'Despicable': Pete Buttigieg thrashes Trump for plane crash press conference rant

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg hit back on Thursday after President Donald Trump blamed him and assorted "diversity" initiatives for Wednesday night's deadly plane crash over Washington D.C.

During a press conference about the crash, Trump directly blamed Buttigieg for the crash despite having no evidence whatsoever to back up such a claim.

Maybe this is the reason the FAA, which is overseen by secretary Pete Buttigieg, a real winner," Trump said. "That's the guy's a real winner. Do you know how badly everything's run since he's run? The Department of Transportation? He's a disaster. He was a disaster as a mayor, he ran his city into the ground, and he's a disaster now. He's just got a good line of b------. The Department of Transportation, his government agency charged with regulating civil aviation while he runs it, 45,000 people, and he's run it right into the ground with his diversity, so I had to say that it's terrible."

Buttigieg came out swinging at Trump immediately after the president's rant and pointed out that Trump in his first week in office pushed out several aviation safety officials.

"Despicable," he wrote in response on X. "As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch. President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again."

Trump orders mass detention facility to house 30,000 migrants at Guantanamo Bay WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump ordered his administration Wednesday to begin preparations on a detention facility at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to house up to 30,000 migrants detained for being in the U.S. without legal authorization. Trump signed a presidential memorandum instructing the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to expand an existing migrant center at Guantanamo Bay, which has long been used to hold suspects accused in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump provided few details but said it would house "the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people." He announced the move during a bill signing ceremony at the White House for the Laken Riley Act, which empowers immigration officers to detain unauthorized immigrants when they are arrested on criminal charges. The new law is expected to increase the number of detained migrants. Some of them are so bad we don't even trust the countries to hold them because we don't want them coming back. So we're going to send them out to Guantanamo," Trump said. Trump has pursued an aggressive crackdown on migrants during the first two weeks of his second term, ramping up detainments by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and sending troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. The Naval Station Guantanamo Bay is about 430 miles southeast of Miami, on the southeastern coast of Cuba. Established in 1903, it is the United States' oldest overseas military installation and the only one in a communist country, according to the DOD. Guantanamo already houses a migrant facility that is separate from the high-security facility used to house foreign terrorism suspects. It has been used over the years to house Cubans, Haitians and others, including suspects picked up at sea. Trump's memo charges his administration with expanding the migrant facility to "full capacity" to provide additional detention space for "high-profile criminal aliens." "Most people don't even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo," Trump said. "This will double our capacity immediately ‒ and tough. It's a tough place to get out of." rump border czar Tom Homan said ICE would manage the facility, telling reporters it will house migrants who are “significant public safety threats.” It was not clear on Wednesday how much the facility would cost or when it could open. "That is something that the White House is working on to use resources that we currently have there at Guantanamo Bay. So we'll go through the process. The worst of the worst is where that can be utilized. So that potential is there, we know we need the infrastructure,” said Kristi Noem, the newly minted secretary of Homeland Security. According to the United States' lease with Cuba, the U.S. retains jurisdiction while Cuba technically maintains sovereignty over the 45-square-mile installation. Over the past century, it has served as a key operational and logistics hub, supporting various missions including maritime security, humanitarian assistance, and joint operations, the Pentagon says. Charles "Cully" Stimson, who helped establish the terrorist detention facility as President George W. Bush's deputy assistant secretary of defense for Detainee Affairs, said personnel at Guantanamo are ready to take in detainees on a moment’s notice. “They do training exercises routinely in anticipation of just this type of situation where the president orders detainees, migrants or whatever you want to call them brought to Guantanamo for a short or medium period of time,” Stimson told USA TODAY. “So they have supplies and stores of tents, cots, food, desalinated water at the ready, just like they had back in the day when the Clinton administration housed Haitian migrants” and Cubans there. Stims also said the troops there are trained to segregate “people who have not committed crimes.

The announcement sparked immediate concerns among human and civil rights advocates and some former senior U.S. officials.

One recently departed DHS official said it could confer on the immigrant detainees the same status – and lack of basic rights – as those detained as suspected terrorists after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks in the U.S. in 2001. That official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the order, said authorities have long looked at Guantanamo as a place for use in an emergency to hold those detained in a mass maritime migration to the U.S. and stressed that there are too many potential variables to support or criticize the effort without knowing more details.

Only about 15 suspected terrorist detainees remain at the facility set up at Guantanamo Bay in the years since the 9/11 attacks, including the accused mastermind of the coordinated plane hijackings, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several alleged accomplices.

Gitmo or GTMO, as it is informally known, has a documented history of human rights violations, including allegations of torture and indefinite detention without trial by United Nations officials and other legal experts who have inspected the facility.

Detaining migrants at Guantanamo Bay almost certainly could lead to legal challenges regarding the rights of people sent there, both under U.S. and international law.

Is there anything he has done that doesn't leave itself open to a court challenge??

Former Sen. Bob Menendez sentenced to 11 years in prison, no fine in federal bribery case

Former Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., was sentenced to 11 years in prison Wednesday in a federal bribery case in which he was accused of trading political influence for cash, gold bars and other goods with two Egyptian and New Jersey businessmen.    

A jury in July found Menendez, along with Edgewater developer Fred Daibes and Egyptian American businessman Wael Hana, guilty on all charges related to the bribery scheme. Daibes was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined $1.75 million. Hana was sentenced to a little more than eight years in prison and fined $1.3 million. Menendez was not fined for his part in the corruption.

