Category: Petty

Trump Praises Roseanne During Infrastructure Speech: ‘Look at Her Ratings!’

President Trump delivered a speech on infrastructure in Ohio today that touched upon a number of different topics including, yes, Roseanne‘s debut ratings.

The eponymous star revealed that the President called her to congratulate her on the huge ratings numbers.

And he brought up the ratings again today during his speech:

“Look at Roseanne! I called her yesterday! Look at her ratings! Look at her ratings! I got a call from Mark Burnett, he did The Apprentice, he’s a great guy. He said, ‘Donald, I called just to say hello, and to tell you: did you see Roseanne’s ratings?’ I said, ‘Mark, how big were they?’ They were unbelievable! Over 18 million people! And it was about us! They haven’t figured it out! The fake news hasn’t quite figured it out yet.”

[Mediaite]

Trump escalates attack on Amazon, slams it on taxes, shipping

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday blasted Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) with a list of complaints, a day after news website Axios reported that Trump wants to curb the mega retailer’s growing power using federal antitrust laws and led its shares to fall almost 5 percent.

“I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” Trump said in a post on Twitter early on Thursday.

Amazon founder and chairman, Jeff Bezos, also privately owns the Washington Post, which won a Pulitzer Prize last year for its investigation of Trump’s donations to charities. The probe found that many of Trump’s philanthropic claims were exaggerated and often were not charitable donations.

Still, White House Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah shot down the notion that Trump’s criticism was part of a personal grudge.

“A lot of people have made this, with respect to Amazon, about personalities and the CEO at Amazon – we’re talking about Jeff Bezos here,” he said on Thursday on the Fox News Channel. “It’s really about policy.”

Shah reiterated that Trump was not making specific policy changes.

“There are a number of proposals that have worked their ways through the House and the Senate or have been considered by the House and the Senate. He’d be supportive of such efforts,” he said.

Trump’s claims about Amazon’s state and local tax payments have been met with skepticism. While the company was once criticized for attempting to skirt state sales taxes, it currently has a reputation as a leader in collecting the levies, which can vary from state to state.

Legally pursuing Amazon could affect more than its share price, which was largely steady after Trump’s tweet. Amazon is currently in the process of establishing a $5 billion second headquarters which could bring 50,000 new jobs to the location it selects. In January, it winnowed the list of possible locations down to 20 metropolitan areas.

Apart from nationwide goods deliveries, Amazon’s services include video streaming, a digital home assistant known as Alexa, and an online payments program.

[Yahoo]

Reality

Trump was informed many times that the Postal Service actually makes money from Amazon, a lot, but he refuses to accept this information

Trump Threatens Joe Biden, Saying He ‘Would Go Down Fast and Hard’ if They Fought

President Trump threatened former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday, saying in a tweet that Mr. Biden “would go down fast and hard” if the two men ever physically fought. Mr. Trump was responding to Mr. Biden’s comments on Tuesday about how, if he was in high school, Mr. Biden would “beat the hell” out of Mr. Trump for disrespecting women.

Mr. Biden, speaking at a University of Miami rally to combat sexual assault, said, “A guy who ended up becoming our national leader said, ‘I can grab a woman anywhere and she likes it,’ ” referring to an Access Hollywood audio recording in which Mr. Trump is heard boasting about kissing and groping women without their consent. Mr. Biden said when he was asked if he would like to debate Mr. Trump, he said, “If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”

The back-and-forth blustering between two men in their 70s comes a day after Mr. Trump criticized two of his predecessors, Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, for not being able to improve relations with Russia. And Mr. Trump is facing revived sexual misconduct accusations after a New York state judge ruled that a defamation lawsuit from a woman who has said Mr. Trump made unwanted sexual advances could go forward.

Mr. Biden, who has been a longtime advocate for anti-sexual assault policies, has been on the road lately, campaigning for Democrats.

Earlier this month, he campaigned for a Democrat in western Pennsylvania who won a special congressional election in a district that had previously been considered Trump country. Mr. Trump campaigned for the Republican candidate who lost. Democrats see the loss as an indicator of a potential wave of Democratic wins in the upcoming midterm elections.

There has been talk of a possible 2020 presidential run, which could pit Mr. Biden, 75, directly against Mr. Trump, 71.

