Trump 38: Donald Trump and the Wall of Lies

[Howl]

@AmazonGrace, from the Raw Story article with Mimi Rocah, who served in the SDNY:

Quote

Wallace noted Trump’s TV attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, seems to believe that special counsel Robert Mueller is only investigating the actions of Trump and his campaign up until election day.

I don't know why, but I get an immense kick out  journos referring to Rudy as "Trump's TV lawyer."  It's the perfect veiled insult, and I can't remember who started it, but it's been picked up by various journalists and a few talking heads on the non-conservative spectrum. 

 

4 minutes ago, WiseGirl said:

When you figure this out let me know. I, too, am tech challenged. Her book is excellent, but reads like a prophecy lately. Scary, scary stuff.

@WiseGirl is referencing the Gaslit Nation podcast.  I'll check out Gaslit Nation web site and see if I can stream it over my computer.  I think it is a subscription only service, but I'd feel good about financially supporting her work. 

Sarah on Twitter has been linking to her tweets from 2016, say, See, it was OBVIOUS all along.  

This is an excerpt from Sarah's Wiki. Her area of study for her PhD explains why she understands perfectly what was going on, early on: 

Spoiler

Sarah Kendzior is a St Louis-based journalist and author.[1] She has written for Al Jazeera,[2] The Guardian,[3] Foreign Policy[4] and other outlets, is the author of The View From Flyover Country - a collection of essays first published in Al Jazeera - and a co-host of the Gaslit Nation podcast.[5][6][7] She speaks Russian and has a Master’s degree in Eurasian Studies from Indiana University and a PhD in anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis. Her focus of study was former Soviet Union authoritarian states, and her dissertation was on how the Uzbekistan dictatorship employed the internet to undermine public trust in and manipulate the media. In 2016, she wrote about similarities between Donald Trump and the authoritarian leaders she had studied and noted Trump's affection and admiration for Russian president Vladimir Putin before there was widespread public awareness of Russia's interference in the US election.[8]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another week, another tell-all: "‘Absolutely out of control’: Cliff Sims’s book depicts life in Trump’s White House"

Spoiler

President Trump watched on television, increasingly angry as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan criticized his handling of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. He held the remote control “like a pistol” and yelled for an assistant to get the Republican leader on the phone.

“Paul, do you know why Democrats have been kicking your a-- for decades? Because they know a little word called ‘loyalty,’ ” Trump told Ryan, then a Wisconsin congressman. “Why do you think Nancy [Pelosi] has held on this long? Have you seen her? She’s a disaster. Every time she opens her mouth another Republican gets elected. But they stick with her . . . Why can’t you be loyal to your president, Paul?”

The tormenting continued. Trump recalled Ryan distancing himself from Trump in October 2016, in the days after the “Access Hollywood” video in which he bragged of fondling women first surfaced in The Washington Post.

“I remember being in Wisconsin and your own people were booing you,” Trump told him, according to former West Wing communications aide Cliff Sims. “You were out there dying like a dog, Paul. Like a dog! And what’d I do? I saved your a--.”

The browbeating of the top Republican on Capitol Hill was one of the vivid snapshots of life inside the Trump White House told by one of its original inhabitants, Cliff Sims, in his 384-page tell-all, “Team of Vipers,” which goes on sale next week and was obtained in advance by The Post. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Sims, who enjoyed uncommon personal access to Trump, recounts expletive-filled scenes of chaos, dysfunction and duplicity among the president, his family members and administration officials.

Unlike memoirs of other Trump officials, Sims’s book is neither a sycophantic portrayal of the president nor a blistering account written to settle scores. The author presents himself as a true believer in Trump and his agenda, and even writes whimsically of the president, but still is critical of him, especially his morality. Sims also finds fault in himself, a rarity in Trump World, writing that at times he was “selfish,” “nakedly ambitious” and “a coward.”

The author reconstructs in comic detail the Trump team’s first day at work, when the president sat in the residence raging about news coverage of the relatively small size of his inauguration crowds, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer scrambled to address it.

Spicer had worked the team “into a frenzy,” and it fell to Sims to write the script for his first statement to the media. Nervously chewing gum, Spicer dictated “a torrent of expletives with a few salient points scattered in between.” At one point, Sims’s computer crashed and he lost the draft, so it had to be rewritten. And in their rush to satisfy the impatient president, nobody checked the facts. Spicer, he writes, was “walking into his own execution.”

“It’s impossible to deny how absolutely out of control the White House staff — again, myself included — was at times,” Sims writes. The book’s scenes are consistent with news reporting at the time from inside the White House.

Sims depicts Trump as deeply suspicious of his own staff. He recalls a private huddle in which he and Keith Schiller, the president’s longtime bodyguard and confidant, helped Trump draw up an enemies list with a Sharpie on White House stationery. “We’re going to get rid of all the snakes, even the bottom-feeders,” Trump told them.

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly told the staff that he viewed his job as serving the “country first, POTUS second,” which Sims interpreted as potentially hostile to Trump’s agenda.

