Of all the fracked up things that occurred today during Trump’s impromptu press conference, this moment when an orthodox Jewish reporter attempted to ask him what he would do in response to the rise in anti-Semitism around that nation.
The reporter, Jake Turx of the Jewish publication Ami Magazine, did not accuse Trump of being anti-Semitic — he specifically said otherwise — but Trump responded as if he had, engaging in an attack on the news media and offering no response to the problem Turx outlined.
“I haven't seen anybody in my community accuse either yourself or anyone on your staff of being anti-Semitic,” Turx told Trump. “However, what we are concerned about, and what we haven't really heard being addressed, is an uptick in anti-Semitism and how the government is planning to take care of it.”
He continued: “There have been reports that 48 bomb threats have been made against Jewish centers all across the country in the last couple of weeks. There are people who are committing anti-Semitic acts or threats —”
So note, he didn’t accuse Trump of being anti-Semitic, in fact he very specifically said so, and what he wanted to know was what the government was going to do about it and then this happened….
In typical Trump fashion, he made it about himself.
“So here’s the story, folks,” Trump continued in response to Turx. “Number one, I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism. The least racist person, in fact we did very well, relative to other people running as a Republican…”
“Quiet, quiet, quiet,” Trump said to Turx, after he tried to ask another question. “See, he lied about, he was going to get up and ask be a very straight, simple question. So, you know, welcome to the world of the media.”
“But let me know just tell you something, that I hate the charge,” Trump went on, returning to the question of anti-Semitism. “I find it repulsive. I hate even the question, because people that know me, and you heard the prime minister, you heard Netanyahu yesterday, did you hear him, Bibi? He said, ‘I've known Donald Trump for a long time,' and then he said, 'Forget it.’”
Actually it was a simple question, “What are you going to do about the rise in anti-Semitism?” That’s not complicated. He offered a preface and context to the question is all, but Trump didn’t answer it. At one point in the press conference Trump seemed to deny that bigoted signs like the one headlining this post are done by any of his own supporters, that they are literally “false flag” signs and graffiti written and created by his enemies only to make his supporter look bad.
“Democrats did he” he claims.
But the fact is that hate crimes have clearly been rising as Thinkprogress notes, so did Democrats do all this too?
Our conclusions require context: For example, while anti-Muslim incidents are one of our smallest categories, they are also by far the smallest population of those listed. In addition, a disproportionate number of anti-Semitic incidents are part of a wave of bomb threats targeted at Jewish Community Centers, almost all of which came in recent weeks—as attacks on other groups began to dip.
Yet the number, scope, and severity of hate incidents remains staggering.
More populous states tended to have more occurrences—possibly because city dwellers are more likely to report them—but the wave of hate extended deep into the Southeast, Midwest, Northeast, and the American heartland. The incidents themselves run the gamut from disheartening to are chilling: Muslim women report being physically assaulted and told to remove their hijabs on buses and street corners. LGBTQ people allege being harassed and beaten as they walk home. Black churches were reportedly defaced with hateful racial slurs. A man of Guatemalan descent told police he was beaten as his assailants chanted “make America white again!” Trump supporters were also allegedly attacked, and at least three people were killed in what appear to be hate incidents.
But Trump still remains clueless about any of these kinds of incidents. And this isn’t the first time he’s been asked about this, he was asked about it before and ducked the question then too.
Today’s non-answer was after rambling shambling Press conference where he claimed “The leaks are real, but the news is ‘Fake’” in regards to reported contacts between his campaign staff and Russia.
He proclaimed his victory of 306 electoral votes was the “greatest since Reagan” when George Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all had greater electoral victories.
He claimed that he continues to be alright with Wikileaks revealing data from Hillary’s email — even when he believed some of the data may have classified — but that leaks about his phone calls to the Prime Minister of Australia are wrong because it was “Secret” [really it wasn’t unless it was properly marked “Secret” or “Confidential” and I can’t see that as being true when the refugee transfer was already a public matter]. He said that if we don't get along with Russia we might have a “Nuclear Holocaust” and that a lot of people would love it if he destroyed the Russia spy boat that is reportedly off the coast of Connecticut. [So he would start a war, if it would make some people happy?]
He claimed that he was going to stop “All Crime.” Like, every bit of it. Everywhere. How’s that going to work exactly?
He asked a black reporter, April Ryan, to set up a meeting with Congressional Black Caucus for him, when she inquired about it, as if simply be being black she had to personally know them or something — yet the CBC has already sent a letter to the White House asking for a meeting.
