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Democratic congressional leaders have, for the time being, ruled out pursuing impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. That could all change depending on what is in the eagerly awaited report on the Russia investigation being prepared by special counsel Robert Mueller.

On his way to Ohio Wednesday, Trump told reporters outside the White House that the public should have access to the Mueller report. 

“Let it come out. Let the people see,” Trump said. “Let’s see whether or not it is legit.”

The decision by Democratic congressional leaders to pass on impeachment seems to be mindful of recent history, especially the Republican-led impeachment effort against President Bill Clinton in 1998.

In announcing her opposition to impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said simply that Trump “wasn’t worth it.”

Pelosi is sticking to her position despite pressure from liberal activists.

“Impeachment is a divisive issue in our country, and let us see what the facts are, what the law is, and what the behavior is of the president,” Pelosi recently told reporters at the Capitol.​

WATCH: Mindful of History, Democrats Hold off on Impeaching Trump

​Trump: ‘Great job’

For President Trump, the idea of impeachment is, not surprisingly, a non-starter.

“Well, you can’t impeach somebody that is doing a great job. That is the way I view it,” Trump said when asked about the issue in January.

Late last year, Trump told Reuters that he was not concerned about impeachment.

“I think that the people would revolt if that happened,” he said.

Trump’s Republican allies in Congress are also poised to leap to his defense.

“I don’t think it is good for the country,” House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters last week. “The Democrats made a decision (to want to impeach) on the day President Trump one.”

Some Democrats want to keep pushing, including former Hillary Clinton senior adviser Philippe Reines. Reines wrote recently in the New York Times that Democrats would be doing a “civic duty” to pursue impeachment.

“There is a mounting political cost to not impeaching Mr. Trump,” Reines wrote last week. “He will hail it as exoneration and he will go into the 2020 campaign under the banner, ‘I Told You So.’”​

Polls say no

Recent polls show most voters do not favor impeachment at this time. A Quinnipiac University poll earlier this month found that 59 percent of those surveyed do not think House Democrats should initiate impeachment proceedings against the president, while 35 percent support the idea.

Given that the 2020 election cycle is underway, Democrats may prefer to have the voters try to oust Trump during next year’s election, according to George Washington University analyst Matt Dallek.

“By the time impeachment proceedings were even to ramp up, you are talking about the end of 2019 or early 2020,” Dallek told VOA this week. “That creates its own complication because there is another remedy for removing a president and it is called the election.”

​Political risk

Democrats clearly recall what happened to Bill Clinton in 1998. Clinton lied about and tried to cover up his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, which led to his impeachment by the House. Clinton remained in office after he was acquitted in a trial in the Senate.

Historically, impeachment has been a rare event. Clinton was only the second president impeached by the House. Andrew Johnson was the first back in 1868. Johnson avoided removal by a single vote in the Senate.

Presidential impeachments have been rare and that is by design, according to University of Virginia expert Larry Sabato.

“They (the founders) did not want presidents impeached and convicted and thrown out of office for minor offenses. They expected Congress to do it only in extreme circumstances.”

Republicans paid a price for the Clinton impeachment, losing five House seats in the 1998 midterm elections. And Sabato said that lesson could have resonance for Democrats today as they mull impeaching Trump.

“Given the fact that the Republicans took a wounded Bill Clinton and made him almost invulnerable for the rest of his term, it should serve as a warning to Democrats,” he said.

Experts also note that the damage to Republicans from the Clinton impeachment was not long-lasting. George W. Bush narrowly beat Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, and the political fallout from Clinton’s scandal may have cost Gore the presidency.

​Senate obstacle

The biggest obstacle facing any impeachment effort of Trump is the Republican-controlled Senate. Democrats would have to bring over at least 20 Republican senators in any impeachment trial in order to get a conviction and remove the president from office.

A vote to impeach a president only requires a majority vote in the House, now controlled by Democrats. But in a Senate trial, it would take 67 of 100 senators to vote for conviction in order to remove the president from office, and Democrats concede that is not a possibility at the moment.

“It has less than zero chance of passing the Senate,” Sabato said. “Why would you go through all this in the House of Representatives, torpedo your entire agenda to impeach Trump in order to send it to the Senate to have him exonerated and not convicted?”

​Nixon case

President Richard Nixon was not impeached over the Watergate scandal in 1974, but the process was well underway. The House began impeachment proceedings through the House Judiciary Committee and was preparing to move Articles of Impeachment to the House floor when Nixon decided to resign.

Several Republican senators including Barry Goldwater went to the White House and made it clear to Nixon that he had lost Republican support and would not survive an impeachment trial in the Senate.

Some analysts predict that President Trump could face renewed calls for his ouster depending on the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

“I think if the Mueller report indicates some serious wrongdoing by the president and his campaign, it really empowers Democrats to begin deliberating how to move forward with impeachment proceedings,” said Brookings Institution scholar John Hudak.

But other experts caution that it would have to be something quite serious for Republicans to even consider abandoning the president.

Given the lack of bipartisan support for impeachment at the moment, it does seem more likely that Trump will face the voters again in 2020 before he has to contend with a Democratic-led impeachment inquiry in the House.
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Democrats were mindful of history when leaders decided for now not to begin impeachment proceedings on President Trump, particularly the case of Bill Clinton in 1998.
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The Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General has launched an investigation into allegations that Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan violated ethics rules by promoting his former employer, Boeing, while serving in the Trump administration.

