Trump 31: Parody of a Presidency

[Howl]

13 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump thanks federal employees with $143.5 billion in retirement cuts"

This dismantling of the government, all of it, is the GOP Tea Party wet dream, and Trump is just the figurehead that is allowing them the ability to do it. He certainly does not come up with this stuff on his own;  governance and policy makes up only a minuscule sliver of his mental pie chart.*  So who is pulling the strings?  Who sets the policy?  Who, exactly.  Mitch McConnell? Is it Paul Ryan?  Pence? Some policy wonk in the West Wing?  So I googled for an answer to my own question!   

This article from Politico pretty much sums it up: 

Trump sets his Cabinet free to shape an agenda Agency heads have been given extreme leeway to pursue their policy goals, moving fast on changes as the White House seeks compromises with the Hill.

*I'm thinking, I'll spice up this post with a pie chart of Trump's brain.  google it.  There are thousands of images and lots of memes.  I couldn't choose just one! 

[fraurosena]

The presidunce is all about robbing the poor to give to the rich. 

Trump may just blow up the farm bill over demanding food stamp work requirements

Quote

President Donald Trump may blow up negotiations over the farm bill by demanding work requirements for food stamps.

Trump is expected to tell lawmakers Wednesday that he will veto any farm bill that doesn’t include stricter work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as food stamps, the Wall Street Journal reported.

That demand, which could mean tens of billions of dollars in cuts to the anti-poverty program that serves more than 42 million Americans, is likely a nonstarter for Democrats, whose votes are needed for the bill to pass. The $100 billion legislative package, which Congress largely renews every five years to subsidize agriculture and food assistance programs, needs bipartisan support to pass the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Eighty percent of the farm bill’s spending is on nutrition programs.

Currently, the House Republicans’ proposed farm bill, which was written behind closed doors and without Democratic input, is estimated to slash $20 billion from SNAP over the next 10 years. More than 2 million people could be pushed off the program, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, if the stringent proposed work requirements and anti-fraud measures are put into place. The House is expected to vote on the bill in the next week. The Senate has yet to put together its own version.

The Senate Agricultural Committee’s Republican chair, Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, has said their proposal would be more bipartisan and was unlikely to include harsh work requirements. But Trump’s push to make the farm bill more partisan could bring the legislative package to a standstill.

The farm bill is often seen as bipartisan, but it — like many other issues — has been plagued by partisan fights in recent years. The last farm bill, which finally passed in 2014, was delayed for two years after a similar conservative push over SNAP. Roberts said that wouldn’t happen this time.

“We’re going to make efficiencies,” he said, according to the Journal. “The nutrition title is exceedingly important to the minority and we have to have 60 votes.”

That might all change if Trump gets his way.

The House’s farm bill has already erupted into a partisan food fight

There are already work requirements for able-bodied adults ages 18 through 49 without dependents to receive food stamps; recipients have to work at least 20 hours per week in order to receive food aid for more than three months in a 36-month period. On average, a SNAP recipient usually receives $126.39 per month, and an average household receives $256.11 monthly — about $1.40 per meal. States often waive those requirements when the economy is doing poorly and reinstate them in healthier job markets, designed to offer stability during the ebbs and flows of the economic cycle. Poverty experts see it as an “important macroeconomic stabilizer.”

The House farm bill would extend the work requirements for people up to age 59 beginning in 2021 and ask for proof of working at least 20 hours a week monthly. The minimum work requirement would also be increased to 25 hours by 2026. Those who violate the requirements (or fail to properly prove they’ve completed the work) would be cut off from benefits for an entire year. If they violate the requirements repeatedly, recipients could be cut off from benefits for up to three years.

Poverty experts argue these stricter work requirements will add onerous paperwork to the program, cut off millions from necessary aid, and ultimately have dire public health consequences like increasing food insecurity.

“My own sense is that this is a cost-cutting push, period,” James Ziliak, the director of University of Kentucky’s Center for Poverty Research, said. “The disconnect is that some people don’t want to acknowledge that there are people in need.”

