Category Archives: Donald Trump

NicolaSturgeon was quizzed on President Donald Trump's decision to furlough his workforce in Scotland by Channel 4'sKrishnan Guru-Murthy.Scotland's First Minister did not directly address the US President but warned all businesses with "deep pockets" to think carefully before relying on taxpayers' money during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Guru-Murthysaid: "We now know that Donald Trumps staff in Scotland are being furloughed.

"So Scottish taxpayers money will be going to pay the bills that might have been picked up by the President's business.

"Do you think that is an appropriate use of your taxpayers' money?"

Ms Sturgeon replied: "It is right the Government has given unprecedented support to businesses when we are asking businesses to do unprecedented things.

READ MORE:Nicola Sturgeon told to 'move on' from independence dream

"But businesses should think carefully about whether they need that support.

"So that as much of the support as possible is going to those that need.

"If a business has got deep pockets of its own it should be relying on them before the taxpayer."

During the same interview with Channel 4, Ms Sturgeonrevealed some of the potential measures the Scottish Government is looking at implementing in order to re-open schools.

At this difficult time for frontline doctors and nurses, sign up here toshow your support now to our brave NHS Heroes.

Ms Sturgeon stated that children may be split into two groups and rotated between staying at home and going to school so that class sizes are reduced.

Scotland's First Minister said: "We want to get kids back into schools as quickly as possible but we might have classrooms with desks further apart for social distancing.

"Maybe not all school children will be able to be in school at the same time."

Mr Guru-Murthy asked:"Are your experts telling you it is possible that schools could go back before the summer holidays?"

DON'T MISSNicola Sturgeon told 'time is up' following Scotland's 'major fall'[INSIGHT]Sturgeon breaks ranks with No10 as she announces lockdown to continue[INSIGHT]Sturgeon forced to accept EUs terms and common fisheries policy[VIDEO]

Ms Sturgeon replied: "I couldnt say for certain but I dont want children to be outside of school for a day longer than is necessary so there may be points in between where you have classes split into two.

"Dont take this as a decision, we are thinking things over.

"One half is in school on some days and the other half is in school on other days, to reduce the number of children in classes at any one time.

"These are the kind of creative things we are going to have to think about if we are going to get normality back but still do what we have to do in suppressing this virus."

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Sturgeon fires warning to Donald Trump over furloughing Scottish staff 'think carefully!' - Express.co.uk

President Trumps campaign manager, Brad Parscale, has been paying $15,000 a month the equivalent of the top White House salary to Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the wife and girlfriend of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., respectively, for campaign work.

This article was originally published at Salon

The payments, the existence of which was revealed in March by the New York Times, reportedly came through one of Parscales private companies, Parscale Strategy.

Lara Trump is a senior campaign adviser, and Guilfoyle, formerly a senior campaign adviser, is currently chair of Trump Victory Committee, a joint fundraising vehicle between the campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Its unclear why the campaign didnt pay the pair directly, but the payments would allow the campaign to sidestep federal electionrules that require it to publicly disclose all spending.

I can pay them however I want to pay them, Parscale told Huffington Post, which first revealed the amount of the payments.

Its unclear when the payments began, and though Huffington Post did not specify which of Parscales firms was making them, the Times report cited two sources that named Parscale Strategy. (Guilfoyle was reportedly overheard complaining to Parscale that her checks were late.)

These payments reveal how the murky web of campaign finance has become evenmurkier in the Trump era, and how easy it is to blur individual roles, organizational hierarchiesand payment flows to live between the famously fuzzy lines of federal electionlaw.

Parscale has also operatedat least two other firms: the now-defunct Giles-Parscale; and Red State Data and Digital, which has purposely ambiguous financial connections to the campaign and affiliated groups.

In 2017, the AP reported that Giles-Parscale (not Parscale Strategy) hadhired Lara Trump as a liaison, a job the Raleigh News & Observer later specified as comprising digital, fundraising, and merchandising efforts.

At the time, AP reported, Giles-Parscale was doing digital work for America First Policies, the dark-money affiliate of the America First Action Super PAC. Parscale along with Pence adviser Nick Ayers and Paul Manafort associate-cum-federal inmate Rick Gates had co-founded AFP in 2017, just before hiring Lara Trump. By the time Parscale left to become Trumpscampaign manager in February 2018, AFP had paid Parscale Strategy millions of dollars.

Its unclear whether Lara Trump left Giles-Parscale, but she received the alleged $15,000 monthly payments from Parscale Strategy separately. Parscale sold his half of Giles-Parscale for a reported $10 million in mid-2017. (The 2016 Trump campaign had paid the company $94 million.) Financial records from America First Policies do not show that the group made any payments to Giles-Parscale that year.

Parscale Strategy has since been paid more than $37.8 million from a range of clients, according to the ethics watchdog groupCREW, including the Trump campaign, the RNC, joint fundraising committeesand the America First Action Super PAC.

A third Parscale firm, Red State Data and Digital, has been paid a combined $3.3 million by America First Action and its dark-money affiliate America First Policies, according to CREW.

