Trump Told Pence ‘You’re Too Honest’ When He Objected to Jan. 6 Scheme; Rolling Stone, August 1, 2023

TIM DICKINSON , Rolling Stone; Trump Told Pence ‘You’re Too Honest’ When He Objected to Jan. 6 Scheme

"The new indictment of Donald Trump on conspiracy charges related to his attempts to subvert the results of the 2020 election makes clear that the then-president not only made false claims about who won the presidency, but “knew that they were false.”

Trump’s tortured relationship with the truth is highlighted in an exchange he allegedly had with Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 1, 2021. Trump, the indictment says, called Pence and “berated him” because Pence opposed efforts to claim that he alone had the power, in his ceremonial role presiding over the counting of the votes of the Electoral College, to reject the official tallies from the states. 

As recounted in the indictment, Pence told Trump that — as he understood the laws of our land — there was no constitutional authority invested in the vice president to make such a move.

Trump then allegedly lit into Pence, telling him: “You’re too honest.”"

Trump attorney calls him ‘the most ethical American I know’ in wake of superseding indictment ; The Hill, July 30, 2023

LAUREN SFORZA  , The Hill; Trump attorney calls him ‘the most ethical American I know’ in wake of superseding indictment

"Alina Habba, an attorney for Donald Trump, praised the former president for being “the most ethical American” she knows after he was hit with fresh superseding charges that accused he and his handlers of deleting footage sought by the federal government in a classified documents case.

“When he has his turn in court and when we get to file our papers, you will see that every single video, every single surveillance tape that was requested, was turned over,” Habba told Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” 

“If President Trump didn’t want something turned over, I assure you, that is something that could have been done, but he never would act like that. He is the most ethical American I know.”"

National Archives refutes claims Trump had two years to go through presidential records in rare public statement; CNN, June 9, 2023

Jamie Gangel, Zachary Cohen and Elizabeth Stuart, CNN; National Archives refutes claims Trump had two years to go through presidential records in rare public statement

"The National Archives is pushing back on claims made by former President Donald Trump, his lawyers and his allies over his retention of classified documents, for which he now faces a federal indictment."

Some of Trump’s New NFTs Look Like Photoshops of Google Search Results; PetaPixel, December 16, 2022

 JARON SCHNEIDER, PetaPixel; Some of Trump’s New NFTs Look Like Photoshops of Google Search Results

"After hyping a major announcement, Donald Trump revealed his next major project: NFTs. But reverse image searches of some of the “digital trading cards” revealed them to be edits of clothing easily found in Google search, raising copyright questions...

While these images aren’t what most would consider to be the height of photographic art, they are still photos that are presumably owned by a manufacturer and using images — even e-commerce photos — without permission in this manner brings up copyright questions: it may not be legal, not to mention unethical, to just take photos off web stores, turn them into “art,” and then sell them for $99 each.

Gizmodo says it reached out to the manufacturer of both pieces of clothing to ask if either granted the former U.S. President permission to use their images, but neither immediately responded." 

Inside Trump’s war on the National Archives; The Washington Post, August 27, 2022

 

Jacqueline Alemany

, 

Isaac Arnsdorf

 and 

Josh Dawsey

, The Washington Post; Inside Trump’s war on the National Archives

“Without the preservation of the records of government, and without access to them, you can’t have an informed population, and without an informed population, you lack one of the basic tools to preserving democracy,” said former acting archivist Trudy Peterson, who expressed concern that Trump’s rhetoric is damaging the public perception of the Archives. “The system won’t work if the neutrality of the National Archives is not protected.”

This portrait of an agency under siege by a former president and his supporters is based on interviews with 14 current and former Archives employees, Trump advisers, historians and others familiar with the escalating dispute, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions."

She Took the White House Photos. Trump Moved to Take the Profit.; The New York Times, March 31, 2022

 Eric Lipton and Maggie Haberman , The New York Times; She Took the White House Photos. Trump Moved to Take the Profit.

"There is no legal prohibition on Mr. Trump assembling and publishing photographs that a White House staff member took during his tenure; under federal law, those photographs are considered in the public domain and not subject to copyright. There is a public Flickr account, now managed by the National Archives, that has 14,995 photos from the Trump White House, a third of them listing Ms. Craighead as the photographer."

