Category: Trump Administration

Inside the extraordinary effort to save Trump from covid-19

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His illness was more severe than the White House acknowledged at the time. Advisers thought it would alter his response to the pandemic. They were wrong.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar’s phone rang with an urgent request: Could he help someone at the White House obtain an experimental coronavirus treatment, known as a monoclonal antibody?

If Azar could get the drug, what would the White House need to do to make that happen? Azar thought for a moment. It was Oct. 1, 2020, and the drug was still in clinical trials. The Food and Drug Administration would have to make a “compassionate use” exception for its use since it was not yet available to the public. Only about 10 people so far had used it outside of those trials. Azar said of course he would help.

Azar wasn’t told who the drug was for but would later connect the dots. The patient was one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers: Hope Hicks. Continue reading.

Trump spending his days at Mar-a-Lago serving Diet Coke to reporters to get ahead of wave of damaging books: report

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Donald Trump is spending his day at Mar-a-Lago hosting a parade of journalists for sit-down interviews as he tries to get in front of a coming wave of damaging books, according to a new report.

Axios co-founder Mike Allen told MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt that he’s obtained a list of 22 interviews the twice-impeached one-term president has given in recent weeks, with some of the book authors going back for more than one visit.

“He’s given 22 interviews to book authors, several people double-dipped,” Allen said. “He spent an hour and a half, two hours, [and] some of the people are then invited to stay and have dinner at Mar-a-Lago, and why it matters, President Trump, who’s said very little, besides to conservative outlets, knows he’s going to be everywhere. This rush of Trump books that will start in July, and he wants his voice out there.” Continue reading.

Trump feels ‘used’ by Jared Kushner after son-in-law bolts from him to protect his image: report

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On Wednesday’s edition of “Anderson Cooper 360,” correspondent Jim Acosta said that former President Donald Trump feels “used” by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, following reports that he and Ivanka Trump have distanced themselves from him as he continues to attack the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

“It sounds like Jared and Ivanka are trying to treat Trump as the coffee boy. I never thought I would see that day,” said Acosta. “I did talk to a long-time Trump adviser today who said, you know what, Trump feels used by Jared Kushner. There’s a twist, Anderson, that I don’t know if we would ever see — Trump feeling used in all of this.”

“Listen, as for Jared and Ivanka trying to distance themselves, keep in mind, I don’t want to go over all of the history in the last four years, but Jared was in charge of Middle East peace in the Trump administration. He had a heavy hand in the COVID response. He was working on, you know, the border wall. He was a campaign adviser and so on. There’s no rehab tour. There’s no PR spinning. There’s no separation that can be put in place between Trump and Jared and Ivanka that is going to wash the blood of January 6th off of their designer suits. It’s just not going to happen. And I think Jared and Ivanka can try this, but I don’t think they’re fooling anybody. I think a lot of people out there see their failures tied very tightly to the failures of former President Donald Trump.” Continue reading.

In sentencing regretful Capitol protester, federal judge rebukes Republicans

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U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth castigated Republican lawmakers on Wednesday for downplaying the violence of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, saying in handing down the first sentence to a charged defendant that those who break the law must pay a penalty.

“I’m especially troubled by the accounts of some members of Congress that January 6 was just a day of tourists walking through the Capitol,” he said. “I don’t know what planet they were on. . . . This was not a peaceful demonstration. It was not an accident that it turned violent; it was intended to halt the very functioning of our government.”

The 49-year-old Indiana woman before him, who had just pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of demonstrating inside the Capitol, did not disagree. Continue reading.

Nearly 900 Secret Service members were infected with the coronavirus. A watchdog blames Trump.

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Almost 900 Secret Service members have tested positive for the coronavirus since March 2020, according to a watchdog report, and many of those infected had protection assignments that included the safety of the president and vice president.

The nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington published a report Tuesday detailing how 881 Secret Service employees had tested positive between March 1, 2020 and March 9, 2021. The data, which came from a Freedom of Information Act request to the Secret Service, found that 477 members of the special agent division had been infected. Described by the Department of Homeland Security as “the elite agents you see protecting the President and Vice President,” special agents are also responsible for a number of safety assignments overseas and in the United States, such as protecting the president and vice president’s families, presidential candidates and visiting foreign leaders.

CREW said it’s unclear “whom the special agents who tested positive were assigned to protect or when, exactly, they tested positive.” Continue reading.

Majority of Americans believe GOP ‘election audits’ are a sham designed to undermine election processes

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As Republican lawmakers continue their efforts to conduct audits of the 2020 presidential election, the majority of Americans are raising questions about the integrity of their efforts. 

The results of a new Monmouth University poll offer insight into how Americans view the so-called election audits, like the one underway in Maricopa County, Ariz. According to Truthout, poll respondents were asked if they believed election audits were “legitimate efforts to identify potential voting irregularities” or “partisan efforts to undermine valid election results.”

Based on the poll results, many Americans see the audits as nothing more than a partisan effort to undermine the outcome of the presidential election. Continue reading.

Biden administration removes Rodney Scott as head of U.S. Border Patrol

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The Biden administration has forced out the head of the U.S. Border Patrol, Rodney Scott, clearing a path for a leadership overhaul at an agency strained by a 20-year high in illegal border crossings, and whose top officials were broadly sympathetic to President Donald Trump.

Scott, a 29-year veteran, published a statement on social media Wednesday saying he had received a letter offering him the option to resign, retire or relocate. He said the notice did not provide a rationale for his removal, describing it a pro forma notice “so the new administration can place the person they want in the position.”

Scott’s departure was widely anticipated, with several of his current and former colleagues surprised he remained in the post long after President Biden’s inauguration. During last year’s presidential campaign, Scott appeared several times alongside Trump, eagerly defending his hard-line policies, leading some colleagues to privately express concern that Scott’s enthusiasm occasionally veered into partisanship. Continue reading.

Mike Lindell unloads on critics: ‘We’re going to have a new inauguration and it’s going to be beautiful’

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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Wednesday lashed out at his critics after claiming that The Washington Post is releasing a “hit piece” to disprove his claim that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent.

“The Washington Post is coming out with a hit piece,” Lindell told Steve Bannon during an appearance on Real America’s Voice. “Since we announced the cyber symposium with all the packet captures that we’re going to reveal for the whole election — 37 terabytes of packet captures.”

According to Lindell, the Post “is going to say that what I have is hogwash.”

Trump’s bizarre reason for passing over a top candidate for the Joint Chiefs of Staff revealed in new report

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Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is one of a handful of senior officials to transition from Donald Trump’s presidency to Joe Biden’s.

“He is one of the people who bear the scars of the Trump years,” John Gans, a former Obama administration official told The Washington Post. “That may not be his fault, but that is the fate of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, which was being chairman under Donald Trump.”

The Post’s Missy Ryan published a sprawling profile of Milley this Tuesday, spanning from his climb through the military’s ranks to his current role in the Biden administration. Within the piece, there’s a brief window into Trump’s questionable decision-making process as president. Continue reading.

GOP-led probe finds no evidence of Michigan election fraud — and busts Trump allies for ‘purposefully defrauding people’ with ‘ludicrous’ claims

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A Donald Trump-loving attorney was singled out in a scathing Republican-led investigation that turned up no evidence of widespread fraud in Michigan’s presidential election.

A 35-page report issued by Senate Oversight Committee spends much time debunking conspiracy theories pushed by pro-Trump attorneys Matt DePerno and Patrick Colbeck and recommends the state’s attorney general investigate individuals who made false or misleading claims about Michigan’s election to raise money for themselves, reported Bridge Michigan.

“There is no evidence presented at this time to prove either significant acts of fraud or that an organized, wide-scale effort to commit fraudulent activity was perpetrated in order to subvert the will of Michigan voters,” wrote state Sen. Ed McBroom (R-Vulcan), who led the probe. Continue reading.