Trump 40: Donald Trump and the Chamber of Incompetence

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s company made late tax payments on L.A. golf course properties, incurring fines"

Spoiler

President Trump’s company owed $36,200 in delinquent property taxes on its California golf course until Monday — when it paid, after the delinquency was pointed out by The Washington Post.

The unpaid taxes were for two parcels of land, totaling about 25 acres, at Trump’s course in Rancho Palos Verdes. The parcels are crucial to the Trump Organization’s future at the course: They include land where the company plans to develop and sell 23 new home lots.

When tax bills for the golf course came due from Los Angeles County last fall, the Trump Organization paid most of them.

But it let these two parcels go unpaid. The county declared them delinquent after Dec. 10.

On Monday — after a reporter noticed the delinquent taxes on a county government website — The Post asked the Trump Organization about the unpaid bills.

Later that day, the company paid the bills, plus $3,600 in late-payment penalties, according to the office of the L.A. County treasurer and tax collector.

The Trump Organization declined to offer a public explanation as to why the bills had not been paid before The Post’s inquiry. Instead, a company spokeswoman sent a brief statement Tuesday morning, the day after the delinquent bills were paid.

“All taxes are paid in full,” spokeswoman Kim Benza wrote Tuesday morning. “To suggest otherwise would be an outright lie.”

This was the second year in a row that the Trump Organization had missed a deadline to pay taxes on the two parcels in California, according to the county. Last year, the company paid about $3,500 in penalties on the parcels.

Last year, Trump’s company also did not offer an explanation for the missed deadlines.

The Trump Organization is primarily a real estate company, and it is standard practice in that industry to promptly pay property taxes. Until last year, the Trump Organization had a near-perfect record of paying its hundreds of property-tax bills on time.

But last year, the company began to miss some deadlines it had met before.

As a result, the company paid late fees and interest in some jurisdictions and also missed out on early-bird discounts that had previously shaved thousands off its bills. In all, the missed deadlines added $61,800 extra to the company’s tax bills, according to a Post analysis.

This year, in addition to the delinquent bills in California, the Trump Organization also missed some early-bird deadlines in Florida. Those delays affected bills for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and three golf clubs and increased the company’s Florida tax bills by about $30,000, according to a Post analysis of county records.

Matthew L. Cypher, who runs a real estate center at Georgetown University’s business school, said the delays and missed deadlines had produced self-inflicted costs for the Trump Organization. But, he said, the costs were too small to affect the company’s bottom line.

“I don’t think anybody’s going to lose any sleep, because it’s not huge dollars,” Cypher said.

Trump will be visiting Los Angeles later this week, according to news reports, but it is unclear whether he will stop at the golf club.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[fraurosena]

His mental state is deteriorating before our very eyes. It's dangerous. He has authoritarian tendencies and believes he can set himself up to be dictator of America. Before you know it, he'll be claiming to be God, or God's representative on Earth. And he'll believe it too. The horrific part of this is that normally someone with such mental decline, political idiocy and hallucinatory beliefs would be put into a psychiatric care facility, but instead the Repugliklans are propping him up and keeping him in place because he's their only ticket to hold on to power. 

 

[fraurosena]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Once inside the grounds, Zhang was approached by a receptionist and asked why she was there.

Epic fail on the part of the Secret Service if it took a receptionist to think something might be amiss. What if they hadn't approached her? How many people have already gotten into Mar-a-Loco unremarked before? 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

28 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

God's representative on Earth. 

What? I thought he already was White Jesus representative!

[smittykins]

White Republican Jesus:  “Verily I say unto thee, ‘Get a job, ya bum.’”

[GreyhoundFan]

Good grief: "Trump mocks Biden over allegations of inappropriate touching"

Spoiler

President Trump on Tuesday ridiculed former vice president Joe Biden over accusations that he has touched women inappropriately, in a preview of the attacks Biden might face if he pursues a 2020 presidential bid.

During a freewheeling speech at a fundraiser for the National Republican Congressional Committee, Trump at one point told a story about a conversation he had with a general.

“I said, ‘General, give me a kiss.’ I felt like Joe Biden. But I meant it,” Trump said, prompting laughter from the crowd.

At another point in his remarks, Trump mentioned the 2020 White House race and said that the only Democratic candidate who is not a socialist is “being taken care of pretty well by the socialists” — a nod to unproven claims by some Biden supporters that the recent accusations against him are being pushed by his political rivals.

“I was going to say, ‘Welcome to the world, Joe. You having a good time, Joe?’ ” Trump said.

More than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. The most recent accusation came in February, when Alva Johnson, a former staffer on Trump’s presidential campaign, said Trump kissed her against her will in 2016. Trump has denied all of the allegations against him.

Trump himself spoke graphically about forcibly kissing and groping women during a 2005 conversation that was caught on tape and surfaced during the 2016 campaign.

Trump’s broadsides Tuesday night underscore the political peril for Biden as he nears an announcement on a potential 2020 bid. The former vice president has long been known for his intimate physical style, but the appropriateness of his behavior toward women is coming under increasing scrutiny.

Late last week, Lucy Flores, a former Nevada state legislator, penned an essay in which she said that Biden approached her from behind during a 2014 campaign rally, placed his hands on her shoulders and planted a “big slow kiss” on the back of her head. On Monday, Amy Lappos, a former congressional aide to Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), said Biden put his hand around her neck and rubbed noses with her at a 2009 fundraiser.

