LIES, HYPOCRISY, AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
Trump was off to a classy start in this category by claiming Germany owes the US “vast sums of money” for NATO. Naturally, this was tweeted from the golf course, and also naturally, it is factually false.
Ivanka made a bit of news this week as she got a WH office and security clearance, despite no job description or title, which you’re really not supposed to do. Yes, Trump did say during the campaign Ivanka wouldn’t get this.
Trump also took credit for the latest job report, numbers he referred to as fake when Obama was President, despite having put no legislation in place that would add jobs – save the Keystone Pipeline, which will have thirty-five. Not thirty-five thousand, not thirty-five hundred, the actual number thirty five, as in, three dozen less one. When asked about Trump’s reversal on job numbers, Spicer gave the actual quote "They may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now."
But the big one was Trump firing 46 Attorney Generals. Amongst them was Bharara, who was investigating Deutche Bank as part of an ongoing federal case. Deutche Bank has already settled the NYState Russian money laundering case for $630 million, but not the federal case. Donald Trump provably owes Deutche Bank hundreds of millions of dollars, and blatantly fired the AG looking into them. Bharara did get a call 24 hours ahead of time though…
It’s also worth noting that Ivanka’s landlord is suing the US government; Rex Tillerson might still have millions in Exxon stock as Trump gave them an official endorsement (related: Keystone Pipeline is go); there has still been no action against Conway despite ethical watchdogs calling for it despite White House lawyers finding no defense for the action and knowing that full well; instead, they might throw Conway’s husband a cushy job he’s not qualified for;Trump is being sued by a DC restaurant for “unfair competition”; Trump’s son-in-law and close advisor Kushner could get $400 million by selling a building to China, the same China that just gave Trump 38 trademarks about the time he softened his One China policy; Trump looks to give a friend and Boeing exec with no governing or military experience a VP for Secretary of Defense job; and another friend and coal lobbyist the #2 seat on the EPA; and finally, the money Trump’s Organization gets from foreign governments they said they’d donate, will actually happen next year, and Trump hasn’t proven he’s giving away his salary yet.
THE ESSENCE OF COMEDY IS TIMING
It’s a minor point, since the nomination of Gorsuch is all but confirmed, but while he was in front of the Senate, one of HIS rulings was overturned by SCOTUS.
Also minor, the state of Colorado is moving to re-classify legal marijuana before a suspected federal crackdown. See, this is why you don’t tell your enemies what your plan is before oooooooooooooooooooooooh now I get it.
ALL IN ALL IT’S JUST ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL
Mexico is not paying for the Wall. However, Texas citizens are getting letters about eminent domain on their property, and Trump has asked Congress, not Mexico, for $1.5 of the $21.5 billion the Wall will cost to get it started. Incidentally, Trump will have nothing to do with the Wall’s design or building, as he’s already outsourced those jobs despite his claims to the contrary while campaigning. Oh, and he didn’t like the first batch so the proposal period was extended at least once.
ELECTIONEERING
Still nothing. There will be no investigation. Trump will provide no evidence for his claims.
VACATION ALL I EVER WANTED
Trump went golfing this weekend. Again. I believe this is eight weekends off out of ten weekends in office, including the first one after inauguration and the one he’s taking right now. He’s also held multiple campaign speeches further reducing the time he’s spent actually doing his job.
As a reminder, Obama was on vacation about 7% of his combined terms. Trump has over tripled that not including campaign speeches. It is for at least this reason that the Secret Service is asking for another $60 million. That’s not total. That’s extra.
Trump’s neighbors are sick and tired of it, too, and they’re asking for reimbursement.
THIS IS WIRE TAPP
(cripes, what’s with all the musical references tonight)
It’s hardly a secret anymore that Trump will just watch conservative news like FOX then tweet on what he saw, even the parts that are easily disproven, without, you know, asking other Cabinet members or anything. So one day, Trump read this Breitbart interview and within the hour tweeted that Obama, a bad/sick individual, pulled a Nixonian tactic and wire tapped Trump Tower. Mark Levin, the radio host who was cited, later went on FOX News and admitted he had no proof. Maybe this was an intentional distraction from, say, the thick wall of text shown here. Maybe he just doesn’t have the temperament to be President. It no longer matters.
Obviously, no proof has been made public. On the contrary, there’s a long line of people who refute these claims. The first was the FBI, who asked the DOJ to specifically refute the claims. They did not. But there were many others.
-- James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence (at the time this didn’t happen)
-- Jason Chaffetz, chairman, House Oversight Committee
-- Leon Panetta, former CIA director, who said it “ weakens the office of the presidency”
-- Nixon’s lawyer during Watergate, ain’t that topical
-- Jeff Sessions, who says he never told Trump anything about this.
