TRUMP Thread

http://mashable.com/2017/08/25/ivan...s/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link#8DMUMhYvD9qk​

 

For Trump, it almost seems that the fact of Obama, the fact of a black president, insulted him personally. The insult intensified when Obama and Seth Meyers publicly humiliated him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011. But the bloody heirloom ensures the last laugh. Replacing Obama is not enough—Trump has made the negation of Obama’s legacy the foundation of his own. And this too is whiteness. “Race is an idea, not a fact,” the historian Nell Irvin Painter has written, and essential to the construct of a “white race” is the idea of not being a nigger. Before Barack Obama, niggers could be manufactured out of Sister Souljahs, Willie Hortons, and Dusky Sallys. But Donald Trump arrived in the wake of something more potent—an entire nigger presidency with nigger health care, nigger climate accords, and nigger justice reform, all of which could be targeted for destruction or redemption, thus reifying the idea of being white. Trump truly is something new—the first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president. And so it will not suffice to say that Trump is a white man like all the others who rose to become president. He must be called by his rightful honorific—America’s first white president.

[/I]https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...ent-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/?utm_source=atltw

 

Trump promised not to work with foreign entities. His company just did

A major construction company owned by the Chinese government was hired to work on the latest Trump golf club development in Dubai despite a pledge from Donald Trump that his family business would not engage in any transactions with foreign government entities while he serves as president.

Trump’s partner, DAMAC Properties, awarded a $32-million contract to the Middle East subsidiary of China State Construction Engineering Corporation to build a six-lane road as part of the residential piece of the Trump World Golf Club Dubai project called Akoya Oxygen, according to news releases released by both companies. It is scheduled to open next year.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article172443417.html

 

President Donald Trump still has not taken the necessary steps to distance himself from his businesses while in office. In accordance with a plan that he and one of his lawyers, Sheri Dillon, laid out at a press conference on January 11, Trump has filed paperwork to remove himself from the day-to-day operation of his eponymous organization. However, numerous ethics experts have voiced strenuous objections to the plan, which they say does very little to resolve the issue: As long as Trump continues to profit from his business empire—which he does whether or not he is nominally in charge—they say, the possibility that outside actors will attempt to affect his policies by plumping up his pocketbook will remain very much in play.

Several of Trump’s critics have moved forward with legal action. The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a lawsuit alleging that Trump’s business holdings violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which makes it illegal for government officials to “accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” CREW’s bipartisan legal team includes, among others, Norm Eisen and Richard Painter, who served as ethics lawyers under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush, respectively; Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University; and Zephyr Teachout, a professor at Fordham University (and former congressional candidate) who is considered an authority on the emoluments clause.

All have been vocally critical of Trump’s continued refusal to sell off his business, and are now taking their case to court to argue that several of Trump’s businesses present avenues by which foreign governments could seek to influence the president by, for example, booking stays at one of his hotels or renting space at one of his properties. Additionally, the lawsuit seeks to force Trump to reveal his tax returns, something every president has done since Gerald Ford but which Trump has refused to do, significantly limiting the public’s ability to understand the president’s finances. When asked about the lawsuit, Trump described it as “totally without merit.” Eisen was quick to respond on Twitter, offering to “debate Trump (or his chosen champion) on the merits of our case anytime,” making it clear that CREW intends to continue to pursue its case. (CREW has also filed a separate complaint to the General Services Administration arguing that Trump has violated the lease on his Washington, D.C. hotel, which states that “no ... elected official of the Government of the United States … shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.”)


https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/08/donald-trump-conflicts-of-interests/508382/

 

Grenade launchers??? Under what circumstances do the police need those? Do they even have the training? Those donunt eating fat boys don't compare to the real professionals.

 

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Trump Organization drops birther crusade from Trump's corporate biography


The Trump Organization this year removed from Donald Trump's corporate biography a reference to his involvement in the birther movement that sought to prove then-President Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen of the United States.The line, which had been included in Trump's bio since as early as August 2015, read, "In 2011, after failed attempts by both Senator McCain and Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump single handedly forced President Obama to release his birth certificate, which was lauded by large segments of the political community."