Lara Trumps $15,000 monthly payments float somewhere in the nexus between Parscale Strategy and its clients the Trump campaign, America First Action, the RNCand the nominally unaffiliated America First Policies.

Though America First Policies is legally barred from engaging in political activities, it shares offices and employees with America First Action, the Trump campaigns super PAC. Those two organizations have paid Red State Data and Digital (again, also a Parscale firm)a combined $3.3 million, CREW reported.They are apparently Red States only known clients.

Guilfoyle also has several direct connections to Parscales firms. CREW reported that in the weeks leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, America First Policies a Parscale client ran a series of digital ads featuring Guilfoyle and Donald Trump Jr.Those ads did not name candidates, but ran in locations where races were tight.

A former Fox News personality, Guilfoyle left the network in 2018. She began dating Donald TrumpJr. two years ago and began joining him at campaign events. In a 2019 press release, Parscale announcedthat Guilfoyle would join the Trump campaign as a senior adviser.

The RNC had paid Parscale Strategy millions for digital ads, payments it reportedly suspended at Parscales request in September of last year. In January of this year,Guilfoyle became the head of Trump Victory Committee, a joint fundraising committee shared between the Trump campaign and the RNC.

The payment amount $15,000 a month also does not seem coincidental.

First, $15,000 a month, or$180,000 a year,is the top White House salary. The Trump administration pays more top White House salaries than previous administrations, and in another, possibly related, break with tradition, all Trump White House employees are presumed to have signed a non-disclosure agreement contingent upon their hiring. The Trump campaign also requires employees to sign NDAs.

In August 2018, former Trump adviser Omarosa Manigault-Newman released a tape of Lara Trump offering her $15,000 a month for a campaign job in December2017, immediately after Manigault left the White House. At the time, Lara Trump was an adviser to the campaign but had also reportedly been holding high-level meetings at the White House, a move experts believe is illegal. Manigault considered the proposed paymentto be hush money.

It sounds a little like, obviously, that there are some things youve got in the back pocket to pull out, Lara Trump said on the tape. Clearly, if you come on board the campaign, like, we cant have, we got to

Oh, God no, Manigault replied.

In another passage from the tape, Trump explains that the offer wasintended to reflect ManigaultsWhite House salary.

So, I know you, you were making 179 at the White House. And I think we can work something out where we keep you right along those lines, Trump said. Specifically, let me see, I havent even added up the numbers. But we were talking about, like, 15K a month. Let me see what that adds up to. Times 12. Yeah. So thats $180,000. Does that sound like a fair deal for you?

According to ABC News, either the Trump campaign, the RNCor America First Action are also paying former presidential security chief and Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller $15,000 a month for security services connected to the 2020 Republican National Convention. Another Trump adviser, John McEntee, who left the administration in 2018 because of a gambling addiction, was hired by the campaign at $14,000 a month hours after he walked out of the White House. The campaign also offered $15,000 a month to former ad director Gary Coby.

Trump reportedly charges donors $15,000 for a photo with him.

ABC News also reported that America First Action and the RNC paid Parscale 15 separate monthly installments of $15,000 betweenMarch 2017, when he first hired Lara Trump, and June 2018.

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then let us make a small request. The COVID crisis has cut advertising rates in half, and we need your help. Like you, we believe in the power of progressive journalism and were investing in investigative reporting as other publications give it the ax. Raw Story readers power David Cay Johnstons DCReport, which we've expanded to keep watch in Washington. Weve exposed billionaire tax evasion and uncovered White House efforts to poison our water. Weve revealed financial scams that prey on veterans, and efforts to harm workers exploited by abusive bosses. We need your support to do what we do.

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Eric Trumps wife and Donald Trump Jr.s girlfriend are on the 2020 campaign managers payroll at $15K a month - Raw Story

Updated April 24, 2020 18:18:11

US President Donald Trump has thrown more cold water on reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was gravely ill but declined to say if he had been in touch with officials there.

"I think the report was incorrect," Mr Trump said at a daily White House briefing, adding that he had heard it was based on "old documents."

Reports in the US media that Mr Kim was "gravely ill" have been repudiated by various sources from South Korea, China, and the nuclear-armed state itself.

Jim Sciutto, CNN's chief national security correspondent, said a US official told him Mr Kim was in "grave danger" after surgery.

But South Korea's presidential office said Mr Kim appeared to be handling state affairs as usual and that it had no information about the rumours regarding his health.

Mr Trump had said he might contact North Korean officials to inquire about Mr Kim but gave no indication he had done so.

The two leaders have had regular communications over the past couple of years.

"We have a good relationship with North Korea, I have a good relationship with Kim Jong-un and I hope he's OK," Mr Trump said.

Daily NK, a Seoul-based website, reported on Monday that Mr Kim, who is believed to be about 36, was recovering after undergoing a cardiovascular procedure on April 12.

It cited one unnamed source in North Korea. The state-controlled media in North Korea has been silent on Mr Kim's whereabouts.

