Donald Trump said Saturday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team are targeting him with 'bulls**t.'
'We're waiting for a report by people who weren't elected,' he complained in a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, talking about Washington's collective anxiety over when Mueller's final report will arrive at the Justice Department and how much of it the public will see.
'Unfortunately you put the wrong people in a couple of positions, and they leave people for a long time that shouldn't be there. And all of the sudden they're trying to take you out with bulls**t, okay?'
Trump was talking about the special counsel and Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed him at the Justice Department.
The president also vented at the media for taking him seriously in 2016 when he joked that he wanted Russians to release Hillary Clinton's tens of thousands of deleted emails to the public.
And he announced in a 2-hour, 2-minute oratory marathon – the longest speech of his political career – that he will soon sign an executive order requiring colleges that receive federal dollars to apply First Amendment speech protections on campus.
But his most aggressive words in an extended-play, unfiltered tear were reserved for people in his own Justice Department who he believes have been out to get him since before Inauguration Day.
'Robert Mueller never received a vote. And neither did the person that appointed him,' he stabbed.
President Donald Trump claimed Saturday that the Justice Department and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are 'targeting' him 'with bull***t'
Trump took the stage at the annual CPAC convention near Washington, hugging a U.S. flag before launching into an unscripted speech that had thousands on their feet
Trump complained that Mueller (left) was targeting him despite not being elected to anything, and jabbed Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein (right) for appointing him
The president mocked his first attorney general Jeff Sessions for handing the Russia investigation to Rosenstein by recusing himself from the probe early on without telling Trump of his plans.
'And as you know, the attorney general says, "I'm gonna recuse myself",' Trump snarked in full southern drawl.
'And I said, "Why the hell didn't he tell me that before I put him in?" How do you recuse yourself?'
Sessions said at the time that he couldn't supervise the probe because he had himself advised Trump's campaign on foreign policy.
Trump angrily denounced the Washington 'swamp' that he believes has tried to kneecap him from the day he took office.
'But we're winning and they're not,' he said.
The Russia probe, now more than two years old, began as a counterintelligence investigation into still unproven claims that Trump's campaign plotted with Russian agents to tilt the 2016 presidential election in his favor.
On Saturday he slapped at Democrats in Congress for keeping the story alive while he insists there was 'no collusion.'
Trump reprised his 2017 complaints about reports of the crowd size at his inauguration, claiming some photos shown on television were shot hours beforehand
Thousands of conservatives like these Trump fans packed the main ballroom of the largest hotel in the Washington, D.C. metro area to see the president speak
Trump shared the podium Saturday with Hayden Williams, a California college student who was punched out on a public plaza because of his political beliefs; the president said he will soon sign an executive order requiring universities that get public dollars to protect free speech on campus
He also mocked House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff as 'little shifty Schiff' for expanding the scope of the investigation to a deep-dive into his personal finances.
'They don't have anything with Russia. There's no collusion,' he said. 'So now they morph into "Let's inspect every deal he's ever done. We're going to go into his finances. We're going to check his deals. We're going to check" – these people are sick.'
FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS
The president announced Saturday that he will soon sign an executive order 'requiring colleges and universities to support free speech.'
'If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions, they have to allow ... all people to speak. And if they don't, it will be very costly,' he said.
He shared the podium with Hayden Williams, a Leadership Institute field organizer who was the victim of a physical assault last month at the hands of a man who objected to his politics at the University of California Berkeley.
'That was a hell of a hard punch,' Trump said of video footage that rocketed around the world, and rejoiced that the young man 'got yourself a great lawyer.'
'Sue the college, the university, and maybe sue the state,' he urged.
'He took a hard punch in the face for all of us,' Trump said, predicting that Williams is 'going to be a very wealthy young man.'
University police arrested 28-year-old Zachary Greenberg on Friday. He is charged with assault with a deadly weapon and attempting to cause great bodily injury.
Trump said Saturday that conservatives 'reject oppressive speech codes, censorship, political correctness, and every other attempt by the hard left to stop people from challenging ridiculous and dangerous ideas.'
TRUMP WANTS DEMS TO RUN ON 'GREEN NEW DEAL'
The president chuckled that Democrats should go all-in with the 'Green New Deal,' an environmental policy package promoted by socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a coterie of the most liberal members of Congress.
'I want them to embrace this plan. I want them to sell this plan. I just want to be the Republican that runs against them,' he said.
An outline of the plan suggested measures that would cost more than $70 trillion, according to legislative analysts. It includes the long-term aim of ending the use of air travel and eliminating 'farting cows' whose methane emissions contribute carbon emissions to the atmosphere.
With his crowd laughing along, Trump deadpanned: 'I do like the Green New Deal. I respect it greatly. It should be part of the dialogue of the next election. And I think it has tremendous promise and tremendous potential for the future of our country.'
'They should stay with that argument. Never change,' he said. 'No planes, no energy, when the wind stops blowing that's the end of your electric.'
Trump has previously poked fun at advocates of wind power, glossing over features of the technology that store energy to compensate for calm days.
