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Donald Trump Donates $1 Million to Hurricane Harvey Relief Efforts


PHOTO: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

With the current White House administration plaguing us by near-constant disarray and destruction, it’s with great surprise that we put forth some not-miserable news about President Donald Trump.

This afternoon White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders relayed the message that Trump will be donating approximately $1 million of his own money to aid the relief efforts brought forth by catastrophic Hurricane Harvey—something that Democrats and Republicans can both agree is a noble deed. Per CNBC, Huckabee Sanders said Trump hasn’t decided which specific organization he’ll be donating to, and he actually told Huckabee Sanders to ask the reporters at today’s press briefing to share their charity recommendations, due to these reporters being “very good at research,” according to The Hill.

“As I said, he’ll pledge probably $1 million of his own personal money to help the people of both Texas and Louisiana,” Huckabee Sanders explained. “He would like to join in the efforts that a lot of people we have seen across the country do.” Other prominent figures who’ve donated $1 million to charities supporting Hurricane Harvey victims include Leonardo DiCaprio and Sandra Bullock, while other celebrities, including the Kardashian family, Jennifer Lopez, Miley Cyrus, and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, have also pledged significant donations.

The news of Trump’s generous donation comes after a rocky few days for the President and his wife, Melania. The couple visited Corpus Christi, Texas, on Tuesday, a city hit badly by the hurricane, where the Commander in Chief drew ire for not witnessing much of the devastation firsthand, joking about the name Harvey, and boasting about the size of the crowd that met him. (Melania’s choice in outfit didn’t exactly help matters, either.) CNBC also notes that the First Couple will travel to the affected areas of Houston and Lake Charles, Louisiana, in a matter of days, although the itinerary has yet to be finalized.

Related: How You Can Help Victims of Harvey in Texas, No Matter Where You Are



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Donald Trump Couldn't Tell the Difference Between Two Female Reporters During a News Conference


Donald Trump has boasted that “no one has more respect for women” than he does—but he sure seems to have trouble telling them apart.

The president struggled to tell the difference between two blonde female reporters at a joint news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö on Monday. As Niinistö called upon a member of the Finland press corps to ask a question—a reporter who happened to be a woman with blonde hair—Trump interjected.

“Again? You’re going to give her the same one?” he asked, alluding to a different blonde-haired woman who had asked a question earlier.

“No, she is not the same lady,” Niinistö retorted. “They are sitting side by side.”

The reporter gamely offered her own insight, telling the President, “We have a lot of blonde women in Finland.” Then she got back to business, launching into a question about Finland’s role in the relationship between Russian and the U.S.

This isn’t the first time Trump has struggled to get through a basic interaction with the press. In the roughly seven months since he took office, his tempestuous relationship with the media has seen an impromptu press conference turn downright hostile, a campaign-style rally built mostly on media attacks, and a truly cringe-worthy moment when the President singled out an Irish reporter to compliment her “nice smile.”

As for Monday’s gaffe, even a cursory glance would indicate that the two women who were subjects of the President’s mix-up, Maria Annala and Paula Vilén, don’t really look alike:

As Annala lamented, “We have a lot of blonde women in Finland” could, sadly, be her journalistic legacy forever.



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Donald Trump Officially Ordered the Military to Ban Transgender Recruits


On Friday night President Donald Trump issued a directive banning transgender recruits from the military. It comes two days after news broke that a White House memo along these lines was being finalized to send to the Department of Defense. Along with the ban, the directive also bars funds for sex reassignment surgeries unless the transgender service member is already in treatment. What’s unclear from Friday’s official order, however, is whether transgender troops currently serving will be allowed to continue.

Trump’s order also applies to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard. According to the New York Times, it falls largely to Defense Secretary James Mattis to come up with how to implement Trump’s order—and to decide whether transgender troops can stay. Mattis’ decision, according to a press briefing about the memo reported by NPR, will be based on how their “continued service affects military effectiveness, lethality, resources and unit cohesion.” He has six months to come up with his proposal, according to the Times.

Trump’s ban marks an end to an initiative from President Obama’s administration that allowed the military to recruit transgender people into the armed forces. The current president had first announced his proposal in a series of tweets in July, saying, “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming … victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”

Trump’s tweets caused an uproar, with people accusing Trump of discrimination when it came to his arguments about why trans people shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military. Case in point: the military actually spends more on Viagra than it does for trans health care—so the President’s point about medical costs being the issue is pretty weak.

When asked at Friday’s briefing if the President’s announcement was discriminatory, a White House official responded, “The president is the president for all Americans, and during last year’s campaign he was the first GOP nominee to talk about LGBTQ issues at the GOP convention, but he also was critical of the Obama administration’s change in that longstanding DOD policy.” He went on to say, “He’s going to continue to ensure that the rights of the LGBTQ community, as well as all Americans, is protected. This policy is based on a series of national security considerations.

Many people, including Senator Tammy Duckworth who served in the army in Iraq, have spoken out against Trump’s ban by arguing that gender identity has nothing to do with the ability to serve the country. If someone is able to do the job, that’s all that matters.

On Saturday morning, the ACLU announced that they’d be filing a lawsuit against Trump on Monday.

We’ll keep you posted with where this goes.

Related Stories:
–Senator Tammy Duckworth on Trump’s Trans Military Ban: ‘This Man Is Not Fit to Be Commander-in-Chief’
–President Donald Trump Bans Transgender People From Serving in the Military: Celebrities React
–Donald Trump’s Transgender Military Ban Is Set to Go Into Effect Within 6 Months, According to a New Memo



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Donald Trump's Transgender Military Ban Is Set to Go Into Effect Within 6 Months, According to a New Memo


Nearly a month after Donald Trump tweeted that transgender men and women would no longer be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, the White House is reportedly preparing to send guidance to the Department of Defense and give the Pentagon the formal power to implement the President’s policy.

