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Trump 25: Stephen King’s Next Horror Story


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6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"The great dealmaker? Lawmakers find Trump to be an untrustworthy negotiator."

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President Trump campaigned as one of the world’s greatest dealmakers, but after nine months of struggling to broker agreements, lawmakers in both parties increasingly consider him an untrustworthy, chronically inconsistent and easily distracted negotiator .

As Trump prepares to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday to unify his party ahead of a high-stakes season of votes on tax cuts and budget measures, some Republicans are openly questioning his negotiating abilities and devising strategies to keep him from changing his mind.

The president’s propensity to create diversions and follow tangents has kept him from focusing on his legislative agenda and forced lawmakers who might be natural allies on key policies into the uncomfortable position of having to answer for his behavior and outbursts.

For instance, Trump’s news conference last Monday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), which was orchestrated to project GOP unity on taxes, instead gave birth to the self-inflicted controversy over Trump’s treatment of fallen soldiers, which set the White House on the defensive and dominated the national media for seven days.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) spent weeks cooking up a health-care bill with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) — and felt he suddenly had Trump’s attention and encouragement when the president called him Oct. 7.

Dinner with his wife interrupted by the call, Alexander said he sat on a curb outside a restaurant for 15 minutes talking about health care with Trump, whom he said supported reaching a bipartisan deal.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trump called him one morning that same week, interrupting his workout at the gym to tell him, “Let’s do some bipartisan work on health care!”

But this past week, Trump created whiplash. On Monday — just moments after Alexander and Murray released the blueprint for a short-term authorization of federal subsidies that help lower-income Americans afford coverage but that the administration had just halted — Trump said he supported the effort.

A few hours later, however, the president was decidedly cool to it.

“There was a lot of momentum building for Lamar’s effort, until the president changed his mind after encouraging him twice to move ahead,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said. “You know, who knows where he’ll be? Maybe where he is this very second?”

Corker said his fellow Tennessean has “the patience of Job” to negotiate with Trump, referring to the biblical prophet who suffers one curse after another but keeps his faith.

If the absence of any signature legislation is an indication, the dealmaking skills that propelled Trump’s career in real estate and reality television have not translated well to government.

Tony Schwartz, a longtime student and now critic of Trump who co-wrote the mogul’s 1987 bestseller “The Art of the Deal,” said Trump’s dealmaking modus operandi is, “I am relentless and I am not burdened by the concern that what I’m doing is ethical or truthful or fair.”

“The expectation that you will stand by what you said you would do is higher in politics than it is in the cutthroat world of real estate,” Schwartz added. “That’s a brutal environment in which misdirection and bullying and making one offer and changing it later are all common practice.”

Trump has blamed the absence of major accomplishments on Capitol Hill — one exception is the Senate’s confirmation of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee — entirely on lawmakers.

“We’re not getting the job done,” Trump said last Monday at his Cabinet meeting. “And I’m not going to blame myself, I’ll be honest. They are not getting the job done . . . I’m not happy about it and a lot of people aren’t happy about it.”

But senators said the president shares responsibility for this year’s turbulence and gridlock, observing that the glacial pace of writing and passing laws, complicated by fits and starts, has been a culture shock for Trump.

“He’s a guy who, you know, comes from the business world and he’s in a hurry to get things done,” Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune (S.D.) said. “Around here, that’s hard. You know, things take a while. So it’s a process — and sometimes, kind of a slow and painful one.”

Trump’s lack of ideological roots makes him an unusual figure in Washington, where most lawmakers adhere rigidly to their party’s agendas. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) said Trump “feels much more comfortable working and talking in a bipartisan manner than he does trying to defend a partisan side.”

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), who met with Trump and lawmakers at the White House this past week, agreed. “I think the Democrats are crazy to not try and deal with him directly,” he said. “Seven years ago, he was a Democrat. It doesn’t take any brains to realize that he’d be open.”

Indeed, Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) emerged from a September dinner with Trump thinking they had a deal with the president to back legislation protecting undocumented immigrants, known as “dreamers,” who were brought to the United States as children.

