Trump's Big CON: He's Not the Only Republi-CON

Paul "Ryan's reputation as a policy expert is under renewed assault.

“It’s hard to make a case that his efforts have been all that serious,” said Jared Bernstein, who was chief economist to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “His numbers never add up.”

The New York Times editorial board this week wrote an even harsher assessment of the House speaker: 'If he is the policy wonk of the Republican Party, then the Republican Party has no policy.'

To critics, Ryan's health-care failure is proof of what they've said all along: Ryan always presented himself as a serious thinker, but his ideas are half-baked at best. To his defenders, Ryan's failure on health care has more to do with a fractious Republican caucus that wasn't ready to unite behind any measure, let alone a bill that President Trump wanted to move through Congress in a matter of weeks.

A look at Ryan's record reveals that although he demonstrated far more expertise than the typical lawmaker, he has yet to confront fully the difficult compromises involved in making federal policy with a comprehensive plan that can achieve conservative goals on a major issue. . .

Paul Krugman, a liberal economist and Nobel laureate who is perhaps the most prominent of Ryan's skeptics, disparaged Ryan's work, saying it relied on a set of unfounded assumptions about a booming economy and inexplicably falling health-care costs.

'Swooning' commentators 'lavished praise on Mr. Ryan, asserting that his plan set a new standard of fiscal seriousness,' Krugman wrote in 2011. 'In short, this plan isn’t remotely serious; on the contrary, it’s ludicrous.'"

Read the Washington Post, Is Paul Ryan a policy guy, or does he just play one on TV?

Trump's Big CON: When Does Trump Tell the Truth?

UPDATE:  Reality sometimes sucks, but it is reality.

Read the Washington Post, Trump has nothing but contempt for facts and reality-based policy. Now it’s backfiring.

"Is there anything in President Trump’s insurance plan that covers congenital lying by federal employees?

The Congressional Budget Office ought to look into that, because if the coverage exists, the White House alone is going to sink the program deep into the red. Premiums will shoot sky-high, and ordinary liars, Hollywood producers, nutritionists, everyone at Fox News (with the exception of Chris Wallace) and all but two lawyers will be unable to afford coverage.

Already it seems that vast numbers of people in the Trump administration are in need of treatment. Trump himself has reversed the natural order of things — he lies more often than he tells the truth. In fact, several experts I consulted, whose names I cannot use because they do not exist, speculate that Trump tells the truth only when he cannot think of a lie." [Emphasis added.]

Read the Washington Post, Will Trump’s health-care plan cover congenital lying?

Read also:

Trump's Big CON: Is He Lying or Delusional?

Trump's Big CON: He Clings to Lies "Like a Drunk to an Empty Gin Bottle"

Easier yet, read all the Trump's Big CON posts.

Trump's Big CON: What's He Hiding: Is Trump a Russian Agent?

UPDATE VIII:  It wasn't long ago that Trump and his surrogates said that if the FBI was investigating you, or you sought immunity, it was a sign of guilt and were "a very bad thing".

Read the Washington Post, The Trump White House is in deep legal trouble, according to Trump’s own standards.

UPDATE VII: Oooh, you might say, Trump just did business with rich Russians.

"To expand his real estate developments over the years, Donald Trump, his company and partners repeatedly turned to wealthy Russians and oligarchs from former Soviet republics — several allegedly connected to organized crime, according to a USA TODAY review of court cases, government and legal documents and an interview with a former federal prosecutor.

The president and his companies have been linked to at least 10 wealthy former Soviet businessmen with alleged ties to criminal organizations or money laundering. . .

[But] '[a]nybody who is an oligarch or is in any position of power in Russia got it because (President) Vladimir Putin or somebody in power saw some reason to give that person that job,'  Steven Hall, a former CIA chief of Russian operations,] said in an interview. 'All the organized crime figures I’ve ever heard of (in Russia) all have deep connections and are tied in with people in government.'"

Read the USA Today, Trump's business network reached alleged Russian mobsters.

UPDATE VI:  Here is how media and civil society work in Russia:

If you criticize the kleptocracy, they try to pay you off or bully you.

Read the Washington Post, Russian billionaire attempts to stifle AP scoop.

And if that doesn't work, you are killed.

Read the Washington Post, Here are 10 critics of Vladimir Putin who died violently or in suspicious ways.

And Trump admires Putin and likes the way thing are done in Russia.

UPDATE V:  "Manafort is only one piece of the Trump-Russia puzzle. Why is it that so many Trump advisers have connections to Russia, often financial ones? Why has Trump gotten so much money from Russian oligarchs and mob-connected individuals? What’s the full extent of the measures the Russian government took to help Trump get elected, and was there any coordination with any Americans, including those connected to Trump?"

Read the Washington Post, Here’s why the latest Trump-Russia revelations are so important, which asks "why is it that this scandal hasn’t yet risen to the level occupied by Watergate, Iran-contra and Monica Lewinsky?"

UPDATE IV: Of course, Russia has the help of it's useful idiots.

Read the Washington Post, Andrew Napolitano reportedly pulled from Fox News over debunked wiretapping claims.

UPDATE III:  "In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. said publicly that “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of our assets” and that “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” The president now denies significant business involvement with Russians. Which is true?"

Read the Washington Post, Does the FBI’s trail lead to Russia?, which also noted that "Trump’s rhetoric about Putin and Russia has been anomalously gentle. He does not hesitate to blast German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a staunch ally, for not spending enough on defense; he goes out of his way to bash our neighbor Mexico; and he even managed to get into a needless row with the prime minister of Australia. Yet he has consistently conveyed his admiration for Putin’s leadership and expressed a desire for a warmer U.S.-Russia relationship."

UPDATE II:  "Trump was the candidate the Kremlin wanted. Trump was the candidate the Kremlin helped. And to everyone’s, including the Kremlin’s, surprise, Trump was the president they/we got. . .

For someone with nothing to hide and no reason for worry, his behavior strikes us as inexplicable. It was, of course, impulsive tweeting about nonexistent wiretapping that put Trump in this situation. We’ll see whether he has the self-control to stop making his situation worse, tweet by tweet.

Read the Washington Post, Five questions after Comey’s testimony. 

