May 28, 2017

Trump: Montana race 'big deal' to Dems, fake news until Republican won

Source: The Hill



BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 05/28/17 08:58 AM EDT

President Trump early Sunday said the special election for Montana's open House seat wasn't well covered after the Republican candidate came out victorious.

-snip-



https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/868810522942164993

Republican Greg Gianforte won the special election last week for Montana's House seat despite an altercation ahead of the election that led to an assault charge against him.


-snip-

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) suggested in a later tweet on Sunday that Trump should express some disapproval over the assault charge.

https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/868816155980464128

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/335455-trump-montana-race-big-deal-to-dems-fake-news-until-republican-won

May 28, 2017

Graham: Comey should be held accountable for acting on bad intel

Source: The Hill


BY MAX GREENWOOD - 05/28/17 09:32 AM EDT

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday that fired FBI James Comey should be held accountable if he acted on Russian intelligence he knew to be fake during the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails.

"If he intervened in the election based on fake information generated by the Russians, that was an incredibly incompetent thing to do. So I don’t know who to believe anymore," Graham said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"That to me is a stunning story," he added. "From a Congress point of view, he never told us it was fake, so he needs to be held accountable." CNN reported on Friday that false intelligence had prompted Comey to publicly declare last summer that the Clinton email probe was over and to recommend against charging the former secretary of state.

In spite of the fact that he knew that intelligence was fake, Comey reportedly feared that, if the information were to become public, it could devastate the credibility of the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/335459-graham-comey-should-be-held-accountable-for-acting-on-bad-intel

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Graham: Withdrawing from Paris deal would be bad for GOP

BY MAX GREENWOOD - 05/28/17 09:45 AM EDT

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) said on Sunday that if President Trump withdraws the U.S. from the Paris climate deal, it would affirm to the world that he believes climate change to be a "hoax" and would badly hurt the GOP and the country.

"If he does withdraw, that would be a definitive statement from the president that he believes climate change is a hoax," Graham said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"It would be taken as a statement that climate change is not a problem; is not real," he continued. "So that would be bad for the party, bad for the country."

Graham's comments came a day after Trump declined to pledge his support for the 195-country Paris deal at a meeting of the Group of 7 in Italy, making him the only G7 leader not to support the agreement outright.

more
http://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/335460-graham-withdrawing-from-paris-deal-would-be-bad-for-gop

May 28, 2017

Macron says long Trump handshake 'not innocent'

Source: Politico



Holding onto U.S. president’s hand showed he won’t make even small concessions, French leader explains.

By KAIT BOLONGARO 5/28/17, 11:30 AM CET Updated 5/28/17, 12:43 PM CET

French President Emmanuel Macron said his extended handshake with Donald Trump before a NATO summit was “not innocent” and intended to show he did not make even small concessions.

In an interview with the Journal du Dimanche published on Sunday, the French leader said his interaction with the American head of state was “a moment of truth.”

“My handshake with him was not innocent,” Macron said. “We need to show that we won’t make small concessions, even symbolic ones, while not overhyping things either.”

In the interview, Macron went on to compare Trump’s attitude to power with that of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “Donald Trump, the Turkish president or the Russian president believe in the logic of the trial of strength, which doesn’t bother me. I don’t believe in the diplomacy of public invective, but in my bilateral dialogues, I don’t let anything pass, that is how we are respected,” he said.

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Read more: http://www.politico.eu/article/macron-says-long-trump-handshake-not-innocent/

May 28, 2017

A high-stakes gamble: How Jared Kushner reacted to previous crises

By Michael Kranish and Jonathan O'Connell May 27 at 5:38 PM

NEW YORK — Jared Kushner had barely survived a fight to save his family’s real estate empire.

Taking charge of the business after his father went to prison, Kushner, 25 at the time, paid $1.8 billion in 2007 for the nation’s most expensive office building. Then the market went south, the debts piled up, and Kushner spent years pushing banks to renegotiate the loans. But after one disgruntled lender had tried to block him, Kushner had an unusual weapon at his disposal: He owned a newspaper.

Kushner, who had purchased the New York Observer in 2006, walked into his editor’s office and suggested a story exposing potentially embarrassing details about the uncooperative lender.

