Trump's Big CON: Evangelicals Are Praying for Armageddon (Formerly North Korea Calls the Bluff (Originally Titled 'North Korea May Call the Bluff'), What Now?)

UPDATE X:  The Donald's hyper-machismo enablers include his entourage of sycophants.

Read the Washington Post, The perks of being a hyperpower.

UPDATE IX:  The Donald is scaring even some of his most ardent supporters.

Read the Daily Mail, PIERS MORGAN: If the President thinks he can handle the North Korea crisis as if it's a Twitter-spat with CNN he could trash talk us into a war.

UPDATE VIII:  More delusional encouragement of Trump's mega-narcissistic personality.

Read the Washington Post, At a time like this, Trump’s team sure seems heaven-sent.

UPDATE VII:  My God, is the babysitter out again?

"Judging by the last few days, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly has made little progress in creating an aura of calm, sanity and competence. In the last few days we’ve seen a never-ending stream of threats, boasts, accusations and whiny denials (I am NOT losing my base!) from President Trump.

Trump embarrassed himself and unnerved Americans on Tuesday by echoing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s belligerent tone, rekindling concerns that he will either overreact or just not be taken seriously in an international standoff that could spin dangerously out of control. This morning there was no improvement. The Post reports:

    President Trump continued to forcefully threaten North Korea on Wednesday, asserting that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is 'far stronger and more powerful than ever before.' . .

His boast is as gratuitous as it is inaccurate in suggesting he improved our arsenal in just seven months. . .

This sort of slow-motion meltdown and loss of discipline is precisely what Kelly was brought on to prevent. But, unfortunately, he seems to have a view of his job that is ill-suited to serve his current boss. . .

Kelly apparently has not impressed upon Trump the impossibility of conducting a war on short notice. . .

Making the trains run on time in an administration in which the conductor is reckless, unskilled and irrational misses the point, to put it mildly. If Kelly is to save Trump’s presidency and serve his country, he has to step out of his role as executing the president’s will and start shaping the president’s behavior. He needs to be able to level with the president, explain how Trump is diminishing his own authority and give him some easy-to-follow directions as to how to conduct himself in a crisis. If Kelly won’t do that or Trump won’t listen, the administration, as we have seen this week, will continue barreling out of control. That puts Trump in political peril and the country in real danger."

Read the Washington Post, Kelly cannot treat Trump like a normal president.

UPDATE VI:  "Your ability to locate North Korea is related to how you think about what we should do about the country."

Read the Washington Post, Nearly two-thirds of Americans can’t find North Korea on a map. Can you?

UPDATE V:  "Yet again, there is an old Trump tweet for every situation:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Be prepared, there is a small chance that our horrendous leadership could unknowingly lead us into World War III.
4:46 AM - Aug 31, 2013 " [Twitter link added.]

UPDATE IV:  Babysitter to the rescue.

"Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this morning defended President Trump’s reckless threat to rain 'fire and fury' on North Korea, but make no mistake: In the course of doing so, Tillerson quietly erased the red line that Trump laid down, and redrew it in a relatively more reasonable place.

Tillerson’s comments will in this sense have a calming effect. But they are also cause for a different sort of alarm: They raise additional questions as to why Trump made the comments in the first place; what process went into the creation and delivery of them, if any; and what will — or won’t — be done to ensure that there is a sane process in place to shape further comments from Trump as this crisis unfolds. . .

As many have already observed, by vaguely vowing an overwhelming nuclear response to continued threats from North Korea, Trump sounded a lot like North Korea itself, employing a formulation that is both vague and menacing, which in combination increases the risk of miscalculation and, with it, unspeakable horror. Tillerson plainly tried to undo that today by redrawing the line more sharply, while defending the impulse behind Trump’s comments.

But that still leaves us guessing in a way that raises worrisome unknowns about what’s to come. We don’t know what Trump really meant. What has now been confirmed, however, is that Trump will use vague and reckless language in the most dangerous conceivable contexts. “If one had any doubt that Trump was going to be incredibly reckless with language at the worst possible times, he just did it,” Lewis said. “Tillerson’s efforts suggest that everyone around Trump knows that was crazy.”

But that raises an additional question: What process went into the creation and delivery of this statement in the first place? Michael Warren of The Weekly Standard suggests this morning that the White House, including Trump’s national security team, was not aware that Trump was going to deliver this statement. And The New York Times adds, alarmingly, that “White House officials did not respond to questions about how much planning went into his brief statement.”

This urgently needs to be teased out. We need to know more about the process, if any, that went into the creation of this statement, and we’ll need to know more about this process going forward, as Trump delivers more similar statements in what looks like an escalating situation."

Read then Washington Post, Rex Tillerson just erased the reckless red line Trump drew on North Korea., which also noted: 

"Tillerson has already erased this red line. But for how long? We all know how heavily the prospect of looking weak weighs on Trump."

UPDATE III: At a time when minds should not be cluttered with delusions, this is scary:

Read the Washington Post, ‘God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un,’ evangelical adviser says.

The adviser is "Texas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, one of President Trump’s evangelical advisers who preached the morning of his inauguration . . .

Jeffress last met with Trump in July when a group of pastors laid hands on the president in the Oval Office. He said now that health care is off the table, evangelicals are hoping for tax reform, though he didn’t have any specifics in mind.

Jeffress, who was was an early supporter of Trump, has said that after sharing Wendy’s cheeseburgers in Iowa, he believed Trump would be the next president and that it would be because God placed him there. In July, his church choir and orchestra performed a song called 'Make America Great Again' at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts where Trump was in attendance."

Trump doesn't realize that his mega-narcissistic personality makes him easily manipulated.

UPDATE II:  "The North Korean nuclear threat is a 'hinge' moment for the United States and China, and for the new international order both nations say they want.

If Washington and Beijing manage to stay together in dealing with Pyongyang, the door opens on a new era in which China will play a larger and more responsible role in global affairs, commensurate with its economic power. If the great powers can’t cooperate, the door will slam shut — possibly triggering a catastrophic military conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

President Trump’s bullying style, even in dealing with trivial matters of domestic politics, obscures the extent to which he has tried to marry U.S. policy on North Korea with that of China. For the most part, he has been surprisingly successful. Beijing and Washington have mostly been aligned, as in this past weekend’s unanimous U.N. Security Council vote in favor of additional sanctions against Pyongyang to punish its continued missile tests.

Washington’s diplomatic goal, although it hasn’t been stated publicly this way, is to encourage China to interpose itself between the United States and North Korea and organize negotiations to de-nuclearize the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. threat is that if China doesn’t help the United States find such a diplomatic settlement, America will pursue its own solution — by military means if necessary. . .

Among the clearest points of consensus among former officials was that the North Korea crisis provides what one participant called a “catalytic” moment. If China and the United States can find a common path and resolve the crisis peacefully, they will succeed in “modernizing the global order,” which was the broad topic of the Aspen discussions.

And if they fail? If Trump’s fiery rhetoric alienates Beijing rather than motivates it? If Pyongyang decides to test its doctrine of self-sufficiency with a roll of the nuclear dice? If Trump becomes the first president since John F. Kennedy to truly find himself at the nuclear brink? One way or another, the coming months will shape global security for many years ahead."

Read the Washington Post, This is the moment of truth on North Korea.

UPDATE:  "Yesterday, president Trump took a break from his 17-day vacation to threaten North Korea. His words:

North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening beyond a normal state. And as I said, they will be met with fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.

This threat was a response to a continuing series of provocations by North Korea. However, it only took a couple of hours for North Korea to respond – by escalating their threats. North Korea’s official news agency reported a couple of hours later that Pyongyang was 'threatening' missile strikes near Guam, where the US has several military bases.

This faces the U.S. with a problem. U.S. leaders have traditionally been careful with their language, especially when dealing with nuclear powers, and for good reason. If the U.S. cares about its credibility, then it only wants to make threats that it will deliver on. Now, North Korea has effectively called Trump’s bluff. If the U.S. responds as Trump has promised, it will mark a very dangerous escalation. If the US does not respond, then Trump’s credibility – and perhaps U.S. credibility – will be damaged. . .

[Now that Trump's bluff has been called, the U.S. will] have to deliver on the threat, risking nuclear conflagration, or face the risk that [North Korea will] not believe in their threats in future, greatly damaging their ability to influence their adversaries’ actions. . .

North Korea seems to have decided that Trump’s threat was unbelievable.

This is unsurprising – there are a number of reasons why North Korea might have calculated that Trump was bluffing. . .

The U.S. is now in a difficult situation of Trump’s making. It will be highly costly, and possibly greatly damaging to the United States to deliver on Trump’s threat, even in its minimal form. There is furthermore a significant risk that a spiral of threat and counter-threat might lead to actual nuclear war, which would have devastating consequences."

