Misadventures of a minority-elect President 67

Chronicling the misadventures of our minority-elect President’s alternate reality, alternative facts and the miscreants that comprise his administration so you don’t have to:

One of many possible reasons Trump is trying to avoid paying his own taxes by mucking up the IRS, the ignorant hypocrisy over Trump’s claims to care about children in other countries, more on Trump’s unraveling Syrian gas attack fairy tale, pushing another dubious ‘executive order’ allegedly aimed at buying American while hiring Americans, still scrambling to justify his fraudulent Obama wiretapping claims, another broken Trump promise – this time involving a DREAMer, the continuing fallout from Trump and Nunes’s fake Susan Rice scandal, white supremacist blames Trump for inciting violence at his rallies, Trump and his family looting the U.S. Treasury, allegations that Putin-linked think tank helped Trump win the election, the convenience of appointing an ex-CEO of Exxon as Secretary of State who gets to decide whether a waiver allowing Exxon to bypass U.S. sanctions against Russia to drill offshore with a Russian company in the Black Sea will be granted, shifting his fraudulent vacations – profiting as U.S. taxpayer expense while staying at his own properties – to another Trump property, his record inauguration fundraising – much of which appears to have been used as bribery for our lackluster leader and the GOP establishment – is unaccounted for, Trump’s ethical issues and conflicts of interest are growing exponentially, aided by his absolute disregard for ethics, laws, and rules and more.

Robert Reich: 4 Reasons Trump’s Plan to Shrink the IRS Would Do Big Damage to Society article from AlterNet. –
http://www.alternet.org/economy/robert-reich-4-reasons-trumps-plan-shrink-irs-would-do-big-damage-society

Trump Has Killed Beautiful Babies in Four Countries article from Information Clearing House. –
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46885.htm

How the U.S. Government Spins the Story article from The Unz Review. –
http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/how-the-u-s-government-spins-the-story/

More on Trump’s unraveling Syrian Gas Attack Fairy Tale.

Trump pushes reactionary ‘Buy American, Hire American’ plan article from The World Socialist Web Site. –
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/04/19/visa-a19.html

“President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday making it more difficult for skilled workers from other countries to obtain temporary work visas in the US. The order also called for a review of trade deals to enforce “Buy American” clauses and mandated government agencies to use American-made steel and other goods in federally funded projects and contracts.

The measures, Trump said, were part of his “Buy American, Hire American” policy, which would “send a powerful signal to the world: We’re going to defend our workers, protect our jobs, and finally put America first.”

Trump’s program of economic nationalism, along with his savage witch-hunting of immigrant workers, is the domestic counterpart to the administration’s ever more violent military provocations around the world. With the support of the trade union bureaucracy, Trump is peddling the lie that foreign workers and “unfair trade deals” with China, Mexico and other countries, not the relentless pursuit of profit by the American ruling class, are the causes for chronic unemployment and stagnant wages.

Aware that American workers are already tired of endless wars and their financial and human cost, the Trump administration is trying to divert social anger outward even as its program of expanding militarism, corporate tax cuts, deregulation and social spending cuts imposes greater hardships and inevitably provokes working class opposition…”

New Yorker: White House sought to justify Trump tweet article from The Hill. –
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/329415-new-yorker-white-house-sought-to-justify-trump-tweet

Still scrambling like hell to justify Trump’s fraudulent Obama wiretapping claims – more on that below.

Jake Tapper Nails the Hypocrisy In Trump’s ‘Buy American’ Executive Order article from CNN. –
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jake-tapper-donald-trump-buy-american_us_58f6d072e4b05b9d613e5177

Which would mean everyone has to stop buying Trump products.

