Category: Policy Novice

Donald Trump Says He Has Absolute Right to Share Intelligence with Russia

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President Donald Trump pushed back on an explosive story in The Washington Post that he shared classified information with members of the Russian government during a meeting last week, arguing on Twitter that he had an “absolute right” to do so and engaged in the discussion for “humanitarian reasons.”

Trump did not characterize the information as classified but as “facts pertaining to terrorism and airline safety.” The White House called the Post story “false.”

“As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism,” Trump wrote in a two-part tweet.

According to The Washington Post, the nature of the information was related to an Islamic State terrorist threat and gathered by a United States intelligence partner. The report says that Trump disclosed the information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak last Wednesday, even though Russia is not a partner in the intelligence-sharing arrangement from which the information originated.

As president, Trump has the legal power to declassify information, but officials worry these reported disclosures to the Russians could jeopardize that intelligence-sharing operation.

A senior U.S. official has confirmed two key details of the Post story to ABC News, namely that the White House was concerned enough after the meeting with the Russians that calls were placed to the CIA and NSA to relay information that the president had shared, and that notes on the meeting were edited in order to remove information that was deemed to be sensitive.

The official clarified these points by suggesting that the calls to intelligence agencies were intended to avoid any misunderstanding about what the president had shared, and that the redactions like what had taken place with the notes were routine occurrences.

The White House fervently denied allegations that the president gave away classified intelligence information to Russian officials in statements that were made Monday.

“The story that came out tonight as reported is false. The president and the foreign minister reviewed a range of common threats to our two countries including threats to civil aviation,” said national security adviser H.R. McMaster. “At no time, at no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed. And the president did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known.”

“I was in the room. It didn’t happen,” added McMaster.

“This story is false. The president only discussed the common threats that both countries faced,” Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser for strategy, said in a statement.

Neither McMaster or Powell specifically addressed the allegation that the president revealed classified information or the possibility that he may have jeopardized an intelligence-sharing operation.

Earlier in the day, McMaster ran into a group of reporters in the White House seeking comment on the story.

“This is the last place in the world I wanted to be,” said McMaster, who left without answering questions.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who met with Lavrov at the State Department before the foreign minister’s visit to the White House last week, released a statement on the situation.

“During President Trump’s meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov, a broad range of subjects were discussed, among which were common efforts and threats regarding counterterrorism,” said Tillerson. “During that exchange, the nature of specific threats were discussed, but they did not discuss sources, methods or military operations.”

A spokesperson for the Russian Embassy in Washington would not comment on the matter and would not discuss the Russians’ interactions with Trump.

On Capitol Hill, as news of the disclosure spread, senators on both sides of the aisle indicated their displeasure with the report.

“If it’s accurate, it would be troubling,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, described the dispatch as “really shocking,” and Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, called it “disturbing.”

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton‘s handling of classified information and use of a private email server while secretary of state were key points of criticism by Trump and the GOP during last year’s campaign.

Shortly after the nature of Trump’s meeting with the Russians was revealed Monday, past statements by Trump and a number of Republicans as well as social media posts relating to Clinton’s security practices resurfaced.

“Crooked Hillary Clinton and her team ‘were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.’ Not fit!” wrote Trump on Twitter last July.

“It’s simple: Individuals who are ‘extremely careless’ w/ classified info should be denied further access to it,” tweeted Speaker of the House Paul Ryan about Clinton the same month, with a link to a press release titled “Speaker Ryan Presses for Action on Clinton Recklessness With Classified Information.”

“Why should we trust Clinton with our nation’s cybersecurity when she so recklessly jeopardized classified information?” asked then–Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, now the White House chief of staff, on Twitter last September.

The Democratic National Committee released a scathing statement in which it said Trump’s actions “could end with him in handcuffs” if he were not the president.

“Russia no longer has to spy on us to get information — they just ask President Trump, and he spills the beans with highly classified information that jeopardizes our national security and hurts our relationships with allies,” said the DNC.

[ABC News]

Reality

Donald Trump again threw his defenders under the bus by completely undercutting their spin and simply coming out and admiting to his highly questionable decision making. It really is amazing, for example:

National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster told the press, “What I’m saying is really the premise of that article is false.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to look past what Trump actually released to the Russians and pointed out, “He did not discuss sources, methods or military operations.”

