Trump's Big CON: It's All About the Show, Health Care Edition

UPDATE II:  "Republicans have fanned across the talk shows to defend the bill, but what they have really revealed is that they can’t defend it without spewing all sorts of lies and distortions about what’s actually in it. . .

Republicans are broadly sidestepping any defense of what their bill actually does. . .

Untold numbers of people with preexisting conditions will be more vulnerable to losing coverage, financial ruin and, in certain cases, possibly death. Millions of lower-income people will lose coverage. Instead of arguing that these things are worth the trade-off of doing away with the mandate and the high-end taxes, Republicans who support the bill continue to deny that those things will happen at all, in the face of all evidence and expert analysis to the contrary."

Read the Washington Post, The health bill is a total disaster. That’s why Republicans keep lying about it.

Read also The New York Times, Republicans Party Like It’s 1984, which notes:

"[T]he Orwell-level dishonesty of the whole effort. As far as I can tell, every word Republicans, from Trump on down, have said about their bill — about why they want to replace Obamacare, about what their replacement would do, and about how it would work — is a lie . .

Trumpcare breaks every promise Republicans ever made about health. Deductibles will rise, not fall, as insurers are set free to offer lower-quality coverage. Premiums may fall for a handful of young, healthy, affluent people, but will rise and in many cases soar for those who are older (because age spreads will rise), sicker (because protection against discrimination based on medical history will be taken away), and poorer (because subsidies will go down).

Many people with pre-existing conditions will find insurance either completely unavailable or totally out of their financial reach.

And Medicaid will be cut back, with the damage worsening over time.

The really important thing, however, is not just to realize that Republicans are breaking their promises, but to realize that they are doing so with intent. This isn’t one of those cases where people try to do what they said they would, but fall short in the execution. This is an act of deliberate betrayal: Everything about Trumpcare is specifically designed to do exactly the opposite of what Trump, Paul Ryan and other Republicans said it would." 

UPDATE:  "House Republicans have been so fixated on passing anything that they now find it hard to defend their handiwork without resort to exaggeration, deflection and flat-out dishonesty. There is a surefire way to tell they are not accurately representing the bill: Fellow GOP senators want no part of it."

Read the Washington Post, GOP grownups debunk fake AHCA defenses. 

"There have been a slew of stories about Trump’s indifference to what was in the health-care bill. What he said he wanted repeatedly on the campaign trail isn’t what was passed, but that didn’t keep Trump from telling a Rose Garden audience on Thursday afternoon that the legislation would do things that outside analysis made clear that it wouldn’t. Of all the things we should have foreseen from a Trump presidency, this, in hindsight, is among the most obvious: Trump was more consistent about his desire to win than he was about what those wins would entail. His policy specifics are generally things championed by others: immigration by Stephen K. Bannon, child-care by Ivanka Trump. The thing Trump wanted to accomplish was to win. . .

There seems to have been a collective sense among the caucus, powered in no small part by the White House, that the win was the important thing. The New York Times reports that Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was twisting every arm in sight in an effort to secure a passing majority, so much so that his famously warm relationship with fellow Wisconsinite Paul Ryan was strained. Kane reports that the positions of the House speaker and other Republican leaders were perceived as being in jeopardy if they couldn’t close the deal. With stakes like that, 217 becomes more important than 24 million — 217 votes was a stronger motivation than the 24 million people who would be uninsured in 2026 thanks to the bill’s passage. . .

It’s certainly not a coincidence that this episode occurred in a moment of unprecedented partisanship. A lot of Republicans across the country likely shared Trump’s attitude: The win was more important than what was won, especially since the win was a victory over the hated Obamacare.

The broader point can be made more simply. Why did Republicans have a Rose Garden ceremony to celebrate a bill moving out of one of the two chambers of Congress? Because the bill wasn’t the point. The passage was."

Read the Washington Post, It’s easy to win if you don’t care what you’ve won. 

Trump's Big CON: Trumpcare is a Mirage

UPDATE:  "President Trump claimed a victory Thursday after the House approved a more free-market approach to health care.

Then he capped it off by praising a country with government-run, universal health care.

Alongside Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at an event in New York, Trump reflected on what the House had just done. He took the occasion to bash Obamacare as being terrible, and then he turned to Turnbull.

'We have a failing health care — I shouldn't say this to our great gentleman and my friend from Australia,' Trump said, as The Post's Abby Phillip reports, "because you have better health care than we do."

Australia's health-care system is run by the government. It's essentially a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system that is available to everyone, with private insurance also available. (They even call it 'Medicare.')

Consider this merely the latest evidence that Trump, in his heart of hearts, wants single-payer health care.  . .

And some see the current debate eventually winding up with single-payer."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s forbidden love: Single-payer health care.

The Donald's comments caused Bernie Sanders, an staunch advocate of single-payer systems, to erupt in laughter.

"Trumpcare's two big mirages. The first is that it absolutely covers people with preexisting conditions. It doesn't. It lets states opt out of the Obamacare rules protecting the sick and then lets them set up high-risk pools that wouldn't have enough money. It's hard to say how much worse off people with preexisting conditions would be, but it seems pretty clear that they would be. The health-care consultancy Avalere, for one, estimates that even in the best-case scenario, only 25 percent of people with preexisting conditions would be covered under this Republican plan.

The second is that Trumpcare is a health-care bill. It's not. It's a trillion dollar tax cut for the top 2 percent that's paid for with a trillion dollars of health-care cuts for the poor and middle class. Or, as Trump would call it, “something terrific.” He just left out that that's only for people making $200,000 or more.

Not being rich is the ultimate preexisting condition."

Read the Washington Post, Republicans’ plan to protect sick people has a long history of not protecting sick people.

Read also  the Washington Post, How being a mom could become a ‘preexisting condition’, which notes that the "Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, estimated that a woman seeking maternity care under the GOP’s current plan could face surcharges up to $17,000."

Trump's Big CON: Like Any Good Con Man, Just Saying Whatever He Can to Get a Reaction

"President Trump is a man containing multitudes. As such, the go-to method of explaining who he is and what makes him tick often involves metaphors.

Lots of metaphors. . . 

[Susan Sarandon said:]

'He reminds me of, like, your drunk uncle at a wedding who gets up and starts talking and just loves the crowd and just goes on and on and on and says whatever he can to get a reaction.'"

Read the Washington Post, The many metaphors that describe Donald Trump.

Trump's Big CON: “Hire American” Pledge

"So much for President Trump’s 'Hire American' promise.

Just two weeks after Trump signed an executive order vowing to crack down on a program designed to import high-skilled foreign labor, a provision slipped into the budget compromise with Democrats this week could double the number of visas for low-wage, seasonal workers such as those in the landscaping, forestry and hospitality industries.

