Trump 38: Donald Trump and the Wall of Lies

[Alisamer]

That seems to assume that whatever happens, he'll be able to do whatever he wants. I realize it's highly unlikely, but if he is convicted of something,  I doubt he'll be tweeting from behind bars. Prison interviews constantly, sure, but not tweeting. And treason is a capital offense. Just saying.

I do realize most likely he's going to go on being a rich mobster like always and get away with as much as possible, while staying in the spotlight as long as possible. 

He is very much like a toddler, in that sometimes ignoring the tantrum is the best route to go. But he's actually dangerous to the entire country, so you CAN'T just ignore him most of the time.

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

@AmazonGrace was not kidding. Here's the hamberder tweet.

I really don't get why the WH is touting this fastfood fest so much. It's gross and makes them look incredibly tacky and cheap. If the presidunce wanted to pay for the food out of his own pocket, and he really is as rich as he says he is, why couldn't he go for some real food, made by a real chef?  

Does anyone think, with Trump obvious detesting of the Obamas, that part of this might be a FU to Michelle for her healthy eating initiative? I know he passionately loves fast food and I know that he thinks he's proud of himself for problem solving, but with the way he continues to talk about this there's almost some hidden subtext to it. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump is ignoring the law to keep the shutdown from causing him political pain"

Spoiler

As the government shutdown has dragged on, the Trump administration has made a series of major changes to how agencies without funding are operating, which it claims are simply an effort to make things “as painless as possible.” But as someone who helped manage the government-wide response to the 2013 shutdown, I can tell you: President Trump’s White House is selling the American people a bill of goods.

It’s natural to want to reduce the harm from a shutdown. But that’s not Trump’s goal. If it were, he would not be threatening to continue this one for months or years. Instead, he is making changes to past precedents in a one-off manner to paper over problems and help favored constituencies, all to create the political space to prolong the standoff. Trump is not concerned about making the shutdown painless for the American people — he’s concerned with making it painless for himself.

Since the Constitution says the government can only spend funds that have been appropriated by Congress, there’s only so much that can legally be done during a shutdown to mitigate harm. The government provides a wide range of important services, and when it has no funding, most of those services must stop, and the people who provide them cannot get their paychecks. The law dictates that only limited activities can continue during a shutdown: those necessary to protect life or property, to carry out the president’s core constitutional responsibilities, and to operate programs that Congress has said should continue in the absence of funding.

But Trump has shunted aside legal and programmatic considerations in favor of two core imperatives: keeping bad press to a minimum and keeping influential supporters happy.

Take the national parks. During a shutdown, the Interior Department cannot legally maintain the full staff needed to safely operate the parks; they can only keep on a skeleton staff necessary to protect life or property. In 2013, the Obama administration closed parks as a result of this legal requirement — and we faced intense political criticism for it. But the Trump administration has chosen instead to keep them open with insufficient staffing. The predictable result: a buildup of garbage and human waste, safety risks to visitors and damage to the parks themselves.

As public pressure intensified, Interior decided to divert user fees to pay for park services. The National Parks Conservation Association has suggested that using these fees for operating expenses is illegal, and the group has requested that the department’s inspector general investigate. Even if it’s legal, this fee diversion uses funds earmarked for long-term maintenance projects to reduce the short-term political fallout from the shutdown. And the damage to the parks from Trump’s cavalier policy has already been done.

This is the same strategy Trump has been applying to the entire government: putting forward patchwork solutions for his own benefit, regardless of long-term consequences or legal requirements.

Nowhere is the imperative to put short-term political gain before all else clearer than with tax refunds. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has repeatedly determined that tax refunds legally cannot be paid during a shutdown, including twice under the Trump administration. There is no funding for the personnel who process refunds and no evidence in the law that Congress wanted these payments to occur as normal during a shutdown.

This distinguishes tax refunds from Social Security payments, which Congress made clear must continue during a shutdown by requiring that they be made on a regular basis — because not making those payments would damage the program. There is no such timing requirement for tax refunds; in fact, the IRS does not even owe interest on unpaid refunds until 45 days after the April 15 filing deadline. There could be a justification for making payments if the shutdown stretched long enough that the government would owe significant interest, but that wouldn’t be until late May.

But when the House of Representatives recently sought to vote on legislation to fund the IRS and thereby ensure tax refunds were sent (which would have highlighted that the responsibility for delayed refunds is squarely in Trump’s lap), the administration reversed its previous determination, ignoring legal restrictions and announcing it would provide refunds as normal for anyone who files while the government is closed.

