Tag: Trump White House

In White House, mood is perseverance amid the storm

The following article by Jordan Fabian and Jonathan Easley was posted on the Hill website December 10, 2017:

Credit: Gary Cameron/Reuters

The White House believes it is weathering the storm wrought by former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s guilty plea and staff remains optimistic President Trump will survive the Russia investigation that has clouded his first year in office.

The mood largely reflects the cool attitude of attorney Ty Cobb, who is telling Trump and his aides the investigation will wrap up by year’s end or soon thereafter, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former White House officials and outside advisers in touch with the West Wing.

“The feeling now, over the last 48 hours, is very positive,” said one former transition official. “I feel good about it. Everyone I talk to does.” Continue reading “In White House, mood is perseverance amid the storm”

Robert Mueller just penetrated the White House gates with Michael Flynn’s guilty plea

The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website December 1, 2017:

Paul Manafort? He “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time” on the Trump campaign. The charges against him? They have “nothing to do with the president.”

George Papadopoulos? Just a low-level “volunteer” for the campaign who wasn’t even worth remembering for both President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

These were credulity-straining defenses offered by the White House in the face of charges against Manafort and Papadopoulos. But they’re not going to work now that former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

In Flynn, we have someone who not only actually served in the White House, but someone for whom Trump clearly maintained a huge affinity even after being forced to fire him. Trump has reportedly rued the day that Flynn forced himself out by misrepresenting his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak — contacts that are at the heart of his guilty plea — and even sought leniency for Flynn from then-FBI Director James B. Comey. While Trump has signaled he might go to war with Manafort, he has handled Flynn with kid gloves from Day One. The polar opposite approaches have been striking. Continue reading “Robert Mueller just penetrated the White House gates with Michael Flynn’s guilty plea”

Michael Flynn pleads guilty to lying to FBI on contacts with Russian ambassador

The following article by Carol D. Leonnig, Adam Entous, Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky was posted on the Washington Post website December 1, 2017:

Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty on Dec. 1 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and, in an ominous sign for the White House, said he is cooperating in the ongoing probe of possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election.

When Flynn was forced out of the White House in February, officials said he had misled the administration, including Vice President Pence, about his contacts with Kislyak. But court records and people familiar with the contacts indicated he was acting in consultation with senior Trump transition officials, including President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in his dealings with the diplomat. Continue reading “Michael Flynn pleads guilty to lying to FBI on contacts with Russian ambassador”

White House struggles to explain Trump’s silence on Moore allegations

The following article by Sarah Kaplan was posted on the Washington Post website November 19, 2017:

President Trump is ignoring the women who have accused him and Senate candidate Roy Moore of harassment or assault, but attacking Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.). (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Amid a growing number of sexual harassment allegations against Roy Moore, White House officials tried to walk a fine line — acknowledging the seriousness of the allegations without outright calling for the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama to step down.

Nine women have accused Moore of a range of inappropriate conduct, including pursuing them when they were teenagers, groping and assault. Continue reading “White House struggles to explain Trump’s silence on Moore allegations”

White House attacks legacies of both Bush presidents after reports that they refused to vote for Trump

The following article by Avi Selk was posted on the Washington Post website November 4, 2017:

On Oct. 19, former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush made veiled criticisms about the Trump administration’s threats to democracy and unity. (Joyce Koh/The Washington Post)

The White House on Saturday disparaged the legacies of the only two living Republican presidents to precede Donald Trump, after reports that both men castigated Trump in interviews last year and refused to vote for him.

Former president George H.W. Bush mocked then-candidate Trump as a “blowhard” and voted for a Democratic president, while the younger Bush worried aloud that Trump would destroy the idea of a Republican president in all but name, according to “The Last Republicans,” which is scheduled to go on sale later this month. Continue reading “White House attacks legacies of both Bush presidents after reports that they refused to vote for Trump”

The Trump White House’s dangerously authoritarian response to criticism

The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website October 10, 2017:

Vice President Pence left the NFL game between the Indianapolis Colts and the San Francisco 49ers on Oct. 8 as several 49ers players knelt in protest during the national anthem. (Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)

This post has been updated with Bannon’s comments Monday night.

