Daily: 02/18/2019

Геращенко критикує Моґеріні та санкції ЄС: очікували більшого

В Україні очікували більшого від Європейського союзу для захисту державного суверенітету України, заявила 18 лютого перший заступник голови Верховної Ради, представник України в гуманітарній підгрупі Тристоронньої контактної групи Ірина Геращенко.

«За всієї подяки до того, що Європа підтримала через санкції суверенітет і територіальну цілісність України, ми очікували більшого в контексті захисту нашого суверенітету. І я дозволю собі це сказати, що наприклад верховний представник Європейського союзу з зовнішніх питань і безпеки пані Моґеріні багато разів була в Україні за ці роки, але вона жодного разу не була на Донбасі. Хіба є на сьогодні на європейському континенті ще хоч одна така гаряча точка і чи можна в брюссельських кабінетах дискутувати на тему Донбасу, не бачачи наслідки «руського міра» своїми очами?» – сказала Геращенко на конференції «Підсумки виконання угоди про асоціацію між Україною і Європейським союзом».

«Від Європейського союзу ми очікуємо не тільки персональних санкцій відносно тих товаришів «фсбшників», які причетні до нападу на наші кораблі в Азові, а й все-таки продовження питання секторальних санкцій», – додала Геращенко.

Санкції ЄС у відповідь на дії Росії проти України «іноді занадто незначні, іноді занадто запізнілі», заявив в інтерв’ю Радіо Свобода 18 лютого міністр закордонних справ Литви Лінас Лінкявічус.

Країни-члени ЄС досягли політичного консенсусу щодо впровадження нових санкції проти Росії, заявила верховний представник ЄС і зовнішньої політики Федеріка Моґеріні 18 лютого за підсумками засідання Ради ЄС на рівні міністрів закордонних справ. Йдеться про нові персональні санкції, пов’язані із листопадовими подіями поблизу Керченської протоки.

Російські силовики захопили 24 українських моряків і три кораблі поблизу Керченської протоки 25 листопада. Російські слідчі звинувачують українських військових у незаконному перетині кордону Росії.

Україна вважає те, що сталося, актом агресії, а своїх військових, яких утримують у московських слідчих ізоляторах «Лефортово» і «Матроська тиша», військовополоненими. За Женевською конвенцією про військовополонених, вони повинні бути негайно звільнені, заявляють у Києві.

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Trump the Pundit Handicaps 2020 Democratic Contenders

Kamala Harris had the best campaign roll-out. Amy Klobuchar’s snowy debut showed grit. Elizabeth Warren’s opening campaign video was a bit odd. Take it from an unlikely armchair pundit sizing up the 2020 Democratic field: President Donald Trump.

In tweets, public remarks and private conversations, Trump is making clear he is closely following the campaign to challenge him on the ballot. Facing no serious primary opponent of his own — at least so far — Trump is establishing himself as an in-their-face observer of the Democratic Party’s nominating process — and no will be surprised to find that he’s not being coy about weighing in.

Presidents traditionally ignore their potential opponents as long as possible to maintain their status as an incumbent floating above the contenders who are auditioning for a job they already inhabit.

Not Trump. He’s eager to shape the debate, sow discord and help position himself for the general election. It’s just one more norm to shatter, and a risky bet that his acerbic politics will work to his advantage once again.

This is the president whose 240-character blasts and penchant for insults made mincemeat of his 2016 Republican rivals. And Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager, said the president aims to use Twitter again this time to “define his potential opponent and impact the Democrat primary debate.”

 

 But often Trump’s commentary reflects a peculiar sense of disengagement from the events of the day, as though he were a panelist on the cable news shows he records and watches, rather than their prime subject of discussion. He puts the armchair in armchair punditry. In an interview with The New York Times, Trump assessed Harris’ campaign like a talk show regular, declaring her opening moves as having a “better crowd, better enthusiasm” than the other Democrats.

