The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Athos_131]

Mueller Tasks an Adviser With Getting Ahead of Pre-Emptive Pardons

#Resist

[_priapism]

Someone finally told Melania you don't wear stilettos to a hurricane cleanup, so they bought her a pair of work boots!  And the white jeans are so cute, because they aren't going to get any closer to a mess than the church where they passed out paper towels!  The quicker picker upper!  "WE HAD A WONDERFUL TIME IN PUERTO RICO!!!"

[Lois]

The paper towels were a nice touch.  I mean you can sure clean up after a hurricane with paper towels!  It was such a small hurricane.

[Athos_131]

Vance Returned Trump Lawyer’s Donation After Reporters’ Questions

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Tillerson’s News Conference Only Highlights Strains With Trump

#Resist

[Athos_131]

FEMA removes statistics about drinking water access and electricity in Puerto Rico from website

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump’s lewd ‘Access Hollywood’ tape is playing on repeat for 12 hours on the Mall



#Resist

[Athos_131]

Rex Tillerson at the Breaking Point

In February, a few weeks after Tillerson was confirmed by the Senate, he visited the Oval Office to introduce the President to a potential deputy, but Trump had something else on his mind. He began fulminating about federal laws that prohibit American businesses from bribing officials overseas; the businesses, he said, were being unfairly penalized.

Tillerson disagreed. When he was an executive with Exxon, he told Trump, he once met with senior officials in Yemen to discuss a deal. At the meeting, Yemen’s oil minister handed him his business card. On the back was written an account number at a Swiss bank. “Five million dollars,” the minister told him.

“I don’t do that,” Tillerson said. “Exxon doesn’t do that.” If the Yemenis wanted Exxon on the deal, he said, they’d have to play straight. A month later, the Yemenis assented. “Tillerson told Trump that America didn’t need to pay bribes—that we could bring the world up to our own standards,” a source with knowledge of the exchange told me.

The Administration believes that the prospect of a nuclear-armed North Korea is worse than the prospect of war. The North Koreans, similarly, have suggested that they prefer war to giving up their nukes. If Tillerson and his fellow-diplomats want to avert a conflict, they must forge a compromise between Trump and Kim Jong Un—who have seemed, at least in their public rhetoric, disinclined to compromise. Tillerson told me that he hoped a diplomatic solution could be found. But he added, “In the United States, diplomacy has always been backed up by a very strong military posture. As I said to the state councillor of China, ‘If you and I don’t solve this, these two guys get to fight. And we will fight.’ ”

#Resist

[Northwest]

Two to one against, and still dropping. Call me cynical, but I don't think things are going to improve as the news about Trump's highly touted tax reform -- which is just another deficit busting tax cut for the wealthy -- gets more airtime.

Trump may not care about reelection, but most of Congress still wants to return after the mid-terms, and yet another gimme tax break for the 1% isn't going to play well back home.

This massively unpopular president simply doesn't have the political clout to get tax reform through a highly divided Congress. I say no deal will happen.

Poll Shows Trump Dipping to 32 Percent Approval



An Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released on Friday found that President Trump has a 32 percent approval rating, with 67 percent of respondents disapproving of the job he’s doing as president. And it reported that only 67 percent of Republicans approve of his performance, down significantly from 80 percent in the same poll in March.

It’s just one poll, and given its diversion from other relatively more Trump-friendly numbers, it may very well be an outlier. But a slide in Republican approval could spell big trouble for Trump, who has maintained popularity among his GOP base even as he alienates most of the rest of the country. Other polls have shown Republican approval in the high 80s, with a massive gap between Democratic and Republican approval that reflects our highly partisan times.

The poll found that 42 percent approved of Trump’s performance in March, and 35 percent in June. Though lower than many findings, the downward trend is consistent with other polls in showing a slide from the beginning of Trump’s presidency to subsequent months, which have been defined by persistent chaos, divisive rhetoric, and legislative inaction.

Trump’s approval rating has stuck to a fairly narrow range throughout most of his presidency — from the mid-40s at the outset to the high-30s now – with very high approval ratings from Republicans keeping his low numbers from falling into last–year–of–George W. Bush’s–presidency territory.

538 has his current average approval rating at 38.2 percent, while Gallup shows it at 39 percent.

He is by far the least popular president at this point in a first term since modern polling began.

In the AP-Norc poll, just 19 percent of people say that Trump “understands the needs and problems of people like them extremely or very well,” 17 percent moderately well, and 64 percent not very well or not at all. Respondents gave Congress an even lower mark than Trump, at 18 percent approval, and only 24 percent of people said the country was going in the right direction, down from 34 percent in June.

