May 24, 2017 – Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said that poverty was “a state of mind.” The former neurosurgeon, now in charge of programs responsible for low-income housing, had previously said that low-income housing should not be a “comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here.’”
May 12, 2020 – During a pandemic that had killed tens of thousands of Americans, Trump took the time to promote a conspiracy theory that suggested that Joe Scarborough of MSNBC committed murder. “When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Did he get away with murder? Some people think so.”
May 26, 2020 – Trump continued to spread a conspiracy theory that Joe Scarborough had committed murder, this time at a press conference in the Rose Garden. Florida police had ruled there was no sign of foul play in the 2001 death of Lori Klausutis, who died when hitting her head in a fall after a heart attack. However, Trump said, “It’s certainly a very suspicious situation. Very sad, very sad and very suspicious.”
May 17, 2017 – Before Donald Trump hired Michael Flynn as national security adviser, Flynn had told President Trump that he was under investigation for remunerated lobbying on behalf of the Turkish government. Trump appointed him anyway.
May 19, 2017 – Four months after his inauguration, almost 700 positions still remained empty at the Center for Disease Control. The vacancies appeared at every level—from administrative roles to scientific advisers to director-level positions.
May 1, 2017 – In a Sirius Radio interview, Donald Trump praised Andrew Jackson as having “a big heart.” Andrew Jackson infamously enacted the Trail of Tears, which forced 17,000 Cherokees to walk across the country and resulted in thousands of deaths. Trump also claimed, “had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War.” He continued, “But why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
May 12, 2017 – Donald Trump shared highly classified information with the Russian foreign minister and Russian ambassador at a WH meeting. The disclosure jeopardized the identity of a source that had infiltrated the Islamic State—an extremely sensitive piece of information. Trump had, “revealed more information to the Russian Ambassador than we’ve shared with our own allies,” said a US official in The Washington Post.
May 6, 2017 – Nicole Kushner Meyer, the sister of White House adviser and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, solicited investments from Chinese business owners by promising American visas in return. An ad for her event in China read, “Invest $500,000 and immigrate to the United States.”
May 29, 2020 – Grief-stricken and angry, people in Minneapolis took to the streets to protest the killing of George Floyd. Trump responded by calling protesters “THUGS,” a racially loaded term. For the second time in a week, Twitter attached a warning label to his tweet, in which the president seemed to condone violence, writing, “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
May 31, 2016 – Donald Trump attacked Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge who presided over the Trump University fraud case, saying that Curiel’s assignment to the case represented "an absolute conflict because the judge was “of Mexican heritage.” “I’m building a wall,” said Trump, “It’s an inherent conflict of interest.”
May 30, 2020 – Trump condemned people across the country who protested the killing of George Floyd, threatening them with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.” In a tweet he wrote, “Tonight, I understand, is MAGA NIGHT AT THE WHITE HOUSE???” He later suggested he didn’t mean to incite any violence. “I was just asking,” he said. “By the way, they love African-American people. They love black people.”
May 29, 2017 – CIA Director Mike Pompeo said top-secret daily briefings must be short and filled with “killer graphics” to hold the attention of President Trump.
April 30, 2017 – Donald Trump invited Philippines authoritarian Rodrigo Duterte to visit the White House. Duterte’s regime had carried out extrajudicial killings of drug users and drug dealers, garnering global condemnation. As of January 2018, Human Rights Watch had counted over 12,000 such murders’. The two leaders met in November, during which time Trump reported the pair had a “great relationship.”
May 3, 2020 – COVID death toll could reach 100,000, Trump said during a Fox broadcast from the Lincoln Memorial--twice what he predicted two weeks earlier. He said the country should still reopen its economy, called predecessors “foolish” and “stupid,” and boasted he had “done more than any other president in history.”
Pointing to Lincoln: “They always said nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”
May 2, 2017 – Donald Trump referred to the system of checks and balances between the legislative and executive branches as an “archaic” system. He followed this statement by claiming, “Maybe at some point we’ll have to take those rules on, because, for the good of the nation, things are going to have to be different.”
May 18, 2017 – Reuters reported the Trump campaign had at least 18 undisclosed contacts with Russian state officials or individuals with Kremlin ties during the final months of the 2016 election. Six of these 18 unreported contacts were direct calls to Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States.
April 30, 2020 – Trump administration officials put pressure on U.S. spy agencies to dig up evidence that the coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China — a theory that was widely discredited. The strategy was part of Trump’s attempt to blame China for what he continued to call the “Chinese virus.”
May 14, 2020 – Perchlorate, a toxic chemical compound used in rocket fuel, has been found to contaminate water, causing fetal and infant brain damage. The Obama administration planned to regulate the chemical, but the Environmental Protection Agency, led by Trump’s appointee Andrew Wheeler, went against the decision, saying that the regulation was “not in the public interest.”
May 12, 2017 – The Environmental Protection Agency announced it would withdraw mining restrictions on Alaska’s headwaters, opening the door to a major mining facility in the area. This reversal came after an EPA study concluded the mine could decimate salmon populations in the area, and thereby harm native Alaskans whose culture depended heavily on salmon.
April 27, 2020 – Trump ignored at least a dozen classified briefings in January and February which called the coronavirus an imminent threat. Officials said, on the condition of anonymity, that Trump seldom reads or listens to an oral summary of the President’s Daily Brief.
May 12, 2017 – Morgan Lewis Tax Partners reviewed ten years of Donald Trump’s tax returns and reported that, with “a few exceptions,” he had no financial ties with Russia. After investigation of Morgan Lewis, the Guardian found the tax firm had been named Russia Law Firm of the Year by an industry publication which ranks law firms by region.
April 24, 2017 – Donald Trump ordered White House aides to draft a tax plan that slashed the corporate tax rate to 15 percent. Trump told his aides cutting taxes for businesses should take priority over decreasing the federal deficit.
April 22, 2020 – Dr. Rick Bright, who headed the agency to develop a coronavirus vaccine, cast doubts on whether hydroxychloroquine could prevent Covid-19. Questioning the drug touted by Trump cost him his position: Bright was ousted as director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.
May 30, 2019 – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent an email to federal migrant shelters notifying them that the government would not pay for educational and recreational programs for unaccompanied minors, including English classes and legal aid.