“I could tell he was angry at the guy,” said the editor, Elizabeth Spiers, who resigned in 2012. Only after months of dead-end reporting did Kushner finally stop asking for the story, she said. That followed a separate incident in which Kushner wanted a “hit job” on another foe, a second Observer editor told The Washington Post.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-high-stakes-gamble-how-jared-kushner-reacted-to-previous-crises/2017/05/27/d1c16f54-3f2b-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html

May 28, 2017

Trump unleashes Sunday morning tweet-spasm: White House leaks are fabricated lies made up by...

Source: RawStory



Trump unleashes Sunday morning tweet-spasm: White House leaks ‘are fabricated lies made up by #FakeNews’

DAVID EDWARDS
28 MAY 2017 AT 08:51 ET

President Donald Trump on Sunday lashed out at the media for publishing leaks about chaos in the White House and revealing that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had become a focus of the FBI investigation.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/868807327130025984
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/868807754231820291
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/868810404335673344

As The New York Times reported, President Trump returned from a nine day overseas trip to a White House in turmoil and the news that Kushner had tried to open backchannel communitcations with Russia before the president took office.

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Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/trump-unleashes-sunday-morning-tweet-spasm-white-house-leaks-are-fabricated-lies-made-up-by-fakenews/

May 28, 2017

'Donny from the Russian block' Trump sets Internet ablaze after calling Trudeau 'Justin from Canada'

ELIZABETH PREZA
27 MAY 2017 AT 20:41 ET

Donald Trump on Saturday capped off his gaffe-filled international tour by referring to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Justin from Canada.”

https://twitter.com/lauren_larose/status/868483095825141761

The president made the remark during a speech to military families at the U.S. Naval Air Base in Signoella, Italy having just departed the G7 summit with NATO allies including Canada, France and Germany.

“Great people,” Trump said of his fellow global leaders. “We made a lot of good friends this week, I’ll tell you, a lot of good friends. They’re good people.” As the Hill reports, this isn’t the first time Trump referenced “Justin from Canada.” Following a meeting with Trudeau and Mexican president Enrique Nieto, the president similarly called his peer by the “Justin from Canada” moniker.

News that Trump applied such a nickname to a fellow world leader set off the Internet. Read some of the best posts below:

https://twitter.com/MrTommyCampbell/status/868548039127973888
https://twitter.com/jbillinson/status/868489308134625281

-snip-

https://twitter.com/mcguffindavid/status/868496166949978112
https://twitter.com/ArleneDickinson/status/868535502323949568
https://twitter.com/AndyCarlsonShow/status/868510824977006592
https://twitter.com/michaelurie/status/868506941848522752

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/donny-from-the-russian-block-trump-sets-internet-ablaze-after-calling-trudeau-justin-from-canada/

May 27, 2017

Trump family members met with GOP leaders to discuss strategy

Source: The Washington Post



By Robert Costa May 27 at 12:57 PM

Amid mounting questions at the White House about Russia, three prominent members of President Trump’s family — his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and Eric’s wife, Lara — have ramped up their engagement with the Republican Party’s national political operation, having met privately with GOP leaders to share their concerns and outlook.

Their most recent effort came Thursday, when the president’s eldest sons and Lara Trump visited the Republican National Committee’s headquarters in Washington. Those three family members, who were invited by the RNC, stayed for about two hours, according to four people who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Their appearance at the RNC irked at least two prominent Republicans who were briefed on the session, who wondered whether it was appropriate for the president’s sons, who run the Trump family real estate business, to be highly involved in discussing the party’s strategy and resources. But two other people familiar with the meeting said it was appropriate for the president’s sons and daughter-in-law, who all volunteered for Trump’s campaign, to huddle with Republican leaders and offer their perspective on what would be most helpful to President Trump ahead of the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential race.

Eric and Donald Jr. run the Trump Organization and manage its numerous properties and branding projects. Lara Trump is now a political operative, following her hire earlier this year as a consultant for a Trump-affiliated digital company.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/27/trump-family-members-met-with-gop-leaders-to-discuss-strategy/

May 27, 2017

'As a Woman, I Am Offended': CNN's Amanpour Says Clinton Has Been Subjected to 'Double Standards'

by Joe DePaolo | 5:18 pm, May 26th, 2017

At a forum in New York earlier this month, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked Hillary Clinton if she believed misogyny played a role in the 2016 campaign.

“Yes,” Clinton said. “I do think it played a role.” So, it turns out, does Amanpour.

As part of a lengthy profile of Clinton published Friday by New York magazine, Amanpour discussed another topic broached at the forum: Clinton blaming, in part, former FBI Director James Comey for her election loss.

