Northampton County is sending three residents to Harrisburg on Monday, for Pennsylvania's 58th Electoral College. All three say they've been inundated with Hillary Clinton supporters urging them not to back Donald Trump, who won 20 electoral votes Nov. 8 in taking Pennsylvania. "I've had more mail than Santa," said Gloria "Lee" Snover, a Bethlehem Township resident…
Andrea Bocelli is rumored to sing at Donald Trump’s inauguration next month, and not all of his fans are happy about it. Though Bocelli has neither confirmed nor denied the reports that he will perform a duet with “America’s Got Talent” singer Jackie Evancho at the event, some of his fans have started a “Boycott Bocelli”…
President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he has chosen U.S. Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina to be his White House budget director, turning to a fiscal conservative to help pursue his policy agenda.
The nomination to be director of the White House Office of Budget and Management will require Senate confirmation. The announcement was made as Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, began his holiday vacation at Mar-a-Lago, his oceanfront club in nearby Palm Beach, Florida.
Mulvaney, 49, was an outspoken critic of former House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, who resigned in 2015 amid opposition from fellow Republicans who were members of the House Freedom Caucus.
Mulvaney's selection points to a strategy by Trump to cut government where he can. The president-elect in recent days has, for example, railed against what he has labeled a far too expensive new version of the Air Force One aircraft he will fly that Boeing is supposed to build.
In a statement announcing his selection, Trump called Mulvaney a strong voice in Congress for "reining in out-of-control spending, fighting government waste and enacting tax policies that will allow working Americans to thrive."
"With Mick at the head of OMB, my administration is going to make smart choices about America’s budget, bring new accountability to our federal government, and renew the American taxpayer’s trust in how their money is spent," Trump said.
Mulvaney said the Trump administration "will restore budgetary and fiscal sanity back in Washington".
"Each day, families across our nation make disciplined choices about how to spend their hard-earned money, and the federal government should exercise the same discretion that hard-working Americans do every day," Mulvaney said.
Trump on Friday night vowed to seek approval from Congress to spend $1 trillion in new spending to rebuild America's crumbling network of roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure as a way to create jobs and make some needed repairs.
"We are going to fix our country. It’s time. We have no choice. It's time," Trump said in Orlando, Florida.
Democratic President Barack Obama had sought infrastructure spending but was thwarted by Republicans in Congress.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Dale Hudson)
CNN pundit Van Jones was in rare form on Friday night's AC360 panel, slamming President-elect Donald Trump for his lack of patriotism for focusing more on his tweets than national security.
"There's something at stake here," Jones said. "Couple things, first of all, the future is important. When you're the president-elect you can deal with something like this in three ways. Personally, I'm offended, they're trying to de-legitimate me. They're trying to deal with it in a partisan way, they're trying to hurt my party or in a patriotic way, they're trying to hurt my country. And what you're watching here is this guy, president-elect who will be all of our president, in real time, he certainly knows how to respond when it's personal, when it's partisan. You have the first attack on our country and he's not responded like a patriot yet. That's very disturbing. You keep wanting to point out Obama did this or that, when Trump gets here he'll do x, y, and z. The reality is he talks all the time. He's speaking tonight. He tweets like my children do and he is not spoken like a patriot yet."
Kingston claimed that this isn't the message that Trump heard months ago when people were taking to the streets to protest the election. "We keep hearing his post-election behavior doesn't suit the standards of the left and that's just too bad," he said.
Jones shook his head. Kingston didn't seem to get it.
"Look, I don't, listen," Jones tried to explain. "I am on the left side of pluto and I'm proud of it. No one can blame me for being conservative. But this is not left versus right it is right versus wrong. There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with an attack on our country. So far we've not seen the right way from this president."
Trump apologist, Kayleigh McEnany, excused Trump's behavior because he's not the president "yet" and claimed we just need to give him more time.
The panel that followed similarly made the case that they're concerned about Trump's lack of patriotism as he defends the country waging a cyber war against the United States instead of his own country.
Watch the full panel discussion below:
The country is just seeming to wake up to the fact that the presidential election was hacked in order to go Donald Trump's way. Paul Krugman wonders what took everyone so long in Friday's column. His answer essentially is that the mainstream media failed epically and disastrously in covering this election, though there was blame to…
Professor and journalist Melissa Harris-Perry got real about Donald Trump's 2016 election victory during an Atlantic forum held at Wake Forest University on Dec. 13, Atlanta Black Star reported.
