Donald Trump and the Deathly Fallout (Part 15)

[JMarie]

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/03/30/poll-shows-americans-trust-some-media-outlets-more-than-trump/22018350/

Americans have slightly more faith in The Onion than in InfoWars.  Ha!

[GreyhoundFan]

50 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

I just had a message flash up on my computer from Washington Post that tRump says he will fight Tea party caucus in 2018 elections. Tried to check it, but can't find anything.

If it's true - oh frabjous day! They will block every move he tries to make, and in 2018 the repugs will eat their own tail.

Please, can anyone confirm this is true?

 

 

Here you go: "Trump: ‘We must fight’ hard-line conservative Freedom Caucus in 2018 midterm elections"

Quote

President Trump effectively declared war Thursday on the House Freedom Caucus, the powerful group of hard-line conservative Republicans who blocked the health-care bill, vowing to “fight them” in the 2018 midterm elections.

In a morning tweet, Trump warned that the Freedom Caucus would “hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast.” He grouped its members, all of them Republican, with Democrats in calling for their political defeat — an extraordinary incitement of intraparty combat from a sitting president.

There are about three dozen members of the Freedom Caucus, and most of them were elected or reelected comfortably in solidly-Republican districts. With his tweet, Trump seemed to be encouraging primary challenges to each of them in next year’s elections. Asked to elaborate on Trump’s threat, the White House had no immediate comment.

“Nothing to add at this time,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “The president’s tweet speaks for itself.”

Trump and his White House advisers have been frustrated by the intransigence of Freedom Caucus members, led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.). Trump lobbied them intensively to support the GOP plan to replace former president Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, only to see the bill collapse last Friday after Meadows and his allies said they would not vote for it.

Trump’s threat comes as Republican leaders are bracing for a month of potential GOP infighting over spending priorities. Congress must pass a spending bill by April 28 to avert a government shutdown, but the path ahead, as in recent spending battles on Capitol Hill, is narrow and filled with obstacles.

...

 

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

11 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

I'm disappointed that Ivanka's role in this corrupt business deal isn't getting more attention from the media: 

 

Well then, I'll just have to add that to reasons to loathe Ivanka. 

I can't stand her and her equally smug brothers.  They have all clearly grown up steeped in the Trump ethical cesspool, but she adds a little extra stench of hypocrisy and entitlement every time she talks about what a feminist she is and how she is such a hardworking businesswoman. Fuck you Ivanka, prancing around in your designer outfits sucking on the silver spoon job Daddy bought for you.  

Her newly created position at the WH is yet another thing that I find offensive,  although my husband pointed out to me that he isn't the first President to appoint family members, nor is she the first family member to have a prominent role, despite not being elected.  The thing is, when Bobby Kennedy was appointed, he was already a lawyer with government experience.  And Eleanor Rooseveldt's role wasn't to tame FDR.  She carved out her own role,  separate from what the President did.

I guess she fits in with all the other unqualified people Trump has advising him, but she still pisses me off.  If she and her husband wanted to run the country then they should have run for office. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another unqualified Branch Trumpvidian with power:  "Omarosa Manigault is in Trump’s White House because of her loyalty. But what is she doing there?"

Quote

Omarosa Manigault was incredulous.

As she was leaving a gathering of African American members of Congress in the Oval Office, a group of reporters cornered her. For months, the Trump administration had sent strong signals that it would increase support to historically black colleges and universities. But President Trump’s recent budget request contained no new cash for the schools.

The reporters wanted Manigault — a top White House aide and one of Trump’s most high-profile African American supporters — to explain what happened.

“Everything got cut, but did HBCUs get cut? No! . . . And I think that we should be applauded for that,” Manigault said last week in a video posted on Politic365.com. “Seriously. This is a lean budget. This is a very aggressive and lean budget, and yet, HBCUs were protected.

“Can a sister get props?”

That is the central question of Manigault’s brief tenure as assistant to the president, as she has worked to bridge a divide between black America and the man she has long supported.

...

But if her devotion explains how Manigault wound up in Trump’s White House as the highest-ranking African American in the West Wing, it is far less easy to explain exactly what she’s doing there. Some African American political insiders already have concluded that she is ineffective, and she is routinely derided on social media as simply providing cover for a president deeply unpopular with African Americans. Some black Republicans were particularly critical of the Trump administration’s handling of the HBCU initiative, which included a White House meeting with the school officials that some viewed as little more than a photo op for the president.

“She raised expectations too high, and now it’s turned into a negative,” said Raynard Jackson, a longtime Republican strategist. “This shows a lack of political understanding. This is Politics 101.”

...

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Manigault said during an appearance on ABC’s “The View” that as director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison she was planning an event at the White House to celebrate Black History Month “and it’s going to be extravagant.”

On Feb. 1, she sat smiling next to Trump as he stumbled into a major gaffe, when he talked about abolitionist Frederick Douglass as if he were still alive. He said Douglass — who died in 1895 — “is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I’ve noticed.”

