Tag: Trump

  • Don’t diss Donnie

    Did Trump cause Boeing’s stock to plummet in a fit of temper? Philip Bump at the Washington Post wonders.

    The tweet was this morning.

    What inspired him this time?

    CNN’s Jake Tapper noted on Twitter that shortly before the tweet (which was posted at 8:52 a.m. Eastern) the Chicago Tribune posted an article quoting the company’s CEO, Dennis Muilenberg. (The comments were made at a speech on Friday, not in an interview with the Tribune, as this article originally indicated.)

    “Anyone who paid attention to the recent campaigns and the election results realizes that one of the overarching themes was apprehension about free and fair trade,” Muilenberg said at the Illinois Manufacturing Association last week, as noted by Tribune columnist Robert Reed. Fair trade has helped Boeing, which prides itself on being America’s largest manufacturing exporter.

    “Last year, we delivered 495 737s from our factory in Renton, Wash., to customers around the world,” Muilenberg continued, noting that a third of the planes were sent to China. “This phenomenon would have been unimaginable when I started at the company in 1985.”

    Those are pointed comments. It was Trump, of course, who robustly criticized free trade during the general election. And it is Trump who, this week, seemed to threaten a trade war with China.

    In other words Muilenberg disrespected Donnie from Queens.

    That story has a dateline of 7:30 Central time — 8:30 Eastern. Trump’s tweet came out a few minutes later.

    We don’t know that Trump was responding to the Tribune story. We do know that the last time he tweeted an out-of-the-blue opinion, about flag-burning, it was immediately after a Fox News segment showing students burning flags.

    We also know that Trump’s tweet tanked Boeing’s stock price, albeit only briefly.

    Mature and responsible as always.

  • Trump foments violence

    Dana Milbank has more on the pizzeria shootup and Trump’s fomenting of hatred and thus violence.

    He got an email from a reader on Sunday.

    “Rope, Tree, Journalist,” the man wrote. “Some assembly required.” To this slogan, made popular by T-shirts Donald Trump supporters wore at his rallies, my would-be hangman added his offer: “I will assemble for you.”

    This bit of, er, gallows humor was the latest, though far from the worst, of the sort of correspondence my colleagues and I have been receiving lately.

    There was a time when threats against journalists, like threats of any sort of political violence, were exceedingly rare. But in Trump’s America, such threats are neither rare nor idle.

    The pizzeria shootup – in his neighborhood – is one example.

    Jones has been whipping up a bogus and bizarre accusation that Comet is a front for a Hillary Clinton-affiliated pedophilia ring, and the resulting calls and messages threaten a “public lynching” of this nonexistent ring. “I pray someone comes to Comet pizza with automatic weapons and kills everyone inside,” wrote one. “I just may cut your throat. . . . I truly hope someone blows your brains all over Comet pizza.”

    Comet’s owners asked the FBI for help but heard nothing in reply from James Comey’s agents. They heard instead from a North Carolina man, carrying an assault rifle, who walked into Comet and started shooting on Sunday afternoon — by coincidence, about the same time I got the email from the aspiring hangman. The man told police he had come to “self-investigate” the pedophilia conspiracy. Mercifully, nobody was hurt.

    But next time, and the time after that, and into the future?

    And the Flynns, father and son, have been promoting this conspiracy theory.

    This would appear to be the new normal: Not only disagreeing with your opponent but accusing her of running a pedophilia ring, provoking such fury that somebody takes it upon himself to start shooting. Not only chafing when criticized in the press but stoking anti-media hysteria that leads some supporters to threaten to kill journalists.

    After The Washington Post reported Sunday about the Comet gunman and the nonsense conspiracy theory that motivated him, the reporters received emails and tweets saying “I hope the next shooter targets you lying sacks of shit in the media,” “God has a plan better than death,” and “it would also be a shame if someone took a gun to” The Post.

    Trump is not directly responsible for every violent word or action of his followers. But he foments violence. As The Post’s executive editor, Marty Baron, has noted, when Trump refers to journalists as “the lowest form of life,” “scum” and the enemy, “it is no wonder that some members of our staff [at The Post] and at other news organizations received vile insults and threats of personal harm so worrisome that extra security was required.”

    The fact that Trump is not directly responsible is thus kind of beside the point. Working people up into a lather of rage at a particular set of people is dangerous to that particular set of people.

    Trump, during the campaign, fantasized about Clinton and her judicial nominees being assassinated. He boasted that “I bring rage out” in people, and his violent rallies proved it. Since the election, Trump has falsely accused the media of inciting violence. At his speech in Ohio last week he denounced the “dishonest” media no fewer than six times.

