attacks – Capitol Hill Blue

Biden fires back at Trump’s attacks

October 3, 2019October 3, 2019

Former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks during a gun safety forum Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2019, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden assured supporters Wednesday night that his message to President Donald Trump is “I’m not going anywhere” as he laid out his most forceful pushback yet to Trump’s baseless attacks.

In a rebuke of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, the former vice president said during a 20-minute speech at a rally that he’s not surprised Trump asked a foreign government for help to defeat him. Trump’s effort to enlist Ukraine has sparked an impeachment inquiry in the Democratic-led House.

Trump and his allies have accused Biden and his son Hunter, without evidence, of participating in the kind of corruption that has plagued Ukraine. They point to Hunter Biden’s service on the board of a Ukrainian gas company while Biden was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv. Yet no one has produced evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden.

“Let me make something clear to Trump and his hatchet men and the special interests funding his attacks against me. I’m not going anywhere,” Biden said to loud cheers.

“It’s not about Donald Trump’s antics. It’s about what has brought Donald Trump, and the nation, to this sobering moment in our history and to the choice facing us in 2020,” he said. “What has brought us here is simply this: the abuse of power.”

A complaint by a government whistleblower helped make public Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president. House investigators said Wednesday they will issue a subpoena demanding all White House and Trump administration documents related to efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son.

“Desperate and defensive, Trump sends one crazed tweet after another _ insinuating that the whistleblower should be dealt with extensively, using the word ‘executed,’ threatening to prosecute the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, warning direly of civil war if he is impeached,” he said.

Biden praised the whistleblower and accused Trump of repeatedly smearing the Biden family.

“Now because of the courageous actions of a whistleblower, Trump’s scheme has been exposed,” he said. “He did it because, like every bully in history _ he’s afraid. He’s afraid of just how badly he may be beaten in November.”

More than 400 people crowded into the student center at Truckee Meadows Community College for Biden’s rally after he joined eight other White House hopefuls at a gun policy forum in Las Vegas earlier in the day. It marked the first time this year the early Democratic presidential front-runner had brought his campaign to northern Nevada.

Nevada’s caucuses in February follow Iowa and New Hampshire as third in the nominating process. It was one of the few key swing states that Trump failed to carry in 2016. Biden historically has enjoyed strong support from labor unions and others in Washoe County, including Reno and Sparks.

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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

Trump backtracks, returns to racist form

July 23, 2019July 20, 2019

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., walks from the House to her office following votes at the Capitol in Washington Thursday. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President Donald Trump on Friday reversed his previous criticisms of a North Carolina campaign crowd that chanted “send her back” about a Somali-born congresswoman.

Trump defended the rally-goers as “patriots” while again questioning the loyalty of four Democratic lawmakers of color. His comments marked a return to a pattern that has become familiar during controversies of his own making: Ignite a firestorm, backtrack from it, but then double down on his original, inflammatory position.

When reporters at the White House asked if he was unhappy with the Wednesday night crowd, Trump responded: “Those are incredible people. They are incredible patriots. But I’m unhappy when a congresswoman goes and says, ‘I’m going to be the president’s nightmare.’”

It was another dizzying twist in a saga sparked by the president’s racist tweets about Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who moved from Somalia as a child, and her colleagues Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.

The moment took an ugly turn at the rally when the crowd’s “send her back” shouts resounded for 13 seconds as Trump made no attempt to interrupt them. He paused in his speech and surveyed the scene, taking in the uproar, though the next day he claimed he did not approve of the chant and tried to stop it.

But on Friday, he made clear he was not disavowing the chant and again laced into Omar, the target of the chant.

“You can’t talk that way about our country. Not when I’m president,” Trump said. “These women have said horrible things about our country and the people of our country.”

He also tweeted that it was “amazing how the Fake News Media became ‘crazed’ over the chant ‘send her back’ by a packed Arena (a record) crowd in the Great State of North Carolina, but is totally calm & accepting of the most vile and disgusting statements made by the three Radical Left Congresswomen.”

Omar was defiant Thursday, telling reporters at the Capitol that she believes the president is a “fascist” and casting the confrontation as a fight over “what this country truly should be.”

“We are going to continue to be a nightmare to this president because his policies are a nightmare to us. We are not deterred. We are not frightened,” she told a cheering crowd that greeted her like a local hero at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport as she returned from Washington.