Sims recounts that Kelly once confided to him in a moment of exasperation: “This is the worst [expletive] job I’ve ever had. People apparently think that I care when they write that I might be fired. If that ever happened, it would be the best day I’ve had since I walked into this place.”

A conservative media figure in Alabama, Sims came to work on Trump’s 2016 campaign and cultivated a personal relationship with the candidate-turned-president. Sims writes rich, extended dialogue from his conversations with Trump and others in the administration.

As White House director of message strategy, Sims regularly met Trump at the private elevator of the residence and accompanied him to video tapings — carrying a can of Tresemmé Tres Two hair spray, extra hold, for the boss. At one such taping, about an hour after Trump had tweeted that he saw MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a facelift,” the president sought feedback from Sims and Spicer.

“They’re going to say it’s not presidential,” Trump said, referring to the media. “But you know what? It’s modern-day presidential.” The president then raged about the “Morning Joe” program on which Brzezinski appears and instructed Spicer, “Don’t you dare say I watch that show.”

Sims also recounts a meeting with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime friend, and former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon at which Sessions suggested a polygraph test of national security officials to root out “leakers” after The Post reported the transcripts of Trump’s phone calls with the Mexican president and Australian prime minister.

At times, Trump evinced less rage than a lack of interest. Sims recounts one time when Ryan was in the Oval Office explaining the ins and outs of the Republican health-care bill to the president. As Ryan droned on for 15 minutes, Trump sipped on a glass of Diet Coke, peered out at the Rose Garden, stared aimlessly at the walls and, finally, walked out.

Ryan kept talking as the president wandered down the hall to his private dining room, where he flicked on his giant flat-screen TV. Apparently, he had had enough of Ryan’s talk. It fell to Vice President Pence to retrieve Trump and convince him to return to the Oval Office so they could continue their strategy session.

Sims reconstructs moments of crisis for the West Wing communications team in play-by-play detail, including the domestic abuse allegations against former staff secretary Rob Porter and the firing of James B. Comey as FBI director.

He paints Spicer, counselor Kellyanne Conway and communications adviser Mercedes Schlapp in an especially negative light, calling Conway “the American Sniper of West Wing marksmen” and describing her agenda as “survival over all others, including the president.”

Sims writes that former aide Omarosa Manigault cursed members of the Congressional Black Caucus when they asked for a moment of privacy in the West Wing after meeting with Trump and before addressing the media.

“Privacy?!” Manigault said. “You think you can come up in our house and demand [expletive] privacy? Hell, no! You must be outta your . . . mind.”

Perhaps the book’s most cinematic chapter of chaos is “The Mooch Is Loose,” a reconstruction of Anthony Scaramucci’s 11 days as White House communications director.

Sims was Scaramucci’s right-hand man and describes the flamboyant aide’s hunt for “leakers,” which began with his own staff. Scaramucci assembled the 40-odd media aides and threatened to fire them all, Sims writes, as if he were a “fire-breathing dragon that had just returned from laying waste to the unsuspecting peasants in the village.”

Sims writes that Scaramucci ordered them to reply to anyone in the White House instructing them to leak information to a reporter, including then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, by saying: “I cannot do that. I only report to Anthony Scaramucci and he reports directly to the president of the United States.”

Even Trump was amused.

“Can you believe this guy?” the president told Sims. “He’s completely out of his mind — like, on drugs or something — totally out of his mind. We’ll figure it out, but the guy is crazy.”

 

[Botkinetti]

Who knows how true Sim’s book is but it sounds completely believable to me. Chaos , backstabbing and no one knowing what is going on. 

[AmazonGrace]

What seems to be the trouble? For me it worked fine on an Android phone at https://gaslitnation.libsyn.com and I was also able to tune in on Spotify.

[candygirl200413]

@Howl Have you read her book flyover nation? I just added it to my list at my local library, is it as good as her tweets? 

[47of74]

Sen Joni Breadbags McCutyerNutzoff Ernst says Donnie Dumbfuck was going to chose her to be VP;

Quote

The Iowa senator Joni Ernst has stated she turned down the opportunity to be Donald Trump’s vice-president because she believed her husband Gail “hated any successes I have”.

In an affidavit filed as part of divorce proceedings with her husband of 26 years, Ernst states: “in the summer of 2016, I was interviewed by Candidate Trump to be vice president of the United States. I turned Candidate Trump down, knowing it wasn’t the right thing for me or my family.

“I continued to make sacrifices and not soar higher out of concern for Gail and our family,” she added.

The Iowa Republican met with Trump in New Jersey at his Bedminister golf course on 4 July 2016 and gave a positive statement about the meeting. However, within two days, Ernst told Politico: “I made that very clear to him that I’m focused on Iowa. I feel that I have a lot more to do in the United States Senate. And Iowa is where my heart is.”

Uh huh.  Yeah, right Joni.  Dry that one out you could fertilize every fucking yard in Iowa.  Along with all the farm fields, pastures, etc.  And then have enough left over for Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota.

[AmazonGrace]

Hard to imagine someone being passed by for a job at the Trump White House and not being like, "whoa I sure dodged that bullet there".