When the black college presidents came to seek more funding on Feb. 27, new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued a statement applauding HBCUs for being “real pioneers when it comes to school choice.” Most of the colleges were founded to serve black students in response to Jim Crow segregation.

And when Trump signed an executive order the next day that moved a task force on HBCUs from the Education Department to the White House, neither the order nor Trump’s subsequent budget request included the 5 to 10 percent funding increases the college presidents sought.

Far from the “extravagant” celebration Manigault touted, the administration’s opening and closing events for Black History Month were met with ridicule.

Jackson penned a blistering column in February for Black Press USA arguing that Manigault doesn’t represent the Republican Party and isn’t a credible go-between for the black community and Trump. Not only is she a recent convert to the GOP who does not know or appreciate black Republicans’ struggle to make the party more inclusive, he argued, she doesn’t have the relationships or the political acumen to be an effective advocate.

“I have a personal relationship with my physician, but I don’t go to him for tax advice,” Jackson said in an interview, rejecting the notion that her friendship with Trump makes her a powerful force for the black community.

...

Manigault doesn’t publicly display a strong political or ideological identity; she was supporting Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid before Trump announced his candidacy. Neither does she have any strong public ties to any individual charities or causes. She said in an episode of “Oprah: Where Are They Now?” several years ago that, while on a humanitarian trip to Africa, she stared into the eyes of a child dying of AIDS and heard her calling to become ordained, which she achieved in 2011. She was an assistant minister at the Weller Street Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles when she left to join the Trump campaign last year.

...

Before being tapped for “The Apprentice,” she worked briefly in the White House during former president Bill Clinton’s tenure. She received mixed reviews on her stints in low-level support positions in logistics and personnel, with some describing her as smart and hard-working and others saying she was disruptive and struggled with assigned tasks.

...

Last week, seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with Trump in the Oval Office. They told Trump they are concerned about his budget and policy positions, and they related how they don’t appreciate his characterization of black communities as rife with crime and poverty. Sources said Manigault made it clear that the attendance — seven of 49 Black Caucus members — was irritatingly small.

Trump tried to get the group to stand behind him at his desk. The lawmakers declined, ruining a potentially powerful photo op.

 

[Audrey2]

@sawasdee and @Childless, Guess I'm a bit slow on the uptake, but when I finally caught up and read your recent comments, this hit me hard. Donald Trump is just the reincarnation of P.T. Barnum. You know, the sucker born every minute guy?

@GreyhoundFan, Donald Trump isn't racist. He's got that one black friend, remember? He even gave Omrusa a job in the White House! (Sarcasm font off now.)

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, RoseWilder said:

I agree. The part that Trump hasn't thought all the way through though is that if he pisses off enough Republicans, they might not stop at just impeaching him. He could go to prison for a lot of the things he's done. He needs to think about that when he's lashing out at the very people who are standing between him and prison. 

No. No-no-no-no-no!  The Toddler shouldn't start thinking now.... 

I want to see his ass in prison. So badly. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I liked this opinion piece: "Trump threatens to drown out the voices of despair"

Quote

BLOOMINGTON, Ind.

What ever happened to the interests of the working class? Weren’t they supposed to be front and center in the Trump administration?

Here’s one clue: When a policy that helps some corporate sector can be repackaged to make it look like a pro-worker move, President Trump will always hide his real purpose behind a phalanx of workers. Thus did he surround himself with coal miners on Tuesday when he signed a shamefully shortsighted executive order nullifying President Barack Obama’s climate-change efforts.

“Come on, fellas,” Trump said. “You know what this is? You know what it says, right? You’re going back to work.”

Actually, Trump’s promise to the “fellas” is no more believable than any of his other promises. As Clifford Krauss and Diane Cardwell reported in the New York Times, the biggest challenges to coal come from market forces — cheap natural gas and the increasing competitiveness of wind and solar power, for example. So don’t count on those jobs.

And workers and consumers are nowhere to be seen or heard when it comes to the rest of Trump’s corporate priorities. The president, for example, is expected to sign a bill passed on a party-line House vote this week that eliminates Obama-era online privacy protections. This is good for Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and other providers that, as The Post’s Brian Fung noted, “will be able to monitor their customers’ behavior online and, without their permission, use their personal and financial information to sell highly targeted ads.” Not exactly empowering to the ordinary American.

Trump already signaled his indifference to the lives of his working-class supporters by backing the failed House Republican health-care bill. It would have deprived 24 million Americans of health insurance. And the administration’s next big priority is corporate tax cuts, not an issue high on voters’ wish lists in Erie, Pa., or Bay County, Mich.

...

Trump has no coherent approach to lifting up working-class Americans. But Democrats need to do more than just embarrass him about the tilt of his policies toward the best-off. They need to put serious thought and energy into pushing a comprehensive program to relieve economic insecurity across racial lines.

