Tag: Donald Trump

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Politico: Day-To-Day Turmoil In A Twitter-Driven White House

Donald Trump

Politico has an article up describing the turmoil living inside a Twitter-driven White House:

President Donald Trump’s White House and Defense Department lawyers had warned him against the transgender military ban for days. They were concerned about the ramifications of the policy, how military officials would respond and what legal backlash it could cause, two West Wing officials familiar with last month’s discussions said. The lawyers thought there would be plenty of time for more discussions and were analyzing arguments.

Frustrated with being “slow-walked,” in the words of one White House official, the president took to Twitter last week — jarring many in the West Wing out of complacency and startling his lawyers, Defense Department officials and West Wing aides, who learned of the change in a series of tweets.

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military,” Trump began.

The administration had no plan in place, but Trump told others they would have to “get in gear” if he announced the ban first, one White House adviser who spoke to Trump said. He also said the announcement would stop the lawyers from arguing with him anymore. There is still no plan in place, and Defense Department officials have said they won’t implement the ban until guidance is given.

[snip]

Advisors believed for days that Trump was likely to pick John Pistole as FBI director. Inside the administration, three officials said, there was little initial support for Christopher Wray, the former FBI official who was New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s attorney in the bridge-closing controversy. “No one really was pushing for Wray,” one senior administration official said.

After talking extensively with Christie, who sold Trump on the former FBI official’s bona fides as a lawyer, Trump decided to go with Wray without telling others on staff, advisers said. White House officials waking up to the tweet were startled, and hurriedly wrote a news release to correspond to it. Much of the president’s inner circle knew little about Wray. Trump was simply tired of the search, these people said.

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Amazon: Donald Trump Twitter Toilet Paper

Finally, a good use for Donald Trump’s tweets: Trump Toilet Paper!

For the low, low price (not so low) of $11.99 you can own a roll of toilet paper printed with Donald Trump’s tweets from Amazon.

All the popular tweets are here:

• “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy”

• “Again, to our very foolish leader, do not attack Syria – if you do many very bad things will happen & from that fight the U.S. gets noth-“

• “What I am saying is stay out of Syria”

• Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow – if so, will he become my new best friend?”

For the discount price of $5.99, you can purchase a roll of toilet paper with the Donald’s face on it.

So many choices…

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Trump Covers NEWSWEEK: “Lazy Boy”

From the Newsweek article:

Now that he’s president, Trump frequently departs the White House and spends the weekend golfing at either his South Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, or his country club in the New Jersey suburb of Bedminster. The promise he’d made a year before was discarded so quickly, you have to wonder if he even remembers making it. Politico did the legwork: George W. Bush didn’t golf for the first five months of his presidency, while Obama stayed away from his beloved links for four months following his inauguration. Trump held out for all of two weeks. He has visited a golf club 40 times since taking office in January, according to the self-explanatory site Trump Golf Count, which estimates the forays have cost American taxpayers $55 million. Another Trump tracker, this one by The New York Times, finds that his visits to Trump-branded properties total 56 days, nearly a third of his time in office.

For those who think the “Trump Golf Count” is mean-spirited, I’ll just say had Trump not harangued Obama about golfing for years, and then turned to the golf course so incessantly himself in an amazing feat of hypocrisy, no one would care.

You get what you put out.

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News Round-Up: August 4, 2017

Some news items you may have missed:

• Celebrating #FurryFriday at The Randy Report #grrr

• The U.S. economy added 209K jobs in July, bringing the unemployment rate to 4.3%.

• The CEO of former escort site RentBoy.com sentenced to six months in prison for promoting prostitution and conspiracy to commit money laundering. It’s notable that the escorts on the site signed up voluntarily. There seems to be hypocrisy at play here in that there are dozens of straight escort sites in operation in NYC that have gone unpunished.

• Donald Trump is taking credit for the stock market’s record highs, but just last fall he said stock values were “sitting on an economic bubble; a financial bubble.” Funny how real it all gets when he’s president.

• The Massachusetts woman convicted in June of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging her boyfriend to kill himself was sentenced to 2 and 1/2 years in prison. In a stream of several texts, then-17-year-old Carter encouraged 18-year-old boyfriend Conrad Roy III to follow through on thoughts of killing himself. #evil

• Kacy Hill, signed to Kanye West’s GOOD Music label, was named “MTV PUSH: Artist To Watch,” and I’m inclined to believe. Check out Kacy’s pop-y, EDM-driven “Hard To Love” below. More info on the rapturous red-head at her official site here.

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Donald Trump Prepares For 17 Day Vacation After 6 Months Of Playing Golf

Donald Trump, who campaigned for president criticizing President Obama for taking vacations, is now taking 17 days off after six hard months of playing golf at his country clubs.

Don’t forget this:

Just 2 weeks ago – “We shouldn’t leave town” until health care is solved:

And, of course, this trip on the “way-back machine:”

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Trump Blames Congress For “All-Time Low” Russian Relationship, McCain Slaps Back “Thank Putin For Attacking Our Democracy”

Sen. John McCain

A day after Donald Trump signed into law a bill passed with massive bipartisan support in Congress that imposes new sanctions on Russia and curbs the president’s authority to lift them, Trump took to Twitter to complain about the “flawed” legislation.

In addition to imposting new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea, the legislation impairs the president’s ability to lift any sanctions put in place by the Obama administration in retaliation for Russian election meddling.

