Trump criticizes sermon asking him to show ‘mercy’ toward LGBTQ people, immigrants
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(WASHINGTON) — Following a traditional inaugural prayer service at Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday, during which an Episcopal bishop called on President Donald Trump to show “mercy” toward LGBTQ people and immigrants, he told reporters the sermon “wasn’t too exciting” and added he “didn’t think it was a good service.”
The National Prayer Service was one of several events presidents attend around being sworn in.
“What did you think? Did you like it? Did you find it exciting? Not too exciting, was it? I didn’t think it was a good service, no,” Trump said to reporters.
In her sermon, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde addressed Trump directly from the pulpit.
“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” Budde said.
“They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals,” she continued. “They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”
Throughout the sermon, Trump, in the front pew, had a stoic expression, flipping through his program and scanning the room.
He looked up only during the hymns, sometimes moving his head to the music. Melania Trump was seen stifling a yawn and shifting around to stay alert.
A majority of Trump family members were seated behind the Trumps.
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler argued Sunday that Rep. Mike Johnson should be reelected as speaker of the House despite Republican infighting on whether he should keep the position after how he handled a spending bill that prevented a government shutdown last week.
“Mike Johnson inherited a disaster when [former Rep.] Matt Gaetz and several of my colleagues teamed up with 208 Democrats to remove Kevin McCarthy, which will go down as the single stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in politics,” the New York lawmaker told ABC’s “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.
“With that said, removing Mike Johnson would equally be as stupid. The fact is that these folks are playing with fire, and if they think they’re somehow going to get a more conservative speaker, they’re kidding themselves,” he said, pointing out that Johnson was successful in keeping a Republican majority in the House.
Republicans are expected to hold 219 seats when the new Congress convenes on Friday. Electing the speaker of the House will be the first order of business, and the House cannot move on to other business until that happens. If all Democrats are present and vote against Johnson, the Louisiana Republican can only afford to lose one Republican vote. One Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, has already said he will not support Johnson while other GOP hardliners have yet to commit to backing him.
“I’m not going to bend to their will,” Lawler said of his hardline colleagues. “So if they think somehow that they are going to end up in a stronger position by removing Mike Johnson, they’re not.”
Republicans have also been feuding over H-1B work visas, which allow highly skilled foreign workers into the Unites States to fill specialty occupations.
Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” leaders, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, support increasing the amount of the visas awarded annually, arguing they will bring more talent into the country. But other Trump supporters say those job opportunities should be for Americans.
In a post on X this week, Musk said “OF COURSE my companies and I would prefer to hire Americans and we DO, as that is MUCH easier than going through the incredibly painful and slow work visa process. HOWEVER, there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America.”
Ramaswamy criticized the American workforce, writing on X that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.”
After Musk went after critics of his position in a series of X posts, writing at one point, “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon called him a “toddler.”
Lawler voiced his support for the H-1B program, telling Karl that it is critical to the economy.
“As President Trump said, it’s a program he’s used over the years for his businesses, and it’s something that has obviously been beneficial to our economy,” he said. “The United States has been built on immigration and it is vital to the continued growth within our economy.”
Pressed by Karl about why some Trump supporters are strongly against the visas, Lawler expressed his desire for Americans to fill needed jobs, “but the fact is, India is producing a significant number more of engineers than we are. So it’s both a function of fixing our education system and having a legal immigration system that works.”
“You cannot have no immigration at all. It will cripple the economy long-term,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump has shown no qualms about making or sticking by picks for his Cabinet no matter the baggage they carry — even some accused of sexual assault.
It’s a far cry from the days when much smaller-scale scandals, such as marijuana use or hiring an undocumented worker as a nanny, sunk candidates put forward by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, experts said.
“We’re in untested waters,” Jonathan Hanson, a political scientist and lecturer in statistics at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, told ABC News.
Hanson and other experts said the public has become less concerned about some indiscretions, such as minor and one-time drug and alcohol arrests. Ronald Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Douglas Ginsburg admitting to smoking pot when he was younger would never have gotten much negative blowback today, Hanson said.
Two of Bill Clinton’s picks for attorney general — Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood — both withdrew amid questions over their hiring immigrants in the country illegally as babysitters. Former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle — Clinton’s choice for health and human services secretary — had to bow out after it was revealed he didn’t pay taxes for the use of a car and driver.
“It’s true that people’s standards have shifted, but the question is, when does it really cross a line?” Hanson said.
Trump’s picks bring the debate to a new level, he argued.
Trump himself campaigned in the shadow of his hush money felony criminal conviction and after a Manhattan civil jury found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations in both cases.
Matt Gaetz was already a controversial figure before his nomination while under a House Ethics Committee investigation for alleged sexual abuse and illicit drug use.
The former Florida congressman has denied all the allegations and the investigations by the Justice Department ended with no charges being brought and the House Ethics Committee ended when Gaetz resigned from his seat.
Trump’s pick to head the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, paid a woman who alleged he had sexually assaulted her in 2017, an accusation he denied and for which he was not charged.
