Monday, October 16, 2017
Trump slams 'failing' New York Times reporter for ignoring successes on trade, climate
President Trump on Sunday criticized a New York
Times story stating that he has failed to fulfill campaign promises on
undoing key Obama administration policies, calling the newspaper
“failing” and pointing to early successes like exiting the international
Paris climate accord and getting conservative Judge Neil Gorsuch on the
Supreme Court.
“The Failing @nytimes, in a story by
Peter Baker, should have mentioned the rapid terminations by me of TPP
& The Paris Accord & the fast ... approvals of The Keystone XL
& Dakota Access pipelines” Trump said in a two-part tweet. “Also,
look at the recent EPA cancelations & our great new Supreme Court
Justice!”
In a story Sunday titled, “Promise the Moon? Easy for
Trump. But Now Comes the Reckoning,” Baker points out that Trump, on his
winning 2016 presidential campaign trail, called ObamaCare “outrageous”
and the 2015 international Iran nuclear deal led by former President
Barack Obama “one of the worst and one-sided transactions the United
States has ever entered into.”However, nearly nine months into his presidency, Trump has yet to dismantle either, though he took steps last week to address both with or without the help of his Republican-controlled Congress.
Beyond pointing out that he exited the Paris climate deal last month, Trump, in his tweets Sunday, touted the prompt approval of the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, which were held up during Obama’s administration by lengthy environmental and approval processes.
Trump also pointed out that in March he ended U.S. involvement in the TPP, or the Trans Pacific Partnership, the 2016 international trade deal that he argued was unfair to the U.S.
And he pointed out recent efforts, under his orders, for the Environmental Protection Agency to roll back regulations on the domestic fossil fuel industry.
Baker is The Times’ chief White House correspondent and is billed as a straight-news reporter.
Last month, the newspaper published a Baker story titled, “A Divider, Not a Uniter, Trump Widens the Breach,” that reads like what could be considered an opinion piece.
Baker referred to Trump as an “apostle of anger” and “deacon of divisiveness,” before noting that the president’s recent comments about athletes protesting the national anthem “distract from other matters, particularly Congress’ efforts on health care reform."
When reached by Fox News, Baker defended his comments as “analysis rather than opinion,” referring to it as “an observation” based on covering Trump for the past eight months.
The Times did not respond when Fox News asked if Baker is still considered a straight-news reporter.
The Baker article also details the groups that Trump has offended, including the media industry, the National Football League and Hollywood, among many others.
Baker previously had covered the White House for 15 years in the past, but moved out of the country in 2016 to serve as the paper’s Jerusalem bureau chief. Shortly after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton on Election Day, he was recalled to beef up the Times’ White House team during the Trump administration.
Trump has previously referred to the Times as “failing,” and many media watchdogs feel liberal bias is showing.
Hillary Clinton defends kneeling NFL players, says 'that's not against our anthem or flag'
Idiot |
Hillary Clinton speaking in London on Sunday.
(Southbank Centre's London Literature Festival)
Hillary Clinton on Sunday defended
NFL players who knelt during the national anthem, saying kneeling is a
“reverent” position that is not against “our anthem or our flag.”
The former Democratic presidential
candidate, who was at the Southbank Centre's London Literature Festival,
urged Democrats to use the issue against President Trump.
Clinton was embarking on a foreign trip to promote her book “What Happened.”She said people should resist “what are very clear dog-whistles” to the Trump base, pointing to the example of kneeling NFL players.
“That's what black athletes kneeling was all about,” she said in response to a question about ways to resist the White House. ”That's not against our anthem or our flag.”
“Actually, kneeling is a reverent position,” she continued. “It was to demonstrate in a peaceful way against racism and injustice in our criminal system.”
Clinton urged the Democratic Party to continue to “resist” the president, saying “I think it would be a grave error for Democrats to recede from those fights, so therefore we have to stand up, fight back, resist.”
Clinton went on to compare the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections to the September 11 terrorist attack.
“We have really well-respected security and intelligence veterans saying this was a kind of cyber 9/11 in the sense that it was a direct attack to American institutions,” she said. “That may sound dramatic but we know they tried to recruit into election systems, not just social media propaganda.”
North Korea diplomacy will continue 'until the first bomb drops,' Tillerson says
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in an
interview Sunday that the Trump administration will continue to pursue
diplomacy with Pyongyang “until the first bomb drops.”
Tillerson did not specify whether the
U.S. or North Korea would have to pull the trigger. He told CNN’s
“State of the Union” that he wants the issue “solved diplomatically.”
“He’s (Trump) not seeking to go to war,” he said. “He
has made it clear to me to continue my diplomatic efforts… until the
first bomb drops.”That statement comes despite President Trump's tweets a couple of weeks ago that his chief envoy was "wasting his time" trying to negotiate with "Little Rocket Man," a mocking nickname Trump has given the nuclear-armed nation's leader Kim Jong Un.
"I think he does want to be clear with Kim Jong-un and that regime in North Korea that he has military preparations ready to go and he has those military options on the table. And we have spent substantial time actually perfecting those," Tillerson said.
Recent mixed messaging from the top of the U.S. government has raised concerns about the potential for miscalculation amid the increasingly bellicose exchange of words by Trump and the North Korean leader.
Trump told the U.N. General Assembly last month that if the U.S. is "forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea." Trump also tweeted that Korea's leadership "won't be around much longer" if it continued its provocations, a declaration that led the North's foreign minister to assert that Trump had "declared war on our country."
Tillerson acknowledged during a recent trip to Beijing that the Trump administration was keeping open direct channels of communications with North Korea and probing the North's willingness to talk. He provided no elaboration about those channels or the substance of any discussions.
Soon after, Trump took to Twitter, saying he had told "our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man ... Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!" Trump offered no further explanation, but he said all military options are on the table for dealing with North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.
Analysts have speculated about whether the president and his top diplomat were playing "good cop, bad cop" with North Korea, and how China might interpret the confusing signals from Washington. Beijing is the North's main trading partner, and the U.S. is counting on China to enforce U.N. sanctions.
"Rest assured that the Chinese are not confused in any way what the American policy towards North Korea (is) or what our actions and efforts are directed at," Tillerson said.
Clinton Foundation to keep Harvey Weinstein's $250,000 donation
The Clinton Foundation will not
return as much as $250,000 in donations from disgraced Hollywood mogul
Harvey Weinstein following the accusations of sexual harassment and
rape.
The foundation said Sunday that
donations, ranging from $100,000 to $250,000, have already been spent on
projects, The Daily Mail reported.
The move to keep the money was expected following tweets from the foundation’s spokesman Craig Minassian.“Suggesting @ClintonFdn return funds from our 330,000+ donors ignores the fact that donations have been used to help people across the world,” Minassian wrote on Twitter.
The calls to return Weinstein’s money were prompted after multiple actresses have come forward and accused the Hollywood executive of sexual assault and rape, forcing numerous politicians and organization to grapple with the dilemma.
Dozens Democratic Party politicians – including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Sen. Al Franken, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Cory Booker – have pledged to donate their Weinstein’s contributions to charities focused on women’s rights.
Hillary Clinton echoed her former colleagues, saying she was “shocked and appalled” after the sexual harassment allegations were revealed about Weinstein, who hosted fundraisers for her in the past and donated more than $46,000 to her recent presidential campaign and other election efforts.
"What other people are saying, what my former colleagues are saying, is they're going to donate it to charity, and of course I will do that," she said on CNN. "I give 10% of my income to charity every year, this will be part of that. There's no – there's no doubt about it."
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