The Trump thread: All things Donald

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This is what happens when you have an unfit commander in chief

The Senate repudiating a president of the majority party on a matter of national security would be unusual under any circumstances. That it comes at a time when tensions with a major international foe are boiling over is nothing short of astonishing, a sign of how far President Trump has fallen as commander in chief even among Republicans.

The Post reports on the Senate’s vote to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia:

Trump has cited rising tensions with Iran as justification for using his emergency powers to complete the deals.

A bipartisan group of senators, led by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), had initially filed 22 resolutions of disapproval against the sales — one for every contract the administration had expedited by emergency order, effectively sidestepping congressional opposition. But after weeks of negotiations, Senate leaders agreed to hold just three votes, which will encompass the substance of all the blocking resolutions, congressional aides said.

In other words, senators don’t believe the president is playing it straight on the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which set off a firestorm regarding the Saudis on Capitol Hill. They do not believe in Trump’s policy of making Saudi Arabia a proxy in a battle with Iran over regional dominance. And, moreover, the Senate is willing to undercut Trump at the precise moment his credibility and judgment are under fire in a standoff with Iran.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) declared from the Senate floor: “I must say, even in closed-door briefings with senators, the administration doesn’t spell out a strategy. This is not how democracy is supposed to work, and this is not how even the CEO of a major company should behave — with no articulated strategy. The president needs to explain to the American people why he is driving us towards another endless conflict in the Middle East.” On Saudi Arabia specifically, Schumer explained that the Senate was denying “the transfer of tens of thousands of precision-guided munitions that the Saudis have previously used to bomb innocent civilians in Yemen.”

The votes come after the United Nations issued a report far more revealing — and damning — about the grotesque Khashoggi murder and dismemberment. As Schumer said, “Last night, the United Nations issued a report that documented evidence that the Saudis meticulously planned the murder of U.S. resident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi and ‘forensically' disposed of the evidence. According to the report, the Saudis referred to Mr. Khashoggi as a ‘sacrificial animal’ and that dismembering the body would ‘be easy.’ ” And now, of all times, the administration wants to give Saudi Arabia access to weaponry that can slaughter more civilians in Yemen.

The president once more has gone to the well claiming “emergency” powers as a way to do an end run around Congress. The only emergency we have, however, is an utterly unfit commander in chief who has earned no deference from Congress, no trust from allies and no respect from foes.

When Asshelmet McConnell disagrees with Trump, he really fucked up.

#Resist

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Lawyers claim infants, children are in dangerous situation at border detention site

A legal team that recently interviewed over 60 children at a Border Patrol station in Texas says a traumatic and dangerous situation is unfolding for some 250 infants, children and teens locked up for up to 27 days without adequate food, water and sanitation.

A team of attorneys who recently visited the facility near El Paso told The Associated Press that three girls, ages 10 to 15, said they had been taking turns keeping watch over a sick 2-year-old boy because there was no one else to look after him.

When the lawyers saw the 2-year-old boy, he wasn't wearing a diaper and had wet his pants, and his shirt was smeared in mucus. They said at least 15 children at the facility had the flu, and some were kept in medical quarantine. Children told lawyers that they were fed uncooked frozen food or rice and had gone weeks without bathing or a clean change of clothes at the facility in Clint, in the desert scrubland some 25 miles southeast of El Paso.

"In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention I have never heard of this level of inhumanity," said Holly Cooper, an attorney who represents detained youth. "Seeing our country at this crucible moment where we have forsaken children and failed to see them as human is hopefully a wake up for this country to move toward change."

The lawyers visited the facility in Clint because they are involved in a legal settlement known as the Flores agreement that governs detention conditions for migrant children and families. The lawyers negotiated access to the facility with officials, and say Border Patrol knew the dates of their visit three weeks in advance.

Many children the lawyers interviewed had arrived alone at the U.S.-Mexico border, but some of the kids had been separated from adult caregivers such as aunts and uncles, the attorneys said. Government rules call for the children to be held by the Border Patrol for no longer than 72 hours before they are transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services, which houses migrant youth in facilities around the country.

But many children interviewed by the lawyers said they were kept inside the facility near El Paso beyond 72 hours.

Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to the allegations about the conditions, but has said in recent weeks that it is overwhelmed and needs more money and help from the gridlocked Congress.

The allegations about the conditions inside the El Paso facility are the latest complaints about mistreatment of immigrants at a time when record numbers of migrant families from Central America have been arriving at the border. Government facilities are overcrowded and five immigrant children have died since late last year after being detained by the U.S. government. A teenage mother with a premature baby was found last week in a Texas Border Patrol processing center after being held for nine days by the government.

The Trump administration has been scrambling to find new space to hold immigrants as it faces withering criticism from Democrats that it's violating the human rights of migrant children by keeping so many of them detained.

#Resist

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Trump ordered an attack on Iran, but called off the operation at the last minute

President Trump ordered an attack on Iran on Thursday in retaliation for the downing of a surveillance drone in the Strait of Hormuz, but called the operation off just hours before it was due to occur, officials said.

Administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security decisions, said the president approved the counterstrikes after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) earlier in the day shot down a Navy RQ-4 operating off Iran’s southern coast, a move Trump described as a “very big mistake.”

But he later changed his mind, the officials said. It was not immediately clear why Trump decided to pull back the operation or what it would have included. The decision was first reported by the New York Times.

The administration did not make a formal announcement regarding military action Thursday. There was no immediate reaction from Tehran.

The aborted operation capped a day in which news of the drone’s targeting heaped fuel on already heightened fears that the United States and Iran are on a course toward a military conflict as each side blamed the other for the incident.

Tehran and Washington gave conflicting accounts of what occurred when the massive drone crashed into the sea. While Iran said it had entered its airspace, U.S. Central Command denied that assertion, characterizing the incident as an “unprovoked attack” over one of the world’s most important commercial waterways.

In remarks alongside visiting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House, Trump condemned the shoot-down but also appeared to tamp down speculation that a counterstrike might be in the works, saying the drone may have been shot down without the knowledge of Iranian leaders.

“I’m not just talking about the country made a mistake. I’m talking about somebody under the command of that country made a mistake,” Trump said at the White House. “I find it hard to believe it was intentional” on the part of Iran’s top officials, the president said.

Trump was noncommittal about a U.S. counterattack. “Let’s see what happens,” he said. “This is a new fly in the ointment — what happened, shooting down the drone — and this country will not stand for it.”

The White House invited a bipartisan group of top congressional leaders to a meeting Thursday afternoon to discuss the situation.

Among those invited were Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the chairmen and ranking minority party members of the House and Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees.

“We had a good briefing,” McConnell said, adding that he could confirm that an unmanned aerial vehicle “was fired on from Iranian soil and it was in international waters. And beyond that I think the administration is engaged in what I would call measured responses.”

Schumer said he cautioned that “these conflicts have a way of escalating.”

“The president may not intend to go to war here, but we’re worried that he and the administration may bumble into a war,” he said. “One of the best ways to avoid bumbling into war, a war that nobody wants, is to have a robust open debate and for Congress to have a real say. We learned that lesson in the run-up to Iraq” in 2003.

After the White House meeting, Pelosi held a closed-door session with Democratic lawmakers to brief them on the developments. “We know that the high-tension wires are up there, and we must do everything we cannot to escalate the situation, but also to make sure that our personnel in the region are safe,” she said.

Thursday’s strike capped a number of recent incidents, including attacks on oil tankers, that American officials have depicted as part of an Iranian effort to hurt the United States and its allies in the region. The attack on the drone comes as the United States continues its “maximum pressure” campaign against a country the Trump administration has identified as its main adversary in the Middle East.

Tehran has responded with defiance to the initiative, which was launched after Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and has included designating the IRGC as a terrorist group and taking steps to cut off Iranian oil sales.

On Thursday, the European Union said officials from Germany, Britain, France, Russia, China and Iran would meet next week to discuss strategies to salvage the nuclear pact despite renewed U.S. sanctions and Tehran’s threat to exceed limits on its uranium stockpiles.

Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Defense Minister said Friday on Twitter that he met with Brian Hook, the State Department’s Special Representative for Iran, in Riyadh “to explore the latest efforts to counter hostile Iranian acts.”

The Revolutionary Guard’s top commander, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, called the downing of the drone “a clear message to America.”

“Our borders are Iran’s red line, and we will react strongly against any aggression,” Salami said in remarks carried by Iranian state television. “Iran is not seeking war with any country, but we are fully prepared to defend Iran.”

Nearly a quarter of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which connects Middle East energy producers to markets around the globe.

Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, head of U.S. air forces in the Middle East, told reporters at the Pentagon that the Global Hawk was flying at high altitude in the vicinity of recent tanker attacks and was not at any time any closer than 21 miles to the nearest point on Iran’s coast.

Guastella said the aircraft did not leave international airspace and was brought down by an IRGC surface-to-air missile fired from an area close to Goruk, Iran.

“This dangerous and escalatory attack was irresponsible and occurred in the vicinity of established air corridors between Dubai, UAE, and Muscat, Oman, possibly endangering innocent civilians,” he said. Guastella did not take questions, and the Pentagon did not make anyone else available to discuss the tensions.

Late Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency order prohibiting U.S. operators from flying in an overwater area of Tehran-controlled airspace over the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman because of heightened tensions, the agency said.