Read the Washington Post, North Korea just called Trump’s bluff. So what happens now?

"North Korea is approaching the Trump administration's red line faster than previously thought.

According to The Post's Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima and Anna Fifield, a previously secret Defense Intelligence Agency analysis indicates that Kim Jong Un's regime has produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside one of the intercontinental ballistic missiles that it has been testing."

Read the Washington Post, North Korea is fast approaching Trump’s red line.

Like the dog that caught the bus, I can hear The Donald saying now: Oh $#!+, now what!!

Read also:

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

Trump's Big CON: North Korea Will Not Develop a Nuclear Weapon Capable of Reaching the U.S. "It won't happen!", and

Trump's Big CON: He Has No Plan, But Could He Tweet Us Into Nuclear War?

Trump's Big CON: What Might Have Been If He Only Had Ideas or Principles (Or Even Common Sense), CONt.

UPDATE III: Even the VP knows The Donald is in trouble.

Read the Washington Post, What Trump’s freakout over his VP’s ambition tells us.

Read also the Washington Post, Who’s worse for the nation — Trump or Pence?, which notes that despite denial:

"Pence’s presidential ambitions are nothing new. He’s been running his entire life.

Pence is the very personification of the career politician. With the exception of a few years doing talk radio and television shows, he has done nothing but run for office, winning all but the first two times. In Congress, he set out to shimmy up the leadership of his party — chairman of the Republican Study Committee, etc. — finally running for Indiana governor in 2012 and then, with all humility, becoming Trump’s running mate. Pence is not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He’s got his eye on 2020.

In the meantime, Pence has become a parlor game in certain circles: If President Trump leaves office before his term is up — if either lightning or Robert S. Mueller III strikes — would it be a good thing for the nation? In other words, who’s worse — Trump or Pence?"

The article goes on to state: "This is a hard one. Trump is a menace, both ignorant and chaotic. His saving grace is his incompetence. In his first six months in office, he has made a hash of our foreign policy, set back efforts to contain global warming, exploited public land and depopulated the State Department. But these efforts — as bad as they might be — have been so far confined to the margins. Trump has not passed any major legislation or, for that matter, built any walls.

On the other hand, his most significant and appalling contribution has been to normalize lying as an ordinary tool of the presidency. He has ghettoized truth, confining it to something characterized as the lying and disloyal mainstream media. He lies for purpose and he lies just for the hell of it. His lying is such that it ought to be a mental ailment. Call him politically insane. . .

To anyone other than an adamant social conservative, Pence is shockingly unreasonable. But he is also shockingly hypocritical. Throughout his career, he has billboarded himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.” But what about Trump is any of those? Trump is a virtual pagan. He has never been ideologically nor culturally conservative and is a Republican of convenience only. Nonetheless, Pence not only leaped into Trump’s arms but rebuked him only once — for his “Access Hollywood” crack — and never for what he said about Mexicans, Muslims or the disabled, or, for that matter, how he denigrated his primary-election opponents. Pence is all faith and no morality.

So now Pence stands to Trump’s side, his head nodding at every inanity. He is the cardboard cutout for a soulless and opportunistic Republican Party, a display to put in the window of some Trump souvenir shop. In a sense, he is worse than the man he serves. Trump is a child — undisciplined, capricious and self-involved. Pence is none of those things. Trump knows nothing. Pence knows better." [Emphasis added.]

UPDATE II:  The Donald is stuck.

Soon after the election he could have pivoted to the center, but not now.

Now The Donald is stuck because of Steve Bannon.

During the campaign, "Bannon found a willing pupil for his anti-immigrant and nationalist fervor. In Bannon, Trump found a self-made man whose wealth he admired and whose Breitbart News championed his politics and presidential campaign. Together, they ran one of the ugliest races for the White House in recent memory.

Green said that Bannon, who was brought in as Trump’s campaign chief executive after a third shake-up of his team, was 'the guy who came in and told [Trump] to be more extreme, to go further, to never apologize.' When a Trump campaign ad was criticized for its anti-Semitic bent and apologies were demanded, Green writes that Bannon counseled, 'Darkness is good. Don’t let up.' A mind-set we are continuing to see from Trump’s West Wing, that place where senior staffers backstab, front-stab and just plain knife each other in the press in the hopes of getting someone fired. . .

Joshua Green, author of 'Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency' says: "'The one thing Trump fears most in the world is losing that connection and losing that support to his base, to his voters, and therefore, I don’t think he’s gonna push Bannon out.'"

Read the Washington Post, Why Steve Bannon isn’t going anywhere.

UPDATE:  "In recent days, President Trump has escalated his assaults on the 'Fake News' media and other institutions, in an increasingly frantic effort to carve out a kind of safe space that cannot be penetrated by accountability or factual reality. Inside this bubble, the truth is what Trump says it is, on Twitter and in his tirades before rally crowds, where Twitter replies (even by bots) and raucous cheers serve as confirmation of Trump’s versions of events in a kind of intensifying feedback loop.

But if the brutal new poll released Tuesday by CNN is any indication, that safe space seems perilously small.

Trump’s own advisers appear to believe his safe space is shrinking. . .

Trump’s gut-level calculation seems to be that his long-term political survival depends on forging an enduring bond with his supporters — a bond that appears dependent on delegitimizing (in their minds) all outside sources of information. The probe into Russian sabotage of our election, which our intelligence services have documented, is nothing but a hoax. Reporting that fills in details about the ongoing Russia probes, or raises doubts about his fitness for the presidency (such as that crazy conversation with the Australian prime minister), are dismissed as 'fake news,' before subsequently being confirmed. As Jake Tapper put it: 'Almost every single time he’s used that term, the news has been accurate. It’s just been news he doesn’t like.'

Indeed, Trump’s use of 'Fake News' is even broader than this: It is also a catchall dismissal, a forward-looking one, that seems to be designed to prep his supporters to dismiss future revelations".

Read the Washington Post, This brutal new poll shows that Trump’s safe space is shrinking.

Read also the Washington Post, Trump’s base is officially crumbling.

"Donald Trump lacks the ability to exercise power and the gift of strategy to accomplish what he wants as president. . .

The president certainly does not seem to have any bright ideas. Or any coherent ideas, for that matter. In the full transcript of his interview with the Wall Street Journal (which Politico published), what stands out is Trump’s complete inability to grasp any policy idea. Consider this verbatim response to a question about what he thinks the ideal corporate income tax rate should be:

Well, you know, we’re going for 15 [percent]. We’re going to see, and we’ll see. But, you know, I don’t want to say anything about negotiation. I mean, we are asking for 15 percent, and we think we’re going to grow tremendously.

So I deal with foreign countries, and despite what you may read, I have unbelievable relationships with all of the foreign leaders. They like me. I like them. You know, it’s amazing. So I’ll call, like, major — major countries, and I’ll be dealing with the prime minister or the president. And I’ll say, how are you doing? Oh, don’t know, don’t know, not well, Mr. President, not well. I said, well, what’s the problem? Oh, GDP 9 percent, not well. And I’m saying to myself, here we are at like 1 percent, dying, and they’re at 9 percent and they’re unhappy. So, you know, and these are like countries, you know, fairly large, like 300 million people. You know, a lot of people say — they say, well, but the United States is large. And then you call places like Malaysia, Indonesia, and you say, you know, how many people do you have? And it’s pretty amazing how many people they have. So China’s going to be at 7 [percent] or 8 percent, and they have a billion-five, right? So we should do really well.

But in order to do that — you know, it’s tax reform, but it’s a big tax cut. But it’s simplification, it’s reform, and it’s a big tax cut, 15–

… oh, I’m sorry, I passed out from the extreme bloviating. That middle paragraph is … it’s just dumb, is all. It is a remarkably incoherent word salad about economic development.

This problem extends to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, tasked by his father-in-law to broker peace in the Middle East. He said the following to congressional interns last week:

You know everyone finds an issue, that 'You have to understand what they did then' and 'You have to understand that they did this.' But how does that help us get peace? Let’s not focus on that. We don’t want a history lesson. We’ve read enough books. Let’s focus on, How do you come up with a conclusion to the situation.

I’m just spitballing here, but Kushner’s dismissal of history and, you know, book-learning might explain why his initiative has bogged down.

Let’s face it, the Trump administration is intellectually bankrupt. Its policies to date amount to little more than warmed-over GOP ideology. Its strategists can do little beyond finding ways to make the phrase 'Make America Great Again' appear in strategy documents. . .

If Trump wants to be known for anything other than 'mediocre conventional Republicanism,' then he is going to need to commune with The Ideas Industry. His administration has been so intellectually toxic, however, that he has relied on D-listers. There isn’t a first-rate policy intellectual anywhere to be found in Trump’s White House, and it shows. . .

