Category Archives: Donald Trump

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We all know the now-famous picture of Mitt Romney having dinner with then-president-elect Donald Trump in 2016. Trump was reportedly considering Romney for a spot in his new administration, but a new book says the dinner was set up by Trump to torture Romney.

Former Trump White House staffer Stephanie Grisham writes in her book Ill Take Your Questions Now about the story behind the dinner.

Raw Story reports the meeting was a power play by Trump to humiliate Romney.

Trump wanted all the press to see that Romney would come all the way to New York and sit down with a man he had called a con artist and a fake to sing for his supper, the book said. Donald Trump was many things, but even his critics had to admit that he was a master at TV spectacles. This was yet another, set to be one for the ages.

During the 2016 campaign, Romney delivered a speech at the University of Utah where he excoriated Trump as a charlatan.

Heres what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. Hes playing the American public for suckers, Romney said during the speech.

Trump wanted all the press to see that Romney would come all the way to New York and sit down with a man he had called a con artist and a fake to sing for his supper, the book said. Donald Trump was many things, but even his critics had to admit that he was a master at TV spectacles. This was yet another, set to be one for the ages.

Southwest Airlines canceled hundreds of flights over the weekend. The company blamed the disruption on weather and issues with air traffic controllers, but there are indications that the problems arose from protests against a vaccine mandate. [WaPo]

Merck is seeking FDA emergency use of its antiviral treatment for COVID-19. [CNN]

Soaring energy prices are raising concerns about inflation and the impact that may have on the economy. [WSJ]

How will President Joe Bidens restoration of two national monuments in Utah impact legal challenges to the Antiquities Act? [Tribune]

Former President Donald Trump came incredibly close to installing his daughter, Ivanka, as the head of the World Bank in 2019. Trump argued his daughter was very good at numbers. Then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin stepped in to block the appointment. [Intercept]

The Tribunes Robert Gehrke looks at the starkly different approaches to COVID-19 in Summit County and the Uintah Basin. They had wildly different results. [Tribune]

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops have not yet complied with a vaccine mandate as the deadline approaches. [WaPo]

Allen West, a former congressman who is running for governor of Texas, was hospitalized with COVID. West is unvaccinated. [WaPo]

A new report says a quarter of critical infrastructure in the U.S. could fail due to flooding. [CNN]

Supporters of Bears Ears celebrate President Bidens restoration of the national monument. [Tribune]

The Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to a trio of researchers from America to understand how the job market works. [WSJ]

Former President Trump paid tribute to Ashli Babbit, the capitol rioter killed during the January 6 attack. Trump sent a video message to a rally on Sunday for her birthday in which he called for an investigation into her death. [Insider]

William Shatner is headed to space on Jeff Bezos Blue Origin rocket on Wednesday. [The Verge]

In this weeks episode, Im joined by Rex Facer, chairman of Utahs independent redistricting commission.

We discuss the factors theyre considering as they come up with map proposals and the importance of public input to their process.

Listen to the conversation here.

Utah

Rural Utah wrestles with its future as apostles, tech executives and lawmakers weigh in. [Tribune]

Runners who fought near whiteout conditions during Utah ultramarathon had one choice: Keep moving. [Tribune]

In a historic neighborhood, Ogden faces an age-old battle: how to balance preservation with the need for denser housing. [Tribune]

Zions monster year means record rescues, trash, graffiti and, in nearby towns, revenue. [Tribune]

Lionsback Resort above Moab is under construction, after delays and litigation. [Tribune]

Whats being done to help human trafficking victims in Utah? This recovery center is seeking donations. [Tribune]

Dozens of Southwest Airlines flights to/from SLC canceled. [Fox 13]

First Afghan woman to openly protest Taliban now living in Utah. [Fox 13]

Politics

COVID-19

Andy Larsen: Explaining molnupiravir, a new COVID drug with surprisingly effective test results. [Tribune]

Drop in Utah COVID-19 cases stalls. What that means for hospitals. [Tribune]

Elementary school in Provo moves to remote learning following Test-to-Stay event. [KUTV]

Opinion

Whats wrong with Utah politics? Facebook whistleblower explains, George Pyle writes. [Tribune]

What should come after restoration of national monuments in Utah, from the Tribune Editorial Board. [Tribune]

Opinion: Bernie Sanders is wrong about Sens. Manchin and Sinema. [Deseret News]

Happy birthday to former Utah state Rep. Ben Ferry.

Belated birthday wishes to Rich McKeown, former chief of staff to former Gov. Mike Leavitt who celebrated on Sunday.

Got a birthday youd like us to recognize in this space? Send us an email.

Original post:

A new book says the 2017 dinner between Donald Trump and Mitt Romney was a power play by Trump to humiliate Romney - Salt Lake Tribune

Former President TrumpDonald TrumpFormer Trump cybersecurity official says GOP leaders have 'lost control' of voter base: 'This is a death spiral' Pence treads carefully with Trump Grisham thinks Trump will run in 2024 and have no 'guardrails' MORE recently declared he would beat Florida Gov. Ron DeSantisRon DeSantisThe Biden-Harris train wreck may have its savior: 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump The perfect Democratic running mate for DeSantis? Trump heads to Iowa as 2024 chatter grows MORE in a potential Republican primary match-up for the party's 2024 presidential nomination. And based on current polling, he's almost certainly right.

"If I faced him, I'd beat him like I would beat everyone else, Trump said of DeSantis in an interview with Yahoo Finance earlier this week.I don't think I will face him. ... I think most people would drop out. I think he would drop out.