The impact of these reforms is clear: The Congressional Budget Office expects it would cut around $20 billion in costs from the program over the next 10 years, derived directly from reducing the benefits. Instead, the reforms would increase administrative costs by requiring beneficiaries to file more paperwork to maintain eligibility.

There are currently about 42 million Americans living below the poverty line, almost half of whom are children, who rely on SNAP to purchase food. It’s expected that roughly 2 million would be pushed off the rolls altogether or see reductions in already meager stipends.

There are some investments in the benefits in the House proposal, with funding for the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive program, which would double SNAP benefits when buying fruits and vegetables. But those improvements largely pale in comparison to the cuts low-income families would experience.

SNAP cuts derailed the farm bill last time. Trump could do it again.

House Republicans say their conservative farm bill proposal is aimed at reducing poverty and promoting self-sufficiency.

“We believe that breaking this poverty cycle is really important,” Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), the chair of the Agriculture Committee, told reporters in early April — a continuation of President Trump’s executive order this month charging his Cabinet secretaries to review their agencies’ welfare programs and institute work requirements wherever possible.

Democrats beg to differ.

Rep. Collin Peterson, a conservative Minnesota Democrat and the Agricultural Committee’s ranking member, said Democrats “were pushed away by an ideological fight I repeatedly warned the chairman not to start.”

“This bill as it is written kicks people off the SNAP program,” Peterson said at the bill’s markup hearing. “The chairman calls it self-selection. Call it whatever you want, it’s reducing the SNAP rolls.”

House Republicans are arguing that their proposed work requirements for SNAP, which they tout as having widespread approval nationwide (the public is much less supportive of cutting welfare programs), can gain bipartisan support in the Senate. But the political dynamics in Congress indicate otherwise.

This partisan fight is reminiscent of one Congress had in 2012, when lawmakers’ failure to reach consensus let the funding expire for two years. The impasse was over a partisan fight over SNAP. The House, then held by a Republican majority, proposed a policy that would have thrown 2 million to 3 million people off food assistance.

Needless to say, Trump’s push to potentially cut SNAP, a program that experts find has little fraud and has positive impacts on public health could reignite that fight and risk leaving these programs without funding altogether.

[Howl]

Rick Wilson is back at it with a new post. Remember that although Rick Wilson is a Never Trumper, he's also a Republican who worked on Giuliani's first mayoral campaign so there's a little melancholy at what its all come to.  Brutally prescient post-mortem of the Rudy Trumpy paso doble.  

Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump: This Will End Badly. And Probably Soon.  

Here's the first paragraph to pique your interest: 

Like a bloated, portly fake billionaire rolling off a hooker after a hot 45 seconds of passionate sex, Donald Trump’s ardor for Rudy Giuliani seems to have cooled.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Cartmann99]

I posted about this a few weeks ago when Donovan's constituent first raised a fuss because Obama and Biden's pictures were displayed at his local post office.

Why is Rep. Dan Donovan doing this? He's scared the nutters will cost him his job.

Quote

Donovan is gearing up for a primary challenge against former Rep. Michael Grimm (R), who finished an eight-month prison sentence in 2016 for pleading guilty to tax fraud and famously once threatened to throw a reporter off a balcony.

Trump won the district by 10 points in 2016 after Obama narrowly took it in 2012

Having a Republican congressman propose that American taxpayers foot the bill so that pictures of Dear Leader can be sent to every post office in America really makes the 'fiscally responsible ' talking point go up in flames. 

Honestly, I'm totally fine with following the current law of not posting any pictures of the president or vice-president. People are already grumpy from having to take time out of their day to be there in the first place, and having to wait in line and stare at someone you may detest doesn't improve the situation.

[Cartmann99]

Rudy's law firm is severing ties with him:

When Trump finally dumps him, is Rudy going to try for a Fox gig, or just yell at clouds all day?

[Howl]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

Rudy going to try for a Fox gig, or just yell at clouds all day?

I'd guess he'll be another Fox screamer, although, to my mind, Faux is basically people yelling at clouds all day. 

[fraurosena]

While we're on the subject of presiduncial lawyers...

