Liberal Forum

Trump Administration Absolutely Outraged Someone Would Try To Delegitimize A President

In its short time in office, the new administration has consistently complained that people keep trying to undermine and delegitimize President Donald Trump.

“There is this constant theme to undercut the enormous support that he has. The default narrative is always negative. And it’s demoralizing,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Monday, just three days after Trump was inaugurated.

“There’s an obsession by the media to delegitimize this president, and we are not going to sit around and let it happen,” White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Sunday. “We are going to fight back tooth and nail every day, and twice on Sunday.”

Spicer and Priebus work for a man who spent years trying to delegitimize and undercut President Barack Obama, pushing the conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the United States and therefore wasn’t even constitutionally eligible to be president.

Watch the video in the link above for the new administration’s complaints and Trump’s own efforts to undermine Obama.

Saudi Arabia Not on Trump’s Travel Ban List Despite Providing 15 of 19 9/11 Hijackers

Trump's Muslim travel ban list seems then to be less about danger vectors than sources of wealth for Donald Trump

Talking about Donald Trump’s proposed travel ban Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told host Dana Bash that his master’s travel ban would target people who come from countries “that have sent a large number of people that have become terrorists.”

Bash asked which countries they were looking at specifically, naming as an example, Saudi Arabia. This was Sessions’ answer:

“The public data that we have indicate there are quite a number of countries in that region that have sent a large number of people that have become terrorists…Pakistan has a number, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen.”

Significantly, Sessions did not include Saudi Arabia even though, if he wants to find the point of origin for terrorists, he should: 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia.

Why might Donald Trump give Saudi Arabia a pass? Well, Donald Trump is a businessman. He has huge business ties with Russia and you might notice he is soft on Russia too, and very cozy with strongman Vladimir Putin.

We are right to question whether NATO is more important to Trump than his business ventures in Russia.

And despite blaming them for 9/11, he also has huge business ties with Saudi Arabia, including a potential hotel project in Jeddah.

Misty » 26 Jan 2017 11:59 am » wrote:Saudi Arabia Not on Trump’s Travel Ban List Despite Providing 15 of 19 9/11 Hijackers
Trump's Muslim travel ban list seems then to be less about danger vectors than sources of wealth for Donald Trump

Termin8tor » 20 Jan 2017 2:55 pm » wrote: Liar.

Trump gets into fiery debate over voter fraud claim in ABC News interview

President Donald Trump doubled down on his call for an investigation into voter fraud during the 2016 election on Wednesday in an interview with ABC News.

"We're gonna launch an investigation to find out," Trump said, echoing his Wednesday-morning tweet.

"And I will say this: Of those votes cast, none of 'em come to me. None of 'em come to me."

"They would all be for the other side," said Trump. "None of 'em come to me."

During one heated exchange, ABC News anchor David Muir challenged the president over his statements that millions of illegal ballots were cast in the 2016 election, a claim that has been called a falsehood.

However Trump continued to push the notion that there is widespread voter fraud saying, "You have people that are registered, who are dead, who are illegals, who are in two states," Trump said.

"You have people registered in two states.

They're registered in a New York and a New Jersey.

They vote twice.

There are millions of votes, in my opinion.

Now, I'm gonna do an investigation."

Muir pushed back, claiming the basis of Trump's assertions had already been "debunked."

"It's been called false," said Muir. Trump quickly replied saying "Take a look at the Pew reports."

However, Muir again fired back saying he called the author of the Pew report and that he told him "they found no evidence of voter fraud."

Trump then said, "Really? Then why did he write the report?"

Termin8tor » 26 Jan 2017 12:02 pm » wrote:
The psychopath continues her dishonest Propaganda Campaign with new lies.

Trump's Trouble with Numbers Is America's Problem Now

The new administration's insistence on exaggeration and fuzzy math is a bad sign for the next four years.

Back when Donald Trump was just a guy who put his name on skyscrapers, casinos, and steaks, no one needed to worry too much about his habitual exaggerations.

Braggadocio comes with the territory for being famous and getting richer by playing a rich guy on TV—the public didn't want Trump to be humble any more than they wanted Paris Hilton to be bashful.