UPDATE:  Additional evidence:  "[h]ere's what we know about Trump's campaign and Russia:

The intelligence community has concluded that Russia meddled in the U.S. election to undermine faith in the democratic process and harm Hillary Clinton's candidacy, in part because Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed then-Secretary of State Clinton for domestic protests against his authority in 2011-2012.

Two members of Trump's inner circle — former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — have publicly acknowledged that they failed to disclose private conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Flynn lost his job; Sessions agreed to recuse himself from the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election as a result.

But meeting with the Russian ambassador to Washington isn't illegal — in fact, you could argue it's part of diplomacy. It's the lack of disclosure that got both men in trouble.

Democrats are suggesting that Russia's involvement in the election and Trump officials' lack of disclosure about their ties to Russia point to something more. In a 15-minute opening statement, Schiff laid out a series of ties between Trump's campaign and Russia, citing former British spy Christopher Steele, who compiled an unverified dossier on Trump and Russia. They included accusations that:

One of Trump's national security advisers during the campaign, Carter Page, has ties to Russia and has praised its president, Vladimir Putin.

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had been on the payroll for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine. [Note: read the Washington Post, New documents show Trump aide laundered payments from party with Moscow ties, lawmaker alleges.]

Trump officials met with the Russian ambassador to Washington during the Republican National Convention. At that convention, Republicans changed their platform to remove a section that supported giving weapons to Ukraine as it battles Russia for territory.

Former Trump adviser Roger Stone boasted in a speech that he knew of impending WikiLeaks documents related to Hillary Clinton's campaign before they were published.

And Flynn and Sessions would go on to avoid disclosing their conversations with the Russian ambassador during or shortly after the campaign."

Read the Washington Post, Six big takeaways from Congress’s extraordinary hearing on Russia, President Trump and wiretapping. 

 Trump is trying desperately to hide something. What is it?

With the House Intelligence Committee on Monday prepared to hold hearings on Russian influence in the 2016 election, the president issued tweets that did not hold up well as the testimony unfolded. . .

FBI Director James Comey announced that a criminal investigation into possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign was indeed active and ongoing . . .

The president’s tweets throughout the day were misleading, inaccurate or simply false."

Read the Washington Post, President Trump’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Twitter day.

As noted before, The Donald is Putin's Puppet.

Now it appears that Trump was evaluated, groomed and developed for many years.

"A Reuters review found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida. . .

The buyers include politically connected businessmen, such as a former executive in a Moscow-based state-run construction firm that works on military and intelligence facilities, the founder of a St. Petersburg investment bank and the co-founder of a conglomerate with interests in banking, property and electronics.

People from the second and third tiers of Russian power have invested in the Trump buildings as well. One recently posted a photo of himself with the leader of a Russian motorcycle gang that was sanctioned by the United States for its alleged role in Moscow’s seizure of Crimea."

Read Reuters, Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings.

If you think about it, it makes sense. Trump was spotted as a potential resource and groomed and developed for years by the Russians, originally as a way to move dirty money out of the Russian kleptocracy. ("Russian president Vladimir Putin is alleged to be the 'head of the clan', whose assets are estimated at $200 billion.")

Trump, who had financial problems, is know to reward those who help him, thus the quid pro quo.

Putin likely never thought it possible to get Trump elected, but when the opportunity presented itself, Russia went to work to influence the election.

And he 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.

Read National Review, The Trump ‘Kompromat’ Story Is Disturbing — Every Bit of It.

So again, what is he hiding: Is Trump a Russian agent?

Trump's Big CON: He's a Loser

"President Trump's biggest weakness is that he doesn't know how to make deals.

That, as Business Insider's Josh Barro points out, seems to suggest a deep unfamiliarity with the urtext of the subject, 'The Art of the Deal.' Trump should know that “the worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it.” But that's precisely what he has done, first with health care and now with infrastructure. . .

[H]he did just about everything he could to alienate Democrats, from his, in their view, discriminatory travel ban to his attempt to undo their greatest legislative achievement of the last 40 years in Obamacare. More than that, though, Trump's inability to unite Republicans behind his health-care bill showed Democrats that they don't have to make a deal with him out of fear of him making an extremely conservative deal with the House Freedom Caucus. It turns out he can't make a deal with them at all. Kind of makes it hard to play the two sides off against each other. . .

Democrats have no incentive to help Trump pass popular legislation when his unpopularity helps them. Why turn him into the winning winner he ran as, who alone possesses the ability to break through the gridlock of Washington, when they can keep him as the losing loser he's governed as, who can't even get a bill through one chamber of Congress his party controls? They won't, at least not on terms that are remotely acceptable to Republicans."

Read the Washington Post, Trump is throwing himself into the Democrats’ trap.

Trump's Big CON: Ha Ha Ha, the Repeal Obamacare Joke's On You

UPDATE:  "[I]t is probable that whatever replaces the ACA’s tapestry of subsidies, regulations and mandates will be a tapestry of subsidies, regulations and mandates. The differences probably will constitute substantial improvements but will hardly constitute a revolution in the relation of the citizen, or the health-care sector, to the government."

Read the Washington Post, Whatever replaces Obamacare will look a lot like Obamacare.

"It took Republicans seven years to decide on an Obamacare replacement, but only a little more than seven days to decide that they needed to replace parts of that with something that wouldn't hurt their voters quite so much.

If they're serious about fixing their plan, though, there's already one that does just that. It's called, well, Obamacare. And it's the only 'replacement' option that would work."

Read the Washington Post, The only Obamacare replacement that will work is Obamacare.

Read also the Washington Post, President Trump’s biggest Obamacare bloopers., which noted that "Trump’s claims that Obamacare 'is failing,' 'is dead,' 'will close up very, very soon' and 'is not even a health-care plan [?]' are simply false.

Trump's Big CON: Is He Lying or Delusional?

UPDATE VII:  "O.K., at this point it’s not news that the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military is a man you wouldn’t trust to park your car or feed your cat. Thanks, Comey. But Mr. Trump’s pathological inability to accept responsibility is just the culmination of a trend. American politics — at least on one side of the aisle — is suffering from an epidemic of infallibility, of powerful people who never, ever admit to making a mistake. . .

[W]hat’s going on with Mr. Trump and his inner circle seems to have less to do with ideology than with fragile egos. To admit having been wrong about anything, they seem to imagine, would brand them as losers and make them look small.

