Trump 44: Finally on Trial

[GreyhoundFan]

Good one from Max Boot: "These 7 impulses explain Trump’s inexplicable foreign policy'

Spoiler

The Iraqi government is now pushing for a withdrawal of U.S troops. You would think President Trump would be ecstatic, given his repeated promises to bring troops “home from the ridiculous & costly Endless Wars.” But he is actually exerting maximum pressure to keep the troops in Iraq, even going so far as to threaten economic sanctions if they get kicked out. Why? I suspect it’s because his desire to look strong trumps, so to speak, his isolationism: He only wants the troops out if it’s his initiative.

To rational observers, Trump’s approach to Iraq is emblematic of a foreign policy that makes no sense. But while Trump’s instincts are incoherent and illogical, they are not entirely random. Highly trained Trumpologists are able to spot patterns just as zoologists do when they study primate behavior.

The Rosetta Stone of Trump foreign policy studies is a Politico article published four years ago by Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution. He found that Trump has “three key arguments that he returns to time and again”: “He is deeply unhappy with America’s military alliances and feels the United States is overcommitted around the world. He feels that America is disadvantaged by the global economy. And he is sympathetic to authoritarian strongmen.” That assessment, written before candidate Trump had won a single primary, holds up remarkably well as he seeks a second term.

1. Unhappy with our military alliances? Check. Trump has repeatedly trashed NATO and is demanding that South Korea pay billions more for the privilege of being protected by U.S. troops.

2. Aggrieved about the global economy? Check. Trump kneecapped the World Trade Organization, left the Trans-Pacific Partnership and imposed tariffs on countries from Canada to China.

3. Sympathetic to strongmen? Check. Trump has praised dictators such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for being “strong,” said he is “in love” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and covered up for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the murder of Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. A corollary: Trump doesn’t care about human rights save in a few isolated instances (viz., Venezuela and Iran) when he sees them as a useful cudgel against an enemy regime.

To Wright’s list I would add a few other tendencies — I wouldn’t dignify them by calling them ideas — that have become evident over the past three years:

4. Branding rocks, substance walks. Trump scuttled the North American Free Trade Agreement only to reconstitute it, virtually unchanged, as the USMCA (U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement) — which, as he helpfully noted, rhymes with “YMCA.” Bragging “I’m good at names,” Trump last week unveiled his latest brainstorm: NATOME, i.e., “NATO” plus “Middle East.” Trump did not offer any explanation of who would join this organization or how it would work. But he did say it has “a beautiful name.” What more do you need? Even in deciding which terrorists to target, a former CIA officer writes at Just Security, Trump focused on “big names” rather than the most important operatives.

5. Trump First. His foreign policy is entirely motivated by what will help him personally. He was impeached for trying to blackmail Ukraine into smearing Joe Biden. The same impulse is evident, in less larcenous form, in his pro-Israel policy, which is designed to win the support of Jewish donors and evangelical Christian voters, and his confrontational policy in Venezuela, designed to win the support of Florida voters. Given Trump’s track record, there are widespread suspicions that he’s “wagging the dog” with Iran. Indeed, according to the Wall Street Journal, Trump “told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. [Qasem] Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial.”

6. Always look strong. In June 2019, Trump said he was “cocked and loaded” to strike Iran in retaliation for shooting down a U.S. drone, but he called back the airstrike at the last minute because he didn’t want to get embroiled in a war. Criticism for looking weak helped spur him to assassinate Soleimani. Trump’s obsession with looking strong also explains his pardons for war criminals, threats to bomb cultural sites, and refusal to apologize for false and defamatory statements.

7. Beat Obama. Many have suggested that Trump was motivated to run for president after President Barack Obama humiliated him at the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner. Trump remains obsessed with his predecessor, who is accorded the respect Trump is denied. Trump was eager to exit the Iran nuclear deal because Obama had negotiated it and was ready to kill Soleimani to avoid “another Benghazi.” When criticized for his confrontation with Iran, he blamed — who else? — Obama.

These seven impulses define Trump’s foreign policy, such as it is. If I had to give a name to his worldview, it would be “violent isolationism” — and, yes, that’s as oxymoronic as it sounds. He does whatever appears convenient to him at the moment. If there is one principle that Trump always eschews, it’s consistency. Thus he may be near war with Iran now, but no one should be surprised if he falls in love with the ayatollahs before long — i.e., if he does precisely what he now accuses Democrats of doing. Projection, after all, is another one of his dubious character traits.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Christian advocates booked Trump hotel to coincide with White House briefing"

Spoiler

When dozens of Catholic leaders prepared to meet with Trump administration officials last month, one advocacy group planned a reception at an increasingly common stopping point for conservative religious groups in Washington: President Trump’s D.C. hotel.

CatholicVote, a political action group that lobbies on behalf of candidates who oppose abortion and same-sex marriage, held a 50-person afternoon reception on Dec. 16, the same day it and other Catholic groups met administrative officials for a briefing on “religious freedom,” according to internal hotel documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The afternoon reception, offering drinks and appetizers including beef Wellington and jumbo shrimp cocktail, was organized by former Republican congressman Tim Huelskamp, the group’s senior political adviser, according to the documents.

Huelskamp, a former chairman of the House Tea Party Caucus, is known for his strong social conservatism, including opposition to same-sex marriage.

CatholicVote selected the Trump hotel not to curry political favor with the administration but because it was a nice hotel near the White House, said a spokesman for the group, Joshua Mercer.

“It’s pretty simple, actually. It was a beautiful venue with close proximity to the White House,” he said.

The event was modest by luxury hotel standards. Documents show it probably cost at least $2,500 but not the tens of thousands of dollars that large room bookings and events can bring luxury hotels. Mercer declined to provide a total of the group’s spending at the hotel. A Trump Organization spokeswoman did not return a request for comment.

CatholicVote is the latest in a long line of conservative religious organizations to book an event at the Trump hotel while trying to build support for its cause in Washington, causing concern among ethics experts, government watchdog groups and congressional Democrats.

Other religious groups that have booked events at the hotel during Trump’s presidency include the Museum of the Bible, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Revival Outside the Walls Ministry, the First Liberty Institute and the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle, according to hotel documents and news reports.

CatholicVote is not connected to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, as the bishops of the U.S. Catholic Church have their own lobbying efforts. Recently the president of CatholicVote announced plans to use cellphone tracking data to target Christian voters in key states this year.

At the Dec. 16 briefing, held in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building the day of CatholicVote’s hotel reception, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and attendees discussed legislation introduced by House Republicans earlier in December. Called the Fairness for All Act, the bill attempts to balance LGBTQ protections with concerns of conservative religious leaders, according to the Catholic Telegraph.

LGBTQ advocates oppose the legislation, and some take issue with the business that conservative religious groups are booking at Trump’s hotel.

“The reality is Catholic voters overwhelmingly support full non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people,” Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national group headquartered in the District that advocates for LGTBQ rights, said in a statement.

David called CatholicVote’s booking of the Trump hotel shameful and said “the fact that this corrupt back channel exists in the first place is the deeper problem.”

CatholicVote’s opposition to LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections appears to be out of step with the majority of Catholics. Roughly 7 in 10 American Catholics support laws protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people against discrimination, according to 2018 polling from the Public Religion Research Institute.

Critics of Trump have routinely raised concerns about special interest groups currying favor with the administration by spending money at the president’s hotel, which he still owns because he retained his stake in his business when he entered the White House.

The president’s company, now run by his adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, is trying to sell its lease to the hotel, which operates in a federally owned building, the Old Post Office Pavilion, on a lease the company signed in 2013. The deadline for bids is Jan. 23.

Last week, House Democrats Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon and Dina Titus of Nevada stepped up the pressure by announcing they plan to hold a Jan. 28 hearing on the General Services Administration’s withholding of documents related to the hotel.

“In addition to discussing GSA’s development and execution of the OPO lease, we will examine GSA’s role in the Trump Organization’s current effort to sell the OPO lease,” the Democrats said in a statement.

I love how they give proximity to the WH as the reason they held the event at Agolf Twitler's hotel. Um, the Willard is closer and way nicer.

[JMarie]

23 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

No one needs to run their dishwasher cycle 10 times, and the president, who has surely NEVER  not washed a dish in 50 years, is under the impression that the way to get cleaner dishes is to maniacally press the start button on the dishwasher over and over again, which is not how dishwashers work.

Fixed it for you

[GreyhoundFan]

Another great article about Twitler's hotel: "‘It was like a breeding ground’: Trump hotel’s mix of GOP insiders and hangers-on helped give rise to impeachment episodes"

Spoiler

They are key locations in the drama that led to President Trump’s impeachment: the steakhouse table where Trump’s private lawyer set out a nameplate, “Rudolph W. Giuliani, Private Office.” The upstairs hideaway, where Giuliani’s team planned its outreach to Ukraine.

And the expensive bar, where Giuliani’s team met an odd figure: Robert F. Hyde, a big-talking ex-Marine who claimed to have the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under surveillance.

All three places are within 300 yards of each other, in the lobby of the Trump International Hotel.

For three years, President Trump’s hotel near the White House has been a loose, anybody-welcome hangout for Republicans: Candidates raise money in the ballrooms. Congressmen and lobbyists dine in the steakhouse. Hangers-on wait at the bar, taking selfies in “#americaslivingroom.”

That arrangement worked for Republicans, because it compressed a city’s worth of networking into one room. It worked for Trump, because he converted political allies into private customers.

But the hotel’s atmosphere of blurred lines — mixing the public interest with Trump’s private interests, and mixing the GOP’s leaders and its wannabe fringes — helped give rise to a scandal that threatens to overshadow Trump’s presidency.

Giuliani and his team didn’t just meet at the Trump hotel. They embodied its world.

“I spent two years going to Washington and I didn’t see the monuments,” said Lev Parnas, who was a central figure in Giuliani’s effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rival, former vice president Joe Biden. “All I saw was the Trump hotel.”

Trump opened his hotel before he won the presidency, having spent more than $200 million to renovate the government-owned Old Post Office building near the White House. After he won, Trump kept his ownership of the hotel, operated under a federal lease.

But its business model had to change sharply, according to hotel employees.

Democrats wouldn’t stay in the hotel rooms. Many major corporations and associations wouldn’t rent the ballrooms, worried about alienating liberal customers.

They shifted to focus on the part of the business that was thriving: the lobby, with its bar and BLT Prime steakhouse.

The place where pro-Trump Republicans see and be seen.

“There were many, many of them that were just there, who we just happened to run into,” said Seth Morrison, executive director of the Orange County, Calif., Lincoln Club. Morrison said his group stayed at the Trump hotel last year on its biannual Washington trip, and encountered a slew of candidates and conservative TV personalities in the lobby. “Eric Bolling was there for like three days in the lobby,” Morrison said of the conservative commentator.