Alas, there will be no getting away from the Trump follies, including the administration’s obsessive maneuvers to bury the questions that eventually will have to be answered about his campaign’s relationship with Russia.

But it would be a national service for at least some politicians to point out that in Washington’s angry noise, the voices being drowned out are those of Americans whose despair should be commanding our attention.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"When the President Is Ignorant of His Own Ignorance"

Quote

How prepared is our president for the next great foreign, economic or terrorist crisis?

After a little more than two months in office, President Trump has raised doubts about his ability to deal with what the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously described as the “known unknowns” and the “unknown unknowns.”

“President Trump seems to have no awareness whatsoever of what he does and does not know,” Steven Nadler, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote me. “He is ignorant of his own ignorance.”

During his first 63 days in office, Trump made 317 “false or misleading claims,” according to The Washington Post.

The FBI, the Treasury Department and two congressional committees are probing whether Trump’s campaign aides and advisers — including Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn — were complicit in alleged Russian interference.

Without an obvious mandate (as the world knows, he lost the popular vote by 2.87 million), Trump has proposed a profound retrenchment of domestic policy.

His 2018 budget, the potential impact of which he does not seem to grasp, calls for cutting $54 billion from programs that pay for education, housing and child care assistance for low- and moderate-income families, protection against infectious diseases, enforcement of environmental, worker and consumer protection regulation, national parks and a host of other social programs. See the accompanying chart, which illustrates the depth of these changes. It shows, to give a few examples, Trump’s proposal to cut the Environmental Protection Agency budget by 31 percent; the Labor Department by 21 percent; and the Health and Human Services budget by 16 percent.

...

In addition, Trump has antagonized the leaders of allied countries like Mexico, Australia and Germany, and he has repeatedly demonstrated an extraordinary lack of knowledge about foreign affairs.

This is the president who faces what Warren Christopher, President Clinton’s first secretary of state, called problems from hell. A partial list, compiled by Project Syndicate, includes: intensifying conflicts and dissent within the European Union; the rise of illiberal forces, including welfare chauvinism and exclusionary nationalism; the danger to the continued independence of the buffer states surrounding Russia; a frayed consensus in support of western liberal democratic principles; aggression from a nuclear-armed North Korea and counter threats from the Trump administration of a pre-emptive strike; a foreign policy that The Economist reports has left America’s allies “aghast” — a policy that “seems determined to destroy many of the institutions and alliances created in the past half century.”

How dangerous is the situation that the United States faces?

I asked a range of foreign policy analysts and other scholars to assess the ability of President Trump and his administration to effectively manage the developments listed above.

Steve Nadler of the University of Wisconsin had more to say:

Donald Trump and the people with whom he has filled his cabinet are perfectly unqualified and unprepared to handle any and all of those developments and trends. The lack of experience and understanding of the world, especially of our historical and contemporary relationship with our European allies and rivals is frightening, especially in today’s world, where the stakes and the dangers are so much greater than ever.

Andrew Bacevich, professor emeritus of international relations and history at Boston University and a retired Army colonel, wrote that Trump is “utterly unqualified, both intellectually and by temperament, for the office he holds,” adding that “The possibility that Trump will disastrously mishandle” foreign policy “is real.”

Bacevich makes an intriguing argument to downplay the danger of a Trump presidency: “

Because Trump is manifestly unprincipled, there are very few things he actually believes in.

Bacevich cites

the growing list of things he seemed certain to do where that certainty has now largely disappeared: “tearing up” the Iran nuclear deal; jettisoning NATO; abandoning the “One China” policy; moving the US embassy to Jerusalem; reinstituting torture.

Gambling the future of the country on the possibility that Trump will turn out to be a weak reed is, however, a high-risk proposition.

...

David Bell, a historian at Princeton, emailed his thoughts on Trump’s capacity to handle the difficulties that will face his administration:

Trump himself is abysmally ignorant about both international and domestic affairs, and he is nearly always guided by a single principle: his own self-interest.

Normally, there is quite a lot of expertise available in institutions such as the State Department to guide administrations during crises, but Trump seems to be doing his best to decimate the institution.

...

What a sobering and true article.

[47of74]

Branch Trumpvidians in action again.  Including one Billy Baer who claims he saw busloads of out of illegal voters coming in to vote...

rawstory.com/2017/03/watch-cnns-alisyn-camerota-mortified-when-trump-voters-tell-her-they-dont-care-if-he-tells-the-truth/

Quote

Camerota asked whether he believed 3 million to 5 million illegal votes were cast, and Baer said he personally saw busloads of out-of-state voters come into New Hampshire.

“When you say you’ve seen it, do you mean dozens or do you mean 3 million? There’s a difference,” Camerota said.

Baer conceded he hadn’t seen 3 million illegal voters, but Camerota reminded him that’s the number Trump has claimed.

