Category: Unpresidential

Trump Flips, Now Opposes Prosecution for Clinton

During the presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump pledged to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton, would join crowds of his supporters in chants of “lock her up!” and said to her face during a debate that if he were president, “you’d be in jail.”

But now that he actually will be president, Trump says he won’t recommend prosecution of Clinton, who he told New York Times reporters has “suffered greatly.”
What’s more, he said the idea of prosecuting Clinton is “just not something I feel very strongly about.”

The quotes come from the tweets of New York Times reporters Mike Grynbaum and Maggie Haberman, who attended a meeting between the President-elect and reporters and editors at the paper.

“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” Trump said, according to the tweets. “She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways.”
It’s a stunning departure from the campaign rhetoric, which could come as a shock to some of the President-elect’s most ardent supporters. The Times characterized one exchange as extending an olive branch to Clinton supporters.

“I think I will explain it that we, in many ways, will save our country,” he said.

He said the issues have been investigated “ad nauseum” and he added, according to Haberman, that people could argue the Clinton Foundation has done “good work.”

The about-face on his formal rival and suggestion that the Trump administration will not pursue further investigations of Clinton related to her private email server or the Clinton Foundation first came Tuesday morning from Trump’s former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who said it would send a message to other Republicans.

“I think when the President-elect, who’s also the head of your party, tells you before he’s even inaugurated that he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone and content” to fellow Republicans, Conway said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

At the second presidential debate in early October, Trump threatened Clinton, saying that “if I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.”

Conway said Clinton “still has to face the fact that a majority of Americans don’t find her to be honest or trustworthy,” but added that “if Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps that’s a good thing to do.”

“Look, I think he’s thinking of many different things as he prepares to become the president of the United States, and things that sound like the campaign are not among them,” she added.

Steve Vladeck, CNN legal contributor and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said it was unusual for a President-elect to take such a public position on whether to pursue an investigation.

“Even though the attorney general reports to the president, the Department of Justice is meant to exercise a degree of independence from the White House entirely to avoid the perception that political considerations, rather than legal ones, are behind decisions to (or to not) prosecute,” Vladeck said in an email. “Indeed, we’ve seen plenty of scandals throughout American history in which presidents have wrongly politicized the Justice Department’s role, and President-Elect Trump’s comments don’t exactly augur well for preservation of the line between law and politics over the next four years.”

Despite Trump breaking a campaign promise to some of the most fervent anti-Clinton supporters, Democrats also took issue with the decision as a sign of the President-elect’s executive overreach.

“That’s not how this works. In our democracy, the President doesn’t decide who gets prosecuted and who doesn’t,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote on Twitter.

During Trump’s ferocious election fight with Clinton, chants of “lock her up” — referring to Clinton — became a refrain of the Republican’s campaign, as he hammered the Democratic presidential nominee over her decision to use a private email server as secretary of state, and lobbed accusations of corruption and “pay to play” politics at the Clinton Foundation. Trump’s choice for national security advisor, Michael Flynn, also led a high-profile chant at the Republican National Convention of “lock her up.”

Trump repeatedly brought up jailing Clinton on his own, often at raucous campaign rallies over the summer and into the fall.

“Remember I said I was a counter-puncher? I am,” Trump said at a San Jose, California, rally in June, referencing an anti-Trump speech Clinton gave. “After what she said about me today, her phony speech, that was a phony speech. It was a Donald trump hit job. I will say this: Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, OK? (Cheers) She has to go to jail, phony hit job. She’s guilty as hell.”

“She gets a subpoena, she deleted the emails, she has to go to jail,” Trump said at a Lakeland, Florida, rally in October.

But in interviews with the Wall Street Journal and CBS’ “60 Minutes” after the election, Trump refused to say if he would fulfill that commitment to appoint a special prosecutor.

“I’m going to think about it,” he told “60 Minutes.” “I feel I want to focus on jobs. I want to focus on health care, I want to focus on the border and immigration and doing a really great immigration bill. And I want to focus on — all of these other things that we’ve been talking about.” He told the program she “did some bad things” but added the Clintons are “good people.”