The watch group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed an ethics complaint last week claiming that Shanahan had appeared to promote Boeing and disparage former competitors such as Lockheed Martin in his statements.

One example listed in the complaint was the allegation that Shanahan pushed the Pentagon to buy more Boeing-made F-15X fighter jets over other fighter jets made by Boeing’s competitors.

The Secretary’s office issued a statement Wednesday asserting that “Shanahan welcomes the Inspector General’s review.”

“Acting Secretary Shanahan has at all times remained committed to upholding his ethics agreement filed with the DoD.This agreement ensures any matters pertaining to Boeing are handled by appropriate officials within the Pentagon to eliminate any perceived or actual conflict of interest issue(s) with Boeing,” the statement read.

Shanahan served as deputy secretary of defense at the Pentagon after spending more than three decades at Boeing.

Replaces Jim Mattis

He stepped into the role of acting secretary of defense after former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned on Dec. 20, saying in his resignation letter that President Donald Trump had the “right to have a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned” with his.

The president decided to replace Mattis before his expected resignation date, tapping Shanahan to take the post as of Jan. 1, 2019.

Shanahan has had to repel questions about potential conflicts of interest since taking office.

Last week, he told Congress he welcomed any such investigation into his actions at the Pentagon. In January, he called claims of favoritism “just noise.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump has continued his string of attacks on late Sen. John McCain, saying during a speech in Ohio that he was never thanked for “giving [McCain] the kind of funeral that he wanted.”

Trump went on an extended rant about McCain, who died of brain cancer nearly seven months ago. It was the fourth time in five days the president made pointed, public criticisms of McCain, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War and longtime U.S. Republican senator.

“I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve. I don’t care about this. I didn’t get a thank you. That’s OK,” Trump said during his speech.

“To be honest, I’ve never liked him much,” he added.

Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral last year. The flag over the White House was left at full staff after McCain’s death until the administration was criticized by Democrats and Republicans.

Trump has renewed his attacks on McCain in recent days, blaming him for instigating the lengthy investigation of Trump campaign ties to Russia during the 2016 election, and later for casting the decisive vote that doomed Trump’s effort to overhaul national health policies that were the signature legislative achievement of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

During the president’s days-long rant, McCain’s supporters have fiercely defended him.

Republican stalwart U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia lashed out at Trump in an interview Wednesday with Georgia Public Broadcasting. Isakson, who vowed at the time of McCain’s death to defend him to detractors, called the president’s comments “deplorable.”

Earlier, Isakson raised concerns about the message Trump was sending to U.S. troops by targeting McCain, a naval fighter pilot who was held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi for 5.5 years.

Meghan McCain, a regular on the morning talk show The View, said Wednesday her father would “think it was so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he [McCain] was dominating the news cycle in death.”
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President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 election should be made public.

But Trump again questioned the grounds for the nearly two-year-old investigation, which is also examining whether the president himself criminally obstructed the probe.

With expectations rising that Mueller will wrap up his operation within weeks after having already charged six Trump associates and over two dozen Russians, Trump said that the secret report to be submitted to the Attorney General Bill Barr should be revealed to the public.

“If you want to let them see it, let them see it,” Trump told reporters.

Trump questioned how Mueller — a man “out of the blue” who “never got a vote” — can be investigating him, given his victory in the 2016 election.

“I’m saying to myself, wait a minute, I just won one of the greatest elections of all time in the history of this country … and I have somebody writing the report who never got a vote, called the Mueller report. Explain that,” Trump said.

“Because my voters don’t get it. And I don’t get it. At the same time, let it come out. Let people see it.”

‘Confidential report’

Even so, that could be difficult. Under the rules of his May 2017 appointment, Mueller, a former director of the FBI, is to submit to Barr “a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions.”

That report, experts say, is unlikely to be revealed in the raw — it could have confidential data on people not charged, as well as top secret information on sources.

But Barr is also compelled to submit to Congress his own summary of the investigation, a report which could be made public.

Barr, who was a critic of Mueller before Trump appointed him attorney general in February, would not have to be as detailed as Mueller.

He could possibly leave out information that might be damaging to individuals like Trump, according to legal experts.

On the other hand, if Mueller finds criminal behavior by Trump and believes the evidence strong enough to support an impeachment motion by Congress, he could, with Barr’s permission, write a separate report making that case.

An important question then is whether Barr would permit that, and allow that report to be released.

‘Witch hunt’

Trump has repeatedly branded the Mueller investigation an “illegal witch hunt” over the past two years and labeled his team of investigators politically biased.

While Mueller has revealed little about how he views Trump and his family as possible targets of the investigation, the president and the White House have stepped up their political campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the investigation.

“No collusion, no collusion,” Trump declared Wednesday.

“I had the greatest electoral victory in the history of our country, one of them,” he said. “Tremendous success. Tens of millions of voters. Now somebody’s going to write a report, who never got a vote.

“We will see what the report says. Let’s see if it’s fair.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump has accused social media outlets, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, of being biased, and suggested that the situation needs scrutiny. In answer to a reporter at the White House Tuesday, Trump said digital platforms tend to suppress Republican and conservative views. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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Special counsel Robert Mueller began investigating President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, for fraud in his personal business dealings and for potentially acting as an unregistered foreign agent at least nine months before FBI agents in New York raided his home and office, according to documents released Tuesday.