But in October, the Trump administration released a list of hard-line principles that effectively derailed any such deal. The White House wish list included toughening immigration laws and funding construction of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, and officials ruled out granting a path to citizenship for the dreamers.

Trump has been traveling the country to pitch his plan for broad tax cuts, targeting in particular Manchin and other Democratic senators up for reelection in 2018 in states Trump won last year. The president boasted this past week of being able to easily pass tax legislation this fall, even though a bill has not been introduced.

“I think we’re going to have the votes for taxes,” Trump said Friday in an interview with the Fox Business Network. “And I will say, the fact that health care is so difficult, I think, makes the taxes easier. The Republicans want to get it done, and it’s a tremendous tax cut.”

But Trump has sent mixed messages about what this tax cut measure will be. In early October, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) told constituents that the emerging White House plan seemed to be the kind of bill she would support.

“I’ve met with the president’s people four or five times now, and they’ve told me, no, this really is going to be a middle-class tax cut,” Heitkamp said at a roundtable in Bismarck, near where Trump gave a speech in September pushing his tax cut plan.

Ten days later, however, Heitkamp told reporters at the Capitol that the administration’s plan remained a mystery. “I still don’t know what it is,” she said.

Schumer said the key to getting things done on Capitol Hill is for the president to take a back seat.

“Our Republican colleagues are going to have to realize, if they want to get something done, they can’t follow his erratic path,” Schumer said. “They have to lead him, not follow him.”

Of course, Trump has never considered himself a follower. Asked whether his advice would even be possible, Schumer said the Alexander-Murray health-care fix could be a model. “It’s going to happen on this,” he said.

One way some lawmakers are trying to influence and focus Trump is to interact frequently with him.

“He’s a dealmaker and he’s extremely flexible,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said with a chuckle. Graham’s strategy: “Just keep talking to him. Keep him close.”

Graham has endured fierce fights with Trump — when they were competing for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Trump read aloud Graham’s cellphone number at a rally and exhorted his supporters to call it — but is embracing his role as a mediator between fellow senators and the president.

Graham has tried to iron out his differences with Trump over recent rounds of golf. They played together twice this month at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, and after their first outing Graham apparently tried to flatter the president by heaping praise on his swing in an interview with sportswriter Michael Bamberger, who has golfed with Trump many times .

“What impressed me about the president is that he has a nice, compact swing, and he can get it up and down from jail,” Graham said. He added: “He hit the ball on the screws almost every time. He sets up behind the ball. He has an athletic swing. He goes down and gets it.”

Schwartz said playing to Trump’s ego, as Graham has with his golf compliments, is an effective way to manage him. His advice to those seeking to make deals with Trump: Find the most persuasive way to portray one’s agenda as a personal victory for the president, and be the last person to talk to him.

“Trump is motivated by the same concern in all situations, which is to dominate and to be perceived as having won,” Schwartz said. “That supersedes everything, including ideology.”

I know some think Lindsey Graham is a good guy, but his giving a blow job to the tangerine toddler, shows he has no shame.

Christ, trying very, very hard not to picture that. 

MrsDuggar.jpg.9fdbfa8c6e70c085b06bb5cf13f5218a.jpg

 

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If (please Rufus), Trumpface does head off to Jail in the (hopefully not to far off) future, how long will he stay there? Crooked Lawyers will crawl out of the sewers in dozens and rescue him. SAD.

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@47of74 -- thank you, I really needed that! When I clicked next page and saw that picture, I just burst into giggles. And that's during a crappy Monday!

@Gobsmacked -- even if he's convicted, he won't spend much, if any, time behind bars. He'll buy his way out.

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2 hours ago, JMarie said:

It's hard to imagine how Trump could have handled all of this any worse. And what's amazing is that there is a 0% chance he will admit that he mishandled it or try to make things even marginally better with Johnson or Wilson. Instead, if past is prologue, he will continue on the attack and then use any public appearance in the coming weeks to insist events proved him right.