A Trump 2024 run which looks increasingly likely would look a lot like 2016 from a media perspective. The former real estate mogul and star of the reality TV show "The Apprentice"would blot out the sun and dominate the media coverage. Most of said coverage would be profoundly negative, of course, with the usual comparisons of Trump to Hitler or (insert favorite totalitarian figure here) and enough file footage of the horrible Jan. 6 Capitol riot to fill an entire decade. (More on that later.)

With such a backdrop, the immediate questions (and probable answers) are:

Would DeSantis still run if Trump were to announcehis intention to take back the White House? (Probably not.)

Does Trump really want to be president while in his 80s? (Probably so.)

Against whomwould Trump or DeSantis (or both, on a combined ticket) run if President BidenJoe BidenMajority of Americans concerned about cyberattacks on critical groups: poll Labor secretary says 194K jobs added in September was 'not the best number' Biden task force has reunited 52 families separated under Trump: report MORE chose not to run again or was asked by his handlers not to run again? (Impossible to say.)

Despite Trump's media dominance and extremely loyal base, one could make the argument that DeSantis would have a better chance in a general election to beat President Biden, Vice President Harris or (insert favorite Democrat here) if he were the nominee. The governor, of course, would need the full blessing of Trump if the former president decided to sit this one out, complete with rallies on his behalf.

Why would DeSantis who is just 43 and has never run for national office be a better option if winning back the White House is the Republicans goal? Simply put, DeSantis doesnt have remotely as much political baggage. DeSantis, an Iraq War veteran, would make the choice for voters (particularlyfor independents) one largely basedon his positions on major issues versus those of Biden or Harris rather than a personality contest between two flawed candidates. That would be especially true regarding inflation, the economy, taxes, the southern border, foreign policy and Afghanistan.

In contrast, a personality contest is exactly what any race with Trump would become about the person himself and not so much the issues. In addition, Trumps propensity to continually relitigate the 2020 election (with declarations at every rally about it having been "stolen" from him, despite loss after loss in court and post-election vote audits not uncovering any victories in states such as Arizona or Georgia) would be a constant, pointless distraction.

On all the aforementioned issues, the Biden administration is failing badly in the eyes of most Americans. A recent Quinnipiac poll has Biden polling at 39 percent approval on the economy, 37 percent approval on taxes, 23 percent approval on border security and 28 percentapproval on Afghanistan.

Overall, just 32 percent of independents support the president, with his overall approval clocking in at 38 percent.But if Trump runs, the focus would be largely taken off Biden's dismal record.

Biden's handlers wisely would attempt to turn such a 2024 contest into a rerun of the 2020 race, making the choice a referendum on Trump instead of Biden, who arguably has had the worst first nine months in office imaginable.

Battleground state pollingreflects how poor Bidens performance has been. Hereare his approval-disapproval rankings in the 10 states that decide elections, per Civiqs polling: Arizona, 42-52; Florida, 40-54; Georgia, 39-53; Iowa, 35-59; Michigan, 42-54; Nevada, 43-49; North Carolina, 41-52; Ohio, 37-56; Pennsylvania, 42-51; Virginia, 42-51.

It's difficult to see how Biden turns those numbers upside down if he is the nominee. And ifplan B(meaning Harris) is activatedinstead, the numbers likely would look worse, considering that she's polling lower than Biden in almost every sampling. Throw in her awful 2020 campaign for the party nomination, which ended in 2019 before one vote was cast, and it's looking gloomy for the Blue Team in 2024.

Unless, of course, Trump enters the fray because there's no greater reverse motivator for the Democratic base and independents than the 45th president. It's easy to foresee a hold-your-nose election in which those who might otherwise vote against Biden or juststay home would, instead, turn out for Biden because they viewed another Trump presidency as infinitely worse.

And this perspective wouldn't be based on performance, of course. Leading up to the pandemic, the Trump era was highly successful, based on key metrics on which most presidencies are measured. The economy was strong; unemployment was at just 3.5 percent. The ISIS caliphate had been destroyed, the North Korea threat was diminished and the Middle East was relatively stable. The U.S. border was more secure.

Then COVID-19 came along, and the whole game changed.

Trump's handling of the pandemic, particularly from a messaging perspective, was profoundly horrid. He should have allowed the experts and his vice president, who headed the administrations coronavirus task force, to take the lead on messaging and press conferences. But a defensive Trump insisted on taking dozens upon dozens of questions every day from the podium, with some press conferences lasting more than two hours. And the more he spoke, the worse it got.

The vaccines that most of the media said were impossible to deliver in 2020 came shortly after the election, thanks to Operation Warp Speed. For that, Trump deserved enormous credit, but it was too little, too late, in terms of his reelection bid.

A 2024 Trump campaign would be all about Trump, which is the way he likes it. Yes, he'd hit on all the key issues, but he wouldn't be able to resist rambling about the 2020election being "stolen," which the press would make its main takeaway. Almost every media analysis would be about the man, the tone, the past, the impeachments but not his overall record or vision moving forward.

That wouldn't be the case with DeSantis. He still would receive the kind of negative press that Republicans John McCainJohn Sidney McCainThe Biden-Harris train wreck may have its savior: 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump Kelly raises million in third quarter Legislative limbo how low can they go? MORE, Mitt RomneyWillard (Mitt) Mitt RomneyDemocrat on controversial Schumer speech: Timing 'may not have been the best' The Biden-Harris train wreck may have its savior: 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump McConnell vows GOP won't help raise debt ceiling in December after Schumer 'tantrum' MORE and, especially, Trump received during their presidential campaigns. But the governor has shown that he knows how to engage in this battle; the most notable example of this was when he struck back hard against an obvious hit piece by "60 Minutes" regarding his vaccine distribution in Florida earlier this year:

'60 Minutes' faces backlash from Democrats and Publix for critical story on Florida's vaccine rollouthttps://t.co/0kpa3rJPdO

*Democratic* mayor of Palm Beach Dave Kerner, on 60 Mins DeSantis story:

"Our residents, like all Americans, are tired. And the media is making it worse. They are hellbent on dividing us for cheap views and clicks. 60 Minutes should be ashamed."https://t.co/oEbociUi2g

Trump versus Biden (or versus Harris or any other Democrat) would be another ratings bonanza, just like the 2016 and 2020 campaigns. The sound bites, drama and unnamed-source gossip dressed up as news stories would be an almost hourly occurrence. Another two-year political food fight, from the primaries to Election Day.