Trump Lawyer Was on Kremlin-Linked Financial Firm’s Payroll Just Months Before Leading President’s Legal Defense in Russia Investigation

Quote

The day after it was revealed Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen received $500,000 in payments from a financial firm linked to a Russian oligarch aligned with Vladimir Putin, Pro Publica reports another longtime Trump personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, also represented the very same Russian firm as recently as last year. Kasowitz says he has represented the private equity firm Columbus Nova since 2010; Columbus Nova operates as the U.S. investment vehicle for Renova Group, a financial company run by Putin ally, Viktor Vekselberg. Columbus Nova also happens to be founded and run by Vekselberg’s cousin, Andrew Intrater. Vekselberg and Renova Group were both targeted by U.S. sanctions in April; Vekselberg and Intrater have been questioned by Robert Mueller.

It’s not completely clear the implications of the financial link between Vekselberg, Columbus Nova, and Kasowitz, but, at the very least, it shows an intimate business connection between the Trump World and the Kremlin-approved businesses. Columbus Nova told Pro Publica that its hiring of the pair of Trump lawyers was a coincidence. From Pro Publica:

• Kasowitz’s work for Columbus Nova stretches back to at least 2010 in related cases filed in New York and Illinois. In Illinois, Fifth Third Bank sued Columbus Nova and several affiliated entities, alleging that they had caused the bank to lose tens of millions of dollars on loans to a life insurance financing program that was “permeated … by fraud and embezzlement.” In the New York case, Kasowitz and three other attorneys at his firm filed a separate suit alleging that it was Fifth Third Bank that had committed fraud and caused losses.

More troubling is the idea that a lawyer (Kasowitz), who was for a brief two-month period in 2017 in charge of the president of the United States’ legal defense in the Russia investigation, was on the payroll of a Putin-aligned oligarch just months before assuming that role. A spokesperson for Kasowitz told Pro Publica the litigation the lawyer was involved with settled in early 2017, but there is no public record confirmation of that fact. Kasowitz was ousted from Trump’s Mueller defense team in July 2017, but the New York Times reported in March that he was still in contact with Trump, who was considering bringing the lawyer back to his legal team in a larger role. 

 

[Cartmann99]

11 minutes ago, Howl said:

I'd guess he'll be another Fox screamer, although, to my mind, Faux is basically people yelling at clouds all day. 

Faux is the "Letters to the Editor" section of my newspaper with lip gloss and hairdos.

[Audrey2]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

Faux is the "Letters to the Editor" section of my newspaper with lip gloss and hairdos.

Fox is staffed by people who bemoan the lower birthrate because they can no longer yell as the neighborhood kids to get off their lawn. Now, they work at Fox and get paid to be crochety, irregardless of their age. 

[Cartmann99]

Only the best people in Trump's White House...

 

[47of74]

Only the best people in Trump's White House...
 

Fuck everyone who works for fuck face.

[onekidanddone]

6 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Rudy's law firm is severing ties with him:

I bet there is one hell of a Wheels Up party going on.

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

It looks like Novartis' investment paid off 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Can you get the Nobel prize every year? 

[fraurosena]

So the presidunce held a rally.

Just look at that face in the still. The righteous hatred he exudes. He makes me want to puke.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

5 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

It looks like Novartis' investment paid off 

 

This bit quoted in the article is utter bullshit that has been disproved many times.

Spoiler

The theme of the president’s initiative is “American patients first,” and his plan takes aim at what the White House calls “foreign freeloading.” The administration will, as expected, put pressure on foreign countries to relax drug price controls, in the belief that pharmaceutical companies can then lower prices in the United States.

“Other countries use socialized health care to command unfairly low prices from U.S. drugmakers,” said a summary provided by the White House on Thursday. “This places the burden of financing drug development largely on American patients and taxpayers, subsidizes foreign consumers, and reduces innovation and the development of new treatments.”

 

 

Sorry tRumpsters but healthcare cannot be cheap for patients AND pay huge dividends. The two things are mutually exclusive.

[Howl]

13 hours ago, fraurosena said:

While we're on the subject of presiduncial lawyers...

