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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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Past presidents and first ladies have often taken to social media to celebrate their birthdays and wedding anniversaries, giving the American people rare glimpses into their private lives and marriages.
But here again, the Trumps have bucked tradition.
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump marked their 13th wedding anniversary on Monday, but neither celebrated the occasion on social media.
Trump did fire off a few tweets that day, but only to slam Democrats on Capitol Hill over the deal to reopen the government following a brief shutdown. “Big win for Republicans as Democrats cave on Shutdown,” he wrote late Monday.
Mrs. Trump’s most recent tweet came on another commemorative day — the one-year anniversary of her husband’s inauguration. “This has been a year filled with many wonderful moments,” the first lady tweeted Saturday. “I’ve enjoyed the people I’ve been lucky enough to meet throughout our great country & the world!”
The first lady’s tweet included a photo of herself — notably not with her husband but with a military escort.
Past presidents and first ladies have often taken to social media to celebrate their birthdays and wedding anniversaries, giving the American people rare glimpses into their private lives and marriages.
But here again, the Trumps have bucked tradition.
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump marked their 13th wedding anniversary on Monday, but neither celebrated the occasion on social media.
Trump did fire off a few tweets that day, but only to slam Democrats on Capitol Hill over the deal to reopen the government following a brief shutdown. “Big win for Republicans as Democrats cave on Shutdown,” he wrote late Monday.
Mrs. Trump’s most recent tweet came on another commemorative day — the one-year anniversary of her husband’s inauguration. “This has been a year filled with many wonderful moments,” the first lady tweeted Saturday. “I’ve enjoyed the people I’ve been lucky enough to meet throughout our great country & the world!”
The first lady’s tweet included a photo of herself — notably not with her husband but with a military escort.
Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission disbanded in disgrace earlier this month, but the fight to uncover what the panel actually did during its brief, secretive existence continues. On Monday, the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/trump-election-fraud-commission-bought-texas-election-data-flagging-hispanic-voters/2018/01/22/2791934a-fd55-11e7-ad8c-ecbb62019393_story.html?utm_term=.eb11142c1038 (reported) that the panel had purchased Texas election records that flagged all registered voters with Hispanic last names. Kris Kobach, who led the commission, claims he was unaware of that acquisition, which was made by a researcher who was recently arrested on child pornography charges.
The Texas data purchase was part of Kobach’s ill-conceived effort to gather comprehensive voter records from every state. At least 44 states and the District of Columbia refused to hand over all the requested data. (Even Kobach, who also serves as Kansas’ Secretary of State, http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article159113369.html (could not legally provide) all the information he requested from his own office.) Although the purchase of the Texas records did apparently go through, a judge ultimately blocked the statefrom giving Kobach the voter data.
The voter fraud panel’s interest in the Texas records came to light when Sen. Claire McCaskill requested information about the commission from the U.S. General Services Administration, which supported the group’s work. GSA turned over dozens of documents, including an invoicefor Texas voter records with “Hispanic surname
Washington (CNN)Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates has quietly added a prominent white-collar attorney, Tom Green, to his defense team, signaling that Gates' approach to his not-guilty plea could be changing behind the scenes.
Green, a well-known Washington defense lawyer, was seen at special counsel Robert Mueller's office twice last week. CNN is told by a source familiar with the matter that Green has joined Gates' team.
Green isn't listed in the court record as a lawyer in the case and works for a large law firm separate from Gates' primary lawyers.
Green's involvement suggests that there is an ongoing negotiation between the defendant's team and the prosecutors. At this stage, with Gates' charges filed and bail set, talks could concern the charges and Gates' plea. The defense and prosecution are currently working together on discovery of evidence.
Shortly after President Trump fired his FBI director in May, he summoned to the Oval Office the bureau’s acting director for a get-to-know-you meeting.
The two men exchanged pleasantries, but before long, Trump, according to several current and former U.S. officials, asked Andrew McCabe a pointed question: Whom did he vote for in the 2016 election?
McCabe said he didn’t vote, according to the officials, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about a sensitive matter.
