Tag: Joe Biden

Trump attacks Biden clean energy plan while announcing environmental rollback

President Trump mocked presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s climate plan Wednesday during a speech unveiling an environmental regulation rollback the White House hopes will speed construction projects.

Trump’s comments came in an Atlanta speech announcing a rollback to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), weakening a bedrock environmental law in order to speed permitting for pipelines, oil and gas drilling, highways, and other infrastructure.

“Our past vice president opposes — think of this — all of our permitting reforms,” Trump said to the crowd. 

“Biden is happy to tie up projects in red tape, and we want to get things built,” he added.

Biden does oppose Trump’s rollback to NEPA. 

“No one should be fooled that Donald Trump is attempting to destroy a bipartisan, cornerstone law to distract from the fact that ‘Infrastructure Week’ never happened and never will happen as long as he is president,” Biden campaign spokesman Matt Hill said in a statement.

“He has failed to deliver any real plan to create jobs and instead is cutting corners to once again ignore science, experts, and communities and reservations entitled to clean air, water, and environments,” Hill added.

Biden recently unveiled a $700 billion economic plan and has included multiple environmental measures as part of his vision for restoring economic growth. 

A Tuesday update to his environmental plan, which comes as the left wing of the party has sought to push him further on green issues, would set a 2035 target for carbon-free power.

That goal was among those recommended by a “unity task force” of supporters of both Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the former vice president. The panel was co-chaired by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a leading proponent of the Green New Deal. 

“Unbelievable. Biden wants to massively re-regulate the energy economy, rejoin the Paris climate accord, which would kill our energy totally,” Trump said Wednesday.

“They still haven’t explained what they could do to power our great plants and factories, but at some point I’m sure they will. We’ll learn that from AOC, who is in charge of energy,” he said, adding, “AOC and Bernie are in charge of energy.”

[The Hill]

Trump shares disturbing meme of Joe Biden in a coffin

President Trump has given the Biden campaign a death sentence — literally.

On Tuesday, Trump shared a video declaring former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign effectively over for declaring that black voters who can’t decide between him and Trump “ain’t black.” It first shares the devastating clip, and then cuts to video of Ghana’s dancing pallbearers, with Biden’s campaign logo on the coffin.

While closing out a Friday interview with Charlamagne tha God on The Breakfast Club, Biden declared that “you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or [President] Trump, you ain’t black.” A whole lot of people unexpectedly found Biden’s comment racist and offensive, and by Friday afternoon, Biden had acknowledged he “shouldn’t have been such a wise guy.”

[The Week]

Media

Twitter flags Biden video retweeted by Trump as ‘manipulated media’

For apparently the first time, Twitter Inc. has flagged a post retweeted by President Donald Trump as “manipulated media.”

The tweet came from Dan Scavino, the White House’s social media director, who posted an edited video of former Vice President Joe Biden saying: “We can only re-elect Donald Trump.”

But the actual, unedited quote, which came from a Biden speech in Kansas City, Mo., on Saturday, was: “We can only reelect Donald Trump if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here.”

The Washington Post first reported Twitter’s action.

As of 8:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, the tweet, which was originally posted by Scavino on Saturday evening, had been viewed 5.2 million times.

On Friday, Twitter TWTR, 3.825% updated its manipulated-media policy. “You may not deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm,” the company said in a blog post. “In addition, we may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context.”

Last month, Twitter vowed a new effort to crack down on photos, videos and audio that are designed to mislead people. At the time, Twitter said it could remove posts that caused harm, while posts that misled but did not cause harm would just be given a warning label.

However, as of Sunday night, the “manipulated media” tag was only visible to Twitter users on their timelines — searching for the offending tweet brought it up without the warning label. Twitter was reportedly working to fix that glitch.

[Market Watch]

Trump repeats Ukraine conspiracy theory and more debunked lies on 53-minute “Fox & Friends” call

President Trump spent 53 minutes of his Friday morning on the phone with the hosts of “Fox & Friends” — his latest call-in to one of his favorite TV shows.

Driving the news: President Trump spent a chunk of the interview repeating a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election. “That’s what the word is,” he claimed without evidence.

  • The debunked conspiracy theory — frequently referred to as CrowdStrike, the security firm at its center — is based on the idea that Ukraine was complicit in the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee to create false electronic records that Russia was behind the hacking.
  • Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, said during his impeachment hearing that the Crowdstrike conspiracy theory is “a Russian narrative that President Putin has promoted.”
  • Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top Russia adviser, said during her impeachment hearing that the conspiracy theory is “a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

Worth noting: Trump also said that Crowdstrike is owned by “a very wealthy Ukrainian,” but it’s actually a publicly-traded company. Its largest outside shareholder is Warburg Pincus, a New York City private equity firm from which Trump plucked one of his top economic advisors.