The Global Hawk incident occurs the week after two tankers, one Japanese and one Norwegian, were attacked in the area of the Gulf of Oman. The Trump administration has blamed Iran for both incidents, at least one of which is said to have been carried out by use of limpet mine similar to devices previously displayed at Iranian military parades. Iran has denied involvement, calling the accusation “a lie.”

The tanker incidents were similar to an attack on a tanker off the United Arab Emirates in May. The U.S. military also accused Iran of firing a modified SA-7 surface-to-air missile at an MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Gulf of Oman as it surveilled the attack on the Japanese ship.

Also this month, Centcom said Houthi rebels shot down an MQ-9 over Yemen using an SA-6 surface-to-air missile in an attack that “was enabled by Iranian assistance.”

The latest incident occurs just days before acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan steps down. Shanahan, who this week withdrew from his confirmation process after news media, including The Washington Post, published reports about past family strife, is handing responsibility for the military to Mark Esper, who now serves as Army secretary.

It is unclear how the turnover at the top of the Pentagon will affect an internal debate about how to respond to what officials say is an attempt to strike American interests. Some defense officials have voiced concerns that officials led by national security adviser John Bolton, who has publicly advocated regime change in Iran in the past, may be creating conditions in which war is inevitable.

Trump has previously authorized targeted strikes in the Middle East, including on government-controlled air bases in Syria. He was elected in 2016 promising to end American involvement in conflicts in the region.

At the same time, the Pentagon remains concerned about the potential for Iranian attacks on U.S. military personnel, especially those stationed in Iraq. During a visit to Baghdad last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sought to relay a message for Iranian leaders that even one American death would result in a U.S. counterattack.

Trump appeared to tamp down the likelihood of an immediate military response as he highlighted the fact that the Global Hawk was unmanned. “We had nobody in the drone,” he said. “It would have made a big difference, let me tell you.”

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) tweeted, “When it comes to the Middle East, there are seldom good choices.”

“But in some instances, failing to act can prove to be the most dangerous choice of all,” he said.

A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said U.S. naval assets were trying to recover pieces of the drone.

The strike on the RQ-4 is much more significant than the recent attacks on Reapers. Each Global Hawk, which has a wingspan of 131 feet, is worth more than $100 million, and is packed with sensors and able to fly at altitudes of more than 55,000 feet to observe broad areas for periods that can stretch longer than a day.

The Global Hawk downed on Thursday was an older “demonstrator” model, according to another U.S. official, that had been transferred from the Air Force to the Navy to carry out a mission known as Broad Area Maritime Surveillance. The Pentagon has since begun testing a newer cousin, the MQ-4C Triton. Neither version carries weapons.

According to an IRGC statement, the U.S. drone took off from a base in the “southern Persian Gulf” and was heading toward Iran’s Chabahar port “in full secrecy, violating the rules of international aviation.”

“While returning to the western Hormuz Strait’s region, the drone violated Iran’s airspace and engaged in information-gathering and spying,” the statement said.

At its narrowest, the Strait of Hormuz is just 21 nautical miles wide, and ships passing through it must enter the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. Under the rule of the shah in 1959, Iran extended its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles and declared that it would recognize only “innocent passage” through the area, essentially excluding warships engaging in activities deemed hostile. Oman also claimed a 12-mile territorial limit in 1972 and later demanded that foreign warships obtain permission to pass through its waters.

The United States does not recognize any restrictions on transit through the strait.

#Resist

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Accusing the New York Times of ‘Treason,’ Trump Crosses a Line

First it was “the failing New York Times.” Then “fake news.” Then “enemy of the people.” President Trump’s escalating attacks on the New York Times have paralleled his broader barrage on American media. He’s gone from misrepresenting our business, to assaulting our integrity, to demonizing our journalists with a phrase that’s been used by generations of demagogues.

Now the president has escalated his attacks even further, accusing the Times of a crime so grave it is punishable by death.

On Saturday, Mr. Trump said the Times had committed “a virtual act of treason.” The charge, levied on Twitter , was in response to an article about American cyber incursions into the Russian electrical grid that his own aides had assured our reporters raised no national-security concerns.

Few paid much attention. Many news organizations, including the Times, determined the accusation wasn’t even worth reporting, a sign of how inured we’ve grown to such rhetorical recklessness. But this new attack crosses a dangerous line in the president’s campaign against a free and independent press.

Treason is the only crime explicitly defined in the U.S. Constitution. The Founding Fathers knew the word’s history as a weapon wielded by tyrants to justify the persecution and execution of enemies. They made its definition immutable—Article III reads: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort”—to ensure that it couldn’t be abused by politicians for self-serving attacks on rivals or critics. The crime is almost never prosecuted, but Mr. Trump has used the word dozens of times.

There is no more serious charge a commander in chief can make against an independent news organization. Which presents a troubling question: What would it look like for Mr. Trump to escalate his attacks on the press further? Having already reached for the most incendiary language available, what is left but putting his threats into action?

There’s evidence that’s already happening. The administration has waged an aggressive legal campaign against journalists. Leak investigations, which were already on the rise under President Obama, have surged. Government regulatory powers have been misused to retaliate against news organizations, such as the attempt to block AT&T from acquiring CNN’s parent company, Time Warner. Most recently, the precedent-shattering use of the Espionage Act against Julian Assange for publishing classified information has raised fears that the Justice Department seeks not merely to punish illegal hacking but effectively to criminalize standard reporting practices.

Meanwhile, the president’s rhetorical attacks continue to foster a climate in which trust in journalists is eroding and violence against them is growing. More than a quarter of Americans—and a plurality of Republicans—now agree that “the news media is the enemy of the American people” and “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.” A world-wide surge of attacks has made this the most dangerous year for journalists on record. This is particularly true in parts of the world where pursuing the truth already carries great risks, as news reporters and editors experience rising levels of censorship, harassment, imprisonment and murder.

I met with the president in the Oval Office earlier this year and told him directly that authoritarian leaders around the world, with growing impunity, are employing his words to undermine free expression. The president expressed concern and insisted he wanted to be viewed as a defender of the free press. But in the same conversation, he took credit for the term “fake news,” a phrase that has now been wielded by dozens of leaders across five continents to justify everything from the passage of anti-free-speech laws in Egypt to the takeover of independent news organizations in Hungary to a crackdown on investigations into genocide in Myanmar.

America’s Founders believed that a free press was essential to democracy, and the American experience has proved them right. Journalism guards freedoms, binds together communities, ferrets out corruption and injustice, and ensures the flow of information that powers everything from elections to the economy. Freedom of the press has been fiercely defended by nearly all American presidents regardless of politics or party affiliation, and regardless of their own complaints about coverage.

There are moments when the press and the government are legitimately at odds, never more so than when the press’s conviction about the public’s right to know collides with the government’s assessment of the importance of maintaining secrecy. Journalists take seriously the concern that their reporting may jeopardize national security, and at the Times we have withheld details or delayed publication when government officials convinced us there was a danger of loss of life or damage to intelligence operations.

The story that prompted the president’s attack was no exception. As the Times prepared the story for publication, our reporter contacted officials at the White House National Security Council, the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command and gave them the opportunity to raise any national-security concerns about the story. They told us they did not have any. Shortly after publication, the president accused the Times of treason.

Over 167 years, through 33 presidential administrations, the Times has sought to serve America and its citizens by seeking the truth and helping people understand the world. There is nothing we take more seriously than doing this work fairly and accurately, even when we are under attack. Mr. Trump’s campaign against journalists should concern every patriotic American. A free, fair and independent press is essential to our country’s strength and vitality and to every freedom that makes it great.

#Resist

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Trump threatens reporter with prison time during interview

President Trump, in an interview this week and on Twitter on Friday morning, again suggested criminal action against American journalists.

During a sit-down interview with Time magazine, Trump showed the reporters a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. When a photographer tried to snap a photograph of the letter, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told him he couldn’t.

Later in the interview, the subject turned to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and a reporter asked about sworn testimony that Trump tried to limit the investigation to only “future election meddling.”

Rather than answer, Trump lashed out about the photographer’s attempt to take a shot of the letter from Kim, according to a transcript of the interview that Time released Thursday night.

“Well, you can go to prison, instead, because if you use, if you use the photograph you took of the letter that I gave you . . . ” Trump started.

When the Time reporter interjected to continue his line of questioning, Trump went on, “confidentially, I didn’t give it to you to take photographs of it — so don’t play that game with me.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President. Were you threatening me with prison time?” the reporter asked.

Trump didn’t answer directly, but launched into a rant about Time’s unfavorable coverage of him.

“So go have fun with your story,” Trump said. “Because I’m sure it will be the 28th horrible story I have in Time magazine because I never, I mean, ha. It’s incredible. With all I’ve done and the success I’ve had, the way that Time magazine writes is absolutely incredible.”

Trump, who lashes out at the news media daily, is extra sensitive to Time magazine because he’s long prided himself on being featured on its cover — this interview will mark his 29th cover story.

Trump has been so enamored with his own appearance in the national publication that he had a fake Time cover with his portrait and the headline: “Donald Trump: The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!” framed and hung in several of his golf clubs.

On Friday, Trump also weighed in on an email between a New York Times reporter and the FBI’s director of public affairs that was obtained by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. In the 2017 email, the reporter writes that his colleagues had learned in their reporting on the Russia investigation that the FBI was scrutinizing Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, for meeting with Russians.

