“Trump is treason! Trump is treason!” the man could be heard chanting after throwing the Russian flags.
Full video: Chaos erupts as President Trump enters the Senate GOP lunch and a protester posing as a reporter begins yelling about treason. pic.twitter.com/GiYMwt9g5l— Emma Loop (@LoopEmma) October 24, 2017
The man identified himself to reporters on scene as Ryan Clayton with the group Americans Take Action. Clayton made headlines in July when he tried to get Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner to autograph a Russian flag.
Imagine if this had happened under a Democratby digby
The story about the four soldiers who were killed in Niger is changing weeks after it happened and the president acted cagey and evasive when asked about it, which is what got him into trouble. There’s probably a good explanation for it, fog of war etc. But if the president were a Democrat, there would already be a full blown investigation and accusations of cover-up.CNN reports:
We have some new details on the attack in Niger that left four US soldiers dead, thanks to a timeline laid out by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford. The 12-member team was on its way back to its operating base when it was attacked by about 50 members of ISIS. The troops didn’t call for help for about an hour. French jets arrived about an hour after that. Dunford thinks the team initially felt it could handle the firefight, and investigators will focus on why it took them so long to ask for help. Dunford also said it doesn’t seem like the troops were acting outside of their orders.
Even with these new details, there are still a ton of unanswered questions, including why Sgt. La David Johnson was separated from his team during the firefight, and why his body was recovered 48 hours later nearly a mile away from the ambush.
Again, I would assume that there’s nothing nefarious going on. But the White House is handling it a badly as possible and you cannot help but think about how this mismanagement would be handled if the shoe were on the other foot. Recall kevin McCarthy’s famous statement:
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”
They do it and they admit they do it. There’s power in that. Of course, it’s destroying the country but whatevs …
Wingnuts finally get serious about Russiaby digby
I wrote about latest on Bizarroworld’s Russia scandal this morning for Salon. They’re gearing up for a major investigation. Of Hillary Clinton:
With all the activity around President Donald Trump’s cruel and unnecessary battle with Gold Star widow Myeshia Johnson and Rep. Frederica Wilson, as well as a dozen other scandals and skirmishes over various issues, it has felt as if the Russia investigation has faded into the background. But on Monday NBC reported that Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller was investigating a Democratic Party-affiliated lobbying group led by Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman John Podesta. This apparently concerns work the firm did in Ukraine a few years back as part of a team put together by Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager. Tony Podesta’s firm may have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA, which could lead to felony charges.
Needless to say, the right-wing media went nuts at this news. This was the hook they’ve been waiting for. For months they’ve been pushing a narrative that has Hillary Clinton as the real beneficiary of Russian manipulation, and this is supposed to be proof that connects all the dots. Rush Limbaugh has cooked up a massive conspiracy featuring President Barack Obama, Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Russians over that uranium sale from years ago that’s going to blow the lid off everything. (If you can make heads or tails out of what Limbaugh says happened or will happen, take a drink. You need it.)
A New York Times story on Monday indicated that the three congressional committees that were supposed to be looking into Russian interference in the election, and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, are hitting a wall. Partisan infighting and GOP lack of focus and interest are pointing toward the conclusion that nothing will be done about any of it. If Mueller’s investigation comes up with something concrete, maybe they’ll take another look — but if anyone was expecting the U.S. Congress to be even slightly concerned about the propaganda campaign, the hacking or the attempts to break into actual voting systems, they’re going to be disappointed. The Republicans don’t give a damn about any of that and they are running the show.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t busy. You’ll recall that House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes had to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, due to his bad habit of sneaking off to the White House in the middle of the night with phony evidence that the Obama administration had been spying on the Trump campaign. Apparently, Nunes is still pursuing that line of inquiry, along with a separate investigation into the question of who paid for the so-called Steele dossier. He has a funny definition of recusal.
Meanwhile the rest of the House investigation is being overseen by three GOP congressmen, K. Michael Conaway of Texas, Tom Rooney of Florida and Trey Gowdy of North Carolina. The New York Times reports that the latter, best known as the Javert of Benghazi, has taken on an air of cynical ennui, declaring that the Russia probe is nothing more than a political exercise, hardly worth doing, a tremendous waste of everyone’s time.