Crowd size was also at play last week when he held a rally in El Paso, Texas, that was countered a few blocks away by one led by former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a potential 2020 candidate.

“So we have let’s say 35,000 people tonight, and he has 200 people, 300 people,” Trump observed, wildly exaggerating both numbers. “Not too good. In fact, what I would do is, I would say, that may be the end of his presidential bid.”

When Sen. Klobuchar announced her candidacy on a frigid day in her home state of Minnesota, Trump anointed her with a nickname of sorts, and a benign one at that: “By the end of her speech she looked like a Snowmanlwoman]!”

Inside the West Wing and in conversations with outside allies, Trump has been workshopping other attempts to imprint his new adversaries with lasting labels, according to two people on whom the president has tested out the nicknames. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with the president. He is also testing out lines of attack in public rallies, exploring vulnerabilities he could use against them should they advance to the general election.

No candidate has drawn more commentary and criticism from Trump than Sen. Warren, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat. Warren’s past claims of Native American heritage prompted Trump to brand her “Pocahontas” and he has shown no qualms about deploying racially charged barbs harking back to some of the nation’s darkest abuses.

Wading into a Twitter frenzy over an Instagram video Warren posted after she announced her exploratory committee while sharing a beer with her husband at their kitchen table, Trump jeered: “Best line in the Elizabeth Warren beer catastrophe is, to her husband, `Thank you for being here. I’m glad you’re here’ It’s their house, he’s supposed to be there!”

“If Elizabeth Warren, often referred to by me as Pocahontas, did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash!” Trump tweeted.

Even in the midst of the partial government shutdown, those tweets mocking Warren were widely joked about by White House staff weary from the protracted closure, according to one aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations. The person said the president repeatedly ridiculed Warren’s video in private conversations with aides and outside advisers.

Attention from Trump can drive up fundraising and elevate a candidate above a crowded field. But responding to attacks also distracts from a candidate’s message.

Trump’s rivals in the 2016 GOP primary learned that lesson as he bedeviled them with name-calling. Trump goaded Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida into making a thinly veiled insult of his manhood that quickly backfired, and weeks later he sucked Texas Sen. Ted Cruz into a brutal back-and-forth about an insult he had leveled at Cruz’s wife.

“The president has an ability to use social media to define his opponents and influence the primary debate in a way no sitting president before him has,” said former White House spokesman Raj Shah. “I expect him to take full advantage.”

On Friday, hours after declaring a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump tweeted a video made by a supporter that featured the president’s Democratic critics in Congress. Harris, Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker were shown sitting dourly during the State of the Union address, set to the R.E.M. ballad “Everybody Hurts.”

The mocking video may have been taken down later in the day after a copyright complaint by the band, and re-cut using Trump-supporter Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” But the message to Trump’s would-be 2020 rivals, and people girding for another wild presidential cycle, remained anchored to the lyrics of that R.E.M. song: “Hold on.”

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У Києві суд продовжив арешт екс-голові МОЗ анексованого Криму, обвинуваченому в держраді

Дніпровський районний суд Києва 18 лютого продовжив на два місяці арешт екс-міністрові охорони здоров’я анексованого Криму Петру Михальчевському, обвинуваченому в державній зраді і сепаратизмі.

Як повідомляє кореспондент проекту Радіо Свобода Крим.Реалії, Михальчевський перебуватиме в СІЗО до 18 квітня.

Наступне засідання суду призначене на 28 лютого.

З 8 січня 2018 року Петро Михальчевський перебуває під вартою: спочатку він утримувався в СІЗО Херсона, влітку його перевезли в київський ізолятор.

У червні розслідування у справі екс-міністра було завершене, зараз його справу розглядає Дніпровський районний суд Києва.

Петро Михальчевський обіймав посаду міністра охорони здоров’я Криму з 27 лютого по 10 червня 2014 року в уряді, підконтрольному Росії. Прокуратура АРК звинувачує його за статтями «посягання на територіальну цілісність» і «державна зрада».

