New York Times | Do Muslims Have to Be Democrats Now? New York Times As Republicans have embraced an extreme anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim platform, has the Democratic Party emerged as our only viable political home? As a Muslim, I'd vote for Jesus, but the Republicans won't let him in, and the Democrats don't believe in ... |
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President Donald Trump discussed his next steps and ways to connect with the American people amid many obstructions from the media to Democrats during an interview with Jeanine Pirro for "Justice With Judge Jeanine" on Saturday.
Weve freed up this system, which was all glued up, so that people can build houses and they can build factories and they can build so much, Trump said. Our trade deals are about to come. Theyre going to be unbelievable. Were doing things and I honestly believe that people see it. But theres no question, it would be wonderful to go fast, but I want it to be done right.
The president believes everyday Americans can see the successes of his administration.
He said, What Im most proud about is whats happening with the country. You look at jobs are way up. Its going to be unbelievable the trade deals were making for this country. We have the worst trade deals ever made by any country anywhere and were making them into great deals. The business that were now reopening with China thats been gone for many, many years, especially when you look at natural gas, and especially when you look at the deal we just made on cattle. Its really something special.
Trump talked about the busyness of being president and how his life now is having meeting after meeting from cutting the price of the airplanes with Lockheed to cutting the price of airplanes with Boeing.
Im a very active president. Im doing like Im dealing with China, Im dealing with Japan, Im dealing with North Korea, Im dealing with all of these different things, Trump said. I am a very activeperson. I have a lot of very positive things going on right up here for this country.
Trump added later in the interview, Another president, Jeanine, will sit in the Oval Office and do practically nothing all day. Im doing every minute of the day Im doing something. Im cutting prices, Im were going this nation has such unbelievable potential.
The president dismissed media accounts about his efforts to repeal and replace ObamaCare: It wasnt really an initial failure. It was just a continuation of a negotiation.
Obamacare is dead, its dying. Ive been saying that for a long time, the president said. Now Aetna just pulled out, the big insurance company just pulled out, and we have to come up with a plan, because Obamacare is dead.
The president also dismissed a New York Times article saying he demanded loyalty from FBI Director James Comey, whom he abruptly fired on Tuesday. His administration is on a fast track to nominate a replacement and several candidates were interviewed Saturday at the Department of Justice. I want loyalty to the country. I mean I want loyalty to the United States of America. I want him to do a good job or her to do a great job, Trump said.
Beyond the media, the president commented on opposition from the Democrats. Well, theyre obstructionists, Trump said. I mean what they want to do is obstruct and delay, and Im actually very surprised with Chuck Schumer because I know him; Ive known him for a long time. I cannot I really am surprised that hes become such hes gone so far left in order to get into the Elizabeth Warren group that I think hes hurting himself.
The president added, And I also dont think they can win any more elections unless they start changing their tune.
The president,however, is very optimistic about the Republican Party. Were going to end up winning. Weve been winning. We won, and now you look, we have the House, we have the Senate.
At the end of the interview, Judge Jeanine asked the president about what his late brother, Fred, who died in 1981 at 42 of complications associated with alcoholism, would think of his younger brothers achievements.
Were going to have, I think, I would love to say one of the truly great impacts of any president on the lives and the betterment of lives, people of this nation, said Trump, noting his brother would be very proud.
Fred would be looking down and he would say keep going. And I would tell you if it were different. If I thought he would be looking down and saying you can do better here or there, I think hed be very proud of the things that weve accomplished, having to do with everything from jobs to the military to the borders. You see whats happening on the borders, Trump said. Were going to have to solve some big problems, like the North Korea problem that weve been talking about. But I think hed be very proud.
