Week 27 in Trump's America: rolling back LGBTQ rights

Week 27, in one sentence: Trump hired Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci as his new communications director, which reportedly caused Sean Spicer to resign; accused the New York Times of foiling an assassination attempt on the leader of ISIS; proclaimed that he has the “complete power to pardon” anyone he wants for a crime; repeatedly and publicly berated Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and not going after Hillary Clinton; pressured Republicans to pass an Obamacare repeal, any Obamacare repeal, after “years of talking and campaigning on it”; updated his nickname for Washington from “the swamp” to “the sewer”; bragged about his Electoral College victory to a crowd of Boy Scouts; praised Sen. John McCain for returning to Washington after surgery and a brain cancer diagnosis; said Tim Cook will build three Apple manufacturing plants in the U.S., even though Apple hasn’t said anything about that; stunned the nation (and apparently the Pentagon) by tweeting that the military will no longer allow transgender people to serve “in any capacity”; and lambasted all Democrats and three Republicans — including John McCain — for killing the Senate’s latest Obamacare repeal effort.

Sean Spicer — who had all but disappeared from the public eye in recent weeks after barring cameras from press briefings —abruptly resigned as press secretary after reportedly disagreeing with Trump’s decision to hire Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci, a Wall Street financier, as communications director. Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has essentially taken over the daily briefings, though Spicer will stay on until August.

“Sean Spicer is a wonderful person who took tremendous abuse from the Fake News Media,” Trump tweeted after Spicer’s resignation, “but his future is bright!”

The Mooch filled a position that’s been vacant since May. He’s a former hedge fund manager who reportedly has plenty of bad blood with senior adviser Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff. Scaramucci, however, said he had “enormous respect” for Bannon and that he and Priebus are “dear friends.”

Trump accused the New York Times of “foiling” an attempt to kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group. The Times itself seemed confounded and issued a statement asking Trump for some clarity on the accusation. (A recent Fox News report claimed Baghdadi “snuck away” from U.S. forces thanks to a New York Times article. The Times asked for an apology over the “malicious and inaccurate segment.”)

Trump and Putin may have met even more times at the G-20 summit than what’s been disclosed, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. “Maybe they went to the toilet together,” Lavrov joked.

Trump’s new communications director quickly came under fire when people began digging up his old tweets that acknowledged the legitimacy of climate change, signaled support of gun control, and praised Hillary Clinton. Soon after, Scaramucci announced “for the sake of full transparency” that he was deleting those tweets. But Trump defended Scaramucci by saying he wanted to support Trump before the Republican primaries but didn’t know Trump was running.

Also, everyone realized The Mooch reminded them of “That Guy” — you know, the one from “Futurama.”

After reports surfaced that Trump was consulting aides about his ability to pardon himself and others from crimes, he tweeted about his “complete power to pardon.”

Trump continued to publicly berate his own attorney general, this time pondering in a tweet why Jeff Sessions (and special counsel Robert Mueller) weren’t looking into Hillary Clinton and James Comey’s “crimes.” After admitting last week that he never would have hired Sessions if he’d known the attorney general would recuse himself from the Russia investigation, the president waged a smear campaign against Sessions in an effort, speculation goes, to force him to resign.

The president also continued to defend his son Don Jr. — who took a meeting with a Russian lawyer who reportedly offered dirt on Hillary Clinton — by attacking attacking his vanquished election opponent once again.

Trump attacked Democrats, Republicans, and the Russians in his daily tweets. He decried the “phony” witch hunt against him and wondered why Republicans didn’t defend the president more firmly.

Meanwhile, the new White House communications director said the president still wasn’t sure if Russia intervened in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf. “He basically said to me, ‘Hey, you know, this is, maybe they did it, maybe they didn’t do it,'” Scaramucci said. (They did.)

Jared Kushner, the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law, denied that he colluded with Russia to help Trump win the presidency. “Let me be very clear: I did not collude with Russia, nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so,” Kushner said to reporters after a closed-door conversation with the Senate Intelligence Committee. He also asserted his father-in-law won the election not because of Russia, but because he ran a “smarter” campaign.

The president came up with a new nickname for his right-hand man turned opponent: “beleaguered” Jeff Sessions. In tweets, Trump also pondered why the attorney general wasn’t investigating “Crooked Hillary’s crimes and Russia relations.” Meanwhile, rumors swirled that Rudy Giuliani was being tapped to replace Sessions — though Giuliani denied the claims and said that Sessions was right to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

Trump again pressed Republicans to repeal Obamacare after “years of talking and campaigning on it.” He told a room full of kids that “Obamacare is death” during a publicity stunt that paraded children as “victims of Obamacare.”

Trump again shouted his politics at children at the Boy Scouts’ National Jamboree. He used the event — which always invites presidents on a nonpartisan basis — to brag about record crowd sizes and Electoral College victories. The speech was so strange that Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh apologized later in the week: “We sincerely regret that politics were inserted into the scouting program.”