Specifically, Harris-Perry touched on her annoyance that anyone would be shocked that racism and sexual assault would disqualify him as a candidate.
"I am not even vaguely surprised by the idea that sexual assault would be a not disqualifier for the American presidency," she said. "In fact, I was mostly irritated every time people would say 'Oh God, we can't have a racist be the American president,' because I kept wondering, since when?"
She continued, "For most of American history, racism has been a prerequisite to win the American presidency. One had to actually demonstrate one's racism to become the American president."
"And the same was certainly true of sexism, and even of sexual assault," Harris-Perry said.
Hear her remarks below.
Liz Wahl very publicly quit her anchor job on air at the Russia-sponsored network Russia Today after she said the news site "whitewashed" Vladimir Putin’s invasion into Crimea. Now, Wahl is calling out Donald Trump for being a Kremlin puppet.
In an interview captured by Media Matters, with NBC News reporter Chris Jansing, Wahl was asked what she expects to hear going forward from what she called the "Russian propaganda machine" as the new administration takes over.
"This is typical," Wahl said of the Russian government's pressure to craft media reports. "Denial is kind of a, just the way that they handle news that is damning to them. And you hear this over and over again that there is no proof."
She noted that the news is similar to when Russia became more aggressive in Ukraine. "Denial is what they do," she explained. "There were little green men in Ukraine, occupying Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine, they said they didn't exist, and they were fueling the war in Eastern Ukraine, they said that that was not happening. And perhaps most disturbingly, the repeated targeting bombing of hospitals, humanitarian aid convoy, of the White Helmets, of civilian groups. These are all things that have been happening and simply, you just get denials."
Wahl said that it reminds her of the way that the Trump team also treated the news during the campaign.
"We're getting this intelligence from US intelligence agencies, from the CIA, and this evidence is presented to him, and he's saying, 'Nope, I simply don't believe it.' So, there really isn't a better mouthpiece for the Kremlin right now."
She explained that anther major message that Russian media uses is urging people not to trust U.S. institutions, western institutions and the mainstream media. It can create a kind of chaos among people because, ultimately, no one can be trusted.
Wahl told CNN's Anderson Cooper after her resignation that the Russian government pressures American reporters working at the RT network to fit their reporting around the network's agenda.
See the full video below via Media Matters:
Last month, conspiracy theorist and Donald Trump supporter Alex Jones alleged that there was a child sex ring being run by Hillary Clinton and Democratic operatives out of the basement of a D.C. pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong.
Last week, one of his fans arrived at Comet Ping Pong with an assault rifle and fired off shots. The 26-year-old North Carolina man said he’d come to “investigate" the restaurant himself
Now, the video of Jones' claims regarding the so-called "Pizzagate" scandal has been deleted from his YouTube channel after significant backlash and the shooting that took place at the restaurant, Media Matters reports.
Jones' "Pizzagate" conspiracy alleged that Hillary Clinton aides were running a child sex trafficking business through Comet Ping Pong. Jones urged his listeners, "go investigate it for yourself" because "Something’s going on. Something’s being covered up. It needs to be investigated."
The video, which was called "Down The #Pizzagate Rabbit Hole" was removed by the YouTube account as of Dec. 7.
Jones did warn in his original video that "Not everybody in the WikiLeaks is involved in this. Clearly."
Media Matters recovered a portion of the original radio segment that Jones posted on Nov. 27, which you can listen to below.
Reprinted with permission from AlterNet. There are a finite number of hours in every day, making time the most precious commodity of all. That's especially true for someone stepping into the role of leading a world superpower. Donald Trump, the guy who won the election, has 1,000 projects he cares deeply about- and 1,001 projects if…
Donald Trump remains firmly committed to his controversial campaign promise to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the president-elect’s transition team said on Friday, as Israeli officials welcomed his choice of a pro-Israel hard-liner as ambassador to the country.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller said bankruptcy lawyer David Friedman, whose nomination was announced on Thursday, "shares the same viewpoint" that the embassy should be relocated, despite the risk of upending decades of U.S. policy and enraging the Muslim world. But Miller said it was "premature" to present a timetable for such a move.
While several right-wing Israeli officials praised Friedman’s selection, liberal Jewish-American groups have raised objections over his previously stated positions, including support for Jewish settlement building and advocacy of Israeli annexation of the West Bank.
