Trump 21: Tweeting Us Into the Apocalypse

[GreyhoundFan]

And the fun continues: "State Department spent more than $15,000 for rooms at new Trump hotel in Vancouver"

Spoiler

The State Department spent more than $15,000 to book 19 rooms at the new Trump hotel in Vancouver when members of President Trump’s family headlined the grand opening of the tower in late February.

The hotel bookings — which were released to The Washington Post under a Freedom of Information Act request — reflect the first evidence of State Department expenditures at a Trump-branded property since President Trump took office in January.

The department redacted many of the details on the invoice from the U.S. Consulate General in Vancouver and declined to provide additional information about the nature of the State Department’s presence at the hotel. Although the Secret Service is responsible for protecting the president’s family, the State Department provides assistance with security and logistics for international trips.

The president’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, their spouses, and the president’s daughter, Tiffany, were flanked by a heavy security presence on Feb. 28 during a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a VIP party hosted by developer Joo Kim Tiah, the son of one of Malaysia’s wealthiest businessmen.

Since his inauguration, Trump has spent much of his free time at his private business properties, ranging from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to his golf courses in Virginia and New Jersey. Meanwhile, Trump’s sons — Donald Jr. and Eric — have traveled to Dubai, Vancouver, Uruguay and Ireland to promote the family’s real estate empire.

Such business trips by Trump’s children have put U.S. government agencies in a necessary — albeit potentially awkward — arrangement of engaging in taxpayer-funded transactions with the president’s private company while at the same time protecting the president’s immediate family. The president has refused critics’ demands to divest his assets and has instead placed his business empire into a trust controlled by sons Don Jr. and Eric.

Last week, the outgoing head of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter M. Shaub Jr., told CBS News that he believes there is “an appearance that the businesses are profiting from his occupying the presidency.”

The Trump Organization does not own the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver but instead has a management and licensing deal. Trump’s most recent financial disclosure reflects that he earned more than $5 million in royalties from the Vancouver project during the last reporting period, which covers the year 2016 through April 2017.

A State Department official did not answer questions about who stayed at the Trump hotel and the reasons for their stay.

“Embassy and consulate personnel work with the Secret Service to provide assistance on security matters as necessary for conditions in the particular host country,” the official told The Post. “Our policy is not to discuss the details of security matters.”

A spokeswoman from the Trump Organization declined to answer questions about how the Trump family paid for their rooms and what type of assistance the State Department provided the family on their business trip.

Secret Service spokesman Joseph Casey told the Post it is common to “utilize our partners at the State Department to assist us in facilitating our security plan” for international trips.

In March, The Post filed a separate Freedom of Information Act request with the Secret Service seeking similar records of expenses from the Vancouver trip. The agency has not yet released the records, which would likely reflect a bill for additional rooms separate from those reserved by State Department staff.

The Post previously reported that the Secret Service spent $88,320 for lodging on Eric Trump’s business trip to Uruguay in early January to promote a Trump hotel and condominium tower under construction in the resort town of Punta del Este.

The State Department — through the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo — paid an additional $9,510 for hotel rooms to assist the Secret Service for the visit, according to purchasing orders.

The Feb. 28 grand opening of the Vancouver hotel drew crowds of protesters who chanted and held signs outside of the hotel. Guests and the media were ushered inside through a back entrance of the “twisting tower,” which is known for its striking shape among the Vancouver skyline.

Once inside, members of the press were offered a tour of the luxury property, including lavender-scented hand towels at the Ivanka Trump-branded spa and handcrafted cocktails at the lobby bar.

The Post requested any records related to the use of State Department funds to provide security or other services for the Trump family’s trip to the Vancouver hotel.

The department’s expenditures reflect a total of 56 nights booked at the Trump hotel in Vancouver. Four rooms were booked for seven nights, while the remaining rooms were booked for either one or two nights.

The records released to The Post were heavily redacted because of security and privacy exemptions. The names of the staffers and their assignments were not disclosed, nor were the specific rates of the rooms.

The State Department also spent $5,000 for rooms at a nearby Hyatt Regency, which is about a five-minute walk from the Trump hotel.

 

[fraurosena]

33 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

And the fun continues: "State Department spent more than $15,000 for rooms at new Trump hotel in Vancouver"

  Hide contents

The State Department spent more than $15,000 to book 19 rooms at the new Trump hotel in Vancouver when members of President Trump’s family headlined the grand opening of the tower in late February.

The hotel bookings — which were released to The Washington Post under a Freedom of Information Act request — reflect the first evidence of State Department expenditures at a Trump-branded property since President Trump took office in January.

The department redacted many of the details on the invoice from the U.S. Consulate General in Vancouver and declined to provide additional information about the nature of the State Department’s presence at the hotel. Although the Secret Service is responsible for protecting the president’s family, the State Department provides assistance with security and logistics for international trips.

The president’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, their spouses, and the president’s daughter, Tiffany, were flanked by a heavy security presence on Feb. 28 during a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a VIP party hosted by developer Joo Kim Tiah, the son of one of Malaysia’s wealthiest businessmen.

Since his inauguration, Trump has spent much of his free time at his private business properties, ranging from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to his golf courses in Virginia and New Jersey. Meanwhile, Trump’s sons — Donald Jr. and Eric — have traveled to Dubai, Vancouver, Uruguay and Ireland to promote the family’s real estate empire.

Such business trips by Trump’s children have put U.S. government agencies in a necessary — albeit potentially awkward — arrangement of engaging in taxpayer-funded transactions with the president’s private company while at the same time protecting the president’s immediate family. The president has refused critics’ demands to divest his assets and has instead placed his business empire into a trust controlled by sons Don Jr. and Eric.

Last week, the outgoing head of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter M. Shaub Jr., told CBS News that he believes there is “an appearance that the businesses are profiting from his occupying the presidency.”

The Trump Organization does not own the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver but instead has a management and licensing deal. Trump’s most recent financial disclosure reflects that he earned more than $5 million in royalties from the Vancouver project during the last reporting period, which covers the year 2016 through April 2017.

A State Department official did not answer questions about who stayed at the Trump hotel and the reasons for their stay.

“Embassy and consulate personnel work with the Secret Service to provide assistance on security matters as necessary for conditions in the particular host country,” the official told The Post. “Our policy is not to discuss the details of security matters.”

A spokeswoman from the Trump Organization declined to answer questions about how the Trump family paid for their rooms and what type of assistance the State Department provided the family on their business trip.

Secret Service spokesman Joseph Casey told the Post it is common to “utilize our partners at the State Department to assist us in facilitating our security plan” for international trips.

In March, The Post filed a separate Freedom of Information Act request with the Secret Service seeking similar records of expenses from the Vancouver trip. The agency has not yet released the records, which would likely reflect a bill for additional rooms separate from those reserved by State Department staff.

The Post previously reported that the Secret Service spent $88,320 for lodging on Eric Trump’s business trip to Uruguay in early January to promote a Trump hotel and condominium tower under construction in the resort town of Punta del Este.

The State Department — through the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo — paid an additional $9,510 for hotel rooms to assist the Secret Service for the visit, according to purchasing orders.

The Feb. 28 grand opening of the Vancouver hotel drew crowds of protesters who chanted and held signs outside of the hotel. Guests and the media were ushered inside through a back entrance of the “twisting tower,” which is known for its striking shape among the Vancouver skyline.

Once inside, members of the press were offered a tour of the luxury property, including lavender-scented hand towels at the Ivanka Trump-branded spa and handcrafted cocktails at the lobby bar.

The Post requested any records related to the use of State Department funds to provide security or other services for the Trump family’s trip to the Vancouver hotel.

The department’s expenditures reflect a total of 56 nights booked at the Trump hotel in Vancouver. Four rooms were booked for seven nights, while the remaining rooms were booked for either one or two nights.

The records released to The Post were heavily redacted because of security and privacy exemptions. The names of the staffers and their assignments were not disclosed, nor were the specific rates of the rooms.

The State Department also spent $5,000 for rooms at a nearby Hyatt Regency, which is about a five-minute walk from the Trump hotel.

 

This is just one example of how the presidunce is personally financially benefiting from his office. Now, what was that clause again...?

On second thoughts, don't bother answering that, it's not as if the Repugliklans are going to act on it.

