President Trump on Wednesday said he still loved the idea of a $1.8 billion fund to use taxpayer money to pay his allies who claim they have been politically persecuted, even after his administration said it was dropping the plan.<\/p>\n
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said on Tuesday that the administration was \u201cnot moving forward with the fund, period,\u201d after the plan drew enormous, bipartisan backlash.<\/p>\n
But in his first public comments since then, Mr. Trump did not disavow the politically toxic pot of money, which critics have characterized as a slush fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love it,\u201d Mr. Trump said of the fund. \u201cI think it\u2019s so important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether the fund was actually dead or merely on hold, the president said: \u201cI\u2019d have to ask the lawyers.\u201d He added: \u201cThe weaponization fund, as far as I\u2019m concerned, was a beautiful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump\u2019s comments appeared to be a way to distance himself from the decision to back away from the fund.<\/p>\n
The president then spoke in praiseworthy terms of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, chanting \u201cHang Mike Pence,\u201d defacing the halls of Congress and attacking and injuring more than 150 officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are great people that were destroyed, their families have been destroyed,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cThey went there with love.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one of his first official acts of his second term, Mr. Trump issued a sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol, issuing pardons to most of the defendants and commuting the sentences of 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia, most of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump\u2019s proposal could have enriched through taxpayer dollars those who attacked the Capitol; the prospect spurred widespread outcry among lawmakers, many of whom had fled the mob violence. In response, Republican senators blocked the advancement of a spending bill as a protest, unless the fund was killed. They moved forward with the bill<\/a> on Wednesday, around the time the president made his remarks praising the fund.<\/p>\n The president said Wednesday he thought the fund was \u201cso important.\u201d He said many people including himself had been victimized by law enforcement.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m one of them,\u201d he said. \u201cLook, they raided my house.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump on Wednesday said he still loved the idea of a $1.8 billion fund to use taxpayer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[18077,24442,128,1452,3278,9,24,63,5285,855,24434,5288,129,131,130,24443,1069,1876],"class_list":["post-254473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-18077","tag-blanche","tag-bronx","tag-donald-j","tag-federal-budget-us","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-republican-party","tag-senate","tag-storming-of-the-us-capitol-jan","tag-taxation","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-todd-attorney","tag-trump","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}