In reality, of course, inability to engage in reflection and self-criticism is the mark of a tiny, shriveled soul — but they’re not big enough to see that.

But why did so many Americans vote for Mr. Trump, whose character flaws should have been obvious long before the election?

Catastrophic media failure and F.B.I. malfeasance played crucial roles. But my sense is that there’s also something going on in our society: Many Americans no longer seem to understand what a leader is supposed to sound like, mistaking bombast and belligerence for real toughness.

Why? Is it celebrity culture? Is it working-class despair, channeled into a desire for people who spout easy slogans?

Read The New York Times, America’s Epidemic of Infallibility.

UPDATE VI:  "America is now governed by a president and party that fundamentally don’t accept the idea that there are objective facts. Instead, they want everyone to accept that reality is whatever they say it is. . .

Mr. Trump has declared [the media] 'enemies of the people' — not, whatever he may say, because they get things wrong, but because they dare to challenge him on anything.

'Enemy of the people' is, of course, a phrase historically associated with Stalin and other tyrants. This is no accident. Mr. Trump isn’t a dictator — not yet, anyway — but he clearly has totalitarian instincts.

And much, perhaps most, of his party is happy to go along, accepting even the most bizarre conspiracy theories. . .

It’s part of a much bigger struggle, in which what’s really at stake is whether ignorance is strength, whether the man in the White House is the sole arbiter of truth."

Read The New York Times, Facts Are Enemies of the People.

UPDATE V:  "We’re seeing a broad White House effort to corrode the very ideal of reality-based governing, something that includes not just a discrediting of institutions such as the CBO but also the weakening of the influence of science and data over agency decision-making and the deliberate misuse of our democracy’s institutional processes to prop up Trump’s lies about his popular support and political opponents."

Read the Washington Post, Donald Trump’s deliberate corruption of reality-based governing.

UPDATE IV:  "Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) called Sunday for President Trump to either prove his claim that President Barack Obama tapped the phones in Trump Tower during last year’s election campaign or drop the accusation.

'The president has one of two choices, either retract or provide the information that the American people deserve,' McCain said in an interview on CNN’s 'State of the Union.' 'I have no reason to believe that the charge is true, but I also believe that the president of the United States could clear this up in a minute.'

Read the Washington Post, McCain to Trump: Retract wiretapping claim or prove it.

UPDATE III:  "Rep. Schiff (D-CA) was asked on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports if there was any proof to back up Trump’s claim [regarding wiretaps].

He answered, 'No, and I think it’s a preposterous claim. As other people have pointed out, if it were true it would mean that a federal judge had found probable cause to believe that Trump or his associates were engaged in a crime, or that a FISA court judge had found that they were acting as agents of a foreign power. This is what the president is suggesting when he says that he was wiretapped. But it’s a preposterous claim, and I think it’s certainly one explanation that he’s merely trying to distract, but a more troubling conclusion might be that this is simply a president that can not separate fact from fantasy, and as a Commander In Chief doesn’t know right from wrong.'

Schiff was suggesting that the President Of The United States is potentially not of sound mind."

Read Politicususa, Top Member Of House Intel Committee Questions Trump’s Mental State On National TV.

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

UPDATE II:  For a 'tally of the lies and distortions', read the Washington Post, Trump just gave a remarkable new interview. Here’s a tally of all his lies.

UPDATE: Actually, Trump is a psycho-narcissistic con man.

A "lengthy interview, which aired late Wednesday night, provided a glimpse of the president and his state-of-mind on his fifth full day in office. It revealed a man who is obsessed with his own popularity and eager to provide evidence of his likability, even if that information doesn't match reality."

Read the Washington Post, In his first major TV interview as president, Trump is endlessly obsessed with his popularity.

As noted before, this can't end well for the country.

Trump is clearly a con man. So that begs the question: why?

"Is he lying or is he unable to separate what he wants to believe and what exists, literally, in front of his eyes? The first makes him morally unfit, and was the basis upon which many #NeverTrumpers refused to vote for him. If the latter, they — and we all — have a constitutional crisis the likes of which we have never seen. With Trump, however, we have learned the past provides no guarantees."

Read the Washington Post, Maybe Trump isn’t ‘lying’.

Trump's Big CON: 24 Million People Will Lose Health Insurance to Fund Tax Cuts and Credits For the Wealthy

UPDATE:  Need more proof, remember the proposed border adjustment tax on imported consumers goods to give more tax breaks to rich people?

Nothing better proves the true Republi-CON purpose.

And it is now clear why the Republi-CONs didn't want to wait for the Congressional Budget Office report.

Read:

The New York Times, Trumpcare vs. Obamacare: Apocalypse Foretold, which stated:

"The Congressional Budget Office report on Trumpcare is out, and it’s devastating: 14 million people losing insurance in the first year, 24 million over time, with premiums soaring for older, lower-income Americans — in many cases, the very people who went strongly for President Trump. The C.B.O. thinks it would reduce the deficit, but only marginally, around $30 billion a year in a $19 trillion economy.

Let me offer one assertion and ask two questions.

The assertion is that something like this was to be expected. The C.B.O. came in even worse on coverage than most predicted, but it was obvious that the news would be terrible because that’s what the logic of the situation told us. Obamacare imposes a mandate to induce healthy people to sign up, offers means-tested subsidies to make insurance affordable and expands Medicaid to take care of people with really low incomes. Trumpcare eliminates the mandate, slashes subsidies overall and redirects them to those who don’t need them and sharply cuts Medicaid. Of course that leads to a huge drop in coverage.

Or to put it differently, Obamacare is actually an intelligently designed system, and Republican claims that they could do much better even while slashing funding so they could cut taxes on the rich were always obvious nonsense. Trumpcare is a slapdash, incompetent piece of legislation; but even a much more competent set of people couldn’t have done better given the constraints of Republican Party ideology."

Read also:

Politico, 5 takeaways from the CBO's report on Obamacare repeal, which notes that "[m]any Trump voters and states would lose big under the GOP health plan",

Vox, The GOP health plan is an act of class warfare by the rich against the poor, and

The Washington Post, The CBO wallops Paul Ryan, which notes that no matter what you believe or think about the proposal,, "[o]ne thing is for sure: A bill that transfers wealth from poor to rich is going to blow up the notion that Trump is a populist."