Mr. Biden considered running in 2016, but decided not to because of the death of his son. At the time, Mr. Trump said he thought Mr. Biden made the right choice for his family and that he would rather run against Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Trump has previously tweeted about Mr. Biden while he was vice president, commenting on Mr. Biden’s gaffes. In 2012, Mr. Trump said he felt sorry for Mr. Biden’s communications team.

[The New York Times]

Trump Insists U.S. Has Trade Deficit With Canada After Tapes Leak of Him Admitting It Doesn’t

President Donald Trump is now apparently doubling down on false comments that he admitted saying to Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.

After The Washington Post obtained audio of Trump telling Republican donors about a meeting with Trudeau in which he asserted that we have a trade deficit with Canada, a claim that the president admitted he had “no idea” was right or wrong at the time, the president tweeted this statement:

“We do have a Trade Deficit with Canada, as we do with almost all countries (some of them massive),” Trump wrote. “P.M. Justin Trudeau of Canada, a very good guy, doesn’t like saying that Canada has a Surplus vs. the U.S.(negotiating), but they do…they almost all do…and that’s how I know!”

As many have pointed out, Trump’s own government acknowledges that U.S. has a trade surplus with Canada — of $12.5 billion:

To recap: The president had, by his own admission, “absolutely no idea” whether the U.S. had a trade deficit with Canada; he and Trudeau had to send people out of the room to find out the facts, they came back and said that, as Trudeau claimed, there was no trade deficit; then, Trump tweeted that there actually is a trade deficit with Canada, despite there being audio evidence of him admitting the opposite; his conclusion that there is a trade deficit is because “almost all countries” have one, “and that’s how I know!”

[Mediaite]

Reality

Trump’s own administration says we have a trade surplus with Canada..

 

Trump Slams NBC’s Chuck Todd at Rally: ‘Sleepy-Eyed Son of a B*tch’

President Donald Trump held a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday night to support a GOP congressional candidate before the state’s special election — and re-upped on his brutal criticisms of the media.

Trump saved most of his vitriol, however, for cable news — most notably NBC News political director Chuck Todd, who he decried using one of his trademark insults.

After boasting of his recent decision to accept a meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Trump turned his ire towards those in the media expressing skepticism of his diplomatic breakthrough.

“They are saying well, Obama could have done that,” Trump said. “Trust me, he wouldn’t have did that. And neither would Bush and neither would Clinton. And they had their shot. And all they did was nothing.”

As he referenced an interview he did about North Korea on NBC’s Meet the Press back in 1999, Trump remarked that the show is “now headed by sleepy-eyes Chuck Todd.”

“He is a sleepy son of a bitch bitch, I’ll tell you,” Trump added.

Trump continued to tout his North Korea foreign policy, and took several more shots at NBC, even calling MSNBC “worse than CNN,” his arch cable nemesis:

[Mediaite]

Trump Goes Full MAGA: Calls Maxine Waters ‘Low IQ’

At a Moon Township, Penn. rally on Saturday, Donald Trump dropped any sense of decorum and presidential behavior in an extended rant against anything black, brown or logical, fulfilling predictions that he plans to go full MAGA to distract from the increasing coverage of the Mueller investigation, his legislative failures, the NRA’s wholesale buyout of the Republican Party’s soul and White House appointees dropping line like it’s hell week at the Que House.

At a KKK political rally for congressional candidate Rick Saccone (R-Penn.) on Saturday night, President Trump became so unhinged that his his face turned the color of the inside of an overripe cantaloupe as he railed against…

Hold up. I’m being told that’s his normal color. I’m not sure that’s medically possible, but in order to avoid any further mistakes,let’s just look at some excerpts from his speech:

“That’s why we have to defeat people like Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters, a very low IQ person. You ever see her? You ever see her? ‘We will impeach him! We will impeach him!’ … She is a very low IQ individual. You can’t help it. She really is.”

[The Root]

Media

Trump approves Arkansas Medicaid work requirements

Arkansas on Monday became the third state to get the Trump administration’s permission to impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved a Medicaid waiver that included a requirement for recipients to work, or participate in job training or job search activities for 80 hours a month.

State officials said they will begin implementing the work requirements June 1, making them the first state to do so. If a person fails to meet the requirements for three months, he or she will lose coverage for the rest of that calendar year.

However, the state did not get approval to roll back the eligibility level for Medicaid beneficiaries. If that provision had been approved, an estimated 60,000 people would have lost coverage.