Two more women, Caitlyn Caruso and D.J. Hill, have also accused Biden of touching them inappropriately, the New York Times reported Tuesday night.

Biden on Sunday said in a statement that he had offered “countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort” during his years in public life, “and not once — never — did I believe I acted inappropriately.”

During his nearly 90-minute speech Tuesday night, Trump took a number of swipes at Democrats — and also made some remarks that probably raised the eyebrows of members of his own party.

He took aim at the sweeping plan to combat climate change embraced by some Democrats, joking, “If they beat me with the Green New Deal, I deserve to lose.”

He also said that when he started running for president, the GOP was “the party of the rich person,” and claimed that Republican candidates were losing because there weren’t enough rich people.

Now, the Republican Party is “the party for all Americans . . . We’re the party of the American Dream,” Trump said.

He doubled down on his plan for Republicans to make a vote on a new health-care law their first act of the next Congress — despite the fact that congressional Republicans have little appetite to take on an issue that was a boon for Democrats in the 2018 midterms.

“You’re going to win your elections because of health care,” Trump told the crowd.

And he urged Republicans to be “more paranoid” about the way votes are counted in future elections, echoing the unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud he has made in the past.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

More about the vulnerabilities at Mar-a-Loco

Spoiler

Mar-a-Lago has seen it all.

Equestrian events. Christmas celebrations. “The most beautiful piece of chocolate cake.”

There’s a reason President Trump once called his members-only club, which boasts a spa and a salon, “the biggest and the hottest.” In more recent years, he has updated its moniker, labeling his Palm Beach getaway the “winter White House.”

The new title befits the increasingly solemn events that unfold in its chambers, furnished with gleaming chandeliers, Oriental rugs and 16th-century Flemish tapestries. It’s where Trump has prepared to address the nation. It’s where he has interviewed candidates for positions in his administration. And it’s where he has conducted high-wire talks with world leaders, alfresco.

But security officials and intelligence experts have been warning for more than two years that Mar-a-Lago is ill-suited for statecraft. Guests stream through its doors without a security clearance. Internet protections have been found similarly incomplete, reportedly marked by weakly encrypted WiFi networks, wireless printers unguarded by passwords and insecure databases that could provide access to sensitive information about the club’s staff and members.

The club set aside just $442,931 for security in 2016, according to a joint investigation by ProPublica and Gizmodo. That’s a fraction of the $64 million spent by the military that year simply on updating the networks at the White House and at Camp David, the more traditional presidential retreat, nestled in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland.

“Any half-decent hacker could break into Mar-a-Lago,” the investigation concluded.

Fears that Mar-a-Lago could be susceptible to a breach mounted on Saturday, when Secret Service agents arrested a Chinese woman who had eluded security and gained access to the reception area of the club.

According to a criminal complaint filed on Monday, Yujing Zhang was carrying four cellphones, two passports and a thumb drive infected with malicious software. She was only stopped because a receptionist knew that there was no United Nations Chinese American Association event later that evening, which Zhang had said was her reason for being on the premises.

The president himself was not in danger, Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent, said on CNN, even though the woman had cracked the agency’s outer ring among several “concentric rings of protection.”

But the Secret Service said its power was limited at the winter White House.

“The Secret Service does not determine who is invited or welcome at Mar-a-Lago; this is the responsibility of the host entity,” the agency noted in a statement on Tuesday. “The Mar-a-Lago club management determines which members and guests are granted access to the property.”

The result has been a collision between Trump’s public duties and his freewheeling life in his private palace.

Democrats decry the financial burden of the president’s double life, as well as the prospect that he could be using his office to drive business to his commercial venture. Each jaunt to South Florida saddles taxpayers with an average $3.4 million, according to a report released in February by the Government Accountability Office.

“The bottom line is the president’s the president, no matter where he goes, and he doesn’t get to control the level of cost and security that may come along with that,” Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said in response to a query about whether the president could save money by working from the White House.

But there are questions, too, about less calculable costs.

These came to the fore in February 2017 when Mar-a-Lago — which has been everything from a wedding venue to the site of New Year’s Eve bacchanalia — was briefly transformed into the Situation Room.

Guests at the country club snapped photos of Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe huddling over dinner about their response to a ballistic missile test by North Korea. The chaotic scene on the dining terrace was captured in a Facebook post by Richard DeAgazio, a retired investor and club member from the Boston area.

“HOLY MOLY,” the club patron wrote, uploading photos of Trump talking on his phone and of the two leaders examining documents by the light of an aide’s cellphone. “It was fascinating to watch the flurry of activity at dinner when the news came that North Korea had launched a missile in the direction of Japan.”

Democrats were less enthusiastic.

“There’s no excuse for letting an international crisis play out in front of a bunch of country club members like dinner theater,” then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California wrote in a tweet at the time.

The same weekend, DeAgazio posted a photograph of himself at Mar-a-Lago with the military aide who carries the “nuclear football,” an aluminum briefcase wrapped in leather that contains the equipment necessary to launch nuclear weapons.

The hotel guest identified the aide-de-camp by his first name and pronounced him “the Man.”

The viral documentation of the inner workings of American diplomacy and military strategy prompted Democrats to request a review of security procedures at Mar-a-Lago, covering not only clearance for guests but also “telephonic, electronic, and any other communication by President Trump and his staff.”