    He has also been encouraging Jones, leading publicist of the Comet-Clinton-pedophilia absurdity. Trump has praised Jones’s “amazing” reputation, called Jones after winning the presidency to thank him for his support, and has regularly parroted Jones’s conspiracy ideas.

    And surprise surprise, he gets results.

    If Trump were a different leader, he would declare that political violence is unacceptable in a free society. Perhaps he’d say it after eating a “Steel Wills” pie at Comet.

    But instead he continues to fuel rage against his opponents and his critics. More and worse violence will inevitably follow.

    Watch your back out there.

  • Sifting fact from speculation and rumor

    The New York Times yesterday pointed out Michael Flynn’s fondness for conspiracy theories and fake news.

    For Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for national security adviser, pushing conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton is a family affair: Both he and his son, Michael G. Flynn, have used social media to spread fake news stories linking Mrs. Clinton to underage sex rings and other serious crimes, backed by no evidence.

    The Twitter habits of both men are attracting renewed attention after a man fired a rifle on Sunday inside Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizza restaurant that was the subject of false stories during the campaign tying it and the Clinton campaign to a child sex trafficking ring.

    Lies and people who believe lies helped get Trump, a chronic liar, elected. Something is wrong here.

    Well before he joined the Trump campaign, the elder Mr. Flynn, 57, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, pushed unsubstantiated claims about Islamic law’s spreading in the United States and about the attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. But in his emergence this year as the angry former general out to help Mr. Trump clean up Washington, Mr. Flynn added wild stories about Hillary Clinton to his stock of unproven tales.

    Six days before the election, for instance, Mr. Flynn posted on Twitter a fake news story that claimed the police and prosecutors in New York had found evidence linking Mrs. Clinton and much of her senior campaign staff to pedophilia, money laundering, perjury and other felonies.

    That is really disgusting as well as frightening. That is the future national security adviser. How do we know he and Trump won’t start a war based on fake news?! We don’t.

    https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/794000841518776320

    Does that look like a good fit for the job?

    And then there’s his son. I was hoping he’s beside the point, but he’s not, because he works for his daddy.

    Michael G. Flynn, 33, is more than just a relative of an incoming senior administration official. In recent years, he has served as the chief of staff to his father, who started a private intelligence and consulting business, the Flynn Intel Group, after being forced to retire from the military in 2014.

    Throughout the campaign, Michael G. Flynn served as a gatekeeper for his father, and he now appears to have a job with the Trump transition team. Email sent to an address at the Flynn Intel Group returned with an automated response that provided a new email contact for both Flynns, and each had a Trump transition email address that ended with .gov.

    I’ve seen headlines today that say he’s no longer part of the transition team. His public blurts are even worse than the general’s.

    But the general is the one whose job it is to filter out lies.

    His role as national security adviser calls for mediating the conflicting views of cabinet secretaries and agencies, and sifting fact from speculation and rumor to help the new president decide how the United States should react to international crises.

    It is a role that is likely to take on outsize importance for Mr. Trump, who has no experience in defense or foreign policy issues and has a habit of making broad assertions that are not based in fact.

    Pause to think about that. It’s especially important for the next president to have a national security adviser who knows how to sift fact from speculation and rumor, because the  next president is a stupid and ignorant real estate tycoon who tells reckless lies all the time. It’s especially important for the next president to have a national security adviser who knows how to sift fact from speculation and rumor, because the  next president is a stupid and ignorant real estate tycoon who tells reckless lies all the time.

    Mr. Flynn, though, has shown similar inclinations both on Twitter and in regular life. His sometimes dubious assertions became so familiar to subordinates at the Defense Intelligence Agency that they came up with a name for the phenomenon: They called them “Flynn facts.”

    It’s enough to make you vomit from sheer terror.

  • Kidding not kidding

    So Trump was lying about how innocent and unexpected that phone call with the president of Taiwan was.

    In today’s Washington Post, Anne Gearan, Philip Rucker and Simon Denyer cite inside sources who say the call was months in the making and intentionally provocative in regard to China.

    That was apparently news to Trump, who on Friday night, as the controversy erupted, dismissively tweeted as if it were a small matter in which Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen phoned him to offer her congratulations, and he took the call as a courtesy.

    And some of his team also said calm down, chill out, it was no big thing, just a couple of people dishing on the phone.

    But by Sunday evening — shortly before The Post’s story went live — Trump took a decidedly new tack, talking tough on China in a way that’s more consistent with what the sources were saying about the Taiwan call.

    And as The Post’s story makes clear, those close to the situation are describing it as much more than just a “courtesy call.” They aren’t saying the “One China” policy is out the window, but they do suggest it was meant to signal a substantial shift in at least the tone of U.S. policy toward China and Taiwan.

    Maybe if we’re really really lucky he’ll get us into a war with China. A dream come true!