-- Paul Ryan, who said no such wire tap exists.
-- Chris Christie, and I’ll admit, that one surprised me.
-- Rubio, who’d never heard about this
-- FOX News, despite Trump calling them the source when they, of course, were not.
-- the entire Senate Intelligence Committee
Trump’s surrogates, over time, have backed away from this claim. Things like “ if this is accurate” and “ https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/...6219520Neither the White House nor the President will comment further until such oversight is conducted” and we were taking the literally quoted “wire tapp” too literally to “this is above my pay grade” ([url=http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/322886-obama-press-secretary-shuts-down-spicers-claim-that-wiretapping]no it’s not[/url). Others were dodging questions whenever possible, which they should, considering the thrashing Spicer got after Trump made the claim without evidence, then hid for a solid week. Pence has also been dodging questions on the subject. But the biggest “what he meant was” goes to Spicer, who said Britain did it, and blimey was he grilled on that one. He was forced to apologize but didn’t mean it.
Trump personally has not. He continues to tell friends that he is confident he will be proven right. He said the truth and evidence would be out in a few days, then a week, then two more weeks. He’s since admitted he saw it on the news, rather than an intelligence briefing or the like (see above list) but continues to hold fast to the claim.
Then, Nunes stepped in. He claimed he had info that Trump’s campaign was picked up by “incidental” surveillance. First of all, that doesn’t match Trump’s claim at all (yet Trump felled “somewhat vindicated”). Secondly, Nunes cited an anonymous source (doesn’t Trump hate those?) and leaked classified intel (doesn’t Trump hate leaks?) to do this, but nobody else in both parties on his committee had any idea what he was talking about. Nunes first apologized for not telling his fellow committee members, then second backpedalled on the entire assertion entirely. So all this did was make him look like Trump’s bitch, and further suggests no such evidence exists.
WAKE UP YOU HAVE TO MAKE MONEY
The latest budget is also causing a stir. It calls for dramatic cuts to many federal programs and agencies, mostly to pay for the increase in military budget. That’s probably why Mulvaney told department heads to remain silent on the budget before it was unveiled. Listed targets include
-- the Coast Guard
-- FEMA
-- airport security…wait a minute, cutting airport security during the Muslim Ban? What?
-- nutrition for older, poorer, and sicker Americans
-- the Department of Transportation, which is odd in the sense that he promised a $1 trillion infrastructure plan, a lot of which would be roads and bridges
-- the State Department, the people who handle diplomacy, despite the very real security risk top generals say this causes
-- similar, UN funding, which is (a) hypocritical given what he said about Germany and (b) affects both military and humanitarian programs
-- scientific and medical research
-- the New York State Police, to whom he already owes millions for the extra security on Trump Tower, in which Trump does not live but his wife does. Read into that what you will.
-- job creation programs
-- those urban/inner city areas he asked “what do you have to lose?” Apparently, what they have to lose is $6 billion
-- various programs that assist poor and unemployed, such as coal miners.
Incidentally, some of the cuts he’s making (Meals on Wheels, PBS, etc) cost less than the vacation money he’s already spent. Not yearly result: so far.
And despite wanting to raise the military budget 10% during peacetime, this might be enough for the buildup he’s looking for. So the cuts might potentially deepen in the future.
GET OUT (LEAVE) RIGHT NOW
After the first ban hit a brick wall and was denied an appeal, Trump specifically wrote another one based on the first ”so-called” court decision he swore up and down was invalid and he would challenge all the way to yeah he lost and gave up. Anyhow, the second ban…was immediately blocked as well. That case, at time of writing, remains open to further appeals, but no amount of re-writing can change the fact that Trump called for a Muslim Ban while running for office, and his intent is legally arguably unconstitutional as it discriminates against a religion (but there are other reasons too). Even Trump’s own aides aren’t sure if Trump sees Islam as a religion at all.
The ACLU statement on the second Muslim Ban was pretty specific. “The Trump administration has conceded that its original Muslim ban was indefensible. Unfortunately, it has replaced it with a scaled-back version that shares the same fatal flaws. The only way to actually fix the Muslim ban is not to have a Muslim ban. Instead, President Trump has recommitted himself to religious discrimination, and he can expect continued disapproval from both the courts and the people. What's more, the changes the Trump administration has made, and everything we've learned since the original ban rolled out, completely undermine the bogus national security justifications the president has tried to hide behind and only strengthen the case against his unconstitutional executive orders.”
