Category Archives: Donald Trump

New York Times

Donald Trump, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 'All Eyez on Me': Your Friday Briefing New York Times Steve Garvey, a former major league star, led a prayer before the congressional baseball game in Washington on Thursday. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times. (Want to get this briefing by email? Here's the sign-up.) Good morning. Here's what you need to ... and more »

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Donald Trump, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 'All Eyez on Me': Your Friday Briefing - New York Times

"The Fake News Media hates when I use what has turned out to be my very powerful Social Media - over 100 million people! I can go around them," Trump tweeted.

If Trump believes this -- and he certainly seem to -- it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the media views the president's Twitter feed and how he employs it.

The reality is this: Every political journalist in the world is absolutely thrilled that Donald Trump not only tweets but does with the frequency and bluntness that he does. NO reporter wants Donald Trump to stop tweeting. Not one.

Trump's Twitter feed gives the political media -- and anyone else who follows him -- a direct look into his thought processes. We know what he is thinking about -- or angry about -- at all times of day. That's absolutely invaluable. It's "The President: Raw and Uncut."

Even as his White House will be excoriating the media for focusing too little on some policy roll-out or another, Trump will drop a series of tweets about the "witch hunt" Russia investigation or complain, as he did yesterday, about why the Justice Department isn't investigating alleged improprieties surrounding Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

All presidents have private thoughts that sometimes (often?) run counter to the official message the White House is pushing in a given day, week or month. But, no past president has been willing to put those discrepancies on public display in front of the tens of millions of people who follow him on Twitter before Trump.

What sort of reporter would want that pipeline to end?

The people who do want Trump to stop tweeting or to tweet less aren't the media. They're Republicans and Trump loyalists who believe his willingness to tell people exactly what is on his mind at any minute of the day fundamentally undermines the White House's efforts to find some consistent messaging and build the momentum the administration has been sorely lacking to date.

"[Twitter is] a powerful tool, but I do believe that it can be used more effectively to achieve his purpose," New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Trump supporter, said on CNN Friday morning. "I don't know the strategy behind, you know, this morning -- this latest tweet you are asking me about. But if there is a bigger strategy that makes sense, I'm all ears."

If you're reading this, Mr. Trump, let me be crystal clear as a card-carrying member of the media: Please keep tweeting. It provides us insight into how you think that we have never had before and may never get again from a president. Period.

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The one big thing Donald Trump gets totally wrong about the media - CNN

The yearning in the character of Donald Trump for dominance and praise is bottomless, a hunger that is never satisfied. Last week, the President gathered his Cabinet for a meeting with no other purpose than to praise him, to note the great honor and blessing of serving such a man as he. Trump nodded with grave self-satisfaction, accepting the serial hosannas as his daily due. But even as the members declared, Pyongyang-style, their everlasting gratitude and fealty to the Great Leader, this concocted dumb show of loyalty only served to suggest how unsustainable it all is.

The reason that this White House staff is so leaky, so prepared to express private anxiety and contempt, even while parading obeisance for the cameras, is that the President himself has so far been incapable of garnering its discretion or respect. Trump has made it plain that he is capable of turning his confused fury against anyone in his circle at any time. In a tweet on Friday morning, Trump confirmed that he is under investigation for firing the F.B.I. director James Comey, but blamed the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, for the legal imbroglio that Trump himself has created. The President has fired a few aides, he has made known his disdain and disappointment at many others, and he will, undoubtedly, turn against more. Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Sean Spicerwho has not yet felt the lash?

Trumps egotism, his demand for one-way loyalty, and his incapacity to assume responsibility for his own untruths and mistakes were, his biographers make plain, his pattern in business and have proved to be his pattern as President.

Veteran Washington reporters tell me that they have never observed this kind of anxiety, regret, and sense of imminent personal doom among White House staffersnot to this degree, anyway. These troubled aides seem to think that they can help their own standing by turning on those around themand that by retailing information anonymously they will be able to live with themselves after serving a President who has proved so disconnected from the truth and reality.