[T]his is a White House bereft of strategy, of power, and apparently, of ideas.

Otherwise, everything is going great."

Read the Washington Post, The marketplace of ideas is killing the Trump administration.

Read also Trump's Big CON: What Might Have Been If He Only Had Ideas or Principles (Or Even Common Sense).

Trump's Big CON: He Is Clueless, New Hampshire is a ‘Drug-Infested Den' Edition

"'I won in New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den,' President Trump told Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in a phone call in January.

The remark came in the course of an exchange in which Trump blamed 'drug lords in Mexico' for “sending drugs” to places like New Hampshire. 'We are becoming a drug-addicted nation and most the drugs are coming from Mexico or certainly from the southern border,' Trump added.

But in New Hampshire at least, Mexican drugs are only part of the story. The state does indeed have a serious drug problem — in 2015, New Hampshire was second only to West Virginia in its rate of drug overdose deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But the drugs driving that spike are primarily produced not in Mexico, but in China. The synthetic opioid fentanyl and its derivatives are now the leading cause of drug overdose deaths in New Hampshire, according to official state statistics. . .

Fentanyl made in China is shipped via the U.S. Postal Service to Canada, Mexico and directly to the United States. At the risk of stating the obvious, a wall across the Mexican border — the subject of Trump's conversation with Peña Nieto — isn't going to do much to stop drugs shipped from China.

Beyond that, writing off an entire state as a 'drug-infested den' isn't likely to lead to smart policies to reduce the toll of opioids there. "

Read the Washington Post, Trump called New Hampshire a ‘drug-infested den.’ Here’s what’s really going on there.

Once again, The Donald shows how incredibly ignorant he is. 

Read also Trump's Big CON: He Is Clueless, Health Care Edition.

Trump's Big CON: Want to Know The Donald's True Character, Play Golf With Him (AKA Our Pinocchio President (© NoBullU.com))

UPDATE II:  You must read the Washington Post, Why the most dishonest president in history can’t fool us about what matters, which notes:

"During a presidential campaign in which Donald Trump upended our baseline assumptions about politics and truth-telling, many asked what it would be like if someone so profoundly dishonest, who lied so easily, so shamelessly and so promiscuously actually became president. Would it create an ongoing crisis of legitimacy? Would it permanently debase our democracy? Would we even be able to have sane debates about important issues?

The answers to those questions are starting to take shape, and while the news is by no means good, there are glimmers of hope. It turns out that we didn’t all just throw up our hands and give up on any notion of truth. Policing the president’s boundless mendacity is taking up an enormous proportion of our time and attention — but in an odd way, that may protect us.

The latest occasion to consider the effects of President Trump’s unique enthusiasm for deception comes out of an interview he did with the Wall Street Journal, where he commented on his disastrous speech last week to the Boy Scout Jamboree. With characteristic classlessness, Trump took an event at which presidents usually talk about things like citizenship and integrity and instead delivered a rambling, partisan speech that also included a bizarre story about a developer and his party yacht ('I won’t go any more than that because you’re Boy Scouts. … Oh, you’re Boy Scouts, but you know life.'). To the Journal, Trump claimed, 'I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful.'

Anyone who heard this immediately knew it couldn’t possibly be true, particularly because the head of the Boy Scouts had issued a public apology for the fact that the president had given such an inappropriate speech at their event. It fits a pattern in which Trump claims absurdly that people are calling him up to tell him that a speech he gave was the greatest thing anyone had ever heard; about the speech he gave on a recent trip to Poland, he said, 'enemies of mine are saying it was the greatest speech ever made on foreign soil by a president,' which no one was saying.

After the Boy Scouts told reporters that there was no such phone call of praise to Trump, something amazing happened: Trump’s spokeswoman admitted that he made the whole thing up. Sort of. Asked by a reporter whether Trump had lied about the Boy Scouts and about another apparently fabricated phone call, this one from Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, Sarah Huckabee Sanders replied that while there was no phone call, 'multiple members of the Boy Scout leadership, following his speech there that day, congratulated him, praised him. … I wouldn’t say it was a lie.'

Of course she wouldn’t, because admitting that truth would probably get her fired. But this somewhat trivial story illustrates that this has become a central component of the relationship between the press and the White House: Trump tells a bunch of lies, reporters track down the truth then confront his spokesmen to see how they’ll try to spin it away, and report the results.

You can look at it as a kind of game, but something fundamental has changed. We now assume as a matter of course that whatever the president of the United States says is probably false. This is a 180-degree shift from how every president before him, Democrat and Republican, has been approached. All presidents have lied from time to time, but most of what they said was still true. Not so with Trump."

UPDATE: Read also the Washington Post, 8 things the Trump team denied, and then later confirmed, subsequently updated as 9 times the Trump team denied something — and then confirmed it.

Note: the internet link indicates it was originally titled: 7 things the Trump team denied, and then later confirmed.

How many times will it be updated?

"The famed 20th-century golf pro and instructor Percy Boomer said that the game reveals much about the man. 'If you wish to hide your character, do not play golf,' he said.

But Trump plays, and reveals more than we’d like to see."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s golf game tells us an awful lot about Trump, which notes:

"The late golf legend Bobby Jones called his sport “the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots — but you have to play the ball where it lies.”

Unless you are Donald Trump. . .

Golf is a game of humility: Even the best players are brought low by nature and chance. And it’s a game of honor: You keep your own score and are often unseen by other players.

Then there is Trump golf. He breaks rules, exaggerates scores and ignores the game’s decorum. Sound familiar? He is, Sports Illustrated asserted, “easily the best golfer” ever to occupy the White House. Likewise, he is an enormously talented politician, with a genius for marketing. Yet in golf, as in life, he doesn’t leave it at that. He gilds the lily with dishonesty. . .

So why does he desecrate the game he loves? He drives his cart on greens and tee boxes. He talks through other players’ shots. He 'doesn’t play a round of golf so much as narrate it, his commentary peppered with hyperbole,' SI reports. He says he’s attracted to the game by 'walking down all those beautiful fairways,' but he only rides in a cart.

Maybe Trump has a chip on his shoulder because the old-boy golf clubs wouldn’t admit the gauche showman. So he built his own. Now the populist Trump boasts that he’s “the best golfer of all the rich people.”

Or maybe he can’t help himself. Not satisfied being a very good golfer, he shaves scores, boasts of championships un-won and tears up greens with carts — because he can."

Trump's Big CON: He's Really a Crony Capitalist, CONt.

"Republican senator Jeff Flake's new book, “Conscience of a Conservative,” bashes President Trump for just about everything, but some of the harshest criticism in the book's 160 scathing pages is reserved for Trump's economic “plan.”

In Flake's eyes, Trumponomics is huge mistake. It shows the GOP has “abandoned its core principles” of free trade and free enterprise. “Seemingly overnight, we became willing to roll back the ideas on the global economy that have given America the highest standard of living in history,” Flake wrote.

The senator calls Trump a “crony capitalist” who is “incoherent” and “doing irreparable damage.” He even compares Trump to a liberal, saying all the president does is offer “easy answers and free stuff without worrying about the details.

[For] a rundown of Flake’s attacks on Trumponomics . . ."

Read the Washington Post, Trump is a ‘crony capitalist,’ says GOP Senator Flake., which notes that the "GOP is deeply divided. The rifts have been on display all summer, especially during the health-care fight. Flake’s book only adds to the tug-of-war between traditional Republicans who want to cut taxes and expand free trade, and Trump Republicans, who want to restrict trade and resurrect coal and manufacturing jobs."

Read also the Washington Post, Jeff Flake delivers the most courageous conservative rebuttal of Trumpism yet.

And read Trump's Big CON: He's Really a Crony Capitalist.

Trump's Big CON: The Donald Admits that the Wall is 'Boob Bait for Bubbas'

UPDATE:  The border wall "was always a scam; perhaps more interesting is that Trump would admit it so openly to a foreign leader — and that he himself is in no way deluded about it.

Trump plainly knew that he’d never get Mexico to pay for a wall (if it ever gets built), even as he was telling crowds that they would. And he cared deeply about it, because he understood just how powerful a symbol it had become for his followers. Which meant that he wanted to keep the illusion alive for as long as possible . . .

I’m not saying that Trump doesn’t actually want to cut down on undocumented immigration. He certainly does. But why was it so important that Mexico pay for the wall? Why did Trump do that call-and-response with his rabid crowds about it? “And who’s going to pay for it?” he’d ask. “Mexico!” they’d shout. The reason is that making Mexico pay for the wall would be an act of domination, humiliating them so we could show that we were in control.

This idea lay at the very heart of Trump’s appeal to white working-class voters, particularly men. He understood that those people no longer felt in control — their economic opportunities had dwindled, their communities had declined, they felt deeply uncomfortable in a country growing more diverse all the time and a bunch of liberals are telling them to check their privilege. Trump promised them not just that he would turn back the clock and Make America Great Again, but also that he would empower them to strike back at those who had made them feel small.

