Trump orders Guantanamo prison to remain open
By CONNOR O’BRIEN
President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered the controversial U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to remain open.
Trump announced the executive order, initially reported by POLITICO, during his first State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. It directs the prison stay open and allows the possibility Trump could send new enemy combatants there.
"I just signed, prior to walking in, an order directing [Defense] Secretary [Jim] Mattis ... to re-examine our military detention policy and to keep open the detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay," Trump said.
Trump's initiative repeals part of an executive order, signed by then-President Barack Obama in his first days in office, that calls for Guantanamo's closure. It also directs detention operations to continue and permits additional detainees to be sent to the prison "when lawful and necessary to protect" the country.
The executive order also gives Mattis three months to recommend policies for holding individuals captured in armed conflict, including policies for transferring detainees to Guantanamo Bay.
"Terrorists who do things like place bombs in civilian hospitals are evil. When possible, we have no choice but to annihilate them. When necessary, we must be able to detain and question them," Trump said. "But we must be clear: Terrorists are not merely criminals, they are unlawful enemy combatants."
Proponents of the military prison contend the detainees held there are too dangerous to send abroad or hold in U.S. prisons and that the facility is an effective tool to gain information from terrorists.
But critics argue the prison is expensive, unnecessary and serves as a recruiting tool for terrorists. The move is also a jab at the legacy of the Obama administration, which tried to shutter the prison for eight years without success — and was immediately decried by the American Civil Liberties Union.
"For more than a decade, Presidents [George W.] Bush and Obama tried to transfer people out responsibly, but Trump is reversing course," said Hina Shamsi, director of ACLU's National Security Project, in a statement. "In trying to give new life to a prison that symbolizes America's descent into torture and unlawful indefinite detention, Trump will not make this country any safer."
Obama attempted to close the prison but was repeatedly blocked. So, in lieu of shuttering the prison and transferring detainees to the U.S., the Obama administration moved dozens of cleared detainees to foreign countries, gradually winnowing down the prisoner population.
During his presidential campaign and since taking office, Trump has expressed openness to sending new enemy combatants to Guantanamo. And he repeated that sentiment again during Tuesday night's speech.
"I am asking Congress to ensure that in the fight against ISIS and Al Qaeda, we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists wherever we chase them down, wherever we find them," Trump said. "And in many cases for them it will now be Guantanamo Bay."
January 31, 2018
SOTU infrastructure pitch
Lawmakers question price tag of Trump’s SOTU infrastructure pitch
By ELANA SCHOR and SEUNG MIN KIM
President Donald Trump made a fresh plea Tuesday night for bipartisanship on rebuilding the nation's crumbling roads and bridges. But lawmakers in both parties left his State of the Union still wondering about how Trump wants to pay for it.
Trump's infrastructure agenda, long seen as a natural fit for the New York developer, envisions a public investment of $200 billion that could be used to attract private-sector as well as state and local spending. The president asked Congress in his speech "to produce a bill that generates at least $1.5 trillion" for infrastructure.
But Republicans and Democrats alike expressed disappointment with the lack of details.
"The question is, how are you gonna pay for it?” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters. “You tell me how we pay for it and I’ll tell you what we can do … leveraging private dollars is a good start but we got a lot of work to do."
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said that "$1.5 trillion, I think, kind of sucked the oxygen out of the room for a moment, as no one expected a number that big."
“And the obvious thing is, where are we with debt and deficit and how are we going to be able to pull it together?" he asked.
Trump told lawmakers that any federal spending "should be leveraged by partnering with state and local governments and, where appropriate, tapping into private sector investment." Congressional Republicans are considering a strategy that would set aside infrastructure money as part of a broader deal to raise budget caps for domestic programs, but those talks remain in their early stages.
Hours before Trump's speech, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) pressed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on another approach to pay for legislation on shoring up the nation's creaky foundations: using proceeds from income repatriated under the GOP tax bill. Mnuchin called Kennedy's pitch a “terrific idea” during a committee hearing, which cheered the genial Louisianan.
“We all know we need more infrastructure,” Kennedy said. “I would love to get some more details about what the president is thinking in terms of how we pay for it.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) welcomed Trump's invocation of infrastructure but also said she wanted to hear more details on how the White House plans to pay for the plan. When Trump mentioned a $1 trillion-plus investment, she said, “you could sort of hear the rumble in the room on that.”
Capito added that she had hoped to hear more about expanding broadband, a top priority for rural states such as hers.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, the confusion was even deeper over how Trump would find the new revenue to pay for an infrastructure bill that Republicans are already hoping to use as a political cudgel against Democrats in close races this fall.
"Where’s that trillion and a half coming from? Was that the trillion and a half he added to the national debt with the tax bill?” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked. “Where’s that coming from?"
Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, pointed out in a statement that Trump's planned trillion-dollar boost to infrastructure is "the same promise he made to the American people in his speech last year – but tomorrow we will still be waiting for his long overdue plan to do so."
By ELANA SCHOR and SEUNG MIN KIM
President Donald Trump made a fresh plea Tuesday night for bipartisanship on rebuilding the nation's crumbling roads and bridges. But lawmakers in both parties left his State of the Union still wondering about how Trump wants to pay for it.
Trump's infrastructure agenda, long seen as a natural fit for the New York developer, envisions a public investment of $200 billion that could be used to attract private-sector as well as state and local spending. The president asked Congress in his speech "to produce a bill that generates at least $1.5 trillion" for infrastructure.
But Republicans and Democrats alike expressed disappointment with the lack of details.
"The question is, how are you gonna pay for it?” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters. “You tell me how we pay for it and I’ll tell you what we can do … leveraging private dollars is a good start but we got a lot of work to do."
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said that "$1.5 trillion, I think, kind of sucked the oxygen out of the room for a moment, as no one expected a number that big."
“And the obvious thing is, where are we with debt and deficit and how are we going to be able to pull it together?" he asked.
Trump told lawmakers that any federal spending "should be leveraged by partnering with state and local governments and, where appropriate, tapping into private sector investment." Congressional Republicans are considering a strategy that would set aside infrastructure money as part of a broader deal to raise budget caps for domestic programs, but those talks remain in their early stages.
Hours before Trump's speech, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) pressed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on another approach to pay for legislation on shoring up the nation's creaky foundations: using proceeds from income repatriated under the GOP tax bill. Mnuchin called Kennedy's pitch a “terrific idea” during a committee hearing, which cheered the genial Louisianan.
“We all know we need more infrastructure,” Kennedy said. “I would love to get some more details about what the president is thinking in terms of how we pay for it.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) welcomed Trump's invocation of infrastructure but also said she wanted to hear more details on how the White House plans to pay for the plan. When Trump mentioned a $1 trillion-plus investment, she said, “you could sort of hear the rumble in the room on that.”
Capito added that she had hoped to hear more about expanding broadband, a top priority for rural states such as hers.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, the confusion was even deeper over how Trump would find the new revenue to pay for an infrastructure bill that Republicans are already hoping to use as a political cudgel against Democrats in close races this fall.
"Where’s that trillion and a half coming from? Was that the trillion and a half he added to the national debt with the tax bill?” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked. “Where’s that coming from?"
Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, pointed out in a statement that Trump's planned trillion-dollar boost to infrastructure is "the same promise he made to the American people in his speech last year – but tomorrow we will still be waiting for his long overdue plan to do so."
Warns against preemptive North Korea strike
Ex-Trump pick for ambassador warns against preemptive North Korea strike
By LOUIS NELSON
The man President Donald Trump had until recently picked to be U.S. ambassador to South Korea warned Tuesday against even a limited preemptive strike against North Korea, predicting that such a move could set-off an uncontrollably escalating conflict.
“There is a point at which hope must give in to logic. If we believe that Kim is undeterrable without such a strike, how can we also believe that a strike will deter him from responding in kind?” Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor who served in the administration of George W. Bush, wrote in The Washington Post. “And if Kim is unpredictable, impulsive and bordering on irrational, how can we control the escalation ladder, which is premised on an adversary’s rational understanding of signals and deterrence?”
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Cha’s name was removed from consideration for the ambassador job in South Korea after a December meeting in which he raised concerns about a so-called “bloody nose” strike against the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Un, one intended to demonstrate U.S. willingness to use military force. Cha also voiced objections to the president’s threats to pull the U.S. out of a bilateral trade agreement with South Korea.
While Cha’s formal nomination to be ambassador to South Korea had not yet been sent to the Senate, the White House had conducted security and financial background checks on him and had notified Seoul in December of the president’s plans to nominate him. The South Korean government had approved Cha as the president’s pick.
Instead of a preemptive nuclear strike, Cha prescribed a U.S. approach that continues to build economic and global political pressures on the Kim regime while increasing U.S. military readiness in the region, as well as that of U.S. allies Japan and South Korea. Any preemptive strike, Cha wrote, would endanger the roughly 320,000 Americans in Japan and South Korea on any given day, the “putting at risk an American population the size of a medium-size U.S. city — Pittsburgh, say, or Cincinnati — on the assumption that a crazy and undeterrable dictator will be rationally cowed by a demonstration of U.S. kinetic power.”
“The answer is not, as some Trump administration officials have suggested, a preventive military strike. Instead, there is a forceful military option available that can address the threat without escalating into a war that would likely kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Americans,” Cha wrote. “When I was under consideration for a position in this administration, I shared some of these views.”
