Category Archives: Donald Trump

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Senior administration officials erroneously claim that they are proposing a middle-class tax cut that will be paid for by economic growth.

By STEVEN RATTNER

The F.B.I. director said that if he had to revisit his decision to tell Congress in October about newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton, he would do it again.

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

President Trump and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who clashed over refugees, will be at a commemoration on the Intrepid of their nations 1942 battle against Japan.

By NOAH REMNICK

In this weeks newsletter, John Howard, South Sudanese basketball stars, Darwin essays, and what Australias favorite chef wants you to hear.

By DAMIEN CAVE

A comparison of the Republican bill with key components of the Affordable Care Act.

By HAEYOUN PARK, MARGOT SANGER-KATZ and JASMINE C. LEE

An obscure State Department program made headlines after it appeared to be promoting the presidents Florida getaway. The reality is more complicatedand almost surreal.

By LYDIA KIESLING

The bipartisan agreement is expected to earn final passage with a Senate vote later this week.

With the Philippine-American relationship under scrutiny, here are three books to shed light on the former U.S. colonys culture and politics.

By CONCEPCIN DE LEN

The Kremlin cannot understand why President Trump has met a string of world leaders but afforded President Putin just three measly phone calls.

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

President Trump met with President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House and repeated his commitment to pulling off the toughest deal.

By PETER BAKER

A visual guide to Donald J. Trumps first visit to his hometown as president.

By FORD FESSENDEN, ANJALI SINGHVI, JEREMY WHITE and KAREN YOURISH

Beneath the bonhomie, experts say, are differences of strategic interest that may keep President Trump from getting the results he wants on North Korea.

By JANE PERLEZ

After a personnel upheaval, the Fox News Channels new evening lineup is not so much pro-Trump as it is anti-anti-Trump.

By JAMES PONIEWOZIK

South Koreans head to the polls on May 9. The leader they choose will face many uncertainties, not least of them President Trump.

By CHOE SANG-HUN and RUSSELL GOLDMAN

The lines being drawn in Washington arent entirely partisan. Are Democrats and Republicans in Congress banding together to block the president?

By MICHAEL BARBARO

Not one description of chocolate cake? Trevor Noah asked. I didnt realize how much Id missed hearing sentences with a beginning, middle and end.

By GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

By demanding that the Senate change one of its signature rules, the president created a cause for bipartisan unity: preserving the 60-vote threshold on legislation.

By CARL HULSE

The white-flight suburb of Johns Creek, out of reach of Atlantas transit system, is now rippling with diversity and facing a possible watershed election.

By RICHARD FAUSSET

The new F.C.C. chairmans plan to slacken net neutrality rules is a boon to tech giants and a bane to competitors and innovators.

By FARHAD MANJOO

The F.B.I. director spoke publicly for the first time about his decisions about the Hillary Clinton email inquiry in the days before the election.

By ADAM GOLDMAN

Senior administration officials erroneously claim that they are proposing a middle-class tax cut that will be paid for by economic growth.

By STEVEN RATTNER

The F.B.I. director said that if he had to revisit his decision to tell Congress in October about newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton, he would do it again.

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

President Trump and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who clashed over refugees, will be at a commemoration on the Intrepid of their nations 1942 battle against Japan.

By NOAH REMNICK

In this weeks newsletter, John Howard, South Sudanese basketball stars, Darwin essays, and what Australias favorite chef wants you to hear.

By DAMIEN CAVE

A comparison of the Republican bill with key components of the Affordable Care Act.

By HAEYOUN PARK, MARGOT SANGER-KATZ and JASMINE C. LEE

An obscure State Department program made headlines after it appeared to be promoting the presidents Florida getaway. The reality is more complicatedand almost surreal.

By LYDIA KIESLING

The bipartisan agreement is expected to earn final passage with a Senate vote later this week.

With the Philippine-American relationship under scrutiny, here are three books to shed light on the former U.S. colonys culture and politics.

By CONCEPCIN DE LEN

The Kremlin cannot understand why President Trump has met a string of world leaders but afforded President Putin just three measly phone calls.

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

President Trump met with President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House and repeated his commitment to pulling off the toughest deal.

By PETER BAKER

A visual guide to Donald J. Trumps first visit to his hometown as president.

By FORD FESSENDEN, ANJALI SINGHVI, JEREMY WHITE and KAREN YOURISH

Beneath the bonhomie, experts say, are differences of strategic interest that may keep President Trump from getting the results he wants on North Korea.

By JANE PERLEZ

After a personnel upheaval, the Fox News Channels new evening lineup is not so much pro-Trump as it is anti-anti-Trump.

By JAMES PONIEWOZIK

South Koreans head to the polls on May 9. The leader they choose will face many uncertainties, not least of them President Trump.