The administration also has been more focused on helping favored constituencies than anyone else. One day after the head of the Mortgage Bankers Association pressured a high-ranking government official to restart income verifications for mortgages because it was hurting the industry, IRS announced it would be paying for the program with user fees. The Interior Department has been pulling out all the stops to limit the shutdown’s impacts on the oil and gas industry, including by rushing ahead with controversial drilling projects despite curtailed public input and inadequate environmental reviews.

Meanwhile, officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development are reportedly scrambling to keep thousands of low-income tenants from being evicted after the administration somehow failed to realize the impacts of the shutdown on this critical program and did not take action in time to protect them. Even if they fix this issue, as the shutdown drags on low-income households risk losing out on needed rent assistance.

And while it was welcome news that the Department of Agriculture took advantage of a legally available means to provide another month of access to nutrition programs that provide assistance to vulnerable families, the administration inexplicably waited more than two weeks into the shutdown to announce the plan, suggesting leadership did not pay attention until press reports began to highlight the risk to vulnerable families.

Why should we be concerned about the administration playing fast and loose with the rules if the result is to keep programs that help people operating?

Because it’s critical that our elected officials act within legal constraints; if they can break the law with impunity now, nothing prevents them from doing so later. This politicized approach leaves programs for the most vulnerable at risk, too, particularly if they are not aligned with the interests of powerful industries or their concerns fail to garner wall-to-wall press coverage.

Finally, the purpose of these changes is to enable Trump to prolong the shutdown. So while the government will provide important short-term relief in particular circumstances, millions of small businesses will continue to be denied access to federally backed loans, food safety inspections will continue to be curtailed and 800,000 federal workers will continue to wait for their pay, including federal law enforcement and the Secret Service officers guarding the president and first family. (And an unknown number of people who work for government contractors will continue to go without pay, as well.)

There’s no question that shutdowns are difficult. During the 2013 shutdown, when Republicans refused to fund the government in an effort to deny access to health care for millions of Americans, the law forced us to close down programs we cared deeply for, ones that the Obama administration had fiercely defended. That’s the nature of shutdowns — you cannot fix them because the government legally cannot continue much of its important work.

Luckily, there’s a way to make sure people receive their tax refunds, families receive nutrition assistance, and parks are open: fund the government through the bipartisan deal lawmakers reached in December and that the House passed earlier this month. It just requires Trump and the GOP to act.

 

[thoughtful]

I see that lots of people thought of movies and other pop culture references when Melted Velveeta Boy ordered all of that fast food. But I haven't seen the one that first sprang to my mind:

 

[onekidanddone]

36 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

He will burn the house down rather than go quietly. 

I now have Burning Down the House in my head

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"‘Trump has turned the White House into a White Castle’: President roasted for serving Clemson fast food"

  Reveal hidden contents

When the Clemson football players entered the White House’s opulent State Dining Room during their visit with President Trump on Monday, they were greeted by a sight many had likely never laid eyes on before.

In the center of the historic room that has hosted royalty, foreign dignitaries and celebrities, a long mahogany table gleamed under the glow of an enormous golden chandelier. A pair of ornate candelabras holding tapered white candles sat on the table amid numerous silver serving platters piled high with what Trump described as “Great American food.”

Boxes of McDonald’s Quarter Pounders, Big Macs and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches were stacked in neat rows next to pyramids of packaged salads. The Wendy’s girl and her wholesome grin decorated mounds of wraps. Silver gravy boats overflowed with packets of dipping sauce for Chicken McNuggets. On a separate table, Domino’s pizzas and french fries repackaged in cups bearing the presidential seal basked under what appeared to be heat lamps.

“I thought it was a joke,” one Clemson player could be overheard saying in a video shared on Twitter, accurately capturing many people’s reaction to the president’s earlier promise to serve college football’s national champions items found on various dollar menus. Only the meal was very real, and late-night hosts and the Internet had a lot to say about it.

“Of all the crazy things Trump said and did over the weekend, this might be the craziest,” Jimmy Kimmel said on his ABC show Monday night, playing a clip of the president telling reporters how he planned to feed the Clemson Tigers.

“I think we are going to serve McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King’s with some pizza. I really mean it,” Trump said outside the White House earlier in the day. “It will be interesting. I would think that’s their favorite food."

Kimmel didn’t even try to contain his laughter.