The back-and-forth captured the potential impacts of Trump’s willingness to inject racist rhetoric into his reelection fight. Trump’s allies distanced themselves from the chant, fretting over the voters it might turn off in next year’s election and beyond. Democrats, meanwhile, pointed to the episode as a rallying cry to energize and mobilize their supporters to vote Trump out of office.

Trump’s double flip-flop was reminiscent of his response to the violent clash between white supremacists and anti-racist demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.

Then, he initially blamed violence on “both sides” of the altercation. After a wave of bipartisan condemnation and scathing cable news coverage, he issued a clean-up statement at the White House days later. Yet, after watching the response to his reversal, he doubled back to his original position during a wild Trump Tower news conference.

This week, Trump started the tumult by tweeting Sunday that Omar and three other freshmen congresswomen could “go back” to their native countries if they were unhappy here.

The chants at the Trump rally brought criticism from GOP lawmakers as well as from Democrats, though the Republicans did not fault Trump himself.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California declared that the chant has “no place in our party and no place in this country.”

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted that it was “ugly, wrong, & would send chills down the spines of our Founding Fathers. This ugliness must end, or we risk our great union.”

Citing Trump’s rhetoric, House Democrats said they were discussing arranging security for Omar and the three other congresswomen.

Even by Trump’s standards, the campaign rally offered an extraordinary tableau for American politics: a president drinking in a crowd’s cries to expel a congresswoman from the country who’s his critic and a woman of color.

It was also the latest demonstration of how Trump’s verbal cannonades are capable of dominating the news. Democrats had hoped the spotlight Thursday would be on House passage of legislation to boost the minimum wage for the first time in a decade.

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Padmananda Rama, Kathleen Hennessey, Zeke Miller, Deb Riechmann and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

AG Barr attacks judges who rule against Trump

May 22, 2019May 22, 2019

Attorney General William Barr (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Attorney General William Barr is taking on another item from President Donald Trump’s agenda, railing against judges who issue rulings blocking nationwide policies.

In a speech Tuesday night, Barr took aim at the broad judicial power, arguing that federal judges who have issued the so-called nationwide injunctions are hampering Trump’s efforts on immigration, health care and other issues with “no clear end in sight.”

It is the latest example of Barr moving to embrace Trump’s political talking points.

The attorney general is traditionally expected to carry out the president’s agenda as a member of the Cabinet while trying to avoid political bias. Democrats have cast Barr as an attorney general who acts more like Trump’s personal lawyer instead of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.

At a re-election rally earlier this month, Trump railed against “activist judges who issue nationwide injunctions based on their personal beliefs,” which he said “undermine democracy and threaten the rule of law.”

Administration officials have often complained about the proliferation of nationwide injunctions since Trump became president. Vice President Mike Pence said a few weeks ago that the administration intends to challenge the right of federal district courts to issue such rulings.

“The legal community and the broader public should be more concerned, particularly about this trend of nationwide injunctions,” Barr said.

Barr highlighted the legal fights that have happened in federal courts across the country over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that shields young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children but don’t have legal status to protect them from deportation.

The Justice Department, under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, argued that the Obama administration acted unlawfully when it implemented DACA. Texas and other Republican-led states eventually sued and won a partial victory in a federal court in Texas.

Civil rights groups, advocates for immigrants and Democratic-led states all have sued to prevent the end of the program. A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that the administration decision to end DACA was arbitrary and capricious.

Barr said Trump “lost much of his leverage” in negotiations with congressional Democrats, who were pushing for a permanent solution for DACA recipients, after one district court judge issued an order forcing the administration to maintain the program nationwide.

“Unsurprisingly, those negotiations did not lead to a deal,” Barr said.

In his speech to the American Law Institute, Barr argued it isn’t about partisanship and said the approach taken by judges who issue these nationwide rulings departs not only from the limitations of the Constitution, but also from the “traditional understanding of the role of courts.” The Justice Department will continue to oppose such rulings, he said.

“Nationwide injunctions not only allow district courts to wield unprecedented power, they also allow district courts to wield it asymmetrically,” Barr said.

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Follow Balsamo on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MikeBalsamo1 .