I thought about Trump and his aides and councillors while reading The Last of the Presidents Men , Bob Woodwards 2015 book about Alexander Butterfield, a career Air Force officer who took a job as an assistant to Richard Nixon. He made the move less for ideological reasons than to indulge a yearning ambition to be in the smoketo be at the locus of power, where decisions are made.

As an undergraduate, at U.C.L.A., Butterfield knew H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and, after serving in Vietnam and being stationed in Australia, he called on Haldeman, who was Nixons most important assistant. Haldeman made Butterfield his deputy. Butterfield got what every D.C. bureaucrat craves mostaccess. He worked on Nixons schedule, his paper flow, his travel; he offered advice, took orders, no matter how bizarre or transitory. Butterfield could not have been more in the smoke than he was then. He quickly discovered that Nixon was a fantastically weird and solitary manrude, unthoughtful, broiling with resentment against the Eastern lites who had somehow wounded him, be it in his imagination or in fact. Butterfield had to manage Nixons relations with everyone from his Cabinet members to his wife, Pat, who on vacations resided separately from the President. Butterfield carried out Nixons most peculiar orders, whether they involved barring a senior economic adviser from a White House faith service or making sure that Henry Kissinger was no longer seated at state dinners next to the most attractive woman at the occasion. (Nixon, who barely acknowledged, much less touched, his own wife in public, resented Kissingers public, and well-cultivated, image as a Washington sex symbol.)

Butterfield experienced what all aides do, eventually, if they have the constant access; he was witness to the unguarded and, in Nixons case, the most unattractive behavior of a powerful man. Incident after incident revealed Nixons distaste for his fellow human beings, his racism and anti-Semitism, his overpowering personal suspicions, and his sad longings. Nixon, the most anti-social of men, needed a briefing memo just to make it through the pleasantries of a staff birthday party. One evening, Butterfield recounts to Woodward, he sat across from Nixon on a night trip back to the White House from Camp David on Marine One, and watched as Nixon, in one of the more discomfiting passages in the literature of sexual misbehavior, kept patting the bare legs of one of his secretaries, Beverly Kaye:

And hes carrying on this small talk, but still patting her. Because I can see now, Nixon being Nixon, he doesnt quite know how to stop. You know, to stop is an action in itself. So hes pat, pat, patting her. And looking at her. And feelingI can see hes feeling more distressed all the time now about the situation hes got himself into. So he keeps trying to make this small talk, and I can see him saying [to himself], you know, when the small talk is over, what the hell am I going to do? . . . Shes petrified. Shes never had this happen before. The president of the United States is patting her bare legs.

For how long? Woodward asks.

It seems like half the way to Washington but Id say a long time, minutes.

When it appeared, The Last of the Presidents Men did not receive the attention that was paid to some of Woodwards early investigative books, but its intimacy and strangeness are very much worth returning to in the Trumpian momentespecially so if you are blessed with serving the current President. It is instructive.

Butterfield, who is ninety-one and spent dozens of hours with Woodward recounting his experiences in proximity to a President who ran what was essentially a criminal operation from the White House, emerges from the telling as a man of complex motivations. He hardly charged forward in the early days of the scandal to tell what he knew. After Nixons relection, Butterfield left the White House to lead the Federal Aviation Administration. But no matter how hard Butterfield worked to swallow his hurt feelings or to submerge his knowledge of the various enemies lists and the criminal cover-up that took shape all around him during Watergate, no matter how hard he tried to rationalize Nixons venality with his achievements, particularly the diplomatic opening to China, he came to an almost inevitable moment of reckoning.

