Trump's Big CON: The 'I Want The Credit, Don't Blame Me' President, WV Edition

"The fact that West Virginia saw a 3 percent increase after years of limited growth was not lost on Trump. In two interviews on Fox News programs, he touted the state’s economic growth, adding that it was a result of his elimination of regulatory policies on mining and coal. Is the credit deserved?

The short answer is, no. . .

Taking credit for economic advances where no credit is due seems to be a habit for Trump. He should be more careful not to overstate the effect of his administration’s policies when praising economic gains across the country.  For trying to capitalize on the hard work of West Virginians, Trump earns Four Pinocchios."

Read the Washington Post, President Trump’s claim that he ‘turned West Virginia around’ by cutting regulations on mining.

Trump's Big CON: Using Fear, Anger and Hatred for Political Purposes

UPDATE II:  "The terrorists behind the attack, he said, need to be “rubbed out.” “Law and order” must be preserved. The courts are “against the country” and “the media should not have unlimited freedom.” “I will allow the military to try you,” the president warned terrorists, “and put you to death.”

You could be forgiven for thinking these were the words of President Trump reacting to Tuesday’s terrorist attack in New York City that killed eight and wounded 12. It’s all there: The familiar Trump bravado. The call for swift justice. The indictment of other institutions — the courts, the press — that are said to be too weak or unwilling to help safeguard the nation.

But each of the quotes above are from authoritarians who have exploited terrorist attacks to undermine rule of law in their own countries and for whom Trump has breathlessly professed admiration. And this week, he has also sought to emulate them. . .

[Terrorist] groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda seek to do more than kill. With each attack, they hope to provoke divisions in our society and undermine confidence in the institutions and diversity that define our Republic.

This week, we saw that they have an enabler at the highest level — an unpopular, impulsive, ineffective and increasingly isolated president who in attempting to project a strongman image reveals his fundamental weakness as a leader. Trump has once again succumbed to his worst impulses. They question for the rest of us is, which is stronger — the demagogue or our democracy?"

Read the Washington Post, President Trump is responding to terrorism the way demagogues and dictators do. 

UPDATE:  "[E]ven when we take reasonable, effective actions against Islamist terrorism, we do not guarantee that these incidents will stop. We are defeating the Islamic State and destroying its caliphate, and yet Islamist fundamentalism may still inspire murderous rampages. We can authorize and reauthorize National Security Agency surveillance programs, but a single killer need not communicate with anyone overseas to launch a plot. We can interdict money flowing to terrorism, but all this attack cost was the rental fee for a truck. . .

So what do we do? Do we learn to 'live with' these low-level attacks? Let’s begin with what we should not do — demonize an entire religion, assail our own democratic institutions, demean our intelligence community or politicize every corner of government. . .

Beyond that, we should continue to do the big things (destroy the Islamic State’s territorial haven) and the not-so-big-but-critically-important things (more extensive use of barriers, improved police relations with Muslim communities). We control what we can, and we understand that we cannot eliminate every threat, of every size, of every origin. That is how Israel has survived since its inception; that is how we address ordinary, domestic crime.

This should not be confused with complacency or fatalism. To the contrary, we should remain determined to do whatever is in our power to halt the scourge of Islamist terrorism, but in doing so, we should stop doing silly, time-wasting, counterproductive things for political reasons. We should stop stoke fear of our fellow Americans and of foreigners. Focus on what’s doable and avoid idiotic stunts that make us no safer and that do great damage to the fabric of our democracy. In short, stop Trump from being Trump."

Read the Washington Post, The right and wrong ways to respond to the NYC attack.

"October was bookended by tragedy.

On Halloween, a man who authorities say emigrated from Uzbekistan seven years ago, drove a rented pickup truck down a bike path, killing eight people and injuring 11 before being shot and subdued. On Oct. 1, a man shooting from the windows of a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip killed 58 and wounded 546. . .

Trump’s response to the attack in New York on Tuesday was immediately different. Since the attack, at about 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Trump has tweeted (as of writing) six times about it and about the need for policy changes to address it.

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

My thoughts, condolences and prayers to the victims and families of the New York City terrorist attack. God and your country are with you!
5:57 PM - Oct 31, 2017

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program. Being politically correct is fine, but not for this!
8:26 PM - Oct 31, 2017

 Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

The terrorist came into our country through what is called the "Diversity Visa Lottery Program," a Chuck Schumer beauty. I want merit based.
6:24 AM - Nov 1, 2017

And so on.

This is not a new pattern for Trump. He’s regularly raced to link terrorist attacks (and things that turned out not to be terrorist attacks) to the need to crack down on immigration. It’s of a piece with his campaign, during which he promoted the risks posed by immigrants as a central concern for the public and his own policies as the only way of addressing them.

Contrasting the two incidents in October mirrors the overall difference between gun violence and terrorism. Since Trump was inaugurated, there have been 283 incidents in the United States in which four or more people were shot. The death toll from those incidents, excluding Vegas, is 224. There have been a handful of terrorist attacks, perhaps only two of which involve a Muslim or an immigrant (though it’s not clear). In those two incidents, two people were killed. . .

[These two incidents show how The Donald uses fear, anger and hatred for political purposes,] how Trump considers people like Paddock versus how he considers people like Saipov. Saipov’s actions are inseparable from his status as an immigrant, as Trump’s tweets make clear: What he did is a reflection of all immigrants and therefore immigration laws need to change. Paddock — older, white — was just a guy with a broken brain. What can you possibly do about that?
So, with Saipov, Trump is quick to weigh in on policy proposals meant to address the perceived threat posed by immigrants — even if those proposals are not necessarily rooted in an accurate understanding of the issue."

Read the Washington Post, For Trump, October’s two mass killings lead to very different responses.

Read also the Washington Post, Trump responds to terror attack with petty tweets and demagoguery.

Trump's Big CON: Lie, Deny, & Vilify, Repeat Frequently, And NEVER Admit a Mistake

"Last week John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, tried to defend President Trump against charges that he was grossly insensitive to the widow of a U.S. soldier killed in action. In the process, Kelly accused Frederica Wilson, the member of Congress and friend of the soldier’s family who reported what Trump had said, of having behaved badly previously during the dedication of an F.B.I. building.

Video of the dedication shows, however, that Kelly’s claim was false, and that Representative Wilson’s remarks at the ceremony were entirely appropriate. . .

[O]f course, Kelly has neither admitted error nor apologized. Instead, the White House declared that it’s unpatriotic to criticize generals — which, aside from being a deeply un-American position, is ludicrous given the many times Donald Trump has done just that.

But we are living in the age of Trumpal infallibility: We are ruled by men who never admit error, never apologize and, crucially, never learn from their mistakes. Needless to say, men who think admitting error makes you look weak just keep making bigger mistakes; delusions of infallibility eventually lead to disaster, and one can only hope that the disasters ahead don’t bring catastrophe for all of us. . .