  • Fox to oversee henhouse

    The Times on Trump’s choice of Ben Carson:

    With no experience in government or running a large bureaucracy, Mr. Carson, 65, publicly waffled over whether to join the administration. He will oversee an agency with a $47 billion budget, bringing to the job a philosophical opposition to government programs that encourage what he calls “dependency” and engage in “social engineering.”

    He has no expertise in housing policy, but he did spend part of his childhood in public housing, said a close friend, Armstrong Williams, and he was raised by a dauntless mother with a grammar-school education. In his autobiography he stressed that individual effort, not government programs, were the key to overcoming poverty.

    Yeah that’s great. I’ve been to the doctor for checkups a few times, therefore I’m qualified to be Surgeon General, right? Why not, this is America.

    The Department of Housing and Urban Development oversees programs that provide vouchers and other rental assistance for five million low-income families, fights urban blight and helps struggling homeowners stave off foreclosures.

    So given his emphasis on the fatuous claim that individual effort, not government programs, is the key to overcoming poverty, no doubt he’ll be doing away with all those pesky vouchers, not to mention the struggling remainders of federal public housing.

    Mr. Carson will be charged with enforcing the same civil rights law once used in a federal lawsuit against Mr. Trump. He and his father were accused in 1973 of refusing to rent to African-Americans in their buildings. A former Trump superintendent testified that he had been told to mark a “C,” for “colored,” on the applications of black apartment seekers. The Trumps denied the charges and countersued the government. They ultimately signed a consent degree in which they did not admit guilt, but agreed to desegregate their properties.

    A band of brothers.

  • An unconventional choice

    Well here’s a classic of normalizing language – in the Washington Post’s story on President Pussygrabber’s nomination of reactionary retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson to HUD chief:

    President-elect Donald Trump nominated retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an unconventional choice that underscores Trump’s willingness to forgo traditional policy expertise in some Cabinet positions to surround himself with allies.

    Normalizing and grossly euphemistic, would be a more thorough description. Make that: a shockingly random choice that underscores Trump’s determination to appoint completely unqualified inexperienced people to Cabinet positions.

    That determination, in turn, underscores Trump’s contempt for the very concepts of knowledge, relevant experience, expertise, competence, and the like.

    That contempt, in turn, underscores Trump’s frightening anti-intellectualism and amateurism, which in turn underscore the logical underpinning of such a view: that only force and power count.

    In other words Trump seems to think that there is no such thing as relevant knowledge and expertise, and thus that it’s all random, and thus that winning and losing are all there are.

    In other words Trumpworld is wholly arbitrary apart from force and money. There is no such thing as argument, or careful thought, or analysis, or weighing opposing views. There is only fiat.

    That’s what makes Trump a fascist. That’s fascismworld, and we now have to live in it.

  • Please stop retweeting all these random “real” people

    Alec Baldwin’s Trump on SNL last night:

    https://youtu.be/NA57GAaItKc

    Trump’s furious tweet about it is all the more hilarious because the skit is about Trump’s Twitter eruptions.

  • Trump reviews Saturday Night Live again

    Ah the dignity and modesty of the future president:

    He really tried watching it, people. He did. He made every effort. But speaking as a totally objective impartial dispassionate observer, he found it simply unwatchable. The fact that it features a mocking caricature of him by Alec Baldwin is entirely unconnected to his reasoned opinion; nothing to do with it at all.

    The flaws of SNL are threefold, according to our thoughtful future head of state:

    1. It is totally biased
    2. It is not funny
    3. Alec Baldwin’s impersonation of Donald Trump (the author of the criticism in question but that’s wholly unconnected) is so bad it can’t get any worse

    On 1 – I have occasionally noticed a tendency toward bias in the critic himself (Donald Trump), a tendency that seems to go unchecked, even when it’s publicly noticed by third parties. This makes me uncertain that he is particularly skilled in attributing bias to people not himself. It makes me suspect that he attributes bias to perceived enemies in proportion to his exoneration of himself.

    On 2 – I have never observed the critic himself (Donald Trump) to make any impromptu remark that could be considered genuinely funny (as opposed to merely insulting, which some people confuse with “funny”). This makes me uncertain that he knows what’s funny and what isn’t. Humor is notoriously subjective, of course, but it’s not infinitely subjective. I don’t think Trump is an edge case – maybe witty, maybe not. I think his view of how funny SNL is is inconclusive.

    On 3 – This one is easier. He’s dead wrong. Baldwin’s impersonation is startlingly good as an impersonation (whether or not you think it’s funny). They’re physically alike enough that Baldwin’s deployment of Trump’s absurd mannerisms is hilarious. It’s understandable that Trump wouldn’t see it that way, of course, but it’s imbecilic of him not to realize that we all know that and that it renders his opinion on the subject entirely worthless.