The guest worker visa, known as the H-2B, is the exact kind that helps Trump staff his Mar-a-Lago golf resort."

Read the Washington Post, Despite Trump’s “Hire American” pledge, budget bill would dramatically expand the number of foreign workers.

Trump's Big CON: How Does He Do It?

UPDATE:  "Is Trump nuts, ill-informed or a liar — or all three?"

Read the Washington Post, When is it okay to say the president might be nuts?

No, The Donald is not "nuts".  As noted before, Trump is a psycho-narcissistic con man, who happens to be President.

By pandering to fear, anger and hatred.

"For those who claim that Donald Trump has been pasteurized and homogenized by the presidency, his sour, 100th-day speech in Harrisburg, Pa., was inconvenient.

Trump used his high office to pursue divisive grudges (Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer is a 'bad leader'), to attack the media (composed of 'incompetent, dishonest people') and to savage congressional Democrats ('they don’t mind drugs pouring in'). Most of all, Trump used his bully pulpit quite literally, devoting about half his speech to the dehumanization of migrants and refugees as criminals, infiltrators and terrorists. Trump gained a kind of perverse energy from the rolling waves of hatred, culminating in the reading of racist song lyrics comparing his targets to vermin. It was a speech with all the logic, elevation and public purpose of a stink bomb.

On a selection of policy issues (Chinese currency manipulation, NATO, the North American Free Trade Agreement), Trump has been forced to accommodate reality. But those who find the president surprisingly “conventional” must somehow dismiss or discount this kind of speech, which George Wallace would have gladly given as president. They must somehow ignore the children in the audience, soaking up the fears and prejudices of their elders. They must somehow believe that presidential rhetoric — capable of elevating a country — has no power to debase it.

It is not sophisticated or worldly-wise to become inured to bigotry. The only thing more frightening than Trump’s speech — arguably the most hate-filled presidential communication in modern history — is the apathetic response of those who should know better."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s 100th-day speech may have been the most hate-filled in modern history. 

Trump's Big CON: His Tax Reform Bamboozle

UPDATE IV:  "President Trump is planning on cutting taxes, and his advisers have been arguing that he does not need to reduce federal spending at the same time. Instead, they say, reduced taxes will pay to stimulate the U.S. economy, so the government will not have to borrow more money to make up the difference.

Economists aren't buying it, according to a new survey conducted at the University of Chicago."

Read the Washington Post, Survey: Just 5 percent of economists believe Trump’s big tax promise.

UPDATE III:  "After almost 100 days in office, President Trump has finally found his forte: one-page tax plans.

That's how long his first one was last September, and how long his new one was Wednesday. There's a reason for this. If you compare them side-by-side, you can see that Trump's two main innovations this time around are using bullet points and offering less specificity. Everything else is just about the same. . .

[T]the biggest difference is that the first edition of Trump's plan was merely wildly implausible, while the slightly updated second one is actually impossible."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s new, one-page tax plan is the same as his old, one-page tax plan.

UPDATE II:  "From the start, members of the administration have offered inconsistent explanations of how the tax plan would affect the middle class."

Read the Washington Post, If Trump has a tax plan, his advisers can’t agree on what it is.

But who cares about the middle class, Trump & friends get ma$$ive tax cuts!!

UPDATE:  Some people just ignore the lies, don't mind being bamboozled, and love the con man.

"The lies that tumble from Trump himself are unprecedented in scope, audacity and frequency. The Post fact-checking team documented more than 400 false or misleading statements as of Day 91 of his presidency. Other administration members have taken their cues from this,  particularly press secretary Sean Spicer, who set the tone early on by lying about Trump’s inaugural crowd sizes and accusing the press of falsely diminishing them. Yet to Trump voters, not only does this reality not exist at all; such critical media scrutiny of him and his administration also is a sign that he’s doing something right — that he’s on their side, and the news media is the enemy."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s lies are working brilliantly. This new poll proves it.

To bamboozle is to: deceive · delude · hoodwink · mislead · take in · dupe · fool · double-cross · cheat · defraud · swindle · gull · hoax · bamboozle · entrap · con · bilk · diddle · rook · put one over on · pull a fast one on · pull the wool over someone's eyes · take for a ride · shaft · flimflam · sucker · snooker · cozen · illude · chicane.

And that about sums up The Donald's latest con.

Read the Washington Post:

Trump again overpromises, underdelivers on tax ‘plan’, which states that;

The "White House had promised to roll out a 'tax plan' Wednesday. Instead of a fully developed plan, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and senior adviser Gary Cohn put out a one-page sheet with bullet points, something you might see as a first draft of a campaign white paper. Worse yet, as we anticipated, Mnuchin and Cohn wound up getting grilled on whether President Trump, who stands to save millions (via, among other things, elimination of the alternative minimum tax), would release his tax returns. Mnuchin was emphatic: 'The president has no intention.' He falsely asserted, 'The president has released plenty of information and I think has given more financial disclosure than anybody else. I think the American population has plenty of information.' He and Cohn had no specifics about the savings for voters by tax bracket or about the expected increase in the debt. . .

This is classic Trump — all flash and big talk, with very little substance. His economic team plainly was not prepared to provide anything approaching a detailed 'plan,' but now Republicans’ actual tax plan, if they ever come up with one, will be judged in comparison with a cotton-candy plan that could never become law. Trump did “accomplish” one thing — he reminded us he has concealed his taxes and may stand to reap enormous tax savings as a result of his plan. This hardly seems like populism."

Trump, in new tax plan, promises to do what Reagan couldn’t, which noted that:

At the center of President Trump’s plan to significantly cut taxes on businesses and individuals is a promise to stimulate extraordinary economic growth, so much so, his advisers say, that the plan would pay for itself.

If he succeeds in keeping that promise, Trump will have accomplished something his tax-cutting Republican predecessors were unable to do, say economists and tax policy experts from both parties. . .

But in the experience of two other Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, tax cuts produced an uneven record of prompting economic growth. And in both instances, reductions in taxes were unable to pay for themselves, instead leaving the nation to deal with increasing federal debt."

How Trump’s tax proposal could impact his own business empire, which points out that the proposal:

"[C]ould prove to be a windfall for the Trump Organization, the private umbrella company for hundreds of Trump real estate, licensing and other companies, many of which qualify as pass-through businesses.

Trump has refused to release his tax returns, making it impossible to know how much his businesses could save on taxes. . .

A copy of Trump’s tax return from 2005 suggests that a tax cut similar to the one Trump is proposing could have lowered his tax obligation by potentially tens of millions of dollars in a single year."