The line was removed at some point between January 13 and January 24 of this year, a review of the Internet Archive shows. Trump took office on January 20.
Representatives for the Trump Organization and the White House did not respond to requests for comment about the change.

The line echoed a claim Trump himself made during the 2016 campaign, in which he falsely placed blame on Clinton and her 2008 campaign for starting the birther conspiracy.

Trump repeatedly and publicly cast doubt that Obama was born in the US and challenged Obama multiple times to release his birth certificate.

Obama ultimately released a long-form birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii. Even after this, Trump continued to suggest that the birth certificate was a forgery.

In September 2016, Trump finally acknowledged that Obama was born in the US.

The Trump Organization also made other changes to Trump's bio early this year. References to a Trump-branded Puerto Rico golf course that went bankrupt and failed projects in Azerbaijan and Brazil have been removed.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/12/politics/kfile-trump-birther-biography/index.html?sr=twCNN091217kfile-trump-birther-biography1007PMStory

 

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“The government had previously announced it would cut the budget for Obamacare’s navigator program by 41 percent. But right now, the program has no funding at all. Last year’s grants ran out on September 1, and the administration still has not awarded next year’s money.
The sudden funding halt comes at a critical time for the Affordable Care Act. Navigator groups were just beginning to ramp up outreach for the health law’s open enrollment period, which begins November 1. Now, some have done an about-face: They’ve canceled outreach work and appointments with potential enrollees because they have no budget to cover those costs.”



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Exclusive: US government wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman

"Washington (CNN) US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election, sources tell CNN, an extraordinary step involving a high-ranking campaign official now at the center of the Russia meddling probe.

The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump.

Some of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the investigation."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/18/polit...-wiretapped-fisa-russians/index.html?adkey=bn

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Trump hires campaign workers instead of farm experts at USDA

President Donald Trump’s appointees to jobs at Agriculture Department headquarters include a long-haul truck driver, a country club cabana attendant and the owner of a scented-candle company.

A POLITICO review of dozens of résumés from political appointees to USDA shows the agency has been stocked with Trump campaign staff and volunteers who in many cases demonstrated little to no experience with federal policy, let alone deep roots in agriculture. But of the 42 résumés POLITICO reviewed, 22 cited Trump campaign experience. And based on their résumés, some of those appointees appear to lack credentials, such as a college degree, required to qualify for higher government salaries.

It’s typical for presidents to reward loyalists with jobs once a campaign is over. But what’s different under Trump, sources familiar with the department's inner workings say, is the number of campaign staffers who have gotten positions and the jobs and salaries they have been hired for, despite not having solid agricultural credentials in certain cases. An inexperienced staff can lead to mistakes and sidetrack a president’s agenda, the sources say.

 

Jared Kushner's lawyer, fooled by 'email prankster,' offers window into private email controversy


Abbe Lowell, a top Washington lawyer, exchanged emails on Monday with a prankster posing as his client Jared Kushner, at one point telling the prankster he needed to see "all emails" sent and received from a private email account Kushner had set up in December.

The exchange, masterminded by amateur Trump-Russia sleuth Jeff Jetton and executed by a prankster who tweets as @SINON_REBORN, comes as Kushner is dealing with his own minor email scandal and offers a window into how his team is responding in its initial stages.
Politico reported on Sunday that Kushner had used a private email address to communicate with top White House officials, including the former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former chief strategist Steve Bannon. The New York Times reported on Monday night that as many as six top White House officials, including Priebus and Bannon, had used private email accounts to discuss White House matters.

http://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-lawyer-email-prankster-private-2017-9

 

Blumenthal: ‘99 percent sure’ of Flynn, Manafort indictments

At least two key Trump associates will face criminal charges, says the Connecticut senator and former state attorney general.

Criminal charges against two former top advisers to President Donald Trump are virtually certain, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Tuesday.
Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort are almost sure to be indicted as a result of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Connecticut senator told POLITICO.