Largely forgotten would be potential solutions to a country divided and going decidedly in the wrong direction, according to most polling:

Americans are more pessimistic and divided two decades after 9/11, polls show (@mmurraypolitics NBC News) Details: https://t.co/1yZ0pTdOkz pic.twitter.com/5eTAvODo7H

Trump will likely run. He'll likely be the nominee. And there's a chance he'd win, albeit not by much if that were to occur.

But the easier path for Republicans would be to nominate a governor such as DeSantis, who would make his case by drawing a contrast between himself and Joe Biden rather than by drawing unflattering attention to himself.

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist for The Hill.

See the article here:

The Biden-Harris train wreck may have its savior: 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump | TheHill - The Hill

Exactly nine months ago today, as his failed presidential term neared its end, Donald Trump reflected on the insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol that he'd helped inspire a day earlier. "Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem," the Republican said on Jan. 7, describing the riot as a "heinous attack."

Reading from a prepared text, Trump added, "The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.... To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction: You do not represent our country, and to those who broke the law: You will pay."

Five days later, the then-president condemned the "mob [that] stormed the Capitol and trashed the halls of government." On the final full day of his term, again reading from a script, Trump added, "All Americans were horrified by the assault on our Capitol. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. It can never be tolerated."

At the time, the Republican apparently saw some political value in aligning himself with the American mainstream. Much of the nation, like much of the world, recoiled in response to insurrectionist violence, and Trump didn't see an upside to pushing back.

He's since abandoned the pretense. The former president issued this written statement yesterday:

"The Unselect Committee of partisan Democrats, and two very weak and pathetic RINOs, should come to the conclusion after spending many millions of dollars, that the real insurrection happened on November 3rd, the Presidential Election, not on January 6th which was a day of protesting the Fake Election results."

Trump pushed similar rhetoric on a conservative podcast a day earlier, insisting, "The insurrection took place on November 3rd. That was the insurrection: when they rigged the election. The big insurrection, the real insurrection."

The fact that Trump is lying is obvious. The election was not rigged; the Republican keeps pretending otherwise because his fragile ego can't tolerate being seen as a loser who was twice rejected by his own country's electorate.

What's less obvious is how dangerous lies like these are.

According to a former American president by all measures, the head of one of the nation's two major political parties it's time to rebrand the word "insurrection." It should no longer refer to violent anti-government uprisings; it should instead refer to election results Trump disapproves of.

There's a word for those who believe elections are crimes. They're called authoritarians.

Making matters slightly more serious, the former president's followers seem unfazed by Trump's increasingly radical antics. The Pew Research Center released the results of a new national poll yesterday, noting, "The share of Republicans who say Trump should continue to be a major national figure has grown 10 percentage points from 57% to 67% since a January survey that was conducted in the waning days of his administration and in the immediate wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol."

The former president has spent the year on a dangerous and undemocratic crusade. During that time, the public has gained a clearer understanding of many of the scandals and corrupt abuses that unfolded during his tenure.

And it's against this backdrop that a growing majority of Republican voters are saying they want Trump to be a major political figure for many years to come.

Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii told The New York Times this week, "American politics has gone crazy because one party has gone crazy." It's a quote that resonates for a reason.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

The rest is here:

Donald Trump identifies what he considers 'the real insurrection' - MSNBC

Resentment is someone else is doing better than me, revenge is I want to bring them down; we had resentment over the last 20-30 years, we did not have a desire for revenge, that desire came into being in 2016.

New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Credit:AP

He said the rise of squad leader Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reflected the Democratic Partys desire for revenge via woke politics, something he warns MPs against because of the long-term destruction it will cause to society.

Once you put it in your bloodstream you can never get it out, thats the danger populism on the right and wokeism on the left, and Im seeking here in Britain, to warn people of both, he said.

He defined woke as intolerance, cancel and the drive to punish people in the future for perceived mistakes of the past.

Thats the worst kind of politics because its all about definitions and you cant figure out a way to work together, he said.

He said countries need look no further than the US to see the damage it causes.

Frank Luntz, who has worked as a political consultant for decades, says Australias divisions over climate policy are fixable. Credit:Getty Images

We should be the shining light and instead were a shit show and Im a part of that shit show and I have been for the last 20 years.

He says the way to fix America could be out of reach.

Social media is what allows the polarisation to occur, he said.

If you fix social media, you fix America, but our culture wont allow it and perhaps its correct, he said, noting the fierce protection Americans have for the first amendment, which states Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.

But its poisoning our minds, its an acid, it genuinely is toxic, its dividing us, its killing our attention span, its killing our ability to reason and most importantly were being fed 24/7 what we already believe and thats the problem, he said.

In 2007, Kevin Rudd swept Labor to its last majority victory. Luntz had a ringside seat, working in Australia conducting focus groups for Sky News and News Corp.

Rudd was elected to deliver an emissions trading scheme, but the campaign waged against it by Tony Abbott, who reversed Coalition support for a carbon price, contributed to the downfall of four prime ministers, including Abbott, and the governments reluctance thus far to sign up to net-zero reduction targets ahead of the global climate negotiations next month.