However, Mr Trump said earlier in the week that reports had not been confirmed and he did not put much credence in them.

"If he is in the kind of condition that the reports say that would be [a] very serious condition," Mr Trump said.

"I just hope he's doing fine. I've had a very good relationship with Kim Jong-un. And I'd like to see him do well. We'll see how he does. We don't know if the reports are true."

Two South Korean government officials rejected a CNN report citing an unnamed US official that said the United States was "monitoring intelligence" that Mr Kim was in grave danger after surgery.

The US Government's latest information on the North Korean leadership is that Mr Kim still remains out of sight and there is a dearth of reliable information about the reasons for his absence, according to a source familiar with current intelligence reporting and analysis.

US officials acknowledge Mr Kim does have a history of health problems and is overweight, and say this does at least raise a credible possibility he has suffered some kind of health crisis, the source said.

Reuters/ABC

Topics:government-and-politics,world-politics,leadership,donald-trump,unrest-conflict-and-war,korea-democratic-peoples-republic-of,united-states

First posted April 24, 2020 17:16:44

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Donald Trump says reports on illness of North Korea's Kim Jong-un are incorrect - ABC News

We have to fight that invisible enemy, Trump first said at a March 17 presser. Its called the invisible enemy, and thats what it is: its an invisible enemy, he said in a March 18 video blog. In his March 18 presser, he called it the invisible enemy three times, just in case listeners werent paying attention, and used the phrase every day for the next 18 days, missing only March 25. But he didnt fail to hammer his theme with a pitchmans verve: Nobody could ever have seen something like this coming, he said.

We are learning much about the Invisible Enemy, Trump tweeted on the April 5. It is tough and smart, but we are tougher and smarter. It might have seemed weird for the president to attribute intelligence to a tangle of nucleic acids inside a protein shell coated by a fatty jacket, but theres been a method to Trump weirdness from the beginning. Viewed from the lowest level of cognition, youd have to concede that Trump is right. Viruses are unseeable by the naked eye. And broadly speaking, its fair to apply the metaphor of enemy to a host of hardshipshurricanes, old age, alcoholism, famine, et al. Given Trumps preference for plain-speak over metaphor, youve got to wonder how he came to call coronavirus the invisible enemy. He cant really imagine it an evil apparition out of Harry Potter that sends both the young and old rushing for the protection of a ventilator, can he?

No, he cant. Trumps determination to label the virus an invisible enemy bears all the hallmarks of a branding campaign, one fashioned to shape our attitudes toward the microbe to his liking. By calling the virus invisible, Trump implies that he cant be responsible for its wreckage because who can be expected to see an invisible thing coming? And once the unseeable thing has arrived, there are limits to what can be expected to do about it!

This position, of course, is rot. U.S. intelligence was issuing warnings about the contagion in late November. And George W. Bush, nobodys idea of a bright filament, saw the coming danger lucidly in 2005, when he told the country a new pandemic was an unavoidable certainty. Trump can claim the virus was invisible, but only if he will admit his blindness was self-imposed. As the press has demonstrated again and again, Trump routinely downplayed or dismissed its danger, averting his eyes to the coming cataclysm. Actually, Trump has been inconsistent on coronavirus visibility. On February 27, three weeks before Trump started to brand the virus as the invisible enemy, he saw it clearly enough to assert that, One day its like a miracle, it will disappear. (As long as were charting Trumps fluctuating vision, let it be noted that at his March 17 presser he asserted that, I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.)

Trumps determination to brand the virus as an enemy, rather than a pathogen, pays political benefits. Calling his crusade our big war and directly enlisting the military in the fight allows Trump to frame a public health crisis as a military operation: He is the commander in chief, we are his foot soldiers, our patriotic duty is to obey him, and the entire planet is his battleground. This, too, is rot. You cant bomb a virus into submission or bayonet it to death, as Will Bunch recently wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, attacking Trumps use of military symbolism. The virus isnt attacking us like the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. It cant be corralled by diplomacy. Its just a mindless biological process doing what biological processes doself-replicate. All this saber-rattling might enthuse Trumps base, but it does zilch to create a vaccine or an effective therapy.

Id like to say that Trumps coronavirus branding campaign has flopped like his attempts to sell overpriced, mail-order steaks that carried his name, that the pubic is too shrewd to embrace his self-serving metaphor. But I cant. Other Republicans have adopted the phraseSecretary of State Mike Pompeo, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantisand so too have Democrats, including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper. Even Boris Johnson, summoning his inner Churchill, repeated the phrase before the virus sent him to the ICU.

Whether politicians are imitating Trump to flatter him or because they share his mystic, military mindset I cant say. But either way, Trump has succeeded in getting others to view the invisible thing the way he views it. The crisis has also prompted Trump to declare himself a wartime president, which conveniently places him in the pantheon with genuine wartime presidents like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who expanded the powers of their office. If war is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne wrote, the invisible enemy of coronavirus may prove to be the health of Donald Trump.

******

Bournes immortal quotation was rescued from a wastebasket by his desk after his death. Send throwaway quotations to [emailprotected]. My email alerts have called my Twitter feed a very risible enemy. My born-again RSS feed is also self-replicating.