Fox News tried to smear the reporting at The Washington Post by telling their viewers they were wrong that time before and therefore they must be wrong now!

…A few hours later…

Trump: “Yeah I shared classified intel with the Russians and I have the absolute right to do so!!!”

 

Donald Trump Thinks Health Insurance Costs $15 a Month

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Donald Trump, the President of these United States of America, either believes that health insurance currently costs $15 a month or he believes that’s how much it should cost. This is according to an interview he did with The Economist on May 4, the same day the American Health Care Act passed the House. A transcript of the interview was published yesterday.

The interview was about economic policy, but they also discussed healthcare and the AHCA. One of the Economist editors pointed out that “some people will look at this bill and say, ‘hang on, a lot of people are going to lose their coverage.'” In Trump’s response, he said [emphasis added]:

You’re going to have absolute guaranteed coverage. You’re going to have it if you’re a person going in…don’t forget, this was not supposed to be the way insurance works. Insurance is, you’re 20 years old, you just graduated from college, and you start paying $15 a month for the rest of your life and by the time you’re 70, and you really need it, you’re still paying the same amount and that’s really insurance.

But I believe it’s very important to have this. Because one thing Obamacare did, is it gave that and it was a concept that people hadn’t heard of. And now I don’t want to end it. I don’t want to end it for somebody that…first of all I don’t want to end it for the people that already have it. And I don’t want to end it for somebody that hasn’t been buying insurance for all of his life where he has a guarantee that for all of his life he’s been buying the insurance and he can buy it inexpensively when he turns 65 or 70 years old. So we put in a tremendous amount and we’re…you know, for the pre-existing conditions. We are going to have a great pool for pre-existing conditions.

Before we even talk about the $15 figure, it bears repeating that the AHCA guarantees coverage for pre-existing conditions in name only, not in practice: The version that passed the House said people couldn’t be denied coverage but that states could choose to let insurers charge people more if they have pre-existing conditions. It would also let insurers charge older people up to five times more than younger people (the current limit is three times more). Trump and other Republicans swear up and down that additional money for high-risk pools will prevent people from being priced out, but multiple think tanks say it’s not nearly enough money.

Now, back to premiums. Trying to decipher exactly what Trump means is often a fool’s errand, but this response seems to have several possible interpretations. Is Trump confusing health insurance with life insurance, which could cost a healthy, 20-something person about $15 a month, according to Mother Jones? Possibly.

Or maybe he thinks people pay $15 a month for health insurance right now, but that is demonstrably false. The average monthly premium for people buying their own insurance was $235.27 in 2013, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and many people’s premiums have increased since then. But if it is $15 then why would premiums need to be lower, a point he’s been hammering since the start of his campaign? He even parroted that line later in his response to the question about people losing coverage, saying: “We’re going to have much lower premiums and we’re going to have much lower deductibles.”

Yet another possibility is that this is how much he thinks health insurance premiums should cost, as Sarah Kliff argues at Vox. Fifteen-dollar-premiums would certainly be much lower than what people are paying now, but it’s totally unrealistic and suggests he has no idea what he’s talking about. Unless, of course, he wants to bring something like Australia’s universal healthcare system to the US. After all, he told the Australian prime minister that it’s better than what we have.

[VICE]

Trump: The US Government Needs a Good ‘Shutdown’ If Senate Rules Don’t Change

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President Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to call for a government shutdown later this year in response to a bipartisan spending deal that looks set to pass Congress this week.

In tweets, the president contended that the agreement — which funds the government through Sept. 30 — shows that Republicans must get more senators elected or change the Senate’s rules so they can push spending through with only a majority vote, rather than 60. He then wrote that the country “needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September” to fix a “mess.”

The tweets came after Congress reached a compromise to keep the government open that they appear set to pass with Trump’s signature this week. The deal did not include funding for a wall on the Southern border, which Trump initially called for, and includes less money for border security and defense than Trump sought, according to NBC News.

Republicans need Democratic votes to pass the spending bill even though they control both chambers of Congress.

Trump later Tuesday cast the “hotly-contested” budget as a win for the White House, highlighting a military funding increase without a corresponding rise in non-defense spending and a boost in funding for border security.

Just last week, Trump blamed Democrats for what he called a desire to shut down the government, a charge that Democratic leaders denied. He called the possibility of national parks getting closed “terrible.”