Camerota pressed Baer to explain how he saw “busloads and busloads” of illegal voters, and another panelist broke in to say it didn’t matter.

Sure you did pal.  Right after you saw a woman with a dozen kids purchase a bottle of Remy Martin Louis XIII Cognac with a SNAP card and drive away in a Caddy, right?

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Trump himself is abysmally ignorant

And that is all that needs to be said.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump has nothing but contempt for facts and reality-based policy. Now it’s backfiring."

Quote

President Trump’s new efforts to dramatically roll back our current climate change policies — which will effectively end the United States’ leadership role in securing science-based international cooperation against global warming — constitute perhaps the clearest sign yet that his administration will be animated by contempt for science and fact-based governing.

We are now learning that this contempt may also apply to the very role that scientists themselves will play in the Trump administration. The New York Times has a remarkable new report revealing that scores of science and technology officials under former president Barack Obama have departed but have yet to be replaced, which is leading scientists to worry that they may be held in very low regard by the new White House:

Critics see the empty offices as part of a devaluation of science throughout the Trump administration, including the reversal of Mr. Obama’s climate change policies and proposals to sharply reduce spending for research on climate change, science and health.

But for now, it is hard to avoid viewing all of this in its larger context. As I’ve argued, the Trump White House has been infected from the outset with a kind of deep rot of bad faith — a contempt for legitimate process, fact-based debate and reality-based governing — that has bordered on all-corrosive. This low regard for science may well prove to be another data point illustrating this pattern.

Indeed, the administration has regularly shown contempt for the very idea that consequential policy decisions require serious justification or a weighing of their consequences. Michelle Ye Hee Lee reports that in justifying the rollback of the Clean Power Plan — which seeks to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants — the administration is citing questionable data furnished by an industry group, rather than by government agencies. This reinforces the Times’s similar conclusion above. Trump has also scrapped a moratorium on the leasing of federal land for coal mining, claiming this will create jobs. But as David Roberts reports, all this does is lift a hold that was designed to be temporary, while our leasing policies are reviewed to see if they are good for taxpayers, and coal companies already have access to years of reserves in any case. The rationale is very thin.

Still more: Trump continues to promise the formation of “a committee” to investigate his claim that millions voted illegally, in effect promising the use of government resources to validate his absurd lie, which itself undermines faith in our democracy. And after Trump falsely claimed based on conservative media that Obama wiretapped his phones, the White House called on Congress to investigate it (i.e., pretend it has some validity). Beyond all this, there is the constant effort to undermine the news media’s legitimate institutional role in our democracy and the regular use of the power of the White House to promote Mar-a-Lago and steer more cash into Trump’s pockets, which will happen again when the president of China visits.

* THE CONTEMPT FOR GOVERNING IS BACKFIRING ON TRUMP: A Hawaii federal judge has extended a broad block on Trump’s new travel ban, and Politico notes that the judge explicitly cited a public statement from Trump that revealed the new version is basically a repackaged version of the old one, designed to get around the courts. The judge’s ruling also cites a statement to this effect by top adviser Stephen Miller.

...

 

[fraurosena]

Everyone, try to hold on to your eyes as you read this one. Or be prepared for them to roll very painfully to the back of your head.

US interior secretary suggests America could annex Mexican land to build Donald Trump's wall

Quote

America could annex Mexican land to build Donald Trump's "big, beautiful wall" on the border, the US Interior Secretary has suggested. 

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told a Public lands Council meeting the Trump administration did not want to build the wall on US soil because it would mean ceding the Rio Grande river to Mexico.

So, not only are they paying for the wall, it's going to be built on their own land too. Next we'll hear that the Mexicans will be building it too. The labor costs would certainly be cheaper... 

[GreyhoundFan]

"I worked for Jared Kushner. He’s the wrong businessman to reinvent government."

Quote

On my first day of work as the editor in chief of the New York Observer, which had been acquired five years earlier by Jared Kushner, now the son-in-law and senior adviser to President Trump, I inherited an office and a desktop computer, both in fine but used condition. The computer was a recent-model Mac, but when I turned it on, it was inexplicably running Windows. I summoned our beleaguered IT guy to explain, and he informed me that it had belonged to Kushner, who liked the design of Apple products but preferred the Windows OS.

“So he was basically using a $2,500 desktop as a monitor?” I said. The IT guy shrugged.

In retrospect, this tiny moment seems like a metaphor. Frankensteining two products you appreciate into one product you appreciate even more isn’t irrational; it’s even creative, in a way. On the other hand, why did the newspaper’s owner need a $2,500 monitor? How was it anything but a vanity object?

That moment in 2011 came back to me when the Trump administration announced this past week that Kushner would lead the newly created Office of American Innovation to “infuse fresh thinking” into government institutions by utilizing the hard-won knowledge of great American business executives. The appointment was announced with a breathlessness that suggests no one has ever thought of it before, or that former great American business executives have never worked in government until now.

