Trump 38: Donald Trump and the Wall of Lies

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

"The government is trying to turn Trump’s lies into truths"

Spoiler

They say you can fix anything with duct tape. But using it to repair a presidency?

That can get a little sticky.

The Post’s Katie Mettler recently caught President Trump in one of his frequent fabrications, this time his oft-repeated claim that migrant women are commonly bound and gagged with tape (alternately duct, painter’s or electrical, in Trump’s telling) across their mouths and smuggled across the border. Baffled experts called the claim “divorced from reality.”

And there it would have ended — had the Trump administration not sent the Border Patrol in search of duct tape.

After The Post’s report, a senior Border Patrol official, apparently acting on behalf of Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, emailed an urgent request to agents seeking “any information that you may have (in any format) regarding claims ‘that traffickers tie up and silence women with tape before illegally driving them through the desert from Mexico to the United States in the backs of cars and windowless vans.’ ” The email, reported Sunday by Vox, linked to The Post’s article.

That Trump told a lie is unremarkable. That government officials continue to use federal resources in vain attempts to turn the president’s lies into truth is unacceptable.

Such efforts began almost as soon as Trump was inaugurated, when he called the acting director of the National Park Service for photographic evidence supporting his false claim that attendance for his inauguration had set a record. It continued with his forming of a since-disbanded presidential commission to substantiate his false claim that there is widespread voter fraud in the United States.

In October, Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker detailed several instances of “the federal government scrambling to reverse-engineer policies to meet Trump’s sudden public promises — or to search for evidence buttressing his conspiracy theories and falsehoods.”

Officials retroactively tried to find supporting evidence for Trump’s dubious claims that voters would receive a 10 percent tax cut before the midterm elections, and that “unknown Middle Easterners” were part of a migrant caravan, among other things.

Similarly, after CNN’s Jim Acosta annoyed Trump in November with aggressive questioning at a news conference, the White House justified revoking Acosta’s press credentials by saying he placed “his hands on a young woman” at the news conference — and then, to support the dubious allegation, shared a doctored, high-speed video.

The routine, extravagant efforts to convert fiction into fact remind me of the work of the great con artist Stephen Glass 20 years ago, when we both worked at the New Republic. Glass partially or wholly fabricated 27 (literally) fantastic articles for the magazine before he was caught. Even more stunning was the web of deceit he employed to cover up his fraud once editor Chuck Lane (now a colleague in The Post’s opinions section) began asking questions: fake notes, fake memos, fake business cards, a fake website, fake voice mail and even the use of his brother to pose as a fake source.

The difference, of course, is that Glass wasn’t running the country. As Trump is discovering, the administration’s backfilling of his untruths keeps the con going for only so long.

Everywhere, the lies are unraveling. On Friday, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team indicted longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, in part over falsehoods he told Congress concerning the Trump campaign’s Russia contacts. Stone, who has denied the allegations, is just the latest of many Trump loyalists to be ensnared by the Mueller investigation because of lies.

For all Trump’s claims that his policies will make the economy grow at 4 percent or more each year, the Congressional Budget Office on Monday forecast growth slipping to 2.3 percent this year and averaging 1.7 percent through 2023.

For all Trump’s claims about implementing a massive increase in border agents to combat a border “emergency,” the Los Angeles Times reports that a Customs and Border Protection contract to recruit and hire 7,500 border officers over five years has produced only 33 new hires so far.

For all Trump’s claims that he would cut the debt in half and find a better, cheaper alternative to Obamacare, Americans have discovered otherwise, giving him sharply lower marks on his handling of the economy, the federal deficit and health care in a new Post-ABC News poll.

As his fictions unravel, Trump does what Glass did: He lashes out (Trump even attacked Fox News journalists on Twitter on Sunday because he didn’t like their border coverage) and piles on more fictions (now a fanciful claim that “58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas”).

Somewhere, some hapless government workers have probably just been tasked with searching for the phantom 58,000 alien voters, joining those already searching for illusory duct-tape incidents on the border.