[CTRLZero]

56 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The Post requested any records related to the use of State Department funds to provide security or other services for the Trump family’s trip to the Vancouver hotel.

I worked for government for many years, and at least annually we would be beat about the head and shoulders with ethics rules training.  It was seriously frowned upon to even accept a cup of coffee or a pastry (darn it!).  We were always reminded to err on the side of caution and to avoid any appearance of evil ethics rules violations.

You would think that the current administration would (at a minimum) avoid anything branded with a big ol' TRUMP logo, no matter what loopholes there may be because they don't own the property, only "license" or "manage" said hotel. 

On a side note, I just finished watching Season 5 of House of Cards.  It all seemed so familiar...yet rather tame by comparison...

 

[fraurosena]

Everybody's scrambling for cover...

‘Category 5 hurricane’: White House under siege by Trump Jr.’s Russia revelations

Spoiler

The White House has been thrust into chaos after days of ever-worsening revelations about a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a lawyer characterized as representing the Russian government, as the president fumes against his enemies and senior aides circle one another with suspicion, according to top White House officials and outside advisers.

President Trump — who has been hidden from public view since returning last weekend from a divisive international summit — is enraged that the Russia cloud still hangs over his presidency and is exasperated that his eldest son and namesake has become engulfed by it, said people who have spoken with him this week.

The disclosure that Trump Jr. met with a Russian attorney, believing he would receive incriminating information about Hillary Clinton as part of the Kremlin’s effort to boost his father’s candidacy, has set back the administration’s faltering agenda and rattled the senior leadership team.

On Wednesday, in his first Twitter posts since the email disclosures, Trump defended his son as “open, transparent and innocent” and repeated past claims that his administration is the subject of a “witch hunt” fueled by leakers.

“My son Donald did a good job last night,” Trump wrote, referring to his son’s appearance on Fox News. “He was open, transparent and innocent. This is the greatest Witch Hunt in political history. Sad!”

Trump also took aim at anonymous leaks from “sources” — even though Trump Jr. gave a step-by-step email chronology of the plans for the meeting with the Russian lawyer in 2016.

Even supporters of Trump Jr. who believe he faces no legal repercussions privately acknowledged Tuesday that the story is a public relations disaster — for him as well as for the White House. One outside ally called it a “Category 5 hurricane,” while an outside adviser said a CNN graphic charting connections between the Trump team and Russians resembled the plot of the fictional Netflix series “House of Cards.”

Vice President Pence sought to distance himself from the controversy, with his spokesman noting that Trump Jr.’s meeting occurred before Pence joined the ticket.

Inside a White House in which infighting often seems like a core cultural value, three straight days of revelations in the New York Times about Trump Jr. have inspired a new round of accusations and recriminations, with advisers privately speculating about who inside the Trump orbit may be leaking damaging information about the president’s son.

This portrait of the Trump White House under siege is based on interviews Tuesday with more than a dozen West Wing officials, outside advisers, and friends and associates of the president and his family, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid.

The makeup of Trump’s inner circle is the subject of internal debate, as ever. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser; Jared Kushner, her husband and another senior adviser; and first lady Melania Trump have been privately pressing the president to shake up his team — most specifically by replacing Reince Priebus as the White House chief of staff, according to two senior White House officials and one ally close to the White House.

The three family members are especially concerned about the steady stream of unauthorized leaks to journalists that have plagued the administration over the nearly six months that President Trump has been in office, from sensitive national security information to embarrassing details about the inner workings of the White House, the officials said.

Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s communications director, said: “Of course, the first lady is concerned about leaks from her husband’s administration, as all Americans should be. And while she does offer advice and perspectives on many things, Mrs. Trump does not weigh in on West Wing staff.”

Lindsay Walters, a deputy White House press secretary, disputed reports about Priebus’s standing. “These sources have been consistently wrong about Reince, and they’re still wrong today,” she said.

After this story first published, Josh Raffel, a White House spokesman, said in a statement on behalf of Kushner and Ivanka Trump: “Jared and Ivanka are focused on working with Reince and the team to advance the President’s agenda and not on pushing for staff changes.”

Trump recently publicly praised Priebus’s work ethic, and the chief of staff’s allies note that Priebus has done as good a job as can be expected under the unique circumstances of this administration. Defenders of Priebus have long said they expect him to make it to a year in the position, and Trump is said to be hesitant to fire him or any other senior staffer amid the escalating Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The mind-set of Trump Jr. over the past few days has evolved from distress to anger to defiance, according to people close to him. He hired a criminal defense attorney but maintains that he is innocent of any wrongdoing. After his tweets commenting on the matter drew scrutiny, he agreed to his first media interview — with his friend Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity on his show on Tuesday night.

One friend of Trump Jr.’s said the presidential son saw the Hannity appearance as an opportunity to give his version of Richard Nixon’s “Checkers” speech, a 1952 address in which the then-vice-presidential candidate defended himself against accusations of financial improprieties.

Trump has had no public events since returning Saturday night from Germany but has been closely monitoring developments with his eldest son in the news.

Trump continues to view the Russia controversy as an excuse used by Democrats for losing an election they thought they would win — and an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of his victory, aides said. They said that the president’s frustration is based on the media coverage of his son’s actions, as opposed to the actions themselves.

“He just looks at this as the continuum of taking a group of unrelated facts and putting them together in concentric circles and saying, ‘Aha — look what happened!’ ” said Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a longtime friend of the president who was chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee. “With Don Jr., whatever set of facts there are may not lead to the conclusion that the establishment media is making.”

Trump and his advisers are deeply frustrated that the disclosure by Trump Jr. has overshadowed the positive coverage they expected to receive from the president’s trip abroad, as well as other issues they hoped to spotlight this week, such as the Senate health-care bill and trade.

A handful of Republican operatives close to the White House are scrambling to Trump Jr.’s defense and have begun what could be an extensive campaign to try to discredit some of the journalists who have been reporting on the matter.

Their plan, as one member of the team described it, is to research the reporters’ previous work, in some cases going back years, and to exploit any mistakes or perceived biases. They intend to demand corrections, trumpet errors on social media and feed them to conservative outlets, such as Fox News.

But one outside adviser said a campaign against the press when it comes to Trump Jr.’s meeting could be futile: “The meeting happened. It’s tough to go to war with the facts.”

In the West Wing, meanwhile, fear of the Mueller probe effectively paralyzed senior staffers as they struggled to respond.

No official has yet delivered a robust defense of Trump Jr., although Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the principal deputy press secretary, told reporters Monday, “I would certainly say Don Jr. did not collude with anybody to influence the election.”

At Tuesday’s press briefing, Sanders read a brief statement from the president — “My son is a high-quality person and I applaud his transparency” — but declined to speak further on the issue, referring all questions to Trump Jr.’s attorney.

Other senior White House officials were hesitant to talk about Trump Jr. — even on the condition of anonymity — for fear of exposing themselves legally.

Some top officials, as well as outside advisers, had earlier suggested that the White House conduct its own internal review to identify any potential problem areas related to Russia so that it can release the information on its own rather than be caught unaware by news reports. But that notion went nowhere, in part because officials were afraid to discuss any potential Russia interactions that could make them targets of Mueller’s probe.

One White House official went so far as to stop communicating with the president’s embattled son, although this official spoke sympathetically about his plight, casting Trump Jr. as someone who just wants to hunt, fish and run his family’s real estate business.

“The kid is an honest kid,” said one friend of Trump Jr. “The White House should’ve never let that story go out on the president’s son … What he’s upset about was that it was a minor meeting and the media glare — anything that’s Russia-related, gets picked up the way roaches get caught in a roach motel.”

Eric Trump, another son of the president, defended his older brother Tuesday night by retweeting a message from British politician Nigel Farage, who said Trump Jr. was under attack because he is “the best public supporter” of the president. Eric Trump tweeted: “This is the ­EXACT reason they viciously attack our family! They can’t stand that we are extremely close and will ALWAYS support each other.”

Critics of Trump Jr. counter that he should have known better than to accept a meeting with someone who was explicitly described in an email as a “Russian government attorney.”