But I worked for Kushner for 18 months as he tried to infuse a much smaller institution than the U.S. government with cost-cutting impulses from the commercial real estate world. And my experience doesn’t bode well for the Office of American Innovation. Not everything that works in the private sector is transferrable to the public sector — and even if it were, Kushner isn’t the best person to transfer it.

...

But I resigned in 2012 for a variety of reasons, chiefly that the president of the company and I couldn’t persuade Kushner to recapitalize the Observer — even though I reached all my numbers. When the paper had a profitable quarter for what I was told was the first time, Kushner floated the idea of layoffs to increase the margins, seemingly ignoring the fact that staff reductions would also reduce ad inventory by reducing content. A material part of what had been attractive about the job was the promise of expansion and growth. But we submitted business plans over and over again, and Kushner rejected them. He wanted the Observer to be cheaper to run, usually at the expense of growth and evolution, and he could not see the relationship between scale and profit — between risk and reward. (The White House did not answer a request from The Washington Post to provide Kushner’s perspective for this story.)

He viewed investments in terms of opportunity costs. “Why should I put more money into the Observer when I could invest in a software company?” he would say. This is a legitimate question for any returns-driven investor. But news media doesn’t scale like software. You need people to produce content, at least until artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated and sensitive sources are willing to trust a bot.

Why would you buy a newspaper if you expect it to scale the way software does? Why assume that media and software have the same risk profile and dynamics? Kushner would frequently point to a media company with a 60-person editorial staff and ask why our two-person desk wasn’t producing as many stories or as much traffic. Or he’d argue, bizarrely and incorrectly, that because Gawker started with one person, that meant you didn’t need head count to scale a media company. The Internet makes media more scalable, of course — distribution is unlimited and gained at little marginal cost. But that doesn’t mean a media company is just like Uber.

That same obsession with the tech world permeates Kushner’s new project. Cost-cutting is important in situations where there is excess, but it is not what catalyzes evolution; if the point here is to make government more effective, not just more efficient, cuts alone won’t do it. The Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Kushner has roped into helping him with the new office — such as Apple’s Tim Cook, Salesforce boss Marc Benioff and Tesla founder Elon Musk — would be the first to tell him that scale is important, and that growth is often a function of prioritizing R&D investments. You prototype cheaply to get to a minimum viable product, but if you stop there, you’re in trouble. You have to reinvest, constantly.

Lessons from Silicon Valley are even likelier to be misapplied in government than in media. Outside experts always groan that government institutions are running outdated systems that still rely on floppy disks, and that this is a function of some combination of government waste, idiocy and ubiquitous Luddite-ism. But a more logical explanation is that systems upgrades require appropriations, many of which have been gleefully slashed by Congress. There’s also the problem of government pay, and the fact that the private sector has financial resources that the government does not. Is it reasonable to expect speedy, high-quality upgrades when engineers are making $90,000 a year and implementations are often contracted out to the lowest bidder?

The irrelevance of private-sector nostrums is likely to haunt Kushner’s new initiative. “They’re all outsiders and nobody knows anything about the government,” says Elaine Kamarck, who worked with Vice President Al Gore when the Clinton administration sought to reinvent government 25 years ago and who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It will take these people a year just to figure out what they’re doing.” There are many government functions that have no analog in the private sector, she pointed out, like maintaining a nuclear arsenal.

...

Kushner’s claim to business knowledge, beyond admiring Silicon Valley, boils down to his work for his family’s commercial real estate company, which is hardly comparable to a government institution. And if industry dynamics are not transitive across the board, expertise isn’t, either.

On that count, I’m not even sure how to quantify Kushner’s expertise, anyway. Yes, he ran the company — which he inherited, not uncommon in New York’s dynastic, insular real estate world. But he was sure he had the goods. When I worked for him, I wasn’t sure he had a realistic view of his own capabilities since, like his father-in-law, he seemed to view his wealth and its concomitant accoutrements as rewards for his personal success in business, and not something he would have had in any case. To me, he appeared to view his position and net worth as the products of an essentially meritocratic process.

...

A few days after Trump won the election, Kushner folded the now attenuated print newspaper and subsequently announced that the Observer, in its digital incarnation, was for sale. He probably would refer to it as a “lean” operation. I would say in his zeal to trim the fat, he began eliminating muscle and hacked into a few bones. I realize also, in retrospect, that he may never have intended to grow it or improve it. It was for him, in essence, another vanity object — like the beautiful, expensive desktop computer he used as a monitor.

I worry that this new office will be more of the same: a vanity project, one that exists primarily to put Kushner in the same room with people he admires whom he wouldn’t have had access to before, glossing government agencies in the process with a thin veneer of what appears to be capitalism but is really just nihilistic cost-cutting designed to project the optics of efficiency. If the outside experts have good advice, it will be heeded only where it reinforces what the administration would do anyway. And anyone who volunteers to carry out the administration’s agenda may be handed wholesale control of an area of government where their domain expertise isn’t just low, but nonexistent.

