Archive for the ‘Donald Trump’ Category

Kellyanne Conway Says Media Should Stop Covering Donald Trump’s Tweets – Newsweek

President Donald Trump went on one of his infamous early-morning Twitter rants on Monday, but Kellyanne Conway doesn't want you to read all about it.

Conway, the pollster turned counselor to the president, told anchors on the Today showthat the media has an "obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what he does as president."

Related: Conway and Priebus among those given ethics waivers for former lobby work

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Conway made the remarks while speaking with Craig Melvin and Savannah Guthrie. The latter had asked whether Trump owed London Mayor Sadiq Khan an apology for his reaction to Saturday's attack that killed seven people and wounded nearly 50 at London Bridge and Borough Market. As the news was breaking over theweekend, Trump took to Twitter to not only promote his executive order suspending travel for people from certain Muslim-majority countries but also to call out Khan.

"At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is 'no reason to be alarmed!'" Trump wrote.

He was apparently referring to a quote from Khan telling residents of London not to worry when they see an increased police presence. A spokesman for Khan shot back in a statement to CNN, saying the tweet was "ill-informed" and adding that "Khan]has more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump's ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks urging Londoners not to be alarmed when they saw more policeincluding armed officerson the streets."

Today's Guthrie resurfaced the criticism on Monday, characterizing Trump's Saturday tweet as a "political attack" that quoted the London leaderin a misleading way.

But Conway was adamant that Trump didn't need to say he was sorry. She said the president was firmly behind the British people and had spoken to Prime Minister Theresa May to offer his condolences afterthe attack, for which the Islamic State group (ISIS) laterclaimed responsibility.

When pressed, Conway argued that Guthrie was trying to "make this about something other than what it's about."

"I'm not going to allow,a day and a half after terrorists did it again, whether they're ISIS-inspired or ISIS-directed. They're savage murderers. It's an evil slaughter, as the president said last night. I'm going to not let him be seen as the perpetrator here," Conway said. "For every time you said Russia,imagine if you said ISIS.Every time you said Twitter,imagine if you said terrorist."

Melvin struck back, saying that Twitter is Trump's "preferred method of communication with the American people," given that he hasn't been doing many press interviews lately. Melvin then pivoted to Trump's travel executive order, about which the commander in chief coincidentally tweeted Monday morning.

The Monday tweets also raised eyebrows because Trump used the words "travel ban" to describe the policyan apparent departure from his administration's stance.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in January that "it's not a travel ban" but a "vetting system to keep America safe," according to The Hill. On Monday, Trump wrote,"People, the lawyers and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!"

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Kellyanne Conway Says Media Should Stop Covering Donald Trump's Tweets - Newsweek

President Trump Just Held a Signing. He Had Nothing to Sign – TIME

After announcing his goal to privatize the nation's Air Traffic Control System, President Donald Trump sat down at a desk on Monday and signed two documents. There was only one problem: He wasn't actually signing something that would have any tangible impact on what he had just proposed.

A White House aide told reporters Trump had signed a "a decision memo and letter transmitting legislative principles to Congress," surrounding the privatization of the Air Traffic Control system, which he had just spent the last few minutes advocating for. But in order for his goal to come to fruition, Congress would need to pass pass legislation implementing it. Before Trump gave remarks Monday, White House officials had told reporters that the President is only dictating his legislative goals of separating air traffic controls from the FAA. Congress is not required to follow through on these goals.

Trump's proposal was actually based on legislation introduced by Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Bill Shuster, the Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The bill never made it to the House floor for a vote and reportedly faced bipartisan opposition in the Senate.

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President Trump Just Held a Signing. He Had Nothing to Sign - TIME

Donald Trump’s Mishandling of the Paris Climate Agreement Was Even More Humiliating Than We Thought – GQ Magazine

(Photo by Gabriele Maricchiolo/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

A dark moment in American history gets darker with each bit of information that comes out.

Donald Trump's disastrous decision to pull out of the Paris climate deal last week is already, on its face, one of the dumbest decisions a political leader has made in a long time. The reasons to stay in the agreement were countless, while the reasons to pull out were stupid both politically and, you know, factually.

Politically, polls show that seven out of ten Americans support staying in the Paris Agreement. Considering this nation is so divided that I'm pretty sure you'd be hard-pressed to get more than 51 percent of Americans to agree that ice cream is good, that is saying something. But perhaps more staggering are the facts of the situation. Donald Trump decided to leave the Paris Agreement because he thinks it will cost us jobs. Of course, this is all based on the fact that Trump desperately wants his base to think he's bringing back coal jobs. Spoiler: He's not. No one is. They're gone forever, and burning down the world's future just to try (and fail) to convince some people otherwise is not a recipe for success. And parading about in the Rose Garden as though you just accomplished something good (as opposed to terrifying) is embarrassing.

And that's become something of a theme with this administration. Embarrassing decision after humiliating fuck-up after embarrassing decision after et cetera, et cetera. But on this issue, Donald Trump had every opportunity to fix things. He had every chance to not make himself (and by proxy all of us) look stupid. A new report from Der Spiegel claims that Trump's display in a closed-door meeting with world leaders was that of a petulant child who chose recalcitrance and tempter tantrums over listening to anyone.

The newly elected French president, Emmanuel Macron, went first. It makes sense that the Frenchman would defend the international treaty that bears the name of France's capital: The Paris Agreement. "Climate change is real and it affects the poorest countries," Macron said.

