Donald Trump and the Deathly Fallout (Part 15)

[fraurosena]

Nepotism, thy name is Trump.

Trump's son-in-law to oversee government revamp

Quote

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday will announce that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will oversee a broad effort to overhaul the federal government, a White House official confirmed.

Kushner, who is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and currently serves as a senior adviser, will lead the newly formed White House Office of American Innovation to leverage business ideas and potentially privatize some government functions, the official said, confirming a Washington Post story.

"The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens," Kushner told the Post in an interview.

He will focus on veterans' care, opioid addiction, technology and data infrastructure, workforce training and infrastructure, according to the report.[...]

The announcement will come one week after Ivanka Trump received her own office in the White House along with access to classified information and a government-issued phone. Aides had said earlier she would not take on a role in her father's White House. Aides said she will collaborate with Kushner's innovation office but will not have an official role, according to the Post. [...]

The Post said the innovation team is working with key corporate executives at companies including Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Salesforce.com Inc (CRM.N), IBM Corp (IBM.N) and Tesla Inc (TSLA.O).

What? Emoluments clause? Sorry, that does not exist in the alternative reality...

[JMarie]

On ‎3‎/‎25‎/‎2017 at 11:49 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Wow, Melania is going to deign to come to DC: "Melania Trump to make a rare Washington appearance this week"

 

Another Branch Trumpvidian got his feelings hurt: "Veteran newsman Ted Koppel tells Sean Hannity he’s bad for America"

Of course Hannity blast the interview with a bunch of whiny Tweets, calling CBS "fake news" and saying the interview was edited. Um, of course it was edited, the interview was 45 minutes long and they didn't have 45 minutes for the segment. What a jerk.

Such an adult..."Trump tweets: 'Do not worry' on health care; urges followers to watch Fox News host trash Ryan"

 

Did he really think he was special enough that the entire interview would air?  To use one of his favorite words, what a snowflake.

[fraurosena]

What an incredibly petty and infantile action.

https://www.rt.com/usa/382479-sessions-action-sanctuary-citites/

Quote

Jurisdictions must certify compliance with Section 1373 before they can be eligible for DOJ grants, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told reporters at the White House on Monday. That law regulates communications between agencies and the bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Sanctuary city policies “endanger lives of every American” and violate federal law, Sessions said, adding that “this disregard for law must end.”

 

[47of74]

26 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

What an incredibly petty and infantile action.

https://www.rt.com/usa/382479-sessions-action-sanctuary-citites/

 

I sense Beauregard's calendar getting even more full of court dates in the very near future.

[Cartmann99]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Get ready for the Beltway equivalent of a rare-bird sighting: Melania Trump is expected this week in Washington, where she’s being billed as the “special guest” at the International Women of Courage awards ceremony at the State Department on Wednesday.

The Manhattan-based first lady will join Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for the event, per the invite

Heh, I need to eat something. I misread this at first as they were honoring Melania for her courage and was very confused. Eventually, I realized that she's there to represent the Trump administration, while the awards are being given out to the various recipients. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I thought this was an interesting opinion piece: "Why Trump and the GOP could fail on tax reform, too"

Quote

 

There are many lessons to be learned from the failure of the GOP health-care effort. An important one is that being a businessman, even a successful one, does not prepare you for the complexities of governing, any more than being a successful software engineer means you could easily become a great carpenter.

But President Trump, who believes that his success in real estate shows he can do anything, hasn’t given up on the idea that when you want to accomplish something in government, what you need is people who know nothing about government. So before he gets to his next complicated and tricky legislative priority — tax reform — he’s doing this:

President Trump plans to unveil a new White House office on Monday with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction — by harvesting ideas from the business world and, potentially, privatizing some government functions.

The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements

My favorite line from the article is this: “Kushner proudly notes that most of the members of his team have little-to-no political experience, hailing instead from the world of business.” Proudly! I guess the reason government often doesn’t work as well as it should is that no previous president has thought to put his inexperienced son-in-law in charge of things.

Chances are that Kushner’s effort will meet the same fate as every other “reinventing government” initiative: It’ll find some processes that don’t work well and make some recommendations, which will be only sporadically adopted, before it peters out amid frustration and neglect, leaving government stubbornly unreinvented.