Since he took office in January, Trump has faced hurdles in pushing his broad agenda, most notably replacing the Affordable Care Act, as he hits the realities of the government’s legislative branch. In a Fox News interview Friday, he called congressional rules “archaic.”

Earlier this year, Senate Republicans voted to end the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees, allowing them to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch with only a majority voter. However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters Tuesday that most senators do not want to kill the 60-vote threshold needed to stop filibusters on most legislation.

“There is an overwhelming majority on a bipartisan basis that is not interested in changing the way the Senate operates on the legislative calendar,” he said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded to Trump’s tweets at a news conference, saying that “bipartisanship is best summed up by the Rolling Stones: You can’t always get what you want.” Trump played the band’s song to close many campaign rallies.

At a news conference Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Congress has a “long ways to go” before September but added that he shares Trump’s “frustration” with the appropriations process. However, he highlighted what he considered good provisions for Republicans in the bill, including defense and border security spending increases.

“I feel good about the wins we got with the administration in this bill,” Ryan said.

It is unclear if Trump truly wants a shutdown, as he has often taken extreme positions on issues before backing off.

(h/t CNBC)

Reality

What is truly ironic is Trump falsely blamed the Democrats just four days prior of wanting to shut down the government over the budget.

Donald Trump Blames Constitution for Chaos of His First 100 Days

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On his 100th day in office on Saturday, facing historically low popularity ratings, a succession of intractable foreign crises and multiple investigations of his links with Moscow, Donald Trump reminded the nation that 1 May was Loyalty Day.

The day is a US tradition dating back to the cold war, when it was a bolster to stop May Day becoming a rallying point for socialists and unionised workers, but for an embattled president learning politics on the job it has an added resonance.

In an interview with Fox News to mark the 100-day mark, he declared himself “disappointed” with congressional Republicans, despite his many “great relationships” with them.

He blamed the constitutional checks and balances built in to US governance. “It’s a very rough system,” he said. “It’s an archaic system … It’s really a bad thing for the country.”

The Loyalty Day announcement came amid a flurry of other proclamations to mark the milestone at which the early stages of American presidencies are traditionally measured. The coming seven days were named both National Charter Schools Week and Small Business Week. May has been burdened with being simultaneously: National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, Older Americans Month, Jewish American Heritage Month, National Foster Care Month, as well as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Such announcements help a president look busy, especially at such heavily scrutinised milestones as the 100-day mark, and particularly for an inexperienced politician rapidly learning the limits of presidential power, even with a solid Republican majority in Congress.

He has failed to get any of his priorities turned into legislation in the face of party disunity, and his attempt to rule by executive order has been largely hollow. His decrees have been either meaningless, like his one-page, detail-free tax reform plan, or have been blocked by the courts, such as his travel ban for Muslim countries and refugees.

Trump’s approval ratings have remained mired at historic lows for a presidency in what is supposed to be a honeymoon period, hovering around – and frequently below – the 40% mark, well below his recent predecessors at this stage in their presidencies.

But his core supporters have remained faithful, choosing to believe that the mainstream media are purveyors of fake news, rather than accept that the Trump presidency has not been the unrivalled success the president has claimed. They have also accommodated Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin. The percentage of Republicans who see Russia as an unfriendly state has fallen from 82% in 2014 to 41% now, according to a CNN/ORC poll.

On his 100th day, Trump turned to this loyal base to sound off on the issue that bonds them most tightly – economic nationalism. On an otherwise leisurely Saturday, during which his only other engagement was a call with the CIA director, Mike Pompeo, the president was due to attend an evening rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where disenchanted workers defected from the Democrats in droves in the 2016 election. While visiting the town, he was also due to sign an executive order to establish an office of trade and manufacturing policy, which will help push his drive for import substitution.

In his weekly presidential address, he also focused on jobs, pointing to evidence of an economic revival that has been previously contested as a result of corporate decisions made before Trump came to office. He claimed that car companies were “roaring back in”, an apparent reference to General Motors’ plans and Ford’s decision to expand in Michigan, which both appeared to be part of their long-term strategy.

Trump also claimed that his approval of the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada would create tens of thousands of jobs. That will be true in the short term, during the construction phase, but after that keeping the pipeline going is expected to employ 35 people on a permanent basis.

The gap between the extreme bravado of Trump’s claims and the daily realities of governing has deepened public cynicism. In a new Gallup poll, just 36% declared him honest and trustworthy, down from 42% in early February. His general approval rating stood at 40%.