Clinton was widely criticized for her comments on Comey. But Amanpour believes that gender played a role in the backlash against the democratic nominee.

<The idea that she shouldn’t mention the Comey letter when the entire nation and the most respected statisticians are considering its impact is so strange. If she were a man, would she be allowed to mention it? As a woman, I am offended by the double standards applied here.>

http://www.mediaite.com/online/as-a-woman-i-am-offended-cnns-amanpour-says-clinton-has-been-subjected-to-double-standards/

May 27, 2017

Trump, Ryan, Mulvaney, All of Them: Partners in Plutocracy - by Joy Ann Reid

The Republicans have been called the party that hates the poor. With this budget and this health care bill, it’s no longer just the poor.

JOY-ANN REID
05.26.17 1:00 AM ET

It may be too glib to say that Republicans hate the poor. After all, any political party is made up of lots of different people with differing views and priorities. But it isn’t far off to say that the Republican Party is at its core a collection of men (and women) who broadly believe that the poor should bear more of the burdens of funding the government, while the rich should enjoy more of its fruits.

Listen to Mick Mulvaney, Donald Trump’s budget chief and a founding member of the House “Freedom Caucus,” bark into the camera about “fairness to the people who pay the bills” versus aid to the poor, or Paul Ryan giggle with delight at the prospect of throwing millions of people off Medicaid to make room for “tax reform” and you’ll get the idea.

Mulvaney and Ryan are proud architects of the deeply cruel, almost cartoonishly villainous Trump budget, unveiled this week amidst the ongoing swirl of Russiagate and Donald Trump’s variously weird and awkward travels abroad. But while many are attempting to label the budget a betrayal of the ideas Trump ran on, even a cursory inspection of his life proves that he does indeed buy into the Ryan-Mulvaney reverse Robin Hood fairy tale. And by the way, so do his voters, who almost to a person believe not only that the rich deserve more but that even the most draconian budget cuts will restore fairness to the system by cutting the undeserving—read “lazy minorities” and “illegals”—out of it.

These beliefs aren’t new. They’ve been nurtured among generations of young Republicans who devoured Ayn Rand novels in high school and who revere Ronald Reagan—not just the Reagan of the 1980s, but the one who in 1965 declared Medicare to be the first horseman of the socialist Apocalypse. They’re reinforced every Sunday by a conservative Protestant church that teaches that riches are a tangible sign of God’s grace, and that prosperity, not charity, is what the believer should aspire to. They’re backstopped by friends and neighbors and plumbers and store clerks who view wealth as a sign of intelligence, even when the tortured syntax of a rich man they revere renders that notion laughable. And they are redoubled by an American culture that almost since its founding has mistaken material success for achievement, and plunder for pluck.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/26/trump-ryan-mulvaney-all-of-them-partners-in-plutocracy

May 27, 2017

Liberals Wanted a Fight in Montana. Democratic Leaders Saw a Lost Cause.

By JONATHAN MARTIN and ALEXANDER BURNSMAY 26, 2017

BOZEMAN, Mont. — The Democratic defeat in a hard-fought special House election in Montana on Thursday highlighted the practical limitations on liberal opposition to President Trump and exposed a deepening rift between cautious party leaders, who want to pick their shots in battling for control of Congress in 2018, and more militant grass-roots activists who want to fight the Republicans everywhere.

Rob Quist, the Democratic nominee in Montana, staked his campaign on the Republican health care bill, but he still lost by six percentage points, even after his Republican opponent for the state’s lone House seat, Greg Gianforte, was charged with assaulting a reporter on the eve of the election.

The margin in this race was relatively small in a state that Mr. Trump carried by more than 20 percentage points last year. But Mr. Quist’s defeat disappointed grass-roots Democrats who financed nearly his entire campaign while the national party declined to spend heavily on what it considered, from the outset, an all-but-lost cause in daunting political territory.

This tension — between party leaders who will not compete for seats they think they cannot win and an energized base loath to concede any contests to Republicans — risks demoralizing activists who keep getting their hopes up. It also points to a painful reality for Democrats: Despite the boiling fury on the left, the resistance toward Mr. Trump has yet to translate into a major electoral victory.

In part, this is because the few special elections for Congress so far have taken place in red-leaning districts, where the near-daily barrage of new controversies involving Mr. Trump has not damaged him irreparably and where he remains fairly popular.

more
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/montana-special-election.html?emc=edit_th_20170527&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284