In February, 1971, Nixon came up with the idea of putting a voice-activated taping system in his offices. Butterfield was charged with the installation. Haldeman told Butterfield that Nixon wanted the system installed on his telephones and in the Oval Office, his office in the Executive Office Building, the Cabinet Room, and the Lincoln Sitting Room. Kissinger was not to know; neither was his senior-most secretary, Rose Mary Woods. Only a few aides and the President were aware that no conversation was now truly confidential. Tiny holes were drilled into the Presidents desktop to make way for the microphones. A set of Sony 800B tape recorders was set up in the White House basement.

It was all for the sake of history, Nixon said. Kennedy and Johnson had taped selectively, but Nixon wanted it all for the recordhis own recordsbut no one was to know. Goddamn it, this cannot get out, Nixon told Butterfield. Mums the word.

In the end, of course, the tapes were Nixons undoing. In July, 1973, when Senate Watergate investigators asked Butterfield point-blank whether the White House taped conversations, Butterfield decided that his loyalty was not to the cesspool of Nixons White House but to the truth. And by confirming what so few knewthat there were tapes of Nixon and his cronies discussing Watergate and its cover-upButterfield helped end a Presidency.

Donald Trump now faces an investigation led by Robert Mueller, late of the F.B.I., and it could last many months. There is hardly any guarantee that the Administration will be found guilty of collusion with Russia, or with Russians, on any score; to predict that is to leap ahead of any publicly available evidence. Nor is there any guarantee, despite the testimony of Comey, and the testimony coming from other top national-security figures, that there will be a charge of obstruction of justice. This is bound to take some time.

But, while Trumps personality is different from Nixons, there is little evidence that the show of bogus loyalty performed last week has any basis in real life. Will Bannon, Spicer, Conway, Sessions, Kushner, and many others who have been battered in one way or another by Trump keep their counsel? Will all of them risk their futures to protect someone whose focus is on himself alone, the rest be damned? Will none of them conclude that they are working for a President whose honesty is on a par with his loyalty to others? The government is already filled with public servants and bureaucrats who have found ways to protest this Presidents actions and describe them to investigators and reporters. Will the inner circle follow? Have they already?

Alexander Butterfield, day after day, would hear Nixon say, Were going to nail those sons of bitches. He heard the lies; he watched the President try to crush his opponents with surveillance and dirty tricks. It disgusted him, but, for a good while, he assumed that the Presidency would endure; it was too powerful an institution to fall. But then momentum toward the truth began to build a wave, as Butterfield called it. He was, all along, ambivalent, torn between loyalty to the Presidentor, at least, to the idea of the Presidencyand a desire to do the right thing. When his time came, though, Butterfield testified.

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Who in the White House Will Turn Against Donald Trump? - The New Yorker

Trevor Noah addressed a crowd while standing inside a recreation of the Oval Office with a Russian flag flanking him and an open golden toilet directly behind him.

Welcome to what I hope will become a place we live to remember for a very long time, Noah said into a microphone. The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library.

Thursday night,The Daily Show finally debuted their pop-up library thats dedicated to Donald Trumps tweets. In many ways, its like a typical presidential library, with immersive exhibits and placards adding context to historical artifacts. In other ways, it is not.

You can sit on a gold shitter! Daily Showcorrespondent Jordan Klepper explained to HuffPost at the event.

One could only guess at whether this library would be hilarious, a disaster, or a hilarious disaster earlier this year when The Daily Show announced their plan. But it turned out to be arguably the most impressive satire of the current administration to date.

Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, Seth Meyers and John Oliver are going to have to really consider their next move if they want the elusive Trump mockery crown. Noah and The Daily Show crew have vanquished, destroyed, eviscerated, ethered and slammed insert other destructive verbs here the president with this ridiculous library.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY via Getty Images

This Trump Twitter library is right around the corner from Trump Tower in Manhattan, but somehow neither Klepper nor fellow correspondent Hasan Minhaj have ever been inside the latter.

How would an American version of Jafar live? Thats probably the inside of Trump Tower, in my mind, Minhaj guessed to HuffPost about what the presidents former residence is like. Despite never stepping foot in Trump Tower, The Daily Show crew certainly hopes the president stops by their pop-up over the weekend.

