Trump skipped post-Helsinki intelligence briefing to lie in bed and watch cable news

President Donald Trump skipped a Tuesday intelligence briefing to sit in the White House residence to watch cable news and share his thoughts on Twitter.

MSNBC anchor Katy Tur put on screen one of Trump’s tweets, remarking, “I feel like we are living on Earth One and Earth Two.”

“Katy, you asked if [Trump] had consumed the media coverage,” NBC News Pentagon correspondent Hans Nichols said. “He did not make his way to the West Wing until well after noon today, that gave him plenty of time to digest the media and perhaps watch a little cable TV.”

“And what’s interesting is that he had an intelligence briefing on his schedule yesterday, this morning, the intelligence briefing was no longer there and no reason given for why that changed,” Tur noted.

“Just scrubbed from his schedule,” Nichols noted. “Officially, that was on the schedule, and then it wasn’t — and that is where we stand the now as the president is going to about to try to talk to the press the American people about just what his intentions were with Vladimir Putin.”

In addition to canceling his Presidential Daily Briefing, the commander-in-chief also blew off a planned lunch with Vice President Mike Pence.

[Raw Story]

President Trump blames media for criticism over Putin news conference

The day after his ill-fated news conference with Vladimir Putin drew criticism even from supporters, a defiant President Donald Trump said Tuesday he had a great meeting with the Russian leader and blamed the news media for the poor reception.

“While I had a great meeting with NATO, raising vast amounts of money, I had an even better meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia,” Trump tweeted after returning from a weeklong trip to Europe. “Sadly, it is not being reported that way – the Fake News is going Crazy!”

Having watched the president’s performance, lawmakers across the ideological spectrum criticized Trump for taking Putin’s word over that of U.S. intelligence officials who report that Russians interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

Like Trump, the critics showed no signs of backing down.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, said he was glad to see criticism from both parties. A day after saying that Putin probably celebrated the Trump meeting with caviar, Corker called for legislation to counter some of the president’s foreign policy moves, including tariffs on imports.

“As the president taxes Americans with tariffs, he pushes away our allies and further strengthens Putin,” Corker tweeted. “It is time for Congress to step up and take back our authorities.”

During his morning tweet session, Trump also defended the Putin news conference by citing the thoughts of a rare supporter who stuck up for him: Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

“Thank you @RandPaul, you really get it!” Trump tweeted, citing a comment by the Kentucky senator that “the President has gone through a year and a half of totally partisan investigations – what’s he supposed think?”

Paul was one of the few Republicans to defend the president after he accepted Putin’s denials that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, despite the conclusions of U.S. intelligence officials that Russians hacked Democratic officials and pushed fake news to help Trump.

While taking Putin’s side, Trump also condemned the ongoing investigation of Russia as a “disaster” driving a wedge between the United States and Russia.

[USA Today]

Trump thanks Rand Paul for praising his position on Russia

Facing widespread condemnation for his fawning meeting with Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump gave a shout-out to Sen. Paul Rand, who praised him for trying “to prevent us from having World War 3.”

“Thank you @RandPaul, you really get it!” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning, referring to Paul’s interview on “CBS This Morning.”

“‘The President has gone through a year and a half of totally partisan investigations — what’s he supposed think?’” he added, quoting the Kentucky Republican.

“Yes, the vast majority of the foreign policy community, the bipartisan consensus said you shouldn’t meet with Putin,” Paul said.

“They also said he shouldn’t meet with (North Korean leader) Kim (Jong Un) and this is an extraordinary thing about President Trump that should be lauded and not belittled is that he is willing to meet with adversaries to try to prevent us from having World War 3.”

Paul stood by the president’s decision to sit down with the Russian leader, saying that Trump “did a good thing” by meeting with Putin and warned his colleagues that it was a “mistake” to “try to turn this into a partisan escapade.”

The pol also compared Trump’s meeting with Putin to President Ronald Reagan’s summit with Mikhail Gorbachev when he was general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

“CBS This Morning” co-anchor John Dickerson pointed out that, unlike Trump, Reagan had pushed America’s moral objection to the Soviet Union during their summit.

