Category: Winning

Trump reportedly wanted nearly 10 times more nuclear weapons

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President Donald Trump wanted to increase the U.S. nuclear arsenal by nearly 10 times, NBC News reported Wednesday.

The president brought up his desire for a buildup during a meeting with top national security advisors in July, according to the report, which cited three officials at the gathering. Advisors told Trump about treaties that would be endangered and other hurdles preventing such a move. There is no planned expansion of nuclear weapons, NBC reported.

After the meeting ended, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was heard calling Trump a “moron.” That comment reportedly sparked more tensions between Tillerson and Trump following an NBC News report last week. Tillerson denied the piece of the report that said he was close to resigning this summer, but did not refute calling the president a “moron.”

The report on the July meeting comes as the U.S. pushes for the denuclearization of North Korea.

Trump has made public statements before about boosting the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In December, he tweeted that the “United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

The White House and Pentagon could not immediately be reached for comment.

In a Wednesday morning tweet, the president claimed “fake” NBC “made up” the story. He called it “pure fiction, made up to demean.”

In a second tweet, he suggested that the NBC coverage is “bad” for the country. He asked: “At what point is it appropriate to challenge their License?”

Trump is apparently referencing the licenses granted to individual television stations by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC does not license news originations or television networks.
NBC Universal, through its television stations division, owns 28 NBC and Telemundo local television stations.

The licensing of television stations dates back to the early days of radio, when the government set regulations based on the idea that the spectrum belonged to the public. Radio and television stations are required to renew their licenses periodically, and those licenses can be revoked if the station’s owner violates FCC regulations or other laws.

But as recently as December, the commission made clear that individual broadcasters have “broad discretion” in what they choose to air.

“The Commission will not take adverse action on a license renewal application based upon the subjective determination of a listener or group of listeners that the station has broadcast purportedly inappropriate programming,” the FCC commissioners wrote in a recent decision challenging a local radio station license.

[CNBC]

Trump: I want to focus on North Korea not ‘fixing somebody’s back’

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President Trump praised health care block grants on Saturday, saying they allow the states to focus on health care, but said he would rather focus his energy on tensions with North Korea than “fixing somebody’s back or their knee.”

“You know in theory, I want to focus on North Korea, I want to focus on Iran, I want to focus on other things. I don’t want to focus on fixing somebody’s back or their knee or something. Let the states do that,” the president told Mike Huckabee on the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s “Huckabee.”

“The block grant concept is a very good concept, and if you have good management, good governors, good politicians in the state, it’ll be phenomenal,” he continued.
“I could almost say we are just about there in terms of the vote, so I expect to be getting health care approved,” he said.

Trump’s comments come after Senate Republicans failed twice this year to fulfill a seven-year campaign promise of repealing and replacing ObamaCare.

The latest repeal and replace failure was the Graham-Cassidy bill, which included block grants to states.

However, the legislation failed after Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Susan Collins (Maine) announced their opposition to the bill last month, effectively killing it.

Trump has expressed frustration in his Republican colleagues in the Senate for their health care failure, so much so that he called Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Friday to discuss the issue.

The move is likely to unsettle Republicans on Capitol Hill who have been working with Trump on tax reform in recent weeks.

[The Hill]

Trump Deleting Tweets After Luther Strange’s Loss Raises Legal Questions

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After the candidate whom President Trump backed in Tuesday’s Alabama Senate primary, Luther Strange, lost to Roy Moore, Trump summarily deleted several tweets he had made in support of Strange. However, they were archived on ProPublica’s Politiwhoops website.

Among them: “Luther Strange has been shooting up in the Alabama polls since my endorsement. Finish the job-vote today for “Big Luther”

And: “ALABAMA, get out and vote for Luther Strange-he has proven to me that he will never let you down!#MAGA”

It’s not clear why Trump (or someone on his behalf) acted to attempt to remove the evidence that he backed Strange. The president had been very vocal in his support for Strange, including holding a rally in Alabama on Sept. 22. And while on the Internet nothing is ever really deleted, Trump’s actions to remove the tweets from his feed have raised some legal questions.

In June, two government watchdog groups, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, brought a lawsuit against the Trump administration in part for deleting other tweets, arguing it was in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

According to the website of the National Archives, which administers the act, it places “the responsibility for the custody and management of incumbent Presidential records with the President.”

At the time the lawsuit was filed, CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said that “by deleting these records, the White House is destroying essential historical records.”

