Trump has made sure to get even with Steve Bannon for what he supposedly said/thought. I'm sure all have now heard that Bannon has been dumped by Breitbart on Trumps challenge to either be with him or with Bannon - choose ONE! While I am NO Bannon lover [in fact think he is another sick puppy - if of a slightly different and more educated type than Trumpf himself], this 'get even' side of Trump is very dangerous - and to my mind really makes his talk of 'have a bigger red button on my desk' talk [like a child] about nuclear weapons potentially imperils the Planet. I think this episode [his reaction to Fire and Fury] only further supports its basic thesis - that he is not mentally, intellectually, or emotionally fit to hold the job - and is dangerous, capricious, devious and a long list of other negatives. While those negatives would fit a LOT of politicians and big businessmen of all stripes, even previous Presidents - there is something special about Trump and his 'crew' that is [to me] really frightening and dangerous. Watch this space.....never a dull moment in Trumpty-Dumpties adventures in White House Land. I'd also say that this move increases the chances that Trump will at some point try to fire Muller and make Nixon look like a little pike when it comes to Constitutional crises!
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Dianne Feinstein Releases Transcript Of Fusion GPS Co-Founder's Testimony On Russia Dossier
"The American people deserve the opportunity to see what he said and judge for themselves," Feinstein said.
By Paige Lavender Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office released a transcript Tuesday of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson's testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The committee questioned Simpson in August about Russian interference in the 2016 election. A dossier compiled by Fusion GPS with the help of former British spy Christopher Steele alleged collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russian government.
"After speaking with majority and minority committee staff for 10 hours, Glenn Simpson requested the transcript of his interview be released publicly. The American people deserve the opportunity to see what he said and judge for themselves," Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a statement Tuesday. "The innuendo and misinformation circulating about the transcript are part of a deeply troubling effort to undermine the investigation into potential collusion and obstruction of justice. The only way to set the record straight is to make the transcript public."
Feinstein said Democrats supported releasing the transcript, CNBC reports. In a statement, Fusion GPS commended Feinstein "for her courage" in releasing the document.
"The transcript of Glenn Simpson's lengthy responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee's questioning speaks for itself," Fusion GPS said.
One can read/download the testimony here:
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Mr. Fish / Truthdig Imagine yourself in early 2019. The Democrats, despite never articulating a political vision other than not being Donald Trump and refusing to roll back Republican legislation such as the 2017 tax bill, have regained the House of Representatives by a slim majority. They vote articles of impeachment. The Senate Republicans, pressured by many within their own party to abandon Trump because of his ineptitude, increasingly erratic behavior and corruption, call on the president to resign. Trump refuses. He uses the megaphone of his office to incite violence by his small, fanatic base. The military, whose deployment as a domestic police force is authorized by Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, is called into the streets to quell unrest. The United States, by the time the violence is snuffed out, is a de facto military dictatorship.
That such a scenario is plausible to public figures such as Ralph Nader is a sign of the deep decay of democratic institutions. The two major political parties lack a coherent vision. They are subservient to corporate power. They have abandoned the common good. They have turned politics into burlesque. They have rendered the citizenry impotent. The press, especially the electronic press, has transformed news into a grotesque reality show filled with trivia, gossip and conjecture. The elites in both parties, along with the rich and corporations, profit from a naked kleptocracy. Everything is for sale, from public lands to public education. And the juggernaut of corporate power impoverishes the people as it willfully destroys the facade of the hollowed-out democratic state.
"There is no democracy," Nader said when I reached him by phone in Connecticut. "The only democracy left in this country is they don't haul you to jail for speaking out. What's left of democracy is a significant due process, habeas corpus, freedom of speech and probable cause, and that's violated when there's a terrorist attack and people are rounded up, like Muslim Americans."
"Can there be a democracy when you don't have a competitive electoral system?" he asked. "No. Can there be a democracy when people who come in second win the election? No. Can there be a democracy when it's tougher to get on the ballot than in any other Western country in the world by an order of magnitude? No. Can there be a democracy when money rules? And not just the money that politicians raise, but the third-party money. No. Can there be a democracy when people have no influence on the military budget? No. It's not subjected to hearings. It's ratified on the floor of the House and Senate, but it doesn't go through the appropriations process. It's subject to the most anemic, pathetic, servile questioning you can imagine. The Congress has destroyed any kind of democratic participation … in the military and foreign policy. The Congress is [supposed to be] invested in the sovereignty of the people. They [those in Congress] do not comply with the Constitution and the declaration of war authority. They don't comply with the appropriations process. They have increasingly less public hearings. They are cocooned on Capitol Hill with a force field of money, militarism and materialism. Self-interests block the American people, who can hardly call their member of Congress [because the calls are diverted to voicemail]. This is the latest racket."
