A Complete Breakdown Of Donald Trump’s 73rd Unpresidented Week As POTUS

In this June 13, 2018 photo, Nicole Hernandez, of the Mexican state of Guerrero, holds on to her mother as they wait with other families to request political asylum in the United States, across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. The family has waited for about a week in this Mexican border city, hoping for a chance to escape widespread violence in their home state. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

A Complete Breakdown Of Donald Trump’s 73rd Unpresidented Week As POTUS

The turning point.
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by: Ahmed Baba on June 17, 2018

Over 500 days in office.

At least 3,200 lies spoken.

At least 2,000 immigrant children taken.

Millions of Puerto Ricans (Americans) forsaken.

Countless reasons Donald Trump is one of the most depraved Presidents in American history.

In spite of this, President Trump still maintains 87% support among Republican voters and 100% capitulation from Republican lawmakers.

The party of self-proclaimed “family values” has become the party of family separation, as their President holds thousands of children as a ransom for his border wall.

The party of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” has become the complicit party of a wannabe authoritarian who fawns over dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.

After spending the previous week attacking America’s allies with unjustified tariffs and insults, President Trump held a conciliatory summit with North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un.

After giving the biggest human rights violator on the planet everything he wanted out of the summit, President Trump praised Kim as “smart” and “talented,” claiming he “loves his people.”

Amid his envious glorification of a dictator who executes his own people, Trump proceeded to call the American media “our country’s biggest enemy.”

Then, before his ex-Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort was jailed, President Trump held an impromptu press gaggle in front of the White House, seemingly desperate to grab headlines. In the process, the President may have set the world record for the most lies in the span of 20 minutes. But something great happened during that 20 minutes. Journalists called out President Trump’s lies to his face.

This week marked a turning point. We saw print journalists and cable news anchors push back on President Trump’s lies and authoritarian tendencies with greater force than ever before. Why? Because President Trump has crossed too many lines and many in the media have finally realized the true nature of Trump’s cruelty and deception.

Donald Trump told us who he was during the campaign; millions still voted for him.

President Trump is showing us who is during his presidency; millions still support him.

As we approach the midterms, we’ll see if the inhumane separation of thousands of immigrant children from their parents, authoritarian tendencies, unlawful corruption scandals, and regressive policies mark a turning point for the American public.

Only a seismic rejection of Trumpism at the ballot box will right these wrongs.

America’s moral core depends on it.

Moments like these require unrelenting truthtelling. We take pride in being reader-funded. If you like our work, support our journalism.

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The G-7 Minus 1

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) meets with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (L) meets with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The previous week, President Trump announced unjustified tariffs on steel and aluminum against America’s allies. Mexico, Canada, and the European Union (EU) threatened counter-measures.

At the G-7 summit, he ratcheted up the attacks on our own allies. One image that embodied the G-7 summit and new international order went viral.

After the summit, President Trump took to Twitter and announced the U.S. would not sign onto the statement of common values and continued attacking our allies. He reserved the harshest words for Justin Trudeau.

This was triggered by a press conference Trudeau held after Trump left Canada.

The Washington Post reported:

President Trump left America’s closest allies in a state of shock and outrage Sunday after a verbal barrage against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had just hosted Trump and other leaders from the Group of Seven industrial nations. Trump’s rhetorical assault on Trudeau, characteristically delivered on Twitter, was echoed by two top White House advisers who took to the Sunday talk shows to go after the leader of the United States’ neighbor to the north.

The bizarre aftermath of the G-7 summit in Quebec was a political calculation, meant to show muscularity in advance of the historic summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, one of those advisers acknowledged Sunday. There has rarely been such a coordinated and acerbic series of attacks by White House advisers aimed at a U.S. ally, revealing the extent to which Trump possibly felt slighted by Trudeau as he left for his North Korea talks.

On top of President Trump’s attacks, his economic advisers Larry Kudlow and Peter Navarro chimed in. Kudlow said that Trudeau “stabbed us in the back” and Navarro said that there’s “a special place in hell” for Trudeau…

People on the left, right, and middle condemned Trump’s baseless attacks on American allies…

Including Republican Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

This all came as President Trump was in Singapore ahead of his June 12th summit with North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un.