He's going to insult Ms. Wilson and the Johnson family at one of his stupid rallies, isn't he? :martian-disgust:

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33 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

He's going to insult Ms. Wilson and the Johnson family at one of his stupid rallies, isn't he? :martian-disgust:

Poor New Jersey's due for one.  They pick a new governor this November (no more Chris Christie!), and the Republican candidate, who is the current lieutenant governor, is lagging in the polls.

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2 hours ago, Gobsmacked said:

If (please Rufus), Trumpface does head off to Jail in the (hopefully not to far off) future, how long will he stay there? Crooked Lawyers will crawl out of the sewers in dozens and rescue him. SAD.

LOCK HIM UP!

(I can dream, can’t I?)

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9 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"The great dealmaker? Lawmakers find Trump to be an untrustworthy negotiator."

Aaaaand they are just figuring out this now? I'll be right back as I am off to bang my head into the wall again.

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"The Founding Fathers designed impeachment for someone exactly like Donald Trump"

Spoiler

Their writings and debates surrounding the creation of the Constitution make clear that the framers feared a certain kind of character coming to power and usurping the republican ideal of their new nation. Having just defeated a tyrant — “Mad” King George III of England — they carefully crafted rules to remove such a character: impeachment. In the process, they revealed precisely the kind of corrupt, venal, inattentive and impulsive character they were worried about.

The very embodiment of what the Founding Fathers feared is now residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Again and again, they anticipated attributes and behaviors that President Trump exhibits on an all-too-regular basis. By describing “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” the grounds for impeachment, as any act that poses a significant threat to society — either through incompetence or other misdeeds — the framers made it clear that an official does not have to commit a crime to be subject to impeachment. Instead, they made impeachment a political process, understanding that the true threat to the republic was not criminality but unfitness, that a president who violated the country’s norms and values was as much a threat as one who broke its laws.

Gouverneur Morris, who wrote the Constitution’s preamble, and future president James Madison were worried about a leader who would “pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation” — theft of public funds — “or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers,” as Madison put it. Morris, who like many in the colonies believed King Charles had taken bribes from Louis XIV to support France’s war against the Dutch, declared that without impeachment we “expose ourselves to the danger of seeing the first Magistrate [the President] in foreign pay without being able to guard against it by displacing him.”

Trump’s many ties to Russia spring immediately to mind, of course. What’s provable so far — denying electoral harm perpetrated by Russian actors, hiding his efforts to conduct business in Moscow during his 2016 campaign, leaking state secrets to the Russian ambassador at a White House meeting, numerous contacts between his top staff and family and Russian agents — resonates deeply with this core concern expressed by the Founding Fathers.

The possible involvement with a Russian scheme to corrupt the election process was something else the framers worried about, with George Mason, at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, calling for impeachment for any president who “might engage in the corrupting of electors.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey, the man investigating his administration’s Russian connections, is clearly an impeachable act, according to Madison. He wrote that if “the President can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it … he will be impeachable … for such an act of maladministration.”

Constitution-signer Abraham Baldwin of Georgia likewise seemed to be speaking about the Comey firing way back in the first Congress, when he noted that if a president “in a fit of passion” removed “all the good officers of government,” he should be susceptible to impeachment.

But Baldwin had in mind a more pressing fear: a president who didn’t live up to his constitutional duty to properly staff the executive branch, including the various departments such as the State Department — say, by removing appointments of a previous administration and not replacing them. Sound like anyone you know? According to Baldwin, the duty of Congress in such situations was to “turn him out of office, as he had others.”

Another attribute the Founding Fathers feared in a president was the abuse of the power to issue pardons. Mason, at the Virginia constitutional ratification convention, worried in fact that the president might use his pardoning power to “pardon crimes which were advised against himself,” or before indictment or conviction “to stop inquiry and prevent detection.”

Whether Trump is considering a self-pardon is unknown, but it is fairly widely speculated that, with the August pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, he was signaling to the likes of former campaign aides Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn that they too might be pardoned for disregarding valid orders and laws. To which the words of Madison would apply: “if the president be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him,” he should be impeached.