Excerpt from:

Opinion | Whats With Trump and the Invisible Enemy? - POLITICO

Michael Atkinson, the then-inspector general for the intelligence community, departs a closed-door hearing before the House Intelligence Committee in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 4, 2019.

Photo: Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times via Redux

Three years into his presidency, Donald Trumps corruption and blatant politicization have reached into every corner of the government. Now, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed thousands of Americans, its more clear than ever that the officials who stayed in public service to try to curb Trumps worst abuses are becoming his most numerous victims.

Hoping that the country is too distracted by Covid-19 to notice, Trump has over the last few days engaged in a Stalinist purge of truth-tellers, leaving the survivors frightened and intimidated even as the federal government is shown to be too weak to counter the rampaging coronavirus.

Last week, Trump fired the intelligence communitys inspector general, Michael Atkinson. Atkinsons sin was that he took seriously a whistleblower complaint about Trumps illegal scheme to get Ukraine to meddle in the 2020 presidential election on his behalf.

Last year, Atkinson concluded that the whistleblowers complaint was both credible and urgent, and should be shared with Congress, which ultimately led to Trumps impeachment by the House of Representatives. A mountain of evidence confirmed the whistleblowers complaint and vindicated Atkinsons decision to tell Congress about it.

It is hard not to think that the Presidents loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General, Atkinson wrote in a statement. He urged whistleblowers to continue to come forward: Please do not allow recent events to silence your voices.

Atkinsons firing is just the latest in a series of attempts by Trump to decapitate the intelligence community and place it under the control of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the clammy thug who has gained power over most of the national security apparatus by sucking up to Trump more compulsively than any of his rivals.

In the wake of Atkinsons firing, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff wrote a scathing letter to Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, pointing out that every Senate-appointed official in the DNI has now been removed, making it impossible for the intelligence community to function. The only problem with Schiffs letter was that he had to address it to Grenell, an empty suit who is temporarily filling the job of director after replacing yet another acting national intelligence director in February. Replacing acting officials with more acting officials is part of Trumps ongoing strategy to fill the government with unqualified yes-men.

Trumps dysfunctional leadership style is to rant and rave in public over the slightest hint of criticism. That explains why the popular captain of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier was relieved of command last week after pleading for help as Covid-19 ravaged his crew.

Replacing acting officials with more acting officials is part of Trumps ongoing strategy to fill the government with unqualified yes-men.

The captain, Brett Crozier, had angered Trump by telling his superiors that the Navy wasnt doing enough to protect its sailors. Croziers letter was promptly leaked to the media, embarrassing Navy brass, so Crozier had to go. On Monday, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, yet another Trump minion, flew to Guam and gave a profanity-laced speech to the carriers crew, in which he said that if Crozier hadnt intended his letter to be leaked, the captain was too naive or too stupid to be the commanding officer of a ship like this. The audio of Modlys speech was itself promptly leaked to the press, and Modly was forced to resign. In trying a little too hard to be like Trump, he had actually embarrassed the president.

Trump began the week by ousting the chair of the federal panel created by Congress to oversee the management of the $2 trillion stimulus package designed to offset the economic impact of the pandemic. Trump removed Glenn Fine before he could even start his new job because he discovered that Fine had been the acting inspector general of the Pentagon and previously served as the longtime inspector general for the Justice Department. In other words, he was afraid that Fine had enough experience to actually know how to do his job and therefore, could conduct real oversight of the massive spending bill.

At around the same time, Trump publicly attacked the inspector general for Health and Human Services for issuing a report that showed that hospitals around the nation faced severe shortages of Covid-19 tests and related supplies.

Trump views anyone who tells the truth as an enemy who must be crushed. Since the onset of the pandemic, he has often assaulted the truth in the middle of White House press briefings. That the docile White House press corps has repeatedly let it happen with barely a murmur encourages Trump to keep it up.

In the middle of a press briefing on Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the governments top infectious disease expert, tried to answer a question about whether an anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, could be an effective treatment for Covid-19. Trump has continuously touted the drug in public despite the fact that there is no conclusive proof of its usefulness and plenty of evidence of its harmful side effects. His heedless quackery threatens to kill thousands.

The last thing Trump wanted was for Fauci to tell the truth while standing next to him in front of the press, so Trump blocked him from answering the question and attacked reporters for asking about it. You dont have to ask the question again, Trump told a reporter, while complaining that Fauci had already talked about the anti-malarial drug 15 times.

Fauci has tried hard over the last few weeks to avoid directly contradicting Trump, particularly in official press briefings. He has instead used alternative media interviews including a popular online chat with NBA star Stephen Curry to try to get the truth out.

Yet the fact that Fauci must stand by and let Trump spout dangerous misinformation shows how Trumps purges have intimidated the remaining professionals inside the government.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been almost completely sidelined from press briefings. Stat, a health and medicine news organization, noted that the CDC hasnt given its own press briefing since March 9, after Trump and the White House took control of public messaging about the pandemic. CDC experts, who held regular briefings to update the public about previous health threats such as the H1N1 flu pandemic and the Zika outbreak, have been silenced, Stat reported.