By LOUIS NELSON
The man President Donald Trump had until recently picked to be U.S. ambassador to South Korea warned Tuesday against even a limited preemptive strike against North Korea, predicting that such a move could set-off an uncontrollably escalating conflict.
“There is a point at which hope must give in to logic. If we believe that Kim is undeterrable without such a strike, how can we also believe that a strike will deter him from responding in kind?” Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor who served in the administration of George W. Bush, wrote in The Washington Post. “And if Kim is unpredictable, impulsive and bordering on irrational, how can we control the escalation ladder, which is premised on an adversary’s rational understanding of signals and deterrence?”
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Cha’s name was removed from consideration for the ambassador job in South Korea after a December meeting in which he raised concerns about a so-called “bloody nose” strike against the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Un, one intended to demonstrate U.S. willingness to use military force. Cha also voiced objections to the president’s threats to pull the U.S. out of a bilateral trade agreement with South Korea.
While Cha’s formal nomination to be ambassador to South Korea had not yet been sent to the Senate, the White House had conducted security and financial background checks on him and had notified Seoul in December of the president’s plans to nominate him. The South Korean government had approved Cha as the president’s pick.
Instead of a preemptive nuclear strike, Cha prescribed a U.S. approach that continues to build economic and global political pressures on the Kim regime while increasing U.S. military readiness in the region, as well as that of U.S. allies Japan and South Korea. Any preemptive strike, Cha wrote, would endanger the roughly 320,000 Americans in Japan and South Korea on any given day, the “putting at risk an American population the size of a medium-size U.S. city — Pittsburgh, say, or Cincinnati — on the assumption that a crazy and undeterrable dictator will be rationally cowed by a demonstration of U.S. kinetic power.”
“The answer is not, as some Trump administration officials have suggested, a preventive military strike. Instead, there is a forceful military option available that can address the threat without escalating into a war that would likely kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Americans,” Cha wrote. “When I was under consideration for a position in this administration, I shared some of these views.”
Deflects
Stormy Daniels deflects Kimmel's questions on alleged Trump affair
By LOUIS NELSON
Adult film star Stormy Daniels dodged questions Tuesday night about her alleged affair with President Donald Trump, playing coy about the relationship that she has recently denied but previously had talked about in great detail.
Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, hedged and shrugged Thursday as ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel read a summary of her 2011 interview with In Touch magazine in which she detailed her alleged relationship with the president. That relationship came to light earlier this month when The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s private attorney paid Daniels $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement one month before the 2016 election.
As Kimmel recalled Daniels saying in her 2011 interview that Trump had asked for her autograph on one of her DVDs, the actress said “I guess he does have good taste then.” When the late night host recalled a meeting between Daniels and Trump where the president was engrossed in Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” programming and declared his fear of sharks, Daniels interjected “aren’t we all?”
Once Kimmel finished his summary of Daniels’ interview, he asked “is any of that true?” To which Daniels replied, “define true.” Kimmel also handed Daniels a puppet version of herself, asking the puppet Daniels about the reported relationship with Trump.
Asked by Kimmel if she had a nondisclosure agreement related to her reported relationship with Trump, Daniels replied “do I?” But when Kimmel responded that “if you didn’t have an non-disclosure agreement you most certainly could say you don’t have an non-disclosure agreement, yes?” Daniels replied “you’re so smart, Jimmy.”
Daniels was relatively clear in disputing her signature on a statement that purportedly came from her in the hours leading up to her appearance on Kimmel’s show. The statement, attributed to Daniels, reads in part: "I am not denying this affair because I was paid 'hush money' as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.”
But the signature on the Thursday statement does not appear to match other examples of Daniels’s signature, something Kimmel pointed out during his interview with the actress. “That doesn’t look like my signature, does it?” she said.
By LOUIS NELSON
Adult film star Stormy Daniels dodged questions Tuesday night about her alleged affair with President Donald Trump, playing coy about the relationship that she has recently denied but previously had talked about in great detail.
Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, hedged and shrugged Thursday as ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel read a summary of her 2011 interview with In Touch magazine in which she detailed her alleged relationship with the president. That relationship came to light earlier this month when The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s private attorney paid Daniels $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement one month before the 2016 election.
As Kimmel recalled Daniels saying in her 2011 interview that Trump had asked for her autograph on one of her DVDs, the actress said “I guess he does have good taste then.” When the late night host recalled a meeting between Daniels and Trump where the president was engrossed in Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” programming and declared his fear of sharks, Daniels interjected “aren’t we all?”
Once Kimmel finished his summary of Daniels’ interview, he asked “is any of that true?” To which Daniels replied, “define true.” Kimmel also handed Daniels a puppet version of herself, asking the puppet Daniels about the reported relationship with Trump.
Asked by Kimmel if she had a nondisclosure agreement related to her reported relationship with Trump, Daniels replied “do I?” But when Kimmel responded that “if you didn’t have an non-disclosure agreement you most certainly could say you don’t have an non-disclosure agreement, yes?” Daniels replied “you’re so smart, Jimmy.”
Daniels was relatively clear in disputing her signature on a statement that purportedly came from her in the hours leading up to her appearance on Kimmel’s show. The statement, attributed to Daniels, reads in part: "I am not denying this affair because I was paid 'hush money' as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.”
But the signature on the Thursday statement does not appear to match other examples of Daniels’s signature, something Kimmel pointed out during his interview with the actress. “That doesn’t look like my signature, does it?” she said.
Kennedy speech...
Kennedy calls Trump a 'bully' — though not by name
By MATTHEW NUSSBAUM
Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.), a scion of the powerful Democratic dynasty, touted his party’s promise of “a better deal” in his rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night.
Kennedy, speaking from Fall River, Mass., sought to paint the president as a bully set on division, though he did not once mention Trump by name.
“This administration isn’t just targeting the laws that protect us — they are targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection,” Kennedy said in an address that sought to weave together an inclusive message that reached out to those in Trump country and those in the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.
He gave nods to both the “me too” and “Black Lives Matter” movements. He hailed the Women’s Marches protesting Trump and delivered a line in Spanish. And he promised that Democrats’ vision for the United States was one that “the greatest strongest, richest, nation in the world should not have to leave any one behind.”
“Bullies may land a punch. They might leave a mark,” he said. “But they have never, not once, in the history of our United States, managed to match the strength and spirit of a people united in defense of their future.”
Kennedy also sought to revive the Democrats’ “better deal” — an on-again, off-again slogan from last year and a play on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, among the party’s signature 20th-century achievements.
“We choose a better deal for all who call our country home,” Kennedy said. “We choose the living wage, paid leave and the affordable child care your family needs to survive. We choose pensions that are solvent, trade pacts that are fair, roads and bridges that won’t rust away, a good education you can afford. We choose a health care system that offers you mercy, whether you suffer from cancer or depression or addiction. We choose an economy strong enough to boast record stock prices and brave enough to admit that top CEOs making 300 times the average worker is not right.”
Still, Kennedy could not escape some of the stilted awkwardness that seems a perennial feature of State of the Union rebuttals. While Trump spoke from the House chamber before Congress, the Cabinet, Supreme Court Justices and top military leaders, Kennedy addressed a small crowd with what appeared to be an antique car in the background.
Kennedy, a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, the late senator and attorney general, may have delivered the party’s official response, but his isn't the only one.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and former Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) will deliver their own responses. Virginia Del. Elizabeth Guzman will deliver the official response in Spanish.
Kennedy is one of a number of Democrats whose name has been floated as a potential 2020 contender to take on Trump.
By MATTHEW NUSSBAUM
Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.), a scion of the powerful Democratic dynasty, touted his party’s promise of “a better deal” in his rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night.
Kennedy, speaking from Fall River, Mass., sought to paint the president as a bully set on division, though he did not once mention Trump by name.
“This administration isn’t just targeting the laws that protect us — they are targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection,” Kennedy said in an address that sought to weave together an inclusive message that reached out to those in Trump country and those in the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.
He gave nods to both the “me too” and “Black Lives Matter” movements. He hailed the Women’s Marches protesting Trump and delivered a line in Spanish. And he promised that Democrats’ vision for the United States was one that “the greatest strongest, richest, nation in the world should not have to leave any one behind.”
“Bullies may land a punch. They might leave a mark,” he said. “But they have never, not once, in the history of our United States, managed to match the strength and spirit of a people united in defense of their future.”
Kennedy also sought to revive the Democrats’ “better deal” — an on-again, off-again slogan from last year and a play on President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, among the party’s signature 20th-century achievements.
“We choose a better deal for all who call our country home,” Kennedy said. “We choose the living wage, paid leave and the affordable child care your family needs to survive. We choose pensions that are solvent, trade pacts that are fair, roads and bridges that won’t rust away, a good education you can afford. We choose a health care system that offers you mercy, whether you suffer from cancer or depression or addiction. We choose an economy strong enough to boast record stock prices and brave enough to admit that top CEOs making 300 times the average worker is not right.”
Still, Kennedy could not escape some of the stilted awkwardness that seems a perennial feature of State of the Union rebuttals. While Trump spoke from the House chamber before Congress, the Cabinet, Supreme Court Justices and top military leaders, Kennedy addressed a small crowd with what appeared to be an antique car in the background.
