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White House Senior Advisers Steve Bannon, left, and Jared Kushner, right, listen as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting. (AP Photo / Andrew Harnik)

Donald J. Trump is preparing his endgame. Besieged in every directionby Robert Muellers multi-pronged special-counsel inquiry, by the FBI and the Department of Justice, by several congressional committees, and by a steady drumbeat of leaksthe White House is building an Alamo-like fortress to protect the president. In the battles ahead, Trump is relying on his innermost core of loyalists: his two sons, his daughter, his son-in-law, his lawyers, and a select group of White House staffers and former campaign advisers whove passed muster by pledging ultimate fealty to the commander in chief.

Everyone else is either being thrown overboard or getting the runaround, and many who were once considered Trumps closest allies are now seen as likely to resign. These include Attorney General Jeff Sessions, under relentless attack from the president, and Reince Priebus, the out-of-favor White House chief of staff. An obsequious GOP organization man, Priebus lost a key ally last week with the ouster of Sean Spicer, a former aide and spokesman for the RNC, who served just six rocky months as White House press secretary. Following Spicers exit, another White House communications staffer, Michael Short, was forced out. And there will be more to come.

Im going to fire everybody, said Anthony Scaramucci, the Wall Street tycoon and political neophyte whose appointment as White House communications director prompted Spicer to quit and who is now rumored to be in the running to take over as White House chief of staff, replacing Priebus. If Ive got to get the thing down to me and Sarah Huckabee, then the leaking will stop, he said.

A strong indication that Trump and Scaramucci are getting ready to lower the boom on Priebus came with Scaramuccis overt warning, issued on Wednesday. If Reince wants to explain that hes not a leaker, let him do that, he said. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that Trump is engaged in detailed talks about ousting Sessions, despite vociferous objections from Sessionss GOP allies and Breitbart News.

At least one member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is worried that Trumps attack on Sessions could intimidate others in the administration, including top intelligence officials such as Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA director Mike Pompeo, and incoming FBI director Christopher Wray. Watching the president slap the attorney general around has a pretty chilling effect on people who want to keep their job, Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) told The Nation. The conduct by the president is reprehensible, and his intent on thwarting the investigation is alarming and very challenging, from a constitutional perspective. The scary part of this is that there arent more people objecting.

The circling of wagons follows the devastating revelation that three Trump insidersDon Jr., Jared Kushner, and then-campaign manager Paul Manafortheld a secret tte--tte in June 2016 with several Russians who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. All three participants were summoned to Congress this week following that report, which was confirmed by Trump Jr. himself and seen by many as a smoking gun. Kushner was hauled in front of both the House and Senate intelligence committees, and Manafort and Don Jr. were the subject of an inquiry by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A pair of outside advisers and ber-loyal followers of Trump, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, seem to be playing key roles in whats likely to be a no-holds-barred defense of Trump. Back in May, the White House mulled the idea of creating a war room dedicated to an all-out defense of Trump amid charges of pre-election collusion with Russia and a swirling number of conflict-of-interest and malfeasance charges against Trump aides and allies. Their mission: Respond, rebut and refute bad press and legal issues emanating from the special counsel probe led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller into Russian influence on the 2016 election, reported Fox News.

Tapped to lead the effort was Steve Bannon, the ultra-nationalist former Breitbart executive and leader of the alt-right wing of the White House staff. Steve Bannon is not a lawyer, but the chief White House strategist is poised to become the senior partner in a heavyweight firm of bareknuckle barristers at the center of President Trumps counter-offensive against Russia collusion claims, added Fox. Axios, reporting on the war-room plans, quoted a White House insiderpossibly Bannon himselfsaying, Were getting the street fighters ready to go. According to CNN, Lewandowski and Bossie would be among those street fighters: The internal White House war room may be aided by an outside rapid response operation, staffed by Trump loyalists who have remained outside the administration. Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and ex-top campaign official David Bossie have been mentioned repeatedly in those conversations.

Though the war-room plans were temporarily put on hold, it appears that they are being revved up now. When Trump traveled this week to Youngstown, Ohio, for a fire-breathing campaign rally, he took both Lewandowski and Bossie along for the ride, along with Sebastian Gorka, a key Bannon aide and former Breitbart national-security editor. Politico reported that the pair have been spending more time in the White House in recent weeks. And, according to CNN, last week Bannon dispatched both Bossie and Lewandowski to Capitol Hill to plunge into the last-ditch Senate effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And Gorka, a Hungarian Islamophobe with ties to the countrys far right, has emerged as Trumps go-to television and radio defender. Did you see Gorka? Trump said recently after one of Gorkas pugnacious TV appearances So great, I mean, really truly great!

