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The Trump presidency

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On Reuters U.S. reverses course and offers new dates for NATO talks
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson proposed new dates on Tuesday for a NATO meeting, the State Department said, after he initially decided to skip the talks and rebuffed the alliance's efforts to reschedule them.

Tillerson's decision to miss his first meeting with NATO foreign ministers, set for April 5-6 in Brussels, unsettled European allies who worried it reopened questions about U.S. President Donald Trump's commitment to the alliance.

Reuters exclusively reported on Monday that Tillerson would stay in the United States to attend Trump's expected April 6-7 talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida. U.S. officials also said Tillerson would visit Russia later in April.

The alliance had offered to change the meeting dates so Tillerson could attend both it and the Xi talks but the U.S. State Department rebuffed the idea, a former U.S. official and a former NATO diplomat, both speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Monday.
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Tillerson seems not to have realised Xi being a higher priority than NATO would upset some folks. Points out Colin Powell did duck a NATO summit but that was during Desert Storm. Trump is thought to be going but it's increasingly evident he knows diddly squat about world affairs and needs adult supervision.
 
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In The WSJ A President’s Credibility
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The latest example is Mr. Trump’s refusal to back off his Saturday morning tweet of three weeks ago that he had “found out that [Barack] Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory” on Election Day. He has offered no evidence for his claim, and a parade of intelligence officials, senior Republicans and Democrats have since said they have seen no such evidence.

Yet the President clings to his assertion like a drunk to an empty gin bottle, rolling out his press spokesman to make more dubious claims. Sean Spicer—who doesn’t deserve this treatment—was dispatched last week to repeat an assertion by a Fox News commentator that perhaps the Obama Administration had subcontracted the wiretap to British intelligence.

That bungle led to a public denial from the British Government Communications Headquarters, and British news reports said the U.S. apologized. But then the White House claimed there was no apology. For the sake of grasping for any evidence to back up his original tweet, and the sin of pride in not admitting error, Mr. Trump had his spokesman repeat an unchecked TV claim that insulted an ally.

The wiretap tweet is also costing Mr. Trump politically as he hands his opponents a sword. Mr. Trump has a legitimate question about why the U.S. was listening to his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and who leaked news of his meeting with the Russian ambassador. But that question never gets a hearing because the near-daily repudiation of his false tweet is a bigger media story.
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Donald Trump: fake President.

I'd not have predicted finding on the WSJ Editorial pages such a downright savage assessment of a rightwing President who is very popular with Republicans and has just proposed a splendidly neoliberal state slashing budget.
 
Yuwipi Woman said:
The "Hearing Protection Act" makes silencers on guns legal. I can't recall ever seeing a more bizarre name for a proposed law, and I've seen some doozies:

H.R.367 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): Hearing Protection Act of 2017
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The demand for silencers have been cropping up all over the US gun media for the past few years.

It's not so you can finally sneakily kill off the RINOs who live next door, no not at all. Definitely not that. You see the noise a gun makes is distracting when you are bagging a bunch of heavily armed Mexican home invaders and I don't know folks just really want more pointless shit that can go wrong to screw onto their tacticool kit.

There was a report about a USMC battalion experimenting with going suppressed as apparently with all the bang bangs they are often blazing away to little effect.
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"It increases their ability to command and control, to coordinate with each other," Wade told Military.com. "They shoot better, because they can focus more, and they get more discipline with their fire."

The noise of gunfire can create an artificial stimulus that gives the illusion of effectiveness, he said. When it's taken away, he explained, Marines pay more attention to their shooting and its effect on target.

"They've got to get up and look, see what effect they're having on the enemy because you can't hear it," he said.

He added that suppressors were already in common use by near-peer militaries, including those of Russia and China.
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I think they are taking all the fun out of it myself.
 
On The Intercept Donald Trump Is Filling Top Pentagon and Homeland Security Positions With Defense Contractors
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The Trump administration is the “military-industrial complex personified,” said William Hartung, director of the Arms & Security Project at the Center for International Policy. Hartung noted that while the administration is bringing arms industry officials into government, it is also demanding a massive increase in military spending and appears to be escalating conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

“In short, the Trump proposals are an armsmaker’s dream come true,” he said.
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It's a corrupt military-industrial Swamplandia of revolving doors.
 
WTF with this asshole?

House Intelligence chair discloses classified intel in clumsy effort to validate Trump

House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) claims to have evidence that President Donald Trump was surveilled after all.

Any intelligence report detailing communications between Trump transition officials and foreign agents would be classified. But instead of bringing whatever information he has to the attention of the intelligence community, Nunes addressed reporters and then headed straight to the White House to inform the target of an ongoing FBI investigation. A journalist at the press briefing asked him why that doesn’t constitute obstruction of justice.