Quote

“Can you believe this guy?” the president told Sims. “He’s completely out of his mind — like, on drugs or something — totally out of his mind. We’ll figure it out, but the guy is crazy.”

Look somebody is projecting.

Quote

Unlike memoirs of other Trump officials, Sims’s book is neither a sycophantic portrayal of the president nor a blistering account written to settle scores. The author presents himself as a true believer in Trump and his agenda, and even writes whimsically of the president, but still is critical of him, especially his morality.

I don't get it. If you know he's a stupid immoral idiot but yet you're a true believer, what does it make you?

[WiseGirl]

1 hour ago, candygirl200413 said:

@Howl Have you read her book flyover nation? I just added it to my list at my local library, is it as good as her tweets? 

Not @Howl but it is a great book. She called a lot if this back then.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump keeps trying to win the shutdown fight by pretending he’s a typical president"

Spoiler

President Trump’s speech about immigration on Saturday was meant to present a new compromise proposal on funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border that could bring the month-long partial government shutdown to an end. But it didn’t really offer a compromise as much as an effort to say that he’d offered a compromise. And it wasn’t really a speech as much as it was a string of Trump tweets Scotch-taped together with presidential-sounding verbiage.

Trump refitted his tweets and his rhetoric into his current position with pro forma language that at times had a jarring effect. At the outset of his speech on Saturday, for example, Trump spoke of having attended a naturalization ceremony and described the words he offered the new citizens.

“I told them that the beauty and majesty of citizenship is that it draws no distinctions of race, or class, or faith, or gender or background,” Trump said, adding that “we are all equal. We are one team, and one people, proudly saluting one great American flag. We believe in a safe and lawful system of immigration, one that upholds our laws, our traditions and our most cherished values.”

Typical patriotic presidential rhetoric. But it’s not what Trump actually presents as policy.

He has specifically advocated an immigration policy that explicitly considers background and, indirectly, class in demanding that those who migrate to the United States have particular skills before being cleared for entry. He has repeatedly tried to put into effect his campaign trail pledge to bar people of the Muslim faith from entering the country by implementing a ban on migration from specific Muslim-majority countries. Trump’s immigration policies aren’t the colorblind, neutral ones for which presidential rhetoric has been honed over the years, but he uses that rhetoric anyway.

In part this is because Trump is indifferent to accuracy in the things he says. He’s a salesman, as he always has been, and it’s a better sales pitch to hail the American Dream than it is to admit you’ve tailored many immigrants out of that dream. Just as it’s a better apartment sales pitch to claim a view of Central Park than to point out that the view comes from a one-foot gap between two buildings that fill most of your window.

Trump’s indifference to accuracy also took its more typical, more direct form during the address. Consider the following line.

"If we build a powerful and fully designed see-through steel barrier on our southern border, the crime rate and drug problem in our country would be quickly and greatly reduced,” Trump said. “Some say it could be cut in half."

This is a standard sort of political appeal in broad strokes. We must do X so that Y will result. But considered specifically, its Trumpiness is obvious.

The X we must do is “build a powerful and fully designed see-through steel barrier.” How is a series of steel slats “powerful”? Do we occasionally build things that are only partly designed? Trump sprinkles aggressive adjectives into his sentences like spices from a cook at a bad diner, with similar digestive results.

Here it’s the Y that’s more questionable. Building a wall will “quickly and greatly” reduce “the crime rate and drug problem,” he claims, even slicing them in half, according to experts.” Past presidents, when making a sweeping claim that taking some action would cut the nation’s crime rate and drug use in half would point to a bit of research that offers some evidence for that hard-to-believe claim. Trump just sort of waves his hand at it. Why he doesn’t simply say the move would end all crime and all drug use isn’t clear.

Data from various parts of Trump’s administration itself makes clear that the claim about drug use in particular is unfounded. Most drugs enter the country through existing ports of entry, smuggled in vehicles on people’s bodies. But the specter of drug abuse has been impossible for Trump to resist in pitching his wall.

Speaking of impossible to resist, here’s Trump on the risks posed to migrants:

"Thousands of children are being exploited by ruthless coyotes and vicious cartels and gangs. One in three women is sexually assaulted on the dangerous journey north. In fact, many loving mothers give their young daughters birth control pills for the long journey up to the United States because they know they may be raped or sexually accosted or assaulted,” he claimed. “Nearly 50 migrants a day are being referred for urgent medical care."

Trump is conflating a lot of things here. There is a real risk posed to women who migrate to the United States, including that assertion about birth control. The “urgent medical care” line includes an average of 11 migrants a day who are in distress when apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, many, it’s safe to assume, suffering from having tried to cross a wide desert.

That claim about the “thousands of children,” though, has never been well documented by the administration. There’s no clear time period offered. In the past, the administration has pointed to numbers that essentially count any child arriving at the border with an adult who isn’t an immediate relative (including family friends) as being potentially “trafficked.”

“I’ve gotten to know and love angel moms, dads and family who lost loved ones to people illegally in our country,” Trump said at another point. “I want this to end. It’s got to end now. These are not talking points. These are the heartbreaking realities that are hurting innocent, precious human beings every single day on both sides of the border.”