Federal agents have deported a ‘DREAMer’ for the first time, breaking a Trump promise article from Business Insider on Yahoo! News. –
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/federal-agents-deported-dreamer-first-231600507.html

Report: WH Directed Intel Agencies To Find Cover For Trump’s Wiretap Claims article from Talking Points Memo. –
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/report-wh-directed-intel-agencies-to-find-cover-for-trumps-wiretap-claims

“The intelligence community was allegedly directed to provide cover for President Donald Trump’s baseless claim that Trump Tower was wiretapped by his predecessor, the New Yorker reported Tuesday.

An anonymous intelligence source told the magazine’s Ryan Lizza that “the White House said, ‘We are going to mobilize to find something to justify the President’s tweet that he was being surveilled.’”

Asking for an “all-points bulletin,” or a request to look through intelligence reports, White House officials said, “We need to find something that justifies the President’s crazy tweet about surveillance at Trump Tower,” according to Lizza’s source.

The alleged effort to justify the President’s outlandish wiretapping claim sparked a month-long goose chase that culminated with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) temporarily recusing himself from the panel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the U.S. election.

The White House did not respond to the New Yorker’s request for comment…”

Dissembling on North Korea, Trump creates a crisis of credibility article from Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. –
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/dissembling-north-korea-trump-creates-crisis-credibility

Trump’s problem with all his pathological lies: once he starts it’s impossible to stop.

White supremacist blames Trump for inspiring him to violence at campaign rally article from Think Progress. –
https://thinkprogress.org/white-supremacist-blames-trump-for-inspiring-him-to-violence-at-campaign-rally-e016c74d8049

Trump Probably Won’t Defy Midterm Gravity article from Five Thirty Eight. –
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-probably-wont-defy-midterm-gravity/

How Trump’s First 100 Days Could End in a Government Shutdown article from The Atlantic. –
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/04/how-trumps-first-100-days-could-end-in-a-government-shutdown/523434/

THE CONTINUING FALLOUT FROM TRUMP AND NUNES’S FAKE SCANDAL article from The New Yorker. –
http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/the-continuing-fallout-from-trump-and-nuness-fake-scandal

“Recently, several members and staffers on the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russia’s role in the Presidential election, visited the National Security Agency, in Fort Meade, Maryland. Inside the enormous black glass headquarters of America’s largest spy agency, the congressmen and their aides were shown a binder of two to three dozen pages of highly classified intercepts, mostly transcripts of conversations between foreign government officials that took place during the Presidential transition. These intercepts were not related to the heart of the committee’s Russia investigation. In fact, only one of the documents had anything to do with Russia, according to an official who reviewed them.

What the intercepts all had in common is that the people being spied on made references to Donald Trump or to Trump officials. That wasn’t even clear, though, from reading the transcripts. The names of any Americans were concealed, or “masked,” the intelligence community’s term for redacting references to Americans who are not the legal targets of surveillance when such intelligence reports are distributed to policy makers.

The binder of secret documents is at the center of the bizarre scandal created by what may be the most reckless lie President Trump has ever told. On March 4th, he tweeted, “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” The White House made several efforts to justify Trump’s claim, including using Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as a conduit for the documents, which allegedly offered some substantiation. A former Nunes staffer now working for the White House dug up the transcripts and shared them with Nunes. As Bloomberg View reported, earlier this month, Susan Rice, Obama’s national-security adviser, had used a process that allowed her to request that the masked names be revealed to her. Rice had to log her unmasking requests on a White House computer, which is how Trump’s aides knew about them. Nunes and the White House presented this as a major scandal. “I think the Susan Rice thing is a massive story,” Trump told the Times, adding, while offering no evidence, that Rice may have committed a crime…”

Trump, family: Looting the U.S. Treasury article from Capitol Hill Blue. –
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/65666

Congress is poking holes in a key Trump talking point about Obama-era surveillance article from Business Insider on Yahoo! News. –
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/congress-poking-holes-key-white-220928459.html

Exclusive: Putin-linked think tank drew up plan to sway 2016 U.S. election – documents article from Yahoo! News. –
https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-putin-linked-think-tank-drew-plan-sway-200726949.html

Seems a little far-fetched, and only time will tell, but it does put Trump’s Russia scandal front and center again.