“Just revealed that the Failing and Desperate New York Times was feeding false stories about me, & those associated with me, to the FBI,” Trump tweeted. “This shows the kind of unprecedented hatred I have been putting up with for years with this Crooked newspaper. Is what they have done legal? . . . ”

Judicial Watch claims the email is evidence of “FBI-media collusion.” Emailing an agency spokesman to verify new information gleaned through reporting is standard journalistic practice.

Trump has made the news media a top adversary since his early days as a candidate but only started tweeting about “fake news” and “enemy of the people” after he was elected. He’s used derogatory terms for reporters, calling them “crazed lunatics” and “the opposition party.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has suggested jailing journalists. Former FBI director James B. Comey recalled in a conversation with the president regarding leaks in the media that Trump said that one solution would be to have reporters “spend a couple days in jail, make a new friend and they are ready to talk.”

#Resist

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Prosecutors examining whether Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy offered clients access to inauguration: report

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Elliott Broidy, the top GOP fundraiser who previously served as the Republican National Committee's (RNC) deputy finance chairman, used his position to improperly offer access to President Trump's inaugural team.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that investigators are looking at whether Broidy was paid by his clients, including an intelligence firm, for access to inaugural events at his invitation, which would violate campaign finance laws or possibly statutes against money laundering.

According to the Journal, Broidy invited several officials from Angola and Romania to inaugural events, introducing some of them to members of Congress despite not being registered as a lobbyist for foreign countries. Weeks later, his company would be paid $6 million by Angolan officials for his services.

A spokesman for Broidy's company, Cirinicus, told the Journal that the guests were approved by the State Department and did not comment further on the investigation. The Trump inaugural committee reportedly told the Journal that it had responded to a request for information on the case from prosecutors in April.

Broidy resigned from the RNC last April after it was revealed that he had paid a woman $1.6 million after she became pregnant with his child. He was also accused late last year of physical abuse by a former Playboy model. He has denied those allegations.

“This person tried to extract money from me by making up false, malicious and disgusting allegations," Broidy said in a statement last year. "I have acknowledged making the mistake of having an affair, and I entered a confidential agreement to protect my family’s privacy.

"I honored my agreement until her lawyer breached it—and then, when I failed to pay her demands, she did what blackmailers do and went public with her lies. I will vigorously defend myself against these false and defamatory allegations, and I will seek all relief available to me under the settlement agreement against her and her attorneys.”

#Resist

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#Resist

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Trumpism, Realized

At least 2,000 children have now been forcibly separated from their parents by the United States government. Their stories are wrenching. Antar Davidson, a former youth-care worker at an Arizona shelter, described to the Los Angeles Times children “huddled together, tears streaming down their faces,” because they believed that their parents were dead. Natalia Cornelio, an attorney with the Texas Human Rights Project, told CNN about a Honduran mother whose child had been ripped away from her while she was breastfeeding. “Inside an old warehouse in South Texas, hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing,” the Associated Press reported. “One cage had 20 children inside.”

In some cases, parents have been deported while their children are still in custody, with no way to retrieve them. John Sandweg, a former director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told NBC News that some of these family separations will be permanent. “You could be creating thousands of immigrant orphans in the U.S. that one day could become eligible for citizenship when they are adopted,” he said.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly blithely assured NPR in May that “the children will be taken care of—put into foster care or whatever.” The administration’s main focus is not the welfare of the children, as much as the manner in which breaking up families at the U.S.-Mexico border could send a message to other migrants fleeing violence or persecution. Kelly defended the policy as a “tough deterrent.”

The crisis, to the extent that one exists, is of the administration’s own making. The people fleeing to the U.S. border are a threat neither to American economic prosperity nor to public safety, there is not a great surge of border crossers requiring an extreme response. There are a variety of options for dealing with them short of amnesty, and the separation of families is not legally required.

The policy’s cruelty is its purpose: By inflicting irreparable trauma on children and their families, the administration intends to persuade those looking to America for a better life to stay home. The barbarism of deliberately inflicting suffering on children as coercion, though, has forced the Trump administration and its allies in the conservative press to offer three contradictory defenses.

First, there’s the denial that the policy exists: Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen declared, “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”

Not so, the administration’s defenders in the media have insisted. The policy is both real and delightful. The conservative radio host Laura Ingraham called the uproar “hilarious,” adding sarcastically that “the U​.​S​.​ is so inhumane to provide entertainment, sports, tutoring, medical, dental, four meals a day, and clean, decent housing for children whose parents irresponsibly tried to bring them across the border illegally.” She also described the facilities as “essentially summer camps.” On Fox News, the Breitbart editor Joel Pollak argued that the detention facilities offer children both basic necessities and the chance to receive an education. “This is a place where they really have the welfare of the kids at heart,” he said.

Others in the administration—such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his former aide, the White House adviser Stephen Miller—offer a third defense. The policy exists, they say, and it’s necessary to uphold the rule of law. Sessions told the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that the measures in question are routine. “Every time somebody … gets prosecuted in America for a crime, American citizens, and they go to jail, they’re separated from their children,” he said. Miller has presented family separation as a “potent tool in a severely limited arsenal of strategies for stopping immigrants from flooding across the border.”

It is not an accident that these three defenses—the policy does not exist, the children are better off under the policy, and the policy is required by law—are contradictory. The heart of Trumpism is both cruelty and denial. The administration and its supporters valorize cruelty against outsiders even while denying that such cruelty is taking place.

The policy of shattering families and the cacophony of conservative voices defending it are the fruits of a campaign of dehumanization that began when Trump announced his candidacy for president, declaring that Mexico was sending rapists and drug dealers to migrate illegally to the United States. Trump’s advocates have said that his generalizations about religious and ethnic minorities apply only to some members of those communities—but as president, Trump has used fears of terrorism and criminality among the few to justify persecuting the many. Only some Muslims may be terrorists, but that “some” justifies barring as many as possible from the country. Only some immigrants are MS-13 “animals,” but that “some” justifies caging all unauthorized immigrants.

Dehumanizing “some” dehumanizes the whole. This has been Trump’s strategy from the beginning. It has been an essential element of the most shameful episodes in American history, a list to which the Trump administration’s policy of detaining children to frighten their parents must now be added.

The trump administration’s purposeful separation of families has roused the ghosts that haunt America. In the antebellum United States, abolitionists seized on the separation of families by slave traders to indict the institution of slavery itself. Family separation was a key part of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which so affected some readers that, the historian Heather Andrea Williams writes in Help Me to Find My People, they went to slave auctions to bear witness: “Some travelers wanted to see for themselves the scenes that Stowe described in the novel, and they likened the people they saw to her characters.”

For the enslaved, who lived lives of toil and hardship as chattel, the forced division of families was among the most agonizing experiences they ever suffered or witnessed.

Solomon Northup, who had lived his entire life as a free black man in the North before being abducted into slavery in 1841, was confined alongside a woman named Eliza and her two children, Emily and Randall. Emily was the child of Eliza’s former master, who tricked her into believing she was about to be freed, and then sold them all to a trader, whose slave pen was a short distance from the U.S. Capitol.

The four were taken to New Orleans. Randall was bought by a Baton Rouge planter. Days later, Eliza and Northup were sold together, ripping Eliza away from Emily. Northup, who himself endured 12 years of bondage, called it one of the worst things he ever witnessed.“I have seen mothers kissing for the last time the faces of their dead offspring; I have seen them looking down into the grave, as the earth fell with a dull sound upon their coffins, hiding them from their eyes forever; but never have I seen such an exhibition of intense, unmeasured, and unbounded grief, as when Eliza was parted from her child,” Northup wrote in 1853.

Eliza never saw her children again. “Day nor night, however, were they ever absent from her memory. In the cotton field, in the cabin, always and everywhere, she was talking of them—often to them, as if they were actually present,” Northup wrote. “Only when absorbed in that illusion, or asleep, did she ever have a moment’s comfort afterwards.”

Henry Brown, nicknamed “Box” because he later escaped slavery by hiding himself in a box, watched his daughter being carted off after he failed to earn enough to purchase his family’s freedom. “I looked, and beheld her familiar face; but O, reader, that glance of agony! may God spare me ever again enduring the excruciating horror of that moment!,” Brown said in an account published in 1816.

She passed, and came near to where I stood. I seized hold of her hand, intending to bid her farewell; but words failed me; the gift of utterance had fled, and I remained speechless. I followed her for some distance, with her hand grasped in mine, as if to save her from her fate, but I could not speak, and I was obliged to turn away in silence.

The children who survived such separations were marked forever. Williams recounts the story of Charles Ball, who watched his family members being sold off to different masters when he was only 4. “Young as I was, the horrors of that day sank deeply into my heart, and even at this time, though a half a century has elapsed, the terrors of the scene return with painful vividness upon my memory,” Ball would write later. Louis Hughes, a former slave from Virginia, would write, “I grieved continually about my mother … It came to me, more and more plainly, that I would never see her again. Young and lonely as I was, I could not help crying, oftentimes for hours together. It was hard to get used to being away from my mother.” The great orator and former slave Frederick Douglass was at a loss for words when describing the anguish of his early separation from his mother:

It has been a life-long, standing grief to me, that I knew so little of my mother; and that I was so early separated from her. The counsels of her love must have been beneficial to me. The side view of her face is imaged on my memory, and I take few steps in life, without feeling her presence; but the image is mute, and I have no striking words of hers treasured up.