And on it goes. The Founding Fathers tried to prepare the country for the possibility of someone not only corrupt and venal — whereby impeachment was “an essential check … upon the encroachments of the executive,” as Alexander Hamilton put it in the “Federalist Papers” — but also from someone simply unable to perform the job, whether through incompetence, ignorance or incapacity. (The first successful impeachment conviction in our history, for example, was of an elderly federal judge who had slipped into dementia.)

As Supreme Court Justice James Wilson, signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, taught: The president “cannot act improperly, and hide either his negligence or inattention; he cannot roll upon any other person his criminality … and he is responsible for every nomination he makes … far from being above the laws, he is amenable to them … in his public character by impeachment.”

But prescient as they were, what the framers may not have anticipated was someone who epitomized so many of their fears at once — someone like Donald Trump — being elected to the presidency in the first place. They hoped that the electoral college system would prevent that from happening. But in the event that didn’t happen, they added an additional fail-safe: impeachment. It’s now up to Congress to fulfill the framers’ vision.

Yeah, with the Repugs in power, it won't happen. Not that I want Pence in charge.

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10 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I know some think Lindsey Graham is a good guy, but his giving a blow job to the tangerine toddler, shows he has no shame.

@GreyhoundFan I will never forgive you for this image.  I'm prepping for a colonoscopy tonight and I thought I couldn't feel any sicker, and now I do.

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16 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

@GreyhoundFan I will never forgive you for this image.  I'm prepping for a colonoscopy tonight and I thought I couldn't feel any sicker, and now I do.

I'm sorry. On both counts. Hey, look on the bright side -- now you aren't hungry, right?

Dana Milbank could be an FJer with this snark: "A missive from 2036: I was disgusting to criticize Trump"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2036 — Some of my old-timer colleagues still talk about the “good old days” when we used to work in what they called a “free press.” I don’t know what they’re on about.

Sure, we were free. But were we happy? I think not.

It’s hard to remember back then, the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, when we in the fake news media were the enemies of the American people. I’m embarrassed to say it, but I was one of those who criticized President Trump. It was a tremendous disservice to the American people. I was one of the most dishonest people on Earth. I really did not like America, and 46 percent of people knew my colleagues and I fabricated stories about the president. It was frankly disgusting the way I was able to write whatever I wanted to write, and people needed to look into it.

People did look into it, and I was admittedly concerned when Congress passed — and all 11 justices appointed by Trump to the Supreme Court upheld — the following:

●The Trump Equal Time and Fairness Doctrine of 2018, making it a felony to criticize, or joke about, President Trump unless simultaneously providing “a harsher criticism and/or funnier joke about a Democrat.”

●The Adult Day Care Act of 2018, also known as the Corker Act, making it illegal to raise questions about the president’s state of mind.

●The Huckabee Sanders Act of 2018, making it a crime to commit the “highly inappropriate” action of questioning a military officer.

●The Stephen Miller Act of 2018, which said that all actions of the president on matters of national security are “not to be questioned.”

●The Jeff Sessions Act of 2018, making it illegal to quote any source without the express written consent of the Justice Department and Major League Baseball.

●The “Open Up Our Libel Laws” Act of 2018, which allows Trump to “win lots of money” when people write “negative and horrible” articles about him.

●The Fake News Reform Act of 2018, which revoked the “licenses” of all broadcasters, put Jeff Bezos under house arrest at the Federal Trade Commission and placed the failing New York Times and the Amazon Washington Post under the control of Minister of Information Sebastian Gorka.

That was 18 years ago, and Trump’s first term in the White House has now extended to nearly two decades. (Under the new rules, only House Speaker Steve Bannon and Senate Majority Leader Roy Moore can call an election, and they say they have no immediate plans to do so.)

While I at first chafed at the new restrictions — no sources, no criticism — I quickly came to realize how much easier and low-stress the new journalism would be. Each morning I get a call from Gorka with my assignment. I write it up, and then it’s up to the Russian bots to spread the word on social media.

