Tag: Donald Trump

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Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort Asks To Hire More Foreign Employees

I’m sorry, but this should really make all Americans who are concerned about jobs in the U.S. mad.

According to The Hill, Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort has asked the federal government to be allowed to hire 70 foreign employees.

And I’m not talking high-end, high-training jobs.

We’re talking cooks, housekeepers and servers.

The jobs would begin on Oct. 1 and end in May 2018, according to the filings. Those positions would take advantage of the H-2B visa program, which allows U.S. employers to bring foreign nations to the country for temporary, nonagricultural work.

The Trump National Golf Course in Jupiter, Fla., also filed a request to hire temporary foreign workers as cooks for the same period of time.

The requests came as the White House celebrates what it has designated “Made in America Week,” highlighting American-made products and re-upping the administration’s emphasis on bringing jobs back to the U.S.

Employers must establish that there are not enough American workers able or willing to fill the temporary positions in order to qualify for H-2B classification.

The cook positions at both Mar-a-Lago and the golf course pay $13.34 per hour, according to the filings. The server jobs pay $11.88 per hour, while the housekeeping positions pay $10.33 per hour.

As a presidential candidate and in his first six months in office, Trump touted the importance of U.S. manufacturing and labor and savaged international trade agreements, saying they have killed American jobs.

It is impossible to believe that there are not 70 people in the Palm Beach area who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) fill jobs for servers or housekeepers.

How this fits into Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” theme makes no sense.

Trump spent the 2016 campaign railing against lost American jobs. He can personally hire 70 Americans right now.

#smh

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Special Counsel Expanding Investigation Into Trump’s Business Transactions

President Trump told the New York Times yesterday that it would be improper for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to expand his current investigation into the Trump’s business dealings, but that’s exactly what Mueller is now doing.

Via Bloomberg:

The U.S. special counsel investigating possible ties between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia in last year’s election is examining a broad range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses as well as those of his associates, according to a person familiar with the probe.

FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008, the person said.

The investigation also has absorbed a money-laundering probe begun by federal prosecutors in New York into Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The president told the New York Times on Wednesday that any digging into matters beyond Russia would be out of bounds. Trump’s businesses have involved Russians for years, however, making the boundaries fuzzy.

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President Trump Throws AG Jeff Sessions Under The Bus

In what can only be described as “stunning,” President Trump told the New York Times that had he known Attorney General Jeff Sessions would recuse himself on all matters pertaining to Russia, he would have never fired him. Trump says the decision to recuse was “very unfair to the president.”

In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “Sessions should have never recused himself and if he was going to recuse himself he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.

In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, the president also accused James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director he fired in May, of trying to leverage a dossier of compromising material to keep his job. Mr. Trump criticized both the acting F.B.I. director who has been filling in since Mr. Comey’s dismissal and the deputy attorney general who recommended it. And he took on Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel now leading the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election.

Trump also draws a red line in the sand saying Robert Mueller should not look into his family’s financial records, again raising the question, “What’s he hiding?”

It’s interesting how much Trump bashes the NY Times but then sits down with them for these lengthy interviews. It’s like he wants their approval so very badly.

Listen to the president below then head over to the New York Times for the wide-ranging interview.

UPDATE – AG Sessions told reporters today, “We love this job. We love this department, and I plan to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate.”

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Trump’s Proposed Budget Would Cut 40% From Labor Department Job Training Programs

The Trump administration may be promoting “Made in America” week at the White House, but that theme doesn’t quite jive with the budget proposed by the administration which, if passed, would cut 40% from federal job training programs.

Those programs are vital for helping train American workers for new jobs.

Watch the report below from MSNBC.

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News Round-Up: July 19, 2017

With Grammy Award winner Richard Marx

Some news items you might have missed:

• File this under “Someone needs attention:” Donald Trump, all butt hurt from Senate Republicans’ failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, has hastily scheduled a rally in Ohio next week so his followers can love all over him.

• GOP Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas jumped the subway tracks that connect Congress to avoid speaking to reporters after his announcement with fellow Senator Mike Lee torpedoed the Republican health care bill last night.

• A Brigham-Young professor was fired for writing a pro-LGBT post on her Facebook. #SRSLY

• Andrew Garfield has clarified his now-infamous “gay without the physical act” comment saying he was taken out of context. And he was.

• Dallas businessman Jeffery Payne, owner of the Dallas Eagle and a former Mr. International Leather, has announced he will run for governor challenging Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s bid for re-election.

• I was down on the Las Vegas Strip yesterday interviewing the fab Richard Marx (above), who is about to begin his residency at the Flamingo Las Vegas in August. I attended a sneak peek of his show, “Satisfied: Only The Hits,” later in the evening. A tiny bit of last night’s showcase is posted below. Podcast interview coming up soon!

A post shared by Randy Slovacek (@randyslovacek) on Jul 19, 2017 at 12:08am PDT

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Trump: “Fake News” Reporting Of Secret Putin Chat Is “Sick”

Another morning, another Twitter rant from Donald Trump.

The New York Times reported yesterday that the president had an hour long previously undisclosed conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit earlier this month.

According to reports, the impromptu discussion included only Putin, Putin’s translator, and Trump. No one other staff from the U.S. was present.

The hourlong conversation in Hamburg, Germany, took place at a private dinner of the world leaders at a conference hall on the banks of the Elbe River during the Group of 20 economic summit meeting. It followed a more than two-hour formal meeting earlier in the day between the two presidents that included their foreign ministers and featured a fraught discussion about Moscow’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 elections.