And see TrumpCareCon (© NoBullU.com) (AKA TrumpConCare or TrumpCon (© NoBullU.com)) Is All About Future Tax Cut.

Trump's Big CON: SURPRISE, He and His Staff Routinely Lie to the Public

UPDATE IV:  "If you woke up Monday from a coma that caused you to miss the presidential campaign and the first two months of Donald Trump's presidency, then you may have never experienced a Kellyanne Conway interview. But you could catch up on the phenomenon by watching just one TV appearance by the counselor to the president — her latest on CNN.

You missed the whole 'alternative facts' thing? No prob. 'I'm not in the job of having evidence' — a line Conway delivered to Chris Cuomo on Monday morning — should cover the concept.

Never seen Conway take an unsubstantiated claim and state it as fact? . . .

Haven't witnessed Conway's unparalleled ability to twist a journalist's words in a way that frames the media as an enemy? Get ready for a clinic."

Read the Washington Post, Kellyanne Conway gave the most Kellyane Conway interview ever.

UPDATE III:  Anticipating  the obstruction of justice and coverup, steps were taken to preserve the evidence.

Read The New York Times, Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking. 

UPDATE II:  Now it is Trump's leading lawman lying.

Read the Washington Post, Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, encounters he later did not disclose and Jeff Sessions’s denials of contact with Russians are falling apart quickly.

And don't forget the obstruction of justice and coverup, all to hide that The Donald is Putin's Puppet. 

UPDATE:  Read the Washington Post, 5 times Donald Trump’s team denied contact with Russia.

Is it REALLY a surprise, or have you just been lying to yourself?

Read the Washington Post, In a remarkable interview, Kellyanne Conway’s spin about Mike Flynn crashes and burns.

Trump's Big CON: TrumpCareCon (© NoBullU.com) (AKA TrumpConCare or TrumpCon (© NoBullU.com)) Is All About Future Tax Cuts

UPDATE:  "Given the sick joke of a health plan, you might ask what happened to all those proclamations that Obamacare was a terrible, no good system that Republicans would immediately replace with something far better — not to mention Donald Trump’s promises of “insurance for everybody” and “great health care.”

But the answer, of course, is that they were all lying, all along — and they still are. On this, at least, Republican unity remains impressively intact."

Read The New York Times, A Bill So Bad It’s Awesome.

"Let’s abandon the pretense.

Republicans’ 'health care' bill is not really about health care. It’s not about improving access to health insurance, or reducing premiums, or making sure you get to keep your doctor if you like your doctor. And it’s certainly not about preventing people from dying in the streets.

Instead, it’s about hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts — tax cuts that will quietly pave the way for more, and far larger, tax cuts. . .

For those keeping score, [the plan] means fewer people would have insurance, those who get insurance on the exchanges would pay a higher price for it and Medicare’s solvency would be jeopardized as a bonus.

Hard to see how this achieves any of President Trump’s stated goals to “lower costs, expand choices, increase competition and ensure health-care access for all Americans.”

On the other hand, it’s quite easy to see how another well-established Republican goal would be achieved: tax cuts. . .

Under normal circumstances, Democrats would almost certainly filibuster the coming tax overhaul, preventing it from ever getting to a vote. But Republicans can take the filibuster option away by using the 'reconciliation' process, which is an option if, and only if, the tax bill doesn’t increase government deficits in the long term, relative to existing law.

How do you keep tax cuts from increasing deficits relative to existing law? One useful tool is to change existing law — that is, to move the goalposts. Cutting taxes in the Obamacare repeal bill today lowers the revenue baseline against which a tax overhaul plan will be judged tomorrow."

Read the Washington Post, The Republican health-care plan isn’t about health care at all.

Trump's Big CON: I'll Get Tough With Iran

"Since former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn warned Iran that it was “on notice” for an illegal missile test and the administration issued exceptionally narrow sanctions, we have heard little — if anything — from the administration about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iranian aggression in the region, Iran’s human rights atrocities or much of anything else concerning the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. (The White House spokesman did issue one of the sort of empty platitudes — that it is “unwavering” in its determination to bring home American Robert Levinson, believed to be held in Iran for 10 years — that conservatives ridiculed during the Obama administration.)

Obviously unconcerned about being on 'notice,' Iran this week yet again conducted a ballistic missile test."

Read the Washington Post, Trump misses an opportunity to defang Iran.

Trump's Big CON: Our Racist, White Nationalist President

"Leading conservatives have taken to pretending that the alt-right is a fringe movement that they and President Trump have disavowed. In recent interviews and at a high-profile conservative conference last month, conservatives have taken great pains to distance conservatism — and the Trump administration — from any alt-right influence.

But here’s the reality: The alt-right’s deep influence over this White House is on display daily — in Trump’s rhetoric and his administration’s policies. The alt-right influence on Trump matters: it means the most powerful man in the world is under the influence of a racist and white nationalist movement. . .

Bannon — who is now Trump’s most influential adviser — told me last summer, when he was chairman of Breitbart, that his site was 'the platform for the alt-right.'

The reality is that it is under Bannon’s influence that the administration has taken its actions that most thrill the alt-right, most notably his moves to step up deportation of undocumented immigrants, and ban refugees and migrants from Muslim-majority countries.

[And] after Trump tapped him to head up his campaign, Bannon nonetheless praised the deeply Islamophobic ethno-nationalism on the rise in Europe, like the National Front in France, led by far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

And then there’s Trump’s choice of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. During the transition, alt-right leaders were delighted with the Sessions pick, pointing to his opposition to immigration as well as their hope that he would stop enforcing civil rights laws and might even prosecute Black Lives Matter protesters.

As Emily Bazelon writes, Sessions has long been a devoted Breitbart reader, and met regularly with the site’s writers. Trump’s dark vision of America as besieged by inner city crime, immigrants, and refugees, Bazelon notes, 'provides clear justification for policies that will advance Sessions, Bannon and Miller’s divisive nationalism.' Justice Department policy, under Sessions, she adds, aims 'to strengthen the grip of law enforcement, raise barriers to voting and significantly reduce all forms of immigration, promoting what seems to be a longstanding desire to reassert the country’s European and Christian heritage.'