“What would possibly make you think that?” he asked incredulously. “I’ll tell you what made him think that. ... He’s paying the check, so he had to get the cheapest food they could find.” (White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the president would be footing the bill because the ongoing partial government shutdown meant those who may have handled the event’s catering were furloughed, The Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey reported.)

The host continued, quipping, “And you know he’s taking whatever they don’t eat back to his bedroom. He’ll be like the rat in ‘Charlotte’s Web’ tonight rolling around in Quarter Pounders with cheese.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers mocked the president for hosting a meal that appeared to cater less to the tastes of his guests and more to his own well-documented preferences.

“Mr. President,” Colbert said, his face contorting into an uncomfortable grimace, “is it possible you’re just projecting your favorite foods onto them?”

He then slipped into his well-practiced Trump impersonation to describe an alternate version of Monday’s White House visit.

“We’re going to eat all of their favorite foods — burgers, KFC, taco bowls, two scoops of ice cream,” Colbert said in his Trump voice. “We’re going to watch their favorite movie, the 2016 election results. Then, I will spank them all with a rolled-up Forbes. I hear they’re really into that.”

On NBC, Meyers was equally quick to call out the president.

“He thinks he’s being so sly, ‘Normally, I would have a salad for dinner on Monday, but they told me they only eat every fast food!’ ” the host said, impersonating Trump.

On social media, users didn’t hold back either. By early Tuesday morning, Trump’s fast-food feast was the subject of two Twitter moments, both chock full of shock and derision.

Many felt the bizarre scene in the State Dining Room could have easily been plucked from a film or TV show in which a child is in charge.

Critics also pointed out that elite college athletes most likely weren’t supposed to be gorging themselves on burgers and fries, and wondered why the president didn’t have his hotel — located just minutes from the White House — provide catering.

“Our nutritionist must be having a fit,” one Clemson player was reportedly overheard saying.

Some conservatives, however, slammed criticisms of Trump’s move as “elitist,” arguing that “real Americans” often eat, and enjoy, fast food. Others, such as FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, asserted that the meal was an appropriate choice for a group of college students.

To Trump’s credit, it appeared his guests enjoyed their cheat day as there was reportedly “not much” food left over, according to The Post.

“I mean you’re not just gonna NOT eat the Big Macs stacked in a pile right?” tweeted Clemson offensive lineman Matt Bockhorst, who had been caught on camera smiling impishly as he loaded his plate with two Big Macs, which keen social media users quickly turned into a meme.

And for Bockhorst, the feasting didn’t end at the White House.

“Pocketed two chicken wraps and a quarter pounder,” he wrote in another tweet.

 

I would also say, even though I was going to the White House I would be pretty disappointed if I dressed up in my best clothes (notice the young men are mostly if not all wearing jackets and ties) and I was fed McDonald's and Wendy's sandwiches.

secondly, what is not being pointed out, it's the McDonald's is currently running a special on Big Macs quarter-pounders and Filet-O-Fish. They are two for $5. I just wanted to add that it's even a bigger sign of not frugality but cheapness (there is a difference).

Third, even if he had the idea that he wanted to get fast food type stuff for the national championship team, he should have sprung for a bit better burger, like Five Guys or Boardwalk Burgers and Fries. I'm not saying he had to spring for Red Robin, but his choices were just being cheap.

[Alisamer]

3 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

Third, even if he had the idea that he wanted to get fast food type stuff for the national championship team, he should have sprung for a bit better burger, like Five Guys or Boardwalk Burgers and Fries. I'm not saying he had to spring for Red Robin, but his choices were just being cheap.

They're from CLEMSON. He'd have done better to cater in Bojangles or let a barbecue guy set up a smoker on the lawn. i can get not wanting to do the traditional rubber chicken and crunchy green beans catering thing, but really now. He's surprisingly missed an opportunity to line his pockets more here - serve those taco bowls and the chocolate cake he raved about from his own properties. Bring over a chef from the Trump hotel!

I think I may have figured out a way to end the shutdown, however. If all his favorite fast food places closed down for three or four days, promising not to re-open until he re-opens the government...

[Cartmann99]

7 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

I'm sorry America but in front of the world this will haunt you forever. It fits too well with American stereotypes. The tackiness of a grand room, a candlelit table, silver trays, stocked with cold fast food is beyond words, better not ruin the metaphor with an explanation.

In the humblest places in the world, where you eat with your hands and food is scarce, it still tastes one thousand times better and it would be a greater honour to be a guest there than in the White House right now.