Although defenders of slavery would argue that black people felt no pain from such separations, the slave masters themselves understood the coercive power of shattering family bonds. “Often we were reminded,” wrote Lewis Johnson, a former slave in Virginia, “that if we were not good the white people would sell us to Georgia, which place we dreaded above all others on earth.”

After emancipation, freed people would travel hundreds of miles, in an era where such journeys were difficult and perilous, for the smallest chance to find their lost loved ones. The historian Eric Foner quotes a Freedmen’s Bureau agent who observed that in the eyes of former slaves, “the work of emancipation was incomplete until the families which had been dispersed by slavery were reunited.” For many, perhaps most, it would never be complete.

American immigration policy under trump is not chattel slavery. The children being separated from their families, and the parents being detained as they pick up their children from school, attend church, or go to work, are not being forced into lives of involuntary servitude as property, or passing their condition to their offspring in perpetuity.

Yet the uncomfortable echoes of America’s past with its present are difficult to ignore. There is the intentional cruelty inflicted on the innocent and the denial of that cruelty; the insistence that those targeted by law enforcement are less human than those implementing the law; and the assertion of the primacy of federal law over the wishes of communities to be sanctuaries for all their people. To preserve the political and cultural preeminence of white Americans against a tide of demographic change, to keep America more white and less brown, the Trump administration has settled on a policy of systemic child abuse intended to intimidate prospective immigrants into submission.

And then, as now, it is this particular feature of a broader system that has roused public outrage as little else has done. Defenders of slavery understood the threat such outrage posed and rushed to quell it. Thomas Jefferson wrote that black people simply didn’t feel pain the same way white people did. “Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether Heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them,” Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia in 1785. “In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection.”

“With regard to the separation of husbands and wives, parents and children, nothing can be more untrue than the inferences drawn from what is so constantly harped on by abolitionists,” James Henry Hammond, among the most prominent apologists for slavery, wrote in 1845.

Some painful instances perhaps may occur. Very few that can be prevented. It is, and it always has been, an object of prime consideration with our slaveholders, to keep families together. Negroes are themselves both perverse and comparatively indifferent about this matter. Sometimes it happens that a negro prefers to give up his family rather than separate from his master. I have known such instances. As to wilfully selling off a husband, or wife, or child, I believe it is rarely, very rarely done, except when some offence has been committed demanding “transportation.”

It was the same tripartite denial offered by Trump officials and defenders: separations are rare and not systemic, they may leave children better off, and the maintenance of law and order demands that they take place. But then, as now, the defense was at odds with reality. From 1815 to 1820, New Orleans alone “saw 2,646 sales of children under the age of thirteen, of whom 1,001 were sold separately from any family member,” the historian Edward Baptist wrote in The Half Has Never Been Told. “Their average age was nine. Many were younger—some much younger.”

Just as Sessions reached for Romans 13 to justify the policy of family separation, so did the South’s theologians, such as Thornton Stringfellow, insist that scripture bestowed “the authority, from God himself, to hold men and women, and their increase, in slavery, and to transmit them as property forever.”

Although the Confederacy and its defenders would later seek to cast their cause as a defense of states’ rights rather than a defense of slavery, slavery apologists  insisted that federal law allowed slave catchers to pursue their human quarry even into states where slavery had been outlawed. In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which required public officials to assist in the capture of escaped black people or be subject to hefty fines. Attempts by local officials to provide sanctuary for those fleeing bondage were thus preempted by the federal government; local communities were drawn into a system that tore apart families in the name of preserving order.

“Moderate Republican newspapers, including the New York Times,” Foner writes, “criticized the Fugitive Slave Act but insisted on adherence to the rule of law.” Choosing procedural objections over clear moral stances, though, did not spare the Union. Even in free states, Americans were forced to confront their own complicity in maintaining an institution that took children from their parents. Slavery’s defenders, for their part, were driven deeper into denial.

“If they acknowledged that these black people were people just like them, who hurt as they did when they lost their loved ones,” Heather Andrea Williams writes, “and if they faced them in their grief, then they might not be able to live with themselves.”

Barack obama’s administration spent years pursuing record numbers of deportations while exempting certain categories of undocumented immigrants from deportation. In some cases, it even deported unaccompanied minors. But at the same time, the Obama administration supported a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants in the United States. Obama’s defenders would no doubt argue that he paired harsh enforcement as a strategy for bringing Republicans to the table on an immigration deal. But that would not erase the suffering caused by Obama’s policies, in pursuit of a deal that was never made.

Yet the Obama administration’s willingness to allow millions of undocumented immigrants to seek citizenship is not simply a minor difference with the Trump administration. It illustrates a stark difference in motivation. Trump’s harsh policies are the product of his view that Latin American immigrants will “infest” the U.S., changing the character of the country. It is a racialized view of citizenship, one that perceives white Americans as the nation’s rightful inheritors and the rest of us as interlopers. It is a worldview both antithetical to the American creed and inseparable from its execution.

I suspect that part of what horrifies Americans is not the novelty of Trump’s policy, but its familiarity. Americans are fighting a part of themselves that they naively thought they had vanquished. From chattel slavery to American Indian schools to convict leasing, child-snatching has been a tradition in America since before there was an America. If one is convinced that the parents are not truly human, then the children cannot truly be children, and what should be unthinkable becomes inevitable.

The sins of the past are not guardrails. There is nothing to prevent them from being committed again, except for the dedication of the living to creating a better world. The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.

“It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him,” Solomon Northup wrote. The architects of the Trump administration’s family-separation policy have no such excuse; they have purposefully chosen to enhance the cruelty of the system they inherited. The president insists in his defense that America must have borders, but America had borders before the Trump administration began deliberately shattering families to make a point.

That alone should illustrate the depth of their conviction. Few of the Trump administration’s policies better exemplify the Trump campaign’s commitment to restoring America’s traditional hierarchies of race, religion, and gender, than family separation. That commitment—and Republicans’ muted opposition to or vigorous support of the administration’s actions —has plunged the United States into a profound moral crisis that will define the nation’s character for decades to come. To harden oneself against the cries of children is no simple task. It requires a coldness to suffering that will not be easily thawed. The scars it inflicts on American civic culture will not heal quickly, and they will never completely fade.

Americans should have fathomed the depth of the crisis Trump would cause in 2016, but many chose denial, ridiculing those who spoke the plain meaning of Trumpism as oversensitive. Since then, Trump has failed the people of Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria; deliberately revoked the immigration status of hundreds of thousands of black and Latino immigrants; retreated from civil-rights enforcement; applied an immigration ban to a set of predominantly Muslim countries; attempted to turn black athletes into pariahs for protesting the unjust killings of their countrymen by the state; and defended the white nationalists who terrorized Charlottesville, Virginia. The separation of children from their families at the border in order to punish children for their parents’ decision to seek a better life America, as the forebears of millions of Americans once did, has now clarified for many what should have been obvious before.

People who would do this to children would do anything to anyone. Before this is over, they will be called to do worse.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Ravelry Bans Users Who Publicly Support the Trump Regime and the President's White Supremacist Ideology

Ravelry, a knitting and crocheting community with over 8 million registered members, announced over the weekend that it was banning support of the Trump regime. Anyone expressing support for President Donald Trump on the website will be banned, but project data for those users will not be deleted.

Ravelry specifically called out the Trump regime’s support of white supremacist ideology while announcing the ban on Sunday, but did not mention other hot button issues like President Trump’s vast network of concentration camps for migrants or the most recent allegation of rape against the sitting president.

“We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy,” Ravelry said in a post to its website.

The administrators of the website went on to explain that users are still free to support the Trump regime privately, but Ravelry will no longer host any public discussion that endorses the president. Ravelry explained that it had been inspired to institute the new policy by the roleplaying game site RPG.net which has a similar ban.

Ravelry also wanted to make it clear that it’s not taking sides in supporting Democrats or Republicans. The website simply notes that President Trump’s policies are aligned with hate groups and that intolerance of marginalized people will not be allowed on the platform.

President Trump has repeatedly endorsed policies of white supremacy, including his wall at the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out Mexican “rapists” and his claims that there were fine people on “both sides” in Charlottesville, Virginia where neo-Nazis marched in the summer of 2017.

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” President Trump reportedly said on January 11, 2018 when referring to immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries.

Ravelry stated that it would not ban users for past support of President Trump’s regime and that “antagonizing conservative members for their unstated positions is not acceptable.”

“Do not try to weaponize this policy by entrapping people who do support the Trump administration into voicing their support,” the website said.

The website’s rules now include:

Projects: Unacceptable projects will be provided to the member or made invisible to others.
Patterns: Unacceptable patterns will be returned to drafts.

Forum posts: right now, only posts written after Sunday, June 23rd at 8 AM Eastern

Profiles: Please do not flag profiles yet if the only banned content is an avatar or avatars. There is not yet a flagging system for those.

Trump supporters were quick to claim victimhood after the new policy was announced, with some particularly ignorant people claiming that Ravelry would be in legal trouble for banning support of Donald Trump.

But websites are free to ban whoever they like over hate speech.

The First Amendment doesn’t apply to private web forums, and only specifies that the U.S. government is not allowed to restrict the speech of private citizens. Ravelry, as a private company, doesn’t have to allow supporters of the Trump regime to post their hateful messages supporting repugnant racism, gaslighting about rape, and the torture of immigrants. There are plenty of other forms online where that kind of grotesque speech is allowed.

