TV News LIES

Another desk is being vacated in the ever-churning White House communications department.

Cliff Sims, a special assistant to the president who oversees White House message strategy, is expected to take a position at the State Department as a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the coming weeks.

“Cliff worked on communications for Pompeo’s confirmation and did an outstanding job, which led to Secretary Pompeo offering him that position,” said a person close to Pompeo.

Sims was officially offered the post on Monday and is expected to begin as soon as possible, the source said. The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment on the personnel change.

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A booklet published by Melania Trump’s new campaign for children’s online safety bears an uncanny resemblance to a document released under Barack Obama’s administration.

Donald Trump’s wife gave an opening night address at the Republican National Convention in 2016 that was partly plagiarised from a speech by then first lady Michelle Obama.

Melania’s initiative, Be Best, which launched on Monday, has a page on the official White House website that said near the bottom: “Parents, click here to read Talking with Kids about Being Online, a booklet by First Lady Melania Trump and the Federal Trade Commission.”

North Korea's foreign ministry has warned Washington not to "mistake its peace-loving intentions for a sign of weakness," blasting claims that the U.S-led campaign of pressure and sanctions on the NOrth paved the way for the upcoming summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

In an interview with (North) Korean Central News Agency on Sunday, a foreign ministry spokesman said the United States has "misled public opinion by making it appear its sanctions and pressure had led to the recently adopted Panmunjom Declaration between the two Koreas revealing their intention to denuclearize the Peninsula.

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Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen gained access to roughly $774,000 through two financial transactions during the 2016 campaign, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

According to real estate records cited by the newspaper, during the campaign Cohen nearly doubled how much he could use on a credit line linked to his apartment in Manhattan. The amount rose to $245,000 as Trump’s income grew during the presidential race in February 2016.

Cohen also gained possible access to an additional $529,000 through a mortgage he co-signed with his wife for a condominium owned by her parents at Trump World Tower in late 2015, the Journal reported.

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Donald Trump’s legal team for the Russia investigation has had its share of setbacks. Most recently, lead attorney John Dowd resigned from his post, reportedly because Trump stopped listening to him. Losing Dowd didn’t just mean losing a “fierce legal mind,” it also meant losing the only lawyer on Trump’s team with security clearance.

Now, Bloomberg reports, none of Trump’s lawyers working on issues related to the Russia probe have clearance. Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal attorney and the host of Jay Sekulow Live!, replaced Dowd, but he’s still waiting to be cleared. The newest members of the team — Rudy Giuliani, Marty Raskin and Jane Raskin — haven’t been on the job long enough to get cleared themselves and none of them told Bloomberg whether they’d even sought such clearance.

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In the fourth and final Florida bellwether election since 2016, the Democratic candidate beat the Republican in a contested race, providing the best evidence yet that the GOP is in retreat heading into the midterm elections under an unpopular president.

On Tuesday, in Florida’s 114th state House District in Miami, Javier Fernandez beat Republican Andrew Vargas by about 4.1 percentage points, despite being outspent by at least 2-1 in a swing seat where voters split their tickets between both parties in the 2016 elections.

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The Supreme Court on Monday announced Justice Sonia Sotomayor will undergo shoulder-replacement surgery.

Sotomayor, 63, injured her shoulder when she fell at her home earlier this month.

The court's public information office said in a press release that "tests revealed she suffered a multipart displaced head splitting fracture of her proximal humerus," and that further consultation with specialists indicated surgery was needed.

The court said she will undergo reverse total shoulder replacement on Tuesday morning and will curtail activities for the next few weeks while she recuperates.

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