Trump news: President rails at Joe Biden as 2020 announcement looms, after New Zealand terror complaint and angry attack on John McCain
The president is ramping up his attacks on Twitter
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Donald Trump has targeted Joe Biden after the former vice president made a verbal slip about a potential 2020 presidential bid.
Mr Trump, who has eagerly followed the 2020 Democratic field, tweeted Monday: “Joe Biden got tongue tied over the weekend when he was unable to properly deliver a very simple line about his decision to run for President.”
He added, “Get used to it, another low I.Q. individual!”
At a dinner over the weekend, Mr Biden said he had “the most progressive record of anybody running.” But Mr Biden hasn’t announced whether he will launch a third run for the White House.
He quickly corrected himself, but the comment prompted frenzied speculation.
The president has previously labelled California Congresswoman Maxine Waters and actor Robert De Niro as being “low I.Q.”
Meanwhile, Mr Trump faced controversy on Monday after denying white nationalism was an increasing threat just days after a suspected gunman launched a terror attack against two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The House Judiciary Committee has revealed its intention to conduct hearings into the rise of white nationalism under Mr Trump, in which it will probe the administration’s response to FBI findings that the issue has become an increasing threat.
Monday also marked the deadline for the White House to respond to the committee’s request for documents — a move the Trump administration has seemingly avoided.
It remains unclear whether Democrats will now issue a subpoena against Mr Trump or the White House.
Additional reporting by AP. Check out The Independent’s live coverage below.
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Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
So many tweets...
Let's start with Donald Trump's attacks on Fox.
The president has been criticised for having such close ties to the right-wing broadcaster, most recently by The New Yorker, but here called on the network to "stay strong" over the decision to take host Judge Jeanine Pirro off the air for making an Islamophobic comment about Democrat Ilhan Omar.
On her show last week, Ms Pirro asked of Ms Omar, a Muslim who wears a hijab: "Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?"
With the channel already under-fire over another host, Tucker Carlson, after misogynist and racist remarks he made on a radio show resurfaced, it acted to suspend Ms Pirro, but the president was having none of it...
Mr Trump was surprisingly critical of Fox, whose star anchor, Sean Hannity, he is said to speak to on a nightly basis.
In addition to telling the broadcaster to "Stop working soooo hard on being politically correct" (!), he subsequently launched into two more of its hosts, Arthel Neville and Leland Vitteret, asking, mockingly, whether they were "trained by CNN".
The Steele Dossier has once more been on the president's mind as Robert Mueller's Russia report edges ever closer.
The dossier, written by British MI6 agent Christopher Steele, consists of 17 memos dating from between June and December 2016 that allege misconduct and conspiracy between the Trump camp and the Kremlin during his successful run for the White House.
On Friday, the president accused his Democratic opponent, "Crooked" Hillary Clinton, of commissioning it.
He retweeted the above tweet trilogy on Sunday with this reboot to follow:
Finally, he retweeted a theory, expanding on a criticism by Hawaii Democrat and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, that the Steele Dossier was actually a fiendish plot instigated by us dastardly Brits (and not Hillary?) to manoeuvre Washington into standing up to Vladimir Putin on our behalf.
But he wasn't done there.
Donald Trump continued his strategy of attacking the Steele Dossier as a tool of the "Witch Hunt" against him by taking Republican Senator John McCain to task for passing it on to the FBI.
Senator McCain, lest we forget, was a hugely-admired public servant and presidential candidate who passed away from brain cancer on 25 August 2018.
Mr Trump famously mocked McCain - a pilot during the Vietnam War who was shot down, captured and held prisoner in Hanoi for six years by the North Vietnamese - for not being a true American hero (having not served himself due to "bone spurs"): "He is a war hero because he was captured? I like people who weren't capture."
He was duly criticised by the deceased's grieving daughter Meghan...
...And retweeted this in response:
Worth remembering Meghan McCain's thinly-veiled warnings at her father's funeral against "cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly" and "the opportunistic appropriation of those who live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served."
What else? Oh yes, he's been after a General Motors autoworkers' union in Ohio:
And Saturday Night Live (again).
He now appears to be threatening to intervene to stop Alec Baldwin impersonating him. So much for free speech.
Lastly, on what has been a spectacular weekend of tweets, even by the standards of this master of the art, there were plenty of reminders to loyal Trump supporters of the need for the border wall and the threats posed by unaddressed illegal immigration from Central America.
Here's Tom Barnes on Mr Trump's lobbying for Judge Jeanine of Fox.
Opponents of the president are wasting little time in pointing out that defending Islamophobia is not a good look for the Leader of the Free World in the wake of the atrocious mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday.
His assertion that there was no rising threat from white nationalism and that "it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems" was widely seen as a weak response to the tragedy.
And here's Chris Riotta on the president's ongoing bitterness towards John McCain, seven months after the poor man was laid to rest.
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