Believe me, I'm so embarrassed that this incredibly tacky man and his horrible family are our current public image. I know some of his fans are absolutely delighted about this dinner, but I find it downright appalling that he couldn't be bothered to ensure that a decent meal had been arranged for these young men. 

[47of74]

Believe me, I'm so embarrassed that this incredibly tacky man and his horrible family are our current public image. I know some of his fans are absolutely delighted about this dinner, but I find it downright appalling that he couldn't be bothered to ensure that a decent meal had been arranged for these young men. 

Jesus what a fuck knob.

Yeah I would whip up a decent meal for these young men. If I was going to have it catered I would pick a local establishment and not Mc Fucking Donald’s. Same logic that I use when I go out of town. These young men can get McDonald’s any fucking where they want. Local stuff not so much.

[fraurosena]

Oh boy, we're in for a twitter-tantrum again.

Judge Strikes Down Controversial Citizenship Question on 2020 Census

Quote

A federal judge struck down a controversial question about US citizenship that the Trump administration added to the 2020 census, ruling that “adding a citizenship question to the census will result in a significant reduction in self-response rates among noncitizen and Hispanic households.”

New York and 16 other states, along with the ACLU and immigrant rights groups, challenged the question, saying it would depress response rates from immigrants, imperil the accuracy of the census, and shift political power to areas with fewer immigrants. Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York agreed with the plaintiffs, finding on Tuesday that “hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of people will go uncounted in the census if the citizenship question is included…That undercount, in turn, will translate into a loss of political power and funds, among other harms, for various Plaintiffs.”

The census determines how $675 billion in federal funding is allocated, how much representation states receive, and how political districts are drawn. “Given the stakes, the interest in an accurate count is immense,” Furman wrote in his 277-page opinion. “Even small deviations from an accurate count can have major implications for states, localities, and the people who live in them—indeed, for the country as a whole.”

The decision is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court, which could reinstate the question in time for it to be included on the 2020 census.

The administration announced in March 2017 that it was adding the citizenship question, which hasn’t been asked on the census since 1950. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census Bureau, approved the question. Furman ruled that Ross’ decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, which prohibits federal agencies from acting in a manner that is arbitrary and capricious. In a biting opinion, Furman ruled that Ross “alternately ignored, cherry-picked, or badly misconstrued the evidence in the record before him,” “acted irrationally,” and “failed to justify significant departures from past policies and practices—a veritable smorgasbord of classic, clear-cut APA violations.”

Ross said he approved the question because he said the Justice Department needed it for “more effective enforcement” of the Voting Rights Act. He subsequently testified before Congress that the Justice Department had “initiated” the request. However, evidence released during the trial repeatedly undercut the Trump administration’s stated rationale for the question, as Mother Jones reported from the three-week trial in New York City:

In a deposition played on a video screen at the trial, John Gore, the former assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Justice Department, stated that Ross, and not the Justice Department, had initially requested the citizenship question. He agreed with a lawyer for the ACLU that the citizenship question was “not necessary” to enforce the Voting Rights Act. He said he was not aware of any voting rights case in which the Justice Department had not succeeded because it lacked access to citizenship data on the census, and he confirmed that President Donald Trump’s Justice Department hadn’t filed a single case to enforce the Voting Rights Act. He also said that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had ordered him not to meet with the Census Bureau to discuss an alternative proposal to the citizenship question that would use existing government records to confirm citizenship status, which the bureau said would be cheaper and more accurate.

John Abowd, the top scientist for the Census Bureau, testified that the bureau opposed adding the question. Abowd wrote in a January memo to bureau leadership that the citizenship question would be “very costly, harms the quality of the census count, and would use substantially less accurate citizenship status data than are available from administrative sources.” He said Sessions used his “political influence” to prevent Justice Department staff from meeting with the bureau to hear their concerns.

Furman found that Ross “announced his decision in a manner that concealed its true basis rather than explaining it, as the APA required him to do.” Furman concluded, “In arriving at his decision as he did, Secretary Ross violated the law…And in doing so with respect to the census…Secretary Ross violated the public trust.”

