'Not What He Ran On': How Trump Is Dumping His Campaign Promises
President-elect Donald Trump assured voters during his campaign that he would lower prices on groceries and other items — but a former New York congressman called him out for already abandoning that promise.
Tech tycoons Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos have donated $1 million each to Trump's inauguration despite his past attacks on them, and former Democratic lawmaker Max Rose said the president-elect is already siding with the rich and walking away from the policies he promised to voters.
"This is not what Donald Trump ran on," Rose said. "Donald Trump ran and won this presidential election largely by co-opting traditional Democratic talking points in and around fighting an elitist class that was both culturally estranged from working people and working against the economic interests of working people. He did not run on this notion that he was going to parade billionaires down to Mar-a-Lago in what is ultimately an escalator of transactional deals.
"So this speaks to potentially what the Trump administration will actually look like, which is traditional Republican politics of being there for the top 1 percent. That's not only a bad set of policies and agendas for working people in the United States of America, but it's also going to be very poor politics."Republican strategist Brad Todd, however, didn't see anything wrong with Trump associating with the social media magnates and suggested that Democrats had unfairly benefited from their largesse in the past.
"People like Mark Zuckerberg have been in the pocket of Democrats and donating millions and millions to Democrats for generations, these same donors who you're decrying for going to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President-elect Trump," Todd said. "They're Democratic donors. I don't know how you can how you can take those things and not equate them."
Rose insisted he was not decrying their donations to Trump's inauguration, but he said it was still a betrayal of his campaign promises.
"This is not what Donald Trump ran on," Rose said. "Where were the commercials that said that he is going to surround himself by billionaires at Mar-a-Lago who give him a million bucks? Where were the commercials that said he's going to listen to donors and then talk about annexing the Panama Canal because someone's upset about their higher toll rates, that they're paying. This is not what he spoke about, but it is how he is governing."
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Reprinted with permission from Alternet
Kamala Harris Grills DHS Chief On Racist Remarks And White Nationalist Threat
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) sparred with Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen over the president’s racist remarks — and the administration official’s apparent support for those views.
Nielsen said earlier Tuesday during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the president was simply repeating an observation about hard-working Norwegian immigrants, but Harris said Trump was unfavorably comparing them to African and Haitian immigrants.
“You spoke of them, according to the president, as the people of Norway — well, you know, they work very hard — the inference being the people of the 54 states of Africa and Haiti do not,” Harris said. “That is a fair inference.”
She then blasted Nielsen’s claim under oath that she was not aware that Norway was a majority white nation.
“You run the Department of Homeland Security,” Harris continued, “and when you say you don’t know if Norway is predominantly white when asked by a member of the United States Senate, that causes me concern about your ability to understand the scope of your responsibilities and the impact of your words — much less the policies that you promulgate in that very important department.”
Harris asked Nielsen why she ignored domestic terrorist attacks by white supremacists in her opening remarks about security threats faced by the U.S. — and she said the omission was “deeply troubling.”
“You must understand the inference, the reasonable inference, that the American public is drawing from the words you speak much less the words of the president of the United States,” Harris said.
Nielsen later complained that Harris had unfairly drawn conclusions based on her testimony.
“If you don’t mind, it’s not a fair inference to say that my comments about Norway were in contrast to any other country,” Nielsen said. “What I was describing was the president’s views upon meeting with the prime minister, and what I was quoting was what he was told in meeting with the Norwegian delegation. That’s what he repeated, words that he repeated that I repeated. It was not in contrast. With respect to white supremacy, we expanded our prevention efforts in the Department of Homeland Security to ensure we in fact are going after violence of any kind, any kind is not appropriate and I will not allow it to occur if it’s within our authority to stop.”
Harris made one brief response before ceding the floor.
“Mr. Chairman, I would just ask that the record — so we can all review it — will reflect in the opening statements when discussing challenges to our homeland in terms of security, the white supremacist threat was not mentioned,” Harris said.