But I would like to be a fly on the wall when Kushner expresses his feelings to Tim Cook about the Macintosh operating system.

Gee, Prince Jared isn't perfect...

[fraurosena]

13 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Gee, Prince Jared isn't perfect...

Well, it seems to be a prerequisite of this administration that you suck at your job. So he fits right in.

[JMarie]

5 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

@sawasdee and @Childless, Guess I'm a bit slow on the uptake, but when I finally caught up and read your recent comments, this hit me hard. Donald Trump is just the reincarnation of P.T. Barnum. You know, the sucker born every minute guy?

@GreyhoundFan, Donald Trump isn't racist. He's got that one black friend, remember? He even gave Omrusa a job in the White House! (Sarcasm font off now.)

He has TWO black friends.  He gave his good friend Ben Carson a job for which Carson isn't qualified for.

[Jennifer Hart]

President Trump Rescinds The Fair Pay And Safe Workplaces Order

https://www.good.is/articles/trump-strikes-fair-pay-and-safe-workplaces

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump claimed to be a “friend” of the LGBTQ community. After the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, he made what appeared to be a heartfelt gesture to the LGBTQ community. “I want to say this to all the LGBT people grieving today in Florida and across our country,” he said. “You have millions of allies who will always have your back. And I am one of them.” Some thought Trump would be a departure from the Republican party’s tradition of anti-gay rhetoric, but after just two months in office, he’s more of the same.

A White House executive order was signed on Monday that rescinded an important piece of pro-LGBTQ legislation put in place by the Obama administration, the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order. This executive order forced federal contractors to prove they are in compliance with 14 antidiscrimination laws. Some of these laws safeguarded the LGBTQ community from discrimination and harassment based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Donald Trump has signed an executive order which guts LGBT+ protections for workers.

http://www.gaytimes.co.uk/news/67264/donald-trump-guts-obama-order-protecting-lgbt-workers/

The President of the United States on Monday 27 March revoked three orders issued by Obama, including Executive Order 13673, known as the Fair Pay and Safe Workplace Order.

Introduced in 2014, EO 13673 required companies receiving large federal contracts to prove that they have complied with federal laws, many of which prohibit discrimination, for at least three years.

Laws implicated include Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, and the ADA and Rehabilitation Act, which prevents discrimination based on HIV infection.

Although the federal laws still exist, companies will no longer be required to provide documentation proving they’re complying with them, meaning they can ignore anti-discrimination laws without consequence.

[Cartmann99]

16 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

I feel like I need a giant dry-erase board to keep track of all the Trump-Russia connections: 

 

We all need a "murder board" like the cops had on Castle.

 

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"When the President Is Ignorant of His Own Ignorance"

What a sobering and true article.

I heard that Trump was complaining about The New York Times on Twitter this morning. I'm guessing this article was part of the reason why. 

 

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Everyone, try to hold on to your eyes as you read this one. Or be prepared for them to roll very painfully to the back of your head.

US interior secretary suggests America could annex Mexican land to build Donald Trump's wall

So, not only are they paying for the wall, it's going to be built on their own land too. Next we'll hear that the Mexicans will be building it too. The labor costs would certainly be cheaper... 

Yeah, I'm sure Mexico is going to be totally fine with giving up some of their land, walling themselves off from the Rio Grande, and paying for everything. 

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"I worked for Jared Kushner. He’s the wrong businessman to reinvent government."

Gee, Prince Jared isn't perfect...

If the Trumps and Jared Kushner were not born wealthy, we wouldn't know the names of any of these people. On second thought, we might know their names from one of those "stupid criminal" stories you see from time to time. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

32 minutes ago, JMarie said:

He has TWO black friends.  He gave his good friend Ben Carson a job for which Carson isn't qualified for.

One of the articles had a line that the tangerine toddler was buddies with Don King too, so three whole black friends.

 

 

[Childless]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Everyone, try to hold on to your eyes as you read this one. Or be prepared for them to roll very painfully to the back of your head.

US interior secretary suggests America could annex Mexican land to build Donald Trump's wall

So, not only are they paying for the wall, it's going to be built on their own land too. Next we'll hear that the Mexicans will be building it too. The labor costs would certainly be cheaper... 

Jesus.  Cheeto von Tweeto is going to start a war with fucking Mexico.  I hope people in Texas don't mind getting their asses bombed.

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh, this should be good. "Trump threatens hard-liners as part of escalating Republican civil war"

Quote

President Trump threatened Thursday to try to knock off members of the House Freedom Caucus in next year’s elections if they don’t fall in line — an extraordinary move that laid bare an escalating civil war within a Republican Party struggling to enact an ambitious agenda.

In a series of tweets that began in the morning, the president warned that the powerful group of hard-line conservatives who helped block the party’s health-care bill last week would “hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast.”