The Post Office Mess Is Meant to Exhaust You. Don’t Let It.; The New York Times, August 17, 2020

Charlie Warzel, The New York Times; The Post Office Mess Is Meant to Exhaust You. Don’t Let It.

Trump is “flooding the zone.” It’s a form of modern censorship.

"Despite Mr. Swan’s persistent and admirable grilling and calling out of the president’s lies, a number of Mr. Trump’s claims (including one about climate change) slipped past unchallenged. Had Mr. Swan rebutted each one, the conversation would have ground to a halt — there were simply too many lies per minute.

It’s exhausting and deliberate, part of a strategy best explained by the former Trump strategist Steve Bannon to “flood the zone” with garbage information. Vox’s Sean Illing detailed this in February, suggesting that the strategy was one reason that Mr. Trump’s impeachment did little to change public opinion of the president.

Flooding the zone, Mr. Illing wrote, “seeks to disorient audiences with an avalanche of competing stories. And it produces a certain nihilism in which people are so skeptical about the possibility of finding the truth that they give up the search.” It is, as many have noted, a form of modern censorship and has an effect on the media, causing journalists to waste time not just chasing lies but also repeating them. Each time we speak out against a lie — especially if we’re not careful in how we frame it — we risk also giving it the oxygen it needs to spread."

Neighbors’ freedom of expression infringed; The Herald, August 15, 2020

DAVID L. DYE, The Herald; Neighbors’ freedom of expression infringed

"The presidential election is still almost three months off, but the campaign already appears to be heating up locally by one measure — stolen election signs.

Mercer County supporters of Republican President Donald J. Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, have reported the theft and destructions of campaign signs for their favored candidates...

The removal of election signs on private property is a criminal offense...

Supporters of both candidates said the sign thefts are leaving them with an increased determination to express their political opinions."

Trump’s attacks on the Postal Service deserve sustained, red-alert coverage from the media; The Washington Post, August 15, 2020

Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post

; Trump’s attacks on the Postal Service deserve sustained, red-alert coverage from the media
"But if journalists don’t keep the pressure on Postal Service problems, they will be abdicating their duty.

There’s very little that matters more than the Nov. 3 vote. Anything that threatens the integrity of the vote needs to be treated as one of the biggest stories out there — even if it’s not the sexiest."

Think Outside the Box, Jack; The New York Times, May 30, 2020

Maureen Dowd, The New York Times; Think Outside the Box, Jack: Trump, Twitter and the society-crushing pursuit of monetized rage.

"The Wall Street Journal had a chilling report a few days ago that Facebook’s own research in 2018 revealed that “our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness. If left unchecked,” Facebook would feed users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.”

Mark Zuckerberg shelved the research...

“The shareholders of Facebook decided, ‘If you can increase my stock tenfold, we can put up with a lot of rage and hate,’” says Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

“These platforms have very dangerous profit motives. When you monetize rage at such an exponential rate, it’s bad for the world. These guys don’t look left or right; they just look down. They’re willing to promote white nationalism if there’s money in it. The rise of social media will be seen as directly correlating to the decline of Western civilization.”"

Trump says his comments on injecting disinfectants were “sarcastic.” Let’s review the tape.; Vox, April 24, 2020

Aaron Rupar, Vox; Trump says his comments on injecting disinfectants were “sarcastic.” Let’s review the tape.

Spoiler alert: He’s lying.

"President Donald Trump now claims he was being “sarcastic” when he mused on Thursday about disinfectant injections being a possible miracle cure for the coronavirus.

Unfortunately for him, there’s video.

Asked during a White House bill-signing ceremony on Friday to explain his comments — which were widely mocked for being ridiculous and more than a little irresponsible, became the top trending topic on Twitter, and prompted warnings from health agencies that it’s actually a bad idea to inject or consume bleach — Trump tried to rewrite history.

“I was asking a sarcastic, and a very sarcastic question, to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside,” Trump lied. In reality, he was looking at White House officialswhen he earnestly asked them to investigate whether there’s “a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.”