By CHOE SANG-HUN and RUSSELL GOLDMAN

The lines being drawn in Washington arent entirely partisan. Are Democrats and Republicans in Congress banding together to block the president?

By MICHAEL BARBARO

Not one description of chocolate cake? Trevor Noah asked. I didnt realize how much Id missed hearing sentences with a beginning, middle and end.

By GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

By demanding that the Senate change one of its signature rules, the president created a cause for bipartisan unity: preserving the 60-vote threshold on legislation.

By CARL HULSE

The white-flight suburb of Johns Creek, out of reach of Atlantas transit system, is now rippling with diversity and facing a possible watershed election.

By RICHARD FAUSSET

The new F.C.C. chairmans plan to slacken net neutrality rules is a boon to tech giants and a bane to competitors and innovators.

By FARHAD MANJOO

The F.B.I. director spoke publicly for the first time about his decisions about the Hillary Clinton email inquiry in the days before the election.

By ADAM GOLDMAN

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Donald Trump - The New York Times

During a news conference Wednesday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked how an amendment to the American Health Care Act that could increase premiums for those with preexisting conditions squares with the presidents pledge that this wouldnt happen.

His response? Something we could have expected from this administration.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said it would be "impossible" to calculate the potential cost of insurance plans for people with preexisting conditions who would be forced to buy insurance from state-run high-risk pools under the new GOP health care bill, on May 3 at the White House. (Reuters)

REPORTER: An analysis from AARP showed that the sickest patients will pay nearly $26,000 a year in premiums under the new health-care law and that $8 billion which was included in that amendment this morning is not nearly enough to lower those costs.

So Im wondering, how does that, which would be a major premium hike on the sickest patients, square with the presidents promise to both lower premiums and take care of those with preexisting conditions?

SPICER: So it sounds interesting to me that, without there are so many variables that are unknown, that to make an analysis of that level of precision, it seems almost impossible.

Let me give you an example. So right now preexisting conditions are covered in the bill. They always have been; weve talked about that before. States have a right to receive a waiver. If someone has continuous coverage, thats never going to be an issue, regardless of no circumstance does anyone with continuous coverage would ever have a problem with preexisting.

If someone chose not to have coverage for 63 days or more, and they were in a state that opted out, and they had a preexisting condition, and they were put into a high-risk pool then weve allocated an additional $8 billion over five years to help drive down those costs.

So for someone to know how many people that is, what number of states are going to ask for and receive a waiver is literally impossible at this point. So to do an analysis of any level of factual basis would be literally not a [possibility].

That right there is a natural end point of the Donald Trump phenomenon: A representative of the administration declaring that there is no knowable truth behind the debate over a policy, so the policy might just as well be supported.

It is true that it is literally impossible to know exactly how many people with preexisting conditions will live in states that ask for a waiver on their coverage and to know how much that will cost. It is similarly impossible to know precisely how many Americans do any number of things. How many Americans like President Trump? How many Americans have jobs? How many Americans are Hispanic? Measuring each of these things offers a level of imprecision, but that doesnt mean that we cant know generally what those numbers look like.

As explained by the reporter, the estimate about those with preexisting conditions that is, serious health issues that existed beforereceiving insurance coverage comes from AARP. Heres the relevant excerpt from an April 27 article:

States that want to allow insurers to charge more for people with preexisting conditions would have to have a high-risk pool program or a reinsurance program. For consumers who buy coverage in a high-risk pool, AARPs PPI projects that the premiums could reach $25,700 a year in 2019, when this provision would go into effect.

That figure would disproportionately affect those ages 50to 64, since AARP estimates that 40 percent of Americans in that age bracket have such conditions. Whats more, the density of the population with such conditions is higher in Appalachia and the South, areas that are more conservative and therefore more likely to ask for some sort of waiver from the stipulations in place.

As Spicer notes, the $25,700 would be paid only by those whohad let their coverage lapse. How many that may be isnt known. But $8 billion spread over five years would cover $25,700 in premiums for fewer than 63,000 people a year.

AARP estimates that 24.8 million Americans have preexisting conditions, just within that 50-64 age range. The Kaiser Family Foundation figures that 52 million in total have such a condition.

So the question is valid: How does that square with the presidents promise to both lower premiums and take care of those with preexisting conditions? We dont know a hard number for those who will be affected, no. But we know that some large number is likely to be.

Over the course of the 2016 campaign, Trump used one rhetorical trick repeatedly. Questioned about an issue, hed gin up some anecdotal example providing an opposing line of thinking and use that to sort of shrug the whole thing off. Trump says his phones were wiretapped at Trump Tower and, look, the New York Times says that someone associated with his campaign was surveilled in some way, so that basically proves the point. Remember when he sat down with Bill OReilly and said explicitly to forget all that about not having actual data, pointing instead to a report that had nothing to do with voter fraud?

