Tag: Trump Administration

April 29 Is Judgement Day for Trump Administration

Buck Banks

100

President Trump “has far more than three years left in his first term. But inside his pressure-cooker of a White House, aides and advisers are sweating the next three weeks,” Politico reports. “The symbolic 100-day mark by which modern presidents are judged menaces for an image-obsessed chief executive whose opening sprint has been marred by legislative stumbles, legal setbacks, senior staff kneecapping one another, the resignation of his national security adviser and near-daily headlines and headaches about links to Russia. … The date, April 29, hangs over the West Wing like the sword of Damocles as the unofficial deadline to find their footing— or else.”

Trump Looking to Cut $6 Billion from HUD

Buck Banks

$6 billion

“The Trump administration has considered more than $6 billion in cuts at the Department of Housing and Urban Development,” according to preliminary budget documents obtained by the Washington Post. “The plan would squeeze public housing support and end most federally funded community development grants, which provide services such as meal assistance and cleaning up abandoned properties in low-income neighborhoods.”

Donald Has Hired Hundreds of Lackeys and Lobbyists

Buck Banks

20170308-beachhead-graphic-300x200ProPublica has obtained a list of more than 400 Trump administration hires, including dozens of lobbyists and some from far-right media. They include:

A Trump campaign aide who argues that Democrats committed “ethnic cleansing” in a plot to “liquidate” the white working class. A former reality show contestant whose study of societal collapse inspired him to invent a bow-and-arrow-cum-survivalist multi-tool. A pair of healthcare industry lobbyists. A lobbyist for defense contractors. An “evangelist” and lobbyist for Palantir, the Silicon Valley company with close ties to intelligence agencies. And a New Hampshire Trump supporter who has only recently graduated from high school.

And remember Donald’s pledge to “drain the swamp?”

The list is striking for how many former lobbyists it contains: We found at least 36, spanning industries from health insurance and pharmaceuticals to construction, energy and finance. Many of them lobbied in the same areas that are regulated by the agencies they have now joined.
That figure is almost certainly an undercount since we only included those who formally registered as lobbyists, a process increasingly avoided by many in Washington.

Read it here.

Americans Have Low Expectations for President Trump

Buck Banks

34%

Of Americans think President-elect Trump will be a good or very good president, and another 23% think he will be average; 36 percent think he will be a poor president, according to a new CBS News poll. Trump ends the election year with far lower expectations than his two most recent predecessors did. In December 2008, 63% of Americans thought Barack Obama would make a good for very good president, while just 7% expected a poor performance. Less than half thought George W. Bush would make a good president in December 2000, but just 14% expected him to be a poor president.

Donald Can’t Be Bothered with Security Briefings

Buck Banks

2

Number of classified intelligence briefings President-elect Donald Trump has received “since his surprise election victory earlier this month, a frequency that is notably lower — at least so far — than that of his predecessors,” the Washington Post reports. “A team of intelligence analysts has been prepared to deliver daily briefings on global developments and security threats to Trump in the two weeks since he won. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, by contrast, has set aside time for intelligence briefings almost every day since the election.”

Donald’s Team of Rivals, er, Racists

Buck Banks

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign bludgeoned modern norms about the acceptability of racism. The candidate proposed a religious test for immigrants, and called a federal judge unfit on the grounds of his heritage. Trump could have decided to put the racial demagoguery of the campaign behind him, and it could have been remembered as a divisive ploy to win that did not define his administration, like George Bush’s manipulation of white racial panic to defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988. But Trump, perhaps predictably, is making a different choice. His early staffing choices are redefining the boundaries of acceptable racial discourse in Republican politics.

— Jonathan Chait