Trump 22: Not Even Poe Could Make This Shit Up

[AmazonGrace]

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/345113-golf-journalist-at-least-8-people-heard-trump-call-the-white-house-a

TL; DR: Trump lied again: 

Spoiler

 

A golf journalist is standing by his report that President Trump called the White House a "dump" despite Trump's claim that it's "totally untrue."

Alan Shipnuck told Golf Magazine that eight or nine people heard Trump call the White House a dump.

Shipnuck published a report about Trump’s golfing hobby in Sports Illustrated this week, which included the revelation that Trump called the president’s house a “real dump” compared to his New Jersey country club.

Shipnuck told Golf Magazine that a White House spokeswoman called him to demand a retraction for the statement but that he would not do so because he heard it from multiple people and that he believes they are credible sources.

“It might be inconvenient for her boss and she might wish he didn’t say it, but it’s not a lie,” he said. 

“They definitely don’t waste any time trying to be charming or friendly, these people in the White House communications department,” he added.

After the initial report was released, Trump took to Twitter to deny the claim, adding “I love the White House, one of the most beautiful buildings (homes) I have ever seen.”

 

 

Spoiler

http://www.smh.com.au/world/full-transcript-donald-trump-and-malcolm-turnbull-telephone-conversation-20170803-gxp13g.html

This full transcript of the Turnbull Trump call is absolutely terrifying. Turnbull explains the refugee deal several times and Trump asks the same questions over and over again without comprehending the responses. The boat ban thing is totally impossible for him to get and the vetting and the numbers. 

http://www.smh.com.au/world/full-transcript-donald-trump-and-malcolm-turnbull-telephone-conversation-20170803-gxp13g.html

Quote

 

The President: Okay, good. Can Australia give me a guarantee that if we have any problems – you know that is what they said about the Boston bombers. They said they were wonderful young men.

Prime Minister Turnbull: They were Russians. They were not from any of these countries.

The President: They were from wherever they were.

 

Me too, Donny, me too. 

[AnywhereButHere]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/special-counsel-mueller-impanels-washington-grand-jury-in-russia-probe-1501788287?mod=e2tw

So things are ticking along nicely in the Special Counsel's investigation. It doesn't sound like he's feeling pressured or rushed under the constant rumblings of firing.

Spoiler

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury in Washington to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, a sign that his inquiry is growing in intensity and entering a new phase, according to people familiar with the matter.

The grand jury, which began its work in recent weeks, is a sign that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry will likely continue for months. Mr. Mueller is investigating Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign or associates colluded with the Kremlin as part of that effort.

A spokesman for Mr. Mueller, Joshua Stueve, declined to comment. Moscow has denied seeking to influence the election, and Mr. Trump has vigorously disputed allegations of collusion. The president has called Mr. Mueller’s inquiry a “witch hunt.”

Ty Cobb, special counsel to the president, said he wasn’t aware that Mr. Mueller had started using a new grand jury. “Grand jury matters are typically secret,” Mr. Cobb said. “The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly.…The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller.”

Before Mr. Mueller was tapped in May to be special counsel, federal prosecutors had been using at least one other grand jury, located in Alexandria, Va., to assist in their criminal investigation of Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser. That probe, which has been taken over by Mr. Mueller’s team, focuses on Mr. Flynn’s work in the private sector on behalf of foreign interests.

Grand juries are powerful investigative tools that allow prosecutors to subpoena documents, put witnesses under oath and seek indictments, if there is evidence of a crime. Legal experts said that the decision by Mr. Mueller to impanel a grand jury suggests he believes he will need to subpoena records and take testimony from witnesses.

A grand jury in Washington is also more convenient for Mr. Mueller and his 16 attorneys—they work just a few blocks from the U.S. federal courthouse where grand juries meet—than one that is 10 traffic-clogged miles away in Virginia.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is taking over the investigation into potential links between President Trump's campaign and Russian officials. WSJ's Shelby Holliday explains just how broad his authority can go.

“This is yet a further sign that there is a long-term, large-scale series of prosecutions being contemplated and being pursued by the special counsel,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas. “If there was already a grand jury in Alexandria looking at Flynn, there would be no need to reinvent the wheel for the same guy. This suggests that the investigation is bigger and wider than Flynn, perhaps substantially so.”

[GrumpyGran]

3 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

I might have to get a glass of wine while reading that transcript. I already saw bits and pieces on Velshi and Rhule and pretty sure my eyes got stuck from rolling them.

Has anyone read about the immigration "point system?". My cousin who is still on her student visa I believe (also an alumna of Wharton) looked into it and wanted to puke.

How to earn 'points' to come to the US under Trump's immigration plan

 

Wow. So the staff at Trump's resorts will have advanced degrees and make six figures?

3 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/08/03/why-the-leaked-presidential-transcripts-are-so-frightening/?utm_term=.1a3a13f61217

Why the leaked presidential transcripts are so frightening

By Jennifer Rubin August 3 at 1:00 PM

  Hide contents

 

The Post’s latest bombshell has dropped:

The Post has obtained transcripts of Trump’s talks with Peña Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Produced by White House staff, the documents provide an unfiltered glimpse of Trump’s approach to the diplomatic aspect of his job, subjecting even a close neighbor and long-standing ally to streams of threats and invective as if aimed at U.S. adversaries.

Among the most disturbing exchanges were a series of petulant remarks concerning — what else? — refugees:

The Jan. 28 call with Turnbull became particularly acrimonious. “I have had it,” Trump erupted after the two argued about an agreement on refugees. “I have been making these calls all day, and this is the most unpleasant call all day.”

Before ending the call, Trump noted that at least one of his conversations that day had gone far more smoothly. “Putin was a pleasant call,” Trump said, referring to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin. “This is ridiculous.” … “This is going to kill me,” he said to Turnbull. “I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people.”

With the president of Mexico, Trump again made it all about him:

“On the wall, you and I both have a political problem,” Trump said. “My people stand up and say, ‘Mexico will pay for the wall,’ and your people probably say something in a similar but slightly different language.”