The library didnt appear to have any books, but has plenty of artworks, interactive activities and small Easter eggs to discover. A large television screen features a live update of Trumps Twitter. If he tweets during the time the library is open this weekend, a bing bing bong bong, bing bing, bong bong alarm, as Noah described, will go off.

The stated goal of the library besides jokes is to put the presidents tweets into a historical context. I think over time, they will lose context, said Noah during his speech in front of the golden toilet. And people will assume that theyre misinterpreting them. They will say, Surely, that was not what the president wrote back in that day, maybe language has changed. They will then find ways to distill them and turn them into coherent language, which is partly why we are holding this beautiful Twitter library experience because we do not wish for that to take place.

Noah continued, saying the president was at his best when experienced in his purest form.

Thats what this library is about, he continued. We are living in history, people. This is the beginning ... and possibly the end.

Rob Kim via Getty Images

The library is located at 3 West 57th Street in New York and is open Friday, June 16, throughSunday June 18, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Theadmission is free.

HuffPost reporter Bill Bradley sat on the golden toilet and asked Noah what hed say to Trump if he ever slid into his DMs on Twitter. Well, the obligatory, u up? Noah responded. And then #followback.

Presumably Noah and Klepper and Minhaj wont be on the premises this weekend, but who knows, maybe Trump will stop by to bask in this monument to his writing.

This is real history, Minhaj said to HuffPost at one point in the night. We are living through history.

Below is a transcript of Noahs entire opening remarks:

Brad Barket via Getty Images

Well, good evening, everybody. And welcome, welcome to what I hope will become a place we live to remember for a very long time. The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library.

You know, at The Daily Show, we faced a lot of criticism from people whove said we are haters of the President. We are not. We are admirers. We are honest. We are fake news. And he promotes us more than most. And to show our appreciation of that, we decided to tackle an issue that is near and dear to our hearts, and that is the Presidents Twitter.

Weve noticed that there is a concerted effort by many people within the administration and from without who wish to silence the Presidents tweets. Say what you want about Donald Trump, he may not be good at president-ing or leading or geo-politics, but he is a damn fine Twitterer. Probably the best that ever lived.

And so we thought at The Daily Show we would take a moment to honor the President of the United States and the King of Twitter with this library.

Now some people would say, Trevor, why would you have this Twitter library now? Shouldnt a presidential library be at the end of a presidents term? Yes, that is true. Unfortunately, we do not know when the term will end. Could be next week, could be never. So we decided to do it now. Tell the ones you love you love them when theyre still around.

And thats what this Twitter library is about. Its about giving context to the tweets. Not absorbing them one bite at a time, but rather looking at them as a body of work. Some of the greatest moments, some of the greatest ideas that have ever been shared in 140 characters or less.

Weve invited you here today to share it with us and I know many of you, fake and mainstream, will strive to paint this as a negative affair, which it was not. I know that the President himself will appreciate this. Its around the corner from where he once lived. And I hope that everyone who is a fan and lover of Donald Trump what he tweets everyday will come and enjoy this experience with us.

So thank you very much. Its an exhibit, as you can see, that contains just a little bit of the mastery, just a little bit of the panache. Everything from birtherism through to deleted tweets that we have not forgotten. And we tried, but we could not. We have some of the survivors of his Twitter feuds.

But most importantly, we have an opportunity for people to take the position of Commander in Tweet and try to respond to a crisis as only the president would. Some people would see this as an insult, but it is not. We thought to ourselves, where do we send most of our tweets from. The president, who is a man of the people, probably shares in that experience.

So welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to The Daily Show Presents: Donald J Trump Twitter Presidential Library.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY via Getty Images

TIMOTHY A. CLARY via Getty Images

Brad Barket via Getty Images

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Trevor Noah And 'The Daily Show' Just Took Donald Trump Mockery To The Next Level - HuffPost

New York Times

Moving to Scuttle Obama Legacy, Donald Trump to Crack Down on Cuba New York Times WASHINGTON President Trump on Friday will move to halt the historic rapprochement between the United States and Cuba set in motion by former President Barack Obama, delivering a speech in Miami in which he plans to announce he is clamping down ... Trump to unveil new Cuba travel restrictions in aim to slam regime's human rights recordCNBC Donald Trump's Cuba policy restricts travel, business with militarySun Sentinel Donald Trump's new hardline policy on Cuba is yet another gift to RussiaQuartz Politico all 151 news articles »

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Moving to Scuttle Obama Legacy, Donald Trump to Crack Down on Cuba - New York Times

That was 219 days ago.

And yet, on Thursday afternoon, Trump sent two tweets attacking his former opponent.

What these twin tweets suggest is something we already knew: Trump just can't quit the 2016 election, and Clinton.

He spent weeks reveling in his stunning win. He reminded anyone who asked -- and lots of people who didn't -- that he had won over 300 electoral votes, a feat people said was impossible for any Republicans. As his 100th day in office approached, Trump handed out electoral maps to reporters coming to talk to him about what he had done for those first 100 days.

Huge framed electoral maps were shown being brought into the White House.

The 2016 election represented Trump's greatest triumph, his life's work: Proving that all the elites who mocked him or said he couldn't do something were mistaken all along. They had to eat their words. He was right. Everyone else was wrong. The end.

Then there's the fact that Trump also works better when he has someone or something to run against. In Clinton, he found a perfect opponent -- someone as cautious as he was risky, someone as insider as he was outsider, someone as mannered as he was unruly.

The problem for Trump is that he won the election. It's over. Has been for a long time. (We are now closer to November 2017 than we are to November 2016.)

In winning, he became the president. And what the current president does or has done matters a whole lot more than what a losing candidate for president does, in the eyes of our criminal and legal systems.

(That's not unique to Trump. Many members of Congress -- of both parties -- have resigned in the face of legal problems, knowing that a former House member is a lot less juicy of a target than a sitting one.)

Then there are the specifics of the allegations Trump is making against Clinton in his tweets.

Here's the key paragraph:

"As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well."

What Trump is arguing is, essentially, that the questions about the uranium mine sale and the plane visit should take precedence over the "hoax" that is the investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, potential collusion with his campaign and the possibility that he obstructed justice in the probe.

That is, of course, a matter of personal opinion -- and one Trump is very much entitled to. But remember that the special counsel was appointed by the deputy attorney general within the Trump administration. Bob Mueller was deputy AG Rod Rosenstein's pick, not Clinton's, or anyone else's. This was not a partisan action.

Trump is a victim of his own success here.

He won the election. He is the President -- and the most powerful person in the country. That means he gets a level of scrutiny no one else does. Particularly when there is so much smoke swirling regarding the ties between Russia and his campaign, and his decision to fire Comey in the midst of a federal investigation into those allegations.

Trump can try to distract. He can try to deflect. He can complain about Clinton's alleged transgressions. But what he can't change is the fact that he is President, and this investigation isn't going to disappear just because he sent two -- or two hundred -- tweets about Clinton.

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Memo to Donald Trump: The election ended 219 days ago. You won. - CNN International

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull mimicked President Trump during a leaked speech at a ball in Australia hosted by the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery on June 14. (AP)

You know what they say: In the age of smartphones, there's no such thing as off the record.

It's a lesson Australias prime minister just learned the hard way.

On Thursday, Malcolm Turnbull delivered a jovial speech at Parliament House's annual press ball, the equivalent of the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. In it, he made fun of the Australian government's dismal poll rankings. And he did so usinga verbal tick made popular by a certain world leader.