President Trump, as the White House will often remind us, is a counterpuncher. You hit him; he hits back twice as hard. You bring a knife; he brings a bazooka. Continue reading “The Trump White House’s dangerously authoritarian response to criticism”

White House Confirms Stephen Miller Was a Right-Wing Creep Back in High School Too

The following article by Kali Holloway was posted on the AlterNet website October 9, 2017:

Trump’s adviser once crashed a girls’ track meet to prove his athletic superiority. Really.

You remember Stephen Miller, don’t you? He’s the smug, dead-eyed presidential adviser the White House trots out when it needs someone to deliver its transparently dishonesttalking points about immigration. Miller’s track record as a racist xenophobe reportedly stretches back to his high school days, when he dropped a childhood friend for being Latino, showed up to meetings among students of color with the sole purpose of derailing their efforts, and suggested classmates do everything in their power to demean and humiliate janitors. Now, a New York Times profile adds one more gross detail to the Miller file, which was already thick with reasons to dislike the Roy Cohn lookalike.

[Miller] jumped, uninvited, into the final stretch of a girls’ track meet, apparently intent on proving his athletic supremacy over the opposite sex. (The White House, reaching for exculpatory context, noted that this was a girls’ team from another school, not his own.)

Continue reading “White House Confirms Stephen Miller Was a Right-Wing Creep Back in High School Too”

Steve Bannon says rivals ‘wetting themselves,’ calls supremacists ‘clowns,’ contradicts Trump on N. Korea

The following article by Derek Hawkins was posted on the Washington Post website August 17, 2017:

Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist, seemed to take issue with President Trump on North Korea, attacked white supremacists as “clowns” and “losers” and described his efforts against administration rivals in an unusual interview Wednesday with The American Prospect, a progressive magazine.

The interview with magazine co-editor and columnist Robert Kuttner was initiated by Bannon, Kuttner said, in an Anthony Scaramucci-style phone call out of the blue in response to a column Kuttner had written on China. Continue reading “Steve Bannon says rivals ‘wetting themselves,’ calls supremacists ‘clowns,’ contradicts Trump on N. Korea”

Republicans Worry That White House Disarray Is Undermining Trump

The following article by Alexander Burns and Michael D. Shear was posted on the New York Times website July 30, 2017:

President Trump boarded Air Force One Credit:   Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump and Republicans in Washington have shaken the confidence of their supporters after a punishing and self-inflicted series of setbacks that have angered activists, left allies slack-jawed and reopened old fissures on the right.

A seemingly endless sequence of disappointments and blunders has rattled Mr. Trump’s volatile governing coalition, like Mr. Trump’s attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions; a vulgar tirade by his new communications chief, Anthony Scaramucci; and the collapse of conservative-backed health care legislation.

Mr. Trump remains overwhelmingly popular with Republicans, but among party loyalists and pro-Trump activists around the country, there are new doubts about the tactics he has employed, the team he has assembled and the fate of the populist, “drain the swamp” agenda he promised to deliver in partnership with a Republican-controlled Congress. Continue reading “Republicans Worry That White House Disarray Is Undermining Trump”

Anthony Scaramucci removed as White House communications director

The following article by Abby Phillips and Damian Paletta was posted on the Washington Post website July 31, 2017:

Leaks, threats and insults. And it lasted less than two weeks. Here’s a look back at the very short tenure of the White House’s latest communications director, Anthony Scaramucci. (Video: Claritza Jimenez, Meg Kelly/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

President Trump on Monday removed Anthony Scaramucci from his role as White House communications director just days after the New York financier was named to the job — a move made at the request of new White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.

Scaramucci’s brief tenure in the role had been marked by turmoil as he feuded publicly with then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Scaramucci’s arrival at the White House prompted press secretary Sean Spicer to resign in protest. Continue reading “Anthony Scaramucci removed as White House communications director”