Here’s the first draft of tomorrow’s column I just sent to Gorka:

President Trump has already Made America Great Again. In fact, he keeps Making America Even Better and Better.

It is fair to say that no other president has done more than President Trump, now 90: Over 50 Legislation approvals, massive regulation cuts, energy freedom, pipelines, border security, 2nd Amendment, Strong Military, ISIS, historic VA improvement, Supreme Court Justice, Record Stock Market, lowest unemployment in 17 years! He is getting what will be the biggest tax cut in U.S. history. He will give great and popular tax breaks to the middle class but not make any changes to 401(k) plans. It all stays! It will be historic and once-in-a-generation. He will also get HealthCare and it will be great. The budget that just passed is a very big deal.

Jobless claims were the best last month. The stock market continues to set all-time highs. Unlike his predecessors, Trump has written personally, on parchment and with quill pen, to every relative of every U.S. soldier ever killed, going back to the French and Indian War. Raqqa is liberated. The National Football League is requiring all 32 teams to participate in color-guard drills. And Democrats continue to be wacky and crooked.

Okay, so it’s a bit dull. And it pretty much comes out the same every day. But it only took me about five minutes because I didn’t have to waste time with “research” or “interviewing” or “fact checking.” In fact, it took almost no thought at all.

And it’s safer. Remember Trump’s response when asked about Vladi­mir Putin’s killing of critical journalists? “Our country does plenty of killing, too,” he said.

Did I mention that Trump, in addition to being the best president ever, is very handsome?

Sadly, I can imagine some BTs would think this situation would be just fine.

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3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm sorry. On both counts. Hey, look on the bright side -- now you aren't hungry, right?

... and that was how the @GreyhoundFan Rapid Weight Loss System™ came into being. If you order in the next 29 minutes, you'll get a free Trumpy Bear to double the effect of the system! Quantities are limited, so grab your phone or computer and order now!

 

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4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm sorry. On both counts. Hey, look on the bright side -- now you aren't hungry, right?

No, I'm not hungry.  I've been through this many times before as I need to get this "looky loo" ever year because I have a history of colitis. It never gets easier.

Four more hours .. I am not amused. 

Well I am a little bit amused.  Since I know I'm not going to get any sleep I'm watching rail cams all night.  Yes, I'm odd.

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5 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

No, I'm not hungry.  I've been through this many times before as I need to get this "looky loo" ever year because I have a history of colitis. It never gets easier.

Four more hours .. I am not amused. 

Well I am a little bit amused.  Since I know I'm not going to get any sleep I'm watching rail cams all night.  Yes, I'm odd.

You mean cameras on trains?

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9 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

... and that was how the @GreyhoundFan Rapid Weight Loss System™ came into being. If you order in the next 29 minutes, you'll get a free Trumpy Bear to double the effect of the system! Quantities are limited, so grab your phone or computer and order now!

If only it were so easy, I'd be a size 2, instead of my current size, which is WAY, WAY larger. Hey, maybe the Trumpy Bear could be a combination weight loss tool and birth control, since I think many women's ovaries shrivel up when they see the TT.

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I just noticed that one of the tags for this thread is “fuck this guy.”  Well played. :evil-laugh:

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3 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

You mean cameras on trains?

Cameras next to railroad tracks to watch the trains go by.  But, a cam in a train would be way way cool.

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

If only it were so easy, I'd be a size 2, instead of my current size, which is WAY, WAY larger. Hey, maybe the Trumpy Bear could be a combination weight loss tool and birth control, since I think many women's ovaries shrivel up when they see the TT.

I'd think the projectile vomiting at the sight of the thing would also do the trick.

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I just noticed that one of the tags for this thread is “fuck this guy.”  Well played. evil-laugh.gif

That’s been there for at least two threads. I can’t remember at what point I added it tbh.
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1 hour ago, onekidanddone said:

Cameras next to railroad tracks to watch the trains go by.  But, a cam in a train would be way way cool.

Yes, yes, yes! I'd go everywhere on the train if I could. My two year-old grandson can be snapped out of a meltdown instantly by a video of a train.