Russiagate may be nearing an endgame, especially if Mueller starts to unravel Trumps finances. The people Trump wants in the trenches with him are not the opportunists who climbed aboard the bandwagon after it rolled to victory, but the few who were there with him when it all began. His tiny circle of trusted intimates starts and ends with his family and a few hardcore loyalists such as Bannon, Gorka, Bossie, Lewandowski, and Scaramucci.

In a now-famous interview with The New York Times, Trump delivered stinging remarks about three top Department of Justice officials, a clear sign that he considers their role as law-enforcement officials either questionable or illegitimate. He delivered a blistering rebuke of Sessions (extremely unfair. I would have picked somebody else). He ridiculed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller inquiry (Who is he? What the hell is this all about?). And he warned Mueller himself that the special counsel ought to steer clear of Trump and his familys murky financial history, including real-estate deals related to Russian investors and contacts with Russian banks.

His statements amounted to a declaration of war against the Department of Justice, on top of his ongoing war against the media and his utter refusal to accept the judgment of the US intelligence communityincluding the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the FBIthat Russias GRU intelligence agency and President Putin himself ordered the hack-and-leak attack in 2016 and coordinated an information war against the American electoral system using social media, bots, and trolls to spread fake news.

But what are Trumps options, other than tweeting furiously and building a White House war room? Most immediately, it appears that his first goal is to oust Sessions, though that is a high-risk move. With a steady stream of tweets and public remarks (our beleaguered attorney general, very WEAK position on crimes by Hillary Clinton). Of course, the president could fire the attorney general outright, as he did FBI director Jim Comey in May, but Scaramucci, Bannon, and other top White House officials have undoubtedly learned the lesson of the Comey firing, which led to harmful leaks, an exquisitely damaging Comey appearance at a congressional hearing, and the appointment of Mueller as special counsel. As with the Comey firing, an aggressive Sessions ouster could contribute to obstruction-of-justice charges against the president, something that Mueller is already looking into.

And then what? If Sessions quits, Trump has suggested a tough successor, with Rudy Giuliani a leading candidate according to various reports. But getting an attorney general ratified by a hostile Senate Judiciary Committeethe same committee seeking testimony from Don Jr. and Manafort this weekwont be easy. Its been suggested that Trump could make a recess appointment, which The Washington Post reported is being actively discussed in the White House. Such an appointment wouldnt need Senate confirmation, which would allow Sessionss replacement to serve until 2019, though that would be an explosively controversial move. Giuliani, Ted Cruz, or Chris Christie might decide to fire Mueller if appointed as attorney general, but that could also trigger impeachment hearings.

But what are Trumps options, other than tweeting furiously and building a White House war room?

Even if Sessions stays on, Trump could order Rosenstein to get rid of Mueller, but that would have the same earthshaking consequences. And, as with the Watergate-era Saturday Night Massacre, it could lead to a cascading series of resignations of DOJ officials who refuse to carry out Trumps order to fire Mueller.

Trump also has the power of the presidential pardon in his back pocket, which could protect current and former officials, as well as family members. But that course has a severe downside too. By pardoning witnesses and potential witnesses in the Russiagate inquiry, Trump adds to the long list of actions that could be construed as obstruction of justice. Once pardoned, those individuals would no longer be able to use the Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination, so theyd have to testify about what they know. But if any of the folks under Muellers microscope are thinking about flipping, or getting immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony against higher-ups, the possibility of a pardon might keep them from doing so.

In the end, neither Mueller nor the House and Senate committees will be intimidated by Trumps bluster. The presidents expectation is that [our investigation] is going to be wrapped up in the next three weeks, Representative Speier told The Nation. It wont be wrapped up in the next three months, in my view. There are a lot of witnesses that have yet to be called, including the most significant witnesses. Among them, she says, are the people that appear to have the potential relationships with Russia.