In the voice of a post-Green-New-Deal American, he asked a fictional spouse: 'Darling, is the wind blowing today? I'd like to watch television, darling.'
Trump blasted socialism, the mass-media and the 'Green New Deal' – although he joked that he hoped Democrats continue to promote it
Trump vented Saturday that House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff – now nicknamed 'shifty Schiff – has shifted his emphasis from unproven Russia-collusion claims to a deep-dive into his finances
Trump has spoken at CPAC three times, including once long before he became president
TRUMP SAYS MEDIA IGNORES HIS SENSE OF HUMOR
Trump had his crowd in thrall, mocking 'fake news' reporters trapped in a roped-off ballroom section between endless rows of seats and a standing-room section.
He recalled a July 2016 press conference in Florida where he railed against Hillary Clinton for deleting tens of thousands of her personal emails before giving the State Department the rest of what had resided on a home-brew, unsecured server.
'Russia, if you're listening,' he said that day, 'I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.'
At the time, according to the FBI, Clinton's private server had been offline for more than a year.
On Saturday he insisted, as he has before, that he was joking.
But Trump said 'fake news' reporters would never allow him to be humorous 'if you tell a joke, if you're sarcastic, if you're having fun with the audience, if you're on live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena – and if you say something like, "Russia! Please! If you can, get us Hillary Clinton's emails! Please, Russia, please! Please get us the emails! Please!"'
Chants of 'Lock her up!' broke out – a favorite anti-Clinton campaign chant among Trump supporters who believe Clinton should have been prosecuted for mishandling classified material on her server.
Trump adopted a southern drawl to mock his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from the Russia investigation in 2017
The president vented at the media for taking him seriously in 2016 when he joked that he wanted Russians to release Hillary Clinton's deleted emails to the public
'So everyone is having a good time, I'm laughing, we're all having a good time and having fun,' Trump recalled. 'And then that fake CNN and others say, "He asked Russia to go get the emails. Horrible!"'
'These people are sick,' he said. 'And I'm telling you, they know the game. They know the game and they play it dirty, dirtier than anybody's ever played the game. Dirtier than it has ever been played.'
The president predicted that he will outdo himself in 2020, winning re-election with more Electoral College votes than he collected in 2016
FOUR MORE YEARS?
Trump also predicted his own re-election on Saturday.
'What we did in 2016 – "The Election" we call it, with a capital E – 'it's never been done before,' Trump said. 'And I think we're going to do it again in 2020.'
'I think we're going to do even better in 2020,' he said, projecting Electoral College numbers like 'nobody has seen in a long time.'
'Our movement and our future in this country is unlimited,' he told a sea of engaged conservatives, some of whom came from as far as Hawaii to the largest hotel in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area.
He said his victory over Hillary Clinton, and the resulting changes in D.C., are 'driving the other side crazy.'
Trump claimed credit for last year's Republican victory in Georgia's gubernatorial race.
He scoffed at Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate, who brought in the star power of Oprah Winfrey and both Barack and Michelle Obama to endorse her.
Republican Brian Kemp defeated Abrams.
'All he had was Trump,' the president quipped, 'and we kicked their ass.'
Photos like this have rankled Trump for more than two years, and he returned on Saturday to insisting that 'fake news' media circulated photos of a sparse crowd that were taken hours before his swearing-in
Trump's speech capped a tempest-tossed week that included his former lawyer calling him a criminal in scorching congressional testimony and the sudden collapse of talks at a tense North Korea nuclear summit.
He took the stage Saturday to a full playing of Lee Greenwood's 'God Bless the U.S.A.,' his unofficial rally anthem, and physically hugged an American flag as camera shutters clicked.
In short order Trump was complaining about journalists, pointing at 'fake news media' as his audience booed.
Perhaps forecasting a second inauguration, he returned to his 2-year-old complaints about how aerial photojournalists portrayed the crowd that came to Washington to see him take his oath of office.
'It's all a phony deal folks,' he insisted. 'I saw pictures that – there were no people! Those pictures were taken hours before.'
'We had fencing all the way down to the Washington Monument, and it was raining, and it was wet, and the grass was wet,' the president argued, making his age-old case that President Barack Obama didn't out-draw him eight years earlier.
IMMIGRATION AND ABORTION FOCUS
Trump hit his usual points on immigration, pledging to fund ICE and battle sactuary city policies, while calling illegal immigration inhumane.
He claimed that just 3 per cent of immigrants awaiting asylum hearings or released on bail return to court.
According to the Justice Department, 72 per cent of asylum seekers returned for hearings in 2017.
But the president said America's immigration policy, specifically birthright citizenship, has made the U.S. a global laughingstock.
'This is, like, crazy,' he said. 'They used to call it "anchor babies" but they don't use that anymore because it doesn't sound nice.'
President Trump's image was everywhere at CPAC this week, including a mural-sized painting on display
CPAC is an annual convention held since 1974; this year it brought more than 9,200 people to a hotel in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C.
Citing crime figures as he claimed illegal immigrants are more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, he charged that rogue nations 'send us the people they don't want.'