Trump, meanwhile, held both the US and Russia responsible for the sour relationship between the two countries.

Paul countered that the assessment was “not being fair to the president,” citing Reagan’s “evil empire” comments toward the Soviet leader.

“While the rhetoric was strong, you might actually compare that with Trump’s rhetoric in North Korea, it’s been very strong. So I think there’s actually some apt comparisons between Reagan and Trump on the diplomatic front,” he said.

“We have to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, and if we’re only going to talk to people who have perfect constitutional republics, we’re going to have a very small audience and we’re going to have a lot of potential conflicts with no outlet for diplomacy,” he added.

Meanwhile, Trump also mentioned his “great meeting with NATO.”

“They have paid $33 Billion more and will pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars more in the future, only because of me,” the president tweeted.

“NATO was weak, but now it is strong again (bad for Russia). The media only says I was rude to leaders, never mentions the money!” he added.

After a contentious visit at NATO headquarters in Brussels, the president declared that all the member nations agreed to increase their defense spending.

French President Emmanuel Macron rejected that assertion, citing a 2014 agreement by the countries to increase their share to 2 percent of their gross domestic product in 10 years.

“There was a communiqué released yesterday it was very detailed and I invite you to read it … It shows the measures approved by all the member states. This communiqué is clear, it reaffirms a commitment to 2 percent in 2024. That is all,” Macron said last week.

[New York Post]

Trump using Scotland visit to promote his golf course — which is losing millions

President Donald Trump is running an “informercial” for his struggling Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, The New York Times reported Saturday.

Financial records show that the president’s Trump Turnberry resort has lost money since the New York City real estate mogul purchased the golf course in 2014.

“In fact, the Turnberry operation has lost tens of millions of pounds since he purchased it, filings in Britain show: about £17 million in 2016, the last year for which such comprehensive records are available,” the Times reported. “For 2017, Mr. Trump’s government ethics filing discloses only how much revenue the course generated — $20.4 million — not whether it had earned a profit.”

The commander-in-chief also cited his investment in claiming that Brexit would be good for his struggling business.

“When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry, frankly,” Trump publicly concluded.

Ethics watchdogs worry about Trump mixing private business during his public trip to Scotland.

Eisen, the chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) blasted Trump hyping his struggling business during his taxpayer-funded trip.

“Through this trip to Turnberry,” Mr. Eisen said, “the president is forcing his foreign hosts and the United States to spend enormous amounts of money so that he can get free advertising for his resort.”

“He’s the master of earned media,” Eisen noted. “It’s an important part of the way he won the presidency, and that’s what he’s doing here.”

As Trump arrived in Scotland, demonstrators mobilized to protest his visit.

The BBC reported that a power paraglider was flying lose to Trump Turnberry with a banner reading, “Trump: Well below par.”

[Mediaite]

Trump’s Turnberry getaway: A little golf, a lot of promoting

President Donald Trump did not let the pressure of his high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladmir Putin stand in the way of his typical Saturday routine: Tweeting followed by golf on a Trump-branded course.

“The weather is beautiful, and this place is incredible!” Trump tweeted Saturday morning, promoting his own money-losing property in Turnberry.

Trump did not plug his business from the official government account of the President of the United States, which he does not use. Instead, he gave the property a boost from his personal account, from behind the walls of his private club.

To ethics experts who criticized the president’s use of his office to promote his business, the account he uses marks a distinction without a difference. But it was the latest sign of Trump bending the presidency to fit the old lifestyle he misses — even down to sticking with his own account — rather than being shaped by the demands of the office he occupies.

During the course of his trip, Trump has conducted himself more like his pre-presidential self than ever before, while traveling. In England, he turned to the familiar pages of a Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid to mouth off about a world leader — before his election, Trump’s favorite newspaper to call up and chat with was the New York Post. This time, however, he later tried to walk back his comments criticizing British Prime Minister Theresa May’s handling of the Brexit negotiations when he seemed to realize that intervening in the fragile government of an ally was a mistake.