The evidence in the case shows that the upper echelons of the White House pressured Ross and the Commerce Department to reinstate the citizenship question on the census, apparently because of a desire to reduce the influence of immigrant communities, as Mother Jones has previously reported:

One of the senior administration officials who lobbied Ross to add the question was former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. In July 2017, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach—at the time the vice chair of President Donald Trump’s now-defunct Election Integrity Commission—wrote to Ross “at the direction of Steve Bannon” and said it was “essential” that the citizenship question be added to the census. Kobach wrote that the absence of a citizenship question “leads to the problem that aliens who do not actually ‘reside’ in the United States are still counted for congressional apportionment purposes.”

Kobach’s correspondence with Ross contradicted the Trump administration’s stated rationale for the question—Kobach never mentioned the Voting Rights Act in his letter—and suggested the question was added to reduce the political clout of areas with many immigrants and boost Republicans. The Justice Department said in court that Kobach, Bannon, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who have all advocated aggressive crackdowns on immigration, were among those involved in pushing for the citizenship question.

Ross had “no apparent interest in promoting more robust enforcement of the VRA,” Furman found. “While the Court is unable to determine—based on the existing record, at least—what Secretary Ross’s real reasons for adding the citizenship question were, it does find, by a preponderance of the evidence, that promoting enforcement of the VRA was not his real reason for the decision. Instead, the Court finds that the VRA was a post hoc rationale for a decision that Secretary had already made for other reasons.”

If noncitizens do not respond to the census, which Furman said was likely to happen if the citizenship question remained, areas with a high concentration of immigrants, like New York, California, and Texas, will receive less federal funding and fewer political seats. “The Court finds by a preponderance of the evidence that California residents face a certainly impending loss of representation in the House of Representatives,” Furman wrote. “Similarly, Texas, Arizona, Florida, New York, and Illinois face a substantial risk of losing a seat.”

Six major lawsuits, including the one from New York and 16 other states, are currently challenging the citizenship question. The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments in February to decide whether Ross must sit for a deposition under oath and what kind of evidence can be considered in these cases. Furman vacated his September decision that Ross must sit for a deposition under oath—a decision the Supreme Court had already blocked—but it’s possible the Supreme Court could instead hear an expedited appeal of Furman’s decision striking down the citizenship question and reinstate the question in time for the 2020 census.

For now, this is sure to be one of the most important legal decisions of the new year, one that will go a long way toward deciding what the 2020 census—and by extension, the future of American politics—will look like over the next decade.

(official Findings of Fact and Conclusions in Law embedded in the article)

[Cartmann99]

BREAKING: Live video of Trump being informed about the citizenship question ruling:

Spoiler

 

[onekidanddone]

30 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Oh boy, we're in for a twitter-tantrum again.

Judge Strikes Down Controversial Citizenship Question on 2020 Census

(official Findings of Fact and Conclusions in Law embedded in the article)

Time is running out before they have to pull the lever on the 2020 Census.  With luck this will be tied up in court past January 20, 2021

57 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

 

Jesus what a fuck knob.

Yeah I would whip up a decent meal for these young men. If I was going to have it catered I would pick a local establishment and not Mc Fucking Donald’s. Same logic that I use when I go out of town. These young men can get McDonald’s any fucking where they want. Local stuff not so much.

 

Since it is in the DMV I'd say half smokes, crab cakes and Ben's Chili Bowl would be a good start.

[AmazonGrace]

Didn't fancy leftover hamberders I presume.

Damn coastal elites.

[fraurosena]

While we're on the subject of lawsuits...

Trump administration sued over new Kentucky Medicaid work requirements

Quote

More than a dozen Medicaid beneficiaries in Kentucky have filed another lawsuit against the Trump administration over its re-approval of the state’s controversial Medicaid waiver.

The lawsuit comes after a federal judge in June blocked Kentucky’s efforts to impose work requirements and premiums on beneficiaries days before the waiver was set to go into effect.

“The Secretary is working to effectively rewrite the Medicaid statute, ignoring congressional restrictions, overturning a half century of administrative practice, and threatening irreparable harm to the health and welfare of the poorest and most vulnerable in our country,” the complaint says.

A federal judge ruled in June 2018 that Kentucky’s effort to add work requirements to the state’s Medicaid program was “arbitrary and capricious.”

Judge James Boasberg, an appointee of former President Obama with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled that the administration never adequately considered whether the work requirements and other restrictions would violate the program's central purpose of providing medical assistance to vulnerable citizens.

The Trump administration then re-approved what was essentially the same request from Kentucky, having it go into effect on April 1, 2019.

Kentucky made no changes to the key features of the project; it continues to include work requirements, high premiums and cost sharing, as well as lockouts, termination of retroactive coverage and transportation for non-emergency medical care.