Trump tax plan roundup, which also noted that:

The "Trump tax plan, such as it is — it’s 'less than 200 words and contain[s] just seven numbers' . . . is a massive sprinkling of the old supply-side, trickle-down fairy dust that very few budget wonks will endorse, regardless of their political stripes . . . "that no feasible tax reform in this country will raise economic growth to 3 percent on a sustained basis given our current demographics . . . [but the proposal would, according to the] Upshot’s Neil Irwin . . . benefit the president himself and his family: 'It is striking how many of the affect the president and his family. He is a high-income earner. He receives income from 564 business entities, according to his financial disclosure form, and could take advantage of the low rate on 'pass-through' companies. According to his leaked 2005 tax return, he paid an extra $31 million because of the alternative minimum tax that he seeks to eliminate. And his heirs could eventually enjoy his enormous assets tax-free. . . [and it is striking] the extent to which Trump continues to push policies that totally disregard the working-class people who helped him get elected. First it was a health-care plan that kicked 24 million off the insurance rolls. Now it’s a tax cut that delivers almost all its goodies to the nation’s wealthiest households." 

Trump's Big CON: The Truth Doesn't Matter, Just Feel Good

Says Trump: "I don’t stand by anything. I just– you can take it the way you want."

Read the Washington Post, ‘I don’t stand by anything’: Trump withers under heat from CBS News’s John Dickerson.

Because it's all about making his supporters feel good.

"Trump fans think he is winning because he yells at the press, vilifies cities run by Democrats, denies climate change and demonizes immigrants. He talks and acts like they wish they could — demeaning women, stereotyping minorities, telling off experts. (According to polling, Trump’s voters really are more amenable to racial stereotypes than non-Trump voters.) It does not matter to Trump fans if the executive orders are struck down or are mere window dressing (authorizing an agency to study something it already has the power to study). He makes them feel as if they’re winning, as if they are now more important than the experts with the facts and the courts with the laws on their side. Trump fans, the quintessential Fox News viewers, revel in the know-nothingism of a hero who reflects their anger, grievances, frustration and, yes, prejudice. . .

Saying he’s the most successful president in the first 100 days ever may sound nuts to people who look at what he’s done; it makes perfect sense to the people whom Trump makes feel better. At some point, one wonders when it will dawn on Trump’s fans that they’ve been bamboozled."

Read  the Washington Post, Trump suspends disbelief — on most everything. 

Trump's Big CON: Bad News: He Has No Values or Beliefs, Good News: He Is No Conservative

UPDATE IV: I quote at length this editorial that explains why The Donald has no values or beliefs, and is no conservative:

"After 100 days we can see clearly the many false assumptions baked into that rationale [Paul Ryan had when he endorsed then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump].

First, I don’t know what kind of policy discussion he had, but we’ve seen Trump is entirely incapable of grasping and discussing particulars. Trump was either humoring Ryan ('Yes, Paul, that’s exactly the kind of thing we would do!') or Ryan was kidding himself that Trump, lacking any real policy views, would sign whatever the Congress passed. He should have listened more critically and figured out that Trump doesn’t stand by anything and would be entirely incapable of advocating for policies Ryan wanted. In fact, Trump has never bought into Ryan’s small government, restraint-of-executive party brand of conservatism. And worse, Trump’s ineptitude and lack of self-discipline has widened the divide within the House GOP and paralyzed members from fear that Trump would let them twist in the wind over an controversial vote.

Second, in all likelihood Ryan never expected Trump to win. . .

Third, entirely absent from Ryan’s endorsement and from his rationale for supporting Trump was any recognition that character, intellect and temperament are the predicate for any acceptable, let alone successful, president. 'Sure he’s erratic, but he’ll stick with our position on health care' is the sort of unsound thinking that leads one to endorse someone manifestly unfit to govern. If he is erratic, Mr. Speaker, he’s going to undermine your efforts on health care. And he did.

Ignoring Trump’s fondness for Vladimir Putin, Ryan bought into a man whose affection for strongmen is so contrary to American values and interest that he makes President Barack Obama seem Reaganesque. Instead of Clinton, we have a commander in chief who cheers for Marine Le Pen, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Xi Jinping and Rodrigo Duterte — and compliments Kim Jong Un. We have a president who has gotten into fights with Canada, Mexico and Australia — and has shaken European leaders to their core. Ryan should have paid attention to Trump’s inferior judgment, knowledge and capacity to learn.

How did things work out for Ryan? He has signed onto a spending bill that Clinton would have liked (Planned Parenthood funding, no wall, domestic spending restored, a little bit — but not enough — defense spending). He has not gotten health-care reform. His chances of obtaining tax reform are slim. . .

By ignoring fundamental questions of competency and character, Ryan vouched for a man who echoed Russian agitprop and encouraged Russian cyber-mischief during the campaign and who continues to deny the existence of mounds of evidence proving Russian efforts to meddle with our election. Ryan enabled an administration that has a bevy of ties to Russian officials, originally hired as national security adviser a man acting as an agent for foreign governments and still employs an aide (Sebastian Gorka) with ties to Hungarian fascists. Surely Clinton, for all her faults, wouldn’t have done all that.

As for the cause of clean government, Ryan supported Trump with no assurance he wouldn’t defy the Constitution by receiving foreign monies, maintain ownership in companies creating massive conflicts of interest, hire relatives who have their own conflicts and refuse to release his taxes ever. Ryan thought Clinton would bring corruption to the White House?"

Read the Washington Post, How did Ryan’s Faustian bargain with Trump work out?

UPDATE III:  "Nobody ever said that Donald Trump was a man of firm principle. Indeed, apart from a couple of rancid ideas about race and foreigners, one struggles to find anything Trump has consistently believed over the course of his life when it comes to political issues.

But recently Trump has racked up an unusual number of flip-flops, with some interesting implications for the rest of his presidency. To begin, let’s look at what he has changed his mind about just in the last few days:

    He now thinks NATO is no longer obsolete
    He won’t label China a currency manipulator
    He now thinks the Export-Import bank should stay
    He now likes Janet Yellen and may renominate her as Fed chair
    The federal hiring freeze he ordered has now been lifted

You can look at each of these reversals and come up with an ideological interpretation. For instance, on the economic ones, you might say they represent the ascendance of the Wall Street wing of Trump’s advisers.

But what they have more in common is the maintenance of the status quo.

Here’s how it works. Trump the candidate makes all kinds of promises about radical change, blowing up the system, sweeping into Washington and remaking it from top to bottom. Many of the things he says are substantively ridiculous and born of ignorance, but none of his aides bother to tell him. Because who really cared back then? He wasn’t going to sit down for extended policy instruction, and the campaign seemed to be working pretty well anyway.