As The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday (via CNN), the administration is finalizing a memo that will give Defense Secretary James Mattis six months to implement the stipulations of the ban. Among them: The military will no longer be allowed to recruit transgender people and medical treatment regimens for current transgender troops will no longer be paid for by Pentagon. Further, it would give Mattis the authority to expel transgender service members by setting new standards for deployment.

Though the memo has not been finalized, a source familiar with the document confirmed that it will likely be handed down within the “coming days.” In a statement released Wednesday evening, the Pentagon said that it “has not received formal guidance from the White House as a follow-up to the Commander-in-Chief’s announcement on military service by transgender personnel.”

“The Department continues to focus on our mission of defending our nation and ongoing operations against our foes, while ensuring all service members are treated with respect,” the statement read.

As noted by The New York Times, Trump’s “order-by-social media” in late July “caught senior military officials by surprise and short-circuited the customary interagency policy process that attends such sweeping decisions.” The Pentagon was unclear as to how such a ban would be implemented but the White House assured the Defense Department that they would work with them to develop a plan that matched the President’s tweets. (White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to comment to the Times about any forthcoming memo.)

Like Trump’s initial tweets, the latest development in the transgender military ban is drawing plenty of public ire. A statement from Ashley Broadway-Mack, the president of the American Military Partner Association President (the country’s largest organization for families, partners, and spouses of LGBT service members), slammed the reported memo saying, “[The President’s] foolhardy assertion that transgender service members are not able to deploy is simply not rooted in fact.

“Transgender service members are just as deployable as any other service member. These brave men and women are already risking their lives for this country around the world,” Broadway-Mack added. “They have earned their right to appropriate medical care, and President Trump’s attempt to rip that away is beyond unconscionable.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also condemned Trump’s policy, tweeting Wednesday night: “This is NOT how you keep America safe. Period. #ProtectTransTroops.”

Related: Senator Tammy Duckworth on Trump’s Trans Military Ban: ‘This Man Is Not Fit to Be Commander-in-Chief’



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Hillary Clinton Says Her 'Skin Crawled' When She Was Debating Donald Trump


We’re still a few weeks out from the release of Hillary Clinton‘s election memoir What Happened, due out September 12, but a newly-released excerpt from the book has us revisiting the unprecedented campaign of 2016—specifically, last October’s town hall debate.

On Wednesday morning, MSNBC’s Morning Joe shared a portion of the book in which the former secretary of state described what it was like to stand on stage with an opponent who skulked behind her the entire night. As a quick reminder: This was the second of the presidential debates and was held just days after Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood tape was released and the country heard a presidential candidate brag about grabbing women “by the pussy.” As the two candidates debated one another, Donald Trump spent the evening stalking Clinton on the stage—standing ominously in the background as she answered each of her questions.

“This is not OK, I thought,” Clinton wrote. “It was the second presidential debate, and Donald Trump was looming behind me. Two days before, the world heard him brag about groping women. Now we were on a small stage, and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces.”

She continued, saying:

“It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my
neck. My skin crawled. It was one of those moments where you wish you
could hit pause and ask everyone watching, ‘Well, what would you do?’
Do you stay calm, keep smiling, and carry on as if he weren’t
repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye,
and say loudly and clearly, ‘Back up, you creep! Get away from me! I
know you love to intimidate women but you can’t intimidate me, so back
up!’ I chose option A. I kept my cool, aided by a lifetime of dealing
with difficult men trying to throw me off. I did, however, grip the
microphone extra hard. I wonder, though, whether I should have chosen
option B. It certainly would have been better TV. May I have over
learned the lesson of staying calm—biting my tongue, digging my
fingernails into a clenched fist, smiling all the while, determined to
present a composed face to the world.”

Listen to the entire excerpt below:



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A Photo of Afghan Women in Miniskirts Helped Convince Donald Trump to Send More Troops to Afghanistan


PHOTO: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

In an address to the nation on Monday night, Donald Trump announced plans to commit more troops to Afghanistan and continue the 16-year war. This decision seemed in stark contrast to Trump’s stance on the war in the years leading up to his ascent to the presidency. In 2012, he said the conflict was a “total disaster” and “wasting our money.” In 2013, he called for the U.S. military to leave Afghanistan “immediately.” And in 2015 and well into 2016—a.k.a. the duration of his presidential campaign—Trump continued to denounce the war.

But since actually taking office—and surrounding himself with plenty of retired military men—Trump has seemed to have changed his mind. And according to a report from The Washington Post, one of his closest White House officials knew exactly how to reach Trump—and get him to deploy more troops.

As the The Washington Post reported: “One of the ways [national security adviser H.R. McMaster] tried to persuade Trump to recommit to the effort was by convincing him that Afghanistan was not a hopeless place. He presented Trump with a black-and-white snapshot from 1972 of Afghan women in miniskirts walking through Kabul, to show him that Western norms had existed there before and could return.”

Considering Trump’s comments, actions, and attitudes toward women, it’s not surprising that a photograph of young women in short skirts was the best way for McMaster to convince the President that reinstating “Western norms” was worth continuing the military effort—and to completely reverse his original stance on the war in Afghanistan.

Though the exact number of troops that will be sent to join the 8,400 that are currently in Afghanistan is unclear, a report from The Hill indicates that the number will likely be between 3,000 and 5,000.



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