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Abbott relied heavily on the work of Luntz to destroy political support for a carbon price; in 2001, Luntz advised George W. Bush to refer to global warming as climate change.

I was trying to say the science wasnt settled prove it, Luntz says. He says this is now his biggest regret.

Between 2007 and 2009 and by the time Tony Abbott toppled Malcolm Turnbull for the Liberal leadership and reversed the then oppositions support for an emissions trading scheme, the work that Luntz did with the Environmental Defence Fund had convinced him the science was settled.

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Instead of damning me for getting it wrong 21 years ago, recognise that I was willing to acknowledge my mistakes 12 years ago and the media doesnt do that even today, he said.

Bring me to Australia and let me tell your people about the journey. It is fixable and I know how to do it, he said.

Luntz, who has been conducting research for the Centre for Policy Studies on how to prevent the Americanisation of British politics, says his advice for politicians wanting to avoid Americas divisions is to take a zero-tolerance position towards any kind of ugliness, citing the throwing of rocks at Canadas recently re-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Because if you start to justify it, if you start to legitimise it, it will get out of control immediately, he said.

And on policy, he says its important for winners to give the losers a voice.

The winner gets to choose policy, but the loser needs to be heard, he said.

Id operate on an 85/15 mentality, which is the winner gets 85 per cent and the loser gets 15 per cent. Give them a voice and they wont want to cancel you, deny them a voice and theyll hate you forever.

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Donald Trump will never be president again, says renowned pollster Frank Luntz - Sydney Morning Herald

Trump critics have long claimed that if the former president had simply taken the money his father gave him, stuck it in the S&P 500 and watched the money appreciate over time, hed be far richer. But for years, those critics were wrong. In fact, Trump outperformed the market for much of his life, developing some great buildings, lucking out on a couple of other projects, and capitalizing on a knack for marketing.

But markets change, and so do fortunesespecially in times of upheaval. Since U.S. equities crashed in the early days of the pandemic, they have gone on a stunning run, largely thanks to the growth of big technology companies. Trumps fortune also plunged at the outset of the pandemic, but his real estate empire, concentrated in urban office buildings, hotels and storefronts, hasnt come roaring back. The result is that the oft-repeated, long-false claim that Trump would have been richer if hed just stuck his inheritance in the S&P 500 hasfinallyturned into truth. As of today, Trump would be an estimated $400 million richer if he had just put his fathers money in the index.

In order to fairly measure Trump against the S&P 500, you need to answer three questions: how much the former president received from his dad, when he received that money, and what he is worth now. Around 2016, several outlets tried to make the comparison without knowing those answers, leading to bad guesses that fueled years of inaccurate speculation. On Oct. 2, 2018, the New York Times clarified the picture, addressing the first two questions with a single line buried inside a 13,000-word expose on the tax returns of Fred Trump, Donalds dad. Here is what can be said with certainty, the article stated. Had [Donald] Trump done nothing but invest the money his father gave him in an index fund that tracks the Standard & Poors 500, he would be worth $1.96 billion today.

At the time, Forbes estimated that Trump was worth $3.1 billion. In other words, despite all of the speculation to the contrary, he had apparently outperformed the market index by about $1 billion, as of 2018. That accomplishment didnt get anywhere near as much coverage as the previous suggestions that Trump had underperformed the market.

Trump continued to stay comfortably ahead of the S&P 500 until last year, when Covid turned the world upside down. The stock market tanked, and Trump personally lost an estimated $1 billion in a matter of weeks. After the initial shock, the overall market began to recover, but Trumps fortune languished. With his hotels, storefronts and office buildings hollowed out, the S&P 500 started to catch up to Trump. Eventually, in early 2021, the market overtook the mogul for good.

By September, when Forbes locked in its estimates for its annual list Americas richest people, Trumps net worth stood at an estimated $2.5 billion, which, for the first time in 25 years, left him short of the cutoff for The Forbes 400. If Trump had instead lived a simple life and invested in the S&P 500 for decades, he would have been worth an estimated $3 billion, enough to rank No. 377. Instead, he had decided to go his own way, providing him with years as a high-stakes businessman, decades as a famous name and one term as the president of the United Statesbut eventually costing him hundreds of millions.

The future doesnt look much brighter for Trump, whose representatives did not respond to a request for comment. Right now, the former president should be sorting out how to pay back hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due over the next three years. But he seems to be spending much of his time on politics. Meanwhile, the man who would usually be helping him with his financial issues, longtime executive Allen Weisselberg, stands accused of 15 counts of financial crimes, including fraud, conspiracy and grand larceny. Weisselberg has pleaded not guilty. Last month, rumors surfaced that there may be more indictments coming.

Original post:

It's Official: Trump Would Be Richer If He Had Just Invested His Inheritance Into The S&P 500 - Forbes

Grishams book states that Trump made the decision to keep his visit under wraps because, she suspects, he didnt want to be the butt of the joke on late night television. The book also states her belief that he avoided anesthesia for the painful and invasive procedure because he didnt want Vice President Mike Pence to take over temporarily as commander-in-chief and loathed showing any kind of weakness.

Former White House aides say theyre surprised the detail never got out while Trump was president. After all, just about everything else eventually made its way into TV chyrons and newspaper headlines.

Instead, the moment became emblematic of another prominent feature of the Trump years: the president taking an otherwise normal event in 2018, more than 19 million colonoscopies were performed in the U.S. alone and turning it into something far larger and more controversial by his cryptic handling of it. In the process, it fed a destructive feedback loop: in which the White House operates in secrecy, the press gets motivated by it and the resulting speculation and reporting feeds a narrative of media irresponsibility.