But now he’s president, and instead of just making statements he’s making policy. So when one of these issues comes up, there’s a good chance someone will say, 'Well actually sir, that could be a really bad idea.' They’ll explain why, and since Trump doesn’t really care about the substance of any of it, he’ll change his position.

In many cases, the flip-flop is a simple matter of Trump learning about something he never understood. "

Read the Washington Post, What’s really behind Donald Trump’s flip-flops. 

UPDATE II:  There is a war in the White House between "the alt-right, the white nationalist movement that [Stephen] Bannon appealed to as head of Breitbart News" and Trump's family who realize this is a deadend.

"[T]here is a gaping leadership void in the West Wing, and it’s caused by Trump’s complete lack of a clear vision or agenda. . .

Trump’s agenda, of course, was encapsulated by his campaign slogan, 'Make America Great Again.' Crucially, however, the White House is being run by people who can’t seem to agree on what 'making America great' entails. . .

Remember: It was under Bannon’s guidance as chief executive of his campaign that Trump gave an October 2016 campaign speech, claiming that Hillary Clinton 'meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special-interest friends and her donors.' His closing campaign ad evoked similar anti-Semitic imagery, showing philanthropist George Soros, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, who are all Jewish, complete with narration about 'those who control the levers of power in Washington,' 'global special interests' and 'a global power structure.'

It was under Bannon’s tutelage that Trump believed these moves would win him the White House — and perhaps they did help him get there by appealing to at least some of Trump’s voters.

But now the 'globalists' are crucial members of Team Trump, and they are inside the White House, in the form of Kushner, Ivanka Trump, chief economic adviser Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, both former Goldman Sachs executives. To Bannon’s base, the 'globalists' are the enemy: They haven’t put America’s economy or America’s interests first — so it’s hard to see how Trump will ever get these two camps to unite behind a cogent agenda, much less get them to function as a White House staff.

The problem is that Trump himself is a man without ideas or an ideology. His political instincts are more frequently driven by the likes of Bannon, and it’s obvious that Trump will be reluctant to cast Bannon aside. Yet at the same time, Trump is plainly loyal to his family. There’s no clear way for Trump to reconcile this, however, precisely because Trump does not have any clear policy agenda of his own.

Put it this way: Imagine that Camp Bannon and Camp Kushner were to somehow truly reconcile with one another. What exactly is the agenda we are supposed to believe this pair is going to implement together?

Read the Washington Post, The real reason for the White House infighting: Trump has no clear vision or agenda.

UPDATE:  "During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump summed up his approach to foreign policy this way: 'We must as a nation be more unpredictable.'

But now that he is commander in chief, anxious allies say that unpredictability might be better described as incoherence — a dangerous tendency at a moment of high tension with Russia and Syria, and with U.S. warships heading toward the Korean Peninsula.

In recent weeks, the president has held meetings with his counterparts from other countries. But in some cases, those sessions have only heightened doubts that Trump has a clear sense of what direction he intends to take U.S. foreign policy. . .

Ambiguity has always had a place in diplomacy, of course. But Trump adds to that a freestyle approach to international relations. He has a disregard for norms and protocol, an impulsive nature and a tendency toward making contradictory statements.

Compounding the chaos is the fact that those who claim to speak for Trump — Cabinet officials and top White House advisers — also have offered conflicting pronouncements on basic questions about the direction of U.S. policy. . .

In interviews over the past few weeks with a half-dozen foreign ambassadors based in Washington, most complained — diplomatically, of course — that thin lines of communication have made it difficult for them to explain U.S. intentions to officials in their home capitals. That is creating strain on traditionally solid alliances, they said.

'Nobody can tell us on Russia what the American policy is, on Syria what the American policy is, on China what the American policy is,' one ambassador said. 'I’m not sure there is a policy. They will listen to me and tell me, 'We will get back to you when there is a policy.'?' . .

'I don’t know what will happen,' one said. 'You had a president who took three months to make a decision, and now you have one who takes three seconds. It’s very worrying.' . .

While some diplomats and leaders puzzle over how to decode an opaque and often contradictory presidency, they have figured out one language to which Trump responds: flattery.

In his joint appearance with Trump, Jordan’s King Abdullah II lathered the president with praise for a 'holistic approach' to the Middle East, which he said is 'a move in the right direction.'

It was their second meeting since Trump’s election, and Trump returned the compliments, calling Abdullah a 'warrior.' Their joint news conference was the first of Trump’s presidency to be held in the Rose Garden. . .

Several added that they have tried to be creative in their approaches to the Trump administration, increasingly going outside the normal channels. Some said they have tried to leverage friendships with people in business who have ties to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner or daughter Ivanka Trump to get access to those key members of Trump’s inner circle. . .

'The question is: Will the close allies maintain that same natural cooperation that we have had for 70 years?' one ambassador said. 'The leaders of those allies want to maintain a relationship of trust with the traditional leader of the Western world. But today we have the impression that the chair of the leader of the Western world is a little bit empty. We are reaching out to test those relationships, but we have no answer.'

Said another: 'It’s quite distressing that the Americans are so unpredictable. Unpredictability is the worst.'"

Read the Washington Post, Trump promised an ‘unpredictable’ foreign policy. To allies, it looks incoherent.

The Republi-CONs have been conned.

Whether it is Syria or health care, "inconsistency is the most consistent theme of Trump’s young presidency. During the campaign, he opposed entitlement reform, yet his health-care bill contained the most fundamental entitlement reform — moving federal Medicaid spending from an open-ended match for state spending to a capped amount per person — that Congress has recently considered. He campaigned as a tribune for the working class, yet his economic approach seems heavily tilted toward the interests of the wealthy.

This has been attacked as lying. It also indicates a complete unfamiliarity with the issues and debates at the heart of American politics. He never encountered these matters during previous government service (which he did none of). He was not forced to explain his views during primary or general election debates (a few lines from the stump speech more than sufficed). Trump was not hiding an inner sophistication. His ignorance was presented as part of an anti-establishment package — as contempt for the quibbles of smaller men.

In this context, the current palace intrigue between Bannon and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, actually matters. This is not the normal circumstance in which a president with developed policy views is influenced at the margins by a diverse group of advisers. What we are seeing is a president without settled or tested policy convictions, influenced by advisers with sharp knives and fundamentally different views of the world. On Breitbart this is described as a conflict between 'national populists' and 'liberal NYC Democrats.' It is the high-stakes struggle to provide the soul for a soulless presidency.

This inbuilt discord has turned normal West Wing tension into a red-carpeted cage fight. . .

And it should concern conservatives that neither side in the main White House conflict — ethno-nationalists or moderates related to the president — is actually conservative. It would be better for the Republican Party (and for the world) if the family were to win this contest, as it almost certainly will.