The president vowed to “fight them” as well as Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections, a warning that his allies said was intended in the short term to make members of the Freedom Caucus think twice about crossing him again. But Trump’s pledge was met with defiance by many in the bloc, including some members who accused him of succumbing to the establishment in Washington that he had campaigned against.

Later in the day, Trump singled out three of the group’s members in another tweet, saying that if Reps. Mark Meadows (N.C.), Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Raúl R. Labrador (Idaho) got on board, “we would have both great healthcare and massive tax cuts & reform.”

...

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters a few hours after Trump’s first tweet on Thursday that he sympathized with him.

“I understand the president’s frustration,” Ryan said. “About 90 percent of our conference is for this bill to repeal and replace Obamacare and about 10 percent are not. And that’s not enough to pass a bill.”

Ryan said he had no immediate plans to bring the bill back to the House floor, saying it was “too big of an issue to not get right.”

Trump and his White House advisers have been particularly frustrated by the intransigence of several prominent Freedom Caucus members, led by Meadows.

...

The official added that Trump and White House aides are “sick and tired” of seeing Freedom Caucus members on television in recent days.

Trump’s threat comes as Republican leaders are bracing for a month of potential GOP infighting over spending priorities. Congress must pass a spending bill by April 28 to avert a government shutdown.

Beyond that, the same divide that derailed the health-care legislation could imperil the next marquee legislation that Trump wants to tackle: tax reform.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Thursday that Trump remains committed to “a bold and robust agenda,” adding: “He’s going to get the votes from wherever he can.”

...

If Trump gets involved in Republican primaries, Norquist said he thinks it’s possible he could “get some scalps.”

Though Trump’s national job approval numbers are historically low for a new president, he remains popular in many of the districts where Freedom Caucus members were elected. At the same time, most of those members won a larger percentage of the vote in their districts than Trump did.

On Capitol Hill, Trump’s tweet was met with a range of reactions: Some members said it could prove counterproductive while others praised him for using the power of his office in a way he hasn’t to this point.

Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), who has called for health-insurance reform to work its way through Congress more slowly, said that with Trump’s tweet on Thursday, the president was taking exactly the wrong approach.

“The idea of threatening your way to legislative success may not be the wisest of strategies,” Sanford said Thursday. “His message yesterday was that he wanted to work with Democrats; I guess the message today is, ‘We need to fight against Freedom Caucus members and Democrats.’ . . . It’s a case of shooting messengers who were, rightfully, pointing out problems in a bill that the American public has not shown a proclivity toward.”

Jordan, another Freedom Caucus member, said the break with Trump was based on real policy differences, not a lack of loyalty.

“The president can say what he wants and that’s fine. But we’re focused on the legislation,” Jordan said.

Some of the harshest responses to Trump came via Twitter, his preferred means of provocative communication. Those included a tweet from Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who said that Trump’s support of the health-care bill signaled he was now part of the Washington elite.

“It didn’t take long for the swamp to drain @realDonaldTrump,” said Amash, a member of the Freedom Caucus and one of Trump’s frequent GOP critics. “No shame, Mr. President. Almost everyone succumbs to the D.C. Establishment.”

Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), a Trump ally, said the president’s focus on the Freedom Caucus was well placed as the White House attempts to steady itself and rethink its congressional coalitions.

Collins, a member of the Tuesday Group, a group of moderate House Republicans, rejected the notion — put forth this week by members of both groups — that there could be an accommodation between them on the health-care bill.

“The Tuesday Group will never meet with the Freedom Caucus, with a capital N-E-V-E-R,” Collins said, spelling out the last word.

Some Republicans said they see potential for Trump forging a governing coalition that includes some Democrats.

“Trump is a New York-type bargainer who wants to get something done,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.). “That approach will give him a lot of room to maneuver on taxes and infrastructure. Once you break the barrier that every bill has to have total Republican support, you can be more creative.”

Michael Steel, who was a senior aide to former House speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), said there is potential in some districts for Trump to dislodge Freedom Caucus members.

“If the president chooses to support primary challengers to House members who’ve been unhelpful, it wouldn’t necessarily be an ideological challenge,” Steel said. “It would be based on loyalty to the president, or lack thereof.”

But Steel added: “You don’t necessarily have to wait for 2018 for this to have an effect.”

...

 

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Trump’s threat comes as Republican leaders are bracing for a month of potential GOP infighting over spending priorities. Congress must pass a spending bill by April 28 to avert a government shutdown

Is it time for another round of low information voters throwing hissy fits about the National Parks, etc.. being closed during a government shutdown? 

[sawasdee]

I don't know if this report of the Senate Intelligence committee hearings has been posted

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/03/30/todays-russia-hearings-actually-revealed-something-new-and-important/?utm_term=.3f7aacdb6144

It says, in part,

In a moment that stunned the hearing room, Watts flatly stated that the president himself has become a cog in such Russian measures. When asked by Oklahoma Republican James Lankford, who appeared visibly dismayed, why, if Russians have long used these methods, they finally worked in this election cycle, Watts’ answer was extraordinary.