Gowdy reportedly told Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, after the latter had privately testified for two hours, that Kushner was in an unwinnable situation in which the Democrats would say that he refused to answer all the questions if he left but would keep him there indefinitely if he stayed. Recall that in one of the three congressional investigations into the Benghazi attacks that Gowdy oversaw (out of eight total) over the course of four years, he grilled Hillary Clinton for 11 straight hours live on national television.
According to Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., who appeared on Fox News over the weekend, while Gowdy may be uninterested in Russian election interference, he is very interested in looking into the Hillary Clinton’s notional “uranium scandal”:
I’ve spoken with Chairman Gowdy. He believes this is an important issue, and he’s indicated to me that he’s supportive of what we’re doing. So I think that you are gonna see action. You’re right, though. Last Congress we in the Oversight Committee wanted to investigate the foundation and all the other payments involving the Clintons, and we were not allowed to do that by the leadership of the House for whatever reason. Well, now I think that this information is so explosive that there’s no way you can justify not getting all the information on this. Remember, we have three Russia investigations about Trump and Russia. There’s not been any evidence of collusion. Here there’s a lot of evidence, and this stuff needs to be vetted thoroughly.
Meanwhile, over in the Senate we have Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr, R-N.C., pretty much throwing up his hands and saying that there isn’t much the panel can do about potential criminal matters. He has promised to wrap up his investigation by spring. Burr and his Democratic counterpart Mark Warner of Virginia held a press conference a couple of weeks ago in which Burr tried to make it sound as if the investigation was winding down. He wasn’t entirely successful.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, which would logically be looking into the firing of FBI Director James Comey, is also dragging its feet. Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa seems to be more interested in investigating Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch for their alleged assistance of Hillary Clinton than Trump’s blatant interference with the Department of Justice. He too is now reportedly focusing on the uranium scandal.
This “scandal” is being pushed hard by Fox News, right-wing radio and longtime GOP operatives like attorney Victoria Toensing and professional Clinton chaser David Bossie. The latter is calling for a special prosecutor who can get to the bottom of this and Lock Her Up once and for all. It’s a full-court press.
All these people seem to be certain that Russian interference in our elections is nothing to worry about. One cannot help wondering why they are so confident that, if it continues, it will always accrue to their benefit.
Watching this powerful spot by Doug Jones, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama, I’m struck by two things.
First, by the fact that spots like that bring a tear to my eye the way Khizr Khan’s holding aloft his pocket Constitution did. Second, by the fact that others got teary at rallies by the sitting president and not by what gets to me.
Regarding that disconnect, Martin Longman wonders what it is that prompted Vigo County, Indiana to vote for George W. Bush twice, then for Barack Obama twice, then for you-know-who. The New York Times indicates voters in Terre Haute already have buyer’s remorse. What are we missing?
Now, a lot of people mock the idea that economic hardship had more to do with the election results than racism. Conversely, the Democrats’ fixation on “identity politics,” however defined, is frequently blamed for turning off Obama voters in communities like Vigo County. I think both of these arguments are basically dead ends. What we know for sure is that protesting Trump’s racism didn’t have the effect we had the right to expect it would. We know that he wasn’t wrong-footed by his positions on transgender bathrooms or Muslim and Latino immigration or his blind support for police violence. We know women didn’t turn against him in big enough numbers even after numerous victims of his sexual predation came forward.
We tend to get bogged down in these facts and attack the communities who overlooked all these signs. We want to write off any voters who would support a candidate after all the evidence that was presented against him. But Vigo County was Obama territory. It could easily become Democratic territory again. And, to be honest, the things the left supports on the cultural or “identity” plane weren’t much different in 2016 than they had been in 2012 or even 2008. The answer isn’t going to be magically found by pandering to cultural conservatism.