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FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE: Trump talks about obstructions, from the media to Democrats, with Judge Jeanine Pirro - Fox News
News & Observer | At 3 a.m., NC Senate GOP strips education funding from Democrats' districts News & Observer N.C. Senate Republicans were visibly upset with Democrats for prolonging the budget debate with amendments during an after-midnight session Friday morning. As the clock approached 1 a.m., Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue was summoned to the front of ... |
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At 3 a.m., NC Senate GOP strips education funding from Democrats' districts - News & Observer
Syracuse Democrats choose Joe Nicoletti as party's candidate for mayor
The Syracuse Democrats have chosen Joe Nicoletti as their party's candidate for mayor.
This is Nicoletti's fourth run for mayor and after winning the Democratic seat on Saturday he was overwhelmed with emotion.
"I'm very flattered and honored to be able to represent my party but more importantly for the opportunities given to me to speak for the people of our community and to work with our community to make it a better place," Nicoletti explained.
The now at-large Common Councilor wants to focus on rebuilding the city of Syracuse with a "neighborhood mayor."
"I think the mayor needs to be a neighborhood mayor," Nicoletti said. "I think the office should be someone who has the ability to have relationships on the federal, state and local level."
Along with Nicoletti there were seven other Democrats seeking the party's endorsement including Raymond Blackwell, Alfonso Davis, Chris Fowler, Marty Masterpole and Juanita Perez Williams.
According to the Democratic Committee, Nicoletti was nominated after winning in the second round of voting in a close battle with Andrew Maxwell.
Maxwell fell just short of the nomination only receiving 48% of the votes, while Nicoletti received 51%.
"I have not made any decisions yet about a primary. I will be taking time to talk with my family, friends and supports about the future," Maxwell commented following Saturday's vote. "Right now I want to thank my supporters and congratulate Joe Nicoletti on securing the Democratic designation."
Alfonso Davis earned only 1% of the vote and Democrats Marty Masterpole and Juanita Perez Williams withdrew from the designation race after the first round.
However, it is now expected that there will be a primary fight.
Other parties have already selected their candidates. Laura Lavine was endorsed by the Republicans, Ben Walsh is running as an independent and Howie Hawkins plans to run with Green Party.
The primary will take place in four months on September 12th with the general election on November 7th.
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Syracuse Democrats choose Joe Nicoletti as party's candidate for mayor - CNYcentral.com
When an atheist asked Tom Perriello how his Catholicism would affect his approach to governing Virginia and whether he could keep the two separate, the former Democratic congressman answered carefully. Faith, he said, is both one of the most powerful forces for justice in the world and a vehicle for repression and dehumanization.
My relationship with my church is complicated, Perriello told the crowd in a small room at a Richmond LGBT community center in mid-March. And my faith is complicated.
Once a leading light of the religious left who made faith-based outreach a key feature of his successful 2008 run for Congress in the conservative 5th District, Perriellos political comeback bid has focused more on the secular than the sacred.
Summing up his political calling in past campaigns, Perriello often quoted the biblical prophet Micahs description of what God asks of his followers: to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. When Perriello talks about what motivated him to make a surprise run for governor and challenge Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam for the Democratic nomination, the story has been a little more ominous. And it starts with the election of President Donald Trump.
I think you saw with Trumps election that people are willing to overlook all of these behaviors that I grew up certainly being taught were un-Christian in order to get a particular party elected, Perriello said in a recent interview. I think it has been a wake-up call to many that we perhaps need some more prophetic voices out there.
In one of the first major elections of the Trump era, Perriellos candidacy presents an early test of how faith may or may not factor in to Democrats efforts to reconnect with rural and small-town voters who sunk Hillary Clintons candidacy last year. Despite Trumps defiance of the traditional pieties of Republican politics, he won a majority of Christian voters, particularly white evangelicals, while Clinton drew more support from those with no religious affiliation.
Trumps racist and sexist language and the decision by leaders of the religious right to embrace him anyway, Perriello said, create an opportunity to continue the mission of the faith-based progressive groups he helped organize in the mid-2000s, which tried to nudge religious voters away from issues related to sex and sexuality while elevating poverty, the environment and social justice.