"If he is confirmed, it will be very hard for Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, Europeans and others not to conclude ... that the United States is no longer on board with a two-state solution,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to the Palestinian leadership who is now at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.
Other U.S.-based analysts said that while Friedman’s appointment could signal a break with President Barack Obama’s sometimes tough approach to ally Israel, U.S. ambassadors typically do not drive Middle East policy and it was still unclear how far Trump would be prepared to go.
Contacted by phone, Friedman, who must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate before taking up his post, declined to answer questions about his positions and experience or the debate his nomination has triggered.
"I'll do that at some point, but I'm not providing any comments just yet," he told Reuters.
While campaigning, Trump pledged to switch the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, all but enshrining the city as Israel's capital regardless of international objections.
Israel and the Palestinians, who are seeking a state of their own, both claim Jerusalem as their capital, and successive U.S. administrations have said the city’s status must be negotiated. It is one of the thorniest issues in the Israeli-Palestinan dispute. Jerusalem contains sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians, making its status even more of a hot-button issue.
In Thursday’s announcement, Friedman – a close Trump associate with no diplomatic experience – said he looked forward to doing the job “from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem."
“This is a commitment that the president-elect made numerous times on the campaign trail that he remains firmly committed to,” Miller told reporters on a conference call.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was satisfied with Friedman’s appointment, according to the Israeli website Ynet. The conservative premier has had fractious ties with Obama.
“Appointing David Friedman ... is a positive declaration of intent," Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked tweeted. "David is a true friend of Israel, encouraging with all his strength construction in the settlements in the West Bank.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely was quoted by pro-settler Arutz 7 website as saying Friedman’s stance “reflects the will to strengthen Jerusalem as Israel's capital.”
Friedman, in writings and news interviews, has aligned himself with Israel’s far right, backing settlement building on occupied land and questioning whether the Palestinians should get a state, a bedrock of U.S. policy.
He has called liberal Jewish Americans supporting a two-state solution “worse than kapos,” a reference to Jewish prisoners in World War Two concentration camps assigned by Nazi guards to supervise fellow inmates.
J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group, told supporters Friedman’s appointment was “unacceptable” and it would fight to persuade U.S. senators not to confirm his nomination.
(Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
While there are a number of alarming things that President-elect Donald Trump has done since winning the electoral vote in November, the scariest thing that he's done so far, said New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait, is the appointment of Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn as national security adviser.
Chait said that our country is once again about to be in the hands of the party that nearly destroyed the world economy and mired the nation's military in two costly, ill-defined wars when it was last in charge.
"These disasters occurred because the party’s ideological extremism made it unequipped to make pragmatic choices, and because its chief executive was a mental lightweight," he wrote. "Sixteen years after it last came to power, the party has grown far more ideologically extreme, and its head of state is much less competent."
Pointing out that the incoming president is the only president in American history lacking any public experience in either a civilian or military role, Chait said that it's particularly crucial for Trump to choose a top notch national security adviser.
Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn is not that man, Chait said: "Flynn’s appointment is the one that contains the sum of all fears of Trumpian government."
"Flynn’s portrait seems to reflect the worst qualities of Dick Cheney, but in exaggerated form," he said. "Flynn avidly subscribes to conspiracy theories. He believes Islamists have infiltrated the Mexican border en masse, guided along the way by Arabic-language signs Flynn claims to have seen himself. He also believes that Democrats have imposed Sharia law in parts of Florida, and shared a now-deleted tweet that suggested Hillary Clinton could have been involved in child sex trafficking. These claims were frequent enough that his subordinates at the Defense Intelligence Agency gave them a name, 'Flynn facts,' which means a Flynn belief that is the opposite of a fact."
A former Flynn subordinate told the New York Times that Flynn is violently resistant to taking in any information that conflicts with his ideologies and prejudices.
“Mr. Flynn said that the first thing everyone needed to know was that he was always right. His staff would know they were right, he said, when their views melded to his," the source said.
Flynn has surrounded himself with a claque of vapid sycophants who are loath to challenge him on any subject, meaning his views never meet any resistance. Chait said that he and his top foreign policy advisor, Monica Crowley, are "driven by fervent anti-Islamic terror more than any coherent calculation."
Crowley -- a Fox News talking head -- echoes her boss's habit of promoting wild and verifiably false conspiracy theories on social media. Crowley views herself as being on a "holy war" against Islam and says that ultimately, the U.S. must be unafraid to violate our own Constitution to defeat Islam.