    It’s really rare to see someone in public life who is that mind-blind. You’d think it would make him easy to cheat and defraud, wouldn’t you, and yet he’s the one who cheats and defrauds others. That’s a puzzle.

  • The minute he’s sworn in

    MoveOn on Facebook:

  • The swaggering men administration

    Trump is filling his cabinet with far too many plutocrats (any would be too many, in my view) and too many military people. That makes sense coming from him, I guess: he undervalues relevant experience and orientation and expertise (law, government, diplomacy, public service) and overvalues irrelevant and potentially damaging ditto (money, militarism).

    Donald J. Trump ran for president boasting that he knew more about fighting terrorists than America’s generals.

    But now that Mr. Trump is the president-elect, he is spending a great deal of his time with retired generals, and those of a particular breed: commanders who, when they served, were often at odds with President Obama.

    One has been named as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, and several others are candidates for coveted positions in his cabinet or are advising him on how to confront the world’s greatest threats. They would give his foreign policy a far more aggressive cast than Mr. Obama’s.

    That was November 21. As of yesterday:

    Donald Trump’s move to pack his administration with military brass is getting mixed reviews, as Congress and others struggle to balance their personal regard for the individuals he’s choosing with a broader worry about an increased militarization of American policy.

    No fewer than three combat-experienced retired Army and Marine leaders, with multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, are on tap for high-level government jobs normally reserved for civilians. Others are entrenched in Trump’s organization as close advisers.

    Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn will serve as the president’s national security adviser, and Trump announced retired Marine four-star Gen. James Mattis Thursday night as his secretary of defense. In addition, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly is a likely pick to head the Department of Homeland Security.

    We’re supposed to have civilian government. Really: it’s important.

    Vikram Singh, a former senior adviser at the Defense Department and now vice president at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said the law requiring a gap between military service and leading the Pentagon “exists to preserve civilian control of the military, a cornerstone of American democracy, and appointing a general so recently retired from active service to be secretary of defense is a serious matter, no matter how qualified that general may be for the position.”

    Jon Soltz, who leads the liberal political action committee VoteVets, said that people with military service are needed in Washington, but “it is somewhat concerning that Donald Trump continues to eye recently retired generals for some of the most important traditionally civilian positions in government.”

    I suspect that what attracts Trump to the military is that it’s a command-obey system. He’s a “do what I say” kind of guy, so he’s drawn to generals, who are at the top of the command-obey pyramid. He’ll still be at the top over them, but they’ll be his deputy “do what I say” guys, he’s thinking; that’s my guess.

    The Times has a similar take:

    Turning to the retired officers reflects Mr. Trump’s preference for having strong, even swaggering, men around him. But it worries national security experts and even other retired generals, who say that if Mr. Trump stacks critical jobs purely with warriors, it could lead to an undue emphasis on military force in American foreign policy.

    So far so bad.

  • Of course both sides agreed ahead of time

    The Washington Post hints that maybe possibly Trump was lying about how that phone call with Taiwan’s president happened and what was discussed when it did happen.

    But a spokesman in the Taiwanese president’s office clarified to Reuters that the call was agreed to beforehand.

    “Of course both sides agreed ahead of time before making contact,” spokesman Alex Huang said in response to Trump’s tweet.

    Taiwan’s government also said the two sides discussed “strengthening bilateral relations” and talked about their “close economic, political and security ties” — all words likely to make China cringe and suggestive of a more in-depth conversation than just a congratulatory call.

    “Cringe” is again a cautious way of putting it.

    Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and potential Trump foreign policy adviser Ric Grenell said Friday night that the flap was overblown.

    “It was totally planned,” Grenell said. “It was a simple courtesy call. People need to calm down. The ‘One China’ policy wasn’t changed. Washington, D.C., types need to lighten up.”

    Right. People who know something about foreign affairs and diplomacy and China and Taiwan – they all need to calm down and lighten up, and let the people who know nothing whatever about any of it just get on with trying to start a war between nuclear states.

    But the situation raises real questions about who is advising Trump when it comes to diplomacy with Asia, as The Post’s Emily Rauhala writes. It also came just a day after the New York Times reported on building concerns about Trump’s handling of other calls with world leaders and his preparation level. And the stakes are considerably higher with China than with Mexico and many other countries.

    His preparation level is zero. We know this. He’s much too busy taking victory laps and tweeting bullshit and trying to persuade the New York Times to be nice to him to do any pesky preparation.

    Even if it wasn’t meant to be a big deal, it’s clearly become a big deal to China. China has now lodged an official complaint with the United States over the matter, though it appears to be giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and blaming Taiwan. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, called it a “petty” move by Tsai. “The One China principle is the foundation for heathy development of Sino-U. S. relations,” Wang said. “We don’t wish for anything to obstruct or ruin this foundation.”

