Tag: Donald Trump

What Should We Do About A Mentally Ill President?

The following article by Jim Hightower was posted on the National Memo website March 10, 2017:

It’s time to face up to the obvious: The President of the United States is deranged.

I don’t mean that he’s merely idiosyncratic or pushing policies that I think are crazy, nor do I say this as just another political jab. I mean that Donald J. Trump literally is mentally ill.

OK, I’m no doctor, but you don’t need a doctorate in mental disorders to see that his behavior in public and on Twitter is beyond abnormal — it’s psychotic. As we’ve seen, he routinely plunges uncontrollably into prolonged fits of petty paranoia; he succumbs to delusions of imperialist grandeur; he spouts absurd right-wing rumors as facts (while simultaneously denying that actual facts are true); and he is pathologically addicted to lying, bizarrely repeating his most blatant fabrications even after they’ve been totally debunked. Continue reading “What Should We Do About A Mentally Ill President?”

The Daily 202: Trump team taking more and more credit for Obama successes

The following article by James Hohmann was posted on the Washington Post website March 10, 2017:

President Trump greets FirstCapital Bank of Texas Chairman Kenneth Burgess, Jr., during a meeting with leaders from small community banks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House yesterday. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

THE BIG IDEA: While Donald Trump accuses his predecessor of wiretapping his office and prods Congress to eviscerate his signature domestic achievement, he also demands credit for Obama administration victories that he had nothing or little to do with.

— The Bureau for Labor Statistics announced this morning that the U.S. added 235,000 jobs in February, bringing the unemployment rate down to 4.7 percent and likely giving the Federal Reserve the green light to raise interest rates next week. Continue reading “The Daily 202: Trump team taking more and more credit for Obama successes”

Ex-AIdes: Trump has long been worried about recorded calls

The following article by Jake Pearson was released by the Associated Press March 8, 2017:

Long before he tweeted about wiretaps, Donald Trump worried about who was listening in on his calls.

As a real estate mogul and reality TV star — well before he alleged on Twitter that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones during the campaign — Trump expressed regular concern that his phone lines were not secure, according to three former Trump Organization executives.

At times he talked about possible listening devices and worried that he was being monitored, two executives said. In other times, he was doing the monitoring. One of the executives said Trump occasionally taped his own phone conversations using an old-school tape recorder, although Trump once denied this. Continue reading “Ex-AIdes: Trump has long been worried about recorded calls”

What Trump’s Medicaid Plan Would Mean for People with Disabilities

The following article by Aki Suzuki, Michael Richardson and Jeremy Slevin was posted on the Center for American Progress website March 8, 2017:

During his campaign for president, Donald Trump openly mocked people with disabilities. Now, he and his allies in Congress are threatening to slash Medicaid—a program on which 15 million people with disabilities rely for basic living standards. It’s time to tell President Trump and Congress: hands off Medicaid.

Did The Trump Organization Make A Deal With An Oligarch Linked To Iran?

The following article by Jack Moore was written for Newsweek and posted on the National Memo website March 7, 2017:

President of the United States Donald J. Trump at CPAC 2017 February 24th 2017. Michael Vadon /Flickr

Donald Trump has styled himself as a hardline opponent of the Iranian regime, but new details of a business deal in Azerbaijan point to his organization’s relationship with an oligarch’s family that has close links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

A New Yorker feature alleges that indirect ties between Trump’s business interests and the Iranian regime, which he is currently railing against in office, may have been closer than previously believed before he ascended to the presidency.

It reports that the Trump Organization, the business that Trump handed to his sons when he was inaugurated in January, had conducted business with the Mammadov family, specifically “close relatives of Ziya Mammadov,” the Transport Minister of Azerbaijan. Continue reading “Did The Trump Organization Make A Deal With An Oligarch Linked To Iran?”

There’s An Obvious Reason Why Trump Has Gotten Some “Negative” Coverage

The following article by Eric Boehlert was posted on the Media Matters website March 7, 2017:

Recent media analyses have argued that President Donald Trump has received lots of negative news coverage since being sworn into office. But before his supporters inevitably seize on the findings to bash journalists as biased and unfair, there’s important context to keep mind: Based on the fawning over Trump’s address to Congress last week, the press is desperate to tell positive Trump stories — but the administration’s first weeks have created nonstop tumult.

Media coverage of Trump since the election has been flawed in several important ways, but journalists shouldn’t be blamed for reporting on all the self-inflicted wounds Trump and his White House team have caused, because news coverage doesn’t exist in a vacuum. News coverage revolves around … news. Continue reading “There’s An Obvious Reason Why Trump Has Gotten Some “Negative” Coverage”

Who Will Save Us From The Conspiracy Theorist In Chief?

The following article by Gene Lyons was posted on the National Memo website March 8, 2017:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Greensboro, North Carolina on June 14, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

You know, along with having the impulse control of a seven year-old boy, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Donald J. Trump just ain’t real smart. He’s a cunning self-promoter, but dim. He did manage to go bankrupt in the casino business, you know. That’s really hard to do.

Trump showed losses of close to a billion dollars operating his grandiose gambling dens in Atlantic City. In the process, he stiffed investors and contractors alike, right down to the guys who installed the toilets and slot machines. Around the same time, Trump Air — his personal airline — also went bust. U.S. banks basically quit lending him money.

So he turned to the Russians. Continue reading “Who Will Save Us From The Conspiracy Theorist In Chief?”

Fact-Check: Trump Is Wrong About Guantánamo Detainees

The following article by Charlie Savage was posted on the New York Times March 7, 2017:

A United States soldier inside the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Credit John Moore/Getty Images

President Trump said on Tuesday on Twitter that “122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!”

Is that true?

No, what Mr. Trump wrote is false.

What is true?

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, of the 714 former Guantánamo Bay detainees who were transferred to other countries by Jan. 15, 2017 — dating back to when the Bush administration opened the prison in Cuba in January 2002 — 121 are “confirmed” to have engaged in militant activity after their release. Continue reading “Fact-Check: Trump Is Wrong About Guantánamo Detainees”

Trump and Republicans see a ‘deep state’ foe: Barack Obama

The following article by David Weigel was posted on the Washington Post website March 7, 2017:

President Trump’s weekend allegations of a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to wiretap his 2016 campaign confused intelligence analysts, befuddled members of Congress and created fresh work for fact-checkers. Within 24 hours of his allegations, made on Twitter, the administration conceded that the president was basing his claim not on closely held information, but on a Breitbart News story quoting the conservative radio host and author Mark Levin.

But in conservative media, where the claim originated, Trump has gotten credit for cracking open a plot by a “deep state” of critics and conspirators to bring down his presidency. And the perpetrator is former president Barack Obama. Continue reading “Trump and Republicans see a ‘deep state’ foe: Barack Obama”