“I'm about 99 percent sure there will be some criminal charges from this investigation,” said Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Blumenthal has also served as a U.S. attorney and spent 20 years as his state's attorney general.
Blumenthal said he is less certain Trump himself would end up facing charges, including for possible obstruction of justice for his firing of FBI Director James Comey.
But he said that several Trump associates may find themselves under indictment.
Manafort and Flynn "are the most prominent,” he said, "but there may well be others."

Manafort, a Republican lobbyist who served as Trump’s former 2016 campaign chairman, reportedly first came under FBI scrutiny in early 2014—long before Trump announced his presidential bid—for his lucrative political consulting work in Ukraine. That probe has since been folded into Mueller’s investigation and includes a review into Manafort’s lobbying work with a variety of pro-Russian clients.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/...nafort-richard-blumenthal-says-243158?cid=apn

 

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Kushner registered in New York as a female voter

Registration records show that when Kushner, who is married to first daughter Ivanka Ivanka, registered to vote in 2009, he apparently checked a box classifying his gender as a female.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobby...er-registered-to-vote-in-new-york-as-a-female

 

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[h=2]TRUMP’S LEGACY IS ALREADY ONE OF GREED, IGNORANCE, RACISM AND CRUELTY[/h](by Greg Price)
[HR][/HR]

DONALD TRUMP’s administration is requiring impoverished Puerto Rican hurricane victims to pay full price to evacuate—and is even holding their passports as collateral until the government receives payment.
The administration is reportedly sticking with a State Department policy that forces evacuees to sign a promissory note before leaving, according to MarketWatch Thursday morning. The note “obligates an evacuated person to repay the cost of the transportation to the U.S. government.“
The amount of the note, or loan, is based on the most recent one-way full face plane ticket before a crisis, a State Department policy that the agency has declined to waive. Meanwhile, some commercial airlines had reduced heir fares for flights leaving Florida before Hurricane Irma struck earlier this month.
A State Department official is required to hold an evacuee’s passport—unless he or she has another proper form of identification—until the promissory note is paid off. However, the payments cannot be received right away due to “ongoing emergencies.”
The report comes as Trump faces myriad criticism and cries of hypocrisy for his administration’s lopsided responses to hurricane victims in Houston, Texas and Florida compared to Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens, decimated by Hurricane Maria a week ago.
Trump has claimed he’s received rave reviews for his administration’s response to the tragedy in Puerto Rico, which is dealing with power outages across the entire island and a lack of drivers to move aid from ports to victims. He also said the task of getting aid to the island was difficult because of its location in the “middle” of the Atlantic Ocean, but then initially did not temporarily waive the Jones Act, an archane naval code that complicates the relief effort by allowing only U.S.-built and U.S.-flagged vessels from responding.
(continue reading)

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Elaine Chao, champion of Trump's infrastructure plan, chose to keep stock in a building company
Elaine Chao, champion of Trump's infrastructure plan, chose to keep stock in a building company

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao testifies at her confirmation hearing in January 2017. - Zach Gibson | AP
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, a leader in the Trump administration's effort to inject $1 trillion into America's crumbling infrastructure, chose to hold on to more than $300,000 of deferred stock awards in a transportation construction company after resigning from its board when she was confirmed to the Cabinet position.

Shares in the company — Vulcan Materials — climbed to a 10-year high in the days following Trump's election and have hovered there since, reflecting investors' optimism that the company's business and the construction sector will benefit from a federally funded infrastructure package.

Because of Chao's Cabinet position and the company's business, the stock awards present a conflict of interest.

Here's why: Chao could by turns propel an infrastructure plan in the company's best interest and gain financially when she sells her shares, assuming the price climbs if an infrastructure package gets through Congress.

Since Inauguration Day, Chao and Trump have spoken publicly at least 20 times about infrastructure. Each time, the share price in Vulcan jumped in the days afterward. Vulcan, which generated $3.5 billion in revenue last year, is among the nation's largest producers of construction aggregates — crushed stone, sand and gravel. It also produces asphalt and ready-mixed concrete.

Cabinet nominees and political appointees, in compliance with various laws and ethics guidelines, resign positions in the private sector and divest assets that could be affected by policy matters or legislation they're involved in. Some will separate from all outside interests to avoid any perceived conflicts.