Notably, even as he tried to distance himself from his remarks, Trump illustrated his fundamental inability to ever admit a mistake by continuing to defend his premise.

Disinfectant “does kill it, and it would kill it on the hands, and that would make things much better,” Trump said.

Watch the two clips back to back for yourself:"

‘Stable genius’ or dangerous ignoramus?'; The Washington Post, April 24, 2020

Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post; ‘Stable genius’ or dangerous ignoramus?

"We can laugh (uproariously) about Trump’s ignorance and inanity, but like his hawking of hydroxychloroquine — which induced hoarding of medication needed by patients with other diseases (and perhaps others to harm themselves) — this is one more instance in which concern for public safety should spur news networks to discontinue live coverage of the daily briefings. Like a con man peddling patent medicine, Trump dispenses false hope and crackpot remedies, thereby promoting disdain for scientific inquiry and valid research. Once more, one is compelled not only to shudder that such an intellectually unfit man could be president but that legions of right-wing hucksters and sycophants could regularly contort themselves not merely to defend his blabbering but also to lionize him.

It is little wonder that only 23 percent of Americans, according to the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, have a high level of trust in what Trump says. (Some of us find it disturbing the number is that high, although the poll was taken before his latest quackery.)"

It wasn’t just the National Archives. The Library of Congress also balked at a Women’s March photo.; The Washington Post, January 31, 2020

Joe Heim , The Washington Post; It wasn’t just the National Archives. The Library of Congress also balked at a Women’s March photo.

 

"The Library of Congress abandoned plans last year to showcase a mural-size photograph of demonstrators at the 2017 Women’s March in Washington because of concerns it would be perceived as critical of President Trump, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post...

 

Slayton said the decision to remove the photograph was made by leadership of the library’s Center for Exhibits and Interpretation. “No outside entities reviewed this exhibition’s content before it opened or opined on its content,” the spokeswoman wrote.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden was informed of the decision soon after and supported it, Slayton said. Hayden, who is in the fourth year of her 10-year term, was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2016 and confirmed by the Senate."

 

Michael Cohen just breached Trump’s GOP stone wall; The Washington Post, February 27, 2019

E.J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post; Michael Cohen just breached Trump’s GOP stone wall

"Nothing Trump does should surprise us anymore, yet it was still shocking that the man who holds an office once associated with the words “leader of the free world” would refer to a murderous dictator as “my friend.” It’s clear by now that Trump feels closest to autocrats and is uneasy with truly democratic leaders, as Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, among others, has learned.

The president’s apparatchiks also gave us an instructive hint as to what an unrestrained Trump might do to the free press. They excluded White House reporters Jonathan Lemire of the Associated Press and Jeff Mason of Reuters from the press pool covering the dinner between Trump and Kim for daring to ask inconvenient questions of our country’s elected leader. This wasn’t the work of Kim or Vietnam’s authoritarian government. It was the imperious action of a man who wishes he could live without the accountability that free government imposes...

Their fear that this might happen again is why House Republicans worked so hard to delegitimize Wednesday’s hearing. They and Trump would prefer Congress (and the media) to leave us in the dark. Fortunately, we do not live in North Korea."

Trump’s bizarre statement on China dishonors us all; The Washington Post, January 11, 2019

Dana Milbank, The Washington Post; Trump’s bizarre statement on China dishonors us all

"Asked an unrelated question on the White House South Lawn on Thursday, Trump volunteered a comparison between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) — and the leaders of the People’s Republic of China.

“I find China, frankly, in many ways, to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy. I really do,” he said. “I think that China is actually much easier to deal with than the opposition party.”

China, honorable?

China, which is holding a million members of religious minorities in concentration camps for “reeducation” by force?

China, which, according to Trump’s own FBI director, is, by far, the leading perpetrator of technology theft and espionage against the United States and is “using illegal methods” to “replace the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower”?

China, whose state-sponsored hackers were indicted just three weeks ago and accused of a 12-year campaign of cyberattacks on this and other countries?

China, whose ruling Communist Party has caused the extermination of tens of millions of people since the end of World War II, through government-induced famine, the ideological purges of the Cultural Revolution, and in mowing down reformers in Tiananmen Square?