He was persistently on-brand before being on-brand was really a thing.

That meant, for instance, badgering Forbes in an effort to get the magazine to revise its estimates of his net worth upward. (Forbes said Trump was worth $3.7 billion at last count.)

It meant being "obsessed" with the ratings of The Apprentice, according to a former NBC PR man.

It meant showing up at a struggling school in the Bronx and handing out a fake million-dollar bill.

In the course of this on-brandness, Trump could, well, exaggerate sometimes.

When journalist Tim O'Brien challenged him on his net worth, it led to a lawsuit during which Trump was forced to admit that his sense of his worth was based on his own feelings.

When The Apprentice's ratings dipped, Trump told that PR man to keep telling reporters it was a number-one show.

And he actually only gave that Bronx school $200.

None of these things really hurt anyone (well, the parents at the school were disappointed).

Trump might have been a billionaire, or so he insists, but he wasn't a particularly powerful one.

He was on the fringe of American life, a sideshow, a hype man, the type of dude who gets roasted on Comedy Central—where, incidentally, he demanded that no one make fun of him for having less money than he said he did.

This fuzzy math, however, is going to matter a lot more now that Trump is the most powerful man in the country—and the consequences could be more far-reaching and severe than many people think.

The federal government does a lot of things, but a major function involves tracking the basic facts of American life: how many people live in a certain place, how many of those people are out of work, how much money a bridge will cost to build, how much the IRS collects in taxes, how many pollutants are floating in our air or swimming in our water.

Public officials use those numbers to make policy, journalists use them to report on various problems facing the country, average citizens can look them up if they're curious about something. Sometimes there are debates about the relative importance of certain numbers, but a great deal depends on people more or less agreeing about basic facts.

When a basic fact challenges Trump, he tends to reject it.

He did some routine number-stretching during the campaign,
regularly exaggerating the sizes of the large crowds he attracted to emphasize how hugely, big-league popular he was.

And this habit has continued after his win: On Monday, he
sent his press secretary Sean Spicer out to tell the media that more people had attended his inauguration than Barack Obama's.

This sparked more debate about crowd size and invited coverage that was unflattering to Trump, but it also indicated just how insistent this administration is going to be when it comes to defending the president's assertions.

The size of a crowd is not really going to affect public policy either way.

What matters more is Trump's subsequent insistence that millions of people voted illegally.

On Tuesday, Spicer told the White House press corps that the president "believed" this to be true, but didn't offer any evidence.

When reporters pointed out that if this were true it would be a huge scandal that should be investigated, Spicer demurred and didn't say if there were plans to investigate.

Everyone, including mainstream outlets like CNN, pointed out how truly ridiculous all this sounded—but on Wednesday morning, Trump showed how far he was willing to go, calling for an investigation (via tweet) into this supposed voter fraud.

These accusations closely follow right-wing claims that it's easy for fraudsters to vote multiple times because millions of people are registered to vote in more than one state.

But it's not illegal to merely be registered to vote in two different places (as White House adviser Steve Bannon reportedly is), and the fear is that crackdowns on voter fraud will just make it harder for poor people, particularly minorities, to vote, giving Republicans an electoral advantage.

The millions of phony votes may just be a "belief" of Trump's, but that belief may have real-world consequences.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Trump has indicated that he thinks the unemployment rate might be "42 percent," which is based on a faulty understanding of how unemployment is measured.

When Spicer was asked on Monday what the unemployment rate is, he didn't even say, instead talking about how the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) puts out "several versions" of that number.

But the unemployment rate is a very specific statistic that measures the percentage of people who are actively looking for work but haven't found it, and according the the BLS, it's currently 4.7 percent.

It's right there on the federal agency's website.

(Since his election, Trump has also exaggerated the number of undocumented immigrants with criminal records.)

So, will Trump and his administration ignore his own government?

Will certain true information that has been put out by the federal government be taken offline, a la the White House's order that the EPA remove its climate change page?

Will federal employees be put in the awkward position of having to contradict their boss when he exaggerates or else follow along in his untruth?

(Spicer in particular is already in a pretty miserable position; he wouldn't say when asked if he agreed with Trump about the alleged voter fraud.)