“It wasn’t naivete,” said Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration. “It was, ‘Oh, they have some dirt on our opponent and I’m eager to receive it.’ Nobody thought to think, ‘Well, how did they obtain that? Is this coming from the Russian government, Russian intelligence?’ Those are the kinds of obvious questions that should have been asked, in my opinion.”

Pence found out about Trump Jr.’s meeting with the Russian attorney Friday evening in advance of the first Times story, said one person familiar with the discussions. Both Pence and his team view the Russia coverage as a distraction, and are working to keep the vice president clear of it and focused on Trump’s policy goals — such as health care, the subject of his scheduled visit to Kentucky on Wednesday.

“The vice president is working every day to advance the president’s agenda, which is what the American people sent us here to do. The vice president was not aware of the meeting,” Pence’s press secretary, Marc Lotter, said in a statement. “He is not focused on stories about the campaign, particularly stories about the time before he joined the ticket.”

On Capitol Hill — where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Tuesday that he is delaying his chamber’s August recess by two weeks — Republican senators were becoming increasingly frustrated with the White House, which they blame for Congress’s inability to pass any major legislation.

A growing number of senators believe that the widening Russia probe — as well as the Trump-fueled tumult that seems to dominate nearly every news cycle — have stalled their legislative agenda, leaving them nothing to offer their constituents by way of achievements when they head home over the break.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'd use another term: "The Trump White House is a confederacy of dingbats"

Spoiler

The Trump White House is facing its greatest test yet, as the Russia scandal deepens and the president’s own son has provided direct and incontrovertible evidence that at the very least the Trump campaign attempted to collude with the Russian government in order to destroy Hillary Clinton. Handling this scandal would be an extraordinary challenge for even the smartest and most competent collection of government professionals and political operatives.

But this White House is a confederacy of dingbats. That’s what got them into this pickle in the first place and that’s what will keep them from getting out of it.

Most obviously, we have Donald Trump Jr., who received an email from an acquaintance asking explicitly whether he’d be interested in the Russian government’s help in the campaign, and instead of responding, “Please don’t contact me again” and informing the FBI, he said, “If it’s what you say I love it” and forwarded the email on to his father’s closest adviser (also his brother-in-law, Jared Kushner) and the campaign’s chairman, who apparently both had the same response.

And let’s not forget why we’ve learned about this in the first place. As the New York Times reports:

The emails were discovered in recent weeks by Mr. Kushner’s legal team as it reviewed documents, and the team amended his clearance forms to disclose it.

Kushner forgot to list the meeting when he filled out those forms, just as he forgot to list other meetings he had with influential Russian figures — oops! I suppose he thought no one would notice. But they did, and the result is this explosion.

Not that it should be shocking to learn that Kushner screwed up. By many accounts, he’s a walking caricature of the entitled white guy who thinks the silver spoon he was born with was actually bestowed upon him as a reward for his uncommon brilliance (read here about how his father likely bought Jared’s admission to Harvard University with a well-timed $2.5 million donation). Like the Trump boys, Kushner never had to make it on his own — he was given every privilege a rich kid’s son can have, then went to work in the family business. Yet his father-in-law believes Kushner is such an extraordinary talent that he can reinvent government, reform the criminal justice system, solve the opioid epidemic and achieve peace in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, The Post reports today:

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and senior adviser; Jared Kushner, her husband and another senior adviser; and first lady Melania Trump have been privately pressing the president to shake up his team — most specifically by replacing Reince Priebus as the White House chief of staff.

Yeah, that’s the problem — get rid of Priebus and this whole thing will go away. We’ve also learned that the first misleading statement that Don Jr. made about the meeting with the Russian attorney — that it was about nothing more than adoptions of Russian orphans — was crafted on Air Force One by a core group of Trump’s advisers, and the president approved it. Who would have guessed that with a paper trail proving it to be false and an active investigation into all this that the story wouldn’t hold up for more than a few hours?

When a scandal breaks in Washington, what we often discover is not a finely constructed conspiracy with multiple moving parts and a sinister genius pulling the strings, but stunning overconfidence and outright buffoonery. The question that often comes up is “How the hell were they dumb enough to think they could get away with that?” That happens even when you’re talking about very smart people (Richard Nixon, after all, was extremely smart).

But in this case, we aren’t talking about smart people, particularly the guy in charge. He’s the one, after all, who thought he could put the squeeze on the FBI director to make the scandal disappear, then fire the director when he wouldn’t pledge his loyalty, then go on national television and brag that he fired the director because he wanted the Russia scandal to go away. It doesn’t get much dumber than that.

And at the moment of its greatest peril (so far anyway), Trump’s White House descends into disarray, backstabbing and outright terror as staffers start to lawyer up and wonder how they’re going to escape their current employment without being publicly disgraced (at a minimum). As The Post reports:

The White House has been thrust into chaos after days of ever-worsening revelations about a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a lawyer characterized as representing the Russian government, as the president fumes against his enemies and senior aides circle one another with suspicion, according to top White House officials and outside advisers.

The president, according to multiple reports, is enraged at the media for paying attention to all this. The response to that rage will inevitably be a focus among his aides on improving news coverage, both by enlisting the (eager) support of conservative media outlets and by working to construct persuasive arguments for the White House’s position. Now in certain circumstances, dealing with scandal can in fact be primarily a matter of crafting and disseminating arguments, i.e., spinning. For instance, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, it eventually became clear that despite his denials, President Bill Clinton did indeed have an affair with the young woman; the argument then became about whether his behavior was personal in nature or merited impeachment. The entire country debated it for months, and Democrats won the argument.

But more often, handling a scandal is a complex practical task, involving a legal strategy, a management strategy and a communication strategy. Who thinks that Donald Trump and the people who work for him are up to it?

In the end, what matters most will be the facts. Much as the White House might try, you can’t spin away such remarkably clear and explicit evidence of eagerness to collude, especially when for months you’ve been saying that the idea that there might have been collusion is ludicrous. That’s why Don Jr.’s emails were such a blockbuster story. And there’s doubtless more to come.

I love the assessment of Jared.

[AuntK]

2 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

In all fairness, when they are your very good friends and you've had a long and profitable relationship with them, then you probably wouldn't see that disappointment coming. He thought that this woman, like all of the other Russians his family has dealt with, wanted to jump on the Trump bandwagon

This is sarcasm, right?  The Russians are nobody's friends - they would sell out their mothers.

[GreyhoundFan]

Big surprise (note sarcasm): "Trump’s proposals could hike taxes for nearly a quarter of the middle class"

Spoiler

When one of President Trump's senior economic advisers was asked what the White House's plans for tax reform would mean for a typical middle-class family, he answered with confidence.

“Going to mean a tax cut,” said Gary Cohn, the director of Trump's National Economic Council, at a news conference in April. Asked for more details, Cohn repeated himself: “Going to mean a tax cut,” he said again.

The White House has promised the biggest tax cut in the history of the country, and the promise of tax relief was a crucial aspect of Trump's pitch to voters as a candidate. Many Americans are probably expecting that Trump will bring down their taxes.

In fact, while Trump has not yet laid out a detailed plan, the proposals that administration officials have put forward so far would result in an increase in taxes for nearly 1 in 5 American households, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC).

And among those in the middle class, almost a quarter would see their taxes go up, according to the TPC analysis. For households with annual incomes between $49,000 and $86,000, those facing a hike would see an average annual increase of $1,000.

Among the other three-quarters of taxpayers in that range who would enjoy a tax cut, the average annual decrease of their household tax bill would be about $1,320, according to the TPC.

The figures demonstrate the difficult compromises confronting GOP policymakers as they work on a plan to overhaul the tax system.

Trump has promised to bring down taxes, dropping the rates on individual and corporate income, throwing out the estate tax and simplifying the system for ordinary taxpayers overall.

But to make up for some of the revenue that the federal government would forgo with reduced rates, his advisers have also proposed a few tax hikes as well — mainly in the form of eliminating write-offs. The result is that while many households would pay less, some would pay more.

The benefits of the proposals from the Trump administration, however, are overwhelmingly concentrated among the very richest taxpayers.

Nearly half of the total savings (49 percent) would accrue to the richest 1 percent of households. Among the richest 0.1 percent — the wealthiest 1 in 1,000 households, those with more than $3.4 million in annual income — only 2 percent would pay more in taxes.

The other 98 percent would receive a tax cut, worth an average of nearly $1 million a year per household.