"Trump is playing rope-a-dope with the Democrats," Nader continued. "He's such an inviting targetall the lies, the stupidity, the outrage, the racism, the misogynythey can't resist. As a result, they're weakening themselves by not having an affirmative agenda. They're still talking about how they can learn how to connect with the average person. Can you imagine? It's now the end of 2017. They're trying to figure out a message."
House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Nader noted, has adopted the mantra "money, message, and mobilization" for the party. "If you start with money, what kind of a message are you going to have?" he asked. "If you don't have a message, what are you going to mobilize around? So here it is. They still haven't learned because they will never learn. The party will always be weak, flabby, indentured and dialing for the same commercial dollars as long as the four-time losers continue to run the party. … The country is spinning into the abyss."
The Democrats have never called for an audit of the Pentagon's massive and bloated military budget. They do not address corporate crime, champion consumer protection, promote the rights of workers or demand a living wage or full Medicare for all. And because they stand for nothing other than the politesse of identity politics and high-blown liberal rhetoric they have been unable to protect the country from the worst generation of the Republican Party in the nation's history.
"They don't even know how to have sonorous political language," Nader said. "They're stealing from youmy fellow Americans. A handful of corporate, greedy bosses controlling your government on this national stage and local level, gouging out whole communities, sending industries to fascist communist regimes abroad. They have no loyalties to this country. They have no allegiance to communities other than to exploit them, abandon them. They rose to power on the backs of you, the workers. They were subsidized by Washington and state capitals, by you the taxpayer. The Marines bailed them out when they got into hot water, palling around with dictators and monarchs. Why do you allow them to rule you?"
Nader said the ruling elites have "lost the fear of the people." This has given rise to "a multifaceted dictatorial government indentured to the plutocratic class symbolized by Wall Street."
Corporations, enjoying a new tax code that reduces corporate income taxes to 21 percent while individuals pay up to 37 percent, have been awarded the constitutional rights of individuals while individuals have been stripped of their rights.
"The Constitution is increasingly a dead letter," Nader said.
Corporate media companies view the news division as a revenue stream. They collude with Trump in the daily Gong Show that masquerades as news.
"Trump took the press from profanity to obscenity," Nader said. "He learned some lessons from The Apprentice.' He realized the media, with a few exceptions, will do anything for ratings and money. What does he do? He goes down the sensuality ladder. He starts talking openly about racism, rapists and sex, grab them wherever you want and get away with it. They [the media] go wild. That destroyed all the opponents in the Republican primary. Knocked them out day after day, as the press went after sensuality. The coarseness, the brutishness. There's always a novel attack. He kept them catching up with him. One day he goes after [Sen. Marco] Rubio. Another day, he goes after Hillary. Another day, a veteran family."
"When The New York Times has two pages of tiny print of Trump's lies, what impact does it have unless there are remedies and mobilizations that use that material to strengthen the opposition to replace him?" Nader asked. "After a while, people just shrug their shoulders and go back to playing video games. The margin for the defeat of the Democrats by the Republicans can be attributed sufficiently to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and all these creeps. They have a massive soliloquy, day after day after day with no rebuttal. And they've got the blue-collar worker that way. What kind of a population on the left of center would have allowed that to happen? Using our public airwaves for free."
Nader said he feared that the population was so effectively anesthetized by mass culture that it might not rise up against the elites. "The U.S. has developed a society with an almost indeterminate absorptive capacity for injustice, abuse and degradation," Nader said. "There is no civic education in the schools. They don't know what the Constitution is. They don't know what the law of torts is. They don't know where the town hall is. They're living in virtual reality, swinging between big screen TV and their cellphones. They're wallowing in text messages. To an extent, they're excited by the workings of the minds symbolized by Wall Street and Silicon Valley. That's the young generation. Great changes start with people in their 20s. But look what you've got now. You've got 10 years of internet connection, cellphones available to any child. That's one. The second is 24/7 entertainment. The third is the abandonment by the elderly generation. They've sort of given up. They don't know the gadgetry. They don't know the language. They have their own economic insecurity. They're not extending any kind of historical experience to the young which contains severe warnings. Watch out. You don't think it can happen again, [but] it can happen again and again. There's no verbal, oral tradition between the generations. Less and less. Then you have the political system, which is deep-sinking the society. How are people going to mobilize themselves? Is there a strong union, a labor movement? No. A strong consumer movement? No. They're losing their privacy. They're losing their ability to use legal tender. The corporate coercion is, to a degree, now getting rid of cash. Marx never believed that could happen. Why do they want to get rid of cash? They want to drive everybody into an incarcerated penitentiary that is surrounded by mobile payments, credit cards, credit scores, credit ratings, debit cards, constant debt, invasion of privacy, and the ability to assess penalties, charges and unwanted purchases because they control people's money. That's Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo got away with 3 million forced, unknown and unwanted credit card sales, auto insurance sales, repairing their ratings. Some people lost their cars and their homes. They're flipped over into bankruptcy. Nobody has been prosecuted yet."