In January, the Government Accountability Office provided insight into the different levels of screening that take place at the resort. There is an outer layer allowing access to general grounds, a middle layer covering specific rooms that the president may visit and an inner layer that surrounds the president’s personal room. The report also indicated that the Secret Service and the Department of Defense share responsibility for ensuring that the president has secure means of communication and secure areas for handling classified information at Mar-a-Lago. But the specific details, it said, were privileged.

Abe is hardly the only world leader hosted by Trump at Mar-a-Lago. In the spring of 2017, Trump discussed the situation in Syria with Chinese President Xi Jinping over “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake you have ever seen.”

The investigation by ProPublica and Gizmodo found digital security wanting at the resort.

Part of their study was conducted from a speedboat parked 800 feet from the grassy expanse of Mar-a-Lago. From the azure waters of the Florida coast, they were able to reach three weakly encrypted WiFi networks.

“We could have hacked them in less than five minutes, but we refrained,” the story said, also warning, “Sophisticated attackers could take advantage of vulnerabilities in the WiFi networks to take over devices like computers or smartphones and use them to record conversations involving anyone on the premises.”

A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization said the conglomerate follows “cybersecurity best practices,” according to the report.

Yet Trump properties have been targeted by numerous hacks. One breach, between August 2016 and March 2017, exposed the names, addresses, phone numbers and credit card numbers and expiration dates of guests at 14 Trump properties, including hotels in more than one country.

Meanwhile, security has been beefed up in Palm Beach, including the presence of Secret Service agents armed with rifles watching from Coast Guard boats on the nearby Intracoastal Waterway.

Still, the Secret Service has said it does not keep visitor logs for guests at the resort.

And it appears that Trump’s digital tendencies have not fully evolved with his ascension to the Oval Office. When he travels, the president enjoys access to highly advanced, secure communications technology. But it’s not clear that Trump, who leveled a baseless accusation that his predecessor had wiretapped him, always follows best practices. An analysis by a website that tracks news about Android devices raised questions about the model employed by the president, and whether it passes muster for classified use.

Digital technology has become a battleground ensnaring leaders across the globe, from Hillary Clinton, whose private communications were hacked during the 2016 election, to French President Emmanuel Macron, whose campaign was subject to a massive leak two days before a pivotal vote. This past winter, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said parliamentary computer networks had been penetrated in that country.

Less sophisticated attempts to trespass on Mar-a-Lago are no less revelatory of the security risks at the president’s private club.

In January, a 30-year-old man drove up to the resort, parked near the service entrance, approached a Secret Service agent and explained that he needed to speak with the president about his “$6.3 trillion.” He was arrested on a trespassing charge, as local media reported.

Two years earlier, just before Trump’s inauguration, a 48-year-old woman sneaked onto the club grounds three times to smear bananas on cars and leave an explicit message on a hotel computer. She told police that she wanted to “make a statement regarding her being cyberattacked,” the Palm Beach Daily News reported. She was arrested on a trespassing charge.

 

[formergothardite]

5 hours ago, fraurosena said:

How many people have already gotten into Mar-a-Loco unremarked before? 

This is exactly what my husband said. How many have gotten in and not gotten caught. It was a fluke that this person got caught. Our national security is shit right now. I realize that when Obama was in office there was that time that the Real House Wife of Washington managed to sneak into a dinner but a huge deal was made out of that. No one seems to be making a big deal about this and it is 100 times worse. 

 

[fraurosena]

16 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“Any half-decent hacker could break into Mar-a-Lago,” the investigation concluded.

Could? You can bet that they already have! Don't think that because one attentive receptionist happened to be on working and almost accidentally caught a bad actor with malware who had easily gained access, that this is the first time a bad actor got in, physically, digitally or otherwise. How much spyware has already been installed? How much sensitive information is already in the hands of foreign entities that don't have America's best interests at heart?

One of the first things the new administration has to do is ensure that all the security breaches are found and closed. That means in the WH, in Mar a Loco, Bedminster and anywhere else the presidunce and his entourage have stayed. At the same time the damage to national (and international) security needs to be assessed and, where possible, addressed. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

Quote

“Any half-decent hacker could break into Mar-a-Lago,” the investigation concluded.

A tweeter noted this morning that, based on her experience, one can access Merde-a-Loco's WiFi without a password while passing by on a boat. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Ozlsn]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Democrats decry the financial burden of the president’s double life, as well as the prospect that he could be using his office to drive business to his commercial venture.

"Prospect"?

Agreed that this woman was probably not the only one who has gotten through and that the networks are probably compromised.

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

1. But Trump must have enough time for his Fox News watching and tweeting habits.

2. As hard as Trump is working to screw up the US aren't we glad that he only has these two things on his schedule? It seems like we're watching him fall apart before our very eyes. If he spent time during the day actually working we might find herself at war with Canada or Switzerland!

[formergothardite]

35 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

It seems like we're watching him fall apart before our very eyes.

My one hope for the coming election is that Trump seems to be getting tired and bored with the whole president thing. I don't think he will have the energy to campaign like he did last time. 

Since he isn't being president. I wonder who is. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump leaves Washington reeling with policy whiplash as he struggles with domestic agenda"

Spoiler

President Trump has left his advisers and GOP lawmakers reeling from policy whiplash in recent days, cycling through new ideas on health care and immigration that underscore his continuing struggle to pursue a coherent domestic agenda in a divided Washington.