A handful of knitters took to Twitter to say that they’d be leaving Ravelry, but those people are obviously the minority. The knitting community has a long history of progressive activism dating all the way back to colonial America, and President Trump, despite being normalized in the mainstream press, is simply being recognized for his dangerous, neo-fascist policies.

“Folks leaving the site will find themselves with extra spare time,” one Twitter user wrote today. “I bet the kids in cages would appreciate some lovely handcrafted blankets.”

That tweet is a joke, of course, but even if people were making homemade blankets for the migrants in U.S. concentration camps they wouldn’t be allowed to deliver them. The policies that prohibit things like blankets aren’t over a lack of resources. The Trump regime’s policies are designed to be punitive, as was made evident when a Department of Justice lawyer argued last week that it wasn’t the government’s responsibility to provide things like toothpaste and soap to migrant kids in their custody.

The U.S. government even confiscates life-saving medications which has likely contributed to the suffering and even death that has occurred in these facilities. At least six children have died in U.S. custody in the past year. No immigrant children died in U.S. custody in the previous decade.

The cruelty is the point, as they say. And the mainstream knitting community has clearly had enough with all of it.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump brushes off calls to investigate Jamal Khashoggi’s death

Days after a U.N. expert called for further investigation of Saudi Arabian officials’ involvement in the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump declined to say whether he would hold the country’s leaders responsible and asserted that it was in the United States’ best interest to “take their money.”

In a Sunday interview on “Meet the Press,” Trump revealed that he recently had “a great conversation” with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in which he did not raise the issue of the U.N. report or Khashoggi’s killing in October.

“I think it’s been heavily investigated,” Trump said, when host Chuck Todd asked whether he would order the FBI to investigate, as the United Nations has recommended. “I’ve seen so many different reports.”

It was the latest instance of Trump prioritizing strategic and financial interest in the kingdom over the intelligence community’s assessment and concerns from his own party, which hold Mohammed primarily responsible for the killing of the dissident, who was a Virginia resident.

Although U.N. investigator Agnes Callamard did not find a “smoking gun” incriminating the crown prince, her report says that “every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the Crown Prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched.”

“Mr. Khashoggi’s killing constituted an extrajudicial killing for which the State of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible,” the report states.

[U.N. investigator calls for probe of Saudi officials in Khashoggi killing]

The CIA concluded in November that Mohammed had ordered Khashoggi’s brutal killing, and Trump has faced pressure from politicians and activists who wish to see the kingdom punished. But the president’s relationship with the crown prince has endured, to the concern of Democrats and even some Republicans — including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a close ally of Trump.

Soon after the CIA revealed those findings, Trump issued a statement that his administration was “standing by Saudi Arabia” for strategic reasons having to do with Iran and because it had agreed to invest “a record amount of money” in the United States. As for Mohammed’s involvement in the death, the statement reads: “It could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”

There were echoes of that justification on Sunday as the president said he remained focused on the business and strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia, which the administration considers a key ally in the Middle East and says “serves as a bulwark against Iran and its proxies’ malign activities in the region."

Trump’s interview comes as tensions with Iran have escalated following explosions on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and the downing of a U.S. drone, both of which the administration has blamed on Iran.

[The U.S.-Iran showdown: What’s happened in the week since two tankers were attacked]

“I’m not like a fool that says, ‘We don’t want to do business with them,’ ” he said when pressed about the humanitarian concerns raised against Saudi Arabia’s leadership. “Take their money. Take their money, Chuck.”

“We’re going to protect Saudi Arabia,” he said. “Look, Saudi Arabia is buying $400 billion worth of things for us. That’s a very good thing.”

Trump added: “They buy massive amounts, $150 billion worth of military equipment that, by the way, we use. We use that military equipment. And unlike other countries that don’t have money and we have to subsidize everything. So Saudi Arabia is a big buyer of American product. That means something to me. It’s a big producer of jobs.”

Trump’s commitment to working with Saudi Arabia has earned rare rebukes from his party. Last winter, the Republican-controlled Senate unanimously voted on a resolution holding Mohammed responsible for Khashoggi’s death.

And on Thursday, it voted to block planned arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a move the White House has said the president will veto.

Yellow Wall masturbates furiously to the thought of a journalist being brutally murdered and his family being devastated.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump adds to his endless parade of corruption and conflicts of interest

SEEMINGLY EVERY day, a new report emerges about the corruption that taints the Trump presidency, and has tainted it from the beginning. The president’s refusal to distance himself from his family business results in an endless parade of blatant conflicts of interest.

When President Trump visits his clubs, federal officials and Republicans pay to go where he is, which has brought his private businesses at least $1.6 million in revenue. The Post’s David A. Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey, Jonathan O’Connell and Michelle Ye Hee Lee reported on Thursday: “About one-third of all the political fundraisers or donor meetings that Trump has attended — 23 out of 63 — have taken place at his own properties. . . . GOP fundraisers say they do that, in part, to increase the chances Trump will attend.” Moreover, “the actual amount of money Trump has received as a result of his visits and campaign events is probably much higher than the $1.6 million The Post identified. That’s because most of the records available about government spending date to the first half of 2017 — covering just the first few months of Trump’s presidency so far.”

The investigative outfit ProPublica estimated earlier this month that the payday lending industry spent roughly $1 million holding two conferences at Trump National Doral Miami, after donating heavily to the president’s inaugural committee. As far as ProPublica could ascertain, the payday lenders had never held conferences at any Trump property before 2018. Meanwhile, they have been fighting rules at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau meant to crack down on the industry’s parasitic practices.

Then there is the foreign money. “Representatives of at least 22 foreign governments appear to have spent money at Trump Organization properties,” NBC News found , noting that the count suggested “a significant foreign cash flow to the American president.” Countries such as Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have hosted events at Trump facilities. Iraq, China, Malaysia and Slovakia have either rented or bought property in Trump buildings. Other countries have upgraded infrastructure in such a way that helped Trump properties within their borders.

The Trump Organization, the president’s private business, has said it donates foreign profits to the U.S. treasury, but how it calculates its numbers is opaque. Moreover, high demand driven in part by foreign patronage no doubt helps keep rates high at Trump International Hotel in Washington. And not every foreigner seeking attention from the Trump administration represents a foreign government. The Post reported this month that Nahro al-Kasnazan, an Iraqi sheikh and aspiring politician, paid tens of thousands of dollars to stay at Trump International for 26 nights last year, as he was urging administration officials to take a tough line on Iran. Former prime ministers of Thailand and a Nigerian presidential candidate have also been guests.

No surprise that Mr. Trump’s most recent financial disclosure forms, released last month, show that the Trump International Hotel produced $41 million in revenue, accounting for almost one-tenth of the Trump Organization’s revenue last year. According to additional financial disclosure reports released this month, Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and a White House adviser, made $4 million off the hotel last year.

Courts might eventually conclude that foreign transactions at Mr. Trump’s properties represent illegal emoluments — and judges should expedite their consideration of this question. But as long as the president maintains such close ties to a broad array of businesses, wealthy people seeking favors will see them as a way to siphon money into Mr. Trump’s pocket.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Mike Pence just revealed something important about Trump’s Iran decisions

The official explanation for President Trump’s last-minute decision to postpone a strike on Iran contains two separate claims. First, the move shows that Trump is capable of restraint, forbearance and great temperamental poise. Second, his resolve and willingness to unleash spectacular military might should not be underestimated.

Those two things aren’t necessarily contradictory. Indeed, the argument is that Trump is judiciously balancing those two impulses. This is crucial to Trump’s story: He wants to convince domestic audiences both that he isn’t recklessly hurtling into war and that he’s strong and tough. He also wants Iran to fear him more, now that he’s launching “major additional sanctions” in hopes of forcing total capitulation.

But here’s the problem: It’s hard to square this narrative with the known facts and public statements we now have about what happened. And the real emerging story says something important about how Trump’s worldview landed us in this mess.

Pence’s revealing CNN interview

Vice President Pence’s Sunday interview on CNN was unintentionally revealing in this regard. Pence reiterated the message that Trump concluded “late in the process” that the potential casualties from a strike were “not proportionate” to Iran’s shooting down of an unmanned drone.

But then Tapper pressed Pence further. Last week, Trump tweeted that he halted strikes after being informed 150 people would die. Then, asked why he’d ordered the strikes before getting a casualty count, Trump told reporters he’d initially received “very odd” casualty numbers before getting reliable ones.

Tapper prodded Pence on what this meant:

TAPPER: Why would the president have only gotten the casualty numbers, as you put it, “very late in the process”?

PENCE: What I can tell you … is that the president was provided with casualty assessments and a whole range of information --

TAPPER: But only at the end …

PENCE: Really throughout. But as the president indicated, late in the process there were more specific projections given to him relative to the targets that he was prepared to use force against and he concluded that it was not a proportionate response.

Here Pence conceded Trump actually had been given casualty estimates early on, and greenlighted the strikes anyway, but that they were somehow not as specific as the estimate at the last second.

This demands further scrutiny

Ned Price, who was President Barack Obama’s special assistant on national security, told me that Pence’s account doesn’t square with how this process — which should give the president highly specific information at the outset — is supposed to work.