There is strong evidence, however, that the fact-checking of presidential claims is having a small and dwindling impact on true Trump loyalists. His support remains strong in traditional blue collar areas and evangelical strongholds, where there is more trust in the president than the mainstream media. The president has relentlessly assaulted the media, launching an attack per day on average since he took office, denouncing negative news as fake news, and there are signs the relentless offensive has inflicted wounds. One poll released on Friday found that more people trusted the White House than political journalists.

Against that background there were reports yesterday that Steve Bannon, the champion of economic and ethnic nationalism, was making a political comeback in the White House, and that he remained a bulwark of Trump’s strategy to secure his core support and win again in 2020.

His hand has been seen behind the rapid-burst issue of protectionist moves in the run up to the 100th day, picking fights with Canada over milk and softwood imports, and measures to shield the aluminium industry from foreign competition.

“All of these people who say the president doesn’t have an ideology, they’re wrong,” one unnamed Bannon ally told political news site The Hill. “He does have an ideology, and it’s Bannon’s ideology. They are just now figuring out how to implement it.”

Bannon was also said to have drafted an executive order withdrawing the US from the North American Free Trade Area (Nafta), but on Thursday Trump decided simply to issue a call for its renegotiation reportedly after having been shown a map showing it would cost the most jobs in states that had supported him in the election. The battle between countervailing factions in the Trump White House continues to ebb and flow, but the president’s reflexes in times of adversity lead him to fall back on the “America First” narrative that got him elected in the first place.

(h/t The Guardian)

Media

Trump Says He May Break Up 9th Circuit Court After Rulings Go Against Him

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President Trump is considering breaking up the 9th Circuit Court after a federal district court judge in its jurisdiction blocked his order to withhold funding from “sanctuary cities.”

In a Wednesday interview with the Washington Examiner, Trump said “there are many people who want to break up the 9th Circuit. It’s outrageous.”

In the interview, Trump accused liberals of “judge-shopping” for a court that would strike down his executive order.

“I mean, the language on the ban, it reads so easy that a reasonably good student in the first grade will fully understand it. And they don’t even mention the words in their rejection on the ban,” Trump said.

Trump claimed the court oversteps its authority and that his opponents “immediately run” to the court for “semi-automatic” rulings.

The 9th Circuit earlier this year blocked Trump’s executive order that barred immigration from certain Muslim-majority countries and banned all Syrian refugees from the U.S. for a period of time.

Earlier Wednesday, Trump railed against the 9th Circuit over a judge blocking his order withholding funds from sanctuary cities.

If Trump decides to move forward with plans to break up the court, he’ll have Republican support. Earlier this year, Sen Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) voiced support for breaking up the court, which is seen as one of the most liberal in the country.

On Tuesday, a federal judge rejected Trump’s order to defund sanctuary cities, arguing that the White House had overreached with requirements not related to law enforcement.

The 9th Circuit Court covers Arizona, California, Alaska, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Washington and Hawaii, as well as Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Eighteen of the court’s 25 judges were appointed by Democratic presidents.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

First of all, Trump is angry at the wrong court. The most recent ruling against Trump, in which Judge William Orrick issued an injunction blocking his executive order targeting so-called sanctuary cities, wasn’t handed down by the 9th Circuit. Orrick sits on the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, which is one level below the appeals court.

Donald Trump is still learning the Constitution. His hands are completely tied when it comes the the courts. Trump can’t break up a circuit court on his own. He needs the help of Congress, who would need a super-majority to pass. While most Republicans polled wouldn’t back it, Democrats alone could block any legislation to break up the 9th circuit.

Trump just blasted the wrong court for ‘blocking’ his sanctuary cities order

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President Donald Trump lashed out again at the American judiciary for blocking a piece of his agenda.

Except on Wednesday, he got his court wrong.

In a morning tweet, he blamed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for blocking his order to withhold funding from so-called sanctuary cities. He called the ruling “ridiculous” and signaled that his administration will appeal by saying “see you in the Supreme Court.”

The problem: Tuesday’s ruling did not come from the 9th Circuit. It was made in federal district court in San Francisco.
Earlier this year, the 9th Circuit did block Trump’s executive order restricting travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus also targeted the appeals court in comments to reporters Tuesday, according to The Hill.

