Archive for the ‘Donald Trump’ Category

Under Trump, US foreign policy is increasingly being left to the generals – Quartz

Qatar is home to the USs largest military base in the Middle East and a long-time US ally. Since its Gulf neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia, imposed a blockade two weeks ago, president Donald Trump has enthusiastically praised the blockade and attacked Qatarcontradicting the messages from his own Defense Department, State Department, and Senate Republicans. His ex-ambassador to Qatar, who abruptly stepped down last week, this week took to Twitter to cheer the State Department for chiding the Saudis.

That same day, Trump chastised Chinas attempts to rein in North Korea, tweeting that it had not worked out. That must have made for an uncomfortable meeting, just hours later, between top Chinese defense officials and diplomats and the US secretaries of State, Rex Tillerson, and Defense, James Mattis.

US foreign policy experts who spoke to Quartz, many of whom work or worked in the National Security Council, State Department, or Pentagon in the past, say theyve rarely seen such a wide-open divide between what a US president is saying and long-stated US government agenda, or between the president and his own top policy and security advisors. It looks like we have two governments at the moment, said Edward Goldberg, a professor at New York Universitys Center For Global Affairs, and author of The Joint Ventured Nation: Why America Needs A New Foreign Policy.

Aside from contradicting his own officials, Trump has made a habit of bypassing them. This week his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and the Trump Organizations former legal counsel are in Israel for peace talks with Israeli and Palestinian authoritiescutting out the State Department and its decades of experience. Kushner will brief Trump, Tillerson, and national security advisor HR McMaster on his return, according to the White House. During Trumps last visit to the Middle East, Kushner sat in on a meeting with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, while McMaster was left outside, reportedly for hours.

White House officials seem to have given up trying to reconcile the conflicting approaches. Asked on Air Force One on June 21 how the presidents tweets affected Mattis and Tillersons meeting with Chinese officials, a spokeswoman had only this enigmatic response: The president is not going to project his strategy. And tweets speak for themselves. While Trump has focused on a few hot spots, the result is that the bureaucrats and generals are running much of US foreign policy.

Traditionally, the National Security Council (NSC) is supposed to serve as the presidents chief advisory body on foreign policy, funneling information from State, Defense, and intelligence agencies into a cohesive action plan. Some tensions are normal; in the Barack Obama administration, friction between the Oval Office, NSC, State, and Defense ran high over how to respond to ISIL and the Russian invasion of Crimea, among other topics.

But this time is different. Mattis, McMaster, and usually Tillerson are increasingly united around traditional US policy goals, as in Qatar. Trump, backed by a tiny group of personal confidantes with no foreign-policy experience, including Steve Bannon and Kusher, is disregarding them.

Not only are officials from these agencies openly contradicting the president; more quietly, some are recommending that his public statements be ignored. US foreign policy still works fine if the international community realizes they dont have to react to every Trump tweet, explained one defense department official, who asked not to be named.

The message to the rest of the world is that it is not a systematic policy development process, said Stephen Biddle, a defense policy expert at the Council of Foreign Relations and a former advisor to the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is poorly managed, poorly coordinated, and is going to be a challenge for any US embassy to try to understand and explain. You cant take a garden variety statement from the president or the secretary of State as US policy, said Biddle.

In the worst case, this confusion could cause the US to bumble into a war. We might find ourselves in a major military conflict with Assad, Iran, or Russia, without knowing why, exactly, or what US interests are, said Ilan Goldenberg, a director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, and a former State Department chief of staff.

Some military heads of command have already had a conversation about what to do if Trump gives an order they cant comply with, said a former National Security Agency analyst who still consults for the US government, citing direct conversations with military agency personnel. If it gets to a point beyond their comfort level, theyre well trained by the military not to disobey, said the defense official. Instead, expect the military leaders to just say Im out.

Kushners close relationship with Saudi prince Mohammad bin Salman, the 31-year old who has just been named successor to the aging King Salman, has shaped Trumps embrace of Saudi Arabia, analysts say. He has also helped moderate the presidents views on China. Because he has the presidents ear at any time, his influence has proven hard to counteract. Kushner has proven tough to work around, one lobbyist in DC with foreign clients said.

But Kushners foreign-policy inexperience is a risk for the situation now developing in the Middle East. Its much more dangerous than other previous spats, said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. What the Saudi royal family is doing is arguing whether the ruling family of Qatar has legitimacy, he said. If the Saudis want to push it all the way to its logical end, this could become a very dangerous crisis in the Gulf.

Moreover, the special prosecutor investigating the Trump campaigns possible ties to Russian election hacking is now investigating Kushners business dealings. If he becomes a bigger focus of the probe his star, and his influence, is likely to fade.

