Opinion | How Trump could lose his base John F. Kelly, President Trump’s new chief of staff, is focused on ending chaos in the White House. Given that his boss is the self-disrupter in chief, good luck with that. And Trump world’s vicious backstabbing is not, in any event, the administration’s most important problem. The Post’s report, essentially confirmed by the White House, that the president was the prime mover behind Donald Trump Jr.’s misleading statement about his meeting with a Russian lawyer peddling derogatory information about Hillary Clinton ratifies the pattern of deceit and misdirection on all matters Russian. opinions Orlando Shooting Updates News and analysis on the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. post_newsletter348 follow-orlando true after3th false The president seems convinced that he can survive whatever comes his way as long as he keeps his much-celebrated political base with him. Nothing illustrated this more dramatically than the health-care showdown. Sen. His position was incoherent but very shrewd.
Did Trump inherit a mess? 8 charts show otherwise In his address to a joint session of Congress, President Donald Trump revived a theme he had unveiled less than two weeks earlier, when he said at a marathon press conference that he’d inherited "a mess" from his predecessor, Barack Obama. Speaking in the House chamber on Feb. 28, Trump offered a series of statistics that collectively painted a dire picture of the U.S. economy. To be sure, there are shortcomings in the economy. But while Trump had a point with some of these assertions, many of the talking points on his list leave out crucial context, gloss over nuance, or both. At most, the list of economic shortcomings that Trump offered in the House chamber provides a partial portrait of the economy — a portrait carefully crafted, in the reverse of the old song lyrics, to accentuate the negative and eliminate the positive. What Trump said "More than one in five people in their prime working years are not working. There definitely is a downside to today’s economy. Employment Bankruptcies
Trump "Considering" Intriguing New Way to Lie With Statistics aluxum/iStock Oh FFS: The Trump administration is considering changing the way it calculates U.S. trade deficits, a shift that would make the country’s trade gap appear larger than it had in past years, according to people involved in the discussions. The leading idea under consideration would exclude from U.S. exports any goods first imported into the country, such as cars, and then transferred to a third country like Canada or Mexico unchanged, these people told The Wall Street Journal. Economists say that approach would inflate trade deficit numbers because it would typically count goods as imports when they come into the country but not count the same goods when they go back out, known as re-exports. While we're at it, let's change our new jobs report to show all the people who have gained a job but not the ones who have lost a job.
Julian Assange says he is '1,000% confident' Russia was not the source for hacked emails WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said Barack Obama is 'trying to delegitimize the Trump administration' by claiming the Russian government hacked Democrats' emails during the bitter presidential election. Assange, whose interview with Sean Hannity will air on Fox News tonight, also reiterated his claims that Russia was not the source of the hacks. He told Hannity 'with a thousand per cent' confidence that the Russian government was not responsible for emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman. Julian Assange, whose interview will air on Fox News tonight, reiterated his claims that the Russian government was not responsible for the hacks during the 2016 presidential election In tonight's interview on Fox News, Assange claims Obama's administration are 'trying to say that President-elect Trump is not a legitimate President' Those emails were published online by WikiLeaks in the lead-up to the November 8 vote. Loaded: 0%
How Trump’s White House Could Mess With Government Data Numbers and data are a backbone of modern life. We cite them buzzily at bars and soberly to bosses so often that “studies show” might as well be given its own entry in the dictionary. Much of what we cite comes from government data — weather patterns, the population or average income of a city, even honeybee activity — collected across innumerable departments, agencies and centers, then made public. Now, watchdogs are worried that a Donald Trump administration could erode the quality of government data collection and systems. More Politics Certain steps being taken by the president-elect’s transition team have raised alarm bells for some who worry that Trump’s glibness with the truth could take root in a more institutional form. Widespread government data tampering remains unlikely given the vast numbers of career bureaucrats working across agencies, according to Alex Howard, senior analyst at the Sunlight Foundation, an open government advocacy organization.
Ambiguity and self censorship An ambiguous public statement, of course, can serve as a dog-whistle to your supporters while giving you plausible deniability. Ambiguous orders are even more useful: they put all of the details of what the orders actually mean in the hands of ground-level enforcers. This has several important benefits for autocrats: When rules are explicit, people can obey them. When rules are vague but penalties are harsh, people censor themselves: they keep far away from anything which might violate the rules.When rules are explicit, they can be used as defenses. A more direct version of this shows up in an essay of mine from late 2015, talking about the logistics of Trump’s plan to deport 11 million people in two years. Identifying people is harder than it sounds, since it’s not like everyone has proof of citizenship tattooed on their arms. I am sad to say that this essay seems more relevant with each passing month. With this in mind, let’s look at some ways things could go wrong.
