Vice President JD Vance joined President Donald Trump in urging Republicans to link the SAVE America Act to renewal of a key spy program that has stalled in the Senate. “Why don’t we try and at least force people to vote against it?” Vance said at a Thursday press briefing at the White House. Trump […]
Online critics are blasting U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum’s press team for politicizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool by comparing now-dead algae, which reached five-year-high levels, to the remnants of the Iranian Navy — all while taking a swipe at President Barack Obama.According to The Washington Post on Thursday, Reflecting Pool algae has “roared back,” reaching the “highest levels in years.” “President Donald Trump vowed in April to clean up what he called the ‘filthy’ and ‘disgusting’ water in the Reflecting Pool,” the Post reported. “He promised to resurface the basin to eliminate persistent leaking and to paint it ‘American flag blue.’ Once the pool started to be refilled, on June 4, he praised its ‘clean, beautiful water.'” “An analysis of satellite imagery of the Lincoln Memorial shows algae levels spiked days after a $14 million renovation was completed,” the Post noted.But not according to the Interior Department, which declared hours earlier, late Wednesday night, that the algae problem had been eliminated — just like the Iranian Navy. “The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool—just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf,” an Interior Department social media post declared.Interior did not stop there.“Previous administrations—most notably under Obama—failed to maintain the Reflecting Pool, and after refilling the pool, the water would quickly become murky and thick with massive clumps of algae floating on the surface,” it said, before attacking the media as well. “As our National Park Service team noted, the Reflecting Pool is now so ‘blue’ that the Fake News Media, which has been staked out at the Reflecting Pool for weeks, has fled!”Online critics blasted Interior’s post.“Why the hell is my government’s interior press account making jabs at foreign affairs? FFS, yall supposed to be adults, and you’re acting like petulant children,” wrote one critic. “‘Funny’ is not something I want from my administration. I want resolutions. I want fixes. They are more obsessed with social media & making good clips than making our lives affordable, our wages higher, giving us healthcare.”“Americans died in this war,” noted communications strategist and political analyst Melik Abdul. “Please stop disrespecting them by comparing the circumstances surrounding their deaths to vacuuming algae. Stick with what you do best and leave your military fantasies out of it. It’s lazy and childish.” “What purpose does lying serve America?” asked another critic. “Anyone can view the live feed, and see the pool is still green and very much NOT clear. The entire pool is still green, with a couple tiny spots clear, but refilling with Algae as noted from two days ago to this morning the entire edge is refilled with green.”“Comparing the algae in the reflecting pool after its $14.2 million fraud, waste, and abuse paint job to Iran’s navy isn’t the flex the Department of Interior seems to think it is,” wrote U.S. Air Force Colonel (Ret.) Moe Davis.“This is an actual U.S. government account spewing deceptive propaganda comparing Trump’s failed Reflecting Pool renovation to his failed Iran War and Memorandum of Understanding,” wrote another critic.Not all remarks were critical. U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) responded to the Interior Dept.’s post by writing: “This warms my heart.”
A Fox Business segment on Thursday morning devolved into shouting as anchor Maria Bartiromo tried to talk over the objections of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to certain provisions of the SAVE America Act, the controversial Trump-backed legislation that would put extreme new restrictions on voting rights and effectively give the Department of Homeland Security oversight of state voting rolls.Khanna focused on the fact that under the terms of the law, married women who had legal name changes would face significant obstacles to voting because they can't use the name on their birth certificate to verify their citizenship — but Bartiromo, who is known for embracing conspiracy theories on air, didn't see any issue with this."Elections have been lost by a couple of votes," said Bartiromo heatedly. "So just to say, oh, [the fraud is] not a lot, that's not an answer, sir.""But people have been fearmongering that when it's not an issue in the election, and the reality is you have cases of people who are married, you want them if they've changed their name to have to prove with their birth certificate?" said Khanna."What's the problem?" Bartiromo said, talking over him. "Yes. Get your birth certificate. You can't vote if you're not an American citizen."The SAVE America Act has no path to passage in the Senate, where it cannot overcome the 60-vote cloture threshold to defeat a Democratic filibuster.Trump has spent months demanding Republicans either tack the bill onto some other must-pass measure or do away with the filibuster entirely to get it through, neither of which has support from the Senate GOP. The disagreement has caused a growing rift between Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD).Privately, a number of Republicans are sick of debating the legislation and want Trump to let them move on from it.
Senator Ted Budd (R-NC) says President Trump's push to attach the Save America Act to a FISA extension may make both bills harder to pass. Budd also says he is "skeptical" of Trump's Iran memorandum but applauds the administration for pursuing diplomacy with a "difficult" negotiating partner. He speaks with Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz on the late edition of Bloomberg's "Balance of Power." (Source: Bloomberg)