One Washington, DC consultant to Middle East governments compares Trumps stance on Qatar to a car with no driver but only a set of brakesin the form of State, Defense, and the NSC. The brakes are all that is stopping the tensions around Qatar turning into an all-out war against a US ally.

One emerging outcome of this is that foreign policy in general is increasingly under the control of the military. Mattis has a tremendous amount of autonomy, billions of dollars of weaponry at his disposal, and political capital, said Goldenberg. He can make decisions and back them up with real action. In particular, Mattis has been given full responsibility for troop levels in Afghanistan, normally something the president decides.

Described as both deeply thoughtful and extremely aggressive, Mattis earned a fearsome reputation for leading Marine troops in the bloody 2004 attack on Fallujah, but said last year he thought the Iraq war was a strategic mistake. Since taking the Defense job, he has urged for the US to provide more military support for anti-Iranian forces (paywall) in Yemen, and has armed Syrian Kurdish fighters.

McMaster, himself a general with experience in the Middle East and Afghanistan, has ex-Army officials Derek Harvey and Joel Rayburn on his team, giving even more heft to the military point of view. In contrast, Tillerson, as a civilian voice on foreign policy, is hampered by running a department with large numbers of senior posts and ambassadorships still unfilled, while trying to defend its budget, which Trump has targeted for nearly 30% cuts.

Taken together, the team is smart and well-respected, said Goldenberg. But, sometimes things cant be figured out with a military solution, he said. Sometimes they are grayer and murkier and uglier than good guys and bad guys.

A White House spokesman, Michael Short said that questions about a disconnect between the presidents words and the State and Defense departments actions were nebulous claims. Trump and Tillerson, he said, have both stated publicly that there are steps that Qatar needs to take to address concerns about support for terrorists and extremists. Given the high stakes involved, the United States is disappointed that this dispute between our partners in the Gulf has not been resolved.

The State Department is still pointing to a diplomatic solution. The president and the secretary both want to see the Qatar dispute resolved quickly, one official said. Through the secretarys phone calls and meetings, he believes it can be resolved.

Follow this link:
Under Trump, US foreign policy is increasingly being left to the generals - Quartz

Does Everything That Donald Trump Touches Die? – Vanity Fair

By NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images.

Even before Donald Trump was sworn in to office, he began declaring victories on behalf of the American worker. The bizarre public relations campaign began in November, at the Carrier plant in Indianapolis, where he announced that his Art of the Deal-style negotiating skills had prevented 1,100 jobs from being sent to Mexico. In January, after Ford canceled plans to build a plant in Mexico, he tweeted, This is just the beginningmuch more to follow. Weeks later, he delivered a speech in front of a South Carolina Boeing plant, during which he managed to make a sexist joke about how airplanes, unlike women, can still look good at the ripe old age of 30, and boasted, My focus has been all about jobs, and jobs is one of the primary reasons Im standing here today as your president, and I will never, ever disappoint you. Seven, five, and a mere four months later, how are things working out at those companies? Lets take a look!

Carrier, CNBC reported this week, will be laying off 600 employees over the next five months. Ford announced on Tuesday that it would be producing its Focus line in China. And Boeing, 16 weeks after Trump stood in front of a Boeing Dreamliner and declared himself the savior of the Working Man, confirmed Friday that it would be cutting 200 jobs at that very South Carolina plant.

Of course, its hardly fair to blame Trump for global, cyclical, and secular economic trends that are largely beyond his control. But then, it was hardly fair for Trump to try to take credit for every alleged bit of good job news, either. And hey, were willing to give Trump a pass on Carrier, Ford, and Boeing, so long as he can admit that all of his previous bogus JOBS announcements were fake news, too.

Dont hold your breath: Trump, after all, cares about appearances first and substance last, or never, which is why he tasked his chief economic adviser and treasury secretary with rushing out a one-page, double-spaced bullet point tax plan so that he could claim to be making progress on tax reform (the theoretical bill, which has yet to be written, has been delayed until mid-September). Its why hes made a huge showing of signing a dozens of executive orders, which are mostly just directives for government agencies to review rules. Its why his big, much-touted Infrastructure Week amounted to, essentially, a call to privatize air-traffic control and a speech in which he held up a big binder then dropped it on the floor for effect. Its why he took credit for saving 20,000 jobs that were actually saved months before he was elected. Its why he strangely claimed that his trip to Saudi Arabia saved millions of jobs (a stat he upgraded from thousands in a matter of 24 hours, because why not.)

Still, its actually sort of amazing to behold the pace at which his stunts have fallen apart. Memo to the employees of the next company at which he shows up: take cover.

If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.