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What came after this was quite the week…

Day 508-509: Monday (June 11) and Tuesday (June 12)

The Art Of Capitulation
President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sentosa Island, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, in Singapore. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Sentosa Island, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, in Singapore. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

On June 12th, at 9 am in Singapore, President Donald Trump did what no other U.S. President has been willing to do: grant a face-to-face meeting with North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un, the biggest human rights violator in the world.

With American flags perched next to North Korea’s, President Trump elevated Kim Jong-un onto the world stage. The meeting itself was a concession. Meeting the President of the United States has been an objective of the Kim regime for generations. President Trump made concession after concession, but one of the most significant was the promise of stopping joint-military exercises with South Korea (which reportedly caught the South Koreans off guard). In return, North Korea signed a small piece of paper promising to work towards denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. North Korea has agreed to more substantive agreements in the past and backtracked. Also important to note that denuclearization means something entirely different to Kim Jong-un than it does to Trump. In spite of this, President Trump continued to tout this “deal” and claimed North Korea is “no longer a nuclear threat.”

What makes this worse is the fact President Trump didn’t broach the issue of human rights and lavished Dictator Kim Jong-un with an enormous, unnecessary amount of praise. Trump claimed that Kim Jong-un (who has executed and starved his people, holds over 100,000 political prisoners in labor camps, killed members of his own family, and restricts basic freedoms) “loves his people” and “his country does love him.”

As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews noted, this is part of a pattern. President Trump enjoys cozying up to authoritarian leaders, from the Philippines, to Turkey, to Russia. All while lambasting our democratic allies. Many conservatives have pointed to President Obama’s visit to Cuba as justification for this, but Obama always made a point to challenge autocratic leaders for their human rights violations, as he did with Raul Castro.

Perhaps President Trump doesn’t broach the issue of human rights with authoritarian leaders because he doesn’t value human rights.

While President Trump was abroad, here at home Americans were reacting to the news of Attorney General Jeff Sessions ending protections for asylum seekers fleeing domestic violence and gang violence. This news came as a flood of reports continued to detail the horrific policy of immigrant children being separated from their parents at America’s southern border – including a Washington Post story detailing a Honduran father killing himself after his child was taken from him.

It appears President Trump envisions an America that doesn’t value human rights on the world stage or here at home. President Trump also sees the American media as a bigger threat than the human rights violating Dictators he tries to curry favor with.

Meanwhile…

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s ongoing battle with House Republicans reached new heights Tuesday, as the No. 2 senior leader of the Justice Department plans to call on the House to investigate its own committee staff.

Rosenstein has butted heads with House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes for months over a subpoena for documents related to the Russia investigation, but the battle spilled out into public view Tuesday after Fox News reported staff on the committee felt “personally attacked” at a meeting with Rosenstein in January.

A federal judge on Monday sharply criticized the Justice Department’s argument that President Trump’s financial interest in his company’s hotel in downtown Washington is constitutional, a fresh sign that the judge may soon rule against the president in a historic case that could head to the Supreme Court.

WASHINGTON — In a major rebuke to President Donald Trump, the Senate has adopted a measure that would block the administration’s deal with Chinese telecom giant ZTE, pitting the president against Congress on what many senators say is an issue of national security.

The Senate’s move comes less than a week after the administration struck an agreement with ZTE that would have kept the telecom company engaged in the U.S. market.

  • A financial disclosure revealed how much money Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have been making while they’ve been in the White House. The Washington Post reported:

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s daughter and son-in-law, brought in at least $82 million in outside income while serving as senior White House advisers during 2017, according to financial disclosure forms released Monday.

Trump earned $3.9 million from her stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington and more than $2 million in severance from the Trump Organization, while Kushner reported over $5 million in income from Quail Ridge, a Kushner Cos. apartment complex acquired last year in Plainsboro, N.J.

  • The FCC’s repeal of net neutrality took effect.