In a saner world, Trump might take the health-care defeat and ask himself whether neither knowing nor caring how government and politics actually work might be a hindrance in the future. Trump never grasped that doing a deal with another real estate developer to partner on a golf course isn’t anything like getting 218 ornery members of Congress to agree on a plan to upend one-sixth of the economy. You can’t threaten to walk away (as he did), because it isn’t like there’s another country around the corner you might do your deal with instead. You have to understand what all those members of Congress want and need, and you have to grasp the details that legislators care deeply about. You can’t tell them to “forget about the little s—,” i.e., the things the bill would actually do.

Indeed, much of the failure of Trump’s presidency so far comes from the fact that so few people around him have ever worked in government before, and so many of them hold it in so much contempt. In typical style, Trump has been lashing out since the GOP health-care plan died, both at Democrats and at the House Freedom Caucus — whose votes he’ll need in the future — without taking any of the blame himself.

So what does that portend for tax reform? Trump is going to find a slightly different set of challenges and complications, but there will still be intra-Republican conflicts, and solving them will require the same kind of political skills that he has shown no evidence of possessing.

It’s important to understand that what Republicans have in mind isn’t just tax cuts. If that’s all they wanted, it wouldn’t be particularly hard, because everyone in their party loves cutting taxes, so long as the noble job-creators at the top get nearly all the benefits. (One tax plan from House Republicans would give an average tax break of $100 to those in the lowest 20 percent of taxpayers, but those in the top 0.1 percent would get a sweet $1.4 million off their tax bills.)

...

There’s a reason major tax reform happens only once every few decades: Much like health care, it’s complicated and there are competing interests that are tough to reconcile. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump is saying to himself, “Okay, so I didn’t really understand that health care stuff, but I know taxes. I’m a businessman!” But tax reform isn’t just a policy challenge (and trust me, Trump knows a lot less about tax policy than he thinks), it’s a political challenge. It requires the same kinds of skills and knowledge — particularly about how to unite a fractious caucus around a far-reaching piece of legislation — that Trump and his team just demonstrated that they lack.

So what will happen? If I had to guess, I’d say they’ll try to do comprehensive reform, it’ll be a gigantic mess, and then faced with defeat they’ll just pass some tax cuts for the wealthy and declare victory. And it will be one more demonstration that knowing how to make money in brand licensing doesn’t mean you know how to run government.

This was my favorite line: "I guess the reason government often doesn’t work as well as it should is that no previous president has thought to put his inexperienced son-in-law in charge of things."

[fraurosena]

So, there's a whole lot of infighting going on within the GOP and administration. 

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-blame-agenda-stalls-236508

Quote

With President Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda hitting the rocks as he edges toward the 100-day mark, top aides, political allies and donors are embroiled in a furious round of finger-pointing over who is at fault. [...]

Senior aides are lashing each other over their inability to stem a never-ending tide of negative stories about the president.[...]

This account of White House infighting is based on interviews with more than two dozen Trump aides, confidants and others close to his administration, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity. They described a distracting and toxic atmosphere, with warring power centers blaming one another for an ever-growing list of setbacks. The dysfunction has further paralyzed an administration struggling to deliver on its blunt promises of wholesale change.[...]

the discussions surrounding the rocky weeks leading to [the healthcare bill's] collapse generated an outpouring of ill will in the West Wing. Steve Bannon, Trump’s populist-minded chief strategist, privately singled out the more moderate Cohn for criticism, charging that he was too willing to make concessions to mainstream Republicans that repelled the hard-line House Freedom Caucus. 

Others say the fault lies with chief of staff Reince Priebus.[...]

Still others pinned blame on Jared Kushner, Trump’s politically moderate son-in-law and senior adviser.[...]

The recriminations, however, were not limited to the health care fiasco. For weeks, many staffers have expressed profound unhappiness with a communications office that has struggled to accomplish what it had set out to do: To inoculate a president who is preoccupied with his public image.

Many Trump loyalists criticize former RNC employees now working in the communications office.[...]

There are also growing complaints being directed at the Trump’s political operation, which senior Republicans had hoped would marshal support for the president’s agenda.[...]

The White House office of political affairs is another target of grousing.[...]

