Misadventures of a minority-elect President 4

Trump’s conflicts of interest are making him money, avoiding real press conferences, continuing chaos in the White House, more on the moronic miscreants Trump has surrounded himself with, and the revelation that all News that is critical of Trump is “fake News” according to our so-called President and the anti-Christ cabal he allegedly runs.

Trump now owns Obamacare article from Yahoo! News. –
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/trump-now-owns-obamacare-181736930.html

“President Trump seems gleeful every time the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, encounters some new difficulty. But these are now becoming Trump’s problems, not his predecessor’s, and he’s likely to get most of the blame if some 20 million Americans who get health coverage under the ACA suffer from the program’s demise.

Health insurer Humana (HUM) recently said it would pull out of the ACA in 2018, a development Trump reveled in. Here’s the tweet:

Obamacare continues to fail. Humana to pull out in 2018. Will repeal, replace & save healthcare for ALL Americans. https://origin-nyi.thehill.com/policy/healthcare/319538-humana-to-drop-out-of-obamacare-marketplace-at-end-of-2017 …”

The Resistance Abroad: Expats Rejecting Trump Administration article from Common Dreams. –
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/02/15/resistance-abroad-expats-rejecting-trump-administration

“With actions big and small, it’s clear that resistance within the U.S. to the Trump administration is swelling. But outside the nation’s borders, expats are rising up to express opposition as well…”

One of Trump’s advisers goes around wearing a Nazi collaborator medal article from the Daily Kos. –
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/2/13/1633269/-One-of-Trump-s-advisers-goes-around-wearing-a-Nazi-collaborator-medal

“Sebatian Gorka is the deputy assistant to President Trump. He’s a rabid anti-Islamic presence in the world. As Mic explains:

Gorka, who is of Hungarian descent, was a professor and Breitbart’s national security editor before joining the Trump team. A regular fixture on Fox News, he also has ties to the anti-Muslim right. Gorka was arrested in early 2016 for trying to take a gun through airport security (charges were dropped after six months of good behavior as part of a plea deal). He recently suggested the Trump administration uses — and will continue to use — the term “fake news” to describe media outlets that are critical of the president…”

How Trump avoided being asked about his embattled national security adviser article from McClatchy News. –
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article132524304.html

“WASHINGTON – Since he was sworn into office, President Donald Trump has selected reporters from conservative or friendly media outlets to ask him questions at his news conferences, a pattern that appears aimed at least in part at avoiding touchy subjects.

At his news conference Monday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump called on reporters from WJLA, the Washington ABC affiliate owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which was accused of agreeing to provide favorable coverage to Trump during the campaign, and the Daily Caller, a politically conservative news outlet.

Neither reporter asked Trump about the most pressing questions of the day: Whether he will fire his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who’s been accused of misleading the White House about his contact with Russian officials before the president took office, and whether he will rewrite his contentious executive order that temporarily halted U.S. immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries before it was blocked by a federal appeals court…”

Trump Has Surrounded Himself With a Phalanx of White Nationalists article from AlterNet. –
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trumps-white-nationalist-cabinet

“Donald Trump’s administration is built around a brain trust of white nationalists. To deny that fact is to ignore a crucial element of this national crisis: America’s “greatest generation” defeated Nazism during World War II, and 70 or so years later one of the country’s two leading political parties has injected a more polite version of that poison into its veins and rode to power in Washington on a wave of bigotry and racism.

Among the men who have President Trump’s ear, we find White House strategist Steve Bannon, senior adviser Stephen Miller, deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka and newly installed Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Until recently Bannon ran the right-wing website Breitbart News, which has a well-known white nationalist tilt and loves to publish stories about “black crime” and “Muslim hordes” beating down the gates of “Western civilization.” As Bannon has said, Breitbart functions as a mouthpiece for the “alt-right,” which largely serves as a rebranding label for various white nationalists and white supremacists…”

Beneath the Deepening Chaos of the Trump Administration, the Trump Business Is Doing Just Fine article from AlterNet. –
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-business-thriving

“Sure, the new administration is engulfed in scandals and infighting. But the Trump business is poised to cash in.

Right after the election upset in November, one of the important stories that had been neglected by most of the media during the tumultuous campaign, Donald Trump’s overwhelming conflicts of interest, suddenly took on tremendous urgency. It always struck me as bizarre that Trump wasn’t questioned closely about the potential for corruption before the election, since he and the Republicans had made a fetish of that issue with regard to his opponent, to the point of giving her the sophomoric nickname “Crooked Hillary.”

On the rare occasions when Trump was even asked about this, he made clear that he had no understanding of the complications involved. He simply assured his questioner that he wouldn’t care about his business if he became president because he’d be so busy making America great again. Even though he refused to release his tax returns, and it was revealed late in the cycle that he likely had not paid any federal taxes for more than a decade, the issue of his potential conflicts and the national security implications of his foreign business entanglements went largely unaddressed…”

ROBERT REICH: TRUMP’S BUNGLING, BITCHY WHITE HOUSE article from News Week. –
http://europe.newsweek.com/robert-reich-trump-bungling-bitchy-white-house-556638

“Donald Trump sold himself to voters as a successful businessman who knew how to get things done, a no-nonsense manager who’d whip government into shape.

But he’s showing himself to be about the most inept, disorganized, sloppy, incompetent president in recent memory, one whose White House is nearly dysfunctional.

He allowed Michael Flynn to hang on until the last minute. In any halfway competent administration, Flynn would have been gone the moment it became clear he lied to the vice president about his contacts with Russia.