Jack Tapper on CNN said the entire press conference was “Festivus” — an airing of grievances — and that Trump should stop whining.
Tapper then turned to Trump’s contentious exchange with NBC reporter Peter Alexander over what the president inaccurately claims to be an historic victory in the electoral college. The CNN reporter said Trump tried—and failed—to deflect questions regarding his credibility by insisting “somebody gave” him that false information.
“The buck stops there?” an incredulous Tapper asked. “Is that where we are with this presidency? You said it—own the words. You’re wrong.”
Tapper said the real issue isn’t over Trump’s electoral college lie, it’s the fact that the presidency is “still fixated” on whether or not he legitimately won the election.
That’s when Tapper turned directly to the president and issued this plea:
“President Trump if you’re watching, you legitimately won the presidency. Now get to work and stop whining.“
John King reported that a Republican Senator had said that “He should do this with a therapist, not on live television.”
Largely because he took wide broad swipes at the media Trump’s supporters and fans are likely to love this performance, but the core of his counter attacks were — like the 306 Electoral vote claim, and his denial of contacts with Russian Intelligence which has been confirmed not just by our Intel community but also by overseas agencies which doesn’t require a security breach on our part, and even the Russians themselves admit they were in contact with Trump’s people — all factually wrong and intellectually lazy.
If Trump decided to fire Michael Flynn because he failed to relay accurate information to the Vice President, exactly why should we keep Donald in his current job?
Trumpsters may believe he had a great set of moments, but for most of the rest of us it came off as dangerously delusional, deranged and unhinged. He has certainly managed to change the media narrative from talking about the firing of Gen. Flynn to all of this wild nonsense. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to get used to the new abnormal. For now.
Thursday, Feb 16, 2017 · 9:33:27 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
Also via the comments he as completely wrong/lying about Chuck Shumer having something to do with why the meeting with Rep Cummings was cancelled.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) says President Trump invented a story about him cancelling a scheduled meeting between them.
“[Cummings] was all excited and then he said, ‘Oh, I can’t move it,’” Trump recounted. "'It might be bad for me politically. I can’t have that meeting.’”
“He was probably told by Schumer – or some other lightweight – ‘don’t meet with Trump, it’s bad politics.' That’s part of the problem in this country.”
“I have no idea why President Trump would make up a story about me like he did today. Of course, Senator Schumer never told me to skip a meeting with the President.
“I was actually looking forward to meeting with the President about the skyrocketing price of prescription drugs. What I have been doing for the past several weeks is working closely with my partner on these efforts, Senator Bernie Sanders. My goal was to finalize our proposal to allow HHS to negotiate lower drug prices so I could present it to the President. The President has said many times that he supports this proposal, so I wanted to have our bill ready to get his support.
So apparently that’s bullshit too.
Thursday, Feb 16, 2017 · 11:19:29 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
As expected TrumpNation loved watching the Bully-in-Chief go to town on the media.
Limbaugh said while the media still won’t warm up to Trump, it was what his supporters wanted to see, which was a willingness to tout his achievements and take on some of the claims from the media.
“You know it is hard to say — you get caught up in the moment,” Limbaugh said. “But this was one of the most effective press conferences I have ever seen. The press is going to hate him even more after this. Don’t misunderstand. When I say effective, I’m talking about rallying people who voted for him to stay with him. He made a point — ‘What chaos? You’re reporting chaos. We’re not in chaos. We’re a well-oiled machine. We got one of the smoothest running machines in the history of machines. We got one of the best administrations in the history of administrations.'”
“And he rattled off the achievements they’ve had here that the media is not reporting because they’re so focused on whether or not Trump worked with Russia to screw Hillary out of the presidency,” he continued. “And he was reassuring the people he’s on top of everything. Nothing has changed. Everything he campaigned on, he is doing. All he is doing is fulfilling campaign promises. And of course, the Democrats don’t like him. Of course, the media don’t like him. It isn’t going to stop him.”
The media doesn’t like it because his. facts. are. wrong. Just about all of them. His attacks on the media are a means to an end, it’s deliberately dividing the country into his fans and the rest of us in the not-Alt-Reality community. Limbaugh correctly points out that his fans love him for exactly that, because they’re living in an Alt-Reality world with him.
The rest of us are not with him on this, and he’s certainly not reaching out to us to “give him a chance” anymore. His chances are used up, he’s got nowhere to go but further down from this point on, only circling the drain.