And Trump told the Wall Street Journal that “it’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought, because I want to solve health care, jobs, border control, tax reform.”

(h/t CNN)

Trump Holds Media Summit to Intimidate Executives

Donald Trump scolded media big shots during an off-the-record Trump Tower sitdown on Monday, sources told The Post.

“It was like a f–ing firing squad,” one source said of the encounter.

“Trump started with [CNN chief] Jeff Zucker and said ‘I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,’ ” the source said.

“The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source added.

A second source confirmed the fireworks.

“The meeting took place in a big board room and there were about 30 or 40 people, including the big news anchors from all the networks,” the other source said.

“Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong.’ He addressed everyone in the room calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,” the source said.

“Trump didn’t say [NBC reporter] Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate – which was Martha Raddatz who was also in the room.”

The stunned reporters tried to get a word in edgewise to discuss access to a Trump Administration.

“[CBS Good Morning co-host Gayle] King did not stand up, but asked some question, ‘How do you propose we the media work with you?’ Chuck Todd asked some pretty pointed questions. David Muir asked ‘How are you going to cope living in DC while your family is in NYC? It was a horrible meeting.”

Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway told reporters the gathering went well.

“Excellent meetings with the top executives of the major networks,” she said during a gaggle in the lobby of Trump Tower. “Pretty unprecedented meeting we put together in two days.”

The meeting was off the record, meaning the participants agreed not to talk about the substance of the conversations.

The hour-long session included top execs from network and cable news channels. Among the attendees were NBC’s Deborah Turness, Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, ABC’s James Goldston, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz,

Also, CBS’ Norah O’Donnell John Dickerson, Charlie Rose, Christopher Isham and King, Fox News’ Bill Shine, Jack Abernethy, Jay Wallace, Suzanne Scott, MSNBC’s Phil Griffin and CNN’s Jeff Zucker and Erin Burnett.

Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times, plans to meet with Trump Tuesday.

There was no immediate comment from the Trump Team.

(h/t New York Post)

Reality

Donald J. Trump went to war with members of the media, holding an off-the-record meeting of executives and on-air talent.

In his meeting with the press, which the members believed they would be talking about his recent lack of transparency, Trump instead spent the entire time calling each of them liars right to their face, even singling out individual networks and reporters.

Trump never produced evidence for why he believed they were liars for simply reporting on the things he said.

The worst part to learn was the attendees did not fight back or at best put up mild resistance to Trump’s unsubstantiated charges.

The role of a free and open press is a foundation of democracy, separates us from other forms of government, and any interference from an overreaching state should be seen as an attack on our liberties.

So if this is the position the press is going to be taking this early in a Trump presidency, especially with someone who has an aversion to facts, then this should be taken very seriously otherwise we’ll be in a bad state of affairs.

 

Kellyanne Conway: ‘Why Do You Care’ About Trump’s Tweets?

Former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on Monday defended President-elect Donald Trump’s Twitter vendetta against the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” arguing that social media use is “a great way” to “cut through the noise or silence” and that Trump has the right to offer his criticism.

“Why do you care?” Conway said when asked by “New Day” host Chris Cuomo about Trump’s “Hamilton” feud. “Who is to say that he can’t do that, make a comment, spend five minutes on a tweet and making a comment and still be president-elect?”

Conway, a senior adviser to Trump, criticized media coverage of the social media controversy, saying that Trump is “just trying to cut through the nonsense of people telling Americans what is important to them, which we saw through the elections wasn’t true. People constantly being told this issue, this statement, this past transgression is important to you — and Americans said, ‘No, it’s not. What’s important to me is this 100-day plan.'”

(h/t CNN)

Reality

But that is not what Donald Trump is doing.

Taking a look at his past 10 tweets, half of them are personal attacks against those who have criticized him. And we should care because Trump has made a habit of intimidating those who disagree with him, both in the press and private citizens.

trump-tweet-timeline-2016-11

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIT9lD1z0TQ

Trump Urged UK Leader to Oppose Wind Farm Near His Golf Course

President-elect Donald Trump used a post-election meeting with interim United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage to express opposition to wind farms in the United Kingdom, according to The New York Times.