One reason Trump talks about the families of those killed by immigrants in the country illegally, including things such as drunken driving, is because it seems cruel to diminish their loss by adding context to his assertions. As has been established repeatedly, though, the number of American families suffering because they lost loved ones as a result of the actions of American citizens far outnumbers those who lost loved ones because of undocumented immigrants — who, research shows, commit crimes at rates lower than people born in this country.

After Trump reiterated his case for the wall, he returned to the lofty language of the presidency.

"I am here today,” he said, “to break the logjam and provide Congress with a path forward to end the government shutdown and solve the crisis on the southern border."

It’s Trump who’s compromising. It’s Trump who has decided to set partisanship aside and get the job done, just what you’d expect of a president.

Setting aside that a compromise existed in December that Trump rejected after facing pressure from conservative commentators over not fighting for the wall, it’s important to note that Trump’s new proposal was also not much of a compromise.

“That is our plan: border security, DACA, TPS, and many other things,” Trump said. “Straightforward, fair, reasonable and common sense, with lots of compromise.”

DACA is Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era policy that allowed people brought illegally into the country as children to stay here legally. Trump announced an end to that policy earlier in his administration. TPS is similar: Temporary protected status allows certain groups of migrants fleeing particular hardships to remain — a status that Trump has moved to end in a number of cases.

In other words, Trump rejected compromise in December and, in January, is compromising by offering not to kill the hostages he took earlier. Trump’s speech has the appearance of a presidential offer to break through disagreement but really offers little that fits that definition. (The actual policy introduced by the White House is even less of a compromise than Trump’s speech suggested.)

Earlier this month, Trump attempted to use the traditional Oval Office address to cloak his arguments about the wall in the garb of presidential authority. It didn’t take. On Saturday, he did something similar, deploying the structure and rhetoric of a typical presidential speech to imply that he was taking a typical presidential action.

He wasn’t.

 

[Cartmann99]

@Howl, @WiseGirl,

I normally listen to the show through the Tune In app on my phone, but if you prefer to listen through a browser page and not have to download or sign up for anything, this page is pretty easy to use. Just find the episode you want and click or press the red play button to the right of the title to listen.

https://player.fm/series/gaslit-nation-with-andrea-chalupa-and-sarah-kendzior/welcome-to-gaslit-nation

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you can start from the first episode and work your way forward.

This is their Patreon page if you decide to financially support their podcast:

https://www.patreon.com/gaslit

[Howl]

11 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Another week, another tell-all: "‘Absolutely out of control’: Cliff Sims’s book depicts life in Trump’s White House"

It's always sounded like it got pretty Lord of the Flies at times or maybe most/all of the time.  Remember when people were leaking stuff to gain advantage and damage other aides?

[fraurosena]

Oh good grief. During the Kennedy presidency they put a man on the moon. So of course the presidunce wants to one-up that Democrat and put one on Mars. That it would also be sticking it to that libtard Elon Musk would be an added bonus. 

"I win! I got further away than Kennedy, who only went to that measly little moon!" and "I win! I got to Mars first!" 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump finds a cure for his small-hands problem"

Spoiler

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history shows no sign of resolving, and Americans wonder what President Trump and his team are doing.

Now we know. They are doing the important work the people sent them to do. They are elongating Trump’s fingers.

The tech website Gizmodo reported this week that it found at least three retouched photographs on Trump’s social media pages since October, including two in the past few days, in which his body and face have been slimmed, his face and neck wrinkles tightened, his hair cleaned up — “and in one of the strangest alterations, Trump’s fingers have been made slightly longer.”

Comparing the original photographs to the doctored ones, Gizmodo speculates that Trump aides have been using Photoshop or Facetune and finds it “especially weird that his fingers have been made longer, which might lead one to believe that the president has had some input in these alterations.”

Trump’s reputedly stumpy hands have long been of concern to their owner, at least since the editor Graydon Carter called him a “short-fingered vulgarian” in 1988. After being teased by Marco Rubio, who posited that small hands correspond to another small body part, Trump declared at a presidential debate: “He referred to my hands: If they’re small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s no problem.”

Millions of Americans no doubt were reassured by this personal guarantee.

But why the need for Trump to extend himself now? Perhaps it’s involuntary. Pinocchio’s nose grows when he lies; Trump’s fingers might do the same.

Or maybe the digitally altered digits reflect the broader state of Trump’s truthfulness. As things worsen for Trump — legal troubles, Democrats taking the House, the wavering economy and administration chaos — he has deployed ever more flimflam. Glenn Kessler’s Post fact-checking team this week reported that the president’s production of false or misleading claims has nearly tripled, to a rate of 16.5 per day in his second year from 5.9 during his first year. The 82 days on which Trump did not publicly declare a falsehood “were often days when the president golfed.”

Facetune, then, is a metaphor for Trump’s presidency. He created the illusion of a border crisis. He created the illusion of economic success. He created the illusion of a tax cut for the middle class. He’s trying to create the illusion that others are to blame for the shutdown. And now his team is creating actual illusions by posting doctored images of him (even as he accuses the media of being “fake”).

