Ex-President Donald Trump

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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.
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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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The MOST embarrassing POTUS of at least the last 100 years.

 

Agreed.

 

Oh please, you think people didn't talk shit about Obama, that he didnt demand their loyalty, etc..your liberal MSM just protected him because they were afraid of the "backlash' if they weren't kissing his butt, lol.

 

Bliss, Fox never missed a chance to tear into President Obama, for any reason real or imagined. MSNBC, and other so called "liberal" MSM did in fact criticize President Obama on numerous occasions, per below is just one example.

 

Too bad the clamor for Trump's income taxes isn't as intense as it was for Obama's birth certificate.

 

I never realized before you were one of Trump hardcore 30% voter base.lol
I don't know anyone who defends the guy anymore and many conservatives acknowledge it was a mistake to vote for him into office.

Trump is catching fire from top level cabinet members within his own administration. That never happened under Obama.
No one within the Obama administration ever called him a 'moron'.

7 months in, Trump has already fired his National Security adviser, a U.S. attorney from NY, his top Middle East adviser for the National Security council, his deputy WH chief of staff, his FBI director, his chief of staff at the WH, two(!!) communications directors, his Office of Government Ethics director, his Press Secretary and top press aide, his chief political strategist and Deputy Assistant to the president and now his Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Trump is running the Oval Office like a reality TV show.
And now at a WH dinner tonight with some of the Pentagon's top generals and officers, Dotard made the ominous comment, "this could be the calm before the storm,' which many observers took to mean Trump plans to de-certify the Iran nuclear agreement with no alternative in place.

I don't have time to go over all the random crap that comes out of the man's mouth when he's tweeting from the WH bathroom, or the more vocal criticisms from legislators within his own party.

Nope, Trump is a total embarrassment.
What's scary is he's worse than that. Trumptard is lazy, incompetent, dispassionate to other people's suffering, an uncritical thinker, wholly ignorant about nearly all the institutions of the federal government, completely self centered, thin skinned, temperamental, petty, unethical and shortsighted.

Remember when Hillary haters said she was a war monger??
Watch Trump.

He's pushing us dangerously closer to a military confrontation with both Iran and North Korea.

The man can't get one piece of major legislation passed despite having control of both the House and Senate.

It's hard to be in office for less than 9 months and people are already saying you're worse than Dubya ever was.

That takes a special kind of demented talent only Dotard could master.

To paraphrase Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, "Whatever Donald. It's your deal."(moron.)lol

 

Not so fast, guys! There was...um...uh...er...shit, that name was on the tip of my tongue.

I guess y'all are right after all!

 

This is 100% true. Remember all those times that Obama took to social media to openly criticize and/or insult people who dared to say anything even remotely negative about him? And all those times he referred to negative stories as "fake news?"

He certainly did that kind of thing much more than Trump does, that's for sure.

 

I’m not claiming that President Obama (or any other) was an angel and/or totally innocent and such, but...

In terms of being a total embarrassment... 45 easily takes the cake. Even this latest thing with Puerto Rico... Goes to an island that’s reeling after being hit by a major hurricane, talks about their bad financial state and tosses rolls of paper towels out like they’re gifts. Who does shit like this. Only this dude can be that big of an asshole. He totally kissed up to TX and FL, and basically said drop dead to the folks of Puerto Rico.