Instead of being a hotel with a lobby, the Trump property became a lobby with a hotel attached.

It raised prices at the lobby bar: Candied bacon went from $14 to $22. The most expensive cocktail on the menu had been $21. Then they added one for $100, with caviar in it.

The hotel also spent big on upgrades to the lobby and restaurant: $264,000 for new lobby furniture. An additional $24,000 on carpets in the first-floor hallways. And $15,000 for a new ice-cream maker for dessert specials, according to hotel documents obtained by The Washington Post. At the same time, the hotel had to shut down its outdoor patio because of anti-Trump protesters.

Just as Republican business was reshaping the Trump hotel, the Trump hotel was changing the GOP — by bottling up its top leaders with any wannabe who sat at the bar.

“POTUS doesn’t know, or maybe doesn’t care, but that hotel is the root of many of his problems,” said one Republican who is close to Giuliani and Trump, and spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve relationships with them.

Trump himself has come to the hotel at least 18 times, including for three of his own campaign fundraisers, where he is both the candidate and the caterer.

In addition, top GOP-aligned lobbyists such as Brian Ballard and Jeff Miller also work the room. And Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel convenes some of the party’s top operatives for a monthly “off-the-record dinner,” in a private room at the hotel. Over wine and steak — the price tag is about $3,000 per month and paid for by the RNC, officials say — party officials, lobbyists, White House aides, officials leading Republican super PACs and congressional political leaders meet to talk business.

“You’ve got top confidants of the president hanging out in the hotel lobby, and you can mingle with them for the price of a $20 glass of wine,” said Zach Everson, a journalist who chronicles the Trump hotel’s mixing of politics and business on the blog 1100 Pennsylvania. By Everson’s count, 25 people who have served in Trump’s Cabinet have visited the hotel, along with 30 of the 53 Republicans in the Senate.

No figure embodied that mixing better than Giuliani, the former New York mayor who has reinvented himself as a lawyer, fixer and off-the-books emissary for Trump.

“Rudy is probably the most senior person who’s readily accessible to the public for the price of a drink,” Everson said.

Giuliani claimed enormous private influence. But at the Trump hotel, he sat out in public, spending hours at his “private office,” a table in the lobby steakhouse’s bar. One former Trump hotel staffer said that Giuliani was so comfortable there that he sometimes left without paying — “like he was at home.” The restaurant often had to eat the bill, the former employee said — who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve relationships in the hospitality business.

At that table, Giuliani met repeatedly with Parnas and Igor Fruman, a pair of Soviet-born Americans who were seeking influence in Republican politics — and helping Giuliani pressure Ukraine to provide dirt on Biden. On the day Parnas and Fruman were arrested, charged with campaign-finance violations unrelated to Ukraine, they had previously had lunch at the Trump hotel.

“It was like a breeding ground at the Trump hotel,” Parnas told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in an interview Wednesday night. “You would see the same people every day, all the same congressmen that supported the president would be there, nobody else.”

When the group needed more privacy, Parnas told Maddow, they retreated to a private space: “our BLT office on the second floor.”

“At the Trump hotel?” Maddow asked.

“At the Trump hotel,” Parnas said.

Parnas also met with Trump in one of the hotel’s luxury suites, at a “roundtable” organized by the pro-Trump super PAC America First Actions, according to people familiar with the meeting. Parnas is now facing federal campaign-finance charges, and emerged as a key witness against Trump in the days before Trump’s impeachment trial begins.

If Giuliani was one of the most powerful Republicans in the lobby, then Hyde — the ex-Marine from Connecticut — was one of the least. But his story illustrates how the Trump hotel allows fringe characters to rise in influence, just by being in the right place.

Hyde is a Republican donor and long-shot congressional candidate who began hanging out at the hotel — along with other Trump properties — and posting photos of himself with GOP figures. He began to date Rabia Kazan, a onetime pro-Trump activist he met there.

“Trump is like a cult leader, and people go to the hotel to show their loyalty and love for him,” Kazan said. Their relationship ended after several weeks, Kazan said.

In the past year, Hyde was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital in Florida, and was hit with a restraining order in Washington for allegedly harassing a former business associate, according to court and police records.

Hyde sent Parnas texts saying that he had Marie Yovanovitch — then the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a perceived obstacle to Giuliani’s plans — under surveillance in Kyiv. Hyde has since said he was joking.

Where did Parnas link up with somebody like that?

“At the Trump hotel,” Parnas told Maddow. “He was a regular at the bar.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

More interesting info from the new book, "A Very Stable Genius". "‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals"

Spoiler

This article is adapted from “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America,” which will be published on Jan. 21 by Penguin Press.

There is no more sacred room for military officers than 2E924 of the Pentagon, a windowless and secure vault where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet regularly to wrestle with classified matters. Its more common name is “the Tank.” The Tank resembles a small corporate boardroom, with a gleaming golden oak table, leather swivel armchairs and other mid-century stylings. Inside its walls, flag officers observe a reverence and decorum for the wrenching decisions that have been made there.

Hanging prominently on one of the walls is The Peacemakers, a painting that depicts an 1865 Civil War strategy session with President Abraham Lincoln and his three service chiefs — Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, and Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. One hundred fifty-­two years after Lincoln hatched plans to preserve the Union, President Trump’s advisers staged an intervention inside the Tank to try to preserve the world order.

By that point, six months into his administration, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had grown alarmed by gaping holes in Trump’s knowledge of history, especially the key alliances forged following World War II. Trump had dismissed allies as worthless, cozied up to authoritarian regimes in Russia and elsewhere, and advocated withdrawing troops from strategic outposts and active theaters alike.

Trump organized his unorthodox worldview under the simplistic banner of “America First,” but Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn feared his proposals were rash, barely considered, and a danger to America’s superpower standing. They also felt that many of Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history and, even, where countries were located. To have a useful discussion with him, the trio agreed, they had to create a basic knowledge, a shared language.

So on July 20, 2017, Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and Cohn had carefully organized as a tailored tutorial. What happened inside the Tank that day crystallized the commander in chief’s berating, derisive and dismissive manner, foreshadowing decisions such as the one earlier this month that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. The Tank meeting was a turning point in Trump’s presidency. Rather than getting him to appreciate America’s traditional role and alliances, Trump began to tune out and eventually push away the experts who believed their duty was to protect the country by restraining his more dangerous impulses.

The episode has been documented numerous times, but subsequent reporting reveals a more complete picture of the moment and the chilling effect Trump’s comments and hostility had on the nation’s military and national security leadership.

Just before 10 a.m. on a scorching summer Thursday, Trump arrived at the Pentagon. He stepped out of his motorcade, walked along a corridor with portraits honoring former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, and stepped inside the Tank. The uniformed officers greeted their commander in chief. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. sat in the seat of honor midway down the table, because this was his room, and Trump sat at the head of the table facing a projection screen. Mattis and the newly confirmed deputy defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, sat to the president’s left, with Vice President Pence and Tillerson to his right. Down the table sat the leaders of the military branches, along with Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon was in the outer ring of chairs with other staff, taking his seat just behind Mattis and directly in Trump’s line of sight.

Mattis, Cohn, and Tillerson and their aides decided to use maps, graphics, and charts to tutor the president, figuring they would help keep him from getting bored. Mattis opened with a slide show punctuated by lots of dollar signs. Mattis devised a strategy to use terms the impatient president, schooled in real estate, would appreciate to impress upon him the value of U.S. investments abroad. He sought to explain why U.S. troops were deployed in so many regions and why America’s safety hinged on a complex web of trade deals, alliances, and bases across the globe.

An opening line flashed on the screen, setting the tone: “The post-war international rules-based order is the greatest gift of the greatest generation.” Mattis then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe. Bannon thought to himself, “Not good. Trump is not going to like that one bit.” The internationalist language Mattis was using was a trigger for Trump.

“Oh, baby, this is going to be f---ing wild,” Bannon thought. “If you stood up and threatened to shoot [Trump], he couldn’t say ‘postwar rules-based international order.’ It’s just not the way he thinks.”

For the next 90 minutes, Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn took turns trying to emphasize their points, pointing to their charts and diagrams. They showed where U.S. personnel were positioned, at military bases, CIA stations, and embassies, and how U.S. deployments fended off the threats of terror cells, nuclear blasts, and destabilizing enemies in places including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the Korea Peninsula, and Syria. Cohn spoke for about 20 minutes about the value of free trade with America’s allies, emphasizing how he saw each trade agreement working together as part of an overall structure to solidify U.S. economic and national security.

Trump appeared peeved by the schoolhouse vibe but also allergic to the dynamic of his advisers talking at him. His ricocheting attention span led him to repeatedly interrupt the lesson. He heard an adviser say a word or phrase and then seized on that to interject with his take. For instance, the word “base” prompted him to launch in to say how “crazy” and “stupid” it was to pay for bases in some countries.

Trump’s first complaint was to repeat what he had vented about to his national security adviser months earlier: South Korea should pay for a $10 billion missile defense system that the United States built for it. The system was designed to shoot down any short- and medium-range ballistic missiles from North Korea to protect South Korea and American troops stationed there. But Trump argued that the South Koreans should pay for it, proposing that the administration pull U.S. troops out of the region or bill the South Koreans for their protection.

“We should charge them rent,” Trump said of South Korea. “We should make them pay for our soldiers. We should make money off of everything.”

Trump proceeded to explain that NATO, too, was worthless. U.S. generals were letting the allied member countries get away with murder, he said, and they owed the United States a lot of money after not living up to their promise of paying their dues.

“They’re in arrears,” Trump said, reverting to the language of real estate. He lifted both his arms at his sides in frustration. Then he scolded top officials for the untold millions of dollars he believed they had let slip through their fingers by allowing allies to avoid their obligations.

“We are owed money you haven’t been collecting!” Trump told them. “You would totally go bankrupt if you had to run your own business.”

Mattis wasn’t trying to convince the president of anything, only to explain and provide facts. Now things were devolving quickly. The general tried to calmly explain to the president that he was not quite right. The NATO allies didn’t owe the United States back rent, he said. The truth was more complicated. NATO had a nonbinding goal that members should pay at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their defenses. Only five of the countries currently met that goal, but it wasn’t as if they were shorting the United States on the bill.

More broadly, Mattis argued, the NATO alliance was not serving only to protect western Europe. It protected America, too. “This is what keeps us safe,” Mattis said. Cohn tried to explain to Trump that he needed to see the value of the trade deals. “These are commitments that help keep us safe,” Cohn said.

Bannon interjected. “Stop, stop, stop,” he said. “All you guys talk about all these great things, they’re all our partners, I want you to name me now one country and one company that’s going to have his back.”