The trial hinged on accusations that Menendez used his political might to influence criminal investigations involving the two businessmen and helped direct billions in U.S. aid to Egypt to bolster their business dealings. In exchange, Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, received gifts including gold bars, cash and luxury cars.   

Menendez, 71, represented New Jersey for more than 18 years in the U.S. Senate. He resigned in August after the convictions. 

Trump launches appeal of NY criminal hush money conviction. What could he argue?

President Donald Trump appealed his New York criminal hush money conviction Wednesday, after he was sentenced Jan. 10 for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star.

Trump's notice of appeal jumpstarts the process for trying to get his felony conviction tossed out, which could take months or years to play out. The president failed in his earlier efforts to challenge the conviction and prevent his sentencing from happening, with the Supreme Court ruling in a 5-4 vote that his arguments could be addressed in a later appeal.

Trump was convicted May 30 of falsifying records to obscure that he was reimbursing his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, for paying adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to stay quiet ahead of the 2016 presidential election about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump. The real estate mogul has denied the encounter took place.

After winning the November presidential election, Trump is taking office as the first U.S. president convicted of a felony. While it's unclear whether presidents can pardon themselves, it is clear they can't pardon anyone for a state crime, such as his New York conviction. Trump's appeal therefore may be his final hope to clear the conviction from his record.

A President can't pardon them self and it they could Biden would have done it for himself before leaving office.

If anyone thinks he can please show me where it says he can,

Trump orders mass detention facility to house 30,000 migrants at Guantanamo Bay WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump ordered his administration Wednesday to begin preparations on a detention facility at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to house up to 30,000 migrants detained for being in the U.S. without legal authorization. Trump signed a presidential memorandum instructing the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to expand an existing migrant center at Guantanamo Bay, which has long been used to hold suspects accused in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump provided few details but said it would house "the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people." He announced the move during a bill signing ceremony at the White House for the Laken Riley Act, which empowers immigration officers to detain unauthorized immigrants when they are arrested on criminal charges. The new law is expected to increase the number of detained migrants. Some of them are so bad we don't even trust the countries to hold them because we don't want them coming back. So we're going to send them out to Guantanamo," Trump said. Trump has pursued an aggressive crackdown on migrants during the first two weeks of his second term, ramping up detainments by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and sending troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. The Naval Station Guantanamo Bay is about 430 miles southeast of Miami, on the southeastern coast of Cuba. Established in 1903, it is the United States' oldest overseas military installation and the only one in a communist country, according to the DOD. Guantanamo already houses a migrant facility that is separate from the high-security facility used to house foreign terrorism suspects. It has been used over the years to house Cubans, Haitians and others, including suspects picked up at sea. Trump's memo charges his administration with expanding the migrant facility to "full capacity" to provide additional detention space for "high-profile criminal aliens." "Most people don't even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo," Trump said. "This will double our capacity immediately ‒ and tough. It's a tough place to get out of." rump border czar Tom Homan said ICE would manage the facility, telling reporters it will house migrants who are “significant public safety threats.” It was not clear on Wednesday how much the facility would cost or when it could open. "That is something that the White House is working on to use resources that we currently have there at Guantanamo Bay. So we'll go through the process. The worst of the worst is where that can be utilized. So that potential is there, we know we need the infrastructure,” said Kristi Noem, the newly minted secretary of Homeland Security. According to the United States' lease with Cuba, the U.S. retains jurisdiction while Cuba technically maintains sovereignty over the 45-square-mile installation. Over the past century, it has served as a key operational and logistics hub, supporting various missions including maritime security, humanitarian assistance, and joint operations, the Pentagon says. Charles "Cully" Stimson, who helped establish the terrorist detention facility as President George W. Bush's deputy assistant secretary of defense for Detainee Affairs, said personnel at Guantanamo are ready to take in detainees on a moment’s notice. “They do training exercises routinely in anticipation of just this type of situation where the president orders detainees, migrants or whatever you want to call them brought to Guantanamo for a short or medium period of time,” Stimson told USA TODAY. “So they have supplies and stores of tents, cots, food, desalinated water at the ready, just like they had back in the day when the Clinton administration housed Haitian migrants” and Cubans there. Stims also said the troops there are trained to segregate “people who have not committed crimes.

The announcement sparked immediate concerns among human and civil rights advocates and some former senior U.S. officials.

One recently departed DHS official said it could confer on the immigrant detainees the same status – and lack of basic rights – as those detained as suspected terrorists after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks in the U.S. in 2001. That official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the order, said authorities have long looked at Guantanamo as a place for use in an emergency to hold those detained in a mass maritime migration to the U.S. and stressed that there are too many potential variables to support or criticize the effort without knowing more details.

Only about 15 suspected terrorist detainees remain at the facility set up at Guantanamo Bay in the years since the 9/11 attacks, including the accused mastermind of the coordinated plane hijackings, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several alleged accomplices.

Gitmo or GTMO, as it is informally known, has a documented history of human rights violations, including allegations of torture and indefinite detention without trial by United Nations officials and other legal experts who have inspected the facility.

Detaining migrants at Guantanamo Bay almost certainly could lead to legal challenges regarding the rights of people sent there, both under U.S. and international law.

Is there anything he has done that doesn't leave itself open to a court challenge??

I worked with a guy in my P.D. days who was a Marine & served at Gitmo. When his tour was done he actually shipped over another 6 months there. I asked him why & he said "Because I liked it." Imagine that?

All the Nato countries have said if America invades Canada they will come over and defend Canada. Then it would be a stronger force than Russia at America's back door.