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Donald Trump's abnormal presidency: the week of Sept. 4

You too can buy a presidential medal, courtesy of the Trump Make America Great Again Committee.

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Donald Trump made it clear at the beginning of his campaign that he wasn’t going to follow the normal rules or tone of politics. We’re keeping track of all the ways his presidency veers from the norm in terms of policy and rhetoric.

Day 230 Sept 6

Trump’s campaign is selling $45 gold medals with his face on them

Only a handful of Americans will ever receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a U.S. citizen can receive. But thanks to President Trump, the  similar-sounding “presidential medal” can now be had for the low price of just $45.

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That’s right: You, too, can buy a presidential medal, courtesy of the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising committee for Trump’s re-election campaign, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. The gold medal features Trump’s face and a promise to “Make America Great Again” (which encircles an American flag, of course).

Neither Trump’s reelection committee nor its Federal Election Commission–listed treasurer immediately returned VICE News’ request for comment about when Trump started selling the medals, but records from the Wayback Machine — an archive of most of the internet — show that the presidential medal webpage first appeared online Wednesday. Trump’s campaign also released a YouTube video on Wednesday meant to highlight the resurgence of American manufacturing but also shows workers creating medals with Trump’s face on them.

The video ends with a link to Trump’s campaign gear site.

The new commemorative medal won’t quiet critics’ cries that Trump is “licensing the presidency” — accusations that surfaced again last week when Trump wore one of his campaign’s $40 “USA” hats to tour Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. While profits from campaign merchandise ostensibly go to the campaign’s pockets, not Trump’s pockets, no other president has ever launched a re-election committee so quickly.

— Carter Sherman

Trump won’t stop lying about American taxes

Donald Trump is spreading inaccuracies about American taxes again.

In a Wednesday morning tweet, the president called the U.S. “the highest taxed nation in the world.” It’s a claim he’s made a few times in the past — and he was wrong on those occasions, too.

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In fact, the U.S. places somewhere near the middle or bottom of the OECD countries using typical tax metrics, according to 2015 data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Other major economies like the U.K., Germany, and France have higher taxation rates.

Trump had pushed the wrong claim back in May on “Meet the Press,” during the GOP primary debates, and even as far back as a 2015 “Fox & Friends” interview.

Trump will discuss one of his major campaign talking points in North Dakota on Wednesday: tax cuts. House Republicans are returning to the Hill this week to begin work on a tax-cut bill to benefit businesses and rich people.

Trump will undoubtedly bring down the hammer (or at least send out some strongly worded tweets) to push the plan through Congress. Since his repeated efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare derailed, he’s in need of a legislative victory.

— Rex Santus

Trump “has grounds” to decertify the Iran nuclear deal

In just over a month’s time, President Trump will again have to decide whether he believes Iran is living up to its side of the nuclear deal struck in 2015. Twice he has gone against his own instincts and recertified the deal, but if Trump’s ambassador to the U.N. is to be believed, he will not ignore his gut a third time.

In a speech given to conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, Nikki Haley stopped short of saying outright that she thinks Trump will decertify the deal on October 15 — an agreement which gave Iran billions of dollars in global sanctions relief in exchange for severely curbing its nuclear activities — but Haley did say that should the president take that route, he would be within his rights.

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“I’m not making the case for decertifying,” Haley said. “What I am saying is should [Trump] decide to decertify he has grounds to stand on.”

Haley laid out two avenues by which Trump could void the nuclear agreement.

The first is on national security grounds. The legislation Congress passed on reviewing the Iran deal requires the president to certify that the deal is vital to the national security interests of the U.S. every three months. On that basis alone, Trump could decertify the agreement.

The second is based on the fact that Iran continues to test technology capable of carrying a nuclear warhead — in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231. Haley also said Iran was still supporting terrorism, conducting arms-smuggling, and violating travel bans — all reasons for Trump to pull the plug.

But Haley also said that should Trump fail to certify the deal, it did not automatically that mean the U.S. would pull out of the agreement. Under the law, Congress would have 60 days to consider whether to re-impose sanctions on Iran.

“Congress could debate whether the nuclear deal is in fact too big to fail,” Haley said.

The president has long opposed the deal struck by the Obama administration, calling it “the worst deal ever negotiated” during the election campaign.

— David Gilbert

Day 228 Sept 4

Trump likely to end DACA with a six-month delay

President Trump has decided to scrap a program protecting undocumented young immigrants who entered the country as children from deportation, according to reports. The news, which broke Sunday night, has prompted an outcry from politicians and business figures and left the fate of hundreds of thousands of so-called “Dreamers” in limbo.

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Politico was first to report the news that Trump had decided to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era program launched in 2012 that protects “Dreamers” from deportation and gives them the right to work.

Enforcement of the decision would be delayed for six months to give Congress time to come up with a replacement, according to sources, effectively placing the onus back on lawmakers to find a solution to the thorny issue of immigration, one that has stubbornly eluded them for years (President Barack Obama created DACA by executive action). A statement about the issue has been scheduled for Tuesday, though some have suggested Trump could yet change his mind.

Polls suggest the majority of Americans are in favor of DACA and support the rights of Dreamers to legally remain in the U.S. The issue has divided Republicans, and even Trump has sent mixed messages in the eight months since he came into office. While he promised during his campaign to scrap the program immediately, as recently as Friday he claimed to “love the Dreamers.” “We think the Dreamers are terrific,” he told reporters.

Senior Republicans including Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. Orrin Hatch have also urged Trump not to scrap the program, while Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, railed against the news on Twitter, accusing Trump of “teasing #Dreamers for months.”

But ending DACA is important to his hard-line anti-immigration base, who believe that undocumented immigrants take jobs from U.S. citizens. Rep. Steve King, a hawk on immigration, tweeted his disapproval of the decision to delay the end of DACA by six months, writing that allowing time for a potential amnesty to be agreed on was “Republican suicide.”

Many Democrats were scathing in their response to the news, with Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeting: “If Trump decides to end DACA, it will be one of the ugliest and cruelest decisions ever made by a president in our modern history.”

The nearly 800,000 Dreamers make up a tiny fraction of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Most on the program are Hispanic, with more than a quarter living in California. More than 90 percent of them are employed, contributing to the U.S. economy.

— David Gilbert