The New York Times published an email Friday that Hegseth’s mother, Penelope Hegseth, sent him in 2018 in the context of his divorce from his second wife, saying he had routinely mistreated women for years.
“I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote in the message, according to the Times.
She said she later apologized and told the paper that she sent the e-mail in anger, adding “I know my son. He is a good father, husband.”
The New Yorker reported Hegseth was allegedly forced to step down from two non-profits veterans’ groups that he ran due to “serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.” The magazine cited “a trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues.”
ABC News has not independently confirmed The New Yorker or The New York Times reporting.
Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, called the New Yorker piece, “outlandish claims laundered …by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate,” in a response to the magazine.
Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser, told CNN on Tuesday that the allegations in The New Yorker about Hegseth are “innuendo and gossip,” and said the Trump transition has no concerns about his pick to lead the Department of Defense.
Hegseth has said the sex assault allegation from 2017 was “fully investigated” and that he was “completely cleared” although a police report did not say that. He has avoided talking about the allegations while he met with Republican lawmakers over the last couple of weeks to garner support.
Hanson notes Trump named Gaetz and Hegseth after a majority of voters sent him back to the White House despite his own criminal indictments, including attempting to overturn the 2020 election. The sentencing for Trump’s New York conviction has been postponed indefinitely while the federal cases have been dismissed.
That, along with the Republicans taking control of Congress, Hanson said, might have motivated Trump to push forward with his controversial picks.
“It does raise the question if we are holding people to different standards than we used to,” he said. “There has been this notion to shrug it all off, thinking, ‘Everyone is corrupt. At least he’s open about it.'”
Edward Queen, a faculty member at Emory University Center for Ethics, said this thinking has been linked to what he said is growing distrust in the American political system.
“One of the consequences of the decline of trust is that everyone has done ‘it’ therefore ‘it’ doesn’t matter. And that’s disturbing,” he told ABC News.
At the same time, Hanson said, history shows the public traditionally has been against corruption, cronyism and other questionable behavior by public officials.
“There are voters in the middle who voted for Trump that would be unhappy for a vote for these troubling nominees,” Hanson said. “That will come back to hurt Republicans who may have ridden on his momentum.”
Jeff Spinner-Halev, the Kenan Eminent Professor of Political Ethics at the University of North Carolina, however, told ABC News that the general public has not kept up with the ins and outs of the confirmation process on Capitol Hill, and the outcry may not be that loud.
“It will have limited influence,” he said of the public reaction. “What will matter if a few senators are concerned about the controversies or competency of the candidate verses how much they care about the wrath of President Trump.”
The Senate must confirm each Cabinet choice, and while the GOP will have the majority, some Senate Republicans who back Trump also question whether his picks’ ethical issues make them impossible to approve, according to Hanson.
“Putting my shoes in a senator’s for a moment, they don’t want to walk the plank for a vote,” Hanson added. “If they feel that a nominee is too unpopular, they don’t want to stick their hand in the air and say ‘yes’ — but if they do, he said, they would need to weigh the consequences of looking the other way.”
He sees the fact that some GOP senators signaled Gaetz wasn’t acceptable as proof some standards still exist. For example, Gaetz withdrew his name from the nomination eight days after Trump announced it due to the increased scrutiny and more details about his scandals came to light.
Gaetz said in a social media post that his nomination process would have been “a distraction.”
“No one was really looking to defend this guy, and the message got sent to the president-elect’s team that this isn’t going to work,” Hanson said.
“I do think it is a positive sign because, at some point, lines were crossed. Some candidates are just a bridge too far, and it may be the case with some of the other appointees,” he added.
Steven Cheung, Trump’s choice for White House communications director and campaign spokesman, reiterated his claim that “voters gave President Trump a mandate to choose Cabinet nominees that reflect the will of the American people and he will continue to do so.”
“President Trump appreciates the advice and consent of Senators on Capitol Hill, but ultimately this is his administration,” he said in a statement after Gaetz withdrew.
Hanson predicted there will continue to be increased scrutiny of Trump’s Cabinet picks as Senate confirmation hearings get closer, but he warned that the opposition might have limits.
“It depends on how much fight will come from Democrats and interest groups that engage with politics. It will be interesting to see what happens because there is plenty of opportunity here for Democrats in the Senate to make a lot of noise,” he said.
“We will also be in a situation where there may be only enough clout and power to fight only the most controversial of nominees and let others pass,” he said.
Spinner-Halev said that Republican senators, in particular, may not want to cross Trump too many times and may just limit their opposition to his picks with the most baggage.
“One of the worries the Republicans will have is if a person [who is nominated] is incompetent,” he said. “The danger for the Trump administration and Republicans general is if these people are incompetent and mess up and then the public notices. This is what happened with George W. Bush and [Hurricane] Katrina where he said [FEMA Director Michael Brown] was doing a ‘heck of a job.’ That hurt him badly.”
Queen said there is a possibility that some Republican senators may put ethics before partisanship when all is said and done.
“It’s not unreasonable to assume that there are a number of senators who realize there will be consequences of their choices and their decisions that it will be bad for the country as a whole,” he said.