Trump seemed to acknowledge that his threats to make Mexico pay had left him cornered politically. “I have to have Mexico pay for the wall — I have to,” he said. “I have been talking about it for a two-year period.” …

Peña Nieto resisted, saying that Trump’s repeated threats had placed “a very big mark on our back, Mr. President.” He warned that “my position has been and will continue to be very firm, saying that Mexico cannot pay for the wall.”

Trump objected: “But you cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that, and I cannot live with that.”

There are several deeply troubling aspects of all this.

First, it is shocking to see presidential conversations released in this way. Some in the executive branch, as Anthony Scaramucci aptly put it, are intent on protecting the country from Trump. This is a good thing, by the way. White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly has obviously failed to plug the flood leaks, and one wonders whether a leak this egregious is meant to signal that the White House will remain dysfunctional. (Trump should understand that anything and everything in his administration that could be compromising will come out sooner or later.) Although leaking transcripts of presidential conversations is potentially very harmful in the long run, I would argue in this case that it is justified.

And that brings us to the next point: Trump is frighteningly obsessed with himself and his image to such an extent that he cannot fulfill the role of commander in chief. He cannot frame logical arguments based on public policy, and therefore comes across as, well, a fool to foreign leaders. His desire to maintain his own image suggests he’d be more than willing to make the country’s interests subordinate to his own need for personal affirmations. Dealing with foreign allies is bad enough, but one can only imagine what he has said to adversaries.

This, in turn, raises a third critical issue: Trump’s narcissism leaves him open to flattery and threats (to reveal embarrassing material, for example). That’s the worry in the Russia investigation — namely, that Vladimir Putin has “something” on Trump, which compels Trump to act in ways inimical to U.S. interests. Trump’s interests are paramount, so a cagey adversary can easily manipulate him.

As you can see, there is no magical cure for this, no Svengali who can be brought in to stop Trump from being Trump. One cannot be impeached and removed for being an embarrassment to the United States or an egomaniac temperamentally unfit for the job (that was the argument fornot electing him). Unless he really goes off the deep end, invoking the 25th Amendment is not a realistic option.

That leaves members of Congress and his administration with a few options. They can try to box him off from dangerous actions (as Congress now contemplates doing in a statute to protect special counsel Robert S. Mueller III from being fired) and ignore tweets, although that is an incomplete solution. Alternatively, Congress can rely on the special counsel’s findings and its own investigation, finding justification in the Russia scandal to impeach and remove him. Finally, Congress can force Trump to make a choice, or looked upon differently, give him an out to leave the presidency. Enforce the Constitution’s emoluments clause (he can receive no foreign monies); affix anti-nepotism rules in statute (depriving him of his relatives’ hand-holding, at least in an official capacity); through statute require complete divestiture of senior officials’ business holdings; or pass a law forcing him and all future presidents to disclose their tax returns. Because we know Trump puts himself, his ego and his interests ahead of everything and will do almost anything to avoid looking bad, he might just decide to take his ball and go home.

 

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/08/03/trump-berated-australias-prime-minister-over-a-refugee-policy-he-barely-understood/

Trump berated Australia’s prime minister over a refugee policy he barely understood

By Aaron Blake August 3 at 1:40 PM

We've known for a while that President Trump berated Australia's prime minister on a Jan. 28 phone call; The Washington Post reported on it back then.

What we didn't know then was how little Trump understood the policy that was discussed on the call.

  Hide contents

 

According to a transcript of the call unearthed by The Post's Greg Miller, the deal to resettle refugees was actually brought up first on the call by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who wanted assurance that the U.S. government would stand by its commitment in light of Trump's stance on other refugees. After some discussion of the Islamic State and Christian refugees more generally, Turnbull says, “This is a very big issue for us, particularly domestically, and I do understand you are inclined to a different point of view than the vice president.”

Trump then starts the back-and-forth by noting that someone had just described the deal to him. But then he uses inaccurate numbers: “Somebody told me yesterday that close to 2,000 people are coming who are really probably troublesome.”

Later, he inflates it even more for reasons that aren't clear. “With great respect, Turnbull says, “that is not right; it is not 2,000.” Trump responds: “Well, it is close. I have also heard, like, 5,000 as well.”

The number, in fact, is about 1,250, which is the number of refugees currently being held on the islands of Manus and Nauru.

Trump also doesn't even seem to familiar with the fact that the deal was forged by the Obama administration. “Who made the deal? Obama?” Trump asks. Turnbull responds, apparently realizing Trump is out of his depth: “Yes, but let me describe what it is.”

Finally, later in the conversation, Trump seems wholly unfamiliar with the reason the United States might take these refugees in the first place, rather than Australia. It's because Australia doesn't take refugees who arrive via boat, which is how these refugees traveled.

Trump repeatedly seems puzzled, first as to why Australia doesn't take the refugees, and then as to why they have a policy of not accepting people via boat:

TRUMP: Why haven’t you let them out? Why have you not let them into your society?

TURNBULL: Okay, I will explain why. It is not because they are bad people. It is because in order to stop people smugglers, we had to deprive them of the product. So we said if you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Noble [sic] Prize winning genius, we will not let you in.

And later:

TURNBULL: Let me explain. We know exactly who they are. They have been on Nauru or Manus for over three years and the only reason we cannot let them into Australia is because of our commitment to not allow people to come by boat. Otherwise we would have let them in. If they had arrived by airplane and with a tourist visa then they would be here.

TRUMP: Malcom, but they are arrived on a boat?

TURNBULL: Correct, we have stopped the boats.

And:

TURNBULL: We will take more. We will take anyone that you want us to take. The only people that we do not take are people who come by boat. So we would rather take a not very attractive guy that help you out then to take a Noble Peace Prize winner that comes by boat. That is the point.

TRUMP: What is the thing with boats? Why do you discriminate against boats? No, I know, they come from certain regions. I get it.

TURNBULL: No, let me explain why. The problem with the boats it that you are basically outsourcing your immigration program to people smugglers and also you get thousands of people drowning at sea. So what we say is, we will decide which people get to come to Australia who are refugees, economic migrants, businessmen, whatever. We decide. That is our decision.