Trump surprised Republicans last week with a new pledge to replace the Affordable Care Act, only to backtrack Tuesday after being confronted with the realities of another all-consuming fight over President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law on Capitol Hill.

Trump has also sent aides and a large part of the federal bureaucracy scrambling to respond to his expansive vow to close the entire U.S.-Mexico border this week unless “ALL illegal immigration” is halted by Mexico. Alarmed lawmakers and business leaders warned that any such move would be catastrophic for the U.S. economy, and administration officials signaled Tuesday that they were seeking more-limited options to address a surge in migration at the border.

Even efforts on which the White House has worked closely with congressional GOP leaders have seen setbacks, such as a massive disaster funding bill that stalled Monday amid partisan sniping over aid to Puerto Rico. Trump has inflamed the fight by repeatedly denigrating the island’s leadership and implying that Puerto Rico — a U.S. territory — is separate from the United States.

The battles illustrate the difficulties Trump and Republicans have had in adjusting to Democratic control of the House after two years of uncontested GOP power in Congress and the White House. But many Republicans say they have adapted to the pandemonium — learning to privately sway Trump by warning him of the consequences of his policy declarations, many of which are launched in late-night or early-morning tweets.

GOP lawmakers, for instance, think they have successfully headed off any major health-care effort, which they fear would open them up to damaging Democratic attacks. Even so, a legal challenge targeting the Obama-era health law, and backed by the Trump administration, virtually ensures that the issue will remain at the forefront of the president’s reelection campaign.

“Obviously this is a president who tends sometimes to move on his own and then obviously has some of those conversations later,” Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said Tuesday of Trump’s recent push on health care and the border. “That’s the dynamic that everybody up here deals with.” 

Trump had several such conversations on replacing the health law, commonly known as Obamacare, amid days of upbeat proclamations that the GOP would become the “Party of Healthcare.” By late Monday night — and in subsequent comments in the Oval Office on Tuesday — Trump bowed to the political pressure by announcing he would rather vote on health care after the 2020 elections.

“If we get back the House, and on the assumption we keep the Senate and we keep the presidency — which I hope are two good assumptions — we’re going to have phenomenal health care,” Trump said as he sat next to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the Oval Office. 

He promised that Republicans will unveil their Obamacare replacement plan “at the appropriate time” and blamed Democrats for turning health care into a political issue. 

Despite the punt, officials at the White House continued meetings to discuss a potential health-care plan, led by Domestic Policy Council chief Joe Grogan, and circulated principles earlier Tuesday, according to a senior aide.

But congressional Republicans made it clear they would direct their attention elsewhere. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), whom Trump tapped last week as one of his point men on health care in the Senate, instead rolled out legislation Tuesday to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. 

When asked about Trump’s idea to hold a vote on a health-care plan after the election, Scott responded: “I think you’d have to ask the president. I know what I’m going to focus on. I’m going to focus on drug prices.” 

One gen­esis of Trump’s public retreat was private nudging from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who along with most Senate Republicans was displeased by the unexpected health-care push. 

In at least two phone calls in recent days, McConnell pressed Trump to listen to those around him — his advisers, senators and political strategists — who were urging the president to reverse course on health care, according to an official familiar with the conversation. McConnell questioned why Republicans would want an intraparty fight over health care at a time when Democrats are divided on their own proposals, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private calls. 

During a conversation Monday, the majority leader made the case that while the GOP-led Senate could pass a health-care bill endorsed by Trump, the president would not be able to support the product that would emerge from the House once Democrats got their hands on it, the official said.

McConnell told reporters Tuesday that he had a “good conversation” with Trump and that he and the president were now on the same page.

“I made it clear to him we were not going to be doing that in the Senate,” McConnell said of health care, stressing the challenges of writing legislation that could pass muster with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “We don’t have a misunderstanding about that.”

Even as Trump tries to steer the party’s policy agenda, GOP lawmakers have attempted to emphasize goals that broadly unify Republicans and either split Democrats or put them on the defensive.

This year, McConnell has held votes on the Green New Deal environmental plan — a vote Democrats derided as a political stunt — and a wide-ranging Middle East policy bill that divided Senate Democrats. This week, Senate Republicans plan to alter Senate rules so that dozens of Trump nominees in the administration and throughout the judiciary who have been stalled for months can be confirmed more quickly.

“Given that the president’s proposals range from the imprudent to the impractical, at best, congressional Republicans seem largely to be ignoring them in favor of their own priorities: nominations in the Senate, and highlighting Democratic radicalism and disunity in the House,” said Michael Steel, who worked under former House speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). 

Many in the GOP sympathize with Trump and his frustrations — and with his tendency to act on his own on immigration or to push Republicans on something they don’t want to do, like health care. 

“Listen, before the 2018 election, certainly in Wisconsin, I was saying, ‘Don’t elect Democrats to the House; if the Democrats take over the House all we’re going to be talking about is investigation, talk of impeachment, it won’t be about legislation, it won’t be about solving these problems,’ ” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). “I hate to say I was right.”

Still, some Republican senators have grown accustomed to not taking Trump’s threats seriously. 