Day 510: Wednesday, June 13

Cohen Cracking
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump&#8217;s personal attorney, walks down the sidewalk in New York, Wednesday, April 11, 2018. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, walks down the sidewalk in New York, Wednesday, April 11, 2018. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Reports began to indicate that President Trump’s personal “fixer” and former RNC Finance Chair Michael Cohen is splitting with this lawyers. Some claimed it was just a transition from DC attorneys to some with more experience in the Southern District of New York. Others reported this indicates he is on the verge of cooperating with investigators.

Needless to say, if Cohen flips on President Trump, he would reveal a mountain of evidence. From Trump’s past business dealings (Trump Tower Moscow, potential money laundering, etc) to the Stephanie Clifford (Stormy Daniels) case.

Meanwhile…

  • President Trump continued his disgraceful praise of Kim Jong-un, but he had some harsh words for the media.

  • Speaking of authoritarianism, RNC Chairwoman called for loyalty to President Trump.

A lawyer for Andrew McCabe, the fired deputy director of the FBI, is suing the Justice Department and the FBI, claiming that his client is being denied access to records critical to defending him in connection with the misconduct allegation that led to his dismissal in March.

  • Even more pressure mounted on Manafort.

Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt last year had a top aide help contact Republican donors who might offer his wife a job, eventually securing her a position at a conservative political group that has backed him for years, according to multiple individuals familiar with the matter.

Day 511: Thursday, June 14

A Family Built On A Foundation Of Unlawful Corruption
Donald Trump, accompanied by his family, at a news conference in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Donald Trump, accompanied by his family, at a news conference in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

A lot happened today. From the IG report on Former FBI Director James Comey’s conduct during the Hillary Clinton email investigation to the Trump administration’s depraved defense of their child separation policy. We’ll touch on both in a second, but first, let’s dive into the Trump family culture of corruption.

From settled lawsuits to apparent donation-triggered case dismissals, the Trump family has paid their way around the law their entire lives. They’ve proven they are willing to go to any lengths necessary to win, no matter how illegal. Their conduct indicates they believe they’re above the law. They are mistaken.

Today, Donald Trump and his three eldest children were sued by the State of New York.

In 2016, The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold published a series of reports that revealed the stunning self-dealing and impropriety of the Trump Foundation. It is what triggered New York’s investigation into the Trump Foundation, causing it to be shut down. That reporting would later earn Fahrenthold a Pulitzer Prize. Today, it appears that reporting could cost Donald Trump and his children in a major way. Fahrenthold reported:

New York’s attorney general filed suit against President Trump and his three eldest children Thursday, alleging “persistently illegal conduct” at the president’s personal charity and saying that Trump had repeatedly misused the nonprofit organization to pay off his businesses’ creditors, to decorate one of his golf clubs and to stage a multimillion-dollar giveaway at 2016 campaign events.

In the suit, Attorney General Barbara Underwood asked a state judge to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation. She asked that its remaining $1 million in assets be distributed to other charities and that Trump be forced to pay at least $2.8 million in restitution and penalties.

Underwood also asked that Trump be banned from leading any other New York nonprofit organization for 10 years — seeking to apply a penalty usually reserved for the operators of small-time charity frauds to the president of the United States.

…

The claims in the New York attorney general’s suit could trigger tax penalties by the IRS, according to tax-law experts, who noted that the Justice Department can also bring criminal charges when prosecutors believe tax-law violations are “willful.”

…

Without any outside supervision, Underwood said, the foundation came to serve the spending needs of Trump — and then, in 2016, the needs of his presidential campaign. She cited emails from Trump campaign staff members — including then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski — directing which charities should ­receive gifts from the Trump Foundation, and in what amounts, in the lead-up to the crucial Iowa caucuses.

The report mentioned the stunning lack of oversight on the part of Donald Trump Sr. and his children. Underwood claimed the Foundation’s board hadn’t met since 1999. Fahrenthold’s piece goes on to cite the fact after a certain period, the Trump Foundation became almost entirely funded by other people’s money. Let’s take a look at how this Foundation was spending other people’s money and how the media completely botched this story when it was first revealed during the election:

On Saturday, September 10, 2016, Fahrenthold published a piece which originally outlined how the Trump Foundation has improperly spent other people’s money for years. It also depicted acts of self-dealing.