Again, everyone makes [mistakes]. If you’re consistently wrong, that should certainly count against your credibility; track records matter. But it’s much worse if you can never bring yourself to admit past errors and learn from them.

That kind of behavior makes it all too likely that you’ll keep making the same mistakes; but more than that, it shows something wrong with your character. And men with that character flaw should never be placed in positions of policy responsibility."

Read The New York Times, The Doctrine of Trumpal Infallibility.

Read also from March, The New York Times, America’s Epidemic of Infallibility, which states:

"Just to be clear: Everyone makes mistakes. Some of these mistakes are in the 'nobody could have known' category. But there’s also the temptation to engage in motivated reasoning, to let our emotions get the better of our critical faculties — and almost everyone succumbs to that temptation now and then (as I myself did on election night).

So nobody is perfect. The point, however, is to try to do better — which means owning up to your mistakes and learning from them. Yet that is something that the people now ruling America never, ever do.

What happened to us? Some of it surely has to do with ideology: When you’re committed to a fundamentally false narrative about government and the economy, as almost the whole Republican Party now is, facing up to facts becomes an act of political disloyalty. . .

But what’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?

The truth is that I don’t know. But we can at least hope that watching Mr. Trump in action will be a learning experience — not for him, because he never learns anything, but for the body politic. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll eventually put a responsible adult back in the White House."

It should be clear by now that a responsible adult will not be back in the White House any time soon.

Trump's Big CON: It's Not Tax Reform, It's a Tax Cut for the Wealthy

UPDATE VI:  "Contrary to the president’s claim, the tax plan is not “so bad” for the wealthy. In fact, no matter how you slice it, the superwealthy do rather well under the House GOP proposal. As we have said, that’s largely because they already pay a large chuck of income taxes already.

Trump could actually make the distribution tables look better if he pushed to keep the AMT in place for incomes above $1 million and the estate tax in place for estates larger than $11 million. The failure to do so underscores the fact that this tax plan is not only for the middle class."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s claim that the House GOP bill is ‘so bad for rich people’.

Read also the Washington Post, Who really pays the estate tax?, which notes that roughly 2.7 million Americans will pass away in 2017, but only 11,310 deceased individuals (the top 0.5 percent wealthiest) will need to file an estate tax return.  After deductions, only 5,460 of them will owe any estate tax, and only 80 will be "small" businesses or small farms (worth between $5-10 million). Those 80 "small" businesses or small farms will pay on average $375,000, and they have "the option to pay it off over a period of 15 years, softening its impact."

So Trump's claim that the proposal is 'so bad for rich people' is a lie, but his tax cut proposal will save him and his family billions (yes, billions).

UPDATE V:  "Killing the estate tax has long been the holy grail of Republicans. (They even succeeded in one year, 2010, but then it came back.) So there is little surprise that the tax bill would include an estate-tax repeal.

But what is surprising is that the tax bill also allows the beneficiaries of estates to not pay capital gains taxes on the increase in value of assets held by the estates. That has not been a feature of most previous estate-tax bills. In fact, President Trump’s campaign plan would have repealed the estate tax but taxed capital gains accumulated at death. . .

But the House GOP tax plan, by contrast, kills the estate tax (starting in 2024) and continues to value assets passed to heirs at a stepped-up basis. (The only exception is certain interest in foreign entities, such as a passive foreign investment company.)

[I]t’s interesting that House tax-writers would press forward with an elimination of the estate tax that goes far beyond previous efforts — or even Trump’s campaign tax plan — to allow tens of billions of untapped capital gains to remain beyond the reach of the U.S. government. The money left on the table because of a difference between two words — 'stepped-up' and 'carryover' — is certainly staggering."

Read the Washington Post, Two words in the GOP tax bill mean tens of billions for the superwealthy.

UPDATE IV:  "The Republican tax bill is often described as being weighted toward 'the rich.' But that’s not the full story.

It’s actually weighted toward the loafer, the freeloader, the heir, the passive investor who spends his time yachting and charity-balling.

In short: the idle rich.

Republicans claim the opposite, of course. For years the GOP has argued that we need to cut taxes to incentivize work and job creation. If only today’s allegedly sky-high marginal rates were lower, millions of talented, driven Americans would apply more of their talent and drive toward growing the economy.

Why? Well, if they got to keep more of their hard-earned cash, there would be a greater payoff from clocking that extra hour, taking on that extra project, seeing that extra patient, scoring that extra client, building that extra business, and so on. Working would look more attractive relative to playing an extra round of golf.

Yet the GOP tax bill offers the biggest windfall to those who sit on their duffs and do nothing.

Rich layabouts benefit in multiple ways from the proposal. . .

So much for the dignity of work."

Read the Washington Post, Who wins biggest in the GOP tax plan? The lazy rich.

UPDATE III: "Many of the ideas in the Republican tax proposal unveiled Thursday have found bipartisan support in the past and endorsements from economists who see a way to improve the U.S. economy. That includes plans to make the corporate rate more competitive, simplify personal taxes, curb several tax breaks of dubious value and provide more assistance to working families.

The controversy is over who will gain the most: the rich and corporations. The GOP bill would cut the corporate rate well below previous attempts, eliminate a tax on inheritance that affects only people with many millions of dollars, and take other actions that do not provide direct benefits to most Americans.

And the proposal represents a significant break with previous tax-rewrite discussions.

Republicans have in the past focused on the importance of not adding to the nation’s debt through tax reform. Democrats have favored overhauling the tax code to raise revenue to pay for needed improvements in America’s infrastructure or to provide services for the middle class and poor.

But in this case, Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation estimated Thursday that the tax plan would be paid for by $1.5 trillion in additional borrowing over the next decade. Much of that reflects tax reductions benefiting the wealthy and companies."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP’s bill is ‘a sensible framework’ — but ‘still a deficit-exploding tax cut’ for the rich and corporations.

UPDATE II:  "Judging from the initial details, Republican tax-plan writers have thrown out the idea that they should simplify the code. They’ve also decided that high-six-figure earners and wealthy heirs deserve a tax break. . .

As one might expect, Trump’s plan takes care of himself and his real estate pals: 'Many companies would face a new limit on their interest deductions, which would be capped at 30% of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, which is a measure of cash flow. Real-estate firms and small businesses would be exempt from that limit.'

In short, this is still a bill that directs enormous benefits to the rich and to corporations and hammers middle-class people in high-cost and high-tax states. The complexity of the proposals undercuts its claim to be “tax simplification” while diminishing some pro-growth aspects. It is a bill in which everyone will find something to hate."

Read the Washington Post, Republicans manage to make the tax code more complicated.

UPDATE:  "In 1986, corporations basically footed the bill for individual tax cuts. It's shaping up to be the reverse this time around."

Read the Washington Post, Who’s really going to pay for Trump’s big tax cut?

Republi-CON so-called tax reform "is, in fact, a gigantic giveaway to corporations and the wealthy . . .