Will the Trump tax cut 'pay for itself'?

Trump's advisers have also said that they will rely on more rapid economic growth to help make up some of the forgone revenue from lower tax rates. In theory, if tax relief encourages more Americans to work and invest, there will be more overall income for the federal government to tax. Steven Mnuchin, Trump's treasury secretary, has even argued that the tax cut will “pay for itself.”

The TPC analysis contradicts that claim. In the short term, reducing taxes would stimulate the economy, the authors predict. Over the long term, however, Trump's proposals would force the federal government to borrow more to make up the difference, and the tax cut would become a burden on the economy overall because of the additional federal debt.

Republicans could prevent that by reducing federal spending at the same time, although Trump has pledged not to reduce benefits for Medicare and Social Security, the entitlements that are the principle reasons for rising outlays.

Another option would be to reform the tax system in ways that encourage Americans to work and save, but finding enough alternative sources of revenue to avoid adding to the deficit, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist and the former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

He argued that without more detail, it was difficult to assess the administration's plans. “I don’t think the TPC has enough grist for their mill,” Holtz-Eakin said. “Given that they’ve got these policies that aren’t well fleshed out, you can’t do anything more than say, 'Gee, this is a huge hole in the deficit, and that has to be bad.' "

“We thought we had enough to begin, with the contours of a plan,” said TPC director Mark Mazur, a former assistant secretary in President Barack Obama's Treasury Department. The administration did not respond to a request for more details on Trump's plans, Mazur said.

“Part of what motivated us to do this analysis was to try to understand what the impact is — in the outline and in the campaign," Mazur said. "It just points up some of the difficulties in undertaking tax reform.”

Tax hikes for some

The analysis is based on a one-page list of proposals published by the White House in April, along with other public statements by Trump and his advisers, including some of the ideas they floated during the campaign.

Those proposals include eliminating four of the seven current tax brackets and bringing down marginal rates on income. Trump would also double the standard deduction — the minimum amount of income on which Americans do not have to pay taxes — and provide tax relief on parents' child-care expenses.

Trump and his advisers have also talked about repealing the estate tax, which is paid by wealthy families when a member dies, and bringing down the rate on income from businesses and corporations to 15 percent.

All these changes would mean less money for the federal government, and Trump and his advisers have talked about ways of raising revenue in other areas.

For instance, Trump's campaign proposed eliminating the special status for heads of household, which gives single parents a break on their taxes. Getting rid of it would result in a tax hike for many in the lower middle class.

Among more affluent households, some would pay more as a result of the proposal to end the personal exemption. A taxpayer would no longer be able to claim a break for each member of the household. And Trump's lieutenants have also discussed eliminating all of the individual deductions, with exceptions for writing down interest paid on mortgages and gifts to charity.

If those changes were implemented, they would most negatively affect Americans who are rich but not quite rich enough. Nearly a third of households with incomes between $217,000 and $308,000 — those in the 90th through 95th percentiles — would pay more in taxes. The average annual hike for households in this group would be $3,900.

 

[candygirl200413]

Wow with those tax hikes but the $3 worth of childcare credits they'll give to the working middle class is what is truly going to make america great again

It's sad that many of his supporters will either pin this on Obama and Clinton or something stupid while they can't afford paying their taxes or childcare.

Also just saw this on twitter, which apparently happened this morning:

As a Christian I am legitimately offended. He as well as his cabinet sold their souls to the devil and yet people think he's God's gift to mankind. He is to ruining them but ugh I got just visibly angry looking at that.

[Destiny]

See, my first thought when I saw that pic was wow, that's a lot of old white guys. :/ Though there does appear to be at least one woman there.

[AnywhereButHere]

Quote

Maybe it's an exorcism.

 

[Howl]

Re: Trump blaming Obama when the WH can't book hotel rooms. This is ironic for a man who is in the hotel bidness, big time, the biggest time, in fact he's YUUUUUUGE in the hotel bidness.  Can't imagine the sheer number of  associates hangers on bootlickers  toadies sycophants in Trump's delegation entourage clown car who had to be accommodated. 

Re: Evangelicals laying hands on Trump. The guy's a germ-o-phobe big time.  He probably had to take a shower and change clothes after that meeting. 

Watching Listening to the White House press briefing.  Sarah Sanders Huckabee is being raked over the coals, but apparently she's been taking lessons from Kellyanne Conway.  She spins and pivots with the best of them without giving anything away.  Like nothing.  Empty content.  Zero. 

[apple1]

4 hours ago, CTRLZero said:

I worked for government for many years, and at least annually we would be beat about the head and shoulders with ethics rules training.  It was seriously frowned upon to even accept a cup of coffee or a pastry (darn it!).  We were always reminded to err on the side of caution and to avoid any appearance of evil ethics rules violations.

I don't even work for the government; I am an allied health professional (clinical lab scientist). Even we are "beat about the head and shoulders with ethics rules training". We have to complete this every year.

No excuses for the politicians.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump contradicts his son’s emails, suggests Russia preferred Hillary Clinton"

Spoiler

On Tuesday, President Trump's son released emails in which he was told that the Russian government was working to elect Trump — something U.S. intelligence services long ago concluded.

On Wednesday, the elder Trump doubled down on his past doubts about that conclusion — even going so far as to suggest that it was Hillary Clinton that Putin wanted.

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network's Pat Robertson, Trump expounded at length on this theory. Here's the full quote:

It’s something that you don’t like talking about, but again we are the most powerful country in the world, and we are getting more and more powerful because I’m a big military person. As an example, if Hillary had won, our military would be decimated. Our energy would be much more expensive. That’s what Putin doesn’t like about me. And that’s why I say, Why would he want me? Because from Day One I wanted a strong military; he doesn’t want to see that. And from Day One I want fracking and everything else to get energy prices low and to create tremendous energy. We’re going to be self-supporting — we just about are now. We’re going to be exporting energy. He doesn’t want that. He would like Hillary where she wants to have windmills. He would much rather have that because energy prices would go up and Russia, as you know, relies very much on energy. So there are many things that I do that are the exact opposite of what he would want. So what I keep hearing about that he would have rather had Trump, I think probably not because when I want a strong military — you know she wouldn’t have spent the money on military, when I want a strong military, when I want tremendous energy, we’re opening up coal, we’re opening up natural gas, we’re opening up fracking — all the things that he would hate, but nobody ever mentions that.

This isn't entirely surprising, in the context of everything Trump has said about Russian hacking in the 2016 election. Trump has occasionally conceded that Russia was probably behind the hacking, but he has never really conceded that it was meant to help him specifically.

It's not difficult to surmise why: Trump views the whole Russia matter as an effort to delegitimize his presidency, and the fact that he won by such a narrow margin means it's plausible that Russia put him over the top. He can't have that.

During the election, there was some thought that perhaps Russia was merely doing this to destabilize American democracy, not to benefit a specific candidate. But Trump takes things a step further here by suggesting — rather implausibly — that Putin in fact favored a President Clinton or at least didn't want a President Trump.

The reasons Putin may have favored Trump over Clinton are myriad. Putin's history with Clinton was a strained one, at best, for a whole host of reasons. Clinton in 2011 criticized corrupt parliamentary elections in Russia as “neither free nor fair.” It was during her time as secretary of state that Congress passed the Magnitsky Act instituting sanctions against Russia for human rights abuses (this remains perhaps the major sticking point between the two countries, and it's what that Russian lawyer who talked to Donald Trump Jr. last year was focused on). And after the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, Clinton in 2014 compared Putin to Hitler.

Trump, meanwhile, spent almost the entirety of his campaign saying curiously nice things about Putin, who was then a reviled foreign leader even among Republicans, and pushing the need for a better U.S.-Russia relationship.

Trump is clearly seeking to exploit his supporters' continued doubts about Russian hacking in the 2016. Polls show that not only do many Republicans not believe Russia hacked, but even fewer believe it was meant to help Trump. A May Fox News poll showed just 13 percent of Republicans thought Russia's involvement helped Trump, and a March CBS News poll showed just 13 percent thought it even tried to help Trump. Another 64 percent of Republicans said Russia didn't even interfere in the election.

...