On Tuesday, the House intelligence committee heard testimony from Jared Kushner concerning the June 2016 meeting with the Russian go-betweens. The hearing went on for probably a hour longer than it was scheduled to, and he was happy to answer all the questions that the members had. He offered to come back, which is going to important in his case, because we have not seen his SF-86 [security clearance form] yet or his financial disclosure statement, says Speier. He wasnt defensive or aggressive. But he didnt recall a lot of things.

And what did Kushner say? I have to be careful here, because it was in closed session, she says. But its safe to say that what he was inclined to say is that hes new to politics. He has used the line that hes a business guy, and that politics is very new to him. But its very early in the process, and we do not have the benefit of documents. The majority was really pushing to have him testify, and I think the intention was to move it before we had access to the documents.

Stay tuned. If youre Donald Trump, you can fortify your Alamo. Of course, Trump doesnt know much history, so someone should tell him that at the battle of the Alamo, the Mexicans won.

Originally posted here:
Donald Trump's Inner Circle Is Quickly Evaporating - The Nation.

WASHINGTON On July 27, 2016, Donald J. Trump stood behind a lectern in a Miami suburb and asked the Russian government to intervene in the 2016 election.

Russia, if youre listening, I hope youre able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, Trump told a crowded press conference, referring to messages his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, kept on a private server and deleted. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.

Twelve months later, top U.S. intelligence officials have said Russian state-backed entities did something similar to what Trump asked for: They hacked and released internal Democratic Party emails to embarrass Clinton and aid Trump. The leaked materials dominated media coverage for weeks, notably in the lead-up to Election Day itself.

Whats unclear and currently under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and three congressional committees is whether Trump and his campaign were involved in that foreign interference effort.

Trump himself says the remark last year was sarcastic, and there is no proof yet of criminal collusion. But a pile of evidence thats drawn attention since he made the comment shows a pattern of open cooperation. And the latest big story about Trump-Russia contacts regarding a June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr., other campaign aides and a well-connected Russian lawyer proves there was a willingness in the Trump camp to accept Russian help even before Trumps statement.

In March testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, former FBI agent Clint Watts explained that the Trump team and Moscow-linked media, including the site Wikileaks, spent months amplifying each others sharing of false information and conspiracy theories, helping the Kremlin get more bang for its buck.

Part of the reason active measures [by Russia] have worked in this U.S. election is because the commander-in-chief has used Russian active measures at times against his opponents, Watts said. He described Trumps Oct. 11 promotion of a fake news report published on Russias Sputnik News, and how former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort pushed a different false story that Watts traced back to Russian sources.

He denies the intel from the United States. He claims that the election could be rigged, Watts said. They parrot the same lines.

The Russian social media influence campaign also spent time trying to boost disaffection among supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), targeting a constituency Trump repeatedly reached out to,Watts noted.

A few days after that hearing, the popular blog Lawfare shared a similar assessment in a post titled Of Course Theres Evidence Trump Colluded With Russian Intelligence. They provided an appendix listing the many, many times candidate Trump praised the leaks and denied growing U.S. intelligence suggesting Russia was behind them something he has continued to do as president.

And in May, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, issued a reminder that theres more than enough smoke to suggest a fire.

What we do not have right now is conclusive proof that President Trumps team colluded with the Russian government. But a lack of conclusive proof is not the same thing as a lack of evidence, and we should not confuse the two, Smith said in a press release. There is sufficient evidence to justify the appointment of a special prosecutor, there is enough evidence for Congress to continue investigating, and there is enough evidence that the American people should be deeply concerned about the Presidents dealings with Russia. We do the truth a disservice when we blur those two questions, and it is important that we make every effort to keep this distinction clear.

Smith noted the case of Manafort, who ran Trumps presidential campaign until the New York Times revealed in August of last year that Ukrainian investigators believed he had received $12.7 million in undisclosed payments from a pro-Russian political party. (The Times has since shown that Manafort was in debt to pro-Russian interests just before he began working for Trump, and Manafort has spoken with Senate investigators about his role in the meeting with the Trump son.)

Smith also mentioned Carter Page, a Trump foreign policy adviser who flew to Moscow last July to deliver a speech slamming the U.S.approach to the world and promoting Russias foreign policy. In 2016, a Foreign Intelligence Service Court judge determined that the FBI was probably correct in considering Page a Russian agent. And he cited Roger Stone, who was a Trump adviser for decades and loud promoter of the materials taken from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Smith also noted the multiple undisclosed meetings between Trump officials like Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Its also become clearer over time how desperate Trump is to quash the Russia investigation. To that end, he has already fired FBI director James Comey, threatened Mueller and Sessions despite support for them within the GOP, and repeatedly attempted to switch the focus back to Clintons alleged wrongdoing.