In a jab that was widely interpreted as xenophobic, Trump said Saturday that some members of Congress who are themselves immigrants 'hate' the U.S. despite leading better lives than they could in their countries of origin.
'Right now we have people in Congress that hate our country. And you know that,' he said. 'And we can name every one of 'em if they want.'
'They hate our country! Sad. It's very sad,' Trump continued. 'When I see some of the things being made, the statements being made, it’s very, very sad.'
The president didn't identify lawmakers by name.
'How did they do in their country? Just ask 'em, how did they do?' he asked. 'Did they do well? Were they succeeding? Just ask that question.'
'Somebody would say, "Oh, that's terrible that he brings that up," but that’s okay, I don’t mind, I’ll bring it up. How did they do in their country? Not so good, not so good.'
The president visited wrath on Virginia's Democratic Governor Ralph Northam, who drew outrage from evangelical Christians last month for endorsing permitting mothers to end the life of a baby that survives an abortion, and -- in some cases -- babies born at full-term.
'They will execute the baby after birth!' Trump boomed. 'This is a radical agenda by the Democrats.'
He said some Democratic policies are so 'lousy' politically that 'I couldn't sell 'em if I wanted to.'
Bloggers mixed with reporters in the CPAC ballroom on Saturday, with some chanting 'We Want Trump!' along with the bulging crowd
The Trump 2020 campaign did a brisk business at CPAC, selling everything from t-shirts and hats to playing cards and 'Build the Wall and Crime will Fall' merchandise
The three-day convention in Oxon Hill, Maryland was a Trump-fest even as the president was half a world away in Vietnam for most of it
The commander-in-chief was the exclamation point on three days of red-meat speeches at CPAC, an event hosted annually since 1974 by the American Conservative Union.
ACU chairman Matt Schlapp introduced Trump, praising him as 'working, for free, in a last-ditch attempt to get this country on the right path. And you know what else? He beats the left at their own game.'
Schlapp's wife Mercedes is the White House director of strategic communications.
The ACU said Saturday that more than 9,200 people attended its convention in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., including about 2,600 students.
PENCE SET THE STAGE
They watched Vice President Mike Pence and a host of senators lobbing Trump soft alley-oops in speech after speech, targeting the leftward-drifting Democratic Party for what Republicans say is an embrace of socialism.
Democrats, Pence said Friday, have taken a 'hard left turn' as the political calendar becomes an exercise in forecasting the 2020 elections.
'Under the guise of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, Democrats are embracing the same tired economic theories that have impoverished nations and stifled the liberties of millions over the last century. That system is socialism,' he declared.
Voters will choose next year 'between freedom and socialism, between personal responsibility and government dependence,' the vice president continued, warning that a Venezuela-style collapse could, improbably, visit itself on the U.S.
'This is the choice we face in the next 20 months," he said.
The packed CPAC ballroom seemed to enlarge on Friday for Trump's appearance, with the press area moving forward by 40 feet to accommodate a standing-room-only section teeming with 'Make America Great Again' caps in the rear.
A man wore this pro-Trump t-shirt at CPAC on Friday, channeling the sentiment of attendees
CPAC visitors this week could pose for pictures behind a replica of the White House Briefing Room podium made famous by Saturday Night Live's lampoon of former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer
The president has dominated America's media landscape for the past four years, dictating news cycles through his Twitter account and changing the subject of the nation's fascination at will every time he speaks on camera.
Saturday's barn-burner served to shine a bright light on what his base wanted to hear – and away from his woes that monopolized front pages and TV news chyrons all week.
Michael Cohen set a dire tone on Wednesday with political-theater testimony before the Democratic-run House Oversight and Reform Committee, claiming under oath that Trump is a 'racist,' a 'conman' and a business 'cheat' who he saw using 'mobster' tactics for a decade.
Cohen, who will report to prison in May for three years, has already pleaded guilty to lying to Congress in the past, and to making hush-money payments to silence two women who claim to be past Trump mistresses.
Trump didn't mention the disgraced former attorney in his CPAC speech.
Officials in New York disbarred Cohen on Tuesday. The twist of Democrats publicly lionizing the convicted perjurer in a public setting after he swore an oath to tell the truth, polarized Americans at a moment when Trump was preparing for a summit with North Korean despot Kim Jong Un.
That meeting, the two leaders' second in two years, failed to produce an agreement to trade sanctions relief for the denuclearization of North Korea.
Trump on Saturday called the meeting 'very productive' and defended his decision to leave the negotiating table.
'Every once in a while you have to walk, because the deal wasn't a deal that was acceptable to me,' he said.
Trump upbraided some of his predecessors who would 'make a deal just for the same of doing it. I don't want to do that.'
Link hienalouca.com
https://hienalouca.com/2019/03/03/trump-says-mueller-and-rosenstein-are-targeting-him-with-bulls-in-russia-probe/
Main photo article Donald Trump said Saturday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team are targeting him with ‘bulls**t.’
‘We’re waiting for a report by people who weren’t elected,’ he complained in a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, talking ...
It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.
Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/03/02/17/10495840-6764047-image-a-38_1551549201451.jpg
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