What’s needed is a focus on the things that make people wince. We tend to wince at sexism and racism, and we expect everyone else to have a similar reaction and fault them if they do not. I can’t fault us for that, but I think the evidence is in that it isn’t a winning political message in a lot of the country. I also don’t think it’s a brilliant idea to assume that the Democratic Party can just tinker with their message or focus on mobilizing their base. What the people of Vigo County need and want is a set of fresh ideas that haven’t been tried before. The reason I’ve written about anti-monopoly and antitrust issues is because it something new in the sense that we’ve gotten away from it for so long that it will seem fresh. The national party can do whatever it wants, but Democrats running in Obama/Trump areas need to have something new to offer.
Obama’s message was hope and change. His successor’s “great again” slogan was hope and change mixed with nativism and a thumb in the eyes of people who’d promised change but didn’t deliver. Under both presidents, for places like Vigo County, Washington was still Washington and the fat cats just got fatter. They’re finding out now their new champion can’t deliver either, and those cats are on their way to obese.
DNC Chair Tom Perez last weekend touted the diversity of his at-large DNC picks. The problem is, ideologically his picks look to many like more of the same “Now With More Diversity.” My guess is that’s not an indication of the change people in Vigo were hoping for when they voted twice for Obama. Look more closely.
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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.
What really happened at the platform meeting?by digby
One of the stranger aspects of the whole Russia scandal was that weird platform meeting at the GOP convention. And the guy who did it is changing his story. Via Business Insider:
The Trump campaign’s national-security policy representative for the Republican National Convention, J.D. Gordon, told CNN on Thursday that he pushed to alter an amendment to the GOP’s draft policy on Ukraine at the Republican National Convention last year to further align it with President Donald Trump’s views.
Gordon’s remarks represent a dramatic shift from previous comments, and they come as Attorney General Jeff Sessions faces intense scrutiny over two previously undisclosed meetings with Russia’s ambassador to the US — one of which was timed to the convention.
In January, Gordon told Business Insider that he “never left” his “assigned side table” nor spoke publicly at the GOP national security subcommittee meeting, where the amendment — which originally called for “providing lethal defense weapons” to the Ukrainian army to fend off Russian-backed separatists — was read aloud, debated, and ultimately watered down to “providing appropriate assistance” to Ukraine.
According to CNN’s Jim Acosta, however, Gordon said that at the RNC he and others “advocated for the GOP platform to include language against arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels” because “this was in line with Trump’s views, expressed at a March national security meeting at the unfinished Trump hotel” in Washington, DC.
“Gordon says Trump said at the meeting … that he didn’t want to go to ‘World War Three’ over Ukraine,” Acosta said.
Trump’s apparent involvement in steering the language change — Gordon reportedly told CNN that “this was the language Donald Trump himself wanted and advocated for back in March [2016]” — is also at odds with what Gordon told Business Insider in January, when he said “neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Manafort were involved in those sort of details, as they’ve made clear.”
When asked why he told Acosta that Trump did weigh in on the subject, when he told BI in January that neither Trump nor Manafort were involved, Gordon emphasized that he had told BI that Trump was not involved “in the details” of the platform.
“Meaning they weren’t part of the process to write, draft, edit the document, or weigh in with the delegates at all,” Gordon said in an email. “That said, the overarching thought of better relations with Russia was certainly their strategic position.”
One of Trump’s most odious moments in a campaign chock full of odious moments was the one in which he mocked a disabled reporter. It really got to the essence of the man. Recall what he did:
The Education Department has rescinded 72 policy documents that outline the rights of students with disabilities as part of the Trump administration’s effort to eliminate regulations it deems superfluous.
The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services wrote in a newsletter Friday that it had “a total of 72 guidance documents that have been rescinded due to being outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective — 63 from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) and 9 from the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA).” The documents, which fleshed out students’ rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the Rehabilitation Act, were rescinded Oct. 2.
A spokeswoman for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did not respond to requests for comment.
Advocates for students with disabilities were still reviewing the changes to determine their impact. Lindsay E. Jones, the chief policy and advocacy officer for the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said she was particularly concerned to see guidance documents outlining how schools could use federal money for special education removed.