The 15 plaintiffs suing the administration now have filed their suit in the same federal court, and want to have the new Trump administration approval also declared to be arbitrary and capricious.

Kentucky’s waiver seeks to allow the state to deny coverage to any nondisabled adult who cannot prove they are working, volunteering or in school for at least 20 hours per week.

It also would charge premiums to low-income Medicaid recipients, eliminate full coverage of dental care, vision services, and over-the-counter medications for many adults.

The waiver also seeks to impose a six-month lockout period for people who fail to re-enroll in time or report a change in income.

 

[onekidanddone]

6 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Didn't fancy leftover hamberders I presume.

Damn coastal elites.

What would he serve them? I'm guessing stale cold pop tarts and a dusty box of Snowcaps from the vending machine.

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

secondly, what is not being pointed out, it's the McDonald's is currently running a special on Big Macs quarter-pounders and Filet-O-Fish. They are two for $5. I just wanted to add that it's even a bigger sign of not frugality but cheapness (there is a difference).

The WaPo did an analysis of what was offered and the total cost. Even at full price, it was less than $3,000.

[Cartmann99]

19 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

What would he serve them? I'm guessing stale cold pop tarts and a dusty box of Snowcaps from the vending machine.

He could send Kellyanne down to a convenience store for some of those hot dogs that look like they've been on the rotisserie since the 1980s.

[onekidanddone]

Just now, Cartmann99 said:

He could send Kellyanne down to a convenience store for some of those hot dogs that look like they've been on the rotisserie since the 1980s.

Ah yes the height gourmet queezine. Throw in a tuna sandwich from the gas station and we have a feast. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Cartmann99]

42 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Ah yes the height gourmet queezine. Throw in a tuna sandwich from the gas station and we have a feast. 

It could be worse, Trump could have invited Jim and Lori Bakker to serve doom buckets to everyone.

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Clearly some guests are worthier than others.

4 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Believe me, I'm so embarrassed that this incredibly tacky man and his horrible family are our current public image. I know some of his fans are absolutely delighted about this dinner, but I find it downright appalling that he couldn't be bothered to ensure that a decent meal had been arranged for these young men. 

I believe you. I'm deeply sorry for you and every decent American. Feeling like living in a joke must be a nightmare.

[Howl]

3 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

BREAKING: Live video of Trump being informed about the citizenship question ruling:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Oh, you!  Not too far from the truth, though. 

[GreyhoundFan]

No emoluments here... (end sarcasm)  "T-Mobile announced a merger needing Trump administration approval. The next day, 9 executives had reservations at Trump’s hotel."

Spoiler

Last April, telecom giant T-Mobile announced a megadeal: a $26 billion merger with rival Sprint, which would more than double T-Mobile’s value and give it a huge new chunk of the cellphone market.

But for T-Mobile, one hurdle remained: Its deal needed approval from the Trump administration.

The next day, in Washington, staffers at the Trump International Hotel were handed a list of incoming “VIP Arrivals.” That day’s list included nine of T-Mobile’s top executives — including its chief operating officer, chief technology officer, chief strategy officer, chief financial officer and its outspoken celebrity chief executive, John Legere.

They were scheduled to stay between one and three days. But it was not their last visit.

Instead, T-Mobile executives have returned to President Trump’s hotel repeatedly since then, according to eyewitnesses and hotel documents obtained by The Washington Post.

By mid-June, seven weeks after the announcement of the merger, hotel records indicated that one T-Mobile executive was making his 10th visit to the hotel. Legere appears to have made at least four visits to the Trump hotel, walking the lobby in his T-Mobile gear.

These visits highlight a stark reality in Washington, unprecedented in modern American history. Trump the president works at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump the businessman owns a hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania.

Countries, interest groups and companies like T-Mobile — whose future will be shaped by the administration’s choices — are free to stop at both and pay the president’s company while also meeting with officials in his government. Such visits raise questions about whether patronizing Trump’s private business is viewed as a way to influence public policy, critics said.

Last week, a Post reporter spotted Legere in the Trump hotel’s lobby. In an impromptu interview, the T-Mobile chief executive said he was not seeking special treatment. He chose the Trump hotel, he said, for its fine service and good security.

“It’s become a place I feel very comfortable,” Legere said. He also praised the hotel’s location, next to one of the departments that must approve the company’s merger.

“At the moment I am in town for some meetings at the Department of Justice,” Legere said. “And it’s very convenient for that.”