The series of heavily redacted search warrant applications and other documents revealed new details about the timing and depth of the probe into Cohen, who ultimately pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress.

The records show the inquiry into Cohen had been going on since July 2017 — far longer than previously known— and that a big part of its focus was Cohen’s taxi businesses and misrepresentations he made to banks as part of a scheme to relieve himself of some $22 million in debt he owed on taxi medallion loans.

Prosecutors were also interested in money that was flowing into Cohen’s bank accounts from consulting contracts he’d signed after Trump won office. Some of those payments were from companies with strong foreign ties, including a Korean aerospace company and Columbus Nova, an investment management firm affiliated with Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg.

Cohen was ultimately not charged with failing to register as a foreign agent.

Many sections of the records dealing with the campaign-finance violations Cohen committed when he paid two women to stay silent about alleged affairs they had with Trump were redacted. A judge ordered those sections to remain secret after prosecutors said they were still investigating campaign finance violations.

Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, said the release of the search warrant “furthers his interest in continuing to cooperate and providing information and the truth about Donald Trump and the Trump organization to law enforcement and Congress.”

The FBI raided Cohen’s Manhattan home and office last April, marking the first public sign of a criminal investigation that has threatened Trump’s presidency and netted Cohen a three-year prison sentence he’s scheduled to start serving in May. The agents who also scoured Cohen’s hotel room and safe deposit box, seized more than 4 million electronic and paper files in the searches, more than a dozen mobile devices and iPads, 20 external hard drives, flash drives and laptops.

Both Cohen and Trump cried foul over the raids, with Cohen’s attorney at the time calling them “completely inappropriate and unnecessary” and the president taking to Twitter to declare that “Attorney-client privilege is dead!”

A court-ordered review ultimately found only a fraction of the seized material to be privileged.

Tuesday’s release of the search warrant came nearly six weeks after U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III partially granted a request by several media organizations, including The Associated Press, that the search warrant be made public due to the high public interest in the case.

David E. McCraw, vice president and deputy general counsel for The New York Times, said he was hopeful Pauley would approve the release of additional materials in May after the government updates the judge on its investigation.

“The documents are important because they allow the public to see first hand why the investigation was initiated and how it was conducted,” McCraw said in an email.

The judge acknowledged prosecutors’ concerns that a wholesale release of the document “would jeopardize an ongoing investigation and prejudice the privacy rights of uncharged third parties,” a ruling that revealed prosecutors are still investigating the campaign-finance violations.

The judge ordered prosecutors to redact Cohen’s personal information and details in the warrant that refer to ongoing investigations and several third-parties who have cooperated with the inquiry. But he authorized the release of details in the warrant that relate to Cohen’s tax evasion and false statements to financial institutions charges, along with Cohen’s conduct that did not result in criminal charges.

“At this stage, wholesale disclosure of the materials would reveal the scope and direction of the Government’s ongoing investigation,” Pauley wrote in a ruling last month.

Cohen pleaded guilty over the summer to failing to report more than $4 million in income to the IRS, making false statements to financial institutions and campaign-finance violations stemming from the hush-money payments he arranged for porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen implicated Trump in his guilty plea, saying the president directed him to make the payments during his 2016 campaign.
…

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday called the husband of one of his top aides, Kellyanne Conway, “a total loser” after lawyer and Trump critic George Conway suggested that Trump is increasingly mentally impaired.

George Conway is without qualifications in psychology.

But on Sunday, as Trump vented his wrath at a variety of targets in a hail of Twitter comments, Conway cited the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to claim that the president embodies “a grandiose sense of self-importance,” is “pre-occupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance” and shows signs of “irritability and aggressiveness.”

“His condition is getting worse,” said Conway, a Republican attorney who was considered for the job of solicitor general by the Trump administration but withdrew from consideration.

His wife, a fixture on U.S. news shows defending Trump and by now accustomed to her husband’s months of taunts against the president, dismissed his armchair assessment of Trump’s mental stability.

“No, I don’t share those concerns,” she said Monday.

But the feud between George Conway and the president escalated Tuesday when Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, said on Twitter that Trump “turned down Mr. Kellyanne Conway for a job he desperately wanted. He barely worked @TheJusticeDept and was either fired/quit, didn’t want the scrutiny?”

He added, “Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success,” claiming that Trump “doesn’t even know him!” The couple, however, has attended black tie events together at the White House.

Trump retweeted Parscale’s disparaging assessment of George Conway, saying, “A total loser!”

Within minutes of Trump’s comment, George Conway replied, “Congratulations! You just guaranteed that millions of more people are going to learn about narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism! Great job!”

The president’s doctor, after examining Trump last month, said he is healthy although overweight.

“I am happy to announce the president of the United States is in very good health and I anticipate he will remain so for the duration of his presidency, and beyond,” White House doctor Sean Conley said.

George Conway helped co-found Checks and Balances, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers who have attacked Trump for the way he has handled legal and political situations during his 26-month presidency.

After earlier attacks on him, Trump called him “Mr. Kellyanne Conway” and said, “He’s just trying to get publicity for himself.”

But Trump’s assessment of his key aide’s spouse was once decidedly more favorable.

The Washington Post published a 2006 letter, a decade before Trump ran for the presidency, in which Trump, then a real estate mogul, praised George Conway for his work representing him in a dispute with tenants at his Trump World Tower condominium in New York.