That change would make the administration marginally more humane. But it would not, for the most part, be a victory for conservative policy ideas."

Read the Washington Post, The struggle to give a soul to a soulless presidency.

Trump's Big CON: "You'd Better Start Thinking Happy Thoughts"

"Fans of old TV series may remember a classic 'Twilight Zone' episode titled 'It’s a Good Life.' It featured a small town terrorized by a 6-year-old who for some reason had monstrous superpowers, coupled with complete emotional immaturity. Everyone lived in constant fear, made worse by the need to pretend that everything was fine. After all, any hint of discontent could bring terrible retribution.

And now you know what it must be like working in the Trump administration. Actually, it feels a bit like that just living in Trump’s America.

What set me off on this chain of association? The answer may surprise you; it was the tax 'plan' the administration released on Wednesday.

The reason I use scare quotes here is that the single-page document the White House circulated this week bore no resemblance to what people normally mean when they talk about a tax plan. . .

It’s clear the White House is proposing huge tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, with the breaks especially big for people who can bypass regular personal taxes by channeling their income into tax-privileged businesses — people, for example, named Donald Trump. So Trump plans to blow up the deficit bigly, largely to his own personal benefit; but that’s about all we know.

So why would the White House release such an embarrassing document? Why would the Treasury Department go along with this clown show?

Unfortunately, we know the answer. Every report from inside the White House conveys the impression that Trump is like a temperamental child, bored by details and easily frustrated when things don’t go his way; being an effective staffer seems to involve finding ways to make him feel good and take his mind off news that he feels makes him look bad.

If he says he wants something, no matter how ridiculous, you say, 'Yes, Mr. President!'; at most, you try to minimize the damage.

Right now, by all accounts, the child-man in chief is in a snit over the prospect of news stories that review his first 100 days and conclude that he hasn’t achieved much if anything (because he hasn’t). So last week he announced the imminent release of something he could call a tax plan."

According to The Times, this left Treasury staff — who were nowhere near having a plan ready to go — 'speechless.' But nobody dared tell him it couldn’t be done. Instead, they released … something, with nobody sure what it means.

And the absence of a real tax plan isn’t the only thing the inner circle apparently doesn’t dare tell him. . .

No, what we’re looking at here isn’t policy; it’s pieces of paper whose goal is to soothe the big man’s temper tantrums. Unfortunately, we may all pay the price of his therapy." {Link added.]

Read The New York Times, Living in the Trump Zone.

Trump's Big CON: 'I'm a Great Negotiator', Budget Edition

"[H]ere are the eight most notable areas Trump caved in his first big spending negotiation: . .

1. [E]xplicit restrictions to block the border wall.

2. Non-defense domestic spending will go up . .

3. Barack Obama’s cancer moonshot is generously funded. . .

4. The final deal trims [the EPA] budget by just 1 percent, with no staff cuts. As part of a compromise, the EPA gets $80 million less than last year, but the budget is $8 billion.

5. He didn’t defund Planned Parenthood. . .

6. The president got less than half as much for the military as he said was necessary. . .

7. Democrats say they forced Republicans to withdraw more than 160 riders. These unrelated policy measures, which each could have been a poison pill . . .

8. [T]he White House already agreed last week to continue paying Obamacare subsidies . . .

Soon after the deal was reached last night, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi quickly put out celebratory statements. But McConnell and Paul Ryan did not. . .

The bigger picture: 'Trump is a nightmare negotiating partner,' writes USA Today commentary editor Jill Lawrence, who wrote a book called 'The Art of the Political Deal.' 'The only constants with Trump are unpredictability and expediency. These are not, suffice it to say, the traditional cornerstones of getting to yes in politics.'"

Read the Washington Post, Eight ways Trump got rolled in his first budget negotiation.

Trump's Big CON: 100 Days, 499 False or Misleading Claims

UPDATE:  "President Trump remains an angry, irrational figure, someone who still must stir up hatred — against the press, against immigrants, against Democrats — to enliven his base. . .

It’s not normal to rack up a record 488 falsehoods in the first 100 days in office and to repeat the same falsehoods over and over again. It’s not normal for a president to continue to question a foreign power’s responsibility for its well-documented, comprehensive effort to sway our elections. Yes, he is still doing that despite what all his national security advisers tell him.

It’s not normal for the public to doubt whether Trump even knows what is in his own proposals. He insists Trumpcare protects preexisting conditions. He claims his taxes would go up under his plan, which lowers his rate to 15 percent (he’s a Svengali of pass-through companies) and abolishes the alternative minimum tax. It’s not normal for a president to be surprised that health care is complicated or being president isn’t easy.

It’s not normal for a U.S. president to praise and congratulate dictatorial leaders, as he does with President Xi Jinping of China ('a very good man') and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. (Good men do not lock up political dissidents.) Normal presidents do not go out of their way to cheer the leader of the National Front, a party that is still infested with anti-Semites and whose leader denied the role of France in the murder of French Jews during WWII. It’s not normal to invite for a White House visit a human-rights abuser and anti-American demagogue who has presided over thousands of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. (Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley at her confirmation hearing correctly described extrajudicial killings under Rodrigo Duterte as a gross abuse of human rights.)

And yet Republicans in Congress and in the commentariat ignore, minimize or don’t care about all that. Great job! Give him an A! Hey, there’s Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, you know! Whatever standards — Constitutional, personal, ideological — Republicans once upheld have been thrown overboard. They cannot bring themselves to enforce the emoluments clause or compel Trump to disclose his taxes or crack down on the blatant conflicts of interest throughout his administration.

During the first 100 days the Republic has survived, but the GOP, permanently we think, has been morally compromised and intellectually corrupted, just as many of us warned. 'Everything Trump touches dies,' GOP consultant Rick Wilson is fond of saying. Trump’s victims now include a respectable Republican Party."

Read the Washington Post, This is not a normal president.

"[H]ere are the numbers for the president’s first 100 days.

    488: The number of false or misleading claims made by the president. That’s an average of 4.9 claims a day.

    10: Number of days without a single false claim. (On six of those days, the president golfed at a Trump property.)

    4: Number of days with 20 or more false claims. (Feb. 16, Feb. 28, March 20 and April 21.) He made 19 false claims on April 29, his 100th day, though we did not include his interview with 'Face the Nation,' since that aired April 30."

Read the Washington Post, President Trump’s first 100 days: The fact check tally.

Read also Trump's Big CON: The Score Card of False or Misleading Claims & Promises Kept and Trump's Big CON: When Does Trump Tell the Truth?

[Hint: "Trump tells the truth only when he cannot think of a ___."