At a black tie dinner on Wednesday night at Blenheim Palace, he made sure that the dinner included some familiar faces from home, among the Brits — including Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, a longtime Mar-a-Lago member and Trump friend, Wall Street billionaire Stephen Schwarzman and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.

Later, he mugged for his press secretary by taking a seat in Winston Churchill’s chair while meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May at Chequers, a casual photo that gave the impression of a Churchill-loving tourist, rather than a visiting head of state.

But his turn at Turnberry has been long planned, aides said. Over the past 18 months in office, associates said, he has often talked about scheduling a visit here to check on his properties.

Trump loves his Scottish clubs, friends said, and typically visited them about once a year in his old life as a private citizen with a mouthy Twitter account. Friends said he has an emotional connection to the clubs here, and often mentions his mother, who was born in Scotland, when he brings up the Trump links at Turnberry and Aberdeen.

Ahead of his trip abroad, he told associates that he was eager to hang out in Scotland and check in on his properties, noting he was frustrated he had gone too long without a visit. (He lasted visited Turnberry as a presidential candidate in 2016.)

One former adviser noted that the Scotland and England portions of the trip were meant to entice Trump to even attend the NATO Summit in Brussels, which he approached with dread, like a dessert he earned after eating his vegetables.We

At home, Trump spends most of his time away from the White House at his own properties: Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach during the winter; the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster during the summer; and the Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia, or the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., on the weekends he stays put.

His two-day break in Scotland, some downtime between from international meetings, however, marked the first time he has spent a weekend at one of his own properties while traveling abroad as president.

On Saturday morning, he tweeted that he was going to be busy with “meetings and calls” at the club, noting that he would squeeze in golf if he had the time. But just like at home, “meetings and calls” appeared to mean more time on the course. Shortly after his tweet, he was spotted playing golf with his son Eric Trump, whose “Trump” branded plane had been waiting on the tarmac when Air Force One landed here on Friday night.

[Politico]

Trump Defends Golfing in Scotland: It’s ‘My Primary Form of Exercise!’

President Trump on Saturday tweeted his plans for the weekend during his trip to Europe, saying that he will “hopefully” golf, which he referred to as his “primary form of exercise.”

“I have arrived in Scotland and will be at Trump Turnberry for two days of meetings, calls and hopefully, some golf – my primary form of exercise!” Trump tweeted. “The weather is beautiful, and this place is incredible!”

He also highlighted his upcoming meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

Trump owns two private golf resorts in Scotland, including Turnberry.

The president is known to be a frequent golfer, often spending his weekends at his private golf clubs in Virginia, near Washington, D.C., or in Florida. He has spent 127 days of his presidency at his golf properties, according to a NBC News tracker.

Trump said earlier this year that he gets “more exercise than people think” after his then-White House doctor recommended that he exercise more.

“I get exercise. I mean I walk, I this, I that,” Trump said at the time. “I run over to a building next door. I get more exercise than people think.”

He also referred to his playing golf as a form of exercise, but added that he usually uses a golf cart on the course because of the amount of time it can talk to walk it.

“I don’t want to spend the time,” Trump said.

[The Hill]

Dubious Fox News article appears to have sparked Trump attack on Obama

President Donald Trump appeared to rely on a dubious Fox News report Tuesday morning to unleash an attack on his predecessor, accusing President Barack Obama, without any real evidence, of granting citizenship to 2,500 Iranians as part of nuclear deal negotiations.

“Just out that Obama Administration granted citizenship, during the terrible Iran Deal negotiation, to 2,500 Iranians – including to government officials,” Trump tweeted. “How big (and bad) is that?”

Jeff Prescott, the former senior director on Obama’s National Security Council, called Trump’s allegation “absurd and entirely false.”

Prescott shared with CNN immigration data from the Department of Homeland Security which showed that the number of Iranians naturalized in the United States over the course of the Obama and Bush administrations was relatively consistent.