“I want to thank you for your wonderful assistance in ridding Trump World Tower of some very bad people,” Trump wrote Conway. “What I was most impressed with was how quickly you were able to comprehend a very bad situation.”

Conway, 55, and Kellyanne Conway, 52, married in 2001 and have four children together.

Conway told one interviewer last year that he knows his wife does not appreciate his barbed comments about her boss, the president.

“But I’ve told her, I don’t like the administration, so it’s even,” he said.

 
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Former U.S. president George W. Bush on Monday called immigration a “blessing and a strength,” as lawmakers tussled with Donald Trump over border wall funding.

The Republican, who has largely stayed out of the spotlight after leaving office in 2009, did not explicitly criticize Trump or the border wall policy.

Speaking at a naturalization ceremony for 51 new American citizens at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas, the nation’s 43th president called for reform of “outdated and ineffective” immigration laws.

He also emphasized: “Borders are not arbitrary and they need to be respected.”

“Amid all the complications of policy, may we never forget that immigration is a blessing and a strength,” Bush said in prepared remarks.

“I hope those responsible in Washington can dial down the rhetoric, put politics aside and modernize our immigration laws soon.”

Bush’s remarks came as Congress and the White House were gearing up for a court fight over Trump’s declarations of an emergency to fund construction of a border wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Congress had refused to appropriate money for the project — a central promise of the Republican’s 2016 election campaign.

In an embarrassing rebuke to Trump, some fellow Republicans joined Democrats in voting to terminate his declaration of an emergency. Trump vetoed the legislation Friday.

Opponents, who accuse Trump of executive overreach and hyping the problem on the border, could now fight the emergency measure in court.

 
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Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of more than a dozen Democrats vying for the 2020 presidential nomination, on Monday called for the scrapping of the electoral college, the method used to elect U.S. presidents.

It was the first time Warren has explicitly called to eliminate the system established by the U.S. constitution, in which each state is allotted a set number of “electors” based on the combined total of the state’s representation in Congress.

Warren was participating in a televised CNN town hall in Jackson, Mississippi, when she was asked how, if elected, she would expand access to voting, including for those convicted of felonies.

Warren, 69, said there should be an amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing all citizens the right to vote, and called for the repeal of laws that make it more difficult to cast ballots.

She then lamented that White House candidates do not spend much time in places like Mississippi, which is conservative, and therefore not considered a swing state in U.S. presidential elections.

“Well, my view is that every vote matters. And the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting. And that means get rid of the electoral college and everybody counts,” Warren said, eliciting some of the most enthusiastic applause of the night.

The electoral college has 538 electors and 270 are needed to win the presidency. Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election but Republican Donald Trump won the electoral college.

Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee introduced a constitutional amendment this year to eliminate the electoral college, but it has not been brought up for a vote in the House, which is controlled by Democrats.
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Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Monday that her department may have been founded to combat terrorism, but its mission is shifting to also confront emerging online threats.

China, Iran and other countries are mimicking the approach that Russia used to interfere in the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and continues to use in an attempt to influence campaigns on social media, she said. Under threat are Americans’ devices and networks.

“It’s not just U.S. troops and government agents on the front lines anymore,” Nielsen said. “It’s U.S. companies. It’s our schools and gathering places. It’s ordinary Americans.”

Devices and networks are “mercilessly” targeted, she said. Those responsible are “compromising, co-opting, and controlling them.”

Nielsen was speaking about the priorities of a sprawling department created after the Sept. 11 attacks. It handles counterterrorism, election security and cybersecurity, natural disaster responses and border security — President Donald Trump’s signature domestic issue.

The president on Friday issued his first veto, to secure money for a U.S.-Mexico border wall. Nielsen did not specifically mention that fight, but made clear that she sees a humanitarian and security crisis at the border because of an increasing number of Central American families crossing into the U.S. to seek asylum.

While the overall number of migrants coming into the U.S. is down from a high of 1.6 million in 2000, the number of families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has reached record highs. The system is at a breaking point, she said.

Nielsen said the department has introduced tougher screening systems at airports and is working with the State Department to notify other countries of stricter information-sharing requirements. She said the countries that work with the U.S. will make the world safer, and those that do not “will face consequences.”
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A judge has directed prosecutors to publicly release documents related to the search warrant that authorized last year’s FBI raids on the home and office of President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen.

U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III said redacted versions of the documents should be released Tuesday.

Media organizations had requested access to the records.

Pauley sentenced Cohen to prison in December for crimes including lying to Congress and paying two women to stay silent about affairs they claimed to have had with Trump.

Cohen is scheduled to report to prison in May.

Pauley had ruled early that some parts of the search warrant documents can remain secret because making them public could jeopardize ongoing investigations.
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A judge has directed prosecutors to publicly release documents related to the search warrant that authorized last year’s FBI raids on the home and office of President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen.

U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III said redacted versions of the documents should be released Tuesday.

Media organizations had requested access to the records.

Pauley sentenced Cohen to prison in December for crimes including lying to Congress and paying two women to stay silent about affairs they claimed to have had with Trump.

Cohen is scheduled to report to prison in May.

Pauley had ruled early that some parts of the search warrant documents can remain secret because making them public could jeopardize ongoing investigations.
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President Donald Trump complained Monday that the U.S. national news media “is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand.”

He said on Twitter, “They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!”  