It's difficult to read all of this and believe Trump had anything more than a passing understanding of the refugee resettlement deal before this call, and yet he launches into a virtual tirade against a major U.S. ally and later hangs up on Turnbull.

This, of course, wouldn't be the only time that Trump spoke with a foreign leader apparently without doing his homework on the major issues between their two countries. When he welcomed the Lebanese prime minister to the White House recently, Trump was asked about sanctions against Hezbollah and didn't seem to have a clue about it. He even seemed to not recognize the word Hezbollah at one point.

View image on Twitter

 Follow

Aaron Blake ✔@AaronBlake

This answer from Trump ...

12:17 AM - Jul 26, 2017

 

Needless to say, conducting diplomacy without an understanding of the issues you're debating is a pretty curious approach. It seems a lot like Trump heard the word “refugees” and that's all he needed to know.

 

 

OMG, how could he be worse than I already thought he was?

[JMarie]

Well, the Trumps (Eric included) are heading to West Virginia for a rally!  There's going to be a huge announcement!  The governor is switching teams!  No, not like that!  Get your head out of the gutter!  He's becoming a Republican!  And for that, the president and his family have to be there, because... why?  Is that why Trump's having a rally in WV?  To celebrate Republicaness?

[Rachel333]

Quote

Turnbull: Let me explain. We know exactly who they are. They have been on Nauru or Manus for over three years and the only reason we cannot let them into Australia is because of our commitment to not allow people to come by boat. Otherwise we would have let them in. If they had arrived by airplane and with a tourist visa then they would be here.

Trump: Malcom, but they are arrived on a boat?

Turnbull: The only people that we do not take are people who come by boa. So we would rather take a not very attractive guy that help you out then to take a Noble [sic] Peace Prize winner that comes by boat. That is the point.”

Trump: What is the thing with boats? Why do you discriminate against boats? No, I know, they come from certain regions. I get it.

[GrumpyGran]

50 minutes ago, JMarie said:

Well, the Trumps (Eric included) are heading to West Virginia for a rally!  There's going to be a huge announcement!  The governor is switching teams!  No, not like that!  Get your head out of the gutter!  He's becoming a Republican!  And for that, the president and his family have to be there, because... why?  Is that why Trump's having a rally in WV?  To celebrate Republicaness?

So what did he promise this guy to get him to provide this PR event? Poor guy doesn't realize Trump will cheat him.

[47of74]

Secret Service vacates Trump Tower command post in lease dispute with president’s company

Quote

The Secret Service has vacated its command post inside Trump Tower in Manhattan following a dispute between the government and President Trump’s company over the terms of a lease for the space, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

Previously, the Secret Service had stationed its command post — which houses supervisors and backup agents on standby in case of an emergency — in a Trump Tower unit one floor below the president’s apartment.

But in early July, the post was relocated to a trailer on the sidewalk, more than 50 floors below, a distance that some security experts worry could hamper the agency that protects the president’s home and family.

The command post appears unlikely to move anytime soon back inside Trump Tower, where the president and his family have rarely gone since moving to the White House.

That Orange Fucksicle ought to be paying us for all the extra demands he's putting on the Secret Service, not the other way around.

[GreyhoundFan]

Hmmmm :"Secret Service vacates Trump Tower command post in lease dispute with president’s company"

Spoiler

The Secret Service has vacated its command post inside Trump Tower in Manhattan following a dispute between the government and President Trump’s company over the terms of a lease for the space, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

Previously, the Secret Service had stationed its command post — which houses supervisors and backup agents on standby in case of an emergency — in a Trump Tower unit one floor below the president’s apartment.

But in early July, the post was relocated to a trailer on the sidewalk, more than 50 floors below, a distance that some security experts worry could hamper the agency that protects the president’s home and family.

The command post appears unlikely to move anytime soon back inside Trump Tower, where the president and his family have rarely gone since moving to the White House.

On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization said the government should seek space in another location.

“After much consideration, it was mutually determined that it would be more cost effective and logistically practical for the Secret Service to lease space elsewhere,” spokeswoman Amanda Miller wrote in an email to The Washington Post.

The details of the dispute between the Trump Organization and the Secret Service were not clear Thursday. Two people familiar with the discussions said the sticking points included the price and other conditions of the lease.

On Thursday, there appeared to be a difference of opinion over whether negotiations for a Trump Tower space were still going on.

Despite the Trump Organization’s statement to The Post on Thursday saying the agency should look elsewhere, Secret Service officials said the agency is still hoping for space in Trump Tower.

The agency is working “to obtain permanent work space in an appropriate location,” said Catherine Milhoan, a Secret Service spokeswoman.

Milhoan added, “Throughout this process, there has been no impact to the security plan developed by the Secret Service.”

A spokeswoman for the General Services Administration, which handles government leasing, declined to comment because the search for a command-post space is still active.

“The space is still in the process of being obtained and a final decision has not been made,” spokeswoman Pamela Dixon wrote in an e-mail.

That move has provided a new illustration of the unusual nature of Trump’s tenure, in which the president has retained ownership of a real estate and branding company.

In this case, Trump’s government sought to be a customer of Trump’s business. To protect him, the agency needed space in the pricey tower where he lives. But the two sides couldn’t agree. The Trump Organization was willing to accept a situation where the agents moved out and the space was available for others.

Trump has not visited Trump Tower since he was inaugurated. His wife, first lady Melania Trump, and their son Barron lived there for several months, but relocated to Washington in early June.

Still, the Secret Service treats Trump Tower as the president’s permanent home, and has a full-time detail to protect it.

Experts said the Secret Service will have a presence inside the building if Trump or his family members visit, as their personal security details would remain in close proximity.

A Secret Service official said Thursday that the agency could compensate at other times by stationing more agents at standing posts in various locations throughout the building.

But experts said that the lack of a nearby command post could make the situation less safe in an emergency.

“It’s a security deficiency that has to be resolved,” said a former Secret Service official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “It’s like having the quarterback of the football game actually being located in a different stadium than where the game is being played.”

The Secret Service command post acts as a nerve center for a broader team of agents, both at a president’s private home and when the president travels. The command post is usually located on the same floor as the suite or room where the president is sleeping, or one floor below.