Kennedy, a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, the late senator and attorney general, may have delivered the party’s official response, but his isn't the only one.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and former Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) will deliver their own responses. Virginia Del. Elizabeth Guzman will deliver the official response in Spanish.
Kennedy is one of a number of Democrats whose name has been floated as a potential 2020 contender to take on Trump.
What He Didn't Mention...
Trump Took a Victory Lap. Here's What He Didn't Mention
Some things about the economy got conveniently left out last night.
By MICHAEL GRUNWALD
Almost exactly a year ago, President Donald Trump hosted Harley-Davidson executives at the White House, and credited their success to a new American spirit that had emerged since his election: “I think you’re going to even expand. I know your business is now doing very well.” He later singled out Harley-Davidson as a “great American company” in his first address to Congress, vowing to help it again by persuading foreign countries to cut tariffs on its motorcycles.
But Harley-Davidson did not make Trump’s list of corporations benefiting from his presidency during his State of the Union address Tuesday night. That may be because Tuesday morning, Harley-Davidson announced plans to close a Kansas City factory and lay off 800 employees after weak fourth-quarter earnings, capping off a rough 2017 that saw its worldwide sales drop 6.7 percent. The company’s CEO has said publicly that part of the problem was Trump’s decision to quit the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal: “That would have helped us a lot.”
It would be silly to portray Harley-Davidson’s current troubles as a reflection of the economy, which is doing just fine after Trump’s first year in office. But it was even sillier to portray Harley-Davidson’s successes as a reflection of his instant rescue of the economy, which was also doing just fine before Trump took office. He loves to use corporations as props in his own heroic economic narrative, a narrative that depends on national amnesia about the state of the economy he inherited.
“For many years, companies and jobs were only leaving us,” Trump declared last night. “But now they are coming back!”
Um…no. It’s good that the U.S. economy created 2.4 million jobs in the last year, as Trump boasted last night, but it created 16 million jobs in the six years before that. The president provided an inadvertent reminder with his shoutout to Corey Adams, “an all-American worker” whose bosses at Staub Manufacturing in Ohio used their tax cuts to give him a raise. Trump noted that Adams “lost his job during the 2008 recession, and was later hired by Staub,” so he was presumably one of the 16 million who left the unemployment rolls under President Barack Obama.
Similarly, it’s great that the African-American unemployment rate dropped from 7.9 percent to 6.8 percent in 2017, which Trump noted is “the lowest rate ever recorded,” but that was after dropping from 16.1 percent to 7.9 percent since 2009. Trump also hailed how the stock market “has smashed one record after another,” and indeed it has, but it also nearly tripled on Obama’s watch, which doesn’t quite fit Trump’s mythology of America rising from the ashes. Trump even took credit for the resurgence of U.S. auto manufacturing, “something we have not seen for decades.” In fact, Obama inherited an auto industry in shambles, but auto sales and employment nearly doubled on his watch—and have actually declined slightly on Trump’s.
Last night, Trump spent a lot of time advertising that “massive tax cut” he signed last month—and at $1.5 trillion it really is big, although not, as he claimed, the biggest in American history. And it is true, as he said, that 3 million workers have received bonuses that companies like Staub attributed to his corporate tax cuts. But if the point of the legislation had been to get money to workers, the Republicans who wrote it could have just given money to workers. Instead, they poured most of the money into permanent tax relief for corporations and wealthy heirs, while the relief for the middle class was much more modest and temporary.
Those bonuses, of course, will also be temporary, but they gave employers an opportunity to play their beneficent roles in Trump’s economic theater. With great fanfare, AT&T attributed its $1000 employee bonuses to the tax cuts, even though it had been discussing them with its unions for months, then unveiled major layoffs with no fanfare. Wal-Mart paired a $300 million wage increase for its workers with a $4 billion stock buyback for its investors, while also shuttering stores and firing workers. Kimberly-Clark, abandoning the Trump script, actually announced that it would use its tax-cut windfall to shut down factories and lay off 5,000 workers. One consulting firm surveyed 333 large employers about what they planned to do with their tax cuts, and only 7 percent said they were planning any kind of wage increase.
It’s reminiscent of Trump’s early days in office, when he kept touting big expansion plans from companies like Charter Communications, General Motors, and Intel that had been in the works long before he arrived in Washington. Or his post-election public-relations coup when he supposedly saved the jobs at a Carrier plant in Indianapolis from relocating to Mexico; that factory announced 300 layoffs in July and another 200 this month. Obviously, Carrier didn’t fit last night’s New American Moment theme—the Democratic group American Bridge ran digital ads featuring angry Carrier workers accusing Trump of betraying them during the speech—so Trump bragged about Apple instead, crediting its new $350 billion investment strategy to his tax cuts, even though the company has not.
It must be said that Trump misleading his audience about the economy was not exactly playing against type. What seemed unusual last night was Trump boring his audience about the economy. Whatever you thought of his muscular economic nationalism on the campaign trail, with his fiery rants about the nefariousness of China and Mexico and the stupidity of U.S. negotiators, he always put on a good and original show. Last night, most of the policy statements he read off the TelePromter were studiously bland and content-free politician-talk: “From now on, we expect trading relationships to be fair and reciprocal.” Or: “I am asking both parties to come together to give us the safe, fast, reliable modern infrastructure our economy needs and our people deserve.” Perhaps he paid his speechwriters by the cliché.
In fairness, it’s hard to craft an original or indelible State of the Union address. Obama’s annual exhortations about “winning the future” or “an economy built to last” were pretty forgettable, too; the most memorable line in an Obama speech to Congress was “You lie!”—and it wasn’t his. The public quickly forgot the promises Trump made about the economy last year, and last night’s promises probably won’t matter much, either.
But Trump has committed pretty ferociously to his heroic narrative of resurrection. If the stock market or the labor market ever departs too dramatically from that narrative, if the rest of the economy follows the path of Harley-Davidson—well, that might matter.
Some things about the economy got conveniently left out last night.
By MICHAEL GRUNWALD
Almost exactly a year ago, President Donald Trump hosted Harley-Davidson executives at the White House, and credited their success to a new American spirit that had emerged since his election: “I think you’re going to even expand. I know your business is now doing very well.” He later singled out Harley-Davidson as a “great American company” in his first address to Congress, vowing to help it again by persuading foreign countries to cut tariffs on its motorcycles.
But Harley-Davidson did not make Trump’s list of corporations benefiting from his presidency during his State of the Union address Tuesday night. That may be because Tuesday morning, Harley-Davidson announced plans to close a Kansas City factory and lay off 800 employees after weak fourth-quarter earnings, capping off a rough 2017 that saw its worldwide sales drop 6.7 percent. The company’s CEO has said publicly that part of the problem was Trump’s decision to quit the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal: “That would have helped us a lot.”
It would be silly to portray Harley-Davidson’s current troubles as a reflection of the economy, which is doing just fine after Trump’s first year in office. But it was even sillier to portray Harley-Davidson’s successes as a reflection of his instant rescue of the economy, which was also doing just fine before Trump took office. He loves to use corporations as props in his own heroic economic narrative, a narrative that depends on national amnesia about the state of the economy he inherited.
“For many years, companies and jobs were only leaving us,” Trump declared last night. “But now they are coming back!”
Um…no. It’s good that the U.S. economy created 2.4 million jobs in the last year, as Trump boasted last night, but it created 16 million jobs in the six years before that. The president provided an inadvertent reminder with his shoutout to Corey Adams, “an all-American worker” whose bosses at Staub Manufacturing in Ohio used their tax cuts to give him a raise. Trump noted that Adams “lost his job during the 2008 recession, and was later hired by Staub,” so he was presumably one of the 16 million who left the unemployment rolls under President Barack Obama.
Similarly, it’s great that the African-American unemployment rate dropped from 7.9 percent to 6.8 percent in 2017, which Trump noted is “the lowest rate ever recorded,” but that was after dropping from 16.1 percent to 7.9 percent since 2009. Trump also hailed how the stock market “has smashed one record after another,” and indeed it has, but it also nearly tripled on Obama’s watch, which doesn’t quite fit Trump’s mythology of America rising from the ashes. Trump even took credit for the resurgence of U.S. auto manufacturing, “something we have not seen for decades.” In fact, Obama inherited an auto industry in shambles, but auto sales and employment nearly doubled on his watch—and have actually declined slightly on Trump’s.
Last night, Trump spent a lot of time advertising that “massive tax cut” he signed last month—and at $1.5 trillion it really is big, although not, as he claimed, the biggest in American history. And it is true, as he said, that 3 million workers have received bonuses that companies like Staub attributed to his corporate tax cuts. But if the point of the legislation had been to get money to workers, the Republicans who wrote it could have just given money to workers. Instead, they poured most of the money into permanent tax relief for corporations and wealthy heirs, while the relief for the middle class was much more modest and temporary.
Those bonuses, of course, will also be temporary, but they gave employers an opportunity to play their beneficent roles in Trump’s economic theater. With great fanfare, AT&T attributed its $1000 employee bonuses to the tax cuts, even though it had been discussing them with its unions for months, then unveiled major layoffs with no fanfare. Wal-Mart paired a $300 million wage increase for its workers with a $4 billion stock buyback for its investors, while also shuttering stores and firing workers. Kimberly-Clark, abandoning the Trump script, actually announced that it would use its tax-cut windfall to shut down factories and lay off 5,000 workers. One consulting firm surveyed 333 large employers about what they planned to do with their tax cuts, and only 7 percent said they were planning any kind of wage increase.
