After Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, resulting in nearly 3,000 deaths, former acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke said Trump considered selling the US commonwealth.
Betsy DeVos, Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Education, was a longtime advocate of charter schools and redirecting tax dollars to private and Christian schools.
Betsy DeVos. Wikipedia
DeVos’ family was among the richest in the nation, with a worth over $5 billion. Her husband was former CEO of Amway and her brother founded the private military firm Blackwater. She and her family used their significant wealth for political influence within the Republican Party. In a 1997 editorial, she wrote, “I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return.”
In 2001, she said education reform was a means to “advance God’s kingdom.” In a separate interview, she said she sought “to impact our culture in ways that are not the traditional funding-the-Christian-organization route, but that really may have greater Kingdom gain in the long run by changing the way we approach things – in this case, the system of education in the country.”
Despite never being an educator, DeVos was nominated to be Secretary of Education by Trump. She was confirmed by the Senate in a narrow 50-50 vote, where the tie was broken by Vice President Mike Pence. During the confirmation hearings, DeVos said guns had a place in schools, giving the example of defense against grizzly bears.
During her tenure, DeVos sought to allocate federal funds to private schools by arguing it to be a component of “state’s rights.” She failed to divest from 24 assets as required by law, attempted to cut funding for the Special Olympics, revoked Obama-era rules about for-profit universities and sexual assault reporting on campuses, and was investigated for using personal email accounts to conduct government business.
In a 2018 60 Minutes interview, she struggled to answer various questions, including why the Michigan charter school programs she pushed in her home state of Michigan were failing students.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she attempted to redirect millions of dollars in relief from public schools to private and religious schools until the move was prevented by a federal court. She also called for the full re-opening of schools, saying, “there’s nothing in the data that suggests that kids being in school is in any way dangerous to them.”
The New York Times was the first to report in 2017 that Trump watched between 4 and 8 hours of cable television per day. Trump dismissed the reports as fake news.
During a September 10, 2020 press conference in which Trump responded to claims that he called fallen US soldiers “suckers” and “losers,” he named some 8 hours of television programming he’d watched the day prior.
On July 24, 2017, Trump delivered a meandering speech at the annual Boy Scout Jamboree. Some 40,000 people were in attendance. In it, he railed against political rivals, bragged about his election results from 260 days prior, and went on various other tangents, including a reference to another rich real-estate developer having sex on a yacht.
Amid anger from parents, the Boy Scouts apologized for Trump’s remarks.
At a 2017 Phoenix rally, Trump championed “clean coal,” though he seemed unclear as to what it was.
We’ve ended the war on beautiful, clean coal, and it’s just been announced that a second brand new coal mine where they’re going to take out clean coal – meaning they’re taking out coal, they’re going to clean it – is opening in the state of Pennsylvania.
“Clean coal” has nothing to do with the mining and extraction process. It refers to various complex technologies used to mitigate the carbon emissions that arise from burning coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels. Championing coal was a core component of Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Trump at a rally in West Virginia. Saul Loeb—AFP/Getty Images
Because of the cost associated with developing and implementing such technologies, the term “clean coal” has been derided by critics as a fabrication. The Sierra Club has long maintained that “clean coal” is an oxymoron, and that there is no way to “clean” coal to any substantive degree that would be superior to alternative forms of energy.
Despite being a climate change denier, in 2017, the CEO of the United States’ largest coal company agreed.
Murray Energy Corp. CEO Robert Murray explained, “Carbon capture and sequestration does not work. It’s a pseudonym for ‘no coal.’ It is neither practical nor economic, carbon capture and sequestration. It is just cover for the politicians, both Republicans and Democrats that say, ‘Look what I did for coal,’ knowing all the time that it doesn’t help coal at all.”
When voting in the 2017 New York City mayoral election, Trump penned the wrong birth date for his ballot. According to the New York Daily News, despite being born on June 14, 1946, his ballot application listed July as his birthday, which could have led it to be considered invalid.
The rest of Trump’s family fared no better with their absentee ballots. Trump’s wife Melania failed to sign her ballot, rendering it invalid. His daughter Ivanka mailed hers too late to be counted. His son-in-law Jared Kushner failed to vote at all.
Donald, Melania, Ivanka, and Jared. AP / Paul Sancya
DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, was a program created by President Obama that allowed undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation. It also allowed those people to become eligible for a work permit if they had no felonies or only minor misdemeanors on their record. It included some 700,000 people.
In September of 2017, Trump’s administration announced that it would shut down the program.
Trump put the onus on Congress to decide whether or not to create a permanent version through legislation.
Congress failed to pass any legislation on the issue, but the phase-out of DACA was held up in courts, and is to be taken up by the US Supreme Court in 2020. Trump also later blamed Democrats for DACA’s demise.
Trump attacked the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, in tweets where he said she was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” when he saw her at his Florida resort.
I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don't watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..
Brzezinski responded with a tweet that showcased a box of Cheerios that had on it, “made for little hands.” It was a reference to when Trump defended the size of his hands and penis during a Republican primary debate.
The press secretary at the time, Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the tweets:
I think the president has been attacked mercilessly on personal accounts, by members on that program, and I think he’s been very clear that when he gets attacked, he’s going to hit back… I think the American people elected somebody who’s tough, who’s smart and who’s a fighter and that’s Donald Trump.
The show hosts and Trump had had a long and contentious relationship. There have also been subsequent jabs at each other, such as when Brzezinski referred to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as “a wannabe-dictator’s butt boy,” for which she later apologized.
….She will probably be given a pass, despite their terrible ratings. Congratulations to @RichardGrenell, our great Ambassador to Germany, for having the courage to take this horrible issue on!
Trump first tweeted the claim in 2017 about Lori Klausutis, who worked in Scarborough’s Fort Walton Beach congressional office. She was found dead in the office in 2001. Scarborough served in the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001 as a Republican for the 1st district of Florida.
Lori Klausutis
The coroner discovered an undiagnosed heart condition and reported that Klausutis passed out and hit her head as she fell. He said she was not struck by another person. Scarborough was in Washington, DC at the time of her death.
At the time of Trump’s comments, Scarborough was host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe alongside wife and co-host Mika Brzezinski, who was also personally targeted by Trump for “bleeding badly from a face-lift.”
So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the “unsolved mystery” that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!
Trump renewed attacks in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Concast” should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is “nuts”. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE
When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!
At the time of the May 4 tweet, nearly 70,000 Americans had died of COVID-19. At the time of his May 12 tweet, it had reached over 80,000.
Scarborough responded on his show, in which he called the comments “extraordinarily cruel” and likened the claims to the Seth Rich conspiracy theories.
![President Donald Trump holds up a Trump Digs Coal sign as he arrives to speak during a Make America Great Again Rally at Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington, West Virginia in August.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/donald-trump-coal-robert-murray.jpeg?w=800&quality=85 "President Donald Trump holds up a "Trump Digs Coal" sign as he arrives to speak during a Make America Great Again Rally at Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington, West Virginia in August.")