As with the first Muslim Ban, the diplomatic struggle this creates is obvious. Other issues, such as a doctor shortage, are less so.
I’ll remind everyone that the Muslim Bans were meant to be temporary measures until we find out what the hell is going on until a new extreme vetting procedure can be made. Nobody has seen hide nor hair of such a new vetting system, however, with the bans being blocked, you’d think they’d be trying to make one sooner rather than later.
NA NA NA NAH NA NA NA, WE’RE ALL GOING TO GET IN A FIGHT
This batch of weeks was flanked by botched raids on both ends, Yemen on one side, Mosul on the other. Apparently they are launching more drone strikes and accepting more civilian losses than Obama – and Trump has allowed the Pentagon to do this without his approval. Within a week of ceding control, the US bombed a mosque, killing dozens who weren’t the targets. An investigation is underway.
North Korea has been making an especially big stink recently, not the least of which was firing a missile into the Sea of Japan. Apparently, DPRK’s Glorious Leader was so happy after personally launching the missile that he barely noticed that his brother was blatantly assassinated. China is not helping matters, to the point that South Korea is considering a WTO complaint and bringing out an American anti-missile system. Trump has outsourced a plan to his aides and generals, but apparently, everything is on the table, including pre-emptive strikes. Tillerson on the subject: “Let me be very clear: The policy of strategic patience has ended.” Then he cut his trip to South Korea short due to fatigue.
Iran’s also been making a bit of a fuss, buzzing our ships in a defiant show of strength, and we buzzed them the hell right back which was very mature. Naturally Trump threatened them again, despite owning a hotel there…that might possibly have ties to terrorism…
BACK IN THE USSR
Despite Trump trying to paint Obama as the Russian accomplice, this story will not go away. More and more seems to surface each week…because more and more has surfaced each week, actually, at least in the last three.
-- a former NSA official says there is “considerable evidence” of high-level Trump-Russia communication
-- Monica Crowley, yes the plagiarism person, has backed out of a NSC post and is instead working with for a Ukrainian billionaire and Putin ally
-- Russians own $100 million in Trump properties, some of which they’ve never set foot in
-- despite Trump originally claiming he had nothing to do with the RNC platform moving away from helping Ukraine against Russia, a former Trump advisor says such a move was based on Trump’s insistence after meeting the Russian Ambassador a few months earlier
-- Tillerson cancelling a trip to NATO and going to Russia first (when called out on this, he rescheduled NATO first).
-- Manafort was paid $10 million to help Putin by Oleg Deripaska.
-- and anything else I missed on this list from NBC.
It also doesn’t help their case when they change the narrative to “we had no contact with Russia” to “we didn’t know Flynn was doing it” to “okay we knew he worked with multiple Russian firms but we don’t care” to “fine, we’ll retroactively classify him as a foreign agent”.
Then Comey swaggered onto the field, denied Trump’s wire tapp claims, confirmed Trump’s campaign was under investigation, dropped the mic, and Hammerdanced offstage.
At this point, the majority of Americans want a special, independent prosecutor to fully investigate the situation. While Sessions has recused himself, he will not ask for a special prosecutor. So, Congress has been asking to see other people on their own. Carter Page is one of them, and understandably so, the Trump campaign gave him the okay to visit Russia during the campaign. Manafort is another, which might be why the White House is slowly backing away from his role in the campaign, claiming he had a limited role, which is factually false. And Roger Stone, who has bragged about being in contact with the Russian hacker group that attacked the DNC, is a third. Also, their various staff members.
Russia’s outlook on the US has soured. Possibly due to no longer having an eager puppet, or possibly because Trump is so mired in allegations that he can’t put forth a pro-Putin agenda of his own free will, either. Either way, Trump cannot contain the GOPs apparent distaste for Putin, nor their ability to act on this distaste, such as intensifying sanctions. McConnell was certainly vocal about it. This could threaten anything from their challenge to world courts about their invasion of Ukraine to whatever the hell their troops eyeing Egypt and Libya are doing. Then there’s that treaty-busting missile they parked on the European border and reports that Russia is backing the motherfucking Taliban.
DOCTOR DOCTOR GIMME THE NEWS
You all know where this is going. Sing along if you know the words.
Perhaps they should have seen this coming. Actually, perhaps they did. Despite praising publicly and highly the House bill, the White House took 24 hours to actually endorse it. But, once they did, the bill became TrumpCare, regardless of the author.
