reversed the demotion of and congratulated a Navy SEAL charged with war crimes?
Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher allegedly stabbed to death an unarmed prisoner of war. He was acquitted of the murder, but was found guilty in 2017 of posing with the corpse in photographs.
Prosecutors asserted that this was part of a pattern of behavior. They stated that fellow SEALs had grown so alarmed over his killing of civilians that they tampered with his sniper rifle to make it less accurate, and fired warning shots at civilians so they would flee before Gallagher attacked them. One fellow SEAL noted, “You could tell he was perfectly OK with killing anybody that was moving.” Another SEAL said of Gallagher, “The guy is freaking evil.”
Nevertheless, Trump allowed Gallagher to retain his SEAL Trident, an insignia which recognizes an individual as part of the elite special forces unit, and lent his vocal support. Despite Trump’s intervention, Navy military leaders still want Gallagher removed from the SEALs.
Trump has also pardoned other soldiers convicted of war crimes.
USA Today – Trump pardons service members in high profile war crimes cases
PBS – Navy SEAL Gallagher cleared of most charges
The New York Times – Navy Wants to Eject From SEALs a Sailor Cleared by Trump, Officials Say
NBC News – Navy SEALs spoke against pardoned platoon chief, leaked video reveals
Wikipedia – Eddie Gallagher (Navy SEAL)
Wikipedia – Special Warfare insignia
demanded that his transition team be shut down because he illegally didn’t want to provide payment to staff?
The author of Moneyball and The Big Short wrote about the transition,
The first time Trump paid attention to any of this was when he read about it in the newspaper. The story revealed that Trump’s very own transition team had raised several million dollars to pay the staff. The moment he saw it, Trump called Steve Bannon, the chief executive of his campaign, from his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, and told him to come immediately to his residence, many floors above. Bannon stepped off the elevator to find Christie seated on a sofa, being hollered at. Trump was apoplectic, yelling: You’re stealing my money! You’re stealing my fucking money! What the fuck is this?
Seeing Bannon, Trump turned on him and screamed: Why are you letting him steal my fucking money? Bannon and Christie together set out to explain to Trump federal law. Months before the election, the law said, the nominees of the two major parties were expected to prepare to take control of the government. The government supplied them with office space in downtown DC, along with computers and rubbish bins and so on, but the campaigns paid their people. To which Trump replied: Fuck the law. I don’t give a fuck about the law. I want my fucking money. Bannon and Christie tried to explain that Trump couldn’t have both his money and a transition.
Shut it down, said Trump. Shut down the transition.
railed against new aircraft carriers and their digital deck propulsion system, demanding that they return to “goddamned steam”?
In an interview with Time, Trump recalled the conversation.
I said, “You don’t use steam anymore for catapult?” “No sir.” I said, “Ah, how is it working?” “Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air.”
It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said — and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said, “What system are you going to be—” “Sir, we’re staying with digital.” I said, “No you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.”
Foreign Policy – Trump Wants New Aircraft Carriers to Turn Back to ‘Goddamned Steam’ Power Catapults
said of the Charlottesville protests that “there were some very fine people on both sides”?
At Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, a rally named Unite the Right was held to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Those in attendance included the KKK, neo-Confederates, and neo-Nazis. The organizer of the rally, Jason Kessler, was a self-avowed white supremacist and Neo-Nazi.
On the second day of the rally, a white supremacist drove a car through a crowd of counter-protesters, injuring 28 people, and murdering Heather Heyer, a 32-year old woman. It was ruled a terror attack by the city and the FBI. A police helicopter responding to the events also crashed, resulting in the deaths of two Virginia state troopers.
When questioned about the rally, Trump remarked, “you have blame on both sides,” and “you had very fine people, on both sides.” He went on to say, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally.”
The Atlantic – Trump Defends White-Nationalist Protesters: ‘Some Very Fine People on Both Sides’
NPR – Events Surrounding White Nationalist Rally In Virginia Turn Fatal
Real Clear Politics – Trump Didn’t Call Neo-Nazis ‘Fine People.’ Here’s Proof.
Wikipedia – Unite the Right rally
Wikipedia – Jason Kessler
said that four Congresswomen should “go back” from where they came?
The four freshman Congresswomen, known as the Squad, include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), are all American citizens, and only one was born outside of the United States. Regardless, Trump said of their criticism that they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” He continued to attack them using prepared talking points, and demanded an apology from Ilhan-Omar after saying she was “incapable” of loving America.
Trump doubled down on his remarks, saying that the Congresswomen should “love it or leave it.” Some pundits pointed out that the phrase was a slogan employed by various xenophobic groups, including the KKK. Trump also failed to explain how the four Congresswomen’s criticisms on the state of America were insulting to the country, when his own campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” presupposes that America was no longer great.
The New York Times – Trump Tells Congresswomen to ‘Go Back’ to the Countries They Came From
The Boston Globe – A painful history of Trump’s ‘love it or leave it’ argument
SBS News – How Trump invoked KKK slogan ‘love it or leave it’ at North Carolina rally
demanded an apology from a Congresswoman he said was “incapable of loving America”?
Trump had tweeted, “I don’t believe the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our Country,” saying that they should go back to their own countries. All four were US citizens, with three having been born in the US. After lying about having prepared talking points to attack the Congresswomen, he then demanded an apology from Ilhan-Omar of Minnesota. She had remarked about Republican Congressmen only supporting Israel because they were paid to do so from Israeli lobby groups. When she walked back the remark, Trump called her apology “lame.”
The New York Times – Trump Tells Congresswomen to ‘Go Back’ to the Countries They Came From
Associated Press – Trump calls Rep. Omar apology about Israel remark ‘lame’
Independent – Trump demands congresswomen he subjected to racist tweets apologise to US and Israel
told police, “please don’t be too nice” to suspects?
Trump gave a speech to law enforcement in Long Island, New York. He remarked,
“When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, and I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.'”
USA Today – Trump tells law enforcement: ‘Don’t be too nice’ with suspects
ABC News – Trump to police: ‘Please don’t be too nice’ to suspects
tweeted a gif of him wrestling CNN to the ground?
Trump has also retweeted an image of a bloody CNN crushed under his shoe. He has long railed against the press, calling them “the enemy of the people.”
ABC News – Critics pounce on Trump after CNN wrestling tweet