    By “benefit of the doubt” I suppose Aaron Blake means “allowances because he’s such an imbecile.”

  • Trump says he can too so talk to Taiwan if he wants to

    Trump fully understands what a colossal mistake it was for him to chat with the president of Taiwan, and he’s said so on Twitter.

    No I’m kidding of course. Here’s what he said on Twitter:

    Actually, Bozo, that doesn’t change anything. You’re not supposed to do it that way. There’s a process, and you’re too lazy and stupid to learn it. You’ve been skipping the briefings you’re supposed to get. You’re keeping the State Department out of the loop. You’re a runaway train, and you don’t care.

    At this rate we may be in a nuclear exchange with China before the New Year, let alone before he’s actually president.

    Christ. That pile of sulky suiting will be the president in a few short weeks, and he talks like a petulant child. THEY get to talk to Taiwan and I don’t, it’s NOT FAIR.

    Seriously, when he’s run aground this fast, how can things possibly not get much much worse very fast?

  • Siri, what is Taiwan?

    The latest in Trump has no fucking clue what he’s doing.

    Trump: What does the President do?

    The New York Times reports:

    President-elect Donald J. Trump spoke by telephone with Taiwan’s president on Friday, a striking break with nearly four decades of diplomatic practice that could precipitate a major rift with China even before Mr. Trump takes office.

    Mr. Trump’s office said he spoke with the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, “who offered her congratulations.”

    He is believed to be the first president or president-elect who has spoken to a Taiwanese leader since 1979, when the United States severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan after its recognition of the People’s Republic of China.

    He thinks he’s been elected dictator. He thinks he has no need to find out what he should be doing, because hey, he’s the Big Cheese.

    The White House was not told about Mr. Trump’s call until after it happened, according to a senior administration official. The official spoke on ground rules of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic relations.

    But the potential fallout from the conversation was significant, the administration official said, noting that the Chinese government issued a bitter protest after the United States sold weapons to Taiwan as part of a well-established arms agreement.

    Mr. Trump’s call with President Tsai is a far bigger provocation, though the Chinese government did not issue an immediate response. Beijing views Taiwan as a breakaway province and has adamantly opposed the attempts of any country to open official relations with it.

    So this won’t be any kind of problem at all.

  • As if they were so bound

    The Office of Government Ethics has been joining Trump in the Twitter game.

    It started Wednesday morning, when President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter to address concerns about his ability to lead the U.S. government while also holding massive business interests around the world.

    “While I am not mandated to do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses,” Trump tweeted, adding that “legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations” and that he will be leaving his “great business in total.”

    More than “visually.” Much more. The “visual” part flows from the substantive part. Conflicts of interest are a problem for very clear, substantive reasons. Public servants are supposed to work for the public good, not their personal profit. That’s not a mere image issue.

    What exactly that means remains unclear. But the verified Twitter account of the typically decorous federal ethics office chimed in with statements that appeared to goad Trump about divesting his businesses — something he hasn’t specifically promised to do.

    “Bravo! Only way to resolve these conflicts of interest is to divest . Good call!” the agency tweeted, mimicking Trump’s own tweeting style. And: “OGE is delighted that you’ve decided to divest your businesses. Right decision!”

    Then the tweets disappeared for awhile, and there was speculation they were a hack, or a tease, or who knows what.

    But then they all came back, and a spokes sent NPR a statement:

    An OGE spokesman, Seth Jaffe, who is the chief of the agency’s ethics law and policy branch, emailed a statement to NPR:

    “Like everyone else, we were excited this morning to read the President-elect’s twitter feed indicating that he wants to be free of conflicts of interest. OGE applauds that goal, which is consistent with an opinion OGE issued in 1983. Divestiture resolves conflicts of interest in a way that transferring control does not. We don’t know the details of their plan, but we are willing and eager to help them with it.”

    The statement suggested that the tweets have been deliberate all along. And, in fact, the OGE later confirmed to NPR that this was not a hack.

    So then people wondered if the OGE had insider information about what Trump meant by his bizarro tweets.

    Almost two hours after the first statement, the OGE issued another one:

    “The tweets that OGE posted today were responding only to the public statement that the President-elect made on his Twitter feed about his plans regarding conflicts of interest. OGE’s tweets were not based on any information about the President-elect’s plans beyond what was shared on his Twitter feed. OGE is non-partisan and does not endorse any individual.”

    The tweets are all there to see: here is their Twitter.