But the Alabama Senate tweets may be another matter. In an email, CREW Communications Director Jordan Libowitz said Trump can delete “purely political tweets,” which he said are not covered by the Presidential Records Act.

However, Libowitz said Trump has been deleting a lot of tweets, and that “particularly as the government has acknowledged @realdonaldtrump tweets to be official statements, deleting those tweets which are not purely political would violate the [Presidential Records Act] if the tweets are not archived.”

Lauren Harper of the nonprofit National Security Archive, which advocates for public access to government information, said Trump is the head of the Republican Party because of his position as president, and so there is not much differentiation between his role as party leader and as president in the instance of deleting his tweets about Strange.

Noting reports that at least six current or former White House officials used private email accounts for government business, Harper says the deletion of the Strange tweets “is part of a larger pattern” of the Trump administration’s not taking record keeping seriously.

Following the email reports, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Tuesday, “All White House personnel have been instructed to use official email to conduct all government-related work.”

Many of the tweets Trump has deleted are to correct typos. The night of the Alabama race, for example, Trump congratulated Moore and initially told him to “WIN in Nov.” A new tweet later corrected that to “in Dec,” when Alabama will hold its general election.

There was also the “covfefe” kerfuffle in May, when Trump tweeted the mysterious nonword, which was retweeted more than 100,000 times before being deleted. In June, Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., introduced the “COVFEFE Act of 2017” to officially make social media part of the Presidential Records Act.

[NPR]

Trump’s Plan to End Qatar-Saudi Arabia Deadlock Fails

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President Trump’s plan to de-escalate the tensions between Saudi Arabia and Qatar ended in failure this week after the two countries released conflicting statements hours after a phone call organized by Trump.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that a phone call late Friday between the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, was meant to find common ground between the two nations. Instead, the two countries attacked each other hours later in the media over which country capitulated and agreed to peace negotiations first.

“The problem is as much about appearing to not capitulate to the other side as it is trying to solve any problems,” Michael Stephens of the Royal United Services Institute told the Times.

“Given the hypersensitivity of both sides to appearing weak,” he added, “it makes the problem considerably harder to solve.”

Trump himself seemed to hint that he was favoring Saudi Arabia in the negotiations on Thursday in comments at the White House, saying that “massive funding of terrorism by certain countries” was still a huge problem. Trump has accused the country of sponsoring terrorism in the region in the past.

“If they don’t stop the funding of terrorism, I don’t want them to come together,” he added.

Trump called the two leaders separately on Friday, urging them to work together to end terrorism in the region and work with the United States to counter Iran’s influence.

Unity among the Arab nations “is essential to promoting regional stability and countering the threat of Iran,” read a White House read out of the calls.

Trump “also emphasized that all countries must follow through on commitments from the Riyadh Summit to defeat terrorism, cut off funding for terrorist groups, and combat extremist ideology,” it added.

[The Hill]

Trump Disbands Business Councils Before They Disband Themselves. Takes Credit.

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Some of America’s top CEOs were preparing to issue a statement criticizing the president — so he effectively fired them from a White House council first.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he was ending two business advisory councils amid a stampede of defections and after one of the groups had decided to disband over the president’s much-criticized response to the weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Va.

A person close to Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum said the group had already told the White House it had resolved to disband and condemn the president’s Tuesday claims that “both sides” were responsible for violence at a white supremacist and neo-Nazi gathering and that some “very fine people” were among the marchers defending a Confederate statue.

The group in a statement presented the decision as mutual with Trump, though EY CEO Mark Weinberger tweeted Wednesday that “we made the right call.” Members of the separate Manufacturing Council — which had already lost eight members this week — were due to hold their own call Wednesday.

“Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!” Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday afternoon, ending the debate.

The split likely won’t change Trump’s agenda — the long-time real estate developer still intends to slash corporate taxes and regulations. And the White House said a separate group of government officials called the American Technology Council, which met with top Sillicon Valley executives and Trump in June, will keep working. Still, the break-up of the two high-profile CEO groups shows increasing pressure on business leaders to distance themselves from the White House and could hurt Trump’s standing with the pro-business, establishment wing of voters and donors in the Republican Party.

“There is no room for equivocation here: the evil on display by these perpetrators of hate should be condemned and has no place in a country that draws strength from our diversity and humanity,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in a statement Wednesday after Trump disbanded the Strategic and Policy Forum to which he belonged. Dimon had weighed in on the events in Charlottesville over the weekend but had not criticized the president directly.