The entire purpose of this exercise is to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations, because it’s a Republican plan and that’s what Republicans do."

Read the Washington Post, Don’t buy the latest spin. The GOP tax plan is still a huge giveaway to the rich., which explains how they are trying to do it.

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

"Forbes magazine says that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross 'lied to us' about his net worth, exaggerating it by billions of dollars to make the widely cited 'Forbes 400' list of richest people in America. Ross was dropped from the list for 2017 after being a presence for 13 years.

In an article Dan Alexander posted Tuesday, Forbes said it discovered a discrepancy after examining Ross’s government financial disclosure forms, on which Ross, a Wall Street investor before President Trump put him in his Cabinet, listed his assets at $700 million.

That’s not even close to qualifying for what the magazine calls “the country’s most exclusive club” in which the richest person, Bill Gates, is worth $89 billion and the poorest a mere $2 billion."

Read the Washington Post, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross ‘lied’ about his wealth to make richest Americans list, says Forbes magazine.

Remember: it's all 'bout the show, 'bout the show, stupid people!!! (Repeat til you get it).

Trump's Great Strength: He Know How to Connect to People, Unfortunately He Uses It to Leverage Racism

Again, I've always thought The Donald had an exceptionally high EQ , too bad he misuses it.

Read the Washington Post, What makes President Trump casually dismiss black pain? White rage., which states in part:

"The white resentment that unmasked itself during the Obama era, sparked by the tea party and Trump’s birther crusade, had been pretty obvious even before the predominantly white media devoted legions of stories to it over the past couple of years in a fit of 'Hillbilly Elegy' curiosity. It seemed apparent to people of color that this was the mysterious malady that caused people to support Trump; the press, in the manner of Christopher Columbus, would eventually discover it, too. Much less energy was devoted to, say, examining black anger about racial injustice and other issues. That’s partly why the president was able to get so many (mostly white) Americans to believe the fiction that kneeling athletes were Betsy Ross blasphemers. Those attitudes give Trump license to make targets of outspoken sports commentators and various members of Congress — especially if they’re women of color, his favorite opponents. The act of not believing black folks or performing confusion about our anger has social currency as well, since it makes it look as though we are all crying wolf. Even when we’re talking about a pregnant military widow, perhaps the most sympathetic character in the entire American story. . .

It is also the latest chapter in America’s long history of mistreating African American military veterans, alive or dead. As Peter C. Baker noted in November in the New Yorker, the Equal Justice Institute in Alabama released a report about lynching shortly after the election that indicated that 'no one was more at risk of experiencing violence and targeted racial terror than black veterans' of America’s wars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Baker wrote that those veterans, returning home from fighting overseas, understandably felt more of an entitlement to equal treatment under the law, and the lynchings were intended to disabuse them of that notion.

Lynching was the most violent form of racial denigration in that era. But racial denigration, that act by which bigots strip any respectability or humanity away from black folks to reinforce their false racial hierarchy, has never gone away. And Trump has such a gift for it that he used it to win the White House. He was elected by a swell of bigotry, and so he serves his masters with aplomb. It may be the only consistent thing he does.

While he didn’t break out a noose for the Johnsons or Wilson, he did sic his dogs on them through his continued insistence that they are lying. Already, an Illinois man is being investigated for a Facebook post threatening to lynch Wilson. Knowing that his base either is racist or willing to vote in a man who would metastasize white supremacy, Trump felt secure putting a black Gold Star family in the crosshairs to escape accountability.

Asked toward the end of the interview Monday whether she had anything to say to the president, Myeshia Johnson said, 'No,' then paused a bit before adding, 'I don’t have nothing to say to him.' You should watch it in its entirety, if for no other reason than to see this moment. Her anger and hurt was palpable throughout the interview, but perhaps none more so than right then. You’ll see a woman who clearly can’t believe that she has to deal with this nonsense.

These are surely the worst days of her life. But rather than talking purely about her husband and any righteous rage she may have over the circumstances of his death, she has to talk about Trump and what he is doing to her. She may even be screaming inside over the fact that this maddening episode will always be a part of La David Johnson’s story. The president could’ve prevented that by trying to act like a human being for the five minutes it took to make that call, but alas.

While we don’t yet understand why La David Johnson was left behind to die, we understand why his family has been treated like trash. A fallen soldier’s family is being forced to make space for the president’s petty grievances in their time of bereavement, all because, even at an unconscious level, America accepts white anger. Even when viewed as wrong, it is at least tolerated more than the fury of black folks. This has been a long con by conservatives, dating back to before the birth of the Southern Strategy after Jim Crow, and it is paying out for them now.

The president knows that white resentment is a perfect fit for his pugnacious politics, so he can continue reflexively picking fights that wiser men ignore. He has cover from his acolytic base, who see the disrespect and hatred they have nurtured for so long exploding into presidential action. What appear to be confounding, unforced errors borne of his inherent cruelty are also chunks of red meat for his base. The satisfaction that Trump derives from feeding them clearly matters more to him than the outrage of a black war widow. If that’s disturbing, consider that it makes some political sense for him to behave like this. Whose fault is that?"

Trump's Big CON: He is Unfit to Be President, And Republi-CONs Know It, CONt. Part 2

UPDATE:  "There is no president in modern memory who has repeatedly and directly called on the Justice Department to investigate a political opponent in such a manner. A politician, one could imagine, upon new and actual evidence of wrongdoing, might say something like, “The appropriate authorities should look into this.” That’s not what Trump is doing here. He is both assuming guilt and applying pressure to go after an opponent based on scurrilous propaganda that he and his followers have generated. This is the conduct of a Third World dictator, and by any stretch of the imagination, an abuse of presidential power.

Trump’s latest call — following “lock her up” chants at rallies that continued after his election — is not an isolated event, but, as noted before, part of an ongoing pattern of trying to lean on the Justice Department either to pursue or not to pursue criminal proceedings against specific individuals. This certainly clears the bar of abuse of power established in the impeachment of Richard Nixon (who “merely” countenanced using the CIA to shut down the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate break-in) and goes well beyond the discrete action of Bill Clinton in lying under oath in the Paula Jones matter and to the grand jury. Trump’s conduct is pervasive, and if allowed to go unpunished will permanently distort our constitutional system. We simply cannot tolerate presidential meddling in our criminal-justice system to protect friends and persecute enemies. . .

Republican leadership, however, has entirely abandoned its constitutional obligations and makes no effort to halt such conduct. The leaders are not acting in good faith to uphold their oaths of office — namely to defend the Constitution."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s latest impeachable actions.

"Trump chooses to ignore this and other evidence that led our intelligence community to conclude Russia had meddled in the election. In refusing to address the issue because his own ego is at stake (and the country’s perception of his legitimacy), he thereby puts out the welcome mat for further efforts to meddle in our democracy. He cannot bring himself to recognize what Russia did for him, so he cannot take seriously his obligation to defend against future Russian attacks on our democracy.