Trump apparently was incensed that major U.S. news outlets reported that Brent Harris Tarrant, the Australian white supremacist accused in the massacre of 50 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, said in a manifesto he released Friday shortly before the attacks that he viewed Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose,” even though he did not support his policies.

Asked Friday after the attacks whether he sees an increase in white nationalism, Trump said, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.”

Trump said he had not seen the manifesto.

The president has condemned the attack and voiced support for New Zealand.  But he has not commented on Tarrant’s apparent motive for allegedly carrying out the attacks — his avowed racism and hatred for immigrants and Muslims.

The White House on Sunday rejected any attempt to link Trump to Tarrant.

“The president is not a white supremacist,” acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m not sure how many times we have to say that. Let’s take what happened in New Zealand for what it is: a terrible evil tragic act.”

Trump’s dismissal that white nationalism is on the rise renewed criticism that he has not voiced strong enough condemnation of white nationalists.

Trump was widely attacked in the aftermath of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 when he equated white supremacists with counter-protesters, saying “both sides” were to blame and that there were “fine people” on both sides of the protest.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of numerous Democrats seeking the party’s presidential nomination to oppose Trump in the 2020 election, said on Twitter after the New Zealand attack, “Time and time again, this president has embraced and emboldened white supremacists and instead of condemning racist terrorists, he covers for them. This isn’t normal or acceptable.”

Mulvaney, in the Fox News interview, said, “I don’t think it’s fair to cast this person (Tarrant) as a supporter of Donald Trump any more than it is to look at his eco-terrorist passages in that manifesto and align him with (Democratic House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi or Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Democratic congresswoman from New York.

“This was a disturbed individual, an evil person,” Mulvaney said.

Scott Brown, U.S. ambassador to New Zealand, told CNN that he gave no credence to Tarrant’s comments about Trump in the manifesto, saying the accused gunman “is rotten to the core.” Brown said he hopes Tarrant is convicted “as quickly as he can be,” and “lock him up and throw away the key.”
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President Donald Trump complained Monday that the U.S. national news media “is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand.”

He said on Twitter, “They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!”  

Trump apparently was incensed that major U.S. news outlets reported that Brent Harris Tarrant, the Australian white supremacist accused in the massacre of 50 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, said in a manifesto he released Friday shortly before the attacks that he viewed Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose,” even though he did not support his policies.

Asked Friday after the attacks whether he sees an increase in white nationalism, Trump said, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.”

Trump said he had not seen the manifesto.

The president has condemned the attack and voiced support for New Zealand.  But he has not commented on Tarrant’s apparent motive for allegedly carrying out the attacks — his avowed racism and hatred for immigrants and Muslims.

The White House on Sunday rejected any attempt to link Trump to Tarrant.

“The president is not a white supremacist,” acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told “Fox News Sunday.” “I’m not sure how many times we have to say that. Let’s take what happened in New Zealand for what it is: a terrible evil tragic act.”

Trump’s dismissal that white nationalism is on the rise renewed criticism that he has not voiced strong enough condemnation of white nationalists.

Trump was widely attacked in the aftermath of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 when he equated white supremacists with counter-protesters, saying “both sides” were to blame and that there were “fine people” on both sides of the protest.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of numerous Democrats seeking the party’s presidential nomination to oppose Trump in the 2020 election, said on Twitter after the New Zealand attack, “Time and time again, this president has embraced and emboldened white supremacists and instead of condemning racist terrorists, he covers for them. This isn’t normal or acceptable.”

Mulvaney, in the Fox News interview, said, “I don’t think it’s fair to cast this person (Tarrant) as a supporter of Donald Trump any more than it is to look at his eco-terrorist passages in that manifesto and align him with (Democratic House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi or Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a Democratic congresswoman from New York.

“This was a disturbed individual, an evil person,” Mulvaney said.

Scott Brown, U.S. ambassador to New Zealand, told CNN that he gave no credence to Tarrant’s comments about Trump in the manifesto, saying the accused gunman “is rotten to the core.” Brown said he hopes Tarrant is convicted “as quickly as he can be,” and “lock him up and throw away the key.”
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Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke raised more than $6 million online during the first 24 hours after he announced his White House bid, the highest first-day number reported by any candidate, his campaign said Monday.

The “record-breaking” $6.1 million came “without a dime” from political action committees, corporations or special interests, O’Rourke spokesman Chris Evans tweeted.

The $6.1 million is just above what Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders reported for his first day as a candidate.

O’Rourke, a former Texas congressman, jumped into the 2020 presidential race on Thursday after months of speculation, shaking up the already packed Democratic field and pledging to win over voters from across the political spectrum.

O’Rourke raised an eye-popping $80 million in grassroots donations last year in his failed U.S. Senate race in Texas against incumbent Republican Ted Cruz, all while largely avoiding money from PACs. His early fundraising numbers in the presidential contest will be seen as an initial signal of whether his popularity during the Senate campaign will carry over to his White House bid.

The new figures set O’Rourke and Sanders apart from the rest of the Democratic field in launch-day fundraising. California Sen. Kamala Harris reported raising $1.5 million in the 24 hours after she launched her campaign in January. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar reported raising $1 million in the 48 hours after launching her campaign in February.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said three days after starting his presidential campaign this month that he had raised more than $1 million, a notable haul for a governor less widely known than many of his competitors in a field dominated by senators.

