Tag: Trump lies

Trump campaign manager deletes dramatic Air Force One photo after people point out it’s from 2004

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Donald Trump’s campaign manager deleted a tweet featuring a dramatic photo of Air Force One at the Daytona 500 after users pointed out that the shot was from President George W. Bush’s visit to the NASCAR race in 2004, not from Trump’s visit on Sunday.

Brad Parscale tweeted the 2004 photo, which shows Air Force One rising above packed stands at the Daytona International Speedway in Florida, and wrote, “.@realDonaldTrump won the #Daytona500 before the race even started.”

The tweet stayed online for about three hours, drawing at least 6,700 retweets and 23,000 likes before it was deleted. Users identifying themselves as Trump supporters replied with messages like “Amazing shot wow” and “WOW WHAT A SHOT!!!!!!!!!” Continue reading.

Steve Mnuchin admits Trump’s budget cuts Social Security even as president claims he is ‘not touching’ the program

AlterNet logoDuring a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin—using euphemistic language Democratic lawmakers described as “Washington-speak“—admitted that President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2021 budget proposal would cut Social Security days after the president insisted he is “not touching” the program.

Pressed by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) on the budget’s call for tens of billions in cuts to Social Security over the next decade, Mnuchin said, “I believe it’s not a cut, it’s a reduction in the rate of increase. And it’s not to the benefits of people on Social Security.”

“If that is not a cut, then I would love to talk to you about what it is this administration values and what they see, how these groups and important individuals in our communities are being affected,” responded Cortez Masto. “My concern is this administration says one thing, but their actions are just the opposite.” Continue reading.

Trump Seeks To Cut Public Health Funding Amid Coronavirus Epidemic

Donald Trump’s new budget proposes cutting $3 billion from global health programs, despite his repeated vows to protect Americans from the deadly new virus outbreak.

According to Foreign Policy, Trump is specifically proposing a 50 percent reduction in funding for the World Health Organization, the main global body fighting to contain the coronavirus outbreak, which first began in China.

Such cuts “are entirely out of touch with the threats facing our nation,” Adm. James Stavridis and Gen. Tony Zinni, co-chairs of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s National Security Advisory Council, said in a statement Monday, after Trump’s proposal was released. Continue reading.

Report: Erik Prince May Face Indictment For Lying To Congress In Russia Probe

While Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office has long since closed up shop, a key mysterious figure in the Russia investigation may still face charges related to the probe.

Erik Prince, an ally of President Donald Trump and the founder of the military contracting company formerly called Blackwater, is under investigation by the Justice Department for potentially lying to congressional investigators who interviewed him as part of the House of Representative’s Russia investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. That investigation is reportedly in its “late stages.”

In addition to investigating potential lies to Congress, the Justice Department is also probing whether Prince violated U.S. export laws, the report said. Continue reading.

Trump’s War Against ‘the Deep State’ Enters a New Stage

New York Times logoThe suggestion that Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman should now face punishment by the Pentagon was one sign of how determined the president is to even the scales after his impeachment.

WASHINGTON — As far as President Trump is concerned, banishing Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman from the White House and exiling him back to the Pentagon was not enough. If he had his way, the commander in chief made clear on Tuesday, the Defense Department would now take action against the colonel, too.

“That’s going to be up to the military,” Mr. Trump told reporters who asked whether Colonel Vindman should face disciplinary action after testifying in the House hearings that led to the president’s impeachment. “But if you look at what happened,” Mr. Trump added in threatening terms, “I mean they’re going to, certainly, I would imagine, take a look at that.”

This is an unsettled time in Mr. Trump’s Washington. In the days since he was acquitted in a Senate trial, an aggrieved and unbound president has sought to even the scales as he sees it. Colonel Vindman was abruptly marched by security out of the White House, an ambassador who also testified in the House hearings was summarily dismissed, and senior Justice Department officials on Tuesday intervened on behalf of Mr. Trump’s convicted friend, Roger J. Stone Jr., leading four career prosecutors to quit the case. Continue reading.