“It is a leader’s role, in business or government, to bring people together, not tear them apart,” he said.

Executives historically have clamored to belong to White House business councils, which give them an opportunity to pitch the president behind closed doors.

Merck’s Kenneth Frazier — the first CEO to announce he was leaving Trump’s manufacturing council this week — repeatedly pressed Trump in private on reforming tax laws. Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris was initially granted a private sit-down with EPA head Scott Pruitt as the agency weighed a key regulation, though the meeting was trimmed down to a brief greeting.

In return, the executives served as surrogates for a White House trying to sell its pro-business message. Council members regularly flanked the president at a series of announcements and executive order signings. Executives like Campbell’s Soup CEO Denise Morrison told reporters they were optimistic about Trump’s effect on the economy. Dow donated about $1 million for the president’s inauguration.

The corporate backlash started Monday with Merck’s Frazier — the only African-American CEO on Trump’s manufacturing council — who said he was quitting “to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” Within a day, the CEOs of Under Armour and Intel said they were leaving too.

The president on Tuesday called them “grandstanders” on Twitter and lashed out at Merck specifically. He claimed the defections wouldn’t hurt him.

“For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning. However, no other CEOs publicly stepped forward to join the council, and five more leaders said they were leaving.

On Tuesday — before Trump’s news conference but after he took heat Saturday for blaming “many sides” for violence in Charlottesville — Morrison of Campbell’s said she planned to remain on the manufacturing council. Social media campaigns in response called the company a “Soup Nazi” in reference to the television show Seinfeld; another circulated altered photos of fake Campbell’s products called “Cream of Complicity” and “Swastika Soup.”

On Wednesday, Morrison said she couldn’t serve on the council any longer. “Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville,” Morrison said in a statement.

Others also flipped their stances. “The President’s most recent statements equating those who are motivated by race-based hate with those who stand up against hatred is unacceptable and has changed our decision to participate in the White House Manufacturing Advisory Council,” Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky said on Wednesday — less than 24 hours after telling reporters he planned to stay on the council so J&J would have a voice in high-level discussions.

Activists said the overnight campaigns and threats of boycotts motivated executives. Progressive groups have also pushed payment processing companies to cut ties with hate groups, collecting thousands of signatures on petitions, though Discover, Visa and Mastercard told POLITICO they had limited ability to force banks to cut off merchants conducting legal businesses.

“The collapse of the CEO councils is not due to an outbreak of conscience,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “Instead, it is public pressure — pressure for the CEOs to evidence a measure of decency — that is driving them off the councils. That’s not exactly the most inspiring example of moral leadership. No profiles in courage here.”

Silicon Valley executives such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Tim Cook also met with Trump in June through the administration’s American Technology Council, which is technically made up of government employees. Still, activists like Weissman are calling on the affiliated executives to condemn Trump’s comments too.

Until this week, Trump had spent months praising the same executives who are now rebuking him.

“I want to thank these great business leaders,” Trump said in February, when Merck’s Frazier, J&J’s Gorsky, Campbell’s Morrison and other CEO advisers joined him for a signing ceremony on an executive order on regulatory reform. “They’re helping us sort out what’s going on, because … it’s been disastrous for business. This is going to be a place for business to do well and to thrive.”

[Politico]

Trump praises record-low July 4th gas prices

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As travelers hit the road for the Fourth of July holiday, President Donald Trump touted record-low gasoline prices and expressed hope that they would continue to fall.

“Gas prices are the lowest in the U.S. in over ten years!” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “I would like to see them go even lower.”

AAA said Monday that the national average of $2.23 per gallon was the cheapest gas has been all year. The last time gas prices were this low on Independence Day was 2005.

Trump’s tweet came minutes after he wished his followers a “Happy 4th.”

“Getting ready to celebrate the 4th of July with a big crowd at the White House. Happy 4th to everyone. Our country will grow and prosper!”

[Politico]

Reality

Forgetting the fact that government actions typically have little impact on the fluctuation of gas prices, Trump was not exactly telling the truth.

While the national average gas price is at the lowest point they have been in the past ten years on the date of July 4th, beating last year by just a few pennies, Trump didn’t say that. He claimed gas prices are the lowest ever in over ten years, which is a distortion of the truth. A lie.

 

Allies Distance Themselves From U.S. After Trump’s First Foreign Trip

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President Trump received a largely cordial welcome on the first overseas trip of his presidency. But now that he’s returned to Washington, the foreign leaders he met with are increasingly blunt in their reviews of the American president.