This is an actual strategy: Cast doubt about the certainty of an issue and use that doubt to press forward as you see fit.

In this case, theres a direct political advantage. When a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the original iteration of the AHCA came out in March showing that 24 million fewer people would be insured in a decade, it spurred a number of Republicans to bail on the legislation. Spicers who knows strategy isnt just meant to rebut reporters, its meant to keep House Republicans in line until they vote.

Spiceris right that we dont know precisely how many people will be negatively affected by the updated American Health Care Act. In fact, its probably safer to assume that the uncertainty in how many people will be negatively affected will work against the administration, given how many people have preexisting conditions. Regardless, the exact number isnt the point. The point is that we know that some will be, and we know that Trump said that wouldnt happen, which is why the question came up.

For that, Spicer had no answer.

More:

The Donald Trump Zone of Uncertainty shows up in the health-care debate - Washington Post

But, there's one number that has to warm Trump's heart -- and give some level of reassurance to Republicans jittery that Trump could bring the whole political world down on them in the 2018 midterm elections.

For the first time since 2003, more people say they are satisfied with the state of the economy than say they are dissatisfied -- and by a relatively wide 13-point margin.

That's a big deal.

At the heart of the many (many) promises Trump made on the campaign trail was the one to "Make America Great Again." While that's a decidedly amorphous pledge, most people translate that slogan to mean: Make my life better again. And, again, for the majority of people, things get better when they have more money in their pocket, when they can buy the things they want and when they feel that the national economy is humming.

Much of that is a perception rather than a series of cold hard facts. And it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people feel like the economy is stronger, they have a tendency to go spend money, which, in turn, helps the economy strengthen.

President Obama repeatedly struggled with the fact that while most economic indicators suggested the economy was improving -- particularly in his second term -- large numbers of people still felt squeezed. Insisting that things were going better while lots of people just didn't feel that way was a total political loser.

If Trump can convince people that his election and his policies, which, to this point, are largely in undoing Obama-era regulations, are why the economy is stabilizing and even strengthening, he will be in better shape politically than he has any business being given the massive struggles of his first 100 days.

Trump's not there yet. The April NBC-WSJ poll showed 44% approved of his handling of the economy and 46% disapproved -- not exactly a world-beating number. But, "working to improve the economy" was one of the two most mentioned positive developments people cited when asked what they liked about Trump's first 100 days, a finding he can certainly build on.

James Carville's famous 1992 campaign mantra -- "It's the economy, stupid" -- is as true today as it was 25 years ago. If Trump gets the economy right -- and get credit for doing so -- he will be in good shape as he moves into a 2020 reelection bid. That's still a giant "if" but the early returns have to be promising for an administration desperate for some good news.

Read the original here:

This is the best news Donald Trump has had in a while - CNN

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump predicted an Israeli-Palestinian agreement might be not as difficult as people have thought in a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday, but failed to mention what has been a key component to a deal a separate Palestinian state.

The omission continues Trumps seeming abandonment of what had been U.S. policy toward the region for decades during both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Trump said the Israelis and Palestinians had to agree on terms, not have them imposed by the United States or any other country. I will do whatever is necessary to facilitate the agreement, to mediate, to arbitrate anything theyd like to do, Trump said. But I would love to be a mediator or an arbitrator or a facilitator. And we will get this done.

Olivier Douliery/Pool via Getty Images

In neither the joint 15-minute appearance in the Roosevelt Room nor photo opportunities in the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room before and after did Trump address the two-state solution that presidents going back to Democrat Bill Clinton in the 1990s have supported.

When Abbas visited the White House in March 2014, for example, then-President Barack Obama spoke of two states, side by side in his public remarks.

Trump first publicly signaled the policy shift during the February White House visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Im looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that both parties like, Trump said in response to a question about the two-state policy, indicating that he did not have any real preference.

Abbas, for his part, continued the Palestinian Authoritys long-held position that a long-term peace agreement requires a separate Palestinian state, bounded by territorial borders as they were in 1967 and with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Abbas also called on Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories. We are the only remaining people in the world that still live under occupation. We are aspiring and want to achieve our freedom, our dignity, and our right to self-determination, Abbas said. And we also want for Israel to recognize the Palestinian state just as the Palestinian people recognize the state of Israel.

Trump since his election has said he would like to broker a long-term deal between the two sides. He returned to that idea in the Cabinet Room as he and Abbas were about to be served a lunch of steak and halibut.

We will be discussing details of what has proven to be a very difficult situation between Israel and the Palestinians, Trump said. Lets see if we can find the solution. Its something that I think is, frankly, maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years. We need two willing parties. We believe Israel is willing. We believe youre willing. And if you are willing, we are going to make a deal.