It’s reminiscent of Trump’s early days in office, when he kept touting big expansion plans from companies like Charter Communications, General Motors, and Intel that had been in the works long before he arrived in Washington. Or his post-election public-relations coup when he supposedly saved the jobs at a Carrier plant in Indianapolis from relocating to Mexico; that factory announced 300 layoffs in July and another 200 this month. Obviously, Carrier didn’t fit last night’s New American Moment theme—the Democratic group American Bridge ran digital ads featuring angry Carrier workers accusing Trump of betraying them during the speech—so Trump bragged about Apple instead, crediting its new $350 billion investment strategy to his tax cuts, even though the company has not.
It must be said that Trump misleading his audience about the economy was not exactly playing against type. What seemed unusual last night was Trump boring his audience about the economy. Whatever you thought of his muscular economic nationalism on the campaign trail, with his fiery rants about the nefariousness of China and Mexico and the stupidity of U.S. negotiators, he always put on a good and original show. Last night, most of the policy statements he read off the TelePromter were studiously bland and content-free politician-talk: “From now on, we expect trading relationships to be fair and reciprocal.” Or: “I am asking both parties to come together to give us the safe, fast, reliable modern infrastructure our economy needs and our people deserve.” Perhaps he paid his speechwriters by the cliché.
In fairness, it’s hard to craft an original or indelible State of the Union address. Obama’s annual exhortations about “winning the future” or “an economy built to last” were pretty forgettable, too; the most memorable line in an Obama speech to Congress was “You lie!”—and it wasn’t his. The public quickly forgot the promises Trump made about the economy last year, and last night’s promises probably won’t matter much, either.
But Trump has committed pretty ferociously to his heroic narrative of resurrection. If the stock market or the labor market ever departs too dramatically from that narrative, if the rest of the economy follows the path of Harley-Davidson—well, that might matter.
Why is this not surprising???
Trump's top health official traded tobacco stock while leading anti-smoking efforts
CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald bought shares in a global tobacco giant even as her previous holdings were under review.
By SARAH KARLIN-SMITH and BRIANNA EHLEY
The Trump administration’s top public health official bought shares in a tobacco company one month into her leadership of the agency charged with reducing tobacco use — the leading cause of preventable disease and death and an issue she had long championed.
The stock was one of about a dozen new investments that Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, made after she took over the agency’s top job, according to documents obtained by POLITICO. Fitzgerald has since come under congressional scrutiny for slow walking divestment from older holdings that government officials said posed potential conflicts of interest.
Buying shares of tobacco companies raises even more flags than Fitzgerald’s trading in drug and food companies because it stands in such stark contrast to the CDC’s mission to persuade smokers to quit and keep children from becoming addicted. Critics say her trading behavior broke with ethical norms for public health officials and was, at best, sloppy. At worst, they say, it was legally problematic if she didn't recuse herself from government activities that could have affected her investments.
“You don’t buy tobacco stocks when you are the head of the CDC. It’s ridiculous; it gives a terrible appearance,” said Richard Painter, who served as George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007. He described the move as “tone deaf,” given the CDC’s role in leading anti-smoking efforts.
Even if Fitzgerald, a medical doctor and former Georgia Department of Public Health commissioner, met all of the legal requirements, “it stinks to high heaven,” Painter said.
A Health and Human Services Department spokesman confirmed "the potentially conflicting" stock purchases, saying they were handled by her financial manager and that she subsequently sold them.
“Like all presidential personnel, Dr. Fitzgerald’s financial holdings were reviewed by the HHS Ethics Office, and she was instructed to divest of certain holdings that may pose a conflict of interest. During the divestiture process, her financial account manager purchased some potentially conflicting stock holdings. These additional purchases did not change the scope of Dr. Fitzgerald’s recusal obligations, and Dr. Fitzgerald has since also divested of these newly acquired potentially conflicting publicly traded stock holdings.”
After assuming the CDC leadership on July 7, Fitzgerald bought tens of thousands of dollars in new stock holdings in at least a dozen companies later that month as well as in August and September, according to records obtained under the Stock Act, which requires disclosures of transactions over $1,000. Purchases included between $1,001 and $15,000 of Japan Tobacco, one of the largest such companies in the world, which sells four tobacco brands in the U.S. through a subsidiary.
The purchases also include between $1,001 and $15,000 each in Merck & Co., Bayer and health insurance company Humana, as well as between $15,001 and $50,000 in US Food Holding Co., according to financial disclosure documents.
On Aug. 9, one day after purchasing stock in global giant Japan Tobacco, she toured the CDC’s Tobacco Laboratory, which researches how the chemicals in tobacco harm human health, according to financial forms obtained from HHS’ Office of Government Ethics and calendars obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The records confirm that Fitzgerald sold the shares of tobacco on Oct. 26 and all of her stock holdings above $1,000 by Nov. 21, more than four months after she became CDC director.
Fitzgerald, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has made tobacco efforts a focus of her public health career, despite owning stock in the industry. She listed tobacco cessation as one of her primary priorities while still serving in the Georgia position in February 2017. Prior to accepting the CDC position, she owned stock in five other tobacco companies: Reynolds American, British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands, Philip Morris International, and Altria Group Inc. — all legal under Georgia’s ethics rules. HHS did not respond to questions about why she invested in tobacco companies while working to reduce tobacco consumption.
“It’s stunning,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “It sends two messages, both of which are deeply disturbing. First, it undermines the credibility of a public official when they argue that tobacco is the No. 1 preventable cause of disease. Second, and perhaps even worse, it indicates a public official is willing to put their personal profit above the ethics of investing in a company whose products cause so much harm.”
“It gives you a window, I think, into her value system,” said Kathleen Clark, a professor of law focusing on government ethics at Washington University in St. Louis. “It doesn’t make her a criminal, but it does raise the question of what are her commitments? What are her values, and are they consistent with this government agency that is dedicated to the public health? Frankly, she loses some credibility.”
While holding the newly purchased tobacco, drug company and food stock, along with other financial holdings in various health companies, Fitzgerald participated in meetings related to the opioid crisis, hurricane response efforts, cancer and obesity, stroke prevention, polio, Zika and Ebola, according to a copy of her schedule between Aug. 1 and Oct. 27.
Merck, whose stock Fitzgerald purchased on Aug. 9, has been working on developing an Ebola vaccine and also makes HIV medications. Bayer, whose stock she purchased on Aug. 10, has in the past partnered with the CDC Foundation, which works closely with the CDC, to prevent the spread of the Zika virus.
“If she participated in meetings in which she has financial conflicts of interest, that is not fine in my book,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist at the liberal watchdog group Public Citizen. Because some of the meetings took place before Fitzgerald had an ethics agreement, Holman said she “could have an easy avenue for excusing herself,” by saying she didn't understand it was a conflict, or arguing she didn’t make decisions in those meetings. “But that is not how the law should be applied,” he added. “Even if you could claim you didn’t speak up at those meetings, your presence poses a conflict of interest.”
But it could have been possible for Fitzgerald to participate in briefings on topics like tobacco or Ebola without violating government ethics policy, depending on her role, said a former government ethics official. For example, if Fitzgerald was just in listening mode and not making any substantive comments or decisions, she would likely be within the rules, the official said.
Fitzgerald has already been criticized by some lawmakers for her inability to offload two financial holdings, which date to before she became CDC director and left her unable to perform some tasks, such as testifying in front of lawmakers. An HHS spokesperson said she is actively working to address her remaining recusal obligations related to the two companies, adding that both have “complex transfer restrictions.”
HHS officials said Fitzgerald’s lengthy divestment process was due to her complicated stock portfolio. They declined to say whether she had any ethics training. She didn’t enter into a formal ethics agreement with HHS until two months after taking office.
“It’s a little concerning it took two months to get her ethics agreement signed and an additional month for her to dump conflicting stock,” said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group.
The Health and Human Services Department declined to respond to detailed questions about Fitzgerald’s investments, including whether she herself approved the transactions and what activities and decisions she recused herself from due to her holdings.
Normally, senior government officials commence the process of outlining their conflicts of interest before they assume a job, so that they can quickly divest within days of taking office, a former HHS senior legal counsel told POLITICO.
HHS lawyers usually advise employees to avoid purchasing new stock during an interim period, particularly in areas where they would likely need to divest. Fitzgerald’s ethics agreement, dated Sept. 7, identified nearly all the companies in which she bought stocks on the job as conflicts of interest.
But officials are liable for their actions, regardless of whether they have an ethics agreement in place or have been warned by ethics officials that a financial holding is a conflict, multiple former government ethics officials told POLITICO.
One reason Fitzgerald’s divestment may have taken so long is that the Office of Government Ethics has little ability to force government officials to speedily address financial conflicts, unless they are undergoing a Senate confirmation process, said Walter Shaub, who directed the U.S. Office of Government Ethics under Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017. The CDC director is not a Senate-confirmable post.
“There is a lot less transparency around the non-Senate confirmed individuals … and the ethics process lags, even though the rules still apply," said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a government oversight group. "Those folks put themselves at risk by not getting clearance and understanding the rules.”
CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald bought shares in a global tobacco giant even as her previous holdings were under review.
