Daily Archives: May 3, 2017

Donald J. Trump For President, Inc. Why Now?

On November 8, 2016, the American People delivered a historic victory and took our country back. This victory was the result of a Movement to put America first, to save the American economy, and to make America once again a shining city on the hill. But our Movement cannot stop now - we still have much work to do.

This is why our Campaign Committee, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., is still here.

We will provide a beacon for this historic Movement as our lights continue to shine brightly for you - the hardworking patriots who have paid the price for our freedom. While Washington flourished, our American jobs were shipped overseas, our families struggled, and our factories closed - that all ended on January 20, 2017.

This Campaign will be a voice for all Americans, in every city near and far, who support a more prosperous, safe and strong America. Thats why our Campaign cannot stop now - our Movement is just getting started.

Together, we will Make America Great Again!

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Make America Great Again! | Donald J Trump for President

Latest Articles

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

See the article here:

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

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

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

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

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

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, ...

Originally posted here:

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