This is why Trump will never back off his doubts. Conceding that Russia tried to help him is just too big a shot to his ego. Meanwhile, he has successfully created an alternate reality in which these consensus conclusions of the intelligence community are fake news — proof that Trump's opponents will do anything to undermine him.

The question, as always, is when will Trump have taken this too far? When will his claims that run counter to the intelligence community and to his own son's well-publicized emails cause his supporters to lose faith in his credibility? Trump doesn't seem to have an “off” button on this stuff; his inclination, instead, is to push just as hard in the opposite direction.

For the first time, though, he's not just pitted against the intelligence community and logic, but against his own son's paper trail.

Every single day, it's like the US is on an episode of "Punked". Every.single.day.

[AuntK]

2 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Wow with those tax hikes but the $3 worth of childcare credits they'll give to the working middle class is what is truly going to make america great again

It's sad that many of his supporters will either pin this on Obama and Clinton or something stupid while they can't afford paying their taxes or childcare.

Also just saw this on twitter, which apparently happened this morning:

As a Christian I am legitimately offended. He as well as his cabinet sold their souls to the devil and yet people think he's God's gift to mankind. He is to ruining them but ugh I got just visibly angry looking at that.

I, too, as a Christian, am offended, mortified, angry, whatever. These people are hypocrites, they surely do not worship the God I know.  There is absolutely NOTHING about this man that reflects Christianity, goodness, or any kind of feelings for humanity, period.  

And as far as him being a "germaphobe," I'm calling BS on that one. Any man who brags about grabbing p*ssy, is hardly a germophobe! Not to mention the other stories of his grabby hands. . . BS!!!

[GreyhoundFan]

Another lawsuit: "Why blocked Twitter users are suing President Trump"

Spoiler

Seven people blocked by President Trump from seeing or interacting with his Twitter account filed a lawsuit against him Tuesday, arguing that barring them from his popular social-media feed violates the First Amendment to the Constitution. The lawsuit, which raises interesting questions about what constitutes a public forum, as well as the boundaries of free-speech rights on the Web, comes as Trump continues to draw concern about his novel and erratic use of social media.

“President Trump’s Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, has become an important source of news and information about the government, and an important public forum for speech by, to, and about the President,” the lawsuit said. “In an effort to suppress dissent in this forum, Defendants have excluded — 'blocked' —Twitter users who have criticized the President or his policies. This practice is unconstitutional, and this suit seeks to end it."

The Twitter users, represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said that Trump's actions violated their Constitutional rights in several ways. They argued that the president has restricted their participation in a public forum, their ability to access official public statements made by him and their capacity to petition the government to air their grievances.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer, and White House director of social media Daniel Scavino were named as defendants in the suit, along with the president. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The Twitter users said they brought the lawsuit to seek a declaration that Trump's actions were unconstitutional and to get an injunction requiring Trump to unblock their accounts and preventing him from blocking other people because of their views.

Earlier this month, Trump ignited a controversy by tweeting out a GIF of himself pummeling Vince McMahon at a past WrestleMania, with a CNN logo superimposed over McMahon’s face. It was titled "Trump takes down fake news." As the tweet gained traction online, some questioned whether Trump had violated Twitter's harassment policy by appearing to promote violence against CNN.

Before that tweet, some watchdog groups argued that Trump may have violated records laws by deleting tweets from his account.

...

What exactly were the offending tweets that led the president to block the Twitter users from viewing his account?

According to the lawsuit, one plaintiff, Holly Figueroa, “replied to the President in a series of tweets, including one that contained an image of Pope Francis looking incredulously at President Trump, along with the statement 'This is pretty much how the whole world sees you. #AMJoy #SundayMorning.'" Her reply received nearly 15,000 likes and 5,300 retweets. Later that night, Figueroa discovered she had been blocked by Trump, according to the lawsuit.

...

After Trump tweeted, “Sorry folks, but if I would have relied on the Fake News of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS washpost or nytimes, I would have had ZERO chance winning WH,” another plaintiff, Rebecca Buckwalter, replied, “To be fair you didn’t win the WH: Russia won it for you.” Her reply drew 9,100 likes and 3,400 retweets. Soon after, Buckwalter discovered she had been blocked, the lawsuit said.

...

And after Trump tweeted, “The new Rasmussen Poll, one of the most accurate in the 2016 Election, just out with a Trump 50% Approval Rating. That’s higher than O’s #’s!,” another plaintiff, Eugene Gu, replied, “Covfefe: The same guy who doesn’t proofread his Twitter handles the nuclear button.” His reply drew 2,900 likes and 300 retweets. Gu discovered he had been blocked from the @realDonaldTrump account about two hours later, the lawsuit said.

...

He's the greatest, isn't he? No president has ever had so many bigly lawsuits.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Get off the Trump train before it crashes"

Spoiler

“Will he tell the president ‘no’?”

This question was at the heart of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s opening statement at Wednesday’s confirmation hearing for Christopher A. Wray, President Trump’s nominee as FBI director. Wray was there because the man who appointed him had fired James B. Comey for failing, as Feinstein put it, to “pledge his loyalty” to Trump and to soft-peddle inquiries involving Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign.

The test for Wray, Feinstein (D-Calif.) said, will be his “willingness to stand up in the face of political pressure.”

There is good reason to feel uneasy about having anyone appointed by Trump lead the FBI at this moment. It is obvious to all except the willfully blind that we now have a president who observes none of the norms, rules or expectations of his office and will pressure anyone at any time if doing so serves his personal interests.

We also know beyond doubt that this team will lie, and lie, and lie again whenever the matter of Russia’s exertions to elect Trump and defeat Hillary Clinton arises.

Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer connected to the Putin regime after he received an email from an intermediary promising “sensitive information” about Clinton that was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” His decision exploded the president’s claims that neither he nor his campaign had anything to do with Russia’s efforts to tilt our election his way.

The son’s response to the invitation, “I love it,” will become the iconic summation of the Trump apparat’s attitude toward the assistance the president received from Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Almost as instructive were the number of outright lies the Trump camp concocted to try to disguise the motivation behind the encounter. Their story changed as New York Times reporters developed more information as to what happened. The White House initially seemed to think it could get everyone to buy its fiction that the conversation — which also involved Trump’s then-campaign manager, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — had focused on policy toward Russian adoptions.

The administration’s marriage of incompetence and corruption was captured with a popular refrain on Twitter that may someday become a book title: “The Gang That Couldn’t Collude Straight.”

Feinstein’s suggestion that telling this president “no” has become the true measure of patriotism applies far beyond Wray. So far, Republican politicians, with a precious few exceptions, are failing this ethics exam.

The revelations about Trump Jr. might have been the moment when Republican leaders at least started to grab their luggage in preparation for disembarking from the Trump train. After all, as Post blogger Greg Sargent underscored, there is evidence that the president himself cooperated in putting out the original lies about his son’s meeting. This may prove to be the wedge that opens up a larger examination of the president’s determination to cover up.

Yet the GOP is having trouble kicking its Trump habit.

While some Republican senators see the administration’s dysfunction as a barrier to their Obamacare repeal efforts, others are hoping the Trump Jr. distraction will lower the level of scrutiny of their forthcoming second draft of a health-care bill. Could scandalous political behavior provide a shield for scandalous public policy?

Vice President Pence’s effort to stay loyal to Trump while tiptoeing away from the latest disclosures is another sign of chaos. Marc Lotter, Pence’s press secretary, attempted to draw a bright line, saying of the vice president: “He is not focused on stories about the campaign, particularly stories about the time before he joined the ticket.”

But there is no bright line. This statement should widen, rather than narrow, interest in Pence’s behavior because denying any relationship with Russia was central to the campaign that he was part of. It was also Pence who (in theory, at least) was in charge of vetting Michael Flynn, the national security adviser who had to resign after 24 days because of his own dissembling about Russian contacts. Pence publicly defended Flynn and then pleaded ignorance as to what was going on.

Pence cannot be allowed to slink away from the administration whose cause he has advanced. If he’s starting to see reasons for breaking with Trump, he’ll have to do it outright and end his own collusion with one of the most disingenuous White Houses in our history.

The same applies to Republican leaders in Congress. When will they tell the president “no”? Feinstein’s question is the right one for Wray. It should haunt Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, too.

Unfortunately, that train is crashing into our democracy.