One such threat was Trump’s vow to seal the border this week, which he reiterated in the Oval Office on Tuesday despite having been warned of the potential economic consequences by his top advisers. Senior White House officials are now examining how to exempt commercial trade from whatever border crackdown Trump might decide to pursue in coming days. 

Even as he insisted that Mexico must do more to stem the numbers of migrants arriving on the southern U.S. border, Trump softened the threat slightly, saying Tuesday that he would close “large sections of the border, maybe not all of it.” 

“It’s the only way we’re getting a response, and I’m ready to do it,” Trump said. “And I will say this: Many people want me to do it.”

On Capitol Hill, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) brushed off Trump’s remarks: “Until he closes the border, I don’t believe it.” 

Trump’s comments so alarmed some Republicans that they began dialing the White House to wave the president off his latest threat. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said he had a call in to the White House and was hoping to speak with Trump later Tuesday to detail his concerns about the potential “unintended consequences” of shutting down the border. 

“I understand the president’s frustration, I share it,” said Cornyn, a former party leader. “But I think there are more targeted ways to address it than just a blunt instrument like that.”

 

2 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

My one hope for the coming election is that Trump seems to be getting tired and bored with the whole president thing. I don't think he will have the energy to campaign like he did last time. 

Since he isn't being president. I wonder who is. 

I agree about him being tired and bored. I'm guessing several people are performing as shadow president: Jarvanka, Stephen Miller, Mick Mulvaney, maybe some others.

[Dandruff]

I'm not quite as optimistic.  While he doesn't seem to enjoy being President, I believe he does enjoy campaigning.  It's an opportunity to incite, lie, and insult people without the expectation of doing real work.  It's actually an excuse to not do real work.

[GreyhoundFan]

From Jennifer Rubin: "Trump is unraveling before our eyes. He isn’t fit for reelection."

Spoiler

Far too much media time has been devoted to mulling whether former vice president Joe Biden, as svelte and vigorous as he has ever been and showing no sign of mental deterioration, is too old to run for president and not nearly enough considering whether President Trump is.

In the past 24 hours, Trump — who will be 74 in November 2020 and is “tired,” according to aides — has:

• Falsely declared multiple times that his father was born in Germany. (Fred Trump was born in New York.)
• Declared that wind turbines cause cancer.
• Confused “origins” and “oranges” in asking reporters to look into the “oranges of the Mueller report.”
• Told Republicans to be more “paranoid” about vote-counting.

He is increasingly incoherent. The Post quotes him at a Republican event on Tuesday: “We’re going into the war with some socialist. It looks like the only non, sort of, heavy socialist is being taken care of pretty well by the socialists, they got to him, our former vice president. I was going to call him, I don’t know him well, I was going to say ‘Welcome to the world Joe, you having a good time?'” Even when attempting to defend himself, he emits spurts of disconnected thoughts. “Now you look at that [presidential announcement] speech and you see what’s happening and that speech was so tame compared to what is happening now, that trek up is one of the great treacherous treks anywhere, and Mexico has now, because they don’t want the border closed.”

I don’t presume to diagnose him or to render judgment on his health. All of us, however, should evaluate his words and actions. If you had a relative who spoke this way, you would urge him to get checked out or advise him to slow down (although Trump’s schedule, with its hours of “executive time," is already lighter than the schedules of many retirees). Remember that this guy is the commander in chief, holder of the nuclear codes.

Even Republicans realize that his decisions are more erratic and illogical than ever. He doubled down on his intention to invalidate the Affordable Care Act in the courts, then insisted he had a terrific replacement, next said he would assign others to figure out the plan and take a vote before the 2020 election, and finally declared that they would vote on such a (nonexistent) bill after the 2020 election. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was compelled to stage an intervention and tell him there would be no vote before 2020. (I suppose if the court strikes down Obamacare before that, McConnell would tell 20 million people covered by Obamacare to fend for themselves.)

Trump, even after declaring an “emergency” and robbing the Pentagon budget to pay for a border wall, declares we are at a “breaking point” and wants to close the border. That comes as news to his aides, who know you can’t close a 1,900-mile border, and in saying so risk causing a panic flight to get across before such an order. Even Trump staffers know that if you could pull it off, closing the border would crash the economy. As to the latter, Trump says he doesn’t care because security is more important than trade. (We’d have neither with his scheme.)

Collectively, we need to stop treating his conduct as normal. Politicians should start saying aloud what we all intuitively understand: Trump is unraveling before our eyes. There is reason to be concerned about how he’ll make it through the rest of his term. Giving him another four years is unimaginable.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s Takeover of the Republican Party Is Almost Complete"

Spoiler

On Election Day in 2016, the Republican Party was divided against itself, split over its nominee for president, Donald J. Trump.

In Ohio, a crucial battleground, the state party chairman had repeatedly chided Mr. Trump in public, amplifying the concerns of Gov. John Kasich, a Republican dissenter. In New Hampshire, the party chairman harbored deep, if largely private, misgivings about her party’s nominee. The Republican Party of Florida was listing, hobbled by local feuds and a rift between donors loyal to Senator Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush and those backing the man who humiliated both in the primaries.

Those power struggles have now been resolved in a one-sided fashion. In every state important to the 2020 race, Mr. Trump and his lieutenants are in firm control of the Republican electoral machinery, and they are taking steps to extend and tighten their grip.

It is, in every institutional sense, Mr. Trump’s party.

