Tracking Trump, Week 7: March 5-11 2017
Sunday
So the Mosques are getting bomb threats, too. Over the weekend, two mosques – one in Cincinnati, Ohio, the other in Lexington, Kentucky – received anonymous bomb threats. Muslim communities in Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, and Georgia found hate messages in their mailboxes including poorly drawn sketches of a Muslim being beheaded. Corey Saylor, executive of CAIR’s Department to Monitor and Combat Islamophobia, said CAIR has tracked 28 “anti-mosque” incidents since January. These include:
mosque signs defaced with Nazi references in Illinois. Windows broken and tires slashed at a California Islamic center. Muslim worship halls burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances in Florida, Washington, and Texas.
In an ongoing list, ThinkProgress tracked 142 anti-Muslim incidents from November 2015 to February 10, 2017. Several cases had Trump associations mentioned during the attack.
Monday
And now it’s the LGBT community. Over the past two months, various LGBT centers experienced vandalism. Monday’s incident was one where a driver fired multiple shots across the front door and windows of Dennis R. Neill Equality Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As tracked by ThinkProgress, about one out of every seven hate incidents since Novemeber targeted LGBTQ people. Most of them had Trump associations.
Tuesday
Trump has an obsession for Obama. Last week, he accused the guy of wiretapping him. Without evidence. A reporter who asked for evidence was booted out of the room by one of Trump’s personal security men (Never mind that such an arrangement is unprecedented in recent history). Today, President Donald Trump tweeted statistics from Fox News and embroidered the story to spread a falsehood about Guantanamo detainees former President Barack Obama allegedly released. At 6:13 a.m. during a news rundown, Fox News had mentioned the death of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Yasir al-Silmi, who was killed in an air strike on Yemen on March 2nd. Fox mentioned that “122 prisoners released from Gitmo have returned to the battlefield.”
At 7:04 a.m., Trump tweeted the same statistic – and blamed all 122 releases on former President Barack Obama: 122 vicious prisoners released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!
Wednesday
Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, asks Paul Ryan a.k.a. Congress to “raise the federal debt limit at the first opportunity.” Never mind that in 2011, Trump said that if he were president he “wouldn’t raise” the debt limit but “make a deal” and “stop [the debt] right now.”
“TrumpCare” an apt name for Trump’s care for the people, or more appropriately for his voters who end up being the biggest losers.
Experts on all sides, for various reasons, condemn the bill. The biggest doctors’ group in the country, the American Medical Association (AMA) warned it “would result in millions of Americans losing coverage and benefits.” The American Hospital Association and the AARP assented. America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the leading industry group representing health insurers, objected to provisions that could destabilize insurance markets, cut financial assistance to help people afford coverage, and “weaken Medicaid coverage of mental health and opioid addiction.” A report from S&P Global, concluded that up to 10 million nationwide will lose their health insurance.
But Trump prodded and wheedled the bill through the House – although the Congressional Budget Office hasn’t yet released its officials estimate of how many people stand to lose coverage.
He tweeted:
We are making great progress with healthcare. ObamaCare is imploding and will only get worse. Republicans coming together to get job done!Despite what you hear in the press, healthcare is coming along great. We are talking to many groups and it will end in a beautiful picture! (March 9)
Trump’s promise? His supporters? Never mind. “Trump Cares”
Friday
On Friday, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions asked for the resignation of all 46 sitting U.S. attorneys who had been appointed by Trump’s predecessor. The scandal lay in the following story.
The episode of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara
Wednesday, Preet Bharara, Attorney of Southern District of New York received a letter from three government accountability groups asking him to investigate whether Trump had violated the Constitution by receiving cash from foreign governments through his extensive business holdings. Thursday, President Trump called Bharara’s office to speak with him personally. Bharara told both the White House and the Justice Department that he could not speak with the President because it would be a breach of protocol. Friday, Sessions asked that Bharara and 45 other U.S. attorneys resign. Bharara refused, so Saturday, the venerable Attorney was fired.
Here’s what Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics czar and head of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, had to say:
“The White House was obviously concerned about the investigative power of the U.S. attorneys. I think they woke up to the fact that there are all of these independent U.S. attorneys with investigative powers and subpoena power and they saw that as a large potential threat, not just for Trump but for his staff who are riddled with conflicts of interest’’
So Trump forced 46 attorneys to reign.
And Preet who refused? Eisen said he “was the most influential U.S. attorney in the country, and the Trump Organization is in his district.’’ More important, Bharara had earned a reputation as a crusader against corruption. Preet had to go!