Despite the determined spin, the reality is that Trumpism would not exist without the alt-right. Conservatives can pretend it’s fringe and has little to no influence on the Trump administration — but the proof is in the policy."

Read the Washington Post, Conservatives insist Trump is not influenced by the alt-right. Here’s why they’re wrong.

Trump's Big CON: ObamaCare vs. TrumpCareCon (© NoBullU.com) (AKA TrumpConCare or TrumpCon (© NoBullU.com))

UPDATE VII:  "[H]ealth-care experts across the political spectrum agree that the new House GOP health-care plan, which Trump has now endorsed, falls short of his promises:

    The bill, experts said, falls far short of the goals President Donald Trump laid out: Affordable coverage for everyone; lower deductibles and health care costs; better care; and zero cuts to Medicaid. Instead, the bill is almost certain to reduce overall coverage, result in deductibles increasing, and will phase out Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

The American Medical Association came out against the GOP bill on Wednesday morning, arguing that its subsidy scheme and rollback of Medicaid expansion would produce a “decline in health insurance coverage,” instead calling on Republicans to “ensure that those who are currently covered do not become uninsured.” The GOP bill would likely result in millions losing insurance, even though Trump himself recently promised that the GOP replacement would mean “insurance for everybody.”

It’s plausible that the GOP bill would hit a lot of Trump voters. A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis concludes that older, lower-income people will likely see a loss of financial support for insurance — many of whom are probably Trump voters. Non-college whites in the Rust Belt states that flipped to Trump saw a big drop in the uninsured rate under the ACA. Meanwhile, the GOP bill would mean cuts to Medicaid over time and potentially a phasing-out of the expansion, something that might also hit many Trump voters. . .

[T]here is an irreconcilable split among Republicans over the specific outcome they envision for a post-Obamacare health-care system.

The split was obscured for years, because Republicans could call for repeal, secure in the knowledge that it wouldn’t happen. It is between two camps. There are conservatives (mostly in the House) who actually want repeal, because they don’t think the government should be spending and regulating to expand coverage to poor and sick people, and instead want free markets to fulfill this goal. And there are other Republicans (mostly senators and governors) who want to say they’re repealing Obamacare (since they’ve railed against it for years in the abstract) while actually minimizing just how much of the coverage expansion gets rolled back in their states. Trump is more or less in the second camp, since he doesn’t want to be the guy who kicks millions off insurance or shatter Trumpism’s aura of ideological heterodoxy.

The result is a kind of kludge solution, which tries to give both camps a way to argue that they are getting their way. But the practical result is that it doesn’t actually give either what they want. And there is simply no way of pretending it comes anywhere near what Trump explicitly promised or vaguely signaled in ideological terms. This has left Trump spewing outright gibberish as he tries to sell the plan".

Read the Washington Post, Trumpism is now getting exposed as a monumental fraud.

UPDATE VI:  Congratulation Trump supporters, you've been conned.

TrumpCareCon (© NoBullU.com)  is "especially harmful to Trump’s lower-income, older Rust Belt supporters.

The Kaiser Foundation has a user-friendly map and calculator which shows which states (most of them) and which counties specifically would pay more under the GOP American Health Care Act and which pay more under the Affordable Care Act. In almost every single county in Iowa, Michigan and Ohio, a 60-year-old with $30,000 in income would pay more for coverage. In some counties that would amount to more than $1,000. As Kaiser puts it, 'Generally, people who are older, lower-income, or live in high-premium areas (like Alaska and Arizona) receive larger tax credits under the ACA than they would under the American Health Care Act replacement. Conversely, some people who are younger, higher-income, or live in low-premium areas (like Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Washington) may receive larger assistance under the replacement plan.' Congratulations, House Republicans and Trump, you’re on the side of rich New England millennials. Seriously, this would be a tragedy for the 'forgotten' Americans and hence a political disaster for Trump. . . 

[It appears Trump's health care] plan all along was to reward the rich, cover fewer people, enact painful cuts at the expense of the poor and repeal taxes for the upper-income taxpayers who’ve footed a large share of the cost of Obamacare."

Read the Washington Post, How Trump blew it on health care.

UPDATE V:  For a specific comparison of ObamaCare vs. TrumpCareCon (© NoBullU.com), read the Washington Post, How the House Republicans’ proposed Obamacare replacement compares.

UPDATE IV:  "It only took seven years, but Republicans have finally decided how they want to replace Obamacare: with a much, much less generous version of it that almost seems designed to push individual insurance markets into death spirals.

I guess that's freedom?

Before we get to that, though, let's recap what it is that Obamacare actually does. At the most general level, it just taxes the rich to subsidize health insurance for the poor and sick. . .

It's no surprise, then, that Republicans have acted like this is the gravest threat to the republic since the 16th Amendment. (That's the one that made the income tax legal). After all, the GOP has made reversing redistribution its raison d'être the past 40 years, and in the past 40 years there hasn't been a bigger piece of redistribution than Obamacare. Still, they've run into a problem when they've tried to come up with a plan of their own. There isn't a conservative alternative to Obamacare, you see, because Obamacare is the conservative alternative. It's pretty close to what conservatives proposed in 1993, and what Mitt Romney did in Massachusetts. If you buy into the idea of universal coverage (or at least not yanking it away from too many people), then you either need the government to do it directly or use the same kind of three-legged stool Obamacare has. So it's even less of a surprise that the Republican replacement plan is more or less a stingier version of Obamacare that cuts taxes on the rich, cuts Medicaid, and cuts subsidies for lower earners while introducing them for some higher ones. . .

If this sounds like a plan that's designed to please no one and infuriate everyone, that's because it is. House conservatives don't like that it enshrines what they think is a “new entitlement” in tax-credit subsidies; Republican governors won't like the way it cuts Medicaid; and Senate Republicans are leery of anything that could make anywhere from 6 to 10 million people lose their health insurance, as S&P estimates this could. Indeed, conservative groups such as FreedomWorks, Heritage Action, and Americans for Prosperity are already rallying against it.

The only question is whether it will take seven years for Republicans to replace their Obamacare replacement."

Read the Washington Post, Republicans’ ready-to-fail Obamacare replacement.