Trump then repeated a threat he’d made countless times before. He wanted out of the Iran nuclear deal that President Obama had struck in 2015, which called for Iran to eliminate its uranium stockpile and cut its nuclear weaponry.

“It’s the worst deal in history!” Trump declared.

“Well, actually . . .,” Tillerson interjected.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Trump said, cutting off the secretary of state before he could explain some of the benefits of the agreement. “They’re cheating. They’re building. We’re getting out of it. I keep telling you, I keep giving you time, and you keep delaying me. I want out of it.”

Before they could debate the Iran deal, Trump erupted to revive another frequent complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now America’s longest war. He demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn’t won in Afghanistan yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a “loser war.” That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief’s commands, and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war.

“You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know how to win anymore.”

Trump questioned why the United States couldn’t get some oil as payment for the troops stationed in the Persian Gulf. “We spent $7 trillion; they’re ripping us off,” Trump boomed. “Where is the f---ing oil?”

Trump seemed to be speaking up for the voters who elected him, and several attendees thought they heard Bannon in Trump’s words. Bannon had been trying to persuade Trump to withdraw forces by telling him, “The American people are saying we can’t spend a trillion dollars a year on this. We just can’t. It’s going to bankrupt us.”

“And not just that, the deplorables don’t want their kids in the South China Sea at the 38th parallel or in Syria, in Afghanistan, in perpetuity,” Bannon would add, invoking Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” reference to Trump supporters.

Trump mused about removing General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in charge of troops in Afghanistan. “I don’t think he knows how to win,” the president said, impugning Nicholson, who was not present at the meeting.

Dunford tried to come to Nicholson’s defense, but the mild-mannered general struggled to convey his points to the irascible president.

“Mr. President, that’s just not . . .,” Dunford started. “We’ve been under different orders.”

Dunford sought to explain that he hadn’t been charged with annihilating the enemy in Afghanistan but was instead following a strategy started by the Obama administration to gradually reduce the military presence in the country in hopes of training locals to maintain a stable government so that eventually the United States could pull out. Trump shot back in more plain language.

“I want to win,” he said. “We don’t win any wars anymore . . . We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we’re not winning anymore.”

Trump by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn’t taking many breaths. All morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several things he bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone in the room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them. Indeed, they have not been reported until now.

“I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.

Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

For a president known for verbiage he euphemistically called “locker room talk,” this was the gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred space. The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking down at their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the room. A few considered walking out. They tried not to reveal their revulsion on their faces, but questions raced through their minds. “How does the commander in chief say that?” one thought. “What would our worst adversaries think if they knew he said this?”

This was a president who had been labeled a “draft dodger” for avoiding service in the Vietnam War under questionable circumstances. Trump was a young man born of privilege and in seemingly perfect health: six feet two inches with a muscular build and a flawless medical record. He played several sports, including football. Then, in 1968 at age 22, he obtained a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that exempted him from military service just as the United States was drafting men his age to fulfill massive troop deployments to Vietnam.

Tillerson in particular was stunned by Trump’s diatribe and began visibly seething. For too many minutes, others in the room noticed, he had been staring straight, dumbfounded, at Mattis, who was speechless, his head bowed down toward the table. Tillerson thought to himself, “Gosh darn it, Jim, say something. Why aren’t you saying something?”

But, as he would later tell close aides, Tillerson realized in that moment that Mattis was genetically a Marine, unable to talk back to his commander in chief, no matter what nonsense came out of his mouth.

The more perplexing silence was from Pence, a leader who should have been able to stand up to Trump. Instead, one attendee thought, “He’s sitting there frozen like a statue. Why doesn’t he stop the president?” Another recalled the vice president was “a wax museum guy.” From the start of the meeting, Pence looked as if he wanted to escape and put an end to the president’s torrent. Surely, he disagreed with Trump’s characterization of military leaders as “dopes and babies,” considering his son, Michael, was a Marine first lieutenant then training for his naval aviator wings. But some surmised Pence feared getting crosswise with Trump. “A total deer in the headlights,” recalled a third attendee.

Others at the table noticed Trump’s stream of venom had taken an emotional toll. So many people in that room had gone to war and risked their lives for their country, and now they were being dressed down by a president who had not. They felt sick to their stomachs. Tillerson told others he thought he saw a woman in the room silently crying. He was furious and decided he couldn’t stand it another minute. His voice broke into Trump’s tirade, this one about trying to make money off U.S. troops.

“No, that’s just wrong,” the secretary of state said. “Mr. President, you’re totally wrong. None of that is true.”

Tillerson’s father and uncle had both been combat veterans, and he was deeply proud of their service.

“The men and women who put on a uniform don’t do it to become soldiers of fortune,” Tillerson said. “That’s not why they put on a uniform and go out and die . . . They do it to protect our freedom.”

There was silence in the Tank. Several military officers in the room were grateful to the secretary of state for defending them when no one else would. The meeting soon ended and Trump walked out, saying goodbye to a group of servicemen lining the corridor as he made his way to his motorcade waiting outside. Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn were deflated. Standing in the hall with a small cluster of people he trusted, Tillerson finally let down his guard.

“He’s a f---ing moron,” the secretary of state said of the president.

The plan by Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn to train the president to appreciate the internationalist view had clearly backfired.

“We were starting to get out on the wrong path, and we really needed to have a course correction and needed to educate, to teach, to help him understand the reason and basis for a lot of these things,” said one senior official involved in the planning. “We needed to change how he thinks about this, to course correct. Everybody was on board, 100 percent agreed with that sentiment. [But] they were dismayed and in shock when not only did it not have the intended effect, but he dug in his heels and pushed it even further on the spectrum, further solidifying his views.”

A few days later, Pence’s national security adviser, Andrea Thompson, a retired Army colonel who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, reached out to thank Tillerson for speaking up on behalf of the military and the public servants who had been in the Tank. By September 2017, she would leave the White House and join Tillerson at Foggy Bottom as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security affairs.

The Tank meeting had so thoroughly shocked the conscience of military leaders that they tried to keep it a secret. At the Aspen Security Forum two days later, longtime NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell asked Dunford how Trump had interacted during the Tank meeting. The Joint Chiefs chairman misleadingly described the meeting, skipping over the fireworks.

“He asked a lot of hard questions, and the one thing he does is question some fundamental assumptions that we make as military leaders — and he will come in and question those,” Dunford told Mitchell on July 22. “It’s a pretty energetic and an interactive dialogue.”

One victim of the Tank meeting was Trump’s relationship with Tillerson, which forever after was strained. The secretary of state came to see it as the beginning of the end. It would only worsen when news that Tillerson had called Trump a “moron” was first reported in October 2017 by NBC News.

*****

Trump once again gathered his generals and top diplomats in December 2017 for a meeting as part of the administration’s ongoing strategy talks about troop deployments in Afghanistan in the Situation Room, a secure meeting room on the ground floor of the West Wing. Trump didn’t like the Situation Room as much as the Pentagon’s Tank, because he didn’t think it had enough gravitas. It just wasn’t impressive.

But there Trump was, struggling to come up with a new Afghanistan policy and frustrated that so many U.S. forces were deployed in so many places around the world. The conversation began to tilt in the same direction as it had in the Tank back in July.

“All these countries need to start paying us for the troops we are sending to their countries. We need to be making a profit,” Trump said. “We could turn a profit on this.”

Dunford tried to explain to the president once again, gently, that troops deployed in these regions provided stability there, which helped make America safer. Another officer chimed in that charging other countries for U.S. soldiers would be against the law.

“But it just wasn’t working,” one former Trump aide recalled. “Nothing worked.”

Following the Tank meeting, Tillerson had told his aides that he would never silently tolerate such demeaning talk from Trump about making money off the deployments of U.S. soldiers. Tillerson’s father, at the age of 17, had committed to enlist in the Navy on his next birthday, wanting so much to serve his country in World War II. His great-uncle was a career officer in the Navy as well. Both men had been on his mind, Tillerson told aides, when Trump unleashed his tirade in the Tank and again when he repeated those points in the Situation Room in December.

“We need to get our money back,” Trump told his assembled advisers.

That was it. Tillerson stood up. But when he did so, he turned his back to the president and faced the flag officers and the rest of the aides in the room. He didn’t want a repeat of the scene in the Tank.

“I’ve never put on a uniform, but I know this,” Tillerson said. “Every person who has put on a uniform, the people in this room, they don’t do it to make a buck. They did it for their country, to protect us. I want everyone to be clear about how much we as a country value their service.”

Tillerson’s rebuke made Trump angry. He got a little red in the face. But the president decided not to engage Tillerson at that moment. He would wait to take him on another day.

Later that evening, after 8:00, Tillerson was working in his office at the State Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters, preparing for the next day. The phone rang. It was Dunford. The Joint Chiefs chairman’s voice was unsteady with emotion. Dunford had much earlier joked with Tillerson that in past administrations the secretaries of state and Defense Department leaders wouldn’t be caught dead walking on the same side of the street, for their rivalry was that fierce. But now, as both men served Trump, they were brothers joined against what they saw as disrespect for service members. Dunford thanked Tillerson for standing up for them in the Situation Room.

“You took the body blows for us,” Dunford said. “Punch after punch. Thank you. I will never forget it.”

Tillerson, Dunford, and Mattis would not take those body blows for much longer. They failed to rein in Trump’s impulses or to break through what they regarded as the president’s stubborn, even dangerous insistence that he knew best. Piece by piece, the guardrails that had hemmed in the chaos of Trump’s presidency crumpled.

In March 2018, Trump abruptly fired Tillerson while the secretary of state was halfway across the globe on a sensitive diplomatic mission to Africa to ease tensions caused by Trump’s demeaning insults about African countries. Trump gave Tillerson no rationale for his firing, and afterward acted as if they were buddies, inviting him to come by the Oval Office to take a picture and have the president sign it. Tillerson never went.

Mattis continued serving as the defense secretary, but the president’s sudden decision in December 2018 to withdraw troops from Syria and abandon America’s Kurdish allies there — one the president soon reversed, only to remake 10 months later — inspired him to resign. Mattis saw Trump’s desired withdrawal as an assault on a soldier’s code. “He began to feel like he was becoming complicit,” recalled one of the secretary’s confidants.

The media interpretation of Mattis’ resignation letter as a scathing rebuke of Trump’s worldview brought the president’s anger to a boiling point. Trump decided to remove Mattis two months ahead of the secretary’s chosen departure date. His treatment of Mattis upset the secretary’s staff. They decided to arrange the biggest clap out they could. The event was a tradition for all departing secretaries. They wanted a line of Pentagon personnel that stretched for a mile applauding Mattis as he left for the last time. It was going to be “yuge,” staffers joked, borrowing from Trump’s glossary.