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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

After getting Trump elected, Russians next attacked Mueller

December 18, 2018

Russia helped Donald Trump become an unlikely president of the United States in 2016 with fake posts and disinformation spread through social media and then turned on special counsel Robert Mueller when he became the one investigating the involvement of our sworn enemy’s involvement.

Reports The Washington Post:

The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram — which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal — claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with “radical Islamic groups.”

Such tactics exemplified how Russian teams ranged nimbly across social media platforms in a shrewd online influence operation aimed squarely at American voters. The effort started earlier than commonly understood and lasted longer while relying on the strengths of different sites to manipulate distinct slices of the electorate, according to a pair of comprehensive new reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee and released Monday.

Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and network analysis firm Graphika looked at more than 10 million posts and messages on the major social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and others and found Russia used American technology to construct a huge online disinformation machine that tried to discredit Mueller and his team at every stop of its investigation.

“Twitter hit political and journalistic elites. Facebook and its advertising targeting tools divided the electorate into demographic and ideological segments ripe for manipulation, with particular focus on energizing conservatives and suppressing African Americans, who traditionally are more likely to vote for Democrats,” wrote Craig Timberk, Tony Romm and Elizabeth Dwoskin of the Post.

“We hope that these reports provide clarity for the American people and policymakers alike, and make clear the sweeping scope of the operation and the long game being played,” said Renee DiResta, research director at New Knowledge.

The Russians posted more than 1,100 ” disinformation” videos. They used PayPal to raise money and sell politically themed merchandise designed by the Russian teams.

Instagram’s fake posts from Russians drew 187 million comments — more than Facebook and Twitter combined.

On Twitter, Russians posted more than 5,000 tweets about Mueller, many of them calling on Congress and/or Trump to fire him because of his “fake investigation.” The tweets also called fired FBI director James Comey “a dirty cop.”

“I think all the platforms remain keenly vulnerable, and I don’t have the confidence yet companies have invested the resources and people power necessary to deal with the scope of the problem,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. ““If Facebook was unaware of it, it’s one problem. If they were aware of it and didn’t share that information, that’s a completely different problem.”

YouTube did not disclose how many people watched the fake videos, Russia did not release comments by those who saw their fake posts and Twitter withheld key details.

“Regrettably, it appears that the platforms may have misrepresented or evaded in some of their statements to Congress,” The Senate report said.

The current chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said the findings show “how aggressively Russia sought to divide Americans by race, religion and ideology.”

“For many months we urged the social media companies to undertake such a crosscutting analysis without success, even as we made as much of their data as public as possible,” said Schiff. Such reluctance “made our task far more difficult than it should have been.”

Twitter, for example, failed to work with the researchers used by the Senate to track Russian influence.

Other Republicans on the committee refused to comment.

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Trump attacks Kavanaugh’s accuser, setting the tone

September 22, 2018September 22, 2018

President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Combat won out over caution.

White House aides and congressional allies worked all week to keep President Donald Trump from unloading on the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct.

But as Kavanaugh’s nomination hung in the balance, Trump couldn’t contain his frustration any longer and unleashed a direct Twitter attack on the credibility of Christine Blasey Ford, who says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her decades ago during a high school party.

Friday’s tweet landed with a splat in the noxious brew of gender and politics that has taken over a high-stakes confirmation battle playing out against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement. In keeping with Trump’s natural instinct to fight back when under attack, as well as his long pattern of defending powerful men against the claims of women, the president’s tweet reflected growing anger over all the focus on Ford’s accusation.

Trump initially believed he could support his nominee without wading into the specific allegations against Kavanaugh since they did not involve him. But that began to change as Trump watched ongoing coverage of the accusations, particularly on Air Force One TVs tuned into Fox News on his long flight Thursday from Washington to Las Vegas, according to a White House official and a Republican close to the White House. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations.

Trump began to view the allegations as a scheme to undermine his pick and told one confidant that he doubted Ford’s credibility. The “fake” attack on Kavanaugh reminded him of the broadsides launched against him during his presidency and the claims of sexual misconduct that dogged him at the end of his campaign.

Increasingly convinced the accusations were a Democratic plot being advanced by the media, Trump tweeted that if the attack was really so bad, “charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents.”