Politico, which first pointed out Trump’s error, noted that the 9th Circuit would hear the case next if the Trump administration appeals.

(h/t NBC News)

Trump Has Done Complete 180 on Fed Chair Yellen

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President Trump’s interview with The Wall Street Journal played out along a week-long spectrum of policy shifts that prompted an unprecedented use of the word “whiplash” in the Washington pundit class.

Sandwiched between salacious stories about White House palace intrigue (Steve Bannon in or out?), increasing risks of military conflict with North Korea and the use of a really big bomb in Afghanistan, were notable economic and financial policy pronouncements.

These included his support for renewing the U.S. Export-Import Bank, recognition that China is not currently guilty of “currency manipulation” and expressing new-found nuance about the double-edged benefits of U.S. dollar strength. All represent important and welcome steps along the presidential learning curve.

But the economic revelation with the most far-reaching impact was the president’s apparent willingness to consider re-appointing Janet Yellen to a second term as chairwoman of the Federal Reserve.

During the campaign, Trump had accused her of being overtly political, having artificially created a bubble to support the Obama agenda, having undermined retirees’ savings and bluntly stated that he “would most likely replace her.” So when he told the Journal that he liked her and rejected the assertion that her chairmanship was “toast,” one could argue that this was a huge surprise.

In fact, Trump’s potential support for Yellen could easily have been foreseen. Of all the alternative potential Fed chair candidates currently being promoted by the president’s party, none would provide the president with the experience and the steady hand that Yellen’s reappointment would present. Still, neither experience nor stability have been highly prized by President Trump.

What is important are her previous statements, intellectual leanings and actual actions taken at the helm of the central bank that make it abundantly clear that a second Yellen Fed would be more cautious about aggressively hiking rates that could risk Trump’s own economic growth agenda than would any GOP-favored conservative candidate to take her place.

The fact is, for all the focus on foreign and social policy issues, Trump, like others before him, may find his political fortunes could turn on whether he can maintain and even accelerate the economic expansion he inherited from his predecessor.

He will also quickly learn that political success is often linked to figuring out how to give the people what they want while also figuring out how to pay for it. Or, if you can’t pay for it, how to borrow, preferably, on the best terms possible. That is one of the few areas where the president’s previous experience and skill set should serve him well.

In spite of Republican assertions that they would be the party to rein in the debt, the most likely outcome of budget negotiations and tax reform is either continued stalemate and paralysis or spending money on things people want and not entirely paying for them. The GOP may squeal, but borrowing and spending is in Trump’s blood.

Even Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, formerly of the House Freedom Caucus, called the president’s promises to cut the federal debt “hyperbole” and argued that he was not concerned about the budget deficit impact of either infrastructure spending or tax reform, two of the largest and costliest government reform initiatives currently contemplated by the administration.

One of the many new complexities Trump is grappling with is the fact that the portion of the Fed’s mandate for price stability and its independence to pursue that mandate often conflict with fiscal efforts to stimulate growth and spend to achieve political goals. Monetary policy can be used as a dampener on broad fiscal expansion efforts precisely by design.

In fact, efforts to strip some independence from the Fed stem not from a political desire to force the Fed to loosen its potential policy constraints on potentially expensive government spending but from ideological conservative opponents of the Fed’s failing to more aggressively use monetary policy to constrain overheated economic growth, not from doing so too often.

Republican critics of Janet Yellen’s leadership argue that she has not already taken the punch bowl away, not that she has done so too quickly. President Trump is quickly learning that his stated affection for “the low interest rate policy” is not necessarily in line with the views of many conservative candidates jockeying for position to succeed Yellen.

Of all the rumored names in the running to become Trump’s Fed nominee, all are more hawkish on monetary policy than the current chair. Among the names circulating is that of John Taylor, whose eponymous Taylor Rule many conservatives would like to see enacted into law, potentially resulting in steeper and faster rate hikes than even the most hawkish of other candidates have proposed.

Perhaps to gain favor with the president’s less hawkish leanings, potential candidates are said to be circling within the Washington and New York power bubbles, now arguing that they would not actually be as hawkish as their previous rhetoric might suggest.

Janet Yellen’s tenure at the Fed has been one of the most difficult in modern Fed history. Yellen inherited from her predecessor, Ben Bernanke, monetary policy that had migrated into highly unorthodox territory, as a means of stabilizing and growing an economy decimated by the housing crisis and the great recession.