Of course Trumps commerce secretary built a wall that violated zoning laws in the Hamptons

We apologize if were started to sound like a broken record but on John Jacob Astors grave, billionaire Wilbur Ross is one of Donald Trumps most perfect Cabinet picks: a real life, time-traveling 19th-century robber baron who for the life of him still cant wrap his head around why history treated Marie Antoinette so unfairly. To recap, Ross, whose net worth hovers around $2.5 billion:

Tried to kill a story about his secret Wall Street fraternitys annual event, which consisted of off-color jokes, hazing rituals, and a drag show that involved singing about seven-figure bonuses;

Commissioned a pair of custom-made $500 velvet slippers with the Commerce Department stitched on the toes;

Complained on Bloomberg TV that the 1 percent is picked on . . . for political reasons, and that poor people could easily join his tax bracket if they wanted to (Education is the way that people get out of the ghetto);

Described a U.S. airstrike as after-dinner entertainment for the paying guests at Mar-a-Lago;

Returned from Trumps big trip abroad to praise the lack of protesters in Saudia Arabia, where protesters are executed;

And, just this week, pitched an evening of cocktails and hors doeuvres as a way to convince people to work in factories.

So while its a relatively small signifier of being a wildly out-of-touch rich person, we were thrilled to learn Friday that Ross had previously ticked that all-important box of pissing off ones neighbors in the Hamptons by violating zoning laws. Per the New York Daily News:

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross once built an illegal wall on the perimeter of his swanky Southampton estate to block the noise from the American Indian reservation across the street and the traffic along Montauk Highway. When the billionaire Cabinet member was told he couldnt have the wall, he waged a three-year legal battle with the local zoning board of appeals that he ultimately lost . . . The wealthy investor applied for a variance with the towns zoning board of appeals in January 2001, shortly after purchasing the home for $1.35 million. To bolster his case, he hired an acoustic expert, who found that noise levels in his yard were as much as four times louder than the local ordinance would permit at night. When the board took too long to hear his application, Ross pre-emptively built the barrier a 6-foot fence on top of a 3-foot berm along the property line adjacent to Montauk Highway.

Naturally, that didnt sit well with the board, and Ross ultimately sold the house for $4 million, $2.65 million more than what he paid for it.

Al Gore cant catch a break, quote of the day edition

Al Gore has come into you fellas business . . . He has made $3 or $400 million in your business. And he's not very smart," Warren Buffett's business partner Charlie Munger reportedly told a small group of investors at the annual Daily Journal meeting. He had one obsessive idea that global warming was a terrible thing . . . So his idea when he went into investment counseling is he was not going to put any CO2 in the air . . . he found some partner to go into investment counseling with and says we're not going to have any (carbon dioxide). But this partner is a value investor and a good one. So what they did is, is Gore hired staff to find people who didn't put CO2 in the air. Of course that put him into services. Microsoft and all these service companies were just ideally located. And this value investor picked the best service companies. So all of a sudden the clients are making hundreds of millions of dollars and they are paying part of it to Al Gore. Al Gore has hundreds of millions [of] dollars in your profession. And he's an idiot. It's an interesting story. And a true one.

Hedge fund managers attempt at humor lands . . . poorly

Yikes, Bill Ackman:

The altercation occurred at this years SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) Conference, a popular Wall Street confab held in May and started by hedge-fund impresario Anthony Scaramucci. Both Joe Biden and Ackman were featured speakers during the event. During a private V.I.P. dinner that night the question of why Biden didnt run for president in 2016 was raised once again, by former Florida governor and 2016 G.O.P. presidential contender Jeb Bush, who asked Biden, Why didnt you run?

Biden explained that part of the decision stemmed from the death of his son Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015. The room grew quiet as Biden became emotional, and said: Im sorry . . . Ive said enough. Thats when Ackman blurted out Why? Thats never stopped you before.

The formal, and understated dinner conversation suddenly turned tense, according to three people who were present and confirmed both the substance and the wording of Bidens responses.

Biden, these people say, turned to someone seated near him, and asked, Who is this asshole?, referring to Ackman.

Ackman was most recently in the news for losing $4 billion on his Valeant investment, so perhaps this is a sign he should just sit out the rest of 2017.

Elsewhere!

Steven Mnuchins fiance accidentally makes the case for higher taxes (The Hive)

Britains Financial Power Is Already Seeping Away (Bloomberg)

Big Banks Clear First Phase of Federal Reserve Stress Tests (N.Y.T.)

Short-Seller Nailed Home Capital, Then Got Stung by Buffett (Bloomberg)

Can Uber Ever Make Money? (Financial Times)

Has Silicon Valley Finally Jumped the Shark? (The Hive)

Madoff Clients Fighting for Their Fortunes Get a Hand From Madoff (Bloomberg)

When Helicopter Parents Hover Even at Work (N.Y.T.)

NASA Fact Checks Goop Over Wearable Body Stickers (Vanities)

Octopus, Seal Duke It Out in Ocean Fight (Toronto Sun)

Excerpt from:
Does Everything That Donald Trump Touches Die? - Vanity Fair

Donald Trump’s Approval Rating Actually Went Up, Halting His Downward Spiral – Newsweek

Some good news for President Donald Trump: His approval rating actually went up Friday.

