Trump's America, March 2017: Using His Inside VOICE

6. ???
7. PROFIT!

Likeliness to pass is a pre-Trumpian question, fool. Only idiots take his proposals/orders/support for policies literally; they forget he is the master dealmaker who always begins negotiating at an extreme, trusting that the final position will be someplace else. This is the prism through which he sees the world.

So he puts out a budget eliminating (for example) life support for fluffy puppies who have cancer. All the usual suspects cry out, "Trump hates fluffy cute widdle puppies!" Whereas to him, it was never about the puppies, but about the rush of the art of the deal. After negotiation it turns out that he really only wanted to kill, say, 75% of the puppies. You fools took him literally when it was really just a starting negotiating position.

Ditto, ban all the muslims. Maybe it's only most of them. Let's talk, let's deal.

Ditto, eliminating the EPA, NEA, NEH, PBS, and pretty much any non-Defense government department. It's just a proposal! People will get in a room, see, and there will be a Deal Made. Maybe only half of those agencies are actually eliminated.

Ditto, the health care bill. He doesn't care about the details of the GOP proposal because to him, it's just a starting point for the awesomely winning dealmaking that is gonna happen. Believe me. It'll be beautiful.

Ugh. This mode of thinking is getting normal and it just makes me so ill.

yes yes but we gotta point out that, cuts to State notwithstanding, this is a REPUBLICAN budget. They've dreamed of cutting the arts and EPA for years, at least since Reagan.

that budget won't pass either chamber, and generally speaking president's budgets never do - Congress writes the bills.

it is v much a "starting point" though

I would love to leave some "trickle down" economics on Reagan's grave

So he puts out a budget eliminating (for example) life support for fluffy puppies who have cancer. All the usual suspects cry out

this is just normal politicking and law-making stuff though.

so the new health bill passed committee this morning by a narrow margin of 19-17, 3 GOP defections

so no surprises there

altho damn that is close

yeah I mean - they had an 8 member deficit (22-14) and came that close. can't imagine this thing will do well in either branch of Congress without significant revision

i also wonder how many Republican members that didn't defect are going to do the old trick of "vote yes to get it through committee, then vote no during Congressional vote"

Lord Alfred is right: Republicans have always wanted to kill arts funding. Yet they haven't, completely, despite plenty of periods of full control. And Dr. C is right that it is normal to have proposals that people howl about, and it all gets worked out somehow.

Is it just the level of "OMG CAN HE DO THAT?!?!?!" shock that is new?

Maybe because the answer has been Yes a bit too often lately?

Front page of FT today has a graph showing uninsured Americans since '87 and then projections into 2025 under Obamacare and Whocares, and the ultimate projection of the latter is actually higher than the number just before ACA went into effect.

About that budget:

https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/842381184877359104

Senior aide to Hill GOP leadership on Trump/budget: 'its a joke...we've learned not to listen to anything he says or does. We're on our own'

pobrecito

Even if it's totally Congress's job to set the budget, we still get to blame the President for everything that happens or doesn't happen, right? Just going based on the last 8 years.

Also apparently he's going to try and do a rally once every two weeks. Which if it results in half-empty arenas time and again would be entertaining in this sense:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ6JxAgmxXg

Last 230 years IIRC

Of all the batshit things about Trump, the endless rallies are some of the batshittiest.

the amount of free time he appears to have is incredible

it's getting pretty strange b/c nearly all his policy ideas are idiotic or in the process of failing, so what exactly is he gonna campaign on? if it's 2018 and there's no replacement of Obamacare, no Muslim shutdown, and no border wall, are people gonna keep hooting and hollering for him? it's so fucking weird for the President of the United States to be doing this.

hooting and hollering is his main appeal fwiw

like, literally

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJeugIJFXas

Well, there's always locking up the former president and his former campaign opponent. That's something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KILVCs_bhY

https://twitter.com/maggienyt/status/842378765334396929

Apparently he's going to do these every couple of weeks. That bubble he's keen to escape is just "a work environment where a small fraction of the people you encounter judge you on your merits and accomplishments"

amazing how the comments and the content of that video are essentially identical

so what exactly is he gonna campaign on?

the dem fear is that he'll do a big infrastructure bill and run on having created a bunch of jobs

the more he yaps literally the less effective he is, so keep it up loser

xp

the dem fear is that he'll do a big infrastructure bill

this won't happen

mostly cuz it's abundantly clear he can't write a bill at this point. and if you think GOP congress is gonna come up w some awesome infrastructure bill on its own I have a bridge to sell you

(bridge financed entirely by tax breaks for developers btw)

They did a hilarious run down of how limited even a number like $1 trillion is when it comes to "infrastructure." Like, each stop of the NYC subway essentially costs $1 billion. Rebuilding half of the nation's airports would cost $1 trillion. Etc. But of course, Trump wants to fix and rebuild everything. "Everything" being this fallback when he knows nothing.