Its striking that all this is often still forgotten in coverage and conversations of the affair. In discussing Trumps links with Russian media election efforts, Lawfares writers attempted to explain why this is the case. We have collectively discounted this cooperation for two related, and quite perverse, reasons: It was overt and public and it was legal, they wrote. The consequence has been that we largely ignore it in discussing the matter.

Contributing to the confusion is the public fascination with uncovering something secret, the real desperation to find that one damning clue that will explain it all, and the difficulty reporters and the public have in realizing that the traditionally hawkish GOP could now share interests with Moscow.

But the current tendency to forget Trumps public call on Russia to hack his opponent is a worrying sign. Russian interference is far from over, and Moscow does its best to make its efforts public to take advantage of the way open liberal democracies work, and avoid clear incrimination of Russia or its partners, experts on Kremlin strategy argue. Unless Americans gain a better understanding of how this kind of influence works, theres little reason to believe it will end, no matter how the Trump-Russia case concludes.

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Donald Trump Asked For Russian Help In The Election 1 Year Ago Today - HuffPost

President Donald Trump speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House on Wednesday in Washington.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

In a fusillade of Twitter posts this week, President Donald Trump blasted his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for failing to pursue probes of Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey. It is unclear whether the presidents posts will spur his attorney general and the Justice Department to pursue investigations into either individual. It is increasingly clear, though, that Trump has no compunction about using the machinery of federal law enforcement as a weapon against his political opponents. What he probably doesnt realize is that he is committing a crime by doing so.

There are 120,000 full-time federal law enforcement officers in the United States, all of whom reportat least indirectlyto the president. Meanwhile, thefederal criminal code runs to 868 pages, with many crimes defined vaguely and many rarely enforced. If the president wants to use the vast investigative and prosecutorial infrastructure at his disposal to go after his rivals, its likely that federal law enforcement officers will be able to findsome provision that his opponents have violated. Even if not, the president could make his opponents lives miserable with ceaseless probes and baseless charges.

But the very breadth of federal law enforcement power has, at least since Richard Nixon abused it, given rise to a strong norm of independence from political control. While the president is the nominal head of the executive branch and can order the Justice Department to follow his priorities, he must not use his authority to criminalize political opposition or harass his opponents.

A now mostly forgotten political scandal from George W. Bushs second term shows what can happen when an administration tries to transform the Justice Department into a political weapon. To put that scandal in context: Each of the federal judicial districts has a U.S. attorney who serves as its chief federal prosecutor. The president can fire any one of them at any time. In 2006, Bush dismissed nine, includingmost controversiallythe U.S. attorney in New Mexico, David Iglesias.

Iglesias says he was fired after a number of Republican officials in the state pressured him to bring corruption charges against a prominent Democratic politician in therun-up to the 2006 midterm election. That would potentially violate obstruction of justice laws, which make it a crime for anyone to corruptly influence a grand jury investigation oragency proceeding (among other matters). A subsequent Justice Departmentreport recommended the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate whether Bush administration officials had broken the obstruction laws in the course of the Iglesias firing. The report stated: [W]e believe that pressuring a prosecutor to indict a case more quickly to affect the outcome of an upcoming election could be a corrupt attempt to influence the prosecution in violation of the obstruction of justice statute. The report added that the obstruction laws didnt just apply to the indictment of an opponent prior to an electionthey could apply to pressuring a prosecutor to take partisan considerations into account under other circumstances as well.

A special prosecutor was ultimately appointed to investigate the Iglesias firing and eventually concluded that there was insufficient evidence that any Bush administration official had pressured the New Mexico U.S. attorney. But all along, the Justice Department proceeded on the assumption that administration officials could be charged with obstruction if they had sought to influence Iglesias investigation for partisan purposes. In that case, there was no smoking gun: no tweets in which the president intimated that he would fire the prosecutor unless the prosecutor brought charges against the presidents political rival. (Twitter was only a fewmonths old then, and Bush wasnot a user.)

Is Trump pressuring Sessions to pursue cases on the basis of partisan considerations? Seems like it.