Compounding the decay is the collapse of the legal profession, a problem exacerbated by Trump's stacking of the federal courts with incompetent and far-right judges selected by groups such as The Federalist Society. The courts, he said, have already destroyed the freedom of contract and the law of torts. They have repeatedly revoked constitutional rights by judicial fiat, ruling, for example, that unlimited campaign contributions by corporations is a form of free speech and the right to petition the government.
Wall Street and the big banks, bailed out in 2008, have returned to the games of speculation that led to the global financial collapse. And when the next collapse comes, the banks and Wall Street will again descend on the U.S. Treasury for trillions more in bailouts.
"The banks are making huge profits," Nader said. "Therefore, they're taking bigger risks. The consumer dollars are being transferred to corporate profits, which are now being transformed into stock buybacks in order to meet the criteria for higher compensation even if it's against the interest of their own company."
"From 2005 to 2014, you had $3.9 trillion of stock buybacks, 50 percent of all corporate net profits," he said. "Fifty percent of the top 500 corporations profited in that decade with stock buybacks. Not to better salaries or shoring up pension plans, not to dividends, not to research and development, not to productive capital and job creation. It's to stock buybacks. The biggest story untold, or minimally told, in the American economy today. With all this money repatriating from overseas and more corporate offices, they're planning more stock buybacks. It's like burning money."
"Walmart, instead of raising wages for its wage-starved masses, has about $65 billion stock buybacks in the last seven years," Nader said. "If you take a million Walmart workers and you give them a thousand dollars more a year, that's $1 billion. Multiply that by 60 to 70 times."
The speculation, which is trashing the country's economy, will continue, Nader said, until the financial system collapses and the U.S. defaults on its bonds.
Nader worries that as long as "10 to 15 percent of the American people are well-off" the elites will have enough support to continue the assault.
"Societies have been repressed by far smaller members of well-instituted upper classes," he said. "That's what we forget. Eighteenth-, 19th-, 20th-century Europe. A tiny clique controlled them. When there's any problem it flips over to dictatorship. As long as the contented classes are not upset, the system of control is in lock, like connecting gears."
"The corruption never ends," he said. "We're a gambling society. We bet on the future. We don't build the future. You've got casinos everywhere, video gambling. They're pushing for gambling on your mobile phone. They're pushing for legalization of gambling in sports. Then you got marijuana. Day after day there are stories about the legalization of marijuana. What's going to happen? It's already a big business. The paraphernalia. They don't write anything about legalizing industrial hemp. Which could be a significant industry in the country. All the farmers want it, and even the paper companies want it. And the DEA has still got it on a proscribed list. You got [Sen.] Rand Paul and [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell supporting legalization of hemp. It's not being pushed in Congress by the Democrats."
Resistance, Nader said, must be local. First we need to organize to take back our own communities, he said. Congressional seats have to be contested by grass-roots organizations that use the power of numbers to overwhelm mass media and corporate money. And we can expect the corporate state to attempt to shut out our message.
"Living wage, taxes, universal health insurance, that have 70 percent support or higher," Nader said in listing campaign issues. "Breaking up big banks, 90 percent support. Cracking down on corporate crime, similar. People need to give corporate crime a face. This is what happens to your credit. This is what happens to your home. This is what happens to your job. This is what happens to you if you have cancer. This is what happens in the hospital. This is what happens when you're denied health insurance; you can't cover your kids. It's pretty crazy when you can't make this kind of a pitch to a large audience."
The greed of the corporate state leaves us unprepared for the ravages of climate change, he warned. And by the time the elites respond it may be too late.
"It's a race," Nader said. "Once Miami gets inundated, especially Fisher Island, it might bring the wealthy class to their senses. The problem with solar is it needs a network. Solar panels are fine, but if you're going to have solar electricity you need a different type of grid system. That requires infrastructure investment."