Nunes was part of Trump's "transition team" Executive Committee so there's already a massive conflict of interest with his as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and chairing the investigations. But this stunt? Could he make it any clearer how crooked he is?

Problem is, Trump's jumped on Nunes' comments, saying he feels "somewhat vindicated," and his supporters are already claiming this proves the wiretapping stuff to be true.
 
CrabbedOne said:
In The WSJ A President’s Credibility
Donald Trump: fake President.

I'd not have predicted finding on the WSJ Editorial pages such a downright savage assessment of a rightwing President who is very popular with Republicans and has just proposed a splendidly neoliberal state slashing budget.
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"Sean Spicer—who doesn’t deserve this treatment"
Why not? Old wormtougne deserves everything he gets!
 
nogojones said:
26,000 psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental-health professionals think he has a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States.

The Elephant in the Room
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And I imagine that's just those who can't be 'got at' by a particularly vicious and petty administration, his lawyers are chasing a teen for mocking him FFS.
 
Like the worst of royalty. Let them eat fucking cake. :mad:

THE TRUMP LIFESTYLE IS BLEEDING THE SECRET SERVICE DRY
The agency reportedly asked for an additional $60 million, but the White House said no.

For voters tired of the status quo, Donald Trump’s gaudy lifestyle was part of his populist appeal, suggesting both his inability to be bought and his enmity toward his better-heeled peers. And in his first two months in office, the president has certainly delivered on at least one of those two fronts, refusing to compromise any of his creature comforts. He has traveled to Mar-a-Lago, the Trump-owned Palm Beach club he has dubbed the “Southern White House,” most weekends since he took office, and visited other Trump-owned properties on the rare weekends he has stayed in Washington. First Lady Melania Trump has yet to move into the White House, opting to stay in Trump Tower in Manhattan until their son, Barron, finishes his school year. His two adult sons, who took over day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization while the boss is in the Oval Office, are traveling around the world to open new hotels. Ivanka Trump, meanwhile, has taken an office in the West Wing and is in the process of obtaining a security clearance to serve as an unofficial adviser to her father. Three of his adult children, along with his eight grandchildren and their spouses, traveled to Aspen earlier this week during what is spring break for private schools along the Acela corridor.

As the Trumps know better than anyone, there’s no such thing as a free trip to Mar-a-Lago, or to Aspen, and all this shuttling to-and-fro with Secret Service protection adds up. Based on internal agency documents, The Washington Post reports, the Secret Service has had to request $60 million in additional funding for next year in order to keep up with the Trump lifestyle. The Secret Service declined to share with the Post how much it spent to protect previous First Families.

Nearly half of the new figure—$26.8 million—would go to protecting the First Family and the gilded Trump Tower triplex where Melania has opted to stay for the time being. The money will go toward “residence security operations at the president’s private residence in Trump Tower,” with roughly $12.5 million earmarked to cover “personnel related costs in New York,” as well as additional undisclosed costs, already spent this year, to put in “equipment and infrastructure to secure Trump Tower,” the fiscal 2018 budget documents show.

The ask also included more money to protect the unusually large First Family. President Trump is 70 years old—the oldest president to be sworn in for a first term. He has five children, two of whom have eight children between them. Eric Trump announced earlier this week that he and his wife, Lara, are having a baby boy in September, bringing the total count of Trumps to 19. The Secret Service asked for six additional full-time-equivalent positions for the Trump detail, the Post reports.

The remainder of the proposed budget additional funding—$33 million—would go toward travel costs. It is no secret that the president is fond of taking trips to Mar-a-Lago. The Trump children have also jetted to Dubai, Vancouver, and Aspen since he took office, for both business and pleasure. All of these trips require advance and detail, and thus, come out of the agency budget.

This part of Trump’s presidency doesn’t just get covered by gold dust and magic. A person familiar with the budget discussions told the Post that the Office of Management and Budget denied the request for additional funding. If the Secret Service does not receive extra funding, the additional money would have to come out of its budget elsewhere. The Secret Service investigates cases of missing or exploited minors and cyber-crimes, among other functions, along with protecting the president’s private South Florida resort. Something’s gotta give, and it probably won’t be the latter.
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:mad: This: If the Secret Service does not receive extra funding, the additional money would have to come out of its budget elsewhere. The Secret Service investigates cases of missing or exploited minors and cyber-crimes, among other functions, along with protecting the president’s private South Florida resort. Something’s gotta give, and it probably won’t be the latter.
 
