him a “disgruntled employee.”

“I don’t know the so-called Whistleblower Rick Bright, never met him or even heard of him, but to me he is a disgruntled employee, not liked or respected by people I spoke to and who, with his attitude, should no longer be working for our government!” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.

Bright is expected to deliver critical testimony to a House committee later Thursday saying that the Trump administration was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic. He plans to warn that without a coordinated national response, this year will be “the darkest winter in modern history,” according to a leaked copy of his prepared remarks.

Bright served at the helm of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority from 2016 until last month, when he was reassigned to a narrower position based at the National Institutes of Health.

Bright filed a whistleblower complaint following his reassignment alleging that his early warnings about the virus were met with indifference at the Department of Health and Human Services and that his efforts to push back on the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus, something Trump touted, contributed to his removal from the high-level post.

Bright is seeking to be reinstated in his former position and asked for a full investigation into the decision to reassign him.

Bright, who first came forward with his claims in late April, is slated to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health at 10 a.m. Thursday morning.

Trump has repeatedly said he didn’t know Bright, while dismissing him as a seemingly “disgruntled employee.”

“I don’t know who he is. I did not hear good things about him at all,” Trump told reporters at the White House on May 6. “And to me he seems like a disgruntled employee that’s trying to help the Democrats win an election.” 

[The Hill]

Trump demands Obama be made to testify in the Senate

For the past few days, President Trump has been talking nonstop about something he has termed “OBAMAGATE” — a largely incoherent conspiracy theory that positions former President Obama as the mastermind behind a conspiracy to use federal law enforcement to undermine Trump’s campaign and presidency.

It is, in effect, the new birtherism: an unfounded campaign against the legitimacy of America’s first black president that Trump is trying to exploit to rally the political faithful.

This morning, Trump seriously escalated his campaign against Obama, tweeting at one of his most reliable supporters in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, to force Obama to testify before Congress about this allegedly dastardly plot.

The specific wording of the tweet — “Do it… just do it” — is striking; the request sounds like a childish dare, as if Trump were daring Graham to shave his head during a late-night Zoom call. But the absurdity of the language shouldn’t distract from the nefariousness of the request.

The president of the United States is labeling a fringe right-wing conspiracy theory “the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR.” He’s also more or less ordering a particularly compliant senator — who happens to chair the Judiciary Committee — to use the powers of the Senate to treat one of his predecessors as a potential criminal suspect or witness on the basis of this conspiracy theory.

Throughout Trump’s presidency, he has consistently treated the investigatory and law enforcement powers of the US government as tools to be deployed for purely political reasons. During the coronavirus crisis, when his presidency is once again in mortal danger, he has stepped on the gas on this kind of abuse of power — the Justice Department has dropped charges against Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had pleaded guilty,and Trump now seems to be trying to get them to treat Obama like a criminal.

In democracies, presidents are not supposed to use law enforcement agencies as shields for their crooked political allies and swords against their political enemies. The threat that Trump poses to the rule of law, and the basic principles of a free society, has never been clearer.

[Vox]

Update

Graham denied Trump’s request.

Trump refuses to say what crime he is accusing Obama of committing

President Trump repeatedly declined at a press briefing to specify what crime he accused former President Obama of committing in a series of tweets over the weekend and Monday morning, telling reporters: “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody.”

Why it matters: In the wake of the Justice Department’s decision to drop charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump has sent hundreds of tweets and retweets of conservative media — many of which use the phrase “Obamagate” — that allege the Russia investigation was a political hit job directed by the former president.

  • Trump called it the “biggest political crime in American history, by far!” on Sunday and tweeted that “OBAMAGATE makes Watergate look small time” on Monday morning.
  • He also responded to an article from The Federalist on Monday that asked why Obama allegedly told the FBI under James Comey to withhold intelligence from the incoming Trump administration: “Because it was OBAMAGATE, and he and Sleepy Joe led the charge. The most corrupt administration in U.S. history!”

What they’re saying: Trump told reporters on Monday: “Obamagate, it’s been going on for a long time. … Some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again. And you’ll be seeing what’s going on over the coming weeks.”

[Axios]

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