It was covered by online publications pretty heavily at the time. With this new information, you would expect the Trump Foundation to be equally scrutinized by cable news going into the next week…That was not the case. That weekend was the 15th anniversary of 9/11, or as the media made sure we didn’t forget, it was the weekend Hillary Clinton had pneumonia.

What followed was some of the worst examples of click-bait journalism and ratings-hungry broadcasting that year. Story after story was published about “Hillary’s Health,” and if you watched cable news that week, you would’ve had no idea that there was a Trump Foundation scandal at all.

What makes this even worse, is after election day, the Trump Foundation admitted to the IRS that Trump did indeed partake in “self-dealing.” This story was covered by, once again, David Fahrenthold. Way before they admitted to self-dealing to the IRS, Fahrenthold had already laid the evidence out in plain sight for everyone to see, and yet cable news networks failed to adequately report on it. In the end, the Trump Foundation was guilty of everything that the media, and Trump himself, attempted to project onto the Clinton Foundation.

I bring up the 2016 coverage because there is no forward progression if one doesn’t own up to their mistakes and learn the valuable lessons within them.

The media must see the error of their ways so that these same impulses do not lead to another 2016.

Meanwhile…

  • The long-awaited DOJ Inspector General report on FBI Director James Comey arrived. The Washington Post reported:

The Justice Department’s inspector general on Thursday painted a harsh portrait of the F.B.I. during the 2016 presidential election, describing a destructive culture in which James B. Comey, the former director, was “insubordinate,” senior officials privately bashed Donald J. Trump and agents came to distrust prosecutors.

The 500-page report criticized Mr. Comey for breaking with longstanding policy and publicly discussing — in a news conference and a pair of letters in the middle of the campaign — an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server in handling classified information. The report was a firm rebuke of those actions, which Mr. Comey has tried for months to defend.

In a blow to President Trump’s narrative that Comey protected Hillary Clinton, it found no pro-Clinton political motivations for closing the investigation.  In fact, it appeared to signal the opposite of what Trump wanted it to. Comey went out of his way to release the letter re-opening the email investigation 11 days before the election. The very same letter that ended up tanking her candidacy.

And then, came the news that made Comey look hypocritical, and triggered a priceless Hillary Clinton tweet.

Believe it or not, I could not sum it up better than conservative commentator and former congressman Joe Walsh.

But this didn’t stop President Trump and his propagandists from trying to spin it with blatant lies.

It also led to calls for drastic measures, which were also triggered by Attorney General Jeff Sessions taking responsibility for the Comey firing and the fact Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is not recused.

But they clearly know what picture the report really painted.

  • After Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited the bible as justification for the Trump administration’s inhumane policy of separating immigrant children at the border, things got heated at the White House press briefing.

This came after MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff gave us some of the first glimpses into where some of the children who leave the initial holding sells are placed once they make it to a shelter. It’s complete with an eerie mural of President Trump.

There are reports of babies at the breastfeeding age being ripped from their mother’s arms…

And children not being reunited with their deported parents.


The pressure seems to be mounting on members of Congress.

Americans around the country protested this inhumane policy today.

This is not the America the people want.

Day 512: Friday, June 15

The Walls Are Closing In On Manafort
Artwork By Rantt Media Production Designer Madison Anderson

Artwork By Rantt Media Production Designer Madison Anderson

Paul Manafort, former Trump Campaign Chairman, is going to jail. A judge has revoked his bail and ordered his confinement after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s superseding indictment accused Paul Manafort of witness tampering, his 24th charge.

One of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s objectives in his investigation has long been to flip Trump’s former Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort into a cooperating witness. Today, he could be one step closer.

Mueller has issued his second superseding indictment for Manafort, now placing his total felony charges at 24. It also targets Manafort’s longtime Russian-Ukrainian aide (from his Ukraine lobbying days) Konstantin Kilimnik. The charges in the superseding indictment include obstruction of justice, citing Manafort and Kilimnik’s witness tampering when trying to influence the testimony of two public-relations executives connected to their lobbying work.