Impeachment-related highlights:

  • The president once again slammed former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, claiming she was “not an angel.” During her impeachment testimony , she agreed that it was Trump’s prerogative to fire ambassadors at will, but asked, “What I do wonder is why was it necessary to smear my reputation also?”
  • Trump said that during a Senate impeachment trial he only wants House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to testify more than Hunter Biden.
  • Trump said that he knows “exactly” who the Ukraine whistleblower is — and insinuated that the “Fox & Friends” hosts did as well — prompting them to attempt to steer the conversation away from the topic live on air.

Other highlights:

  • Trump predicted that Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t pass the USMCA trade deal, despite it being a priority for some Democratic lawmakers ahead of 2020.
  • He tried to find a middle ground between supporting pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong and not offending Chinese President Xi Jinping as the U.S. attempts to close a “phase one” trade deal with China. “We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I’m also standing with President Xi,” he said.
  • Trump denied rumors surrounding his health after a surprise visit to Walter Reed National Medical Center last weekend, calling it “fake, disgusting news.”

2020 lightning round:

  • Joe Biden: “I don’t know if Joe can make it mentally. He’s off.”
  • Pete Buttigieg: “I don’t see him dealing with President Xi. I don’t see him dealing with Kim Jong-un. But maybe he is.”
  • Elizabeth Warren: “I think Pocahontas has come up from the embers.”
  • Michael Bloomberg: “I think his time has come and gone.

[Axios]

Reality

There was multiple fact checks some could only refer to this call as “bananas.”

Media

Trump publicly urges China to investigate Bidens amid impeachment inquiry

 President Donald Trump urged another foreign government to probe Joe Biden and his son Thursday, saying the Chinese government should investigate the former vice president and son Hunter Biden over the latter’s involvement with an investment fund that raised money in the country.

“China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.

While Trump said he hasn’t requested Chinese President Xi Jinping investigate the Bidens, the public call mirrors the private behavior on which Democrats are partially basing their impeachment inquiry — using the office of the presidency to press a foreign leader to investigate a political rival.

It is “certainly something we can start thinking about, because I’m sure that President Xi does not like being on that kind of scrutiny, where billions of dollars is taken out of his country by a guy that just got kicked out of the Navy,” Trump said Thursday of asking China to probe the Bidens. “He got kicked out of the Navy, all of the sudden he’s getting billions of dollars. You know what they call that? They call that a payoff.”

The U.S. in the midst of a tense trade war with China. The president, discussing progress on negotiations with Beijing on a possible trade agreement just moments prior to his remarks about the Bidens, told reporters that “if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.”

Chinese officials will be in Washington next week in another attempt to revive talks, Trump said.

Trump, seeking to expand his corruption accusations against the Bidens beyond Ukraine, has in recent days repeatedly accused Hunter Biden of using a 2013 trip on Air Force Two with his father, then the vice president, to procure $1.5 billion from China for a private equity fund he had started.

Prior to Thursday, Trump had not called for an investigation of the matter. The White House declined to comment on Trump’s remarks.

Despite Trump’s accusations, there has been no evidence of corruption on the part of the former vice president or his son. In a statement, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director, Kate Bedingfield, said the president “is flailing and melting down on national television, desperately clutching for conspiracy theories that have been debunked and dismissed by independent, credible news organizations.”

“As Joe Biden forcefully said last night, the defining characteristic of Donald Trump’s presidency is the ongoing abuse of power. What Donald Trump just said on the South Lawn of the White House was this election’s equivalent of his infamous ‘Russia, if you’re listening’ moment from 2016 — a grotesque choice of lies over truth and self over the country,” Bedingfield said.

Trump, during a 2016 campaign rally, encouraged the country to meddle in the 2016 election by trying to access Hillary Clinton’s emails, saying, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation found that within hours of Trump‘s invitation, Russian military intelligence initiated a hack against Clinton’s office. Trump and his allies have said he wasn’t serious when he made the comment.

In pushing back on Trump, Biden’s campaign previously pointed to a fact-check from The Washington Post that found Trump’s claims false while tracing the origins of the $1.5 billion figure to a 2018 book published by conservative author Peter Schweizer.

In addition, Hunter Biden’s spokesman, George Mesires, told NBC News previously that Hunter Biden wasn’t initially an “owner” of the company and has never gotten paid for serving on the board. He said Hunter Biden didn’t acquire an equity interest in the fund until 2017, after his father had left office.