"Justice needs money," he concluded, calling on enlightened elites to spend a billion dollars to fund resistance movements outside the Democratic Party. "The abolition movement needed money. The suffrage movement needed money. They got it from wealthy people. Civil rights movement. The Curry family. The Stern family. The early 1950s, 1960s. Environmental movements got money from rich people. Don't wait for the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is an instrument. On the first round you've got to use it and control it. On the third round, when you're mobilized, you can throw it aside. It's a hollowed feature that is a part of the duopoly. But it's there. These parties are very vulnerable. They're shells that rest on money and television ads that nobody likes. Unrebuttable right-wing talk radio. All these can be circumvented neighborhood by neighborhood, but you've got to have money. Labor halls are unoccupied. Veteran halls are unoccupied. Libraries are unoccupied. There are a lot of meeting places around. A lot of empty stores can be rented."
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
In 1980, the richest cohort of middle-age American men could expect to live until about 83 and the poorest, to 76. By 2010, the richest American males had gained six years in life expectancy, living to 89 on average, while life expectancy for the poorest men hadn't improved. Getty Images/Image SourceLiving in the US increasingly looks like a health risk. Average life expectancy here dropped for the second year in a row, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The grim trend stems from a toxic mixture of more drug- and alcohol-related deaths and more heart disease and obesity in many parts of the country. And it puts Americans at a higher risk of early death compared to their counterparts in other wealthy countries. But what's often lost in the conversation about the uptick in mortality here is that this trend isn't affecting all Americans. In fact, there's one group in the US that's actually doing better than ever: the rich. While poor and middle-class Americans are dying earlier these days, the wealthiest among us are enjoying unprecedented longevity. So when we talk about life expectancy slipping, what we should also talk about is the growing problem of health inequality in America. And it's an increasingly urgent discussion, health researchers are warning, because of policy changes on the horizon that are poised to make the mortality gap even wider. Some of these policies will hamper access to medical care (such as failing to fund CHIP, the health insurance program for low-income children) but others that aren't even directly related to health care like tax cuts may have even more insidious effects on the American mortality gap.
America's alarming life expectancy gap
The rich have long-enjoyed more longevity than the poor, but the gap in life expectancy has been widening in the US over the last few decades, along with other types of social and income inequality here. The CDC's Division of Vital Statistics, which tracks mortality in the US, uses death certificates as the data source, and doesn't collect family income data. But we do have good data on the mortality gap and income from a study published in JAMAin 2016. A group of researchers, led by Stanford University economist Raj Chetty, analyzed income data for the US population from 1.4 billion tax records between 1999 and 2014. They then compared it with mortality data from Social Security Administration death records. They found that, from 2001 to 2014, the richest Americans gained about five years of longevity, while life expectancy for the poor didn't budge: Changes in race- and ethnicity-adjusted life expectancy by income group, 2001 to 2014. JAMAThey also found that men who were among the top 1 percent of income earners lived 15 years longer than men at the bottom 1 percent. For women at the extremes of the income distribution, life expectancy differed by 10 years. At Vox, we broke their data down by state, and you can see that wealthier Americans are living longer than poorer Americans all across the country. (Here's the data on men, but the same trends hold for women.) Alvin Chang/VoxThis life expectancy divide between rich and poor Americans has been growing for decades. A report from the National Academies of Science looked at life expectancy by income groups between 1980 and 2010. In 1980, the richest cohort of middle-age American men could expect to live until about 83 and the poorest, to 76. By 2010, the richest American males had gained six years in life expectancy, living to 89 on average, while life expectancy for the poorest men hadn't improved. (The Washington Post has nice visualizations of the data in the report here.) "Because we have widening income inequality and there's a bigger gap between haves and have nots," said Steven Woolf, a researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University who has been researching income and mortality. "We are seeing a bigger divide in mortality."
Tax reform and other Trump-era policies are expected to make the gap worse
This growing gap should be "a dramatic reminder of what actually affects our health," Woolf added. We often think about health status in terms of access to doctors, hospitals, and medicines. But access to health care only accounts for about 10 to 20 percent of our health outcomes. Far more influential on our health is our socioeconomic status and certain health behaviors, like smoking, eating healthfully, and getting exercise. In Chetty's study, for example, the researchers found that life expectancy among the poorest individuals was "significantly correlated" with health behaviors like smoking, obesity, and exercise. Poorer people are more likely to be overweight, smoke, and drink compared to their wealthier counterparts. Interestingly, these effects seemed to be mitigated in places that had enacted policies to curb poor health behaviors such as anti-smoking laws or trans fat bans in cities. Right now, there are several policies on the horizon that are not only expected to hamper health care access, but exacerbate income inequality and widen the life expectancy disparity, David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund, says. Blumenthal has written about the potential effects of the tax bill, which passed through the Senate in December, on low- and middle-income Americans in particular, and how it'll disproportionately ding them while rich Americans and corporations will enjoy tax breaks:
If the Senate tax legislation becomes law, Americans earning less than $75,000 would face higher taxes on average by 2027, according to the Joint Commission on Taxation's estimates of the bill's distributional effects. The bill has varying effects on different income groups in different years, but consistently cuts taxes for the richest Americans. For example, individuals earning less than $10,000 would see their federal taxes go up on average by $182 each year until 2027. People earning a million dollars or more would, on average, see their taxes fall by $6,800 annually over the next decade.