Читайте також: «Останній дзвінок для Аксьонова»: як затримували і судили кримських чиновників у 2018 році

Сам Михальчевський визнає, що працював міністром охорони здоров’я в підконтрольному Кремлю уряді анексованого Криму, але не вважає це держзрадою. Він обґрунтовує це тим, що його обирала на посаду Верховна Рада АРК відповідно до законодавства України.

5 липня 2018 року віце-спікер України Ірина Геращенко заявила, що Київ готовий обміняти Михальчевський на українських ув’язнених, яких утримують у російських СІЗО і колоніях. У відповідь сам екс-міністр заявив, що він проти участі в такому обміні.

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Trump Lashes Out at Officials Who Discussed Removing Him

U.S. President Donald Trump suggested Monday that key law enforcement officials engaged in “treasonous” activity when they considered invoking a constitutional amendment in 2017 to remove him from office while opening an obstruction of justice investigation against him.

Trump, from his oceanfront Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, lashed out at former acting Federal Bureau of Investigation director Andrew McCabe, who told the CBS News show 60 Minutes Sunday night that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed employing the 25th Amendment to the Constitution allowing a vice president and a majority of the 15 Cabinet members to declare a president incapable of handling the duties of the presidency, making the vice president the acting president.

McCabe said a “crime may have been committed” when Trump fired then FBI chief James Comey in May 2017 at the time Comey was heading the agency’s investigation into Trump’s campaign ties to Russia during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Days later, Trump said he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he decided to oust Comey.

McCabe, himself later fired after 21 years at the FBI, said, “And the idea is, if the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the FBI to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of Russia’s malign activity and possibly in support of his campaign, as a counterintelligence investigator you have to ask yourself, ‘Why would a president of the United States do that?'”

He added: “So all those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder is there an inappropriate relationship, a connection between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia?”

McCabe said Rosenstein, who is soon leaving the Justice Department, was “absolutely” onboard with the obstruction and counterintelligence investigations of Trump. Nothing came of the discussions about invoking the constitutional amendment.

Days after Comey’s firing, Rosenstein named Robert Mueller, himself a former FBI director, as special counsel to take over the Russia investigation. Rosenstein had assumed control of the Russia investigation because then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had removed himself from oversight because of his own discussions during the election campaign with Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s former ambassador to the U.S. Sessions’s recusal from oversight of the probe eventually led Trump to fire him last year.

“Wow, so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe,” Trump said on Twitter. “He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged. He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught.” 

​Trump added, “There is a lot of explaining to do to the millions of people who had just elected a president who they really like and who has done a great job for them with the Military, Vets, Economy and so much more. This was the illegal and treasonous “insurance policy” in full action!” 

​McCabe said that Trump’s request early in his administration to Comey that he drop the FBI’s investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his discussions with Kislyak also contributed to the FBI’s suspicion of Trump’s actions.

“Put together, these circumstances were articulable facts that indicated that a crime may have been committed,” McCabe said. “The president may have been engaged in obstruction of justice in the firing of Jim Comey.”

McCabe said Rosenstein at one point offered to wear a wire to a White House meeting with Trump to document their conversations. McCabe said Rosenstein’s comment was made in a conversation about Comey’s firing, but the Justice Department said last year the comment was sarcastic in nature, not serious.

McCabe was fired last year by Sessions, a day short of gaining full retirement benefits. The Justice Department said he was dismissed because he misled investigators during an internal probe of a disclosure about an investigation to the Wall Street Journal, a claim McCabe rejected.

“I believe I was fired because I opened a case against the president of the United States,” he said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is one of Trump’s staunchest supporters, said Sunday he plans to open an investigation into McCabe’s claims there was a discussion of trying to remove Trump from office by invoking the constitutional amendment. 

“The deputy attorney general denies it,” Graham said. “We will have a hearing about who’s telling the truth, what actually happened.”