No matter how much tape they “find” or how many yarns they spin, it won’t be enough to make Trump’s unraveling claims hold together.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Ali]

5 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Maybe instead of being a jerk he could work on his biblical literacy since it is so important to him? I live in one of the areas that will be experiencing the polar vortex.  My governor declared a state of emergency which would allow more funds for warming centers. I heard they are looking for homeless people to pick up to take to shelters. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Alisamer]

how in the world did we go from "OMG. The vice president can't spell 'potato'" and "I didn't inhale" to president moron here so quickly?

(Russia, I know. Thanks Putin.)

I'm still sorting the thoughts out in my head, but I think President Obama being black has a lot to do with this. Despite the fact he did a remarkable job as president, I think there are a number of people so racist that now that the office of the president has been held by someone not male and white, they've lost respect for it to the point of being willing to vote in a half-rate near-illiterate wannabe mobster. I think if all other things were exactly the same, except Obama (and his family) had white skin, most of Trump's supporters would have gone for one of the other candidates. But after 8 years of calling the president a racial slur and having utter disrespect for him, they had no problem voting in someone with no respectability whatsoever. They're a minority, for sure, but they're loud. And with a woman as the opponent, they got the misogynist vote. With Trump saying "sure, I'll outlaw abortion, whatever. I'll just send my mistresses overseas for theirs" he got the one-issue evangelicals to hold their noses and vote for him. And then with Russia tipping the vote as well... we got this mess.

I hope all these people are realizing what a disaster and disgrace Trump is, and he is removed from office one way or another before he bankrupts the country and runs off overseas to live in luxury somewhere.

[AmazonGrace]

He doesn't know Cliff Sims 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

So they're saying it's true?

[Howl]

I have this mental image of hundreds and hundreds of low level gofers scurrying around everywhere, carrying coffee and sheaves of paper here and there and everywhere, and sleeping in the basement like sardines on 4-high bunk beds. 

[Destiny]

Thanks Orange One! I appreciate the reminder to buy the book!

[CTRLZero]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

So they're saying it's true?

The Stephen Colbert interview made me wonder about Kellyanne Conway and the syncing of her phone to her laptop as she was supposedly dissing the president.  If true, wouldn't there be a way to retrieve those messages?  Wishful thinking.

[Audrey2]

22 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Oh Donnie, are you concerned about Global Waming? Perhaps you should make yourself some cofefe and enjoy a hamberder or two, while crafting with your smocking gun.

[fraurosena]

16 hours ago, CTRLZero said:

The Stephen Colbert interview made me wonder about Kellyanne Conway and the syncing of her phone to her laptop as she was supposedly dissing the president.  If true, wouldn't there be a way to retrieve those messages?  Wishful thinking.

Speaking of phones...

 

[AmazonGrace]

Winning 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[NotQuiteMotY]

On 1/29/2019 at 6:45 AM, Ali said:

Maybe instead of being a jerk he could work on his biblical literacy since it is so important to him? I live in one of the areas that will be experiencing the polar vortex.  My governor declared a state of emergency which would allow more funds for warming centers. I heard they are looking for homeless people to pick up to take to shelters. 

The nearest city is getting hit hard by the temperatures, too, not as badly as the Midwest but badly enough that the city's declared a "Code Blue" to open up extra beds for the homeless. They've also set up ambulatory warming centers in buses for those who they can't convince to go.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s latest rage tweets give Democrats an opening. Here’s how they’ll respond."

Spoiler

President Trump is once again raging about his wall. Apparently he heard something during his morning excursion into the right-wing media house of horrors that persuaded him he’s in danger of looking weak, as conference committee negotiations over a border funding bill begin:

In saying this, Trump is actually restricting the maneuvering room Republicans will have in these bipartisan conference talks, which are focused on finding a compromise on Department of Homeland Security funding that will avert another government shutdown in mid-February.

Trump is letting it be known that he will continue to define “border security” as a “wall” or “barrier” — that is, as a down payment on a large and monolithic superstructure that fulfills the fantasy he promised his supporters. That could make it harder for Republicans to accept a deal that spends billions on real border security, just not quite to Trump’s specifications, without enraging the base.

But this gives Democrats an opening to go into these talks with a reality-based agenda to address the real problems at the border. And the early signs are that they are going to do just this.

