Tag: Trump dictatorial dreams

Trump gleefully compares himself to an authoritarian strongman

Hungary’s democratic institutions are under attack from its own Prime Minister Viktor Orban, but you wouldn’t know it from President Donald Trump treatment of the authoritarian leader on Monday in the Oval Office.

As the Washington Post explained, the previous two presidents had refused to meet with Orban as “he shut down Hungary’s opposition media, eliminated independent courts, drove a prestigious U.S. university out of Budapest and spewed hateful rhetoric toward Muslims and, in more subtle terms, Jews.” And while much of Europe is shunning him over his explicitly illiberal turn, promoting the country as a white Christian nation, Trump saw fit to praise Orban from the White House.

“You’re respected all over Europe,” he said. “Probably like me a little bit controversial, but that’s okay. That’s okay. You’ve done a good job and you’ve kept your country safe.”

View the complete May 13 article by Cody Fenwick on the AlterNet website here.

Trump And Pence Launch Autocratic Attack On Federal Courts

Here’s a proposed step towards the new autocracy that Donald Trump is promoting that we ought to stop in its tracks.

Vice President Mike Pence told the Federalist Society on Wednesday that the Trump administration intends to challenge the right of federal district courts to issue rulings blocking nationwide policies, arguing that such injunctions are obstructing Trump’s agenda on immigration, health care and other issues.

It’s a perfect distillation of what’s wrong about the direction of the Trump presidency. It is a call for disruption – again – of judicial procedures and jurisdictions, all with the intent to protect any policy announcement by an imperial White House to be questioned. And it is not the White House’s jurisdiction to change.

View the complete May 12 article by Terry H. Schwadron of DCReport.org on the National Memo website here.

Trump seeks to limit judges’ powers on injunctions after legal blows

President Trump is looking to stop lower courts from being able to issue wide-ranging injunctions in a move that could dramatically limit the authority of judges.

The plan comes as groups opposed to Trump have been able to get several of his policies, including those seeking to limit immigration, put on hold by nationwide orders issued by lower courts in battles that were eventually decided by the Supreme Court.

Advocacy groups that have pushed judges to issue nationwide injunctions say they are necessary to protect people from policies they see as harmful, and some legal experts agree, arguing that the right to issue such actions is protected under the Constitution.

View the complete May 11 article by Jacqueline Thomse on The Hill website here.

Trump and the march of ballot box autocrats

To President Trump’s critics, the creeping authoritarianism is in plain view.

Take this week: Democrats on the Hill declared that the United States was in constitutional crisis, a consequence of the Trump administration’s refusal to comply with House subpoenas pertaining to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe and thereby disregard congressional powers of oversight. Separately, my colleague Dana Milbank pointed to the administration’s provocative new steps to revoke the media credentials for White House journalists (including his).

And then, at a rally on Wednesday, Trump laughed along with thousands of cheering supporters about shooting migrants who arrive at the U.S. border. That it fostered only muted outrage and discussion on cable news networks the following day pointed to how inured the American public has become to Trump’s routine demagoguery.

stephanie kotuby@stephaniekotuby

.@RepJerryNadler tells @JudyWoodruff on @NewsHour tonight @realdonaldtrump is trying to establish the presidency as a “dictatorship” by defying all House subpoenas.

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In part for that reason, the White House visit next week of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is worth watching. Shunned during the Obama presidency, Orban, an illiberal nationalist, has appeared to find common cause with Trump. While numerous E.U. officials and European statesmen have decried Orban’s majoritarian rule — which they say is actively eroding Hungary’s democracy — the Trump administration has cultivated Hungary and other nationalist governments in Central Europe as like-minded partners.

View the complete May 10 article by Ishaan Tharoor on The Washington Post website here.

Here are 6 of the wildest moments from Trump’s off-the-wall press conference

On Thursday,  President Donald Trump gave a White House press conference that was intended, primarily, to address medical billing. But the president was all over the place during the briefing, using it for everything from attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller and former Secretary of State John Kerry to a defense of his China trade policy. Here are some of the wildest and craziest moments from Trump’s May 9 White House press conference.

1. Trump described his administration as generous to Puerto Rico

Trump has been widely criticized for his response to the Hurricane Maria tragedy in Puerto Rico; San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Roselló have been especially critical. But during his press conference, Trump vigorously defended his Puerto Rico policy — saying he “gave Puerto Rico $91 billion” and insisting “I think the people of Puerto Rico should really like President Trump.”

2. Trump called for prosecution of John Kerry

Trump, after taking office, ended the Obama Administration’s nuclear arms deal with Iran, which was negotiated in part by former Secretary of State John Kerry. And Trump took aim at Kerry on Thursday, accusing him of telling Iran not to call his administration. Trump claimed that Kerry was in violation of the Logan Act and should be prosecuted for interfering.

View the complete May 9 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Sarah Sanders carries out a ‘mass purge’ that disqualifies ‘almost the entire White House press corps’ from covering Trump

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has quietly implemented a new standard that has resulted in what one journalist calls “a mass purge” of “almost the entire White House press corps.”

Huckabee Sanders revoked the press credentials, known as a “hard pass,” for all Washington Post reporters assigned to cover the White House, and many others. That would be six correspondents, and Dana Milbank, a veteran journalist who writes an opinion column at the Washington Post, and is the first to report this story.

“After covering four presidents, I received an email informing me that Trump’s press office had revoked my White House credential,” Milbank writes in The Washington Post Wednesday evening.

View the complete May 8 article by David Badash from The New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

Two more years? Trump’s retweet sets off a furor over the idea of bonus time.

President Trump for months has griped, complained and tweeted about what he says is the unfair Russia “witch hunt” investigation that has consumed nearly half of his presidency.

Now, the president has floated a possible solution: two bonus years.

Trump over the weekend shared a tweet by Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, in which Falwell complimented Trump for “no obstruction, no collusion” and a soaring economy, before adding, “Trump should have 2 yrs added to his 1st term as pay back for time stolen by this corrupt failed coup.”

White House officials and others close to the president said he was joking and is not serious about trying to increase his first four-year term by 50 percent — an extension that would violate the Constitution and has no historical precedent.

View the complete May 6 article by Ashley Parker on The Washington Post website here.

Statement by Former Federal Prosecutors: Trump Behavior Would Have Resulted in Multiple Felony Charles for Obstruction

We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country.

Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.

The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming. These include:

View the complete May 6 post (which more former prosecutors have been adding their names to, as of this posting the number was 690) on the Medium website here.