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Donald Trump Tag

Of all the reporters with whom Donald Trump sparred during his campaign, a favorite target was NBC's Katy Tur. Trump called Tur out by name more than once, as here and here. So it was fascinating to hear Tur, appearing on today's Morning Joe, report that Trump was very friendly to her behind the scenes. She described two anecdotes. In the first, said Tur, Trump tried to pull her up on the stage to wave to the crowd "as if I was his wife or something."

Yesterday we pointed out the massive security being planned for Trump's inauguration. There's a very good reason for that. In addition to fears of terrorist actions, the radical left is planning a number of different actions for inauguration day. No one on the right tried to ruin Obama's inauguration but that favor will not be repaid. Reuters reports, via Yahoo News:
Protests will aim to disrupt Trump inauguration: organizers Thousands of demonstrators are expected to turn out in Washington next week for protests aiming to "shut down" the inauguration of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president, organizers said on Thursday.

The professional protesters of the left are planning all kinds of activities for Trump's inauguration. As a result, the security presence will be yuge. FOX News reports:
Massive security preparations under way for inauguration, amid protest threats to 'paralyze' DC The stage is set for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration – not just the traditional swearing-in platform on Capitol Hill, but a massive security presence amid protest plans to “shut down” the nation’s capital.

It's one fabulously nasty mess both CNN and Buzzfeed created for themselves. Buzzfeed decided to publish an unsubstantiated dossier full of all kinds of licentious information about president-elect Trump, particularly that he has "deep ties to Russia". CNN then ran with the Buzzfeed story. The backstory on how the dossier came to be is as bizarre as the document itself. NOTHING, not even the tiniest little accusation in the report was verified before Buzzfeed hit "publish." They even mentioned that the document had been bouncing around news outlets and reporters for months. Such open secrets are not uncommon. Stories, videos, documents, especially those most sensational in nature are frequently shopped to blogs, news orgs, and reporters. Everyone knows about them. Everyone talks about them. But no one reports them. Why? Because their veracity is unprovable.

Former CEO ExxonMobil Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump's choice for Secretary of State, will face the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today for his confirmation hearing. You can expect him to face questions about Russia since ExxonMobil has agreed to numerous deals with Russian state companies to drill in the Arctic. Questions will also include topics like climate change and human rights. You can watch the confirmation with us as I live blog.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has begun his confirmation hearing for attorney general. We have a live stream in this post. This is expected to be one of the most tense confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet. The Democrats will ask Sessions about his record on civil rights and female rights. However, the GOP holds the majority in the Senate so more than likely he will receive confirmation.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said that President-elect Donald Trump backs his plan to appeal the Affordable Care Act only if the government has a replacement at the same time:
“He called after seeing an interview that I had done [talking about] that we should vote on Obamacare replacement at the same time,” Paul said in an interview on Monday. “He said he was in complete agreement with that.”

Jared Kushner, husband of Trump's oldest daughter Ivanka, was appointed a Senior Adviser to president-elect Trump, news outlets reported Monday afternoon. Kushner married Ivanka in 2009. The couple have three children together. Kushner owns the New York Observer and played a key role in Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Before assuming the role of Senior Advisor Kushner must traverse two fairly significant hurdles -- federal anti-nepotism laws and his participation in Trump-family businesses that might be a conflict of interest to his tentative White House gig.

At the Golden Globe awards Sunday night, Meryl Streep used her stage time to attack Donald Trump. She lamented the fact that such a vulgarian won the election. The funniest thing about her speech is how she frames the importance of being respectful of other people, a quality she clearly doesn't think Trump possesses. Does everyone recall how respectful movies and TV were to George W. Bush? Streep lives in an alternate reality where everyone has always played fairly with each other.

So the American intelligence community has declassified a report that supposedly shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to influence the election in favor of President-elect Donald Trump. However, the report includes circumstantial evidence. They provided no concrete evidence that shows Putin sat down with his Kremlin cronies to orchestrated a campaign to make Hillary Clinton lose. They also concentrated on RT, formerly known as Russia Today, with a brief mention of the phishing schemes that led to Wikileaks publishing emails from the DNC and Hillary campaign chair John Podesta.

"We're going to build a big, beautiful wall and Mexico will pay for it!" President-elect Trump bragged while campaigning. Mexico said they would definitely not pay for a wall, but it looks like we might. Trump's transition team indicated the border wall was a top priority and that the incoming administration hopes to have Congressional approval of funding by as early as April.