Hope you've gotten a meal by now.

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"Corker says White House should stay out of tax debate; Trump fires back with insult"

Spoiler

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) admonished President Trump on Tuesday to stop interfering in the debate over tax legislation and said his volatility could lead the United States into war, prompting a slew of Twitter insults from the president and renewing a long-simmering feud just hours before he is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill.

“I would just like him to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something that’s constructive,” Corker said on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” referring to the debate over restructuring the tax code. “If you start taking things off the table before you get started, you make it very difficult.”

Trump, whose relationship with the senator has rapidly deteriorated in recent weeks, returned fire by insulting Corker on Twitter, saying the retiring lawmaker “couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee.”

“Isn’t it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker . . . will now fight Tax Cuts plus!” the president tweeted.

The feud lays bare tensions between Trump and congressional Republicans that are already complicating GOP efforts to advance tax cuts, the party’s last-ditch attempt at a major policy accomplishment this year.

Trump has promised changes to the tax code will not affect tax-deferred retirement plans, the mortgage interest deduction or the deduction for charitable contributions. Republicans like Corker, one of Trump’s most vocal GOP critics, say these promises raise expectations prematurely while making it more difficult for lawmakers to make up the revenue lost to tax cuts.

The strained relations between the president and Republican senators, which go far beyond Trump’s fight with Corker, add uncertainty to the GOP’s effort to cut taxes and enact other policy priorities.

Trump has sharply criticized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for failing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Republican senators have also thrown some rhetorical elbows at the president.

Corker’s pointed comments came just ahead of Trump’s planned visit to the Senate to address Republicans at their weekly policy luncheon.

In a round of interviews, he stood by his previous description of the White House as an “adult day-care center” and his comment that Trump’s volatility could set the United States on a “path to World War III.”

“I don’t make comments I haven’t thought about,” the senator said on “Good Morning America.”

“The president continues to kneecap his diplomatic representative, the secretary of state, and really move him away from successful diplomatic negotiations [related to North Korea] . . . You’re taking us on a path to combat,” said Corker, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Asked whether he regrets supporting Trump, Corker told CNN he would not do it again.

“The president has great difficulty with the truth on many issues,” he said. “He’s proven himself unable to rise to the occasion.”

On Twitter, Trump attacked Corker for helping former president Barack Obama “give us the bad Iran Deal,” and said Corker changed his plans to run for reelection in 2018 after Trump declined to endorse him.

In reality, Corker organized opposition to the Iran deal and voted against it. The senator and his top aide have said Trump offered his support for Corker’s reelection, and that after Corker announced he would retire after next year, Trump called asking him to reconsider and to run again.

“Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president,” Corker tweeted Tuesday. He added the hashtag #AlertTheDaycareStaff, repeating an earlier description of Trump’s White House.

While GOP aides and senators predicted Monday that Trump’s visit would center mostly on the ongoing effort to rewrite the nation’s tax laws, the broad array of topics on their mind, coupled with the president’s penchant for suddenly veering from one subject to another, could open the door to an unpredictable afternoon.

“I want him to tell us to do our job,” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), a Trump ally who, like the president, has openly voiced his frustration that a handful of Republican senators sank the repeal-and-replace effort. He expected the president would argue that the tax- reform push is “bigger than tax,” in that it marked a chance for Republicans to prove they can govern, among other things.

When Trump addresses the luncheon the Republican senators attend each Tuesday afternoon in a room near the Senate chamber, “it’s important for him to convey to us the things that he thinks are priorities, and not only with respect to the tax bill, but some of the other things that we are currently working on,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the third-ranking Republican senator.

One of the other issues Republicans are wrestling with is health-care reform. Trump’s decision to end federal subsidies to help offset lower-income Americans’ coverage costs led a bipartisan coalition of senators to offer a compromise bill that would authorize those funds. In exchange, states would have broader leeway in regulating coverage under the ACA.

Trump, who phoned Democratic and Republican lawmakers this month to push them to make a deal, has sent mixed signals on the plan, seeming to support it before backing away.