Graham added, “We’re a democracy. People enforce the law — can’t take it into their own hands. And was this an attempted bureaucratic coup? I don’t know.”

Mueller is 21 months into his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the Trump campaign links to Russia and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe.

He has won convictions for various offenses against five key officials in Trump’s orbit, including Flynn, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, former foreign affairs adviser George Papadopoulos and former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, while indicting longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone. 

Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion with Russia during the campaign or that he obstructed justice.

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‘Digital Gangsters’: UK Wants Tougher Rules for Facebook

British lawmakers issued a scathing report Monday that calls for tougher rules on Facebook to keep it from acting like “digital gangsters” and intentionally violating data privacy and competition laws.

The report on fake news and disinformation on social media sites followed an 18-month investigation by Parliament’s influential media committee. The committee recommended that social media sites should have to follow a mandatory code of ethics overseen by an independent regulator to better control harmful or illegal content.

 

The report called out Facebook in particular, saying that the site’s structure seems to be designed to “conceal knowledge of and responsibility for specific decisions.”

 

“It is evident that Facebook intentionally and knowingly violated both data privacy and anti-competition laws,” the report states. It also accuses CEO Mark Zuckerberg of showing contempt for the U.K. Parliament by declining numerous invitations to appear before the committee.

“Companies like Facebook should not be allowed to behave like ‘digital gangsters’ in the online world, considering themselves to be ahead of and beyond the law,” the report added.

 

U.K. parliamentary committee reports are intended to influence government policy, but are not binding. The committee said it hopes its conclusions will be considered when the government reviews its competition powers in April.

 

And while the U.K. is part of the 28-country European Union, it is due to leave the bloc in late March, so it is unclear whether any regulatory decisions it takes could influence those of the EU.

 

Facebook said it shared “the committee’s concerns about false news and election integrity” and was open to “meaningful regulation.”

 

“While we still have more to do, we are not the same company we were a year ago,” said Facebook’s U.K. public policy manager, Karim Palant.

 

“We have tripled the size of the team working to detect and protect users from bad content to 30,000 people and invested heavily in machine learning, artificial intelligence and computer vision technology to help prevent this type of abuse.”

 

Facebook and other internet companies have been facing increased scrutiny over how they handle user data and have come under fire for not doing enough to stop misuse of their platforms by groups trying to sway elections.

 

The report echoes and expands upon an interim report with similar findings issued by the committee in July . And in December , a trove of documents released by the committee offered evidence that the social network had used its enormous trove of user data as a competitive weapon, often in ways designed to keep its users in the dark.

Facebook faced its biggest privacy scandal last year when Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British political data-mining firm that worked for the 2016 Donald Trump campaign, accessed the private information of up to 87 million users.

 

 

 

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Barred from Venezuela, European Lawmakers Call for Action

Conservative European lawmakers who were barred from entering Venezuela this weekend are urging the European Union’s top diplomat to suspend contacts with Nicolas Maduro’s government.

 

Esteban Gonzalez Pons, the head of the European Popular Party parliamentary group, is also calling for European sanctions against Venezuela’s foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, who had ordered that the lawmakers should be barred on the grounds that they were conspiring against the government.

The five visitors were invited by the opposition-led congress led by Juan Guaido, whom the European Parliament and a majority of the EU’s members recognize as Venezuela’s interim leader.

Speaking to reporters in Madrid on Monday after returning from Caracas, Gonzalez Pons said that the EU’s foreign affairs commissioner, Federica Mogherini, should cancel the International Group of Contact that seeks talks in Venezuela.

 

He also called for the bloc’s members to oust Maduro’s ambassadors, and he vowed to return to Venezuela on Saturday.

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China Seizes $1.5 Billion in Online Lending Crackdown

Chinese police have investigated 380 online lenders and frozen $1.5 billion in assets following an avalanche of scandals in the huge but lightly regulated industry, the government announced Monday.