With that, he blew right past the advice of aides, who had counseled Trump to avoid attacking Ford directly, warning that it could backfire and damage Kavanaugh’s chances and hurt vulnerable Republicans in the midterm elections.

As is often the case with the president’s tweets, this one seemed to catch many off guard. Shortly before Trump’s tweet, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters at the White House there was “no reason” to attack Ford. Asked if she had been advising Trump to avoid criticism, Conway said: “The president doesn’t need anybody to tell him. He does the right thing.”

Trump’s refusal to hold back has a history.

In 2015, he tweeted: “When somebody challenges you unfairly, fight back – be brutal, be tough – don’t take it. It is always important to WIN!”

Throughout his presidency, Trump has taken an aggressive posture, picking fights with his perceived enemies. He has complained loudly over the Russia probe and special counsel Robert Mueller. He carps constantly about what he sees as unfair coverage by the news media. He has targeted a number of potential 2020 Democratic opponents and continues to lambast former President Barack Obama. He also has gone after congressional Republicans at times and lacerated his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

It was just that sort of Twitter-driven ire that congressional Republicans and White House aides guiding the Kavanaugh confirmation had hoped to avoid. Since the allegation first surfaced, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and White House Counsel Don McGahn have kept in constant contact with one another, people familiar with their conversations said. The lawmakers told the top White House lawyer early on that Trump’s reaction was a wild card that could undermine their attempts to confirm Kavanaugh in such a highly charged political and cultural moment.

Beyond those early conversations, congressional Republicans left it up to the White House to explain the stakes to the president. White House aides relayed the congressional concerns to Trump, as Conway and other officials walked a tight rope in defending Kavanaugh while also remaining sympathetic toward his accuser. When Trump first spoke out Monday, he largely stuck to the talking points that his aides had prepared.

His fairly tame response — allowing that there might be a need for a brief delay on the committee vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination — had some White House aides believing they had gotten through. But it didn’t last.

Trump traveled to Nevada on Thursday without McGahn or chief of staff John Kelly for a rally and a bill signing, joined by press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and aides Dan Scavino, Stephen Miller and Johnny DeStefano. He launched his tweets just before sunrise Friday from his gold-hued high-rise hotel off the Vegas Strip in the hours before a political fundraiser.

His combative tone sent White House and congressional aides rushing to try to contain the fallout with wavering GOP lawmakers whom they feared would bend over backward to distance themselves from Trump’s barbs. And aides worried that the president could unleash further attacks in future appearances.

Trump has long defended powerful men against claims from women and has faced numerous accusations himself.

His campaign was nearly derailed in October 2016 when a video from TV’s “Access Hollywood” emerged that captured him boasting about groping women. After a reluctant apology, Trump returned to denying any wrongdoing, dismissing the claims of more than a dozen women who accused of him of sexual misconduct, and mocking some of them for not being attractive enough for him to seduce.

Even as the #MeToo movement gained steam, giving a voice to women who said they were abused by powerful men, the White House has steadily denied accusations against the president and his allies.

Trump backed longtime friend Roger Ailes, the Fox News executive accused of misconduct by more than two dozen women, and later hired Ailes’ onetime aide Bill Shine to be his White House communications director. He publicly defended Rob Porter, an aide who resigned after his two ex-wives accused him of spousal abuse. And he backed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore despite accusations that Moore pursued relationships with underage women. All three men denied the allegations.

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Lemire reported from Las Vegas.

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Trump attacks U.S. news networks, British tabloid

July 13, 2018July 13, 2018

President Donald Trump with British Prime Minister Theresa May during their joint news conference at Chequers, in Buckinghamshire, England, Friday, July 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Donald Trump found time to attack CNN, NBC and the British tabloid The Sun, and offer fashion advice to a fourth news organization, while talking to reporters Friday with British Prime Minister Theresa May.

The leaders faced sharp questions at a news conference following their talks, which came between a reportedly contentious meeting of NATO representatives and Trump’s upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Frequent Trump foil Jim Acosta of CNN tried to ask a question at one point and was rebuffed by the president.

“CNN is fake news,” Trump said. “I don’t take questions from CNN.

“Let’s go to a real network,” Trump said, pointing to John Roberts of Fox News Channel. Roberts asked if there was any way that relations with Russia would improve as long as the country occupied Crimea.