By SARAH KARLIN-SMITH and BRIANNA EHLEY
The Trump administration’s top public health official bought shares in a tobacco company one month into her leadership of the agency charged with reducing tobacco use — the leading cause of preventable disease and death and an issue she had long championed.
The stock was one of about a dozen new investments that Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, made after she took over the agency’s top job, according to documents obtained by POLITICO. Fitzgerald has since come under congressional scrutiny for slow walking divestment from older holdings that government officials said posed potential conflicts of interest.
Buying shares of tobacco companies raises even more flags than Fitzgerald’s trading in drug and food companies because it stands in such stark contrast to the CDC’s mission to persuade smokers to quit and keep children from becoming addicted. Critics say her trading behavior broke with ethical norms for public health officials and was, at best, sloppy. At worst, they say, it was legally problematic if she didn't recuse herself from government activities that could have affected her investments.
“You don’t buy tobacco stocks when you are the head of the CDC. It’s ridiculous; it gives a terrible appearance,” said Richard Painter, who served as George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer from 2005 to 2007. He described the move as “tone deaf,” given the CDC’s role in leading anti-smoking efforts.
Even if Fitzgerald, a medical doctor and former Georgia Department of Public Health commissioner, met all of the legal requirements, “it stinks to high heaven,” Painter said.
A Health and Human Services Department spokesman confirmed "the potentially conflicting" stock purchases, saying they were handled by her financial manager and that she subsequently sold them.
“Like all presidential personnel, Dr. Fitzgerald’s financial holdings were reviewed by the HHS Ethics Office, and she was instructed to divest of certain holdings that may pose a conflict of interest. During the divestiture process, her financial account manager purchased some potentially conflicting stock holdings. These additional purchases did not change the scope of Dr. Fitzgerald’s recusal obligations, and Dr. Fitzgerald has since also divested of these newly acquired potentially conflicting publicly traded stock holdings.”
After assuming the CDC leadership on July 7, Fitzgerald bought tens of thousands of dollars in new stock holdings in at least a dozen companies later that month as well as in August and September, according to records obtained under the Stock Act, which requires disclosures of transactions over $1,000. Purchases included between $1,001 and $15,000 of Japan Tobacco, one of the largest such companies in the world, which sells four tobacco brands in the U.S. through a subsidiary.
The purchases also include between $1,001 and $15,000 each in Merck & Co., Bayer and health insurance company Humana, as well as between $15,001 and $50,000 in US Food Holding Co., according to financial disclosure documents.
On Aug. 9, one day after purchasing stock in global giant Japan Tobacco, she toured the CDC’s Tobacco Laboratory, which researches how the chemicals in tobacco harm human health, according to financial forms obtained from HHS’ Office of Government Ethics and calendars obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The records confirm that Fitzgerald sold the shares of tobacco on Oct. 26 and all of her stock holdings above $1,000 by Nov. 21, more than four months after she became CDC director.
Fitzgerald, who declined to be interviewed for this story, has made tobacco efforts a focus of her public health career, despite owning stock in the industry. She listed tobacco cessation as one of her primary priorities while still serving in the Georgia position in February 2017. Prior to accepting the CDC position, she owned stock in five other tobacco companies: Reynolds American, British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands, Philip Morris International, and Altria Group Inc. — all legal under Georgia’s ethics rules. HHS did not respond to questions about why she invested in tobacco companies while working to reduce tobacco consumption.
“It’s stunning,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “It sends two messages, both of which are deeply disturbing. First, it undermines the credibility of a public official when they argue that tobacco is the No. 1 preventable cause of disease. Second, and perhaps even worse, it indicates a public official is willing to put their personal profit above the ethics of investing in a company whose products cause so much harm.”
“It gives you a window, I think, into her value system,” said Kathleen Clark, a professor of law focusing on government ethics at Washington University in St. Louis. “It doesn’t make her a criminal, but it does raise the question of what are her commitments? What are her values, and are they consistent with this government agency that is dedicated to the public health? Frankly, she loses some credibility.”
While holding the newly purchased tobacco, drug company and food stock, along with other financial holdings in various health companies, Fitzgerald participated in meetings related to the opioid crisis, hurricane response efforts, cancer and obesity, stroke prevention, polio, Zika and Ebola, according to a copy of her schedule between Aug. 1 and Oct. 27.
Merck, whose stock Fitzgerald purchased on Aug. 9, has been working on developing an Ebola vaccine and also makes HIV medications. Bayer, whose stock she purchased on Aug. 10, has in the past partnered with the CDC Foundation, which works closely with the CDC, to prevent the spread of the Zika virus.
“If she participated in meetings in which she has financial conflicts of interest, that is not fine in my book,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist at the liberal watchdog group Public Citizen. Because some of the meetings took place before Fitzgerald had an ethics agreement, Holman said she “could have an easy avenue for excusing herself,” by saying she didn't understand it was a conflict, or arguing she didn’t make decisions in those meetings. “But that is not how the law should be applied,” he added. “Even if you could claim you didn’t speak up at those meetings, your presence poses a conflict of interest.”
But it could have been possible for Fitzgerald to participate in briefings on topics like tobacco or Ebola without violating government ethics policy, depending on her role, said a former government ethics official. For example, if Fitzgerald was just in listening mode and not making any substantive comments or decisions, she would likely be within the rules, the official said.
Fitzgerald has already been criticized by some lawmakers for her inability to offload two financial holdings, which date to before she became CDC director and left her unable to perform some tasks, such as testifying in front of lawmakers. An HHS spokesperson said she is actively working to address her remaining recusal obligations related to the two companies, adding that both have “complex transfer restrictions.”
HHS officials said Fitzgerald’s lengthy divestment process was due to her complicated stock portfolio. They declined to say whether she had any ethics training. She didn’t enter into a formal ethics agreement with HHS until two months after taking office.
“It’s a little concerning it took two months to get her ethics agreement signed and an additional month for her to dump conflicting stock,” said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group.
The Health and Human Services Department declined to respond to detailed questions about Fitzgerald’s investments, including whether she herself approved the transactions and what activities and decisions she recused herself from due to her holdings.
Normally, senior government officials commence the process of outlining their conflicts of interest before they assume a job, so that they can quickly divest within days of taking office, a former HHS senior legal counsel told POLITICO.
HHS lawyers usually advise employees to avoid purchasing new stock during an interim period, particularly in areas where they would likely need to divest. Fitzgerald’s ethics agreement, dated Sept. 7, identified nearly all the companies in which she bought stocks on the job as conflicts of interest.
But officials are liable for their actions, regardless of whether they have an ethics agreement in place or have been warned by ethics officials that a financial holding is a conflict, multiple former government ethics officials told POLITICO.
One reason Fitzgerald’s divestment may have taken so long is that the Office of Government Ethics has little ability to force government officials to speedily address financial conflicts, unless they are undergoing a Senate confirmation process, said Walter Shaub, who directed the U.S. Office of Government Ethics under Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017. The CDC director is not a Senate-confirmable post.
“There is a lot less transparency around the non-Senate confirmed individuals … and the ethics process lags, even though the rules still apply," said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a government oversight group. "Those folks put themselves at risk by not getting clearance and understanding the rules.”
Democrats furious
Democrats furious over Trump's immigration rhetoric
The opposition party says the president has only made a Dreamers deal harder to reach.
By BURGESS EVERETT, SEUNG MIN KIM and ELANA SCHOR
Democrats were infuriated by President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union speech, claiming the president put an immigration deal even further out of reach with what they called bigoted remarks during the 80-minute address.
After Trump and his White House team teased a bipartisan theme, the minority party was waiting to hear something conciliatory about how to protect hundreds of thousands of young immigrants facing deportation. Instead, Democrats booed Trump’s reference to “chain migration” and fumed afterward that his remarks conflated immigrants with gang members and did little to give so-called Dreamers any reassurance at all.
“The tone was of a divider-in-chief,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview. “It was a red-meat appeal to the anti-immigrant base of his party, not the unifying, coming-together appeal that we all know is necessary.”
Trump reiterated his proposal to offer 1.8 million undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, dramatically scale back legal immigration and spend billions on a border wall. His only explicit reference to Dreamers, however, was his line that, “Americans are dreamers, too.”
Democrats called it a nativist appeal that belittled a cause — extending protections provided by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — that is supported by both parties.
“He’s laying out pillars that are not going to get him a deal from Democrats. A lot of empty rhetoric,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). “Those words were not helpful.”
“Nothing about the Dreamers,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “He had opportunities to heal. I’ve never seen a president that cares nothing about reaching out to people that didn’t vote for him.”
But Trump’s Republican allies pushed back on Democrats’ complaints. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said it was a “good speech” that was “consistent with everything I’ve heard from him.”
“If Democrats don’t figure out a way to negotiate then the DACA program will end and that’s not an outcome I think anybody would like,” Cornyn said. “But they will be responsible for it. I think they need a little reality check.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had urged her members to resist jeering Trump during his speech. But a smattering of boos was heard in the House chamber after Trump said that “a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.”
Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), who has a bipartisan DACA-border security bill in the House, tilted his head back and laughed when Trump called his immigration proposal a "down-the-middle compromise.”
But it was Trump's "Americans are dreamers, too" remark that rankled Democrats most.
“Really stoking the fires, from my perspective, of bigotry," said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.).
Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) said after hearing Trump’s speech “you would think coming out of this that every undocumented alien is actually a member of MS-13.” That was a reference to Trump's repeated mentions of the violent gang in the context of his desire to reform immigration policy.