Failing to vet high-ranking officials and disinclination to act to defend America’s electoral democracy are not illegal. Nor is it illegal to deride the First Amendment, equate neo-Nazis with protesters, lie hundreds if not thousands of times or berate one’s attorney general for recusing himself as required by law. It’s not illegal to refuse to master policy basics. Nevertheless, when we consider all that, plus his firing of FBI director James B. Comey, his alleged effort to interfere with the Flynn investigation, his alleged attempt to chase the Justice Department off the prosecution of Joe Arpaio, his lying about the existence of tapes of Comey, his self-enrichment and his conflicts of interest (including receipt of foreign emoluments), the stark portrait emerges of someone unwilling or unable to act in the interests and defense of the Constitution. Whenever the choice is between his own self-interest and the country, the former prevails. The president lacks the ability to sublimate his own interests, and thereby is unable to uphold the oath that requires he put the country first.

When and if Congress ever gets around to considering impeachment, all of this is relevant to the political consideration of 'high crimes and misdemeanors.' And even if all that does not warrant Trump’s removal, it must require much greater congressional oversight (e.g. mandatory disclosure of his tax returns, ending nepotism, required liquidation of his businesses). To the extent that Republicans aren’t willing to do even that, they make the case for voting the whole lot of them out of office."

Read the Washington Post, While Mueller probe plays out, Republicans shouldn’t forget Trump is unfit.

Trump's Big CON: He Is Our Savior (NOT), ISIS Edition (The 'I Want The Credit, Don't Blame Me' President, CONt Part 3)

"A president taking credit for a successful outcome started by his predecessor is a time-honored tradition. . . .

That still does not make it right. Trump exacerbates the braggadocio by specifically saying he has done “by far” more than Obama, even though he inherited a structure and plan developed by Obama. Experts credit Trump with some tactical shifts that may have stepped up the tempo — though the number of civilian deaths has soared as a result. But in reality, according to several metrics, more was done under Obama.

Trump earns Three Pinocchios."

 Read the Washington Post, Trump’s claim that he’s done more ‘by far’ than Obama in the fight against ISIS.

Trump's Big CON: It's All About the Show, Federal Reserve Chairman Edition

"President Trump delights in making spectacles out of personnel decisions. He conducted cabinet interviews at his New Jersey golf club, inviting members to gather and gawk. He summoned both finalists for a Supreme Court seat to the White House on the day of the announcement. And now he is conducting the most dramatic and drawn-out search for a Federal Reserve chairman in the long history of the stolid institution.

Mr. Trump is very publicly deliberating between two candidates with strikingly different views about the practice and purpose of monetary policy . .

The choice of a Fed chairman is always a high-stakes political decision, but Mr. Trump’s predecessors uniformly sought to minimize the attendant drama. Past presidents have rarely acknowledged the existence of multiple candidates and, since World War II, every chairman who completed a first term was nominated for a second term.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, announced in July that he was considering candidates to replace Ms. Yellen. . .

On Tuesday, he conducted an informal poll of Senate Republicans, asking them to raise a hand for [for one of two candidates]. Some refused."

Read The New York Times, Trump’s Latest Show: Choosing a Fed Chairman.

Trump's Big CON: The 'I Want The Credit, Don't Blame Me' President, CONt Part 2

Obama, Congress, the courts, Puerto Rico, McCain, McConnell and Ryan, Republicans, and Obama – it’s always someone else's fault.

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s hypocritical quote on taking blame just about says it all.

Trump's Big CON: His $700 Billion Tax Cut for Foreigners

"Now, it may sound extreme to say that Trump and his allies want to take away health care from millions largely so that they can give wealthy foreigners a $700 billion gift. But however it may sound, it’s also the literal truth."

Read The New York Times, Trump’s $700 Billion Gift to Wealthy Foreigners.

Trump's Big CON: The Donald is a Russian Agent, CONt. Part 4 (Why Are He, "His" Party, and "His" Propaganda News Friends So Worried?)

UPDATE X:  Trump is really worried about and afraid of the Russian investigation, and he and his supporters are working vigorously to stop it or at the very least discredit it.

Why?

Because Putin has the kompromat to control Trump, and Trump knows it since he knows his own compromising financial and personal information.

Read the Washington Post, In new interview, Trump openly rages at checks on his authoritarianism, which show how much Trump wishes he were a dictator, free to lock up critics and opponents.

Read also the Washington Post, Why is Trump so obsessed with Russia? We’re finally going to find out.

My guess, it is worse than compromising financial information, those salacious stories in the ‘Steele Dossier’ might even be true!

UPDATE IX: ANOTHER MUST READ, the Washington Post, To what circle of hell are Republicans about to consign themselves?, which states in substantial part:

"At our political costume ball, it is definitely ’90s nostalgia night. A president obsessed with attacking all things Clinton stands accused of serial sexual harassment, sends out underlings to dismiss the accusers as liars, condemns a federal investigation as a politically motivated fraud and is attempting to destroy the reputation of the leader of that investigation. Hillary Clinton may be President Trump’s continuing target, but the Clinton years are clearly his inspiration.

It worked the first time around. In President Bill Clinton’s case, the Democratic Party almost uniformly honored tribal loyalties above legal or moral principle. Even the feminist left generally fell into line for partisan reasons. 'American women,' said columnist Nina Burleigh, 'should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.' What is a little sexual misconduct and obstruction of justice among friends when legal abortion is at stake?

Now Trump appeals to the same type of team solidarity, this time on the right. “The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics,” tweeted Trump, “but the R’s are now fighting back like never before.” Note how a federal investigation of Russian influence on American democracy has become “the Dems.” Note also that it is not the president and his lawyers fighting this investigation but the “R’s.” Trump is conditioning Republicans and conservatives to view his upcoming legal defense entirely through the lens of partisanship. With the broad cooperation of conservative media, there is every reason to think he might succeed.

Trump’s ultimate objective in all this matters greatly. If he wants to recruit Republicans into a defense of the shady political and business dealings of Paul Manafort and the rest of the president’s political circle — now exposed by federal indictment — it will be discrediting and humiliating. A party that rallies to the defense of corruption will eventually be seen as a swamp in need of clearing.

As the indictments begin to come down, Republicans need to ponder what legal and ethical lines, if any, they are willing to draw. Continuing the attacks on Hillary Clinton’s own dishonest dealings is all fun and games (except to Clinton, I suppose). Joining the defense of slimy political figures such as Manafort makes one, ceteris paribus, into a slimy political figure. Obscuring or excusing Russian influence on the American political process is a dangerous disservice to the country. Supporting Trump in a power play against the special prosecutor and his investigation would be an attack on the stability and legitimacy of the Republic — a source of infamy in American history. . .