“Among the first points that the president and his top advisers would be briefed on are casualty estimates that are as specific as intelligence would allow,” Price, who sat in on multiple such sessions with Obama, told me. “They would account for potential casualties for a range of scenarios.”

Price noted that Pence may have implicitly conceded that the process was distorted in some way, perhaps by advisers (such as national security adviser John Bolton) who want war.

“The vice president seemed to acknowledge that the estimates sent to the president changed over time,” Price told me, adding that this raises questions as to whether such advisers “may be orchestrating a process that not only filters but potentially manipulates information making its way to the president.”

“He was given information that he hadn’t previously been briefed on,” Price said. While it’s always possible military targets might change, Price noted, “that is not typically something that would happen if these briefings were on the level.”

To some degree, this dovetails with detailed reporting by The Post, which confirmed that Trump had been given casualty counts earlier than he said, and had signed off on the attack (before nixing it).

It’s hard to know whether Trump was given the 150 estimate in particular early on. But either he was given that number (in which case he’s lying about why he changed his mind) or he was given something else (in which case the process might have gone awry or gotten manipulated). Neither is reassuring, and more scrutiny is warranted.

The deeper problem here

In the end, though, the real problem revealed by this mess lies in Trump’s worldview. Pence said repeatedly that Trump exercised “restraint,” but that this shouldn’t be mistaken for a lack of “resolve” to use force.

Iran recently said it might soon violate the Iran nuclear deal. Trump’s sanctions are designed to completely cripple the Iranian economy to prevent that and to force additional concessions, though those demands appear deliberately designed by administration hawks not to be met.

But the Iran deal actually had been constraining Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Yet Trump pulled out of it, anyway.

In an important essay, Gabriel Schoenfeld of the Niskanen Center notes that a key feature of the “malignant nationalism” animating Trump and his intellectual supporters is the notion that international integration that requires accepting any constraints on the nation’s prerogatives cannot ever be acknowledged to be succeeding.

Trump’s worldview did not permit an acknowledgment that the Iran deal — an imperfect but carefully negotiated settlement that our allies continued to favor — was preventing nuclear weapons. So he had to say it was weak and a failure, and he had to pull out. Instead, Trump vowed to be so unilaterally tough that he’d force total capitulation (without firing a shot) alone.

This has made war more likely, and as Susan E. Rice points out, avoiding it would involve recommitting to a diplomatic solution that would entail settling for something short of total capitulation. But Trump can’t do that. Yet he doesn’t appear to want war, either.

So, as the Pence interview shows, we’re trapped in a situation where Trump is lurching wildly between reluctance and belligerence, even as the situation continues to escalate.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Judge orders Roger Stone to explain Instagram posts attacking FBI, prosecutors despite gag order

A federal judge on Friday demanded that Roger Stone explain why she should not find he violated a court gag order and his release terms pending trial after prosecutors criticized his recent social media posts attacking the FBI and Robert S. Mueller III’s special counsel probe.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington gave attorneys for the longtime Trump confidant until Thursday to explain Stone’s actions, after which she could set a hearing or weigh further restrictions on his liberty including jailing pending his November trial.

Jackson did not elaborate, but a one-sentence notice in the court’s electronic docket stated Stone “must show cause in writing” why he should not be found in violation.

Prosecutors led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Kravis on Thursday filed a motion with the court requesting a hearing, arguing Stone’s posts breached an order that he not comment “in the media or in public settings about the Special Counsel’s investigation or this case or any of the participants in the investigation or the case.”

Postings in Stone’s Instagram this week included photos of commentators referring to the “Russia Hoax” and claiming Stone’s defense has exposed “the ‘intelligence community’s’ betrayal of their responsibilities” and revealed “deeply disturbing lessons about the level of corruption at the top levels of the agencies charged with protecting us from external threats.”

Stone has pleaded not guilty to charges of lying about his efforts to gather information about Democratic Party emails hacked and leaked by Russian operatives in 2016.

In a statement, Stone’s attorney Bruce Rogow called the government’s filing “ill-advised and an astonishing overreaching.” The statement said, “We are disappointed in, and surprised by, the Government’s unrealized fears. Mr. Stone has limited his comments to matters widely reported in the news or public court filings.”

Jackson in February imposed a gag order after Stone, a longtime Republican operative and media commentator, posted an image on Instagram that appeared to show the judge’s photo near crosshairs and accused her and “Deep State hit man” Mueller of bias by arranging for her to preside over his “show trial.”

Jackson ordered Stone not to speak publicly about the investigation or case against him, saying he was “fanning the flames” and using his public platform “to incite others who may be less constrained.”

Jackson warned Stone that, if he violated the order in any way, she would order him to jail.

At issue in Stone’s latest postings is his allegation that Mueller prosecutors in search warrants in his case relied on unproven assumptions that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic Party emails and their release to WikiLeaks and other groups.

His defense has asked the court to suppress evidence gathered through the searches in his trial on charges of lying to Congress and witness tampering connected to his efforts to gather information about the emails gathered in hacks on the Democratic National Committee and others.

Stone’s Instagram posts refer to his claim that prosecutors, in obtaining search warrants, improperly relied on redacted reports issued by CrowdStrike, the private cybersecurity firm hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate the June 2016 attack. He has said they should turn over unredacted versions of the reports because they could help his defense.

Jackson has not yet ruled on Stone’s requests.

In a separate court filing Thursday, U.S. prosecutors wrote, “Stone’s statement that the government has no other evidence is not only irrelevant to this proceeding but is also mistaken.” They pointed to the special counsel’s indictment of members of the GRU, a Russian military intelligence agency, in the hack on Democratic organizations and added that in Stone’s indictment the references to the firm’s statements about the DNC hack were made as background.

Stone’s claims and those of his supporters also deny a central finding of Mueller’s investigation: Moscow’s primary role in the “sweeping and systemic” cyber interference effort.

Prosecutors asked Jackson to set a hearing saying Stone’s posts “appear calculated” to generate news coverage that could taint potential jurors “with information that is not relevant but that may appear, to some, to be relevant.”

Stone’s defense is expected to respond in court.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Exclusive: Leaked Trump vetting docs

Nearly 100 internal Trump transition vetting documents leaked to "Axios on HBO" identify a host of "red flags" about officials who went on to get some of the most powerful jobs in the U.S. government.

Why it matters: The massive trove, and the story behind it, sheds light on the slap-dash way President Trump filled his cabinet and administration, and foreshadowed future scandals that beset his government.

Some highlights:

Scott Pruitt, who ultimately lost his job as EPA Administrator because of serial ethical abuses and clubbiness with lobbyists, had a section in his vetting form titled "allegations of coziness with big energy companies."

Tom Price, who ultimately resigned as Health and Human Services Secretary after Trump lost confidence in him in part for stories about his use of chartered flights, had sections in his dossier flagging "criticisms of management ability" and "Dysfunction And Division Has Haunted Price's Leadership Of The House Budget Committee."

Mick Mulvaney, who became Trump's Budget Director and is now his acting chief of staff, has a striking assortment of "red flags," including his assessment that Trump "is not a very good person."

The Trump transition team was so worried about Rudy Giuliani, in line for Secretary of State, that they created a separate 25-page document titled "Rudy Giuliani Business Ties Research Dossier" with copious accounting of his "foreign entanglements."

One red flag for Gen. David Petraeus, who was under consideration for Secretary of State and National Security Adviser: "Petraeus Is Opposed to Torture."

Behind the scenes: In the chaotic weeks after Trump's surprise election victory, Trump fired Chris Christie as the head of his transition. The team that took over — which V.P. Mike Pence helmed — outsourced the political vetting of would-be top officials to the Republican National Committee.

We obtained the political vetting forms that Trump and his senior aides were given for Ben Carson, Dan Coats, Betsy DeVos, Gary Cohn, Don McGahn, Elaine Chao, John Kelly, James Mattis, John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney, Nikki Haley, Rex Tillerson, Rick Perry, Robert Lighthizer, Ryan Zinke, Scott Pruitt, and many others.

President-elect Trump reviewed many of these documents at Trump Tower and Bedminster before his interviews, according to a source who saw him eyeball them.

Traditionally, any would-be top official faces three types of vetting: an FBI background check, a scrub for financial conflicts of interest from the Office of Government Ethics, and a deep dive from the president-elect's political team, which veteran Washington lawyers often handle.

We obtained many of the political vetting forms. According to sources on the RNC vetting team, senior Trump officials asked them to do an initial "scrub" of the public record before Trump met the contenders. But in many cases — for example the misguided choice of Andrew Puzder as Labor Secretary — this RNC "scrub" of public sources was the only substantial vetting in Trump's possession when he announced his picks.

The documents show what Trump’s vetting shop worried about in assessing candidates for the most important jobs in government.
The RNC researchers identified some striking "Red Flags."

The first red flag for Rex Tillerson, who became Trump’s first Secretary of State, was about Russia. "Tillerson's Russia ties go deep," it read.

One red flag for Fox News host Laura Ingraham, considered for White House press secretary: "Ingraham said people should wear diapers instead of sharing bathrooms with transgender people."

One heading in the document about Kris Kobach, in the running for Homeland Security Secretary, listed "white supremacy" as a vulnerability. It cited accusations from past political opponents that he had ties to white supremacist groups.