“There was no connection between the Iran nuclear deal and immigration policy,” Prescott added.

The unsubstantiated claim first gained attention with a Monday story on Fox News’ website that relied on the word of an Iranian cleric who is also a member of the country’s parliament.

The article, written by Chris Irvine, a Fox News senior editor, cited an Iranian news agency that cited an Iranian newspaper that quoted the single Iranian cleric, who said the Obama administration provided citizenship to 2,500 unidentified Iranians during nuclear deal negotiations.

The article itself quoted, toward the end of the story, the network’s own commentator, former Obama State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, saying, “This sounds like totally made up BS.” The story said the Department of Homeland Security and State Department declined to comment, and that a representative for former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson could not be reached.

Prior to the Fox News article, the claim had not received any noticeable attention from the US media.

But after Fox News published its story, other outlets, primarily in the conservative media space, published similar stories. Those outlets included The Daily Mail, The Gateway Pundit, and TownHall.

The claims were also shared on Twitter by Fox News host Sean Hannity and frequent Fox guests David Clarke and Charlie Kirk.

On Tuesday morning, just hours before Trump’s tweet, the story made its way to Fox News’ airwaves on “Fox & Friends First,” the network’s early morning show. It also later aired on “America’s Newsroom,” a late-morning news program on Fox News.

“It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that this is a case of Donald Trump parroting Fox News, which is peddling the claims of an Iranian hardliner,” Prescott told CNN.

Jake Sullivan, a former Obama official who was involved at the start of the Iran nuclear negotiations, also skewered Trump for relying on Fox News’ thin report to make what he called a “completely false” claim.

“What is interesting about this is that what happened is a hardline crank in Iran just randomly made this comment, Fox News writes a story on it, and then Trump tweets it,” Sullivan said on “The Situation Room.”

[CNN]

Trump Touts Mueller Poll Numbers ‘Plummeting’ While Watching Fox & Friends: ‘Rigged’ Witch Hunt!

President Trump this morning touted dropping poll numbers for special counsel Robert Mueller after watching Fox & Friends cover it.

Yes, the morning show today covered Mueller’s poll numbers, and the President subsequently tweeted about it:

[Mediaite]

Trump Goes On Another ‘Witch Hunt’ Tweetstorm While Watching Lou Dobbs

President Trump is on another “witch hunt” tweetstorm, this time in response to watching a segment on Lou Dobbs‘ Fox Business Network program.

Dobbs hosted Judicial Watch director Chris Farrell and the President loved what he said so much that he tweeted it out, before concluding again there’s a “witch hunt” going on:

[Mediaite]

Media

 

‘Stormtrooper tactics’: Trump compares his own Justice Dept. to Nazi assault troops

President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation team was similar to Nazi “stormtroopers.”

In a tweet Sunday afternoon, Trump quoted Mark Penn, a former Democratic strategist.

“Why are there people from the Clinton Foundation on the Mueller Staff? Why is there an Independent Counsel? To go after people and their families for unrelated offenses…Constitution was set up to prevent this…Stormtrooper tactics almost,” the tweet quoting Penn said.

Trump added: “Disgrace!”

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani also compared FBI agents to “stormtroopers” last month after they raided the office of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen.

“I know the New York FBI,” former FBI Director James Comey tweeted in response to Giuliani. “There are no ‘stormtroopers’ there; just a group of people devoted to the rule of law and the truth. Our country would be better off if our leaders tried to be like them, rather than comparing them to Nazis.”

[Raw Story]

Reality

Trump is referring to Jeannie Rhee, who did in-fact represent Hillary Clinton in a 2015 lawsuit that sought access to her private emails. She also represented the Clinton Foundation in a 2015 racketeering lawsuit, that was quickly thrown out for being frivolous and “did not allege any facts.”

What escapes Trump’s criticism is Rhee also has the experience and credentials to be a part of this investigation, having once served as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General under former Attorney General Eric Holder.

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