It is worth making clear that every conservative media voice — including, recently, the editorial voice of the Wall Street Journal — that attacks the objectivity and legitimacy of Mueller is giving Trump cover and encouragement to move against him. They are dropping lit matches in the dry tinder of American politics. And they would be responsible, in part, for the resulting wildfire.

Do Republicans and conservatives really want to be remembered as a bodyguard of enablers for this man? For this cause? Few enter the fray of political ideas, or make the considerable sacrifices of entering public life, to defend corruption and the abuse of power. That is now the calling of the Republican partisan, and the downward path of dishonor."

So, 'what legal and ethical lines, if any, the Republi-CONs are willing to draw'?

Think back to Watergate.

UPDATE VIII:  "Look at the whole story and tell me this isn't suspicious. . .

The Trump campaign was filled with operatives connected in shady ways to the Russian government. It included individuals who knew that the Russians had obtained Clinton-related emails and who lied about that knowledge to federal investigators. Top campaign officials (and Trump family members) dropped everything to meet with Russian operatives when they believed there was useful opposition research on offer. Trump publicly asked Russia to hack into Clinton’s computers to find and release her missing emails.

We also know the Russians really did hack into John Podesta’s and the DNC’s email accounts and found and released emails that damaged Clinton. They really did conduct social media operations designed help Trump. Both their targets and their timing were extremely sophisticated for a foreign government that has traditionally shown itself to have a poor understanding of American politics. After winning the White House, Trump attacked the CIA and fired the director of the FBI in an effort to discredit or end their investigations into Russia’s role in the election.

At this point, it would be a truly remarkable coincidence if two entities that had so many ties to each other, that had so much information about what the other was doing, and that were working so hard toward the same goal never found a way to coordinate."

Read Vox, It sure looks like there was collusion between the Trump operation and Russia.

UPDATE VII:  And The Donald and his Propaganda News, AKA Hedgehog News, are really, really worried.

Read the Washington Post, The Fox News-cum-Murdoch effect: Mueller must resign! Or be fired!

UPDATE VI: Of course, given The Donald's intense desire to win at all cost, it is possible that he and/or those very, very, very close to him knowingly and actively colluded with Putin to win the election.

Read the Washington Post, How bad will Mueller probe get for Trump? The Papadopoulos plea may be a big tell., which notes:

"While the biggest news of the day is the indictments Robert S. Mueller III has handed down against former Trump aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, today he also released a plea bargain with a heretofore minor figure in the Russia scandal by the name of George Papadopoulos. And that could actually be the day’s biggest news. . .

Who does Papadopoulos have information on? We don’t know. The plea document mentions his discussions (his efforts to set up a meeting with the Russians) with people who are referred to as 'Senior Policy Adviser,' 'Campaign Supervisor,' and 'High-Ranking Campaign Official,' but we don’t know who those are. Then there’s this:

    On or about May 4, 2016, the Russian MFA Connection sent an email (the 'May 4 MFA Email') to defendant PAPADOPOULOS and the Professor that stated: 'I have just talked to my colleagues from the MFA. The[y] are open for cooperation. One of the options is to make a meeting for you at the North America Desk, if you are in Moscow.' Defendant PAPADOPOULOS responded that he was '[g]lad the MFA is interested.' Defendant PAPADOPOULOS forwarded the May 4 MFA Email to the High-Ranking Campaign Official, adding: 'What do you think? Is this something we want to move forward with?' The next day, on or about May 5, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS had a phone call with the Campaign Supervisor, and then forwarded the May 4 MFA Email to him, adding to the top of the email: 'Russia updates.'

This exchange happened not long before Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner had their infamous meeting with representatives of the Russian government who purportedly had damaging information on Clinton to offer. Given that context, it seems rather unlikely that Papadopoulos would not have mentioned the possibility that the Russians had of 'dirt' on Clinton contained in 'thousands of emails.' But we don’t yet know for sure.

What we do know is that the prosecutors believe that Papadopoulos’ information will be valuable to them in building a case against others. Manafort, on the other hand, is not cooperating — at least not yet. . .

If Manfort is going to flip, there are only so many people he could flip on who are closer to the center of whatever happened than he was. That could include Jared Kushner, perhaps Donald Trump Jr., and of course President Trump himself.

But right now, Papadopoulos is the one who is providing Mueller an entry into the heart of the Trump campaign and its relationship to Russia. Which is why McQuade says, 'That one, because of its relevance to that larger question, strikes me as maybe the more important development today.' And this is just getting started."

One hint that this is possible -- The Donald doth protest too much, methinks.

UPDATE V:  As I said early on, The Donald is a Russian agent, perhaps he was originally 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.

Those salacious stories in the ‘Steele Dossier’ might even be true!

"Like a poker player whose flagrant tell gives him away, President Donald Trump telegraphed a twitchy bit of direction to Trump Tower scandal-watchers this week. Or was it indirection? After the founder of the oppo-research company Fusion GPS that commissioned the infamous Steele Dossier told the House Intelligence Committee he would take the Fifth Amendment if subpoenaed to testify, Trump responded with a brain-bender of a tweet that thrust the dossier to the center of the stage again.

'Workers of firm involved with the discredited and Fake Dossier take the 5th. Who paid for it, Russia, the FBI or the Dems (or all)?' Trump's tweet said.

Like many Trump tweets, it proved more difficult to untangle than a mound of last night's dried out spaghetti. Why was Trump screaming about the dossier now? Does he sense that investigators are closing in on him and he needs to divert them? BuzzFeed published the 35-page smutty and salacious document, which purports that the Russians had compromised Trump personally and financially, more than nine months ago. Was it because the dossier had floated back into the news because Fusion GPS's Glenn Simpson had refused to testify and Trump's a reflexive beast? Or because he worries that the investigations may be used to unlock his secrets? Or is it just a new tactic in his campaign to undercut its origin?

Trump may claim that the contents of the dossier have been discredited, but as Reuters' Mark Hosenball wrote last week, elements of the dossier may have been denied but none of it has been disproved. Trump reliably affixes the "fake" label to every utterance he dislikes or finds threatening, and the dossier abounds with potentially damaging assertions like, 'Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years.' By jumping up and down with the fury of a Yosemite Sam, is Trump really confirming the accuracy and potency of the dossier?"

Read Politico, Trump Singes Fingers Trying to Torch Dossier.

UPDATE IV:  In the investigation of  "Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential campaign . . . three facts are both important and undisputed . . .

Trump’s family and the top echelons of the campaign hoped that a meeting with well-connected Russians would yield dirt on Clinton. The Trump White House dissembled on the purpose of this meeting. And Trump admitted that the primary reason he fired the FBI director was because of the Russia investigation.

These are the facts of the case, and they are not in dispute."

Read the Washington Post, These are the facts of the Russia investigation, and they are not in dispute.

I would add, Putin didn't want Clinton as president, he wanted The Donald.