Perhaps the reason it was pushed so hard, and so fast, was because Trump promised, repeatedly, to repeal and replace the ACA immediately. Perhaps it was because Trump has no attention span, or because he can’t work for more than a few days in a row without golfing in Florida or holding a campaign rally. Or, perhaps it was pushed so hard because everyone involved knew how poor of an idea this was. The repeal of $500 billion in tax revenue wasn’t even the biggest issue. The CBO reports, both of them, fell from above like urine from a Russian prostitute like the Sword of Damocles, and other reports from other groups joined in as well. Numbers were thrown around like “24 million more uninsured” “deductibles raised from $2500 to $4000”. Naturally the findings were contested before they were even announced, even by the new HHS head who had endorsed the CBO head, since there was a zero percent chance the findings would show the bill in any positive light.
In any event, the bill was written, endorsed, and put into the public eye. It immediately drew heavy criticism, even before CBO numbers had come out. Some opponents were obvious, such as basically every Democrat, but no shocker there, it was a $600B tax cut for the rich that removed income-based health care assistance. Others included Rand Paul, again, not a huge surprise, who claimed Paul Ryan was trying to fool Trump with the bill. Then there were major organizations, such as the AMA and AARP (just to name a couple), who savaged the bill openly and thoroughly. Even the Koch Brothers are taking up arms at this point.
Arguably the biggest surprise opponents were the people who flooded GOP town hall meetings in loud, angry protest, to the point where GOP Reps basically stopped going to those. Data point of one (aka “anecdote”) but mine sure bailed. She held a phone call conference, in which questions from callers were recorded, played to the conference call, and she would answer those questions (well no, she answered maybe two out of five I heard, but she pretended to answer the other three) without their ability to ask follow-ups or say “you didn’t answer my question”, and more importantly, without looking anyone in the eye. And she turned out to be a “no” vote!
But the real opponents, the ones who would eventually kill the bill, were an unlikely alliance of the Freedom Caucus – who said the bill didn’t go far enough – and the Tuesday Group – who said it went too far. There were also a smattering of other GOP members, notably governors but also Newt Gingrich, who were uneasy about something so questionable while they were up for re-election, and their voters were so obviously aware of the issues with this bill, regardless of which group they were in (or neither). Nine of the top ten states receiving ACA tax credits were won by Trump, it turns out, and some of the elected officials there knew it, and so did Trump. Ryan and Trump got together with these people, begging them, arguably bribing them, less arguably threatening them, and most certainly saying “this is our only shot, now or never”.
It wasn’t enough. Not enough “no” votes would have become “yes” votes, and Ryan and Trump said to pull the vote. Who made the suggestion, and who agreed with it, remains unclear. But the vote was pulled at the very literal last minute.
YOU FUCKING COWARDS.
Last time I promise.
No, I don’t.
Now, such a big, embarrassing, unspinnable loss is bad enough, but this could also domino. Trump spent a fair amount of his remaining political capital (see “Back In The USSR” above) pushing for this bill. And he lost it. Tax reform was already unlikely by August and this can’t possibly make it smoother or faster.
Naturally, just as he said he would weeks ago, Trump blamed the Democrats, the only group involved he didn’t talk to or negotiate with, don’t have enough votes to stop it, and who were never going to say yes anyhow. They’ll try again (“maybe next year”), and Pence praised Trump for how tirelessly he worked, which Trump immediately ruined by going straight to his own golf course within fewer hours than you can count on one tiny hand.
And that should be the end of it. That’s where a mature adult would have left it. But that’s not what we’re dealing with. Trump tweeted that we should all watch Judge Jeanie on FOX, no big deal at first, he’s promoted her before. But then she said…this.
Official source: http://video.foxnews.com/v/5372739464001/?#sp=show-clips
That’s right: Trump, by proxy, demanded Paul Ryan step down as Speaker of the House, within 24 hours of saying what a good job Ryan did.
This is it, boys. This is war.
TL : D-ENCORE
Much has been said about Trump’s childish “I’m the President, and you’re not” statement. But based purely on his results, he’s not the President either. His biggest campaign promises are either missing in action, stalled, or blocked entirely. His own party won’t even follow his lead on something they also campaigned for, and they’re not accepting his boldface lies. He’s under an increasing number of lawsuits, increasing international negative pressure, his political capital is nearly bankrupt (HAH), his poll numbers remain historically low, he can’t help Russia even if he wanted to, and he just basically declared war against the leader of his only remaining allies, the Republican Party.
And, to top everything else off, Trump just lost a billion dollars and was replaced on Forbes’ list of greatest leaders by Samantha Bee.
This may be the worst 100 days of any President. And we're not even to seventy.
Nine weeks in, ladies and gentlemen. Nine.