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Various Trump officials for instance struggled to get on the same page Tuesday over the question of whether Russia knew in advance about the chemical weapons attack by its ally President Bashar al-Assad's government that killed more than 80 civilians.

The apparent contradictions were symptomatic of the Trump team's failure to agree a public line on its first big national security test. Haley's comments and a string of other seemingly jarring interventions by officials are raising questions about the coordination of the foreign policy process between the National Security Council, the State Department and the Pentagon and may reveal a lack of basic strategic planning and messaging in the still understaffed administration.

The last few days have seen a flurry of gaffes, walk-backs, vague, sometimes conflicting statements and off-the-cuff policy making by President Donald Trump himself, Tillerson, Haley and Spicer.

A similar realization is now becoming evident on foreign policy.

Yet his heartfelt response to horrific images of gassed children in Syria, and decision to launch military action, appeared to completely reverse his stated foreign policy intentions. His instinctual move to order his first major military actions of his presidency also raised concerns that he was basing military action on emotion before arriving at a strategic long-term determination of next steps or the consequences of bombing Syria.

Tuesday was yet another dizzying day for America's allies, enemies and analysts as they try to arrive at clarity about Trump's intentions.

Attempts by the administration to explain its strategy on Syria and to shame Russia for its backing of Assad were blown out of the water by a huge blunder by Spicer.

Trump's spokesman reached for an unwise comparison by saying that even Adolf Hitler had never used chemical weapons against civilians during World War II, despite the gassing of millions of Jews and other minorities in death camps.

Spicer appeared on CNN's "The Situation Room" on Tuesday to apologize for the Hitler analogy.

"It was a mistake, I shouldn't have done it. I won't do it again. It was an attempt to do something that should not have been done. There really was no explaining it," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

Former Bill Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta, who served another Democratic President, Barack Obama, as CIA chief, praised Spicer for apologizing but said his comments were a damaging distraction for the administration.

"When he says the kind of stupid things that he did today, it hurts the administration, it changes the story," Panetta said.

Spicer is not alone in muddling the administration's message and fogging perceptions of the Trump administration's Syria policy.

The President himself also weighed in on Tuesday, blaming the previous Obama administration's failure to enforce a US red line over the use of chemical weapons -- though did not bring much clarity to the situation.

"We are not going into Syria," Trump told Fox Business Network.

It was left to Mattis, speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, to clarify that America's policy was still primarily geared towards destroying ISIS and not regime change. He said the missile strikes were a separate attempt to outlaw the use of chemical weapons.

"There is a limit, I think, to what we can do. And when you look at what happened with this chemical attack, we knew that we could not stand passive on this," the former general told reporters.

"But it was not a statement that we could enter full-fledged, full-bore into the most complex civil war probably raging on the planet at this time."

Mattis however, in his sober way did make clear to Assad that using chemical weapons again would draw a response, but did so in a way that avoided putting the administration's credibility on the line and highlighted the lack of precision and restraint evident in other administration statements.

But the Syria confusion is not only unfolding example of the administration learning that events have a way of quickly testing an inexperienced White House.

Events of the last few days appear to have completely reshaped the assumptions that Trump brought into office about improving relations with Russia that have pitched to their lowest point since the Cold War.

"If we got along with Russia and Russia went out with us and knocked the hell out of ISIS that is OK with me folks," Trump said at a campaign rally in October. Then-candidate Trump expressed his admiration for President Vladimir Putin many times, including in an NBC interview in September.

"If he says get things about me, I am going to say great things about him," Trump said. Back in August, Trump told supporters: "there is nothing I can think of that I would rather do than have Russia friendly."

Trump's room for maneuver with Russia was already curtailed by allegations that some campaign aides had links with Moscow at a time when it was accused of interfering in the presidential election.

The aftermath of the missile attacks ordered by Trump have appeared to have alerted the administration as never before to the geostrategic factors that make any rapprochement between Moscow and Washington a long shot.

Even members of his own administration appear to be undermining the President's hopes of improving relations with Russia, which sees Syria as a crucial Middle Eastern ally and props up Assad's government to maintain its influence in the region.

Tillerson, who was once branded by critics as too close to Moscow, owing to his business deals in his former job as the head of ExxonMobil, talked tough before arriving.

During a stop in Italy, the top US diplomat blasted the Russian government for supporting Assad and other US enemies.

"Russia has really aligned itself with the Assad regime, the Iranians and Hezbollah. Is that a long-term alliance that serves Russia's interests?" he said.

