Tag: Trump White House

Judge denies request to block Bolton book

The Hill logoA federal judge has denied a Trump administration request to block former national security adviser John Bolton‘s book from being published.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in an order released Saturday that “while Bolton’s unilateral conduct raises grave national security concerns, the government has not established that an injunction is an appropriate remedy.”

The judge noted that the Justice Department’s push for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction came after the book was printed and shipped across the country ahead of its scheduled release on Tuesday. Continue reading.

Trump: Esper, Milley “should be proud” of Lafayette Square walk

Axios logoPresident Trump declined on Friday to say he retains full confidence in Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and said Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley should have been “proud” to join him on the now-infamous walk across Lafayette Square.

Driving the news: “I personally think they should have done it differently,” Trump told Axios in an interview Friday in the Oval Office. “I think they should be proud to walk alongside of their president for purposes of safety.”

Why it matters: Despite initial indications that he accepted their pushback against him, Trump remains irked by his top military leaders’ public statements. Esper told colleagues he felt deeply uncomfortable being drawn into the photo op at St. John’s church, and Milley publicly apologized for his participation in the episode.

Why the new case against Bill Barr could be a game-changer

AlterNet logoNo attorney general since John Mitchell has gotten away with assaulting the rule of law more than Bill Barr. But unlike Mitchell, who served 19 months in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, Barr has yet to be held accountable for his ever-expanding laundry list of outrageous misdeeds and derelictions.

To be sure, there have been several efforts to bring Barr to heel. Last July, for example, the House voted to hold both Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt for refusing to turn over documents related to the Trump administration’s attempt to include a citizenship question in the 2020 census. But in an act of defiance that surprised absolutely no one, the DOJ, which Barr heads, refused to pursue charges against either cabinet member, leaving the House with no means of enforcement.

More recently, more than 2,000 former Justice Department lawyers signed open letters demanding Barr’s resignation after he intervened in the cases of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn to overturn the sentencing recommendations of career prosecutors. And in a scathing rebuke published May 9, the editorial board of the New York Times accused Barr of using the DOJ as a “political weapon” to advance and protect the personal interests of the president. And yet despite the denunciations, Barr remains, in effect, the country’s top cop. Continue reading.

Suddenly Kellyanne Conway Is Eager For ‘Fact Checking’

Senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway claimed on Wednesday that she worries that there is “very little fact-checking” done in books about Donald Trump.

Conway’s remarks came after she was questioned about an upcoming book from former Trump national security adviser John Bolton. The Trump administration has sued Bolton before the book’s release.

The book reportedly contains several personally embarrassing revelations about Trump.

Without making any specific claims, Conway said that she had seen errors in previous books that have exposed the inner workings of the Trump administration. She called on reporters to apply fact-checking to “all types of work.” Continue reading.

Bolton: Trump moves in office guided by reelection concerns

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump “pleaded” with China’s Xi Jinping during a 2019 summit to help his reelection prospects, according to a scathing new book by former Trump adviser John Bolton that accuses the president of being driven by political calculations when making national security decisions.

The White House worked furiously to block the book, asking a federal court for an emergency temporary restraining order Wednesday against its release.

Bolton’s allegations that Trump solicited Chinese help for his reelection effort carried echoes of Trump’s attempt to get political help from Ukraine, which led to his impeachment. Continue reading.

Millionaire Trump adviser complains $600-per-week boost in unemployment benefits is too generous

AlterNet logoWith the U.S. jobless rate still at levels not seen since the Great Depression and coronavirus-induced mass layoffs continuing across the nation, millionaire White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow complained Sunday that the $600-per-week increase in unemployment insurance authorized by the CARES Act is too generous and said the benefits should expire at the end of July.

“I mean, we’re paying people not to work. It’s better than their salaries would get,” Kudlow said in an appearance on CNN, echoing the common Republican complaint that many U.S. workers are earning slightly more on the boosted unemployment insurance than they would at their low-wage jobs. Progressive lawmakers and economists have argued that the solution is to raise wages, not slash benefits.

Kudlow predicted that Congress will not extend the enhanced unemployment benefits past the July 31 expiration date and said the Trump administration is “looking at a reform measure that will still provide some kind of bonus for returning to work, but it will not be as large.” Continue reading.

White House pressure for a vaccine raises risk the U.S. will approve one that doesn’t work

Drugmakers and health agencies have already begun rewriting the rules of vaccine research.

President Donald Trump has promised that there will be a coronavirus vaccine before the year is out. But public health experts are growing increasingly worried that the White House will pressure regulators to approve the first vaccine candidate to show promise — without proof that it provides effective, reliable protection against the virus.

Drugmakers and health agencies have already begun rewriting the rules of vaccine research, launching candidates into clinical trials at record speed in search of a pandemic-ending shot. Data on the vaccines’ safety is already trickling in. But no candidate is yet ready for the final step of the development process: a months-long trial in tens of thousands of volunteers to prove once and for all whether the shot works.

That tight timing, coupled with the high-pressure political environment, has experts concerned that the Food and Drug Administration could grant emergency-use authorization to one or more vaccines before clinical trials have definitively determined whether they can prevent infection. Taking that step also could make millions of doses available outside of clinical trials, making it hard to enroll enough people in the trials to get the data ultimately needed to show the vaccine works. It could also squeeze other — potentially better — candidates out of the market. Continue reading.

‘Spinning his wheels’ and ‘bewildered’: New report exposes Trump’s complete lack of leadership ability

AlterNet logoA new report from NBC News on Friday night about internal White House debates shone a revealing light on the abject leadership failures of President Donald Trump.

The piece documents his dueling camps of advisers, both in the campaign and the administration, who are split over how Trump should react to the ongoing protests over the killing of George Floyd, police abuses, and racism more broadly.

Trump, the report found, is largely dismissive of the protesters themselves, saying: “These aren’t my voters.” This reflects a trait of the president’s that has repeatedly shown its ugly head throughout his term in office: dismissiveness toward constituents who didn’t vote for him. He clearly thinks he owes more to Trump voters than he does to the American people more generally. Continue reading.

McEnany: We ‘need to’ be asking whether police brutality caught on video is real

Trump recently promoted a conspiracy theory suggesting a 75-year-old protester attacked by police was faking it.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Wednesday defended Trump’s smear of a 75-year-old peace activist who was brutalized by police, saying Trump’s baseless accusation that the man was a member of antifa and possibly faked his injuries was “legitimate.”

“The president was raising questions based on a report that he saw. They are questions that need to be asked,” McEnany said during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

The man had “some very questionable tweets, some profanity-laden tweets about police officers,” she said. Continue reading.