Hint #2: It's a three letter word that begins with L.] 

Trump's Big CON: He Finally Realizes He's Not Presidental Material

UPDATE II:  And The Donald is right, he's not really presidential material. Being president is not a contrived so-called reality show where it's all about winning, which is his only obsession.

But he just doesn't get it.

"More than five months after his victory and two days shy of the 100-day mark of his presidency, the election is still on Trump's mind. Midway through a discussion about Chinese President Xi Jinping, the president paused to hand out copies of what he said were the latest figures from the 2016 electoral map.

'Here, you can take that, that's the final map of the numbers,' the Republican president said from his desk in the Oval Office, handing out maps of the United States with areas he won marked in red. 'It’s pretty good, right? The red is obviously us.'

He had copies for each of the three Reuters reporters in the room."

Read Reuters, Exclusive: Trump says he thought being president would be easier than his old life.

As noted before, Trump is a psycho-narcissistic con man.

Read also Trump is a Psycho-Narcissistic Con Man & Trump is a Psycho-Narcissistic Con Man (Cont.).

UPDATE:  "[T]his president and this Congress have not a clue how to proceed. They would potentially do much more harm than good. They are prisoners of extreme ideology, unrealistic expectations and their own incompetence.

Perhaps under another president, the center-right and center-left can make progress on key issues. For the remainder of Trump’s term, however, the best-case scenario would be no new wars or new nuclear powers and the status quo at home." [Emphasis in original]

Read the Washington Post, Here’s why, even with control of everything, the GOP cannot govern.

"Donald Trump spent a great portion of 2016 insisting that being president would be easy — at least for him. HuffPost compiled a number of examples of him dismissing the problems that accompany the job as being easily dispatched. Building a wall on the border with Mexico is easy. Beating Hillary Clinton would be easy. Renegotiating the Iran deal would be easy. Paying down the national debt would be easy. Acting presidential? Easy.

To a reporter from Reuters this week, though, Trump had a slightly different assessment of the presidency.

'I love my previous life. I had so many things going. This is more work than in my previous life,' Trump said. 'I thought it would be easier. I thought it was more of a … I’m a details-oriented person. I think you’d say that, but I do miss my old life. I like to work so that’s not a problem but this is actually more work.'

It wasn’t the first time that Trump copped to the job being trickier than he anticipated. In November, NBC News reported that Trump had told former House speaker Newt Gingrich that 'This is really a bigger job than I thought.' (Gingrich’s response? “…good. He should think that.”) Then there are individual issues. “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” he said at one point. At another, he revealed that it took a conversation with the president of China to realize that the situation on the Korean peninsula was 'not so easy.'"

Read the Washington Post, Trump now agrees with the majority of Americans: He wasn’t ready to be president. 

So far his presidency has just seemed like a joke gone bad.  But he should resign before he harms the country.

Of course, he love the fame.

Read the Washington Post, Alone in the White House, Trump is enjoying the perks of his new home.

Trump Big CON: The Fill-In-The-Blank of His Hundred Days of Scamming the Public

UPDATE:  "As we cross the finish line of President Trump’s first 100 days, no leader in recent memory has benefited more from low expectations. A more typical president who tumbled from an approval rating in the high 60s to one in the low 40s would be in a political crisis. Trump’s current performance is only a slight dip from his divisive norm. A president with pretensions of rhetorical coherence would be embarrassed by gaffes and mediocre speeches. For Trump, gaffes and inarticulateness are part of the package. A president with high standards of integrity would be mortified by a brewing scandal that seems to involve smarmy aides and a foreign government. For Trump, well, what would you expect? . .

In a number of cases, Trump has not been cunning but credulous; not an authoritarian but a pushover. During his campaign, Trump looked down on the weak; now, it turns out, he is weak.

Ultimately, Trump is failing because he has little knowledge of the world and no guiding star of moral principle. The best of our leaders — think Abraham Lincoln — have been sure about the truth and uncertain about themselves. Trump is the opposite. His mind is uncluttered by creeds. He knows what he wants at any given moment, but it can bear little relation to the moment following. Who really believes that he would be sleepless if the wall were not built or if NAFTA ultimately survived? Who believes he would not be sleepless because of a nasty joke at his expense during a dinner party?

Without deep and thoughtful beliefs, persuasion is impossible. It is public reasoning that allows others to follow a leader’s footsteps in the snow. What has Trump done to rationally and respectfully persuade his critics?

Without deep and thoughtful beliefs, the prevailing advice is often the latest advice. For a rootless leader, in Oscar Wilde’s phrase, “passions are quotations.”

Trump clearly wants to be judged by a frenetic level of activity. But the issue at hand is direction, not momentum. It is useful to undo some past liberal excesses, as Trump has done. But negation can’t be confused with inspiration. There can be no measure of political progress without a measuring stick of political conviction. Instead, we are treated to hysterical self-praise. Appalling — but, hey, what did we expect?"

Read the Washington Post, We set a low bar for Trump. He still failed to meet it.

"President Trump surprised everyone by announcing that he'd take a break from pretending he had a [fill in the blank] plan to pretend he had a [fill in the blank] plan,  instead.

That has been the 32-word history of Trump's first 100 days. This week, those blanks are "health-care reform" and "tax reform." Last week, they were "tax reform" and "health-care reform." And the one before that, they were, you guessed it, "health-care reform" and "tax reform." The problem, you see, is that Trump doesn't know enough about what he's trying to negotiate to, well, negotiate. The result is an ouroboros of incompetence that even the most naive people inclined to take Trump's words at face value — Wall Street traders — have begun to tune out. . .

[T]he second part of the history of Trump's first 100 days:

President Trump tweeted that his [fill in the blank] plan is going to be [better/the best], that people are saying [great/terrific] things about how [great/terrific] it is, that they shouldn't believe the fake media that say [it isn't close to passing/would cost 24 million people their health insurance/would blow up the deficit], and that it's all going so well that, for now, he's going back to work on his plan to [fill in the blank]."

Read the Washington Post, The 32-word history of Trump’s first 100 days.

Trump's Big CON: 'The Simpsons,' Celebrate His Many "Accomplishments"

UPDATE III:  "For nearly a century, American presidents have played an important, if informal, role in our politics as the leader of their parties. But nearly 100 days into his term, President Trump not only has failed to provide Republicans with skilled leadership, but also seems unaware that he’s even supposed to do so. This failure could doom his presidency before it even really begins. . .

Absence of political leadership is particularly damaging to the modern Republican Party because of the intense and deep fissures running through it. The GOP was bitterly divided into at least four factions prior to Trump’s emergence, and their civil war had waged since at least the 2010 primaries. None of the existing party leaders has the stature, power or credibility to unite this group into a cohesive majority. The president’s failure to step into this fray simply makes the divisions harder to heal.