Keep in mind that Trump’s entire worldview is shaped by the idea of domination and submission. Every interaction — between people or countries — is a zero-sum contest in which there’s a winner and a loser. If you aren’t the winner then you’re the loser, the chump, the one everyone’s laughing at. It’s why whenever he talks about trade he seems obsessed with the idea of other countries 'laughing at us,' as though China filling up our dollar stores with trinkets causes us endless public humiliation. The idea of Mexico being forced against its will to pay for our wall was a potent symbol of America standing tall again, as Trump knew it would be for many people who felt they were no longer standing tall in their own lives. . .

So here’s the truth: There’s never going to be a wall.

Oh, there will be some additional border fencing in some areas. Some of it may even be wall-esque (the Department of Homeland Security just issued environmental waivers to build a 15-mile stretch of wall near San Diego). But it’s not going to stretch for 2,000 miles, and it won’t be the gold-plated monument to Trumpian excess that the president promised. Republicans, especially those who come from areas far from the border, will continue to tell voters they want a wall. Here’s a little music video that House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) put out of him at the border, acting super tough with the Border Patrol — he even got to sit on a real-live horse! But it’s not going to happen.

And Mexico is never going to pay for it. But Trump knows he can’t tell his supporters that, because as he told president Peña Nieto, 'psychologically, it means something.'"

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s border wall? It was in their hearts all along.

On Jan. 27, a week after The Donalds's inauguration, he called Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

In the call The Donald "acknowledges that the wall is 'the least important thing we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important.'"

You hear that, Trump supporters? That applause line that Trump used with such gusto for basically his entire campaign — 'Build that wall,' and 'Who's going to pay for it? (Crowd response: MEXICO!)'? It was all vote-bait, red meat for voters who didn't know that it was completely impractical and would never happen. And within his first days in office — this call took place on Jan. 27, a week after Trump's inauguration — Trump was already throwing in the towel on it on a call with the Mexican president.

Trump was instead hoping people could be made to forget this “least important” issue and wouldn't punish him politically for it.

Trump spent much of his call with Pena Nieto just trying to convince him to stop talking about how Mexico would not pay for the wall. Trump even suggested he would fudge it in the end so that both sides could claim they didn't give in.

'We should both say, ‘We will work it out.’ It will work out in the formula somehow,' Trump said. 'As opposed to you saying, ‘We will not pay,’ and me saying, ‘We will not pay.’ '

Pena Nieto said Trump's promise had put a 'very big mark on our back' and 'is an issue related to the dignity of Mexico and goes to the national pride of my country.” Trump's response to all of that was basically: Okay, well let's just stop talking about it publicly.

[In a tweet about an article reporting the call,] Jonathan Martin
@jmartNYT

Trump all but invokes Moynihan in convo w Mex president: the Wall is boob bait for bubbas https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/you-cannot-say-that-to-the-press-trump-urged-mexican-president-to-end-his-public-defiance-on-border-wall-transcript-reveals/2017/08/03/0c2c0a4e-7610-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html?utm_term=.74e7d0dfbf00 …
8:13 AM - Aug 3, 2017

'But you cannot say that to the press,' Trump said. 'The press is going to go with that, and I cannot live with that.' . .

Hearing Trump basically acknowledge that fact and concede he pulled the wool over his supporters' eyes, just seven days into his presidency, is pretty remarkable."

Read the Washington Post, Trump admits he punked his supporters on Mexico paying for the wall.

Read also Trump's Big CON: Mexico Will Pay For His Wall.

Trump's Big CON: I Will Save the Oppressed White Majority

UPDATE V:  "The Trump administration is preparing to have the Justice Department’s civil rights division investigate and possibly sue universities over affirmative action programs that the administration believes discriminate against white people.

This initiative fits a pattern. Since his inauguration, Trump has been hard to pin down on many issues — for example, he demanded the repeal of Obamacare and then called the House Republican health-care bill “mean” — but he has remained steadfast on one thing: his particular brand of identity politics.

And now, with this new initiative, he is once again addressing, and perhaps stoking, the grievances of the white voters who are integral to his base of support.

A sense of victimhood among whites was ascendant even before Trump’s candidacy. As sociologist Arlie Hochschild documented in her extensive conversations with rural whites in Louisiana, there was a pervasive sense that the beneficiaries of affirmative action, immigrants and refugees were 'stealing their place in line,' cutting ahead 'at the expense of white men and their wives.' In Hochschild’s phrase, these people felt like 'strangers in their own land.'

This sentiment showed up in polls as well. In 2011-2012, 38 percent of Republicans thought that there was at least a moderate amount of discrimination against whites, according to American National Election Study surveys. That figure jumped to 47 percent in the ANES study in January 2016. Similarly, an October 2015 Public Religion Research Institute poll found that nearly two-thirds of Republicans thought that 'discrimination against whites has become as big of a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.'

These views were crucial to Trump’s rise."

Read the Washington Post, Resentful white people propelled Trump to the White House — and he is rewarding their loyalty, which includes a graph which "illustrates this, and, to my mind, it is crucial to understanding Trump’s rise. It shows that Trump did only a little bit better among Republicans concerned about losing their job compared to those with no such concern, as measured in January 2016 YouGov polls. But he did much better among those who thought whites were losing jobs to minorities":

UPDATE IV:  "The Justice Department’s plan to investigate and sue universities over affirmative action admissions policies they determine discriminate against white students represents a shift in the department’s civil rights division. But the move also addresses a central concern for voters who fueled President Trump’s victory last year: that whites are losing out in today’s society."

Read the Washington Post, Discrimination against whites was a core concern of Trump’s base.

UPDATE III: "Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s internal announcement indicating that the Justice Department is seeking to curb affirmative action in a university admissions case has roused President Trump’s conservative base by seizing on a longtime grievance of the right at a moment when the administration is struggling to fulfill core Republican promises. . .

For a Republican Party still searching for consensus in the Trump era, Sessions’s moves signal that the administration is embracing the base during a time of turbulence and tension, with heavy attention being paid to the concerns of the white voters who lifted Trump into the presidency."

Read the Washington Post, Sessions’s move to take on affirmative action energizes Trump’s base.

UPDATE II:  "White Americans obtain bachelor's degrees at significantly higher rates than blacks or hispanics. A 2012 Stanford University study found that while whites comprised 60 percent of the nation's graduating high school class in 2004, they accounted for nearly three quarters of admissions to the nation's most selective colleges. At elite schools, wealthy white families have traditionally used donations and legacy admission preferences to tip the scales in favor of their children.

Nevertheless, the Justice Department's move appears to be linked to a widespread belief among white conservatives that so-called "anti-white bias" is a serious problem in society today. Recent polling underscores the point. A Huffington Post/YouGov survey from last fall, for instance, found that Trump voters believe that whites are more discriminated against than Muslims, Blacks, Jews, and Latinos. . .

A 2011 study found that white people believe anti-white bias has worsened over the decades, to the point that they think it's now a more serious problem than bias against blacks. That study opened with a prescient 2009 quote from then-Senator Jeff Sessions, who will oversee the DOJ's bias investigation as Attorney General: 'Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another.'

White Americans' zero-sum framing is not supported by data. Across any number of available metrics -- income, wealth, education, life expectancy, you name it -- white people continue to fare significantly better than their black counterparts. But the Trump administration's move is likely to validate these beliefs, making them strongly and more widely held among Trump's base.

Some progressive groups, like the Century Foundation, have in recent years moved toward supporting income-based affirmative action policies, rather than race-based ones, as a way of defusing the racial tensions around college admissions. A Gallup poll last year found that aside from direct measures of academic achievement (like grades, SAT scores and course selection), economic considerations were the admissions factor most widely-supported by members of the general public. Race-based measures were near the bottom of the list.

A conservative administration less steeped in the ideology of white nationalism might have chosen to tackle college admissions from the angle of economics, promoting income-based admissions criteria that many voters across the political spectrum would have a hard time disagreeing with. Instead, by focusing on perceived anti-white bias the Sessions Justice Department has all but ensured that race and identity will remain at the center of college admissions battles for years to come."

Read the Washington Post, White Trump voters think they face more discrimination than blacks. The Trump administration is listening.

UPDATE: Maybe The Donald is trying to save oppressed white people like 'His Boy Wonder'.

Read ProPublica, The Story Behind Jared Kushner’s Curious Acceptance into Harvard, by Daniel Golden, who wrote the 2006 book, “The Price of Admission.” The article stated that

"[The] book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.)

I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision."