‘Payout Time’: Exxon Seeks Waiver From U.S. Sanctions to Drill in Russia article from Common Dreams. –
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/04/19/payout-time-exxon-seeks-waiver-us-sanctions-drill-russia

How convenient. Trump appointee to Secretary of State – ex-CEO of Exxon – Rex Tillerson gets to reveal new depths of corruption for personal enrichment…

Goodbye, Mar-a-Lago. Hello, Bedminster article from Politico. –
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/trump-new-jersey-florida-237347

Shifting his fraudulent vacations and profiting at U.S. taxpayer expense while staying at his own properties – to another Trump property:

“As the Florida resort season closes, residents near Trump’s usual summer getaway at his golf club in New Jersey prepare for more security, and more protests.

President Donald Trump’s repeated weekend jaunts away from Washington have caused nonstop headaches for his South Florida neighbors this winter.

But once his exclusive seaside retreat at Mar-a-Lago closes for the season, Trump is expected to shift his weekend plans north, to his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey — and bring with him all the chaos that comes with being a preferred presidential destination…”

Sean Spicer can’t name a single legislative accomplishment for Trump’s first 100 days article from Share blue. –
http://shareblue.com/sean-spicer-cant-name-a-single-legislative-accomplishment-for-trumps-first-100-days/

We Now Know Trump’s Inauguration Donors. Where The Money Went Is Another Story article from NPR. –
http://www.npr.org/2017/04/19/524727575/we-now-know-trumps-inauguration-donors-where-the-money-went-is-another-story

Follow the money to see what – and who – the bribes paid for…

Companies with issues before government wrote big checks for Trump’s inauguration article from Politico. –
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/trump-2017-inaugruation-fundraising-237359

Large companies appear to have bribed Trump and the GOP establishment.

Trump’s Wiretap Tweets Bring Lawsuit Seeking Proof article from NPR. –
http://www.npr.org/2017/04/19/524697854/trumps-wiretap-tweets-bring-lawsuit-seeking-proof

Trump’s ethical squalor is worse than you thought article from The Washington Post. –
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/04/19/trumps-ethical-squalor-is-worse-than-you-thought/

“President Trump’s ethical sloth and financial conflicts of interest are unique in American history. (The Harding and Grant administrations were rife with corruption, but the presidents did not personally profit. Richard Nixon abused power but did not use his office to fatten his coffers or receive help from a hostile foreign power to get elected.) But it keeps getting worse.

Ryan Lizza’s stunning report reveals ample evidence that Trump misused the intelligence community and manipulated Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) to concoct a plot meant to distract from the investigation into his Russian ties:

It is now clear that the scandal was not [former national security adviser Susan] Rice’s normal review of the intelligence reports but the coordinated effort between the Trump Administration and Nunes to sift through classified information and computer logs that recorded Rice’s unmasking requests, and then leak a highly misleading characterization of those documents, all in an apparent effort to turn Rice, a longtime target of Republicans, into the face of alleged spying against Trump. It was a series of lies to manufacture a fake scandal. Last week, CNN was the first to report that both Democrats and Republicans who reviewed the Nunes material at the N.S.A. said that the documents provided “no evidence that Obama Administration officials did anything unusual or illegal.”

I spoke to two intelligence sources, one who read the entire binder of intercepts and one who was briefed on their contents. “There’s absolutely nothing there,” one source said. The Trump names remain masked in the documents, and Rice would not have been able to know in all cases that she was asking the N.S.A. to unmask the names of Trump officials…”

Mr. Trump Plays by His Own Rules (or No Rules) article from The New York Times. –
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/opinion/mr-trump-plays-by-his-own-rules-or-no-rules.html

Ahhhh, life in the land of delusion.

Trump conflicts of interest need transparency article from The Olympian. –
http://www.theolympian.com/opinion/editorials/article145450924.html

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