“All of these are meant to be very useful … in helping schools and parents understand and fill in with concrete examples the way the law is meant to work when it’s being implemented in various situations,” said Jones.
Well, I’ve — I have looked at it very, very strongly. And pretty much, we can do almost what they’re getting. I — I think he is a tremendous person. I don’t know Sen. Murray. I hear very, very good things.I know that Lamar Alexander’s a fine man, and he is really in there to do good for the people. We can do pretty much what we have to do without, you know, the secretary has tremendous leeway in the — under the Obama plans. One of the things that they did, because they were so messed up, they had no choice but to give the secretary leeway because they knew he’d have to be — he or she would have to be changing all the time.And we can pretty much do whatever we have to do just the way it is. So this was going to be temporary, prior to repeal and replace. We’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Can you say clueless?
He’s had months and months of meetings and discussions and briefing papers on health care since he took office. It’s been the entire legislative focus of his presidency in the first year. And he still sounds like a 4th grader who forgot to read the book.
This isn’t normal. George W. Bush was often obtuse and uninterested in details. But he was able to articulate broad principles about his policies. In this passage he shows that his only engagement in the issue is with the personality of Lamar Alexander and that he’s made effort to meet with or work with his Democratic counterpart. And obviously, he has no understanding of the substance.
Nonetheless, when he refers to the “Secretary” he’s talking about HHS sabotaging the Obamacare markets. Here’s an example of how that works:
Iowa withdrew a waiver request to the federal government Monday that was aimed at helping the state’s insurance market, the second Republican-governed state to do so.
Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said in a joint statement with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma that ObamaCare’s rules are too restrictive for the request to work.
The proposal would have expanded ObamaCare subsidies to higher-income earners and helped insurers who cover patients with high medical costs.
“Iowa pursued state flexibility through the Stopgap Measure, but ultimately, Obamacare is an inflexible law that Congress must repeal and replace,” Reynolds and Verma said.
Iowa officials said the plan would have stabilized the state’s individual insurance market, where only one insurer is set to sell plans next year.
That insurer, Medica, plans to increase premiums by an average of more than 57 percent.
The Washington Post reported last month that President Trump told a top official within his administration to reject the proposal.
The Trump administration also sent a letter to Iowa officials last week indicating that the state would need to come up with substantial funding if the waiver were to be approved.
Oklahoma also recently withdrew a waiver request to the federal government that would have stabilized its health insurance markets.
The Oklahoma health commissioner said that approving the waiver would have helped more than 130,000 Oklahoma residents and reduced premiums by 30 percent.
But the Trump administration missed a deadline to approve the waiver, resulting in higher premiums for 2018, officials said.
They’re killing people. But that’s fine. They also voted for an unfit imbecile to run the country. This is simply where we are as a country.
Democratic candidates are reporting historic early fundraising totals, alarming GOP strategists and raising the prospect that 2018 could feature the most expansive House battlefield in years.
Animated by opposition to President Donald Trump and the Republican congressional majorities, at least 162 Democratic candidates in 82 GOP-held districts have raised over $100,000 so far this year, according to a POLITICO analysis of the latest FEC data. That’s about four times as many candidates as House Democrats had at this point before the 2016 or 2014 elections, and it’s more than twice as many as Republicans had running at this point eight years ago, on the eve of capturing the House in the 2010 wave election.
Nearly three dozen Republican incumbents were outraised by Democratic challengers in the third quarter of this year – a stunning figure. Nine GOP incumbents already trail a Democratic opponent in cash on hand, increasing the likelihood that many veteran incumbents will face tough opposition for the first time in years.
The Democrats’ fundraising success, especially from a glut of candidates who have never run for office before, is unsettling to those charged with protecting the GOP majority.
“That’s something that should get every Republican’s attention in Washington,” said Jason Roe, a Republican strategist who works on House races. “These first-timers are printing money.”
I know it’s suspicious when Democrats raise money but I’m guessing that most of this is from small donors. In any case, it costs money to run for congress whether we like it or not so this speaks to the power of the Resistance both with candidate recruitment and fundraising. Maybe they can pull this off.