“That is not reflective of the overall immigrant community and I think that was disgusting that he continued to make reference to them as if every immigrant was a member of the gang,” Crowley said.
Trump’s chilly reception seemed like a foregone conclusion. As he walked into the House chamber, the line of members waiting to shake the president's hand consisted almost solely of Republicans.
One exception was Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat who’s been working behind the scenes to try to reach a deal to shield 700,000 Dreamers from deportation. The Illinois Democrat appeared to strategically position himself near the aisle and grab Trump’s hand as he walked by, perhaps angling for a future deal on DACA.
But that prospect seemed far off after Trump’s speech. Durbin called Trump’s references to MS-13 "inflammatory."
“No one in the world defends them,” Durbin said of MS-13. “We’re talking about DACA and Dreamers, for goodness’ sakes. It’s two different worlds, and he just seems to conflate both.”
Republicans close to Trump smarted over the Democratic reaction to his remarks on immigration. Many Democrats sat expressionless and still during Trump’s remarks, which also heavily focused on the president’s new tax law and on the swelling economy.
“If he drove them further apart, that may mean they don’t want to solve the problem. They want to keep the issue for the campaign," said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.).
And the boos were too much for some in the GOP to take.
“They’re trying to make chain migration into a racist issue.” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) of the Democrats. “And it’s just not.”
One exception to the poor Democratic reviews was West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. The conservative Democrat was often alone in applauding Trump’s remarks and said afterward that the president had offered Democrats an “olive branch.”
“It’s not the way I was raised,” Manchin said of his angry colleagues. “I show respect. Civility and respect.”
Some Republicans were uneasy, too. Conservatives such as Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who asked Trump after the speech to autograph his “Make America Great Again” hat, remained in his seat when Trump talked about citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said he saw evidence of the lingering internal divide over immigration in the changing pattern of Republicans rising and sitting as Trump talked about the issue.
“You could tell by the number of sit-ups and sit-downs that went with different portions of the immigration portion of the speech that there’s still strong division,” Sanford said in an interview, adding that the deal Trump wants is “going to take some time and some old-fashioned politicking.”
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who is working with a large bipartisan group of senators to try and get an immigration deal to the president’s desk, praised Trump for re-stating his goal to create a pathway to citizenship for nearly 2 million young immigrants.
But the tone of Trump’s immigration remarks, particularly his emphasis on crime and gang activity, was “kind of back to [an] American carnage" theme, Flake said in an interview.
When Trump referred to Dreamers as “illegal,” Flake said, “You could feel the groan from a lot of people, including me.”
The opposition party says the president has only made a Dreamers deal harder to reach.
By BURGESS EVERETT, SEUNG MIN KIM and ELANA SCHOR
Democrats were infuriated by President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union speech, claiming the president put an immigration deal even further out of reach with what they called bigoted remarks during the 80-minute address.
After Trump and his White House team teased a bipartisan theme, the minority party was waiting to hear something conciliatory about how to protect hundreds of thousands of young immigrants facing deportation. Instead, Democrats booed Trump’s reference to “chain migration” and fumed afterward that his remarks conflated immigrants with gang members and did little to give so-called Dreamers any reassurance at all.
“The tone was of a divider-in-chief,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview. “It was a red-meat appeal to the anti-immigrant base of his party, not the unifying, coming-together appeal that we all know is necessary.”
Trump reiterated his proposal to offer 1.8 million undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, dramatically scale back legal immigration and spend billions on a border wall. His only explicit reference to Dreamers, however, was his line that, “Americans are dreamers, too.”
Democrats called it a nativist appeal that belittled a cause — extending protections provided by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — that is supported by both parties.
“He’s laying out pillars that are not going to get him a deal from Democrats. A lot of empty rhetoric,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). “Those words were not helpful.”
“Nothing about the Dreamers,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “He had opportunities to heal. I’ve never seen a president that cares nothing about reaching out to people that didn’t vote for him.”
But Trump’s Republican allies pushed back on Democrats’ complaints. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said it was a “good speech” that was “consistent with everything I’ve heard from him.”
“If Democrats don’t figure out a way to negotiate then the DACA program will end and that’s not an outcome I think anybody would like,” Cornyn said. “But they will be responsible for it. I think they need a little reality check.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had urged her members to resist jeering Trump during his speech. But a smattering of boos was heard in the House chamber after Trump said that “a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.”
Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), who has a bipartisan DACA-border security bill in the House, tilted his head back and laughed when Trump called his immigration proposal a "down-the-middle compromise.”
But it was Trump's "Americans are dreamers, too" remark that rankled Democrats most.
“Really stoking the fires, from my perspective, of bigotry," said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.).
Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) said after hearing Trump’s speech “you would think coming out of this that every undocumented alien is actually a member of MS-13.” That was a reference to Trump's repeated mentions of the violent gang in the context of his desire to reform immigration policy.
“That is not reflective of the overall immigrant community and I think that was disgusting that he continued to make reference to them as if every immigrant was a member of the gang,” Crowley said.
Trump’s chilly reception seemed like a foregone conclusion. As he walked into the House chamber, the line of members waiting to shake the president's hand consisted almost solely of Republicans.
One exception was Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat who’s been working behind the scenes to try to reach a deal to shield 700,000 Dreamers from deportation. The Illinois Democrat appeared to strategically position himself near the aisle and grab Trump’s hand as he walked by, perhaps angling for a future deal on DACA.
But that prospect seemed far off after Trump’s speech. Durbin called Trump’s references to MS-13 "inflammatory."
“No one in the world defends them,” Durbin said of MS-13. “We’re talking about DACA and Dreamers, for goodness’ sakes. It’s two different worlds, and he just seems to conflate both.”
Republicans close to Trump smarted over the Democratic reaction to his remarks on immigration. Many Democrats sat expressionless and still during Trump’s remarks, which also heavily focused on the president’s new tax law and on the swelling economy.
“If he drove them further apart, that may mean they don’t want to solve the problem. They want to keep the issue for the campaign," said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.).
And the boos were too much for some in the GOP to take.
“They’re trying to make chain migration into a racist issue.” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) of the Democrats. “And it’s just not.”
One exception to the poor Democratic reviews was West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. The conservative Democrat was often alone in applauding Trump’s remarks and said afterward that the president had offered Democrats an “olive branch.”
“It’s not the way I was raised,” Manchin said of his angry colleagues. “I show respect. Civility and respect.”
Some Republicans were uneasy, too. Conservatives such as Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who asked Trump after the speech to autograph his “Make America Great Again” hat, remained in his seat when Trump talked about citizenship for some undocumented immigrants. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said he saw evidence of the lingering internal divide over immigration in the changing pattern of Republicans rising and sitting as Trump talked about the issue.
“You could tell by the number of sit-ups and sit-downs that went with different portions of the immigration portion of the speech that there’s still strong division,” Sanford said in an interview, adding that the deal Trump wants is “going to take some time and some old-fashioned politicking.”
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who is working with a large bipartisan group of senators to try and get an immigration deal to the president’s desk, praised Trump for re-stating his goal to create a pathway to citizenship for nearly 2 million young immigrants.
But the tone of Trump’s immigration remarks, particularly his emphasis on crime and gang activity, was “kind of back to [an] American carnage" theme, Flake said in an interview.
When Trump referred to Dreamers as “illegal,” Flake said, “You could feel the groan from a lot of people, including me.”
Orangutan on display..
Long shots and easy money: Handicapping Trump’s State of the Union agenda
From immigration to infrastructure, midterm elections cast a shadow over the president’s proposals.
By LORRAINE WOELLERT
President Donald Trump’s State of the Union agenda has two things working against it: Congress and time. Already this year, Congress has locked horns on a budget deal–twice–and could face a second all-consuming government shutdown in February. And with one eye trained on November elections, Republicans will be reluctant to take tough votes and Democrats won’t be in a mood to compromise.
That threatens every piece of the president’s ambitious pitch Tuesday night. Trump’s agenda isn’t necessarily dead on arrival, but will require some serious triage to keep breathing. Even then, everything could blow up in the flash of a tweet or a turn in the investigation by Robert Mueller. Before making any bets, check out POLITICO’s handicapping.
Infrastructure
Trump claims his $1.5 trillion dollar infrastructure plan has bipartisan appeal, but the federal dollars he wants to spend on roads, bridges, transit, broadband and other big projects is relatively small, about $200 billion over the next decade, and it’s money the White House has said would come from cuts to other programs. Trump also would shave the federal share of some urban projects by more than half, according to a draft of the plan. The administration has been talking up infrastructure for months, but has provided few details for Congress to get started.
Trade
“The era of economic surrender is over,” Trump said. The administration is ready to cut new deals with U.S. trading partners, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Distrust abounds after Trump abandoned the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership shortly after being sworn in and countries are waiting to see the outcome of slow-moving talks to rewrite the 24-year-old NAFTA deal with Canada and Mexico before engaging with the administration. Other countries have spent the past year making regional trade deals with each other – and without the United States.
Immigration
Despite Trump’s concession to give 1.8 million young immigrants–Dreamers–a path to citizenship, his plan gives members of both parties a lot to dislike. Conservative Republicans won’t back any bill that gives undocumented immigrants a break, especially something that looks like amnesty. And Democrats, centrist Republicans, employers and economists say the Trump trade off for protecting Dreamers–a massive reduction in legal immigration–is simply a non-starter.