The polls haven't been kind to Trump lately, with results showing that he was either sinking or holding steady at relatively low levels of support. But Gallup's tracking poll Friday found the president's approval rating stood at 42 percent. Fifty-four percent disapproved.

Mind you: 42 percent approval isn't great; in fact, it's downright bad for a president so early in his tenure. But for Trump, it's a big spike. Earlier this week, Gallup pegged Trump's approval at just 37 percent, dangerously close to the low point of 35 percent he set in late March. The Gallup daily tracking survey interviewed 1,500 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Daily Emails and Alerts- Get the best of Newsweek delivered to your inbox

President Donald Trump speaks before signing the VA Accountability Act in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 23. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

It's still too soon to tellexactlywhat effect the current health care debate will have; Republican senators are working to get an Obamacare replacement passed even as the House bill proved deeply unpopular. But the Gallup poll could be seen as an encouraging sign for the White House. The last two times big health care news droppedboth when the House bill failed to garner enough support to take a vote and when that unpopular bill actually passedTrump's approval rating took a nosedive.

It's expected that the Congressional Budget Office will release its score on the bill early next week. If it's anything like the report on the House bill, which estimated the legislation would lead to 23 million Americans losing coverage, it could certainly lead to the public growing upset with GOP lawmakers and the president, who has backed the Republican effort to dismantle Obamacare.

As the score approaches, Trump's average approval rating is inching closer to making its way out of the 30s. The weighted average from data-focused website FiveThirtyEight rose slightly to 39.1 percent Friday. The FiveThirtyEightaverage adjusts for a survey's quality, recency, sample size and any partisan leanings. FiveThirtyEight's tracker has shown a pretty steady decline for the president's approval rating, falling from about 42 percent at the beginning of last month to the high 30s now.

And while Gallup gave the Trump a morsel of hope,it hasn't been allgood news for the former reality TV starin the polls. The latest daily tracking survey from Rasmussen Reportsthe president's favoriteright-leaningfirm that has often found his approval to be higher than other surveysput his rating at just 46 percent, down from50 percent this time last week. "Great news!" Trump tweeted at the time.

See the original post:
Donald Trump's Approval Rating Actually Went Up, Halting His Downward Spiral - Newsweek

Donald Trump Rally Video Accidentally Proclaims He’s ‘Putting Our Minors Back to Work’ – PEOPLE.com

Attention all unemployed minors: Jobs are coming!

Donald Trump, 71, delivered a speech at arally on Friday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, promising new jobs and support for our veterans.

But the presidents message was slightly skewed in a video promotion for the rally that Trump himself posted on Facebook later in the day.

The videos creator seems to have fallen victim to a classic case of homophone confusion, writing that the White House is putting our minors back to work referring to underage citizens as opposed to the coal miners Trump has championed throughout his campaign and presidency.

The gaff did not go unnoticed on Social Media, where Trump supporters and detractors joked about the typo. Facebook user Steve Robbins commented,Hopefully the miners get work also. I mean its great for our youth to have employment, but mining seems kind of dangerous as a first job.

This is absolutely hysterical!! wrote Ivelisse Berio LeBeau. Yes, lets put kids back to work, who cares about child labor laws!

Trump supporter Kim Rubin commented, Whoever is writing your copy needs to learn to spell! MINORS are children; MINERS mine coal. Dont get me wrong, Im a Trump fan, but that doesnt mean I give glaring mistakes a pass!

Ironically, minor miners were common in the early years of the 20th century, when children were preferred to do the work due to their small stature and ability to fit in spaces adults could not. One of the first child labor laws for the mines was passed in 1885, which required boys to be at least 12 to work in the coal breakers.

We have eliminated restrictions on the production of American energy, Trump said at the rally. We have ended the war on clean, beautiful coal. And we are putting our miners back to work.

Read more:
Donald Trump Rally Video Accidentally Proclaims He's 'Putting Our Minors Back to Work' - PEOPLE.com

Johnny Depp on Donald Trump: Crime or free speech? – BBC News


BBC News
Johnny Depp on Donald Trump: Crime or free speech?
BBC News
Actor Johnny Depp has caused controversy after he appeared to threaten US President Donald Trump at the Glastonbury Festival. "When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?" he asked the crowd. It is a crime in the US to make threats ...
Another Hollywood star 'joked' about killing Trump, but no one's laughingCNN International
White House Calls for Hollywood BacklashTMZ.com
Johnny Depp Apologizes for Donald Trump Assassination JokeVariety
Washington Post -TIME -HuffPost -PEOPLE.com
all 493 news articles »

Read the original here:
Johnny Depp on Donald Trump: Crime or free speech? - BBC News