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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 211 Aug 18
Carl Icahn joins wave of White House departures
Yet another member of Team Trump is officially a free agent: Billionaire Carl Icahn, special adviser to President Donald Trump on regulation, has resigned.
But unlike the scores of people who have departed the administration this week citing Trump’s comments on the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — from several CEOs to artists to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon — Icahn says he’s leaving due to one very simple reason — bureaucratic overlap.
Because someone else already is already serving as Trump’s regulatory czar, there’s simply no need for him to still serve in the Trump administration, Icahn said in a resignation letter he posted online. Icahn also hit back at back at Democrats who’ve accused him of having conflicts of interest because — like Trump — he refused to surrender ownership of his many businesses when he took on the White House gig.
“Contrary to the insinuations of a handful of your Democratic critics, I never had access to nonpublic information or profited from my position, nor do I believe that my role presented conflicts of interest,” he wrote. He also later added, “I sincerely regret that because of your extremely busy schedule, as well as my own, I have not had the opportunity to spend nearly as much time as I’d hoped on regulatory issues.”
Trump keeps firing people who already quit
After 16 members of the president’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities resigned Friday — embedding a secret message to “RESIST” in their resignation letter — the White House released a statement declaring that, actually, President Donald Trump had already decided that the arts council was a waste of taxpayers’ money, so…
It’s the second time in less than a week that Trump has tried to pull the old, “You can’t break up with me because I’m breaking up with you.”
Following Trump’s comments on the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, eight CEOs stepped down from the president’s manufacturing council. Members of a separate business council also reportedly started threatening to quit unless Trump disbanded it. And though Trump crowed on Tuesday that, “for every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place,” he abruptly reversed that position Wednesday as the resignations continues to roll in.
In response, Trump tweeted he was actually just going to do everybody a favor, really, and totally disband both councils. So — you’re welcome, “businesspeople.”
Trump reportedly rage-tweeted his transgender military ban
President Trump’s announcement last month that he’d ban transgender people from the U.S. military was done in a fit of rage, an unnamed adviser who knows the president and his staff told Politico.
The late July announcement, made in a series of three tweets, surprised and confounded the Pentagon and left 15,000 active-duty and reserve service members wondering if they still had a job. Even Defense Secretary General Jim Mattis — who opposed the ban, according to Politico — was on vacation at the time.
The whole situation reportedly started because Trump doesn’t like being told what to do. Tired of listening to legal advisers tell him what he can and can’t ban, the adviser told Politico, Trump rebeled and tweeted an unprecedented change to current military policy.
But that kind of behavior is par for the course with Trump, several other advisers told Politico.
Although the Pentagon initially said no official changes would be made without further guidance from the president, chief spokeswoman Dana White confirmed to the Associated Press on August 3 that the Department of Defense had begun talks with the White House to figure out how to implement the ban.
The head of the Coast Guard, however, has promised that he won’t “break faith” with transgender troops and refuses to enforce the ban.
“To have a tweet reverse a DoD personnel policy is unprecedented,” “Brad Carson, a DOD official under Obama who helped write the policy that reversed the ban last year, told BuzzFeed News at the time.
Trump called Heather Heyer’s mother during the funeral
President Donald Trump called Heather Heyer’s mom during Heather’s funeral, televised on a few networks, on Wednesday. She didn’t pick up.
And she won’t if he calls again, she said Friday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Susan Bro said she believes Trump compared her daughter, killed when a car rammed counterprotesters in Charlottesville last Saturday, to the white supremacists who sparked the violence.
Bro had gone easy on Trump earlier in the week. She’d thanked him for “denouncing those who support violence and hatred” on Monday — which the president then bragged about during his off-the-rails “infrastructure” press conference from Trump Tower on Tuesday, when he returned to blaming “both sides” in Charlottesville.
That’s what shifted Bro’s tone.
“I have not, and now I will not,” Bro said when asked whether she would talk to Trump if he called again.