Donald and I, we are winning and winning in the polls, Turnbull said. We are winning so much. We are winning like we have never won before.To raucous laughter, he continued: We are winning in the polls. We are, we are not the fake polls, not the fake polls theyre the one were not winning in. Were winning in the real polls, you know, the online polls. They are so easy to win.

Though the speech was off the record, it was recorded on a phone and broadcast by the Nine Network.

Turnbullalso referenced Trump's Russia troubles. Referencing his supposed glowing polls, Turnbull asked: Did you know that? I know that, did you know that? I kind of know that. I know that. They are so easy to win. I have this Russian guy.

The prime minister later tried to walk back his remarks, telling Melbourne Radio 3AW that he was disappointed by the leak. Its a breach of protocol; its a breach of faith and all those things, he said. Though he also noted the obvious:He was only kidding. Its lighthearted, its affectionate, good-natured and the butt of my jokes was myself, the prime minister said.

The U.S. Embassyin Canberra released a statement saying it takes the impersonation with the good humor that was intended.

We understand that last nights event is equivalent to our own White House correspondents dinner, the embassy's statement reads.

Historically, Australia has been one of America's closest allies, though that relationship has been tested under Trump. Turnbull's first telephone call with Trump was, in the president's words, testy.Trump was surprised and angry to learn about a deal that required the United States to accept about 1,250 refugees who had made their way to Australia.

Since then, though, the pair has made an effort to appear close, at least in public. Turnbull is rarely critical of the U.S. president, and even shares some of his hard-line views about immigration.

The head of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, which hosted the event, said he was disappointed that the non-publication agreement had been breached. But Laurie Oakes, who broke the story, said he had not attended the ball and did not think that journalists should be in the business of letting politicians go off the record at events they host.

The idea that there be no leak with hundreds of people in the room armed with mobile phones is just ridiculous, Oakes told the Associated Press.

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Australian leader is on the hot seat for making fun of Donald Trump - Washington Post

From his rise in Manhattan social circles to his career as a real estate developer to his time as a reality TV star, he's always employed these same basic tactics. If someone writes or says something Trump doesn't like, he either threatens to or actually sues while simultaneously pushing out a counter-narrative aimed at discrediting the initial report and turning the story toward more favorable ground for him.

Everything is to be treated as a tabloid story that can be shaped, changed, rebutted, knocked down and torn apart though force of will -- and words.

It's worked remarkably well for Trump. And so it shouldn't be all that surprising that he's brought that blueprint to Washington with him.

Except that the White House -- and the political and legal worlds it touches -- isn't the same thing that Trump is used to facing. Not at all. The rules governing this world aren't the rules of the tabloids of New York City media. Bob Mueller isn't some "Page Six" reporter.

Trump doesn't seem to have even the slightest understanding of that distinction. His twin tweets Thursday morning make that point better than I ever could.

This is standard-issue stuff in the Trump playbook. When attacked, attack back -- harder. Go after the story in big, broad ways -- "total hoax" is one way Trump has described the federal investigation -- and assume that the average person won't consume enough details or follow it closely enough to see whether you're right or wrong.

But this investigation isn't anything like what Trump has faced before. He can't simply say this is all a "witch hunt" or a "hoax" and have it disappear. Short of firing Mueller, which seems to me incredibly unlikely -- particularly after the leak of the obstruction investigation -- Trump can't stop it. The investigation will proceed no matter what Trump says about it or who involved in it he calls names. It will also, eventually, reach some conclusions about the nature of Russia's hacking of the election and whether or not there was any collusion in that effort by any member of the Trump campaign.

That train has already left the station. And Trump's ability to derail it is decidedly limited.

That doesn't mean Trump's use of his tried and true "attack, pivot, declare victory" strategy against Mueller and the special counsel investigation won't have any impact.

The more Trump casts the investigation as biased and unfairly targeted at him, the more his supporters will believe that it is. Which means that if Trump either fires Mueller -- again, that is so hard to imagine -- or works to discredit the final conclusions of the special counsel, there will be a ready bloc of his supporters eager to adopt and spread that message.