Instead, CDC Director Robert Redfield, a conservative Christian appointed to his position in 2018, has mainly been giving interviews to local radio stations, in which he stresses the value of social distancing while avoiding directly contradicting Trump.

Trump has lied and spouted propaganda and conspiracy theories ever since he took office. In the last few days, he has intensified his war against the truth and anyone who speaks it. With Covid-19, we are witnessing the results.

Read the rest here:

Under Cover of Covid-19, Donald Trump Ramps Up His War on Truth-Tellers - The Intercept

Most people find Donald Trump bewildering. His lies, cruelty, corruption, greed, delusions of godlike powerand other unconscionable behavior seemunbelievable. If Trump werea character in a TV show, movie or comic book, the audience would laugh at his clumsy, obvious villainy. The whole story would be rejected as horrendously bad writing and a waste of time.

But Trump is not that in fact complicated or puzzling once his core motivations are understood and then accepted as basic facts: He appears to be a sociopath. As such, helacks human empathy and a capacityfor the norms of healthy human social relationships. In so many ways, Donald Trump is like a space alien who came to Earth and is (badly) impersonating a human being.

The coronavirus pandemic, and Trump's cruel and callous reactions to it, have only served toamplifyhis gross defects in personality, behaviorand values.

Writing at the Guardian, Lloyd Green summarizes Donald Trump's emotional and cognitive defects as magnified by the coronavirus crisis:

On Sunday, initially at least, there was no White House briefing on the president's public schedule. But the bad news kept coming. Coronavirus deaths continued to climb and reports of the heartland being unprepared for what may be on its horizon continued to ricochet around the media.

In the words of one administration insider, to the Guardian: "The Trump organism is simply collapsing. He's killing his own supporters."

Members of the national guard, emergency workers, rank-and-file Americans: all are exposed. Yet Trump appears incapable of emoting anything that comes close to heart-felt concern. Or just providing straight answers.

In a recent op-ed forthe New York Times, Frank Bruni speaks tothe human emptinessandlack of care, concern, empathy, and overall decency atthe center of Donald Trump:

One more question: Do you remember the moment when President Trump's bearing and words made clear that he grasped not only the magnitude of this rapidly metastasizing pandemic but also our terror in the face of it?

It passed me by, maybe because it never happened.

In Trump's predecessors, for all their imperfections, I could sense the beat of a heart and see the glimmer of a soul. In him I can't, and that fills me with a sorrow and a rage that I quite frankly don't know what to do with.

And while I'm not looking to Trump for any panacea, is it too much to ask for some sign that the dying has made an impression on him, that the crying has penetrated his carapace and that he's thinking about something other than his ratings? I watch. I wait. I suspect I'll be doing that forever.

I recently spoke with Dr. Lance Dodes, a retiredassistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and now a training and supervising analyst emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. We discussedthe coronavirus pandemic and what this crisis hasrevealedabout Donald Trump's mental health and behavior.

Dodes wasa contributor to the bestselling volume "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President," and is a regular guest on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell".

In this conversation, Dodes explains how the coronavirus pandemic offers further evidence of Trump's predatory, sociopathic behaviorand his lack of care or concern for other human beings. Trump's programming and behavior, in fact makes him perhaps the worst person imaginable to lead the United States through the coronavirus crisis. Dodes also explains why too many people, especially in the news media, remain in a state of deep denial about Trump's behavior and the depths of his mental pathologies.

If Trump had not been born into money, Dodes told me, he would have wound up in prison by now. Instead he ispresident of the United States and vigorously protected by the Republican Party and its supporters.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Is Donald Trump the freest man alive? He has no internal restraints and increasingly no external restraints either.

I think he is the least free man. You and I have some degree of choice about how we're going to behave and react to the world around us; we are complex and we make complex decisions because we have a conscience and we care about the effects of our actions on others. Donald Trump, in contrast, is very simple. Everything he says or does is for himself, either to have power over others or to hurt them in revenge against their disagreeing or standing in his way. Because he has shown himself to be incapable of either conscience or empathy, he is basically a predator, lacking the most essential parts of our humanity.

Despite this, he has two techniques that have allowed him to be successful in business and politics: He is a bully, and he lies continuously. Repeating his lies over and over is like the "big lie" technique made famous by Hitler.It works because when a lie is endlessly repeated, even decent people assume there must be some truth in it.

Donald Trump has lied at least 16,000 times. Why are there journalists, reporters, politiciansand peopleamong the general publicwho keep giving him the benefit of the doubt despite the overwhelming evidence that he is a compulsive liar?

People want to trust others.I, too, would rather believe that the president of the United States was an honest, decent, thoughtful person. For some people, having an authority figure be trustworthy is so important that they will not accept the obvious facts about Trump. Like other predators, or other sociopaths, Trump takes advantage of this very human quality by pretending to be trustworthy through endless lying about his real motivations and even his real actions.