But Mattis would not allow it.

“No, we are not doing that,” he told his aides. “You don’t understand the president. I work with him. You don’t know him like I do. He will take it out on Shanahan and Dunford.”

Dunford stayed on until September 2019, retiring at the conclusion of his four-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One of Dunford’s first public acts after leaving office was to defend a military officer attacked by Trump, Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official who testified in the House impeachment inquiry about his worries over Trump’s conduct with Ukraine. Trump dismissed Vindman as a “Never Trumper,” but Dunford stepped forward to praise the Purple Heart recipient as “a professional, competent, patriotic, and loyal officer. He has made an extraordinary contribution to the security of our nation.”

By then, however, Trump had become a president entirely unrestrained. He had replaced his raft of seasoned advisers with a cast of enablers who executed his orders and engaged his obsessions. They saw their mission as telling the president yes.

 

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You couldn't make this up: "Transcript of Trump announcement on school prayer: ‘There is a growing totalitarian impulse on the far left that seeks to … prohibit religious expression’"

Spoiler

Below is the text of remarks President Trump made Thursday in the White House when he announced he was taking steps to protect the right of students to pray at school and make it easier for religious groups that provide social services to access federal funds.

Trump was joined for the announcement by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; Hannah Allen, a Texas high school student; Marilyn Rhames, a former teacher and founder of Teachers Who Pray; Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen; William McLeod, a student; Paula White, a pastor; and others.

The president launched into a diatribe against what he called “a growing totalitarian impulse on the far left that seeks to punish, restrict and even prohibit religious expression” and said the steps his administration was taking “to protect the First Amendment right to pray in public schools” were “historic.” Actually, students and anybody else in a public school already have the right to pray in public schools, and his administration’s new guidance changes little from that of earlier administrations.

A Washington Post story explained the actions taken by the administration on Thursday, saying:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said her department plans to remind schools that students and teachers have a constitutional right to pray in public schools, and that student-led religious organizations should get to access to public facilities just as secular groups do.

The guidance also clarifies that teachers, administrators and coaches are not permitted to lead school prayers or devotional readings of the Bible, “nor may school officials use their authority to attempt to persuade or compel students to participate in prayer or other religious activities.”

“Our actions today will protect the constitutional rights of students, teachers and faith-based institutions,” DeVos said. “The department’s efforts will level the playing field between religious and nonreligious organizations competing for federal grants, as well as protect First Amendment freedoms on campus and the religious liberty of faith-based institutions. I proudly share President Trump’s commitment to religious freedom and the First Amendment.”

The guidance, which largely updates guidelines issued by the Bush administration in 2003, will also require school districts to certify they do not have regulations that conflict with students’ right to pray at school and instructs states to notify the Education Department if a complaint arises against a school district over school prayer. The department does not have similar reporting requirements for states when a school district is accused of other types of discrimination.

Here is the transcript of the announcement, as provided by the White House:

THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much. A couple of things happened today that are very exciting. The USMCA [United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement] passed the Senate. It’s one of the biggest trade bills ever made.

And then, yesterday, as you know, China passed, and that’s something that is extraordinary. And it’s going to have tremendous, far-reaching effects, including our relationship, long term, with China, our farmers and manufacturers and bankers, and everybody. It’s jobs. It’s jobs like we’ve never seen before, and that’s going to be something very special. And USMCA today, which just passed by a very comfortable vote — a very high vote — we are very proud to have that.

So we’ve done two of the biggest trade deals. They are the two biggest trade deals in the world ever done. And we’re honored to have done them in a short period of time.

We are gathered in the Oval Office for the National Religious Freedom Day — something very important and very special, and special to me and the people that are gathered around me.

This afternoon, we’re proudly announcing historic steps to protect the First Amendment right to pray in public schools. So you have the right to pray. And that’s a very important and powerful right. There’s nothing more important than that, I would say.

We’re joined by the Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos; Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen; and students and advocates from across America. And advocates they were. They’ve been calling and writing by the thousands. And you’re representing that large group of people.

In a sacred principle of our republic that government must never stand between the people and God. Yet, in public schools around the country, authorities are stopping students and teachers from praying, sharing their faith, or following their religious beliefs. It is totally unacceptable. You see it on the football field. You see it so many times where they’re stopped from praying. And we are doing something to stop that.

Tragically, there is a growing totalitarian impulse on the far left that seeks to punish, restrict, and even prohibit religious expression. Something that, if you go back 10 years or 15 years or 20 years, it was unthought of that a thing like that could even happen — that anybody would even think of something like that happening.

That is why, today, my administration is issuing strong new guidance to protect religious liberty in our public schools. The right of students and teachers to freely exercise their faith will always be protected, including the right to pray.

So we call this the “Right to Pray.” Is that a good idea? Good? Right? You like that, right? (Laughter.)

Nine federal agencies are also proposing new rules to roll back discriminatory regulations. So we have rules to roll back discriminatory regulations on religious service organizations. And earlier this afternoon, my White House released a new memo to make sure federal funding is never used to violate the First Amendment — which is a very big deal.

With us today is Hannah Allen, a high school freshman from Texas. Hannah, would you tell us what happened at your school with respect to you and prayer? Hannah?

MS. ALLEN: Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, darling. Right here.

MS. ALLEN: So, me and a group of students from our school wanted to pray for our former classmate’s brother who had got hurt in an accident.

After the prayer, our principal told us, “Don’t do that again.” So the next day, parents had called and complained. He told us that we could pray, but he said we had to hide in the gym or behind a curtain, or somewhere away from everyone else.

And I know that if this can happen in a small town in Texas, it can happen anywhere across America, and that’s not right. No one should feel ashamed of their faith, especially in school or anywhere.

THE PRESIDENT: Well —

MS. ALLEN: And —

THE PRESIDENT: So what ultimately happened? How was that resolved?

MS. ALLEN: So we got with First Liberty. They’ve been amazing. They supported us the whole way. And they sent the school a letter, and the school complied with the letter, and they changed the — yeah.

THE PRESIDENT: And now you’re able to do that?

MS. ALLEN: We are.

THE PRESIDENT: Good. Well, now it’s going to be much easier yet. Okay? All right? Thank you, darling. That was beautiful. Thank you very much.

We’re also joined by Marilyn Rhames, a former teacher and the founder of Teachers Who Pray. Marilyn, if you could, let us know — where is —

MS. RHAMES: I’m right here.

THE PRESIDENT: Good. Thank you very much. Maybe you give us a little bit about what happened?

MS. RHAMES: Yes. So, thank you. I’m Marilyn Rhames. I’m the founder and president of Teachers Who Pray. And I founded Teachers Who Pray because I, as a teacher, believe in the beauty of every child and the unlimited potential that resides within. However, the students that I was getting weren’t set up for success because they were so significantly behind grade level. And I taught in Chicago public schools for 14 years. And during that time, we were losing students every year to gun violence. And one year, it was like 30, 32 students getting killed.

And I was overwhelmed with the heaviness of the work, so I thought about quitting, and I decided not to. I was going to fight. And I was going to pray and uplift my spirit so that I can do the job that I knew God had called me to do.

So I began praying with other teachers in the building who were like-minded, and we really supported each other, built community, built more hope, built more joy in the work despite it being so difficult. And we grew. Like, right now, there’s over 150 chapters of Teachers Who Pray because teachers need that spiritual support and guidance.

And today, I believe it’s super important because there is a myth out there that what Teachers Who Pray does and other organizations do for teachers, spiritual wealth is not legal. And it absolutely is.

And I’m here to tell teachers that we need to pray for your faith. We need to pray. We need to buckle and just do what we have to do for our kids because they need us and they’re depending on us. And if we’re not strong, we can’t make them strong. So that’s why I’m here.

THE PRESIDENT: That was really beautifully said. Thank you very much. That was beautiful. Thanks, Marilyn.

So, while I’m president, which will be hopefully for five years — and, I don’t know, maybe we’ll work on, with the media, we’ll work on a major extension of that. Right? (Laughter.) But we will not let anyone push God from the public square. We will uphold religious liberty for all.

And I want to thank you all, and God bless you all for being here. It’s a great time in our country. We’re doing things that nobody thought was possible.

I’d like to ask, if I might, Secretary DeVos and Deputy Attorney General Rosen to say a few words about our actions, if you don’t mind. Please.

SECRETARY DEVOS: Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead, Betsy. Please.

SECRETARY DEVOS: Thank you for your leadership, your courage, and your friendship to people of faith, especially our nation’s children. Too many misinterpret a separation of church and state as an invitation for government to separate people from their faith.

In reality, our Constitution doesn’t exist to protect us from religion; it exists to protect religion from government. The First Amendment affirms our free exercise of religion, and we don’t forfeit that first freedom to anyone or in any place, especially in public schools.

After all, it’s been noted that as long as there are final exams in schools, there will be always be prayer in schools. (Laughter.)

Thanks to your leadership, Mr. President, today we remind schools of the law with respect to religious expression — something that hasn’t been done in more than 15 years. And where there are violations, we now make clear that the law requires states to establish a clear process for students like Hannah and Michael —

MR. MCLEOD: William.

SECRETARY DEVOS: William — parents and teachers like Marilyn to report them.

It also notes that the law directs states to tell us about any and all complaints as well.

This administration and you is, and always will be, committed to ensuring all believers have the freedom to learn, to pursue our passions, to use our talents, and to live in accordance with the unique purpose that God has called us each to do.

If we embrace that freedom, our faith will be a light no darkness can overcome. Thank you again, Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much.

SECRETARY DEVOS: — for your leadership.

THE PRESIDENT: Beautiful. Thank you, Betsy, very much.

Jeff?

DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL ROSEN: Well, thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you for your leadership on this really critical issue. There are — the fundamental freedom that you’ve been supporting for Americans to practice their faith is so important and is so appreciated by millions and millions of Americans.

And at the Department of Justice, we remain firmly committed to enforcing Americans’ constitutional rights, including this one. So that’s part of why I’m very honored and privileged to be a part of today’s announcement on the new guidance document about prayer in school.

I think sometimes people don’t appreciate that there are many, many Americans who feel called to pray during the day, and our First Amendment to our Constitution protects that. And sometimes I think there’s a confusion about this issue as to whether it’s trying to force people to pray who don’t want to, but that’s not what this is about. This is about protecting the rights of those who do to have the liberty to do that on school grounds. And that is protected —

THE PRESIDENT: Right.

DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL ROSEN: — by the First Amendment.

So today’s guidance reaffirms and clarifies and spells out for Americans what that freedom is with regards to prayer and religious expression. And I really think that the courage of people of faith, such as the folks we have here today, is really a reminder of how important our constitutional liberties are and of the great action that your administration is taking to ensure that they remain legally protected.