A day earlier, Trump took a question from CNN’s Jeremy Diamond following the NATO meeting. And as Friday’s session with May was breaking up, Acosta shouted, “Mr. President, will you ask Putin to stay out of U.S. elections?”

Trump turned around and answered yes.

Roberts, a veteran of CBS News and CNN, took some withering criticism online for not standing up for Acosta in the moment or, perhaps, ceding the microphone to his colleague.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper tweeted that he was “old enough to remember when other networks came to the defense of Fox News WH correspondents during the Obama years. Such did not happen here. Lesson for the kids out there: no one should ever try to do the right thing with the expectation that it will ever be reciprocated.”

Media solidarity has become an issue with White House briefings lately, as some journalists suggest that reporters should band together to prevent press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders from changing the subject to avoid answering questions. It hasn’t happened to any appreciable degree.

Roberts said later that he paused when Acosta and Trump went back and forth, and asked his own question when it became clear the president would not entertain one from CNN.

He noted he used to work at CNN. “There are some fine journalists who work there and risk their lives to report on stories around the world,” Roberts said. “To issue a blanket condemnation of the network as ‘fake news’ is … unfair.”

Roberts also said it was similarly wrong for Trump to call Kristen Welker of NBC News dishonest. “She is as honest as the day is long,” he said.

Trump took offense Friday when Welker asked him, “Are you giving Russian President Vladimir Putin the upper hand heading into your talks given that you are challenging the alliances that he is seeking to break up and defeat?”

Trump called it dishonest reporting. “Of course it happens to be NBC, which is possibly worse than CNN,” he said. Welker was cut off when she tried to reply.

NBC News had no comment on the exchange. Margaret Talev, president of the White House Correspondents Association, said that “asking smart, tough questions, whether in a presidential press conference or interview, is central to the role a free press plays in a healthy republic.”

“Saying a news organization isn’t real doesn’t change the facts and won’t stop us from doing our jobs,” Talev said.

All of the cable news networks, along with ABC, CBS and NBC, carried the news conference live. Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” promised the show would fact-check the session live, much as it had done the day before following a NATO meeting. Co-host Joe Scarborough frequently broke in while Trump talked on Thursday, calling some of his claims untrue.

But MSNBC didn’t break in to the Trump-May session Friday. There was no indication whether the live fact-check was considered a failed experiment, or whether it would be repeated on “Morning Joe” or any other show.

Trump was questioned Friday about critical statements he had made about May in an interview this week with The Sun, where he said she hadn’t taken his advice about Brexit negotiations and he praised her political rival. He criticized the newspaper for not printing the positive things he said about May, although he later softened his stance when it was pointed out that the Sun released audio portions of the interview.

“I said very nice things about her,” he said. “They didn’t put it in the headline. I wish they’d put it in the headline.”

The Sun’s headline: “Trump’s Brexit Blast: Donald Trump told Theresa May how to do Brexit ‘but she wrecked it’ — and says the US trade deal is off.”

In a statement, the Sun said it stood by its reporting. “To say the president called us ‘fake news’ with any serious intent is, well … fake news.”

During one awkward moment in the news conference, Trump called attention to Reuters reporter Jeff Mason’s hat. Roberts, sitting next to him, playfully doffed the hat to reveal Mason’s bald head.

“I like you better without the hat,” Trump said.

Mason took it off and asked his question.

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Associated Press reporters Jill Lawless and Jill Colvin contributed to this report from London.

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Monster Trump goes off deep end by attacking allies

June 11, 2018June 11, 2018

How much destruction does wannabe president/king Donald Trump have to inflict upon America before his pandering Congressional leadership and morally deficient supporters accept what he is: A dangerous criminal guilty of fraud, obstruction of justice and treason.

Like the coward he is, Trump waited until he was safely on Air Force One before ordering his representatives to pull out of the G-7 signatory agreement after agreeing to it while in Canada.

Trump claimed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, “insulted” America in his comments at the end of the meeting. He called Trudeau “dishonest” and “weak” and accused him of “false statements.”

Then he dispatched two aides to up the insult ante on Sunday morning talks shows.

“There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad-faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door,” said Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro said on “Fox News Sunday.” “And that’s what bad-faith Justin Trudeau did with that stunt press conference.”