The numbers that the federal government tracks aren't fungible like the value of Trump-owned properties.

They monitor realities—they are how we judge a policy's success or failure, the basis for conversations about the direction America should take.

The danger isn't that the president keeps exaggerating, it's that people start thinking the government's numbers are just as suspect as Trump's.

Cannonpointer » 26 Jan 2017 12:10 pm » wrote:Which one was the lie, Princess?
That 15 of the hijackers were Saudis?
Or that Saudi Arabia is not on the proposed ban list?
Show us on the doll where the lie is, Princes.
Do you want rape counseling? A pap smear? A protective butt donut?

Termin8tor » 26 Jan 2017 12:02 pm » wrote:The psychopath continues her dishonest Propaganda Campaign with new lies.

Misty » 26 Jan 2017 12:29 pm » wrote: He has no idea what he's talking about.
Every time he sees one of my posts, he just spits out the word LIAR like some kind of a deranged parrot, without even bothering to read it.
Never does he even attempt to show what the lie is.

It's a conditioned response, like Pavlov's dogs.

Misty » 26 Jan 2017 12:35 pm » wrote: Did you read my post #9182?

There is something going on with your posts that makes them very difficult to respond to.
I don't know if you're adding the (b) in there or it's some kind of a glitch.

It needs to be fixed, but I can't help you if you won't respond to me.

I for one am not going to waste any more of my time replying to you, if I have to spend ten minutes straightening out your codes before I can reply.

Cannonpointer » 26 Jan 2017 12:10 pm » wrote: Which one was the lie, Princess?

That 15 of the hijackers were Saudis?
Or that Saudi Arabia is not on the proposed ban list?

Show us on the doll where the lie is, Princes.

Do you want rape counseling? A pap smear? A protective butt donut?

Misty » 26 Jan 2017 12:29 pm » wrote: He has no idea what he's talking about.
Every time he sees one of my posts, he just spits out the word LIAR like some kind of a deranged parrot, without even bothering to read it.
Never does he even attempt to show what the lie is.

It's a conditioned response, like Pavlov's dogs.

Misty » 26 Jan 2017 1:17 pm » wrote:Again, the Pew study they keep citing as proof of massive voter fraud, had nothing to do with voter fraud.
It was about outdated voter rolls.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Let me just tell you, you know what's important, millions of people agree with me when I say that if you would’ve looked on one of the other networks and all of the people that were calling in they're saying, "We agree with Mr. Trump. We agree." They're very smart people.

The people that voted for me -- lots of people are saying they saw things happen.

I heard stories also.

But you're not talking about millions.

But it's a small little segment.

I will tell you, it's a good thing that we're doing because at the end we're gonna have an idea as to what's going on.

Now, you're telling me Pew report has all of a sudden changed.

But you have other reports and you have other statements.

You take a look at the registrations, how many dead people are there?

Take a look at the registrations as to the other things that I already presented.

DAVID MUIR: And you're saying ...

(OVERTALK)

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And you're gonna find ...

DAVID MUIR: ... those people who are on the rolls voted, that there are millions of illegal votes?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I didn't say there are millions.

But I think there could very well be millions of people. That's right.

DAVID MUIR: You tweeted though ...

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And I also say this ...

DAVID MUIR: ... you tweeted, "If you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally, I won the popular vote."

PRESIDENT TRUMP: David, and I also say this, if I was going for the popular vote I would've won easily.

But I would've been in California and New York.

I wouldn't have been in Maine. I wouldn't have been in Iowa.

I wouldn't have been in Nebraska and all of those states that I had to win in order to win this.

I would've been in New York, I would've been in California. I never even went there.

Misty » 26 Jan 2017 7:05 pm » wrote:OY YOY YOY!
Now he says that he never said 'millions' voted illegally?

The Pew report has not 'all of a sudden' changed.
It was never about voter fraud.
It was about outdated voter rolls.

"I don't think the 11 million -- which is a number you have been hearing for many many years, I've been hearing that number for five years -- I don't think that is an accurate number anymore," Trump said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe July 24. "I am now hearing it's 30 million, it could be 34 million, which is a much bigger problem."

http://www.politifact.com/florida/state ... ts-30-mil/