Vetters had unique concerns about Gary Cohn. "Some Say Cohn Has An Abrasive, Curt, And Intimidating Style," they wrote, citing a Bloomberg piece. "He Would Sometimes Hike Up One Leg And Plant His Foot On A Trader's Desk, His Thigh Close To The Employee's Face, And Ask How Markets Were Doing."

Some of the contenders were strikingly swampy — even by the RNC vetters' standards.

Seema Verma, who Trump appointed as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, had this paragraph near the top of her vetting form: "Verma was simultaneously advising Indiana ($3.5 million in contracts) on issues impacting how it would spend Medicaid funds while she was also being paid by a client that received Medicaid funds. Ethics experts have called the arrangement a conflict of interest that potentially put Indiana taxpayers at risk."

Sonny Perdue, Trump's pick for Agriculture Secretary, had a vetting form with sections labeled "Business conflicts of interest" and "Family conflicts of interest." It noted that "Perdue is the owner of Houston Fertilizer and Grain, a company that has received contracts from the Department of Agriculture."

The documents point to Trump’s willingness to meet with — and sometimes hire — people who had harshly criticized him. The vetting team often put these denigrations at the top of the documents. A source with direct knowledge told me many of these documents were handed to Trump; he knew about the insults, and picked the insulters anyway.

Nikki Haley, who became Trump's U.N. ambassador, had a note that she'd said Trump is everything "we teach our kids not to do in kindergarten."

Ryan Zinke, who became Interior Secretary, had described Trump as "un-defendable."
Rick Perry, Energy Secretary, had voluminous vetting concerns: "Perry described Trumpism as a 'toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition,'" the vetters noted.

The RNC vetted some left field contenders. Nobody we spoke to, including senior members of the transition, could remember what job Hollywood talent agent Ari Emanuel was vetted for. (A suggested question for Emanuel in his interview: "Will you have any personal issues during times when the Trump administration faces partisan criticism from Democrats, including your brother Rahm or President Obama?")

Two sources who were doing the vetting at the RNC told me they often didn't know what jobs they were vetting people for.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Full list: The leaked Trump transition vetting documents

Full list:

Jerome Michael Adams, U.S. surgeon general
Marsha Blackburn, U.S. senator
John Bolton, national security adviser
Tom Bossert, Trump's former Homeland Security adviser
Scott Brown, U.S. ambassador to New Zealand
Terry Branstad, U.S. ambassador to China
Jovita Carranza, U.S. treasurer
Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Elaine Chao, Secretary of Transportation
Chris Christie, former New Jersey governor
David Clarke, former Milwaukee sheriff
Dan Coats, director of national intelligence
Gary Cohn, Trump's former chief economic advisor
Toby Cosgrove, Cleveland Clinic CEO
Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education
Ari Emanuel, William Morris Endeavor CEO
Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. congressperson (D-Hawaii)
Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer
Giuliani also had a separate business ties research dossier compiled.
Nikki Haley, Trump's former UN ambassador
Pete Hegseth, Fox News contributor
Laura Ingraham, Fox News host
Joel Kaplan, Facebook's vice president of global public policy
John Kelly, Trump's former White House chief of staff
Kris Kobach, former Kansas Secretary of State
Robert Lighthizer, U.S. trade representative
James Mattis, former Secretary of Defense
KT McFarland, former deputy national security adviser
Pat McCrory, former North Carolina governor
Don McGahn, Trump's former White House counsel
Linda McMahon, former administrator of Small Business Administration
Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury
Mick Mulvaney, OMB director, Trump's acting White House chief of staff
Sonny Perdue, Secretary of Agriculture
Rick Perry, Secretary of Energy
David Petraeus, former CIA director and retired four-star general
Tom Price, former Secretary of Health and Human Services
Scott Pruitt, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
Mike Rogers, former Navy admiral
Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce
Rex Tillerson, former Secretary of State
Seema Verma, administrator of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Ray Washburne, former Overseas Private Investment Corportation CEO
Ryan Zinke, former Secretary of the Interior

#Resist

[Lois]

Trump is a rapist.

[Athos_131]

Trump says Megan Rapinoe’s silence during national anthem at World Cup is inappropriate

As her teammates have sung along to “The Star-Spangled Banner” before each World Cup match, U.S. soccer star and national team co-captain Megan Rapinoe has stood silently, lips sealed.

President Trump has noticed and isn’t a fan of that behavior. Asked whether he thought her action was appropriate, Trump told The Hill: “No. I don’t think so.”

Playing in her third World Cup, Rapinoe, 33, was the star of America’s 2-1 win over Spain on Monday, when she connected on a pair of penalty kicks. She is one of the faces of the U.S. team, and she has been willing to use her platform to make a stand beyond soccer.

Rapinoe, who came out as gay in 2012, recently called herself “a walking protest when it comes to the Trump administration” because of “everything I stand for.” She said the idea that someone like her can don the U.S. kit is “kind of a good ‘F you’ to any sort of inequality or bad sentiments that the [Trump] administration might have towards people who don’t look exactly like him.”

[Perspective: Megan Rapinoe isn’t here to make you comfortable]

As a member of the Seattle Reign in September 2016, Rapinoe took a knee during the national anthem before a match against the Chicago Red Stars as a “nod to” 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who that summer began his protests over the oppression of minorities and drew an angry response from Trump. She became the first high-profile white or female athlete to kneel during the anthem.

“I felt like it was the right thing to do. I think it was the right time to do that,” she said days after the protest in 2016. “I’ve talked to people who are equally inspired and outraged, and I welcome both of those conversations and think that they are both incredibly important. I think over all it’s been positive.”

That was shortly before Trump was elected president.

In the 2½ years since Trump took office, many athletes have made it known they’re displeased with his administration — perhaps none more clearly than Rapinoe. In comments published last month, she told Yahoo she considers Trump “sexist,” “misogynistic,” “small-minded,” “racist” and “not a good person.”

She added that her gesture of resistance will continue. “I’ll probably never put my hand over my heart,” she told Yahoo. “I’ll probably never sing the national anthem again.”

Her feelings are also rooted in how she feels about being an advocate for gay rights.

“Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties,” Rapinoe told John D. Halloran of American Soccer Now, explaining why she took a knee in 2016. “It was something small that I could do and something that I plan to keep doing in the future and hopefully spark some meaningful conversation around it.”

Although the president feels it is inappropriate to not sing the anthem, he has remained supportive of the U.S. women’s team, telling The Hill: “I love watching women’s soccer. They’re really talented.”

Asked by The Hill if women’s soccer players should be paid as much as the men, Trump did not have a clear stance.

“I think a lot of it also has to do with the economics,” he said. “I mean who draws more, where is the money coming in. I know that when you have the great stars like [Portugal’s Cristiano] Ronaldo and some of these stars . . . that get paid a lot of money, but they draw hundreds of thousands of people.

“But I haven’t taken a position on that at all. I’d have to look at it.”

The president’s remarks were slightly more elaborative than his response to the same question two weeks ago when he said, “We’ll talk about that later.”

The women’s national team advanced to its eighth consecutive World Cup quarterfinals appearance with its win Monday. It will face France at 3 p.m. Friday.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Mark Morgan to replace John Sanders as border chief as DHS shake-up continues

A week after beginning his reelection campaign with promises of mass deportations, President Trump sent the agencies responsible for immigration enforcement deeper into disarray on Tuesday, replacing his interim border chief with a figure he plucked from cable news punditry last month.

Mark Morgan, who Trump installed as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in early June, will take over as acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, replacing John Sanders, according to two Department of Homeland Security officials and a legislative staffer briefed on the move.

Trump ran for president promising a sweeping immigration crackdown and a monumental border wall, but he has presided over the worst migration crisis in at least a decade while dizzyingly hiring and firing DHS officials. The shake-up Tuesday comes after weeks of interagency squabbles and political knifings among agency officials who are struggling to cope with a record surge of migrant families and squalid conditions inside U.S. Border Patrol detention cells stuffed beyond capacity.

Since April, the president has purged nearly all of the top officials remaining at DHS from the beginning of his term, leaving every immigration-related U.S. agency with an interim leader. Trump has said that he is seeking greater “toughness” from his border enforcers, bringing in figures who issue bold pronouncements on television but lack formal nominations and ways to deliver on Trump’s promises for “millions” of deportations and an ironclad border.

Immigration hard-liners in recent days have been pushing Trump to remove acting DHS secretary Kevin McAleenan at the moment when the policies McAleenan has advanced — including a deal with Mexico for an unprecedented immigration crackdown there — are beginning to yield results.

U.S. authorities detained more than 144,000 migrants last month along the Mexico border, the highest level since 2006, but preliminary reports indicate fewer have been crossing in recent weeks and others are being turned back by Mexican military forces.

McAleenan on Tuesday was en route to meetings with officials in Central America, where the Trump administration is seeking a separate accord that would allow the United States to send asylum seekers back to the first foreign nation where they step foot after fleeing their homelands.

Trump on Saturday called off an ICE roundup of families with deportation orders in major cities, five days after blowing the cover off the operation on Twitter.

McAleenan had challenged the feasibility and timing of the raids, worried that a backlash from Democrats would scuttle the White House’s request for $4.5 billion in supplemental funding to alleviate dire conditions in border detention cells and child shelters.

Morgan had pushed for the “family op” to go forward, and it was not clear whether the decision to move him from ICE to a loftier position at CBP was a consolation for losing out to McAleenan.