She seems niceby digbyThe Daily Beast on how the Fox News staff is not looking forward to working with Laura Ingraham:
When conservative author and talk radio host Laura Ingraham sits down in the anchor chair on Oct. 30 for the first time as a host on Fox News’ evening lineup, the cable network will be making a multi-prong bet.
The first is that its audience will gladly stomach another evening hour of ardent Donald Trump boosterism. The second is that someone who’s spent the much of her career in radio can translate to television. But the third, and perhaps biggest, gamble is that the notoriously combative and difficult-to-work-with Ingraham can run a functioning show.
Already, there are signs of trouble.
A number of Fox staffers are dreading the possibility of working for Ingraham, who, even among the healthy egos that populate America’s cable newsrooms, has built a reputation as overbearing. According to numerous sources, Ingraham has been, occasionally, a verbally abusive boss, who will not hesitate to scream at employees if something goes awry. Two former employees of her radio show recounted to The Daily Beast separate instances of Ingraham hurling objects at staff members in displeasure. Though Fox declined to address most specific examples of her conduct, the channel issued a blanket denial of such allegations.
Cable news is full of abrasive and demanding figures, most of them men. But whereas some shows keep the host distant from the production, leaning heavily on executive producers and other high-level staffers instead, Fox prime-time shows tend to be more host-driven, one senior official at the channel said.
For those on her direct staff, that means a daily dose of a demanding, hands-on managerial style. Ingraham has brought only a few staffers with her to the network, leaving Fox to assign other employees to the show. That includes executive producer Tommy Firth, who was moved over from The Story, Martha MacCallum’s 7 p.m. weeknight program.
But three Fox sources tell The Daily Beast that numerous staffers have been actively hoping—“praying,” in one Fox insider’s words—that they do not get re-assigned to Ingraham’s show. Another Fox employee simply described her as a “known tyrant.”
Sources spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to avoid reprisal. Ingraham did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
In a statement sent to The Daily Beast, Fox News called this story “a transparent, predictable and sexist attack from a left-wing website run by a CNN political analyst whose mandate it is to troll FOX News for traffic purposes on a daily basis.” A number of the allegations in this piece were made by women. Fox News also insisted that it be noted the piece was edited by an MSNBC contributor. That editor, Sam Stein, said in a statement that he feels “quite able to both contribute to MSNBC and edit this piece without one affecting the other.”
Fox News is banking heavily on Ingraham’s show to succeed. Its launch comes amid a tumultuous time for the network, which has experienced difficultymaintaining ratings but remains very much a cable news behemoth. Fox News has struggled to find the right evening lineup after the departure of former prime-time star Bill O’Reilly, who was forced out in April after facing multiple allegations of sexual harassment.
Editorially, Ingraham will fit right in, to the chagrin of some at the network. She is a longtime conservative commentator and staunch Donald Trump ally who even spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Asked whether Ingraham’s show has ruffled the feathers of the network’s hard-news operation, one daytime producer, requesting anonymity as a current employee of Fox, said: “I can tell you this much: It doesn’t make our jobs any easier.” The producer explained: “The credibility gap worsens for all of our reporters and anchors trying to work at a real news organization.”
Operationally, Fox News says that Ingraham will break new ground for the network. A spokesperson for the network said her show will be it’s first regular live broadcast during the 10 p.m. hour (a statement that a past Fox News host, Greta Van Susteren, rightfully noted was not actually true.) Either way, Ingraham’s new show will mean more programming aired from Fox’s D.C. bureau, from which Tucker Carlson broadcasts his weeknight show at 8 p.m., instead of the New York headquarters of parent company News Corp.
Ingraham has been a long-standing and frequent cable commentator who has shown a capacity to move across mediums. “She is brilliant. No one can deny that,” said one former producer of the Laura Ingraham Show, her radio program. “When she would get into a segment, it was like watching Picasso paint. It was everything else that was a nightmare.”