"I told you this whole special counsel was a witch hunt," you can imagine Trump saying to nods from his supporters. "Of course they concluded I was in the wrong. They had decided that before they even started investigating. We need to drain the swamp and make America great again."

That line will work with his supporters. But it won't change the underlying facts Mueller unearths -- and the reverberations they could cause among everyone outside of Trump's most loyal backers.

Trump is a blunt instrument. He knows one way of doing things. And that way has always worked for him. But this investigation is both more serious than anything Trump has faced before.

Almost everyone grasps that. Everyone except Donald John Trump, that is.

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Donald Trump doesn't get the special counsel investigation. And he's never going to. - CNN

I reply to President Donald Trump'stweets sometimes.

I'm not proud of it. It's a compulsion, like biting fingernails or eating all the Doritos in the bag at once. When I wake up and see a blustery new message from our tweeter-in-chief, what am I supposed to do?Walk away? Perform yoga stretches? No. I carve out a snarkyretort. If I'm fast enough, I watch the likes and retweets roll in at lightning speed. (This is the 2017 equivalent of commenting "FIRST!" on an explosive message board thread.)

Sometimes, I try to debunk the misinformation Trump sharesthe false claimsabout an apologyletter from The New York Times, for instance, or the lies about his approval ratings. Other times, I just tweet Borat jokes.

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Again: Not proud. The sight of some verified nobody pumping out atweetstorm in Trump's mentions has become such aclich that there are now numerous profiles of the people who do this every day. The genre is very ripe forparody:

I won't pretend this is some noble act of resistance (or, as they say, #resistance). It's just a quick shot ofdopamine when my tweet blows up. Plus, it'smomentarily satisfying to be able to talk back to Trump on the public medium he can'tstay away from. There isno historical precedent for Trump'sTwitter. The president of the United States communicates directly with us in unfiltered outbursts when he's at his angriest, and we get to respond. It's weird. Sometimes he even sees the responses. And then he gets madder.

On Thursday, Trump, or somebody with access to his account, must have seen my response to one of his tweets.I know this, because he blocked me.

The block came shortly after Trump tweeted about being caught in"the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history." (Presumably, he is referring to the Russia investigation.) The president's use of the phrase "witch hunt" is curious butahistorical. I sent a snarky reply telling Trump to stop comparing himself to witches, who've been persecuted far more than he is:

A few minutes later, I checked to see if Trump had done any more tweets. Instead, I found that he had blocked me. (If you're new to Twitter, this means I can't tweet at him or read his tweets anymore.)

Was I blocked due to a pattern of behavior or because that one joke hurt Trump's feelings? No idea.It would be flattering to think that the president has read the articles I've written about him, like the one in which I relayed the stories behind his terrible movie cameos or the one where I profiled his celebrity admirers. But that seems unlikely, since they don't get discussedonFox&Friends. Plus, Trump doesn't really seem to read,anyway.

Related: The ridiculous stories behind Donald Trump's movie and TV cameos

I'm not the first to be blocked. Trump has been making liberal use of the feature lately. He blocked the writer Bess Kalb, who frequently mocks his tweets. He evenblocked Stephen King the other day. Fellow author J.K. Rowling kindly offered to DM Trump's tweets to King:

In fact, Ashley Feinberg, over at Wired, has a running list of people Trump has blocked on Twitter. For a certain breed of journalist, being insulted by Trump is a badge of honor. CNN'sChris Cillizza, for instance, has had an unflattering quote from Trump in his Twitter bio for yearsproof that even a broken clock is right twice a day:

Chris Cillizza's Twitter bio. twitter.com

So I'm not alone. After I revealed I'd been blocked, I got some interesting replies. Random Trump-haters started tweeting at me with a strange mix of congratulations ("Welcome to the #BlockedByTrump club drinks are at 6," tweeted@BrandonTXNeely) and messages of condolence. "Wow, another one down," tweeted@MissNeverTrump, as though I'd been slain on the front lines of some war. One person shared a memethat says, "Live your life in such a way that Donald Trump blocks you on Twitter." (I assume this is an ancient Greek proverb.) Even the actress who voicedDil Pickles on Rugrats swung by to voice her support.