To get a sense of how Trump’s aides are doing the people’s business, I downloaded the Facetune 2 app, used by teens, celebrities and possibly Donald Trump Jr. to airbrush their way to perfect skin, proportions and even mood. (Choices include “kiss,” “cute,” “seduce,” “fierce” or “smirk.”) Auto-filters turn you into a “hero,” “belle” or other perfect specimen.

After turning myself into a virtual Zac Efron, I set to work on Trump, making his fingers so long they resembled Gollum’s. He could palm a medicine ball with those 18-inch claws. I started with a golf shot of him looking particularly obese, took off 100 pounds and 20 years, and he became an orange-and-white Barack Obama.

Next, I attempted other makeovers. I turned the Sarah Sanders frown into a smile (though the result looked more puzzled than happy). I made Rudy Giuliani’s mouth disappear entirely, to stop him from saying ruinous things about Trump and then recanting. I turned Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg into a 40-year-old. I made Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appear to have lips. I made Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) appear to have a spine.

For a White House having such a hard time dealing with reality, Facetune offers needed relief. Instead of actually building a wall, they could enlarge and elongate one on Facetune. Instead of actually denuclearizing North Korea, they could retouch those launch sites on Facetune. Using the “hero” filter, even Russian President Vladimir Putin could be made to look trustworthy.

Trump’s claims about heroin and children being smuggled into the United States don’t stand up to scrutiny, but a well-doctored photograph could show minors carrying large satchels labeled “HEROIN.” With a swipe and touch, the steel plants Trump promised would appear, as would the thousands of MS-13 gang members he claims to have deported and the “barrels” full of cash Obama supposedly sent Iran.

With enough Facetune skill and creativity, Trump’s team could even generate images showing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on a witch hunt and Democrats colluding with Russia.

He’s got the whole world in his digitally enhanced hands.

 

[fraurosena]

Oh dear. He's found out that fall rhymes with wall... 

As usual, I have questions:

- if the wall is under construction now, why do you need 5.6 billion?

- if the wall is going to be finished in two years time, how did you get possession of the land to build it on?

- if the wall is under construction, what material is it made of? Concrete, bricks, steel slats? Oh, and is it see-through, or not?

- if the wall is under construction, who is building it?

- "Use it and pray"... "Dear Lord, Build a wall & crime will fall! Amen." 

[GreyhoundFan]

An interesting analysis: "‘Knock them in the teeth.’ How Trump turns crises into leverage."

Spoiler

The 800,000 federal workers who are expected to miss their second paycheck in the coming days are the most extreme example yet of a negotiating tactic President Trump has used repeatedly since taking office.

He creates — or threatens to create — a calamity, and then insists he will address the problem only if his adversary capitulates to a separate demand.

Trump has described this approach as creating leverage and negotiating, but Democrats and other opponents have said it amounts to “hostage taking.”

“It’s sort of like bartering with stolen goods,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday.

Trump has used the same playbook during confrontations with Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, South Korea, North Korea and the European Union in the past two years with mixed success.

He imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from a host of nations, saying it was necessary to force changes in other countries’ trade practices. He threatened to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement if Canada and Mexico didn’t agree to a new trade deal, a move that potentially could have crippled both of their economies.

He said he would withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization if other countries didn’t spend more money on their militaries, a move that eventually helped pave the way for the departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

It is a well-worn tactic from Trump’s business career, but this is the first time the livelihoods of so many U.S. workers and households have hung in the balance as a result of it.

“It’s a Trumpian way of negotiating,” longtime friend Larry Kudlow told a radio interviewer last year before joining the White House. “You knock them in the teeth and get their attention. And then you kind of work out a deal.”

But there is mounting evidence that the firm resistance from Democrats is forcing Trump to take his threats much further than he thought necessary.

There are signs the lengthy shutdown is starting to damage the U.S. economy, as consumer confidence has fallen to its lowest level of Trump’s presidency, and a growing number of federal workers are expressing exasperation at being required to continue working without pay.

Many have visited food banks and are accepting free meals, while others have begun selling possessions online and are bracing for mortgage payments due next week.

Trump’s strategy of using such a large segment of the U.S. workforce as leverage has never before been used on such a scale. Presidents typically rely on the federal workforce to keep the government open, seeking to protect them from partisan fights. But Trump has told advisers he thinks the shutdown gives him the leverage he needs to force the appropriation of money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He thinks Democrats will back down before he is forced to.

“With a powerful Wall or Steel Barrier, Crime Rates (and Drugs) will go substantially down all over the U.S.,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “The Dems know this but want to play political games. Must finally be done correctly. No Cave!”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

In the early months of his administration, Trump repeatedly told top aides, including then-National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, that imposing tariffs on imports was a way to create leverage and force other leaders to make concessions.

Cohn would argue that tariffs imposed on U.S. allies actually made it harder for the White House to build an alliance to counter China, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal White House deliberations.

Trump also insisted that he would pull U.S. troops off the Korean Peninsula if South Korea didn’t agree to modify a trade deal to make it better for the United States.

