Tag: Trump White House

A sudden White House change of heart: Trump doesn’t want America to see Mueller’s report anymore

As sure as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, we all knew Donald Trump’s dalliance with transparency on Robert Mueller’s findings would come to a screeching halt once someone explained to him the difference between Attorney General William Barr’s 4-page hack job and Mueller’s 400-page-plus report. Now that Trump has learned those other 396 pages aren’t all dazzling pictures of him, he’s turning his ship around.

Just two weeks after Trump was arguing for public release—”I don’t mind. … Let them see it.”—Trump minds. Trump has now gone from “it wouldn’t bother me at all” on March 25 to his Monday declaration that Democrats are “crazed” about the report and “it will never be enough.” In case anyone mistook his meaning, he twitter screamed on Tuesday morning: “NOTHING WILL EVER SATISFY THEM!”

Trump topped off that tweet a couple hours later by retweeting a Fox News clip in which Alan Dershowitz argued that Barr doesn’t have any legal obligation to publicly release the report at all.

View the complete April 2 article by Kerry Eleveld of the Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.

House Oversight votes to subpoena ex-White House official in security clearance probe

The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Tuesday voted to authorize a subpoena for a former White House official to testify as part of the panel’s investigation into the Trump administration’s security clearance process.

The committee voted 22-15 along party lines to approve a resolution authorizing a subpoena for former White House Personnel Security Director Carl Kline to interview with the committee.

Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) telegraphed plans to subpoena Kline, who worked in the White House Personnel Security Office for the first two years of the Trump administration, in a letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone on Monday.

View the complete April 2 article by Morgan Chalfant and Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

White House studying options to shut down southern border

The White House on Tuesday said it has begun studying options to close down different parts of the U.S. southern border, but expressed hope the drastic move could be avoided.

“Eventually, it may be that it’s the best decision that we close the border,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, while adding that “this isn’t our first choice.”

Sanders said President Trump “is not working on a specific timeline” to decide whether to close down the border with Mexico. Trump last Friday put a deadline on his longstanding threat to shutter the border, saying he would make the move “next week” if Mexico does not stop illegal crossings into the U.S.

View the complete April 2 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

Republican Brushes Off White House Approval Of ‘Serious’ Security Risks

On Monday morning, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), chair of the House Oversight Committee, revealed allegations from a White House whistleblower who said at least 25 individuals received security clearance despite disqualifying issues involving foreign influence, conflicts of interest, financial problems, drug use, and criminal conduct.

The whistleblower, Tricia Newbold, is an 18-year veteran of both Republican and Democratic administrations who reached out to Congress in order to “address the national security risks she has been witnessing over the past two years.”

Jordan, the committee’s ranking Republican, isn’t disputing Newbold’s allegations. In a nine-page memo released by the Republican committee staff Monday afternoon, he whines about behind-the-scenes process issues, but says he takes the “allegations at face value,” despite not being able to independently verify them.

View the complete April 1 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

No, Mick Mulvaney, Republicans don’t have a respectable record on preexisting conditions

ACTING WHITE HOUSE Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney insisted Sunday that the 60 millionAmericans with preexisting medical conditions have no reason to fear President Trump’s new push to scrap Obamacare. “The debate about preexisting conditions is over,” he said. “Both parties support them, and anyone telling you anything different is lying to you for political gain.”

He’s right that someone is being dishonest about preexisting conditions, but it’s not the Democrats. For nine years, Republicans have promised a silver-bullet policy that would adequately cover Americans without resort to big spending, mandates or costs to healthy people, if only the voters would let them govern. After voters put them in charge, they offered one half-baked plan after another and never could pass one. Mr. Mulvaney is either deluded or himself lying when he argues that Republicans have a respectable record on preexisting conditions. Continue reading “No, Mick Mulvaney, Republicans don’t have a respectable record on preexisting conditions”

Nine White House officials of interest in Dem security clearance probe

Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee are zeroing in on a handful of current and former officials in President Trump‘s White House as part of their investigation into the administration’s security clearance practices.

Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) has ramped up the probe in recent weeks, accusing the White House of stonewalling his efforts to obtain additional documentation and information about the process.