Meanwhile, I received a new wave ofvitriol from Trump supporters. One guy asked me if I support the recent shooting ofRepublicanRepresentative Steve Scalise. (I don't!) Another Twitter user called me a "dumb ass dork not worth anybody's time." (Tough, but fair.)

The weird thing about being blocked by Trump is that I can no longer look at his tweets, unless I open an incognito browser that was probably intended for porn, not statements from the president. This has worrisome constitutional implications. TheKnight First Amendment Institute has argued that Trump is violating people's right to free speech when he blocks them on Twitter.The Institute has threatened to file a lawsuit. "If theres any kind of forum the government is operating for expression, it may not discriminate on the basis of viewpoint," a senior fellow at the Institute told Wired.

Meanwhile, I now have no idea whether Trump has tweeted in the last hour. Is this whatfreedom feels like?

Actually, you know what? J. K. Rowling, if you're reading this, can you DM Trump's tweets to me, too?

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Donald Trump Blocked Me on Twitter for Telling Him He's Not as Cool as Witches - Newsweek

The Senate approved the bill 98-2, with Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky and Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont voting against the measure. The bill, which includes both Russian and Iranian sanctions, now heads to the House, which still needs to pass it before it goes to President Donald Trump's desk.

The measure is widely seen as a rebuke to Trump, as it hits Russia with new sanctions to punish Moscow for its interference in US elections, as well as over Moscow's aggression in Ukraine and Syria.

The bill establishes a review process for Congress to have a say whether the White House eases Russia sanctions. It also establishes new sanctions against those conducting cyberattacks on behalf of the Russian government as well as supplying arms to Syrian President Bashar Assad, and it allows for sanctions to hit Russia's mining, metals, shipping and railways sectors.

"We moved to make the Congress, not the President, the final arbiter of sanctions relief when necessary," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. "Any idea of the President that he can lift sanctions on his own for whatever reason are dashed by this legislation."

The Russia sanctions measure was added as an amendment to an Iranian sanctions bill, after a deal was struck between the heads of the Senate Foreign Relations and Banking Committees. The Russia amendment was added to the sanctions bill in a 97-2 vote on Wednesday.

Despite the overwhelming vote, the Russia sanctions package was no sure thing. Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee had initially been hesitant to take it up, as the administration had expressed a hope it could improve relations with Moscow.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said this week that he was wary of Congress taking actions that could interfere with the administration's efforts to improve relations with Russia.

"What I wouldn't want to do is close the channels off," Tillerson told a Senate committee.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that the Trump administration is "committed to existing sanctions against Russia" but is "still reviewing the new Russia sanctions amendment."

"We will keep them in place until Moscow fully honors its commitment to resolve the crisis in Ukraine," Sanders said. "We believe the existing executive branch sanctions regime is the best tool for compelling Russia to fulfill its commitments."

Still, Corker and other Republicans said they expect Trump to sign the bill if it's passed by the House.

"I called over myself yesterday and just shared some thoughts with them. But look, this bill is going to become law," Corker told reporters on Wednesday. "I've had conversations with Tillerson more generally about our relationship with Russia, not about details (of the legislation)."

The Senate also passed two amendments before approving the bill. The first was a technical change that the sanctions would not apply to NASA and commercial space launches, as Russian rocket engines are used for the American Atlas V and Antares rockets.

The second reaffirmed "the strategic importance of Article 5" in NATO, the principle that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all members of the alliance.

CNN's Dan Merica contributed to this report.

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Senate passes Russia sanctions bill, pushing back against Trump - CNN