Tag: Trump wants to be a dictator

Trump Cheers on MAGA Caravan That Ambushed Biden Bus

President Donald Trump tweeted his support late Saturday for the MAGA caravan that reportedly tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the road in Texas, causing the former vice president to cancel a planned event in Austin. “I LOVE TEXAS!” Trump tweeted along with a video of the incident. 

“What the President tweeted in regards to Texas is reckless, dangerous and an intimidation tactic,” Biden campaign spokesperson Symone Sanders tweeted in response. “It’s not something we should come to accept from our leaders. The people of our great country have the opportunity to turn the corner here. VOTE. HIM. OUT.”

Trump officials blur lines on campaigning, governing

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Multiple Trump administration officials have turned into surrogates for the president’s reelection campaign this week, further muddying the distinction between government work and politicking in a White House that has pushed those boundaries for four years.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has appeared on TV multiple times this week as a “Trump 2020 campaign adviser.” Senior White House adviser Stephen Miller and chairman of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow both phoned into Trump campaign calls to tout Trump’s agenda on immigration and the economy, respectively, saying they were acting in their personal capacity.

National security adviser Robert O’Brien this week visited Wisconsin and Minnesota, two battleground states that Trump is spending significant resources targeting and could be critical to his reelection. Continue reading.

How Trump waged war on his own government

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The 45th President: One in a series looking back at the Trump presidency

Early in the new administration, the White House wanted a big win for President Trump on one of his top campaign promises — getting rid of poor performers at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Scott Foster got the order from his boss, a senior political appointee: Draw up a list of underachievers and give “your best 10” so the president could announce their firing at a signing ceremony for a law allowing fast dismissals at VA.

Foster, a seasoned personnel official, balked. The employees still had the right to due process, he argued. Within weeks, his boss tried to sack him. Continue reading.

‘Helping the president’: HHS official sought to rebrand coronavirus campaign

Documents reveal how political considerations shaped planning for a taxpayer-funded ad blitz to ‘defeat despair’ over Covid-19.

The Trump appointee who steered a $300 million taxpayer-funded ad campaign to “defeat despair” about the coronavirus privately pitched a different theme last month: “Helping the President will Help the Country.”

That proposal, which came in a meeting between Trump administration officials and campaign contractors, is among documents obtained by the House Oversight Committee that further illustrate how political considerations shaped the massive campaign as officials rushed to get public service announcements on the air before Election Day. The committee shared the documents with POLITICO, which first detailed the campaign in a series of reports last month.

For instance, contractors vetted at least 274 potential celebrity contributors for their stances on gay rights, gun control and the 2016 election before allowing them to participate in the campaign. One promised public service announcement, which would have also featured infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, was nixed because the celebrity who was set to participate with Fauci had been critical of President Donald Trump, according to documents. Continue reading.

Trump’s attacks on political adversaries are often followed by threats to their safety

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The CIA’s most endangered employee for much of the past year was not an operative on a mission abroad, but an analyst who faced a torrent of threats after filing a whistleblower report that led to the impeachment of President Trump.

The analyst spent months living in no-frills hotels under surveillance by CIA security, current and former U.S. officials said. He was driven to work by armed officers in an unmarked sedan. On the few occasions he was allowed to reenter his home to retrieve belongings, a security team had to sweep the apartment first to make sure it was safe.

The measures were imposed by the CIA’s Security Protective Service, which monitored thousands of threats across social media and Internet chat rooms. Over time, a pattern emerged: Violent messages surged each time the analyst was targeted in tweets or public remarks by the president. Continue reading.

It sure looks like Trump’s national security adviser is campaigning for him in swing states

Experts say it’s pretty clearly an ethics violation.

Just a week before the election, Trump’s National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien is visiting key swing states in what appears to be a naked attempt to boost his boss’s reelection chances — a move some say is consistent with a broader administration campaign.

O’Brien traveled this week to Minnesota and Wisconsin, two important swing states, nominally to discuss the centrality of mining and supply chains to building weaponry. But he went to the same locations — a copper-nickel mining region of Minnesota and the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard in Wisconsin — that President Trump and Vice President Pence had both also visited.

National Security Council spokesperson John Ullyot told me that during his travels in these states, O’Brien “held important meetings” crucial to understanding industry’s role in keeping America safe. “The important work of protecting our national security continues regardless of domestic political events,” he said. Continue reading.

The absolutely bonkers threat Donald Trump made this week

At a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said something incredible — even by his standards.

Recounting how his campaign had to move the site of the rally to comply with Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s Covid-19 protocols, Trump said this: 

“I’ll remember it, Tom. I’m gonna remember it, Tom. ‘Hello, Mr. President, this is Governor Wolf, I need help, I need help.’ You know what? These people are bad.”

Let’s be very clear what Trump is doing here: He is threatening to withhold federal aid — or some sort of other assistance — the next time Pennsylvania needs it because the state’s governor, according to the President, made it difficult to find a site to hold a campaign rally. Yes, really.

Judge rejects Justice Dept. bid to short-circuit defamation case brought by woman who accused Trump of rape

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A federal judge Tuesday rejected the Justice Department’s bid to make the U.S. government the defendant in a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who says President Trump raped her decades ago, paving the way for the case to again proceed.

In a 59-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan wrote that Trump did not qualify as a government “employee” under federal law, nor was he acting “within the scope of his employment” when he denied during interviews in 2019 that he had raped journalist E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan department store during the 1990s.

Carroll sued Trump over that denial in New York in November, and last month the Justice Department moved the case to federal court and asked a judge to substitute the U.S. government as the defendant. The department argued Trump was “acting within the scope of his office as President of the United States” when he disputed Carroll’s allegations. Continue reading.

Trump Issues Order Giving Him More Leeway to Hire and Fire Federal Workers

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The move would give the president greater freedom to weed out what he sees as a “deep state” bureaucracy. The executive order, which could be rescinded if he is not re-elected, was condemned by civil service unions.

WASHINGTON — President Trump signed an executive order this week that could substantially expand his ability to hire and fire tens of thousands of federal workers during a second term, potentially allowing him to weed out what he sees as a “deep state” bureaucracy working to undermine him.

The executive order, issued late Wednesday and described by one prominent federal union leader as “the most profound undermining of the Civil Service in our lifetimes,” would allow federal agencies to go through their employee rosters and reclassify certain workers in a way that would strip them of job protections that now cover most federal employees.

The White House, in a statement that accompanied the executive order, said the new employee classification was justified because under current rules “removing poor performers, even from these critical positions, is time-consuming and difficult.” Continue reading.