Trump Condemns Terrorist Attack In Barcelona, And Other Trump News From Thursday
Thursday. August 17th. Day 210.
Need more? Check out our live-updating Trump channel.
Top Stories
Trump Responds To Barcelona Terror Attack With Uncharacteristically Presidential Tweet: In response to a van plunging into a crowd in Barcelona, which is being treated by local authorities as a terrorist attack, Trump condemned the attack and pledged to help. It was markedly different from his response to the fatal car attack in Charlottesville, about which Trump equivocated (three days after the attack), "You can call it terrorism. You can call it murder."
Trump Laments Removal Of 'Beautiful' Confederate Monuments: In a trio of morning tweets, Trump dug himself deeper into the hole he's been working on since white supremacist violence erupted in Charlottesville on Saturday. Reiterating his earlier comparison of Robert E. Lee with Founding Fathers such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Trump lamented "the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns, and parks" when Confederate monuments are removed.
Steve Bannon Says He 'Drew Fire Away' From Trump With Candid Interview: The American Prospect published an interview with White House chief strategist Steven Bannon on Wednesday in which he called white supremacists "clowns," said there's no viable military solution in North Korea and discussed plans "to neutralize rivals at the Departments of Defense, State and Treasury." Today, Bannon told The Daily Mail "that his remarks 'drew fire away from POTUS,' meaning President Trump, and that he successfully 'changed the [media] narrative' with a single phone call."
Trump's Tweets
In addition to prolonging the controversy over his remarks on white supremacists with his tweets on Confederate statues, Trump took to Twitter to insult Senator Lindsay Graham, who was one of about a dozen Republicans in Congress to denounce Trump by name for defending racists.
He also returned to a favorite topic: the ostensible dishonesty of the media.
He then endorsed Kelli Ward, the Arizona state senator who is challenging Senator Jeff Flake in the Republican primary. (In all fairness, "Flake Jeff Flake" is a pretty good epithet.)
JOBS!
Later, Trump tweeted an approving reference to an apocryphal story about a general who allegedly humiliated and degraded Muslim insurgents by shooting them with bullets coated in pig's blood.