"After the 2012 election, the leadership of the Republican Party (including one Reince Priebus) became convinced that in a country that is becoming steadily more diverse, if it didn’t find a way to reach out to minority voters and win at least some of them over, it would be nearly impossible for the party to win the White House again. But then Donald Trump came along, animated by a theory that was just the opposite. Rather than reach out to minorities, the way to win was to run an explicitly white nationalist campaign that used racial resentment as its engine. To the surprise of most people, it worked. And now the Trump administration is looking for ways to show its voters that it’s delivering for them. Charlie Savage reports on a new Justice Department initiative:

The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

To many people reading this, the idea that white people are being discriminated against in higher education — or anywhere else — is absurd. The idea that discrimination against whites is such a significant problem that it demands Justice Department action is positively ludicrous. But we should understand that this is exactly the kind of thing many of Trump’s voters wanted him to deliver. . .

Affirmative action is just one particularly resonant part of this puzzle, in which white people are told that any effort to address historical and current discrimination must necessarily involve taking something from white people and giving it to black people, a zero-sum contest in which, if racism is being ameliorated, it must mean whites are being victimized.

This idea goes back a long way, but it’s important to understand that it needs to be constantly maintained, which is where the conservative media come in. If you’re not a regular viewer of Fox News, reader of Breitbart or listener to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, you may not understand what a central role white racial grievance plays in the media presentations that shape how conservatives today see the world. There are constant reminders in those forums that government is an entity that swoops into your life to steal things from you so that it can give them to undeserving black people.

Sometimes it requires wholesale invention of crimes and outrages, but much of the time the conservative media do it by taking something real and jamming it through a racial extruder to come out on the other end as evidence of the cushy life minorities are being granted. For instance, a Federal Communications Commission program that has existed for decades to help low-income people afford telephone service gets turned by the conservative media into “Obamaphones” supposedly given only to black people, once there’s an African American in the White House. . .

And of course, these arguments are joined to a steady diet of stories about how African Americans are dangerous criminals who pose a constant threat to the safety and security of good citizens. For instance, you may think that Black Lives Matter is a movement whose goal is to get police to treat African Americans with the same respect they treat white people (including by not killing them), but if you’re a consumer of right-wing media, you’ve been told a hundred times that BLM is actually an insanely violent quasi-terrorist organization that literally advocates the murder of police officers. You’ve also been told that discrimination against racial minorities is all but nonexistent; the only racism that remains in America is white people being unfairly accused of being racist.

To white people who look around at their communities and see poverty, addiction and lack of economic opportunity, the claims about things such as affirmative action and the smorgasbord of government benefits supposedly available only to minorities are enormously compelling. They take tribal impulses and turn them into an argument about economics and fairness. What’s holding you back, Republicans say, is those people and the special favors they get.

So you can be sure that in the White House, they’re only too happy to have a big controversy about affirmative action. It reinforces the racial allegiance of their core voters, with the happy side effect of diffusing any dissatisfaction that might arise from the fact that their economic policy is geared entirely toward serving the interests of the wealthy and powerful. And if they’re successful in making it harder for African Americans to succeed, well, that’s just icing on the cake."

Read the Washington Post, The Trump administration takes up the cause of oppressed white people. 

Trump's Big CON: Many Trump Products Are NOT Made in America (And He Doesn't 'Hire American' Either)

UPDATE IV:  "President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club needs to hire 35 waiters for this winter’s social season in Palm Beach, Fla.

Late last month, the club placed an ad on page C8 of the Palm Beach Post, crammed full of tiny print laying out the job experience requirements in classified ad shorthand. “3 mos recent & verifiable exp in fine dining/country club,” the ad said. “No tips.”

The ad gave no email address or phone number. “Apply by fax,” it said. The ad also provided a mailing address. It ran twice, then never again.

This was an underwhelming way to attract local job-seekers. But that wasn’t the point. The ads were actually part of Mar-a-Lago’s efforts to hire foreign workers for those 35 jobs.

About a week before the ads ran, the president’s club asked the Labor Department for permission to hire 70 temporary workers from overseas, government records show. Beside the 35 waiters, it asked for 20 cooks and 15 housekeepers, slightly more than it hired last year.

To get visas for those workers, Mar-a-Lago, like other businesses that rely on temporary employees each year, must first take legally mandated steps to look for U.S. workers. That includes placing two ads in a newspaper.

Typically, this attempt to recruit U.S. workers is a ritualized failure. Its outcome is usually a conclusion that there are no qualified Americans to hire, justifying the need for the government to issue the visas. . .

Mar-a-Lago has relied on foreign workers since at least 2008, according to government documents. To recruit them, it relies on Petrina Group International, a firm with offices in Ithaca, N.Y., and Romania. News reports have said that Mar-a-Lago’s workers have largely been from Romania and Haiti. Representatives for Petrina did not respond to requests for comment.

In the past, Trump’s club has followed the same pattern of searching for — and not hiring — American workers. Two years ago, for instance, Jeannie Coleman, who lives in nearby West Palm Beach, applied for a job as a housekeeper.

Mar-a-Lago called back. She had an interview. Then: nothing."

Read the Washington Post, ‘Apply by fax’: Before it can hire foreign workers, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club advertises at home — briefly.

Of course, the process is a sham, what else would you expect.

UPDATE III: "Many have pointed out that Trump's words don't match his actions. He promotes American-made at the same time that he and his daughter Ivanka Trump manufacture their own products overseas, in countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and China (as a Washington Post investigation detailed). This very week, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club applied to hire 70 foreign workers.

The problem is a lot of Americans do what the Trumps do: They say they want to buy stuff made in the U.S.A., but when asked if they would be willing to pay more for it, they reconsider. . .

While small domestic manufacturers . . . want tariffs to help their businesses, economists say costs would go up for many products, a risky proposition when customers care more about price than country of origin."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s ‘Made in America’ campaign has a big problem.

UPDATE II:  Read the Washington Post, During ‘Made in America Week,’ President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club applies to hire 70 foreign workers, which noted:

"Trump built his campaign last year in part on an appeal to American workers angry that their jobs had been taken by immigrants or laborers overseas. In his inaugural address, Trump said that under his leadership the country would 'follow two simple rules: buy American, and hire American.'

And this week, Trump has celebrated American companies and American labor, including an event at the White House where the president climbed into the cab of an American-made firetruck. In a proclamation Monday, Trump said he called 'upon Americans to pay special tribute to the builders, to the ranchers, to the crafters, and to all those who work every day to make America great.'

Earlier this year, the Trump Winery near Charlottesville, Va., applied for visas to hire 23 foreign workers under a different visa program meant for farm workers."

UPDATE: This week is "'Made in America' week, a new Washington ritual during which a president who routinely boasts of being the best at everything admits that he is not the best after all. Because if American-made products are the best, then products made abroad, such as many of Trump’s own branded products, are by definition not the best. . .

But because the Trump Organization and related companies haven’t seen fit to produce their own goods in the United States, that means either their products aren’t the best or Trump is engaged in a craven manipulation of his fans. Or both.

If America produces the best craftsmanship, why, then, does Ivanka Trump’s company manufacture no items in the United States? As The Post reported just last week, her company relies 'exclusively on foreign factories,' including in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam and China, to manufacture the shoes, handbags, blouses, dresses, jeans and shirts for the first daughter’s line of clothing.

Similarly, many items in Trump’s own clothing and home accessories are produced overseas in countries including China, Bangladesh and Mexico. When he excoriates American companies for moving manufacturing jobs overseas, then, he is including himself in his own criticism — but of course would never admit that. Instead, when questioned about why he manufactures items overseas, his answer was, essentially, everyone else does it. . .

Trump doesn’t even bother to pay more for American-made goods for those in his customer base who could pay more for items: guests at his luxury hotels. While staying in an $850-per-night room at Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel last year, The Post’s Dana Milbank revealed that the posh 'Trump Hotels' bathrobe and slippers were made in China, and the guest rooms are replete with foreign-made goods. Among the items made overseas, Milbank found towels made in India, china made in Japan, Malaysian-made telephones, and a coffee machine and several lamps, among other things, all made in China.

While Trump has promised steel workers in Rust Belt states that he will restore lost jobs to their economically battered communities, he has built at least two hotels with steel and aluminum from China — the persistent bogeyman of Trump’s campaign speeches in which he decried the decline of American manufacturing. When faced with the evidence of his Chinese steel purchases, though, Trump just plowed ahead, continuing the charade that he is an unemployed steelworker’s best friend. . .

In office, though, Trump has just continued engaging in more gestures, which would be most charitably portrayed as substance-free photo ops but are actually more venal than that. For example, he promoted his April 18 executive order, 'Buy American — Hire American,' at Kenosha, Wis.-based Snap-On Tools, which has numerous manufacturing sites and distribution centers overseas, with more in the works. Trump’s base, though, does not seem to care about his blatant hypocrisies; the stagecraft on its face is sufficient for his voters to believe he is indeed making America great. . .