And when he did, he put in only about $420,000 — a 10 percent interest. That puts the total capitalization of the fund at the time at about $4.2 million — a far cry from the $1.5 billion that Trump has alleged.

Trump also said Thursday that he still wants Ukraine to conduct “a major investigation” into Joe and Hunter Biden.

[NBC News]

Reality

Lawfare: Former federal prosecutor and current professor at the University of Alabama School of Law Joyce White Vance concisely yet methodically explained why Trump’s statements constituted a crime.

“Trump just committed a felony violation of law by soliciting something of value in connection with a US election from a foreign government on national TV. 52 U.S. Code § 30121. Violating the law isn’t necessary for Impeachment but it certainly warrants it,” Vance wrote (including a citation to a statute).

She then explained how previously documented accounts of similar behavior render Trump’s conduct here even more culpable than in earlier instances of his requests for foreign assistance.

“The statute requires knowledge your conduct is a crime. After the Mueller investigation, there’s no way Trump was unaware this violates the law. Ukraine/China can you hear me is even worse than Russia, if that’s possible, because it comes from a sitting president,” she wrote.

Trump blasts media, Biden, Warren in Pennsylvania

President Trump blasted the media, U.S. trading partners and his Democratic rivals for the White House in a Tuesday speech that had been advertised as focusing on energy and manufacturing.

Trump spent roughly an hour in Monaca, Pa., speaking to workers at a Shell petrochemical plant. While his speech was sprinkled with references to his administration’s efforts to expand pipelines, produce more energy and cut regulations, the president regularly went off on tangents swiping at critics.

“Can you imagine if I got a fair press? I mean, we’re leading without it. Can you imagine if these people treated me fairly? The election would be over,” Trump said, taking a dig at the media.

In another random aside directed at the media, Trump mocked the Academy Awards and suggested the annual show had seen a drop in ratings because it didn’t align with his supporters.

“The Academy Awards is on hard times now,” Trump said. “You know why? Because they started taking us on. Everyone got tired of it.”

The president swiped at various other familiar targets, including the Green New Deal, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and the World Trade Organization.

At one point, he disputed claims that he’s profited off the presidency by claiming that lawsuits over the Emoluments Clause and other legal fees have cost him a “fortune.”

“I don’t care. You know, if you’re wealthy it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I just want to do a great job.”

Trump has a tendency to go off script at official White House events. Standing behind the official presidential seal, he often ignores the teleprompter in favor of ad-libbed remarks recounting his 2016 victory, predicting his 2020 opponent and admonishing those who doubt him.

Tuesday was no different. Trump was in Pennsylvania to tour a Shell petrochemical facility where natural gas will be turned into plastic.

The president at times made references to energy and manufacturing as promised. He touted his administration’s decision to roll back regulations that prevented plants like the one he visited Tuesday from being built and cited the boom in energy production during his presidency.

But even some of his energy-related remarks were retreads from his campaign-style rhetoric. He jabbed at 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over her comments dismissing the future of coal miners in West Virginia and accused New York state of caring more about suing him than about boosting jobs with fracking.

Trump again mocked the use of wind as an energy source and ripped the progressive Green New Deal and the Democratic presidential candidates who support it.

“I don’t want to speak badly about it. I want to encourage them. That should be their platform, I don’t want to do it too early. I did it very early with Pocahontas. I should’ve probably waited. She’s staging a comeback on Sleepy Joe,” he said, referring derisively to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former Vice President Joe Biden, respectively.

“I don’t know who’s going to win,” he continued. “But we’ll have to hit Pocahontas very hard again if she does win. But she’s staging a little bit of a comeback. What a group. Pocahontas and Sleepy Joe. I don’t think they give a damn about western Pennsylvania.”

Parts of Trump’s speech were intended to highlight his personal role in boosting economic prospects for some in Pennsylvania, which will serve as a key swing state in the 2020 election as he seeks to retain support in Rust Belt communities that helped propel him to victory four years ago.

The president won the state by roughly 45,000 votes in 2016 and won the county where Tuesday’s speech took place by 18 percentage points.

Even though plans for the Monaca plant were first announced while former President Obama was in office, Trump attempted to broadly take credit for the economic conditions in the state.

[The Hill]

Panicked Trump retweets claim farmers love him and Democrats are to blame for auto industry job losses

President Donald Trump seemed panicky Sunday night, searching for validation that everything is going well in his country despite reports to the contrary.

The president retweeted the chair of the Republican Party, who posted a video showing an Iowa farmer who loves Trump. The move comes after Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture got an ear full from farmers about not doing “great” under this presidency.

“We are not starting to do great again,” said Brian Thalmann, who serves as the president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association. “We are starting to go down very quickly.”