Sean Spicer is a joke, literally. His vituperative, vindictive press conferences are already rich food for late-night comedy. In a White House that had any idea what it means to be an effective press secretary, Spicer would be out the door…”

Steve Bannon Isn’t Trump’s Only Racist Staffer Helping Run the Country article from the Huffington Post. –
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-isnt-trumps-only-racist-staffer-helping_us_58a46827e4b0cd37efcfef07

“Trump Admin Has Stacked the Government with Bigoted, Extreme Individuals In High Ranking Positions – And that Will Have Real Consequences for Our Country

Almost a year ago, a man asked a simple question in an essay: “What good has Muslim immigration done for the United States and the American people?” In the same essay, he tries to pick apart America’s very essence. Diversity, he argued, is a weakness. America, he declared, is not a nation of immigrants. And Islam, according to him, inspires acts of terror. All completely false.

Today, the author has a place in President Donald Trump’s administration.

Michael Anton is working with the National Security Council, where he is shaping America’s policy with his own horrifying racist outlook. Sadly, this just the tip of a larger racist iceberg heading America’s way with Donald Trump as President. In reality, Donald Trump is stacking his administration is full of people like Anton with views that are out of touch with mainstream America and downright racist. And he’s doing it with the goal of dragging our country backwards and implementing dangerous policies that will have serious consequences…”

With the pressure on, Trump thinks a Twitter tantrum will help article from MSNBC (Rachel Maddow). –
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-pressure-trump-thinks-twitter-tantrum-will-help

“Nearly a month into his presidency, Donald Trump is failing by practically every metric. His White House is facing a deeply serious scandal; his National Security Advisor has been forced out; members of his campaign team are facing a counter-espionage investigation; and polls show the American mainstream rejecting what they’re seeing out of the West Wing.

The result is something of a test for the new president. How does Trump respond under pressure? Can he show grace under fire? President Obama excelled at keeping his cool – in ways that often seemed to annoy pundits – and current conditions offer his successor an opportunity to show he can do the same.

So far, it’s not going well.

President Donald Trump blamed “conspiracy theories and blind hatred” — and an attempt to “cover-up” for Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign — in a series of tweets Wednesday morning as he tried to distance himself from any links to Russia.

Trump tweeted that the “fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred,” and added that “this Russian connection non-sense is merely an attempt to cover-up the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton’s losing campaign.”

Yes, the president, who loved leaks when they related to Hillary Clinton, had quite a series of angry missives this morning, starting early with complaints about the media and “conspiracy theories” – this from a man who’s been largely defined by his bizarre affection for ridiculous and racially charged conspiracy theories – which was followed by a torrent of related tweets…”

James Comey Has Some Goddamn Explaining to Do article from GQ. –
http://www.gq.com/story/james-comey-explain-yourself

“You remember James Comey, right? The FBI director who dropped a live hand grenade into the toilet that was the 2016 presidential race by disclosing just eleven days before Election Day that the Bureau was investigating newly discovered evidence related to the Hillary Clinton email scandal in which she had been cleared of months earlier? The one who followed up on this inscrutable-yet-ominous-sounding announcement by concluding a few days later that, haha, just kidding, there wasn’t anything remotely relevant in these stupid emails, sorry if I torpedoed your election and maybe helped deliver the White House to a semiliterate social media celebrity? That James Comey? Good, because holy hell does this man have some explaining to do.

Bombshells about the Trump White House’s ties to the Kremlin have come at a dizzying rate of late, as news that erstwhile national security advisor Michael Flynn talked shop with Russian diplomats before the inauguration now gives way to the revelation that Trump campaign aides were chatting up Russian intelligence officials—who all along were tampering with the election in an effort to promote Trump’s candidacy—throughout the presidential race. Here’s a fun detail from the Times’ report about who knew what when:

The National Security Agency, which monitors the communications of foreign intelligence services, initially captured the calls between Mr. Trump’s associates and the Russians as part of routine foreign surveillance. After that, the F.B.I. asked the N.S.A. to collect as much information as possible about the Russian operatives on the phone calls, and to search through troves of previous intercepted communications that had not been analyzed.

The F.B.I. has closely examined at least three other people close to Mr. Trump, although it is unclear if their calls were intercepted. They are Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign; Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative; and Mr. Flynn…”

As White House spirals into crisis, what will Congress do? GOP leaders face unhappy choice article from Salon. –
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/15/as-white-house-spirals-into-crisis-what-will-congress-do-gop-leaders-face-unhappy-choice/

“All hell is breaking loose in the White House this week. With the resignation of Michael Flynn as national security adviser on Monday night and the ensuing fallout, the Trump administration is careening into a full-blown crisis. This didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s been obvious since the campaign that Donald Trump’s alleged leadership talents were more hype than reality.

His fluky campaign victory convinced him that he was a genius. But he’s never run anything more complicated than his family business, doesn’t read books or listen to people and is a narcissist who thinks he already knows everything there is to know and actually knows almost nothing.

This is not the first time we’ve had presidents who didn’t have a lot going on upstairs or were a bit kooky. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush come to mind when you think about the former and Richard Nixon was more than a little bit unbalanced. But both Reagan and Bush respected the office and hired experienced staff to help them execute the job professionally. Nixon had major personality defects but was highly intelligent. Trump’s incompetence and extreme egotism are a lethal combination and it’s led to his presidency’s coming apart before it even came together…”

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