    I followed the link on this one:

    I found a letter from the OGE from October 1983:

    You have requested us to confirm our oral advice of
    October 18, 1983 regarding whether or not the conflict of
    interest laws (18 U.S.C. §§ 202-209) and the standards of conduct
    regulations (see 3 C.F.R. Part 100) would prohibit the President
    from taking part in official matters relating to the
    entertainment industry which may from time to time arise.
    In brief, the Department of Justice’s views, with which we
    agree, are that the President and the Vice President are not
    legally subject to the restrictions of (1) the conflict of
    interest laws, Title 18 U.S.C. §§ 202-209, and (2) the standards
    of conduct as set forth in Executive Order No. 11222 of
    May 8, 1965 and the regulations thereunder, 5 C.F.R Part 735
    (pertaining to the whole executive branch) and 3 C.F.R. Part 100
    (pertaining specifically to the Executive Office of the
    President), but as a matter of policy, the President and the Vice
    President should conduct themselves as if they were so bound.

    Emphasis added. Yes they should. Please start now.

  • $365 million in loans

    Ok this one seems massive – Trump owes Deutsche Bank some $365 million dollars, and Deutsche Bank is in big trouble with the US Department of Justice.

    Uh oh.

    In 2013, Trump signed a 60-year lease for the building, once the headquarters of the U.S. Post Office, and began a $200 million renovation to turn it into an upscale hotel with the help of loans from Deutsche Bank, a large German bank.

    Trump’s financial disclosure reports, viewed by NPR, show he currently owes Deutsche Bank roughly $365 million in loans for the Washington hotel, another one in Chicago and a Florida golf course.

    Deutsche Bank is one of the large global banks investing in and betting on real estate around the world. So it makes some sense it would be exposed to Trump, says Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT’s Sloane School of Management. He says Trump has had a relationship with the Frankfurt-based bank spanning nearly two decades, and it is his largest financial backer.

    But Johnson says Deutsche Bank is in deep trouble with the Justice Department over a number of allegations.

    And Donald Trump will be overseeing that very department.

    “The tip of the iceberg is a particular fine by the Department of Justice, a large fine with the opening numbers around $14 billion, with regard to how they created and sold mortgage-backed securities before 2008,” he says.

    There are private negotiations underway over the amount of that fine, Johnson says, with the bank and the German government pushing back.

    He says this sets up a huge conflict of interest for the president-elect: Once Trump takes office, he will be overseeing the Justice Department, which in turn is negotiating a fine with his biggest lender.

    “Does it look bad? Does it look like exactly someone might cut Deutsche Bank a deal because they want their boss’s boss to be happier? Yeah, absolutely, of course,” Johnson says. “And that’s why we try to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

    There’s that extra three words again – the appearance of. Couldn’t “we” try to avoid conflict of interest, period, and assume the appearance will naturally follow? I don’t want the fuckers to hide the payoffs and backroom deals, I want them to not have them.

    Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, says it would be best if the case were resolved under the Obama administration.

    Well, no, it would be best if Trump and all his relatives simply got out of his business – sold it off and invested in Treasury bonds.

    But Painter, now a law professor at the University of Minnesota, says even if the case against Deutsche Bank can be resolved, there are a host of other potential conflicts surrounding the Trump International Hotel — such as guests staying there as a way to curry favor with Trump.

    “The foreign diplomats who are coming in to stay at the hotel at the expense of their governments could create a very serious issue for the president [-elect] under the emoluments clause of the Constitution,” he says.

    But the Republicans will refuse to do anything about it, and get away with it for at least a couple of years, and this squalid situation will go on and on and on. It’s disgusting.

    Steven Schooner, with the George Washington University Law School, says Trump’s lease with the hotel — which NPR has seen — should be terminated immediately, because the terms of that lease say so.

    “The contract specifically says that no elected official of the United States government shall be party to, share in or benefit from the contract. It couldn’t be any more clear than that,” he says.

    But will the lease be terminated? I doubt it. The people in charge seem to be letting this proceed without let or hindrance.

  • The Nazi on the road

    The Führer tweeted an action shot.

  • Product placement comes to the Oval Office

    Last July the Independent went to Macy’s in New York to look at Ivanka Trump’s line of clothes.

    One of the people at the Republican National Convention who received praise from all corners was Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka.

    People liked her sharp comments, and admired her stylish line of clothes, which she highlighted during her performances. When she tweeted a link the morning after delivering a speech about how her father would fight for America, the $139 (£106) pink dress she had worn sold out online.

    Ok wait, she what? She promoted her clothes during her “performances” – meaning her appearances at a political convention which nominated her father as a candidate for president? She flogged her clothes there? How grotesque, how tacky, how inappropriate, how gross.

    That’s disgusting.

    Yet many will be surprised to learn that the vast majority of Ms Trump’s clothes are not manufactured in US, but in China and Vietnam, two countries under the spotlight for human rights abuses and poor labour conditions.

    So she uses a political convention to market her product, and she makes her product cheaply by doing it in China and Vietnam.