Sanders has set the pace for 2020 grassroots donations. Aided by the $6 million he pulled in on his first day as a candidate, he took in more than $10 million in the first week, overwhelmingly from small donors.

O’Rourke, asked last week if he thought he would top Sanders, said only, “We’ll see.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump is firing new broadsides at the late-Sen. John McCain, nearly seven months after the one-time prisoner of war in Vietnam died from brain cancer.

In a trio of Twitter comments on Saturday and Sunday, Trump contended the Republican lawmaker helped instigate special counsel Robert Mueller’s long-running investigation of links between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia, and complained again, as he has in the past, about McCain’s 2017 vote that doomed Trump’s attempted overhaul of national health care policies.

After the first attack on her late father, she said, “No one will ever love you the way they loved my father…. I wish I had been given more Saturday’s with him. Maybe spend yours with your family instead of on twitter obsessing over mine?”

When Trump launched another attack Sunday, McCain’s daughter said, “My father lives rent free in your head,” in a tweet that later appeared to have been deleted.

One of McCain’s closest friends in the U.S. Senate, Republican Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, said, “As to @SenJohnMcCain and his devotion to his country: He stepped forward to risk his life for his country, served honorably under difficult circumstances, and was one of the most consequential senators in the history of the body. Nothing about his service will ever be changed or diminished.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons told ABC News, “I’ve long thought that his personal and direct attacks on Senator McCain was one of the most detestable things about President Trump’s conduct as a candidate,” calling on Trump to apologize for his most recent remarks.

Trump quoted former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who investigated former President Bill Clinton two decades ago, as saying on the Fox News network that the fact that a McCain ally shared a dossier with the media that linked Trump to Russia was “unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain.”

On Sunday, Trump claimed McCain was “last in his class” at the U.S. Naval Academy and that he had sent the dossier to the media “hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election” on Nov. 8, 2016. “He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!”

Trump’s claims were wrong on three counts: McCain was fifth from last in his class of 1958. The senator did not learn of the dossier until 10 days after Trump had won the election and there is no evidence that McCain passed the dossier on to the media although a McCain aide said he did. McCain turned the file over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mueller’s investigation has resulted in guilty pleas and convictions of five key Trump aides and the indictment of a sixth.

Trump has long labeled the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt” and rejected any suggestions that his campaign colluded with Russia to help him win or that, as president, he obstructed justice by trying to thwart the investigation.

The president has long shown his disdain for McCain, a fighter pilot before becoming a politician, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam in the 1960s after being shot down over Hanoi.

Trump, during the early months of his presidential campaign in 2015, disparaged McCain’s status as a POW, saying, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump is firing new broadsides at the late-Sen. John McCain, nearly seven months after the one-time prisoner of war in Vietnam died from brain cancer.

In a trio of Twitter comments on Saturday and Sunday, Trump contended the Republican lawmaker helped instigate special counsel Robert Mueller’s long-running investigation of links between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia, and complained again, as he has in the past, about McCain’s 2017 vote that doomed Trump’s attempted overhaul of national health care policies.

After the first attack on her late father, she said, “No one will ever love you the way they loved my father…. I wish I had been given more Saturday’s with him. Maybe spend yours with your family instead of on twitter obsessing over mine?”

When Trump launched another attack Sunday, McCain’s daughter said, “My father lives rent free in your head,” in a tweet that later appeared to have been deleted.

One of McCain’s closest friends in the U.S. Senate, Republican Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, said, “As to @SenJohnMcCain and his devotion to his country: He stepped forward to risk his life for his country, served honorably under difficult circumstances, and was one of the most consequential senators in the history of the body. Nothing about his service will ever be changed or diminished.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons told ABC News, “I’ve long thought that his personal and direct attacks on Senator McCain was one of the most detestable things about President Trump’s conduct as a candidate,” calling on Trump to apologize for his most recent remarks.

Trump quoted former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who investigated former President Bill Clinton two decades ago, as saying on the Fox News network that the fact that a McCain ally shared a dossier with the media that linked Trump to Russia was “unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain.”

On Sunday, Trump claimed McCain was “last in his class” at the U.S. Naval Academy and that he had sent the dossier to the media “hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election” on Nov. 8, 2016. “He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!”

Trump’s claims were wrong on three counts: McCain was fifth from last in his class of 1958. The senator did not learn of the dossier until 10 days after Trump had won the election and there is no evidence that McCain passed the dossier on to the media although a McCain aide said he did. McCain turned the file over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mueller’s investigation has resulted in guilty pleas and convictions of five key Trump aides and the indictment of a sixth.

Trump has long labeled the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt” and rejected any suggestions that his campaign colluded with Russia to help him win or that, as president, he obstructed justice by trying to thwart the investigation.

The president has long shown his disdain for McCain, a fighter pilot before becoming a politician, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam in the 1960s after being shot down over Hanoi.

Trump, during the early months of his presidential campaign in 2015, disparaged McCain’s status as a POW, saying, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.”
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The White House on Sunday rejected any attempt to link President Donald Trump to the white supremacist accused of gunning down 50 people at two New Zealand mosques.

“The president is not a white supremacist,” acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told the “Fox News Sunday” show. “I’m not sure how many times we have to say that. Let’s take what happened in New Zealand [Friday] for what it is: a terrible evil tragic act.”