"We're two months into the presidency, and it's kind of a cluster," said one state Republican Party official. "It's not that they're bad people. It's just that they don't know what they're doing."

Sniping over Trump’s early troubles is occurring at federal agencies, too.[...]

The president’s biggest donors are pointing fingers, too. [Rebekah] Mercer, a philanthropist who has bankrolled the “alt-right” movement that formed the underpinnings of Trump’s campaign, had hoped the new White House would adopt an anti-establishment mindset.[...]

The White House is also moving to soothe megadonor Sheldon Adelson.[...]

As the dust cleared over the weekend from the health care failure, Trump aides dismissed talk of a possible staff shakeup.[...]

Yet the blame game is taking a toll on an exhausted White House. At the highest levels of the West Wing, the mood has grown so tense that staffers have begun calling up reporters inquiring whether other senior aides are leaking damaging information about them.

"The various warring fiefdoms and camps within the White House are constantly changing and are so vast and complicated in their nature,” said one former Trump campaign aide, “that there is no amount of reporting that could accurately describe the subterfuge, animosity and finger-pointing that is currently happening within the ranks of the senior staff."

If it weren't for the horrible fallout all around, I'd say: "Just sit back and get out the popcorn, make yourself comfortable, and watch things slowly but inexorably implode." 

[nokidsmom]

I know I am a couple of days late but @Destiny I love the name of this thread!

[Destiny]

I know I am a couple of days late but @Destiny I love the name of this thread!

I can't take credit. At some point in a past thread when we talked about potential thread titles, i made a list, and I've been using whatever of those made sense at the time ever since.

[nokidsmom]

2 minutes ago, Destiny said:

I can't take credit. At some point in a past thread when we talked about potential thread titles, i made a list, and I've been using whatever of those made sense at the time ever since.

It's still a good one though.   So apropos to what is unfolding in Trumpland.

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh: "The Daily 202: How Trump’s presidency is succeeding"

Quote

THE BIG IDEA: Reading some of the news coverage this weekend, one might get the impression that Donald Trump’s failure to repeal Obamacare is akin to Woodrow Wilson not getting the League of Nations ratified. In other words, a fatal blow to his presidency. That’s hooey.

-- Health care is a siren song that has seduced many presidents since Harry Truman called for a national insurance program in 1945. Bill Clinton, for instance, spent far more political capital on the issue than Trump during his first year as president. His party also controlled both chambers of Congress, and he too failed spectacularly. But Clinton bounced back and won reelection.

-- Liberals mock Trump as ineffective at their own peril. Yes, it’s easy to joke about how Trump said during the campaign that he’d win so much people would get tired of winning. Both of his travel bans have been blocked – for now. An active FBI investigation into his associates is a big gray cloud over the White House. The president himself falsely accused his predecessor of wiretapping him. His first national security adviser registered as a foreign agent after being fired for not being honest about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. His attorney general, at best, misled Congress under oath.

-- Despite the chaos and the growing credibility gap, Trump is systematically succeeding in his quest to “deconstruct the administrative state,” as his chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon puts it. He’s pursued the most aggressive regulatory rollback since Ronald Reagan, especially on environmental issues, with a series of bills and executive orders. He’s placed devoted ideologues into perches from which they can stop aggressively enforcing laws that conservatives don’t like. By not filling certain posts, he’s ensuring that certain government functions will simply not be performed. His budget proposal spotlighted his desire to make as much of the federal bureaucracy as possible wither on the vine.

-- Trump has been using executive orders to tie the hands of rule makers. He put in place a regulatory freeze during his first hours, mandated that two regulations be repealed for every new one that goes on the books and ordered a top-to-bottom review of the government with an eye toward shrinking it.

Any day now, Trump is expected to sign an executive order aimed at undoing Obama’s Clean Power Plan and end a moratorium on federal-land coal mining. This would ensure that the U.S. does not meet its commitments under the Paris climate agreement.

The administration is also preparing new executive orders to re-examine all 14 U.S. free trade agreements, including NAFTA, and the president could start to sign some of them this week.

-- Trump plans to unveil a new White House office today with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and, potentially, privatize some government functions. “The Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump,” Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker report. “Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to … create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements. … Kushner’s team is being formalized just as the Trump administration is proposing sweeping budget cuts across many departments, and members said they would help find efficiencies.”

Kushner’s ambitions are grand: “At least to start, the team plans to focus its attention on re-imagining Veterans Affairs; modernizing the technology and data infrastructure of every federal department and agency; remodeling workforce-training programs; and developing ‘transformative projects’ under the banner of Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, such as providing broadband Internet service to every American. In some cases, the office could direct that government functions be privatized, or that existing contracts be awarded to new bidders.”

-- The Congressional Review Act had only been used once since it passed in 1996 to get rid of a regulation.

Trump has already used it three times since February to kill regulations put into effect by the Obama administration: He eliminated the Interior Department’s stream protection rule, which barred coal-mining companies from conducting any activities that could permanently pollute streams and other sources of drinking water. He killed an SEC rule requiring oil and mining companies to disclose payments to foreign governments. And he made it easier for the mentally ill to get guns by blocking the Social Security Administration from turning over certain data to the FBI.

Seven more bills to undo Obama regulations have passed both chambers of Congress and will soon be signed by the president. Among them: Rolling back worker safety regulations to track and reduce workplace injuries and deaths, reducing disclosure requirements for federal contractors and abolishing a rule that restricted certain kinds of hunting, such as trapping and aerial shooting, inside national wildlife refuges in Alaska.

Several more are in the pipeline. The Republican Senate last Thursday voted to repeal rules aimed at protecting consumers' online data from Internet providers. Once the House passes the measure, and the president signs it, it will be vastly easier for broadband companies to sell and share your personal usage information for advertising purposes.

...

-- He can’t pass legislation to repeal Obamacare, but Trump is weakening the pillars of the health care system from the inside so that he can blame Democrats for future problems. Although Paul Ryan acknowledged Friday that “Obamacare is the law of the land,” its survival or collapse in practical terms now rests with decisions that are in the president’s hands.

On his first night in office, the president directed federal agencies to ease the regulatory burden that the ACA has placed on consumers, the health-care industry and health-care providers. “So far, the main action stemming from that directive is a move by the Internal Revenue Service to process Americans’ tax refunds even if they fail to submit proof that they are insured, as the ACA requires,” Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin explain.

There are other steps the administration could take: “A major one would be to end cost-sharing subsidies the law provides to lower- and middle-income people with marketplace plans to help pay their deductibles and co-pays," Amy and Juliet note. "Another question is how the administration will handle the next enrollment season for ACA health plans, which will begin in November. The end of the most recent season coincided with Trump’s first days in office, and the new administration yanked some advertising meant to encourage sign-ups. … While a set of federal essential health benefits, required of health plans sold to individuals and small businesses, will now remain in law, federal health officials could narrow what they require, limiting prescription drugs, for instance, or the number of visits allowed for mental-health treatment or physical therapy. … The administration also could take advantage of a part of the ACA that, starting this year, lets health officials give states broad latitude to carry out the law’s goals.”

...

The article, which is quite lengthy, goes on to talk about many of the other destructive things either already done, or in the pipeline. It's sobering. We keep getting distracted because there's so much crap going on, but Agent Orange's "team" is really working hard to screw us all.

[JMarie]

On ‎3‎/‎25‎/‎2017 at 11:49 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

33 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I thought this was an interesting opinion piece: "Why Trump and the GOP could fail on tax reform, too"

This was my favorite line: "I guess the reason government often doesn’t work as well as it should is that no previous president has thought to put his inexperienced son-in-law in charge of things."

 

34 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I thought this was an interesting opinion piece: "Why Trump and the GOP could fail on tax reform, too"

This was my favorite line: "I guess the reason government often doesn’t work as well as it should is that no previous president has thought to put his inexperienced son-in-law in charge of things."

Such an adult..."Trump tweets: 'Do not worry' on health care; urges followers to watch Fox News host trash Ryan"

 

He is only 35.  That's pretty young to be the head of anything, whether it be CEO of a large corporation, principal of a high school, or whatever Kushner's job title is.  The not having experience thing only makes matters worse.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/27/us/refugees-jobs-drug-testing/index.html

Quote

"The big factories ... they have a problem with the drugs, so like every time they fire someone, they replace him with the refugee, to be honest," said Bassam Dabbah, who works at a US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants field office in Erie. "The only barrier is the language, but they are picking it up very quick."

'It's like the United Nations'

The status of refugees in the US has been under scrutiny since President Donald Trump's executive orders limiting the number of immigrants to the country. On March 6, Trump signed a new order that bans immigration from six Muslim-majority nations and reinstates a temporary blanket ban on all refugees.

But because of the increase in positive drug tests, the refugees who have reached America in recent years are finding a more welcoming hiring climate, at least for menial manufacturing jobs.

 

Quote

Antigona Mehani, employment services manager at Kentucky Refugee Ministries, says she can usually find a refugee a job within three days.

Employers tell her, "send us as many as you can," she said. "I hear this every single day."

How will stuff get made if we run out of immigrants and us Americans are all hopped up on drugs?

Silly me, I'm thinking ahead.

[47of74]

50 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

So, there's a whole lot of infighting going on within the GOP and administration. 

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-blame-agenda-stalls-236508

If it weren't for the horrible fallout all around, I'd say: "Just sit back and get out the popcorn, make yourself comfortable, and watch things slowly but inexorably implode." 

Me too.  If it wasn't for the innocent people getting hurt I'd just sit back and say to any whining Branch Trumpvidians fuck you, this is what you voted for.  And just have all this popcorn shipped to my place in order to watch the implosion.

[Cartmann99]

The thing I keep coming back to with this new administration, is how they think they know everything and denigrate those with knowledge of how things work in government. I'm all for thinking outside of the box, but if you don't have anyone on your team who knows about the boxes, you are going to have problems.

Maybe a particular box is old, the top's all crushed in, and everything inside is ruined and needs to be tossed, but don't blindly throw out all of the boxes without understanding why they were put there in the first place.

[CTRLZero]

There are a couple articles today in the Washington Post about Trump playing golf weekly and how his minions scramble to cover it up or explain it in terms that make it seem like he is actually working.

Then I wondered if the various professional tours were still holding tournaments at Trump's properties, and found the following linked article.  It boils down to:  the PGA is wishy-washy because they keep apologizing for his racism, etc., but think he is good for the golf industry.

We love Trump's business more than we hate pesky racism

A few excerpts from the Golf.com article:
 

Quote

 

We continue to stand by our earlier statement, and the statement of other golf organizations, that Mr. Trump's comments* are inconsistent with our strong commitment to an inclusive and welcoming environment in the game of golf. [*regarding Muslims and Mexicans]  ....

A Scottish politician proposed an official boycott of both Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeen, which is scheduled to host the 2017 Scottish Open, and Trump Turnberry, which is in the British Open rota.  ....

Trump's golf properties in the Middle East also seem to be under threat. His branding on Damac Properties' Akoya golf course and housing development in Dubai was torn down on Friday.  ....

"While the LPGA, PGA of America, PGA Tour and USGA don't usually comment on presidential politics, Mr. Trump's comments are inconsistent with our strong commitment to an inclusive and welcoming environment in the game of golf."

But all four organizations stopped short of ending their business relationships with Trump.

 

I don't see any true changes happening in the PGA-Trump relationship, but Trump obviously cares about this particular business (more than his White House job!) and it would be great if the PGA would step up and put more pressure on him.

 

 

[fraurosena]

Ahhhh, how low can he go?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-approval-ratings-fall-record-low-obamacare-a7653071.html

Quote

Donald Trump’s approval rating has hit a new low of 36 per cent, according to the latest polling data.

The 36 per cent approval rating in the Gallup poll has was the average for the three days, 24 to 26 March, following Mr Trump’s failure to repeal and replace the health care legislation, Obamacare. 

Mr Trump's approval rating was hovering around 46 per cent in the days following his inauguration, also a historically low rating for an incoming president. 

Even though I have a lower than low opinion of polls, I couldn't help myself and had to post this. Just to make you all feel better. 

[RoseWilder]

Quote

Sessions said, adding that “this disregard for law must end.”

You're right, Sessions. This disregard for the law must end. So stop breaking the law. 

Fucking hypocrite. He and his cronies are in the process of committing TREASON against our country and this asshole has the nerve to point fingers at others.

[47of74]

18 minutes ago, RoseWilder said:

You're right, Sessions. This disregard for the law must end. So stop breaking the law. 

Fucking hypocrite. He and his cronies are in the process of committing TREASON against our country and this asshole has the nerve to point fingers at others.

Yeah, at some point in Beauregard Sessions' life someone should have said this to him.  Along with der Trumpenfuehrer and his groupies in Congress.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

For some amusement, here are a few funny Tweets about the tangerine toddler and his little time behind the wheel of a truck (the last is my favorite):

[GreyhoundFan]

"In New York, searching for the reclusive and elusive Melania Trump"

Quote

The paparazzi no longer stake her out at her son’s private school or search for her on the streets surrounding the black tower that her husband, the president of the United States, named for himself.

Like legions of New Yorkers who hibernate in their apartments, Melania Trump is a virtual shut-in, her refuge 58 stories above Manhattan’s hoi polloi and laden with enough gold to embarrass a Saudi prince.

“She’s the great white whale,” said Miles Diggs, a paparazzo, as he and his partner hunted celebrities in Soho on a recent afternoon in a Chevy Suburban equipped with cameras and a laptop. They were searching for the actress Emma Watson, whom, unlike Melania Trump, they were confident they could find.

“When it comes to getting people, I don’t miss,” Diggs said. “But Melania has just been so elusive.”

...

Her task is all the more complex, she said, because the president is the perpetual star of his own one-man show.

“He dances alone,” Sunshine said. “He’s not into the tango.”

...

Anthony Senecal, the Trumps’ former butler at Mar-a-Lago, occasionally drove Melania on West Palm Beach, Fla., shopping trips to boutiques and the Whole Foods supermarket. He said she could be personable in ways the public rarely sees. Once, when she was alone at Mar-a-Lago, he said, she urged him to take time off to visit his dying sister.

“She said, ‘Tony, there isn’t anything I can’t get here — people will bring anything I ask for, you go be with your sister,’ ” he recalled. “She said, ‘From now on, when I’m here, consider me taken care of.’ ”

But she added: “When Donald’s here, you’ll have to stay.”

...

Yet it’s uncertain whether Melania Trump wants anyone to see beyond her practiced smile.

On the night before the swearing-in, she joined her husband at the Lincoln Memorial for a concert. In a backstage tent beforehand, the president-elect bantered for 20 minutes with his advisers, a campaign volunteer who had traveled to Washington for the festivities, and a reporter.

All the while, the first lady sat in a folding chair alongside her husband, as still and silent as a mannequin, as if oblivious to the chatter around her.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Fox News said Trump spent the weekend ‘working at the White House.’ He was at his golf club."

Quote

The alert from Fox News went out at 5:30 p.m. Sunday.

“PRESIDENT TRUMP SPENDING WEEKEND WORKING AT THE WHITE HOUSE,” the chyron announced, under an image of the White House presumably captured just minutes before.

The timing of the tweet alert was curious: After all, the weekend was nearly over.

“[T]his is like when you start to do your homework when you hear the garage door opening,” one Twitter user noted.

And, as it turned out, the announcement wasn't entirely true.

According to pool reports, the president spent Saturday visiting the Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Va., just outside Washington.

Trump arrived at the golf club at 11:01 a.m. Saturday, wearing a suit, a white shirt with no tie and a red hat with “USA” emblazoned on the front, a pool reporter noted. Though the traveling press pool asked multiple times about the president's activities, Trump's team did not provide answers, the report stated.

The press pool was told that Trump had “meetings” at the golf club. The presidential motorcade returned to the White House shortly after 4 p.m. Saturday, the pool report said.

By then, pictures had emerged on social media of Trump riding a golf cart and dressed in golf attire, still wearing a red hat, at Trump National Golf Club.

...

I love some of the Tweets in the article. My favorite: "News Alert: President does his job. Maybe."

 

 

I love Dana Milbank's writing: "Trump is looking more and more like a man without a plan"

Quote

Attorney General Jeff Sessions showed up unannounced in the White House briefing room to attempt something President Trump very much needed after Friday’s health-care debacle: a change of subject.

Sessions, accompanied by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, revived one of the reliable applause lines from the campaign, a crackdown on “sanctuary cities” harboring illegal immigrants. “DUIs, assaults, burglaries, drug crimes, gang rapes, crimes against children and murders,” the attorney general recited. “Countless Americans would be alive today and countless loved ones would not be grieving today if these policies of sanctuary cities were ended.”

But for all the sturm und drang, Sessions didn’t have much to announce.

“Sounds like you’re applying the standards and the policy that the Obama administration put forward,” CBS News’s Major Garrett observed when Sessions finished his statement. “Are you taking any additional steps?”

“Well, that’s a good question,” Sessions replied. And the answer, apparently, is “no.” Sessions said there could be additional requirements “in the future” beyond those the Obama administration had. But not just yet.

Such policy anticlimaxes are becoming routine in Trump world. Tough rhetoric, big promises — and no substance. Trump looks more and more like a man without a plan.

He promised he would have a health-care plan that would be cheaper and better than Obamacare and would cover just as many. But when it came time to deliver, he had nothing. He left the policy to House Speaker Paul Ryan, and the resulting proposal would have meant 24 million fewer people with health coverage. The bill collapsed in spectacular fashion under opposition from Democrats, moderate Republicans and conservatives — and Trump is blaming everybody but himself.

During the campaign, he said he had a secret plan to defeat the Islamic State. He said he had a “foolproof” plan of “defeating them quickly and effectively and having total victory.” Now, it turns out, he has no plan. He has asked the Pentagon to create one. “We will figure something out,” he said last week.

...

"We will figure something out." Seriously?

[JMarie]

I'm trying to watch Hannity.  He is, of course, complaining about how he was unfairly treated by Ted Koppel (who Hannity says is not a journalist) because 70 seconds of his 45 minute interview was aired.  Apparently, there's an information crisis in America, and only Fox News offers a solution.  Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Cory Lewandowski, and Reince Priebus will be on to discuss further -- Fox News must have gotten some kind of bulk discount on conservatives today. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Interesting story on Politico: "The Three Lame Stories the Press Writes About Every President". My favorite paragraph:

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Monday’s Washington Post brings us, on Page One above the fold, the third classic of first-100 days reporting: A story about the coming “reorganization“ of government—this time by Prince Jared, the president’s son-in-law. Young Jared, who owes his power to 1) the womb he emerged from and 2) the princess he married, is about to be charged with “sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises,” as the Post puts it. “Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements.”

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"Trump withdraws reappointment nomination of popular whistleblower advocate"

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Truth tellers are especially important and potentially vulnerable in an administration afflicted with serial mendacity.

An important refuge from management retaliation for federal truth tellers — a.k.a. whistleblowers — is the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), a small, understaffed independent agency that regularly challenges the biggest dudes on the block.

But now, whistleblowers and their advocates are worried that the office’s vigilance under Carolyn Lerner could be endangered by President Trump’s notice to the Senate “withdrawing from further Senate consideration” her reappointment nomination.

This worry is fueled by the Trump administration’s early agency gag orders, as well as the stern White House rebuke of State Department workers who complained — on an approved, internal dissent channel — about Trump’s first immigration executive order left a chill.

The “new administration hasn’t demonstrated any tolerance for those who dissent against its actions,” said Tom Devine, legal counsel of the Government Accountability Project, which represents whistleblowers.

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[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump moves decisively to wipe out Obama’s climate-change record"

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President Trump will take the most significant step yet in obliterating his predecessor’s environmental record Tuesday, instructing federal regulators to rewrite key rules curbing U.S. carbon emissions.

The sweeping executive order also seeks to lift a moratorium on federal coal leasing and remove the requirement that federal officials consider the impact of climate change when making decisions.

The order sends an unmistakable signal that just as President Barack Obama sought to weave climate considerations into every aspect of the federal government, Trump is hoping to rip that approach out by its roots.

“This policy is in keeping with President Trump’s desire to make the United States energy independent,” said a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the directive Monday evening and asked for anonymity to speak in advance of the announcement. “When it comes to climate change, we want to take our course and do it in our own form and fashion.”

Some of the measures could take years to implement and are unlikely to alter broader economic trends that are shifting the nation’s electricity mix from coal-fired generation to natural gas and renewables. The order is silent on whether the United States should withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, under which it has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions between 26 and 28 percent by 2025 compared to 2005 levels, because the administration remains divided on that question.