At Trump Tower, the command post had operated temporarily for months in the offices of the Trump Organization, one floor below the president’s residence.

Now, with the post on the street below, security experts worry that radio transmissions could break up because of the distance and multiple walls between agents on the scene and commanders in the trailer.

The U.S. military has separately agreed to lease space in Trump Tower for $130,000 a month, according to a lease first reported last month by the Wall Street Journal. That space will be for the White House Military Office, which provides services including communications and the handling of the “football” that the president would use to launch a nuclear attack, the Journal reported.

The Journal reported that the military was paying more for this unit than other renters had paid for similar units in the building.

In that case, however, the unit was not leased directly from Trump — but rather from Joel Anderson, a businessman who owns the space. In an interview Thursday, Anderson said that the government didn’t really try to negotiate a lower price.

“It was a standard lease negotiation, like any other, and had all of the same parts. The only thing that made it difficult it is they’re bureaucratic, and it takes them forever to do anything,” Anderson said. “They’re not bad to deal with, they’re just slow.”

The lease agreement in that case — which runs to 149 pages — illustrates the extra conditions that may come from leasing space to the government. Its provisions ask that the owner of the space follow energy-efficiency guidelines, submit reports on its compliance with fair-hiring practices, and post signs with a hotline for reporting contract fraud.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yes: "The bully in chief is losing his touch"

Spoiler

President Trump has bullied his way through his adult life. Screaming, suing, manipulating the tabloid press and allegedly chiseling employees, he has used wealth, power and a volatile personality to get his way. He bluffed, dodged, insulted and stormed his way through the campaign. For a time, his standing with the GOP base, the fear of nasty tweets (yes, politicians are wimps) and the hope that they could use him to pass their agenda led to a pathetic level of deference from GOP lawmakers.

Now the president’s poll numbers are in the 30s. He has failed on his signature legislative item (repealing and replacing Obamacare), fired a slew of advisers, been compelled to sign Russia sanctions legislation and failed to halt the special counsel’s investigation into his and his campaign’s Russian affiliations. And now the ice has cracked, the power is ebbing and lawmakers, civil servants, outside groups are unimpressed — and more than willing to shove back:

• The Boy Scouts and the Mexican government call him out for lying about phone calls that never happened. (But they were not lies, insisted Sarah Huckabee Sanders!)
• Lawmakers have no time for his mean-spirited and economically disastrous plan to chop immigration numbers in half; they disregard his call to plunge back into health care.
• Republicans tell him to stop berating the attorney general.
• Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev taunts Trump on his acquiescence to sanctions legislation: “The Trump administration has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way.”
• The military shrugs when Trump tries to throw out transgender military personnel via a tweet; meeting participant(s) then leak about his petulant and ignorant rant in a strategy session about Afghanistan.
• Throughout the executive branch, employees who recognize the extent of the Trump team’s recklessness and incompetence are more than willing to leak about it. So far we’ve seen State Department employees reveal gross mismanagement, Justice Department attorneys pull back the curtain on hostility to affirmative action and Environmental Protection Agency scientists denounce Trump’s embrace of anti-science myths (“Today the environmental field is suffering from the temporary triumph of myth over truth,” wrote Elizabeth Southerland, director of science and technology in the Office of Water, in her farewell letter. “The truth is there is NO war on coal, there is NO economic crisis caused by environmental protection, and climate change IS caused by man’s activities.”)

Moreover, by virtue of his string of failures, Trump has been compelled to empower a new chief of staff, John F. Kelly, to rein in himself and his senior staffers. Trump is now in a real sense at the mercy of Kelly (perhaps the only person who can rescue his sinking presidency), who is depriving him of his free-wheeling — chaotic, some would say — operation, insisting on vetting information he gets (!) and allowing national security adviser H.R. McMaster to fire loyalists of Stephen K. Bannon. (How the wacky conspiratorialist and a plotter in the “unmasking” non-scandal lasted this long is a stunning indication of the level of the West Wing’s unprofessionalism.)

Trump is a diminished figure, a weakened force after only about six months in office. Once the aura of presidential authority is gone, others (Congress, the chief of staff, third parties) become more and more daring in challenging the president, more willing to speak out (on the record or via leaks) and more insistent on taking matters into their own hands. Trump got to the presidency by faking his way through the campaign, pretending to have skills and knowledge he obviously does not. As he now fakes “being in charge,” watch for him to lash out at real and perceived affronts, step up the number of self-congratulatory lies (so many imaginary phone calls!) and strain even harder to recapture the adulation he experienced on the campaign trail by pandering to his less-educated, rural white base. Will he completely blow up his presidency before Kelly can assert some semblance of order? The race is on; Kelly better work fast.

Yes, he is probably going to lash out even more.

[AmazonGrace]

Tale of two tweets: 

 

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/australias-pm-slowly-realizes-trump-is-a-complete-idiot.html

This is the best article about the transcripts, imo. 

Australia’s Prime Minister Slowly Realizes Trump Is a Complete Idiot

By Jonathan Chait

Spoiler

 

The transcript of Donald Trump’s discussion with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull obtained by the Washington Post reveals many things, but the most significant may be that Trump in his private negotiations is every bit as mentally limited as he appears to be in public.
At issue in the conversation is a deal to settle 1,250 refugees who have been detained by Australia in the United States. I did not pay any attention to the details of this agreement before reading the transcript. By the time I was halfway through it, my brain could not stop screaming at Trump for his failure to understand what Turnbull was telling him.

Australia has a policy of refusing to accept refugees who arrive by boat. The reason, as Turnbull patiently attempts to explain several times, is that it believes giving refuge to people who arrive by boat would encourage smuggling and create unsafe passage with a high risk of deaths at sea. But it had a large number of refugees who had arrived by sea, living in difficult conditions, whom Australia would not resettle (for fear of encouraging more boat trafficking) but whom it did not want to deport, either. The United States government agreed under President Obama to vet 1,250 of these refugees and accept as many of them as it deemed safe.