Trump’s hypocrisy on 'made in the USA' has been on display for months, so it seems doubtful that this week’s farce will make a difference one way or another.

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s ‘Made in America’ week is a hypocritical joke.

UPDATE:  "The Department of Homeland Security on Monday announced a one-time increase of 15,000 additional visas for low-wage, seasonal workers for the remainder of this fiscal year, a seeming about-face from President Trump's "Hire American" rhetoric, following heavy lobbying from the fisheries, hospitality and other industries that rely on temporary foreign workers.

The increase represents a 45 percent bump from the number of H-2B visas normally issued for the second half of the fiscal year, said senior Homeland Security officials in a call with reporters Monday. . .

Trump himself has used H-2B visas to hire temporary workers at his golf resorts in Palm Beach, Fla., and Jupiter, Fla."

Read the Washington Post, Trump officials open border to 15,000 more foreign workers.

Read also the Washington Post, Despite Trump’s ‘Hire American’ pledge, budget bill would dramatically expand the number of foreign workers, which nmted:

"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."

President Trump, whose company outsources the manufacturing of many of its products to overseas factories, is unveiling 'Made in America' week at the White House to promote products made in the United States. . .

For Trump, highlighting U.S.-made products is inconsistent with his practices as a businessman. For years, the Trump Organization has outsourced much of its product manufacturing, relying on a global network of factories in a dozen countries — including Bangladesh, China and Mexico — to make its clothing, home decor pieces and other items.

Similarly, the clothing line of Ivanka Trump, the president’s older daughter and a senior White House adviser, relies exclusively on foreign factories employing low-wage workers in countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and China, according to a recent Washington Post investigation."

Read the Washington Post, White House unveils ‘Made in America’ week, though many Trump products are made overseas.

Read also Trump's Big CON: Like Father, Like Daughter, which included another Washington Post article, Ivanka Inc., that noted that "while Ivanka Trump published a book this spring declaring that improving the lives of working women is 'my life’s mission,' The Post found that her company lags behind many in the apparel industry when it comes to monitoring the treatment of the largely female workforce employed in factories around the world."

Trump's Big CON: He Can't Be Left Alone

How inept and weak is The Donald?

Former secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, now Trump's Chief of Staff and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, another retired general, "agreed in the earliest weeks of Trump’s presidency that one of them should remain in the United States at all times to keep tabs on the orders rapidly emerging from the White House".

Read the Associated Press, Kelly wins praise across the aisle, but bigger task is ahead.

Trump's Big CON: It's All About the Show, Explained, CONt. Part 2

"No one is working harder for the impeachment of Donald Trump than Donald Trump. If we have learned anything about this president, it is that he has a compulsion to be the center of attention. He can’t bear being out of the limelight and will say almost anything — no matter how offensive, outrageous or dishonest it strikes millions of Americans — to keep the public fixated on him. The more he does this, the more he risks impeachment. . .

For months, Trump’s behavior has posed a riddle. Why is he so self-destructive? His constant tweets deepen the country’s divisions, which he promised to heal. The customary explanation is that Trump is playing to his “base,” but recently, this has seemed less convincing. . .

In fact, we’ve been asking the wrong question. It has been widely assumed that Trump’s behavior must reflect some political logic. . .

But the mystery vanishes once we realize that Trump’s motives, rather than advancing some grand political strategy, are deeply personal. He can’t control himself. In his mind, silence means obscurity, which is unbearable, especially when ending it is only a tweet or two away. It doesn’t matter what he says — whether it is true or false, relevant or irrelevant to the issues — as long as he stirs passions and dominates public discussion.

It is personality more than politics that impels Trump to be Trump. With hindsight, his rhetorical escapades can be described as political maneuvers, but this is mostly damage control.

In this sense, Trump can be seen as the strongest and most determined advocate of impeachment. If he must flirt with impeachment to retain his command of the media, so be it. As a practical matter, he might see impeachment (though not conviction) as acceptable. He would be automatically in the spotlight every day for months. He would have a new arena in which to fight and 'win.'

Perhaps subconsciously, this is his goal: Impeach me, please!"

Read the Washington Post, Trump seems to be crying out: Impeach me, please!

Trump's Big CON: He is the Manifestation of Republi-CON Cruelty, Recklessness and Indecency, CONt.

"This has been quite a week in Washington, a week full of terror, intrigue, suspense, backstabbing and outright chaos. While we might not have been able to predict the particular contours of the catastrophe that complete GOP rule has been, we should have known it would turn out something like this.

Guess what, America: This is what you get when you elect Republicans.

It goes much further than their repugnant and disastrous effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but all the contemporary GOP’s pathologies could be seen there: their outright malice toward ordinary people, their indifference to the suffering of their fellow citizens, their blazing incompetence, their contempt for democratic norms, their shameless hypocrisy, their gleeful ignorance about policy, their utter dishonesty and bad faith, their pure cynicism, and their complete inability to perform anything that resembles governing. It was the perfect Republican spectacle.

It’s remarkable to consider that there was a time not too long ago when the Grand Old Party was known for being serious, sober, a little boring, but above all, responsible. They were conservative in the traditional sense: wanting to conserve what they thought was good and fearful of rapid change. You might not have agreed with them, but there were limits to the damage they could do. The devolution from that Republican Party to the one we see today took a couple of decades and had many sources, but its fullest expression was reached with the lifting up of Donald J. Trump to the presidency, this contemptible buffoon who may have been literally the single worst prominent American they could have chosen to be their standard-bearer. I mean that seriously. Can you think of a single person who might have run for president who is more ignorant, more impulsive, more vindictive and more generally dangerous than Donald Trump? And yet they rallied around him with near-unanimity, a worried shake of the head to his endless stream of atrocious statements and actions the strongest dissent most of them could muster. . .

[W]e’re getting just what we should have expected. Donald Trump isn’t an aberration, he’s the apotheosis of contemporary Republicanism.

Republicans don’t care about making an honest case for their priorities; Trump lies nearly every time he opens his mouth. They’re unconcerned about the details of policy; he knows less about how government works than your average sixth-grader. They’re indifferent to human suffering; he literally advocates destroying the individual health-care market so he can blame Barack Obama for the lives that wind up ruined. They advocate a mindless anti-government philosophy; he has so much contempt for governing that he puts his son-in-law in charge of everything from solving the opioid crisis to achieving Middle East peace. They whine endlessly about the liberal media; he spends hours every day watching 'Fox & Friends' and takes advice from Sean Hannity. Trump is the essence of the GOP, distilled down to its depraved and odious core. . .

But this what you get when you give today’s Republican Party complete control of the government. Have no doubt: There are more horrors to come.

Read the Washington Post, This is what you get when you elect Republicans.

Read also Trump's Big CON: He is the Manifestation of Republi-CON Cruelty, Recklessness and Indecency.

Trump's Big CON: He is Inept and Weak, a Bad Combination

UPDATE IV:  "President Trump has bullied his way through his adult life. Screaming, suing, manipulating the tabloid press and allegedly chiseling employees, he has used wealth, power and a volatile personality to get his way. He bluffed, dodged, insulted and stormed his way through the campaign. For a time, his standing with the GOP base, the fear of nasty tweets (yes, politicians are wimps) and the hope that they could use him to pass their agenda led to a pathetic level of deference from GOP lawmakers.

Now the president’s poll numbers are in the 30s. He has failed on his signature legislative item (repealing and replacing Obamacare), fired a slew of advisers, been compelled to sign Russia sanctions legislation and failed to halt the special counsel’s investigation into his and his campaign’s Russian affiliations. And now the ice has cracked, the power is ebbing and lawmakers, civil servants, outside groups are unimpressed — and more than willing to shove back . .

Trump is a diminished figure, a weakened force after only about six months in office. Once the aura of presidential authority is gone, others (Congress, the chief of staff, third parties) become more and more daring in challenging the president, more willing to speak out (on the record or via leaks) and more insistent on taking matters into their own hands. Trump got to the presidency by faking his way through the campaign, pretending to have skills and knowledge he obviously does not. As he now fakes 'being in charge,' watch for him to lash out at real and perceived affronts, step up the number of self-congratulatory lies (so many imaginary phone calls!) and strain even harder to recapture the adulation he experienced on the campaign trail by pandering to his less-educated, rural white base. Will he completely blow up his presidency before Kelly can assert some semblance of order? The race is on; Kelly better work fast."

Read the Washington Post, The bully in chief is losing his touch.

UPDATE III: "President Trump has discovered that the position is less powerful than he imagined. Actually, he has made the presidency less powerful not only because the other branches are pushing back but also because the executive branch itself often seems to be humoring him. . .