In fact, when Chao was confirmed, she promptly resigned from Vulcan and other non-profit and corporate board positions, including News Corp. and Ingersoll Rand. She also sold her compensation-related stock holdings from the boards and said she'll follow the compensation plan of Wells Fargo, gradually cashing out her stock awards through 2021.

But with Vulcan, instead of requesting a clean break from the company, Chao opted to hold on to the stock awards through April 2018 — the soonest she can sell them — according to her financial disclosure form. In Chao's ethics letter to the Senate confirmation committee, she cited the company's compensation agreement with directors as the basis for her decision.

"Until I receive the cash payment of my vested deferred stock units, I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter that to my knowledge has a direct and predictable effect on the financial interests of Vulcan Materials, unless I first obtain a written waiver," Chao wrote in the January letter.

Despite Vulcan's guidelines regarding director pay, ethics experts and people experienced in corporate board matters say it would have been easy for Chao to separate financially from the company upon her confirmation. Vulcan's guidelines also allow for a director's compensation agreements to be modified, "if it determines in its sole discretion that such action would be in the best interest of the company."

The amount of the cash payout will be determined based on the closing price of the stock at the time the payout is made, according to disclosure records. Chao could also keep the shares, betting the price goes up.

A spokesperson for Vulcan wouldn't comment on whether Chao requested to cash out when she was confirmed. As to her stock awards, Vulcan Materials sent a statement saying "all of the company's actions have been in accordance with the provisions of our plan and applicable IRS regulations."

Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who served as the top ethics lawyer in the White House under President George W. Bush, said Chao used poor judgment. "I don't think it's possible for Elaine Chao to do her job as Secretary of Transportation without participating personally and substantially in a matter that's going to have a direct and predictable impact on Vulcan Materials," he said.

Chao's decision to keep her stock awards in a company that could profit from her policy decisions is the latest in a string of now publicly known decisions by Trump's Cabinet secretaries that raise questions about their attention to ethical behavior.

Four of Trump's Cabinet secretaries are under investigation for using chartered aircraft when commercial travel was a cheaper option. Key among them are Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. Mnuchin requested the use of a government jet for his honeymoon and traveled with his wife on another government plane to Kentucky on the day of the solar eclipse.

And Price used chartered aircraft 26 times since May, according to a review by Politico. The costs of such chartered flights can cost tens of thousands of dollars per flight. Price apologized Thursday, says he will reimburse the government for his portion of the chartered flights and has pledged to fly commercial airlines in the future.

 

Justice releases anti-nepotism White House memos


The Justice Department has released several legal memos issued under past administrations that found it is unlawful for presidents to appoint family members to White House positions or commissions.
The memos, issued to White Houses run by former Presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Obama, were overruled in January by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Daniel Koffsky, a longtime Justice Department lawyer.
That decision paved the way for President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to become a senior adviser at the White House.

The president's elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, eventually became a senior adviser as well, albeit in an unpaid capacity.
The legal memos concluding that the president cannot appoint relatives to his White House staff or advisory commissions were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Politico, which posted them online. According to the documents, Justice Department lawyers had held for decades that a 1967 anti-nepotism law barred the president from appointing family members to White House positions.

For example, a 2009 opinion issued to the Obama White House forbade the president from appointing his half-sister to a White House fellowships commission and his brother-in-law to a fitness commission.
The legal memos were overruled in January of this year. Koffsky concluded that a 1978 law gave the president broad authority to hire for White House positions

http://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...that-supported-coverage-of-presidents-in-anti

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Tillerson’s Fury at Trump Required an Intervention From Pence

by Carol E. Lee, Kristen Welker, Stephanie Ruhle and Dafna LinzerOct 4 2017, 5:50 am ET

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was on the verge of resigning this past summer amid mounting policy disputes and clashes with the White House, according to multiple senior administration officials who were aware of the situation at the time.

The tensions came to a head around the time President Donald Trump delivered a politicized speech in late July to the Boy Scouts of America, an organization Tillerson once led, the officials said.

Just days earlier, Tillerson had openly disparaged the president, referring to him as a “moron,” after a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon with members of Trump’s national security team and Cabinet officials, according to three officials familiar with the incident.