UPDATE III:  "President Trump and his surrogates — most especially the Fox News lineup (which includes a fleet of conservative pundits who disgrace themselves by facilitating a political distraction game for Trump), obsequious Republicans in Congress, old allies such as Roger Stone (who wound up getting banned by Twitter) and the talk radio crowd — have been frantically fanning Hillary Clinton non-scandals about Uranium One (it was baseless before and baseless now) and the dossier’s funder. (Fusion GPS initially was hired by the conservative Free Beacon, which at one time claimed not to know the identity of the Republican outfit that first hired Fusion.) The unhinged rants from Trump’s defenders demanding Clinton be locked up for one or both of these reveal how tightly Trump and the right-wing ecosystem that supports him rely on Clinton as an all-purpose distraction.

Upon a moment’s reflection, the non-scandals make no sense (Clinton was colluding with Russia to beat herself in the election?), have been debunked before and in no way affect the liability, if any, of current or ex-Trump administration figures. This is “whataboutism” run amok. It does expose the degree to which Fox News has given up the pretense of a real news organization, preferring the role of state propagandist. (And it’s not just the evening hosts; the non-scandals now monopolize the rest of the schedule.)

The intensity of Trump’s frenzy underscores the peril in which the president now finds himself. Beyond the indictments unsealed this morning, Trump does not know what special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has uncovered; which witnesses are flippable; what financial documents have revealed about the Trump business empire; and whether, for example, Mueller finds support for an obstruction of justice charge from Trump’s own public dissembling (e.g., hinting at non-existent tapes of former FBI director James B. Comey). For someone who insists on holding all the cards and intimidating others, Trump finds himself in a uniquely powerless position."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s meltdown in anticipation of indictments is telling.

UPDATE II: What is The Donald hiding?

We may soon find out.

Read the Washington Post, Indictments signal the beginning of Mueller’s work, not the end. 

UPDATE: The RepubliCONs are engaged in a "careful, coordinated, and comprehensive strategy" hoping you ignore and forget the "Russian interference in the 2016 election, which it is more than clear was 1) comprehensive, involving hacking, propaganda, and outreach to Trump representatives; and 2) clearly intended to help Donald Trump win the election, or at the very least wound Hillary Clinton should she become president. . .

It has three essential components. The first is the cranking up of the conservative calliope: all of the right’s information sources, from Fox News to conservative talk radio to web sites like Breitbart and Drudge, immediately begin shouting about the same story and repeating the same line. Then to keep it going and force mainstream media to cover it, they create an official 'investigation' that will provide a steady stream of tantalizing leaks and events that can become the occasion of news coverage, even if it all ends up proving nothing. Then the whole narrative gets validated by top-level Republicans whose words are news in and of themselves.

All of these components are now in motion. Fox and the other outlets are doing hour after hour of discussion about what they are calling the 'Russia dossier,' an opposition research document prepared for Democrats that gathered together facts and rumors about Trump’s dealings in Russia (I explained why their line on this document is so bogus here). Now that story is being joined to absurd charges about the sale of a uranium mining company, with all kinds of dark allegations of corruption."

Read the Washington Post, The GOP strategy on the Russia scandal: ‘No puppet. You’re the puppet.’
"There may be no talent the Republican Party and the conservative movement have that is more astounding than the way they are able to take a ludicrous idea with zero relationship to actual facts, light a fuse on it, and turn it into an explosive firework of spin that manages to confuse everyone who tries to look at the issue that started the whole controversy. . .

The most Clinton did was hire an opposition researcher who interviewed sources he knew in Russia to see if her opponent had engaged in any questionable activities there. We don’t even know if she (or anyone else on her staff) even read Steele’s report, since he was a few steps removed from the campaign. Nothing about that even remotely resembles 'collusion with Russia.'" [Emphasis added.]

Read the Washington Post, GOP spin about the new ‘Steele Dossier’ story is disingenuous nonsense.

Trump's Big CON: He Can't Close the Deal, CONt.

UPDATE:  "If there's one thing both parties in Congress can agree on, it's this: President Trump, who bills himself as the ultimate dealmaker, is not a very trustworthy one.

That's an unpleasant reality for Republicans as they begin a make-or-break effort to try to rewrite the tax code. They have no margin for error, procedurally or politically, and they need a president who can help persuade reluctant lawmakers to get on board.

Instead, they have a president they don't trust to stick to his word. Trump's actions lately have solidified that. . .

When Congress failed on health care, Trump blamed Congress. If Congress can't pass a tax bill, Trump probably will blame Congress. But that defies reality, Congress argues. Congress takes big steps only with a push from outside. . .

History tells us presidents without a working relationship with Congress don't get a lot done: No modern president who has struggled in the first 100 days of a presidency has suddenly revved up in the next 100 days, or in the next couple of years, says Robert David Johnson, a presidential historian at Brooklyn College. Presidents can't execute their agenda on their own.

As I wrote at Trump's 100-day mark: Every day it gets more difficult to work with Congress. Every day is a day closer to the 2018 midterm elections, when vulnerable Republicans may not want to be seen compromising with an unpopular president.

If the president has proved anything, it's that he has no allegiance to any deal he makes. That makes members of Congress's lives miserable, but it also threatens to derail Trump's agenda."

Read the Washington Post, The art of the unreliable deal: Trump’s bad-faith negotiating could undermine the GOP’s agenda, and his own.

"President Trump campaigned as one of the world’s greatest dealmakers, but after nine months of struggling to broker agreements, lawmakers in both parties increasingly consider him an untrustworthy, chronically inconsistent and easily distracted negotiator .

As Trump prepares to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday to unify his party ahead of a high-stakes season of votes on tax cuts and budget measures, some Republicans are openly questioning his negotiating abilities and devising strategies to keep him from changing his mind.

The president’s propensity to create diversions and follow tangents has kept him from focusing on his legislative agenda and forced lawmakers who might be natural allies on key policies into the uncomfortable position of having to answer for his behavior and outbursts. . .

If the absence of any signature legislation is an indication, the dealmaking skills that propelled Trump’s career in real estate and reality television have not translated well to government.

Tony Schwartz, a longtime student and now critic of Trump who co-wrote the mogul’s 1987 bestseller 'The Art of the Deal,' said Trump’s dealmaking modus operandi is, 'I am relentless and I am not burdened by the concern that what I’m doing is ethical or truthful or fair.'

'The expectation that you will stand by what you said you would do is higher in politics than it is in the cutthroat world of real estate,' Schwartz added. 'That’s a brutal environment in which misdirection and bullying and making one offer and changing it later are all common practice.' . .

Schwartz said playing to Trump’s ego, as [Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.)] has with his golf compliments, is an effective way to manage him. His advice to those seeking to make deals with Trump: Find the most persuasive way to portray one’s agenda as a personal victory for the president, and be the last person to talk to him.

'Trump is motivated by the same concern in all situations, which is to dominate and to be perceived as having won,' Schwartz said. 'That supersedes everything, including ideology.'"