“POTUS is not gonna let a Canadian prime minister push him around,” Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “He is not going to permit any show of weakness on the trip to negotiate with North Korea.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Robert D. Hormats, advisor uo Republican and Democratic presidents at a dozen Group of 7 summit meetings, starting at the first in Rambouillet, France, in 1975, when it was still the Group of 6, told The New York Times.

“The irony is this institution that was designed largely by the United States was really designed to shore up alliances and political relationships and resolve economic issues. This just served to do the opposite of that.”

Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign minister, meeting with reporters after Trump’s abrupt about-face, says that if anyone should be insulted, it was Canada,. Trump, she said, cited a national security justification for his tariffs on steel and aluminum.

“The national security pretext is absurd and frankly insulting to Canadians, the closest and strongest ally the United States has had,” she said. “That is where the insult lies.”

Adds Roland Paris, a former foreign affairs advisor to Tredaux:

“Big tough guy once he’s back on his airplane,” Paris said on Twitter. “Can’t do it in person, and knows it, which makes him feel week. So he projects these feelings onto Trudeau and then lashes out at him. You don’t need to be Freud. He’s a pathetic little man-child.”

Consider what America has become: A vapid nation with a morally challenged former TV reality host president who lies constantly and is under multiple investigations for conflict of interest, obstruction of justice, fraud and other acts typical of a con artist.

Congress is run by a corrupt congregation of yes men and yes women who let the president run wild with no concern or control.

Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post notes that Trump enablers like Kudlow or Chief of Staff John Kelly used to argue:

We are a moderating influence. It would be worse without us. He isn’t that bad. But they do not moderate Trump, and he is that bad — irrational, cruel, impulsive, anti-democratic and stubbornly ignorant. Trump attacks the things they ostensibly believe in (e.g. democratic alliances, defense of democratic values, the international free-trade system, the rule of law). Nevertheless, they stay on.

They sit back while Trump loots the U.S. Treasury, rolls back protections for consumers, disregards increasing threats to the environment and shows more concern for saving jobs in China than in the country he promised to “make great again.”

His real goal is to make “American disintegrate and end” and he’s doing all that he can to achieve that goal as his cult-like following cheer him on.

Trump’s rape of America has only just begun.

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Trump on the campaign stump: Rants, insults, attacks

March 12, 2018March 12, 2018

President Donald Trump reacts to the crowd while speaking at a campaign rally for Republican Rick Saccone in a hangar, Saturday, March 10, 2018, in Moon Township, Pa. Saccone is running against Democrat Conor Lamb in a special election being held on March 13 for the Pennsylvania 18th Congressional District vacated by Republican Tim Murphy. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

He urged his audience not to jeer North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un while goading the crowd to boo the press.

He called an African-American congresswoman a “very low-IQ individual” and bashed the moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press” as a “sleeping son of a bitch.”

If it wasn’t crystal clear already, President Donald Trump’s roaring rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday night underscored the fact that, more than a year into the job, Trump has no interest in leaving behind the vulgar insults or biting attacks on the free press that defined his 2016 Republican campaign.

“You’d be so bored,” Trump said as he brushed off criticism that he should change his ways.

“Don’t forget, this got us elected,” he told the crowd outside Pittsburgh. “If I came like a stiff, you guys wouldn’t be here tonight.”

Instead, Trump repeatedly lashed out at the “fake, fake media” and insulted reporters, prompting the crowd to break into a round of a favorite 2016 chant, “CNN sucks.”

But when it came to the North Korean leader, Trump was more restrained.

“No, it’s very positive,” Trump said after his mention of Kim’s name prompted boos and jeers. Trump, who last week agreed to a historic one-on-one meeting with Kim, motioned with his arms for the crowd to calm. “After the meeting you may do that, but now we have to be very nice.”

Later, he held up China and Singapore as examples of countries that had successfully tackled their drug problems and suggested mandating the death penalty for drug dealers in the United States.

Trump critic Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said the president’s comments were setting a dangerous precedent.

“Words matter,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” whose host, Chuck Todd, had been the subject of some of Trump’s most virulent tongue-lashing, including being called a “sleeping son of a bitch.”