[GreyhoundFan]

Excellent NYT article: "With Glare on Trump Children, Political Gets Personal for President"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — In private, President Trump sometimes addresses his adult children as “baby,” a term of endearment tinged with a New Yorker’s wisecracking edge. And now that Mr. Trump’s babies have been swept into the vortex of his storm-tossed presidency, he is taking it personally.

The fierce criticism of a meeting between Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and a Kremlin-linked lawyer in June 2016 has left the president by turns angry, defensive and protective but ultimately relieved that for now, the worst appears to be over, people who spoke to him said Wednesday.

For Mr. Trump, who has faced a barrage of questions about his own dealings with Russia, watching his closest family members come under harsh scrutiny for things they are accused of doing to help his presidential campaign has marked an uncomfortable turn in the foreign entanglement that has shadowed him since he took office in January.

The latest disclosures also focused renewed attention on Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, who attended Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting last June with the Russian, Natalia Veselnitskaya. And they came on the heels of a much-criticized decision by his daughter Ivanka to sit in her father’s vacated chair at a summit meeting in Germany.

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump discarded pleas from advisers to avoid wading into the tempest over Donald Trump Jr., and posted a fusillade of tweets defending him. He denounced reports of the meeting — to collect incriminating information about Hillary Clinton — as part of “the greatest Witch Hunt in political history” and even embraced the theory that his son might have been “the victim” in the case.

“He was great,” Mr. Trump told people about his son’s appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program the previous evening.

By midday Wednesday, the mercurial president was telling friends and advisers that he believed the situation had improved. “I think this is getting better,” he said to one group of aides, hours before he was set to take off for a trip to France to mark Bastille Day.

The Trump family, friends said, always draws closer under intense pressure. But Mr. Trump bridles at the idea that his children, who have not spent years in the public spotlight like him, are now facing unrelenting scrutiny over what he believes to be a manufactured scandal by the news media.

While Donald Trump Jr. has been on the firing line, the meeting with Ms. Veselnitskaya could arguably be a bigger distraction for Mr. Kushner. As a senior adviser to the president, he is involved in several of the administration’s most sensitive foreign-policy issues, from China to the Middle East peace process. His involvement in the meeting led reporters to ask the White House whether he still held his security clearance.

Also under scrutiny is how forthcoming Mr. Kushner was with his father-in-law about the nature of the June meeting. He met with Mr. Trump to discuss the issue, according to advisers to the White House, around the time he updated his federal disclosure form to include Ms. Veselnitskaya’s name on a list of foreign contacts that Mr. Kushner was required to submit to the F.B.I. to obtain a security clearance.

Mr. Kushner supplemented the list of foreign contacts three times, adding more than 100 names, people close to him said.

Mr. Kushner played down the significance of the meeting and omitted significant details, according to two people who were briefed on the exchange. They said Mr. Kushner informed the president that he had met with a Russian foreign national, and that while he had to report the name, it would not cause a problem for the administration.

Another official said Mr. Kushner’s assurance to the president was based on the fact that nothing came of the June meeting.

In an interview with Reuters, Mr. Trump said he had not been told last summer that his son was meeting with a Russian lawyer. “No, that I didn’t know until a couple of days ago when I heard about this,” he said.

Mr. Kushner, colleagues say, has kept up a regular work schedule, meeting on Wednesday with Gary D. Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, to discuss the administration’s impending moves on trade. He is also in touch with Jason D. Greenblatt, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, who is in Israel for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. And next week, he plans to take part in a high-level economic dialogue with China.

Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka, are not accompanying Mr. Trump to Paris. Instead they plan to attend the annual media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, sponsored by the investment firm Allen & Company. An official said the couple would pay for their own travel and lodgings.

Mr. Kushner is expected to cooperate in the next several weeks with the Senate and House Intelligence Committees that are looking into Russia’s intervention in the American election and any possible collusion with the Trump campaign. He will have to devote some time to preparing for those appearances with his team of lawyers.

Colleagues of Mr. Kushner said he had remained focused and upbeat despite the drumbeat of negative headlines — a trait they ascribe to his experience dealing with the legal troubles of his father, Charles Kushner, who was convicted of tax evasion and witness tampering.

But even as the White House labors to present a business-as-usual facade, there is evidence that Mr. Trump’s family will be drawn deeper into the investigation. Two officials familiar with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation said the panel was now planning to expand its inquiry to include Donald Trump Jr.

The officials said Mr. Trump’s shifting reasons for the meeting — and his acknowledgment that he was lured by the promise of Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton — had forced the Senate panel to begin examining his role in the campaign, and any contacts he may have had with Russians.

The first step, officials said, would be for Senate investigators to sit down with Mr. Trump. The Senate panel might also request that he turn over emails and financial records from any dealings with Russia, which they have done with other subjects of their investigation.

At the same time, Mr. Kushner now looms larger in the Senate investigation, the officials said. Its investigators concluded as early as March that his meetings during the transition with the Russian ambassador and a Russian banker tied to the Kremlin warranted further scrutiny.

For the president, friends said, the pain of seeing his son ensnared in the Russia scandal was real. In part, that is because, of all his children, he has had the most complicated relationship with Donald Jr., who was a teenager when his parents divorced and did not speak to his father for a year.

Friends who have known the Trump family for many years said they believed Donald Trump Jr., in setting up the meeting, was only focused on trying to help — and even impress — his father with information that could help his campaign.

President Trump has been equally protective of his other children. After Ivanka came under criticism for taking her father’s seat in Germany, he defended her in a tweet and cited Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. “When I left Conference Room for short meetings with Japan and other countries,” he said, “I asked Ivanka to hold seat. Very standard. Angela M agrees!”

Nobody offered a more passionate defense of Ivanka than Donald Trump Jr.

“Look at the attacks on Ivanka,” he told Mr. Hannity on Tuesday night. “If she was anyone else’s daughter, she’d be a feminist icon — this incredible, brilliant, well-spoken woman. And they try to belittle her at every chance. It’s really sad.”

“For me as a family member, as her brother, as her older brother, you know you do take it personally and it does make you want to fight back,” he added. “What we are is we are fighters and they don’t take well to that, either, because most people don’t like being called on their stuff.”

So, Jared and Ivanka are "paying for their own travel and lodging" in Idaho. But we get to foot the bill for their large security entourage.

[fraurosena]

After MSNBC reports Trump is watching TV, Trump goes on Twitter to say no he's not

Quote

For Donald Trump, having his own son be the person who finally confirms that his presidential campaign indeed sought to collude with the Russian government during that nation's extensive efforts to hack U.S. elections systems and Donald Trump's election opponent is likely a very stressful revelation.

 

 

 

Well, sure. But this morning an MSNBC journalist reported Trump was coping in the usual way—watching television. Trump, who must have been watching at the time, apparently didn't like that.

 

 

 

The evidence suggests Donald is perhaps fibbing on this one. Do try to contain your shock.

 

 

 

What the man needs: a top-notch psychiatrist. What the man gets: Sean Effing Hannity.

That last sentence:  

[fraurosena]

Emoluments clause? Constitution? Meh. If it's not in the lease, Horne isn't bothered.

Lawmakers question GSA chief over Trump’s hotel lease, failed FBI headquarters

Spoiler

Democratic members of Congress sharply questioned President Trump’s interim chief of the General Services Administration, the agency that leases Trump his hotel, over why the lease has remained in place and why the agency has repeatedly failed to disclose information about the project.

“We have a situation where the president is both the landlord and the tenant,” said Peter A. DeFazio (Ore.), the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation Committee.

Democratic staff produced a 24-page report on the hotel laying out an argument against the GSA’s ruling that Trump’s company remains in compliance with the lease despite a clause in the agreement barring any “elected official of the government of the United States” from deriving “any benefit” from the arrangement.

The report argues that Trump’s hotel relies heavily on “emoluments” business in violation of the Constitution. Although Trump has stepped down from his company and pledged to donate some foreign profits from the hotel, he retains majority ownership of the business.

In March, the GSA ruled that the lease was in compliance because Trump had vowed not to receive benefits from the lease until he leaves office. Since then it has provided incomplete or nonanswers to five letters of inquiry about the project, DeFazio said, accusing the agency of “very unprofessional conduct” for its lack of transparency.