Trump, a notorious germaphobe who is also obsessed with preserving an image of being in extremely top-notch health, went to immense lengths to hide word of his colonoscopy; so much so that few aides beyond Grisham, the presidents physician, and the chief of staffs office were even made aware at the time of just why he went to the hospital.

The initial line offered to explain his two-hour visit was that he was simply going in for a routine check up. Grisham herself told reporters he was taking advantage of a free weekend a half truth that would raise questions about her current account if not for the fact that others confirmed it.

Trump himself seemed particularly eager to get on the act of spinning his visit to the doc.

I went for a physical on Saturday. My wife said, Oh darling, thats wonderful. Because I had some extra time, he said during a Cabinet meeting shortly after the visit took place. But I went for a physical and I came back and my wife said, Oh darling are you OK? Whats wrong? Theyre reporting you may have had a heart attack. I said why did I have a heart attack? Because you went to Walter Reed, thats where we go when we get the physicals. I was only there for a very short period of time.

Trump explained to "Fox & Friends" the following Friday that White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, noticed a break in his schedule and asked if he would come out to Walter Reed for a portion of his physical.

I said, yeah, go ahead, lets go, Trump recalled. I start my physical. Go see soldiers. Go see families. Did a little tour of the building. Get back in. On the way back I'm hearing rumors I'm in the hospital. Then I'm hearing rumors that I had chest pains. Then I'm hearing rumors I had a massive heart attack at the time being. Then I'm hearing rumors I'm not coming back, I'm staying at Walter Reed overnight and maybe for a long time.

But Trumps incredulousness over the coverage of his Walter Reed visit did little to tamp down speculation about what actually had occurred. In fact, it had the opposite effect. The topic became a fascination for newsrooms. Inside the White House, aides also were searching around for answers.

The day of the trip itself had been relatively quiet, with the exception of a flurry of tweets from Trump on everything from Donald Trump Jr.s book to the stock market. Impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill had just taken place but, as was typical on most weekends, there were few staff members around the sleepy West Wing. Then, in the early afternoon, a press wrangler called on the pool to gather for a secret movement.

A reporter on pool duty later informed the public around 3 p.m. that the president had arrived at the hospital, about 30 minutes north in Bethesda, where they waited for almost two hours. No events were listed in advance on the White House schedule for the weekend, and the use of a motorcade on a clear day instead of a Marine One helicopter only added to speculation about Trumps health.

Was he going to the CIA building? One journalist in the pool that day remembered wondering. We didnt know where we were going, but of course we were trying to think of whether it could be some kind of urgent health issue. We speculated, I think some people wondered if it could be a heart-related issue but no one had any idea and everyone was trying to find out. We were all spitballing.

The president was spotted by a photographer leaving Walter Reed at 5:03 p.m., shirt open, no tie, and with the exception of a press vans flat tire, the evening ended unceremoniously. Shortly after 8 p.m., Trump was back on Twitter.

On Fox News that night, Grisham told host Jeannine Pirro that Trump was "as healthy as can be ... He's got more energy than anybody in the White House."

But many in the public were unconvinced. There were questions about why Trump wasnt wearing a tie, or whether he looked like he was walking normally, or why he was carrying an envelope (likely his collection of work papers and news clips).

The question is less what did they do Saturday afternoon. The more important question is why was it done? Dr. Jonathan Reiner, the former cardiologist to Vice President Dick Cheney, asked on CNN. It doesnt make a lot of sense to do that kind of testing at Walter Reed without provocation.

President Donald Trump pauses during an event on healthcare prices in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Friday, Nov. 15, 2019, in Washington, a day before his trip to Walter Reed Medical Center. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo) | Evan Vucci/AP Photo

The first inclination of what actually happened came in a book by New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt about a year after the mystery procedure. Schmidt noted that in the hours leading up to Trumps trip to the hospital, word went out in the West Wing for the vice president to be on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized.

Trump reacted as expected to Schmidts reporting, vociferously denying his visit had anything to do with him having mini-strokes, as suggested on Twitter. Soon after, he ordered Dr. Conley to publicly weigh in.

I can confirm that President Trump has not experienced nor been evaluated for a cerebrovascular accident (stroke), transient ischemic attack (mini stroke), or any acute cardiovascular emergencies, as have been incorrectly reported in the media, Conley wrote in an unusual statement circulated to the press.

And that was that. The Walter Reed trip remained an object of fascination and intrigue until Grisham came forward to finally provide some clarity.

Looking back now, one former Trump White House official said it was understandable the former president wouldnt want to reveal he was having a colonoscopy.

When youre President Trump and you believe youre going to get bad press no matter what, you can make everyone freak out [by keeping it secret] or you say youre going to have a colonoscopy and people are going to make jokes about it, youd prefer to have everyone in a tizzy rather than people have the image of him getting a colonoscopy, the official said.

But Grisham herself had a different perspective on the incident. In retrospect, she writes, it was like much else during the Trump years: a missed opportunity to be up front with the country and educate the public about an actually important issue, in this case the benefits of detecting disease.

I thought the American people had a right to know about the health of the president, and I still do. But I didnt push the matter too hard, Grisham wrote. I think the president was embarrassed by the procedure, even though President George W. Bush had had the same one done when he was in office and had been very transparent about it.

Original post:

The inside scope: How ego led Trump to hide a colonoscopy - POLITICO

Former President Trump told Fox News in an exclusive interview on Thursday that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell must be replaced among caucus leadership, after the 79-year-old Kentuckian led 10 other Senate Republicans in giving Democrats enough votes to break the filibuster on a debt ceiling increase.

On an ensuing party-line vote, Democrats passed a $480 billion debt ceiling increase which host Sean Hannity said will last until December giving the party time to potentially craft a procedure to successfully pass its multitrillion-dollar socioeconomic overhaul legislation dubbed "human infrastructure."