The poll was conducted from September 28 to October 2, and included online and telephone interviews. It has a margin of error of 4.1 percent.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/poll-shows-trump-dipping-to-32-percent-approval.html

[Athos_131]

Trump and Melania reportedly compared life in the White House to being in a Venezuelan jail

PACK THEM UP!


PACK THEM UP!


PACK THEM UP!

#Resist

[Lois]

The stupidest idea ever is the elimination of the estate tax.

Currently there is a $5.5 million exemption amount per person.  That means that each individual can pass on $5.5 million tax free, and a married couple can pass on 11 million tax free.  Over these amounts and what you leave behind is taxed at 40%.

Additionally, there are many ways to transfer assets so they are inherited without any tax liabilities.  These strategies include the formation of LLCs, shell corporations, and various kinds of Trusts.

Family farms are nearly always held in an LLC, because they are technically businesses.

Because of these generous exemptions and loopholes, very very very few people pay any inheritance taxes at all.

[joan1984]

And, since very few people pay any death tax at all, as Lois notes, then why have a death tax at all. Why cause the grief and effort to evade a death tax at all, just eliminate what was a bad idea from the beginning, and let inheritance go where the person who earned that money wants it to go, no hassles.

  Get Government hands out of our pockets, and get Government out of our lives.

[Katiebee]

Like the poor southerners who were duped into thinking that fighting for the Confederacy was about states rights and not for the wealthier slave owners, you have been duped by those who stand to gain from these measures. The tax cuts favored by the GOP won’t Ever benefit 98% if the electorate. The reduction of revenue, however, will damage the entire country.

If you benefit more you pay more. Otherwise you are asking others to subsidize you. Which is exactly what conservatives are always screaming against.

[Lois]

And, since very few people pay any death tax at all, as Lois notes, then why have a death tax at all. Why cause the grief and effort to evade a death tax at all, just eliminate what was a bad idea from the beginning, and let inheritance go where the person who earned that money wants it to go, no hassles.

  Get Government hands out of our pockets, and get Government out of our lives.

LOL! If you want government out of your life, move to where there is none.  There you will also find no roads, no currency, no markets, no libraries, nada!  You will find a whole lot of nothing.  Just dirt.  Have fun Joan!

[Athos_131]

THE REPUBLICAN’S GUIDE TO PRESIDENTIAL ETIQUETTE

So, if you are the president, you may:

Mock a foreign leader with a demeaning nickname and threaten his country with nuclear annihilation over Twitter

Call for the firing of “son of a bitch” athletes who choose to exercise their right to free speech

Refer to the White House as “a real dump”

Spend the weekend golfing at your private club while the mayor of an American city wades through sewage-filled water to help citizens after a catastrophic hurricane, then accuse that mayor of “poor leadership” when she criticizes your administration’s slow response to the storm

Criticize victims of that hurricane still living without drinking water or electricity by saying they “want everything to be done for them”

During a visit to some of those victims, throw rolls of paper towels at them and tell them they should be “very proud” that only 16 people have died so far, unlike in a “real catastrophe”

Attack a senator battling terminal cancer

Pick nominees to the federal bench who call a sitting Supreme Court justice a “judicial prostitute” and refer to transgender children as part of “Satan’s plan”

Campaign hard for a Senate candidate; then when he appears likely to lose, say “I might have made a mistake” and later delete your tweets supporting him

Behave so erratically and irresponsibly that senators of your own party resort to saying you’re treated like an adult day-care student to keep you from starting World War III

Spend one of every three days as president visiting at least one of your own properties

Publicly and privately humiliate your own attorney general for recusing himself from an investigation into your campaign

Say nothing when a foreign leader’s bodyguards brutally attack peaceful protesters in the streets of Washington, D.C.

 Tweet GIFs of yourself violently attacking the media and your former political opponent

Encourage police officers not to be “too nice” when apprehending criminal suspects

Help draft a misleading statement about the purpose of a meeting between your son, other top campaign aides and representatives of a rival foreign power intent on interfering in the election

Deliver a speech to the Boy Scouts of America that includes mockery of a former president and winking references to sexual orgies, and then lie by claiming that the head of that organization called and told you it was the best speech ever delivered in Boy Scout history

Hang a framed copy of a fake Time magazine cover celebrating your business acumen in your golf clubs around the world

Mock a female television anchor’s appearance, saying the anchor was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” at a holiday gathering at your private resort

Force your cabinet members to take turns extolling your virtues in front of television cameras

Welcome into the Oval Office a man who threatened to assassinate your predecessor, whom he called a “subhuman mongrel,” and who referred to your political opponent as a “worthless bitch”