Deregulation
The White House has already pulled the plug on Obama’s regulatory agenda, slowing or abandoning rules in the pipeline. This year, Trump wants to up the ante by dismantling regulations already etched into law–a much harder lift. Green groups are suing to stop rollbacks of clean air and water rules and Big Tech—think Google and Netflix—is fighting to preserve net neutrality. Democratic attorneys general and a legion of public interest groups are ready to challenge Trump’s next big deregulation push. That said,Trump appointees will continue to make under-the-radar changes at their agencies that could significantly reduce regulatory clutter, including minimizing or eliminating guidance letters that effectively set rules.
Defense spending
Trump wants to boost military spending and modernize the nuclear arsenal, saying “weakness is the surest path to conflict.” The bulk of the defense budget, along with spending on domestic programs, is capped by law through 2021 and congressional leaders are mulling a deal to increase spending on both. But with Republicans and Democrats at odds over whether domestic funding should be increased as much as the military, hopes of avoiding another impasse–and a government shutdown–have dimmed in recent days. Government funding runs out next week.
Drug Prices
“Prices will come down substantially. Watch,” Trump said. Well, maybe. A little. The FDA can approve the sale of more generic medication to chip away at drug costs, and the administration doesn’t need Congress to change import rules or use Medicare to experiment with new ways to pay for drugs. But when it comes to new or branded medications, manufacturers set their price. So far, the administration hasn’t come up with a way to reduce the total cost of drugs to the healthcare system and has backed drug pricing ideas favored by pharmaceutical companies.
Iran
Trump asked Congress to fix “fundamental flaws” in the Iran nuclear agreement, but Washington can’t change the deal on its own and there’s an argument that even an attempt to act unilaterally could unravel the whole thing. But Congress might try to address Iran’s ballistic missile program and sponsorship of terrorism, especially if it can persuade Europe to go along.
Guantanamo Bay
Before his speech, Trump signed an executive order to keep the high-security prison open, reversing an Obama decision made eight years ago. The move will keep 41 prisoners at the site in limbo, including five that have long been cleared for release, according to Amnesty International. Unless Trump changes his mind, the order will seal Guantanamo’s future until another president reverses course.
Judges
Trump has had a great run of judicial appointees, including a Supreme Court justice and a record number of Circuit Court judges. He’ll continue to ride that wave this year, leaving a lasting imprint on the courts.
From immigration to infrastructure, midterm elections cast a shadow over the president’s proposals.
By LORRAINE WOELLERT
President Donald Trump’s State of the Union agenda has two things working against it: Congress and time. Already this year, Congress has locked horns on a budget deal–twice–and could face a second all-consuming government shutdown in February. And with one eye trained on November elections, Republicans will be reluctant to take tough votes and Democrats won’t be in a mood to compromise.
That threatens every piece of the president’s ambitious pitch Tuesday night. Trump’s agenda isn’t necessarily dead on arrival, but will require some serious triage to keep breathing. Even then, everything could blow up in the flash of a tweet or a turn in the investigation by Robert Mueller. Before making any bets, check out POLITICO’s handicapping.
Infrastructure
Trump claims his $1.5 trillion dollar infrastructure plan has bipartisan appeal, but the federal dollars he wants to spend on roads, bridges, transit, broadband and other big projects is relatively small, about $200 billion over the next decade, and it’s money the White House has said would come from cuts to other programs. Trump also would shave the federal share of some urban projects by more than half, according to a draft of the plan. The administration has been talking up infrastructure for months, but has provided few details for Congress to get started.
Trade
“The era of economic surrender is over,” Trump said. The administration is ready to cut new deals with U.S. trading partners, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Distrust abounds after Trump abandoned the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership shortly after being sworn in and countries are waiting to see the outcome of slow-moving talks to rewrite the 24-year-old NAFTA deal with Canada and Mexico before engaging with the administration. Other countries have spent the past year making regional trade deals with each other – and without the United States.
Immigration
Despite Trump’s concession to give 1.8 million young immigrants–Dreamers–a path to citizenship, his plan gives members of both parties a lot to dislike. Conservative Republicans won’t back any bill that gives undocumented immigrants a break, especially something that looks like amnesty. And Democrats, centrist Republicans, employers and economists say the Trump trade off for protecting Dreamers–a massive reduction in legal immigration–is simply a non-starter.
Deregulation
The White House has already pulled the plug on Obama’s regulatory agenda, slowing or abandoning rules in the pipeline. This year, Trump wants to up the ante by dismantling regulations already etched into law–a much harder lift. Green groups are suing to stop rollbacks of clean air and water rules and Big Tech—think Google and Netflix—is fighting to preserve net neutrality. Democratic attorneys general and a legion of public interest groups are ready to challenge Trump’s next big deregulation push. That said,Trump appointees will continue to make under-the-radar changes at their agencies that could significantly reduce regulatory clutter, including minimizing or eliminating guidance letters that effectively set rules.
Defense spending
Trump wants to boost military spending and modernize the nuclear arsenal, saying “weakness is the surest path to conflict.” The bulk of the defense budget, along with spending on domestic programs, is capped by law through 2021 and congressional leaders are mulling a deal to increase spending on both. But with Republicans and Democrats at odds over whether domestic funding should be increased as much as the military, hopes of avoiding another impasse–and a government shutdown–have dimmed in recent days. Government funding runs out next week.
Drug Prices
“Prices will come down substantially. Watch,” Trump said. Well, maybe. A little. The FDA can approve the sale of more generic medication to chip away at drug costs, and the administration doesn’t need Congress to change import rules or use Medicare to experiment with new ways to pay for drugs. But when it comes to new or branded medications, manufacturers set their price. So far, the administration hasn’t come up with a way to reduce the total cost of drugs to the healthcare system and has backed drug pricing ideas favored by pharmaceutical companies.
Iran
Trump asked Congress to fix “fundamental flaws” in the Iran nuclear agreement, but Washington can’t change the deal on its own and there’s an argument that even an attempt to act unilaterally could unravel the whole thing. But Congress might try to address Iran’s ballistic missile program and sponsorship of terrorism, especially if it can persuade Europe to go along.
Guantanamo Bay
Before his speech, Trump signed an executive order to keep the high-security prison open, reversing an Obama decision made eight years ago. The move will keep 41 prisoners at the site in limbo, including five that have long been cleared for release, according to Amnesty International. Unless Trump changes his mind, the order will seal Guantanamo’s future until another president reverses course.
Judges
Trump has had a great run of judicial appointees, including a Supreme Court justice and a record number of Circuit Court judges. He’ll continue to ride that wave this year, leaving a lasting imprint on the courts.
Monkey Shine...
Trump's what-if presidency
The president delivered a State of the Union that suggested an alternate political reality.
By JOHN F. HARRIS and MATTHEW NUSSBAUM
President Donald Trump stood before Congress and the nation Tuesday night and invited people to imagine an alternate universe.
Think of it as the What-If Presidency.
What if he had not spent a year compulsively lashing his opponents and taking steel wool to the country’s cultural, ideological and racial wounds? What if a special prosecutor did not have his sights locked on the administration over possible electoral collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice?
And what if—perhaps the biggest stretch of all—Trump somehow brought to heel the impulsiveness and improvisation that define his politics and replaced these, even partly, with strategic purpose?
The 80 minutes Trump stood at the House Speaker’s lectern suggest an answer: He would be in a commanding position in American politics after one year in power, with his own party firmly locked down and Democrats on the defensive.
The speech also illuminated how well-positioned he would be to fortify his standing in the year ahead.
Whether by accident or design, Trump is presiding over a strong economy—the kind that historically rewards incumbents lavishly—and his recent legislative victory overhauling the tax code has made him the toast of C-suites on Wall Street and beyond. Through a mix of intimidation and accommodation, a man who spent most of his adult life with no consistent partisan allegiances has turned the Republican Party into his tool, as GOP cheers during Tuesday’s speech and cable TV air kisses afterward indicated.
With some artful deal-cutting, Trump also would have a strong chance to expand his base with an agreement on immigration and an even more potent trillion-dollar-plus infrastructure program that would power jobs and likely deepen support in the Midwestern industrial states that Trump snatched from the Democratic column in 2016 to claim the presidency.
Okay, now. Time to snap out of it.
The upbeat view of Trump’s potential—as demonstrated by a flag-waving pep rally-esque State of the Union that slathered praise on a long roster of constituencies and target groups but seemed to avoid (at least by Trump standards) gratuitously offending others—requires willfully ignoring other political and psychological realities.
The political reality is that the vision of Trump and Trumpism on display in the State of the Union is not one voters see more than occasionally. If it were the norm, rather than the exception, it is hard to imagine Republicans losing big in Virginia and Alabama as they did in November, or that Trump’s average approval rating would be 40.1 percent, or that that many of the same Republicans who were clapping along in the House chamber would be privately saying they pray Trump is somehow not again on the ballot of 2020.
The psychological reality, as many of the Republicans tied most closely to Trump well know, is that he could not stay in State of the Union mode—or stay away from Twitter tirades—if he tried.
Trump may have been disciplined during the State of the Union speech, said a senior GOP leadership aide on Capitol Hill – but, this person added, “None of that matters if he goes back and tweets crazy shit.”
