Tag: Trump White House

On The Trail: Pence’s knives come out

The Hill logoVice President Pence has spent three decades in public life selling his brand of orthodox Republicanism through calm and reserved gentility. He is conservative, he likes to say, but he is not angry about it.

But Pence, who once wrote an essay forswearing negative campaign tactics, has always harbored a sharper edge, an attack dog who only occasionally bares his fangs. And as polls show Pence’s boss trailing, the vice president has increasingly snapped at critics and even some erstwhile allies.

This past week, Pence lashed out at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), one of the harshest critics of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. In an appearance on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News, Pence blamed Cuomo for some of the 32,000 New Yorkers who have died from COVID-19. Continue reading.

White House ‘concocted a positive feedback loop’ to mislead Trump into thinking he’s doing an excellent job on coronavirus

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s chaotic White House resulted in “a lost summer” in the battle against coronavirus, according to a new in-depth report by The Washington Post.

The newspaper interviewed “41 senior administration officials and other people directly involved in or briefed on the response efforts” for the story, with multiple former officials offering anonymous quotes.

The report explains the skepticism of science and experts by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Continue reading.

Pelosi, Schumer say White House declined $2T coronavirus deal

The Hill logoDemocratic leaders said Friday that the White House rejected an offer for a roughly $2 trillion coronavirus relief package.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that as part of a closed-door Thursday meeting, Democrats offered to reduce their $3.4 trillion price tag by $1 trillion if Republicans would agree to raise their roughly $1 trillion package by the same amount.

That strategy, effectively trying to split the difference between the two sides, would result in legislation costing between $2 trillion and $2.4 trillion. Continue reading.

House can sue to force former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with subpoena

Washington Post logoHouse Democrats can sue to force President Trump’s former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with a congressional subpoena, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In a 7-2 decision, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed Congress’s oversight powers and said the House has a long-standing right to compel government officials to testify and produce documents. The ruling came in one of a set of historic clashes between the White House and Democratic lawmakers.

The “effective functioning of the Legislative Branch critically depends on the legislative prerogative to obtain information, and constitutional structure and historical practice support judicial enforcement of congressional subpoenas when necessary,” Judge Judith W. Rogers wrote for the majority. Continue reading.

Wary GOP eyes Meadows shift from brick-thrower to dealmaker

The Hill logoWhite House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who as a conservative lawmaker in the House lambasted congressional dealmakers from the outside, is now the guy in the room where it happens whom Republicans are depending on to craft a coronavirus relief package.

Meadows, the former chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, is in a difficult spot.

His boss, President Trump, is down in the polls with less than 100 days to go before Election Day, largely because of negative reviews of his response to the coronavirus pandemic that has wreaked havoc on a formerly strong economy. Continue reading.

House can sue to force former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with subpoena

Washington Post logoHouse Democrats can sue to force President Trump’s former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with a congressional subpoena, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In a 7-2 decision, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed Congress’s oversight powers and said the House has a long-standing right to compel government officials to testify and produce documents. The ruling came in one of a set of historic clashes between the White House and Democratic lawmakers.

The “effective functioning of the Legislative Branch critically depends on the legislative prerogative to obtain information, and constitutional structure and historical practice support judicial enforcement of congressional subpoenas when necessary,” Judge Judith W. Rogers wrote for the majority. Continue reading.

Covid talks going nowhere as deadline nears

Negotiators met for more than three hours but remain far apart on an agreement.

Negotiations between the White House and Democratic congressional leaders on a new coronavirus relief package were on the brink of failure Thursday night, both sides said after a fruitless three-hour meeting in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.

The apparent deadlock in the high-level talks now shifts the focus back to President Donald Trump, who warned earlier in the day that he will issue a series of executive orders to address the economic crisis facing millions of Americans if no deal can be reached with Congress. Trump could issue these orders as early as Friday, senior administration officials said.

After their 10th face-to-face session with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) blamed the White House for failing to reach a bipartisan agreement that would allow the resumption of federal unemployment payments or provide hundreds of billions of dollars in new aid to state and local governments. Democrats are pushing a relief package costing more than $3 trillion, while the White House and Senate Republicans want to keep the price tag closer to $1 trillion. Continue reading.

White House, Democrats fail to reach agreement on virus relief bill, and next steps are uncertain

Washington Post logoParties meet for more than three hours but say they remain far apart on key issues

White House officials and Democratic leaders ended a three-hour negotiation Thursday evening without a coronavirus relief deal or even a clear path forward, with both sides remaining far apart on critical issues.

“We’re still a considerable amount apart,” said White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after emerging from the meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. President Trump called into the meeting several times, but they were unable to resolve key issues.

Pelosi called it a “consequential meeting” in which the differences between the two parties were on display. Continue reading.

McConnell goes hands-off on coronavirus relief bill

The Hill logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been careful to maintain his distance from the negotiations between White House officials and Democratic leaders on coronavirus relief legislation.

McConnell’s decision not to participate directly in talks between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Democratic leaders has struck some colleagues as odd.

Senate Republicans say McConnell has proceeded cautiously because any deal that emerges is likely to divide the Senate GOP conference. They note the GOP leader has made it a practice in recent years to avoid taking up issues that divide Republicans if possible. Continue reading.

What the White House says about civil rights is not what Trump says, again and again

Washington Post logoAsked about John Lewis, the president complained that the civil rights leader had skipped his inauguration.

One way by which President Trump has been able to navigate the presidency is that he has a massive institutional safety net. The historic tendency to conflate “the president” with “the White House” has allowed Trump’s aides and staffers to repeatedly put him on record as holding positions that he clearly doesn’t hold. A fumbling comment from Trump can be modified either by an after-the-fact cleanup or by pointing to a statement the White House produced on his behalf or an excerpt of a speech written for him.

How does this work in practice? In early July, Trump retweeted a video in which one of his supporters used the phrase “white power” to respond to a heckler. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was prepared to address the subject.

“What I would note,” McEnany said of the incident, “the president has repeatedly condemned hate. August of 2019: ‘In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America.’ In April 2019: ‘We have no tolerance for those who disrupt this peace. And we condemn all hate and violence, especially in our places of worship.’ August 2018: ‘I condemn all types of racism.’ He’s repeatedly done this.” Continue reading.