Category Archives: Donald Trump

(WASHINGTON) Attorney General Jeff Sessions has pledged to clamp down on government leaks that he said undermine American security, taking an aggressive public stand after being called weak on the matter by President Donald Trump.

The nation's top law enforcement official is citing no current investigations in which disclosures of information had jeopardized the country, but says the number of criminal leak probes had more than tripled in the early months of the Trump administration.

Justice Department officials are reviewing guidelines put in place to make it difficult for the government to subpoena journalists about their sources, and aren't ruling out the possibility that a reporter could be prosecuted.

"No one is entitled to surreptitiously fight to advance their battles in the media by revealing sensitive government information," Sessions said Friday in an announcement that followed a series of news reports this year on the Trump campaign and White House that have relied on classified information. "No government can be effective when its leaders cannot discuss sensitive matters in confidence or talk freely in confidence with foreign leaders."

Media advocacy organizations condemned the announcement, with Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, saying the decision to review existing guidelines was "deeply troubling."

Meanwhile, a White House adviser raised the possibility of lie detector tests for the small number of people in the West Wing and elsewhere with access to transcripts of Trump's phone calls. The Washington Post on Thursday published transcripts of his conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia.

Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway told "Fox & Friends" that "it's easier to figure out who's leaking than the leakers may realize." And might lie detectors be used? She said: "Well, they may, they may not."

Trump's outbursts against media organizations he derides as "fake news" have led to predictions that his administration will more aggressively try to root out leakers, and the timing of the Justice Department's announcement one week after the president complained on Twitter that Sessions had been weak on "intel leakers" raised questions about whether the attorney general's action was aimed at quelling the anger of the man who appointed him.

Sessions said in his remarks that his department has more than tripled the number of active leaks investigations compared with the number pending when President Barack Obama left office, and the number of referrals to the Justice Department for potential investigation of unauthorized disclosures had "exploded." The Justice Department under Sessions is prosecuting a contractor in Georgia accused of leaking a classified government report to a media organization.

"This nation must end this culture of leaks. We will investigate and seek to bring criminals to justice. We will not allow rogue anonymous sources with security clearances to sell out our country," Sessions said in his remarks.

Media organizations also had an often-tense relationship with the Obama administration, whose Justice Department brought more leaks cases than during all previous administrations combined and was criticized for maneuvers seen as needlessly aggressive and intrusive.

That included a secret subpoena of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors following a 2012 story about a foiled bomb plot, and the labeling of a Fox News journalist as a "co-conspirator" after a report on North Korea. The Justice Department also abandoned a yearslong effort to force a New York Times journalist to reveal his source in the trial of a former CIA officer who was later found guilty of disclosing classified information.

Following consultation with media lawyers, the Justice Department in 2015 revised its guidelines for leak investigations to require additional levels of approval before a reporter could be subpoenaed, including from the attorney general.

But Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Friday that they were reviewing how the department conducts leak investigations and whether current regulations impose too many hurdles on their work. Rosenstein declined to comment when asked whether the department would rule out prosecuting journalists.

Rosenstein said the department expected to consult with media representatives about possible changes to the regulations, though any efforts to undo protections for journalists or to make it easier to target sources will encounter deep opposition from news organizations.

"The current guidelines reflect a great deal of good-faith discussion between the news media and a wide range of interests from within the Department of Justice, including career prosecutors and key nonpolitical personnel," said Brown, of the press freedom group. "They carefully balance the need to enforce the law and protect national security with the value of a free press that can hold the government accountable to the people."

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Jeff Sessions: Active Leak Probes Have Tripled Under Donald Trump - TIME

Im the worlds greatest person that does not want to let people into their country.

So proclaimed Donald Trump to Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in a January phone call, according a transcript published Thursday by the Washington Post. Presumably, he meant that he was the most recognizable immigration restrictionist in the world, although he may also have been complimenting his own virtue, crowning himself a great man of history on the strength of his restrictionism.

What is so striking about Trumps language is that it shows his own view of his authority and of his policymaking to be more royalist than republican. Law and order itself? That is nothing, compared to protecting the sovereigns image and obeying his personal wishes.