It was about trying to return the moral conversation in the United States back to love of neighbor, Perriello said.
Sociologist Rebecca Sager, who embedded with Perriellos congressional campaigns in 2008 and 2010 as a case study of faith-based Democratic politics in action, concluded that Perriellos first campaign stemmed from beliefs held by some in the Democratic Party that by abandoning faith and ceding what it meant to be a religious or moral voter to the Republican Party, Democrats had lost the soul of the country.
In his earlier campaigns, Perriello asked his staff and volunteers to tithe 10 percent of their time through charitable work at homeless shelters and food banks.
The faith that Perriello says fuels his fervor for caring for the poor, his readiness to travel to foreign hot spots such as Sierra Leone and Darfur to promote peace, and his admiration for progressive Catholic leaders like Pope Francis and the late Bishop Walter F. Sullivan of the Richmond Diocese could take more prominence in the general elections broader appeals to the middle. But in a June 13 Democratic primary shaping up as a battle over who has the strongest claim to progressive purity, Perriellos religious convictions are, in some ways, a potential liability.
His nuanced earlier stance on abortion saying he was personally opposed, but fully supportive of the Supreme Courts 1973 Roe v. Wade court decision that enshrined abortion as a constitutional right has resurfaced as opponents try to paint him as a political shape-shifter.
He tried to masquerade as being a conservative, said former 5th District congressman Virgil Goode, a Democrat-turned-independent-turned-Republican who lost his seat to Perriello in 2008 by a little more than 700 votes.
In many ways, Perriellos challenge mirrors that of another Catholic Democrat from Virginia: U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine. Like Perriello, Kaine, a Northam backer, is an Ivy League-educated lawyer whose faith took him overseas. Kaine took a year off from law school at Harvard to be a Catholic missionary in Honduras. Both men say they believe in demonstrating faith through action, and both have delicately tried to separate the political from the personal.
The Northam campaign has sought to highlight Perriellos involvement with Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a progressive group he co-founded in 2004 whose website includes abortion among racism, violence, human trafficking, the death penalty and torture on a list of affronts that further degradation to human dignity and to life.
We are pro-life, said Christopher Hale, CACGs executive director. We think that life begins at conception, but it doesnt end there.
The groups political advocacy drew criticism in a 24-page broadside from a pro-choice Catholic group.
From the beginning, a central tactic of CACG was to play down abortion rights and reframe the debate in terms of reducing the number of abortions as a way to assure Catholics that they could safely vote for Democratic candidates, reads the introduction to a 2009 publication from Catholics for Choice.
A mention of Perriellos former group in the so-called Catholic Spring messages released last year after Clinton campaign chief John Podestas email account was hacked cuts against the notion that the group had right-wing motives.
We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this, wrote Podesta, who has endorsed Perriello, in a 2012 email. He was responding to an associate who asked him who could plant the seeds of the revolution to push the Catholic Church in a more progressive direction on gender equality and contraception.
Hale said Perriello was never a staffer at CACG and was not involved in the day-to-day operations.
It would be unfair to associate our views with Tom Perriellos views, Hale said.
Asked if he still personally opposes abortion, Perriello said his own beliefs are not particularly relevant when it comes to policy.
Thats not something that is mine to judge, he said, adding later that he has no constitutional or moral problem with when a woman decides to start or expand a family.
Though Perriello has said he believes he can win over Trump voters with a message of economic populism, it remains to be seen how faith will factor in to that calculation. Authenticity and values were part of what helped him break through in 2008, he said, and he believes thats what Trump supporters and other voters care about.
Religion is at its best when its used to overcome divides, he said, stressing that the search for common values must include people of all faiths and secular brothers and sisters as well.
The Catholic guilt that Perriello says fueled his interest in public service and politics has led to an incredibly meaningful life.
I got into this for the guilt, he said. And stayed for the joy.
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Can Tom Perriello help Democrats find religion in the Trump era? - Richmond.com