Tag: Trump White House

Trump is ‘having a full-blown mental breakdown’ and needs to resign: Trump ex-staffer

AlterNet logoLeading Republican elected officials should work with President Donald Trump’s family to negotiate him resigning from office, a former top White House official suggested on MSNBC on Friday.

Former White House press secretary Anthony Scaramucci blasted his former boss during an interview with Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s “Meet the Press Daily.”

“He has totally and completely lost it. There is nobody that can look at the situation, read the tweets, look at the press sprays, and say he hasn’t lost it,” Scaramucci argued.

View the complete August 24 article by Bob Brigham on the AlterNet website here.

A Gyrating Economy, and Trump’s Volatile Approach to It, Raise Alarms

New York Times logoBIARRITZ, France — President Trump has again tossed out the economic and political playbook that guided other occupants of the Oval Office for generations as the United States dominated the flow of goods and services across the world.

In the space of a few hours, he declared that his own central bank chief was an “enemy,” claimed sweeping powers not explicitly envisioned by the Constitution to “order” American businesses to leave China and, when stock markets predictably tumbled, made a joke of it.

Mr. Trump’s wild and unscripted pronouncements on Friday renewed questions about his stewardship of the world’s largest economy even as he escalated a trade war with China before heading to France for a high-profile summit with the leaders of many of the world’s other major industrial powers.

View the complete August 23 article by Peter Baker on The New York Times website here.

White House press secretary’s scandal-plagued career includes DUIs, cheating and a horrifying comment about a botched execution

AlterNet logoStephanie Grisham, who replaced Sarah Huckabee Sanders as President Donald Trump’s press secretary, has led a scandal-plagued career that has been dogged by accusations of plagiarism and cheating on expense reports, as well as two arrests for driving while under the influence.

The New York Times reports that Grisham’s resume is one that “contains red flags that most administrations might deem troubling,” and the paper then goes on to document Grisham’s multiple alleged ethical missteps that have so far cost her two different jobs.

For example, Grisham was an employee at the AAA auto club in Arizona for only one year before she left the job under a cloud of scandal after being accused of filing false claims for “travel and other expenses,” the Times reports.

View the complete August 22 article by Brad Reed from Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Scoop: Top Homeland Security aide resigns amid tensions with White House

Axios logoActing Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan’s top aide and spokesperson is resigning amid frustration in the White House over the Department of Homeland Security’s handling of major policy rollouts and White House distrust of McAleenan and his inner circle, sources familiar with his resignation tell Axios.

Why it matters: Andrew Meehan’s departure comes amid broader internal tensions between the White House and DHS leadership. President Trump is wary of McAleenan, whom he associates with the Obama administration, and his top aides, several current and former administration officials tell us. These sources say Trump has no intention of formally nominating McAleenan for a permanent position.

Continue reading “Scoop: Top Homeland Security aide resigns amid tensions with White House”

The White House Saw Riches in the Arctic Refuge, but Reality May Fall Short

New York Times logoWhen the Trump administration first pushed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration, it predicted that drilling would generate a windfall for the federal Treasury: $1.8 billion, by a White House estimate.

But two years later, with the expected sale of the first oil and gas leases just months away, a New York Times analysis of prior lease sales suggests that the new activity may yield as little as $45 million over the next decade. Even the latest federal government estimate is half the figure the White House predicted.

The lofty original projection was just one element of a campaign within the administration to present in the best possible light the idea of opening the refuge’s coastal plain after decades of being stymied by Democrats and environmentalists, according to internal government communications and other documents reviewed by The Times.

View the complete August 21 article by Henry Fountain and Steve Eder on The New York Times website here.

Trump’s Rollback of Auto Pollution Rules Shows Signs of Disarray

New York Times logoWASHINGTON — The White House, blindsided by a pact between California and four automakers to oppose President Trump’s auto emissions rollbacks, has mounted an effort to prevent any more companies from joining California.

Toyota, Fiat Chrysler and General Motors were all summoned by a senior Trump adviser to a White House meeting last month where he pressed them to stand by the president’s own initiative, according to four people familiar with the talks.

But even as the White House was meeting with automakers, it was losing ground. Yet another company, Mercedes-Benz, is preparing to join the four automakers already in the California agreement — Honda, Ford, Volkswagen and BMW — according to two people familiar with the German company’s plans.

View the complete August 22 article by Coral Davenport and Hiroko Tabuchi on The New York Times website here.

Trump team braces GOP donors for a potential ‘moderate and short’ recession

The White House is weighing cuts to corporate and payroll taxes, among other measures, to cushion the U.S. economy if an election-year recession hits.

In public, President Donald Trump and top White House officials keep extolling the strength of the U.S. economy. In private, they’re increasingly worrying about a global economic slowdown triggering a U.S. recession — and weighing options to shore up the economy ahead of an election year.

At a fundraising luncheon this week in Jackson, Wyo., headlined by both Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged the risks to the GOP elite behind closed doors. If the U.S. were to face a recession, it would be “moderate and short,” Mulvaney told roughly 50 donors, according to an attendee. Continue reading “Trump team braces GOP donors for a potential ‘moderate and short’ recession”

White House officials eyeing payroll tax cut in effort to reverse weakening economy

Washington Post logoSeveral senior White House officials have begun discussing whether to push for a temporary payroll tax cut as a way to arrest an economic slowdown, three people familiar with the discussions said, revealing growing concerns about the economy among President Trump’s top economic aides.

The talks are still in their early stages and have included a range of other tax breaks. The officials also have not decided whether to formally push Congress to approve any of these measures, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose internal discussions. But the White House increasingly is discussing ideas to boost a slowing economy, they said.

Even though deliberations about the payroll tax cut were held Monday, the White House released a statement disputing that the idea was actively under “consideration.”

View the complete August 19 article by Damian Paletta on The Washington Post website here.

Trump again undercuts his administration’s messy tariffs rhetoric

Washington Post logoOne of the problems with evaluating claims made by President Trump’s administration about the tariffs imposed on products from China is that it can be hard to determine how much misdirection is built in.

Consider the crux of the issue: who is paying for the tariffs. It is certainly the case that very, very few American consumers are paying for the tariffs directly; Americans aren’t sending checks to the Treasury to cover increased import costs. Instead, they’re paying for the tariffs indirectly, through higher prices of products that are imported from China or that use components imported from China. A bad-faith representation of the situation could say, with accuracy, that consumers are paying very little, if any, of the tariffs simply based on that distinction.

A broader problem, though, is that the president’s rhetoric on the issue is all over the map and internally inconsistent — and also not the argument his team is making publicly.

View the complete August 19 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Trump Administration Asks Congress to Reauthorize N.S.A.’s Deactivated Call Records Program

New York Times logoThe White House is seeking reauthorization of a law that lets the N.S.A. gain access to logs of Americans’ phone and text records — while acknowledging that the program has been indefinitely halted.

WASHINGTON — Breaking a long silence about a high-profile National Security Agency program that sifts records of Americans’ telephone calls and text messages in search of terrorists, the Trump administration on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that the system has been indefinitely shut down — but asked Congress to extend its legal basis anyway.

In a letter to Congress delivered on Thursday and obtained by The New York Times, the administration urged lawmakers to make permanent the legal authority for the National Security Agency to gain access to logs of Americans’ domestic communications, the USA Freedom Act. The law, enacted after the intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden revealed the existence of the program in 2013, is set to expire in December, but the Trump administration wants it made permanent. Continue reading “Trump Administration Asks Congress to Reauthorize N.S.A.’s Deactivated Call Records Program”