Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 3-10-17

White House Fury
New HUD Secretary Ben Carson Refers To Slaves As ‘Immigrants’ In Speech To Employees
44th President Obama Is ‘ Furious’ At Trump’s Allegation He Ordered Wiretap Of Trump Tower
National Park Service Confirms: More People Were At Obama’s Inauguration Than At Trump’s
Former President Obama is continuously being dragged into Trump’s rants via Twitter. He tweeted that President Obama has Trump Tower wiretapped. He also said President Obama re- leased more 100s of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. Trump got that wrong too. President Obama released 9 prisoners.
Former President Barack Obama was irked and exasper- ated in response to his succes- sor's uncorroborated wiretapping accusation, sources close to the former president toldCNN, though these sources say Mr. Obama’s reaction stopped short of outright fury.
Mr. Obama and his aides re- sponded with disbelief when they learned of President Donald Trump's tweets last Saturday morning laying out the charges.
Later in the day, an Mr. Obama spokesman said "nei- ther President Obama nor any White House official ever or- dered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false."
The sources provided CNN with slightly different insight into Mr. Obama’s demeanor than others who told The Wall Street Journal that he was "livid."
Mr. Obama’s loyal army of supporters have been far more active in voicing their dissatisfac- tion with Trump. On social media and television, former aides have been aggressively pushing back on Trump in the first weeks of his presidency.
Presidents Trump and Obama have not spoken since Inauguration Day.
But people close to both men acknowledge that the bitterness of the presidential campaign, paired with Trump's longstand- ing antagonism toward Presi- dent Obama regarding his birth certificate, would make a close relationship improbable.
Trump’s allegations last Sat- urday of a "Nixon/Watergate" plot to wiretap his 2016 cam- paign confused intelligence ana- lysts, befuddled members of Congress and created fresh work for fact-checkers.
Within 24 hours of his allega- tions, made on Twitter, the ad- ministration conceded that the president was basing his claim not on closely held information, but on a Breitbart News story quoting the conservative radio host and author Mark Levin.
But in conservative media, where the claim originated, Trump has gotten credit for cracking open a plot by a "deep state" of critics and conspirators to bring down his presidency. And the perpetrator they claim, is former president Barack Obama.
Republicans Ask For Briefing
Republicans on the House Ju- diciary Committee are asking FBI Director James Comey for a briefing.
In a letter to Comey Wednes- day, the Republican members of the panel are also asking to be briefed on why sensitive infor- mation about government inves- tigations and surveillance keeps leaking to the news media
Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), has jurisdiction over the Foreign In- telligence Surveillance Act, which allows the government to seek warrants to wiretap sus- pected foreign agents inside the United States.
DR. BEN CARSON
Dr. Ben Carson’s first full week as secretary of HUD got off to a rough start on Monday after he described African slaves as “immigrants” during his first speech to his new employees.
The remark, which came as part of a 40-minute address on the theme of America as “a land of dreams and opportunity,” was met with swift outrage online.
The HUD national office was stunned and defensive about the uproar and spent part of the after- noon responding to the news media on Twitter.
In a statement, it said critics were watching only a short clip from a 30-minute speech and were viewing the remarks in bad faith.
Later on Facebook, Carson at- tempted to appear more intelli- gent about his comparison.
Carson drew a clear distinction between immmigrants and slav- ery: “The Immigrants made the choice to come to America. They saw this country as a land of op- portunity. In contrast, slaves were forced here against their will and lost all their opportunities. We continue to live with that legacy.”
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Trump’s inauguration in 2017 with Obama’s in 2009, based on the newly released photos.
The National Park Service has released hundreds of official im- ages from Donald Trump’s in- auguration ceremony in January that prove, once and for all, that the crowds in attendance were far smaller than those that at- tended Barack Obama’s inau- guration in 2009.
The NPS released the photos this week in response to a Free- dom of Information Act (FOIA) request from BuzzFeed News and other media outlets.
Crowd turnout at Trump’s in- auguration immediately became the subject of the administra- tion’s first big battle with the media.
In a speech at the CIA the day after the inauguration, Trump complained: “I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field. I'm like, wait a minute. I made a speech. I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people.”
Shortly thereafter, White
House press secretary Sean Spicer eviscerated the media in his first press conference, accus- ing reporters of using “intention- ally framed” photos to make the crowd at Trump’s inauguration look smaller than it actually was.
It’s possible the furor about crowd sizes might have been avoided altogether if the NPS had released official crowd esti- mates right after the inaugura- tion.
But the NPS has refrained from doing that since 1995 — when its estimate of 400,000 in atten- dance at the Million Man March set off a controversy with the march’s organizers, who esti- mated that 1.5 million had at- tended.
NPS broke that tradition in 2009, estimating that a record- breaking 1.8 million people were in attendance at Obama’s inau- guration, thought to be the largest gathering ever on the Na- tional Mall.
Fear Tactic: Trump Predicts GOP ‘Bloodbath’ If Obamacare Is Not Repealed
President Trump has thrown his weight behind House Republicans' new bill to repeal and replace Oba- macare. But he knows the stakes for the party are high.
He held a closed-door meet- ing with House Republicans on Tuesday.
CNN reports that he warned of a "bloodbath" in the 2018 midterm elections if the party can't deliver on their anti-Obamacare prom-
ises.
Those promises were a
consistent part of Trump's presidential campaign.
And he's made it clear that he backs the new plan, calling it "wonderful" and saying he is "proud to support" it. But opposition will be fierce.
Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer called the bill "a giveaway to the wealthy and insurance com- panies."
And some conservative Republicans are bashing the plan as well. Senator Rand Paul has called it "Oba- maCare Lite" and said "It will not pass."
Trump has been trying to get out ahead of those criti- cisms, tweeting, "I feel sure that my friend @RandPaul will come along with the new and great health care pro- gram because he knows Oba- macare is a disaster!”
PAGE 6-A FLORIDA SENTINEL-BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 2017