Flake, who has hinted he might challenge Trump in 2020, said: “We had a record number of journalists being jailed overseas, some on false news charges, echoing the phrases that he uses. So I don’t think it’s a responsible thing to do.”

But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, also appearing on Todd’s show, brushed off Trump’s vulgar language, including his description of Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, the ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services, as a “low IQ” person.

“These are campaign rally issues,” Mnuchin said. “That is at a campaign rally. And the president likes making funny names.”

Mnuchin also argued the press should pay less attention to Trump’s rally speeches and more attention to his policies, such as his announcement on tariffs last week.

“He’s using these vulgarities in the context of a campaign rally, and obviously there were a lot of funny moments on that rally,” he said.

Todd, whom Trump derided throughout the campaign as “sleepy eyes Chuck Todd,” responded to Mnuchin with a deadpan tone. “Yeah, they were hilarious,” he said.

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Follow Colvin on Twitter at https://twitter.com/colvinj

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Russian hackers continue attacks on American defense weaknesses

February 7, 2018

Russian hackers exploited a key vulnerability in U.S. cyber defenses to come within reach of stealing some of the nation’s most secret and advanced defense technology, an Associated Press investigation has found.

What may have been stolen is uncertain, but the cyberspies clearly took advantage of poorly protected email and scant direct notification of victims.

The hackers known as Fancy Bear, who also intruded in the U.S. election, went after at least 87 people working on military drones, missiles, rockets, stealth fighter jets, cloud-computing platforms, or other sensitive activities, the AP found. Thirty-one agreed to interviews.

Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. James Poss, speaks about a hacking attempt on him, and the danger of such attacks in general, in his home office in Ocean Springs, Miss., on Jan. 17, 2018. An expert with three decades of experience in the military, Poss now consults on drones and intelligence. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Employees at both small companies and defense giants like Lockheed Martin Corp., Raytheon Co., Boeing Co., Airbus Group and General Atomics were targeted. Contacted by the AP, those companies offered no comment.

“The programs that they appear to target and the people who work on those programs are some of the most forward-leaning, advanced technologies,” said Charles Sowell, a former senior adviser in the Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, who reviewed the list of names for the AP. “And if those programs are compromised in any way, then our competitive advantage and our defense is compromised.”

“That’s what’s really scary,” added Sowell, who was himself one of the hacking targets.

The AP identified Fancy Bear’s prey from about 19,000 lines of the hackers’ email phishing data collected by the U.S.-based cybersecurity company Secureworks, which calls the hackers Iron Twilight. The data is partial and extends from March 2015 to May 2016.

Most of the people on the target list worked on classified projects. Yet as many as 40 percent clicked on the hackers’ phishing links, the AP analysis indicates. That’s the first step in potentially opening their accounts or computer files to digital theft.

Hackers predominantly targeted personal Gmail, with a few corporate accounts mixed in. Personal accounts can convey classified information — whether through carelessness or expediency — and lead to more valuable targets or carry embarrassing personal details that can be used for blackmail or to recruit spies.

Among their interests, the Russians seemed to be eyeing the X-37B, an American unmanned space plane that looks like a miniature shuttle.

This combination of photos shows an Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet, left, an MQ-9 Reaper/“Predator B” drone, right, and an X-37B unmanned spacecraft, bottom. Data supplied by the cybersecurity firm Secureworks shows Fancy Bear’s hacking targets included defense contractor employees at Lockheed Martin, General Atomics, and Boeing, involved in the development of these systems. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, Heather Ainsworth, U.S. Air Force via AP)

Referring to an X-37B flight in May 2015, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin invoked it as evidence that his country’s space program was faltering. “The United States is pushing ahead,” he warned Russian lawmakers.

Less than two weeks later, Fancy Bear tried to penetrate the Gmail account of a senior engineer on the X-37B project at Boeing.

The hackers also chased people who work on cloud-based services, the off-site computer networks that enable collaborators to work with data that is sometimes classified. For example, the cyberspies tried to get into the Gmail of an employee at Mellanox Federal Systems, which helps the government with high-speed storage networks, data analysis and cloud computing. Its clients include the FBI and other intelligence agencies.

Yet of the 31 targets reached by AP, just one got any warning from U.S. officials.