Blumenthal told Vox, "We can expect ... to see the gap in life expectancy and health care outcomes between low- and high-income Americans grow in coming years if gaps in income increase." Vox's Dylan Scott and Alvin Chang have also argued that the tax bill because of its tax breaks for the rich "takes the wheel of America's already-dramatic income inequality and presses the accelerator." It'll also repeal Obamacare's individual mandate, resulting in an estimated 13 million fewer Americans with health insurance. That's not to mention Congress's failure to fund CHIP and its proposed cuts to Medicaid health insurance programs for low-income American children and adults both moves that have been endorsed by the Trump administration, So instead of just focusing on the overall decline in life expectancy, we need to start talking about these links between policy, and worsening income inequality and its relationship to the growing mortality gap. If we don't, Woolf warned, we'll fail to see the solutions to America's early death problem.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
While a bipartisan senate group had reportedly reached an "agreement in principle" on DACA, as well as packaging immigration reform in order to avoid a government shutdown next Friday, things took another turn for the bizarre, when the WaPo reported that Trump "grew frustrated with lawmakers Thursday in the Oval Office when they floated restoring protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries" as part of the proposed deal. "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" Trump burst out, referring to African countries and Haiti. Instead, he suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries like Norway. The comments left lawmakers "taken aback."
Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) proposed cutting the visa lottery program by 50 percent and prioritizing countries already in the system, a White House official said.
As reported earlier, the administration announced this week that it was removing the protection for over 200,000 citizens from El Salvador; meanwhile, as part of a potential bipartisan deal, lawmakers discussed restoring protections for countries that have been removed from the temporary protected status program while adding $1.5 billion for a border wall and making changes to the visa lottery system. And, as so often happens, what was until noon a tentative deal, exploded in the afternoon when Trump changed his mind:
Trump had seemed amenable to a deal earlier in the day during phone calls, aides said, but shifted his position in the meeting and did not seem interested.
As a result, what was until just hours ago a done deal, is now in tatters.
Graham and Durbin thought they would be meeting with Trump alone and were surprised to find immigration hard-liners such as Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) at the meeting. The meeting was impromptu and came after phone calls Thursday morning, Capitol Hill aides said. After the meeting, Marc Short, Trump's legislative aide, said the White House was nowhere near a bipartisan deal on immigration.
"We still think we can get there," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the daily White House news briefing. Or maybe not, in which case a government shutdown may be inevitable. Oh, and as for the White House, it refused to deny that Trump said it.
And yes, for those wondering, "shithole" is now trending
Now trending: shithole.
Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) January 11, 2018
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
UN condemns Donald Trump's 'shithole countries' remark as racist
[FONT=&]Human rights office steps into row as residents of nations maligned by president respond angrily and demand apology
[/FONT]Trump suggested the US should bring more immigrants from Norway, not shithole countries'. [FONT=&]Patrick Wintour, Jason Burke and Anna Livsey
[FONT=&]Fri 12 Jan 2018 18.07 GMTFirst published on Fri 12 Jan 2018 03.58 GMT[/FONT]
[/FONT] [FONT=&]Donald Trump has been branded a shocking and shameful racist after it was credibly reported he had described African nations, as well as Haiti and El Salvador as "shitholes" and questioned why so many of their citizens had ever been permitted to enter America.
US diplomats around the world were summoned for formal reproach, amid global shock that such crude remarks could ever be made in a semi-public meeting by the president of America.
In a strongly-worded statement, the UN said it was impossible to describe his remarks as anything other than racist, while the Vatican decried Trump's words as "particularly harsh and offensive".
[FONT=&]
Shithole countries'? Words worthy of a racist-in-chief[/FONT]
Trump initially allowed reported accounts of his comments to go unchallenged, but went into damage limitation mode on Friday, insisting he had not used derogatory words but admitting that the language he had used at a meeting with Senators on immigration was "tough".
But the democratic senator Dick Durbin who was present at the meeting with Trump on Thursday insisted that the reports were entirely accurate.