“I think this answer is very simple and is one no one is really saying in this room,” he said. Part of the reason, he went on, “is the commander in chief has used Russian active measures at times against his opponents.”

 

The Senate committee appears to be doing its job, unlike the House.

 

 

[fraurosena]

1 minute ago, sawasdee said:

I don't know if this report of the Senate Intelligence committee hearings has been posted

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/03/30/todays-russia-hearings-actually-revealed-something-new-and-important/?utm_term=.3f7aacdb6144

It says, in part,

In a moment that stunned the hearing room, Watts flatly stated that the president himself has become a cog in such Russian measures. When asked by Oklahoma Republican James Lankford, who appeared visibly dismayed, why, if Russians have long used these methods, they finally worked in this election cycle, Watts’ answer was extraordinary.

“I think this answer is very simple and is one no one is really saying in this room,” he said. Part of the reason, he went on, “is the commander in chief has used Russian active measures at times against his opponents.”

 

The Senate committee appears to be doing its job, unlike the House.

 

 

Thanks @sawasdee! I posted a link to a small video of Watts saying this to the committee in the Russian Connection thread yesterday, but as I couldn't see the whole testimony here in Europe, it's good to have a transcript of everything. 

[47of74]

I see Darth Tweetder is whining that Flynn is the victim of a witch hunt

cnn.com/2017/03/30/politics/michael-flynn-immunity-testimony/index.html

Quote

Democrats, meanwhile, quickly shot around a comment Flynn made last year on MSNBC, that "when you are given immunity, that means you probably committed a crime."

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Related to @47of74's post: "The Trump White House is in deep legal trouble, according to Trump’s own standards"

Quote

President Trump on Friday urged his former top adviser, Michael Flynn, to seek an immunity deal from Congress, after news broke late Thursday that Flynn was seeking such a deal. Trump said Flynn should cut a deal because the entire thing is “a witch hunt” that ostensibly won't lead anywhere. (Tweet shown in article)

...

Trump used to have a very different take on immunity deals.

It wasn't long ago that Trump seemed to believe such deals signaled guilt and were a very bad thing for a certain presidential candidate. (Tweet shown in article)

...

And here's Trump in late September: “The reason they get immunity is because they did something wrong. If they didn't do anything wrong, they don't think in terms of immunity. Five people. Folks, I'm telling you: Nobody's seen anything like this in our country's history.”

Joining him in that belief was Flynn himself, then a top surrogate who would later become Trump's national security adviser before resigning over his talks with a Russian ambassador. Some argue his discussion of sanctions with Sergey Kislyak before Trump's inauguration may have broken a law against civilians conducting diplomacy. (It's not clear if this is why Flynn is seeking immunity; he's also recently faced serious questions about his failure to disclose his work for the government of Turkey.)

“When you are given immunity, that means that you have probably committed a crime,” Flynn said in September on NBC's “Meet the Press.”

And then there's White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who suggested during the campaign that one particular immunity deal for a Clinton staffer was Very Bad News for Clinton. (Tweet shown in article)

...

But it's merely the latest example of people from Trump's orbit — and Trump himself — suggesting that situations like the one they find themselves in could not be countenanced in a presidential candidate … or a president.

Trump and his team also suggested that the mere prospect of a president being under investigation was unacceptable. Back then, of course, it was Hillary Clinton and her email server; now it's an FBI probe into possible ties between Trump's campaign and Russia.

Here's what Trump said in the closing days of the campaign:

• “If she were to win, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis that would cripple the operations of our government. She is likely to be under investigation for many years, and also it will probably end up — in my opinion — in a criminal trial.” (Nov. 3 in New Hampshire)
• “She is likely to be under investigation for a long time, concluding in a criminal trial — our president. America deserves a government that can go to work on day one and get it done.” (Nov. 4 in New Hampshire)
• [Democratic consultant Doug] Schoen warns that if Hillary is elected, she would be under protracted criminal investigation and probably a criminal trial, I will say. So we'd have a criminal trial for a sitting president. In the meantime Putin, who she likes to say bad things about, and all of the other leaders — many of whom she says bad things about, then you wonder why the world hates us — but all of these people will sit back and they will laugh and they will smile. The investigation will last for years. The trial would probably start, nothing will get done.” (Oct. 31 in Michigan)

Trump also didn't seem to think it was a good idea for President Obama to endorse someone under investigation: (Tweet in article)

...

Here's Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), shortly before Election Day: “Can this country afford to have a president under investigation by the FBI?” (The audience replied: “No!") Rubio added: “Think of the trauma that would do to this country.”

...

It's starting to look a whole lot like the scenario Trump and his campaign warned you about if the other candidate had won.

 

I love Kellyanne's Tweet. She is so freaking two-faced.