Tag: Trump White House

Former White House aide Cliff Sims sues Trump after attack over tell-all book

Cliff Sims, left, former director of White House message strategy, stands with other White House officials in June 2017 during a ceremony at the White House. Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP

A former White House aide who penned an insider account about President Trump is now suing the president after Trump’s lawyers filed an arbitration claim saying the book violated a nondisclosure agreement.

The former communications aide, Cliff Sims, filed the suit in District of Columbia court Monday after Trump’s lawyers began arbitration proceedings late last month and the president attacked Sims on Twitter as a low-level “gofer.”

“I’m not going to be bullied on this,” Sims said during an interview Tuesday on CNN. “That’s what we try to teach our kids to do when bullies are coming after them. … I’m not going to cower.”

View the complete February 11 article by Josh Dawsey and Felicia Sonmez on The Washington Post website here.

The Memo: Trump allies fret as legal troubles multiply

President Trump’s legal troubles are spiraling, and even some people who are supportive of his agenda worry about what comes next.

“They are going after every aspect of his business and his finances, and they have unlimited resources. It’s a huge concern because the Democrats are not on a search for truth but to destroy him and his presidency,” one Republican campaign consultant told The Hill. Continue reading “The Memo: Trump allies fret as legal troubles multiply”

White House Won’t Rule Out Another Government Shutdown

Workers are still struggling to recover from the 35-day Trump Shutdown — the longest in our history. Now, with one week to go before the funding deadline, the White House won’t rule out another government shutdown.

Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said that he “absolutely cannot” rule out another shutdown, and Trump’s top economic advisor Kevin Hassett said that “all options are on the table.”

Question: “Do you think the president would in fact shut the government down again?” Hassett: “All options are on the table.”

Mulvaney: “The government shutdown is technically still on the table.”

Question: “We cannot definitively rule out a government shutdown at the end of this week?” Mulvaney: “You absolutely cannot.” Continue reading “White House Won’t Rule Out Another Government Shutdown”

Ivanka Trump’s empowerment plan aims to help 50 million women. So far, $50 million has been pledged.

Members of the Trump family, including Ivanka Trump, center, attended the State of the Union address Tuesday night. Credit: Toni L. Sandys, The Washington Post)

This article has been updated to include response from the White House.

Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the president and a senior White House adviser, announced a new global effort Thursday to help 50 million women in the developing world by 2025.

“This new initiative will for the first time coordinate America’s commitment to one of the most undervalued resources in the developing world — the talent, ambition and genius of women,” Trump wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that announced the news. For the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, the U.S. government will team up with several private companies such as UPS and Pepsi to “facilitate complementary private-sector investments to achieve our shared goals,” Trump said.

But despite the initiative’s ambitions, it is unclear how the White House-led fund would fit into the president’s broader skepticism about foreign aid. Notably, government funding for the project will come from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — an organization whose funding President Trump has repeatedly tried to cut.

View the complete February 9 article by Adam Taylor on The Washington Post website here.

Power Up: ‘Tom Brady’ of leakers roils Trump White House before State of Union

At the White House

STEPPING ON THE SOTU: President Trump is supposed to own the news cycle today, when he will deliver his third joint address to Congress. The occasion is prepackaged to allow the president to sell a positive message around his administration’s successes and lay out a compelling agenda for the year ahead — something for Congress to rally around.

The State of the Union might be a constitutional obligation but it’s a speech that Trump has been looking forward to, according to the New York Times’s Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman, for “all of the pomp and circumstance that accompany it with some reverence.” But behind-the-scenes, chaos is roiling the White House once again after a prolific leak to Axios on Sunday of Trump’s private schedule for the past three months. It showed the president spends 60 percent of his scheduled hours in what former Chief of Staff John F. Kelly dubbed “Executive Time.”

But Trump might want to apply Marie Kondo’s method to tidy up his White House, keeping only those staffers who “spark joy.”

View the complete February 5 article by Jacqueline Alemany on The Washington Post website here.