The general chaos and incompetence in the White House also prevent development and implementation of policy positions; contradictory tweets and statements further paralyze political appointees as well as permanent civil service personnel. As with summer weather inside the Beltway, if you don’t like the latest Trump pronouncement, just wait a few hours for it to change.

[Jack] Goldsmith observes:

'The fractured executive branch is partly a result of terrible executive organization but mainly the product of an incompetent, mendacious president interacting with appointed or inherited executive branch officials who possess integrity.  The President says and does things that his senior officials, when asked, cannot abide.  And so they tell the truth, often with an awkward wince, or they ignore the President.  And in response to this overt disrespect, President Trump does … nothing.'

Trump cannot even intimidate his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, into quitting. . .

It’s hard enough for a sane, competent and knowledgeable president to turn around the gigantic ship of state; for an unhinged, incompetent and ignorant one, it’s much tougher (at least we hope so). That’s the silver lining in the dark cloud of chaos that hovers over the White House."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s not really president — he just plays one on TV.

Read also Trump's Big CON: The Reality TV President (AKA Stupid Is As Stupid Does, CONt.).

UPDATE II:  "Donald Trump and his advisers have created an administration in which there is no way to get the president’s attention, or to resolve problems, through normal channels.

The only way to make sure an issue will get any attention whatsoever — much less have a prayer of actually getting fixed — is to leak.

[Why?

Because Trump 'does not want advice, cannot be corrected, and is too insecure to see any constructive feedback as anything other than an attack.'"

Read Vox, The real reason the Trump administration has such a leak problem.

UPDATE:  "If the past week has made anything clear, it is that President Trump is a bad strategist. Consider three issues bedeviling his administration: Iran, health care and North Korea."

Read the Washington Post, Why is Trump so bad at strategy? It’s time for some game theory! No, really …, which notes that "[t]he very traits (stubbornness, self-certainty and 'self-aggrandizing delusion') that won Trump the presidency have made it impossible for him to be a strategic actor."

"Machiavelli advised leaders that while it would be nice to be both loved and feared, when one has to choose, it’s better to rely on fear. This is clearly the approach President Trump is trying to take. As his administration wallows in a crisis of policy, a crisis of politics and a crisis of management, he’s issuing threats left and right, to anyone who wins his displeasure. Governing by threats might work sometimes — if you can back them up. But no one is frightened of Trump right now, and all those impotent threats only demonstrate how little he understands about power. . .

Meanwhile, the president pushed out his chief of staff and brought on a new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, who channels Trump’s style more fully than any aide before him. Scaramucci had barely moved into his office before he began threatening to fire people.

This all adds up to a president who is incredibly frustrated that no one is doing what he wants, yet has no idea how to change the situation because he still doesn’t understand Washington. In the business world, Trump utilized threats often, especially threats to sue people. Given that Trump is one of the most litigious people on the planet (he has sued other people more than 2,000 times, according to one count), this was a threat you might be scared by — particularly if you were someone with less money and influence than him. But when he made the same threat to those with a comparable level of resources, it wasn’t so frightening. Remember when he threatened in October to sue the New York Times because it reported that multiple women were accusing him of unwanted sexual advances? The paper was not afraid and didn’t change how it reported on him, and the suit never materialized.

When he was only a businessman, things were straightforward and easy for Trump to understand: He can intimidate little guys, but not big guys. But power in Washington is much more complicated. Power is diffuse, spread across many individuals and institutions. And it changes as circumstances change. . .

Power in Washington is also built on alliances, because in order to wield it you often need the cooperation of many others. Trump has been unable to build those alliances, not only because he came into office trumpeting his contempt for everyone who was already there but also because he can’t be bothered to understand what other people are really after. For all that he trumpets himself as a dealmaker, he has been utterly unable to persuade people to come along with him. . .

When he ran for president, Trump said over and over that any failures in Washington were the result of leaders who were stupid and weak, and that the force of his personality would be enough to achieve any goal. He was even naive enough to think that being president would be easier than running his brand-licensing firm, as he admitted in April. Now he’s discovering that Washington is more complicated than he thought, but instead of trying to learn from his mistakes and adapt, he’s just lashing out with threats."

Read the Washington Post, Trump is trying to govern by threats — and he’s failing.

Trump's Big CON: Obamacare Was the Republi-CON Health Care Plan

"[F]or seven years, Republicans have attacked Obamacare with the same solemnity and frequency that they typically reserve for praising Ronald Reagan. They held symbolic votes against it. Then they held some more. They challenged it in court. Then they did it again over a typo. They shut the government down over it. And, now that he's in office, Trump has even threatened to withhold some of the law's subsidies in a not-so-veiled attempt to make the whole thing “implode.”

Throughout it all, though, Republicans haven't been able to agree on what they want to do, only what they don't. Which, of course, is anything like Obamacare's alleged 'big government takeover' of health care. The only problem with that is that Obamacare is not, in fact, a big government takeover. The opposite, actually. It's just about the most market-friendly way to cover poor and sick people. Indeed, the conservative Heritage Foundation supported something a lot like it back in 1989. As did former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole in 1993. And former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2006. So by vilifying their old plan as unconstitutional socialism, Republicans haven't left themselves a lot of leeway to come up with a new one. . .

Republicans, then, haven't been able to come up with a conservative alternative to Obamacare, because Obamacare is the conservative alternative. And they won't be able to unless they're willing to make the case that the government shouldn't help the poor and sick get covered — or just lie about their plan. In the meantime, though, you can bet that they think they're getting closer and closer.

Republican health-care policy is like tomorrow. It's always a day away." [Emphasis added.]

Read the Washington Post, Trump is clueless about health care. Republicans are worse.

It can be said enough: Obamacare Was the Republi-CON Health Care Plan.

Trump's Big CON: "I'll Work Hard for America, CONt.

"As of July 31, Trump’s visited his own properties on 57 of the 193 days he’s been president, a rate of once every 3.4 days. He’s played golf once every 5.8 days — or, at least, that’s what we assume, since the administration never actually admits he’s playing golf. Sometimes, as he did on Sunday, Trump will simply head from the White House to his golf club in Sterling, Va., for four hours or so and not tell the press what he’s doing. Occasionally, photos will leak on social media of Trump on the links or some other person will admit to being part of Trump’s foursome, but the administration likes to keep it vague, apparently so that they can pretend that maybe he was actually just in meetings. . .

Why does this matter? Trump fans will ask. For a few reasons.

First of all, it matters because Trump repeatedly insisted on the campaign trail that he would play little to no golf as president, since he’d be so busy. (He repeatedly berated President Barack Obama for playing golf; Obama played at a rate of once every 8.8 days. Trump’s playing at a rate of once every 5.8 days.) It matters that Trump’s communications team won’t simply admit that he’s spending a lot of time playing golf, which they likely don’t do because of those campaign-trail pledges, but which they should because (1) it’s obvious and (2) it’s generally preferable for a president not to hide his actions from the public.

Second of all, it matters that Trump goes to properties that are owned by his private business because each of those trips serves as a de facto ad for the property, leveraging Trump’s official position on behalf of his private interests. What’s more, those trips cost the public a lot of money. His jaunts to Mar-a-Lago cost $6.6 million just to protect the facility from the air and water. . .

Third, it matters because it’s unusual for a president to spend so much time away from the White House doing non-president-related things. His calendar this month has been fairly sparse, but, in addition to hitting up his private golf clubs and his hotel, he’s also found a lot of time for watching television. This schedule is almost certainly tied into the paragraph with which this article began: Trump spent very little time cajoling Republican senators to vote for the party’s health-care bill and enough defected on it to give him a black eye.

He spent at least 24 hours playing golf. Did he spend that much time on health care? He spent a weekend literally just watching a golf tournament from inside a glass box at a course he owns. Couldn’t that time have been better used?

One can only wonder: If Trump spent more of his time doing the things one might expect of a president and less time on the putting green, would his July have been such a political disaster?"

Read the Washington Post, Trump had a terrible July, but at least he played a lot of golf.

Read also:

Trump's Big CON: 'I'll Rarely Leave the White House' , and

Trump's Big CON: "I'll Work Hard for America.

Trump's Big CON: LOCK HIM UP!!, CONt.

More on the attempt to obstruct justice.

"On the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Germany last month, President Trump’s advisers discussed how to respond to a new revelation that Trump’s oldest son had met with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign — a disclosure the advisers knew carried political and potentially legal peril.

The strategy, the advisers agreed, should be for Donald Trump Jr. to release a statement to get ahead of the story. They wanted to be truthful, so their account couldn’t be repudiated later if the full details emerged.

But within hours, at the president’s direction, the plan changed.

Flying home from Germany on July 8 aboard Air Force One, Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations. The statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared an article, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was “not a campaign issue at the time.”

The claims were later shown to be misleading. . .

Trump has already come under criticism for steps he has taken to challenge and undercut the Russia investigation.