Second, the president tweeted that a Joe Biden presidency would kill the fossil fuel industry and the auto industry along with it. Unfortunately for the GOP, the auto industry is already making a move to more fuel-efficient vehicles and autonomous cars. One plant that Trump promised to save in 2017 just closed in an Ohio townthat isn’t far from Michigan.

“He came to our community and said: ‘Don’t sell your house. These jobs are coming back,’” said David Green, president of United Auto Workers Local 1112. “We’ve seen nothing but job losses around here.”

Trump went on to retweet claims the economy is strong and everything in the United States is going extremely well.

[Raw Story]

Trump Rage-Tweets at Biden Speech Condemning Him for ‘Fanning the Flames of White Supremacy’: ‘Sooo Boring!’

After visiting victims in Dayton and en route to visiting victims in El Paso, President Donald Trump trashed Joe Biden on Twitter as the networks covered the former veep’s speech denouncing the president.

Biden said that POTUS has “fanned the flames of white supremacy” and that no one was fooled by his “low-energy” condemnation this tweet.

Trump tweeted in response by insulting “Sleepy Joe” and remarking, “Sooo Boring!”

He also got in a dig at the media, saying, “The LameStream Media will die in the ratings and clicks with this guy. It will be over for them.”

[Mediaite]

Trump slams Fox News polls as ‘terrible to me’ a day after he praised one

The up-and-down relationship between President Donald Trump and Fox News took another negative turn Friday.

A day after praising a Fox News poll that reflected confidence in his economic record, Trump attacked another Fox News poll that shows him losing the 2020 race to former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden.

“@FoxNews is at it again,” Trump said in a tweet. “So different from what they used to be during the 2016 Primaries, & before – Proud Warriors!”

He added another barb: “Now new Fox Polls, which have always been terrible to me (they had me losing BIG to Crooked Hillary), have me down to Sleepy Joe.”

Just a day before, Trump touted Fox News data on the economy –  “Fox Poll say best Economy in DECADES!” – while ignoring less impressive numbers (a 51% disapproval rating).

Trump continues to give interviews to Fox News hosts – he spoke Thursday with Sean Hannity on his show – but has periodically attacked his favored network on other fronts.

Earlier this month, Trump hit Fox News over the hiring of Democratic consultant Donna Brazile as a political commentator. 

Back in April, Trump attacked Fox News anchor Bret Baier over sponsoring a town hall featuring Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

That one drew a retweet from Baier, who said “thanks for watching Mr. President” and added that “we cover all sides.”

Despite his criticism, there are many examples of Trump praising Fox News polls – when they look good for him.

“New Fox Poll: 58% of people say that the FBI broke the law in investigating Donald J. Trump,” the president tweeted in May. In November, he praised a Fox News poll claiming he had a record approval rating among African Americans. Early in the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump praised numerous Fox News polls showing him leading Republican candidates nationally, inIowa and in New Hampshire. He also boasted about a 2015 Fox News poll showing him ahead of then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. 

As for the latest survey, the one showing him losing to Biden, Fox anchor Julie Banderas tweeted that Trump “is incorrect” when he suggests that the information is coming from Fox News itself. 

“FOX News Opinion Polls are the public’s opinion,” she tweeted.

[USA Today]

Trump says he’s ‘so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius’ in tweet bashing 2020 Dems

President Donald Trump again referred to himself as a “stable genius” while also touting himself as “great looking” in a tweet Thursday mocking some of the leading Democratic candidates hoping to unseat him. 

In the middle of a morning tweet storm that touched on everything from the census to the Pledge of Allegiance, Trump said that all news media outlets would all be endorsing him “at some point, one way or the other.” He made that prediction based on his belief that they will “quickly go out of business for lack of credibility, or approval, from the public” when “I ultimately leave office in six years or maybe 10 or 14 (just kidding).” 

He then used his favorite insults for former Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wondering how anyone could imagine one of them being president instead of “what you have now, so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius!” 

Trump has referred to himself as a “stable genius” on several occasions. He first used the term in January 2018 in response to concerns that he was not mentally fit for office, which were magnified after the publication of Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.” The book featured quotes from administration officials who questioned Trump’s cognitive ability, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon who said Trump “has lost it.” 

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” Trump tweeted. He added that being elected president “on my first try” should “qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!” 

The president used the phrase again in May after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she hoped “for an intervention” for Trump and expressed concern about his well-being after he abruptly left a meeting with Democrats. Pelosi said Trump had “flipped” but Trump said he had been “extremely calm” and called himself an “extremely stable genius.” 


[USA Today]

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