A Man Arrested in a Fatal Stabbing Came to New York Specifically to Kill Black Men, Police Say

The Baltimore man who fatally stabbed a man in New York City on Monday told investigators that he came to the city specifically to kill black men, officials said.

"[He] picked New York because it's the media capital of the world and he wanted to make a statement," said New York Police Department Chief of Manhattan Detectives William Aubry, according to DNAinfo New York.

James Harris Jackson, 28, and a former military veteran who served in Afghanistan, turned himself in to police on Wednesday. He told investigators that he harbored hatred for black men for more than a decade. On Friday, Jackson took a Bolt Bus to New York and stayed at a hotel in Manhattan before attacking and killing 66-year-old Timothy Caughman on Monday night, officials said.

Upon turning himself in, police arrested Jackson for carrying two knives — one of which was a 26-inch blade that is believed to have been used in the stabbing of Caughman, officials said.

Jackson was still being questioned as of Wednesday afternoon and had not yet been formally charged, police said.
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Most of the coverage of this case seemed to focus on how well-dressed the killer was. :hmm: e.g. Well-dressed suspect in fatal stabbing surrenders to cops
 
On TNI Political Discipline and a Strategic Void
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On the other hand, the White House has installed a system of political commissars in all departments and agencies. This arrangement involves individuals who have been inserted into the high-level executive suites of each department but who do not report to the department head or chief of staff and instead answer to a deputy chief of staff in the White House. Their job is to enforce orthodoxy by monitoring what is said and done in the department, especially by its head, to ensure consistency with White House talking points.
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The commissars do not provide the coordination necessary for sound strategy and policy, or anything close to it. They are not equipped to do so even if they wanted to; they are mostly political operatives and campaign hangers-on. Most important, enforcement of political discipline regarding adherence to themes and memes is not at all the same as policy review and coordination. The main effect on real policy thinking is apt to be the negative one of stifling originality and discouraging frank acknowledgment of failure.

We have seen the debilitating effects of commissar systems in other countries, including the communist ones, where effectiveness in service of the larger national interest was given lower priority than enforcement of political loyalty to the regime, amid a political environment filled with fear and suspicion. The fears, suspicions, and motivations at the top of the regime seem to be similar in Trump’s presidency. Newt Gingrich, in his capacity as an adviser to Trump, defended the insertion of commissars as necessary to monitor a bureaucracy facing the prospect of meat-ax budget cuts. “These people”—meaning the bureaucrats, said Gingrich, “are actively trying to undermine the new government. And they think it’s their moral obligation to do so.”
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At least folk in the Russophobes in the Pentagon are using the term "commissar" rather than комиссáр.

Trump has a tendency to rely on kin and cronies that's typical of feudal heads of family firms. It can be effective in a small tightly knit organisation. However now he's faced with something massively bigger where the application of power is to some extent a negotiation via intermediaries. He has so far failed to staff a great deal of his government positions mainly because of cranky ideological preferences and petty grudge holding. He therefore often lacks proper command and control you have to establish to overcome normal transitional insubordination. This commissar thing might be seen as Trump's way of trying to get some grasp of what's going on rather than just organisationally crippling Bannonite paranoia.
 
CrabbedOne said:
He has so far failed to staff a great deal of his government positions mainly because of cranky ideological preferences and petty grudge holding..
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Do you think maybe there's also an issue with people not wanting to take jobs in his administration because they have their eyes on their future careers and don't want to be tainted by association after he's gone ?
 
On The Hill McCain: Congress doesn't have 'credibility' to handle Russia probes
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"It's a bizarre situation, and what I think, the reason why I'm calling for this select committee or a special committee, is I think that this back-and-forth and what the American people have found out so far that no longer does the Congress have credibility to handle this alone," McCain told MSNBC's Greta Van Susteren. "And I don't say that lightly."

McCain's comments come amid an increasingly bitter feud that erupted between members of the House Intelligence Committee earlier Wednesday, after the panel's chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) claimed that he had seen evidence that the U.S. intelligence community incidentally surveilled members of Trump's transition team.

The inadvertent surveillance, Nunes said, was not tied to ongoing Russia investigation.

The committee's top Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.) fired back, blasting Nunes for routing the committee before briefing Trump himself on the apparent findings and saying that the move "casts quite a profound cloud" over the panel's investigation.
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Appears to be edging towards a full enquiry.
 
On Politico Trump's early policy moves benefit the industries he knows best — his own
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Ethics experts argue that the early spate of industry-friendly policy changes and personnel appointments amount to tangible evidence of the kinds of conflicts of interest that will keep coming up when a billionaire businessman is in the White House. They maintain that Trump should recuse himself on any decisions that affect the industries that his own company has a stake in.