In the long term, Hanson said it is unclear if Trump’s selections will usher in a new norm of presidential picks who buck ethics and experience standards.
He noted that American history has shown several cycles of reform brought on by demand of a public frustrated with dysfunction and improper behavior, such as in the aftermath of the Nixon administration in the 1970s.
“Now that they see what is happening, they may be reminded what the Trump presidency was like the first time around,” he said of Americans who supported him. “There may be a bunch of people who say this is not what I voted for, and that could affect things tremendously.”
Spinner-Halev said the future will depend on how informed the public is over the next four years.
“There is a lot that happens in Washington that’s not in the public eye, and I think it’s important that the public keeps an eye on the bureaucratic ongoings,” he said.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and California Governor Gavin Newsom walked through a neighborhood impacted by the wildfires in Los Angeles County. The two were accompanied by FEMA Region 9 Administrator Bob Fenton and other FEMA staff. (FEMA Photo by Alex Hall ; Dominick Del Vecchio/Released).
(WASHINGTON) — Whether it is a hurricane, major tornado, wildfire or anything in between, disasters “don’t discriminate” in where they will be and whom they might affect, according to the outgoing top emergency manager.
“We know that these types of severe weather events, they don’t have borders, they don’t discriminate and we [at] FEMA … have the ability to make sure that anyone impacted doesn’t have the barriers to access our programs,” outgoing Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell told ABC News.
Criswell, a member of the Air National Guard for 21 years, has also been the top emergency manager in Aurora, Colorado, and in New York City.
“All disasters start and end at the local level, and our job as federal emergency managers is to enable their ability to be successful, and I’ve been in their role,” she said.
The outgoing administrator said she “never lost sight” of putting herself in the local emergency managers’ shoes and made policy changes based on that thinking.
Criswell noted she received criticism for putting “equity” into her strategic plan to run the agency but defended it, saying the agency needed a “mindset shift” to reach everyone who may be affected by a disaster.
“Having been a customer and understanding the barriers that people experience, whether that’s an individual or a small community, and being able to remove those barriers so everybody has the ability to get what they’re eligible for, was my focus with equity, and I know that there’s naysayers out there that want to say that equity is about picking and choosing winners and losers or however they want to phrase it, but that’s not what this was about,” she said. “This was about removing barriers, helping people through their toughest day in the way that the federal government was designed to do.”
Criswell said the agency is “nonpartisan” and that it should stay that way.
“The only way that we are going to be successful in helping communities recover, helping them rebuild in a way that makes them more resilient to future events, is by maintaining that level of nonpartisanship because if we don’t have it, then we’re going to also lose trust in the communities that we’re going in there to help,” she explained. “Without that trust, we’re not going to be able to help them with their immediate needs, and we’re not going to be not going to be able to help them with their long-term rebuilding.”
She said every disaster she responded to during her time as administrator was “different” and “unique,” including wildfires in Los Angeles, hurricane devastation in western North Carolina and crippling tornadoes in Arkansas.
“I think maybe what’s challenging is that every one I go to, it never got any easier,” she said. “It never got any easier to see people lose so much and want to be able to do whatever we could to help them on this road to recovery, knowing that we can only jump-start that process.”
During her time as administrator, she said she tried to meet people where they were and “could not make decisions about how to implement the response in the recovery from an office in Washington, D.C.”
Criswell said she got to know governors from across the country, both Republicans and Democrats, and saw the care they felt for their states during tragedies big and small.
“I reach out to every governor when something has happened, sometimes even small things that are happening,” she said. “When it comes to helping their communities, their people that have been impacted by natural disasters, I get to see the human side of every one of our state leaders, and they all care so deeply about the people that they were elected to serve.”
Part of the job as FEMA administrator is traveling to disaster zones, often with the president.
Just after Criswell was confirmed as administrator, a condominium complex in Surfside, Florida, collapsed. She and President Joe Biden visited the families who were affected. Criswell said loved ones and survivors were gathered in a room waiting to hear the status of their homes and family members when the president walked in.
“President Biden and the first lady came in, and he walked around and talked to every one of them, and what I saw that day — and then I saw every single disaster following that — was just the human side of how he approached these horrible events, and he didn’t walk around and just shake a hand and move on,” she said. “He sat and had meaningful conversations. He shared his own stories of personal tragedy.”
All told, Criswell said, he spent three hours meeting with and talking to victims.
“I have traveled with President Biden to more disasters than I ever expected to. And I told him — Mr. President, I never thought I’d have to see this much,” she said, adding that he’d always give a chuckle.
Criswell said FEMA will continue to have challenges in battling misinformation.
“We are in a new information environment, and we have to find ways to be more proactive, to build relationships with trusted leaders and communities that they can help be force multipliers [in] us getting the right message out,” she said, adding that it is something the agency has always had to deal with.
“The level … that we’re seeing divisiveness created through some of the information that’s going out there is just going to be something we have to face going forward, and we’re going to have to work on how do we get ahead of that and how do we find trusted voices in communities to help us get the real information out there,” she said.
Criswell said that in the end, it is all about helping people and getting the right information out to the right people.