Read the Washington Post, The great dealmaker? Lawmakers find Trump to be an untrustworthy negotiator.

The Donald can't close a deal because being a bully is not very smart.

Trump's Big CON: He is the Jealous President

UPDATE:  "President Trump hasn't been able to repeal Obamacare, so he might be trying to destroy it instead. He can't seem to decide.

This would be even more spiteful than it sounds. That's because, in the short run, Trump's latest move would actually make the government spend more money to cover fewer people, not to mention everyone else he's done to sabotage individual insurance markets. The point of it all, as Trump can't help but explain 140 characters at a time like some attention-deficit Bond villain, is to force the Democrats to “call me to fix” the health-care system — and, as part of the deal, to get them to pay for the border wall that Mexico won't cover.

Yes, that really might be the plan. Trump is telling us that he's shooting the hostages he's taken — the health-care system — and hoping that people will blame Democrats for it.

Now, the Trump administration is actually taking a three-pronged approach to undermining Obamacare. The first is drastically cutting back on the government's outreach efforts. . .

The second is letting people once again buy bare-bones coverage that doesn't meet Obamacare's minimum standards. The problem with that is that only healthy people would buy those plans, which would eventually mean that those would be the only plans healthy people would buy. Why is that? Well, there would be what's known as a death spiral . . .

The third is pulling the plug on Obamacare's cost-sharing reduction payments, or CSRs."

Read the Washington Post, Trump can’t decide if he wants to sabotage Obamacare.

As noted before, "Legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn once said, 'Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.' Simply put, Trump is about as far from being a good carpenter as one can be in the world of politics."

The Donald is not very intelligent, he has no "ideological principles . . . [or] consistent beliefs", and  "is pushed in different directions by competing impulses, any one of which may dominate at a particular moment. It has become clear that there may be no desire that governs his actions more than his need to destroy and discredit everything Barack Obama did. We can debate why this is; my view is that Trump, who is obviously a deeply insecure man, looks at Obama and sees someone who is his superior in almost every way — smarter, more competent, more admired and respected — and is enraged by the inevitable comparisons. But the fact that Trump is driven to undo anything with Obama’s name on it is undeniable.

That goes a long way toward explaining why Trump is so eager to destroy the individual insurance market, at the cost of enormous anxiety and suffering among the public, when his advisers have surely explained to him that he will be held responsible for whatever happens to American health care on his watch. No matter how much it costs him politically, he wants to be able to say that Obamacare is dead, he killed it, and it was a terrible thing in the first place.

However, at the same time Trump is desperate to show that he can make a deal. The failure of the GOP effort to repeal the ACA plainly weighs on him. Despite his belief that he is the greatest dealmaker in human history, you may have noticed that he has negotiated precisely zero deals of any magnitude since becoming president. The Republican Congress has passed no major legislation this year. Trump’s increasingly desperate and comical insistence that he is piling up an awe-inspiring record of accomplishment — 'in nine months, we have done more, they say, than any president in history,' he said today — only highlights his eagerness to have something he can say he actually got done."

Read the Washington Post, Does Trump want to destroy our health-care system? He can’t seem to decide.

Trump's Big CON: He Won't Be Draining the Swamp, Quite the CONtrary (CONt., Part 5)

Two employees and a $300 million no-bid contract, it helps to have friends in Washington.

Read the Washington Post, Small Montana firm lands Puerto Rico’s biggest contract to get the power back on, which notes:

"Whitefish Energy is based in Whitefish, Mont., the home town of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. . .

The scale of the disaster in Puerto Rico is far larger than anything Whitefish has handled. The company has won two contracts from the Energy Department, including $172,000 to replace a metal pole structure and splice in three miles of new conductor and overhead ground wire in Arizona.

Shortly before Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, Whitefish landed its largest federal contract, a $1.3 million deal to replace and upgrade parts of a 4.8-mile transmission line in Arizona. The company — which was listed in procurement documents as having annual revenue of $1 million — was given 11 months to complete the work, records show.

Puerto Rico has 2,400 miles of transmission lines across the island, and 30,000 miles of distribution lines with 300 substations. Jeff Hawk, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ power restoration task force, estimated that 80 percent of the grid has been damaged. A month after the storm, about 80 percent of customers remain without power. . .

Under the contract, the hourly rate was set at $330 for a site supervisor, and at $227.88 for a 'journeyman lineman.' The cost for subcontractors, which make up the bulk of Whitefish’s workforce, is $462 per hour for a supervisor and $319.04 for a lineman. Whitefish also charges nightly accommodation fees of $332 per worker and almost $80 per day for food."

Trump's Big CON: Don't Think He Understands or Even Cares About His Supporters Problems

UPDATE:  This story embodies everything people hate about Washington. It:

Explains the “revolving door” between the industry and those who regulate and legislate it,

Shows the “clear money trail” between the industry and the lawmakers, and

Reveals that Congress glossed over the controversial legislation, never debating it by using a procedural tool to pass it without opposition.

All for a "crisis that left a death toll three times greater than the total U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam War."

Read the Washington Post, Why this investigation into Congress’s ties to the drug industry has Washington’s attention.

One of the issues that The Donald "leveraged" to win the election is the growing and deadly opioid addition crisis.

The Donald then nominated Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) his drug czar.

Now "an investigation by The Washington Post and '60 Minutes' [has] detailed [Marino's] years-long efforts to pass a law that critics say allowed the drug industry to profit off people addicted to opioids. . .

This is the second time in a month that a journalism investigation has cost a Trump administration official his job (or, in Marino's case, his almost-job). Tom Price resigned as health and human services secretary in late September following revelations of an extensive and expensive charter flight habit first reported by Politico. . .

The backstory: In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon to keep prescription narcotics from going straight from major drug companies to the nation's streets. . .

Marino's role in all this: It's hard to overstate. According to the investigation:

Marino wrote the pro-drug industry law that ultimately passed. He spent years pushing versions of it through Congress. . . 

Marino has clear ties to the drug industry. He received nearly $100,000 in campaign contributions from political action committees supporting the industry. . .

Marino asked for (and got) an investigation of a DEA investigator standing in his way. . .

He didn't cooperate with the reporters working on the investigation. . ."

Read the Washington Post, A cheat sheet to the investigation that cost Rep. Tom Marino the nomination to be drug czar.

Trump's Big CON: Teenager or a Toddler?

"Since late April, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has documented more than 135 examples of Trump’s political allies and staffers either describing or treating the president of the United States like a toddler. So, full disclosure, I think the Trump-as-toddler analogy has pretty strong resonance.

On the other hand, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts respects Masha Gessen, a staff writer at the New Yorker. Last week she wrote a column titled 'Trump Doesn’t Govern Like a Toddler. He Governs Like a Teenager.'"

Read the Washington Post, Is Donald Trump more like a teenager or a toddler?

"Let the most important political debate of 2017 begin."