“At first I just missed his calls. The first call it looked like actually came during the funeral,” she said.
“I hadn’t really watched the news until last night,” Bro told “GMA” host Robin Roberts. “I’m not talking to the president now. I’m sorry. After what he said about my child, and it’s not that I saw somebody else’s tweets about him. I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters like Ms. [Heather] Heyer with the KKK and the white supremacists.”
“You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m not forgiving for that,” she continued.
“I’m honestly a little embarrassed to say that part of the reason Heather got so much attention is because she’s white, and she stood up for black people. Isn’t that a shame?” she said, according ABC News. “That a white person standing up for a black person caused all this excitement? That should be an everyday thing, that should be a norm.”
You can watch the full interview here:
Day 209 Aug 16
White House memo tells GOP Trump was “entirely correct” about Charlottesville
During the fallout from President Trump’s impromptu press conference Tuesday, in which he doubled down on blaming “both sides” for the violence at the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, the White House sent talking points to Republican members of Congress encouraging them to vigorously defend the president.
“The President was entirely correct,” say the talking points, obtained by The Atlantic. “The media reacted with hysteria to the notion that counterprotesters showed up with clubs spoiling for a fight, a fact that reporters on the ground have repeatedly stated.”
The talking points also encouraged Republicans to bring up the June shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana as an example of the violent Left. “From cop-killing and violence at political rallies, to shooting at Congressmen at a practice baseball game, extremists on the left have engaged in terrible acts of violence,” the talking points read.
It’s unclear how such past events preclude the president from unequivocally condemning the white supremacists who gathered in Charlottesville.
Also recommended in the talking points:
–Republicans should try to shame journalists and Democrats for criticizing the president. “Leaders and the media in our country should join the president in trying to unite and heal our country rather than incite more division,” they read.
–Republicans should attack the press further and argue that the Fourth Estate should be tuned out because they will criticize the president no matter what he does. “The President condemned — with no ambiguity — the hate groups fueled by bigotry and racism over the weekend, and did so by name yesterday, but for the media that will never be enough,” the talking points read.
At least one member of Congress appeared not to get the memo (metaphorically). Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida tweeted up a storm, arguing that the white supremacists should shoulder the entire blame for last weekend’s bloodshed, which resulted in three deaths and dozens of injuries.
JPMorgan CEO torches Trump in email to staff
In the wake of the collapse of two Trump-administration business advisory councils, CEOs who participated in the groups are taking the opportunity to trash Donald Trump for his Tuesday defense of “very fine” white supremacists in Charlottesville.
JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, a Democratic-leaning figure who has nonetheless cultivated close ties to the White House, is one such CEO. In an internal email sent Wednesday to JPMorgan staff that was obtained by VICE News, Dimon wrote that he strongly disagreed with Trump’s response and said that it’s “a leader’s role, in business or government, to bring people together, not tear them apart.”
“I strongly disagree with President Trump’s reaction to the events that took place in Charlottesville over the past several days. Racism, intolerance, and violence are always wrong,” Dimon wrote. “There is no room for equivocation here: The evil on display by these perpetrators of hate should be condemned and has no place in a country that draws strength from our diversity and humanity.”
Dimon also noted that the Strategic and Policy Forum agreed to disband earlier on Wednesday, around the same time the CEOs of 3M and Campbell announced they were quitting the other now-defunct group, the American Manufacturing Council.
Trump, on Twitter, told it differently, saying that he had decided to end both groups rather than “putting pressure” on business leaders.
Day 208 Aug 15
4 major business leaders have dumped Trump after Charlottesville
While President Donald Trump may have a hard time condemning white supremacy, several CEOs of major American companies don’t.
Three executives resigned from Trump’s White House advisory council after the president’s widely criticized response to deadly violence at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday.
Merck’s Kenneth Frazier resigned from the American Manufacturing Council early Monday after Trump’s initial response to Charlottesville failed to specifically condemn racist organizations (though a later statement did). In a statement announcing his resignation from the council, Frazier said leaders had a responsibility to “honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy.”
Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank — who in the past has made positive statements about Trump’s business agenda — also resigned from the council Monday. In a statement, Plank didn’t cite Trump’s response specifically but said the company “engages in innovation and sports, not politics.”
Tuesday morning brought another resignation: Alliance for American Manufacturing President Scott Paul tweeted “I’m resigning from the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative because it’s the right thing for me to do.”
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, however, was more overt. In a statement, he called on “all leaders to condemn the white supremacists and their ilk who marched and committed violence.” And in an apparent reference to Trump, who tweeted attacks against Merck’s Frazier following his resignation, Krzanich said “We should honor — not attack — those who have stood up for equality and other cherished American values.”
Trump retweets cartoon of “TRUMP TRAIN” smashing into CNN reporter
As the nation reeled from the violence in Virginia over the weekend and looked to him for leadership, President Trump was busy on his favorite media platform, retweeting a cartoon image of a train hitting a CNN reporter.
Trump quickly deleted the tweet — which came after heated exchanges Monday with CNN’s Jim Acosta at a press conference — Tuesday morning, but not before it had been retweeted and screengrabbed by journalists and activists:
This was three days after an alt-right extremist drove into a crowd of counterprotesters at a so-called “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one person and injuring 19 others, and setting off a wave of anti-racist protests across the country. Trump has drawn widespread and bipartisan criticism for his reluctance to condemn the Charlottesville violence.
Not long after the CNN retweet, the president also retweeted a tweet that called him a fascist. The user he retweeted, Mike Holden, was responding to a Fox News tweet that suggested the president was considering a pardon for former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio:
He quickly unretweeted that one, too, apparently correcting himself by retweeting the Fox News tweet Mike Holden was responding to — but in this case, too, it had been spotted and retweeted many times already.
Critics have accused Trump of inciting violence in his CNN-related tweets before: In July he tweeted a video of himself beating up a wrestler with CNN’s logo for a head.
Tweets that incite violence or harassment are in violation of Twitter’s policies. (Twitter said last year that it’d banned Milo Yiannopoulos for “participating in or inciting targeted abuse of individuals,” according to a record of Twitter’s exchange with Milo, posted to Breitbart.)
But Twitter’s policies aren’t all that Trump might need to worry about. He’s facing a lawsuit from two Washington watchdog groups for deleting his tweets, which are considered part of the presidential record. The National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) claim that deleting tweets and other internal communications are a violation of the Presidential Records Act, which says that White House communications must be preserved.
“By deleting these records, the White House is destroying essential historical records,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement about the litigation.
Day 207 Aug 14
Campaign adviser repeatedly urged Trump to meet with the Russians
At least one member of Team Trump really wanted to meet with the Russians.
George Papadopoulos, the youngest adviser on President Donald Trump’s campaign foreign policy team, repeatedly urged the campaign to meet with Russian officials, the Washington Post reported Monday. Between March and September 2016, Papadopoulos — a volunteer who graduated college in 2009 and listed his experience in Model U.N. on his LinkedIn profile — reportedly emailed at least six requests for Trump or his team members to meet with Russian officials, who were apparently asking Papadopoulos to make the introduction.
Each time, he was rebuffed.
“We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips,” Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, emailed an associate. Manafort — who is now allegedly under federal investigation — later sat in on a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer, which Don Trump Jr. had accepted under the impression that the Russian government had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Carter Page, a Trump campaign aide who is also now the reported target of a federal investigation, told the Washington Post that Papadopoulos’s emails were “entirely benign.” Intelligence experts who spoke to the Post, however, say that the emails sounded like the Russians were looking for any way into the Trump campaign.
“The bottom line is that there’s no doubt in my mind that the Russian government was casting a wide net when they were looking at the American election,” Steven L. Hall, who spent three decades managing the CIA’s Russia operations before retiring in 2015, told the Post. “I think they were doing very basic intelligence work: Who’s out there? Who’s willing to play ball? And how can we use them?”