Trump often talks about leverage and power in private meetings with aides. He has said he uses these tactics to make sure “everyone else has to come to the table,” according to a person who has heard his comments and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s strategy.

“He’s not afraid to make any threat,” this person said. “He assumes everyone else is thinking like he is.”

In the early days of the shutdown, the president grew frustrated with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and told them they misunderstood what a strong bargaining position he was in. Initially, McConnell and Ryan tried to persuade Trump not to shut down parts of the government and instead support a bill that would fund agency operations.

“Trump is running the shutdown as a reality television producer,” said Dan Eberhart, a prominent Republican donor. “The problem is he was hired to run a government, grow an economy and protect a country, not be a successful producer.”

One foreign diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal how some foreign leaders perceive Trump, said the U.S. president at first unnerved European leaders and scared them with his rhetoric. “Now you just know what he’s going to do and you kind of shrug it off. You can’t totally ignore him because he’s the president of the United States. But he doesn’t scare people like he used to.”

“All of life is a negotiation, and that every negotiation is a zero-sum game,” former Trump aide Cliff Sims writes in his new book, “Team of Vipers,” describing Trump’s outlook. “There’s no such thing as a win-win; someone will win and someone will lose.”

Trump did not initially plan on forcing the government shutdown. McConnell and Ryan thought they had persuaded him to sign a government spending bill that did not include money for a border wall just days before government agencies would run out of money.

But he reversed course two days before funding was scheduled to lapse, under pressure from conservative activists, and decided to employ his leverage strategy for the first time with Congress. Several White House officials said there was no game plan for what to do next, and they had to come up with a plan after the shutdown began.

“This guy is not really good at thinking his way out of the problem,” said Timothy Naftali, a clinical associate professor of public service at New York University. “He just ups the ante and hopes the pain he causes others pushes them beyond their pain threshold.”

Trump has followed the same script at least eight times before. He threatened to withdraw from NAFTA if Canada and Mexico did not agree to major changes. This prompted a forceful retort from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“We’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around,” Trudeau said in June.

Trump threatened to impose tariffs on all automotive imports from Europe unless European leaders dropped tariffs on U.S.-produced cars.

“We won’t talk at all with a country if it is with a gun to our heads,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in March.

Trump has used the tactic most often with China, slapping duties on $250 billion of goods imported from China and threatening to go even further if China does not agree to major changes in the way it trades with the United States.

“How could you negotiate with someone when he puts a knife on your neck?” China’s deputy trade negotiator, Wang Shouwen, said at a news conference in September.

Trump has embraced this tough-guy persona. During a news conference last year, he told a Japanese reporter, “Say hello to Shinzo,” referring to Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe. “I’m sure he’s happy about tariffs on his cars.”

Trump has not moved to impose tariffs on Japanese cars, but he has continued threatening to do it unless Japan makes it easier for U.S.-made cars to be sold in Japan.

In many of these cases, Trump’s hardball tactics ultimately have brought the foreign counterparts to the negotiating table, though whether they will prove effective is unclear.

In many of these cases, Republican lawmakers have grumbled about Trump’s tactics but have done little to intervene. The shutdown has caused even more GOP angst, but Republicans have largely followed the president’s lead, with a majority saying his latest offer to Democrats is sufficient to win their support. That proposal would temporarily prevent the deportation of roughly 1 million young undocumented immigrants, for a period of three years, in exchange for $5.7 billion in taxpayer money to build sections of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

This offer includes pressure points that Trump himself has created as a way to try to force capitulation from Democrats. It was Trump who moved in the past two years to eliminate the immigration benefits he is now offering to reinstate temporarily. And the shutdown he is offering to end is something he triggered as well.

“Congress says it’s hostage-taking because they’re not the ones controlling the leverage,” said Paul Winfree, who was deputy domestic policy adviser at the White House until leaving last year. “Congress has routinely shown that it doesn’t legislate unless forced. They create their own set of cliffs and catastrophes to force action.”

Lawmakers do tend to wait until the last minute to pass controversial pieces of legislation, which is one reason they failed to avert a shutdown. But Trump’s critics think he will use this same tactic again in a few months, when lawmakers must decide whether to raise the debt ceiling or risk having the government default on its debts.

“He can’t be successful on holding these folks hostage, because he will do it again on the debt ceiling and the end of the appropriations cycle,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans said they felt certain how the shutdown would end and whether Trump would eventually back down. White House officials are also looking for clues, but no resolution appears to be within reach.

“Trump is trying to harness the drama of political theater to get what he wants,” Winfree said. “The problem is that once you shake things up, it’s difficult to control the outcome.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Jack Ohman:

 

[AmazonGrace]

Dump wants his speech 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Pelosi says nope. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

From the WaPo editorial board: "Trump’s lies on his business dealings in Russia were a profound betrayal of voters"

Spoiler

THERE HAS been a welter of news reports, denials, statements and retractions in the past week concerning President Trump’s pursuit of a major real estate deal in Russia during the 2016 campaign, so perhaps some clarification is in order. Here’s what is not in dispute: For most of the time he was running for president, Mr. Trump was also encouraging negotiations that would have put his name on a 100-plus-story tower in Moscow and yielded tens of millions of dollars in revenue for his company. He did this secretly, while publicly defending Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and arguing against sanctions against Russia. And he repeatedly deceived U.S. voters by saying he had no business in the country.