In the transcript, Trump is unable to absorb any of these facts. He calls the refugees “prisoners,” and repeatedly brings up the Cuban boatlift (in which Castro dumped criminals onto Florida). He is unable to absorb Turnbull’s explanation that they are economic refugees, not from conflict zones, and that the United States has the ability to turn away any of them it deems dangerous.

Turnbull tries to explain to Trump that refugees have not been detained because they pose a danger to Australian society, but in order to deter ship-based smuggling:

Trump: Why haven’t you let them out? Why have you not let them into your society?

 

Turnbull: Okay, I will explain why. It is not because they are bad people. It is because in order to stop people smugglers, we had to deprive them of the product. So we said if you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Noble [sic] Prize winning genius, we will not let you in. Because the problem with the people —

At this point, Trump fails to understand the policy altogether, and proceeds to congratulate Turnbull for what Trump mistakes to be a draconian policy of total exclusion:

Trump: That is a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am … Because you do not want to destroy your country. Look at what has happened in Germany. Look at what is happening in these countries.

Trump has completely failed to understand either that the refugees are not considered dangerous, or, again, that they are being held because of a categorical ban on ship-based refugee traffic.

He also fails to understand the number of refugees in the agreement:

Trump: I am the world’s greatest person that does not want to let people into the country. And now I am agreeing to take 2,000 people and I agree I can vet them, but that puts me in a bad position. It makes me look so bad and I have only been here a week.

 

Turnbull: With great respect, that is not right – It is not 2,000.

 

Trump: Well, it is close. I have also heard like 5,000 as well.

 

Turnbull: The given number in the agreement is 1,250 and it is entirely a matter of your vetting.

Then Trump returns to his belief that they are bad, and failing to understand the concept that they have been detained merely because they arrived by sea and not because they committed a crime:

Trump: I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people.

Turnbull: I would not be so sure about that. They are basically —

Trump: Well, maybe you should let them out of prison.

He still thinks they’re criminals.

Later, Trump asks what happens if all the refugees fail his vetting process:

Trump: I hate having to do it, but I am still going to vet them very closely. Suppose I vet them closely and I do not take any?

Turnbull: That is the point I have been trying to make.

After several attempts by Turnbull to explain Australia’s policy, Trump again expresses his total inability to understand what it is:

Trump: Does anybody know who these people are? Who are they? Where do they come from? Are they going to become the Boston bomber in five years? Or two years? Who are these people?

 

Turnbull: Let me explain. We know exactly who they are. They have been on Nauru or Manus for over three years and the only reason we cannot let them into Australia is because of our commitment to not allow people to come by boat. Otherwise we would have let them in. If they had arrived by airplane and with a tourist visa then they would be here.

 

Trump: Malcom [sic], but they are arrived on a boat?

After Turnbull has told Trump several times that the refugees have been detained because they arrived by boat, and only for that reason, Trump’s question is, “But they are arrived on a boat?”

Soon after, Turnbull again reiterates that Australia’s policy is to detain any refugee who arrives by boat:

Turnbull: The only people that we do not take are people who come by boa. So we would rather take a not very attractive guy that help you out then to take a Noble [sic] Peace Prize winner that comes by boat. That is the point.”

 

Trump: What is the thing with boats? Why do you discriminate against boats? No, I know, they come from certain regions. I get it.

No, you don’t get it at all! It’s not that they come from certain regions! It’s that they come by boat!

So Turnbull very patiently tries to explain again that the policy has nothing to do with what region the refugees come from:

Turnbull: No, let me explain why. The problem with the boats it that you are basically outsourcing your immigration program to people smugglers and also you get thousands of people drowning at sea.

At this point, Trump gives up asking about the policy and just starts venting about the terribleness of deals in general:

I do not know what he got out of it. We never get anything out of it — START Treaty, the Iran deal. I do not know where they find these people to make these stupid deals. I am going to get killed on this thing.

Shortly afterward, the call ends in brusque fashion, and Turnbull presumably begins drinking heavily.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another crappy nomination: "The Finance 202: This ex-congressman may be Trump's weirdest nomination to date"

Spoiler

Add this to the growing list of White House headaches: President Trump’s pick to lead the Export-Import Bank is hanging by a fraying thread in the Senate. 

The nominee — former Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) — faces a buzz saw of bipartisan resistance thanks to his outspoken efforts while in Congress to dismantle the bank he now seeks to lead. Garrett is making the rounds among senators this week, hoping to tread a narrow path to confirmation by making assurances he’ll help the institution get back up and running while pursuing reforms demanded by conservatives. 

By all accounts, it’s been a bumpy performance. Garrett opened a meeting with a number of Senate Democrats on Tuesday by volunteering that he was surprised to have been nominated. Sources familiar with the meeting said it went downhill from there, with the New Jersey Republican declining to say whether if confirmed, he’d advocate for the bank’s reauthorization (it's long been a punching bag of hardline conservatives). By the end of the roughly 45-minute huddle, senators were directing their questions to Garrett’s administration minder, White House legislative affairs chief Marc Short, since he seemed better informed on issues facing the bank, sources briefed on it said. The meeting, Democratic participants said in a joint statement afterward, was “bizarre.”

More consequentially for Garrett, Republican skeptics on the Senate Banking Committee aren't committing to approving him. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) met with Garrett on Wednesday and said via statement afterward only that it was a good meeting “and we are continuing to do our due diligence.” Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) — whose state hosts major facilities for Boeing, General Electric and other Ex-Im beneficiaries — likewise reserved judgment after meeting with Garrett. Scott has said the nominee must make a public statement of his support for the bank’s reauthorization, a demand he reaffirmed in a statement Wednesday evening. “My position has not changed,” Scott said. “Mr. Garrett will have that opportunity when he testifies before the Senate Banking Committee, where I will be asking some direct and pointed questions regarding the future of the Bank.” 

Scott’s fellow South Carolinian, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R), has gone further, last month calling on the White House to pull Garrett’s nomination and replace him with somebody more supportive of the bank’s mission. If Rounds and Scott oppose Garrett in committee, assuming Democrats hang together in opposition, Garrett will be defeated. If he manages to surmount that obstacle, things don't look much brighter on the Senate floor -- if Graham opposes him, it would be all over.