Trump renews Twitter attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions How Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump’s relationship turned sour The relationship between President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has deteriorated in recent months. Here’s a look at how they got to this point. The relationship between President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has deteriorated in recent months. (Taylor Turner/The Washington Post) President Trump launched another public assault Tuesday morning on his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, questioning why the Justice Department chief has not done more to investigate alleged “crimes” by Hillary Clinton and those who have leaked information to the media. “Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!” The tweet was one in a series, and it continued the president’s public attacks on Sessions, whose job appears to be in jeopardy. [Trump team weighs options for replacing Sessions] (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) politics
NY Daily News Reveals Who Created Trump's Fake Twitter Followers - Get Ready Last month, shortly after he went on a massive blocking spree, an audit of President Trump’s Twitter account revealed that almost 50 percent of his followers are fake. On Saturday, the person who created those fake accounts was also exposed. According to the New York Daily News, the person behind the several million Twitter bots bolstering Trump’s ego is Robert Mercer, a “Republican mega-donor and staunch Trump supporter” who was once connected to IBM. Mercer is a former computer scientist who helped develop the technology at IBM that later led to the creation of the Watson super-computer. Mercer also played an “integral” role in raising money for the Trump campaign while also connecting the president with people like his current chief adviser, Stephen Bannon. Experts told the Daily News that these bots could be “weaponized” to help spread fake and misleading stories that would distract from the White House’s scandals and paint Trump and his administration in a more positive light.
Former ‘First Grandma’ Marian Robinson caught up in another fake news hoax Former First Grandma Marian Robinson just can’t catch a break from fake news. First Michelle Obama’s mother was wrongly accused in fake stories of drawing a federal pension for taking care of grandchildren Sasha and Malia. Now she’s the victim of a new round of false reports that claim she’s being charged with a crime for doing so since former President Barack Obama left office. "Obama’s mother-in-law charged with larceny and fraud," reads the headline on several Internet posts that started appearing on or after March 16, 2017. The posts all read roughly the same, claiming that Robinson was charged "for accepting money from the federal government under false pretenses." The story stokes reader ire by admonishing Robinson for attempting to take money she didn’t deserve. "While it may not have been her idea to ask for a $160K pension for being the Obama daughters’ ‘caretaker,’ she was the one who filled out the paperwork and signed her name," the posts read. We rate this claim Pants On Fire!
Trump 'Rages' Behind Closed Doors as He Considers Dumping Priebus Photo Credit: Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock While news was breaking of Donald Trump Jr.'s email revelations that the campaign was so desperate for “dirt” on Hillary Clinton they were willing to collude with Russia, President Donald Trump was “raging” behind closed doors. According to an Associated Press report, the president is furious at the media for what he tweeted is “the greatest political witch hunt in history.” However, even CNN’s Chris Cuomo has noted that unless Trump Jr. made up the email, this is not a witch hunt. At the same time, Trump has railed about Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to confidants, and the former RNC chair has been a target of criticism for months with constant speculation about an impending shakeup. During a Tuesday panel discussion, MSNBC’s Kristen Welker revealed the grim outlook of a White House desperately scrambling to come up with ways to spin Trump Jr.’s email proving he was willing to collude with the Russian government. Sarah K.
A neuroscientist explains what may be wrong with Trump supporters’ brains Audience member Robin Roy (C) reacts as U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets her at a campaign rally in Lowell, Massachusetts January 4, 2016. (BRIAN SNYDER / Reuters) There’s no doubt that Donald Trump has said many things that would have been political suicide for any other Republican candidate. And almost every time he made one of these shocking statements, political analysts on both the left and the right predicted that he’d lose supporters because of it. But as we have clearly seen over the past year, they were dead wrong every time. The only thing that might be more perplexing than the psychology of Donald Trump is the psychology of his supporters. Senator John McCain, who has been a regular target for Trump during his campaign, has a simple explanation for his unwavering support. While the former Republican presidential nominee may be on to something, he doesn’t exactly provide a very satisfying scientific explanation. The Dunning-Kruger Effect:
A clinical psychologist explains how Ayn Rand seduced young minds and helped turn the US into a selfish nation The ‘Atlas Shrugged’ author made selfishness heroic and caring about others weakness. Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society….To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.— Gore Vidal, 1961 Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The Seduction of Nathan Blumenthal