The president updated his campaign nickname for the Washington establishment, “the swamp,” to the “sewer” because it’s “actually much worse than anyone thought,” Trump said.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain made a dramatic return to Washington just a week after surgery to remove a blood clot that revealed an aggressive form of brain cancer. He brought the Senate vote on whether to begin a debate over repealing and replacing Obamacare to a 50-50 tie.

“Thank you for coming to D.C. for such a vital vote,” President Trump tweeted at McCain. “Congrats to all Rep. We can now deliver grt healthcare to all Americans!”

The president continued his Twitter assault against the attorney general. “Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!” Trump said. During a joint news conference with the Lebanese prime minister, Trump also said he was “disappointed” with Sessions and that “time will tell” about his position.

We learned the White House is considering arming Ukrainian forces fighting Russia-backed rebels. Although Kurt Volker, new U.S. special representative for Ukraine, said the move wouldn’t change the balance of power in the region, the Kremlin still warned Washington not to proceed.

Trump told the Wall Street Journal that Apple CEO Tim Cook had committed to building
“three big, beautiful” manufacturing plants in the U.S. Apple declined to comment on the president’s claims.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is reportedly considering a “Rexit,” sources told CNN, Politico, and Reuters. Tillerson reportedly told friends he would be “lucky to last a year in his job” and that he’s upset he doesn’t have more autonomy from the president.

With three sudden and stunning tweets, Trump declared that the U.S. military wouldn’t allow transgender people to serve “in any capacity.” His reasoning, after supposedly consulting with generals? The military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”

Three powerful Republicans — Sens. John McCain, Orrin Hatch, Richard Shelby — as well as other members of Trump’s party denounced the decision. Democrats almost universally came out against the ban, and the American Civil Liberties Union even promised legal action.

Trump’s decision to tweet:

• reportedly appalled U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who was on vacation at the time.
• surprised the Pentagon, which directed all inquiries straight back to the White House
• left Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders struggling to answers a barrage of questions about how the ban would be implemented, until she tried to end her briefing early.

In a separate attack on LGBTQ rights, the Department of Justice inserted itself into a private employment-dispute case by filing an amicus brief in federal court arguing that Title VII, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, doesn’t protect LGTBQ people against discrimination in the workplace.

Republican efforts toward a widespread repeal of Obamacare collapsed again. The Senate voted 55-45 against an amendment that would repeal large swaths of Obamacare without a replacement. Instead, the Senate then considered a “skinny” repeal, which would leave the Affordable Care Act mostly intact, and that didn’t go well either.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry spent 22 minutes on the phone with Russian pranksters who were pretending to be the Ukrainian prime minister. The pranksters told Perry there was a new biofuel made of alcohol and pig manure, a completely fictitious material that Perry called “interesting.”

Perhaps an even bigger problem for Trump than backlash to his trans military ban is that a president can’t change military policy with tweets alone. In a message to military leaders, the nation’s top military officer said that no changes would be made to the services’ transgender policy until the Pentagon received official guidance.

The Senate almost unanimously passed sanctions against the Kremlin in a bill that also prevents Trump from removing them without Congressional approval. The legislation now heads to Trump’s desk — though Sarah Huckabee Sanders wouldn’t say if Trump would veto or not. Moscow responded the following day by demanding that the U.S. cut its diplomatic presence in Russia, and the foreign ministry will seize two U.S. properties.

Of his own accord, The Mooch called up a New Yorker reporter and went on a profanity-laden tirade. During the conversation, Scaramucci:

• Threatened to fire the entire White House communications staff
• Said “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock”
• Called Reince Priebus a “fucking paranoid schizophrenic”
• Said he called the FBI and Department of Justice after “leaks” about his financial disclosures, leaks he believes were orchestrated by Priebus

Scaramucci brushed off his “colorful language” and lamented that he’d trusted a reporter. “It won’t happen again,” Scaramucci tweeted. (Scaramucci called the reporter and did not request that the conversation be off the record.)

Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina said that if Trump goes after special counsel Robert Mueller, it could “be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency.” Graham also said that if Sessions is fired as attorney general, there will be “holy hell” to pay.

The meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and the Russians in Trump Tower last year was “absolutely” a Kremlin-backed effort to repeal the Magnitsky Act, according to Bill Browder’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Browder is an American financier who was expelled from Russia for exposing corruption. “Nobody was talking about adoption,” Browder said. “They were talking about repealing the Magnitsky Act so that Russian torturers and murderers could freely travel and keep their money in the U.S.”

Meanwhile, Republicans were scheming to push the “skinny” Obamacare repeal through the Senate. What ended up happening was one of the most dramatic nights on the Senate floor in recent history. “Go Republican Senators, Go!” Trump urged. “Get there after waiting for 7 years. Give America great healthcare!”

But the Republicans’ “skinny repeal” of Obamacare failed. John McCain finally lived up to his “maverick” nickname when he voted against the repeal, along with Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who voted no on the last two replacement bills. When McCain gave a thumbs down after stepping away from the floor to talk to Trump, the chamber briefly erupted into audible gasping and applause. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell apparently almost cried.

The president wasn’t pleased either. “3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down,” Trump tweeted after the repeal failure. “As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!”