The FBI declined to give on-the-record details of its response to this Russian operation. Agency spokeswoman Jillian Stickels said the FBI does sometimes notify individual targets. “The FBI takes … all potential threats to public and private sector systems very seriously,” she said in an email.

However, three people familiar with the matter — including a current and a former government official — previously told the AP the FBI knew the details of Fancy Bear’s phishing campaign for more than a year.

Pressed about notification in that case, a senior FBI official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the hacking operation because of its sensitivity, said the bureau was overwhelmed by the sheer number of attempted hacks. “It’s a matter of triaging to the best of our ability the volume of the targets who are out there,” he said.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Heather Babb, said the department recognizes the evolving cyber threat and continues to update training and technology for military, civilian and contract personnel. But she declined to comment on this hacking operation.

The Defense Security Service, which protects classified U.S. technology, focuses on safeguarding corporate computer networks.

“We simply have no insight into or oversight of anyone’s personal email accounts or how they are protected or notified when something is amiss,” spokeswoman Cynthia McGovern said in an email.

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Donn reported from Plymouth, Massachusetts; Butler, from Washington; Satter, from Paris.

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The AP’s international investigations team can be reached at investigate@ap.org

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For Trump, 2018 is same old reality show

January 4, 2018January 4, 2018

President Donald Trump (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

So much for a new year, new start.

For Donald Trump, that energy-sapping 2017 cocktail of blistering presidential tweets, salacious White House infighting and jaw-dropping feuds with foreign adversaries has given way to, well, more of the same.

“We are off and running,” said Josh Holmes, a longtime adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “It’s amazing that the pace that we set in 2017 has continued with equal vigor.”

Indeed, the first three days of 2018 — yes, just three days — brought a new array of targets for the president and the return of some familiar foes. As part of a 17-tweet barrage on Tuesday, Trump picked a fight with the “deep state” within his own government that he believes is trying to undermine his presidency, and he raised the specter of war with North Korea by asserting that his “Nuclear Button” was bigger than that of Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un.

By Wednesday, Trump had turned on his former top adviser Steve Bannon, accusing him of having “lost his mind.” The scathing attack, issued with the formality of an official White House statement, followed the publication of excerpts from an unflattering book in which Bannon accuses the president’s namesake son of holding a “treasonous” meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign.

Across Washington, holiday cheer was suddenly a distant memory.

“I feel exhausted,” said Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist who advised Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in his campaign against Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primary. “I feel like the year has got to be over by now.”

Trump rattled Washington in his first year in office by blowing past the guardrails that have traditionally governed what a president does and doesn’t say and by frequently picking fights that seem far less consequential than the weighty issues that land on a commander in chief’s desk. He needled friendly foreign leaders like Britain’s Theresa May, accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his New York skyscraper and spread rumors about media personalities he deemed overly critical.

To be sure, no one in Washington expected Trump to be a different man when he returned from Christmas vacation at his estate in Palm Beach, Florida. By now, Washington has largely come to grips with the reality of a president who often starts and ends his day with tweets on topics that are a mystery to even his closest aides until they pop up on their smartphones. And while some Trump advisers have grown beleaguered by the president’s seemingly insatiable appetite for a feud, few expect that to change or put much effort into trying to hold him back.

Yet there was still a hope, both in the White House and on Capitol Hill, that the president might arrive back in Washington eager to build on the passage of a sweeping Republican overhaul of the tax code in the waning days of December. The bill passed with only Republican votes, and polling shows the complicated legislation is deeply unpopular with Americans, leaving the president and his party with a tall task if they hope to ride the tax overhaul to electoral victories in the midterm elections.

Trump has tweeted a handful of messages in 2018 about the tax bill. But he generated far more attention with his missives taking aim at the media and his unfounded claim of credit for the fact that no commercial airlines crashed in 2017.

Some Republicans cringed. Tyler said that in the early days of 2018, the White House had already “lost the communications war over what tax policy is designed to do.” And he put the blame squarely on Trump, saying the president “cannot be trusted with his own message.”

On Capitol Hill, where the Senate returned to work, most GOP lawmakers girded themselves for another year of what has become their familiar ritual: carefully critiquing Trump’s most sensational comments without criticizing the president himself. Asked about Trump’s North Korea button bluster, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said simply: “It’s probably better not to tweet about such things.”

Just 361 days to go until the calendar flips again.

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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

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