What Democrats will propose

I’ve got new details on the opening bid Democrats plan to make in these talks. According to a House Democratic aide, Democrats will put on the table the following proposals:

• Democrats will propose hundreds of millions of dollars in new funding to address the humanitarian crisis at the border, with upgraded facilities that are better equipped to deal with just-arrived asylum-seeking families and children, including additional medical care and counseling. Democrats will also push for around half-billion in money for additional judges to unclog court backlogs.
• Democrats will propose to increase the amount of border security money to a point higher than the $1.3 billion they originally offered but less than the $5.7 billion Trump wants. (I was unable to obtain the exact figure.) However, this would not be wall or barrier money. Instead, it would be for things such as increased personnel and more sensors along the border, and drug-scanning technology at ports of entry.
• That border security investment would also include more money for Homeland Security personnel who would focus on investigating human trafficking, something both sides agree is a serious problem.
• Democrats will also push to include funding in a related bill that provides more than a half-billion dollars for investments in economic aid and shoring up institutions in Central American countries, to address the terrible civil conditions prompting these migrations of asylum-seekers.

Let’s be as clear as possible: There is a set of solutions to the actual crisis that is unfolding in the real world — the humanitarian one — as opposed to the crisis Trump has hyped beyond recognition. This set of proposals is much more targeted toward that crisis than Trump’s wall is.

As Dara Lind put it in an exhaustive piece for Vox on the real border crisis, the United States is now seeing “large numbers of children and families, often in large groups, crossing the border without papers to turn themselves in to U.S. authorities." This is “genuinely unprecedented," with the result that the immigration system is unprepared and “cracking under the strain.”

By contrast, the numbers of illegal crossings — ones in which people try to evade authorities — are at historic lows. But this hyped crisis is the one Trump keeps harping about to make the case for the border wall.

Democrats can reframe the debate

The new Democratic offer in conference negotiations is an attempt to reframe this whole debate, and shift it to a reality-based discussion of what the real crisis genuinely calls for right now.

On the security side, Democrats will propose improved drug-scanning technology at ports of entry because ports of entry are where most illegal drugs enter. This is in contrast to Trump’s constant claim that only a wall will stop illegal drugs, which is fiction.

What’s more, the money for increased investments in personnel to investigate human trafficking would focus more resources on something that both sides agree is a real security problem. Trump keeps going on about taped and gagged migrant women, which is also fiction, but still, if he is serious about this being a problem, this investment should appeal to him.

I’m also told that Democrats will argue in conference that more personnel and technology are the right answer to the real security challenges of the moment. They will argue that technological improvements have rendered those more cost-effective in some cases than barriers are.

To be clear, some barriers could form part of a final compromise. Democrats might accept this, provided they are done in keeping with needs-based requests from DHS that are justified with facts and data, under careful congressional scrutiny.

They would also have to come with actual concessions to Democrats that take Trump’s cruel and draconian asylum-restricting proposals off the table -- money for courts is the better way to reduce backlogs -- and as part of a package that invested major amounts in the humanitarian crisis, which could help a lot of people and save migrant children’s lives.

Trump is trapped in a Fox News bubble

The only real question right now — despite absurdly strained efforts by Trump allies to paint Democrats as the intransigent ones — is whether Trump can accept such a compromise.

Fox News keeps hyping the migrants as posing a terrifying national security crisis, and once again, Trump is echoing that:

But a genuine compromise would give Trump much of what is actually needed to address the real crisis, as members of Trump’s own administration have defined it. Border protection officials want this humanitarian money and increased personnel to battle trafficking addresses a problem that Trump has embellished with fiction but is still nonetheless real.

And while Trump has buffoonishly threatened to cut off aid to Central American countries, in keeping with his idea that they are “sending” migrants to rip us off, border officials want investments in aid to those countries, because they recognize that migrants have real-world motives rooted in home-country conditions.

So a compromise is possible. But will Trump give Republicans on the conference committee to negotiate one?

As Matthew Gertz documents, “Fox & Friends” is now telling Trump that a final deal with “barriers” would give Trump a way to say he got his wall but also give Democrats a way to claim victory. The question is whether Trump could tolerate an outcome in which both sides get some of what they want — and Trump’s base gets angry about it — rather than giving him total victory.