In the earlier meeting, Mr. Trump questioned the Russian president about his role in the American elections, Mr. Putin denied his involvement, and the two men agreed to move beyond the dispute in the interest of finding common ground on other matters, including a limited cease-fire in Syria.

But the intimate dinner conversation, of which there is no official United States government record is the latest to raise eyebrows. Foreign leaders who witnessed it later commented privately on the oddity of an American president flaunting such a close rapport with his Russian counterpart.

John Kirby, a diplomatic military analyst, told CNN, “While smaller pull-aside meetings are common, it is strange that a pull-aside with someone like Putin — especially Putin — would not include at least another national security official and a translator.”

But this morning Trump took to his Twitter account to admonish the media for reporting the meeting and described the “fake news” as “sick” and “dishonest.”

While the Trumpster tweeted that the media characterized the dinner as “secret,” that isn’t what news outlets were reporting. The dinner itself, and Trump’s attendance were well known.

What wasn’t apparent was an hour long chat between the two world leaders. And with no American aide to take notes, no one knows what was discussed.

The first volatile tweet read, “Fake News story of secret dinner with Putin is ‘sick.’ All G 20 leaders, and spouses, were invited by the Chancellor of Germany. Press knew!”

That was followed by, “The Fake News is becoming more and more dishonest! Even a dinner arranged for top 20 leaders in Germany is made to look sinister!”

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Trump On Health Care Fail: “We’ll Let Obamacare Fail”

President Donald Trump side-stepped responsibility on health care reform today saying he would let Obamacare “fail” after six months of botched efforts by his own party to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

“I think we’re probably in that position where we’ll let Obamacare fail,” the president told reporters at the White House. “We’re not going to own it. I’m not going to own it. I can tell you, the Republicans are not going to own it.”

According to Trump, “the Democrats are gonna come to us” and ask how to fix it, working with the GOP.

Highlighting how out of the health care loop he was during the past few weeks, Trump added he was “very surprised” when two GOP senators suddenly withdrew support for the Republican health care bill on Monday night, sealing the bill’s fate.

“The way I look at it, we’re going to have to get some more people elected that are Republican,” Trump said.

Republicans currently hold majorities in both chambers of Congress as well as the White House. After seven years of voting to repeal the ACA, it’s incredible no one had a plan ready to go that Repubs could get behind.

#smh

Watch Trump speak to the press below:

White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders blamed the minority Democrats, as if that makes any sense:

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Tweet Of The Day

Proving there really is a Trump tweet for everything, here’s a classic from 2012:

“Obama’s complaints about Republicans stopping his agenda are BS since he had full control for two years. He can never take responsibility.”

Contrast that with the Trumpster’s tweet today decrying no help from Democrats on the health care bill they were excluded from working on:

#SoMuchWhining

Bonus tweet! How about this nugget from 2013 on “leadership?” So, if health care reform doesn’t happen, he’s gonna take responsibility?

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Poll: 45% Of Trump Followers Would Still Support Him Even If He Shot Someone

New survey results from Public Policy Polling show Donald Trump’s followers tend to operate from a position of “willful ignorance” when it comes to their guy.

According to the poll:

• Only 45% of Trump voters believe Trump Jr. had a meeting in June of 2016 with a “Russian government attorney” with the express purpose to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. That’s after Trump Jr. himself released emails confirming he did just that. Even with that admission, 32% of Trumpers say the meeting didn’t happen.

• 64% of Trump voters oppose an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

• 72% of Trumpers say the Russia story is “fake news.”

• Only 26% believe Russia wanted Trump to win the election.

• Even if proof were to be found that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the campaign, 77% of his supporters say he should stay in office.

• 45% of Trump folks say they would still approve of him even if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

And there you have it, folks.

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Senate GOP Health Care Bill Crashes As More Republicans Announce “No” Votes

The Senate Republican health care bill came to a crashing halt last night as two more senators announced they would not be supporting the legislation.

Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Jerry Moran of Kansas joined Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Maine Sen. Susan Collins in opposition to the bill. With a bare two vote margin in the Senate, those defections were enough to kill the legislation.

House and Senate Republicans have railed against the Affordable Healthcare Act for years promising to repeal and replace if they had the chance. However, seven months of control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives has yielded nothing.

The news was apparently a surprise to the Trump White House who, hours before the news broke, held a dinner with Republican Senators.

Via Politico:

At a dinner with GOP senators on Monday evening, Trump said the party would look like “dopes” if they couldn’t pass the bill after passing a repeal bill in 2015.

“If the Republicans have the House, Senate and the presidency and they can’t pass this health care bill, they are going to look weak,” Trump said, according to a source familiar with the meeting. “How can we not do this after promising it for years?”

Trump had no idea defections were coming Monday night, according to another White House official with knowledge of the meeting. “Why would we have a dinner like that if we knew people were going to drop out?” the official said.

As Sens. Lee and Moran were preparing their announcement, President Trump said publicly, “We’re going to get that done, and I think we’re going to surprise a lot of people.”

During the presidential campaign, Trump said over and over again how he and the GOP would definitely repeal and replace Obamacare, and they would do it “very, very quickly.”

Let’s take a trip in the way-back machine:

Remember back in October of 2016 where Donald Trump told his followers, “You’re gonna have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost, and it’s going to be so easy.”

Just four months later, this was President Trump’s new epiphany:

Trump now says Congress should just repeal and worry about new health care legislation later.

That doesn’t look to be a winning strategy either as Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia have all said publicly they would oppose a vote to repeal Obamacare without a replacement. So, that plan is dead on arrival.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has already scored a repeal-only option and the results are catastrophic. The CBO’s analysis shows 32 million more Americans would be uninsured by 2026 and individual premiums would double.

So. Much. Winning.