Veteran Republican Sen. John McCain didn’t miss a beat responding to Trump, saying any blame for bad blood lies at the feet of Russian President Putin:

And a few more voices from across the political spectrum:

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White House Transcripts: Trump Begged Mexican President To Stop Saying Mexico Will Not Pay For “The Wall”

A transcript of newly-elected President Trump’s first phone call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto shows Trump knew he’d painted himself into a corner campaigning on “The Wall” to be paid for by Mexico.

Trump was most concerned that the Mexican president continued to say his country would not be paying for any wall.

From the Washington Post:

“You cannot say that to the press,” Trump said repeatedly, according to a transcript of the Jan. 27 call obtained by The Washington Post. Trump made clear that he realized the funding would have to come from other sources but threatened to cut off contact if Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto continued to make defiant statements.

The funding “will work out in the formula somehow,” Trump said, adding later that “it will come out in the wash, and that is okay.” But “if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that.”

Trump also told with the Mexican president that he won the state of New Hampshire (he didn’t) because “New Hampshire is a drug-infested den.”

That’s an American president denigrating a state to the head of a foreign nation.

The article goes on to chronicle Trump’s heated conversation with Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a previous agreement by the U.S. to accept 1,250 economic refugees.

“I hate taking these people,” Trump said. “I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people” — an apparent reference to U.S. dairy farms.

Turnbull tried to salvage the deal, noting that the detainees were economic refugees who had not been accused of crimes. He explained that they were being denied entry into Australia because of a policy aimed at discouraging human smuggling.

“There is nothing more important in business or politics than a deal is a deal,” Turnbull said. “You can certainly say that it was not a deal that you would have done, but you are going to stick with it.”

Trump only became angrier, saying the refugees could “become the Boston bomber in five years.”

“I think it is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have never made,” Trump said. “As far as I am concerned, that is enough, Malcolm. I have had it.”

Response from the Twitterverse:

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Quinnipiac Poll: Trump Approval Plummets To 33%

The latest Quinnipiac University poll shows 61% of voters disapprove of the job Trump is doing in office, that’s in contrast to 33% who approve of Trump’s performance.

These are the Trumpster’s lowest approval ratings in the Quinnipiac poll since his inauguration.

This represents a sharp drop from June’s 40% approval rating in this same poll.

More results:

• 71% don’t think Trump is “level headed”

• 62% don’t think he is “honest”

• 63% say he does not have good leadership skills

• 59% say he does not care about average Americans

• 63% say that he does not share their values

So. Much. Winning.

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Boy Scouts & Mexican President Call Out Trump For Making Up Congratulatory Phone Calls

Donald Trump enjoys his flights of fancy

During an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump said the Boy Scouts called him to say his speech at last week’s Jamboree was “the greatest speech that was ever made to them.”

The Boy Scouts have countered saying they know of no such phone call being made.

From the AP:

Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Wednesday, “I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful.” Politico published the transcript of the interview.

“We are unaware of any such call,” the Boy Scouts responded in a statement. It specified that neither of the organization’s two top leaders — President Randall Stephenson and Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh — had placed such a call.

The White House had no immediate response to the Boy Scouts’ denial.

Surbaugh apologized last week to members of the scouting community who were offended by the political rhetoric in Trump’s July 24 speech in West Virginia.

Other U.S. presidents have delivered nonpolitical speeches at past jamborees. To the dismay of many parents and former scouts, Trump promoted his political agenda and derided his rivals, inducing some of the scouts in attendance to boo at the mention of former President Barack Obama.

“I want to extend my sincere apologies to those in our Scouting family who were offended by the political rhetoric that was inserted into the jamboree,” Surbaugh said. “That was never our intent.”

During the Boy Scouts section of the interview, Trump grew irritated that a reporter in the room referred to the speech as getting “mixed” reception.

“There was no mix there,” Trump said. “That was a standing ovation from the time I walked out to the time I left, and for five minutes after I had already gone. There was no mix.”

In related news, CBS reports that Trump’s recent claim that Mexican President Nieto called him to congratulate him on such a great job on border control is false.

As Mr. Trump welcomed his new Chief of Staff John Kelly to the Cabinet table on Monday, Mr. Trump took time to applaud the work Kelly had done during his time leading the Department of Homeland Security. “At Homeland, what he has done has been nothing short of miraculous,” Mr. Trump said of Kelly.

He went on, saying, “As you know, the border was a tremendous problem and they’re close to 80 percent stoppage. And even the president of Mexico called me — they said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know they’re not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment.”

But Nieto denies that ever happened. In a statement released by the Mexican Foreign Ministry, Nieto “has not recently spoken to President Donald Trump over the telephone.”

So, is Trump lying? Or is he delusional?

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Trump Signs Russian Sanctions Bill Calling Legislation “Flawed”

President Trump signed the bipartisan sanctions legislation passed in Congress today, but in doing so issued a signing statement explaining his thoughts on the bill.

Last week, Trump’s press secretary announced, “President Donald J. Trump read early drafts of the bill and negotiated regarding critical elements of it. He has now reviewed the final version and, based on its responsiveness to his negotiations, approves the bill and intends to sign it.”

But today, Trump says the legislation is “flawed.”

It’s worth noting the president really didn’t have a choice in signing the bill. The legislation was passed with a veto-proof bipartisan majority. Any veto would have easily been overridden, causing the Trump administration even further embarrassment.

He also offered remarks to reporters in a separate statement which, of course, takes a dig at the GOP-controlled Congress: “Congress could not even negotiate a health care bill after seven years of talking.”

And then there’s the last line: “I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As President, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress.”