 

[Ozlsn]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

But this gives Democrats an opening to go into these talks with a reality-based agenda to address the real problems at the border.

You know if we could get back to a reality-based agenda that would be awesome. And that is seriously not a sentence I ever thought I would type about the US government.

[47of74]

Some African American players didn't want to hang out with the Grand Wizard of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and eat McGarbage.

Quote

When Filet-O-Fish aficionado Donald Trump invited the Clemson Tigers to enjoy the White House’s first Presidential Value Meal, most of Clemson’s national championship football team members jumped at the opportunity to meet the original cheeseburger-swallowing clown. But The Root has learned that Clemson’s black players, some specifically citing racism and their disdain for Trump’s divisive politics, passed on the opportunity to hang out with the real-life Mayor McCheese.

The Root spoke with three black Clemson players who each separately confirmed that many players, both black and white, had no interest in making the trip. All three acknowledged that Donald Trump was the reason they chose not to attend. Even more telling, most of Clemson’s white players were in attendance while nearly three-fourths of the school’s black football players took a hard pass on the chance to eat cold fries with the president of people who eat salads from McDonald’s.

Another defensive standout noted that coaches didn’t pressure players to accompany the team to Washington, D.C., but said that almost every black player he knew didn’t want to take the trip. However, he noted that he knew that some players only attended because they worried that refusing to attend the traditional White House visit might affect their scholarships or playing time.

In total, 15 of the University’s black players listed on the school’s official roster attended the White House visit, the vast majority of whom (11) were freshmen or sophomores who had very little playing time during the season. Just one senior made the trip and only six of the players in attendance were even listed on Clemson’s national championship depth chart. There are at least 57 black student-athletes on Clemson’s official team roster, which means 74 percent of Clemson’s African-American players chose not to make the trip to the White House.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Undocumented worker who was fired by Trump Organization to attend State of the Union

Spoiler

An undocumented worker who was fired from the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., after she publicly disclosed her immigration status will attend President Trump’s State of the Union address next week.

Victorina Morales, who was born in Guatemala, will be a guest of Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a New Jersey Democrat, when the president speaks to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. Watson Coleman’s office confirmed the decision Wednesday.

The choice to invite Morales follows news stories about the Trump Organization’s failure to fully check the work status of all its employees, even as Trump described illegal immigration as a national crisis and demanded funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

The Post reported Saturday that about a dozen undocumented workers were fired this month from the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, N.Y. Eric Trump said Tuesday that the company will implement E-Verify, a federal program that vets workers’ immigration status, across all of its properties.

Lawmakers — and presidents — often seek to make a statement with the guests they invite to the State of the Union. In 2017, Trump brought the relatives of people who authorities said were killed by undocumented immigrants. In 2016, former president Barack Obama invited a “dreamer” — an undocumented immigrant brought to the United States as a child -- who served in the Army. Obama also left a vacant seat to honor victims of gun violence.

Morales has been the most vocal of the undocumented workers recently fired by the Trump Organization. She was terminated in December after the New York Times published a story about her titled, “Making President Trump’s Bed: A Housekeeper Without Papers.”

This week, Morales joined three other workers on Capitol Hill to petition members of Congress for protection and highlight what their lawyer and some Democratic lawmakers described as potential lawbreaking by the Trump Organization. Two of the four workers said the company provided them with or helped them obtain false documents to justify their employment, a claim that Eric Trump denied.

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) is now gathering signatures for a letter calling on the FBI to launch an investigation. He met with the group Monday.

“The number of immigrants claiming they were employed illegally by the Trump Organization has risen to more than 20 individuals and raises serious questions of criminal activity and numerous violations of employment laws at the Trump Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, and Bedminster, New Jersey — including conspiracy charges, procuring false documents, and forced and coerced labor,” the letter states.

Eric Trump started managing the Trump Organization’s day-to-day operations with his brother, Donald Trump Jr., when President Trump took office. The president maintains an ownership stake in the company.

 

[Dandruff]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Is Wasting time different from wasting time?  Just wondering.

And what if the committee does discuss and/or contemplate a wall-related approach then rejects it?  Not a waste of time then, right?

[WiseGirl]

[GreyhoundFan]