He said "those hate-filled things and did so repeatedly".
"Shithole was the exact word used once not twice but repeatedly," Durbin said, adding that the word was specifically used in the context of African countries.
The UN human rights spokesman, Rupert Colville, told a Geneva news briefing: "There is no other word one can use but racist. You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as shitholes', whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome."
Mmusi Maimane(@MmusiMaimane)The comments referred to here are abhorrent. He confirms a patronizing view of Africa and promotes a racist agenda. Africa/US relations will take strain from this, with a leader who has failed to reconcile humanity. The hatred of Obama's roots now extends to an entire continent https://t.co/Kq09tVu0Bo January 12, 2018
The US state department tried to pour water on the flames, issuing a tweet from its Bureau of African Affairs saying that "the United States will continue to robustly, enthusiastically and forcefully engage in #Africa, promoting this vital relationship".
Mexico's former president, Vicente Fox, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump, said in a colourful tweet that "America's greatness was built on diversity". [/FONT]He added Trump's mouth was "the foulest shithole in the world[FONT=&]. With what authority do you announce who is welcome in America and who is not? America's greatness is based on diversity, or have you forgotten your migration background, Donald?"
David Miliband, the president of the International Rescue Committee, saidTrump's comments were leading a "race to the bottom on refugees".
Trump has made few references to Africa since his election, and many senior Africa-focused posts in his administration remain unfilled.
In September, he appeared to invent a new country called Nambia while addressing African leaders in Washington. Trump also told them: "I have so many friends going to your countries, trying to get rich. It has a tremendous business potential."
The US government's Africa Media Hub made an effort to limit the diplomatic damage of the president's words.
Without directly referring to Trump's statement, a tweet said the "US remains committed to working together w/Africans to realize the promise of a more peaceful, more productive, more prosperous 21st century Africa. US deeply respects the people of #Africa & values its partnerships with them."
Boniface Mwangi, a well-known social activist in Kenya tweeted:
Boniface Mwangi(@bonifacemwangi)Africa isn't a shithole. It's the most beautiful continent in the world. Beautiful,hardworking people. We have diamonds, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum, cocoa, coffee, tea etc. Sadly we have #shithole leaders like Trump shitting on us everyday. pic.twitter.com/Vv4Wgtq4Pk January 12, 2018
Standing at a coffee stall outside an office block in Rosebank, a commercial and business neighbourhood in central Johannesburg, Blessing Dlamini, a 45-year-old administrative assistant, said Trump's words came as "no surprise".
"He has shown the world he is a racist. We should just block him from our thoughts," Dlamini said.
[/FONT]
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
[FONT=&]Trump denies 'shithole countries' remark but senator asserts he said it
[FONT=&]
Trump said he had used tough language' but denies using specific phrase
Senator who attended meeting: Trump's remarks hateful, vile and racist'
[/FONT][/FONT][FONT=&]
Alan Yuhas in New York[URL="https://twitter.com/alanyuhas"]
[/URL]
[/FONT]<font color="#333333"><span style="font-family: &amp">[FONT=&] [FONT=&]Fri 12 Jan 2018 16.53 GMTFirst published on Fri 12 Jan 2018 13.38 GMT[/FONT]
Donald Trump denied on Friday that he used the phrase "shithole countries" to describe Central American and African nations during talks with US lawmakers the day before. But one of the senators present contradicted Trump and called the remarks he had heard "hate-filled, vile and racist".
Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat who was in the meeting, contradicted him to local Chicago press on Friday morning. He said Trump "in the course of his comments said things which were hate-filled, vile and racist".
Durbin said: "He said these hate-filled things, and he said them repeatedly."
A few hours later, at an event to honor Martin Luther King Jr, Trump ignored questions from reporters, including one who asked: "Mr President, are you a racist?"
[FONT=&]Trump pans immigration proposal as bringing people from 'shithole countries'[/FONT]
On Thursday, Trump reportedly grew angry during a meeting about protections for immigrants from several countries, and asked: "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?"
"Why do we need more Haitians?" he reportedly added. "Take them out." He also reportedly suggested the US bring in more people from Norway.
Early on Friday, he denied using the derogatory language. "The language used by me at the Daca meeting was tough, but this was not the language used," he tweeted, using an acronym for a program to protect young undocumented immigrants. "What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made a big setback for Daca!"
Trump later added: "Never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country. Never said take them out.' Made up by Dems. I have a wonderful relationship with Haitians. Probably should record future meetings unfortunately, no trust!"
But Durbin said: "I cannot believe that in the history of the White House and the Oval Office, any president has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our president speak yesterday. I've seen the comments in the press and I've not read one of them that's inaccurate."