Arkansas expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare to people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, and receives federal funding to pay for those new enrollees. But Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) sought to restrict the program so that only people who are at the federal poverty level would be eligible.

The so-called “partial expansion” was a key test of the limits of the Trump administration’s power on how far states could go to limit Medicaid enrollment. Arkansas officials sought to reduce eligibility, while still getting the same level of federal funding.

[The Hill]

Reality

Work requirements don’t make more people work, because most recipients already work, they just throw them off benefits.

Trump tweets — and then deletes — bizarre attack on ‘Alex Baldwin’ and his ‘dieing’ career

President Donald Trump launched a misspelled attack against actor Alec Baldwin over his “Saturday Night Live” portrayal but deleted the post minutes later.

The president twice misspelled the actor’s name as “Alex” in the tweet, which was posted at 5:42 a.m., and insisted Baldwin revived his “dieing” career by playing Trump on the sketch comedy program.

“Alex Baldwin, whose dieing mediocre career was saved by his impersonation of me on SNL, now says playing DJT was agony for him,” Trump tweeted. “Alex, it was also agony for those who were forced to watch. You were terrible. Bring back Darrell Hammond, much funnier and a far greater talent!”

The tweet was deleted by 6 a.m., but multiple Twitter users took screenshots of the misspelled post.

Like many of his early morning tweets, this one was prompted by a Fox News report that aired at 4:24 a.m. about Baldwin, who gave a lengthy interview Thursday with The Hollywood Reporter.

[Raw Story]

Trump says armed school officer in Parkland didn’t ‘love the children’

President Donald Trump continued to criticize the armed school resource officer in Parkland, Florida, who stayed outside of the school during the shooting, saying during a White House news conference conference that Scot Peterson “doesn’t love the children, probably doesn’t know the children.”

The comments tie into Trump’s push to arm some educators, including teachers, to deter school shootings. Trump has argued that officers outside the school don’t care about the students the same way teachers do.

“We need offensive capability and we are going to be doing something about it,” Trump said.

He added that it is “very, very important that we have offensive capability, as well as defensive capability, within the schools. You really are inviting people to come in and do whatever” without arming educators.

The armed school resource deputy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School waited outside the school building as the shooting unfolded last week, officials said earlier this week. Peterson never went in after taking a position on the west side of the building, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said at a news conference.

Peterson resigned after he was suspended without pay by Israel pending an internal investigation into his actions during the shooting that left 17 people dead, Israel said. Peterson was eligible for retirement.

Trump has seized on the story, slamming Peterson by name in an attempt to prove that more people inside schools needs to be armed in case of a shooting.
Trump told reporters earlier on Friday that Peterson “certainly did a poor job” and was a “coward.”

“He trained his whole life,” Trump said on the South Lawn of the White House. “But when it came time to get in there and do something he didn’t have the courage or something happened. But he certainly did a poor job. There’s no question about that.”

The Peterson story, however, undercuts Trump’s point that an armed official with gun training could have stopped the deadly shooting. Scott was armed and failed to do so.

Trump, asked during his news conference for specific proposals he would push on guns after the Florida shooting, listed improving background checks, getting rid of bump stocks and thwarting the mentally ill from buying weapons.

One thing Trump did not mention: Raising the age limit to buy certain types of weapons, something he has previously proposed. The NRA is against any change to age limits for buying weapons.

Trump also said that he talked to House Speaker Paul Ryan on Friday morning and mentioned speaking to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

[CNN]

White House takes dig at Omarosa after she makes negative Trump comments

The White House had a pretty shady response to Omarosa Manigault’s remarks about working for President Donald Trump’s administration.

On Thursday, CBS released a clip from tonight’s Celebrity Big Brother episode in which Manigault — who left her job at the White House in January — said she tried to stop Trump from tweeting, but failed because everyone around him “attacked” her.

Shortly after the clip made the rounds on the internet, White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah told reporters that the administration wasn’t taking Omarosa’s comments very seriously. “Omarosa was fired three times on The Apprentice, and this was the fourth time we let her go,” said Shah during a press conference. “She had limited contact with the president while here. She has no contact now.”

“I was haunted by tweets every single day,” says Manigault, who served as the director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison, on Celebrity Big Brother. “It’s bad.”

The second episode of Celebrity Big Brother airs tonight at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.

[MSN]

Media

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