Trump attacks black CEO who quit his council after Charlottesville
After being roundly criticized for failing to denounce the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday that left three people dead, President Trump took to Twitter Monday morning to attack the black CEO of Merck pharmaceuticals who resigned in protest from the president’s manufacturing council.
Trump’s tweet came soon after the executive, Kenneth Frazier, issued a statement that explained his resignation was “a stand against intolerance and extremism.”
With his resignation, Frazier took direct aim at Trump for his vague, equivocating response to the white supremacist rally, where a man rammed his car into a crowd of peaceful counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Two Virginia State Police officers manning a helicopter at the scene were also killed when the craft crashed.
“America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry, and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal,” Frazier said in a statement.
Instead of singling out the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who gathered in Charlottesville to save a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, the president blamed “many sides” on Saturday for the bloodshed in Virginia. Democrats and Republicans alike criticized Trump’s response.
President Trump identifies the “truly bad people” in Charlottesville tragedy
President Donald Trump has finally singled out the “truly bad people” in the Charlottesville tragedy: the media.
“Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the #Fake News Media will never be satisfied…truly bad people!” Trump tweeted Monday evening, after denouncing the racists behind the Charlottesville rally in a speech earlier that day.
What Trump’s 140-character-long declaration fails to mention is that he made those “additional remarks” only after leaving pretty much everybody unsatisfied by his first attempt to address the violence in Charlottesville. Initially, Trump had resisted blaming the carnage on white nationalists and supremacists, saying only that there was “hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.” Both Democrats and Republicans condemned his vague comments — and they didn’t appear to help Trump’s dismal polling numbers: According to Gallup, as of Sunday, just 34 percent of Americans approve of him.
That’s his lowest approval rating of his entire presidency.
Trump to Guam: At least you’ll be rich and famous
President Trump called the governor of Guam Friday to reassure him that there’s a bright side to being a possible target of North Korea’s nukes: At the very least, the threat of all-out annihilation will bring fame and boost tourism.
“I have to tell you, you have become extremely famous all over the world,” Trump said on the call, a recording of which was posted to Gov. Eddie Baza Calvo’s Facebook page. “They are talking about Guam, and they’re talking about you.” North Korea on Thursday threatened to launch ballistic missiles toward the U.S. Pacific territory, in an escalating war of words with Trump last week.
“And when it comes to tourism,” Trump added to the governor, “I can say this: You’re going to go up, like, tenfold, with the expenditure of no money.”
Trump also said that he was behind Guam “1,000 percent.”
But Trump’s call came just several hours after he gave a confusing press briefing to reporters, suggesting that he wanted peace but also saying that nuclear war was on the table.
“Hopefully it will all work out,” he said. “Nobody loves a peaceful solution more than President Trump, that I can tell you … But we will see what happens. We think that lots of good things could happen, and we could also have a bad solution.”
When asked whether “a bad solution” meant war, Trump responded, “I think you know the answer to that.”
Reports earlier last week said North Korea had successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead small enough to be mounted to a ballistic missile.
Trump attacks black CEO who quit his council after Charlottesville
After being roundly criticized for failing to denounce the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday that left three people dead, President Trump took to Twitter Monday morning to attack the black CEO of Merck pharmaceuticals who resigned in protest from the president’s manufacturing council.
Trump’s tweet came soon after the executive, Kenneth Frazier, issued a statement that explained his resignation was “a stand against intolerance and extremism.”
With his resignation, Frazier took direct aim at Trump for his vague, equivocating response to the white supremacist rally, where a man rammed his car into a crowd of peaceful counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Two Virginia State Police officers manning a helicopter at the scene were also killed when the craft crashed.
“America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry, and group supremacy, which run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal,” Frazier said in a statement.
Instead of singling out the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who gathered in Charlottesville to save a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, the president blamed “many sides” on Saturday for the bloodshed in Virginia. Democrats and Republicans alike criticized Trump’s response.