Donald Trump has said and done many unconscionable things during his time in the White House. But his recent suggestion that doctors and nurses are stealing ventilators from hospitals is, even by standards, one of his most despicable comments.Is that just his instinct to go to such an unbelievably dark place?

As my colleague Dr. John Gartner pointed out, if Trump were walking around wearing a tinfoil hat and talking about Martians controlling his mind, it would be easy for the public to recognize how severely ill he is. Trump is the most dangerous person we could have as a president precisely because his delusional core is not as obvious. When he makes these claims about ventilators and the coronavirus, they need to be understood as delusional beliefs that he summons from his imagination to protect himself, and which he is incapable of altering when presented with reality.

Donald Trump actually believes that he is a great president. I believe he is likely to win a second term. His entirepresidency stands as an indictment of the American people, the news media, the political classand the country's culture and values as a whole.

With respect to the political class, Donald Trump would have been removed from office already if the Republicans in Congress were not propping him up. If a Democrat were behaving like Trump, Republicans would certainly have impeached and convicted him already.Many decent Americans have been successfully conned by Trump, but there is no excuse for the Republicans in Congress.Trump's decisions about the coronavirus are killing Americans and he will continue doing it. The Congress should remove him from office immediately.

If Trump was not born into wealth, what do you think would have happened to him?

People with Donald Trump's very severe personality disorder are rare, which is good for civilization but helps explain why most people cannot understand his behavior. Sociopaths can be camouflaged by being successful in certain areas precisely because they get to the top by lying, cheating, bullying and manipulating, stepping on people who are in their way. Dictators, crime bosses and similar types of people are examples. But most sociopaths end up with criminal records. Donald Trump has committed multiple civil crimes that we know of.If he had not been born into money, it is likely that he would be in prison.

In terms of "metacognition,"is Donald Trump aware of what motivates and drives his behavior?

Donald Trump has made it clear that he processes reality in a different way than most human beings. When he says that if 100,000 people were to die from the coronavirus it would be a "victory" for him, he is revealing who he really is. He is showing that his perceived self-interest is the only thing that is ever on his mind.Insight into himself wouldn't make any sense to him.

Given your expertise in mental health, do you find Donald Trump to be an interesting person to study?

I find Donald Trump to be boring because he's so simple; it is always obvious what he's going to do. In any situation, its merits or complexity will have no bearing on his statements or actions; he will simply say or do whatever he thinks will benefit himself.Part of that calculus, of course, is to act as though he actually cares about others.But with fouryears of experience, everyone now ought to be able to see through that. When he was first elected, many reporters and commentators wrote that they hoped he would change and become "presidential." People with the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorderdo not change. This is just who Trump is.

What do you want the American people and the world to be prepared for, in terms of Donald Trump's behavior?

No matter what happens with the coronavirus, Donald Trump is going to claim victory. He will say that he did the best job possible and use the "big lie" strategy to double down on this falsehood. He will blame his critics for his failures with the virus. If there is a truly horrible outcome, Trump will blame the Democrats, the doctors, the governorsand anyone else he can imagine while, as he has already said, taking no responsibility himself.

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Dr. Lance Dodes on Trump: A "predator" who "would be in prison" if he hadn't been born rich - Salon

The WHO responded Wednesday to President Donald Trumps threat to cut its funding, saying the move would not be appropriate during the global coronavirus pandemic.

We are still in the acute phase of a pandemic so now is not the time to cut back on funding, Dr Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, told a virtual briefing, according to Reuters.

A day earlier, Trump threatened to withhold funding from the United Nations health agency, claiming it got every aspect of the coronavirus pandemic wrong.

With regard to us, theyre taking a lot of heat because they didnt want the borders closed, they called it wrong, Trump said at his daily briefing. They really called, I would say, every aspect of it wrong.

As of Wednesday, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. surpassed 400,000, according to figures provided by NBC, with 12,864 fatalities nationwide.

Its uncertain how the U.S. would withhold funding. Congress has already authorized $122 million for the WHO for this fiscal year, and while Trump has proposed only $58 million of funding in fiscal year 2021, Congress is unlikely to authorize such a drastic funding cut, especially in the the middle of the pandemic.

The president also criticized the WHOs initial response to the outbreak, which originated in Wuhan in China in late 2019, and the time it took to declare the outbreak a global pandemic, on March 11.

Take a look, go through step by step. They said theres no big deal, theres no big problem. Theres no nothing, and then ultimately when I closed it down, they said I made a mistake in closing it down and it turned out to be right, Trump said.

The WHO declared a global health emergency on Jan. 30, nearly a month before Trump tweeted that The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.

Another official at the WHO rejected that criticism.

It was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get on the ground and work with the Chinese to understand this, Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior advisor to the WHO director-general, said at the virtual briefing Wednesday, Reuters reported.

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'Now is not the time': WHO responds to Trump's threat to cut funding - CNBCTV18

"You should say congratulations, great job, instead of being so horrid in the way you ask a question," Trump scolded Fox's Kristin Fisher.