Back at the White House, Spicer effectively gave Moscow an ultimatum: choose better relations with Trump administration or its relations with nations that pursue policies contrary to US interests.

"It's no question that Russia is isolated. They have aligned themselves with North Korea, Syria, Iran. That's not exactly a group of countries that you're looking to hang out with," he said.

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Donald Trump's on-the-job training - CNN

The thinker.

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Last week, I wrote about how the centerpiece of Paul Ryan's tax reform plana border-adjusted corporate tax, or BATappeared to be all but dead thanks to overwhelming opposition from key senators. On Wednesday during an interview on Fox Business Network, however, President Donald Trump left open the possibility that he would support the idea, and even suggested that a little creative rebranding could revive its prospects.

Jordan Weissmann is Slates senior business and economics correspondent.

Unfortunately for Republicans hoping that the president might be able to play a useful role in brokering a tax reform deal, Trump's comments demonstrated that he is either illiterate on this particular policy issue, or thinks that he'll be able to skirt by peddling incoherent talking points that anybody with a passing familiarity with the subject will see through.

To quickly recap, the House GOP's tax reform plan would effectively put a tariff on imports and subsidize exports. It has met furious resistance from retailers like Walmart who sell lots of goods made overseas and are afraid that the proposal would hurt their business by forcing them to pass on higher prices to their customers. Economists have suggested this wouldn't be the case, because foreign exchange rates should theoretically adjust to cancel out the effect of the new import tax. But that promise hasn't pacified the idea's opponents, because what retailer would bet their business on an academic theory about currency markets?

Trump has sent mixed signals on border adjustment. At one point he said it could lead to a lot more jobs in the United States. But at another, he called the idea too complicated. So given that this is still the single most talked about issue in the tax reform debate, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo asked the president whether he'd made up his mind on it. Trump sort of evaded the question, but then suggested the concept needed a name change. Instead of border adjustment people should call it a reciprocal tax, he argued, because really we'd just be doing to other countries what they already do to us.

As always, we need to untoss the president's word salad to make sense of this. Trump is pointing out that certain countries impose heavy tariffs on goods that the United States exports. India, for instance, really does slap a 100 percent duty on motorcycles with engines larger than 800cc, much to the frustration Harley-Davidson. To Trump, a border adjusted tax would merely be a fair and proportional response to such protectionist measures. So we should call it a reciprocal tax instead, since he views it as retaliatory. Also, we're not losers. And border adjustment sounds like something for weakling losers. Like Paul Ryan, presumably.

This is not a politically promising argument. The entire point of border adjustment, according to its advocates, is that it won't really turn into a tariff, thanks to the magic of shifting exchange rates. Retailers, and the senators who love them, oppose it because they're worried currencies won't adjust fully, and so the tax will indeed turn into a tariff. Trump is not going to win over a bunch of tariff opponents by arguing that the BAT is a tariff. He's rhetorically shoveling dirt onto its grave.

Having given Ryan & Co. ample reason to spend their morning staring despondently into their watery House cafeteria coffee, Trump moved on to suggesting that even our foreign trade partners would have to accept the logic of a reciprocal tax.

Where to even start here? First, the premise of the argument is silly. Responding to India's or Thailands or China's duty on select product like motorcycles with a worldwide, across-the-board tariff on imported goods would not be reciprocal. It would be insanely disproportional.1

Not only would China, India and the rest of the world get angry about itthey'd probably try to stop it. Right now, it is unclear whether or not Ryan's border adjusted tax is actually legal under World Trade Organization rules. But other countries are already preparing to challenge it. Germany's finance minister says he warned Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to scrap the whole thing, and has promised to call the WTO if necessary.

Trump appears to have zero understanding of the economics underlying this issue. He has just as little comprehension of either the domestic or international politics of it. If he were to try and go to bat for the idea, he would almost certainly do more harm than good.

This should deeply worry Republicans. One of the major reasons Obamacare repeal turned into such a debacle was that Trump knew too little about the subject to effectively broker a deal. He reportedly urged Republican lawmakers to forget about the little shit and instead focus on the political necessity of just passing something. But health policy is a vastly complicated issue that can hinge on seemingly obscure details. There's no way to negotiate over it without a firm grasp of the minutia.

Tax reform is in many ways just as complicated and politically unwieldly. And at the moment, the president isn't demonstrating any kind of firm grasp on the single topic that has defined the debate so far. Even if he decides not to support border adjustment, that bodes poorly for his ability to close any kind of a deal before the GOP's various factions inevitably start battling amongthemselves. Trump's intellectual vacuum could end up swallowing his whole party's agenda.