Kilimnik worked for Manafort for a decade and served as his right-hand man, helping Manafort run his operation in Ukraine. Kilimnik is of interest due to his ties to Russian intelligence, 2016 contacts with Manafort, and his role in pushing pro-Russia policies onto the Republican platform. As The Atlantic put it in their excellent profile of Kilimnik: “Donald Trump’s campaign chairman had a pawn of Russian intelligence as his indispensable alter ego.”

So, what does this indictment mean? Why is Mueller trying to flip Manafort?

Here’s a quick primer:

Paul Manafort was originally forced out of the Trump campaign after reports of his foreign ties began to overwhelm Trump in late 2016. He worked on the campaign as an unregistered foreign agent. He finally registered in June 2017, but it was too late.

In November 2017, Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates were slapped with a 31-page, 12-count indictment. Those counts included laundering $18 million of the $75 million dollars they made acting as unregistered foreign agents while lobbying on behalf of the Government of Ukraine between 2006–2016 and making false statements to the Justice Department. Both Manafort and Gates pleaded “Not Guilty” at the time. Gates later pleaded guilty and began cooperating with Mueller. Even after his subsequent superseding indictment, a Manafort plea deal remained elusive.

So what does Manafort know? We’ve since learned that Paul Manafort was wiretapped via FISA surveillance in 2014 as part of an investigation into Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych. It was discontinued and then reinstated in 2016 after investigators caught a series of odd connections between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. The surveillance reportedly continued into early 2017 and involved conversations with Donald Trump. Intelligence gathered reportedly “includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign.”

It’s been reported that two weeks before Trump accepted the GOP nomination, Paul Manafort offered “private briefings” on the state of the 2016 election to Russian Oligarch, and close Putin ally, Oleg Deripaska (who also has ties to Kilimnik). Manafort reportedly met twice with Kilimnik during the 2016 campaign. A Kiev operative suggested that Kilimnik may have played a role in the Trump campaign’s gutting of anti-Russian stances from the Republican Party platform. Kilimnik also sent emails regarding Deripaska, and they met in August to speak on it.

Manafort reportedly began his work as a lobbyist and political consultant for Yanukovych in 2004 upon the advice of Deripaska. Manafort also reportedly had a $10 million a year contract with Oleg Deripaska. The contract was part of a plan to assert pro-Russia influence in U.S. politics and lasted from 2006–2009. Paul Manafort moved into Trump Tower in 2006.

Manafort’s involvement in the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting with Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Natalia Veselnitskaya (a Russian lawyer and self-described informant), and Russian operatives is also of interest to Mueller. We now know the meeting was in an effort to obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. Investigators are reportedly reviewing Manafort’s notes of the meeting which “contained the words ‘donations,’ and ‘RNC’ in close proximity.” According to NBC News, congressional investigators who are examining the meeting are “focused on determining whether it included any discussion of donations from Russian sources to either the Trump campaign or the Republican Party.”

Federal law, Section 30121 of Title 52, states that it is a crime for a foreign national to contribute money or other items of value to an American election, as well as making it illegal for an American to solicit such a contribution.

Clearly, if Manafort flipped, it would be of great benefit to Robert Mueller’s investigation and great detriment to Donald Trump.

Unless President Trump pardons Manafort, his choice appears to be cooperate or spend the rest of his life in prison.

Meanwhile…

  • President Trump went wild in a 20-minute press gaggle outside of the White House, telling lie after lie after lie…

  • And then, the President of the United States proceeded to hold children for ransom.

The Associated Press received new numbers from the Department of Homeland Security that increased the number of taken children.

But at the end of the week, one thing was clear: nothing was the same.

Over the weekend…

Roger Stone’s time in the barrel looks to be coming.

On Father’s Day, we remembered the vulnerable as leaders spoke out.

And called out the liars.


Trump’s hardcore base, as always, is all for this indecency.

Unpresidented // America / Donald Trump / Immigration / Media
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by: Ahmed Baba

Ahmed Baba is the Co-Founder and President of Rantt. Writer of Unpresidented, Ahmed documented and analyzed every day of the Trump presidency. He's also a columnist at The Independent and his work has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, The New York Post, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Blavity, Newsweek, The Telegraph, and more. He can be reached at [email protected] or found on Twitter @AhmedBaba_.

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