Archive for the ‘Donald Trump’ Category

This Man Is Turning Donald Trump’s Tweets Into ‘Official’ Presidential Statements – TIME

As President Donald Trump 's tweets continue to jolt the world, a new parody account imagines what they'd look like in the format of official White House statements.

The transformation is a straightforward one: simply grab a direct quote from Trump's account and print it out in the font and style of the White House's press office. The account @RealPressSecBot started posting just that on Sunday night and had already gained 39,000 followers by Monday morning. By giving Trump's tweets a more traditional look, this sendup will take the Twitter-scrolling American citizen to a reality where Trump-style social media statements are underneath the White House letterhead under the header "Statement by the President."

It's the brainchild of Russel Neiss, an educator and software engineer. Neiss' inspiration came when Pat Cunnane, a former deputy director of messaging at the White House under President Barack Obama, tweeted Sunday that , "all of Trump's Tweets should be mocked up in the correct Presidential statement format. It's telling."

"Functionally his tweets are presidential statements," Neiss told TIME. "Formatting them as such gives them the gravity they deserve."

"I like using twitter as a platform for advocacy and for helping to raise a level of discourse, not merely to mock," he added of the new account's mission.

Neil said he uses Twitter's data tool called REST API to collect the tweets, and a code called Python to reformat them to churn out the images. He created the account quickly. "Pat Cunnane's tweet inspired me and I had an hour to kill while my kids napped and I was avoiding doing dishes."

This isn't the first Twitter robot to take on the President. There's a bot that automatically prints his 145-character missives and burns each one. Satirizing Trump has inevitably taken the form of Twitter parody accounts, so the Internet is racing to come up with ways to remix Trump's tweets.

See the tweets below.

The rest is here:
This Man Is Turning Donald Trump's Tweets Into 'Official' Presidential Statements - TIME

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

Subscribe to Newsweek from $1 per week

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!"

Go here to see the original:
Kellyanne Conway Says Media Should Stop Covering Donald Trump's Tweets - Newsweek

Donald Trump blasts Senate as ‘obstructionists,’ demands approval of his nominees – Washington Times

President Trump accused Senate Democrats Monday of blocking his nominees particularly ambassadorships from confirmation, issuing yet another Twitter challenge to Capitol Hill.

But Democrats fired back, saying the problem is that Mr. Trump has been slow in sending nominees over to Capitol Hill for action, and its up to him to get the ball rolling.

Its the latest flare-up in a relationship that has only deteriorated over the first four months of Mr. Trumps presidency.

Dems are taking forever to approve my people, including Ambassadors. They are nothing but OBSTRUCTIONISTS! Want approvals, Mr. Trump said on Twitter amid an outburst that spanned everything from the latest London terror attack to gun control to criticizing how his own Justice Department has mounted the legal defense of his extreme vetting policies.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer fired back, saying Mr. Trump has been the problem. He said there are more than 500 positions that require Senate confirmation, and Mr. Trump has only nominated 63.

Another 24 have been nominated but arent officially before the Senate, and 15 others have been announced but not formally nominated, Mr. Schumer said.

Just 39 have been confirmed.

Mr. Schumer defended his partys pace as an important check on Mr. Trump.

It was the Senates responsibility to give a thorough vetting for such important positions, with many of the nominees having conflicts of interest and incomplete ethics agreements when they were named. President Trump ought to roll up his sleeves and get to work rather than pointing false fingers of blame, the New York Democrat said.

He also pointed to a number of picks Mr. Trump announced then canceled, including his original Labor Department secretary and two different names for secretary of the Army.

Republicans chided Mr. Schumer for initially getting his numbers wrong, skipping over 24 nominations Mr. Trump has made.

And the GOP said those confirmations Mr. Schumer is touting only came after a series of roadblocks erected by Democrats on Capitol Hill. More than 60 percent of the presidents picks have faced Democratic-led filibusters, and his Cabinet saw the largest number of No votes of any president in modern history.

Democrats have used parliamentary tactics to try to delay many of Mr. Trumps appointments, asking for delays in committee and forcing filibuster voters on the Senate floor.

Mr. Trumps solicitor general and two other high-profile Justice Department appointments have been awaiting a vote in the Judiciary Committee for weeks, with Democrats exercising their right under committee rules to demand a delay.

Read the original:
Donald Trump blasts Senate as 'obstructionists,' demands approval of his nominees - Washington Times

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.

View post:
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.

MORE STORIES LIKE THIS ONE

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