Trump has a strange sense of honor. In April, he bestowed the same adjective on the world’s most oppressive leader, North Korea’s nuclear-armed dictator: “Kim Jong Un, he really has been very open and I think very honorable from everything we’re seeing.”

Now, the president is declaring that China’s dictatorship, by far the world’s biggest international criminal and abuser of human rights and operator of its most extensive police state, is more honorable than his political opponents in the United States.

In Trump’s view, your opponents are your enemies — and your actual enemies are your friends. How can you negotiate with a man who thinks like this?"

To Deal With Trump, Look to Voltaire: Advice from the Enlightenment: In the face of crude bullying and humorless lies, try wit and a passion for justice. ; The New York Times, December 27, 2018

Robert Darnton, The New York Times; To Deal With Trump, Look to Voltaire

Advice from the Enlightenment: In the face of crude bullying and humorless lies, try wit and a passion for justice

"We are living through a climate change in politics. Bigotry, bullying, mendacity, vulgarity — everything emitted by the tweets of President Trump and amplified by his followers has damaged the atmosphere of public life. The protective layer of civility, which makes political discourse possible, is disappearing like the ozone around Earth.

How can we restore a healthy climate? There is no easy answer, but some historic figures offer edifying examples. The one I propose may seem unlikely, but he transformed the climate of opinion in his era: Voltaire, the French philosopher who mobilized the power of Enlightenment principles in 18th-century Europe."

2019: The Year of the Wolves Can the Constitution withstand the partisans?; The New York Times, December 31, 2018

David Brooks, The New York Times; 2019: The Year of the Wolves

Can the Constitution withstand the partisans?

"The story reminds us how thin the crust of civilization really is. It reminds us of what otherwise good people are capable at moments of severe stress and crisis, when fear is up and when conflict — red in tooth and claw — takes control."

Trump Knows His Only Legal Hope Is to Win in the Court of Public Opinion; Slate, December 18, 2018

Dahlia Lithwick, Slate; Trump Knows His Only Legal Hope Is to Win in the Court of Public Opinion

"Watch for the pattern: The president is both too big and too small to be held to legal account. He is too busy and too important. But also, he doesn’t understand, and he cannot recall. The crimes weren’t “big.” The president—in this conception—exists on some astral plane that courts, and facts, cannot touch. It’s as if we’ve arrived at a point in the Mueller probe where all of federal law must be reduced to something a small child could color over a long car ride for Trump to be expected to understand it. This is a PR play that works only as long as we all accede to the central principle that this one man is above—or below—the law. That isn’t something the courts, or Bob Mueller, or Rudy Giuliani can adjudicate. It’s the thing we’ll at some point have to determine for ourselves."

Mueller Is Telling Us: He's Got Trump on Collusion; The Daily Beast, December 7, 2018

Max Bergmann, Sam Berger, The Daily Beast; Mueller Is Telling Us: He's Got Trump on Collusion

"Mueller is coming. And he is clearly coming for Trump. Not simply for obstructing justice but for conspiring with a hostile foreign power to win an election. This is a scandal unlike any America has ever seen."

In defending Trump’s reaction to the murder of a U.S.-based columnist, Utah Rep. Stewart says ‘journalists disappear’ all the time; The Salt Lake City Tribune, December 4, 2018

Thomas Burr, The Salt Lake City Tribune; In defending Trump’s reaction to the murder of a U.S.-based columnist, Utah Rep. Stewart says ‘journalists disappear’ all the time

"Rep. Chris Stewart defended President Donald Trump’s dismissal of CIA findings that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince was complicit in the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, noting that America needs relationships with some countries with which it doesn’t always agree.

And, Stewart noted, “journalists disappear” all over the world.

Stewart appeared on CNN on Tuesday not long after a bipartisan group of senators received a closed-door briefing by CIA Director Gina Haspel about the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, who was reportedly slain and dismembered inside a Saudi consulate in Turkey.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was a “wrecking ball” and that “he’s complicit in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi to the highest level.”

“There’s not a smoking gun — there’s a smoking saw,” Graham said, referencing a bone saw that was apparently used in the consulate to dismember Khashoggi’s body."