White House officials are urging Senate Republicans to move the bill to the right, by including provisions offering retroactive relief from the ACA’s insurance mandates for individuals and certain employers, according to people briefed on the talks.

“The White House has the ball right now,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the Republican who took the lead on negotiating the bipartisan package. “They’ve made some suggestions publicly about what they’d like to see in the bill. I’m for all of those things. The question is whether they can persuade Democratic senators to agree to that.”

But Alexander, who said that an analysis of his plan by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could be released as early as Tuesday, wasn’t expecting to hear Trump sketch out his latest thinking on the framework during lunch. In his view, that would be a good thing. “I’d like for the president to focus on tax reform,” he said.

Others, however, were eager to hear Trump talk health care.

“I’d like to hear him reinforce the movement to get something done” on health care, said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who supports the deal Alexander reached with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Looming over the luncheon are the mutual hostilities between Trump and Republican senators. On Twitter and in remarks before television cameras, Trump has slammed McConnell and attacked other senators.

GOP senators have also landed their own blows. McConnell, for instance, has said that Trump’s limited experience in politics created “excessive expectations” for passing landmark legislation.

Until Tuesday morning, both sides had appeared determined to move past their differences and project more harmony. Trump and McConnell sat down for lunch at the White House last Monday and came out for a 40-minute joint news conference afterward.

Republicans are trying to forge ahead in their effort to usher in a sweeping rewrite of the nation’s tax laws by the end of the year. They took an initial step toward passing a tax bill last week, when the Senate passed a budget resolution allowing them to pursue the tax plan without needing any Democratic votes.

They didn’t need any Democratic votes to undo the ACA. That effort still failed because of disagreements among Republican senators. Brewing disputes over tax policy threaten to disrupt if not defeat the tax endeavor in a similar way.

Passing a bill could rest on more unpredictable GOP senators, such as Susan Collins (Maine), one of three Republicans who voted against the ACA repeal bill in July.

“I’m hoping to hear more about his plans on tax reform, with more detail in it,” she said of Trump.

#AlertTheDaycareStaff -- that's so very true.

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27 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The tweets and pictures are well worth a look: "Donald Trump’s Halloween Hat Has Everyone Making The Same Joke"

Who would pay $45 for that piece of crap?

I figured a new hat with another ridiculous price tag would be coming soon, but I thought it would be closer to Christmas or New Year's. $45, huh? What a rip-off. The late summer hurricane season version Trump hat was $40 - and then selling at Wal-Mart for $10 weeks later.

The thing I find most surprising/disturbing is that it says these are sold out. I don't even know why it surprises me anymore. I know good and well why it disturbs me.

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2 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Yes, yes, yes! I'd go everywhere on the train if I could. My two year-old grandson can be snapped out of a meltdown instantly by a video of a train.

Hope you've gotten a meal by now.

Oh yea I've eaten. I tell you the peanut butter sandwich I had when i came home was the BEST one ever.

Now Flake is getting in to it.  He is quitting and trashing Trump.  I'm still pissed off at them all.  They knew they fucking knew what he was and didn't stand up to him until it was too late.

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Well, this protester has some balls on him! I've got to say, I like his style.

What I find appalling though, is that a random person could get this close to the presidunce and throw stuff at him. In this case it was quite harmless... very apt, but harmless. But it could so easily not have been. Security fail, if I ever saw one! :pb_eek:

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A few things:

His daughter-in-law:  Are all these Trump women stamped out at a factory out of one mold?

It could just a marking lie ploy that they are all sold out. It is all about the ratings for this pile-o-slime.

Does he not see the irony of the orange color?

I'd never buy that piece of crap, but I did buy this for my daughter because sometimes I'm a pushover 

https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Lilly-Adult-Pajamas-Cosplay/dp/B0145JUJ84/ref=sr_1_1?s=apparel&ie=UTF8&qid=1508878936&sr=1-1&nodeID=7141123011&psd=1&keywords=silver+lily+panda 

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