As Mr. Trump has prepared to embark on a difficult fight for re-election, a small but ferocious operation within his campaign has helped install loyal allies atop the most significant state parties and urged them to speak up loudly to discourage conservative criticism of Mr. Trump. The campaign has dispatched aides to state party conclaves, Republican executive committee meetings and fund-raising dinners, all with the aim of ensuring the delegates at next year’s convention in Charlotte, N.C., are utterly committed to Mr. Trump.

To Joe Gruters, who was co-chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign in Florida and now leads the state party, the local Republican Party is effectively a regional arm of the president’s re-election effort.

“I’ve had probably 10 conversations with the Trump team about the delegate selection process in Florida,” Mr. Gruters said, adding of a potential Republican primary battle, “The base of the party loves our president, and if anybody runs against him, they are going to get absolutely smashed.”

State and local Republican organizations typically operate below the radar of national politics, but they can be vital to the success of a presidential candidate. Party chairmen and their deputies are tasked with everything from raising money to deploying volunteers to knock on doors, and in many states they help choose delegates for the nominating convention.

For Mr. Trump, who prevailed in 2016 as an outsider with little connection to his party’s electoral apparatus, the ability to control the levers of Republican politics at the state level could make the difference in a close election or a contested primary. It also leaves other Republicans with precious little room to oppose Mr. Trump on his policy preferences or administrative whims — on matters from health care to the Mexican border — for fear of retribution from within the party.

Mr. Trump’s aides have focused most intently on heading off any dissent at the Charlotte convention: To that end, two of Mr. Trump’s top campaign aides, Bill Stepien and Justin Clark, have worked quietly but methodically in a series of states where control of the local party was up for grabs. They have lifted Mr. Trump’s allies even in deep-blue states like Massachusetts, and worked to make peace between competing pro-Trump factions in more competitive states such as Colorado.

The devotion to Mr. Trump was on clear display Saturday outside Denver, where the state party gathered to elect a new chairman. Though Mr. Trump’s unpopularity helped drive Colorado Republicans to deep losses last fall, there was no sign of unrest: Mr. Trump’s name was emblazoned on lapel pins and a flag toted by one candidate for the chairmanship, and his slogan — “Make America Great Again” — was printed on the red hat from which the candidates drew lots to determine their speaking order.

Mr. Trump himself stayed out of the race, and campaign aides sent the White House a short memo last month urging the president not to pick sides between allies after Representative Ken Buck, a deeply conservative candidate, lobbied administration officials for support.

But when Mr. Buck claimed victory in the race for chairman, he described his mission in terms of unflinching loyalty to the president.

“The key is that we make sure that the voters of Colorado understand the great job the president has done,” Mr. Buck said. “That is what my job is.”

Mr. Trump faces at least a quixotic challenge in the Republican primaries from William F. Weld, a moderate former governor of Massachusetts, and other Republicans have toyed with entering the race. But advisers to Mr. Trump view it as an urgent priority to maintain Republican support: With low approval ratings among voters at large, including educated whites who once leaned Republican, Mr. Trump can ill afford additional fractures on the right.

So far, loyalty has prevailed.

“There is no challenge to the president,” declared John Watson, a former supporter of Mr. Kasich who now leads the Georgia Republican Party. “The party is in near-unanimous lock step in support of him, certainly at the activist and delegate level.”

In some respects, the shift toward Mr. Trump in Republican state organizations has been organic, driven by the president’s immense popularity with the party’s most committed voters. In Arizona, an emerging presidential swing state, conservative activists in January ejected a chairman aligned with the Republican establishment in favor of Kelli Ward, a former Senate candidate with fringe views who tied herself closely to Mr. Trump.

But Mr. Trump and his aides have also taken a more active hand in shaping the party leadership around the country, mostly to their own great advantage, according to half a dozen Republicans briefed on the Trump campaign’s loyalty operation. A division of the Trump campaign known as the Delegates and Party Organization unit has closely tracked state party leadership elections and occasionally weighed in to help a preferred contender.

In Michigan, for instance, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, recently endorsed a former state legislator, Laura Cox, to take over Michigan’s discombobulated state party.

The Trump campaign has also taken steps to blunt the influence of a few Republican governors who are hostile to the president. In Massachusetts, Trump aides worked in January to help a hard-line candidate, Jim Lyons, win the chairmanship against a candidate linked closely to the state’s Republican governor, Charlie Baker, who is a critic of Mr. Trump. (As a candidate, Mr. Lyons vowed to “make the Massachusetts Republican Party great again.”)

In Maryland, where Gov. Larry Hogan has mused about challenging Mr. Trump, presidential loyalists in the party apparatus are prepared to flout Mr. Hogan’s wishes in selecting delegates. In Maryland and some other states, convention delegates are selected by a combination of primary voters and members of the state party committee — constituencies overwhelmingly supportive of Mr. Trump.

“No other candidate, no matter if it’s Governor Hogan, Bill Weld or anybody else, will get one single delegate out of Maryland,” said David Bossie, the state’s R.N.C. committeeman and an adviser to Mr. Trump.

