Tag: Trump fragile ego

White House abruptly transfers DHS official amid loyalty purge

Heather Swift, the deputy assistant secretary of public affairs at DHS, was moved to a senior post at the National Endowment for the Arts.

The White House removed a top public affairs official at the Department of Homeland Security in a move that shocked many in the department as it takes a lead role in handling the coronavirus pandemic, according to two former senior DHS officials familiar with the matter.

Heather Swift, who was DHS’ deputy assistant secretary of public affairs, was abruptly pushed out of her position on Friday after the Presidential Personnel Office raised questions about her loyalty to President Donald Trump, said one of the former DHS officials.

The personnel office may have discovered some old social media posts that officials there did not like, this person said, though POLITICO was unable to find any examples of posts the Trump administration might find objectionable. Continue reading.

The Memo: Trump’s coronavirus briefings face criticism

The Hill logoPresident Trump’s daily press briefings on the coronavirus are facing a backlash from critics who say they are hindering rather than helping the nation’s efforts to combat the pandemic.

The daily briefings have seen Trump give misleading information, tangle with members of the media and go off on unrelated tangents.

They have been conducted by the president and a rotating group of officials who have been in close physical proximity to each other— a practice that is in defiance of the rules of social distancing that are aimed at blunting the spread of COVID-19. Continue reading.

Trump tells governors to stop ‘blaming’ him after they request more help from feds

In response, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker tweeted, “You wasted precious months when you could’ve taken action to protect Americans & Illinoisans.”

President Donald Trump on Sunday criticized Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and “a very small group” of other governors for “blaming” his administration “for their own shortcomings.”

“.@JBPritzker, Governor of Illinois, and a very small group of certain other Governors, together with Fake News @CNN & Concast (MSDNC), shouldn’t be blaming the Federal Government for their own shortcomings,” Trump tweeted. “We are there to back you up should you fail, and always will be!”

(NBC News is a division of NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast Corp.)

Pritzker responded to Trump on Twitter soon after, saying, “You wasted precious months when you could’ve taken action to protect Americans & Illinoisans. Continue reading.

‘Child’ Trump ripped to shreds for storming out of NATO summit after video shows world leaders mocking him

AlterNet logoOn Wednesday, President Donald Trump abruptly exited the NATO summit after canceling his meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and blasting him as “two-faced,” in front of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, following the release of a video showing world leaders mocking the president.

In short order, commenters on social media laid into Trump for his cowardly decision to insult a major ally and run from the world stage:

Continue reading

Trump Attacks Yovanovitch Over Failure To Display His Portrait (Not Her Fault)

Donald Trump’s latest reasons for firing Marie Yovanovitch as ambassador to Ukraine: She was an “Obama person” who refused to hang Trump’s portrait in the U.S. Embassy. That’s false on both counts.

Trump’s pique about not having his picture displayed in a timely way — actually the fault of his administration, not the ambassador — came during a week of unfounded or distorted statements by the president about the impeachment inquiry and the political favor he sought from Ukraine.

“This ambassador that everybody says is so wonderful, she wouldn’t hang my picture in the embassy. OK? She’s in charge of the embassy. She wouldn’t hang it,” Trump said in a Fox News interview Friday. “It took like a year and a half or two years for her to get the picture up.”

View the complete November 25 article from the Associated Press on the National Memo website here.

‘This isn’t just a stupid story, it’s a big story’: An oral history of Sharpiegate

Washington Post logoA hurricane’s path may seem erratic at times, but modern forecasting has turned the chaos of weather into data, patterns, probabilities. No such technology exists to forecast what President Trump is going to do.

While he cannot control the weather, Trump can create pressure systems in his natural habitat: Twitter. Over the course of one Scaramucci (about 10 days), as Hurricane Dorian churned through the Atlantic , a metaphysical storm gathered force, with the president at the center. It swept up all sorts of people who weren’t in Dorian’s path: meteorologists in Alabama, politicians from Texas and Tennessee, even a Baptist pastor in Kentucky.

The hurricane destroyed homes and claimed lives. The deluge of presidential tweets caused a different kind of chaos — superficial to some, serious to others. We compiled an oral history of the two storms. Not everyone went fully on the record, and the White House ignored multiple requests to comment.

View the complete September 13 article by Dan Zak, Caitlin Gibson and Ben Terris on The Washington Post website here.

NOAA leader, in Alabama speech, says ‘weather shouldn’t be a partisan issue’

Washington Post logoAmid a controversy over his agency’s response to President Trump’s tweet, Neil Jacobs assures the audience full of meteorologists that no one’s job is at risk.

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — The acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Neil Jacobs, defended his agency at a major weather industry conference on Tuesday morning in an emotional speech, as controversy swirls over how agency officials responded to President Trump’s inaccurate claim on Sept. 1 that Alabama “would most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated” by Hurricane Dorian.

Jacobs defended the agency’s unusual, unsigned statement released on Sept. 6, which backed Trump’s false claim about Alabama and admonished the Weather Service’s Birmingham division for speaking “in absolute terms.”

“I have the utmost respect for what you do because I understand how difficult numerical weather prediction is, and how even more complicated conveying risk to the public is. The purpose of the NOAA statement was to clarify the technical aspects of the potential impacts of Dorian,” Jacobs said. “What it did not say, however, is that we understand and fully support the good intent of the Birmingham weather office, which was to calm fears and support public safety.”

View the complete September 10 article by Kate Harrison Belz and Andrew Freedman on The Washington Post website here.

Commerce chief threatened firings at NOAA after Trump’s hurricane tweets, sources say

WASHINGTON – The secretary of commerce threatened to fire top employees at the federal scientific agency responsible for weather forecasts last Friday after the agency’s Birmingham, Alabama, office contradicted President Donald Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.

That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, disavowing the National Weather Service’s position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew accusations from the scientific community that the National Weather Service, which is part of NOAA, had been bent to political purposes.

NOAA’s statement on Friday is now being examined by the Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General, according to documents reviewed by the New York Times, and employees have been asked to preserve their files. NOAA is a division of the Commerce Department.

View the complete September 10 article by Peter Baker, Christopher Flavelle and Lisa Friedman from The New York Times on The StarTribune website here.

Model Chrissy Teigen absolutely obliterates Trump after he calls her John Legend’s ‘filthy mouthed wife’

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump lashed out at Chrissy Teigen and John Legend after the couple appeared on an MSNBC town hall on criminal justice — and thousands of other social media users hurled mockery at him.

The president was apparently angered that Teigen and Legend, as well as host Lester Holt, failed to credit him with signing what’s known as the First Step Act, and he attacked the two men by name but failed to tag Teigen — a Twitter celebrity with 11.5 million followers.

View the complete September 9 article by Travis Gettys from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Trump slams ‘boring’ John Legend, ‘filthy mouthed’ Chrissy Teigen for not crediting his criminal justice reform

Washington Post logoIn a town hall event filmed inside New York’s Sing Sing prison that aired Sunday night, “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt dissected the costs of America’s high rates of incarceration. Joined by singer John Legend, Holt asked prisoners about the toll on their families and their ideas for changing the system.

One topic, though, did not come up: the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill signed by President Trump in December. And the White House’s chief media critic noticed.

In a four-tweet flurry sent late Sunday, Trump lashed out at Holt and “boring musician” Legend — while also swiping at Legend’s “filthy mouthed wife,” model and frequent Trump critic Chrissy Teigen — for not giving him personal credit for his efforts.

View the complete September 9 article by Tim Elfrink on The Washington Post website here.