Inside Trump’s fury: The president rages at leaks, setbacks and accusations

The following article by Philip RUcker, Robert Costa and Ashley Parker was posted on the Washington Post website March 5, 2017:

President Trump spent the weekend at “the winter White House,” Mar-a-Lago, the secluded Florida castle where he is king. The sun sparkles off the glistening lawn and warms the russet clay Spanish tiles, and the steaks are cooked just how he likes them (well done). His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner — celebrated as calming influences on the tempestuous president — joined him. But they were helpless to contain his fury.

Trump was mad — steaming, raging mad. Continue reading “Inside Trump’s fury: The president rages at leaks, setbacks and accusations”

Twitter Facebook Comment Email Republish Donate 5 Trump Cabinet Members Who’ve Made False Statements to Congress

The following article by Eric Umansky and Marcelo Rochabrum was psoted on the ProPublica website March 2, 2017:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn’t alone.

Betsy DeVos, secretary of education, Jeff Sessions, attorney general and Steve Mnuchin, treasury secretary, listen as President Donald Trump speaks during a joint session of Congress Feb. 28, 2017 (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via Bloomberg)

As most of the world knows by now, Attorney General Jeff Sessions did not tell the truth when he was asked during his confirmation hearings about contacts with Russian officials.

But Sessions isn’t the only one. At least four other cabinet members made statements during their nomination hearings that are contradicted by actual facts: EPA Chief Scott Pruitt, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.

The statements were all made under oath, except those of DeVos. It is a crime to “knowingly” lie in testimony to Congress, but it’s rarely prosecuted. Continue reading “Twitter Facebook Comment Email Republish Donate 5 Trump Cabinet Members Who’ve Made False Statements to Congress”

Despite early denials, growing list of Trump camp contacts with Russians haunts White House

The following article by Rosalind S. Helderman was posted on the Washington Post website March 4, 2017:

Two days after the presidential election, a Russian official speaking to a reporter in Moscow offered a surprising acknowledgment: The Kremlin had been in contact with Donald Trump’s campaign.

The claim, coming amid allegations that Russia had interfered with the election, was met with an immediate no-wiggle-room, blanket denial from Trump’s spokeswoman. “It never happened,” Hope Hicks told the Associated Pressat the time. “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” Continue reading “Despite early denials, growing list of Trump camp contacts with Russians haunts White House”

Pence fought against releasing records as Indiana governor

The following article by Brian Slodysko was posted on the Associated Press website March 3, 2017:

Vice President Mike Pence pauses while speaking before administering the oath of office to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, left, Thursday, March 2, 2017, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Vice President Mike Pence repeatedly stonewalled media requests to view public records when he was Indiana’s governor, including emails about state business distributed from a private AOL account that was hacked last year.

Revelations Pence used the account to discuss homeland security and other official matters, first reported Thursday by the Indianapolis Star, are just the latest in a series of transparency battles involving the Republican’s tenure as governor.

The Star obtained the AOL emails through an open records request after new Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb agreed to release 29 pages from his predecessor’s AOL account. The Associated Press filed a similar records request last July seeking the emails and followed up with a complaint against the governor’s office in January when there was no response. Continue reading “Pence fought against releasing records as Indiana governor”

Al-Qaeda likes Steve Bannon so much, they put him on the cover of their official newspaper

The following article by Amanda Erickson was posted on the Washington Post website March 3, 2017:

Al Masra

The way al-Qaeda tells it, the West is locked in an existential war with Islam. This is how the terrorist group justifies its violence and its fundamentalist ideology. And now it has found a Westerner to back them up — top Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

Bannon graced the cover (above the fold!) of the most recent al-Qaeda-linked Al Masra newspaper. That prominence, University of Oxford researcher Elisabeth Kendall told Quartz, is “striking.” Continue reading “Al-Qaeda likes Steve Bannon so much, they put him on the cover of their official newspaper”

President Trump just had his very own ‘Is our children learning?’ moment

The following by Aaron Blake was posted on the Washington Post website March 3, 2017:

President Trump isn’t a great speller. This is not news. But on Friday, his penchant for typos really couldn’t have been more poorly timed.

Trump tweeted twice about a Politico story that reported on Nancy Pelosi’s misstatement that she had never met Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The first time, he misspelled “hereby” as “hear by.”

Capture

Continue reading “President Trump just had his very own ‘Is our children learning?’ moment”

The Economic Substance Doctrine

The following was posted on the TrumpAccountable.org website March 3, 2017:

In the midst of discussions around the repeal of Obamacare is the fate of a little known IRS policy, the economic substance doctrine, that has been used to help fund the Affordable Care Act. As President Obama’s team worked with House and Senate committees to figure out how to pay for health insurance for millions of Americans, they found and closed loopholes with policies like the economic substance doctrine that the ultra-wealthy had been using to reduce their tax burden.

Very simply: The economic substance doctrine gives the IRS the latitude to determine if an action has a “substantial purpose” beyond simply reducing taxes. The tax-avoidance action, in other words, needs to have economic substance beyond reducing the investor’s exposure to taxes. The doctrine has dramatically limited complex tax-avoidance schemes favored by ultra-wealthy Americans; it is not an IRS policy that middle class Americans can easily use to pay less on April 15. Continue reading “The Economic Substance Doctrine”

What to Make of Donald Trump’s Early-Morning WIretap Tweets

President Trump’s tweets exemplify a fairly basic but often highly effective rhetorical maneuver—the diversionary reverse accusation.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS

The following article by David Remnick and Evan Osnos was psoted on thewebsite March 4, 2017:

Between six and six-thirty this morning, the President of the United States, who had returned to his Mar-a-Lago estate, in Florida, unleashed a series of tweets accusing his predecessor of tapping his phones just before Election Day: “a new low!” “This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” Two hours later, he tweeted again, this time about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to leave “The New Celebrity Apprentice”: “Sad end to great show.” Continue reading “What to Make of Donald Trump’s Early-Morning WIretap Tweets”

White House proposes steep budget cut to leading climate science agency

The following article by Steven Mufson, Jason Samenow and Brady Dennis was posted on the Washington Post website March 3, 2017:

The Trump administration is seeking to slash the budget of one of the government’s premier climate science agencies by 17 percent, delivering steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs, according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post.

The proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also eliminate funding for a variety of smaller programs, including external research, coastal management, estuary reserves and “coastal resilience,” which seeks to bolster the ability of coastal areas to withstand major storms and rising seas. Continue reading “White House proposes steep budget cut to leading climate science agency”