The "horrid" question that Fisher had the gall to ask? "When can hospitals expect to receive a quick turnaround on these [Covid-19] test results?"

Which, unless you have spent the last month or so on another planet, is a very relevant question. Testing for coronavirus was very slow to get started and there remains, in many hospitals, a delay in getting back results from the tests.

"More and more rapid tests are coming onto the market and private companies like Quest and LabCorp are now running thousands of tests a day. But as the virus has spread from state to state infecting hundreds of thousands of Americans, demand for testing has overwhelmed many labs and testing sites. Doctors and officials around the country say that lengthy delays in getting results have persisted and that continued uneven access to tests has prolonged rationing and hampered patient care. In addition, swabs and chemicals needed to run the tests are in short supply in many of the nation's hot zones."

There's no question, then, that Fisher was well within her rights to ask Trump about the continued testing delays. So, why did he react the way he did?

Simple; Trump has absolutely no real idea of (or care for) how a free and independent media actually works.

He's demonstrated this repeatedly -- on some of the biggest stages in the world.

So, yeah. Trump doesn't seem to grasp -- or, more worryingly, doesn't care -- about the difference between how the press should function in the US and how it is allowed to function in an authoritarian state. He likes how authoritarian rulers are "covered" by their media because it is so favorable. He seems to not connect the dots that the reason it is favorable is because a) reporters' work in these countries is heavily censored and b) there are real-life repercussions for journalists who are seen as insufficiently loyal to the political leadership of the country.

The job of journalists in a free and open society is to ask questions -- even uncomfortable ones. And to keep asking them until they get answered. Because in this country reporters never have to -- or should never have to -- worry that asking a hard question of the president might lead to negative consequences.

The media's job is not to ask "nice" or "good" questions, and it's certainly not to say "congratulations." The media's job is to ask questions that elicit critical information about issues affecting the American public. Like, say, when will the rapid-result tests for coronavirus be available to hospitals battling the virus around the country?

That the President of the United States doesn't grasp that basic fact about one of the institutions at the center of a healthy democracy speaks volumes.

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Here's the biggest thing Donald Trump doesn't get about the media - CNN

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge in Manhattan rejected an effort by U.S. President Donald Trump and his adult children to send a lawsuit accusing them of exploiting their family name to promote a marketing scam into arbitration.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump kisses Senior White House Advisor Ivanka Trump as Donald Trump Jr. watches during a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S., February 10, 2020. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo

In a Wednesday night decision concerning the American Communications Network, U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield accused the Trumps of acting unfairly by seeking arbitration after first obtaining the benefits of litigating in federal court, including the dismissal of a racketeering claim.

This conduct is both substantively prejudicial towards Plaintiffs and seeks to use the [Federal Arbitration Act] as a vehicle to manipulate the rules of procedure to Defendants benefit and Plaintiffs harm, Schofield wrote.

Defendants included Trumps adult children Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka, and an affiliate of the Trump Organization.

The court erred, and while we are disappointed, we will take an immediate appeal, Joanna Hendon, a lawyer for the Trumps, said in an email.

In the October 2018 complaint, the Trumps were accused of misleading victims into becoming salespeople for ACN, a multi-level marketing company that charged $499 for a chance to sell videophones and other goods.

According to the plaintiffs, the Trump family conned them into thinking Donald Trump, who had yet to become president, believed their investments would pay off.

They said the real goal was for the Trumps to enrich themselves, including through the receipt of millions of dollars in secret payments from 2005 to 2015.

The Trumps have called the lawsuit politically motivated, and said Donalds Trumps endorsement of ACN was merely his opinion.

In rejecting arbitration, Schofield noted the plaintiffs claim that they had no reason to believe their agreements to arbitrate with ACN also covered the Trumps.

Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an email she looked forward to pursuing the proposed class action on behalf of her clients and thousands of others like them who were defrauded by the Trumps.

Last July, Schofield said the plaintiffs could pursue state law claims of fraud, false advertising and unfair competition against the Trumps, despite dismissing the racketeering claim.

The case is Doe et al v Trump Corp et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 18-09936.

Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler

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Trump family loses bid to move marketing scam lawsuit to arbitration - Reuters

President Donald Trump was accused of political favoritism in the administration's coronavirus response after only sending a fraction of the ventilators sought by Colorado's Democratic governor "at the request" of the state's Republican senator.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has been pleading for the federal government to provide his state with 10,000 ventilators since last month.

"Colorado's COVID-19 death rate is rising faster than any other state right now; the pandemic is spreading so fast that lags in testing are masking the true conditions experienced by Coloradans across the state," Polis said in a letterto Vice President Mike Pence, who is leading the White House coronavirus task force.

Not only did the federal government not respond to the request, but Polis also told CNNjust days later the federal government seized an order of 500 ventilators bought by the state.

"We can't compete against our own federal government," he said. "So either work with us, or don't do anything at all. But this middle ground where they're buying stuff out from under us and not telling us what we're going to get, that's really challenging to manage our hospital surge and our safety of our health care workers in that kind of environment."