Some states are so fully in the grips of Trump enthusiasts that the campaign has sought to keep Mr. Trump neutral in local races, out of concern that he could alienate one supportive faction or another. In Rhode Island last weekend, the campaign dispatched an aide to answer questions from party activists about Mr. Trump’s view of the race for state chairman, after Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary, reportedly made calls on behalf of a candidate who was ultimately defeated. The Trump campaign made clear that Mr. Spicer had been acting on his own, a person familiar with the conversations said.

Last month, several top Trump strategists, including Mr. Stepien and Mr. Clark, informed the president directly on the efforts to lock down party organizations for his re-election, people briefed on the meeting said. In a statement, Mr. Clark described the operation as part of a long run-up to the 2020 convention.

“Like any good campaign operation, we are working to ensure that state party chairs and delegates reflect the will of Republican voters, who support President Trump in record numbers,” Mr. Clark said. “Our goal is to pave the way for a convention in Charlotte that gives the president a multiday platform to share his achievements with 300 million Americans.”

Though the Republican National Committee has stopped short of formally endorsing Mr. Trump, state chairmen elected with the help of Mr. Trump’s campaign have defended him fiercely, even from Mr. Weld’s long-shot effort. When the former Massachusetts governor rolled out his campaign, Mr. Lyons blasted him harshly, as did Stephen Stepanek, a former co-chairman for the Trump campaign in New Hampshire who now leads that state’s Republican Party.

That hard-edge approach has stirred some discomfort in New Hampshire, where some traditional Republicans prize the state’s reputation for political independence and have resisted efforts to quash an open primary. Steve Duprey, a member of the Republican National Committee from the state, hosted Mr. Weld there in late March and argued that New Hampshire’s "special role” as an early-voting state required it to be open to candidates besides Mr. Trump. He said in an interview he believed primary competition was healthy, as a general matter.

“Our job is to be neutral and treat them all equally, period,” argued Mr. Duprey, who was a close adviser to John McCain.

There are still elements of the Republican Party that have yet to fall fully in line behind the president, Republicans acknowledge. The party suffered serious defections in 2018 among moderate white voters who have historically tended to support Republicans, and some of the party’s traditional financial backers have not yet committed to supporting him in 2020. Advisers to Mr. Trump acknowledge that mobilizing the party’s major-donor base remains one of the most important challenges for his campaign.

But there is no comparable reticence among the Republican Party’s field captains in the states. At the meeting in Colorado over the weekend, Vera Ortegon, the state’s R.N.C. committeewoman, alluded to the president’s nagging Republican critics in the form of a stern warning.

“If you know any Never Trumpers,” Ms. Ortegon said, “send them to me.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘You pay and you get in’: At Trump’s beach retreat, hundreds of customers — and growing security concerns"

Spoiler

Presidents used to vacation in seclusion — at a ranch in Texas or a beach house in Hawaii. Screening their visitors was relatively simple: The only people who came were friends and staff.

President Trump has added vast new complications by choosing to spend his weekends with his customers.

Trump stays at the Mar-a-Lago Club, a busy beachfront resort where his quarters are a short distance from the pool, the ballroom, and the “six star” seafood buffet. That decision — to use his Palm Beach, Fla., club as both a presidential retreat and a moneymaking resort — brings hundreds of members, overnight guests and partygoing strangers into the president’s “Winter White House” every weekend.

To protect the president, that requires the Secret Service to screen hundreds of would-be visitors against preapproved lists.

But to protect his business, it has also required the Secret Service to defer to Mar-a-Lago staffers and allow in some visitors who are not on the list.

Last weekend, that complex system of lists and exceptions broke down.

When a visitor approached the club, officers found she was not on the approved list — but let her in anyway after a Mar-a-Lago staffer suggested she might be the relative of a club member.

The woman, identified as Yujing Zhang, a Chinese national, was later arrested inside the club’s main building. Authorities said she was carrying four cellphones, a laptop and a thumb drive with malicious software.

“I’m surprised that she got in. But then again, I’m not surprised,” said Shannon Donnelly, the longtime society columnist for the Palm Beach Daily News who has covered Mar-a-Lago for years.

She described a situation in which the Secret Service is dealing with two missions, to keep the president safe and to keep his customers happy.

“It’s bound to happen” that people will slip through, Donnelly said. “There’s hundreds of people coming and going when there’s an event, and half of them are members — they’re not used to being stopped.”

On Wednesday, Trump said he had a brief meeting about the incident but said he was not concerned about potential espionage efforts aimed at Mar-a-Lago. He praised the Secret Service as well as the receptionist who first noticed something was amiss with Zhang.

“We have very good control,” he told reporters at the White House. “The person at the front desk did a very good job, to be honest with you.”

Zhang is in jail, charged with making a false statement to a federal officer and entering a restricted area. On Monday, a federal judge will decide whether she should remain in custody.

Counterintelligence agents at the FBI are also looking at Zhang to see whether they can find any information that would explain her behavior, according to people familiar with the matter.

On Wednesday, three top Senate Democrats asked FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to investigate whether foreign spies could exploit weaknesses at Mar-a-Lago to steal classified information. Zhang’s arrest “raises very serious questions regarding security vulnerabilities at Mar-a-Lago, which foreign intelligence services have reportedly targeted,” wrote Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.); Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee; and Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

Bernd Lembcke, Mar-a-Lago’s longtime managing director, did not respond to questions about the club’s security procedures, including whether members are checked to see whether they might be foreign agents. Neither did Trump Organization executives in New York.