Read the original post:

Donald Trump Predicts Mideast Peace Is 'Not As Difficult As People Have Thought' - Huffington Post

Expect South Parks next season to be heavy on fart jokes, to clear the air after a season that became much more Donald Trump-concentrated than the creators had intended, Matt Stone and Trey Parker told Bill Simmons or words to that effect on his The Bill Simmons Podcast.live early this morning.

Where we were going with the thing, its all about how girls [have been] slighted, Parker explained of the wrapped Season 20. Girls have been marginalized in South Park too, just because we do all the voices and its hard for us to have people come in at 3 in the morning and change all the lines.

We were heading down this whole path [with] this big boy-girl war going on, and everyone thinks, OK well hooray, Hillarys gonna be president. And that means that Bill Clinton is the first gentleman. That to us was the most ironic, coolest thing to focus onThats where the whole season was going and thats what really got torn apart. Garrison was supposed to come back and just start teaching again and all this stuff and we were now just locked in to this other [timeline].

Theyd prepared an episode, dubbed The First Gentleman to follow Election Night, based on expectation Hillary Clinton would win. Tuesday night, around 8 PM, they knew they had to blow up that episode.

Surveying their options, Go black was what we talked about, Stone said, adding they also mulled airing The First Gentleman episode as-is, as a sort of document for history.

We called [former president of Viacom Music and Entertainment] Doug Herzog and said, We cant get the show done. Its just really screwed up, and sorry, Stone continued. And he was like, Im at The Daily Show, everyones crying, Ill call you back, or something like that. His world was like, everyone was coming to him saying, We cant do this tonight.

I think [Herzog] would have been okay with us just going black, but it was also nice for at least real die-hard South Park fans to air an episode, Parker chimed in. Everyone was so shell-shocked, and it was like you didnt want to see that the world had changed. You wanted to be like, Okay, this horrible thing has happened, and [Trump] has been elected president, [but] South Parks still on the air. The sun is still rising. Waters still clear.

The episode, named Oh Jeez, aired November 9.

As to where the show goes from here Simmons referenced how Saturday Night Live has adjusted to a Trump presidency Parker said that show is doing better than ever because of it, but its like now every week Im seeing a headline about how SNL ripped on the Trump administration this week. Theyve become that show.

That was part of the bummer for us about [last] season; we didnt want to make it a big Trump thing, and we kept thinking it was gonna go away and we didnt want to get caught up in just being a political show, he continued. Theres plenty of good political comedy out there. We like to dabble in that and do that one week, but then the next week we want to do fart jokes. We love to change tones. And its interesting, cause now people are [saying], OK, well lets see how you deal with Trump this coming season. No one ever said, Oh, the new seasons coming, how you gonna deal with Obama in this season? Were not that show and we never were.

If not that, what will they do next season, Simmons asked.

Responded Parker: Fart jokes.

Simmons also asked, in re Trump, the two if they can remember in the last two decades somebody who almost couldnt be parodied because he was a parody.

Again, Parker responded:

If you have like a little monkey and its running himself into the wall over and over and youre like, Thats funny, but how am I gonna make fun of the monkey running himself into the wall? I can discuss the monkey running himself into the wall, I can copy the monkey running into the wall, but nothings funnier than the monkey just running himself into the wall.

See the original post here:

'South Park' Creators Skirt Donald Trump Next Season Because Monkey Running Into Wall Can't Be Made Funnier - Deadline

Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on April 25, 2017 (L); Betsy DeVos in Washington, DC, on Jan. 17, 2017. Olivier DoulieryGetty Images (L); Bill ClarkGetty Images

Donald Trump may say teachers are important, but he spent his first 100 days undermining the schools most educators work in Americas public schools.

One of President Trumps first acts was to appoint the most anti-public education person ever to lead the Department of Education. Betsy DeVos has called public schools a dead end and bankrolled a private school voucher measure in Michigan that the public defeated by a two-to-one ratio. When that failed, she spent millions electing legislators who then did her bidding slashing public school budgets and spreading unaccountable for-profit charters across the state. The result? Nearly half of Michigans charter schools rank in the bottom of U.S. schools, and Michigan dropped from 28th to 41st in reading and from 27th to 42nd in math compared with other states.

Now DeVos is spreading this agenda across the country with Trump and Vice President Mike Pences blessing. Theyve proposed a budget that takes a meat cleaver to public education and programs that work for kids and families. After-school and summer programs gone. Funding for community schools that provide social, emotional, health and academic programs to kids gone. Investments to keep class sizes low and provide teachers with the training and support they need to improve their craft gone. Their budget cuts financial aid for low-income college students grappling with student debt at the same time the Trump administration is making it easier for private loan servicers to prey on students and families.