So again, Mr. President, I thank you —

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jeff. Good job.

DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL ROSEN: — and the Secretary DeVos and the whole administration for the efforts to make this happen.

THE PRESIDENT: Very good job. Thank you very much, Jeff.

Paula, would you like to say something? Go ahead.

PASTOR WHITE: Yes, sir. It’s such an honor to stand here with you, President Trump, and with this amazing team. And the policy and everyone who had made this — this is a huge thing. So we said it is a constitutional right, a First Amendment right. And, President, you continue to be such a fighter for people’s freedoms, for their liberties. As you often say, “We worship God, not government.”

Perceived and perception has often been — people have been bullied, harassed, stopped from practicing their faith. You have so many people that have walked out here, very brave, with horrific stories of being persecuted because they simply wanted to pray. And prayers, we know, makes a huge difference. So thank you for standing for all —

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Paula.

PASTOR WHITE: — religious liberties.

THE PRESIDENT: That’s great. Thank you very much.

Would anybody like to say anything? Go ahead.

MR. MCLEOD: Can I tell my story?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, go ahead. (Laughter.) Go ahead.

MR. MCLEOD: So it all started when I walked in the classroom. I was — it was Ash Wednesday and I had my ashes on my forehead, and all the kids in the classroom was like, “Is that dirt on your forehead?” Because they don’t know, because they aren’t Catholic and they were all Mormon.

THE PRESIDENT: Oh.

MR. MCLEOD: So — because I was like — they’re — that was like — I was like the only Catholic in that school. So then the teacher came up and was like, “It’s unacceptable. Wipe it off.” And I told her four times, and she didn’t listen and she made me wipe it off in front of all the kids.

THE PRESIDENT: Wow.

MR. MCLEOD: That’s my story. So, thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s not going to be happening anymore. Okay?

MR. MCLEOD: Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: All right?

MR. MCLEOD: I just don’t want anyone to feel like that.

THE PRESIDENT: That’s a beautiful — it’s a beautiful story. Well told, because it sets such a good plate out there for people. I mean, you hear a story like that, it’s such a shocking — Jeff, that’s a shocking story, right? You were the only Catholic in the school?

MR. MCLEOD: (Nods head.) Well, I think there’s one more.

THE PRESIDENT: But they didn’t have any idea. It was just — and the teacher did not treat you properly, right?

MR. MCLEOD: (Nods head.)

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. We’re changing that. Okay? Great job. That was beautiful.

Come here. Give me that hand.

Anybody over here? Anybody? Sure.

MR. WINDEBANK: Mr. President, thank you so much for the opportunity to be in the Oval Office. So much history has taken place here. It’s surreal. Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Good.

MR. WINDEBANK: My name is Chase Windebank. I started a small group of students praying in high school during a free period. And by my senior year, it had grown to a community of 90 students. It was so encouraging. But later in senior year, the administration wound up banning us from praying during school hours — not even during lunch.

And so I remember thinking I didn’t want to file a lawsuit at all, but after many meetings unsuccessful with the administration, I wound up realizing it was the only way to secure future students’ rights to pray. And so thank you, sir, that now I get to have the opportunity to tell students to live out their faith in big and small ways —

THE PRESIDENT: That’s right. That’s right.

MR. WINDEBANK: — in the future. And you guys are making sure that the Founding Fathers are living on in our nation. So thank you, sir, very much.

THE PRESIDENT: Beautiful. Thank you very much. That’s very nice.

MR. WINDEBANK: Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes?

MS. HIJAZ: I pray five times day. Oh, my name is Malak Hijaz. I pray five times a day and I have to pray at lunch. And I would bring the hijab to cover my hair, and kids would make fun of me, harass me and attack me. And I would tell the principal, and the principal actually blamed everything on me. At the end, me and my mom complained so many times, and I didn’t have a good education at the end. So, yeah, everything was blamed on me.

THE PRESIDENT: And we’re going to take care of that, right?

MS. HIJAZ: Yeah.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, darling.

MS. HIJAZ: Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Beautiful. Thank you very much.

MS. HOBLIN: Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, we’ll I want to thank everybody for being here.

Did I hear somebody else? Yes, please. Go ahead.

MS. HOBLIN: Hi, my name is Ariana Hoblin. I’m a high school student in South Florida. And in my middle school, I was the only Jewish person and I was very open with my religion. I would announce when I would have Shabbat plans, which is a day of prayer and rest.

And when we started our Holocaust unit, it ended with everybody being nice to me because I spoke out about it. And I wanted to inform people and I wanted to help people learn. And the students started to write swastikas on my belongings, on my arms. I was pushed and shoved in the hallway.

They even went so far as to take my face and put it on Anne Frank’s body. And it was sent around to three different schools. And I was terrified to say I was Jewish. And that should never be in anyone’s mind. Anyone in school should be able to say, “I am what whatever religion I am. And I practice this and I believe this.”

And it’s been three or four years since middle school. I’m a junior in high school and I have continuously fought for anyone to have the right to exercise their constitutional rights in school.

And I just want to thank you so much for everything you’ve done, and for Israel and for everything that you’ve truly done for all of us.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much. So beautiful. Thank you. It’s working out better now? Or is it sort of similar?

MS. HOBLIN: Yes, my high school is extremely supportive of me. I go to Wellington High School.

THE PRESIDENT: Good.

MS. HOBLIN: And they’ve helped me be a leader in the Jewish community now.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, this is going to help, too.

MS. HOBLIN: Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much.

MR. KENNEDY: Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, please.

MR. KENNEDY: Coach Kennedy.

THE PRESIDENT: Coach.

MR. KENNEDY: We talked a few times. I coach up in Bremerton High School —

THE PRESIDENT: Right.

MR. KENNEDY: — in Bremerton, Washington. And I was fired for praying after football games.

THE PRESIDENT: Right.

MR. KENNEDY: And it’s just so nice to have First Liberty representing me and having a president that has the guts to stand up for us. So, I appreciate you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Coach.

MR. KENNEDY: Oorah. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Good coach, too. He’s a good coach.

MR. KENNEDY: Thank you.

MS. CHANEY: Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much.

Yes?

MS. CHANEY: My name is Emily Chaney. I’m a sophomore at East Ridge High School. And I started a prayer locker at my school, and it really helped a lot of people who had different prayer requests. Just —

THE PRESIDENT: Where do you come from with that beautiful accent? (Laughter.) I love the accent. Where do you come from?

MS. CHANEY: Pikeville, Kentucky.

THE PRESIDENT: Kentucky. Oh, we love Kentucky. (Laughter.) We love Kentucky.

MS. CHANEY: I started a prayer locker at my school and it helped a lot of kids who have many different prayer requests just to let them know that someone was there for them and cared for them. And Americans United for Separation of Church and State sent a letter to our board of education that the prayer lockers needed to be taken down.

And whenever my teacher told me my school was notified that I had to take my prayer locker down, I was heartbroke, because I had like 10 prayer requests a day. And that was — I just feel like it really helped move in our community, in our schools. And I just — I’m just so thankful for you and all you’ve done for our country.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much.

MS. CHANEY: Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Say hello to everybody in Kentucky for me, okay? (Laughter.) And beyond. And beyond Kentucky.

MS. CHANEY: Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay? We’re all set?

DR. RICHBURG: Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, please.

DR. RICHBURG: I come from a heritage and from a faith persuasion that every day of my life, from childhood to now, was grounded in faith. And it is my belief that, had we not had that freedom to exercise that faith, we would not be where we are today.

And so, for that reason, we look at this moment as epic, and an opportunity to return to where we have one time been — the opportunity to freely express ourselves and to share with others, who might feel the same way, how far we’ve been brought and how far we must come through faith.

THE PRESIDENT: Beautiful. So nicely stated. Thank you very much.

You were going to say something?

MR. BUEHRER: Yes, Mr. President, I wanted to thank you. Eric Buehrer, with Gateways to Better Education. And these guidelines haven’t been updated and reissued since 2003.

THE PRESIDENT: Right.

MR. BUEHRER: And when we saw that and contacted the Department of Education, we were so gratified of the response from Secretary DeVos and others on your staff that said, “Yes, we need to address this and update these.” Other administrations should have done it every two years, and it hadn’t been done.

So thank you so much for stepping up and really supporting religious freedom in schools.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, we covered a lot of territory in here, as you know, because, you’re right, it’s been many years since they were updated.

MR. BUEHRER: It has.

THE PRESIDENT: So I think it’s very important.

Well, thank you all very much. Go ahead.

Q: Yeah, Mr. President, tell me a little bit about what many folks, especially folks of faith, view as a cultural war out there. Prayer, a lot of things going on in society — what are your views on this cultural war that we hear so much about?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it is a cultural war, and you have two sides. And you have a side that believes so strongly in prayer, and they’re being restricted, and it’s getting worse and worse. And I think we’ve made a big impact. And we’re loosening up a lot, and I want to loosen it up totally.

But you do have — you have things happening today that 10 or 15 years ago would have been unthinkable, what’s happening. Taking the word “God” down, taking the word “Christmas” out. You know, I think we’ve turned that one around very good. I think we’ve turned both of them around very good. But we’re not going to let it happen. We’re never going to let that happen. And we’re fighting it hard. You know better than anybody, we’re fighting it very hard. And we’re opening it up, and we’re opening up again.

So stories like you hear — but so many other stories — hopefully, in the future, you’re not going to be hearing too much about that. Okay? Thank you. Good question.

[There is more, but it is not about this subject.]

 

The only religious expressions uttered by Twitler are "oh God" when he slips it to a porn star and cursing when he misses an important golf shot.

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[fraurosena]

You've got to be kidding.

National Archives exhibit blurs images critical of President Trump

Quote

The large color photograph that greets visitors to a National Archives exhibit celebrating the centennial of women’s suffrage shows a massive crowd filling Pennsylvania Avenue NW for the Women’s March on Jan. 21, 2017, the day after President Trump’s inauguration.

The 49-by-69-inch photograph is a powerful display. Viewed from one perspective, it shows the 2017 march. Viewed from another angle, it shifts to show a 1913 black-and-white image of a women’s suffrage march also on Pennsylvania Avenue. The display links momentous demonstrations for women’s rights more than a century apart on the same stretch of pavement.

But a closer look reveals a different story.

The Archives acknowledged in a statement this week that it made multiple alterations to the photo of the 2017 Women’s March showcased at the museum, blurring signs held by marchers that were critical of Trump. Words on signs that referenced women’s anatomy were also blurred.

In the original version of the 2017 photograph, taken by Getty Images photographer Mario Tama, the street is packed with marchers carrying a variety of signs, with the Capitol in the background. In the Archives version, at least four of those signs are altered.