Continue to deny that Russia attempted to influence the presidential election, despite the consensus of the American intelligence community — and yet also blame your predecessor for not doing anything to stop that interference

Grant temporary White House press credentials to a website that, among other things, claims that Sept. 11 was an “inside job” and that the massacre of 20 schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax

Block people who criticize you on Twitter

Claim that an investigation into your campaign’s possible collusion with a foreign power is “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”

Pressure multiple intelligence chiefs to state publicly that there was no collusion between your presidential campaign and the Russian government

Without consulting anyone at the Pentagon, announce a new policy barring transgender soldiers from serving in the military

Pardon a former sheriff who was convicted of criminal contempt of court for refusing to obey the law

Continue to repeat, with admiration, a false story about an American military general committing war crimes

Mock the mayor of a world city for his careful, sober response to a terrorist attack

Tell Americans that a march of torch-carrying white supremacists and neo-Nazis includes “some very fine people” — and when one of those marchers murders a peaceful counterprotester, condemn violence on “both sides”

Run an administration whose ethical standards have, in the words of the federal government’s top ethics enforcer, made the United States “close to a laughingstock”

Hide data that don’t support your pre-existing policy preferences

Admit to trying to intimidate a key witness in a federal investigation

Continue to leave hundreds of executive branch positions unfilled

Profit off the presidency, accepting millions of dollars from foreign government officials, businesses, politicians and other supporters who pay a premium to patronize your properties and get access to you — while also attempting to hide the visitor lists at some of those properties from the public

Promise to drain the swamp, then quietly grant ethics waivers to multiple former industry lobbyists who want to work in your administration

Tell a lie, on average, more than five times a day

Call for criminal investigations of your former political opponent, seven months after winning the election

Appoint your family wedding planner to head a federal housing office

Shove aside a fellow head of state at a photo-op

Attack private citizens on Twitter

Delegitimize federal judges who rule against you

Refuse to take responsibility for military actions gone awry

Fire the F.B.I. chief in the middle of his expanding investigation into your campaign and your associates

Accuse a former president, without evidence, of an impeachable offense

Employ top aides with financial and other connections to a hostile foreign power

Blame the judiciary, in advance, for any terror attacks

Call the media “the enemy of the American people”

Demand personal loyalty from the F.B.I. director

Threaten the former F.B.I. director

Accept foreign payments to your businesses, in possible violation of the Constitution

Occupy the White House with the help of a hostile foreign power

Intimidate congressional witnesses

Allow White House staff members to use their personal email for government business

Claim, without evidence, that millions of people voted illegally

Fail to fire high-ranking members of your national security team for weeks, even after knowing they lied to your vice president and exposed themselves to blackmail

Refuse to release tax returns

Hide the White House visitors’ list from the public

Vacation at one of your private residences nearly every weekend

Use an unsecured personal cellphone

Criticize specific businesses for dropping your family members’ products

Review and discuss highly sensitive intelligence in a restaurant, and allow the Army officer carrying the “nuclear football” to be photographed and identified by name

Obstruct justice

Hire relatives for key White House posts, and let them meet with foreign officials and engage in business at the same time

Promote family businesses on federal government websites

Tweet, tweet, tweet

Collude with members of Congress to try to shut down investigations of you and your associates

Threaten military conflict with other nations in the middle of news interviews

Compare the U.S. intelligence community to Nazis

Display complete ignorance about international relations, your own administration’s policies, American history and the basic structure of our system of government

Skip daily intelligence briefings

Repeat untruths

Share highly classified information with a hostile foreign power without the source’s permission

Lie

#Resist

[Athos_131]

The price tag for Pence's trip to Indianapolis

According to the Air Force, flying a C-32, the model of plane used for Air Force 2, for one hour costs about $30,000. Pence's flight from Las Vegas to Indianapolis Saturday took about three hours and 20 minutes, so it cost about $100,000

Pence then flew from Indianapolis to Los Angeles on Sunday, which took about four hours and 45 minutes, costing about $142,500.

The grand total: about $242,500.

Some costs of the flight into Los Angeles will be reimbursed by the Republican National Committee because Pence is attending a political event there.

If he had flown just from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, a trip lasting about 90 minutes, the cost would have been about $45,000.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Bob Corker Says Trump’s Recklessness Threatens ‘World War III’

#Resist

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[_priapism]

#Resist

It's a shame Corker only grew a set once he decided not to seek re-election.  Every intelligent member of the GOP who sits in silence is merely an enabler.

[Athos_131]

White House aides lean on delays and distraction to manage Trump

#Resist