    An inspection by The Independent of more than 25 different items of Ms Trump’s range at the Macy’s flagship store in New York city, found not a single one was produced in the US. A sales assistant confirmed that no items in the collection were made at home.

    Donald? Any comment?

    A number of commentators have favourably reflected on how Ms Trump used her moment in the spotlight last week in Cleveland to promote her own line of products, which includes clothing, accessories, shoes and fragrances.

    Wtf? Why would anyone comment favorably on that? It’s so fucking sleazy.

    During his campaign Mr Trump has spoken repeatedly about “bad trade deals” that have seen American jobs go to countries such as Mexico and China. When he was campaigning in Indiana he vowed to tax a producer of air conditioners, Carrier, which had announced it was moving 1,400 jobs from Indianapolis to Mexico.

    Likewise, when he learned that the food giant RJR Nabisco had also relocated a factory to Mexico, he said he would stop eating Oreos, despite his love of the chocolate biscuits.

    Later, speaking in the battleground state of Ohio in June, he declared: “We’re getting the hell beaten out of us. We’re going to stop. We’re going to bring jobs back to this country.”

    Except in our companies. Everyone else’s, but not ours.

    Harvard Trade and Investment Professor Robert Lawrence said earlier this year he had inspected a total of the 838 Ivanka Trump products that were advertised on the Trump.Com website. He said 628 were said to be imported and 354 were made specifically made in China. Her father’s products were also produced overseas.

    “Trump castigates American companies like Apple, Ford, Carrier and Kraft that use their brands to sell goods in the US, but produce them in other countries,” he wrote in a column for PBS. “Yet despite these deep convictions, when it comes to his own businesses, Trump doesn’t exactly walk the walk.”

    Why it’s almost as if he’s completely hollow.

  • And he’s gonna make the faucets run ice cream, too

    Trump says he’s going to “punish” companies that move their factories to places with lower wages. Yeah sure he is – right after he sells all that he has and gives to the poor.

    Trump’s remarks came as he triumphantly celebrated a decision by the heating and air conditioning company Carrier to reverse its plans to close a furnace plant here and move to Mexico, helping keep 1,100 jobs in Indianapolis. About that many Carrier positions at that plant and another facility in the area will still be cut, however.

    Plus Trump bribed them with tax breaks, thus providing an incentive for all other companies to threaten to run away from home unless Trump bribes them too.

    In remarks delivered inside the Carrier facility, the president-elect said more companies will decide to stay in the United States because his administration will lower corporate taxes and reduce regulations.

    Yay! Get ready for more pollution, more workplace injuries and deaths, more contaminated food, more bogus product claims, more workers fired for being too ugly or old or fat or all of those.

    “Companies are not going to leave the United States any more without consequences,” Trump declared Thursday. “Not gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen.”

    His verbal flair is such a joy.

    Trump said he decided to intervene after watching a television news report that reminded him that he had vowed during the campaign, “We’re not going to let Carrier leave.”

    Maybe next he’ll watch Thelma and Louise and drive off a cliff.

    The Carrier deal was sharply criticized by some conservatives, who viewed it as government distortion of free markets, as well as liberals, who derided it as corporate welfare.

    “I think it sets a pretty bad precedent,” said Dan Ikenson, director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “I don’t think we should be addressing issues like this on an ad hoc basis. It certainly incentivizes companies to make a stink and say, ‘We’re going to leave, too. What are you going to do for me?’ ”

    Aw poor Republicans. They’re starting to see the downside already.

    Privately, some business leaders were also unnerved.

    “It is uncharted territory for a president-elect to get involved personally in social engineering with a single company,” said an adviser to major corporations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order not to anger the new administration.

    Because if the adviser angered the new administration, the new administration might pull out the adviser’s fingernails.

    People in Indianapolis are saying what a great guy Trump is, he keeps his promises, wotta pal.

    In fact, by Trump’s own telling on Thursday, he had no plans to intervene in the Carrier case until he watched an evening news segment featuring a worker who expressed confidence that the president-elect would save the Indianapolis plant. He said his campaign vow to save the plant was “a euphemism” for other companies.

    Hahahahahahaha that’s not what euphemism means oh lord he’s such a joke…until he kills us all.

    Regardless, Trump — known for his tendency to react to TV news reports — said he immediately picked up the phone and called Gregory Hayes, the chief executive of Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies.

    “I said, ‘Greg, you gotta help us out here. You gotta do something,’ ” Trump recalled Thursday.

    I’m picturing William Macy as Jerry Lundegaard.

    Standing in front of a wall blanketed with Carrier’s blue-and-white logo, Trump lavished praise on the company for its decision, promising that the sales of its air-conditioning units would soar “because of the goodwill you have engendered.”