1 It's possible that Trump is conflating high duties on individual products, like India's tariff on motorcycles, with a slightly separate issuenamely that other countries rely in part on border adjusted value-added taxes, while the U.S. relies on a corporate income tax that exempts imports and hits out exports. This is a source of frustration to some Republicans, and one of the motivating ideas behind the BAT, but, as I've written it's also kind of a red herring.

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Shocker: Donald Trump Also Sounds Illiterate On Tax Policy - Slate Magazine (blog)

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a listening session on health care with truckers and CEOs from the American Trucking Associations in the Cabinet Room at the White House on March 23, 2017 in Washington, DC.

Molly Riley-Pool/Getty Images

In an interview that aired Wednesday on Fox Business, President Trump was asked by Maria Bartiromo whether he had planned to strike Syria during his dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump proceeded to set the scene:

Its brilliant. Its incredible. Its genius. Its war described in precisely the manner a schoolchild would relay the details of a field trip to a science museum. Food, of course, figures largely. Trump went on.

After this, Trump presumably returned happily to his cake, which, according to that nights menu, matches the description of Mar-a-Lagos signature Trump Chocolate Cake provided by Caity Weaver in a piece for GQ last year. A slice is typically served with four dots of vanilla sauce. Its also accompanied by a scoop of dark chocolate sorbet and a diamond of white chocolate. The white chocolate is stamped TRUMP.

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Donald Trump, Our Kid President, Ordered Syria Strike During Dessert - Slate Magazine (blog)

The butchers bill continues to grow. While he was apresidential candidate, Donald Trump promised to uplift his white working class voters, a group he described as the forgotten Americans. As president, Trump has enacted policies that will hurt them. As I have written beforefor Salon, I have no pity for Donald Trumps voters. They have agency. They are adults. They made the choice to support a neofascist who has quickly made America less great before the eyes of the world.

It will be glorious to see Trumps voters continue on their highway to hell.

The butchers bill now includes Donald Trump and the Republican Partys efforts to end environmental protections for clean water that will disproportionately harm rural red state America, removing mandatory overtime pay for low- and middle-income employees and cutting back and ending programs that provide infrastructure, heating and fuel assistance for the poor. Againthis will disproportionately affect those communities that voted for Trump.The president will also target the Americans he views as useless eaters by taking money away from programs such as Meals on Wheels, which feedpeople who are elderly orhomebound. He will also remove support for programs that help the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

There was a momentary pause in adding another entry to the butchers bill when Donald Trump and the Republican Partys effort to end the Affordable Care Act was derailed. Trump and the Republican Party, however, are continuing their efforts to take away health care from millions of Americans. It is estimated that if the Republican Party and Donald Trump get their way and the Affordable Care Actwere to repealed,at least 43,000 Americans a year woulddie.

The jobs Donald Trump promised his voters continue to leave the country. And Trumps vowto drain the swamp has been replaced with an overflowing cesspool of greed and malfeasance.

With the election of Trump, the American news media has discovered a new subgenre of pseudo-anthropological writing akin to stories from an earlier era about dirty hippies or how hillbillies had descended upon Chicago and Detroit.

The American news media now sends intrepid reporters out into the hinterlands of the Rust Belt and exurb America to speak with the denizens of Trumplandia.

What have these reporters discovered?

Some of Trumps loyalists are dismayed and angry at how their champion has been exposed to be a liar and a fraud. Nevertheless, most of Trumps voters continue to support him. There are few voices of dissent. Even factsshowing that Russia undermined the American election do not diminish their devotion. Trump is a Svengali. His voters remain beguiled by his gaze.

But even by the bizarre norms of Trumplandia, some stories stand out more than others. The New York Times Nicholas Kristof recently journeyed to Tulsa, Oklahoma. There he spoke with Judy Banks. She is a senior citizen who is dependent on the programs that Donald Trump has promised to either eliminate or greatly reduce. Banks also voted for Donald Trump.

The New York Times explained:

Judy Banks, a 70-year-old struggling to get by, said she voted for Trump because he was talking about getting rid of those illegals. But Banks now finds herself shocked that he also has his sights on funds for the Labor Departments Senior Community Service Employment Program, which is her lifeline. It pays senior citizens a minimum wage to hold public service jobs.

This program makes sense, said Banks, who was placed by the program into a job as a receptionist for a senior nutrition program. Banks said she depends on the job to make ends meet, and for an excuse to get out of the house.