Leaders around the world spoke out in anger on Friday. Haiti summoned the American envoy to the country, El Salvador's president lodged a diplomatic protest, and the UN's spokesman on human rights told reporters "there is no other word one can use but racist."
[FONT=&]The invisible wall: how Trump is slowing immigration without laying a brick[/FONT]
The Republican senator Jeff Flake also contradicted the president, tweeting: "The words used by the President, as related to me directly following the meeting by those in attendance, were not tough,' they were abhorrent and repulsive."
The Thursday remarks was first reported by the Washington Post, citing aides briefed on the meeting, and White House spokesman Raj Shah did not deny that the president had used profanity to describe the nations.
"Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people," Shah said Thursday. He added that the president wanted "merit-based immigration" of people who can "grow our economy and assimilate into our great nation".
The president harped on those themes Friday morning, saying that the proposals he saw Thursday were inadequate and even "a big step backwards". He claimed without specifics or evidence that the deal would force the US "to take large numbers of people from high crime countries which are doing badly".
"I want a merit-based system of immigration and people who will help take our country to the next level. I want safety and security for our people. I want to stop the massive inflow of drugs," he said.
That tweet and reported remarks echo Trump's long history of inflammatory comments about race, including years of spreading a false conspiracy about Barack Obama's birth, a campaign announcement calling Mexicans "rapists", and a refusal to condemn white supremacists last summer.
At the midday event to honor King, Trump decried racism. "No matter what the color of our skin or the place of our birth, we are all created equal," he said.
The president left the event without answering reporters' questions, mostly about his views of people from Central America and Africa.
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"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
International condemnation of Donald Trump is growing, after reports the president used an expletive during a meeting about immigrants from Africa, Haiti and El Salvador. While meeting with lawmakers, Trump reportedly said, "Why do we want all these people from Africa here? They're shole countries … We should have more people from Norway." Trump also reportedly said, "Why do we need more Haitians? Take them out." Earlier this morning, Trump wrote on twitter, quote, "The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal madea big setback for DACA!" Trump's remarks come weeks after The New York Times reported Trump had also disparaged Haitians and Nigerians during a closed-door meeting in June, saying Nigerians would never, quote, "go back to their huts" if they came to the U.S. As for Haitians, Trump said, quote, they "all have AIDS." Trump's latest remarks come just after his administration announced it's ending temporary protected status for up to 250,000 Salvadorans who have been living in U.S. since at least 2001. Last year, the Trump administration announced it also is ending temporary protected status for tens of thousands of Haitians, Nicaraguans and Sudanese immigrants living in the U.S. Trump's shole remarks Thursday have been condemned across the globe. That's shole. We're not using the actual expletive that he used, four letters before the word "hole." United Nations high commissioner for human rights [spokesperson] Rupert Colville decried Trump's remarks.
RUPERT COLVILLE: These are shocking and shameful comments from the president of the United States. I'm sorry, but there's no other word one can use but "racist." You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as [bleep], whose entire populations, who are not white, are therefore not welcome. … The positive comment on Norway makes the underlying sentiment very clear. And like the earlier comments made vilifying Mexicans and Muslims, the policy proposals targeting entire groups on grounds of nationality or religion, and the reluctance to clearly condemn the anti-Semitic and racist actions of the white supremacists in Charlottesville, all of these go against the universal values the world has been striving so hard to establish since World War II and the Holocaust.
AMY GOODMAN: In South Africa, Jessie Duarte of the African National Congress also criticized Trump.
JESSIE DUARTE: Ours is not a [bleep] country. Neither is Haiti or any other country in distress. Obviously, we are in no position to stop any president from saying anything they wish to say. But all we can say is that developing countries do have difficulties. Those difficulties are not small matters. And it's not as if the United States doesn't have difficulties. There are millions of unemployed people in the U.S., millions of people who don't have healthcare services or access to education. And we would not deign to make comments as derogatory as that about any country that has any kind of social, economic or other difficulties.
RENÉ CIVIL: [translated] In the name of the Haitian people, we are part of a patriotic emergency that is fighting for real change in Haiti. We demand that Donald Trump apologize before the entire continent, as well as before Haiti, the country whose blood has been used by ancestors who have served with their minds and bodies to liberate the United States itself from slavery. … Haiti is not a [bleep]. It's a great country. It's the mother of liberty.