Trump Lawyer Was on Kremlin-Linked Financial Firm’s Payroll Just Months Before Leading President’s Legal Defense in Russia Investigation

We're how many years into this and I still find myself gobsmacked at how Trumplandia is entwined with Russians, lousy with Russians, overrun by Russians, funded by Russians, infiltrated by Russians.  Trump is a wily and feral politician; he knows the base wants to hear that monsters are coming across the border (to clarify, that would be the brown people at the southern border) rather than the actual evil that has infiltrated and manipulated the base on social media and will likely make every attempt to continue to compromise our voting process. 

Anybody watch to see if Hannity bothered to mention the Michael Cohen pay-to-play Novartis, et al. slush fund drama exposed by Avenatti via #ProjectSunlight?

When Trump realized that part of politics is people giving you money, it makes you richer and all you have to do is screw other people in return.......and even when you screw the hell out of the people who elected you and they still top off the tank of your narcissistic supply.....folks, he'll never resign.  He's getting a blood meal daily and I fear he's only growing stronger.   

 

[AnywhereButHere]

13 minutes ago, Howl said:

Anybody watch to see if Hannity bothered to mention the Michael Cohen pay-to-play Novartis, et al. slush fund drama exposed by Avenatti via #ProjectSunlight?

I didn’t check in to see what, if anything, they were saying on this issue, but my guess is NOTHING. 

When “scandalous” issues regarding this administration have come up in the past, I’ve switched back and forth between MSNBC and Fox to see the difference in reporting. It’s mind boggling. There may be a passing mention on Fox about whatever the issue is, but only if they can also pass it off as the fault of the Democrats. If not, it’s like the issue doesn’t exist.

In contrast, during this latest dust up with the (ex) NY AG, Eric Schneiderman, MSNBC most definitely called out his actions and reported on the story. 

[fraurosena]

They were probably talking about horny panda's, goats as support animals, giraffes with truncated necks, or ammo-liphants, a new gun-toting hybrid species of elephant and lion... heck any animal (real or imagined) will do as long as it's not a Russian bear!  

[Howl]

OK, I went off on a little Russia tangent earlier this morning up thread.   Now I just found a link to this beyond timely Rick Wilson piece at Spectator:USA that puts it all into chilling perspective. Holy Russian bag man, Natasha!  Londongrad, indeed. 

America is in the middle of a Russian influence campaign – not at the end We need only look to London for lessons in how oligarchs apply pressure.

Here's a teaser; click on title for full text: 

Spoiler

Fixers for oligarchs, cash payments for shady real estate deals to launder Russian money, overt and covert political influence, payoffs to mistresses, and the rest of the atmosphere of Rus-inflected sleaze surrounding Michael Cohen are part of a familiar arc. The tidal wave of post-Cold War oligarch money, criminal proceeds needing a safe laundry, and Russian state enterprise capital (but I repeat myself) that have flooded London since 1992 profoundly reshaped that city’s politics, real estate market, banking, and finance.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I wasn't sure whether to post this in the congress thread or here, since it applies to both and shows how horrible both Dumpy and Lyan are: "Trump’s latest rage-filled tirade unmasks Paul Ryan’s lies"

Spoiler

In January 2017, at a town hall meeting broadcast live to the nation on CNN, Paul Ryan made a heartfelt promise to an anxious “dreamer” mom: He and president-elect Donald Trump would do everything in their power to make sure she could remain in the United States.

“What we have to do is find a way to make sure that you can get right with the law,” Ryan said. “That’s the way we feel. And that is exactly what our new, incoming president has stated he wants to do.” Ryan added that he was “sure” that the young mother is a “great contributor” to her “community.”

Nearly 18 months later, the monstrous reality of this broken promise is perfectly captured in two new episodes: Trump’s raging tirade against his Homeland Security chief over the allegedly insecure border; and Ryan’s craven effort to stop an effort by Republicans in the House to force a vote on bills that would protect the dreamers.