“I’d say there’s a good amount that he’s actually accomplished,” said the aide, who readily acknowledged that Trump’s own antics have overshadowed much of his agenda. “The issue is that no one can ever focus on any of that because we’re consumed by distractions over his Twitter, his erratic public remarks, the discord on the personnel level and the Russia investigation all have combined into basically a media firestorm every other day about something that the Trump White House is doing.”
The question to be answered in coming days is whether the State of the Union speech represents a passing rhetorical shift—some speechwriter’s notion of the appropriate tone for this occasion—or a more significant shift in strategy.
Trump mentioned the word “together”—Americans coming together, the two parties coming together, and so on—13 times.
And while some Democrats rolled their eyes at appeals for bipartisanship from a president who insults opponents with such ease, the reality is that party leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, have repeatedly signaled their willingness to strike bargains with Trump on immigration and infrastructure.
Yet Schumer can’t compromise without worrying about backlash on the left as his party tries to recapture one or both chambers of Congress, and House Speaker Paul Ryan can’t negotiate a deal on immigration and the status of “Dreamers” without potentially enraging his right flank.
But thanks to his unusual connection with supporters Trump has uncommon freedom, as illustrated by the speech. He massaged rightwing erogenous zones—lower taxes, conservative judges, support for “beautiful coal,” and elimination of the Obamacare individual mandate. He pivoted with ease to words that from any other Republican president would soothe Democratic ears—record-low unemployment for African-Americans and Hispanics, turning away from “decades of unfair trade deals that sacrificed our prosperity and shipped away our companies, our jobs, and our nation’s wealth.”
He is still Teflon Don—the man who infamously bragged during the 2016 campaign that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose support from his base. Or, as Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander observed in an interview: “President Trump has the opportunity to be Nixon to China on immigration. Because I think if he says this should be the legal status of these Dreamers, they should have some day … citizenship, this is sufficient border security. I think the country is more likely to accept that. So he may be able to do what President Bush and President Obama tried to do but couldn’t.”
Tevi Troy, who served in George W. Bush’s administration and has written two books on the presidency, said the State of the Union speech not only highlighted a presidency that might have been but what could still be.
“Americans like results,” Troy said. “So if the results are good and continue to be good, you might see some people change their minds.”
Americans may change their minds, and Trump may sometimes change his tone, but if there is one lesson of history it is that presidents do not change the fundamental character that shapes their politics. Pondering a what-if presidency is like speculating on what Richard Nixon’s presidency would have been like if he had been less obsessive and paranoid—traits closely linked with the careful plotting and ceaseless ambition that carried him to the White House in the first place.
Or like speculating on Bill Clinton’s presidency if he could have tamed his weakness of the flesh—a side of him that always seemed to reside in close proximity with the part of his psyche that hungered for approval and made him a deft politician.
“You can say yes, but for the tweets and calling Haiti a shithole and being insensitive after Charlottesville and after attacking civil servants on a Twitter account and after completely conflating his private financial interests with policy making in the White House, if all those things were off the table, yes maybe he could have had a successful presidency,” said Tim O’Brien, who wrote the 2005 biography of Trump, “TrumpNation” and now serves as publisher at Bloomberg View. “But the reality is none of those things are off the table because that’s part and parcel of who he is as a human being.”
“The things that you have to strip away from him to make him an effective leader to a broad part of the public are so elemental to who he is that if you were to strip them away, he’d no longer be Donald Trump.”
The president delivered a State of the Union that suggested an alternate political reality.
By JOHN F. HARRIS and MATTHEW NUSSBAUM
President Donald Trump stood before Congress and the nation Tuesday night and invited people to imagine an alternate universe.
Think of it as the What-If Presidency.
What if he had not spent a year compulsively lashing his opponents and taking steel wool to the country’s cultural, ideological and racial wounds? What if a special prosecutor did not have his sights locked on the administration over possible electoral collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice?
And what if—perhaps the biggest stretch of all—Trump somehow brought to heel the impulsiveness and improvisation that define his politics and replaced these, even partly, with strategic purpose?
The 80 minutes Trump stood at the House Speaker’s lectern suggest an answer: He would be in a commanding position in American politics after one year in power, with his own party firmly locked down and Democrats on the defensive.
The speech also illuminated how well-positioned he would be to fortify his standing in the year ahead.
Whether by accident or design, Trump is presiding over a strong economy—the kind that historically rewards incumbents lavishly—and his recent legislative victory overhauling the tax code has made him the toast of C-suites on Wall Street and beyond. Through a mix of intimidation and accommodation, a man who spent most of his adult life with no consistent partisan allegiances has turned the Republican Party into his tool, as GOP cheers during Tuesday’s speech and cable TV air kisses afterward indicated.
With some artful deal-cutting, Trump also would have a strong chance to expand his base with an agreement on immigration and an even more potent trillion-dollar-plus infrastructure program that would power jobs and likely deepen support in the Midwestern industrial states that Trump snatched from the Democratic column in 2016 to claim the presidency.
Okay, now. Time to snap out of it.
The upbeat view of Trump’s potential—as demonstrated by a flag-waving pep rally-esque State of the Union that slathered praise on a long roster of constituencies and target groups but seemed to avoid (at least by Trump standards) gratuitously offending others—requires willfully ignoring other political and psychological realities.
The political reality is that the vision of Trump and Trumpism on display in the State of the Union is not one voters see more than occasionally. If it were the norm, rather than the exception, it is hard to imagine Republicans losing big in Virginia and Alabama as they did in November, or that Trump’s average approval rating would be 40.1 percent, or that that many of the same Republicans who were clapping along in the House chamber would be privately saying they pray Trump is somehow not again on the ballot of 2020.
The psychological reality, as many of the Republicans tied most closely to Trump well know, is that he could not stay in State of the Union mode—or stay away from Twitter tirades—if he tried.
Trump may have been disciplined during the State of the Union speech, said a senior GOP leadership aide on Capitol Hill – but, this person added, “None of that matters if he goes back and tweets crazy shit.”
“I’d say there’s a good amount that he’s actually accomplished,” said the aide, who readily acknowledged that Trump’s own antics have overshadowed much of his agenda. “The issue is that no one can ever focus on any of that because we’re consumed by distractions over his Twitter, his erratic public remarks, the discord on the personnel level and the Russia investigation all have combined into basically a media firestorm every other day about something that the Trump White House is doing.”
The question to be answered in coming days is whether the State of the Union speech represents a passing rhetorical shift—some speechwriter’s notion of the appropriate tone for this occasion—or a more significant shift in strategy.
Trump mentioned the word “together”—Americans coming together, the two parties coming together, and so on—13 times.
And while some Democrats rolled their eyes at appeals for bipartisanship from a president who insults opponents with such ease, the reality is that party leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, have repeatedly signaled their willingness to strike bargains with Trump on immigration and infrastructure.
Yet Schumer can’t compromise without worrying about backlash on the left as his party tries to recapture one or both chambers of Congress, and House Speaker Paul Ryan can’t negotiate a deal on immigration and the status of “Dreamers” without potentially enraging his right flank.
But thanks to his unusual connection with supporters Trump has uncommon freedom, as illustrated by the speech. He massaged rightwing erogenous zones—lower taxes, conservative judges, support for “beautiful coal,” and elimination of the Obamacare individual mandate. He pivoted with ease to words that from any other Republican president would soothe Democratic ears—record-low unemployment for African-Americans and Hispanics, turning away from “decades of unfair trade deals that sacrificed our prosperity and shipped away our companies, our jobs, and our nation’s wealth.”
He is still Teflon Don—the man who infamously bragged during the 2016 campaign that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose support from his base. Or, as Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander observed in an interview: “President Trump has the opportunity to be Nixon to China on immigration. Because I think if he says this should be the legal status of these Dreamers, they should have some day … citizenship, this is sufficient border security. I think the country is more likely to accept that. So he may be able to do what President Bush and President Obama tried to do but couldn’t.”
Tevi Troy, who served in George W. Bush’s administration and has written two books on the presidency, said the State of the Union speech not only highlighted a presidency that might have been but what could still be.
“Americans like results,” Troy said. “So if the results are good and continue to be good, you might see some people change their minds.”
Americans may change their minds, and Trump may sometimes change his tone, but if there is one lesson of history it is that presidents do not change the fundamental character that shapes their politics. Pondering a what-if presidency is like speculating on what Richard Nixon’s presidency would have been like if he had been less obsessive and paranoid—traits closely linked with the careful plotting and ceaseless ambition that carried him to the White House in the first place.
Or like speculating on Bill Clinton’s presidency if he could have tamed his weakness of the flesh—a side of him that always seemed to reside in close proximity with the part of his psyche that hungered for approval and made him a deft politician.
“You can say yes, but for the tweets and calling Haiti a shithole and being insensitive after Charlottesville and after attacking civil servants on a Twitter account and after completely conflating his private financial interests with policy making in the White House, if all those things were off the table, yes maybe he could have had a successful presidency,” said Tim O’Brien, who wrote the 2005 biography of Trump, “TrumpNation” and now serves as publisher at Bloomberg View. “But the reality is none of those things are off the table because that’s part and parcel of who he is as a human being.”
“The things that you have to strip away from him to make him an effective leader to a broad part of the public are so elemental to who he is that if you were to strip them away, he’d no longer be Donald Trump.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)