Category: National Issues

DFL Chair Ken Martin on Donald Trump’s Inauguration

“Today, as Donald Trump becomes president, the Trump Administration will start working to undo all the progress we’ve made over the past 8 years. Their reckless ideas don’t account for the very real people who will be affected by them combined with the unrestrained support by the GOP-controlled Congress creates an unknown level of fear for what our future holds.

“But it’s not about how much we fear the uncertainty. It’s about how we transform that fear into fuel to fight the discrimination and hatred inherent in Trump’s policies so that we can protect the progress we made under President Obama’s bold leadership. Continue reading “DFL Chair Ken Martin on Donald Trump’s Inauguration”

How The Press Never Stopped Blaming Obama For Radical GOP Obstruction

The following article by Eric Boehlert was posted on the Media Matters website January 19, 2017:

Right on cue, as President Obama readies his exit from office, The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza this week published a misguided critique of the Democrat’s two terms. His analysis focused specifically on Obama’s broken “promise” and parroted a favorite Beltway media talking point: Both sides are to blame for the federal government being mired in “partisan gridlock” during his eight years, and it’s largely Obama’s fault he didn’t “fix” politics. Obama didn’t create “a government that worked for all of us”; he failed to create “something new, different and better,” wrote Cillizza.

Cillizza acknowledges that “Democrats immediately point to the fact that congressional Republicans, almost from the first day of Obama’s time in the White House, made opposing him a political strategy,” but dismisses it as being the primary cause for the partisan mess. (In Cillizza’s view, it’s both sides’ supposed culpability for the failed “grand bargain” in 2011 that serves as the key event.) Continue reading “How The Press Never Stopped Blaming Obama For Radical GOP Obstruction”

What Trump got wrong on Twitter this week (#3)

The following article by Michelle Ye Hee Lee was posted on their website:

In the third installment of this Fact Checker series, we fact-checked what President-elect Donald Trump got wrong in 11 tweets in the past week. And we have a bonus at the end of the round-up: something Trump got right on Twitter.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to……

Continue reading “What Trump got wrong on Twitter this week (#3)”

Donald Trump’s Hotel Bans Press For The Inauguration, Raising First Amendment Concerns

The following article by the Media Matters Staff was posted on their website January 18, 2017:

President-elect Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel is banning reporters from its premises during inauguration week, according to Politico’s Daniel Lippman. The move underscores the incoming president’s personal hostility toward the press and raises First Amendment issues, as the hotel space is leased by the president-elect from the federal government.

Throughout the 2016 campaign and into the transition, Trump has made his hostility to the press a centerpiece of his political strategy. Trump declared war on the press, which included mocking specific reporters as “neurotic,” “dumb,” and a “waste of time.” He retreated to softball interviews during the final weeks of the campaign with largely friendly interviewers, Fox News, and fringe media. Since the election, Trump has lashed out at The New York Times several times for its “BAD coverage.” Trump’s own incoming press secretary also admitted that he threatened to remove a journalist who was trying to ask the president-elect a question, and prominent Trump supporter and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich applauded the threat, calling it “a signal, frankly, to all the other reporters that there are going to be real limits” for proper behavior. Continue reading “Donald Trump’s Hotel Bans Press For The Inauguration, Raising First Amendment Concerns”

A New Presidency Of Disrespect And Disinformation Begins

The following article by Cynthia Tucker Haynes was posted on the National Memo website January 20, 2017:

President-elect Donald Trump addresses the “Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration” at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, U.S., January 19, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Segar

It begins.

We have officially entered the Age of Trump, an era that may be the most contentious and most dangerous to the health of the republic since the Civil War. We are two nations of nearly equal count, divided by opposing views on race, religion, pluralism, sexual orientation, feminism and even science. Each side believes the other is corrupt, mendacious and malicious.

This troubling divide would be difficult to bridge for a personality more temperamentally suited to the task. The imperturbable Barack Obama was sorely tested by the challenge of appealing to critics who insisted he was illegitimate. Hillary Clinton, had she become his successor, would have been confronted with a disloyal opposition that had already promised to embroil her in partisan investigations and spurious lawsuits. She, too, would have been pushed to the limits of her patience. Continue reading “A New Presidency Of Disrespect And Disinformation Begins”

Will Trump deliver the unifying inaugural address that his aides keep promising?

The following article by James Hohmann with Breanne Deppisch was posted on the Washington Post website January 19, 2017:

Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post

THE BIG IDEA: Donald Trump’s advisers and surrogates keep saying that tomorrow will be the day when he finally – finally! – pivots to become presidential.

Tom Barrack, a longtime friend and business partner of Trump who is running the Presidential Inaugural Committee, said tomorrow’s big speech will focus on “the issues that unite us” and declared that the divisions from the campaign will “vanish.” “What you’ll hear in his address is a switch from candidate to president,” he said on “CBS This Morning.” Continue reading “Will Trump deliver the unifying inaugural address that his aides keep promising?”

As soon as he is inaugurated, Trump will move to clamp down on immigration

The following article by Brian Bennett was posted on the LA Times website January 19, 2017:

Aides are clearing the way for President-elect Donald Trump to take the first steps toward transforming the immigration system as soon as he takes office Friday, fulfilling a major campaign pledge while deepening the fears of immigration advocates about what’s to come.

Gone will be the temporary protections of the final Obama years for people in the country illegally. In their place, expect to see images on the evening news of workplace raids as Trump sends a message that he is wasting no time on his promised crackdown. Continue reading “As soon as he is inaugurated, Trump will move to clamp down on immigration”

Trump Wants To Flood White House Press Briefings With Sycophants

The following article by Matt Gertz was posted on the Media Matters website January 17, 2017:

Donald J. Trump in Selma, NC. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times

Donald Trump has a message for the White House press corps: The press briefing room the journalists have used since the 1970s belongs to him, and if he wants to take it away, he can.

On Saturday, Esquire reported that the incoming Trump administration has discussed evicting the press from the briefing room and holding the daily briefings with the press secretary in a space outside of the White House. “They are the opposition party,” a senior official told the magazine. “I want ’em out of the building. We are taking back the press room.” Continue reading “Trump Wants To Flood White House Press Briefings With Sycophants”

Trump’s New Tactics With the Press Follow the Old-School Authoritarian Model

Journalists will be targeted in ways we didn’t imagine.

The following article by Kali Holloway was posted on the Alternet website January 16, 2017:

Donald Trump is fulfilling the role of an authoritarian demagogue so thoroughly that if this whole disaster were a movie, it would be criticized for being formulaic and cliched. His frequently expressed hostility toward the media comes right out of a well-worn copy of the Dictator’s Playbook, and he has repeatedly revealed himself to be an enemy of a free press. Continue reading “Trump’s New Tactics With the Press Follow the Old-School Authoritarian Model”