Emphasis added above. This is key to understanding that Obama tried to compromise with Republi-CONs, and give them the health care plan they wanted. Which is why their proposal will fail and Democrats will eventually get single-payer health care, their preferred option.

UPDATE III:  "Republicans' new health-care bill is a mass transfer of income that cuts taxes for the wealthiest Americans while cutting federal benefits for the middle and working class.

Just two provisions in the Republican plan would allow the richest households to pay an average of nearly $200,000 less under the GOP plan, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center."

Read the Washington Post, The massive tax cuts for the rich inside the GOP health-care plan.

UPDATE II:  "Conservative health-care guru and Obamacare critic Avik Roy bluntly criticizes 'the bill’s stubborn desire to make health insurance unaffordable for millions of Americans, and trap millions more in poverty.' He notes the 'critical' flaw in the bill, namely 'its insistence on flat, non-means-tested tax credits. The flat credit will price many poor and vulnerable people out of the health insurance market.' The bill is far more generous to upper-income people than the ACA is . .

Another conservative commentator agrees that the House bill will look horrible upon closer inspection, including: 'significant erosion of up to 10-20 million individuals with employer-provided health coverage; a new entitlement — the refundable tax credits — that by and large wouldn’t expand coverage, but instead cause individuals currently in employer plans to switch to the credits; more federal spending via the refundable tax credits; a tax increase — a cap on the current exclusion for employer-provided health coverage — to pay for the new spending on the credits; and an increase in the uninsured (compared to Obamacare) of at least 15 million — nearly as much as repealing the law outright.' He speculates that 10 million to 20 million could lose coverage."

Read the Washington Post, ACA repeal: House Republicans’ breathtaking recklessness.

UPDATE:  "There are so many awful things about this bill that it’s hard to fit them all into one post, so I’ll try to be as brief as I can. Let’s review the carnage:

The Republican bill undoes the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid. An estimated 14 million more Americans are insured due to the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid. . .

It replaces the ACA’s insurance subsidies with a tax credit. This is a far less efficient and effective way to help people afford insurance . .

It does away with the individual mandate, in a way that could lead the individual market to collapse. . .

If you’re healthy, and especially if you’re young and healthy, this system actually incentivizes you to wait until you get sick before getting insurance. . .

The Medicare trust fund will be drained sooner. . .

It allows insurance companies to charge older people a lot more. . .

It gives a huge tax cut to the wealthy. . .

Planned Parenthood is barred from receiving Medicaid reimbursements for a year. . .

So in sum, the Republican bill makes coverage more expensive and less comprehensive, will inevitably lead to fewer people with insurance, is particularly cruel to those with low incomes, and destabilizes the insurance market, all to give a tax break to the wealthy. That’s why Avik Roy, perhaps the leading conservative health care wonk and a fierce critic of the ACA, wrote that the Republican bill reflects a 'stubborn desire to make health insurance unaffordable for millions of Americans, and trap millions more in poverty.'"

Read the Washington Post, The new Republican health care plan is awe-inspiringly awful.

Kids love sugar, so imagine a parent who fed his kids only sugar and you have TrumpCareCon (© NoBullU.com) (AKA  TrumpConCare or TrumpCon (© NoBullU.com)).

Read the Washington Post, The most popular (and unpopular) parts of House Republicans’ health-care plan. The article included this table which highlighted the provisions kept, changed/scaled back, and repealed, as well as the percent of adults who favor each provision:

Republican health care plan retains some of the most popular parts of Obamacare
   
    Provisions kept in GOP plan                Adults who favor each provision
   
    Eliminate costs for preventative services                77%
    Allow kids to stay on parent's plan until 26            73
    Coverage for pre-existing conditions                     69
    Require insurance to cover birth ctrl costs             60
   
    Provisions changed/scaled back           
   
    Financial help for low/middle income ppl*             72
    Expand Medicaid to cover more people               66
   
    Provisions repealed                   
   
    Employers w/50+ ppl must offer insurance            62
    Increase taxes for wealthy to fund Medicaid         53
    Mandate to buy insurance                                    33

Trump is a Psycho-Narcissistic Con Man

UPDATE II:  "With a lot of pretentious talk about the “deconstruction of the administrative state” and political fantasies (tariffs that don’t provoke retaliation, for example), Stephen K. Bannon and President Trump hoped to transform the GOP into an ethno-nationalist, pro-Russia party akin to the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the National Front in France and the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom (headed by Geert Wilders). We will see how the European counterparts do in elections throughout the year, but so far the Trumpist GOP and its hodgepodge of ill-conceived ideas gleaned from Fox News (with its obsession over illegal immigration for which it provides oodles of incorrect data) have fallen flat. . .

Trump’s emotion-laden campaign promises turn to dust when he actually tries to implement them. In the real world, populism has few concrete, viable solutions to offer the United States. Not surprisingly, when Americans see how it works in practice, they recoil against the mean-spirited anti-immigrant measures, an alliance with anti-democratic kleptocrats and the reverse Robin Hood schemes that widen the inequality gap. Bannon’s mumbo-jumbo about 'deconstruction of the administrative state' apparently means a healthcare scheme which keeps much of Obamacare’s architecture (but favors rich people), enhanced police powers to go after hard-working immigrants and refusal to touch Medicare and Social Security. Populism hence becomes Robber Baron-ism.

Perhaps it took Trump to discredit the whole grab bag of ideas and remind us that putting 'America first' means maintaining leadership in the world, keeping markets open and staying true to our values."

Read the Washington Post, A populist agenda based on Fox News hooey fizzles.

Just remember, don't interrupt him, Trump is doing a great job of destroying  the Republi-CON party.

UPDATE:  "We shouldn’t blithely move on to other matters until we deal with the institutional carnage inflicted upon us by President Trump.

The current president of the United States has accused former president Barack Obama of committing a felony by having him wiretapped. But Trump refuses to offer a shred of evidence for perhaps the most incendiary charge one president has ever leveled against another. Trump recklessly set off a mighty explosion and his spokespeople duck and dodge, hoping we’ll pretend nothing happened.

If our republic had a responsible Congress, its leaders would accept their duty to demand that a president who shakes his country and the world with such an outlandish allegation either put up proof or apologize. . .