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

Ever notice how the Trump show is like World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., with an "endlessly evolving band of enemies" (known as heels) for The Good Donald to fight?  

It no coincidence.

Read the Washington Post, For each scene of his presidency, Trump casts a villain (or two, or three …), which states:

"Hillary Clinton is not running for president again in 2020 — she has said so, her aides know it, and there is no political rationale that would argue otherwise. But for President Trump, facts like those simply miss the point.

'I was recently asked if Crooked Hillary Clinton is going to run in 2020?' Trump declared in a tweet Monday morning. 'My answer was, ‘I hope so!’?'

Just like that, Trump had accomplished his morning task, conjuring and then belittling a political villain with little more than taps on a phone. Using a bit of deadpan humor and his unconventional grammar, Trump’s tweet formed the next turn in his us-against-them story line, which employs an endlessly evolving band of enemies to anchor his presidency.

By the afternoon, his tweet had become a topic in an impromptu Rose Garden news conference, where he was able to repeat the performance in person. 'Hillary, please run again,' he called out in a mocking tone.

Most days bring another round, often at dawn, like plot points in a 24-7 miniseries. In just the past few weeks, Trump has started, without any clear provocation, fights with football players who kneel during the national anthem, departments stores that declare 'happy holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas,' and late-night television hosts for their 'unfunny and repetitive material.'

Then there are the individual targets: Clinton, of course, but also 'Liddle' Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, North Korea’s 'Little Rocket Man' Kim Jong Un, ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), and a shifting array of reporters, newspapers and networks he labels as the 'fake news.'

Although the targets often appear tangential, if not contradictory, to his governing priorities, both the president and his senior aides see them as central to his political strategy. In each instance, the combat allows Trump to underline for his core supporters the populist promise of his election: to challenge the power of political elites and those who have unfairly benefited from their “politically correct” vision.

It’s a tactic he has employed for years — defining himself against a negative space, as a tough truth teller who opposes others. In 1990, he condemned his New York real estate rival, Leona Helmsley, as a “truly evil human being,” and decades later he spent years nursing a viciously personal feud with Rosie O’Donnell, a daytime television host, largely through social media. His rise to politics was built upon sometimes shocking denunciations and insults.

Without a fresh foe to rail against in real time, his political aides have observed, Trump can struggle, uncertain of his next move and unable to frame the political debate.

“The low points, if there are any, are often when his opponent is not clearly defined,” said one senior White House official, who insisted on anonymity to speak freely about the president. The official described the days after the first failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act in March and the weeks near the general election in 2016 as particularly trying times, since Trump was unable for days to clearly define his enemy.

But when the president is on track — he calls Twitter “my voice”-- he can script his presidency like a professional wrestling match, where the heel, or bad guy, is the one who makes the face, or good guy, shine in the ring."

As Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway says with a smile in the article: "'I’m always amazed how easily baited some people are.'" 

Trump's Big CON: He is a Jackass, The Farmers Edition

"Rick Hammond said he wasn’t worried. In more than 30 years of working his wife’s fifth-generation farm in York County, Neb., and steadily acquiring more acres to leave to their kids, he had seen it all: the high inflation and rapid land devaluation of 1980s, the consolidation of farms that followed those bankruptcies, the steady depopulation of rural populations ever since. But he wasn’t worried about a repeat of history. Despite falling grain prices, stalled land values and mounting farm debt, his family was more than equipped to weather a bad year. 'Now, if we see sub-four-dollar corn for two more years,' Hammond continued, 'yeah, you’ll see some people going broke.'

That was the fall of 2014. Today, corn prices remain perilously low. At just $3.50 per bushel, it now costs more to grow corn than a farmer can sell it for. Soybeans, which surged in planted acres when corn prices went into free fall, are only marginally better. Now below $10 per bushel, beans are trading at less than two-thirds of their price of just a few years ago. To get through these lean times, farmers have been taking out more and more loans. U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics indicate that while farm income has been cut nearly in half in the past four years, farm debt has increased by more than a quarter — with projections that it could surpass $390 billion in 2017, the highest level since the farm crisis in the 1980s.

And yet, President Trump — whom many farmers voted for specifically because of plunging income — may be about to make things far worse.

With those unsustainable debts and dwindling profit margins in mind, more than 75 percent of rural voters in the Farm Belt cast their ballots for Trump in the last presidential election. They cheered Trump’s promise to support the Renewable Fuel Standard (which props up the ethanol industry), his pledge to eliminate estate taxes on inherited farmland and roll back regulations on farm runoff, and, most of all, they liked his tough talk on trade policy. Roughly one-third of their combined corn and soybean harvest is shipped overseas, so farmers said they were heartened by Trump’s reputation as a hard-nosed negotiator, a businessman renowned for his skill at the art of the deal, who could strong-arm trading partners into paying higher prices for American commodity grains. Instead, Trump is threatening to withdraw entirely from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — a move that farm lobbying organizations, market analysts and trade experts universally agree would be disastrous for farmers."

Read the Washington Post, Farmers voted heavily for Trump. But his trade policies are terrible for them.

Trump's Big CON: Trump Has No Principles, CONt Part 3

"President Trump's most faithful supporters like to believe he's always a step ahead of the media and the political establishment — that he's playing three-dimensional chess while we're stuck on checkers. Where we see utter discord, they see carefully orchestrated chaos.

This week should disabuse absolutely everybody of that notion.

On two issues — health care and calling the families of dead service members — the White House has shown itself to be clearly unmoored, careening back and forth based upon the unhelpful and impulsive comments and tweets of its captain.

On the more substantial issue of health care, Trump apparently told Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) to craft a deal to replace the Affordable Care Act subsidies for insurers covering low-income Americans. Trump then canceled the subsidies and explained that the money was only making insurers rich (it's not). Then he suggested he would support Alexander's deal. Then he apparently realized that those two things were completely inconsistent, and he backed off his support for the deal, leaving Alexander holding the bag and apparently (understandably) puzzled. . . 

On Gold Star families, Trump . .

    Brought this issue up of his own accord even when he hadn't called some of the very few (relative to his predecessors) new Gold Star families he's seen lose loved ones on his watch. While more than 2,500 service members were killed in action during Obama's tenure, only 20 have died in Trump's first nine months.

    Claimed “proof” that his own White House admits he doesn't have.

    Rehashed the death of his own chief of staff's son, suggesting Obama didn't call John F. Kelly when his son was killed in Afghanistan in 2010. Kelly hasn't commented.

    Put the White House in the position of disputing the accounts of Gold Star families.

If you think any of these things were planned, you are kidding yourself. . .

There is no game plan on any of this; it's Trump simply floating from one controversy to the next and making things worse by flying off the handle and saying untrue things. Trump's controversies are usually at least within the realm of plausible deniability; these examples just seem totally careless and haphazard."

Read the Washington Post, The Trump White House’s utterly unmoored week.

What do you expect from The President Without Principles.