The contrast between these two men was also enlightening. Turnbull acknowledges the political realities confronting Trump, but speaks of the majesty of the law itself, not the ruler. He tries to explain how Australias consistent pattern of immigration enforcement accomplishes two things at once: 1) It insulates Australian immigration law from the pressure that such laws always face when facts on the ground make a mockery of them; and 2) It has a humanitarian benefit for potential migrants because it discourages the unscrupulous human smugglers who rush in to take advantage of the market opportunity that lax enforcement creates. Its a policy with a logic that Turnbull and other Australians have been saying will eventually become obvious to Europe as it continues to struggle with its own migration crisis.

So we said if you try to come to Australia by boat, Turnbull explained to Trump, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Noble [sic] Prize winning genius, we will not let you in. He then tried to return to the point that this discourages people-smugglers, only to be interrupted by Trump, speaking with what the reader can only imagine must have been a note of admiration in his voice: Thats a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am.

In these words are a whole worldview.

This is the backhanded way that Trump talks about his own position on immigration. He practically admits that he does not think his own policy is good or just in its own right. In fact, he comes close to letting on that he thinks it is immoral.

Perhaps he believes that being a restrictionist is necessary all the same. Sometimes, a king has to greet lawlessness with mercy; other times, he has to show strength. It can depend on the sovereigns mood or on what is most expedient in a given moment. Trump is simply being tough. Hes misbehaving himself, but in the national interest. He looks up to Turnbull, because Turnbull has managed to be an even worse guy than he has.

It must be a burden for Trumps counterparts across the world to deal with his overly familiar and overly personal form of diplomacy. Turnbull tries to talk Trump down, noting that the agreement they are discussing essentially a swap of refugees between our two countries is already in place, implying that any trouble that came from their conversation could be blamed on the Obama administration. Trump says the deal to accept migrants is bad for his image. As if Australia were just one more television studios makeup room, and its head of state responsible for keeping the shine off Trumps chin.

Whatever his faults, President Obama never commented on his personal relationships with foreign leaders in real time. He soberly reflected on the shared interests between one nation, which he represented, and another, which his counterpart did. By contrast, Trump says he gets along with leaders as individuals, or has a great relationship with them.

You are in Trumps graces, or you are out of his graces. One week, China is trying to help with North Korea, and Beijing gets a kind tweet. A few weeks later, North Korea fires a few missiles into the Sea of Japan, and Beijing gets an unkind tweet.

The people who held their noses and voted for Trump in the hopes that he would bring sanity to American immigration policy should have new doubts after reading the Posts transcriptabout whether he has the stamina or strength of will to see the job through. If there was no real principle behind Trumps restrictionism if he was just telling his voters what they wanted to hear during the campaign then he is just as likely to abandon the position as hold onto it in the future.

We all know he is capable of turning on a dime. Even in the campaign, he went from saying that Mexico was sending bad hombres our way to whining that he had to hire foreign workers because America was too hot for Americans to work in during the busy season at his Florida hotels. If anything is clear about the man at this late date, its that no stance is truly non-negotiable.

Everyone acknowledges that Trump is a wildcard. He may believe hes a king, and act like it. But look again: Hes actually a Joker.

READ MORE: A Leak That Really Hurts Trump: The Series the Comedy We Want Invites the Tragedies We Dont Trumps Circular Firing Squad

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review.

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The president's conversation with Malcolm Turnbull offers a troubling window into his mind. - National Review

The Trump administration began the formal process to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, but says its willing to "re-engage" if terms more favorable to the U.S. are met.

The State Department said it notified the United Nations that the U.S. will pull out of the global agreement as soon as it can under the terms of the 2015 accord, but President Donald Trump would agree to remain in the deal was reconfigured to be better for U.S. interests.

As the President indicated in his June 1 announcement and subsequently, he is open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the U.S. can identify terms that are more favorable to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, and its taxpayers, the State Department said.

The U.S. will continue to participate in international climate negotiations, including the upcoming UN meeting on climate change "to protect U.S. interests and ensure all future policy options remain open to the administration."

The filing by the State Department kicks off a withdrawal process that will take years to unfold and is largely symbolic. Under terms of the deal, the earliest the U.S. can formally remove itself from the accord is in November 2020 -- just after the next presidential election.

The Secretary General welcomes any effort to reengage in the Paris agreement by the United States, said Stphane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres.

Trump announced in June that the U.S. would leave the Paris climate pact, saying it favors other nations at the expense of American workers, but remained open to seeking a better deal. That stance drew umbrage from world leaders, including those from France, Germany and Italy who have called the agreement "irreversible."

"We firmly believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies," they said in a statement then.