Trump has long been against a wind farm constructed near his golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, even fighting unsuccessfully all the way to Great Britain’s highest court to block it, The New York Times said Monday.

The story broke Monday night, at the same time the president-elect tweeted about his business interests.

“Prior to the election it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world.Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!” he wrote.

He followed that message up with a second tweet praising Farage and suggesting, “Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States.”

Trump met with Farage on Nov. 12 at Trump Tower in New York City, following his shocking White House win.

Farage, who helped spearhead the Brexit campaign for Britain to leave the the European Union (EU), is a longtime supporter of Trump and his Republican presidential campaign.

Andy Wigmore, who was present during the pair’s meeting, said Sunday that Trump wanted Farage to campaign against new wind farm developments in the U.K.

“But one thing Mr. Trump kept returning to was the issue of wind farms,” he said, according to The Sun. “He is a complete Anglophile and also absolutely adores Scotland, which he thinks is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.”

“But [Trump] is dismayed that his beloved Scotland has become overrun with ugly wind farms which he believes are a blight on the stunning landscape,” added Wigmore, who lead communications for Leave.EU, one of two groups leading the Brexit effort.

“It is clear that it is an issue he is very passionate about and not because he is against renewable energy or green technology but because he genuinely thinks wind farms are damaging Scotland’s natural beauty.”

The Times notes that Trump owns two golf courses in Scotland, Trump Turnberry and Trump International Golf Links, the second of which is located in the village of Balmedie, near Aberdeenshire.

Trump’s business empire is facing new scrutiny after his White House win, with critics fretting that it may become a conflict of interest for his incoming administration.

The timing and content of his Monday night tweet about Farage raised eyebrows on social media, with Guardian reporter Jon Swaine noting saying the suggestion of Farage as ambassador “publicly disrespect[s]” the current ambassador and could be seen as “preempting the Queen.”

(h/t The Hill)

Trump on Business Conflicts: You Knew Who You Were Voting For

As Donald Trump assured us during the campaign, someday he’ll turn his business into a “blind trust” operated by his children (right after they change the definition of what a “blind trust” is). For now, it appears Trump is still looking out for his own business interests by combining them with the interests of the president-elect.

The latest example comes from the New York Times, which reported on Monday evening that during a meeting with Nigel Farage days after the election, Trump encouraged the British politician and his pro-Brexit entourage to oppose offshore wind farms that threaten to ruin the view at one of his Scottish golf courses. Last year, Trump lost a long legal battle to block the construction of a wind farm near his resort.

“He did not say he hated wind farms as a concept; he just did not like them spoiling the views,” said Andy Wigmore, a media consultant who attended the meeting. Wigmore said he and his associates were already opposed to wind farms, but Trump “did suggest that we should campaign on it” and “spurred us in and we will be going for it.”

Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks initially denied the report, then stopped responding when informed that Wigmore described the conversation with Trump. But Trump took matters into his own hands, blasting the “crooked media” for focusing on his conflicts of interest. He tweeted, a short time after the Times story was published:

But the next day Mr. Trump was acknowledging a recent meeting with the British politician Nigel Farage, in which, The Times reported, he “encouraged Mr. Farage and his entourage to oppose the kind of offshore wind farms that Mr. Trump believes will mar the pristine view from one of his two Scottish golf courses.”

Pressed about his business interests, Mr. Trump also said, “In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly.”

 

(h/t New York Magazine)

Trump Uses Argentine Congratulatory Call to Push Through Permits

Over the weekend, there were a flurry of stories about how Donald Trump and his family are already using the presidency to leverage his overseas businesses as well as his new DC hotel. Well, now there’s more. This time in Argentina.

Here’s the background.

For a number of years, Trump and his Argentine partners have been trying to build a major office building in Buenos Aires. The project has been held up by a series of complications tied to financing, importation of building materials and various permitting requirements.