But Trump officials backing Garrett argue anyone friendlier to the bank would lose even more votes from the GOP’s right flank. “If a traditional, Chamber-of-Commerce candidate were put forward, conservatives would not reauthorize the bank,” one senior administration official tells me. ”The bigger issue is that the bank is something that divides the Republican Party and the conservative movement.”

It’s true that the fight over Garrett cuts to the core of a sharp GOP ideological rift. The bank, which exists to provide credit financing to foreign buyers of American-made products, has existed in happy obscurity for most of the time since its New Deal-era founding.

Five years ago, hard-line conservatives led by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) seized on it because it was small. They’ve aimed to dispatch the bank — and its roughly 450 employees, equivalent to the Office of Surface Mining — as a proxy win in a wider war for free-market purity in the party. “The Bank of Boeing,” as these critics deride it, offers little more than a taxpayer-funded subsidy in the form of loan guarantees to massive corporate interests. Defenders say it provides a critical boost to American manufacturers competing against foreign companies supported by similar facilities in their native countries. 

Hensarling, now chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Garrett and their allies have scored temporary victories. In 2015, its charter lapsed for five months, shutting it down. And the bank has lacked a quorum for months, prohibiting it from approving deals worth more than $10 million (remember: now-ousted White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was a vice president and senior strategy officer at Ex-Im before he was dispatched from Trump world).

Trump himself has been on both sides of the fight, siding with critics as a candidate, then doing an about-face in April by nominating Garrett in a bid to restore the bank’s quorum -- all while pushing for institutional reforms. 

In recent weeks, business groups backing the bank have waged an unusually aggressive campaign to sink Garrett’s nomination in one instance of the divide between them and Trump. The Business Roundtable opposes Garrett: 

...

The Aerospace Industries Association has urged Trump to withdraw the nomination. 

And the National Association of Manufacturers has been noisiest of all, launching a series of late-July ads against him in three states and keeping up a drumbeat of opposition within the Beltway: 

...

From the National Association of Manufacturers president and CEO: 

...

In the face of the mounting pushback, administration officials recently considered swapping Garrett’s nomination to serve as the bank’s chairman with a board seat they’ve offered to former Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), Hensarling’s predecessor as the top Republican on the House Financial Services panel and a reliable Ex-Im backer. But the senior administration official tells me that the White House remains committed to Garrett. 

As one industry source close to the situation frames it, the power to salvage Garrett’s nomination now lies with the nominee alone: “If he can’t figure out how to square the circle here, I don’t see how it happens.”

Shaking my head.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why the most dishonest president in history can’t fool us about what matters"

Spoiler

During a presidential campaign in which Donald Trump upended our baseline assumptions about politics and truth-telling, many asked what it would be like if someone so profoundly dishonest, who lied so easily, so shamelessly and so promiscuously actually became president. Would it create an ongoing crisis of legitimacy? Would it permanently debase our democracy? Would we even be able to have sane debates about important issues?

The answers to those questions are starting to take shape, and while the news is by no means good, there are glimmers of hope. It turns out that we didn’t all just throw up our hands and give up on any notion of truth. Policing the president’s boundless mendacity is taking up an enormous proportion of our time and attention — but in an odd way, that may protect us.

The latest occasion to consider the effects of President Trump’s unique enthusiasm for deception comes out of an interview he did with the Wall Street Journal, where he commented on his disastrous speech last week to the Boy Scout Jamboree. With characteristic classlessness, Trump took an event at which presidents usually talk about things like citizenship and integrity and instead delivered a rambling, partisan speech that also included a bizarre story about a developer and his party yacht (“I won’t go any more than that because you’re Boy Scouts. … Oh, you’re Boy Scouts, but you know life.”). To the Journal, Trump claimed, “I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful.”

Anyone who heard this immediately knew it couldn’t possibly be true, particularly because the head of the Boy Scouts had issued a public apology for the fact that the president had given such an inappropriate speech at their event. It fits a pattern in which Trump claims absurdly that people are calling him up to tell him that a speech he gave was the greatest thing anyone had ever heard; about the speech he gave on a recent trip to Poland, he said, “enemies of mine are saying it was the greatest speech ever made on foreign soil by a president,” which no one was saying.

After the Boy Scouts told reporters that there was no such phone call of praise to Trump, something amazing happened: Trump’s spokeswoman admitted that he made the whole thing up. Sort of. Asked by a reporter whether Trump had lied about the Boy Scouts and about another apparently fabricated phone call, this one from Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, Sarah Huckabee Sanders replied that while there was no phone call, “multiple members of the Boy Scout leadership, following his speech there that day, congratulated him, praised him. … I wouldn’t say it was a lie.”

Of course she wouldn’t, because admitting that truth would probably get her fired. But this somewhat trivial story illustrates that this has become a central component of the relationship between the press and the White House: Trump tells a bunch of lies, reporters track down the truth then confront his spokesmen to see how they’ll try to spin it away, and report the results.

You can look at it as a kind of game, but something fundamental has changed. We now assume as a matter of course that whatever the president of the United States says is probably false. This is a 180-degree shift from how every president before him, Democrat and Republican, has been approached. All presidents have lied from time to time, but most of what they said was still true. Not so with Trump.

He upended a whole series of assumptions about political honesty, not just with the frequency of the lies he tells but also with their brazenness. Some politicians are more honest than others, but they all want us to believe that they’re honest — they avoid lying if they can and want to avoid getting caught when they do lie. They feel that it’s important that people believe them. Trump doesn’t.

I imagine that in the president’s mind, his lies amount to what in advertising is called “puffery,” which is actually a legal term referring to claims that are so outlandish that no one could possibly believe them. But some people do believe them, because there’s an entire media apparatus devoted to convincing Trump supporters that anything they hear from a source other than Fox News or their favorite right-wing radio host is “fake news,” while whatever Trump says must be true.

But as maddening as that may be, it’s important to remember that the truth still has a chance. If it didn’t, Trump’s approval wouldn’t be in the 30s, and you wouldn’t see polls showing 62 percent of Americans saying the president is not honest.