The VIP Arrivals lists obtained by The Post — in which Trump hotel executives alerted their staff to foreign officials, corporate executives, long-term guests, Trump family friends and big spenders — provide an inside look at some of the hotel’s customers. The Post obtained lists for about a dozen days in 2018.

Those lists showed 38 nights of hotel stays by the T-Mobile executives; because The Post’s data is incomplete, the number could be higher.

Rooms at the luxury hotel routinely cost more than $300 per night.

The Post shared details about those stays — gleaned from the VIP Arrivals lists and eyewitness accounts — with both T-Mobile and the Trump Organization. Neither challenged the findings. After Legere’s brief interview at the Trump hotel, T-Mobile declined to comment further for this report.

Trump’s hotel also has hosted parties put on by the Kuwaiti and Philippine embassies, rented hundreds of rooms to lobbyists paid by Saudi Arabia, and hosted a large meeting of the oil industry’s lobbying group.

But the T-Mobile case stands out because the company’s executives were expected at the hotel so soon after announcing they needed a win in Washington.

“It’s currying favor with the president. It’s disturbing, because it’s another secret avenue for currying favor with the government,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.

She said that even if they weren’t directly ordered by Trump, the president’s appointees might feel pressured to help Trump’s customers. That might undermine public confidence in the decisions that result, Krumholz said.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Eric Trump — who is running the family business while his father serves in the White House — said in an email that the hotel has “absolutely no role in politics.” Asked about the stays by Legere, Eric Trump said that his hotel offers extraordinary service: “It should come as no surprise that a CEO of a major corporation would want to stay with us.”

Before last year, Washington had been a place of disappointment for T-Mobile, the third-biggest of America’s four big cellphone providers, which has long sought a merger to grow bigger.

In 2011 and in 2014, the Bellevue, Wash.-based company planned to combine with rivals: first AT&T, then Sprint. But both times, the Obama administration rejected the mergers on antitrust grounds, saying they would decrease competition and hurt consumers.

On April 29, 2018, T-Mobile announced it would try again with Sprint.

The deal required approval from agencies including the Justice Department, which handles antitrust enforcement, and the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the airwaves that cellphones use. Those two agencies declined to comment.

Sprint, the market’s fourth-place player, is largely owned by SoftBank, a Japanese company whose founder, Masayoshi Son, has built his own relationship with Trump. After Trump’s election, Son was praised by the incoming president for a promise to invest $50 billion and create 50,000 jobs in the United States. Sprint declined to comment for this report.

Legere, the T-Mobile chief executive, also had a history with the president.

But it wasn’t a good one.

“I will obviously leave your hotel right away,” Legere wrote on Twitter in April 2015, during a public spat that began with complaints about Legere’s stay at a Trump hotel in New York, and escalated when Trump called T-Mobile’s service “terrible.”

Later, Legere mocked Trump’s hotels after checking out. “I am so happy to wake up in a hotel where every single item isn’t labeled ‘Trump,’ ” he wrote, according to news coverage. Those tweets appear to have been deleted.

Three years later, on the day after the T-Mobile merger was announced, Legere was scheduled to arrive at the Trump hotel in Washington.

That day’s VIP Arrivals list included 39 names. There were executives at a Defense Department contractor called AxleTech; a spokesman said they chose the hotel because they had a meeting at a corporate office across the street. Two other VIPs were connected with the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action, which was hosting a dinner with the president at the hotel that night. A spokeswoman said one room was for the event photographer, the other for staff preparations.

And there were the nine T-Mobile executives. Of them, only Legere was listed with an “R” next to his name — signaling to Trump hotel employees that he was a repeat Trump customer.

Inside the hotel’s busy, soaring lobby, Legere was noticed quickly.

“Everybody knew. You couldn’t miss it,” said Jake Loft, who was in the lobby for a regularly scheduled networking event. He spotted Legere by his outfit, which was — as usual — a walking billboard for T-Mobile. Legere wore a black-and-magenta hoodie with a T-Mobile logo over a bright-magenta T-shirt with another T-Mobile logo. “He wasn’t dressed appropriately,” Loft said.

“It was essentially like a track suit,” said Tim Briseno, who was there with Loft. Briseno remembered Legere giving out business cards, with an offer of a discount. “He was like, ‘If you guys switch, you’ll get 40 percent off for the rest of your life.’ ” T-Mobile did not respond to a query asking whether that offer was legitimate.

They asked Legere for a photo.