While it's unclear if he was aware of the incident, Vice President Mike Pence counseled Tillerson, who is fourth in line to the presidency, on ways to ease tensions with Trump, and other top administration officials urged him to remain in the job at least until the end of the year, officials said.

Officials said that the administration, beset then by a series of high-level firings and resignations, would have struggled to manage the fallout from a Cabinet secretary of his stature departing within the first year of Trump’s presidency.

Pence has since spoken to Tillerson about being respectful of the president in meetings and in public, urging that any disagreements be sorted out privately, a White House official said. The official said progress has since been made.

Yet the disputes have not abated. This weekend, tensions spilled out into the open once again when the president seemed to publicly chide Tillerson on his handling of the crisis with North Korea.

NBC News spoke with a dozen current and former senior administration officials for this article, as well as others who are close to the president.

Tillerson, who was in Texas for his son’s wedding in late July when Trump addressed the Boy Scouts, had threatened not to return to Washington, according to three people with direct knowledge of the threats. His discussions with retired Gen. John Kelly, who would soon be named Trump’s second chief of staff, and Defense Secretary James Mattis, helped initially to reassure him, four people with direct knowledge of the exchanges said.

After Tillerson’s return to Washington, Pence arranged a meeting with him, according to three officials. During the meeting, Pence gave Tillerson a “pep talk,” one of these officials said, but also had a message: the secretary needed to figure out how to move forward within Trump’s policy framework.

Kelly and Mattis have been Tillerson’s strongest allies in the cabinet. In late July, “they did beg him to stay,” a senior administration official said. “They just wanted stability.”

At that time, however, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert responded to speculation that Tillerson was thinking about resigning by saying he was “committed to staying” and was “just taking a little time off” in Texas.

Tillerson's top State Department spokesman, R.C. Hammond, said Tillerson did not consider quitting this past summer. He denied that Tillerson called Trump a “moron.” Hammond said he was unaware of the details of Tillerson’s meetings with Pence.

Hammond said he knew of only one time when the two men discussed topics other than policy: A meeting where Pence asked Tillerson if he thought Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was helpful to the administration, or if he was worried about the role she was playing. He added that whenever the vice president gives advice on how processes could run more smoothly, the advice is a good thing.

Hammond also said that he wouldn’t characterize the secretary’s conversations with Mattis or Kelly as attempts to convince Tillerson to stay in his position.

A Pentagon official close to Mattis denied any awareness of a specific conversation about Tillerson’s future in the administration. But the official said the two men speak all the time and have a regular breakfast together.

The White House declined to comment on the record for this story.

Tillerson and Trump clashed over a series of key foreign policy issues over the summer, including Iran and Qatar. Trump chafed at Tillerson’s attempts to push him – privately and publicly – toward decisions that were at odds with his policy positions, according to officials. Hammond said Tillerson has had no policy differences with Trump. “The president’s policy is his policy,” Hammond said.

In August, Trump was furious with Tillerson over his response to a question about the president’s handling of the racially charged and deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, administration officials said. Trump had said publicly that white nationalists and neo-Nazi sympathizers shared blame for violence with those who came out to protest them.

“The president speaks for himself,” Tillerson said at the time, when asked on “Fox News Sunday” about Trump’s comments.

Hammond said Trump addressed the issue with Tillerson in a meeting the next day. He said that during the meeting, Trump congratulated another White House official, Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert, for his performance on the Sunday news talk shows. Bossert had defended Trump’s controversial pardon of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.




President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confer during a working lunch with African leaders during the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 20, 2017. Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

 

Part 2

....The president, according to Hammond, told Tillerson he was upset with his comments when he saw them the first time. But, Hammond said Trump told Tillerson, after watching the interview a second and third time, the president understood that Tillerson was trying to say Trump is the best person to convey what his values are.

Still, the message was clear that Trump wanted Tillerson to defend him more, Hammond said. [/COLOR]

The frustrations run both ways. Tillerson stunned a handful of senior administration officials when he called the president a “moron” after a tense two-hour long meeting in a secure room at the Pentagon called "The Tank," according to three officials who were present or briefed on the incident. The July 20 meeting came a day after a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Afghanistan policy where Trump rattled his national security advisers by suggesting he might fire the top U.S. commander of the war and comparing the decision-making process on troop levels to the renovation of a high-end New York restaurant, according to participants in the meeting.