“If it comes to the White House, it should be done by the vice president,” said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center and a former GOP chairman at the Federal Election Commission.

But industry officials with ties to Trump shrug off the conflict of interest complaints, arguing the president’s focus is on helping the wider U.S. economy and not specific businesses. “I think he comes with life experience where he’s been frustrated when he’s trying to create jobs and big projects,” said Sandherr of the contractors’ association. “Those are the eyes he’s looking through and not how can I take care of my buddies.”
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It's not a swamp it's a vast wetland set up to preserve endangered golf course owners and real estate sharks.
 
On Lawfare How Hard Is It To Work for President Trump?
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But what about the President’s other senior political and legal appointees in the White House? These officials seem to be in the worst position of all. Their primary mission is to serve the nation by serving the president directly. Yes, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus can tell himself that he is helping the Republican Party and the American people by helping the President. And White House Counsel Don McGahn and his team can tell themselves that they are serving the nation—for example, in their important work selecting judges and enforcing ethics rules—beyond just helping the President. But much of the work of these officials amounts to little more than enabling and protecting the President, personally and politically. That becomes a problem when the enabling and protecting comes in the service of mendacity or in a way inextricable from mendacity.

A good deal of the daily work by these officials in the White House, in other words, is a lower-key version of the work of Sean Spicer, who compromises himself daily in order to prop up the president’s lies and destructive actions. I imagine that these officials have the hardest time telling themselves (and others) a story about why their services are needed to minimize the damage Trump is causing, for these are the officials whose jobs are largely devoted to empowering the President. (I imagine it is especially hard for the young, super-accomplished line attorneys in the White House Counsel’s office to work in support of a truth-defying President who incessantly trashes courts and the legal system in ways that Neil Gorsuch finds "disheartening” and “demoralizing.”) These are the jobs that are hardest to serve in if one disrespects the President. These jobs will likely grow harder and harder if the Trump presidency continues to accomplish so little, especially if the FBI investigations begin to absorb White House political and legal attention. And these are the jobs about which it will be harder to explain later why one continued in the job after it was clear that the President one worked so hard to support was so unworthy of his office.
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Pity the poor Whitehouse lawyers!

Even Bannon the libertarian servant of Ayn Randian hedge funders watching the US government disintegrate on Trump's chaotic watch does not seem to be a happy camper.

Rumour is a good deal of person hours in this administration are spent talking Trump in of the latest ledge his big mouth has got him stuck on. Ivanka getting an office in the West Wing may be related to her daddy management skills. Being able to calm him in his latest tantrum.
 
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coley said:
Anybody with any sense should avoid visiting America at the moment, seems anybody can turn up only to be refused entry,imagine spending 1000s on a trip to Disneyland and then be refused a visa!
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I wouldn't blame anyone who decided not to come. I'm not certain I feel welcome here any more.
 
On Time Read President Trump's Interview With TIME on Truth and Falsehoods
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But I grant you some of those. But you would agree also that some of the things you have said haven’t been true. You say that Ted Cruz’s father was with Lee Harvey Oswald.

Well that was in a newspaper. No, no, I like Ted Cruz, he’s a friend of mine. But that was in the newspaper. I wasn’t, I didn’t say that. I was referring to a newspaper. A Ted Cruz article referred to a newspaper story with, had a picture of Ted Cruz, his father, and Lee Harvey Oswald, having breakfast.

That gets close to the heart…

Why do you say that I have to apologize? I’m just quoting the newspaper, just like I quoted the judge the other day, Judge Napolitano, I quoted Judge Napolitano, just like I quoted Bret Baier, I mean Bret Baier mentioned the word wiretap. Now he can now deny it, or whatever he is doing, you know. But I watched Bret Baier, and he used that term. I have a lot of respect for Judge Napolitano, and he said that three sources have told him things that would make me right. I don’t know where he has gone with it since then. But I’m quoting highly respected people from highly respected television networks.

But traditionally people in your position in the Oval Office have not said things unless they can verify they are true.

Well, I’m not, well, I think, I’m not saying, I’m quoting, Michael, I’m quoting highly respected people and sources from major television networks.
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Trump is supremely relaxed as POTUS repeating any old bullshit that feels politically expedient. He basically thinks he has a near psychic ability to read the future by consulting the oracles of Fox, Breitbart and InfoWars like some ancient sage reading bird signs. He actually gloats about. The man is clearly demented.
 
In Rolling Stone Trump the Destroyer
trump-the-destroyer-tiabbi-cover-story-rolling-stone-2-34b63f57-7c0a-4f80-9fd2-ce348a9ded97.jpg

Worth it for that image alone.
 
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