Tag: Trump narcissism

Trump says his only regret as President was not deploying military to attack BLM protestors

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Donald Trump, the twice-impeached, one-term Republican president who lost the popular vote twice and the Electoral College once says he has but a single regret for his time as Commander in Chief: not deploying the U.S. Military to attack Black Lives Matter protestors during the summer of 2020 – an act that at the very least would have been met with massive resistance nationwide and some say would have violated the Constitution.

In a lengthy excerpt published at Vanity Fair from their new book, “I Alone Can Fix It,” Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker focus on their hours-long interview with the former president at Mar-a-Lago, just 70 days after Joe Biden was sworn in as president.

“I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me,” Trump told the two Washington Post reporters.”I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me.” Continue reading.

Trump Said He Thinks He Could Have Beaten George Washington In An Election

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Trump believes he was a shoo-in for 2020 if not for COVID-19, he told authors of “I Alone Can Fix It” — contradicting his claims of a rigged election.

Former President Donald Trump told the authors of a new book that he believes he would have had a good chance of winning a presidential election against George Washington, even with Abraham Lincoln as Washington’s running mate.

Trump made the outlandish observation as he indicated that his re-election in 2020 was inevitable had it not been for the COVID-19 pandemic — which appears to contradict his comments about a “rigged” election.

“I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice-president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me,” Trump told Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, they recount in their new book “I Alone Can Fix It.” Continue reading.

‘I Made Juneteenth Very Famous’: The Inside Story of Trump’s Post-George Floyd Month

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For Father’s Day in 2020, what Donald Trump mostly wanted was to avoid his son-in-law.

It was Jared Kushner who had talked the president into hiring Brad Parscale to run a campaign that was now, just months before the election, in freefall. And when most Americans rejected Trump’s unreasonably truculent response to the civil unrest that was sweeping the country, the president also blamed Kushner.

The frustration and anguish that had accrued among Black Americans after decades of debasing systemic racism had been emphatically—finally—cracked open by the death of George Floyd, who’d been murdered by police a few weeks earlier. As protesters poured into the streets of the nation’s capital and major municipalities, Trump privately told advisers that he wished he’d been quicker to support police and more aggressive in his pushback against protesters. Continue reading.

‘I don’t think he cares about winning’: McConnell ally realizes Trump is all ‘about himself’

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and former President Donald Trump exchanged barbs this week as their feud deepened. But some GOP strategists have realized that Trump may just be in it for himself, the Associated Press reported.

The conversation for the last several years from analysts has been about Trump’s selfishness, as the Milwaukee Independent described it, or his constant need for self-promotion, as biographer David Cay Johnston explained. 

Leading GOP strategists described the exploding feud between the former Republican president and the Senate’s most powerful Republican as, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a direct threat to the party’s path to the House and Senate majorities in next year’s midterms. Continue reading.

Here’s why Republicans who are calling for a Trump dictatorship should not be taken lightly — and aren’t going away

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The United States dodged an authoritarian bullet when former Vice President Joe Biden, a centrist Democrat, became president-elect, winning 306 electoral votes and defeating defeated President Donald Trump by more than 6 million in the popular vote. But when Republican Lin Wood, a pro-Trump attorney who has been fighting the election results in Georgia, implores Trump to impose martial law and elections officials are receiving death threats for acknowledging Biden as president-elect, it is painfully obvious that there is a strong appetite for fascism in parts of the United States. And journalist Sasha Abramsky, in an article published by The Nation on December 4, warns that Republicans who are openly calling for fascism should not be taken lightly.

We are less than seven weeks away from the inauguration, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t counting down the seconds,” Abramsky writes. “For the last spasms of Trumpist rule are truly a sight and sound to behold. Trumpism is, at this point, nothing more than a blend of cultism and fascism — a violent, nihilistic howl against the pillars of American democracy unparalleled in presidential history.”

Abramsky adds, however, that when “people surrounding Trump are calling for dictatorship,” it “ought to send a chill up all Americans’ spines.” And Abramsky cites some specific examples of Trumpistas who haven’t been shy about showing their authoritarianism. Continue reading.

Trump largely silent as health officials sound COVID-19 alarm

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Trump administration health officials are issuing increasingly dire warnings about the coronavirus and its rapid spread across the country, drawing a sharp contrast to the president’s reluctance to acknowledge the severity of the crisis head-on.

President Trump has been largely silent when it comes to warning the public about the need for precautions or announcing major new steps aimed at curbing the spread of the virus before a vaccine is widely available.

Instead, many of his public statements have focused on election conspiracy theories and his refusal to accept the results, underscored by a 46-minute video he posted to Facebook on Wednesday. Continue reading.

Trump threatens to veto major defense bill unless Congress repeals Section 230, a legal shield for tech giants

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President Trump on Tuesday threatened to veto an annual defense bill authorizing nearly $1 trillion in military spending unless Congress opens the door for Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to be held legally liable for the way they police their platforms.

Trump delivered his ultimatum — calling for the repeal of a federal law known as Section 230 — in a pair of late-night tweets that transformed a critical national security debate into a political war over his unproved allegations that Silicon Valley’s technology giants exhibit systemic bias against conservatives.

“Section 230, which is a liability shielding gift from the U.S. to ‘Big Tech’ (the only companies in America that have it — corporate welfare!), is a serious threat to our National Security & Election Integrity,” Trump tweeted. Continue reading.

Questions swirl at Pentagon after wave of departures

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Is it a coup, a push to withdraw from Afghanistan or just some petty score settling?

That’s the question that has swirled in defense circles amid a wave of firings and resignations at the Pentagon that saw the ouster of the Defense secretary and installation of several aides seen as loyalists of President Trump.

The shakeup has led Trump’s critics to sound the alarm, with Democratic lawmakers and others fearful of what the Pentagon’s new leadership will try to push through in Trump’s remaining two months in office. Continue reading.

Scoop: Trump privately discussing 2024 run

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President Trump has already told advisers he’s thinking about running for president again in 2024, two sources familiar with the conversations tell Axios.

Why it matters: This is the clearest indication yet that Trump understands he has lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden — even as the president continues to falsely insist that he is the true winner, that there has been election fraud and that his team will fight to the end in the courts.

  • Presidents are limited to serving two terms but they need not be consecutive.
  • Officials with the Trump campaign and White House could not immediately be reached for comment. Continue reading.

Advisers urge Trump to prepare for defeat — but maybe without a concession speech

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President Trump vowed on Friday to continue to fight the election results, privately urging allies and advisers to defend him publicly and insisting that he still had a path to victory over former vice president Joe Biden.

But behind the scenes over the past two days, advisers have broached with the president the prospect of an electoral defeat, and how he should handle such an outcome, two people familiar with the discussions said.

Some close to the president are advocating that, if Biden is declared the winner of the presidential election, Trump will ultimately offer public remarks in which he commits to a peaceful transition of power, according to allies and Republican officials, who like others on Friday spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. One senior campaign aide, however, said there had been no discussion of a concession speech. Continue reading.