Tag: Trump White House

Trump says he can bring in coronavirus experts quickly. The experts say it is not that simple.

Washington Post logoThe White House official charged with leading the U.S. response to deadly pandemics left nearly two years ago as his global health security team was disbanded. Federal funding for preventing and mitigating the spread of infectious disease has been repeatedly threatened since President Trump’s election.

Despite the mounting threat of a coronavirus outbreak in the United States, Trump said he has no regrets about those actions and that expertise and resources can be quickly ramped up to meet the current needs.

Former federal officials and public-health experts argue that an effective response to a epidemiological crisis demands sustained planning and investment. While the administration’s response to coronavirus has been criticized in recent weeks as slow and disjointed, people in and outside the White House have warned for years that the nation is ill prepared for a dangerous pandemic. Continue reading.

White House struggles to contain public alarm over coronavirus

Washington Post logoTop White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told The Washington Post late Monday that investors should consider “buying these dips” in the stock market amid the coronavirus panic. The message was to take advantage of one-day slumps and “buy low.”

After all, the Dow Jones industrial average had just fallen 1,032 points. President Trump tweeted similar guidance thousands of miles away in India.

Less than 24 hours later, the Dow Jones industrial average would fall another 879 points, bringing Trump and Kudlow’s investment advice — at least in the short term — under greater scrutiny. Continue reading.

Why Mick Mulvaney Wants To Remain ‘Acting’ White House Chief

Mick Mulvaney has been Donald Trump’s “acting” chief of staff for more than 14 months, making him the longest-serving of the three chiefs of staff Trump’s had since taking office.

Given Mulvaney has been around so long, it’s curious why “acting” is still part of his job title given he’s been around for so long.

But on Wednesday, Mulvaney revealed the real reason he keeps the “acting” as part of his job title: money. Continue reading.

Mick Mulvaney: Republicans don’t really care about deficits

AlterNet logoActing White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, last prominently seen confessing to Donald Trump’s quid pro quo attempt with Ukraine on national television, with the now infamous “get over it,” has done it again. This time he made his confession overseas in a U.K. visit, so maybe he thought nobody would notice. It didn’t work.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of Mulvaney at the Oxford Union, sounding an awful lot like a Daily Kos blogger. “My party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House,” he said. “The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president. Then Donald Trump became president, and we’re a lot less interested as a party.” Until it comes time to wield the deficit as a weapon to cut the safety net, of course.

He left that part out, but made another admission about why Republicans refuse to do anything about climate change, which he implicitly acknowledged as a real thing. “We take the position in my party that asking people to change their lifestyle dramatically, including by paying more taxes, is simply not something we are interested in doing.” That answer got laughs in the student audience, The Post reports. One can only assume those laughs were derisive. Continue reading.

Trump’s recent trade moves show adversarial approach has only just begun

Washington Post logoIn White House ceremonies and raucous campaign rallies, President Trump has celebrated a pair of “America First” trade deals he says will end the unfair treatment of American workers.

“Unlike so many who came before me, I keep my promises. We did our job,” he said during his State of the Union address on Feb. 4, referring to new trade deals with Canada, China and Mexico. “. . . Our strategy has worked.”

The new deals rewrite the trade rules Trump says were responsible for “the catastrophe” that struck U.S. manufacturing over the past quarter-century. Yet with fresh tariffs this month on European aircraft and products such as steel nails and aluminum vehicle bumpers, it’s clear that the high-profile accords have not completed the president’s planned overhaul of U.S. trade relations. Continue reading.

rump’s expansive view of executive power gets a post-impeachment surge

After defeating impeachment, Trump is displaying the full extent of his legal authority — creating a challenge for White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

Pat Cipollone took only a short post-impeachment break.

The White House’s top attorney and other members of President Donald Trump’s legal team attended a private party at the Trump International Hotel to celebrate, just hours after the Senate voted largely along party lines to acquit the president.

Then Cipollone and his team of roughly 40 lawyers returned to their routine business — much of which had been put on pause as the top lawyers defended the president from an effort to oust him from office. Continue reading.

Bolton Hints at Further Revelations if He Overcomes White House ‘Censorship’

New York Times logoIn his first public appearance since the impeachment trial, the president’s former national security adviser said he was fighting efforts to suppress his unpublished book.

DURHAM, N.C. — John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser to President Trump, suggested on Monday that his unpublished book contained far more revelations than just the campaign to pressure Ukraine for help with domestic politics but said he was fighting “censorship” by the White House.

In his first public appearance since the Senate impeachment trial in which Republicans refused to hear his testimony, Mr. Bolton said that the White House was trying to keep him from publishing important parts of his new memoir by terming them classified. He said he was pushing back but feared that a pre-publication review could stop the book from being published next month.

“For all the focus on Ukraine and the impeachment trial and all that, to me, there are portions of the manuscript that deal with Ukraine, I view that like the sprinkles on the ice cream sundae in terms of what’s in the book,” Mr. Bolton told an audience at Duke University during a forum on foreign policy on Monday evening. “This is an effort to write history and I did it the best I can. We’ll have to see what comes out of the censorship.”

White House memo on Soleimani strike makes no mention of imminent threat

Washington Post logoA White House memo justifying the U.S. strike that killed Iranian military leader Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January makes no mention of an imminent threat, which was President Trump’s rationale for the attack.

The two-page memo made public by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Friday instead says the Soleimani strike was carried out in response to previous attacks and to deter Iran from conducting or supporting attacks in the future.

“Although the threat of further attack existed, recourse to the inherent right of self-defense was justified sufficiently by the series of attacks that preceded the January 2 strike,” the memo reads. Continue reading.

Hope Hicks to return to White House

The Hill logoHope Hicks is returning to the White House as a counselor to President Trump and senior adviser.

Trump’s former communications director will work as a senior adviser for Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner‘s office, the White House confirmed Thursday. 

Hicks is likely to return to the White House sometime in early March, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said, though she noted that “details are still being determined.”  Continue reading.

Republicans expect Trump to withdraw controversial Fed nominee

The Hill logoSenate Republican sources expect President Trump to withdraw his nomination of Judy Shelton to serve on the Federal Reserve Board following bipartisan resistance on Capitol Hill.

The White House has not made a final decision, since Trump would first need to sign off on the reversal, but Republican sources say it would be “desirable” for her to withdraw from consideration and that her nomination is “trending” in that direction.

“She’s being pulled,” said a Republican senator. Continue reading.