‘He was lying’: Nobel laureate Paul Krugman breaks down Trump’s anti-working class agenda

AlterNet logoWhen President Donald Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, some Democrats hoped that he would at least have a Nixonian streak on economics: President Richard Nixon, as right-wing as he was, favored universal health care and supported elements of the New Deal and the Great Society. But Trump, for all his pseudo-populist rhetoric, has gone out of his way to attack the United States’ social safety net — and liberal economist Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column, emphasizes that Trump hasn’t delivered on his economic promises of 2016.

“One thing many people forget about the 2016 election is that as a candidate, Donald Trump promised to be a different kind of Republican,” Krugman recalls. “Unlike the mainstream of his party, he declared, he would raise taxes on the rich and wouldn’t cut programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that ordinary Americans rely on. At the same time, he would invest large sums in rebuilding America’s infrastructure. He was lying.”

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, Krugman notes, “was absolutely standard modern Republicanism: huge tax cuts for corporations, plus tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy” — and Trump “came very close to passing a health care ‘reform’ that would have imposed savage cuts on Medicaid, eliminated protections for those with pre-existing conditions and taken away health insurance from more than 30 million Americans.” Continue reading.

Chris Hayes Dismantles Donald Trump Campaign’s Biggest Con

“He wants you to believe that he’s strong, but he’s not. He is not a colossus. He’s a con man,” said the MSNBC host.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Monday night shattered the perception that Donald Trump is unbeatable, suggesting the president is much more politically vulnerable than he may realize.

The host of “All In with Chris Hayes” acknowledged there was a “real unmistakable sense of fear among Democrats” that Trump will win reelection in November after the GOP-controlled Senate voted to acquit him on impeachment charges.

Trump’s campaign is keen to project the president as a “colossus” with a “juggernaut” of support behind him, the news anchor noted. Continue reading.

Trump’s no-injuries claim about Iran keeps looking worse

Washington Post logoOn Jan. 8, President Trump was itching to claim victory over Iran, and understandably so. He had been criticized for the decision to kill Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, with opponents worrying it could lead to war with Iran. So when Iran apparently lodged a pretty minor response — bombing some bases in Iraq that house U.S. soldiers but not killing anyone — Trump was triumphant.

As it turns out, too triumphant.

The Defense Department announced Monday that 109 U.S. soldiers suffered traumatic brain injuries during those attacks. That stands in contrast with Trump’s proclamation the morning after that there were no casualties or injuries. Continue reading.

Fox Judge: Guilty Trump Was Acquitted, Not Exonerated

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” — George Orwell, “1984”

The Senate trial of President Donald Trump ended not with a bang but a whimper. What different outcome could one expect from a trial without so much as a single witness, a single document, any cross-examination or a defendant respectful enough to show up?

Law students are taught early on that a trial is not a grudge match or an ordeal; it is a search for the truth. Trial lawyers know that cross-examination is the most effective truth-testing tool available to them. But the search for the truth requires witnesses, and when the command from Senate Republican leaders came down that there shall be no witnesses, the truth-telling mission of Trump’s trial was radically transformed into a steamroller of political power.

And in its wake is a Congress ceding power to the presidency, almost as if the states had ratified a constitutional amendment redefining the impeachment language to permit a president to engage in high crimes and misdemeanors so long as he believes that they are in the national interest and so long as his party has an iron-clad grip on the Senate. Continue reading.

Trump Gave a Scholarship to a 4th Grader ‘Trapped’ in a ‘Failing’ Public Education at the State of the Union. She Reportedly Attends a Top Charter School

During Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump introduced Philadelphian 4th grader Janiyah Davis and said she would receive an “opportunity scholarship” to attend whatever school she wanted. He pointed to her experience as an argument for expanding school choice.

However, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Friday that Davis already attends a competitive charter school, Math Science and Technology Community Charter School III (MaST III).

The Inquirer reports that her school is part of a charter network so competitive that it received 6,500 applications for 100 spots in the next school year. The school reportedly opened in the fall with about 900 students, one of whom was Davis. MaST III is funded by taxpayers and does not charge tuition, per the The Inquirer. Continue reading.