It may not be true, as BuzzFeed reported last week, that the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III collected evidence showing that Mr. Trump instructed lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow deal. Mr. Mueller’s office called the report inaccurate. It may be, as Mr. Trump’s counsel Rudolph W. Giuliani said Sunday, that negotiations on the deal continued until the November 2016 election; or maybe, as he said Monday, that timeline was merely “hypothetical.” But we know Mr. Trump thought it perfectly acceptable to clandestinely pursue his personal business interest with the government of a prime U.S. adversary while advancing a presidential platform of improving relations with the regime. Whether that was illegal, it was a profound betrayal of the voters.

Mr. Trump defended his actions last November, after Mr. Cohen confessed to lying about the extent of the negotiations, by saying there was no reason for him to give up “opportunities” such as the proposed Moscow tower because “there was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won” the election. But the record shows it was his presidential candidacy itself that created the opportunity.

Mr. Cohen and another Trump associate, Felix Sater, began working on a plan to license Mr. Trump’s name to a Russian developer after he announced he was running for president in June 2015. Before then, Mr. Sater told BuzzFeed, “a lot of Russians weren’t willing to pay a premium licensing fee to put Donald’s name on their building. Now maybe they would be.”

The two men brokered a deal with a Moscow developer for a tower that was to be the tallest in Europe. Mr. Trump signed the letter of intent the same day as one of the Republican candidate debates, Oct. 28, 2015. According to BuzzFeed’s reporting, the Trump World Tower Moscow was to include a spa created by Ivanka Trump and a penthouse reserved for Mr. Putin.

Mr. Cohen and Mr. Sater continued to work on the deal at least until June 14, 2016, and as Mr. Giuliani confirmed, Mr. Cohen updated Mr. Trump on their progress. One of Mr. Cohen’s aims was to arrange for Mr. Trump to visit Moscow and meet Mr. Putin following the Republican National Convention; presumably both the Trump tower and U.S.-Russian relations would have been on the agenda.

The visit never happened, and Mr. Trump tweeted in late July 2016 that, “for the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.” Now we know that it wasn’t for lack of trying. Would voters have interpreted the praise he heaped on Mr. Putin differently had they known he was secretly trying to cut his own deal with the regime? The answer seems obvious.

 

[fraurosena]

I guess he heard about those Republicans registering as Democrats...

 

[Howl]

Lots of twitter back and forth about whether Pelosi (or anyone) can stop Trump from just showing up to deliver the SOTU.  I don't think there is a precedent. 

[GreyhoundFan]

21 minutes ago, Howl said:

Lots of twitter back and forth about whether Pelosi (or anyone) can stop Trump from just showing up to deliver the SOTU.  I don't think there is a precedent. 

From the WaPo: "Trump planned to still give SOTU in the House. But it was never up to him."

Spoiler

Imagine someone invites you on a date. Then that person makes no formal arrangements for the date and texts you that it’s best to postpone. In response you say you plan to honor the original invitation and expect to see the person then.

To no one’s surprise except maybe yours, the person doesn’t show.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but that’s the basic scenario playing out between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and President Trump over the State of the Union address.

To recap the facts: Pelosi invited Trump to give his annual address to a joint session of Congress on Jan. 29. Then she sent him a letter telling him that since the government was still shut down and resources were already stretched thin, it was best that he postpone until the shuttered agencies were reopened.

She could make that change because, even though Pelosi had invited Trump, she had never finalized the plans. For the president to come into her chamber and speak to a joint session of Congress, she must file a concurrent resolution agreed to by the House and Senate.

Trump informed Pelosi in a letter Wednesday afternoon that he still intends to give his speech on the date they had agreed to and that he would be doing so from the House chamber. But other than publicly challenging and shaming her to tell him “no," Trump has zero leverage in this situation. Pelosi holds all the cards. He cannot give the State of the Union in the House unless she puts the procedural steps in motion for it to happen.

She soon sent a letter back that she would not be clearing the way for him to speak in her chamber. He has now said he’ll find an alternative venue to give his speech and accused her of not wanting to hear the truth.

This back and forth achieves very little, and certainly does nothing to reopen the government, but it’s Trump’s proclivity to never show weakness when challenged.

But in this specific instance, it was up to Pelosi to let him speak, and Trump was powerless to control the outcome.

It’s like inviting someone to dinner at a popular restaurant, but never making the reservations. Trump can show up at the restaurant, but he’s not getting a table.

 

[Dandruff]

9 hours ago, fraurosena said:

- if the wall is under construction, who is building it?

And where...by which I don't mean where on the border.  Is it possible that wall-building work of some sort is going on at a contractor facility?

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s position is weakening fast. Here’s how Democrats can exploit that."