Observers said they doubted the administration truly intended to renegotiate the climate deal.

"This reckless move by President Trump demonstrates that he has no real intent to renegotiate the Paris climate agreement, and would rather walk back from our international climate commitments altogether," Oxfam Americas Climate and Energy Director Heather Coleman said in a statement.

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Donald Trump Notifies UN of Paris Exit While Keeping Option to Return - TIME

Donald Trump is a terrible president, and one of his own worst criticsat least, according to his own analysis of former President Barack Obama.

If Obama-era Donald Trump could offer his criticisms on the current White House administration, beleaguered by internal disorder and a stalled agenda, via some sort of Twitter time machinethey probably wouldnt sound toopretty.

That historic version of thecommander-in-chief would decry his own excuses for being unable to pass any major legislation in six months, saying its "BS since he had full control"in both Houses; just as he said about Obama.

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If somehow possible, 2012-Trump would slam 2017-Trump for his series of controversies following the G7 summit in Sicily, when he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accordand the G20 in Germany, when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and discussed creating a cybersecurity group after his nation meddled in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump "is a disaster at foreign policy,"hed likely say, as he did in September 2012. "Never had the experience or knowledge. He is not capable of doing the job."

"We pay for his golf,"hed complain.

When looking through the presidents tweets from days past, his views on the Obama White House and all of Washingtons flaws seem to foreshadow the exact problems hed soon face after assuming the Oval Office. Its as if a distant, previous Donald Trump is echoing through the Twittersphere, begging the new president to heed his own advice through the constant rebukes and rejection of then-President Obama.

Call it the theory of "Trumpodynamics, as some users have coined it: for every action he takes as president, there is an equal and opposite Trump tweet disagreeing with it.

Trump, the first president in over 40 years who hasnt released his tax returns, used to rail on Obama as "the least transparent presidentever."

Imagine what that Trump must think of the man now seated at the Resolute Desk.

Hed attack todays Trump for "constantly issuing executive orders that are major power grabs of authority,"as he did to Obama in July 2012 when the president signed an order on federal communications during national security and emergency preparedness.

In his first 100 days as the leader of the free world, Trump set a record for the most executive orders ever signed into law since World War Two.

His contradictions in shooting down Obama to his own time in office run the gamut.He apparently no longer believes the president needs to hold China accountable for currency manipulation (Trump hasstated as president that China does not manipulate its currency after tweeting that it does for years),to whether a leader should focus on governing, instead of campaign rallies and huge speeches in states he won a majority of the vote.

And when it comes to vacation time, pre-election Trump sold Americans the biggest dream of all in his tunnel-vision focus on Obama's travels.

It's virtually impossible to keep up with Trumps opinions on any number of issues, as the president is fluid in his stances on matters ranging from national topics like LGBT workplace protections to global policy concerns, including NATO. But the vast majority of his pre-White House tweets all seem to agree with one thing: by Trump's standards, his own presidency is failing.

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Donald Trump Is A Terrible President, According To His Own Tweets About Obama - Newsweek

WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. President Donald Trump (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)Win McNamee Getty Images

President Donald Trump hinted that he may end a key Affordable Care Act subsidy that makes insurance accessible to poorer Americans, a move that may critically destabilize health-insurance exchanges.

The administration has previously floated the idea to halt subsidies that help insurers offset health-care costs for low-income Americans, called a cost-sharing reduction, or CSR. In a tweet on Saturday, Trump hinted at ending that program.

If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon! the president said in a tweet on Saturday.

It was unclear if Trumps message means he also plans to directly target subsidies that are available to health insurance policies for some Congressional staff members. The White House declined to comment further on Trumps tweet.

A months-long effort by Senate Republicans to pass health-care legislation collapsed early Friday after Republican John McCain of Arizona joined two of his colleagues to block a stripped-down Obamacare repeal bill. McCains no vote came after weeks of brinkmanship and after his dramatic return from cancer treatment to cast the 50th vote to start debate on the bill earlier in the week. The skinny repeal bill was defeated 49-51, falling just short of the 50 votes needed to advance it. Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska also voted against it.

For more on the efforts to repeal the ACA, click here.

Ending the CSR subsidies, paid monthly to insurers, is one way that Trump could hasten Obamacares demise without legislation, by prompting more companies to raise premiums in the individual market or stop offering coverage. The administration last made a payment about a week ago for the previous 30 days, but hasnt made a long-term commitment.