According to a report out of Argentina, when Argentine President Mauricio Macri called President-Elect Trump to congratulate him on his election, Trump asked Macri to deal with the permitting issues that are currently holding up the project.

This comes from one of Argentina’s most prominent journalists, Jorge Lanata, in a recent TV appearance. Lanata is quoted here in La Nacion, one of Argentina’s most prestigious dailies. Said Lanata: “Macri called him. This still hasn’t emerged but Trump asked for them to authorize a building he’s constructing in Buenos Aires, it wasn’t just a geopolitical chat.”

(For Spanish speakers, here’s the original Spanish we’ve translated: “Macri llo llamó. Todavía no se contó pero Trump le pidió que autorizaran un edificio que él está construyendo en Buenos Aires, no fue solo una charla geo política.”)

Separately, Trump’s business partner on the project, Felipe Yaryura, was there on election night at the Trump celebration in New York City.

Why aren’t we hearing about this in the American press?

Well, remember, no one knew anything about the visit from Trump’s Indian business partners until it appeared in the Indian press either. It seems like this is likely happening on many fronts. It’s just being hidden from the American press. We only hear about it when it bubbles to the surface in the countries where Trump is pushing his business deals.

(h/t Talking Points Memo)

Update

Both President Macri and President-Elect Trump have denied that they discussed Trump’s building project during their post-election phone conversation.

But it was confirmed that Ivanka Trump, daughter of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, CEO of Trump Org, and member of his transition team, briefly joined her father’s telephone call with Argentine President Mauricio Macri to “say hello.”

Ivanka Trump’s Presence at Meeting With Japan’s Leader Raises Blind Trust Questions

President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly said that there would be no conflicts of interest during his administration because his vast business empire would be in a “blind trust.” But White House ethics lawyers in both parties have criticized that, noting that having his children run the company means it would be neither blind nor a trust.

The very first meeting that the President-elect held with a world leader, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is prompting further criticism—even alarm. According to photographs taken at Trump Tower in New York City and published this week, the session was attended by Ivanka Trump, who has no government security clearance and is an executive at the Trump Organization.

“This is not the way we behave in the world’s leading constitutional democracy,” says Norman Eisen, special counsel and ethics adviser to President Barack Obama between 2009 and 2011. “It’s like something out of a tin-pot oligarchy.”

Members of the press were also barred from the meeting, adding to building criticism that a President Trump will not honor White House traditions of transparency. Ivanka Trump’s presence apparently only became public because the Japanese government released photos; it is not clear whether she was present for the entire meeting.

Meanwhile the New York Times reports that Jared Kushner, Trump’s trusted son-in-law, consulted a lawyer to find out how he could join Trump’s forthcoming administration without running afoul of federal laws prohibiting nepotism. Kushner was also present at the Abe meeting, according to another photo published by Reuters and the Japanese government. He too lacks government security clearance.

In an interview with Fortune, Eisen says Ivanka Trump and Kushner’s apparent presence at Trump’s first face-to-face meeting with the leader of one of our key allies was “shocking” and unprecedented. “If you’ve got one member of the power couple—Jared Kushner, whispering in the President[-elect]’s ear—and if you’ve got the other, the wife and daughter, who is running businesses, it merges the Trump Organization and the United States into one huge conglomerate managed by the Trumps for their own interests,” he says.

He adds that the fear is that their involvement will turn “our intelligence community into a management consulting firm for the Trump family business. That can’t be right. Ivanka must go, and Kushner can’t stay.”

Eisen and Richard Painter, White House ethics adviser to President George W. Bush between 2005 and 2007, on Tuesday wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post urging Trump to put his “conflict-generating assets in a true blind trust run by an independent trustee.”

Unlike most other federal employees, the President of the United States isn’t bound by the federal conflict of interest law. But Eisen tells Fortune that several lawyers, including those who are part of the Republican party, are “worried about this unprecedented blurring of lines” and President-elect Trump should “expect massive litigation if he proceeds on this collision course.”

(h/t Fortune)

After Demanding Safe Spaces in Theaters Trump Attacks Saturday Night Live

President-elect Donald Trump has taken to Twitter again this weekend to dress down another actor: Alec Baldwin.

