The following article by Elizabeth Preza was posted on the AlterNet.org website August 19, 2018:
Tag: Trump White House
Former CIA Director John Brennan on Sunday said he’s mulling legal action against Donald Trump over the president’s decision to revoke his security clearance.Trump speechwriter fired amid scrutiny of appearance with white nation
The following article by Robert Costa was posted on the Washington Post website August 19, 2018:
A White House speechwriter for President Trump was terminated last week after revelations that he had spoken at a conference attended by well-known white nationalists, according to three people familiar with the decision who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Darren Beattie, who was a visiting instructor at Duke University before he joined the White House speechwriting team, was fired Friday after a media inquiry about his appearance at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club conference, where Beattie spoke on a panel alongside Peter Brimelow.
Brimelow, founder of the anti-immigrant website Vdare.com, is a “white nationalist” and “regularly publishes works by white supremacists, anti-Semites, and others on the radical right,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that tracks extremists.
Trump caught weaponizing security clearances to kill bad news stories
The following article by Caroline Orr was posted on the ShareBlue.com website August 18, 2018:
Trump doesn’t control the media from the inside — so he’s taking a page from the modern authoritarian’s playbook and trying to control it from the outside, instead.
After revoking the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan on Wednesday, the White House reportedly started plotting to do the same to other intelligence leaders and national security officials — and then to strategically announce the decisions in an effort to control the news cycle.
According to The Washington Post, the White House has already drafted documents to strip security clearances from a laundry list of current and former officials associated with the Russia investigation.
A senior White House official told the Post on Friday that press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and deputy chief of staff Bill Shine have discussed when would be the best times to drop the news of the additional revoked security clearances. The plan, according to the Post, is to use the revocations as a distraction from negative news stories.
AP source: It’s not just audio, Manigault Newman has video
The following article by Darlene Superville was posted on the Associate Press News website August 18, 2018:
WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s not just audiotapes.
Omarosa Manigault Newman has a stash of video, emails, text messages and other documentation supporting the claims in her tell-all book about her time in the Trump White House, a person with direct knowledge of the records told The Associated Press Friday.
Manigault Newman has made clear that she plans to continue selectively releasing the pieces of evidence if President Donald Trump and his associates continue to attack her credibility and challenge the claims in her book, “Unhinged.” She’s already dribbled out audio recordings of conversations, and video clips, texts or email could follow, according to the person who described what Manigault Newman has called a multimedia “treasure trove.” The person was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly and asked for anonymity.
No, one-third of African Americans don’t support Trump. Not even close.
The following article by Michael Tesler was posted on the Washington Post website August 17, 2018:
The Rev. Darrell Scott on Aug. 1 called President Trump “the most pro-black president that we’ve had in our lifetime.” (The Washington Post)
President Trump has recently faced renewed allegations of racism.
Many critics have argued that Trump’s attacks on the intelligence of such prominent African Americans as LeBron James, Don Lemon, Maxine Waters, and Omarosa Manigault Newman were rooted in racism. Manigault Newman has also made headlines for claiming that Trump is a racist who uses the n-word.
The White House regularly responds to accusations of racism by noting that black unemployment is at historic lows under Trump’s presidency. Sarah Huckabee Sanders even cited some wildly inaccurate statistics on black employment from the White House podium this week to defend the president from charges of racial bias. She later acknowledged the error.
White House press secretary can’t guarantee public won’t hear Trump use n-word on audio recording
The following article by John Wagner and Felicia Sonmez was posted on the Washington Post website August 14, 2018:
When asked if a tape of Trump using the n-word exists, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she “can’t guarantee anything.” Credit: Reuters
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that she couldn’t guarantee that the American people will never hear President Trump uttering the n-word on an audio recording, as a former senior White House adviser continued a publicity tour to promote her new book depicting the president as a racist.
The briefing by Sanders came after Trump referred to the former adviser, Omarosa Manigault Newman, as “that dog” in a morning tweet.
“I can’t guarantee anything, but I can tell you that the president addressed this question directly,” Sanders said. “I can tell you that I’ve never heard it.”
The Memo: Omarosa fury shows no signs of cooling
The following article by Niall Stanage was posted on the Hill website August 13, 2018:
The furor around Omarosa Manigault Newman is rumbling on — and that is bad news for the White House, even as the administration disparages the former reality show star as lacking in credibility.
Manigault Newman, who served in Trump’s White House for almost a year, made her share of enemies during her tenure. But she is adept at the publicity game — a skill she is parlaying into extensive coverage for her book, “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.”
The book is deeply critical of Trump, suggesting, among other charges, that he is racist and not mentally fit to be president.
Trump’s diplomatic learning curve: Time zones, ‘Nambia’ and ‘Nipple’
The following article by Daniel Lippman was posted on the Politico website August 13, 2018:
The president has often perplexed foreign officials and his own aides as he learns how to deal with the world beyond America’s borders.
Several times in the first year of his administration, President Donald Trump wanted to call Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the middle of the afternoon. But there was a problem. Midafternoon in Washington is the middle of the night in Tokyo — when Abe would be fast asleep.
Trump’s aides had to explain the issue, which one diplomatic source said came up on “a constant basis,” but it wasn’t easy.
“He wasn’t great with recognizing that the leader of a country might be 80 or 85 years old and isn’t going to be awake or in the right place at 10:30 or 11 p.m. their time,” said a former Trump NSC official. “When he wants to call someone, he wants to call someone. He’s more impulsive that way. He doesn’t think about what time it is or who it is,” added a person close to Trump.
Trump to Throw Vulnerable Troops to the Loan Sharks
Trump’s White House is planning to absolve the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of their responsibility to conduct routine examinations of lenders who might be violating the Military Lending Act, and is proposing changes that could leave service members more vulnerable to predatory lending.
By putting the lending industry ahead of our troops, it’s obvious that this president views the troops under his command more as props for photo opportunities rather than actual people. When it’s time to look out for the men and women responsible for protecting our nation, the president couldn’t care any less. Take a look:
The commander in chief is purposely making it harder for the the Military Lending Act to protect service members and their families from deceitful lending practices.
New York Times: “Instead of conducting examinations that might find similar patterns, the bureau will now rely solely on complaints funneled through its website, hotlines, the military and people who believe they have been victims of abuse.” Continue reading “Trump to Throw Vulnerable Troops to the Loan Sharks”
Omarosa, and Trump White House’s new hush-money problem
The following article by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website August 11 2018:
Former reality star turned White House aide turned reality star Omarosa Manigault is spilling the tea on her days at the White House. Credit: Taylor Turner/The Washington Post
Skepticism abounds, for good reason, about Omarosa Manigault Newman’s White House tell-all. Like Michael Wolff, Manigault Newman has a long, demonstrated history of suspicious claims, and just because the things she writes confirm what lots of people on the left badly want to believe doesn’t mean they should be swallowed whole. Some of what she’s written has already been directly disputed, including by Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, who has been quite critical of the White House. We should all be very, very careful.
All of that said, this new revelation looks bad, in large part because it is substantiated — and because it has to do, yet again, with hush money.
The Post’s Josh Dawsey has a document verifying Manigault Newman’s claim that she was offered what amounted to $15,000 per month in hush money to keep quiet about the White House. It was technically for a job with the Trump campaign, but it was premised on her signing a nondisclosure agreement that dealt with her time in the West Wing. That, notably, isn’t generally how NDAs work; they usually involve the job you are getting, not the one you previously had.