Responding on Twitter, Andrew Slavitt, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the Obama administration, said the impact of cutting off subsidy payments will be felt by the middle class who will pay more to subsidize low income.

The next payments are due Aug. 21. On Friday, health-care analyst Spencer Perlman at Veda Partners LLC said in a research note that theres a 30 percent chance Trump will end CSR payments, which may immediately destabilize the exchanges, perhaps fatally.

Americas Health Insurance Plans, a lobby group for the industry, has estimated that premiums would rise by about 20 percent if the CSR payments arent made. Many insurers have already dropped out of Obamacare markets in the face of mounting losses, and blamed the uncertainty over the future of the cost-sharing subsidies and the individual mandate as one of the reasons behind this years premium increases.

Moments after the Senate voted down the Republican bill on Friday morning, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called on Democrats to offer their ideas for moving forward with health care. But he warned, Bailing out insurance companies, with no thought of any kind of reform, is not something I want to be a part of.

A survey in April by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation showed that 61 percent Americans believe Trump and Republicans are responsible for future problems with the ACA, while 31 percent said President Barack Obama and Democrats would be at fault.

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Donald Trump Hints at Ending Subsidy That Gives Health Care to the Poor - Fortune

Chances are that you can't. In fact, if you're like most of the political world, Monday feels as if it happened a month ago.

This is the nature of time in the Donald Trump presidency. There are so many storylines every single day that it's impossible to keep up with them even for a 24-hour news cycle. Some of this is, of course, strategy on the part of the President -- if you throw 1,000 balls in the air, any one person can only hope to focus on a few in hopes of catching them.

But, ascribing strategy to every ball Trump throws may be giving him and his White House too much credit. The truth is that this is a President who creates chaos in and around him. He acts, and then watches the wildness that ensues. The plan, seemingly, is that there is no plan.

He's the man knocking down the first domino in a massive chain that spiders in a thousand different directions. Or, maybe even more apt: He's smashing the ice on a thinly frozen pond and watching as the cracks spread out around him -- endangering both himself and anyone else unlucky enough to be sharing the ice with him.

Every week at the manic pace Trump keeps feels like a blur -- none more than this week, in which the President and his administration lurched from controversy to cataclysm to convulsion and back, all in the space of five days.

Let's go through the week that was:

"McMaster is at odds with President Trump on many key national security issues," reported CNN. "McMaster has also found himself undercut by others in the President's orbit like chief strategist Steve Bannon."

Later in the day Trump delivered a humdinger of a speech to police officers in Long Island on the dangers posed by the MS-13 gang, which he derided as "animals." He also appeared to condone violence against criminals; "And when you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon you just see them thrown in, rough I said, please don't be too nice," Trump said.

Just before 5 p.m. Eastern Time, Trump announced -- via Twitter -- that he had fired Reince Priebus as chief of staff and replaced him with John Kelly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

It was a month's worth of bad news -- and maybe several months' worth -- in a single week. (And the week isn't even over yet.)

Consider this: If an episode of "West Wing" had the plot outlined above, Aaron Sorkin would likely have rejected it as too fantastical. There won't ever be THAT much -- and that much bad for the President -- happening in a single week, you can imagine him saying.

And, up until Donald Trump became the President, he'd have been right. But in this reality show presidency, the truth is stranger than fiction. And a week can seem to last a month.

This story has been updated.

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Donald Trump's manic, fantastical and utterly disastrous week - CNN

Comedy has always had a political edge, but never like this.

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On late-night shows, in stand-up routines and scripted sitcoms, the opposition to President Donald Trump is more intense than a rally full of pink pussy hats. Hes an endless source of material for joke-writers, but also a five-alarm crisis, with barely a voice in mainstream or alternative comedy that isnt against him. Punchlines morph into earnest manifestos about diversity or health care. The jokes and jeremiads give Trump opponents the release they neednever mind how they might alienate Trump supporters on the receiving end. And they drive Twitter rages from a president who once felt all publicity was good publicityuntil he became pop cultures No. 1 whipping boy.

Maz Jobrani, the stand-up comedian and actor, has been trying to channel his own experience hating and protesting Trump into his work. Marching at LAX against the travel ban becomes one bit. Arguing with his mother about her saying she likes that Trump speaks his mind becomes another. But its hard to be funny when you feel like your country is going to hell, and everything starts to sound more shrill than amusing.