A placard that proclaims “God Hates Trump” has “Trump” blotted out so that it reads “God Hates.” A sign that reads “Trump & GOP — Hands Off Women” has the word Trump blurred out.

Signs with messages that referenced women’s anatomy — which were prevalent at the march — are also digitally altered. One that reads “If my vagina could shoot bullets, it’d be less REGULATED” has “vagina” blurred out. And another that says “This Pussy Grabs Back” has the word “Pussy” erased.

The Archives said the decision to obscure the words was made as the exhibit was being developed by agency managers and museum staff members. It said David S. Ferriero, the archivist of the United States who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009, participated in talks regarding the exhibit and supports the decision to edit the photo.

“As a non-partisan, non-political federal agency, we blurred references to the President’s name on some posters, so as not to engage in current political controversy,” Archives spokeswoman Miriam Kleiman said in an emailed statement. “Our mission is to safeguard and provide access to the nation’s most important federal records, and our exhibits are one way in which we connect the American people to those records. Modifying the image was an attempt on our part to keep the focus on the records.”

Archive officials did not respond to a request to provide examples of previous instances in which the Archives altered a document or photograph so as not to engage in political controversy.

Kleiman said the images from the 2017 and 1913 marches were presented together “to illustrate the ongoing struggles of women fighting for their interests.”

The decision to blur references to women’s genitals was made because the museum hosts many groups of students and young people and the words could be perceived as inappropriate, Kleiman said in the statement.

Kleiman said the National Archives “only alters images in exhibits when they are used as graphic design components.”

“We do not alter images or documents that are displayed as artifacts in exhibitions,” she said. “In this case, the image is part of a promotional display, not an artifact.”

When told about the action taken by the Archives, prominent historians expressed dismay.

"There's no reason for the National Archives to ever digitally alter a historic photograph," Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley said. "If they don't want to use a specific image, then don't use it. But to confuse the public is reprehensible. The head of the Archives has to very quickly fix this damage. A lot of history is messy, and there's zero reason why the Archives can't be upfront about a photo from a women's march."

Wendy Kline, a history professor at Purdue University, said it was disturbing that the Archives chose to edit out the words "vagina" and "pussy" from an image of the Women's March, especially when it was part of an exhibit about the suffragist movement. Hundreds of thousands of people took part in the 2017 march in the District, which was widely seen as a protest of Trump's victory.

"Doctoring a commemorative photograph buys right into the notion that it's okay to silence women's voice and actions," Kline said in an email. "It is literally erasing something that was accurately captured on camera. That's an attempt to erase a powerful message."

The altered photograph greets visitors to "Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote," an exhibit that opened in May celebrating the centennial of women's suffrage. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1920, prohibits the federal government and states from denying the right to vote on the basis of sex.

"This landmark voting rights victory was made possible by decades of suffragists' persistent political engagement, and yet it is just one critical milestone in women's battle for the vote," reads a news release announcing the exhibit on the Archives website.

Archives spokesman John Valceanu said the proposed edits were sent to Getty for approval, and Getty "then licensed our use of the image."

A Getty spokeswoman, Anne Flanagan, confirmed that the image was licensed by the National Archives Foundation but said in an email Friday evening that Getty was still determining whether it approved alterations to the image.

Karin Wulf, a history professor at the College of William & Mary and executive director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, said that to ensure transparency, the Archives at the very least should have noted prominently that the photo had been altered.

"The Archives has always been self-conscious about its responsibility to educate about source material, and in this case they could have said, or should have said, 'We edited this image in the following way for the following reasons,' " she said. "If you don't have transparency and integrity in government documents, democracy doesn't function."

 

[fraurosena]

What is he thanking for? Or better yet, who is he thanking?

 

[WiseGirl]

Not going to lie. Anything really bad for 45 brightens my mood.

[GreyhoundFan]

Such a thin-skinned grudge-holder: "‘Pretty nervy of you!’: Trump’s Palm Beach billionaire spat"

Spoiler

There were certainly other things for President Donald Trump to care about in early December. He was about to depart for the NATO summit in London. Impeachment hearings were dominating Washington.

But at his private club in West Palm Beach, Trump was smarting over a local political feud. After finishing a round of golf the weekend after Thanksgiving, a small group approached the president as he stepped off the 18th green: two of his biggest donors, and a Florida neighbor.

The president shook everyone’s hands, but then coldly turned to his neighbor, a fellow billionaire who lives down the block from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

“Pretty nervy of you to come to this club,” Trump snapped.

His ire was aimed at Jeff Greene, a real estate tycoon from Palm Beach and Mar-a-Lago member who ran for Florida governor in the Democratic primary last year. Greene said he wasn’t surprised by the reception. A year earlier, he and the president had gotten into a shouting match at the golf club that he videotaped and then featured in political ads across the state.

After the chilly exchange, which Greene described to POLITICO, everyone parted ways and went to the club’s dining room for a bite. But the president didn’t let it go. Sitting at a separate table in the dining room overlooking the golf course, Trump twice yelled across the room at Greene according to his retelling.

“You spent millions of dollars and came in fifth!” Trump taunted, according to Greene.

“I came in fourth!’” Greene said he called back.

In Palm Beach, word spread that there was a new chapter in the spat between Trump and Greene. And while it might seem like a petty squabble between two rich Floridians, the exchange highlights a broader truism about Trump — he doesn’t let things go.

Whether in the privacy of his clubs or out on the campaign trail, the president can’t help but hold onto a grudge. Even as Trump heads into an election year with a record that he claims ranks him among the best presidents of all time, political grievances continue to drive everything from policy decisions to rally speeches to some of the biggest scandals of his presidency — including his impeachment.

The Ukraine quagmire arose from a quest to dig up dirt on a Trump political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden and his family. While explaining his reasoning for striking Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani, Trump invoked former president Barack Obama, his favorite punching bag until Hillary Clinton entered the picture. During remarks about a China trade agreement, the president randomly mocked former FBI Director James Comey, saying he had “choked like a dog.”

The White House declined to comment.

To those who know Trump, the refusal to drop any grudge is tied to Trump’s desire to quash his enemies — both perceived and real.

“More than Biden, the president is in this pickle because of his belief that Ukraine meddled against him,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide. “His primordial instinct to exact revenge can sometimes — as in this case — completely backfire.”

Some of the biggest controversies of Trump’s presidency have swirled around the president’s inability to let go of apparent slights: his antagonism toward the late Sen. John McCain, his spat with the Gold Star Khan family, his attacks on San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz in the wake of natural disasters. Even his profane remarks about the NFL when players kneeled during the national anthem could be linked to a failed bid to buy the Buffalo Bills.

For some who have known and studied Trump for years, the president’s penchant for turning personal grudges into larger public and political controversies is nothing new.

“When people get in his way, he has no patience for it and it becomes a personal vendetta even when it shouldn’t and when it’s against his own self-interest,” said Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer.

“He’s ungoverned around that — he won’t take advice, he won’t look to getting more informed — he will simply do whatever he wants,” added O’Brien, currently a senior advisor to Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign. “He’s used to getting away with that because he was insulated from his own mistakes his whole life. His family and his money helped protect him, and then he became a celebrity and he enjoyed the halo of protection that celebrity has, and now he is president he enjoys legal protections.”

O’Brien pointed to an ugly fight between Trump and then-New York Mayor Ed Koch about zoning for a large piece of undeveloped land Trump purchased on Manhattan’s West Side.

“They got in this hilarious, sophomoric cage fight in the tabloids and Trump reveled in it, but it wasn’t what he should have been doing because he lost the deal and almost went bankrupt,” O’Brien said. “So he got into a fight that was in the press, but he didn’t get the project built.”

There have been times when Trump’s grudges-turned controversies have worked in his favor. In the heat of his battle with the NFL, the Trump campaign fundraised off the issue, while some football fans who supported Trump burned their jerseys in protest.

A former Trump aide noted that his supporters appreciate his pugilism.

And the president has converted some of the targets of his political vitriol. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who Trump once labeled an “idiot,” is now a staunch ally and golfing partner. Sen. Ted Cruz (R.- Texas), who faced nasty Trump barbs about his wife’s appearance and conspiratorial insinuations that his father was involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination, now stands by him in Congress. And Sen. Rand Paul ( R-Ky), who Trump once called a “brat” with a “badly functioning brain,” has championed some of Trump’s more controversial military actions.

“I can say ‘Gee, he’s a boorish guy, pushes through things, he operates from the seat of his pants at the moment and talks first and thinks later,’” Greene said. “But it works for him.”

 

[fraurosena]

This is not about Trump exactly, but as it's one of his 'only the best' people, I'm posting this here.

 

[Dandruff]

12 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

This is not about Trump exactly, but as it's one of his 'only the best' people, I'm posting this here.

 

I wonder what he did or didn't do and whether "security-related" means national security related in this case.

[GreyhoundFan]

"How Trump fused his business empire to the presidency"

Spoiler

He has spent one out of every three days as president visiting one of his luxury resorts, hotels or golf courses. He has leveraged his powerful international platform to promote his developments dozens of times. And he has directed millions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers to his businesses around the globe.

In three years in the White House, Donald Trump has accomplished something no president before him has done: fusing his private business interests with America’s highest public office.

Trump’s early decision to maintain his grip on his sprawling real estate empire — despite his pledge to put his business aside while in the White House — has created a vast web of potential conflicts of interest, accusations about his policies being driven by his business interests and even possible violations of the law, according to documents and interviews.

Even as Trump kicks off his fourth year as president this week facing the stain of an impeachment trial, he has managed to skirt accountability for widespread possible conflicts of interest that critics say represent a blatant abuse of power and create dangerous risks to the integrity of the presidency.

The intersections between Trump Inc. and President Trump are everywhere: A Chinese state-owned company was awarded a multimillion contract to help develop a Trump golf course in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, amid a U.S.-China trade war. T-Mobile executives stayed at Trump's Washington hotel while seeking a green light from the federal government for a merger. The IRS commissioner, who refused to release Trump’s tax returns to Congress, collects rent from a pair of Trump condos in Hawaii.

And in recent weeks, even Trump’s staunchest allies bluntly acknowledged that the president had left his own properties vulnerable to attacks by Iran after his order to kill the country’s top general.

“The level of this is shocking and deeply disturbing,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), a member of House leadership who serves on the Judiciary Committee. “This president has a habit of doing things out in the open, which are completely improper or even illegal and somehow ... the average person thinks, ‘Well, if he’s doing it out in the open it must be OK; I must not completely understand the rules.’ But it’s not.”