The New York Times reports that Trump erupted in a rage at Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other Cabinet members over the alleged failure to make “progress towards sealing the country’s borders.” According to the Times, Trump also raged about the “continued failure of his administration to find a way to build a wall along the southern border.”

The Post adds more reporting, noting that Trump’s “blowup lasted more than 30 minutes.” His face “reddened” as he railed that Nielsen must “close down” the border and shouted: “We need to shut it down. We’re closed.”

Now, over to Paul Ryan. Vulnerable Republicans in the House are pushing a discharge petition that would force a vote on immigration bills, including two measures that would grant the dreamers legal status, one of them packaged with fortifications to border security. Seventeen Republicans have signed the petition, meaning that if organizers can get eight more, it would pass, since Dems will support it — forcing a full House vote on whether the dreamers will be protected or remain in limbo.

Ryan is trying to stop this from happening. He justifies this by claiming that there’s no sense in voting on measures protecting the dreamers that Trump would veto. As Ryan put it: “We actually would like to solve this problem, and that is why I think it’s important for us to come up with a solution that the president can support.”

But this is utter nonsense, because there isn’t any deal that Trump is willing to support that can pass Congress. Ryan knows his suggestion otherwise is a big lie, because we already tried this. This year Democrats repeatedly offered Trump deals with money for the wall in exchange for protecting the dreamers, and he rejected them all, because Trump also wanted deep cuts to legal immigration. After that, multiple immigration packages failed to pass the Senate. The one based on Trump’s framework — citizenship for 1.8 million dreamers traded for $25 billion in wall money and deep cuts to legal immigration — got the fewest votes, at 39, with 14 Republicans defecting.

The bottom line is that Trump will not accept anything that protects the dreamers unless it also contains deep cuts to legal immigration. But nothing like that can pass Congress, because it faces bipartisan opposition.

Trump’s tirade at Nielsen is a reminder that he is the real obstacle to any deal protecting the dreamers. It reminds us of Trump’s bottomless irrationality on this issue: Border crossings have been at historic lows, but #Foxlandia keeps telling him the border is overrun by invading dark hordes, which makes it true. He is still demanding his wall, but even when that has been offered in exchange for protecting the dreamers, he has rejected it. Yet he raged at Nielsen over the lack of movement on the wall, showing himself unable to comprehend that his own deeply unreasonable demands — which many Republicans have rejected — are the real obstacle to getting it built as part of a dreamer deal.

Indeed, it has become undeniable that Trump’s overriding goal on immigration is to reduce the number of immigrants in the United States to the greatest degree possible. As Eric Levitz notes, Trump moved to end temporary protected status for various groups with no credible rationale for doing so and even though U.S. diplomats have warned that it is dangerously bad policy. And as Trump’s “shithole countries” comment confirmed, his main driving impulse on immigration is white nationalism — rolling back the current racial and ethnic mix of the country at all costs — and this is shaping policy.

The real reason Ryan is blocking a vote on the dreamers

Ryan is trying to prevent a vote to protect the dreamers precisely because such a measure could pass the House. That would expose him to the right’s rage and would probably end up forcing Trump to make the terrible choice of accepting or vetoing it. A deal protecting the dreamers in exchange for border security would probably pass the House by a comfortable margin, and it might pass the Senate — after all, passage in the House would bring tremendous pressure on moderate Republican senators — especially if the White House didn’t actively lobby against it.

But Trump will not accept any deal to protect the dreamers, even though it could very likely pass both chambers, unless it also contains deep cuts to legal immigration. So if the House passed it, the White House would lobby the Senate against it, and if that failed, Trump would then have to veto it. Either of those would look horrible, because after House passage, suddenly protections for the dreamers would appear in reach. This is the spectacle that Ryan is trying to avert — all to protect Trump from having his true priorities revealed in all their ugly glory.

...

 

[JMarie]

22 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Rudy's law firm is severing ties with him:

When Trump finally dumps him, is Rudy going to try for a Fox gig, or just yell at clouds all day?

He'll be yelling at clouds, at the park, with everyone else keeping a safe distance....

[AmazonGrace]

 Calm down, it's just some mild corruption that we deny, so why is anyone freaking out