Of course, some lies are more important than others. The largest portion of Trump’s lies are self-aggrandizing, meant to persuade you of little beyond his fantasticness. His crowds are the biggest, he gave the greatest speech, he signed the most bills, his victory was incredible, everyone loves him. No one’s going to impeach the president for lying about the Boy Scouts, so while it reveals something about his character, it isn’t a story we need to dwell on for weeks. But when Trump crafts a false statement about the meeting his son, son-in-law and campaign chairman had with a group of Russian characters, that’s something much more significant, because it appears to show him engaged in a coverup.

Perhaps the most consequential question is whether we’ll be ready for the time when Trump starts lying to us about matters of life and death. Back in 2002 and 2003, the media and the country as a whole were woefully unprepared for the extraordinary propaganda campaign the Bush administration undertook to convince Americans that if we didn’t invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein would kill us all with his fearsome arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. That campaign worked, the country went along (at first), and the result was the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history, with trillions of dollars spent, thousands of American lives lost, and much of the Middle East thrown into chaos.

Could the Trump administration fool the public on that kind of scale? I doubt it. If they tried, everything the president said would be scrutinized closely, and people within the government would be leaking like mad to get the truth out. So in a strange way, Trump’s endless and often comical lies about trivial things may have made it much harder for him to fool us about what matters most. As George W. Bush said, “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — can’t get fooled again.”

See, he's the greatest ever -- the greatest liar.

[GreyhoundFan]

"If Trump were an immigrant, he’d probably be deported"

Spoiler

How might President Trump fare in the “merit-based” immigration scheme he just endorsed?

If he were an immigrant, there’s a decent chance he’d get kicked out of the country.

The economy-crippling bill that Trump embraced this week includes much to dislike. It would cut legal immigration levels in half, flouting Trump’s prior pledges not to reduce legal immigration or be unfair to those who’ve patiently waited in line — some for years.

Despite what he and the bill’s Senate sponsors suggest, it also wouldn’t increase the number of skilled or merit-based immigrants. Instead, it would change how “skills” and “merit” are defined, replacing our current employer-centered system with a points-based one — and then scaling back eligibility for almost everyone else.

For insight into how thoughtfully designed this new system is, let’s try a high-profile test case: the leader of the free world.

Under the bill, points would be awarded for age, education, extraordinary achievement, English-language proficiency, entrepreneurial initiative and having a high-paying job offer. There’s also a tiny bonus for those already scheduled to receive a green card under the old system’s family preference category. The top score available is 90, by my tally. (There’s some ambiguity about the scoring, however; more on that later.)

Here’s how Trump — or at least, a foreign national with roughly his qualifications — would do.

Age: zero points. People older than 51 don’t earn points. Trump is 71. The best ages to be under this system, by the way, are 26 to 30. (Darn millennials.)

Education: six.  Trump has a bachelor’s degree from a U.S. university.

Record of extraordinary achievement: zero. Trump may have starred in a network reality show and (allegedly) sunk 30-foot putts, but what counts as “extraordinary achievement” is limited to two categories.

One is winning a Nobel Prize or comparable recognition in a science or social science field. No luck there, though a certain pseudo-Kenyan predecessor would benefit.

The other is recently winning an Olympic medal (individual event only, no relays!) or placing first in another comparable international athletic event.

English-language ability: zero. To receive points here, you need to score in the top half of those taking an officially sanctioned English proficiency exam, such as the TOEFL.

Success on this exam’s writing section requires using “appropriate word choice,” effectively addressing a topic and displaying “unity, progression and coherence.” Consider how the coiner of “covfefe” might perform.

The TOEFL speaking section includes responding to a simple question prompt. Scoring well requires staying on topic, being intelligible and exhibiting “sustained, coherent discourse.”

Peruse the transcript of Trump’s recent interview with the Wall Street Journal — or any other unscripted conversation, really — to judge how he fares.

Entrepreneurial initiative: 12. Trump gets this for investing at least $1.8 million in a new commercial enterprise in the United States, maintaining this investment for at least three years and playing an active role in the company’s management.

The Trump Organization is not exactly a “new commercial enterprise” — it was founded by Trump’s grandmother, before he was born — but he has a long list of more-recently-created LLCs and other corporations that probably count.

High-paying job offer: zero. This involves the ambiguous legislative language I flagged earlier.

Trump reports having a lot of income from his companies. But two immigration experts I consulted said that the “entrepreneurial initiative” and “high-paying job offer” points are likely mutually exclusive. That is, to get points for the entrepreneurial initiative category, the commercial enterprise you invest in must be one you help manage as your primary occupation; and you can’t claim you made yourself a high-paying job offer. Even the measly $400,000 offered him as president (which as a foreigner, he couldn’t be, but whatever) might not help him here, if he’s claiming entrepreneurial points.

Trump’s total: 18. To be eligible to join the applicant pool of those trying for a points-based immigrant visa, you need a minimum score of 30.

If you want to be more generous (and less cheeky) than I, you could decide that Trump would score in the top decile on the English test. That would grant him an additional 12 points, bringing him just up to that 30-point minimum. 

Even so, not everyone who met that threshold would get in. Roughly the top 70,000 scorers would be selected, when you factor in spouses and dependents they get to bring along. We don’t know what the cutoff would be. It might be 65 points, depending on how many apply.

If Trump’s even-barely-eligible score weren’t high enough, he could try again the following year, so long as still he had a legal temporary visa. Otherwise he’d have to leave the country.

If he were really desperate, of course, he could find a U.S. spouse to sponsor him for a green card. Melania to the rescue? Her English has to be better.

How very SAD.

[47of74]

The Orange Fucksicle has to prove he can behave before he can have a state visit

Quote

President Trump will make a “dummy visit” to the United Kingdom this year, amid concerns that an official visit from the U.S. president could embarrass Queen Elizabeth, according to a report from The Daily Mail.

The trial visit, which will not include the traditional pomp and circumstance of an official visit, will include talks with Prime Minister Theresa May.

Trump will be invited by to the U.K. for an official visit only if the “dummy” run is a success, according to the British publication.

The trial trip is reportedly due to concerns that Trump’s boisterous and untraditional behavior could embarrass the queen.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

@47of74 -- wow, that's pitiful. I can't imagine any recent president requiring that level of behavior management.