The White House and the Trump Organization didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Even after Congress launched an investigation into his businesses, the Trump administration authorized foreign governments to rent condos in Trump World Tower in New York, according to previously unreported documents obtained through a public records lawsuit by American Oversight, a watchdog group engaging with Congress on oversight of the administration.

Trump, already facing an impeachment trial while campaigning for a second term in office, is saddled with an unprecedented onslaught of investigations and lawsuits, many alleging he is violating the law by accepting money from U.S. taxpayers and foreign governments, both of which are forbidden by the emoluments clause of the Constitution.

The House launched an investigation last year, demanding the administration and Trump’s company release details about Vice President Mike Pence’s 2019 stay at a Trump resort in Ireland that came at the president’s suggestion. While they refused, new records obtained by POLITICO show the Irish police spent at least $4,000 at Trump Doonbeg while covering Pence’s visit — on top of $145,000 for other visits.

Lawmakers eventually cut the allegations out of their articles of impeachment, choosing to narrowly focus on Trump pushing Ukraine to open an inquiry into Democratic political rival Joe Biden. But lawmakers say they will continue to investigate to try to stop Trump from profiting from the presidency, force him to repay taxpayer money and prevent further conflicts.

“President Trump is openly enriching himself by encouraging government entities to spend money at his businesses, and foreign entities appear to frequent his business to curry favor with this administration,” said House Oversight and Reform Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y). “President Trump must be held accountable for his blatant disregard for the Constitution.”

Trump ignored calls to fully separate from his eponymous company, which comprises more than 500 businesses and includes properties in nearly two dozen countries, after he was sworn in to office.

Sheri Dillon, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said in January 2017 that Trump “wants there to be no doubt in the minds of the American public that he is completely isolating himself from his business interests.”

That never happened. Trump still owns his business, though he asked his adult sons to run it. His holdings were placed in a trust designed to hold assets for his benefit from which he can draw money at any time without the public’s knowledge.

Trump has responded to repeated criticism by denying he is using the presidency to boost spending at his resorts, insisting people frequent them because “they’re the best” and calling the emoluments clause “phony.”

“It’s not a big deal — you people are making it a big deal,” he told reporters in December 2016. Trump joined others in his administration who argued that voters don’t care. “They all knew I had big business all over the place.”

In 2015, Trump famously rode down the escalator of Trump Tower in New York and launched his candidacy. It was a sign of what was to come.

Trump has visited his properties more than 350 times since he was sworn in to office 1,095 days ago, according to a compilation of information released by the White House.

He regularly visits his golf course in Sterling, Va., just outside Washington, and also travels to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., in the winter and to Bedminster, N.J., in the summer. On Friday, Trump left for Mar-a-Lago, where he held a closed Republican fundraiser, and returned to Washington on Sunday night.

Trump is losing money on many of his businesses, but revenue increased at some of the resorts he visited in 2018, according to his most recent personal financial disclosure forms. That comes even as Trump’s overall income dipped slightly, to $434 million in 2018 from $450 million in 2017.

Trump has promoted his properties dozens of times while in office, mentioning them in official remarks, everywhere from the United Nations to the Oval Office, and in tweets to his more than 60 million followers, with the frequency increasing each year he’s been president.

In March, he tweeted about Trump International Scotland, melding his businesses and his presidency in the message. “Very proud of perhaps the greatest golf course anywhere in the world. Also, furthers U.K. relationship!”

Trump announced last year that he planned to hold the 2020 G-7 world leaders' summit at his financially struggling Trump National Doral Miami resort. But he reversed course after days of intense scrutiny from Democrats and Republicans, who complained he would be lining his pockets with both U.S. and foreign government money.

Trump and his adult children have been criticized for frequenting Trump resorts around the globe on vacation and on business trips, forcing the Secret Service and other federal agencies accompanying them to spend taxpayer money at Trump properties.

The Secret Service spent more than $250,000 at Trump properties during a five-month period in 2017, according to documents, providing a hint of what it may have spent over the three years of his presidency. There’s no way to determine how much in total the administration is spending because no single entity tracks that money.

But Democrats say Trump’s decision to accept foreign government money is where they may have the most leverage.

More than 100 officials and groups from 57 foreign countries have made visits to a Trump property, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group. Trump even invited leaders of seven countries to meet with him at Mar-a-Lago.

And state-owned companies in China, Saudi Arabia and South Korea are building Trump resorts while other countries are constructing roads and donating public land for new developments — all potential violations of the Constitution.

More than 200 Democrats filed a lawsuit in 2017 alleging Trump is violating the emoluments clause through foreign payments received at his properties. The House even launched an investigation into allegations that groups — including at least one foreign government — tried to curry favor with Trump by booking rooms at his hotels but never staying in them.

Meanwhile, Republicans are flocking to his resorts, perhaps to ingratiate themselves to the president or just run into him.

Nearly 200 campaigns and political groups — virtually all conservative — have spent more than $8 million at Trump’s resorts and other businesses since his election in 2016, according to a report from the left-leaning consumer rights group Public Citizen released late last year. In addition, at least 285 top administration officials, more than 90 members of Congress and 47 state officials — some using taxpayer money — have made hundreds of visits, according to CREW.

In the nation’s capital, Trump’s hotel has become a place to see and be seen for candidates, Trump staffers and lawmakers. Trump leases the building from the federal government despite language in the contract that says no “elected official of the Government of the United States ... shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.”

Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), chairwoman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee with jurisdiction over the hotel, is demanding documents from the Trump administration about the hotel’s looming potential sale to try to stop a questionable transaction, such as one that involves a foreign buyer.

“I think this is one of those problems of his own making,” she said. “He said he was going to divest, and then he didn’t divest, and then he put it in his children’s name and he’s kept on doing business.”

 

[fraurosena]

For the life of me, I will never understand why people can continue to support him.

 

[apple1]

Off to search more info about when and where this statement (about farmers' kids) was made.

Edited January 20, 2020 by apple1

[fraurosena]

It should be a pre-requisite that when a POTUS swears to uphold the Constitution they actually know and understand what it says.

"It's Like A Foreign Language": Donald Trump's Encounter With The Constitution Did Not Go Well.

Quote

On March 1, 2017, nearly six weeks after President Trump had raised his right hand and swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, he struggled to read aloud the words of the founding document. A film crew had come to the White House to record the new president reading a section of the Constitution. Trump chose to participate in the HBO production because he did not want to forgo the chance to be filmed for history, and he knew that as the sitting president he would be the documentary’s most important character.

The documentary, titled The Words That Built America, was directed by Alexandra Pelosi, a daughter of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Her conceit was that the country was starkly divided after the ugliness of the 2016 campaign, but the founding documents remained a unifying force for the nation’s factions. Pelosi and her team had a novel and distinctly bipartisan hook: All six living presidents, as well as six vice presidents, would join in reading the Constitution on camera, and other political figures and actors would read portions of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Each performance would be edited to create a lively, unabridged reading of the treasured documents that have united the nation for more than two centuries.

On March 1, Pelosi and her crew arrived at the White House, and as they were getting ready in the Blue Room, Trump entered the opulent parlor, which sits at the center of the residence’s first floor and opens onto the South Portico. The Blue Room, distinguished by its French blue draperies and gold wallpaper, is steeped in history. It was where President Grover Cleveland and his wife exchanged wedding vows in 1886, and every December the White House’s primary Christmas tree is erected at the center of the oval-shaped room.

On this day Trump seemed stiff and uncomfortable. Though he was technically in his own home, he did not greet his guests. Rather, he stood waiting for someone to approach him. Pelosi moved in to thank Trump for participating in this special history project, but he appeared to have no idea who she was, apparently not briefed on her political lineage or her role as the director. The president asked for some water, and with no staff bringing any to him, Pelosi handed him a bottle of Aquafina from her purse. “I’ve been into the White House,” Pelosi later said of visits to see previous presidents. “There are always protocols. Here there were no rules, no protocol.” She added, “There’s so much wrong with the whole thing. I’m thinking, Isn’t there someone who’s supposed to guard what he’s eating and drinking?”

Meanwhile, a White House staffer gave the other crew members instructions about what they could and could not do with the president. The very first rule was for the makeup artist: Do not touch the president’s hair. On his face, light powder only. The next instruction was for the technical crew: Could they make the lighting a little more orange? The president preferred a warm glow on camera. The mention of “orange” struck some in the room as an odd choice. Outside the bubble of the White House, late-night TV show hosts and cartoonists had been mocking the perpetually orange hue of Trump’s skin.

Pelosi had let presidents and vice presidents choose the portion of the Constitution they wanted to read. Many were wary of reading the section on the rules for impeachment or foreign emoluments. Trump had selected the opening of Article II, the part of the Constitution that addresses a president’s election and the scope of his or her power. It would normally have been the perfect selection for a president—but was an ironic one for Trump, who had spoken of his desire to exercise his executive power as much as possible, including by threatening Congress and challenging the judiciary.

With LED lights on stilts in front of him, Trump took his seat. “You’re lucky you got the easy part,” Pelosi told him cheerfully. “It gets complicated after this.” But the president stumbled, trying to get out the words in the arcane, stilted form the founding fathers had written. Trump grew irritated. “It’s very hard to do because of the language here,” Trump told the crew. “It’s very hard to get through that whole thing without a stumble.” He added, “It’s like a different language, right?” The cameraman tried to calm Trump, telling him it was no big deal, to take a moment and start over. Trump tried again, but again remarked, “It’s like a foreign language.”

The section, like many parts of the Constitution, was slightly awkward—an anachronistic arrangement of words that don’t naturally trip off the tongue. Members of the crew exchanged looks, trying not to be obvious. Some believed Trump would eventually get it, but others were more concerned. The president, already bristling about his missteps, was getting angry. He chided the crew, accusing them of distracting him. “You know, your paper was making a lot of noise. It’s tough enough,” Trump said.

“Every time he stumbled, he manufactured something to blame people,” another person in the room recalled. “He never said, ‘Sorry, I’m messing this up.’ [Other] people would screw up and say, ‘Ohhhh, I’m sorry.’ They would be self-effacing. He was making up excuses and saying there were distracting sounds.… He was definitely blaming everyone for his inability to get through it. That was prickly, or childish.” Though stiff, he eventually made it through without any errors.

Trump presented a stark contrast to many other readers, including the Supreme Court associate justice Stephen Breyer, who read as if he knew the full text by heart, and Senator Ted Cruz, who “knew it from beginning to end” as a result of performing dramatic readings of the Constitution as a high school student, according to Pelosi. “Donald Trump is a celebrity and he came to perform,” she said. “He had not practiced it beforehand. I don’t think anyone would show up to read the Constitution without practicing it first.”