AMY GOODMAN: Trump's remarks prompted his hometown paper, the New York Daily News, to publish on its cover an illustration featuring Trump's likeness superimposed over a cartoonish "poop" emoji, with the headline "S FOR BRAINS: Trump spews vicious slur against immigrants." We go now to Florida, where we're joined by the acclaimed Haitian-American novelist Edwidge Danticat. She is a novelist, speaking to us from Orlando, Florida, author of a number of books, including The Farming of Bones, which won an American Book Award. She was born in Haiti, came to the United States when she was 12. We are speaking today to Edwidge, and on this day after Trump's shole comments, on the eighth anniversary of the devastating Haitian earthquake that killed as many as 300,000 people. Edwidge Danticat, welcome to Democracy Now! Your response to President Trump? EDWIDGE DANTICAT: Well, thank you, Amy. My response to President Trump is total condemnation. It was a very racist remark, which shed light on earlier decisions that he hadthat have been made by the administrationfor example, about temporary protected status being eliminated for Haitians and Salvadorans, and his remark, as reported by The New York Times, about all Haitians having AIDS. It seems like, once again, Haiti is being used as a foil, and he is baiting his bait and feeding themHaiti as red meat. And it's extremely sad that it happened also in the shadow of this day. Today was going to be an extraordinarily sad day for many of us, anyway, who lost our family members, who lost our friends, in the devastating earthquake. So this is even more salt on our wounds. Not surprising, because of the nature of this presidency and the way this president conducts himself, but it is a terrible slight. It's completely racist, especially the way that he paralleled Haiti and Africa, which is a continent, not a countrysomeone should tell himand describing them in this manner and contrasting them to Norway. AMY GOODMAN: Seems to be redefining the term "White House," where he lives, in Washington, and what he wants to see in this country. Edwidge Danticat, we have been playing the responses of people around the world, from South Africa, one of those, as Donald Trump calls them, shole, but he uses the full expletive, though, inexplicably, this morning he's kind of denying this in a tweet, though yesterday, when the White House was asked about this, they did not deny that he said this. I mean, there were so many congressmembers in the room. What does it mean for Haitian-American families, both the policy, what you're facing, the loss ofwhat so many communities are facing, Haitian communities and Salvadoran, the loss of TPS, but also for your kids, when people hear these terms? EDWIDGE DANTICAT: Well, that's exactly where I was going to go. Now there are so many Haitian children who will be going to school today, and inevitably it will come up. And then they will have totheir parents, who are going to have to explain to the children why they don'tyou know, what the president has said and what kind of country they actually come from, and a country thatlike Haiti, that has had difficulties, but that also the U.S. has played a hand in creating certain types of situations that has led, you know, to the level of poverty that we have, which doesn't mean that we are not human beings, that we don't have dreams, that we're not trying very hard to keep our country going. So, it's very disparaging. AMY GOODMAN: Edwidge Danticat, what would you say if you were meeting with President Trump today at the White House? EDWIDGE DANTICAT: I don't think I would be meeting with President Trump, but I would use this opportunity that you have given me to tell him to just stop it. Stop it. I mean, he's spewing white supremacist views that have real consequences in the lives of ordinary people. We already see it online, people who are jumping in and saying, "Of course what he's saying is true." And then there are people who will act on it, when they meet people like us. They willwho will exercise certain prejudices that affect the lives of the people he is talking about. But that also can lead to actual violence against our bodies, against our children. So I think he needs to realize that what he's saying, from the biggest bully pulpit in the whole world, is affecting individual people. I don't know that he cares, because I think he's just spewing these things, and I think, in part, this was alsoyou know, this is what he believes. But what he's saying, from this very high position of power, affects the future of nations, affects the lives of individuals, affects how peoplehow policy is created. And now you have all these white supremacists and racists who feel so empowered, because, basically, the president of the United States has put them onyou know, has put a target on the backs of these people who he has described in this way, for them to be ridiculed, for them to be geared to have prejudices exercised against them and, in some cases, to have violence and, you know, assaults possible on their bodies, because these words are verythese words give permission to certain kinds of people. And we become then hypervisible in our vulnerability, because we have been singled out, not onceonce in the policy with the TPS, once with the AIDS, and now with this, and as a group of people, as Haitians, and as people, he was saying, from Africa. And he's singling out people for and making us targets for all kinds of possible attacks. And AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Edwidge, on this anniversary, this eighth anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, that killed up to 300,000 Haitians? EDWIDGE DANTICAT: Yes. Well, todaythis is what we would have been doing today, would be remembering and thinking about our dead and commemorating these losses. But sadly, this has been muddled by this vicious attack by the president against our people at this time. So, it is important. We are still going to remember. We are still going to mourn. But to use a saying that many people of different backgrounds have been saying since the election of the president, "Today, we mourn. Tomorrow, we fight."
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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