He fired FBI Director James B. Comey on May 9 after a private meeting in which Comey said the president asked him if he could end the investigation of ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats told associates that Trump asked him in March if he could intervene with Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on Flynn. In addition, Trump has repeatedly criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from overseeing the FBI’s Russian investigation — a decision that was one factor leading to the appointment of Mueller. And he has privately discussed his power to issue pardons, including for himself, and explored potential avenues for undercutting Mueller’s work.

Read the Washington Post, Trump dictated son’s misleading statement on meeting with Russian lawyer.

And read the Washington Post, President Trump is now directly implicated in trying to cover up the Russia scandal, which notes:

"If the Russia scandal is nothing but a witch hunt, as President Trump so often says, it’s awfully strange that he’s going to so much trouble to cover it up. . .

So, to put this together: The president of the United States personally wrote a statement about this meeting with the Russians, a statement that everyone involved knew to be false. Going further, he then either lied to his own lawyer about his involvement so that the lawyer would repeat that lie publicly (highly likely) or was candid with his lawyer and persuaded him to lie to the media on his behalf (much less likely). . .

It has been entertaining to watch the ongoing soap opera of this White House — the infighting, the backstabbing, the firings, the general air of chaos — but it’s important to remember that the biggest problem it has is the man who sits in the Oval Office. The fact that Trump assumed that he could engineer this mini-coverup and the truth would never get out, both about the meeting itself and about his role in misleading the public about it, shows just how deluded he is about how his own White House works.

Let’s return to that scene on Air Force One. A damaging story is breaking, and Trump’s advisers are facing the dilemma many administrations have faced before: How do we deal with it? How much information should we voluntarily reveal? Is there a way to make the story go away that won’t set us up for even more trouble down the road? While they were debating those questions, the one person to whom no one could say no told them how it was going to be: They were going to lie. And as is so often the case with Trump, the lie was quickly revealed for what it was. . .

Something tells me there’s more to come." [Emphasis added.]

What goes around comes around. 

Read also the Daily Mail, President Trump pressured Fox News to release fake story about death of DNC staffer Seth Rich and Wikileaks to divert attention from Russia, claims explosive lawsuit.

And read also Trump's Big CON: LOCK HIM UP!!

Trump's Big CON: Broken Campaign Promises, Trade Edition

"President Trump said Tuesday that his administration is delaying a long-awaited verdict on whether to restrict imports of foreign steel, again punting on a decision that has divided U.S. industries and his own administration, as well as strained ties with some of the country's closest allies and trading partners. . .

Trump told the Journal that the administration would be addressing steel dumping, which he described as 'a very unfair situation.' But he added that 'we don’t want to do it at this moment.'

The decision is being closely watched as an indicator of whether Trump will deliver on his trade promises. The tariffs or quotas the administration was considering would have been the president’s first major move to fulfill the protectionist, America-first trade policy that was one of the pillars of his candidacy.

For months, the administration kept industry guessing about whether these ideas were mostly campaign rhetoric or the basis for an ambitious repositioning of U.S. trade policy. . .

On multiple occasions, Trump expressed his support for restricting steel imports.

'Wait till you see what I’m going to do for steel and your steel companies,' he said in a speech in Cincinnati on June 7. 'We’re going to stop the dumping and stop all of these wonderful other countries from coming in and killing our companies and our workers. We’ll be seeing that very soon. The steel folks are going to be very happy.'"

Read the Washington Post, Amid resistance, Trump backs away from controversial trade plan.

Trump's Big CON: It's All About the Show, Explained, CONt.

"President Trump sees everything as a sales job.

He ran for president promising to be a dealmaker, but his skill set has always leaned much more toward boldfaced marketing than the quiet art of negotiation. That he was a dealmaker was itself a marketing slogan.

And as with the proverbial hammer, every problem Trump sees is a problem that simply requires a healthy dose of salesmanship. . .

Unfortunately for him, the national news media isn’t an arm of the Trump Organization’s communications shop, and it isn’t the New York Post’s Page Six, where celebrities are explored in minutiae but, at the end of the day, with love. . .

At some point Trump needs to come to terms with the fact that providing honest information to the media will work out better for him than obfuscating and misleading. . .

Maybe by actually embracing the role of the media in identifying problems and then working to fix those problems, the end result for Republicans and the president could be better?

Or maybe it’s easier to tweet about fake news."

Read the Washington Post, Trump does not understand what the role of the press is.

Trump's Big CON: Like Father, Like Daughter

UPDATE IV:  "Can anyone tell me why, other than nepotism, [Ivanka Trump] has an office in the White House and a back-bench seat at meetings of the Cabinet? Washington is full of people who are smart, successful, well-educated — and actually have experience in developing and implementing government policy, which Ivanka completely lacks.

[She has had little or no influence on policy.]

Where Ivanka does apparently have real influence is in matters of personnel. She and Jared are reported to have urged Trump to bring in foul-mouthed Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director. Seriously, that’s the guy you wanted shaping the administration’s message? Scaramucci was dismissed Monday after just 10?days on the job. He had only two things to offer: North Korean-style hosannas to the strength, wisdom and general magnificence of his dear leader, President Trump; and an undeniable talent for imaginative swearing."

Read the Washington Post, Ivanka Trump is part of the problem.

UPDATE III:  "On Inauguration Day, President Trump stood in front of the U.S. Capitol and vowed that his 'America First' agenda would bring jobs back to the United States.

'We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs,' he declared, adding: 'We will follow two simple rules — buy American and hire American.'

Looking on from the front of the stage was Trump’s daughter Ivanka, the celebrity and fashion entrepreneur who would soon join him in the White House.

The first daughter’s cause would be improving the lives of working women, a theme she had developed at her clothing line. She also brought a direct link to the global economy the president was railing against — a connection that was playing out at that very moment on the Pacific coast.

As the Trumps stood on stage, a hulking container ship called the OOCL Ho Chi Minh City was pulling into the harbor of Long Beach, Calif., carrying around 500 pounds of foreign-made Ivanka Trump spandex-knit blouses.

Another 10 ships hauling Ivanka Trump-branded shoes, cardigans and leather handbags bound for the United States were floating in the north Pacific and Atlantic oceans and off the coasts of Malta, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea and Yemen.

Those global journeys — along with millions of pounds of Ivanka Trump products imported into the United States in more than 2,000 shipments since 2010 — illustrate how her business practices collide with some of the key principles she and her father have championed in the White House.

While President Trump has chastised companies for outsourcing jobs overseas, an examination by The Washington Post has revealed the extent to which Ivanka Trump’s company relies exclusively on foreign factories in countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and China, where low-wage laborers have limited ability to advocate for themselves.

And while Ivanka Trump published a book this spring declaring that improving the lives of working women is 'my life’s mission,' The Post found that her company lags behind many in the apparel industry when it comes to monitoring the treatment of the largely female workforce employed in factories around the world."

Read the Washington Post, Ivanka Inc.

UPDATE II: Read the Daily Mail, Ivanka takes on Beijing: First daughter launches report condemning China's record on human trafficking and forced labor – even though her shoe brand has been made there

Then read the Daily Mail, Beaten bloody by supervisors, pay as low as a dollar an hour and overtime past midnight: Workers from Ivanka Trump's Chinese shoe factory reveal brutal conditions.

UPDATE:  "Ivanka Trump’s new book unwittingly reveals just how out of touch she is with the lives of the working women who she believes she speaks for.

-- President Trump dubiously claimed during the campaign that he was a self-made man. “My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars,” he told NBC during a 2015 interview, which he insisted he paid back with interest. 'A million dollars isn’t very much compared to what I built!' During a primary debate, when Marco Rubio claimed that he had received a $200 million inheritance from his father, Trump replied angrily: 'I took $1 million and I turned it into $10 billion.'

Every fact checker faulted Trump for not giving his father enough credit, for downplaying the connections and the resources he received from the family business. Court documents revealed that the candidate was omitting vastly larger loans and gifts he received over the years. His pop also bailed him out when his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. . .

[And in Ivanka's new book] dispensing advice for how working women can succeed, the 35-year-old often relays anecdotes that unintentionally highlight all the special breaks she’s gotten along the way. These are advantages average Americans could never even dream of."

Read the Washington Post, Ivanka Trump’s life of privilege undermines the credibility of her new book’s message.

She is as clueless as her Dad.

The "president’s daughter has sought to cast herself as both a champion of workplace issues and a defender of her father’s 'buy American, hire American' agenda. Trump, whose book 'Women Who Work' debuts next week, was in Germany on Tuesday for public discussions about global entre­pre­neur­ship and empowerment."

But it's all a facade.

Read the Washington Post, Workers endured long hours, low pay at Chinese factory used by Ivanka Trump’s clothing-maker.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.