Whatever the reason for Trump’s discomfort with the reading, several watching agreed on this much: He behaved like a brooding child, short-tempered, brittle, and quick to blame mystery distractions for the mistakes. “I didn’t expect this, but I felt sorry for him,” another witness said. “When [Vice President] Pence is reading it, when [former vice president [Dick] Cheney is reading it, I knew they knew the Constitution. And I thought, Before he got this job, he really should have read it.”

 

[fraurosena]

3 minutes ago, apple1 said:

Off to search more info about when and where this statement (about farmers' kids).

He spoke at the American Farm Bureau Federation's convention yesterday. Here's an article about his speech:

Trump rails against impeachment in speech to Texas farmers

Quote

President Trump lashed out at congressional Democrats over his impeachment on Sunday during an address to the American Farm Bureau in Austin, Texas.

In a roughly 45-minute speech to the crowd Sunday afternoon, Trump rattled off a list of accomplishments under his administration, including the recently-passed "Phase One" trade deal struck between U.S. and Chinese negotiators, which comes after a months-long trade war between Beijing and Washington.

“What do I get out of it? I get impeached. By these radical left lunatics. But it’s OK. The farmers are sticking with Trump," the president said, eliciting loud applause from the Texas audience

During the speech, Trump also lashed out at two top contenders in the Democratic primary — Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren(D-Mass.), whom he called a "socialist" and a "fake socialist," respectively, while also returning to his use of the nickname "Pocahontas" for Warren.

“The far left want to massively raise your taxes, crush your businesses with regulations, take away your health care," he said of Sanders and Warren, while not directing any remarks at their fellow Democratic frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden (D).

The House voted earlier this month to send two articles of impeachment to the Senate, setting up a trial and a battle over whether witnesses will be called by the Senate to give testimony about the president's actions involving his efforts to push Ukraine's government to open a criminal investigation into Biden.

Trump has frequently attacked the impeachment process and attempted to cast it in a partisan light to discredit Democrats leading the inquiry. No Republican members of Congress have announces support for the House impeachment or a removal of Trump by the Senate, though former GOP congressman Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) voted for impeachment.

 

[fraurosena]

More on Trump and the farmers.

Farmers refuse to cheer for Trump as he lies that he’s fighting for them to keep their land

Quote

President Donald Trump appeared in Texas Sunday to speak to the Farm Bureau conference. Among the things he promised was that he was fighting for them to have their water rights and rights to control their own land usage.

As one viewer noted, there was noticeable silence when Trump mentioned land usage. It could be due to the fact that Trump is suing in court to take the land of farmers and ranches so he can build his border wall. For some, the land has been in their family since the founding of the state of Texas.

Trump was also caught in multiple lies and twisting of the truth. He claimed that under former President Barack Obama’s administration, farmer income fell. He didn’t mention that it topped out at the highest it’s ever been, as one viewer noticed.

He also didn’t address the costs he’s forced on farmers due to his tariffs with China. While Trump provided corporate farms with multiple bailouts, those who don’t run huge farms lost a lot of money and many were even forced to file for bankruptcy. Farmer suicides also saw an increase under Trump. Thanks to Trump’s tariffs, equipment costs also significanlty increased.

None of the topics were ones Trump explained to those who deserved answers.

You can see the video in the tweet below:

 

 

[apple1]

@fraurosena FTR I believed you to start with. I was just looking for the definitive documentation for "discussion" with certain individuals in my life. :-)

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s staffing struggle: After 3 years, unfilled jobs across the administration"

Spoiler

Pushing nominees through the Senate confirmation process takes twice as long under President Donald Trump as it did during President Ronald Reagan’s time in office — a record that appears to have limited Trump’s influence during his three years as president.

On average, it takes 115 days to confirm a presidential appointee for Trump, compared with 56.4 days under Reagan, according to new data from the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service. In 2019, the process took even longer: an average of 136 days for the Senate to confirm appointees, particularly for sub-Cabinet positions.

The delays come from several factors including the extensive paperwork applicants must complete, as well as the increasingly common practice of the opposing party delaying nominations by placing holds on them, or filibustering them, according to the partnership’s research.

The latest data illuminates the extent to which the Trump administration has struggled to fill jobs as it heads into its fourth year on Monday. Of the 714 key positions requiring Senate confirmation, 515 of them have a confirmed nominee in place — with 170 positions having no nominee, according to the latest tracking from the partnership.

White Houses typically do not get many nominees confirmed in the fourth year of any presidency apart from Cabinet positions, if needed, and judicial nominations. The Trump administration is likely to be no different and is aware of this fact, one White House official said.

Instead, the Trump White House is focusing its attention on staffing for a potential second term and the steps the administration needs to take on nominations and confirmations, the official added — even though the same aide stressed that no one is yet drawing up lists with potential names.

The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Administrations tend to have the most success in filling Senate-confirmed jobs in the first and fifth years of any administration, according to the partnership data.

 

[fraurosena]

Say one thing for Trump, say he's got excellent moron skillz.

 

[fraurosena]

Trump made quite an impression in Davos.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"D.C. attorney general sues Trump inaugural committee over $1 million booking at president’s hotel"

Spoiler

D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine sued President Trump’s inaugural committee and business Wednesday, alleging that the committee violated its nonprofit status by spending more than $1 million to book a ballroom at Trump’s D.C. hotel that its staff knew was overpriced and that it barely used.

During the lead-up to Trump’s January 2017 inauguration, the committee booked the hotel ballroom for $175,000 a day, plus more than $300,000 in food and beverage costs, over the objections of its own event planner.

The committee was formed to organize the events around the inauguration, but Racine alleges it instead “abandoned this purpose and violated District law when it wasted approximately $1 million of charitable funds in overpayment for the use of event space at the Trump hotel.”

“These charges were unreasonable and improperly served to enrich” Trump’s business, the complaint reads. He alleges that Trump and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, were likely aware of the charges, based on documents Racine subpoenaed from the committee and the Trump Organization.

D.C. law requires that nonprofit organizations not operate for the purpose of generating profits for private individuals. In the civil suit, Racine, a Democrat, asked for an order from D.C. Superior Court directing that the money be returned and given to charities promoting civic engagement.

An attorney for the committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In response to previous inquiries about spending by the committee, its chairman, Thomas J. Barrack Jr., issued a statement saying that the inauguration and the more than 20 related events “were executed in elegance and seamless excellence without incident or interruption, befitting the legacy and tradition that has preceded us.”

The Trump Organization issued a statement Wednesday calling the suit “an attempt to regulate what discounts it believes the hotel should have provided” and “a clear PR stunt.”

“The rates charged by the hotel were completely in line with what anyone else would have been charged for an unprecedented event of this enormous magnitude and were reflective of the fact that hotel had just recently opened, possessed superior facilities and was centrally located on Pennsylvania Avenue,” the company said.

Racine’s lawsuit specifically targets a $1 million deal made between the committee and the Trump Organization for the ballroom during four days around the inaugural, which he alleges was a knowing waste of the nonprofit’s resources to benefit the Trumps. Racine has litigated against other nonprofit groups in the past, including charter schools and the organization managing the Howard Theatre.

Documents submitted with the 18-page complaint show discussions between Trump’s company and his inaugural committee, ending in a deal that Racine argues is such a waste of the committee’s funds that it violates the law and the organization’s mission “to further the common good and welfare” of American citizens “by supporting the activities surrounding the 2017 Presidential inauguration.”

Hotel management emailed the committee in November 2016 saying an eight-day package of meeting rooms, food and drinks would cost $3.6 million — an enormous number even by the standards of luxury hotels during the inauguration.

Rick Gates, a lobbyist and the committee’s deputy chairman, then emailed Ivanka Trump to say that cost “seems quite high compared to other properties” and said he worried it would generate negative publicity. Ivanka Trump, then an executive at her father’s business, responded to say she had directed the hotel’s general manager to speak with Gates directly. (Gates was later sentenced to 45 days in jail plus three years probation for conspiracy and lying to the FBI as part of special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.) 

After hotel management agreed to charge $175,000 per day for meeting space and to charge separately for food and beverage, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a friend of first lady Melania Trump who had previously produced the Met gala and New York’s Fashion Week, expressed alarm, writing that other properties had been offered to the committee at little or no cost. She warned that one of the committee’s two planned events at the hotel was for the Trump family and that “when this is audited it will become public knowledge.”

Wolkoff said the meeting space should cost a maximum of $85,000 per day. Even that was pricey compared to offers from other hotels. The committee separately received free meeting space from the Fairmont Hotel after booking a large block of rooms and agreeing to spend at least $46,000 on food and drinks, according to the documents.

The committee also received two meeting rooms at no cost from the W Hotel after booking a block of guest rooms and agreeing to spend at least $75,000 on food and drinks.

The lawsuit is the second brought by Racine over Trump’s business practices. In the other, Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh allege that Trump violates the Constitution’s foreign “emoluments” clause by doing business with foreign governments.

The Trump inaugural committee raised a record-shattering $107 million, more than double the largest haul for any other incoming president. Trump broke with the practice of most recent inaugural committees and placed no limits on corporate or individual donors, leading more than 45 individuals and companies to donate at least $1 million each.

In the three years since, negative revelations about the committee’s work have emerged. Federal prosecutors in New York are pursuing a criminal investigation related to donations and spending by the committee and have issued their own subpoenas.

Wolkoff was criticized also after the committee directed $26 million to her 12-person firm, though all but $1.62 million of that was reportedly routed to subcontractors.

Although Trump and his children weren’t managers of the committee, they ran into trouble for misuse of charitable funds previously when a judge ordered Trump to pay $2 million in damages for using funds from his foundation for his own benefit. Trump agreed to close the organization.

The documents appear to show that Wolkoff planned to raise the issue of the hotel prices with the president-elect. On Dec. 16, 2016, according to her task list, Wolkoff had a meeting scheduled with Trump at which the “cost of ALL EVENTS at Trump Hotel” was on the agenda.

The cost of the ballroom was raised at least two other times by committee officials, according to the documents.

The hotel had earlier booked another group, the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast, for the morning of the inauguration — meaning the ballroom was double-booked. Correspondence between the committee and hotel management appears to show that committee staff expected a $70,000 discount since the room was unavailable for half that day, but ending up paying full freight anyhow. (The prayer breakfast was booked before Trump’s victory for $5,000.)

Gates later discussed with hotel management the possibility of canceling a Friday night event he originally thought would host 1,250 people.

He wrote to Ivanka Trump to say: “There will be an after party at the [Trump hotel] following the inaugural balls on Friday. DJT is not expected to attend but was more for you, Don and Eric,” referring to the president and his adult sons. Racine cites this as misuse of charitable funds to benefit the Trump family.

The cost for the ballroom at the Trump hotel never came down. Trump’s company is now trying to sell its lease to the hotel. Initial bids are due Thursday for the property.