Took another unplanned break thanks to a pinched nerve in my neck. Ouch. Sorry for keeping you all waiting! Let’s get right to the outrage…
Trump
Trump calls the media ‘the enemy of the American People’
It took the president two tries to properly post his message, which came soon after he arrived at his luxury oceanfront estate for the weekend. The first tweet, which was quickly deleted, contained a number of extra spaces and listed the Times, CNN and NBC, ending with this conclusion: “SICK!” The second tweet added ABC and CBS to the list, while removing “SICK!” Both tweets labeled those organizations as being “the FAKE NEWS media.”
John McCain just systematically dismantled Donald Trump’s entire worldview, railing against nationalism in a speech at the Munich Security Conference.
“I refuse to accept that our values are morally equivalent to those of our adversaries,” he said. “I am a proud, unapologetic believer in the West, and I believe we must always, always stand up for it. For if we do not, who will?”
Trump ignores ‘the grown-ups’ in his Cabinet. Kushner is functioning as a “shadow Secretary of State,” not consulting Tillerson on his policies.
“There was a lot of discussion in the beginning of the transition that Cabinet secretaries were going to get a lot of deference in terms of staffing, but that doesn’t seem to be happening,” said Edelman. “And if there’s an impasse over staffing, you have to ask if there are folks in the White House who think it’s just fine to have agencies unstaffed because you can force through executive orders and it increases their power given their proximity to the president.”
The Strategic Initiatives Group, a new group in the West Wing led by Kushner and White House senior adviser Steve Bannon, has been set up to serve as a shadow National Security Council, which worries Edelman and other mainstream conservative foreign policy and defense experts concerned about the outsize influence of less experienced ideologues like Bannon ally Sebastian Gorka.
Trump invites Mar-a-Lago attendees to sit in on cabinet interviews.
“We’re doing a lot of interviews tomorrow — generals, dictators, we have everything,” Trump told the crowd, according to an audio tape of his closed-press remarks obtained by POLITICO from a source in the room. “You may wanna come around. It’ll be fun. We’re really working tomorrow. We have meetings every 15, 20 minutes with different people that will form our government.”
“We’re going to be interviewing everybody — Treasury, we’re going to be interviewing Secretary of State,” he continued. “We have everybody coming in — if you want to come around, it’s going to be unbelievable….so you might want to come along.”
At least three Mar-a-Lago club members are under consideration for an ambassadorship
Trump family trips cost taxpayers $11.3m in one month – almost as much as Obama’s cost in a year.
Trump family’s elaborate lifestyle is a ‘logistical nightmare’ — at taxpayer expense.
Trump’s F-35 Calls Came With a Surprise: Rival CEO Was Listening
Days before taking office, President-elect Donald Trump made two surprise calls to the Air Force general managing the Pentagon’s largest weapons program, the Lockheed Martin Corp. F-35 jet.
Listening in on one of those calls was Dennis Muilenburg — the CEO of Lockheed’s chief rival, Boeing Co.
Trump Expected to Sign Executive Orders Hitting the EPA
The administration has already imposed a freeze on the EPA’s social media, halted its rulemaking, and reportedly mandated that all agency research be reviewed by a political appointee before being released to the public. But next week, once Pruitt is sworn in, the real frenzy will begin.
Trump says Sweden is having huge problems because of immigrants. Sweden has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about.
Trump "says it like it is" by saying the first part of a thought and letting the listener fill in the rest. Exactly as it is in their mind.
— Emily Gorcenski (@EmilyGorcenski) February 19, 2017
33 questions about Donald Trump and Russia
Cabinet & Federal Appointees
Trump’s first choice to replace Flynn as National Security Adviser turned him down flat, saying the job was “a shit sandwich.” Trump has chosen H. R. McMaster instead.
Trump’s lawyer hand-delivered Michael Flynn a secret plan to lift sanctions on Russia.
The EPA has posted a mirror of its entire website as it existed the day before Trump took office:https://t.co/6WIi1YJ5W2#thanksEPA
— Russ at AltGov2.org [FOIA / anti-secrecy] (@thememoryhole2) February 16, 2017
Congress
Congressional Hispanic Caucus asked to leave a meeting between congress and ICE officials; future meetings will have to be approved by Bob Goodlatte.
The creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election has won bipartisan support. OH MY GOD if Trump were a Democrat they would be FINISHED by now.
Voting
Tufts University is offering a 5-day summer course training mathematicians to be expert witnesses for court cases on redistricting and gerrymandering. Partial funding is available.
Corey Lewandowski that people were not bused into New Hampshire to vote.
Protests
Workers fired for participating in the Day without Immigrants protests.
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