Beijing allowed a private finance industry to flourish in order to supply credit to entrepreneurs and households that aren’t served by the state-run banking system. But that threatens to become a liability for the ruling Communist Party after bankruptcies and fraud cases prompted protests and complaints of official indifference to small investors.

 

The police ministry said it launched the investigation because person-to-person, or P2P, lending was increasingly risky and rife with complaints about fraud, mismanagement and waste.

 

The ministry gave no details of arrests but said more than 100 executives were being sought by investigators and some had fled abroad. It said authorities seized or froze 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) but gave no indication how much might be returned to depositors.

 

Police say some lenders and investment vehicles were brazenly fraudulent, while others collapsed after inexperienced founders failed to manage risk.

 

Monday’s statement said P2P lenders were investigated for complaints including wasting money, reporting phony investment plans and using illegal tactics to raise money.

 

Lending through online platforms grew by triple digits annually until 2017 when regulators tightened controls.

 

Depositors lent 1.9 trillion yuan ($280 billion) last year, but that was down by 50 percent from 2017, according to the Shenzhen Qiancheng Internet Finance Research Institute.

 

The outstanding loan balance stood at 1.2 trillion yuan ($177 billion) at the end of 2018, down 25 percent from a year earlier, according to Diyi Wangdai, a web site that reports on the industry.

 

P2P lenders are part of a privately run Chinese finance industry the national bank regulator estimated in 2015 had grown to $1.5 trillion.

 

The internet has helped financial platforms attract money from financial novices with little knowledge of the risks involved.

 

Many lend to factories and retailers or invest in restaurants, car washes and other businesses. But inexperience and poor risk control means a downturn in business conditions can bankrupt them.

 

Finance as a whole has come under tougher scrutiny after a 2015 plunge in stock prices led to accusations of insider trading and other offenses.

 

In one of China’s biggest financial scams, authorities say depositors lost 50 billion yuan ($7.7 billion) in online lender Ezubo before it was seized by regulators in 2015.

 

The founder and his brother were sentenced to life in prison in 2017.

 

 

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Парламент Великобританії виявив порушення в роботі Facebook

Соціальна мережа Facebook навмисно порушила антимонопольне законодавство і закон про захист персональних даних користувачів Великобританії. Такого висновку дійшла Палата громад британського парламенту за підсумками перевірки діяльності Facebook.

Перевірка тривала півтора року.

У доповіді зазначається, що Facebook, зокрема, використовував інструменти, за допомогою яких перехоплював настройки конфіденційності користувачів. Також виявилося, що деякі керівники компанії навмисне не інформували Лондон про ймовірне втручання Росії у вибори в іноземних державах.

У доповіді мовиться, що іноземні державні діячі впливали на результат референдумів про незалежність Шотландії в 2014 році і стосовно Brexit в 2016 році.

Доповідь не має юридичної сили. Однак Палата громад запропонувала розробити законодавство, яке дозволить певному регулятору контролювати галузь інформаційних технологій.

В кінці 2018 британський парламент оприлюднив понад 200 сторінок внутрішніх документів компанії Facebook. З них випливає, що в 2012 році глава корпорації Марк Цукерберг висловлював упевненість в тому, що за жодних обставин не зіткнеться з витоком даних користувачів від одного розробника до іншого. Через три роки дані 87 мільйонів акаунтів незаконно опинилися в розпорядженні компанії Cambridge Analytica. Керівництво соцмережі змушене було визнати, що не потурбувалося про те, щоб запобігти її використання з метою втручання у вибори.

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Затриманих у Нідерландах кореспондентку «Новой газеты» і співробітницю «Меморіалу» відпустили

Затриманих в аеропорту столиці Нідерландів Амстердама кореспондентку російської «Новой газеты» Олену Мілашину та співробітницю правозахисного центру «Меморіал» Мілану Бахаєву відпустили, повідомила «Новая газета».

Мілашина зазначила, що причина її затримання не встановлена, запитань про ціль перебування їй не ставили.