Alleged gunman Brenton Harris Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian, said in a 74-page manifesto he released shortly before the massacre unfolded at mosques in Christchurch that he viewed Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose” but did not support his policies.

The statement renewed criticism that Trump has not voiced strong enough condemnation of white nationalists.

Asked Friday after the mosque attacks whether he sees an increase in white nationalism, Trump said, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.” He said he had not seen the manifesto.

Mulvaney said, “I don’t think it’s fair to cast this person as a supporter of Donald Trump any more than it is to look at his eco-terrorist passages in that manifesto and align him with [Democratic House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi or Ms. Ocasio-Cortez,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman.

“This was a disturbed individual, an evil person,” he said.

Scott Brown, the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand, told CNN that he gave no credence to Tarrant’s comments about Trump in the manifesto, saying the accused gunman “is rotten to the core.” Brown said he hopes Tarrant is convicted “as quickly as he can be” and the key to his prison cell thrown away.

Trump was widely attacked in the aftermath of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 when he equated white supremacists with counter-protesters, saying “both sides” were to blame and that there were “fine people” on both sides of the protest.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of numerous Democrats seeking the party’s presidential nomination to oppose Trump in the 2020 election, said on Twitter after the New Zealand attack, “Time and time again, this president has embraced and emboldened white supremacists and instead of condemning racist terrorists, he covers for them. This isn’t normal or acceptable.”
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The White House on Sunday rejected any attempt to link President Donald Trump to the white supremacist accused of gunning down 50 people at two New Zealand mosques.

“The president is not a white supremacist,” acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told the “Fox News Sunday” show. “I’m not sure how many times we have to say that. Let’s take what happened in New Zealand [Friday] for what it is: a terrible evil tragic act.”

Alleged gunman Brenton Harris Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian, said in a 74-page manifesto he released shortly before the massacre unfolded at mosques in Christchurch that he viewed Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose” but did not support his policies.

The statement renewed criticism that Trump has not voiced strong enough condemnation of white nationalists.

Asked Friday after the mosque attacks whether he sees an increase in white nationalism, Trump said, “I don’t really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.” He said he had not seen the manifesto.

Mulvaney said, “I don’t think it’s fair to cast this person as a supporter of Donald Trump any more than it is to look at his eco-terrorist passages in that manifesto and align him with [Democratic House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi or Ms. Ocasio-Cortez,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman.

“This was a disturbed individual, an evil person,” he said.

Scott Brown, the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand, told CNN that he gave no credence to Tarrant’s comments about Trump in the manifesto, saying the accused gunman “is rotten to the core.” Brown said he hopes Tarrant is convicted “as quickly as he can be” and the key to his prison cell thrown away.

Trump was widely attacked in the aftermath of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 when he equated white supremacists with counter-protesters, saying “both sides” were to blame and that there were “fine people” on both sides of the protest.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of numerous Democrats seeking the party’s presidential nomination to oppose Trump in the 2020 election, said on Twitter after the New Zealand attack, “Time and time again, this president has embraced and emboldened white supremacists and instead of condemning racist terrorists, he covers for them. This isn’t normal or acceptable.”
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U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York has launched her campaign to win the Democratic Party nomination to oppose President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

She formally launched her bid Sunday morning, not with a big speech, but instead with a video that poses the question, “WIll brave win?”

“We need a leader who makes big, bold, brave choices,” Gillibrand says in the video. “Someone who isn’t afraid of progress.”

The lawmaker is set to deliver her first major speech next week in front of Trump International Hotel in New York City.

She gave an indication in the video of the issues she will focus on during her campaign. “We launched ourselves into space and landed on the moon. If we can do that, we can definitely achieve universal health care,”she said. “We can provide paid family leave for all, end gun violence, pass a Green New Deal, get money out of politics and take back our democracy.”

She joins a large group of presidential hopefuls that includes, among many others, some of her fellow female lawmakers: Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Kamala Harris of California, along with Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.

Gillibrand was appointed to the Senate in 2009.  She filled the New York Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton, but since then has won three elections to retain the seat.
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U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York has launched her campaign to win the Democratic Party nomination to oppose President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

She formally launched her bid Sunday morning, not with a big speech, but instead with a video that poses the question, “WIll brave win?”

“We need a leader who makes big, bold, brave choices,” Gillibrand says in the video. “Someone who isn’t afraid of progress.”

The lawmaker is set to deliver her first major speech next week in front of Trump International Hotel in New York City.

She gave an indication in the video of the issues she will focus on during her campaign. “We launched ourselves into space and landed on the moon. If we can do that, we can definitely achieve universal health care,”she said. “We can provide paid family leave for all, end gun violence, pass a Green New Deal, get money out of politics and take back our democracy.”

She joins a large group of presidential hopefuls that includes, among many others, some of her fellow female lawmakers: Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Kamala Harris of California, along with Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.

Gillibrand was appointed to the Senate in 2009.  She filled the New York Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton, but since then has won three elections to retain the seat.
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Veteran Democrat Joe Biden campaigned for president in every way but name Saturday, declining to announce his 2020 plans but dropping hints, including a memorable gaffe that suggests he will soon be all in.

As the number of Democratic White House hopefuls keeps growing, Biden is expected to jump into the crowded race to see who will challenge Donald Trump next year, but the former vice president has maintained the suspense.

He received a hero’s welcome in his home state of Delaware, where he told nearly 1,000 party brokers and leaders at a Democratic dinner that it was time to restore America’s “backbone,” but also that political “consensus” was necessary to move beyond the toxic tone of the Trump era.