The Trump/DeVos budget funnels more than $1 billion to new voucher and market strategies even though study after study concludes those strategies have hurt kids. Recent studies of voucher programs in Ohio and Washington, D.C., show students in these programs did worse than those in traditional public schools. Further, private voucher schools take money away from neighborhood public schools, lack the same accountability that public schools have, fail to protect kids from discrimination, and increase segregation.

Its dangerous in education when the facts dont matter to people. But it doesnt stop there. Schools must be safe and welcoming places for all children, and thats a belief shared both by parents who send their kids to voucher schools and those who send their kids to public schools. But Trump and DeVos have acted to undermine the rights of kids who look or feel different, and to cut funding for school health and safety programs.

What Trump and DeVos are doing stands in stark contrast to the bipartisan consensus we reached in 2015 when Congress passed a new education law that shifted the focus from testing back to teaching, pushed decision-making back to states and communities, and continued to invest funds in the schools that need it the most. It offered an opportunity to focus on what we know works best for kids and schoolspromoting childrens well-being, engaging in powerful learning, building teacher capacity, and fostering cultures of collaboration.

The Trump/DeVos agenda not only jeopardizes that work, their view that education is a commodity as opposed to a public good threatens the foundation of our democracy and our responsibility to provide opportunity to all of Americas young people.

Americans have a deep connection to and belief in public education. I see it every day as I crisscross the nation talking to parents, teachers, students and community members about what they want for their public schools. And it transcends politics. Its one of the reasons we saw such a massive grass-roots response to the DeVos nomination from every part of the country.

A recent poll by Harvard and Politico showed that while parents want good public school choices to meet the individual needs of their kids, they do not want those choices pit against one another or used to drain money from other public schools. In other words, the DeVos/Trump agenda is wildly out of step with what Americans want for their kids.

Its what I saw when I took DeVos to visit public schools in Van Wert, Ohio, last month. This is an area that voted more than 70 percent for Trump, but people there love and invest in their public schools from a strong early childhood program, to robust robotics and other strategies that engage kids in powerful learning, to a community school that helps the kids most at risk of dropping out stay on a path to graduation. Its what I saw at the Community Health Academy of the Heights in New York City where the school provides a full-service community health clinic, in-school social workers, a food pantry, parent resource center, and other services for parents and kids. And its what I saw this week at Rock Island Elementary School in Broward County, Fla., where kids participate in robotics programs after school, where there is a library in every classroom and a guided reading room where kids can build their literacy skills. The great things happening in these schools are all funded by federal dollars and threatened by the Trump/DeVos budget.

Many of those who voted for Trump did so because they believed he would keep his promise to stand up for working people and create jobs. They didnt vote to dismantle public education and with it the promise and potential it offers their children. Now, the person who ran on jobs and the economy seems intent on crushing one of the most important institutions we have to meet the demands of a changing economy, enable opportunity and propel our nation forward. Thats one of the biggest takeaways from Trumps first 100 days .

Originally posted here:

AFT President: Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump Are Dismantling Public Education - TIME

Are you a foreign despot who has just purged his opposition or authorized a deadly war against your nation's drug dealers? Normally, you would expect at least a mild rebuke from the leader of the free world. Depending on how egregious your violations, maybe even a tough speech from the Rose Garden or a U.S.-sponsored United Nations resolution.

Not anymore. In the Donald Trump era, it's springtime for the world's authoritarians. Or at least that's how it seems. Consider some of Trump's recent statements.

He told Bloomberg News on Monday that he would be "honored" to meet with North Korea's Kim Jong Un under the right circumstances. Last week, we were on the brink of war with Kim's Hermit Kingdom. But now, Trump is holding out the prospect of a deal. All of that is fine, but since when would an American president be honored to meet with a boy-tyrant who presides over a gulag state?

Then there was Trump's invitation to Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte this week to visit the White House. He's the guy who said last summer, "Just because you're a journalist doesn't mean you're exempted from assassination if you're a son of a bitch."

Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, last month orchestrated a constitutional referendum that could keep him in power for the next dozen years and further consolidate the powers of the chief executive. The vote was widely criticized by human rights groups and outside observers as a further nail in the coffin of Turkish democracy. Not Trump. He called Erdogan after the vote to congratulate him on the victory.

From Russia's Vladimir Putin to Egypt's General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Trump has gone out of his way to butter up foreign leaders who have trampled over the rights of their citizens. One gets the sense that if Trump was alive during the era of Mongol conquests he would probably proclaim Genghis Khan was "one smart cookie with a big heart."