Trump, the officials said, also vented his anger at McCabe over the several hundred thousand dollars in donations that his wife, a Democrat, received for her failed 2015 Virginia state Senate bid from a political action committee controlled by a close friend of Hillary Clinton.
McCabe, 49, who had been FBI deputy director for a little more than a year when James B. Comey was fired, is at the center of much of the political jockeying surrounding the investigation into potential coordination between Trump associates and the Kremlin. He has for months been the subject of Trump’s ire, prompting angry tweets suggesting that the Russia probe is politically motivated by Democrats sore about losing the election.
McCabe, who has spent more than two decades at the bureau, found the conversation with Trump “disturbing,” said one former U.S. official. Inside the FBI, officials familiar with the exchange expressed frustration that a civil servant — even a very senior agent in the No. 2 position — would be asked how he voted and criticized for his wife’s political leanings by the president.
ATLANTA — On Tuesday, it was a high school in small-town Kentucky. On Monday, a school cafeteria outside Dallas and a charter school parking lot in New Orleans. And before that, a school bus in Iowa, a college campus in Southern California, a high school in Seattle.
Gunfire ringing out in American schools used to be rare, and shocking. Now it seems to happen all the time.
The scene in Benton, Ky., on Tuesday was the worst so far in 2018: Two 15-year-old students were killed and 18 more people were injured. But it was one of at least 11 shootings on school property recorded since Jan. 1, and roughly the 50th of the academic year.
Researchers and gun control advocates say that since 2013, they have logged school shootings at a rate of about one a week.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has dropped a probe into an installment lender that had been accused of trying to profit from repeat borrowers.
World Acceptance Corp., based in Greenville, S.C., said in a press release Tuesday that it had received a letter from the consumer agency "indicating the investigation into the company's marketing and lending practices has been completed."
"The CFPB noted it does not intend to recommend enforcement action," the company said in the release. Shares of the company jumped nearly 6% in intraday trading to $92.90 a share after the announcement. The CFPB declined to comment.
Yet the decision immediately drew criticism from consumer advocates, who charged that acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney, who is from South Carolina, had received at least $4,500 from World Acceptance's political action committee when he was a lawmaker.
The news was yet another sign of the agency lightening its approach to consumer lenders since Mulvaney took over from former CFPB Director Richard Cordray late last year. The agency dropped a lawsuit last week against a group of four online payday lenders associated with an American Indian tribe. The bureau also said last week that it plans to reopen its payday lending rule.
The CFPB had issued a civil investigative demand against World Acceptance in 2014, a year after ProPublica reported that the company's business model depended on convincing low-income consumers to become repeat borrowers.
"Our team fully cooperated with the bureau and responded to every request for information within the specified deadlines," Jim Wanserski, World Acceptance's interim president and CEO, said in the press release. He called the CFPB's move "a step forward."
Yet the decision immediately drew criticism from consumer advocates.
“The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was established to protect consumers from predatory lenders like World Acceptance Corporation, but under Mick Mulvaney’s control the Bureau is undermining that important mission," Karl Frisch, executive director of Allied Progress, said in a press release. "Worse still, Mulvaney’s CFPB appears to be rewarding bad financial actors who also happen to be his campaign contributors."
It was probably only a matter of time before some unbalanced person decided that he needed to take out a few members of the “fake news” media.
And it was inevitable that his actions — in this case, his threats — would be placed at the feet of President Trump, who has spent a considerable amount of time and energy demonizing the media. If you’re a disturbed 19-year-old, then maybe you hear a call to arms from the commander in chief.
...
There is surely no paucity of people who harbor an irrational hatred for the media. All journalists have heard from them, which is why our workplaces are fortresses and why we glance a third time over our shoulders before turning the corner toward home. Trump didn’t create those people — or their distemper — but he did make a conscious decision to mine and legitimize their darkest inclinations in exchange for power.
This alone doesn’t make him culpable if someone goes off the deep end, but it does make him a despicable human being, which is bad enough. In a president, it’s unpardonable.
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“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin
