Donald Trump and his Coterie of the Craven (part 16)

[GreyhoundFan]

And the fun continues: "Trump’s pick for rules czar would hand more power to Trump"

Quote

Neomi Rao, a little-known law professor at George Mason University, could soon become one of the most powerful officials in Washington.

President Trump has nominated the conservative lawyer to run the obscure but powerful Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a gateway through which federal regulations must pass.

The office, known as OIRA (pronounced oh-eye-rah), would make Rao the Trump administration’s regulatory czar, responsible for vetting and tallying cost estimates for most regulations. The office also resolves conflicts between agencies, and can either sink a rule or send it back for major rewrites.

Rao would also be in a position to promote her conservative views. A critic of “the administrative state” that White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon has vowed to deconstruct, Rao has written that the independence of federal agencies should be abolished, their rules subject to White House review, and the heads of those agencies subject to dismissal by the president.

In past administrations, the OIRA administrator has played the role of a check on ideology, but with Rao and many department chiefs all pushing for deregulation, OIRA’s role as objective analyst could be compromised.

...

“OIRA is the mediator, the referee when agencies are trying to put through regulations,” said Ted Gayer, director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. “It could be enormously influential in any administration and in this administration even more so because so much of the efforts are going to be on the deregulation side rather than legislative accomplishments.”

Trump’s executive order that two regulations must be eliminated for every new regulation — and with costs and benefits that match — hands even greater authority to OIRA.

In addition, because of the growth of science-based regulations, OIRA has increasingly weighed in on controversial science debates. About a decade ago it hired experts in public health, toxicology, engineering and other technical fields to supplement its experts on policy and economics. Under Trump, it may also have to deal with climate issues.

People familiar with Rao’s writing say it does not show whether as OIRA director she would stand up to an administration bent on tearing down much of the government’s regulatory regime. Trump has said that “we can cut regulations by 75 percent.” But the OIRA director typically lays out the cost of eliminating regulations as well as adopting them.

Among the more controversial aspects of Rao’s writings is her support for the power of the president and the need to bring independent agencies under control of the White House.

One example: Rao has written that the Dodd-Frank financial reform law’s creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose director can be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office,” violated the Constitution and was based on acceptance of “virtually unlimited congressional authority to impose limits on presidential control.”

A case challenging the CFPB’s independence is before the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But Rao’s critique extends far beyond the CFPB.

Rao “appears to support bringing independent regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Reserve under OIRA review, which would be a major expansion of OIRA and White House control,” Curtis W. Copeland, formerly a specialist in American government at the Congressional Research Service, said in an email.

“There is also a recent article where she indicates that the President should be able to fire the heads of independent regulatory agencies (who currently have ‘for cause’ removal protection),” Copeland added. “Congress set up these agencies to be independent of the President. If the President can fire the heads of these agencies, and (through OIRA) can say whether or not they can issue significant regulations, that is a huge change.”

The Supreme Court has upheld the independence of certain agencies going back more than a century to cases involving the Federal Trade and Interstate Commerce commissions.

Not surprisingly, some liberal groups have opposed Rao, who must be confirmed by the Senate.

“President Trump has proclaimed that his intent is to defang regulatory agencies and gut regulatory protections,” Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said in a statement. “But the OIRA administrator has a duty to ensure implementation of the laws of the land, which require government agencies to issue new rules to advance their missions, not to give corporations a free hand to pollute and pilfer, poison and profiteer.”

In articles and congressional testimony, Rao has also advocated limiting the authority of federal agencies to draw up rules in areas left ambiguous by legislation. She has said that Congress must spell out clearly what it wants agencies to do. Critics, however, say that when it comes to technical regulations, lawmakers lack the expertise to write detailed regulations the agencies are better equipped to draw up.

Rao has called on the courts to review the judicial principle known as Chevron deference, which leaves it up to agencies to interpret ambiguously worded statutes to fulfill legal mandates.

“Deference is one consequence of Congress leaving a significant interpretive space for administrative agencies,” she said in March 17, 2016 testimony to the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s governmental affairs subcommittee. That error has been compounded by the courts, she said, which have also deferred to agencies and have “allowed for the expansion of the administrative state outside the checks and balances of the Constitution.”

Rao has an impeccable conservative track record. A graduate of Yale University and the University of Chicago Law School, she clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In 2016 when Thomas’s clerks set up a laudatory website about him, Rao told USA Today that he was “more willing to go back and overturn precedents, to go back and find the original meaning of the Constitution.”

...

OIRA, created as part of the Office of Management and Budget by the Paperwork Reduction Act in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter, was given a broader role under President Ronald Reagan to review the impact of regulations. Under Reagan’s OIRA director James Miller, the office became known as “the black hole where rules would go and disappear,” said Thomas O. McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Some administrative law experts fear that Rao and Trump’s agency heads will all be pushing in the same direction.

“It is important for OIRA to act as a counterweight to the agencies in the regulatory process,” said Ryan Bubb, a law professor at New York University and a former policy analyst at OIRA.

During the Obama administration, for example, OIRA Director Cass Sunstein — a respected friend of the president — “played an important role in forcing the Environmental Protection Agency to improve its cost-benefit analysis of proposed regulations, often leading to an improvement in the final rulemaking in the form of a less-costly alternative,” Bubb said. In the most public case, Sunstein rejected a version of the EPA’s proposed ozone rule, and the president backed him up.

“What you want, in my view, is an energetic, activist agency, counterbalanced by a more centrist, analytical OIRA,” Bubb said. “Key to OIRA’s function is for it to inject some conflict and friction into the rulemaking process.”

But there may be little friction between Rao and other Trump officials.

“Scott Pruitt is by all accounts going to focus on rolling back EPA regulations. Given his deregulatory tilt, the key question about Neomi Rao is whether she will be an effective counterweight and force the EPA to justify its deregulatory actions on cost-benefit grounds,” Bubb said.

...

 

[47of74]

Yeah, man baby whining about the NYT again;

thewrap.com/trump-attacks-ny-times-again-this-time-over-photo-of-patriots-visit/

Quote

President Trump took to Twitter to attack the New York Times, again, on Thursday over a photo the paper tweeted of the New England Patriots’ trip to the White House. The president said the Times got caught in a “big lie” and reiterated his feelings that the paper treats him unfairly.

Jesus Fornicating Christ Donnie, grow the Fornicate up already.  The guy in the office before you didn't whine like this whenever something nasty was said about him, and God knows you and all your fornicate stick friends certain said quite a few nasty things about him.

[fraurosena]

34 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Yeah, man baby whining about the NYT again;

thewrap.com/trump-attacks-ny-times-again-this-time-over-photo-of-patriots-visit/

Jesus Fornicating Christ Donnie, grow the Fornicate up already.  The guy in the office before you didn't whine like this whenever something nasty was said about him, and God knows you and all your fornicate stick friends certain said quite a few nasty things about him.

Pffffffttt... he's so, so, so predictable. Didn't I tell you guys yesterday when I posted the photo's that he'd do this? And this is  your presidunce. I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't a farce, this isn't an alternative fact, but the truth. The sad and sorry truth.

[47of74]

51 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Pffffffttt... he's so, so, so predictable. Didn't I tell you guys yesterday when I posted the photo's that he'd do this? And this is  your presidunce. I have to keep reminding myself that this isn't a farce, this isn't an alternative fact, but the truth. The sad and sorry truth.

Even if NYT screwed up with the photo comparison, it doesn't change the fact that 34 players skipped the nazi rally White House reception.

occupydemocrats.com/2017/04/19/34-patriots-just-defied-trump-way-hurts/

Quote

President Trump got another chance to smile for the camera and pal around with his heroes on his favorite football team, the New England Patriots – but it turns out they weren’t so excited to hang out with him.

More than half of the team’s 53-man roster refused to attend the White House meeting, as per Patriots beat reporter Doug Kyed.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump legal tab: $4 million and rising"

Quote

During his campaign, Donald Trump promised to pay the legal bills of supporters who beat up protesters at his rallies, but a POLITICO analysis found that Trump’s campaign hasn’t always paid its own legal bills in a timely or transparent fashion.

The analysis of court and campaign filings found that Trump’s campaign committee is still spending heavily to defend against ongoing civil lawsuits alleging assault, incitement, threats and other illegal behavior by the president, his supporters and staff. But in at least four ongoing cases, Trump’s campaign had yet to make a publicly disclosed payment to the law firms representing it, paid months late or paid in tiny amounts that don’t appear commensurate with the amount of work performed by the firms.

In some cases, lawyers from the Trump Organization assisted outside law firms paid by the campaign in defending cases that named both Trump’s campaign and his company, blurring the line between Trump’s political and business operations. And there were at least two cases in which Trump’s campaign appears to have settled lawsuits quietly by making lump-sum payments to firms involved in the cases, which it listed in its Federal Election Commission reports as “legal consulting.”

In all, FEC filings show that Trump’s campaign has paid out nearly $4 million in “legal consulting” and “legal fees,” including $556,000 since Election Day. That total is more than twice as much as former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign spent on legal fees through this point in his first term.

The trail of legal bills dogging Trump’s campaign more than five months after his election — and his team’s opaque handling of them — reflect Trump’s inability to leave behind the chaos and confrontation that marked his presidential run and his decades as a private real estate developer.

In one lawsuit — in which depositions are planned in Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks of several people “who currently hold high-level positions in the Trump administration,” according to court filings — a former Trump campaign staffer accuses the campaign brass of failing to act after he and others reported that Trump’s then-North Carolina state director had pointed a loaded .45-caliber pistol at them on different occasions.

The White House referred questions about that case and legal fees in other cases to a Trump campaign official, who did not respond to messages.

Lawyers at Jones Day, the Trump campaign’s law firm, also declined to comment. It has been the recipient of the overwhelming majority of the legal fees paid by the campaign — $3.3 million through the end of last month — and has worked with other firms on several cases against the campaign.

Listing settlement payments as “legal consulting” — as the Trump campaign appears to have done in cases alleging illegal mass texting and copyright infringement, respectively — keeps the public in the dark, argued Brett Kappel, an election law attorney at Akerman who has represented Republicans and Democrats.

“Basically, the Trump campaign was run just like the Trump Organization — lawsuits are met with bluster and invective and then ultimately settled quietly with everyone involved required to sign nondisclosure agreements so that the public would not know that Trump, in fact, does settle many of the lawsuits against him and his family members,” Kappel said.

...

Harding pointed out that the alleged gun incident occurred in February, during the crowded GOP primary, but the staffer in question, Vincent Bordini, did not file the complaint until August, by which time Trump had clinched the party’s nomination.

A GOP operative familiar with the case said Bordini proposed to settle the case for about $300,000, but that offer was rejected by the lawyers for Phillip and Trump’s campaign.

Bordini declined to discuss the case, citing a confidentiality agreement between the parties executed this month, though he did say: “No former employee gets this far [in court] making stuff up. This is not some kind of 'I’m-offended' kind of thing. A staffer pulled a gun on me.”

In his lawsuit, Bordini claims that, in the days after the alleged gun incident, he flagged it to top campaign officials including then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and then-national field director Stuart Jolly. They failed to act, despite prior complaints from others of a similar nature, alleges Bordini’s suit, which argues that the campaign is responsible for the alleged assault and subsequent mental anguish. Bordini quit the campaign days later, convinced that Jolly “would try to cover up what had happened,” according to his suit.

Jolly and Lewandowski did not respond to requests for comment, though a GOP operative familiar with the case said both men have been approached in recent weeks by attorneys collecting information and planning depositions for the case.

Phillip, who declined to comment to POLITICO, had recently been removed as state director when the suit was filed, and he resigned from a different campaign post almost immediately after the suit. Yet in a legal filing responding to the lawsuit, Phillip completely rejected Bordini’s version of events and claimed he didn’t even have a gun with him at the time of the alleged incident.

Nonetheless, the GOP operative familiar with the case told POLITICO that Bordini’s complaint was quickly passed along to the campaign’s general counsel, Don McGahn, who was then a partner for Jones Day. McGahn, who has since become Trump’s White House counsel, did not respond on Wednesday to questions about the case or whether he has been asked to provide testimony.

The Trump campaign argued in its initial response to Bordini’s suit that it isn’t liable for Phillip “because, if true, the alleged actions were not committed within the course and scope of Phillip's employment with the Trump Campaign.”

That filing was drafted and filed by a Charlotte, North Carolina-based employment law firm called Van Hoy, Reutlinger, Adams & Dunn, which has been representing Trump’s campaign for seven months in the case as it’s wound its way through the North Carolina state court system. Yet the Trump campaign did not disclose its first payments to the firm until Friday night. In a campaign finance filing covering the first three months of this year, the Trump campaign revealed that it had paid nearly $51,000 on Feb. 15 to Van Hoy, Reutlinger, Adams & Dunn.

Philip Van Hoy, the partner leading the case, said his firm had invoiced the campaign repeatedly with no response. “After several months, I sent a reminder to the folks I was working with,” he said, and they responded by paying the firm significantly more than it was owed for the billable hours it had completed at the time. “They made an arithmetic error,” Van Hoy said, though he added that the amount of additional work since the payment caught up to the payment, and that the campaign is now current.

That’s just one of several examples of puzzling legal payments by the Trump campaign.

Trump’s campaign through the end of last month had yet to report making any payments to the Birmingham, Alabama, firm Maynard, Cooper & Gale, which has been defending the campaign against a lawsuit filed partly by an African-American man who alleges he was punched, kicked and called racial slurs by Trump supporters at a November 2015 Trump rally in Birmingham, while Trump yelled “get him the hell out of here!”

Lawyers from the firm have filed multiple briefs seeking to dismiss the case, including one late last month arguing that “it would be entirely unreasonable to impose a duty on the Trump Campaign to actively police the behavior of every individual who attends a campaign rally.” But they did not respond to questions about whether they were being paid and, if so, by whom.

And through the end of last month, the Trump campaign had paid only $734.58 to a Louisville, Kentucky, firm called Landrum and Shouse that has been defending Trump and his campaign against a suit brought by a trio of protesters who allege that they were roughed up at — and ejected from — a March 2016 rally in Louisville by Trump supporters who were incited by the then-candidate’s calls of “get ’em out of here!”

The lead Landrum lawyer on the case, R. Kent Westberry, tried and failed to get the suit dismissed on several grounds, including that Trump’s calls to remove the protesters were directed at his security and were constitutionally protected free speech. Westberry didn’t respond to an inquiry from POLITICO about whether his firm was being paid by Trump personally or any other entity for its work on the case.

Lawyers from the Trump Organization have been handling the bulk of the filings and depositions in a New York state court case brought by protesters who allege they were roughed up by Trump’s security, and barred from protesting on a public sidewalk outside Trump Tower in September 2015.

...
 

 

[JMarie]

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

http://www.ajc.com/news/national/supreme-court-justice-anthony-kennedy-getting-ready-resign/kiKu48zjVCLq3bdFvYDnfK/

Quote

Kennedy, 80, has talked with former law clerks and others about retirement, according to a story by CNN. The New York Times has reported that the Trump administration is already looking at its next nominee should Kennedy decide to leave the Court.

Bloomberg News reported last week that “Kennedy has given no public indication of his plans, but he has drawn attention with a handful of semiprivate scheduling decisions. Perhaps most significantly, his next law clerk reunion will take place during the last weekend of June, offering the possibility that he will spring a piece of news on the gathering. The timing is noteworthy because previous Kennedy reunions took place every five years, and this one comes four years after the 2013 event.”

 

[47of74]

Fornicate face is now claiming that he's going to meet with the Pope next month;

theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/20/donald-trump-pope-francis-meeting-italy

Quote

Donald Trump has signalled that he expects to meet Pope Francis, with whom he has clashed in the past, when he travels to Italy next month.

The US president will be in Italy late May for a meeting of the G7 industrialised democracies. An audience with the pontiff would bring together two wildly contrasting world views.

“I look very much forward to meeting the pope,” said on Thursday in a joint press conference at the White House with Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni.

Minutes later Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, admitted that the meeting has not yet been confirmed. Trump’s assertion now risks making a non-meeting look like a snub.

I wish Francis would give a two word response to Fornicate Face's request, the second word of which would be yourself.

[nvmbr02]

17 minutes ago, JMarie said:

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

http://www.ajc.com/news/national/supreme-court-justice-anthony-kennedy-getting-ready-resign/kiKu48zjVCLq3bdFvYDnfK/

 

Ugh. Worst piece of news I have read in awhile.  I am hoping with all that I have that we don't loss any more justices until after the 2018 election and the Democrats have a chance at winning some seats back. 

[JMarie]

42 minutes ago, nvmbr02 said:

Ugh. Worst piece of news I have read in awhile.  I am hoping with all that I have that we don't loss any more justices until after the 2018 election and the Democrats have a chance at winning some seats back. 

 

[candygirl200413]

I am personally ready to give RBG any organ she might need in the future for the sake of this nation.

Also something needs to drop in regards to Russia before it gets really really bad.

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Fornicate face is now claiming that he's going to meet with the Pope next month;

theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/20/donald-trump-pope-francis-meeting-italy

I wish Francis would give a two word response to Fornicate Face's request, the second word of which would be yourself.

Wait a minute- wouldn't Holy Water sizzle on Trump's forehead? Or would he melt like the Wicked Witch of the West?

[samira_catlover]

6 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Wait a minute- wouldn't Holy Water sizzle on Trump's forehead? Or would he melt like the Wicked Witch of the West?

Only if we're lucky, hon....

But can you imagine having to clean up the dregs of Fearless Leader?  Not without a hazmat suit.

[47of74]

Some Patriots fans and players aren't happy about the team being tied to fuck head.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

There are too many Tweets and charts in this article for me to quote, but it's an interesting read: "Trump just admitted his presidency isn’t going well — tacitly". I'm wondering if someone else actually sent the Tweet at the beginning of the article, it's not as nasty as the crap spewed by the tangerine toddler.

[formergothardite]

10 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

I am personally ready to give RBG any organ she might need in the future for the sake of this nation.

Also something needs to drop in regards to Russia before it gets really really bad.

We all need to work together to keep her alive. She needs to make it at least a couple more years!

I know that they probably want to ensure all their ducks are in a row before releasing info, but they need to hurry before he totally fucks up our world. 

[AnywhereButHere]

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-11/supreme-court-retirement-talk-focuses-on-pivotal-justice-kennedy

 

Kennedy retiring could be an issue. If he and RBG go, and Caligula and the Reich wing Republicans get their chance, this country will be so far set back into the dark ages. It's terrifying.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Daily 202: What Trump's giving to charity -- or lack thereof -- foreshadowed about his presidency"

Quote

...

During the 2016 campaign, I spent a lot of time trying to answer a simple question: Had Donald Trump followed through on his many public promises to donate money to charity?

The answer, for the most part, was “no.” Although Trump had spent years promising to give away his money – the proceeds from Trump University, his salary from “The Apprentice,” the money he made renting a tent to Moammar Gaddafi – I couldn’t find much evidence he’d actually done it. In fact, after trying 450 charities, I’d found only one gift to charity from Trump’s own pocket in the years between 2008 and 2015. And it was for less than $10,000. I also found that Trump had used his personal charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation – which was filled with other people’s money – in ways that seemed to break the law.

And, along the way, I learned something about the president’s personality, by studying a lot of small decisions –  when Trump gave money, and when he didn’t – that Trump made when he thought nobody was looking.

Now that Trump is in the White House, some of the same behavior patterns have appeared again. There are three main lessons that we learned last year….and now seem to be learning again:

1. The president’s decision-making is guided more by personal relationships than abstract ideals, and by short-term goals rather than long-term strategy.

One of the surprising themes of Trump’s charitable record was that it seemed to have no theme. Even when Trump was giving away other people’s money – through the Donald J. Trump Foundation – he didn’t focus that money on a particular university, or hospital, or other charity. [Eric Trump, by contrast, largely funneled his charity’s money to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis]. The money Trump gave away was instead scattered across a variety of vastly different nonprofits, everything from a charity for gay and lesbian youth to an outfit run by conservative provocateur James O’Keefe. When I dug into those individual donations, I found that they were often driven by Trump’s social or business connections: he gave to charities that were honoring his friends, or to charities that rented ballrooms from him at the Mar-a-Lago Club.

The result was that Trump – a man who loves putting his name on things – wound up with almost no physical evidence of his charitable giving.

I searched for any items that a charity had named in Trump’s honor, and came up with a theater seat in New Jersey, a theater seat in Florida, and a park bench in New York. By thinking only in the short-term, and tending to relationships rather than seeking a broader cause, Trump had missed a chance to make a real difference in the world – and to burnish his personal brand with a monument to his philanthropy.

As president, of course, Trump has seemed to prize personal relationships, and short-term wins, above long-term policy aims. He backed off tough rhetoric about China’s role in North Korea, after getting a 10-minute tutorial from Chinese President Xi Jinping. He was pulled away from his campaign-trail rhetoric on health care – promising to “take care of everybody” – by a desire for a policy “win,” and the wiles of a strong negotiator: House Freedom Caucus leader Mark Meadows (R-N.C.). In fits of pique, Trump has Twitter-roasted the very people whose help he will need later to make deals, like Freedom Caucus members and top Senate Democrat Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.).

The result, after nearly 100 days, is a familiar one. Trump’s list of presidential achievements so far looks like the policy equivalent of two theater seats and a park bench.

2. The president’s social world is rather small, and the peer group he values most – seeking out their advice and company – is defined by wealth, and centered in South Florida and New York.

In my charity reporting, I was surprised to find that Trump – a businessman with a global reputation, and a candidate with a zeal for forgotten voters in rural America – had given almost all his donations to charities in just two places: New York and Palm Beach. There were exceptions to that rule, but not many. Trump gave to charities in Chicago and Los Angeles, but these turned out to be related to contestants he met on “The Celebrity Apprentice.” He gave to a cancer charity in Buffalo, but that was related to a favor he’d asked of another guy named Donald Trump, who was a cancer doctor in Buffalo. He gave to a few conservative groups, as he was beginning his ascent in GOP politics.

But the lesson seemed to be that Trump divided his world into customers and peers (though the peers were often customers, too). He usually donated money to keep up relationships with peers, so his donations showed how narrowly his peers were clustered – in the two places Trump has spent the bulk of his adult life.

Now – even after winning an upset victory by capturing the hopes of rural and middle-class voters –President Trump’s most precious commodity has not been his money but his time. And he has given that time disproportionately to the same peer group he gave his money . Trump has spent about one-fifth of his presidency in Palm Beach, according to calculations by my colleague Philip Bump. He has not yet taken a trip west of the Mississippi River. And even within his inner circle, populists like former Breitbart News leader Steve Bannon are said to be losing ground to other advisers who came from the world of New York’s wealthy elite. They include chief economic advisor Gary Cohn, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. 

3. The president’s marketing strategy relies on promising big results -- and he relies on the assumption that public promises will be kept.

During my research, I went back and cataloged Trump’s promises to donate money to charity. I was struck by how many he’d made: in all, Trump’s public pledges after 2001 totaled $8.5 million or more. Usually, Trump didn’t name which charity he planned to help, which made it hard to check whether he’d kept his word. I searched far and wide, and found little evidence he did. I also found at least one case where Trump had made a specific pledge to a specific charity – a $250,000 promise to a charity that helps Israeli soldiers and veterans – and didn’t pay up (Another unnamed person paid Trump’s pledge instead, the charity said.)

But Trump seemed to suffer little reputational damage. The media covered his promise, but -- since Trump was just a reality-TV star, not a presidential candidate -- they didn’t usually check on the follow-through. During the campaign, when The Washington Post pressed Trump to supply details of his giving, he refused.

“I give mostly to a lot of different groups,” Trump said in one interview.

“Can you give us any names?” asked The Post’s Drew Harwell in May.

“No, I don’t want to. No, I don’t want to,” Trump responded. “I’d like to keep it private.”

Since his election, Trump has repeatedly used this tactic: promising major actions and revelations, and relying on the public belief that a president will keep promises. On a Saturday in late December, he  promised to deliver major news about Russian hacking on “Tuesday or Wednesday.” He didn’t. Then, in January, he promised a major report on hacking “in 90 days.” This month, the 90th day passed with no report. He promised a “major investigation” into voter fraud during the 2016 election, but since then media reports have indicated that the investigation is going slowly, or not at all.

But this tactic is far harder to pull off now, because Trump and his promises are under far more scrutiny. This week, a  Gallup poll found that only 45 percent of Americans believe Trump “keeps his promises,” a number that was down 17 points just since February. 

...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Where is Trump’s ‘armada’? Apparently, wherever Fox News says it is."

Quote

The USS Carl Vinson, 1,100 feet long, has a displacement of 97,000 tons and sails with two nuclear reactors and about 60 aircraft. It’s escorted by a guided-missile cruiser and two destroyers.

So how did President Trump lose it?

In an interview with Fox Business taped on April 11, Trump confirmed a dramatic escalation in the nuclear standoff with North Korea, saying he was redirecting Navy ships to the area. “We are sending an armada — very powerful,” Trump said.

Tough talk — except the Vinson strike group was not heading toward North Korea. It was continuing previously scheduled exercises with Australian forces in the Indian Ocean. Four days after Trump spoke of his Korea armada, a military trade publication noticed that photos released by the Navy showed the carrier off Indonesia — 3,500 miles from the Korean Peninsula — and apparently heading the other way.

Was the Vinson looking for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370? Had Percy Jackson lured it into the Sea of Monsters, from which it would emerge somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle with Amelia Earhart, Grand Duchess Anastasia and Jimmy Hoffa?

There has been much speculation about Trump’s nonsense talk about his “armada.” Administration officials suggested a miscommunication between the Pentagon and the White House. Others suspected deliberate psy-ops against North Korea and China.

I put the question to my former colleague Tom Ricks, military writer and national security specialist at the New America Foundation. Ricks’s hypothesis: Trump didn’t have any idea where his armada was. “He probably saw it on TV.”

Trump, who tends to eschew security briefings, spends much of his day watching Fox News, often tweeting about what he sees. And Fox News was beating the drums of war in the days and hours before Trump spoke of his armada:

“The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, which had been previously scheduled in port in Australia, has turned around and will be proceeding out to the Korean Peninsula.”

“The president ordered the aircraft carrier group to reverse course.”

“The super aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is now steaming toward the waters off the Korean Peninsula.”

“He was sending a powerful message to North Korea, deploying an aircraft carrier group.”

The U.S. Pacific Command had indeed said on April 8 that the Vinson would sail north, attaching the move to rising tensions with North Korea. But there wasn’t any rush. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson encouraged people not to read too much into “routine” movements, saying there was “no particular objective.” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said “she’s just on her way up there because that’s where we thought it was most prudent.”

Trump’s version sounded more like Fox News’s.

This would appear to be another disturbing case of life imitating cable news. I’ve argued before that Trump’s many falsehoods aren’t necessarily lies; he seems not to be able to distinguish between fact and fiction, believing that whatever he says is true.

...

“We’re now experiencing what a decapitation strike would be against the U.S. government,” he said. “You can have nobody, effectively, at the White House and still run the country. It’s a post-nuclear environment.” Trump may have no clue, but his national security team is “solid,” Ricks argues. “The less the White House knows these days, the better.”

And allies — notably Germany’s Angela Merkel, whose hand Trump was reluctant to shake after a tense meeting — are coming to discount Trump because they recognize he is out of his depth. “Foreigners understand that you can’t stand by anything Trump says,” Ricks argues. Instead, the world is learning to “watch what he does, not what he says — and watch what his underlings do.”

At home as well as abroad, people are coming to recognize this emperor’s state of undress. Gallup this week reported that only 45 percent of Americans think Trump keeps his promises, down from 62 percent in February.

The Carl Vinson’s peregrinations show why. On April 11, White House press secretary Sean Spicer proclaimed that it was “a huge deterrence” to “see a carrier group steaming into an area like that.” Eight days later, he argued that his previous hogwash had become true: “We have an armada going towards the peninsula. That’s a fact.”

Yes, it’s a good thing people don’t believe this White House.

What a sad state of affairs when "the less the White House knows these days, the better". I agree with the statement, but it makes me both sad and angry.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump says 100-day marker is ‘ridiculous.’ But he’s scrambling to show progress by then on taxes, health care."

Quote

President Trump scrambled Friday to show progress on two leading priorities — health-care reform and tax cuts — ahead of his 100th day in office, even as he dismissed that marker as a “ridiculous standard” and suggested the media would judge him unfairly when he reaches it next week.

Trump told the Associated Press in an interview that he would release a tax package next week that would include reductions “bigger, I believe, than any tax cut ever.” He provided no specifics but said he would outline his plan “Wednesday or shortly thereafter.” He later sounded firmer about a Wednesday release during an event at the Treasury Department.

That's just three days ahead of Trump's 100th day in office, a standard by which presidents are often measured for their immediate impact. Trump is also pushing the House to quickly pass a revised version of a bill to replace the Affordable Care Act, another Trump campaign promise that collapsed in stunning fashion last month.

Trump's announcement on tax cuts — which caught leading congressional Republicans by surprise — could create an incredibly busy and chaotic week ahead. Lawmakers are also seeking to finish negotiations by the end of the week on a short-term spending bill to avoid a government shutdown that would coincide with Trump's 100th day.

At the Treasury Department event, Trump suggested he has some flexibility on the timetable of his initiatives.

“No particular rush, but we’ll see what happens,” he told reporters, adding: “A lot of good things are happening.”

As he maneuvered to show progress, however, Trump also took to Twitter on Friday to question the yardstick by which he is being measured.

...

While the Republican president has issued a flurry of executive orders seeking to change the direction on multiple Obama administration policies, he has no major wins on Capitol Hill beyond Gorsuch.

Toward the end of his presidential campaign, Trump embraced the 100-day marker he is now questioning. In a “Contract With the American Voter” issued by his campaign, Trump promised that, among other things, he would introduce and “fight for” 10 specific pieces of legislation in his first 100 days.

Those included bills to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, dramatically cut taxes, spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investments and significantly expand school choice.

The only one of those 10 legislative items introduced to this point is the House health-care bill.

As a candidate, Trump promised to cut the corporate tax rate and to cut income taxes for middle-class families.

He proposed cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, and Trump proposed consolidating the existing seven individual income-tax brackets into three brackets: 10, 20 and 25 percent.

At a briefing for reporters Friday, Trump's treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said that “the president wants to get health care done and he wants to get tax done. Hopefully we're going to get both done, but we're going to get tax done.”

Asked for a timeline on that, Mnuchin said: “As I said yesterday, soon.”

It remained unclear Friday afternoon how sweeping a plan Trump plans to unveil next week.

The fate of a deal to continue operations of the government also remained unclear Friday afternoon.

Republican congressional leaders have been negotiating with Democratic leaders to avoid a shutdown, but Trump is seeking to use the process to leverage several of his priorities.

“I think we’ve made it very clear that we want border wall funding, we want greater latitude to deny federal grants to sanctuary cities,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Friday. “We want hiring of immigration agents, and we want $30 billion to infuse the military budget. Those are our priorities.”

But Spicer suggested the administration has some flexibility and said he is confident there will not be a government shutdown.

Aware of Trump’s anemic output on Capitol Hill, aides have increasingly been touting his action on several foreign policy fronts and his use of executive actions, including one Thursday expediting an investigation into whether steel imports are jeopardizing U.S. national security.

Trump aides are also heavily promoting the president’s work with Republican lawmakers in an “unprecedented” way to make use of a little-known law called the Congressional Review Act.

The law allows Congress a limited window to repeal regulations put in place by the president’s administration. Trump and GOP lawmakers have now worked together to repeal more than a dozen such regulations issued in the waning days of the Obama administration. By contrast, Trump aides said, the law was used only once before by other presidents.

As the 100-day mark approaches, Trump’s top press aides have said they are planning several activities to promote his progress on issues including immigration, regulatory reform and job creation. They went through a similar, but more limited exercise, when Trump hit the 50-day mark of his presidency.