It's clear that much of this is improvisational. After the first 100 days, all of us are getting used to a president who says and tweets whatever is on his mind, regardless of how it coheres with his administration's foreign policy. We saw this previously when it came to Russia's political influence operation last year. Trump this weekend told CBS News that he still wasn't sure Russia was behind the hacking of leading Democrats (even though he had acknowledged as much before his inauguration).

At the same time, White House officials tell me it would be a mistake to conclude that Trump doesn't care at all about human rights. "He has a strategy and his strategy is to develop personal relationships to avoid criticizing publicly people with whom he is trying to build a relationship and with whom he is negotiating," Michael Anton, the National Security Council spokesman, told me Tuesday. Anton added that Trump does raise human rights concerns privately with world leaders. He pointed to Egypt's decision to release six humanitarian workers, including one U.S. citizen, from an Egyptian prison as an example of how Trump's private diplomacy with Sisi got results.

White House officials also pointed to Trump's brief meeting in February with Lilian Tintori, the wife of imprisoned Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. Trump tweeted a photo of himself with Tintori and Vice President Mike Pence from the White House right after the Treasury Department issued an order to freeze the assets of Venezuela's vice president for drug trafficking. On Friday Venezuela announced it would no longer be participating in the Organization of American States after the U.S. pressed that body to condemn their government's recent repression of peaceful protests.

White House officials also tell me Trump has asked his national security cabinet to focus on human rights in its policy review on Cuba. Finally, Trump should get some credit for doing something his predecessor never did attacking the Syrian regime. He ordered the strikes on a Syrian air base after the U.S. intelligence community concluded the regime had used sarin gas in an attack on a rebel-controlled area, violating Syria's own 2013 agreement with Russia and the U.S. to give up its chemical weapons.

All of that is well and good. But any argument that Trump really cares about human rights or democracy in foreign policy is undermined by his sweet words for Duterte, Erdogan, Sisi and China's leader, Xi Jinping.

Past presidents have also looked the other way at times for authoritarian allies. And often presidents who made support for human rights a rhetorical priority didn't back up those words when it came to policy. Remember that President Barack Obama was critical of Sisi's military coup in 2012, but he never cut off military aid to Egypt afterward. Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's secretary of state, handed a basketball signed by Michael Jordan to Kim's father on her 2000 visit to North Korea.

The difference is that when former presidents cozied up to authoritarians, there was a strategic purpose. Obama needed Egypt to be stable while its neighbor Libya descended into civil war. Clinton wanted North Korea to agree to a deal to abandon its long-range missile program. Franklin D. Roosevelt needed Stalin to defeat Hitler. With Trump, it's unclear whether his obsequiousness to despots is part of a larger plan, or just popping off.

"The challenge is to know if there is a strategy behind these peculiar openings to foreign authoritarians," Timothy Naftali, a professor of history at New York University and former director of the Nixon Presidential Library, told me. "Donald Trump has so far been incapable of articulating a foreign policy approach, let alone a strategy."

Naftali held out hope that National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster has a strategy, and that Trump is an imperfect spokesperson for it. "But at the moment there is no reason to believe that he is inviting Duterte to this country, except to annoy political elites," he said.

Bolstering Naftali's argument is that Duterte's first response to Trump's invitation was to say he was probably too busy to visit the White House. Usually invitations to a head of state are better choreographed.

That said, it's also possible that Trump understands that Duterte, who threatened to kick the U.S. military out of his country in October, needs courting. It's worth remembering that the Obama administration last fall encouraged the Philippines to settle its dispute with China over artificial islands in the South China Sea directly, even after an international tribunal ruled in favor of the Filipinos. If Duterte concludes his government is too toxic for the West, it will drive him into China's arms.

A similar argument can be made for China and Turkey. If Turkey can be enticed to play a more constructive role in Syria's civil war, if China can be persuaded to pressure North Korea on its nuclear program, then why muddy the diplomacy with boilerplate about political prisoners?

There is, though, another way. Here it's instructive to go back the Philippines. In 1986, another Republican president, Ronald Reagan, faced another Filipino strongman in Ferdinand Marcos. The two had developed a close relationship going back to when Reagan was governor of California. But after it became clear that Marcos had engaged in widespread election fraud in the 1986 election and that his military was defecting to his opposition, Reagan insisted his old friend step down.

Reagan did this in the twilight of the Cold War, when the Soviets and the Americans fought all over the world for influence in weaker countries. There was a strong argument that national interests should prevail over human rights in the Philippines in 1986, too. And yet the U.S. was rewarded for Reagan's foresight in 1988, when the elected government granted the U.S. an interim agreement to keep U.S. military bases on the islands.

Trump could learn a lot from Reagan when it comes to his new authoritarian friends. Statecraft often demands leaders choose between interests and values. But America is an exceptional nation. Sometimes its interests are best served by advancing the principles of its founders.