It is unclear whether Trump was told of Tillerson’s outburst after the Pentagon meeting or to what extent the president was briefed on Tillerson’s plan to resign earlier in the year.

Tillerson also has complained about being publicly undermined by the president on the administration’s foreign policy agenda, officials said.

Those strains were on display this past weekend when Tillerson said, to the White House’s surprise, that the U.S. is attempting diplomatic talks with North Korea.

Trump quickly took the opposite position, writing on Twitter “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man...,” using his latest epithet for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“...Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!” Trump added in a second tweet.

Asked whether the president still has confidence in Tillerson, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Monday that he does.

Trump has already seen an unusually high level of turnover in his administration, with the departures of his national security adviser, deputy national security adviser, his chief of staff, press secretary, communications director — twice — his chief strategist, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the acting head of the Justice Department. Last Friday Trump accepted the resignation of Tom Price, the Health and Human Services secretary.

One senior administration official described late July as “a tough period of time” for Tillerson. His frustrations appeared to mount in the preceding weeks. Trump publicly undermined Tillerson in June over a dispute between Qatar and other Persian Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Tillerson had called on the countries to ease their blockade of Qatar, yet just hours later Trump said the Saudi-led effort was necessary.

Tillerson also pushed Trump to certify in July that Iran was complying with the 2015 nuclear deal.

Tillerson has been at odds with Trump on other issues as well, arguing against sanctions on Venezuela and reportedly suggesting Israel return to the U.S. $75 million in aid. Tillerson also is seeking to use the implementation of arms deals Trump struck with Saudi Arabia and the UAE as leverage to prod the two countries to resolve the dispute with Qatar, according to U.S. and Arab officials.

Administration officials speculate that Tillerson would be succeeded by Haley if Tillerson were to depart.

Tillerson’s tenure has been rocky from the start. He was confirmed by a Republican-led Senate on 56-to-43 vote. That represents the most votes against a secretary of state in Senate history.

Since then, Tillerson, the former chief executive of ExxonMobil, has been slow to fill jobs within his department and appears to have alienated officials in the White House, the Cabinet and Congress.

He has become known for being difficult to reach and tends to take his time returning phone calls, administration and congressional officials said. Congressional Republicans balked at his proposed cuts to the State Department budget.

“It’s hard to get him to return phone calls,” a senior Republican congressional aide said of Tillerson. “It’s hard to get him to answer letters.”

Hammond said Tillerson is quick to return calls and respond to lawmakers.

Tillerson has clashed with the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who has a broad portfolio that includes policies in the Middle East, officials said.

A second White House official downplayed any tensions between Tillerson and Kushner, noting that Kushner’s efforts on an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement are run through the relevant agencies and that a State Department representative went on his most recent trip to the region.

A third White House official disputed the notion that Tillerson has alienated people in the White House, Cabinet and Congress.

Trump’s July 24 speech at the Boy Scouts gathering struck a political tone unusual for the event, with the president talking about his electoral victory and the “cesspool” of Washington. He also joked about firing his Health and Human Services secretary if congressional Republicans didn’t pass a health care bill. The head of the Boy Scouts later apologized for the political tone of the speech.

Tillerson is an Eagle Scout and a former president of the Boy Scouts. He had appeared at the gathering just three days before Trump. Hammond, his spokesman, said Tillerson was not upset with Trump’s speech. He said Tillerson told him that at the end of the day the scouts are going to remember that the president came to speak at their event, and their parents can answer any questions they might have about the message he delivered.

It’s unclear if the latest disagreement between the White House and Tillerson on North Korea spells an end to the late-July reset.

Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state for political affairs under President George W. Bush, said Trump “completely undercut Tillerson” with his tweets.

“This was a direct public, I thought, repudiation of what Tillerson said,” Burns said. “It feeds the perception that Tillerson does not have a trusting relationship with the president, and that’s very harmful.”

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