He released a memo Monday detailing allegations raised by White House staffer Tricia Newbold, who has worked as a career official in the Executive Office of the President for 18 years.

View the complete April 1 article by Brett Samuels on The Hill website here.

Kellyanne Conway reveals her deep cluelessness as drug policy adviser with bogus claim about marijuana

Among other roles in the Trump administration, Kellyanne Conway is the White House’s opioid crisis czar. But a comment she made last month demonstrates how totally clueless and unqualified for the job she is.

At a news conference before briefing Trump on the latest developments in the opioid crisis, Conway took on fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid linked to an ever-increasing number of overdose deaths in the country. The presidential adviser warned that fentanyl was turning up in other drugs, which is true. The illicit drug is showing up not only in heroin, where it might be expected to add to the opioid’s kick, but also in other powder drugs whose users are not even looking for an opioid high, such as the stimulants cocaine and methamphetamine.

The concern about drugs being adulterated with fentanyl is warranted. But Conway went a step further in her remarks, making a claim that would require only a moment’s thought (or some actual familiarity with illicit drugs) for her to realize was not only false but ludicrous.

View the complete April 1 article by Philip Smith on the Independent Media Institute on the AlterNet website here.

‘A hypernarcissistic, sociopathic clown’: George Conway shows no mercy in his latest Trump takedown

In the first round of Ukraine’s presidential race, comedian Volodymyr Zelensky was leading in the exit polls on Sunday. The New York Times’ Peter Baker mentioned the Ukrainian election on Monday morning, tweeting, “Think politics is a joke where you live? In Ukraine, a comedian who plays an accidental president on television leads the first round of voting for president.” And conservative attorney George Conway responded, “That’s no biggie. Over here, we have a hypernarcissistic, sociopathic clown with nuclear weapons.”

The “clown” Conway was obviously referring to was President Donald Trump. Like his wife, GOP strategist Kellyanne Conway, George Conway is a right-wing Republican. But while KC has been one of Trump’s staunchest allies, GC has been highly critical of the president.

GC’s anti-Trump tweet has been receiving both positive and negative responses. Twitter user @RonDufresne posted, “There are still tens of millions of Americans who think Trump is a savvy, successful businessman because he pretended to be one on a fake ‘reality’ TV show,” while @On_Politike asserted, “I would take an actual comedian over Trump anytime.” Another Trump critic, @AlexDesormiers, lamented that “at least” Zelensky “played a fictional president. That’s more experience than our clown had.”

View the complete April 1 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

White House staffer tells Oversight Committee of ‘grave’ concerns with security clearances

House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Monday released a memo detailing “grave” national security concerns raised by a White House staffer over the Trump administration’s security clearance process and announced plans to subpoena a former White House official as part of an ongoing investigation into security clearances.

The whistleblower, Tricia Newbold, participated in a transcribed interview with Democratic and Republican committee staff in late March “to expose grave and continuing failures of the White House security clearance system, including the security clearance adjudications of senior White House officials,” according to a memo detailing her accusations released by Cummings on Monday.

Among her allegations, Newbold told the committee that Trump administration officials overruled her and other career officials in more than two dozen instances in order to grant clearances to officials and contractors despite there being “disqualifying issues” in their backgrounds.

View the complete April 1 article by Morgan Chalfant and Olivia Beavers on The Hill website here.

President Trump has made 9,451 false or misleading claims over 801 days

It was only 200 days ago, on his 601st day in office, that President Trump exceeded 5,000 false or misleading claims.

Now, on his 801st day, the count stands at 9,451, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement the president utters. That’s a pace of 22 fishy claims a day over the past 200 days, a steep climb from the average of nearly 5.9 false or misleading claims a day in Trump’s first year in office.

Of course, not every day yields 22 claims. The president’s tally expands when he’s giving a speech, usually at a campaign rally. At such events, he runs through many of his favorite lines, such as that he passed the biggest tax cut in history, that his U.S.-Mexico border wall is already being built and that the U.S. economy today is the best in history. All three of those claims are on The Fact Checker’s list of Bottomless Pinocchios.

View the complete April 1 article by Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly on The Washington Post website here.