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But Trump announcedWednesday that his administration wouldbe "immediately sending 100 Ventilators to Colorado at the request of Senator [Cory] Gardner," a vulnerable Republican up for re-election.

The announcement came after Gardner spoke with the president personally, he told Fox News.

"The governor has been searching for ventilators and FEMA has also been searching for ventilators. I talked to the president last night about the Colorado need for ventilators, and of course, I'm very thankful that he provided that last night," Gardner said. "We're going to continue to work with the president for more and continue to meet Colorado's needs, but I think it's just a sign that we are fighting for Colorado."

Pence pushed back when asked whether Gardner's personal relationship with Trump led to Colorado getting life-saving equipment.

"We've been watching Denver very closely . . . We're beginning to see some encouraging news in our interactions with the governor and with local officials and with the senator," he told reporters at Wednesday's White House news briefing. "We've made an effort not only in Colorado, but around the country, to be particularly responsive to states where we've seen a growth in cases."

But Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations subcommittee, told CNNthat the move smells of political favoritism.

"It seems that way to me," she said when asked if it appeared to be a political favor to Gardner. "I was totally outraged."

DeGette, who has served in Congress for more than two decades, told the network that "this thing that happened with Sen. Gardner and President Trump is very disturbing."

In a private call with House Democrats on Wednesday, the congresswoman accused Pence of "lying" about the process for distributing ventilators, according to CNN.

"Nowhere did it say if a Republican senator calls up the president they can get it," she said, adding that the vulnerable Republicans then took "all kinds of credit on national TV."

Polis dodged questions about the issue when pressed Wednesdayby reporters.

"Well, you're not going to get my read on it,because I'm not here to do political analysis," he said. "I'm here to celebrate any ventilators that arrive in our state, andof course, we are grateful for 100 ventilators."

Officials in at least a half-dozenstates have complained that the federal government has seized equipment shipped to states and numerous governors, including Republicans in Maryland and Massachusetts, slammed the fedsfor bidding against states to acquire vital ventilators.

Details about the federal response from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) released Wednesdayby the House Oversight Committeealso show that the federal government sent the same number of N95 respirator masks used by emergency workers to every state in its "final push" to get equipment from the national stockpile out before handing the task off to the private sector.As a result, Vermont received about 193 respirators per 1,000 residents while Texas received just five per 1,000 residents.

"Now that the national stockpile has been depleted of critical equipment, it appears that the administration is leaving states to fend for themselves, to scour the open market for these scarce supplies and to compete with each other and federal agencies in a chaotic, free-for-all bidding war," House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said in a statement. "The president failed to bring in FEMA early on, failed to name a national commander for this crisis and failed to fully utilize the authorities Congress gave him under the Defense Production Act to procure and manage the distribution of critical supplies. He must take action now to address these deficiencies."

Under fire from Democrats over the administration'sresponse, Trump has used the White House coronavirus press briefings to instead push conspiracy theorieshe hopes will boost hisre-election efforts.

Trump this week claimed,without evidence,that mail voting, which is used widely by numerous states, including Republican strongholds like Utah, is "corrupt" and used by Democrats to "cheat." There is no evidence of any widespread mail ballot fraud,and the only recent anecdotal evidence is a mail ballot fraud scheme orchestrated by a Republican operative in North Carolina.

"Mail-In Voting, which is 'RIPE for FRAUD,' and shouldn't be allowed!" Trump falsely claimedWednesday onTwitter.

"There is no evidence that voting by mail results in significant fraud. As with in-person voting, the threat is infinitesimally small," said a reportfrom New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. "Twenty-three percent of ballots were cast by mail in 2016, and twenty-six percent of ballots were cast by mail in 2018. Five states Hawaii, Utah, Oregon, Washingtonand Colorado will run all-mail elections this year. And in 28 states and the District of Columbia, any voter has the right to request a mail ballot without excuse in November."

But Trump has been surprisingly transparent about his opposition to mail voting, arguing that Republicans cannot win if large numbers of people vote.

Discussing a Democratic proposal to fund mail voting efforts amid the coronavirus pandemic, Trump told Fox Newsthat "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again" if states expanded mail voting.

Trump has also used the briefings to push his agenda againstglobalorganizationsby picking a fight with the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing itof being "China-centric" while receiving a large portion of their funding from the U.S.

"The World WHO World Healthgot it wrong.I mean,they got it very wrong. Inmany ways, they were wrong. They also minimized the threat very strongly andnot good," Trump saidat Wednesday's briefing.

Taking its cues from Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson, the White House is working on a possible plan to cut WHO funding as the pandemic rages on, NBC Newsreported.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general, appeared to respond to Trump's threats by condemning politicization of the crisis.

"The focus of all political parties should be to save their people. Please don't politicize this virus," he said at a Wednesday news briefing. "If you want to be exploited and if you want to have many more body bags then you do it. If you don't want many more body bags, then you refrain from politicizing it."

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Trump says he only gave Colorado 1% of the ventilators it needs after GOP senator asked for them - Salon