Weekly Review
Trump declared that he would initiate an investigation of widespread voter fraud, which a five-year Bush Administration investigation found not to exist, and then claimed that the fraud was perpetuated by “illegals,” “dead people,” and people registered to vote in more than one state, a category that includes several members of his Cabinet, his son-in-law, at least one of his children, and the man who alerted him to the purported fraud in the first place. Trump released a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day that did not mention Jewish people, and Brunhilde Pomsel, Joseph Goebbels’s secretary, who claimed she “knew nothing” about the Holocaust until after the war, died at the age of 106. Read more...
At airports across the country, tens of thousands of Americans protested an executive action signed by President Donald Trump that temporarily barred citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States.[1][2] On Twitter, Trump referred to the executive action as a “ban,” and elsewhere he stated that it was “not a Muslim ban.”[3][4] Immigration officials ignored a federal judge’s injunction against the ban, Whitehouse.gov briefly dropped the judiciary from its list of branches of government, and Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, who once self-identified as a Leninist and said he wished to “destroy the state,” was made a member of the National Security Council.[5][6][7][8] Trump revived the Dakota Access and Keystone XL Pipeline projects, ordered the construction of a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico, withdrew funding for sanctuary cities and global organizations that provide abortion counseling or referrals, and changed the curtains in the Oval Office from crimson to gold.[9][10][11] Trump declared that he would initiate an investigation of widespread voter fraud, which a five-year Bush Administration investigation found not to exist, and then claimed that the fraud was perpetuated by “illegals,” “dead people,” and people registered to vote in more than one state, a category that includes several members of his Cabinet, his son-in-law, at least one of his children, and the man who alerted him to the purported fraud in the first place.[12][13][14][15] Trump released a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day that did not mention Jewish people, and Brunhilde Pomsel, Joseph Goebbels’s secretary, who claimed she “knew nothing” about the Holocaust until after the war, died at the age of 106.[16][17]
At the Sundance Film Festival, Malia Obama, the daughter of former president Barack Obama, attended a protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and in Manhattan, Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former president Bill Clinton, attended a protest against the travel ban.[18][19] Bannon told the press to “keep its mouth shut,” and Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said she “ripped a new one” to hosts of cable news.[20][21] The clothing retailer Wet Seal announced plans to close all of its stores, a Navy SEAL killed in an antiterror operation in Yemen became the first combat death of Trump’s presidency, and Trump referred to the crowd at his inauguration as a “tremendous sea of love.”[22][23][24] The president of Nitrofreeze Cryogenic Solutions was arrested for allegedly assaulting an airport worker wearing a hijab in a Delta lounge at John F. Kennedy Airport.[25] “Are you fucking sleeping? Are you praying?” the man, Robin Rhodes, is said to have asked the employee, Rabeeya Khan, while kicking her. “Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you.”[26] A Trump supporter opened fire on a mosque in Quebec City, killing five worshippers.[27]
Oleg Erovinkin, an aide to the head of Rosneft, a Russian petroleum company, and a reported source for a dossier assembled by an MI6 spy that suggested Trump would receive 19 percent of Rosneft in exchange for removing sanctions against Russia, was found dead in the back of his car.[28 It was reported that an unknown party in the Cayman Islands had recently received 19.5 percent of Rosneft, and that scientists were naming the individual whale sharks that frequent Mafia Island.[29][30] Twenty million dollars in cash was found under a mattress in Massachusetts, and the former president of Gambia fled the country with $11.4 million in stolen government funds.[31][32] Trump conducted his first official meeting with a foreign leader, reaffirming to British prime minister Theresa May the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, then grabbing her hand as they walked down a ramp because Trump reportedly suffers from a fear of stairs and slopes.[33] A skier in Utah fell 150 feet off a cliff and survived, and the last man to walk on the moon died.[34][35]
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