No one should act as if Trump didn’t warn us about his negotiable relationship with the truth. He laid it out in his 1987 bestseller, 'The Art of the Deal.' Trump wrote: 'I play to people’s fantasies. . . . People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.' . .

It is sad, to paraphrase the tweeter in chief himself, that Washington is now a city of avoidance, denial and deception. Whether he’s talking about policy or his political adversaries, Trump is simply not believable. And his friends in Congress are proving themselves no more trustworthy. Welcome to Fantasyland."

Read the Washington Post, Welcome to Trump’s Fantasyland.

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

If you have any doubt, watch his press conference on February 16, 2017, where he "aired his grievances against the news media, the intelligence community and his detractors generally in a sprawling, stream-of-consciousness news conference that alternated between claims that he had 'inherited a mess' and the assertion that his fledgling administration 'is running like a fine-tuned machine.'"

Read the Washington Post, Trump says ‘I inherited a mess,’ blasts media and detractors at combative news conference.

Trump's Big CON: He's a Different Man Now (Ha Ha Ha, the Jokes on You)

UPDATE V:  That didn't last long.

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s charge that he was wiretapped takes presidency into new territory, which quoted conservative commentator Peter Wehner, who was the top policy strategist in George W. Bush’s White House:

'We have as president a man who is erratic, vindictive, volatile, obsessive, a chronic liar, and prone to believe in conspiracy theories. And you can count on the fact that there will be more to come, since when people like Donald Trump gain power they become less, not more, restrained.'"

Read also the Washington Post, Inside Trump’s fury: The president rages at leaks, setbacks and accusations.

UPDATE IV:  "Like the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster are expected to be early alarms in the event that life in the Trump administration becomes untenable. If the White House fails to build an atmosphere in which they can work, Mattis and McMaster — both of whom are keenly aware that the world is watching their every move — could take their leave. The shock waves caused by their departure would be felt throughout the White House, Congress, and foreign capitals around the globe. The stakes couldn’t be higher — everyone knows that if they aren’t able to make it work, something must be seriously broken. "

Read the Washington Post, Mattis and McMaster are canaries in Trump’s coal mine.

UPDATE III:  "The president’s conciliatory address was a recognition that a softer sales tactic was needed to sell the hard-edge populism on which he campaigned."

Read The New York Times, Speech Wasn’t as Much a Pivot as a Skillful Political Act.

UPDATE II:  "The problem isn’t that Trump honored Carryn Owens at a moment of terrible grief, or that he spoke movingly of her husband’s death. All that was altogether appropriate. Rather, the problem is that he did this after trying to evade any responsibility for what happened, and after the White House cast any criticism of his handling of it as an insult to Ryan’s legacy. In this sense, the entire story raises serious doubts about Trump’s decision-making on matters of national security, and it may be a grim preview of what’s to come."

Read the Washington Post, The pundits are wrong. Trump’s handling of the Ryan Owens affair was contemptibly cynical.

UPDATE:  "The obsession with President Trump’s ability to spend one hour in a disciplined relationship with a teleprompter obscured one of his central goals on Tuesday night: He continued to try to scare the country to death."

Read the Washington Post, Trump still wants you to be very, very afraid.

Wow, after 40 days in office, Trump can maintain some self-control for an hour and read a speech from a teleprompter (which BTW, he frequently criticized Obama for using).

"He delivered a wonderful speech that used the words 'torches' and 'freedom' — not just once, but three times! He did not make lip-farts into the microphone, use the word 'pussy' (It is amazing to think that there was a time when I would have worried about typing that word at a family newspaper. But that was weeks ago, in another country) or mock a reporter, disabled or otherwise. He did not halt mid-speech to level a withering aside at Rosie O’Donnell. In short, it was just like the kind of speech Jack Kennedy would have given.

It was 'the most speech-like speech,' said Brian Williams.

High praise, indeed! I give it a Trump A.

This isn’t grading on a curve so much as it is grading in a deep cave many miles below the curve, but — that is all that America wanted, apparently. . .

Yup, Donald Trump spoke to Congress, and he did not bite a live bat in half.

Trump is finally presidential. That is to say, 'capable of delivering a boring speech full of meaningless platitudes.' . .

What does he want to do with the country, exactly?

Well, don’t worry. He is speaking in fluid sentences and has not paused yet to mock a former Miss USA or complain about the Fake Media. Do we need to trouble ourselves with these niggling details? They will only upset us and turn Vice President Pence’s smile upside down. . .

He listed an exciting agenda, something that these speeches always demand.

He has created many jobs and has started to drain the swamp. (The swamp is almost entirely drained because everyone in it has been offered a job in the Trump administration.)

He has cleared a path for pipelines and made them out of American steel, and he is making the Justice Department form a Task Force on Reducing Violent Crime. (Its first step to reduce all this violent crime will be to hand Trump an accurate set of crime statistics.) . .

It was the Gettysburg Address, by Trump standards. . .

Yup, Trump said words. Words about dreams! Just like the Rev. Martin Luther King, practically.

The facts were not exactly right, and the plans were no less alarming than usual — but they came packaged in such beautiful, coherent sentences. Bravery and freedom, my fellow Americans.

If George Washington were watching, I bet he was shedding proud tears. It was just wonderful. Truly.

Everything but the content."

Read the Washington Post, Great news: President Trump did not bite any bats in half during his address to Congress!

It was what the stock market wanted, today it is giddy.

Trump's Big CON: I Hate Leaks (AND False News)

"[T]he Trump media strategy is looking more and more like a hall of mirrors, where real leaks provide what the president blasts as 'fake news' — but that same news, vociferously denied, can get a top official fired, as with the former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

In this fun house, a president who, during the campaign, proclaimed 'I love WikiLeaks!' because that organization’s leaks were causing political damage to his opponent, now bemoans the dangers of leaks that cause political damage to him. . .

It’s hardly new that American presidents both decry leaks and use them.

But in the extremes of behavior on one side and rhetoric on the other, Trump may be setting a new standard for trying to have it both ways."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s tough talk on leaks is one thing. His actions tell another tale.

He only hates leaks (and news) that doesn't flatter him

Trump's Big CON: Make America Hate Again

UPDATE III:  "There are a few voices of sanity in the administration, people who actually have the experience and knowledge to do their jobs well and aren’t pursuing some maniacal vision of a global clash of civilizations — particularly McMaster and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. But they’re likely to be overcome by a trio of forces working against reason, caution and thoughtfulness.