DEROY MURDOCK: MITCH MCCONNELL COLLAPSES BENEATH DEMOCRAT DEBT-LIMIT LIES

Trump, 75, told "Hannity" he knows the other 10 senators well and has mixed views on an individual basis with each.

In the past, Trump has railed against one of them, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, as "disloyal" and previously promised to support a primary challenger against her in 2022.

The other nine included Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota and Sens. Michael Rounds of South Dakota, Susan Collins of Maine, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Shelby of Alabama, John Cornyn of Texas, Rob Portman of Ohio, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.

"The Republican Senate needs new leadership," Trump said, adding that for a long time he has doubted McConnell's ability to lead his caucus, especially under such pressures.

"Mitch is not the guy, not the right guy, he's not doing the job," he said. "He gave [Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and his Democrats] a lifeline it's more than a lifeline, he gave them so much time to figure out what to do because they were in a big bind; they were unable to do anything."

"He had the weapon and he was able to use it. Its a shame," the Palm Beach Republican continued. "Thats not a good thing that happened today. He made a big mistake."

STATE DEPARTMENT BLAMES PRIVATE CHARTERS FOR SEVERAL INACCURATE AFGHAN REFUGEE FLIGHT MANIFESTS

The former president also addressed President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan, calling the ongoing situation "the single most embarrassing thing to happen to our country, maybe in its history."

He also voiced concern that Russia and China the latter of which borders Afghanistan will be able to, with the help of the Taliban, deconstruct and summarily reconstruct the billions of dollars worth of U.S. military equipment Biden left behind.

"It looked like a total surrender," he said.

Later in the interview, Hannity asked the former president about the continually intensifying border crisis, through which hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have egressed unimpeded into the United States across the Rio Grande.

Trump replied that for a government to be so weak in response to such a chaotic and illegal situation, some officials must not have the same patriotism as others.

"All they [had] to do was leave [the border] alone," he said. "The wall was almost complete [and] one thing you didnt see was drugs. Drugs were at their lowest point in particular fentanyl, which is a brutal drug. It was stopped, it was at a level we had not seen in a long time."

BRANDON JUDD ON DISTURBING IMAGES AT TEXAS BORDER: CARTELS EMBOLDENED BY DEFUND POLICE MOVEMENT

"Now its coming in at levels that we have never seen: three, four, five times more than we ever had coming in Theres something wrong," Trump continued. "You wouldnt believe you could even say this, but somebody doesnt love our country.

"When they allow this to happen to our country, we have hundreds of thousands of people pouring in every two weeks."

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Trump surmised that Central American nations, in particular, are "emptying their prisons into the United States" as the Biden administration refuses to vet many of the illegal alien migrants for criminal or terrorist ties.

"Some of the toughest people on earth are being dumped into the United States because they dont want them. They dont want to take care of them for the next 40 years. These people that are the roughest prisoners, anywhere, are being dumped into the United States for us to take care of them. What are they doing? They are destroying our country," he said.

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Donald Trump calls for McConnell's ouster after giving Dems debt 'lifeline': 'Mitch is not the guy' to lead - Fox News

Traffic in front of the Trump Park Avenue building in Manhattan. Frank Franklin II/AP Photo

Former President Donald Trump's real estate company is fighting the valuation of Trump Park Avenue.

The building's retail space has been overvalued compared with similar properties, the company said.

The assessed value of the building's commercial space increased by about 1% in 2021-2022 tax year.

Former President Donald Trump's real estate company is fighting the property tax assessment on its Trump Park Avenue retail space, saying in part that its valuation is too high compared with similar properties.

Trump's property at 502 Park Avenue has been assigned "excessive, unequal, erroneous, unlawful and illegal assessments," the company said in a six-page petition filed on Thursday in New York State Supreme Court.

The petition was first reported by Bloomberg News.

The assessed value of the building's commercial space increased about 1%, climbing $112,347, for the 2021-2022 tax year, according to New York tax records.

Its total market value was assessed for the year at $12,238,099, up from $12,125,752 the prior tax year, according to records.

But its market value had been higher in the 2019-2020 tax year, at $12,285,788, according to records. It had increased in both of the tax years prior to that.

The property's market value is "excessive" because the "assessed valuation exceeds the full value of the real property," or the "sum for which the said real property would sell under ordinary circumstances," said the filing, which included Eric Trump as petitioner.

Trumps' New York petition came a few weeks after Illinois officials lowered the taxes on the company's Chicago tower by about 30%, in part because the building's commercial space has had trouble finding tenants.

Trump's company reportedly holds more than $2 billion in real estate in major US cities, including a minority stake in a San Francisco office tower. Between 2016 and 2020, Trump's DC hotel lost more than $70 million, according to an audit released by a House committee on Friday.

Story continues

Trump's NY properties were reportedly being scrutinized earlier this year as part of an investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

The company's Park Avenue property is largely residential.

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Donald Trump fights valuation on Park Avenue retail space, saying the property is being overvalued when compared with similar buildings - Yahoo News

On the latest episode of his HBO show Real Time, Bill Maher laid out a scenario in which Donald Trump could return to the White House in 2024.

After reminding viewers that Trump unsuccessfully tried to convince the country that he won the 2020 election, Maher warned of the former president attempting a slow-moving coup, proclaiming that he believes Trump will get the Republican nomination in the next election.

And thats what hes been working on fixing ever since, Maher told the crowd, claiming that Trumps spent the past year figuring out how to pull off the coup he couldnt pull off last time.

Maher continued, Hes like a shark whos not gone but has quietly gone out to sea. But hes been eating people this whole time, methodically purging the Republican party of anyone who voted for his impeachment or doesnt he agree hes the rightful ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.