Today, by contrast, the gun smokes in 140-character plumes. In one of his posts, Trump asked why his beleaguered attorney general wasnt looking into Clintons crimes and Russia relations. In others, he complained of Comeys illegal leaks of memos to the New York Times and berates Sessions for taking a VERY WEAK position on leaks and on Clintons alleged mishandling of classified material. In yet another, he blasted Sessions for failing to replace the acting FBI director with someone who will go after Clinton with vigor. On Wednesday, theWashington Post published a piece sourced to four people familiar with the issue indicating that Trump may fire Sessionsa leak that may be aimed at Sessions himself.

Is Trump pressuring his attorney general and the acting FBI chief to pursue cases on the basis of partisan considerationsthe sort of conduct the Justice Department said could amount to criminal obstruction? Seems like it. If Trump follows up by replacing Sessions, the parallels to the Iglesias firing will be even stronger, except that this time there will be ample evidence of the presidents motive.

Join Dahlia Lithwick and her stable of standout guests for a discussion about the high court and the countrys most important cases.

To be sure, Trumpas presidenthas a constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, and he might argue that this is what motivates his interest in the Clinton and Comey cases. But if a jury could be convinced that Trumps motives are political rather than in the public interest, then his advocacy for action against Clinton and Comey could be considered corrupt, thus amounting to criminal obstruction. That, at least, appears to be the implication of the Justice Department report regarding the Iglesias episode, and it is consistent with the way the obstruction laws have been interpreted in other contexts.

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Certainly Mueller is already collecting all the necessary documentation on this particular crime, right? At this pace, Mueller is going to have to leave some felonies out of his final report just for the sake of brevity. More...

Trumps power over the Justice Department might dissuade prosecutors from pursuing obstruction charges against him. But the Justice Department is staffed with career attorneys committed to the rule of lawand in many cases protected by civil service regulations. It is not so clear that they can be browbeaten by the president. Plus, whether or not Trump can be indicted while still president, he will find himself in legal jeopardy after he leaves office. And then there are his aides and associates; if any of them have assisted Trump in his campaign to pressure the Justice Department, they are complicit in a crime.

The vast reach of federal criminal law and law enforcement leaves us vulnerable to the risk that Trump will use these resources for political ends, as he already seems to have suggested. But Trump is vulnerable to the same forces that he seeks to unleash on his rivals. In an effort to ensnare his opponents, he may be laying his own trap.

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The Obstruction of Justice Case Against Donald Trump - Slate Magazine

Donald Trump and Melania Trump walk off the stage after his rally Tuesday in Youngstown, Ohio.

Justin Merriman/Getty Images

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump took a reprieve from the chaos engulfing his administration, traveling to Youngstown, Ohio, to commune with his fans and supporters in a campaign-style Make America Great Again rally. The event was typical Trump fare: exuberant and improvisational, with the occasional feel of a tent revival. And Trump brought his greatest hits, blasting Democrats, the news media, and other opponents for the crowds enjoyment.

The president also addressed immigration, and there his rhetoric took a darker turn. Trump has always described unauthorized immigrants in harsh, disparaging terms. But here he went further, spinning a lurid and explicit tale of extreme violence against innocent people.

Youve seen the stories about some of these animals, said the president.

Its easy to file this under Trumps usual anti-immigrant demagoguery, specifically his preoccupation with crime committed by Hispanic immigrants. Recall his presidential announcement speech, where he assailed the Mexican government for sending criminals and rapists to the United States, as well as his (and Attorney General Jeff Sessions) recent fixation on MS-13, a gang with origins in Central America. In a June rally in Iowa, the president stated that they like to cut people, and on Thursday, he mentioned them in a tweet: Big progress being made in ridding our country of MS-13 gang members and gang members in general. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!

Despite the connection to those earlier statements, the Youngstown riff was different. It was especially detailed and graphic. And while the racial content of this kind of rhetoric has always been clearthe immigrants are always nonwhite, the victims are typically whitethis was unusually explicit. Trump wasnt just connecting immigrants with violent crime. He was using an outright racist trope: that of the violent, sadistic black or brown criminal, preying on innocent (usually white) women. Even considering his 1989 jeremiad against the Central Park Fivewhere he demanded the death penalty for the five black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted of raping a white womanthe Youngstown rhetoric was sensational and excessive.