Trump was elected to change Washington and 'drain the swamp.' Our modern system won’t allow him to do that without first wading deep into the murky waters himself to corral the alligators. If the president does that by the summer months, he might yet begin to fulfill his promises and move the nation in a new direction. But if he doesn’t, he may find the swamp will have drained his power and authority by the time Congress reconvenes in the fall."

Read the Washington Post, This failure may doom Trump’s presidency before it really begins.

In other words, The Donald doesn't have the leadership skills to get the job done.

UPDATE II: "Unless he can summon a miracle, President Trump is going to reach 100 days in office without getting anything on his wish list through Congress. And the fact we're measuring his failures by this timetable is largely his fault. . .

Even the stuff Trump can do on his own — executive orders — have hit quicksand. His most significant executive orders, a travel ban and pressure on sanctuary cities, are stuck in the courts.

Trump has about exhausted his unilateral power. The rest of his agenda needs Congress to get done.

No president — no matter how much of a dealmaker  — can force Congress to pass bills. But Trump set himself up for failure in a way past presidents never have. He promised to get his priorities through Congress in a matter of months.

That was an amateur move, says pretty much anyone who knows anything about Congress. Major legislation doesn't happen in increments of weeks or months. It happens in years: Medicare, gun reform, Obamacare. These things took years, if not decades.

'He didn't grasp the reality of legislating,' [Steve Bell, a former GOP Senate budget aide now with the Bipartisan Policy Institute] said. 'It takes a lot of time.'

The fact Trump would make promises like that also suggests he doesn't have a lot of people around him who understand Congress. And that's to Trump's disadvantage on any day of his administration."

Read the Washington Post, Trump is about to be 0-4 on his legislative promises for his first 100 days. 

UPDATE: "In the outpouring of commentary on President Trump’s first 100 days in office, his greatest single achievement is almost never mentioned, which is itself a sign of what a major triumph it is: We are not talking much about whether Russia colluded with Trump’s campaign to help elect him."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s greatest single achievement almost never gets mentioned.

Read also:

Trump's Big CON: What's He Hiding: Is Trump a Russian Agent?, where I noted that Trump "may be an unwitting agent, but Putin has the kompromat to control Trump, and Trump knows it since he knows his own compromising financial and personal information."

Trump's Big CON: What's He Hiding: Is Trump a Russian Agent? (Cont.)

 "'The Simpsons,' of course, famously predicted a Trump presidency in an episode aired in 2000. The real estate mogul seemed to be the right comedic fit at the time, episode writer Dan Greaney told The Washington Post’s Michael Cavna. They needed a celebrity name that would sound slyly absurdist.

'He seems like a ‘Simpsons’-esque figure — he fits right in there, in an over-the-top way,' Greaney said. . .
[But] in the first show to air after Trump’s victory, 'The Simpsons' writers expressed their regret.

In the opening credits, which change every episode, Bart Simpson grimaced as he wrote on the blackboard: 'BEING RIGHT SUCKS.'"

And on Sunday, 'The Simpsons' will celebrate some of The Donalds many accomplishments after 100 days in office, such as: "lowering his golf handicap and increasing his Twitter following by 700.

'And finally we can shoot hibernating bears. My boys will love that,' the Trump character says. His wig reveals itself to be a small dog."

Read the Washington Post, ‘The Simpsons’ has a grim take on Trump’s first 100 days.

Trump's Big CON: The Donald Has Exposed the Republi-CON's So-Called 'Less Government' Hypocrisy

"Republicans tend to be more skeptical of the size of government when Democrats are in power.

But even more than that is Trump's rhetoric. While other Republicans will at least talk a good game about shrinking government, he hasn't really bothered; instead he has talked about a $1 trillion infrastructure plan and increasing government borrowing while borrowing is cheap. He gave lip service to balancing the budget as president, but as with many Trump goals, it has quickly gone by the wayside. The White House isn't even pretending that is still a goal.

And Trump's affinity for big government may be one of the truly big paradigm shifts of his presidency. He has taken in a GOP that got religion on the size of government during the Obama administration and is anxious to see what Trump's brand of populist big government can do for it -- the national debt apparently be damned."

Read the Washington Post, The era of big government is back. Thanks, Trump.

Trump's Big CON: "I’m Going to Rip Up Those Trade Deals" Edition

UPDATE III: Another broken promise.

Read the Washington Post, Trump says no plan to pull out of NAFTA ‘at this time’.

UPDATE II:  "President Trump on Wednesday said he would not label China a currency manipulator, contradicting one of the biggest economic promises he made on the campaign trail.

Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he had changed his mind because China is not currently manipulating its currency, adding that he hoped to enlist China’s help on containing the nuclear threat from North Korea."

Read the Washington Post, Trump says he will not label China currency manipulator, reversing campaign promise.

Read also the Washington Post, 3 big ways Trump is starting to sound like Obama on the economy.

UPDATE:  "President Trump, who made opposition to free trade with China and other countries a centerpiece of his campaign and has continued with tough talk since entering office, is struggling to enact policies that match his trade rhetoric. . .

[W]hile Trump has called China “grand champions” of currency manipulation as recently as February, three people familiar with the discussions say it did not appear likely that the Treasury Department would officially designate China in its semiannual foreign currency report due Saturday. . .

Trump had promised to label China a “currency manipulator” on his first day in office, but his administration has moved slowly to follow through on many of his trade-related threats. . .

Ahead of that meeting, Trump had warned of a 'very difficult' discussion “in which we can no longer have massive trade deficits and job losses.” Yet the meeting ended with the White House announcing a '100-day plan' to review the U.S. trade relationship with China. . .

[Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), said] '[t]he ‘100-day plan’ seems typical of what they do: a lot of talk, no action'. . .

Beyond China, the White House has also missed an internal mid-March deadline to begin renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, as a draft letter that would begin the process has not been formally signed.

It also announced a mix of other relatively minor or technical measures to strengthen U.S. trade protections, but experts say those won't do much to benefit U.S. industry unless they're followed by far more substantial action. . .

On trade, the White House has launched numerous reviews but so far done little to change policy."

Read the Washington Post, Ahead of major decision, Trump is struggling to deliver on his trade promises.

You might remember from the campaign, The Donald has many plans, like his pan for ISIS, none of which he can talk about.

"[N]ow he’s president, and guess what? It turns out that he may not end up keeping that promise [about ripping up trade deals], after all . . .

This all fits in well with a pattern that we’ve seen repeated over and over as the Trump candidacy turned into the Trump presidency. Here’s how it works.