The HBO host then compared his hypothetical theory to Al Qaedas first, less successful, attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

The Ding Dongs, who sacked the Capitol last year? That was like when Al Qaeda tried to take down the World Trade Center the first time with a van, he explained. It was a joke. But the next time they came back with planes.

I hope I scared the shit out of you, Maher ended the segment. Watch the full clip up top.

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Bill Maher Warns of Donald Trump's 'Slow-Moving Coup' Ahead of 2024 Election - Yahoo Entertainment

Chris Polansky got out of his van at the Love's truck stop in Boise City, Oklahoma, to gas up. He'd been hiking and camping with his dog, Trout Fishing in America ("Trout, colloquially," Polansky said). Polansky and Trout found themselves in the most remote corner of the Oklahoma Panhandle, a place where literal tumbleweeds roll down Main Street past the headquarters of No Man's Land Beef Jerky.

Polansky heard a cop tell him to get back in the van. The officer had been following him without sirens or lights, and Polansky searched for his license. Polansky dutifully sported a facemask, even though Oklahoma's laissez-faire attitude towards masking often devolves into outright hostility.

As Polansky watched the officer in his cruiser, he noticed something strange: the cop put his driver's license in his lips as he wrote out a speeding ticket. The officer held Polansky's license in his mouth for almost the entire duration of the traffic stop. He was aghast. The pandemic had just torn through a nearby meatpacking plant, but then again, this was rural Oklahoma.

"Of course," Polansky thought to himself as the officer scribbled out a ticket.

One year after Polansky's ticket, Boise City and surrounding Cimarron County made news around the world. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a ride-or-die Republican, signed legislation dedicating one nearby stretch of road as the President Donald J. Trump Highway, starting this Nov. 1.

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For State Sen. Nathan Dahm, the Panhandle is the perfect location for the Trump Highway. "Calls from the Panhandle were some of the loudest," he told me in an email. "This was no surprise as Cimarron County had the highest percentage of votes for President Trump in Oklahoma and one of the highest in the nation. The woke left kicked and screamed and put up trigger warnings, but we're thrilled the new highway signs will soon be raised."

I half-expected parade preparations to be in full swing when I visited thissummer. Not so. Mike Patel, staffing the night desk at the Townsman Motel, had never heard of the Trump Highway, but had a grim take on his adopted hometown. "The kids here, they leave for college, and they don't come back," he said. Boise City has been losing population since 1970.

Braving a storm that brought both hail and tumbleweeds, I walked from the Townsman down Main Street to find Tangee Cayton, a counselor at Boise City High School, who was selling fireworks out of the shell of a brick building. Cayton, like many folks in town, shrugged off questions about the highway. "It could bring tourists," Cayton said. "But it could also bring haters."

Many of the folks coming in and out of the store neither knew nor cared about the Trump Highway. Locals wanted to talk about anything other than the former president: How Amazon Prime was killing local business, how this hail might knock out the GPS system on a tractor, whether the new Mexican place in town was any good.

This surprised me. Cimarron County could very well be the most conservative county in the entire nation. In a statistic that resembles an election return from Russia, Trump captured 92% of the vote here. Joe Biden got a total of 70 votes in the entire county. Boise City's High Plains conservatism makes for a colorful subject on cable television. CNN stopped in the Bluebonnet Cafe and reporter Gary Tuchman asked a packed restaurant to raise their hands if they thought it was a "good idea to take the vaccine," to which he received blank stares. "What if President Trump was very robust and said 'take the vaccine?'" Tuchman insisted.

A roomful of glares shot back at Tuchman, who then sat down and tried to press the issue with a group of men in hunter orange. "Trump's a liberal New Yorker," one said. "Why would we trust him?"

That comment touched on a streak of anti-urban bias that runs even deeper than Trumpism in this area of the country. Yes, you could shorthand it to libertarianism, but that implies a set of policy beliefs. What urban folks do not understand about a place like the Oklahoma Panhandle is that pessimism about social progress is rooted deeper than the prairie shortgrass.

There are historical reasons for this pessimism, as the Panhandle has seen its share of tragedy and farce. Those historical forces, however, have stemmed not from government intervention or liberal elites, but rather from a sort of wildcat capitalism that once brought the region to the brink of famine.

* * *

Boise City, which is closer to Denver than to the state capital in Oklahoma City, was founded in a swindle. In 1908, the Southwestern Immigration and Development Company published a brochure advertising 3,000 lots for sale in a town of paved roads, tree-lined streets and handsome buildings, supplied with water from an artesian well. The brochure claimed that "King Corn and King Cotton grow side by side, yielding in excess of forty-five bushels of corn and a bale of cotton per acre."

By the force of American knowhow and bootstrapping, this Great American Desert would, the developers claimed, become the latest stage of Manifest Destiny. Only 30 years later, this area became the epicenter for what the environmental historian Donald Wooster has called "one of the three worst ecological blunders in history."

Even before the coming of the Dust Bowl, however, there was trouble on the frontier. For starters, the folks at the Southwestern Immigration and Development Company did not have title to the thousands of lots they sold. Midwesterners who knew little of life in an arid land in the former Comanchera arrived to find they'd been scammed. There were no trees, no buildings, no paved roads and a dry riverbed. Contrary to the advertisement's claims about King Cotton growing next to King Corn, no cotton could be grown in the Panhandle. Despite it all, the settlers took up the difficult task of breaking the land, making the thin soil produce wheat.

The region's anti-government sentiments are rooted in the lawless origins of the place. The Oklahoma Panhandle had been ceded to the United States by Texas so that the Lone Star State could remain a slave state (the Missouri Compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery above 36.30 degrees north latitude). But the place was neither part of Kansas nor the Cherokee Nation. It was a place without a government, a Public Strip open to all sorts of bootleggers, swindlers, and outlaws.