What it wasnt, however, was unique. Rhetorically, Trumps Youngstown speech recalls the openly racist language found in the early 20th century among white reporters, pamphleteers, and politicians who expressed the prejudices of the era. In Southern newspapers, for example, writers described the alleged crimes of black offenders with gruesome and sensational detail, usually to justify lynchings and other forms of extrajudicial violence. A miserable negro beast attacked a telephone girl as she was going home at night, and choked her, reads a 1903 report from a newspaper in Greenville, Mississippi. The writer of a 1914 pamphlet titled The Black Shadow and the Red Death spun terrible tales of black crime, including one where cocaine and whiskey led a half-drunken negro beast to kill a little school girl with a pretty head.

Politically, what President Trump was doing in Ohio has a clear antecedent in the racial demagoguery common in the Jim Crow South. Rather than campaign on what they would do for voters, Southern politicians fanned flames of race hatred. This nigger baitinglabeled as such by observers at the timewas how they built emotional connections with their audiences and tarred their (often equally racist) opponents as unacceptable proponents of racial equality. You people who want social equality vote for Jones. You men who have nigger children vote for Jones, declared South Carolina Gov. Coleman Livingston Blease in his 1912 re-election campaign against state Supreme Court Justice Ira Jones, blasting his opponent as a supporter of rights for black Americans.

Join Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz as they discuss and debate the weeks biggest political news.

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Lawmakers like James Vardaman in Mississippi and Cotton Ed Smith of South Carolina earned national notoriety for their vicious advocacy of white supremacy on the campaign trail. This style of politics did not end as the 20th century progressed; in 1958, Alabama Attorney General James Patterson ran for governor and wonbeating a fresh-faced George Wallaceas a staunch opponent of civil rights, backed by the states Ku Klux Klan. In two re-election races, one in 1984 and the other in 1990, North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms ran race-baiting campaigns. Against thenGov. Jim Hunt, he distributed literature warning of black registration drives and black political figures such as Jesse Jackson. And against Harvey Gantt, the black mayor of Charlotte, Helms ran one of the most breathtakingly racist ads of the modern era.

Trump isnt yet running for re-election, but he is in dire political straits. According to FiveThirtyEights aggregate measure of his popularity, just 38.5 percent of Americans approve of his presidency, compared with 55 percent who disapprove. Hes caught in a feud with his attorney general, theres in-fighting among his senior staff, and hes facing backlash from within the armed services on account of a cynical attempt to stoke anti-transgender bias for political gain. Its possible, perhaps even likely, that the presidents riff in Youngstown was just another digression, a rant that emerged from the stew of resentments and prejudices that seem to form Trumps psyche.

But the additional timing of his statement on transgender service members suggests otherwise. On Friday Trump will visit Long Island, where 15 members of MS-13 were arresteda trip that would fit a political plan to demagogue Hispanic immigrants as imminent threats to white Americans, and white women in particular. Trump is aware that hes flailing, and to rebuild supportto re-establish that bond with his votershes turning to an old, crude, and dangerous rhetorical well.

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Make America Afraid Again - Slate Magazine

PresidentDonald Trumpmade clear his dissatisfaction with Sen.Lisa Murkowski(R-Alaska)Wednesday,whenhe tweetedthat she let down her party and the nation by voting againstRepublicans attempts to repealObamacare.

But apparently Trumps public disapproval is not the only way the administration plans to make his anger known.

TheAlaska Dispatch Newsreported Wednesday night that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called Murkowski and fellow Alaskan Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) after Tuesdays health care vote to let them knowher positionhad put some of their state-specific projects in jeopardy particularly those pertaining to energy.

Sullivan told the outlet that Zinkes phone call carried a troubling message, and the interior secretary made it clear to him that the call was in response to Murkowski voting no on the motion to proceed on Tuesday.

She was only one of two Republicans, along with Sen.Susan Collins(Maine), to break from party lines on the vote.

While Murkowski did not respond to Alaska Dispatch News requests for comment regarding the phone call, the senator seemed unfazed by the presidents attempts at publicly shaming her.

Were here to govern. Were here to legislate,Murkowski told MSNBCafter Trump sent his tweet. Were here to represent the people who sent us here. Every day shouldnt be about campaigning.

Murkowski does not face reelection until 2022.

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Donald Trump Is Reportedly Seeking Revenge On Alaska Over Health Care Vote - HuffPost