Trump has spent about 60 percent of his time over the last 3 months in ‘Executive Time’: Leaked White House schedules

Credit: Jabin Botsford, The Washington Post

Donald Trump spent more than 60 percent of his time over the past 3 months in “Executive Time,” according to a White House source who leaked copies of the president’s private schedule to Axios.

“Executive Time” is a loosely-defined title for the time Trump takes to watch television, engage with Twitter and make phone calls to friends and confidants. As Axios reports, Trump “usually spends the first 5 hours of the day” in “Executive Time.”

Six sources also told Axios that while Trump’s schedule claims he’s in the Oval Office from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. everyday, in reality the president “spends his mornings in the residence, watching TV, reading the papers, and responding to what he sees and reads” in phone calls with associates.

View the complete February 3 article by Elizabeth Preza on the AlterNet website here.

Trump appoints Ronny Jackson chief medical adviser

Ronny Jackson was also nominated for a promotion to a two-star admiral on Friday. Credit: Alex Wong, Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Saturday named Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson as chief medical adviser and assistant to the president.

Jackson, the president’s former physician and once his nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs before, was also nominated for a promotion to a two-star admiral on Friday.

The dual announcements came ahead of Trump’s annual physical, which is scheduled for Feb. 8 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

View the complete February 2 article by Christian Vasquez on the Politico website here.

Does Trump Ever Work? Apparently Not.

Trump’s private schedules over the past three months revealed how little the president actually works. In fact, Trump spent around 60% percent of his time in “executive time,” watching TV and tweeting. Wouldn’t that be nice? Good thing there isn’t anything major the president needs to be dealing with…

Trump usually spends the first five hours of each day and around 60% of his time overall in “executive time.”

Axios: “The schedules, which cover nearly every working day since the midterms, show that Trump has spent around 60% of his scheduled time over the past 3 months in unstructured ‘Executive Time.’”

Axios: “Trump, an early riser, usually spends the first 5 hours of the day in Executive Time. Each day’s schedule places Trump in ‘Location: Oval Office’ from 8 to 11 a.m. But Trump, who often wakes before 6 a.m., is never in the Oval during those hours, according to six sources with direct knowledge.”

Trump also spent 77 hours in meetings over the past three months, which is less time than most Americans work in two weeks.

Meanwhile, as Trump claims there is a supposed “national emergency,” he spent the weekend at his ritzy Florida golf course.

Report: Ronny Jackson Nominated for Second Star by White House

Credit: Carlos Barria, Reuters

Former doctor to President Donald Trump, Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, is reportedly up for a “second star” while he under investigation by the Defense Department Inspector General’s Office. An official told Task and Purpose Jackson was nominated by the White House for “rear admiral upper half (2-star)” and submitted the nomination in Jan. 2019. The nomination was reportedly sent over to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 15, but is not close to a vote. The Inspector General’s Office confirmed to The Washington Postlast year that it was looking into allegations against Jackson’s conduct—which reportedly include accusations of overprescribing drugs and the creation of a “hostile working environment.” Inspector general’s office spokesman Bruce Anderson told the website on Friday the investigation is “still ongoing.” Jackson was nominated to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, but withdrew his nomination in April 2018 after the allegations were made public.

View the complete February 1 post on the Daily Beast website here.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Defends Lack Of Briefings, Accuses Reporters Of Wanting To Be ‘Stars’

Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP

The White House press secretary said the administration is not out to make “stars out of people that want to become contributors on CNN.”

After President Donald Trump’s recent tweet justifying the infrequency of White House press briefings, his press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders criticized some reporters’ decorum.

In an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday, she suggested that reporters often seek to boost their profiles during the briefings.

“We’re in the business of getting information to the American people, not making stars out of people that want to become contributors on CNN,” she said. “And that’s, a lot of times, what we see take place in the briefing room.”

View the complete January 23 article by Kimberley Richards on the Huffington Post website here.