She is also not a TV host novice. Ingraham previously hosted a short-lived Fox show called Just In, which ran for three weeks in 2008. That run was long enough for Ingraham to star in a viral video of her berating the show’s production staff off-air. Similar audio has surfaced of Ingraham going off at staff on her radio show. Five former employees of that show, who spoke with The Daily Beast about their experiences, indicated that such conduct was not rare.
Another former employee of the radio show described being targeted with frequent “verbal harassment.” Ingraham, the employee said, would swear and, in “an instance or two,” would throw a phone in anger at individual staffers. Yet another employee recalled Ingraham “screaming to the point of veins popping out, sometimes throwing stuff at staff.” Asked what objects were thrown, that former staffer said: “Whatever was in her hand or closest to her at the moment.”
Other veterans of Ingraham’s radio broadcast recounted similar outbursts, often taking place in the middle of show. Such in-studio lash-outs would not only be directed at a staffer’s job performance but also some times at physical appearances. According to two sources, Ingraham mocked the weight of a particularly large male intern when the intern wasn’t around.
The result, perhaps predictably, was a “high rate of turnover” of producers and staff, sources who have worked for Ingraham say. Some staff did not last much more than a couple of weeks before bailing.
I’ve written a lot about Ingraham over the years. She’s a very serious racist, the real deal. It doesn’t surprise me that she’s also an autocrat. Those things often go together.
Trump the great negotiator is actually inept and untrustworthy. Imagine that.by digbyYes, it turns out he can’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag. That his whole image is fake news. His empire was bankrolled by his father and he managed not to lose money on Manhattan real estate. (He did manage to lose money on casinos which seems almost impossible.) He became a celebrity for being a celebrity, like Kim Kardashian, and he made a lot of money doing it. He’s NOT a genius at anything but self-promotion which turned out to be a potent talent at getting elected. It’s pretty useless at the actual job of being president.
President Trump campaigned as one of the world’s greatest dealmakers, but after nine months of struggling to broker agreements, lawmakers in both parties increasingly consider him an untrustworthy, chronically inconsistent and easily distracted negotiator. As Trump prepares to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday to unify his party ahead of a high-stakes season of votes on tax cuts and budget measures, some Republicans are openly questioning his negotiating abilities and devising strategies to keep him from changing his mind.
The president’s propensity to create diversions and follow tangents has kept him from focusing on his legislative agenda and forced lawmakers who might be natural allies on key policies into the uncomfortable position of having to answer for his behavior and outbursts.
For instance, Trump’s news conference last Monday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), which was orchestrated to project GOP unity on taxes, instead gave birth to the self-inflicted controversy over Trump’s treatment of fallen soldiers, which set the White House on the defensive and dominated the national media for seven days.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) spent weeks cooking up a health-care bill with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) — and felt he suddenly had Trump’s attention and encouragement when the president called him Oct. 7.
Dinner with his wife interrupted by the call, Alexander said he sat on a curb outside a restaurant for 15 minutes talking about health care with Trump, whom he said supported reaching a bipartisan deal.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trump called him one morning that same week, interrupting his workout at the gym to tell him, “Let’s do some bipartisan work on health care!”
But this past week, Trump created whiplash. On Monday — just moments after Alexander and Murray released the blueprint for a short-term authorization of federal subsidies that help lower-income Americans afford coverage but that the administration had just halted — Trump said he supported the effort.
A few hours later, however, the president was decidedly cool to it.
“There was a lot of momentum building for Lamar’s effort, until the president changed his mind after encouraging him twice to move ahead,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said. “You know, who knows where he’ll be? Maybe where he is this very second?”
Corker said his fellow Tennessean has “the patience of Job” to negotiate with Trump, referring to the biblical prophet who suffers one curse after another but keeps his faith.
If the absence of any signature legislation is an indication, the dealmaking skills that propelled Trump’s career in real estate and reality television have not translated well to government.
Tony Schwartz, a longtime student and now critic of Trump who co-wrote the mogul’s 1987 bestseller “The Art of the Deal,” said Trump’s dealmaking modus operandi is, “I am relentless and I am not burdened by the concern that what I’m doing is ethical or truthful or fair.”
Read the whole piece. It’s very interesting.
