President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before leaving the White House, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2017, in Washington for a Thanksgiving trip to Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Trump spent this month bickering on Twitter, authorizing a callous immigration policy, embarrassing himself on the world stage and arguing – again – with a high-profile African-American.
Is anyone surprised? It’s been nine months since Trump took office and it already feels like a full term.
Here’s what you need to know:
Trump called LaVar Ball an “ungrateful fool” and “a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair” after Ball, the father of UCLA basketball player LiAngelo Ball, said Trump did nothing to resolve the shoplifting charges against LiAngelo while he was in China playing a game with his UCLA teammates.
I’m not sure why Trump dragged King into his madness since King is a devoted Republican. King participated in a bizarre press conference earlier this year with Trump where he pledged his support for the president. Perhaps Trump just felt he needed to invoke one black man to pummel another black man on Twitter.
Meanwhile, Trump said he asked Chinese President Chinese Xi Jinping to intervene after LiAngelo and two teammates were arrested – and detained in China – for stealing sunglasses from a high-end store.
The president claimed LaVar Ball was not giving him credit for getting LiAngelo released from police custody (in a hotel) and allowed to return to the United States with no legal repercussions.
“If I feel nobody did anything, I don’t have to go around saying thank you to everybody,” Ball told CNN.
But Trump tweeted, “It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long-term prison sentence – IT WAS ME.”
“But remember LaVar, shoplifting is NOT a little thing. It’s a really big deal, especially in China,” Trump tweeted.
I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of the Trump-Ball Twitter war of words.
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Let’s set the record straight: TIME magazine did not tell President Donald Trump that he would be named the magazine’s prestigious “Man of the Year” as Trump implied via social media.
Another day, another lie.
Trump tweeted last week that Time called to tell him that he was “probably” going to be named the magazine’s Person of the Year, but that he turned the offer down.
Really?
“Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named “Man (Person) of the Year,” like last year but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!” the president tweeted.
But TIME quickly refuted Trump’s bizarre claim.
“The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6,” Time said in a tweet.
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Trump approved a callous and mean-spirited immigration policy that calls for sending 60,000 Haitians living in the U.S. back to Haiti.
The Trump administration is ending an Obama administration-sanctioned humanitarian program called the Temporary Protected Status. Many Haitians living and working in the U.S. will now face deportation.
Haitians living in New York and South Florida are confused, angry and frustrated. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and is still trying to recover from the 2010 earthquake.
Here is the statement from The Department of Homeland Security: “Since the 2010 earthquake, the number of displaced people in Haiti has decreased by 97 percent. Significant steps have been taken to improve the stability and quality of life for Haitian citizens, and Haiti is able to safely receive traditional levels of returned citizens.”
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Trump wants to get tough on criminals – but he wants to give overzealous police departments a pass.
The Justice Department announced it would scale back on a program to regulate police departments where some police officers use excessive force while interacting with African-Americans and other citizens of color.
The Obama administration created the police department reform policy to reduce tensions between communities of color and police.
Too many unarmed African-American men and women have been shot and killed by police during routine traffic stops. And Trump has signaled to police departments that it’s acceptable to rough up suspects.
Trump doesn’t seem to care about police brutality concerns and the myriad of complaints about excessive use of force by some cops.
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He just can’t let it go.
According to The New York Times, Trump is still questioning – incorrectly –the validity of former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Trump is still telling White House aides that he believes Obama was not born in the United States. Trump also told aides that he would have done better in the polls if he had continued to pound away on the birth certificate issue during the presidential campaign.
And last week, Trump again showed his racist views by retweeting three racially incendiary videos from a British far-right group that spewed anti-Muslim content. The videos, posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, depicted Muslims assaulting people.
Trump is wrapping up his disastrous first year in the White House. Three years to go.
What do you think?
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