He has emboldened racists. I say that. Theres no joke. Theres no punch line, Jobrani told me, in an interview for POLITICOs Off Message podcast. But I think if you do that, you better have a punch line coming soon.

But he quotes a line from the comedian D.L. Hughley: Comedy is like giving people their medicine in orange juice. They dont taste it.

Stephen Colbert, who since the election dropped the pretense of playing it down the middle in his new role at CBS, has turned non-stop mocking Trump into skyrocketing ratings. Jimmy Kimmel turned a monologue about Obamacare into what amounted to a viral ad denouncing Republicans perceived cruelty. Weekend Update is coming back early, ahead of the new season of Saturday Night Live, which will have Alec Baldwin back in his Trump wig, though Sean Spicers departure will probably mean fewer Melissa McCarthy cameos behind her rolling podium.

Appearing on Colberts show on Wednesday night, satirical filmmaker Michael Moorea cartoon of the left himself who nonetheless predicted Trump would win last yearargued that McCarthy should get the credit for taking down Spicer. We need an army of satire, he said. A few minutes later, James Corden opened his CBS show following Colbert in a top hat and tux, singing a parody mocking Trumps tweeted transgender ban for the military.

Jobrani knows its all deepening the chasm between conservatives and the entertainment worldbut he doesnt care.

Trump supporters or people on the right, whenever Ive doneeven under Bush, when I would do jokes, they felt like I was attacking them. And Im not attacking you, Im attacking this politician, he said. If youre going to take it personally, like its yourlike Im making fun of your mother, then thats an issue you have.

Jobrani says that people who cant laugh at Trump are just too invested in the president, and not invested enough in the free speech and critical thinking that to him is the whole point of democracy. Hes heard the response that comes back: Well, then, why dont you make fun of Obama? Because he just didnt do a lot of stuff that was funny to me.

Jobrani arrived in America when he was six, on a visa he may or may not have overstayed illegally: His father brought him and his sister on what was supposed to be a two-week trip for their winter break in 1978, but decided in the face of the Iranian Revolution not to go backon such short notice that theyd left his baby brother behind with relatives. He recorded his new comedy special out on Netflix next week, Immigrant, on stage at the Kennedy Center in April with a giant photo of his Iranian passport picture projected above him, inspired by his reaction to Trump.

Raised near San Francisco, Jobrani was in a political science Ph.D. program at UCLA before dropping out for a performing career that started out with many roles as a terrorist. But its the stereotyping hes seeing going on now, in real life, that has him worried.

No matter how American I amIve been here for most of my lifethere are people that still dont consider me American, Jobrani said. Its like, OK, if youre going after green card holders, whats next?

His routine about the travel ban centers around how differently he and other darker-skinned marchers at LAX in February reacted to the police, compared with the white people who were there. In his joke, everyones in it together, marching, chanting, yellinguntil the police show up, and he says the white people got right in their faces, while he and the other non-white people in the crowd quietly edged away.

That feeling is real, he said, accentuated by a climate Trump has encouraged.

I feel, somewhere in the back of my mind, I would feel like they could take my citizenship away, and send me back to Iran, Jobrani said. I honestly do feel that there is a thing in my mind that my rights could be taken away at any minute. And not just my rights; anybodys rights.

Jobrani has been profiled by casting agents and TSA agents alike, but he said he doesnt mind how thats played into his current big role. On the CBS sitcom Superior Donuts, the Iranian-born actor plays an Iraqi, and one with a much stronger accent in English than he has in real life. He asked the writers about making the character, a dry cleaner, Iranian, offering to bring knowledge and a little Farsi to the role, but they saw the humor in lines that referenced living through a war. He noted to them that the Iran-Iraq War could provide that material, but they told him they didnt think most Americans would be familiar enough with that.

Its an awkward fact that playing around with ethnic stereotypes has boosted Jobranis career, as with so many comedians of color. Does that make him uncomfortable? Not really, he insistsbut hes thought about comedian Aziz Ansaris plea to non-white actors to avoid playing up their accents and other stereotypes (a big theme of Ansaris first season of Master of None). Jobrani sees his Faz as in the tradition of Danny DeVitos Louie DePalma on Taxi and Rhea Perlmans Carla on Cheers.