Federal agents eventually arrested the leadership of the Southwestern Immigration and Development Company. Three men were charged with "grossly misrepresent[ing] the natural resources of Boise City and Cimarron County," and sent to the federal penitentiary in Fort Leavenworth, although they were later pardoned by President William Howard Taft.

After its dubious beginnings, a brief period of prosperity ensued. In the 1910s and 1920s, the Panhandle became a wheat producer during "the Great Plow-Up" of the Plains. World War I caused the price of American wheat to double, and the government proclaimed that the key to winning the war was to plant more wheat. Little did the government know that it was planting the seeds for the region's destruction.

On April 14, 1935, a darkness appeared on the horizon. Fluttering birds landed dead in yards. A "norther" picked up strength, turning dust particles into projectiles that felt like shards of glass on exposed skin. As cattle breathed in, their lungs filled with dust. At first, they lost their bearings and circled around, looking for water. Then they fell over, dead.

Swirling dust stripped cars of paint, felled trees and filled the intestines of livestock. Static turned people into electric livewires. Children died of dust pneumonia. By 1940, 43 percent of Cimarron County's residents had fled. The capitalistic urge to break the land and squeeze profits from wheat farms with little precipitation had destroyed the natural vegetation that kept the thin topsoil in place. Once a drought hit, northern winds turned cold fronts into black blizzards.

Survivors' stories are the thing of disaster movies. A child playing in the yard, lost in the blackness, wandered into a ditch and was suffocated by the dust. A woman whose car died in the static electricity of a dust storm pulled off the highway to seek help, only to become lost in dust so thick she could not see her hand in front of her face. In 1937, a reporter from Collier's toured the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles to find, "famine, violent death, private and public futility, insanity and lost generations."

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Today, the Dust Bowl is remembered as a terrible aberration that paired the dire economic conditions of the Depression with a rare drought. According to most environmental historians, however, it was a manmade ecological disaster that reflected an American desire to take risks, consume natural resources and ignore the advice of experts. An object lesson for our times of coronavirus and climate change if there ever was one.

I talked to a lot of Panhandlers about the Dust Bowl, and no one seemed to be drawing the same conclusions as the environmental historians who study it. Rather, people talked about the grit and resilience of their grandparents and great-grandparents, who stayed on while weak-kneed cowards fled to California. If there was a lesson to be learned about the Dust Bowl for them, it was this: Everyone lies, take what you can while you can and never, ever trust the government.

World War II brought one more indignity to Boise City. A B-17 Flying Fortress taking off from Texas mistook Boise City for a practice bombing range. The B-17 passed over the town several times, dropping a single bomb each time. Bombs nicked a Baptist church, crushed a garage and sent truckers fleeing out of town. A 1993 commemorative plaque proclaimed that, all those years later, the town was "still booming."

Almost every conversation about Boise City's precarious existence eventually turns, not to Trump's highway, but to the neighboring town of Guymon, which is growing at the fastest clip since the pre-Dust Bowl days. Guymon's revival began when Seaboard Foods built a pork processing plant there in 1996. (More recently, half the plant's workers contracted COVID.)

Tangee Cayton recalled teaching students of dozens of nationalities, from Ethiopian to Guatemalan, in Guymon's public schools. With a population of about 13,000, Guymon now has loft apartments and Latin-fusion restaurants; Boise City, with less than one-tenth that many residents, has No Man's Land Beef Jerky and Cimmy, a life-size Apatosaurus of rusted iron. Cimmy, along with the World War II bombing plaque, make for eccentric roadside Americana, but there's little hope for the long-term viability of the town.

Parker Furniture, across the street from Cayton's fireworks stand, has been in business since the Panhandle's halcyon days of the 1950s. Hank Hankla's family ran the store, and young Hankla drove all over the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles delivering furniture or laying carpet for the family business. Hankla remembers Boise City as an all-American town with four baseball teams and a Juilliard-trained music teacher. The postwar years were full of promise, but the perils of life on the High Plains were inescapable.

"We had dust storms into the 1950s," Hankla remembered. "That's the first time I saw a person in a face mask." Hankla recollected raising stakes on barbed-wire fences. If the tumbleweeds caught in the barbed-wire, dust piled up, burying houses. "You had to respect the dust," he said.

In fact, Guymon's resurgence worries many people in Boise City. Melissa McGaughy, a history teacher in the public schools, said there's a segment of the population that would rather watch the town die than become a multicultural, multilingual community. She'd seen it happen before. One Panhandle school district recently closed, and there's talk of another shutting down as well. With Oklahoma spending less per student and less on teacher pay than surrounding states, it's hard to see how the pattern of decline can be reversed.

Boise City has much to recommend it: cheap real estate, virtually zero crime and a population willing to drop off a pot roast on the porch if someone catches COVID-19, which Melissa McGaughy did, twice. The first time felt like the flu, but the second bout landed her in the hospital. The town pharmacist delivered drugs to McGaughy's door, and a stranger brought over a watermelon. McGaughy may not always see eye-to-eye with her neighbors, but she says many of them have been "wonderful" through the hard times. She also suspects that a lot more people have been vaccinated than Gary Tuchman's video at the cafe, or even state health data, might suggest. "We don't have a county health department, and that's caused lots of issues," she said.

None of those issues, safe to say, will be addressed by the coming of President Donald J. Trump Highway. "Boise City might be dying," McGaughy said, "but we're a couple good turns away from thriving. We need to start by accepting that things aren't what they used to be."

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Road to nowhere: Oklahoma's Donald J. Trump Highway runs through the Dust Bowl - Salon