One person who has spoken with Trump about immigration said the president has heard from senior immigration adviser Stephen Miller and others around him that “everyone at DHS is weak.”

Trump regularly speaks about how a border wall has to be built before the election and immigration numbers have to go down, the person said.

“It is basically just throw everything at the wall at this point,” said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve access to the president.

Tuesday saw the continuation of a purge of DHS leadership that Trump began in April, leaving every single border- or immigration-related agency at DHS with an acting leader who has not been confirmed by the Senate.

Trump announced more than a week ago that former ICE acting director Tom Homan would be a new “border czar” at the White House. Homan has not accepted the job.

Though the president was eager to name him, White House officials said no paperwork was ready to hire him and no formal position had been created.

Homan was concerned he could not disentangle himself from private interests to go back into public service, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s personnel announcements.

Similarly, Trump installed former Virginia attorney general and conservative activist Ken Cuccinelli at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, despite warnings from Senate GOP leaders they would not confirm him for the role.

Matt Albence, the deputy director of ICE who led the agency before Morgan’s arrival, will resume the role of acting ICE director, DHS officials said.

The move to install Morgan at CBP appeared to be a victory for Miller, whose attempt to make the same move last month was blocked by McAleenan, who wanted Sanders in that role.

Sanders served in the top CBP role barely two months, after McAleenan was promoted from the position to acting DHS secretary, replacing Kirstjen Nielsen, whom Trump ousted.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said DHS is in “chaos,” a troubling look for a massive federal agency founded after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to enhance security in the United States.

“President Trump’s latest leadership change only worsens the chaos at the Department,” Thompson said in a statement. “DHS is charged with keeping the nation secure, but the President is putting its leadership through a constant game of musical chairs to fit his political agenda. . . . Leadership changes won’t change the fact that the Trump Administration’s cruel and abhorrent immigration policies are complete failures.”

Morgan worked at the FBI under then-Director James B. Comey, and he was brought in to CBP in 2014 to lead an overhaul of Border Patrol use-of-force policies. The effort was successful, but it chafed at senior CBP officials, who viewed him as an outsider who had not paid his dues by working as a rank-and-file border agent.

Morgan ascended to be head of the U.S. Border Patrol at the end of President Barack Obama’s second term, but he was removed from his job when Trump took office.

He worked his way into Trump’s good graces through appearances on Fox News during which he praised the president. Trump named Morgan to the top job at ICE last month, saying he wanted to go in a “tougher direction.”

Morgan had never worked at ICE, though, and made his preference for the top CBP job clear to colleagues.

A CBP official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the agency’s rank and file are divided over Morgan. But the official said Morgan’s FBI background allowed him to bring a different point of view to the sprawling agency.

Border Patrol union leader Brandon Judd, who criticized McAleenan in an Fox News op-ed Monday, praised Sanders in an interview Tuesday as a “brilliant” leader at CBP.

Though he and Morgan clashed when Morgan was Border Patrol chief, Judd said the two had “buried the hatchet” and he would welcome Morgan’s move to CBP “if he comes in and changes the culture of accountability for the better.”

Morgan and McAleenan have remained at odds, and tensions between them flared over the weekend when the president agreed to call off the ICE roundup of migrant families.

Trump said he had delayed the raids in up to 10 major cities for two weeks after McAleenan and others at ICE said they would be dangerous to pull off, partially because the president himself had publicly announced the sensitive law enforcement plans in advance on Twitter. Trump said he would give Democrats time to pass the legislation he demands.

In several days of meetings, McAleenan told the president and other immigration advisers that they doubted they could safely deport the large number of people Trump wanted to target and that authorities probably would have to resort to putting families in hotel rooms or releasing them again with ankle monitoring devices.

McAleenan also said that operations could be dangerous for agents because some local and state officials in Democratic districts were preparing to thwart the ICE operations.

Trump reluctantly agreed to cancel the raids and decided to couch the decision as a compromise with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), advisers said.

But the president has begun complaining to advisers about McAleenan. In the past two months, the president has also ousted the previous acting director of ICE, Ronald Vitiello, fired his DHS secretary, and removed the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, L. Francis Cissna.

Albence, who had only recently cleared his desk to make room for Morgan at ICE, will move back into his office again, DHS officials said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump demands subservience and gets incompetence

Can’t anybody here play this game?

The Trump administration, if you haven’t noticed, is undergoing one of its frequent paroxysms of incompetence.

On the border, the administration holds hundreds of migrant children in deplorable conditions: filthy, frightened and hungry. The president ordered and then called off a massive immigration raid, and, in the middle of the chaos, the administration’s top border security official resigned Tuesday.

Overseas, the administration is stumbling toward war with Iran, ordering and then canceling an attack. Iran on Tuesday said the White House is “afflicted by mental retardation,” and Trump responded by threatening Iran with “obliteration.”

Here in Washington, Trump just appointed a new press secretary for the third time and a White House communications director for the seventh time. He refuses to say whether he has confidence in his FBI director, his third, and he’s publicly feuding with the Federal Reserve chairman he appointed over whether Trump can fire him. Meantime, Trump is defying a Trump-appointed watchdog who called for the firing of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway for illegal political activities, and he’s brushing off the latest credible accusation of sexual misconduct by saying the accuser is “not my type.” And Trump’s protocol chief is quitting on the eve of the Group of 20 summit, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, amid allegations that he carried a whip in the office.

The chaos takes on many forms, but most of it stems from a single cause: Trump’s determination to run the country like “The Apprentice.”

The common thread to the mayhem and bungling is Trump’s insistence on staffing his government with officials serving in temporary, “acting” roles at the pleasure of the president and without the stature or protection of Senate confirmation. This allows Trump to demand absolute subservience from appointees. Because he can replace them at will, they don’t contradict him. But this tentative status also means they lack authority within their agencies and the stature to stand up to Trump when he’s wrong.

It’s no mere coincidence that the border debacle is the work of Trump’s Homeland Security Department, where every major border- and immigration-related agency is led by an “acting” official. Trump’s acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, John Sanders, just resigned after only two months on the job. The Post’s Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey report that he will be replaced by the current acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Mark Morgan (who got the job after praising Trump’s policies on Fox News). Morgan, in turn, has only been on the job for a couple of months since Trump fired yet another acting director of ICE. Trump had also ousted his DHS secretary and his head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and he has tabbed an “immigration czar” who has not yet accepted the job. 

It’s no mere coincidence, either, that the Iran debacle is occurring at a time when the Pentagon has been leaderless since Jim Mattis resigned as defense secretary in December. Patrick Shanahan had been the longest-serving “acting” defense secretary in history until last week, when Trump named another acting secretary, Mark Esper. Both men were reportedly with Trump when he ordered the Iran attack, which he later canceled after learning about possible casualties. It’s hard to imagine Trump ordering up a military attack on Mattis’s watch without first getting a casualty estimate.

And it’s no mere coincidence that the man at the fulcrum of chaotic White House decision-making, chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, also serves in “acting” status. Politico’s Nancy Cook reports that Trump is tiring of Mulvaney (he had the nerve to cough during a Trump TV interview), though he might not yet replace him with a fourth chief of staff, because he likes Mulvaney’s “hands-off approach” to Trump’s “whims and decision-making style.” If he weren’t “hands-off,” he’d be fired.

Trump is unabashed in his preference for this “Apprentice”-style, “you’re fired” leadership. It’s a theme of a new book about Trump’s Cabinet, “The Best People,” by Yahoo News national correspondent Alexander Nazaryan. Of his fondness for acting officials, Trump told Nazaryan: “It gives me a lot of leeway. It gives me great flexibility. I do like it. It’s such a big deal to get people approved nowadays. . . . We have actings, and we’re seeing how we like them.”

In other words, the administration is run by people on perpetual tryout, perpetual probation, unable to make long-term plans or to command the respect of those they (nominally) lead. The Federal Aviation Administration, which botched its handling of the Boeing 737 Max crashes, has been led by acting officials. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which bungled the recall of Fisher-Price’s Rock ’n Play bassinet, has been run by an acting chairwoman. (She announced last week she will step down at the end of her term in October.)

Now, Trump’s “actings” are causing babies to go hungry, and they may soon bumble us into war with Iran. But that’s okay, because Trump likes the “flexibility.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

USWNT's Ali Krieger says Donald Trump is angered by women he 'cannot control or grope'

USWNT defender Ali Krieger issued a strong rebuke to President Donald Trump after he tweeted about teammate Megan Rapinoe on Wednesday.

"In regards to the 'President's' tweet today, I know women who you cannot control or grope anger you, but I stand by (Rapinoe) & will sit this one out as well," Krieger wrote.

"I don't support this administration nor their fight against LGBTQ+ citizens, immigrants & our most vulnerable."

On Wednesday morning, Trump sent several critical tweets about Rapinoe, who had previously said she wouldn't visit the White House if the U.S. won the World Cup. Trump wrote, in part: "Megan should never disrespect our Country, the White House, or our Flag, especially since so much has been done for her & the team. Be proud of the Flag that you wear."

Trump added that while he hadn't officially invited the team to the White House, he was extending that invitation Wednesday: "I am a big fan of the American Team, and Women’s Soccer, but Megan should WIN first before she TALKS! Finish the job! We haven’t yet invited Megan or the team, but I am now inviting the TEAM, win or lose."

#Resist