“I didn’t look at the photo until after I left,” Loft said. Legere had given them both bunny ears. “I was like, ‘That was good.’ ”

Legere wound up in several photos on Instagram, giving bunny ears in every one.

On that first visit, the T-Mobile executives were expected to stay between one and three days apiece, according to the VIP Arrivals list.

In late May, the Trump hotel expected T-Mobile’s general counsel, David Miller, for a return visit, staying two days. Then, on June 17, 2018, the VIP Arrivals list showed that Legere, Miller and T-Mobile Executive Vice President David Carey would be returning for five-day stays.

By that time — just six weeks after the merger was announced — the list shows that the T-Mobile executives were already experienced Trump customers. Legere and Carey were members of the “Trump Card” program. Carey’s entry also contained the notation “R(10).”

That — according to Trump hotel staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they aren’t permitted to speak to the media — was an indication that Carey was making his 10th visit to the hotel. The listings also contained the words “Long Term” because of the length of their stays. Carey and Miller did not respond to requests for comment.

After that, Legere came a few days later. On June 27, the same day that Legere testified to Congress about the merger, he was spotted at the hotel by independent journalist Zach Everson, according to an account Everson posted on Twitter. Everson said he saw Legere in the hotel lobby, talking to former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who has advised T-Mobile during the merger talks.

Lewandowski is a frequent patron of the Trump hotel: He has held two book parties there and often appears in social-media photos mingling in the lobby. Lewandowski did not return requests for comment this week.

The visits by T-Mobile executives cumulatively are probably worth tens of thousands of dollars to the Trump Organization, the president’s company, which he still owns despite criticism from government ethics experts.

Since Trump was elected, his hotel has been patronized by other groups with lobbying interests in Washington: foreign embassies, industry associations, religious groups. Lobbyists working for the Saudi government — a close U.S. ally that has grown closer under Trump — paid for 500 hotel rooms in the first four months after Trump was elected.

Opponents of the T-Mobile merger say they believe the executives’ repeated stays are an effort to influence policy.

“I can’t believe this is a coincidence. In mergers, companies look for any potential advantage they can find,” said Gene Kimmelman, who was chief counsel for the antitrust division at the Justice Department under President Barack Obama. He now leads the good-government group Public Knowledge.

Kimmelman said he doubted that the career Justice Department officials would be moved by it but said it could “sway others in government” appointed by Trump.

Daniel Schuman, of the liberal group Demand Progress, is part of a coalition opposing the merger, arguing that it would reduce choice for consumers. The coalition, called the 4Competition Coalition also includes labor unions and some smaller cellphone providers.

“This isn’t justice with a blindfold on, right?” he said. “It creates a fundamental corruption in the way that the work of the American people is done.”

Legere’s own T-Mobile shares are currently valued at $16.5 million, a fortune that analysts say would probably grow if the merger is approved.

In the interview at the Trump hotel last week, Legere said that although the hotel was clearly a place to be seen, he did not believe the president knew about his staying there.

Did he expect that his staying there might earn his company any special treatment?

“Certainly not. I don’t know why it would,” he said.

Sometime after that interview, Legere apparently checked out of the Trump hotel. By the next evening, Legere was tweeting about the great bar at “my current DC hotel” — the Four Seasons in Georgetown.

 

[fraurosena]

I guess the old adage 'divide and conquer' isn't working out. 

Democrats reject Trump invitation to negotiate without Pelosi

Quote

Freshman and centrist Democrats rejected an invitation Tuesday to negotiate with the White House, despite receiving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s blessing to attend such a meeting, the AP reports.

The big picture: The invitation was the White House's attempt to appeal to Democrats who are facing pressure in districts carried by President Trump in 2016. It's now Day 25 of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, and — as the AP notes — the White House has discovered "the limits of trying to bypass Speaker Nancy Pelosi in shutdown negotiations." If the impasse is not resolved by next week, the House has said it will cancel its scheduled recess.

From the AP article quoted by Axios:

Quote

[...]  The White House invited rank-and-file lawmakers to lunch with Trump at the White House as part of a strategy to build support from centrist Democrats and newly elected freshmen, including those from areas where the president is popular with voters.

But the White House quickly learned the limits of that approach. None of the House Democrats took Trump up on the offer.

One, Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., “welcomes the opportunity to talk with the President about border security,” his spokesman said, “as soon as the government is reopened.”

[...] Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, another centrist Democrat, said the White House is “grasping at straws.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]