Then, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reminded the U.S. president how successful the fight against the ozone hole had been and how it had been possible to convince industry leaders to reduce emissions of the harmful gas.

Finally, it was Merkel's turn. Renewable energies, said the chancellor, present significant economic opportunities. "If the world's largest economic power were to pull out, the field would be left to the Chinese," she warned. Xi Jinping is clever, she added, and would take advantage of the vacuum it created. Even the Saudis were preparing for the post-oil era, she continued, and saving energy is also a worthwhile goal for the economy for many other reasons, not just because of climate change.

So let's look at those arguments. Macron made an appeal to Trump's sense of intellect (obviously a bad idea) and compassion (oh boy...). Trudeau appealed to Trump's sense of history (yikes). Merkel, the savviest of the bunch, went in a different direction. She appealed to Trump's egohis image of himself as a brilliant businessman and his desire to "win" at all costs. "You wouldn't want the Chinese to win, would you, Donald?" Obviously, this was the only path that even had a chance, but in the end, Donald couldn't, just once, do the right thing. Nope. Donald reportedly said that even though staying in the deal was easier, he was going to leave because the agreement was hurting the economy's ability to create jobs.

Interesting. Is that true? Well, tough to say. On one hand, noted dummy Donald Trump says it is, while on the other, actual experts say "the agreement would likely help create about as many jobs in renewable energy as it might cost in polluting industries." So for no reason, Donald Trump didn't listen to our allies and then tried to embarrass them in a weirdly confrontational press event. So not only is the world going to burn to a crisp, but we'll have no friends internationally to commiserate with when it does.

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Donald Trump's Mishandling of the Paris Climate Agreement Was Even More Humiliating Than We Thought - GQ Magazine

Donald Trump is massively unpopular, and he’s making no effort to change that – Salon

Donald Trump reached the height of his popularity right before he became president in January. Ever since then, his poll numbers have been moving steady downward. Even in late December Trump still was notviewed favorably by a majority of Americans, according to polling averages.

With Trumppromotinga deeply unpopular health care plan and enmeshed in a scandal surrounding his current and former associates dealings with the Russian government, hisapproval ratings are literally at their lowest point of his presidency according to poll aggregator RealClearPolitics. Just less than40 percent of Americans approve of the job that Trump is doing in office when the most recent surveys are averaged together. That mirrors data from FiveThirtyEight, which gaveTrump a 39 percent approval rating as well.

Most presidential administrations would be sounding internal alarm bells upon hearingsuch low figures, but Trump and the Republicans hehas allied himself with seem to be coming to the realization that things arent likely to change anytime soon. So instead of trying to increase his support by working with Democrats on some bipartisan legislation, Trump and the GOP appear to be embracing the idea of keeping his hard-core supporters happy and motivated in the hopes that the presidents critics dont show up.

Its a risky strategy but one that is actually somewhat in line with the 2004 re-election strategy of former President George W. Bush. During that year, his top strategists Karl Rove and Matt Dowd came to the conclusion that swing voters dont really exist and therefore going toward the middlewouldntbe worth potentially alienating dedicated supporters.

Nobody had ever approached an election that Ive looked at over the last 50 years, where base motivation was important as swing, which is how we approached it, Dowd told PBS in 2005. We didnt say base motivation is what were going to do, and thats all were doing. We said both are important, but we shouldnt be putting 80 percent of our resources into persuasion and 20 percent into base motivation.

That strategy was one that was largely copied by former President Barack Obama when he ran for re-election in 2012. Facing big drops in millennial white support (his GOP rival Mitt Romney actually won over that group) and greater apathy among black Americans who had already made history by voting forObama, hiscampaign operation focused most of its resources ongaining the support of people who had enabled his capture of 365 Electoral College votes.

The problem for Trump, however, is that his base is continuing to shrink not just because elderly voters representedthe only age group with a majority thatvoted for him but also because more and more people are leaving the Republican Party.

Trying to keep happy the dwindling percentage of people who do choose to remain Republican is therefore the No. 1 job for those within the Trump administration and its a huge part of why he recently withdrew from a climate change agreement that was signed by Obama. The bet is that while the public says it wants to abide by the Paris treaty (the Senatestill had to voteon itfor the United States to be bound by its terms even if Trump hadnt withdrawn from the pact), environmental issues dont affect voting decisions that much.

Expect more such decisions of this nature in the very near future from Trump. The White Househas essentially admitted that its anti-government views wont be able to gainthe support of a majority of Americans. If enough congressional Republicans go along with this, expect even more stark policy changes to happen, especially as the party is trying to turn national media outlets into its opponents instead of Democrats.

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Donald Trump is massively unpopular, and he's making no effort to change that - Salon

No, Londoners Didn’t Chant "Donald Trump, We Love You" After The Attack – BuzzFeed News


BuzzFeed News
No, Londoners Didn't Chant "Donald Trump, We Love You" After The Attack
BuzzFeed News
An old video of protesters chanting "Donald Trump, we love you" has resurfaced in the wake of the London attack. It's being passed off as a recent recording by Trump supporters. Sadiq Khan is an EMBARRASSMENT Londoners chant #Trump's name ...

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No, Londoners Didn't Chant "Donald Trump, We Love You" After The Attack - BuzzFeed News