“Our politics has become so mean, so petty, so vicious, that we can’t govern ourselves; in many cases, even talk to one another,” he said.

A gaffe, or was it?

Then, a startling slip by the notoriously gaffe-prone Biden — perhaps an accident, perhaps a perfectly placed tease as he inches towards a presidential campaign.

“I’m told I get criticized by the new left. I have the most progressive record of anybody running for the United” — and then he catches himself. “Anybody who WOULD run.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd, and within moments his die-hard supporters rose to their feet, chanting “Run Joe run.”

“I didn’t mean it!” he chuckled, looking down before crossing himself as the applause lingered.

“Of anybody who would run. Because folks, we have to bring this country back together again.”

Pressure or run or bow out

Biden, 76, sounded at times as if he were rehearsing a campaign speech, repeating lines about the promise of the 21st century and American resolve, and choosing “truth over lies,” that he had used earlier in the week at a Washington speech to firefighters.

“There’s so much at stake,” he said about the next election, calling it the most important in a century. “Our core values are being shredded.”

The Democratic senior statesman has been mulling a challenge against Trump for months.

While he tops nearly all early polls for the Democratic nominations race, strategists and election observers have stressed that he is under pressure to enter the field soon, or bow out.

One of his potential rivals, the former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, launched his presidential bid Thursday, and spent three straight days campaigning in the early voting state of Iowa, sucking up much of the political oxygen.
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President Donald Trump’s first veto was more than a milestone. It signals a new era of ever perilous relations between the executive and legislative branches of government.

Trump’s agenda was stymied even before his party lost unified control of Washington at the start of the year, and he has grown increasingly frustrated by his dealings with Congress, believing little of substance will get done by the end of his first term and feeling just as pessimistic about the second, according to White House aides, campaign staffers and outside allies. 

Republicans in Congress are demonstrating new willingness to part ways with the president. On the Senate vote Thursday rejecting the president’s national emergency declaration to get border wall funding, 12 Republicans joined Democrats in voting against Trump. 

The 59-41 vote against Trump’s declaration was just the latest blow as tensions flare on multiple fronts. 

Trump tweeted one word after the vote: “VETO!” And he eagerly flexed that muscle on Friday for the first time, hoping to demonstrate resolve on fulfilling his 2016 campaign pledge. 

​Proposed deals fall flat

GOP senators had repeatedly agitated for compromise deals that would give them political cover to support Trump despite their concerns that he was improperly circumventing Congress. But the president was never persuaded by any of the proposals, said a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

A last-ditch trip to the White House by a group of senators Wednesday night only irritated Trump, who felt they were offering little in the way of new solutions. 

As the vote neared, Trump repeatedly made clear that it was about party fealty and border security and suggested that voting against him could be perilous. 

“It’s going to be a great election issue,” he predicted. 

Looking past the veto, Trump’s plans for future collaboration with Congress appear limited. With the exception of pushing for approval of his trade deal with Mexico and Canada, the president and his allies see little benefit in investing more political capital on Capitol Hill. Trump ran against Washington in 2016, and he is fully expected to do so again. 

Trump once declared that “I alone can fix it.” But that was before getting hamstrung in Washington, and he is now exploring opportunities to pursue executive action to work around lawmakers, as he did with his emergency declaration on the border wall. He is directing aides to find other areas where he can act — or at least be perceived as acting — without Congress, including infrastructure and drug prices. 

‘The campaign begins’

Trump made his intentions clear recently as he assessed that Democrats would rather investigate him than cooperate on policy: “Basically, they’ve started the campaign. So the campaign begins.” 

His dealings with Congress were inconsistent even when Republicans controlled both chambers, and he has made few overtures to Democrats since they won control of the House. 

Trump initially predicted he could work across the aisle, but that sentiment cooled after the bitter government shutdown fight and in the face of mounting investigations. His frustrations are evidence of the difficulty that the Washington neophyte and former business executive has had with the process of lawmaking, and the challenges yet to come. 

The White House argues there are still opportunities for collaboration, listing ratification of the Canada-Mexico trade pact as a priority. But passage is anything but assured. 

Trump’s ire has been directed at both parties for some time, aides said. He was upset with the Republicans’ performance during the recent congressional hearing featuring his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, telling allies that he was not impressed with their questioning.  

Trump’s budget proposal this past week was viewed as a shot at Democrats, with its proposals to increase money for the border wall and cut to social safety net programs. The plan, which had little in the way of new or bipartisan ideas, was declared dead on arrival by Democratic House leaders. 

Stoltenberg address

Further stoking tensions, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., invited NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to address an upcoming joint meeting of Congress, in what was widely seen as a rebuke of Trump’s criticism of the trans-Atlantic alliance. The invitation was backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and followed votes earlier this year in which Republicans voiced opposition to Trump’s plans to draw down U.S. troops in Syria and Afghanistan. 

Presidential complaints about Congress — and efforts to find a workaround — are nothing new. 

President Barack Obama in 2014 resorted to what became known as his “pen and phone” strategy. 

“I’ve got a pen to take executive actions where Congress won’t, and I’ve got a telephone to rally folks around the country on this mission,” he said. 

Obama’s strategy yielded years of executive orders and regulatory action, but many proved ephemeral when Trump took office and started unwinding them.
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