DeFazio issued a flurry of questions to Tim Horne, who was named acting GSA administrator on Jan. 20 by the Trump administration: How could the lease be in compliance given that clause? What did Horne think of the contacting officer’s conduct? Why was a career GSA official removed by the Trump administration as the president took office?

Horne, a career civil servant and nearly 25-year GSA veteran, remains acting administrator of the agency because Trump has not appointed a permanent leader. He told the subcommittee, which oversees public buildings and economic development, that his job was “to create an environment where contracting officers” can make business decisions insulated from politics.

Horne told Rep. Hank Johnson, Jr. (D-Ga.) that he was “not an expert” on the Constitution’s emoluments clause and that it wasn’t his job to be. “GSA’s role is not to determine compliance with the emoluments clause and the Constitution,” he said.

He also told Johnson that he had never spoken to Trump, Ivanka Trump or her husband, Jared Kushner. “I have never spoken on this matter or any other matter with any of those individuals,” he said.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) asked whether Horne was blind to the Constitution in administering the lease: “Are you ignoring the provision of the Constitution?”

“My role is to make sure the agency is administrating the lease, and as far as I know that clause is not in the lease,” he said.

Democrats have repeatedly chafed at a Trump administration policy of not providing information to congressional committees on matters of oversight unless requested to do so by Republican leaders. Democratic leadership on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has sent three “seven-member letters” — meaning they carry signatures from seven members of Congress — triggering a rule requiring the administration to provide documents, but have not received responses.

DeFazio and other Democrats at the hearing Wednesday introduced a “resolution of inquiry” aimed at forcing the GSA to produce documents related to the hotel.

Horne did not commit to providing information on the project. “We will continue to work with the committee,” he said repeatedly.

D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who pushed for the Old Post Office to be redeveloped for years before Trump won the lease deal there, said in an interview following the hearing that she was amazed at “the lack of forthrightness and transparency” on the part of the Trump administration, especially information on revenue the property produces for the government. The Trump Organization pays the GSA $250,000 a month in rent and is required to share 3 percent of profits.

“Why would they keep that from us?” she said.

The GSA’s cancellation this week of a plan to build a new FBI headquarters in the Washington suburbs also drew questions from Republicans Lou Barletta (Pa.) and Barbara Comstock (Va.). Barletta said he was not surprised the project had been derailed because of the proposed swap of the J. Edgar Hoover Building to the winning bidder.

“By structuring the procurement as an exchange, the previous administration precluded the project from being built in phases,” like other government complexes, Barletta said. “That can only happen with full funding of the project, which the GSA does not have.”

Barletta said other structures such as a ground lease could advance the plans. “We have the opportunity to fix this project and get it back on track,” he said.

Another member of the panel, Kevin Acklin, chief of staff to Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto, was happy to discuss other topics. A new law requires the creation of a government board aimed at selling unneeded federal real estate. Pittsburgh recently studied nearly 300 facilities in the city and is working to gain control of a long-vacant Veterans Affairs medical center.

“For purposes of today, I’m glad I didn’t stay at the Trump hotel last night,” Acklin said.

Holmes Norton's amazement amazes me. This  administration being forthright and transparent is a ludicrous and laughable idea.

[GreyhoundFan]

@fraurosena: Eleanor Holmes Norton is a sensible person. I'm sure she was being sarcastic. She's in no way a Repug or BT. She is a long-time representative of the citizens of Washington, DC.

[fraurosena]

14 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@fraurosena: Eleanor Holmes Norton is a sensible person. I'm sure she was being sarcastic. She's in no way a Repug or BT. She is a long-time representative of the citizens of Washington, DC.

Oh, I wasn't under the impression she was.

It was just me being snarky on her phraseology, as it made her sound as if she just found out that the administration has truth and transparency issues. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"8 over-the-top claims in President Trump’s Reuters interview"

Spoiler

In an increasingly rare interview with a nonconservative journalist, President Trump sat down with Reuters for an extended chat Wednesday amid a ton of controversy stemming from Donald Trump Jr.'s emails.

Trump's response: All is well. And not just well: Fantastic. Also: I'm the best.

Trump's interview with Steve Holland was full of his usual bluster and over-the-top claims. Below, we're pulling out eight and briefly evaluating them.

1) Of Trump Jr.'s June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer about research supposedly from the Kremlin: “Many people, and many political pros, said everybody would do that. If you got a call and said, 'Listen I have information on Hillary and the DNC,' or whatever it was they said, most people are going to take that meeting, I think. … I think many people would have held that meeting.”

Trump is fond of saying “everybody” is saying something or would do something, when it's simply not true. This is clearly not something that everybody would do — especially if they want to avoid breaking the law. On the same day Trump said this, in fact, his own nominee to be FBI director, Christopher A. Wray, testified that anybody who is offered such information by foreign governments should report it: “Any threat or any effort to interfere in our election from any nation state or nonstate actor is the kind of thing the FBI would want to know.”

2) “And you have to understand, when that took place, this was before Russia fever. There was no Russia fever back then, that was at the beginning of the campaign, more or less. There was no Russia fever.”

Trump has a point that Russia's role in meddling in the 2016 election wasn't yet known; the DNC's hacked emails wouldn't be released until a month later — July 2016. But Russia was still an established adversarial foreign power, and Trump's repeated statements praising Vladimir Putin and saying he wanted a better relationship with Russia were already controversial by that point. Basically, there was no way Trump Jr. wouldn't have known that working with Russia would be a no-no.

3) “Now, everybody agrees that there was no impact on the votes in this election, which is very important to say, but we have to make sure that nothing could ever happen to our election process.”

This is an old Trump mainstay, and it's highly deceptive. The intelligence community doesn't believe Russia hacked the actual votes in the 2016 election, but that doesn't mean its actions didn't have an effect on the ballots that people willfully cast. And in fact, the intel community's January assessment says explicitly that it wouldn't weigh in on whether the hacking may have affected the outcome. “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election,” it says. “The U.S. Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze U.S. political processes or U.S. public opinion.” This old Trump talking point is just bogus.

4) “I was very tough with President Putin. We have a very important relationship. It’s going to be a relationship where lots of lives could be saved, like as an example with the cease-fire, which nobody else could have gotten but me.”

This is an extremely bold and self-satisfied claim — saying that “nobody else could have gotten” the cease-fire “but me.” It's true that past cease-fires in Syria have fallen apart rather quickly, but Trump is really patting himself on the back here.

5) “It’s really the one question I wish I would have asked Putin: Were you actually supporting me? … I would bet that inwardly Putin would have been against me.”

First off, it's remarkable that Trump is admitting that he didn't ask Putin about this. The White House has said that Trump “pressed” Putin on whether Russia hacked, and this question is inextricably tied to that one; how could he not have asked it? Secondly, the claim that Putin might have actually been against him is something the intelligence community says isn't true, and it runs completely counter to a whole bunch of facts about what Russia did (i.e. hacking Democrats) and Putin's relationship with Clinton, which was quite strained.

6) “The mood in the White House is fantastic. … We have done more in five months than practically any president in history. … There’s not a thing that we’re not doing well in. The White House is functioning beautifully, despite the hoax made up by the Democrats.”

The idea that the mood in the White House is fantastic is contradicted by many, many people in that same White House, and that's been the case for months. Here's what The Post's Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker reported on Wednesday:

The White House has been thrust into chaos after days of ever-worsening revelations about a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a lawyer characterized as representing the Russian government, as the president fumes against his enemies and senior aides circle one another with suspicion, according to top White House officials and outside advisers.

President Trump — who has been hidden from public view since returning last weekend from a divisive international summit — is enraged that the Russia cloud still hangs over his presidency and is exasperated that his eldest son and namesake has become engulfed by it, said people who have spoken with him this week.

And the claim that he has done more than any president in history to this point is a tired one that doesn't comport with basically any objective measure. There has been no signature legislation, several courts halted his travel ban before the Supreme Court allowed part of it, and there have been several controversies. Trump made this same claim after 90 days, and it got four Pinocchios from The Post's Fact Checker.

7) “There was zero coordination. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. There’s no coordination, this was a hoax, this was made up by the Democrats.”