On NPR this morning.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7DDQVvWsAAh9Jq.jpg:large

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/16/politics/paul-ryan-wiretap-response/index.html

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday that "no such wiretap existed," citing intelligence reports to House leaders after President Donald Trump accused then-President Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower last year.
"The intelligence committees, in their continuing, widening, ongoing investigations of all things Russia, got to the bottom -- at least so far with respect to our intelligence community -- that no such wiretap existed," Ryan said in response to a question from CNN at a news conference.

Investigate Paul Ryan! Lyin' Ryan!

"The Speaker of the House -- I like to call him the Weaker of the House, Lyin' Ryan . . ."

we could have rebuilt our country TWICE! maybe even THREE TIMES! if only they'd read ART OF THE DEAL! which I WROTE!!!

we're a bit shy of two months in and it's pretty clear that Trump is ineffective as president of his immediate aides, let alone president of the country. The GOP congress has already splintered into factionalism, and Nancy Pelosi aside the Dems are actually making a go of staying on message throughout. Trump's executive actions are already unpopular and losing in court. I worry that somehow continuing resolutions won't get passed, or the won't get signed, down the road, or the administrative state really will be hollowed out in a fell swoop that causes massive disruption to peoples' health and safety. But Trump has had one half of a positive news cycle this whole time, when the Beltway pundit class decided he seemed very "presidential" exploiting the grief of a military widow.

what does mark levin say about this? mark levin should check in on this so that trump can know how to respond

xpost

Not wrong:

https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/842404796137127936

I wonder which reporter writes the "inside" story of how Ivanka/Jared saved arts funding or free milk for babies or umbrellas for widows?

Separately from Haberman:

Trump visibly frustrated last night over travel ban rejection in Hawaii, staff had assured him this one would hold up....SESSIONS, with whom Trump was aggravated for the Russian ambassador/hearing answer, got some of the blowback, per ppl briefed.

Guess another weekend as the greeter at Mar-a-Lago is on the cards.

Meanwhile given Thrush's point, Costa's saying this:

https://twitter.com/costareports/status/842216688674328576

The ascent of Dina Powell in the Trump WH is a reflection of Ivanka Trump's rising influence on matters foreign and domestic....Ivanka, Jared, Gary Cohn, Dina Powell--this is the bloc of Goldman-New York-aligned allies to watch.

All so much old school Kremlinology/tea leaf reading but even so. (I've been thinking all along that if/when it comes to it and it's Kushner vs Bannon, the latter is out.)

really hope this wild goose gets killed

Perhaps most revealing of all are the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee — charged with investigating these matters — who recently told BuzzFeed how petrified they are of what the Democratic base will do if they do not find evidence of collusion, as they now suspect will likely be the case. “There’s a tangible frustration over what one official called ‘wildly inflated’ expectations surrounding the panel’s fledgling investigation,” BuzzFeed’s Ali Watkins wrote.

Moreover, “several committee sources grudgingly say, it feels as though the investigation will be seen as a sham if the Senate doesn’t find a silver bullet connecting Trump and Russian intelligence operatives.” One member told Watkins: “I don’t think the conclusions are going to meet people’s expectations.”

What makes all of this most significant is that officials like Clapper and Morell are trained disinformation agents; Clapper in particular has proven he will lie to advance his interests. Yet even with all the incentive to do so, they are refusing to claim there is evidence of such collusion; in fact, they are expressly urging people to stop thinking it exists. As even the law recognizes, statements that otherwise lack credibility become more believable when they are ones made “against interest.”

https://theintercept.com/2017/03/16/key-democratic-officials-now-warning-base-not-to-expect-evidence-of-trumprussia-collusion/

sigh.

Greenberg went back last month to conduct four focus groups with 35 non-college educated whites who voted for both Trump and Obama.
There was no buyer’s remorse. Despite the drama of the opening weeks, not one of the participants regretted voting for the president. They described Trump as sincere, complained about unfair media coverage and criticized protesters for not giving him a chance to do good things. They love that he remains politically incorrect. They remain confident that he is a strong leader who will shake up Washington, secure the border and bring back manufacturing jobs. Their faith is strong. Their doubts are sparse.
At the same time, no one in the focus groups trusted congressional Republicans to do the right thing, particularly on the economy and health care.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/03/15/daily-202-reagan-democrats-give-trump-a-long-leash-but-deeply-distrust-gop/58c8f664e9b69b1406c75d69/?utm_term=.46180d406e0a

There is no way to disappoint a racist.

You can't be racist if you voted for Obama!! Racists really hate black people!!

xxpost yeah, I'd have guessed that what looks to us like fucking up and failing looks to his base like trying to fulfill his campaign promises and being thwarted by his enemies