In separate remarks intended mostly for domestic consumption, leaders of Germany, France and Israel all sought to distance themselves from Trump, just days after meeting with the president during his nine-day foreign trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Vatican City, Brussels and Italy.

Among the sources of friction: Trump’s reluctance to unreservedly commit to the North Atlantic alliance, his skepticism of a climate change accord signed on to by his predecessor, President Obama, and outreach to Palestinians in pursuit of a Middle East peace agreement.

“It’s clear that in Europe at least, that anti-Trump position plays well domestically,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO in the Obama administration. “But the larger issue is that the trip didn’t go well in Europe.”

The dynamic is partly one of Trump’s brash style. “I think what grates on European leaders is the sense that he does not treat them as equals, let alone as allies,” Daalder said. “He approaches them in this confrontational way, in an attempt to constantly get a better deal out of them.”

Trump hasn’t spoken about the trip publicly, avoiding press conferences for the entire journey. But on Twitter, he pronounced the mission a triumph. “Just returned from Europe. Trip was a great success for America. Hard work but big results!” Trump tweeted on Sunday.

The reaction abroad was more cautious:

France: New French President Emmanuel Macron said his now-famous white-knuckled handshake with Trump was a deliberate attempt to demonstrate that he wouldn’t be bullied by the American president. “One must show that you won’t make small concessions, even symbolic ones, but also not over-publicize things, either,” he told the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche. “My handshake with him — it wasn’t innocent.”

Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday at a Bavarian beer hall that Europe can no longer “fully rely” on its overseas allies. On climate issues, she said, the Group of Seven meeting was “seven against one” — counting the European Union as part of the seven (and the United States as the one). Her chief political rival took umbrage at the way Trump sought to “humiliate” Merkel in Brussels. “I reject with outrage the way this man takes it upon himself to treat the head of our country’s government,” said Martin Schulz, who is challenging Merkel for the chancellorship as an “anti-Trump” candidate. He said Trump was “acting like an autocratic leader.”

United Kingdom: British Prime Minister Theresa May is upset that American intelligence officials leaked information about the Manchester concert bombing to the media. Trump acknowledged that he got an earful from May, tweeting Sunday that she was “very angry” about the leaks. “Gave me full details!”

Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said Israel has “no better friend” than Trump, appeared to hold the president at arm’s length on Monday. Speaking to members of his conservative Likud party, Netanyahu warned that a Trump-brokered peace negotiation with the Palestinians “comes at a price.” And while he welcomed U.S. support for Israel, he emphasized that “there is no such thing as innocent gifts.”

Palestinian Authority: An Israeli television station reported that Trump shouted at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, during their meeting in Bethlehem last week yelling, “You tricked me!” and accusing the Palestinian Authority of inciting violence in the West Bank. (The Palestinians denied the report.)

Trump’s trip began in Saudi Arabia with a summit of Muslim Arab leaders — and they’re perhaps the least likely to grumble. After feeling neglected by Obama, the Saudis welcomed a $110 billion arms package and Trump’s more bellicose rhetoric toward mutual enemies like Iran and the Islamic State.

But in Europe, Trump’s “America First” foreign policy appeared to alienate other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the 68-year-old alliance intended to contain Russia — the country at the center of a growing controversy over ties to Trump aides.

At a ceremony meant to solemnize the collective defense provision of the NATO charter in Brussels, Trump failed to explicitly reassure European allies that the U.S. would come to their aid in the event of an attack. Instead, he renewed his complaints that they were not paying their fair share. (In doing so, he misrepresented the commitment by NATO allies to spend at least 2% of their economies on defense.)

And in Sicily, where leaders of the G-7 economic powers gathered, Trump continued his hard-line stance on climate and trade issues. He reportedly told Merkel that Germany was “bad” or “evil” (depending on the translation) because of its trade imbalance with the United States.

But among Trump supporters, his tough talk to foreign leaders drew raves. Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he “could not be more pleased” with Trump’s international travels.

“The trip was executed to near perfection and it appears the president has made great progress on the broad range of objectives,” he said after speaking with Trump on Sunday.

[USA Today]

Trump Sunday Morning Tweet Promises ‘Love and Strength’ of GOP Will Eventually Take Away Obamacare

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President Donald Trump was off and running on Twitter Sunday morning, once again attacking the media for saying his plan to repeal and replace Obamacare is “dead.”