The order comes after several moves by Trump to roll back Obama-era restrictions on mining, drilling and coal- and gas-burning operations. In his first two months as president, Trump has nullified a regulation barring surface-mining companies from polluting waterways and set aside a new accounting system that would have compelled coal companies and other energy firms to pay more in federal royalties.

The administration also has announced it will reconsider stricter fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks and has approved two major oil pipelines, Dakota Access and Keystone XL, that Obama had halted.

Accelerating fossil-fuel production on federal lands and sidelining climate considerations could lead to higher emissions of the greenhouse gases driving climate change and complicate a global effort to curb the world’s carbon output. But Trump has repeatedly questioned whether climate change is underway and emphasized that he is determined to deliver for the voters in coal country who helped him win the Oval Office.

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"Think tax reform will be easy for Trump? Ha, ha."

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You thought tax reform would be an easy win for Republicans?

Oh, it feels good to laugh again.

After the Obamacare-repeal disaster, President Trump has decided to move on to tax reform. He’s hoping to quickly restore public faith in his leadership, which has so far been stymied by federal judges, the House Freedom Caucus and basic math.

But many of the issues that brought down repeal-and-replace will dog his tax plan, too.

Some of these are procedural, and relate to arcane Senate rules governing the filibuster. Some concern the fact that every change to the tax code — as with every change to health care — involves painful trade-offs and angry interest groups that will work to obstruct said change.

The biggest hurdle, however, is not about technicalities or political transactions. It’s about substance. As with health care, the Trump administration has made too many contradictory, sometimes mutually exclusive promises that will be impossible to keep.

In particular, Trump’s many scattershot promises about what’s going to happen to wealthy people’s taxes.

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"Trump could learn a lot from his mistakes. He won’t."

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Last week’s health-care fiasco could end up being a positive experience for President Trump if he learns a few obvious lessons. Spoiler alert: He won’t.

The first thing that should dawn on Trump is that the warring Republican factions in Congress have multiple agendas, none of which remotely resembles his own. This is why the bill that House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was forced to withdraw on Friday — the abominable American Health Care Act — made such a cruel mockery of Trump’s expansive campaign promises.

A “populist” president who promised health insurance “for everybody” ended up supporting legislation that would have taken away coverage from 24 million people. Many, if not most, of the victims would have been working-class voters — the “forgotten Americans” Trump claimed to champion. Now that he has time, maybe he will actually read the bill (or have someone summarize it for him) and realize how truly awful it was.

You don’t have to be a policy wonk to recognize that replacing income-based subsidies with less generous across-the-board tax credits would mean a net transfer of resources from poorer people to wealthier people. That’s just fine with Ryan and the “mainstream” House Republicans who hung in there with legislation that Ronald Reagan or even Barry Goldwater would have considered extreme.

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During the campaign, Trump was nothing if not headstrong. Yet in office he has let others lead — and is getting nowhere. He could still change course. He could get rid of the sycophantic aides who spend so much time blaming each other. He could focus on parts of his agenda, such as infrastructure, that have popular support, including among Democrats.

But that would mean acknowledging his mistakes thus far. Don’t hold your breath.

 

[AuntK]

On 3/26/2017 at 3:11 PM, 47of74 said:

Yes Biden could very well run then even though he'd be close to 78 by then.

Of course his age shouldn't stop him if Mr. Biden has his health and feels that he can do the job.  The previous two Popes have been in their mid to late 70s when elected and that didn't stop them.  Francis especially. 

We're going to need someone who can work hard to undo all the damage The Orange Toxic Megacolon and Total Fornicate Face is doing now. 

I like Joe, but 78 is too damn old to take on the most stressful job in the world. Just look at how it aged Obama, and he was a young man, relatively speaking. Yes, Joe appears to be in good health, but let me tell you, even when you are in good health, take care of yourself, your body just isn't the same after you enter your 70s, that's just how it is. And the job as POTUS? Especially after the Orange toddler has screwed up everything? We will need a younger person with stamina. And as much as I love Michelle, she has made it quite clear, she doesn't want it and I believe her.