Spoiler

The forces arrayed behind President Trump in the government shutdown fight are now sending out decidedly conflicting signals. Some want Trump to dig in more firmly behind the xenophobic nationalism symbolized by his wall, as if he can break the Democrats’ will through sheer force of intractable anti-immigrant recalcitrance. Others are urging him to reach out to Democrats with concessions designed to accommodate their desire for humane immigration solutions.

This gives Democrats an opening to put forth their own proactive immigration agenda in the days and weeks ahead — to further divide the opposition, yes, but more to the point because it’s the right thing to do from a good governing standpoint.

The New York Times has now confirmed that the White House deliberately ensured that poison pills were inserted into the Senate GOP bill to reopen the government. As the Times reports, White House officials “conceded privately” that they “tacked on controversial proposals anathema to Democrats that would block many migrants from seeking asylum.”

This week, the Senate will vote on that bill, which reflects the Trump proposal to reopen the government. Trump pretends it’s a compromise. In reality, it is larded up with cruel provisions hatched from Stephen Miller’s nationalist fever dreams. It would further restrict asylum seeking in multiple ways. It offers one-time legislative relief to 700,000 young immigrants brought here illegally as children — a.k.a. “dreamers” — but only in a manner that codifies relief that has already been granted and that Trump is trying to take away, and appears to create new obstacles for them to apply.

At the same time, however, Axios reports that some in Trump’s orbit, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, want him to offer a path to getting green cards to those 700,000 dreamers. But some on the right are arguing against this. Why? As one GOP senator puts it: “If you throw green cards onto the table, this whole coalition will fall over on the right.” Trump, this senator says, cannot afford to “lose” the likes of Sean Hannity.

In other words, some around Trump recognize that making genuine concessions to Democrats actually would provide a way out of this standoff. But doing this risks splitting off pro-Trump forces on the right.

All this comes as a new CBS News poll finds that 71 percent of Americans overall, including 71 percent of independents and even 43 percent of Republicans, say the wall is not worth shutting down the government over. Only 28 percent say it’s worth the shutdown. Trump’s approval is mired at 36 percent. Large majorities — again, including independents — say the border can be secured without the wall.

Trump’s public position is weakening. The restrictionist right wing he’s appeasing — the one that Trump and Miller played to by salting the “compromise” with poison pills, the one that would revolt if Trump made actual concessions to Democrats — is increasingly isolated.

Here’s what Democrats can do now

This week, the Senate will vote on the Trump sham compromise and on a Democratic proposal to reopen the government without wall funding. Both will almost certainly fail. But some in Congress believe that once this happens, it will increase pressure for a renewed compromise push.

House Democrats can proactively take control of that coming debate. They can initiate oversight hearings on what really went into Trump’s family-separations policies. Remember, those were Trump’s response to the crisis created by the crush of asylum-seeking migrants (they were meant as deterrence, and failed). This would highlight the naked cruelty, ineffectiveness and deeply misguided worldview driving his immigration agenda.

Hearings could focus more broadly on the true causes and solutions to the current migrant crisis at the border, and on what to do to prevent more migrant children from dying. Trump keeps lurching between spewing endless lies to paint asylum-seeking migrants as menacing invaders, and pretending to care about their humanitarian plight. We cannot have a debate in an environment that is so asymmetrically saturated by Trumpian disinformation, bad faith and hate.

Democrats can use hearings to restore much-needed facts to the discussion, ones focused on the need to invest more money in unclogging court backlogs and in beefing up border infrastructure and treatment options for what really is a new kind of immigration, and on the need for regional solutions to the root causes of migration surges.

“I think we have to do that, and I think we will,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) told me, speaking about such hearings. Connolly noted that multiple committees could launch a broad look at everything from what analyses went into Trump’s demand for 234 miles of wall, to 21st-century ways of fortifying security at ports of entry, to what is actually needed to relieve the humanitarian plight of migrants.

“Let’s get some factual data about what’s happening at the southern border,” Connolly said, whether in the “postmortem of the shutdown, or during the shutdown” if necessary.

Following that, House Democrats could hold votes on bills pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into updating the border to better handle the new humanitarian challenges (Trump’s own border officials want such spending). They could vote on permanent protections for the dreamers. They could package those things with the $1.3 billion for border security they have already offered Trump.

Taking back the debate from Trump

All this would place Democrats firmly in favor of reopening the government — which they have already passed bills doing — while also securing the border, addressing the plight of migrants in a truly humane way that is not grounded in fantasies and lies about them, and offering a real permanent solution for the dreamers.

“Work should begin in Congress now to develop plans to address the major border and immigration challenges which remain unaddressed,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg emails. “It’s long past time for Democrats to wrest control of the debate from the president and his extremist allies.”

This would maneuver Trump into the position of turning down all these solutions — that is, holding them hostage — for his wall, which only a shrinking minority wants, and which we do not need. Alternatively, it points a way toward a deal — one that would address some of these terrible humanitarian problems in exchange for more border security money, possibly including more barriers — that both sides could conceivably accept. Provided that there’s some point at which Trump is willing to “lose” Hannity.

 

[47of74]

I was able to use greensight to look in to the future and see fuck head's alternative event

Looked just like this....

Just like all his other rallies....