Ten days after House Majority leader Paul Ryan (R-WI) pulled his Trumpcare bill in the face of certain defeat and Trump administration officials said the president was moving on to budget and tax matters, Trump declared on Sunday that he still intends to get rid on Obamacare.

The president then asserted the real story the press should be covering is “surveillance and leaking.”

“Anybody (especially Fake News media) who thinks that Repeal & Replace of ObamaCare is dead does not know the love and strength in R Party!” Trump tweeted before adding, “Talks on Repealing and Replacing ObamaCare are, and have been, going on, and will continue until such time as a deal is hopefully struck.”

Trump’s mention of “love and strength in the R party” strikes a conciliatory tone from his recent Twitter attacks on the hard right Republican Freedom Caucus that torpedoed Trumpcare.

On Saturday, Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino called for the defeat of Freedom Caucus Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) to be defeated at the polls.

You can see Trump’s Sunday tweets below:

(h/t Raw Story)

Trump Praises Exxon Announcement on Old Investments

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President Donald Trump heralded ExxonMobil’s announcement Monday that it’s investing in manufacturing jobs in the U.S. — even though at least some of the investment started years ago.

Exxon CEO Darren Woods said the company would invest $20 billion in manufacturing projects along the Gulf Coast. But at some of the spending started in 2013 and is expected to continue through at least 2022, Exxon said in a statement. Exxon said at least one of the projects — an aviation lubricants plant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana — had already been completed.

Those facts didn’t deter Trump, who used the occasion to shower praise on the giant oil and gas company that until recently was led by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

“45,000 construction & manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Gulf Coast region,” Trump tweeted Monday afternoon. “$20 billion investment. We are already winning again, America!”

In a statement from the White House, Trump said: “This is exactly the kind of investment, economic development and job creation that will help put Americans back to work.”

The White House statement quoted Woods praising Trump. “Private sector investment is enhanced by this Administration’s support for smart regulations that support growth while protecting the environment,” the CEO said.

Woods took over as Exxon’s CEO in January, following Tillerson’s departure. Tillerson, who had lunch with Trump on Monday, has appeared to be out of the loop on a number of key issues and has kept a low profile within the administration.

Under his agreement with the Office of Government Ethics, Tillerson is barred from any matter involving Exxon through the end of the year. And he has until May 2 to finish divesting his stock holdings in the company, which are estimated at about $55 million. That raises the possibility Tillerson still holds a stake in the company for now. The federal law against conflicts of interest exempts the president but does apply to the secretary of state.

Spokesmen for the White House and the State Department did not immediately answer questions about whether Trump and Tillerson discussed the investment at their lunch Monday and whether Tillerson has already liquidated his holdings in Exxon.

In his announcement, Woods said that Exxon’s goal is to create 35,000 construction jobs and 12,000 full-time jobs, Woods said. The company has not said how many of the 11 projects announced Monday were planned under Tillerson.

The strategy of CEOs re-announcing old investments in the Trump era is not new. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son announced after a December meeting with Trump a tech fund that would invest $50 billion in the U.S. Trump publicized Son’s plan despite the fact that the investment had been part of a previously announced plan.

(h/t Politico)

 

Without Evidence, Trump Tells Lawmakers 3 Million to 5 million Illegal Ballots Cost Him the Popular Vote

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Days after being sworn in, President Trump insisted to congressional leaders invited to a reception at the White House that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for millions of illegal votes, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud caused him to lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, even while he clinched the presidency with an electoral college victory.

Two people familiar with the meeting said Trump spent about 10 minutes at the start of the bipartisan gathering rehashing the campaign. He also told them that between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused him to lose the popular vote.

The discussion about Trump’s election victory and his claim that he would have won the popular vote was confirmed by a third person familiar with the meeting.

The claim is not supported by any verifiable facts, and analyses of the election found virtually no confirmed cases of voter fraud, let alone millions.

Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes. Trump won 304 electoral college votes to Clinton’s 227.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) alluded to Trump’s comments as he returned to the Capitol from the meeting Monday night.

“We talked about different electoral college, popular votes, going through the different ones,” McCarthy said. “Well, we talked about going back through past elections. Everyone in there goes through elections and stuff, so everybody’s giving their different histories of different parts.”

Asked by reporters after the meeting if Trump made any surprising statements at the gathering, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) replied, “Well, I won’t even go into that.”

(h/t Washington Post)

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