To have a character with an accent making people in middle America, or wherever it is, laugh, I actually think thats progress, because whether hes like, saying ludicrous stuff, or some of his stuff is like sexist or whatever, I still feel that we are taking a step in the right direction, Jobrani said. It reminds you that there are peopleimmigrantsthat are just businessmen, that are going to say stuff that is ridiculous. But I think its a drop in this big pond that goes in the right direction.

Others in Hollywood have pushed for more. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a recent speech at the Creative Artists Agency, urged the crowd to channel their frustration with Trump and whats happening into scripts and other ways of shaping the popular imagination.

I want them to know that they have power, Schwarzenegger said in his own recent Off Message podcast interview. If they go out and they rally and they go and let their frustration be heard and go and join a movement or whatever it is, be involved and don't just sit there and look at the news and look at the news and look at the television and then complain. Thats not good enough.

Like most comedians, Jobrani has left most of the material recorded in his special behind and is working on new bits. Hes trying to tell jokes about being a father, about his son and daughter, but up on stage, its the political stuff that ends up getting most of the laughs in spite of his best efforts.

Even though Im not trying to do Trump jokes, I end up doing Trump jokes, he sighed. But Im exhausted of Trump jokes.

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Is Donald Trump Funny? - POLITICO Magazine

Donald Trump doesnt scare Washington anymore.

That was the lesson from a week of stinging defeats for the President, from the halls of Congress to the homepage of Breitbart. Not long ago, Trump could tank a companys stock price with a Twitter blast and cow Republican allies into silence when he trampled political norms.

But these days, Trump doesnt have much juice in the capital.

The President was disengaged throughout much of the Senates dramatic fight over healthcare reform, even though his administration made the repeal of the Affordable Care Act its first big legislative priority. When Trump finally waded into the fray late in the gameafter Republican leaders had failed to rally the votes for the plan they crafted and Trump blessedhis tweeted threats failed to sway GOP Senate holdouts.

Lisa Murkowski was the primary target of Trumps ire. On Wednesday, the President took aim at the Republican senator from Alaska, tweeting that Murkowski, a moderate in her fourth term, really let the Republicans, and our country, down yesterday. Too bad! Then Trump tapped his Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, to ramp up the pressure. Murkowski received a phone call warning that a vote against the bill could jeopardize her states chances of getting approval from the administration on energy projects.

How did Murkowski respond? By standing her ground. First, she went public with the threat, which embarrassed the administration and led Democrats to threaten an investigation. Then she went to the Senate floor early Friday morning and cast one of the three votes required to tank the Republican repeal plan.

Sen. John McCain, whom Trump targeted for derision during the 2016 campaign, joined Murkowski and Maines Susan Collins in voting against the bill. His decisive vote followed impassioned pleas from Vice President Mike Pence and a call from Trump himself, Republican officials say.

When the President went to war on his own attorney general this week, conservative media outlets normally friendly to Trump leapt to Jeff Sessions defense instead. Breitbart News, one of Trumps top cheerleaders, called Sessions a man who embodies the movement that elected Donald Trump President. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh criticized Trumps handling of the spat. Outside groups rallied Tea Party leaders and lawmakers to Sessions defense, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley publicly warned his committee would not consider another nominee for the post this year. The battles lines had been drawn, and conservatives stood on Sessions side.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans were making life difficult for Trump on another sensitive front. Both houses of Congress voted nearly unanimously to impose new sanctions on Russia, sending a bill to Trumps desk that the White House has criticized. The move put the President in a bind: veto the billwhich Congress can override anywayand risk looking as though he was taking a soft line on Moscow in the midst of deepening investigations into whether members of his campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. Or sign it and risk retaliation from President Vladimir Putin.

White House officials expect Trump to sign the legislation, but to issue a signing statement outlining his reservations on the bill. Whats clear from the vote tally is that House and Senate Republicans didnt much care about putting the President in a predicament. After all, theyd watched Trump twist arms to help get the healthcare repeal bill over the line in the House, only to turn around and call the legislation mean.

Even the military pushed pause on their commander in chiefs orders this week. In a series of tweets this week, Trump announced that transgender men and women would no longer be able to serve in the U.S. armed forces. The decree caught the Pentagon by surprise, with even the Joint Chiefs left unaware beforehand of Trumps order. The Pentagon swiftly put the burden of clarifying the policy on the White House, and informed commanders that Trumps tweets had no practical effect until that happened.

Trump remains a formidable foe. He has the bully pulpit of the presidency at his disposal and a loyal base that has largely stuck with him through the fumbles and controversies that marred his opening months in office.