Yellen’s task was to plot and execute an exit from unorthodox monetary policy, while balancing the need to restore fragile economic confidence, reduce unemployment, maintain acceptable inflation and grapple with global financial stability risks that could have undermined the U.S. recovery.

By any measure, Chair Yellen’s measured tapering and return to more conventional monetary policy has been a triumph of prudence and balance. Perhaps it is her steady hand and experience that have begun to enamor her to Donald Trump. Perhaps it is a surprising personal chemistry that was sparked in their two reported face-to-face meetings, maybe the result of their common New York outer-borough roots.

Or, perhaps it is simply that President Trump is focused on the one thing he knows well: money and the cost of debt. Under Yellen, the Fed is projecting two more hikes in 2017 and three more next year, with perhaps as many as four the year thereafter.

Even a monetary policy neophyte like our president is quickly becoming aware that any conservative alternative to Yellen will likely promote a less cautious, steeper and more rapid hawkish monetary policy agenda that could endanger his economic growth story and raise the costs of his potential spending plans.

Seen through that prism, President Trump’s potential support for reappointing Janet Yellen was not surprising at all.

(h/t The Hill)

Trump Used the Phrase ‘My Military’ – Defense Community Not Amused

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President Donald Trump ruffled some feathers on Thursday with his choice of words when describing an overseas military operation.

The comments came when a White House press pool reporter asked Trump if he had personally authorized the deployment of the 21,000-pound bomb that was dropped on an ISIS tunnel complex.

“Everybody knows exactly what happened. What I do is I authorize my military,” Trump said. “We have the greatest military in the world and they’ve done a job as usual. So we have given them total authorization.”

The phrase “my military” stuck out to members of the defense community, some of whom did not appreciate Trump’s use of the possessive pronoun. Chief among them was Leon Panetta, a former defense secretary and CIA director who served under President Barack Obama.

“When it comes to the military, the military belongs to the country. Our defense system belongs to the country. And it’s not the president’s military, it’s the military of the United States of America,” Panetta said on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews.”

“He has responsibility obviously, as commander in chief, to be able to make decisions with regards to our military. But I think if you ask the men and women in uniform who they are responsible to, I think their answer would be, ‘We’re responsible to the United States of America.'”

(h/t Business Insider)

Media

Trump on North Korea: “After Listening for 10 Minutes, I Realized It’s Not So Easy”

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President Donald Trump recounted an absolutely astounding detail about one of his conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping in comments published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday afternoon. Apparently, Trump came into his first meeting with the Chinese leader, in early April, convinced that China could simply eliminate the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear program. Xi then patiently explained Chinese-Korean history to Trump — who then promptly changed his mind.

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” the president told the Journal. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. … But it’s not what you would think.”

Four quick observations about this:

  1. Trump thought China could fix North Korea until the Chinese president politely informed him that North Korea is in fact complicated.
  2. Trump seems to have required the leader of China to explain basic facts to him that he could have Googled, or at least asked one of the many US government North Korea experts about.
  3. Trump came to a profound realization about one of the most dangerous conflicts on earth after a 10-minute conversation.
  4. Trump is getting his information about East Asian affairs from the leader of America’s largest rival in the region.

Around the same time the Journal piece was published, North Korea informed reporters to prepare for a “big and important event.” Initial reports suggest that Pyongyang is planning to test a nuclear device for just the sixth time in the country’s history. There’s no word yet on how the Trump administration plans to respond.

(h/t Vox)

In Major Reversal, Trump Says China ‘Not Currency Manipulators’

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President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he no longer believes China manipulates its currency, a complete shift from the position he repeatedly took during his 2016 campaign.

“They’re not currency manipulators,” Trump told the the Wall Street Journal during an Oval Office interview.

The reason he changed his mind, the president said, was because China has stopped manipulating its currency in recent months and the accusations could jeopardize U.S. negotiations with China to deal with the nuclear threat from North Korea.

Trump’s flip flop comes just days after the president hosted his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at Mar-a-Lago in southern Florida.

Throughout the campaign, Trump repeatedly said he would instruct his Treasury Secretary to label China “a currency manipulator.” And as recently as 10 days ago, he told the Financial Times that China was the “world champion” of currency manipulators.

The official label would need to be included in a semiannual Treasury report expected this month.

(h/t NBC News)

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