    Experts said no modern president has intervened on behalf of an individual company. While Obama stepped in to rescue car manufacturers after the 2008 financial crisis and President John F. Kennedy intervened to prevent steel producers from increasing prices, these actions affected entire industries — not decisions at a specific plant, Bartik said.

    Jeff Windau, an analyst at the investment firm Edward Jones in St. Louis, said that Trump may not have the “bandwidth” to keep up this kind of deal-making once in the Oval Office.

    Hahahahahaha that’s such a tactful way of putting it. No, it probably won’t work very well for him to try to schmooze every CEO he glimpses on the news, one at a time.

    “Having a current president-elect focus on a specific company and a specific location — it’s a pretty micro view of the world,” he said.

    But Trump said Thursday that he planned to personally call other companies contemplating moving operations out of the country, even, as he said, if critics felt such outreach was not “presidential.”

    “I think it’s very presidential. And if it’s not presidential, that’s okay because I actually like doing it,” Trump said. “But we’re going to have a lot of phone calls made to companies when they say they’re leaving this country, because they’re not going to leave this country.”

    “That’s okay because I actually like doing it” – of course he does, he loves calling people up, and he thinks that’s what the job is – calling the CEO of Pakistan and telling him how great he is, and calling up each CEO personally…he’s hilarious. As long as you don’t focus on the damage he’ll do.

    Trump’s aggressive stance toward outsourcing comes despite the fact that his family companies profit from low-wage laborers around the globe who produce Trump-branded merchandise. His daughter Ivanka has her own separate brand of jewelry, shoes and clothing, much of which is produced in China.

    But that’s completely different because…Is that a squirrel?

  • Amazing work which is visible in every way

    Nawaz Sharif phoned Trump yesterday, and Trump responded by flinging himself down belly-up and squirming.

    Donald Trump has heaped praise on Pakistan, traditionally a troublesome US ally, saying it is a “fantastic country, fantastic place of fantastic people” according to an official statement released by Islamabad.

    The US president-elect made his effusive comments in a phone conversation on Wednesday with Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of the nuclear-armed state, whom Trump hailed as a “terrific guy”.

    He had no idea who Sharif was, did he. He couldn’t remember what Pakistan was. He had no clue. He was vamping in place.

    The statement by the government’s Press Information Department quoted Trump saying: “As I am talking to you prime minister, I feel I am talking to a person I have known for long. Your country is amazing with tremendous opportunities. Pakistanis are one of the most intelligent people.”

    It’s probably not a verbatim transcript, the Guardian points out. But if that’s the gist…somebody needs to put the baby back in the playpen, and never let it answer the phone again.

    https://twitter.com/DavidKenner/status/804022820611227649

    It is unlikely Sharif was expecting such a torrent of praise when he phoned Trump to congratulate him on his election victory.

    Relations between the two countries have been fraught for years, with the Obama administration despairing at Pakistan’s harbouring of the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network, two insurgent groups that have used Pakistan soil to launch attacks on US and Nato troops in Afghanistan for more than 15 years.

    Yes yes yes but Trump is an outsider, remember? His job is to ignore all that and just do what occurs to him when the phone rings.

    Current rows between the two countries include US demands for the release from prison of Shakil Afridi, a doctor who helped lead the CIA to the hiding place of former al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden; the withholding of $300m in “reimbursements” to the Pakistani army; and the holding up of a financing deal that would have allowed Islamabad to by US F16 fighter jets.

    But none of those issues appeared to weigh on Trump, who reportedly told Sharif: “You are doing amazing work which is visible in every way.”

    Pakistan will be cock-a-hoop over Trump’s apparent enthusiasm for engaging with a country that has few firm international allies.

    “I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems,” Trump was reported as saying.

    This will go well.

  • How’s that for standing up to corporate greed?

    Bernie Sanders points out that Trump has just signaled to every corporation in the US that it can get big tax benefits and incentives if it threatens to go offshore.

    In exchange for allowing United Technologies to continue to offshore more than 1,000 jobs, Trump will reportedly give the company tax and regulatory favors that the corporation has sought. Just a short few months ago, Trump was pledging to force United Technologies to “pay a damn tax.” He was insisting on very steep tariffs for companies like Carrier that left the United States and wanted to sell their foreign-made products back in the United States. Instead of a damn tax, the company will be rewarded with a damn tax cut. Wow! How’s that for standing up to corporate greed? How’s that for punishing corporations that shut down in the United States and move abroad?

    In essence, United Technologies took Trump hostage and won. And that should send a shock wave of fear through all workers across the country.

    Trump has endangered the jobs of workers who were previously safe in the United States. Why? Because he has signaled to every corporation in America that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives.

    Wouldn’t you think a brilliant deal-maker like Donnie from Queens would have figured that out?