    Trump makes a grandiose promise that sounds great to at least some voters but no serious person believes.

    Trump runs headlong into reality and discovers that doing what he promised would either be impossible or disastrous.

    Trump initiates a hasty retreat from his promise."

Read the Washington Post, Another Trump promise bites the dust.

Trump's Big CON: The Con Man Bluffs A Lot

As I suggested many times, Obama should have called the Republi-CON bluff many years ago.

Trump's election left no choice.

"For the second time in two major legislative battles, the Trump White House has issued an ultimatum — only to back down.

In the health care debate, the president was going to force a House vote on the package and dare skeptical Republicans to vote against replacing Obamacare, before abandoning that plan in the face of defeat.

And now, in the government funding debate, he's backing off his previous demand that Congress approve funding for his border wall. . .

This kind of bluffing and having it called is undoubtedly something Trump is used to in the business and real estate worlds. But in the political world, you are negotiating with the same people over and over again. And the lesson of the first two big congressional debates is that when Trump says a bill must contain XYZ, he doesn't really mean it; it's just posturing. And that doesn't bode well for future Trump demands.

During the last government shutdown in 2013, when Republicans demanded defunding Planned Parenthood, they were at least willing to follow through on that demand. The government was closed for more than two weeks before the GOP relented. That served notice to Democrats that Republicans were at the very least willing to go all-in on their strategy and follow through — that they weren't bluffing when they made such demands in order for a bill to pass. And that made their threats on other things seem more legitimate.

Trump has shown no such inclination to make it so people take his demands at face value. And given what's happened in the first two legislative debates, the next time he draws a line in the sand, you can bet lawmakers know how easily it can be raked over."

Read the Washington Post, President Trump just had his bluff called — again.

Trump's Big CON: It's All About the Show, Mars Edition

"What we are reporting here isn't fake news. But it doesn't feel exactly like real news, either. It's in that foggy realm of Trump news in which everything is slightly ambiguous and wobbly and internally inconsistent and almost certainly improvisational and not actually grounded in what you could call “government policy.” What happened was: Trump called the International Space Station and talked to astronauts and, in passing, mentioned that he's going to send Americans to Mars, and soon, like really lickety-split. . .

It's hard to know if Trump was entirely serious (it's possible he was just joshin') or if he even has been briefed on the current NASA human spaceflight program. He may not know where Mars is. (Who does, really? You know it moves around a lot.)

[The] "NASA Transition Authorization Act of 2017, passed by Congress and signed by Trump this year . . . essentially keeps NASA on the same course it's been for years when it comes to human spaceflight — aiming at a mission to Mars with a 2033 launch. The first mission would be an orbital mission only; a later mission would attempt a landing.

NASA, understanding that Trump wants to do something big in the first term, has pondered adding astronauts to a test flight of the new Space Launch System rocket. There is very little chance that NASA is sending humans to Mars by 2024."

Read the Washington Post, Trump wants NASA to send humans to Mars pronto — by his second term ‘at worst’.

Read also the Washington Post, Will Trump echo JFK’s moonshot and vow to send humans to Mars?, which noted that "Trump understands the power of a big idea, and the leverage that can come from a cult of personality. He has been interested in John F. Kennedy’s vow to send humans to the moon."

Of course, it's a con job because he doesn't believe in science and his "budget calls for a seismic disruption in government-funded medical and scientific research. The cuts are deep and broad."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s budget calls for seismic disruption in medical and science research.

Trump is a Psycho-Narcissistic Con Man (Cont.)

UPDATE II:  Read the other posts about the Trump Family Show.

Of course, the purpose of the show is to promote the Trump family and brand. The office of the Presidency give him a great way to do so.

"As NPR spelled out:

    An article on a State Department website about President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort has been removed after criticism that it was an inappropriate use of taxpayer funds.

    Critics complained that resources were being used to tout the for-profit club, which Trump refers to as the Winter White House. The club, in Palm Beach, Fla., is held in Trump’s trust, of which he is the sole beneficiary.

The State Department claimed that there was no intent to promote Trump’s property, but it was hard to see what possible other purpose it could have served. ('On the webpage about Mar-a-Lago, there was no discussion of policy. The page showed photos of the members-only club’s opulent rooms and exterior, and noted that 'When he acquired the house, Trump also bought the decorations and furnishings that [original owner Marjorie Merriweather] Post had collected over the years, preserving Mar-a-Lago’s style and taste.''

Trump had already doubled the new-membership fee for the club in January.

Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington tells me: 'This is very troubling and further shows the extent to which the Trump businesses are intertwined with the Trump administration. Things like this add to the constant ethical questions raised by the Trump administration’s behavior when it comes to the president’s portfolio.'"

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s brazen self-promotion crosses the line.  

UPDATE:  "Trump's boast of highest TV ratings since ‘the World Trade Center came down’ was made during "a wide-ranging interview with Julie Pace of the Associated Press on April 21, [in which] President Trump yet again made many false or misleading statements."

For a "a roundup of 14 claims", read the Washington Post, Fact-checking President Trump’s Pinocchio-laden Associated Press interview.  

Trump is an incredible narcissist.

Read the Washington Post, Trump boasts of highest TV ratings since ‘the World Trade Center came down’.

That is a truly incredible, and scary, statement

Read also Trump is a Psycho-Narcissistic Con Man, which noted that Trump is a psycho-narcissistic con man.

Trump's Big CON: He's Become Irrelevant

"It is more than five months since the election, three months since the inauguration — enough time to be able to make an informed prognosis about economic and domestic policy under President Trump and the Republican Congress.

What we know, first and foremost, is that it hardly matters what Trump says because what he says is as likely as not to have no relationship to the truth, no relationship to what he said last year during the campaign or even what he said last week. What he says bears no relationship to any consistent political or policy ideology or world-view. What he says is also likely to bear no relationship to what his top advisers or appointees have said or believe, making them unreliable interlocutors even if they agreed among themselves, which they don’t. This lack of clear policy is compounded by the fact that the president, despite his boasts to the contrary, knows very little about the topics at hand and isn’t particularly interested in learning. In other words, he’s still making it up as he goes along.

What all this means, in effect, is that in terms of formulating and passing legislation, or even a budget, Trump and his White House are mostly irrelevant, except to the extent that he establishes a credible threat to veto legislation he decides not to like."

Read the Washington Post, What happens if the president doesn’t matter?

Read also the Washington Post, Wall Street is giving up on Trump.

The read the Washington Post, Democrats to Trump: You don’t have the leverage. We do., which notes that government funding is about to run out at just about the 100-day mark of Trump's presidency, and the timing is likely to show "that Trump and Republicans are making an enormous mess of governing."

Meanwhile, Trump plays golf.