If I lose this job, she said, Ill sit home and die.

Yet she said she might still vote for Trump in 2020. And thats a refrain I heard over and over. Some of the loyalty seemed to be grounded in resentment at Democrats for mocking Trump voters as dumb bigots, some from a belief that budgets are complicated, and some from a sense that its too early to abandon their man. They did say that if jobs didnt reappear, they would turn against him.

Donald Trump is quite literally a threat to Judy Banks health, safety, security, well-being and livelihood. Yet, she continues to support him.

It is easy to mock and laugh and enjoy Schadenfreudes warm embrace as Trumps voters are made to suffer at the hand of their chosen leader. But this does not explain Donald Trumps hold over his supporters and why they remain so loyal even while he increases their misery.

His power is drawn from several sources.

Trumps voters have been conditioned and programmed by the right-wing news entertainment complex to believe disinformation and lies. As such, Trump has found a ready public for his fraudulent presidency. This is shown by how only 3 percent of Trumps voters regret supporting him.

Donald Trump leads a cult of personality in a celebrity-obsessed culture. For his voters, Trump is a type of personal avatar. This is demonstrated by how according to a recent poll, Republicans trust Donald Trumps administration more than the mainstream news media to be truthful.

The right-wing media news media has created an alternate reality for its public. As detailed by a recent report inthe Columbia Journalism Review, this alternate reality is remarkable for how it circulates disinformation and talking points to its public (and affects the broader news media and public discourse). Bursting this bubble is verydifficult.

Extreme political polarization and the phenomenon known as information backfire have combined to make Trumps supporters and other Republican voters hostile to empirical reality.

Conservative authoritarians are binary thinkers who view the world in simple terms. They are also highly resistant to change and new experiences. Conservative authoritarians also in-group loyalty and obedience to authority figures. Together, these factors compel them to support Donald Trump.

Christian evangelicalsare some of themost enthusiastic supportersof Donald Trump. Radical religion and radical politics combine to excuse and rationalize hisfailures in office.

The white rural and Rust Belt communities that elected Donald Trump are in disarray: they are suffering from high levels of social disorganization caused by drug addiction, declining life spansand an increase in suicide, a breakdown in family structure and high levels of economic anxiety. Ultimately, many of Trumps white working class voters are facing a crisis of meaning and value in their own lives. He offered them an elixir. It has instead been provedso far to be a poison.

And with almost every area of American political and social life, the color lines influence is great. Donald Trumps ascendance was fueled by white supremacy, nativism, racial authoritarianism and a promise to make America great again by punishing nonwhites and elevating (even more) white America. Trumps voters remain willing to pay the butchers bill because they know and hope that he will hurt those people and take care of people like us. This transactional politics of race and class was explained by W.E.B. Du Bois more than 80 years ago:

It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule.

Trumps white working class voters in red state America are dead enders. They remain loyal to a man and a cause that has no use for them except as fodder. Trumps voters have not yet accepted this grim truth. When they do, the question will become against who and what groups will Donald Trumps whiteworking class voters direct their rage and anger at having been played as useful idiots.

See the article here:
The butcher's bill keeps growing: Donald Trump abuses his voters and yet they love him - Salon

For the last two presidents, their preferred leisure time has been spent primarily playing golf. Which, again, is totally fine! Being president, in case you might not be able to guess, is a very stressful job. You need ways to blow off steam.

The problem for Trump is -- and stop me if you've heard this one before -- the fact that he was very, very outspoken about the number of rounds of golf that President Barack Obama played during his time in the White House.

And then there is the fact that Trump promised on the campaign trail that he wouldn't be golfing if he got elected president because he would be too busy cutting great deals on behalf of the American people. "I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf," Trump said in August 2016 on the campaign.

If he ever did play golf, Trump promised, he wouldn't just play with his buddies like Obama did, but rather use the golf course as a sort of outdoor board room -- playing with foreign leaders, members of Congress and the like to convince them about something or other related to the running of the country.

The point of this all is that Trump has made the bed he is currently lying in. Had he said nothing about his predecessor's leisure habits, there'd be no stories -- or, at least, a whole lot fewer stories -- about his own love of the links. But since Trump attacked Obama relentlessly for his golf outings, it's difficult to turn around and say that it mattered for Obama but not for him. Golf is just golf. But, it's a reminder that Trump doesn't really believe that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. He sees no apparent hypocrisy in railing against Obama's golf-playing while playing even more golf himself.

Welcome to the wonderful world of contradictions that is President Trump.

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Donald Trump's golf problem - CNN