Mar-a-Lago stretches the full width of narrow Palm Beach island, off the coast of South Florida. It features a beach club, a main building with dining and living rooms, two ballrooms, six hotel suites and an attached house where Trump lives.

There is a cap of 500 members. As of last year, joining required sponsorship by an existing member and a payment of $200,000 — an initiation fee that doubled the year Trump took office. The annual dues are about $14,000, according to members.

Trump has been to the club 22 times since he became president, according to a Washington Post tally.

On busy Saturdays in the winter and spring — like this past Saturday, when Zhang got in — there are hundreds of people arriving. Some are members, coming to swim, eat or play tennis.

Others are attending luncheons and galas, holding tickets that cost them hundreds or thousands of dollars. At first, these galas largely drew guests from Palm Beach’s pastel-colored social scene. These days, after a decline in that traditional banquet business, the galas are more commonly aimed at Trump’s fervid political fan base, which extends beyond the clubby island.

That busy schedule is what Trump wanted for Mar-a-Lago, according to one former senior Trump administration official. Even after he became president, Trump did not want Mar-a-Lago to become a place where visitors became uncomfortable.

So he kept it as it was — and made his aides uncomfortable instead.

“The president has no idea who most of the people around him at the club are,” said another White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. “You pay and you get in.”

When Trump is present, guests say, the first stop for visitors is a security screening in a parking lot across the street from the club.

There, past visitors said, guests give their names and identifications to Secret Service agents or police officers, who check them against a list supplied by the club. The checks are strict: One member said her 11-year-old grandson brings his passport with him when he comes to use the pool.

But visitors also described instances in which — if a name was not on the list — Mar-a-Lago security personnel would make exceptions if they knew the guest or found another staffer to vouch for them.

“Usually it’s the Mar-a-Lago people that are giving the go-ahead,” said one person familiar with the property who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering management. “If [the guest is] a familiar face, they would let them in.”

The Secret Service confirmed as much in its statement about Zhang’s arrest. “The Mar-a-Lago Club’s management determines which members and guests are granted access to the property,” the agency said.

The Secret Service has additional layers of protection around Trump. Agents stand outside the door to his residence, cordon off his table at dinner and surround him if he drops in to weddings or galas in the ballrooms. Guests cannot approach unless Trump waves them over.

“There’s no more access than they’d have than if he was in a restaurant,” said Ronald Kessler, an author who has known Trump for two decades. Kessler said his wife was yanked back by a Secret Service agent when they approached Trump’s table at Mar-a-Lago two years ago.

But, intelligence officials have said, a foreign spy might find Mar-a-Lago a gold mine — even if the spy never laid eyes on Trump. The club is full of Trump’s friends, aides and hangers-on; it could be bugged, or its computers hacked, if someone could get in the door.

In the case of Zhang, the Chinese woman arrested Saturday, she arrived at the first security checkpoint, in the parking lot across the street, and said she was headed to the club’s pool. She was not on the list. According to charging documents, a Mar-a-Lago staffer still allowed her in because the club “believed her to be the relative” of a club member whose name was also Zhang, prosecutors said.

Zhang was picked up by a club employee and driven in a golf cart to the main building. There, prosecutors said, a club receptionist stopped Zhang and asked her why she had come to the club.

Zhang said she had come from Shanghai to attend a “United Nations Friendship Event” at the club, at the invitation of a friend named “Charles.” But there was no such event scheduled, according to charging documents. The receptionist called over a Secret Service agent, the documents said, and Zhang then became “verbally aggressive” and was arrested.

Trump was in Palm Beach this past weekend, but at the time of Zhang’s entrance he was out of the club playing golf.

On Wednesday, authorities were still trying to understand her motivations.

One possibility: She really thought she had a ticket to an event at the club.

There is a Chinese entrepreneur named Charles Li, with a group called the United Nations Chinese Friendship Association, who has sold package tours in China that included tickets to galas at Mar-a-Lago, according to reporting by the Miami Herald.

The Washington Post sought to reach Li at the Beijing address listed for the association, but the building’s management said it had no such tenant.

The Post also sent messages through the Chinese social media network WeChat to a number listed for Li. When The Post asked whether this number belonged to Charles Li, the user sent back a photo of Trump doing a thumbs-up.

But then, when The Post asked about Zhang, the account did not respond, and then it blocked The Post from further contact.

Could Zhang have been at Mar-a-Lago as part of a foreign intelligence operation? Former U.S. counterintelligence officials said that was possible — but noted that it appeared to be an unsophisticated effort, lame enough to be foiled by a receptionist.

“I don’t know if it’s a sanctioned activity by the Chinese government, but there’s no doubt it’s some type of potential intelligence operation,” said Robert Anderson, a former senior FBI counterintelligence official. He is now chief executive of Cyber Defense Labs in Dallas.

He also called it “very disturbing” for someone “with that shoddy of a story to get by two or three levels of security” at a facility where the president could be in attendance. “How in the heck does that happen?”

 

[fraurosena]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm guessing several people are performing as shadow president: Jarvanka, Stephen Miller, Mick Mulvaney, maybe some others.

Sadly, I believe these are the most important shadow presidents: Putin, MBS and Xi Jingping. 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

I don't remember if someone posted this before. But I think it's worth a repeat. The whole thread is a great read. 

 

[47of74]

Malware-a-Tugjob. Filing away for future use.