Bloomberg View

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

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Donald Trump's peculiar obsession with authoritarian leaders - Chicago Tribune

As people analyze the flurry of rambling misstatements, outright lies and flip-flops coming from the toupeed totalitarian sitting in the Oval Office, credible voices who once giggled at Donald Trumps antics have stopped laughing and started asking a very serious question:

Is the president of the United States suffering from dementia or Alzheimers?

Rice University history professor and leading presidential historians Douglas Brinkley analyzed Trumps interviews from over the last few days. Brinkley, who has read hundredsif not thousandsof transcripts and presidential interviews, concluded that Trump seemed to have a confused mental state, the likes of which he has never seen. It seems to be among the most bizarre recent 24 hours in American presidential history, Brinkley told Politico magazine.

If Douglas Brinkley is not the top presidential historian in the world, then Jon Meacham is certainly in the running for that title. During an appearance Monday on MSNBCs Morning Joe, Meacham and host Joe Scarborough had a conversation about the latest White House fiascoes. Scarborough said Trump was mumbling, he was rambling around, incoherent, and then just sort of quit talking. Walked off.

This conversation is significant for two reasons: Scarborough has a long relationship with Trump, and during the transition and early days of Trumps presidency, Scarborough made numerous trips to both Trumps home and his Mar-a-Lago estate. The second reason is that Scarboroughs words reflect his own personal experienceScarboroughs mother suffers from dementia.

My mothers had dementia for 10 years, Scarborough remarked concerning Trumps wondering why no one ever asks about the Civil War. That sounds like the sort of thing my mother would say today.

Even more troubling is the fact that Trumps medical records, released during the campaign, are basically a cursory exam, filled with hyperbole, written by a family friend who is a gastroenterologist. Oh yeah, we also have that time he went on Dr. Oz.

Donald Trump is the oldest man ever to be sworn in as president, surpassing the record held by Ronald Reaganwho died in 2004 after a battle with Alzheimers disease. According to the Alzheimers Association, people who have a parent, brother or sister with Alzheimers are more likely to develop the disease.

At the time of his death in 1999, Fred Trumpthe father of Donald Trumphad suffered from Alzheimers for six years.

Michael Harriot is a staff writer at The Root, host of "The Black One" podcast and editor-in-chief of the daily digital magazine NegusWhoRead.

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Does Donald Trump Have Dementia? - The Root

Forbes

Donald Trump Has Been Lying About The Size Of His Penthouse Forbes During the presidential race, Donald Trump left the campaign trail to give Forbes a guided tour of his three-story Trump Tower penthouse -- part of his decades-long crusade for a higher spot on our billionaire rankings. Gliding through his gilded home, ...

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Donald Trump Has Been Lying About The Size Of His Penthouse - Forbes

U.S. officials haverepeatedly (and falsely) claimed that North Korea is on the verge of having the capability to carry out a nuclear strike on U.S. soil. And the Trump White House has done little to tamp down media speculation about nuclear war, perhaps because the hype plays to its advantage.

In fact, President Trumps rhetorical brinksmanship has some resemblance to the governing style of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator whom Trump recently called a pretty smart cookie. A population that feels threatened by mass violence tends to line up behind its protector. Exaggerated beliefs about North Koreas nuclear capabilities serve to justify Americas own provocations. These include Foal Eagle, a military exercise carried out on North Koreas doorstep by U.S. and South Korean forces every spring since 2002.

The North Korean missile thats drawnthe most speculation is called the KN-08. It has only been tested twice. Both tests ended in failure. Nevertheless, NBC has offered advice on what Americans should do in case of a nuclear strike. Fox News reported on Hawaiis emergency attack plans. Trump himself tweeted that North Korea is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon that could hit the United States. Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the head of Pacific Command, told Congress last week that Kim Jong-un is clearly in a position to threaten Hawaii today. Those who watched the full hearing know that Harris also said that current missile defense systems are sufficient. But you wouldnt know it from the headlines:

There is a problem with this scenario. The North Korean missiles that are theoretically capable of reaching Hawaii do not work. Nor do manyother key componentsof the countrys arsenal. Last Friday, two days after Harriss warning, North Korea tried to launch a medium-range ballistic missile. It was not mounted with a nuclear warhead its unclear whether North Korea is actually capable of mounting a working nuclear bomb onto a working missile. The missileflew 22 miles, never leaving North Korean airspace, before exploding into harmless pieces. An earlier April test failed just after liftoff. North Koreaslast halfway successful test, in March, got four medium-range Scud missiles to the Sea of Japan, but no new capabilities were demonstrated, according to one expert analyst. A fourth test of a single Scud missile, in early April, spun out of control after going only a fraction of its range, according to an anonymous official quoted by Reuters.