 

In reference to the final paragraph: does it sound like they are going to have a bunch of pep rallies so the tangerine toddler can get his ego stroked?

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump says 100-day marker is ‘ridiculous.’ But he’s scrambling to show progress by then on taxes, health care."

In reference to the final paragraph: does it sound like they are going to have a bunch of pep rallies so the tangerine toddler can get his ego stroked?

 Just what we need, more opportunities for the nattering fool to air his grievances to his fans. 

[JMarie]

It's Friday, so I guess he's in Florida again.  Nothing else to add.

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump says 100-day marker is ‘ridiculous.’ But he’s scrambling to show progress by then on taxes, health care."

In reference to the final paragraph: does it sound like they are going to have a bunch of pep rallies so the tangerine toddler can get his ego stroked?

He said he would do it all on day one: January 20th.   So far he is only ruling by executive order and getting bad press for it. Suddenly he sees  he won't make the 100 day mark for doing much.  A little bit of alternative history and now the 100 day mark means nothing.

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh: "The White House reveals what next week’s ‘big announcement’ on taxes will look like"

Quote

The White House will release on Wednesday the “broad principles and priorities” of their plans to overhaul federal taxes, a White House official said Friday night, downplaying expectations that the Trump administration would reveal key details underpinning the plan.

President Trump said earlier Friday that he would release new information about his plan to overhaul the tax code on Wednesday, a sign that he is trying to accelerate one of his most ambitious campaign promises even though key specifics remain undetermined.

“We’ll be having a big announcement on Wednesday having to do with tax reform,” Trump said Friday while visiting the Treasury Department. “The process has begun long ago but it really formally begins on Wednesday.”

Addressing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Trump said, “So, go to it.”

A White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told The Washington Post on Friday night that while the president did plan to make an announcement on tax reform next week, it will be broad in nature.

“[W] e will outline our broad principles and priorities,” the official said. "We are moving forward on comprehensive tax reform that cuts tax rates for individuals, simplifies our overly-complicated system and creates jobs by making American businesses competitive.”

Trump’s statement earlier on Friday had caught many congressional aides — and even some administration officials — off guard, as they thought they were working on a slower timetable.

With his unexpected comments, Trump has jolted the process forward as he tries to breathe new life into an effort that risked becoming bogged down like other campaign priorities.

But if he only issues the broad outline of a plan, he could further complicate lawmakers and many in the business community, who have been hoping the White House would weigh in on key questions, such as how it plans to tax imports or whether it will pursue the elimination of any tax deductions.

Trump plans a major cut in tax rates, focused on simplifying the tax code for individuals and families, lowering the corporate tax rate and a large tax cut for the middle class. He has also said he wants to create some sort of “reciprocity” tax that imposes a tariff-like tax on imports from countries that have tariffs against the United States.

Earlier Friday, Trump told the Associated Press in an interview that the tax cuts he would propose would be "massive" and perhaps the biggest of all time.

Mnuchin has worked on the tax plan for months, but details have remained fluid, with White House officials considering a range of options in how they restructure the tax code. White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn suggested Thursday that many of the details were still in flux during comments he made to the Institute of International Finance.

Trump has said a big tax cut will boost economic growth, help companies invest, and lead to more job creation. But Democrats and some Republicans have said any cut in rates should be offset by the elimination of tax breaks to prevent the changes from widening the budget deficit.

Mnuchin said  Thursday that the tax cuts would essentially pay for themselves because there would be so much economic growth that it would bring in new revenue to the Treasury Department.

...

Many congressional aides were caught by surprise from Trump's announcement, as White House officials have expressed that they were working hard on a plan but nowhere near ready to provide new information. Lawmakers have been anxiously waiting for more details of Trump’s plan for weeks.

Yeah, I'm sure it's a great plan. (end sarcasm font) The only people who will get a tax cut will be mufti-millionaires and billionaires.

[Audrey2]

13 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Sigh: "The White House reveals what next week’s ‘big announcement’ on taxes will look like"

Yeah, I'm sure it's a great plan. (end sarcasm font) The only people who will get a tax cut will be mufti-millionaires and billionaires.

When have we heard this about tax cuts greatly stimulating the economy? Kansas, anyone?

[IrishCarrie]

Guys, I've been meaning for sometime to thank all of you who post these articles. Being Irish, I only read about Trump in our own papers when he's done something particularly idiotic or dramatic (lots of giggles on Irish TV over him saying the boat was one place when it was another...) and it's been great to be able to easily access a daily update here. I'm kind of obsessed  and FJ is now my first port of call for my fix for some time now!

So cheers, friends