Whether Trump Jr. broke the law is one question; it seems pretty clear that he at least tried to coordinate with someone he was told was acting on behalf of the Russian government. Most in the White House say that what Trump Jr. did wasn't illegal or wasn't collusion; Trump its still pretending no evidence of Trump Jr.'s efforts exists.

8) “This is the greatest con job in history, where a party sits down the day after they got their ass kicked, and they say, 'Huh, what’s our excuse?'”

Trump has frequently exaggerated the size of his victory, and he does it again here by saying Democrats “got their ass kicked.” The fact is that he won by less than 1 percentage point in the states that determined the 2016 election: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He also lost the popular vote, and Republicans lost seats in the House and Senate. On the whole, it was a good day for the GOP, but Democrats did not get their “ass kicked.”

Liar-in-chief.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another entry in the "you can't make this shit up" sweepstakes. "Trump, basically: It’s Obama’s fault that Russian lawyer took advantage of ‘young man’ Donald Trump Jr."

Spoiler

President Trump offered a novel defense of his embattled son Donald Trump Jr. in Paris on Thursday. It basically boiled down to this: Trump Jr. is a “young man” who was taken advantage of by a Russian lawyer who wouldn't even have been in this country if it wasn't for the Obama administration.

That's an oversimplification of what Trump said, yes, but it's certainly what he was getting at. Let's break down the quote.

“My son is a wonderful young man.”

Donald Trump Jr., it bears noting, is 39. He is the same age, in fact, as the man who was standing next to Trump at that moment and happens to be the president of France, Emmanuel Macron. But this seems to be a talking point. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), one of Trump Jr.'s top defenders, has called him “a very nice young man.” And a close Trump ally told The Washington Post this week that Trump Jr. was “an honest kid” who just wanted to hunt, fish and run the family business.

At the end of his answer, Trump again referred to Trump Jr.'s age: “So, again, I have a son who's a great young man.” The message seems to be that Trump Jr. is inexperienced and was taken advantage of.

“He took a meeting with a Russian lawyer — not a government lawyer but a Russian lawyer.”

The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, does not hold an official government title, but she has ties to the Kremlin. And she was presented to Trump Jr. as a “Russian government attorney” peddling information from the Russian government in those emails that were released this week. The emails said this multiple times. Put plainly: There was no way Trump Jr. didn't think he was working with the Russian government, based on those emails.

The president then returned to some familiar comments from recent days — about the brevity of the meeting and how prevalent opposition research is — before getting to the Obama part. Here's what he said:

“Now the lawyer that went to the meeting, I see that she was in the halls of Congress also. Somebody said that her visa or her passport to come into the country was approved by Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch. Now, maybe that's wrong, because I just heard about that a little while ago, but I was a little surprised to hear that: She's here because of Lynch.”

Trump seems to be referring to a report in the Hill that says Lynch granted Veselnitskaya entry to this country despite her visa application having been turned down. The report states that Veselnitskaya was granted access “for the limited purpose of helping a company owned by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, her client, defend itself against a Justice Department asset forfeiture case in federal court in New York City.”

So why is Trump bringing this up? Apparently because he wants to argue that this whole situation is, at its root, partially the fault of the Obama administration. There is really no other reason to bring that up. The implication sure seems to be that President Barack Obama and Lynch let this bad person into the country, and look what happened!

And it follows a pattern of Trump and the White House muddying the waters. They have said repeatedly that anybody would take opposition research like this, leaving out the fact that it's objectionable only because it was supposedly coming from the Russian government. They've pointed to the length of the meeting and the claim that no valuable information was obtained, ignoring the fact that Trump Jr. still attempted to get such information. And now they are trying to pin this, at least partially, on the Obama administration.

Banging head on desk...

[GrumpyGran]

18 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Another entry in the "you can't make this shit up" sweepstakes. "Trump, basically: It’s Obama’s fault that Russian lawyer took advantage of ‘young man’ Donald Trump Jr."

  Hide contents

President Trump offered a novel defense of his embattled son Donald Trump Jr. in Paris on Thursday. It basically boiled down to this: Trump Jr. is a “young man” who was taken advantage of by a Russian lawyer who wouldn't even have been in this country if it wasn't for the Obama administration.

That's an oversimplification of what Trump said, yes, but it's certainly what he was getting at. Let's break down the quote.

“My son is a wonderful young man.”

Donald Trump Jr., it bears noting, is 39. He is the same age, in fact, as the man who was standing next to Trump at that moment and happens to be the president of France, Emmanuel Macron. But this seems to be a talking point. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), one of Trump Jr.'s top defenders, has called him “a very nice young man.” And a close Trump ally told The Washington Post this week that Trump Jr. was “an honest kid” who just wanted to hunt, fish and run the family business.

At the end of his answer, Trump again referred to Trump Jr.'s age: “So, again, I have a son who's a great young man.” The message seems to be that Trump Jr. is inexperienced and was taken advantage of.

“He took a meeting with a Russian lawyer — not a government lawyer but a Russian lawyer.”

The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, does not hold an official government title, but she has ties to the Kremlin. And she was presented to Trump Jr. as a “Russian government attorney” peddling information from the Russian government in those emails that were released this week. The emails said this multiple times. Put plainly: There was no way Trump Jr. didn't think he was working with the Russian government, based on those emails.

The president then returned to some familiar comments from recent days — about the brevity of the meeting and how prevalent opposition research is — before getting to the Obama part. Here's what he said:

“Now the lawyer that went to the meeting, I see that she was in the halls of Congress also. Somebody said that her visa or her passport to come into the country was approved by Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch. Now, maybe that's wrong, because I just heard about that a little while ago, but I was a little surprised to hear that: She's here because of Lynch.”

Trump seems to be referring to a report in the Hill that says Lynch granted Veselnitskaya entry to this country despite her visa application having been turned down. The report states that Veselnitskaya was granted access “for the limited purpose of helping a company owned by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, her client, defend itself against a Justice Department asset forfeiture case in federal court in New York City.”

So why is Trump bringing this up? Apparently because he wants to argue that this whole situation is, at its root, partially the fault of the Obama administration. There is really no other reason to bring that up. The implication sure seems to be that President Barack Obama and Lynch let this bad person into the country, and look what happened!

And it follows a pattern of Trump and the White House muddying the waters. They have said repeatedly that anybody would take opposition research like this, leaving out the fact that it's objectionable only because it was supposedly coming from the Russian government. They've pointed to the length of the meeting and the claim that no valuable information was obtained, ignoring the fact that Trump Jr. still attempted to get such information. And now they are trying to pin this, at least partially, on the Obama administration.

Banging head on desk...

Hmm, so now we're casting little Donnie J as a young simpleton, pure of heart, unable to comprehend the evil that Barrack Obama had allowed to enter the country, unable even to comprehend e-mails. I thought he was a successful business man. How could he be both?

[GreyhoundFan]

Not about the orange menace, but this is a real president: "Jimmy Carter recovering after collapsing from dehydration in Winnipeg, report says"

Spoiler

Former president Jimmy Carter was taken to a hospital Thursday for dehydration while in Winnipeg, according to a news report.

The 92-year-old was in Canada helping build a Habitat for Humanity home when he “collapsed,” a volunteer told CBC News, triggering a rush of paramedics and firefighters to assist him. An ambulance took Carter to a hospital.

“President Carter has been working hard all week. He was dehydrated working in the hot sun and has been taken offsite for observation. He encourages everyone to stay hydrated and keep building,” a statement from the Carter Center said.

As a precaution, Carter was transported to St. Boniface General Hospital for re-hydration, and former first lady Rosalynn Carter is with him, the center said.

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are the organization’s most prominent supporters, and since 1984 have  built, renovated or repaired almost 4,000 homes globally, according to the nonprofit’s website.

The Carters arrived in Canada this week to build or repair as many as 100 homes across Canada in four days, ending Friday, the organization said.

Carter described a rising concern over housing costs in Canada as a reason to get involved.

“Housing affordability in Canada is at an all-time low. We are proud supporters of Habitat for Humanity and grateful to everyone who is joining us in our efforts to bring affordable housing to families across the country,” Carter said.

Carter announced in 2015 that he was free of a type of melanoma that spread across his brain.

The man is 92 and actually building houses. for the poor. The orange menace is 21 years younger and couldn't actually build something out of legos, much less actual buildings.