North Koreas launch-failure rate has been extraordinary high since the Obama administration stepped up cyberwar efforts in 2014, the New York Times noted. Trump has dodged the question of whether a secret U.S. cyber campaign against North Korea might be responsible for the latest test failures, though he has claimed that Obama was outplayed in his dealings with Pyongyang.

Trumps attempts to stoke U.S. fears about North Koreas nuclear capabilities began during the transition, with this tweet:

Propaganda from the North Korean government is far more aggressive, promising the destruction of U.S. cities:

The North Koreans want to sell the world on the idea that theyre a serious threat. Not six months or six years from now, but today. The U.S. media has been eager to take this end-of-the-world meme one step further, drawing comparisons to the Cuban missile crisis and suggesting that the face-off between Trump and Kim has the world teetering on the brink of apocalypse. This terrifying narrativecertainly drives traffic:

But there is little evidence to suggest it is true.

This week, with the threat of war firmly established, Trump backed off. He even suggested that he might meet with Kim. I would be honored, he told Bloomberg on Monday. Im telling you under the right circumstances I would meet with him. We have breaking news.

War on Monday, peace on Tuesday, with the news cycle dominated by the presidents ever-shifting whims.

On Korea, Trumps manipulation of the media serves to conceal how little difference there is between his policy and the so-called failed policies of his predecessors. Underneath his tough talk, Trumps approachappears identical to Obamas use sanctions and diplomatic pressure to prod North Korea to the negotiating table, even as a covert cyber campaign undermines Pyongyangs capabilities. Theres been a lot of bluster and declarations, giving the appearance that we have a new sheriff in town, Prof. Richard Samuels, who directs MITs Center for International Studies, told me. In fact, it looks like the old policy of strategic patience may still be in place.

Weve been here before. Consider this statement: North Korean technicians are reportedly in the final stages of fueling a long-range ballistic missile that some experts estimate can deliver a deadly payload to the United States. This was the first sentence of a Washington Post op-ed written by William Perry and Ashton Carter, two former secretaries of defense. Their words echoed Trumps tweet: The final stages.

But thatop-ed was published more than 10years ago, in 2006. Perry and Carter were writing about a missile called the Taepodong. Today, North Korea experts are still speculating about the possibility that the Taepodong could be deployed in an emergency, although they caution that such a weapon would represent more of a political statement than an operational capability since it would suffer from significant problems. Compare that to what Perry and Carter wrote for popular consumption in 2006, and one might be persuaded that North Koreas nuclear program is running backward.

Of course, it is true that North Korea could kill hundreds of thousands of people in Tokyo and Seoul with short-range missiles and artillery. That has always been the case, going back decades. And another North Korean missile, the Musudan, was successfully tested last yearafter five consecutive failures. The Musudan flew 250 miles, but the sharp launch angle suggests the potential for greater range.Kims regime has successfully tested land-based nuclear bombs and has rapidly accelerated the rate of ballistic missile tests. Whether or not he could succeed in detonating a missile-mounted nuclear warhead over Japan or South Korea is unknown; the possibilityis too catastrophic to be ignored.

These facts arent enough for Trump. Having won the presidency as an America-first isolationist who denigrated U.S. alliances and misrepresented his own position on the Iraq War, the prospect of Seoul and Tokyo in flames was insufficient. He had to put Honolulu and Seattle into play as well.

Another example of symbiosis between Trumps vague warnings and the medias hair-trigger alarmism took place over the weekend, when CNN published this map, misrepresenting a possible future threat as a clear and present danger:

The New York Times was slightly more restrained. They used a dotted line and qualified the threat as potential.

Last week, I spoke with a congressional staff member who has drilled down into what we actually know about the KN-08 and a variant, the KN-14. Whats the timeline? said the staff member, who asked not to be identified when discussing intelligence matters. Thats the million-dollar question. Is it 2020? Is it earlier? Among the intelligence community, there are differing estimates. Some folks think its a question of months. Others say its a three- or four-year time frame. The big thing thats missing in the debate is that North Korea has never successfully tested an ICBM [long-range ballistic missile]. The question is what we can do to stop that from happening. A lot of folks dont think pre-emptive strikes are the way.

Its the intelligence communitys job to be pessimistic. The more that the CIA and NSA know about the KN-08, the KN-14, and other low-probability threats, the easier it will be for the U.S. to protect the Korean peninsula without going to war. But theres a difference between making hard-nosed threat assessments and inflating them to drum up the prestige of an insecure leader. Thats not the art of the deal. Thats the art of dictatorship.

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North Korea Wants to Convince the World It Can Nuke Hawaii. Donald Trump Is Happy to Oblige. - The Intercept