 

Another interesting analysis of the ridiculous immigration restrictions which includes many of the WH players. There are screencaps of immigration books in the article: "Under Trump’s new immigration rule, his own grandfather likely wouldn’t have gotten in"

Spoiler

It wasn’t until the media started asking questions that the White House’s introduction of a law curtailing legal immigration got contentious. During the daily press briefing, CNN’s Jim Acosta, himself a son of Cuban immigrants, challenged senior adviser Stephen Miller on a component of the proposed bill which would grant English-speakers more favor in gaining admission to the United States.

“Aren’t you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if you’re telling them you have to speak English?” Acosta asked. “Can’t people learn how to speak English when they get here?”

The answer is, of course, that they can. As President Trump’s grandfather did. As Stephen Miller’s great-grandparents did. And as a member of Trump’s own Cabinet did.

The policy, the Raise Act, would introduce a point-based system for new applicants to enter the United States. In addition to speaking English, points would be awarded based on answers to these other questions that Miller mentioned: “Can they support themselves and their families financially? Do they have a skill that will add to the U.S. economy? Are they being paid a high wage?

...

Were that policy in place in 1885, Friedrich Trumpf would likely not have gained entry to the United States. The immigration record for his arrival that year indicates that he arrived without an identifiable “calling”: The word “none” sits next to his name in that column.

A biographer of Trumpf — father of Fred Trump, who was the father of the president — told Deutsche Welle that Donald Trump’s grandfather didn’t speak English when he got here.

“He came to New York,” Gwenda Blair said, “and, after he learnt English, he went to the West Coast, ran restaurants, amassed a nest egg, then went back to Kallstadt, married the girl next door and brought her to New York.” It was on the West Coast that Trumpf (now just Trump) became a citizen and registered to vote in the 1892 election.

But: no skills, no English. Would he have gotten in?

...

Donald Trump’s mother, Mary MacLeod, would have had more luck. An immigrant from Scotland, she is listed on Census documents as speaking English, although a Politico profile of her from last year notes that “she spoke almost exclusively in Scots Gaelic before leaving for a new life in the United States at age 18.”

Were Friedrich Trumpf barred entry, there might not be a President Trump. But if this law had been in effect a century ago, there also may not have been a senior adviser Stephen Miller.

...

Reporter Jennifer Mendelsohn tracked down Miller’s genealogy. She discovered that Miller’s father’s father’s mother — his great-grandmother, Sarah Miller — was identified in the 1910 Census as speaking only Yiddish.

What’s more, the Los Angeles Times obituary for Miller’s grandmother Freya makes special mention of how her parents, Nathan and Frannie Baker, “epitomized the American Dream.”

“Teaching each other English, working together to build a nest egg, the two immigrants eventually bought a small grocery store,” it reads. “The Baker Family lived upstairs and all the family worked in the store. Freya, and her two brothers, were educated in the superb public school system.”

Other senior Trump officials have family trees that suggest ancestors who may have been barred entry at Ellis Island.

...

Kellyanne Conway’s great-grandfather was named Pasquale Lombardo and was born in Naples, Italy. A man of that name and the proper age is identified in the 1910 Census as living in Pennsylvania and working as a blast furnace laborer who spoke only Italian.

Stephen K. Bannon’s great-great-grandfather was a man named Mattias Herr, who was born in Bavaria in 1836 before moving to Maryland. It’s not clear whether he spoke English or knew a skilled trade.

...

Mike Pence — like many Americans — is also the grandchild of an immigrant. His mother’s father, Richard Michael Cawley, immigrated to the United States from Ireland to work as a bus driver. He did speak English, though, and likely would have cleared admission under the Raise Act.

...

As mentioned above, though, at least one member of Trump’s Cabinet didn’t. Elaine Chao, Trump’s secretary of transportation (and wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), was born in Taiwan and came to the United States in 1961, when she was 8.

She described that transition in a CNN interview last month.

“I remember how tough it was to try to learn a new culture, a new language and just to adapt to, like, ordinary daily stuff like the food. Like, most Chinese don’t eat meat between breads,” she said. As she tried to learn the language, “the kids were mean to me,” she said.

Her father, who spoke English, was already in the United States when Chao and her mother and sisters arrived, working in the maritime industry. Would that have been enough to warrant admission? To bring over his family?

This, it seems, was Acosta’s point: Doesn’t two centuries of experience show that people who arrive in America without the ability to speak English or a highly skilled trade can have a significant impact on the future of the country?

 

[fraurosena]

Oh, goody! Murkowski's revenge!

UNANIMOUSLY.

(sorry can't quote the article itself, I'm on my phone)

[Howl]

Quote

Trump will be invited by to the U.K. for an official visit only if the “dummy” run is a success, according to the British publication.

The trial trip is reportedly due to concerns that Trump’s boisterous and untraditional behavior could embarrass the queen.

Trump is gauche and a buffoon.  I remember how much the queen liked the Obamas and especially Michelle, because they had, you know, class.  

4 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Oh, goody! The Senate did something good for once.

UNANIMOUSLY.

(sorry can't quote the article itself, I'm on my phone)

Whoa and double Whoa! Eleventy.  1!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!11!!! Has the worm finally turned?

[SilverBeach]

18 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Except when there are banana's involved...

Heehee, yep

[fraurosena]

Wherein Kellyanne Conjob's husband's past efforts to get Clinton might just ensure the ultimate irony...

 

[47of74]

Zombies ahead was soooo 2005.

This is 2017.  So now we have...

 

[Childless]

4 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Secret Service vacates Trump Tower command post in lease dispute with president’s company

That Orange Fucksicle ought to be paying us for all the extra demands he's putting on the Secret Service, not the other way around.

Melania and Barron are gone now.  Why the hell is secret service still there?

[Ali]

55 minutes ago, Childless said:

Melania and Barron are gone now.  Why the hell is secret service still there?

Because he might want to leave The Dump and spend a weekend at one of his classy homes.

[Destiny]

Do the other kids live in the tower still? Maybe they need it for that?

[AmazonGrace]