«Затримання журналістів не було. Те, що мало місце бути, – це з’ясування деталей, пов’язаних з поїздкою (мета поїздки, дата і час зворотного квитка). Коли подорожньому не вдається відповісти на питання відразу біля прикордонної стійки, його просять пройти в приміщення», – пояснив прес-секретар нідерландської прикордонної поліції Стівен Комба.

«Новая газета» зазначила, що жінки прилетіли до Амстердама на зустріч із правозахисниками, які досліджують проблему сирійських біженців.

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Trump: US Trade Talks with China Making ‘Big Progress’

President Donald Trump said Sunday “big progress” is being made in U.S. trade talks with China on what he calls “so many different fronts.”

“Our country has such fantastic potential for future growth and greatness on an even higher level,” the president tweeted.

Trump said last week he might put off the March 1 deadline to increase tariffs on China if a trade deal is close.

But a China trade expert who served in the Obama administration says he has only seen “incremental progress” toward a trade deal with China.

“The realistic approach is that the deadline gets extended and the negotiations possibly go into the end of this year, I would suspect,” former Assistant Trade representative for China Jeff Moon tells VOA.

Moon believes negotiators on both sides are failing to address the real reason the U.S. imposed stiff sanctions on China in the first place — allegations that it is stealing U.S. intellectual property, and China’s demands that U.S. firms turn over trade secrets if they want to keep doing business in China.

“It’s not possible to resolve those issues in two weeks. Those are very complex issues that require longer talks…so a quick settlement is not a good settlement. It just glosses things over,” Moon said.

He forecast things getting “messy” over the long run if those matters are not settled.

He also said Trump has “muddied” the negotiations by letting politics creep into the trade talks with such issues as North Korea.

Trump has threatened to hike tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports to the U.S. from 10 to 25 percent if there is no trade deal reached by March 1.

China has accused the U.S. of violating global trade rules, saying it is preventing the Chinese economy from thriving.

Current U.S. sanctions on China were met with retaliation from Beijing by sanctions on U.S. goods.

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Trump: ‘Nothing Funny’ about Jokes Aimed at Him

Can U.S. President Donald Trump laugh at a joke at his own expense?

Not if it’s coming from NBC’s satirical Saturday Night Live show and Trump impersonator Alec Baldwin, who has periodically contorted his face and snarled his way to fame mocking the 45th president.

On Saturday night Baldwin was jabbing at Trump again, a day after Trump declared a national emergency to divert money in the government’s budget to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border without congressional authorization.

“You all see why I gotta fake this emergency, right? I have to because I want to,” Baldwin said as the sketch show opened. “It’s really simple.

We have a problem. Drugs are coming into this country through no wall.”

But Baldwin as Trump said, “Wall works, wall makes safe. You don’t have to be smart to understand that  in fact it’s even easier to understand if you’re not that smart.”

The fake president mimicked Trump’s singsong voice during part of his Friday news conference announcing the national emergency.

“I’ll immediately be sued and the ruling will not go in my favor and then it will end up in the Supreme Court and then I’ll call my buddy [Brett] Kavanaugh (a justice appointed by Trump) and I’ll say, It’s time to repay the Donny,’ and he’ll say, new phone, who dis?'” Baldwin joked.

But by then, Baldwin-as-Trump said, a report by special counsel Robert Mueller, who has been investigating links between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, “will be released, crumbling my house of cards and I can plead insanity and do a few months in the puzzle factory and my personal hell of playing president will finally be over.”

The show also lampooned the results of Trump’s recent annual physical exam.

“I’m still standing 6-7, 185 pounds — shredded,” Baldwin said, although Trump actually is several centimeters shorter and weighs more than 110 kilograms, defined by U.S. health standards as obese.

Trump gave the sketch and the show a thumbs down.

“Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!” Trump said on Twitter. “Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!”

“THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” he tweeted minutes later.

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