[They are Bannon's apocalyptic world view. . . ]

[T]he Republican Party; not just Republicans on Capitol Hill, but the party more broadly. . . For the past two years, Trump has promoted and then fed off the fears and hatreds of the GOP base in a feedback loop of anger. With his daily diet of Fox News shows, Trump is intensely attuned to what the base is saying and is always eager to give them what they want — which is not even to mention that he is in regular communication with people like lunatic conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. That puts those advocating restraint and appreciating nuance at a disadvantage. . .

The final force working against the sane members of the administration is, of course, the president himself. We know that Trump is impulsive and ill-informed, which dramatically increases the risk of terrible decision-making in a crisis. We also know that his natural inclinations move him in the direction of simplistic thinking, bellicosity and overreaction."

Read the Washington Post, There are a few voices of sanity around Trump. They’re likely to be overwhelmed.

UPDATE II:  "To most Americans, a shooting in Kansas last Wednesday will be remembered as just another incident of gun violence in a country where homicides are tragically commonplace and where far too many disturbed loners have ready access to firearms.

To many Indians, though, the murder of Srinivas Kuchibhotla was the harshest warning yet about the reality of President Trump’s America.

Kuchibhotla, an engineer at satellite navigation company Garmin, was having an after-work drink with his friend and colleague Alok Madasani at their regular bar in Olathe, a town 20 miles southwest of Kansas City. The duo, both Indian nationals who received master's degrees in the United States, were confronted by 51-year-old Adam Purinton, who hectored them with ethnic slurs.

'He asked us what visa are we currently on and whether we are staying here illegally,' said Madasani to the New York Times. 'We didn’t react. People do stupid things all the time.'

But an enraged Purinton returned with a shotgun and opened fire, killing Kuchibhotla, 32, and injuring Madasani and Ian Grillot, an onlooker who intervened in defense of the Indian men. Eyewitness accounts suggest Purinton yelled at the pair to 'get out of my country.'"

Read the Washington Post, An act of American terror in Trump’s heartland. 

UPDATE:  "Bannon and Trump are living out a cultural revenge fantasy. Bannon-Trump remain bonded to their base not because of ideology or agenda, but because they desire the downfall of coastal and urban elites (personified by the media), detest the ethnic and racial demographic trends that continue to make the country more diverse and hold fast to various myths and an exaggerated sense of victimhood (e.g. climate change is a hoax, minorities all live in violent and poverty-stricken cities, Christians are 'persecuted'). No wonder the Trump team finds a role model in the anti-Western, authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin, who runs a kleptocracy that impoverishes his people, whom he then tries to pacify with grandiose nationalistic ambitions. (They may not have a high-tech industry, but by gosh, the Empire is back!)"

Read the Washington Post, Bannon and Trump are out for revenge.

Trump wants you to hate this 5-year.

Read the story and tell me if you do.

Read the Washington Post, My 7-year-old daughter Henry is transgender. She’d change Trump’s mind.

BTW, it's not just this child Trump wants you to hate.

Trump's Big CON: "Enormous Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Will Boost the Economy"

UPDATE III:  "Trump’s irresponsible, non-reality-based budget likely makes it more difficult to pass a budget — any budget — and increases the chances we will drift along from continuing resolution to continuing resolution. The president apparently wants to force Congress to make all the hard choices, but it doesn’t work that way. Without presidential leadership Congress usually becomes paralyzed. Lawmakers who want to make hard choices get undercut by the White House (Well, President Trump says we don’t need entitlement cuts!) and those who want to grandstand are encouraged to do so.

In sum, Trump never thought he’d be president. Right now he’s not acting like one, and unless he screws up some courage and faces reality, he and Republicans won’t get much of anything done. On second thought, that might be the good news."

Read the Washington Post, Why Trump’s nonsensical budget matters.

UPDATE II:  "The Trump budget — which is so far only the barest outlines of a budget — is the GOP stereotype on steroids. Take from the poor to give to the military. Trump will be defending a budget, as far as I can tell, [that] is unrealistic, cruel and obscene. . .

He seems to be proposing massive cuts in the one area of the budget that can't afford it, which would exact a terrible human cost. That is impractical, immoral -- and typical."

Read the Washington Post, George W. Bush’s speechwriter on Trump budget: ‘Unrealistic, cruel and obscene.’

UPDATE:  Trump's "budget numbers come nowhere close to adding up. I don’t mean there’s some discrepancy at the margins, nor am I being the Washington budget scold who bugs you for not paying for your proposals. I’m saying that his budget won’t work.

The problem is that he can’t cut taxes by trillions, increase defense spending, invest in infrastructure, hold Social Security and Medicare harmless, and balance the budget in 10 years without almost getting rid of the rest of the government. And that’s not going to happen."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s budget plan depends on wholly unrealistic cuts to the rest of government., which includes this graph:

"What if I told you that I could save you thousands and thousands of dollars a year, and you don’t even have to cut back on anything important in your life? What if I promised you that, just by saving a penny a day, your whole life could change for the better? What if I said you could improve your overall finances by working less and spending more?

You’d probably think that sounded too good to be true. You’d probably suspect that I was trying to scam you. You’d be right on both counts.

If early reports are accurate, President Trump’s budget blueprint will be trying to run that same scam on the American people. His budget will pretend that he can achieve huge savings without any pain. . .

Of course, Trump will argue — as good snake-oil salesmen do — that picking your pockets is good for you. You can be sure he will try to sell you on the idea that enormous tax cuts for the wealthy will boost the economy for everyone. Never mind that we’ve tried that before . . .

To be fair to Trump, this is the same scam that Republicans in Congress have been running for six years. Their budgets always contained the same basic tricks and sleights of hand, and they did seem to get away with it.

Read the Washington Post, Trump says his budget will make government ‘lean.’ It’s really a scam.

Trump's Big CON: Historically Black Colleges Are 'Pioneers of School Choice’

Talk about whitewashing history to help white people forget the nation's racist past and reconcile that past with its ideals!

Read the Washington Post, DeVos called HBCUs ‘pioneers’ of ‘school choice.’ It didn’t go over well.