“I watched parts of @nbcsnl Saturday Night Live last night. It is a totally one-sided, biased show – nothing funny at all. Equal time for us?” tweeted Trump on Sunday morning.

Baldwin did his famous Trump impersonation on the long-running NBC show on Saturday in a sketch that focused on how Trump is in way over his head as the future leader of the free world.

To Trump’s criticism, Baldwin shot off a string of tweets on Sunday, giving Trump some unsolicited advice on how to proceed as the next commander-in-chief, saying, in part, “You know what I would do if I were Prez? I’d be focused on how to improve the lives of AS MANY AMERICANS AS POSSIBLE.”

And, “Equal time? Election is over. There is no more equal time. Now u try 2 b Pres + ppl respond. That’s pretty much it.”

(h/t AOL News)

Reality

Donald Trump, who claims he alone can defeat ISIS, is losing a twitter war with Broadway and Alec Baldwin

Trump Demands Artists Asking Pence for Equal Treatment to Apologize

President-elect Donald Trump accused the “Hamilton” cast Saturday of harassing Vice president-elect Mike Pence at a performance Friday evening after the actors called on Pence to “uphold our American values.”

“Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!” Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

He followed up: “The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!”

Cast member Brandon Dixon, who portrays Aaron Burr and delivered the statement to Pence during a curtain call, soon replied on Twitter, “@realDonaldTrump conversation is not harassment sir. And I appreciate @mike_pence for stopping to listen.”

Pence became part of the show Friday when he attended a performance of “Hamilton” in New York and was directly addressed by the cast.

Word spread on social media that Pence was in the house for the hit Broadway show, and during the curtain call, Dixon urged Pence to “work on behalf of all of us.”

“Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us here at ‘Hamilton: An American Musical.’ We really do,” Dixon said. “We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us.”

Dixon, who urged the audience not to boo Pence, said the show was performed by “a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds and orientations.”

The crowd loudly cheered and applauded Dixon’s remarks.

Sam Rudy, a publicist for “Hamilton,” said Pence was exiting the theater at the time and stopped to listen to Dixon. Rudy described Dixon’s remarks as a “polite request” and said he can “see no way whatsoever how the cast of ‘Hamilton’ can be seen as being rude.”

“I don’t know what (Trump) qualifies as harassment,” Rudy added.

Messages left with Pence representatives were not returned.

Pence, who has been in New York to assist with Trump’s transition, was greeted inside the theater earlier in the night by a chorus of boos, though some applauded.

Despite Trump’s harsh rebuke of the confrontation, Dixon’s rhetoric was not dissimilar to remarks Trump himself has made in the past about uniting the country.

“I’m asking America to join me in dreaming big and bold, and dream for wonderful things in our future. Let’s close the history books on the failures in Washington and let’s open a new chapter of success and prosperity for all of our people. We have a divided nation, a seriously divided nation. All of our people — that is how we will truly make American great again,” Trump said in Washington last month.

“Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda is no stranger to politics, having backed Hillary Clinton during this year’s election cycle. In addition to endorsing Clinton, Miranda held a benefit showing of the musical in July, where admission to the show supported the Clinton campaign — some tickets reportedly went for as much as $10,000.

(h/t CNN)

 

Donald “Never Settle” Trump Settles University Lawsuit

Donald Trump has agreed to a $25 million settlement to end the fraud cases against his now-defunct Trump University, New York’s attorney general said — a move that the president-elect said Saturday was done in order to “focus on the country.”

The settlement likely means that Trump will avoid becoming possibly the first sitting president to testify in open court.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman called the settlement on Friday “a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.” Lawyers involved in the cases say the settlement applies to all three lawsuits against Trump University including two cases filed in California.

Trump commented on the settlement via Twitter on Saturday, telling his 15 million followers that the only “bad thing about winning the presidency” was not being able to fight the “long but winning” Trump University trial.

(h/t NBC News)

Reality

Remember this?

And this?

And this?

 

 

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