But the series of sharp rebukes this week highlighted how quickly Trumps political capital has eroded. Presidents are typically near the apex of their influence in the months after an election, riding high off their inauguration and enjoying a honeymoon in the polls. But Trump is shattering convention there as well. His approval rating hasnt been north of 40% in more than a month, setting new records for unpopularity so soon into an administration.

Maybe its no wonder few people in town seem afraid of him.

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Who's Afraid of Donald Trump? Good Question. - TIME

President Trump questioned the accuracy of a new poll that shows him having the lowest approval rating of any modern president during the first six months of his term.

But Trump's Sunday tweet about the accuracy of the ABC News/Washington Post poll is questionable when the data is actually examined.

The same poll showed Hillary Clinton narrowly leading Donald Trump 47% to 43% on Nov. 7 2016 one day before the election. It was a national poll that was assessing the overall popular vote, not the victory margins in individual states. And although Clinton lost the electoral vote, she did ultimately win the popular vote 48.2% to 46.1%. That means the poll was one point off for Clinton and three points off for Trump slightly outside of the poll's 2.5 margin of error for the latter, but only by half a point.

Other polls had similar results. The NBC/WSJ poll released on Nov. 6, 2016 also had Clinton leading Trump by 4 points, 44% to 40% the final results fell outside the poll's 2.73 margin of error on both sides. The final pre-election poll conducted by CBS News/New York Times, released on Nov. 3, 2016, like the others, had Clinton leading Trump among likely voters 45% to 42%.

In fact, out of the 21 general election polls showcased by the website RealClearPolitics website on Nov. 7, 2016, only two the LA Times/USC tracking poll and the IBD/TIPP tracking poll had Trump winning the general election. The state polls listed on that website were more inaccurate, with several incorrectly predicting, for example, that Clinton would win states like Florida, Michigan and New Hampshire.

The ABC News/Washington Post poll also detected a loss in voter enthusiasm for Clinton following then-FBI Director James Comey's decision to reopen the probe into her emails in mid-October a factor Clinton has said contributed to her loss. "The change in strong enthusiasm for Clinton is not statistically significant and could reflect night-to-night variability. Still, it bears watching," the poll analysis stated on Oct. 31.

Overall, the ABC News/Washington Post poll certainly did not predict Trump's victory. But it also was more correct than the President let on in his tweet about assessing the ultimate outcome of the popular vote.

The tweet was one of several Trump sent Sunday.

He also said the"fake news" media was "distorting democracy" and brought up the revelation from WikiLeaks that Donna Brazile passed along a question from a CNN primary debate to Hillary Clinton campaign associates, claiming there was a discrepancy in coverage between this incident and Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer.

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President Trump Just Said This Poll Was the 'Most Inaccurate' Around the Election. It Wasn't - TIME

CLAIM

A photograph shows Eric and Donald Trump Jr., sons of President Donald Trump.

A photograph purportedly showing an image of Eric and Donald Trump, Jr., the two older sons of President Donald Trump, has been circulating on social media in various forms since at least June 2017:

The image, which provides an oddly grotesque look at President Trumps olders sons, has been re-purposed in various memes to mock the First Family. For instance, it has been turned into a movie poster for Dumb and Dumber, was shared in a meme comparing the two Trumps children into to the sloth character from the movie The Goonies, and was frequently shared with the captions They look like that hyucc sound Goofy be making or Donald Trump HATES this photo of his two sons. Please dont share it.

However, this picture (despite the Getty Images watermark) is not a genuine photograph of Donald Trumps sons, but a digitally altered version of one.

The original photograph was taken on 12 November 2005, during Donald Trump, Jr.s wedding reception at his fathers Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida:

Donald Trump, Jr. pose with his brother Eric Trump after the wedding ceremony at the Mar-a-Lago Club on November 12, 2005 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by C. Allegri/Getty Images)

Several subtle changes were made to the original image in order to uglify the Trump brothers. For instance, Donald Trump, Jr.s upper lip was enlarged, his bottom teeth were hidden, his right eye was moved off-center, and his left ear was lowered. Eric Trumps eyes were also widened, and some extra fat was added to his neck.

Heres a comparison of the fake image (left) and the real image (right):

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Fact Checker: Dan Evon

Published: Jul 16th, 2017

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Is This a Real Photograph of Donald Trump's Older Sons? - snopes.com