“This is essentially the Constitution versus the Quran on every level. The Constitution is not built to fight this war," she said in 2015.
However, Chait said, the most alarming member of Flynn's team is his own son, Mike Flynn Jr., also an avid social media user prone to conspiracies and expressions of thinly-veiled racism.
Flynn Jr. "promoted the conspiracy theory that a Washington pizzeria had a secret back room with child sex slaves that was somehow connected to Hillary Clinton. When a gunman showed up there trying to liberate the imagined slaves, the ensuing publicity forced Trump’s transition team to remove Flynn Jr. from his official role on the transition team. But there’s no evidence his deep influence on his father has abated."
"It is almost impossible to overstate the danger to American national security posed by the combination of Flynn and his staff," Chait said.
"(I)t is the specific, mutually reinforcing characteristics of Flynn and his staff that invite the most alarm," Chait concluded. "He is a conspiracy theorist averse to any challenge to his suspicions, surrounding himself with a staff of fellow conspiracy theorists seemingly designed to shut out any challenge to his biases, providing advice to a novice president who is himself a conspiracy theorist. It’s under-informed, overconfident crackpots all the way down. As a comedic script, it would defy plausibility. Except there’s a terrifying chance that a lot of innocent people will die as a result."
A historical group on Friday began preserving thousands of sticky notes placed on the walls of a busy New York subway station over the past month to lament the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president.
Distraught and defiant residents and visitors to the United States' largest city - long a Democratic and liberal stronghold - have stuck anonymous messages on the walls of Manhattan's Union Square station since Trump's Nov. 8 victory. Many of the notes express grief or pledge to turn the country in a more liberal direction.
The New-York Historical Society removed 5,000 of the messages on Friday, putting them between plastic sheets and archiving them in boxes for undetermined future uses.
"We are ever-mindful of preserving the memory of today's events for future generations," the society's president, Louise Mirrer, said in a statement.
"Ephemeral items in particular, created with spontaneity and emotion, can become vivid historical documents," she said.
The society has preserved reactions to other major events, including the legalization of same-sex marriage and the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.
The sticky-note installation, known as "Subway Therapy," was the idea of a local artist who brought blank notes and pens to the station under Union Square.
In seeking to preserve a variety of notes, workers took all the ones from a 20-foot (6-meter) span of wall that had some of the earliest messages posted after the election, said Margaret Hofer, museum director at the New-York Historical Society.
The society may display the sticky notes in the future, although not while the project is still active on subway station walls. "To recreate it in a museum setting now is perhaps a little premature," Hofer said.
(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
At a Friday afternoon press conference in the White House's Brady Briefing Room, President Barack Obama said that he hopes President-elect Trump will vigorously pursue investigations into Russian tampering in the 2016 election.
The president began by touting his record at home and abroad and by saying that after everything the U.S. has accomplished in the last eight years, "I could not be prouder to be your president."
"Being an American means bearing burdens and meeting obligations to others," he said, and assured the throng of media present that the U.S. will continue to meet its obligations to its allies around the world.
"We have done everything we can to ensure" that the Trump transition team will be successful, he said.
Obama said that he hopes that President-elect Trump will vigorously pursue investigations into the hacking of the 2016 election.
He said that the reason that the current administration did not pursue questions about the integrity of the election prior to the election is because it would have done the leakers' work for them.
In our current "hyper-partisan" environment, he said, to pursue action against the hackers would have become "just another political scrum."
"There was nobody here who didn't have some sense of what kind of effect it might have," he said. "I'm finding it a little curious that you guys are suddenly talking about how it disadvantaged Hillary Clinton" when the media ran with the stories so eagerly.
He expressed bafflement that such an important election became vulnerable to "these kinds of manipulations."
"That concerns me and it should concern all of us," he said, "but the truth of the matter is that we all had the information that was out there."
He said this brings up two major points:
The first is the need for constant vigilance with regard to cyber security. Our infrastructure and, yes, elections are vulnerable and the country needs to take on a systematic plan to defend them.
We should also, he said, "warn other countries against these kinds of attacks."
He said that some measures taken against the Russians will be public, but others will not be visible to the public at large.
"Public shaming" on the matter, he said, fails to understand how the Russians view the situation.
Obama was addressing reports by intelligence groups that Russian state actors subverted the U.S. election process through cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns and other means.
The president spoke to the press before he and the First Family were to depart for Hawaii on their annual Christmas trip. It is their last Christmas in the White House.
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