Tap Dancing around the Truth with Trump - 44 days in for POTUS 45.

[Dumdedumdedum]

The Trump thread, continued from here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2867981-I-never-met-someone-from-NM-to-discuss-MN-Honest-Trump-thread-cont?watched=1&msgid=67412870#67412870

Ouch. I doubt if Shaub could have couched his letter in stronger terms?

Is Kelly Anne toast?

Will Spice confirm that the WH does ethics?

She's fighting hard - even did an interview with her children the other day. (If I recall.)

Trouble is that this is the top of the pole for her.

Why is Nikki Haley speaking up about North Korea rather than Tillerson? Is he too busy counting his Exxon shares to make any statements about international threats?

I doubt he knows what to say.

Does NK have oil?

"... we will review their need for protection. If their reason for asylum no longer stands and it is now safe for them to return, we will seek to return them to their home country rather than offer settlement here in Britain.”

This, from the person who is now PM.

Just caught the tail end of a story about the impact of Trump on the US media on BBC1's News at Ten. Looked interesting & probably worth catching up on.

Prob started about 18-20 mins in if you are watching on catch-up.

Prospects, Lweji. Big prospects - to go, however, with the current big sanctions. I think he may have felt that he's completely out of his depth with this. As indeed he is.

Interesting tweets from RoguePOTUS account. To be read with a grain of salt, as always. The top tweet is referencing the second.

RoguePOTUSStaff @RoguePOTUSStaff 27 mins
What was panic now has become celebration. No follow up Q. No coverage so far. Media becoming docile toward WH, ignoring obv attack point

Rogue POTUS Staff added,

RoguePOTUSStaff @RoguePOTUSStaff
Panic strikes West Wing as Spicer heard saying "I don't know," when asked if POTUS would still have picked Flynn knowing he's foreign agent.

And another Rogue POTUS re: Comey's upcoming intelligence meeting. He sounds nervous (if this is to be believed).

RoguePOTUSStaff @RoguePOTUSStaff 1hr
POTUS stressed about Comey's meeting w/ G.O.8. Demanding he confer w/ Admin first, in future. Priebus: "We can't do that, Mr. President."

And to round it out, one from the Donald. He doesn't appear to understand how to read basic graphs, or interpret statistics. Surprising!

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

U.S. Consumer Comfort Just Reached Its Highest Level in a Decade' ➡️www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2017-03-09/u-s-consumer-comfort-reaches-decade-high-on-economic-optimism …

twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/839968149890076672

I won't post the tweets, but Rogue POTUS has now gone off the dial, suggesting the media has gone completely soft on POTUS and the WH around the Flynn/Russia connections. "... should have been a death blow. This should be the ONLY thing on every news site, every channel, right now. But the media didn't even blink." (This is in response to the the question to Spicer re: if the WH had known he could have been a foreign agent, would he still have been appointed, and Spicer simply said "I don't know.")

I don't think people are 'comfortable' right now.

Wait, what? So Angry Spice suggested that 45 would knowingly have appointed an agent for a foreign power as his National Security Advisor?

OK, I've just checked the transcript here: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/03/09/press-briefing-press-secretary-sean-spicer

Q Was the President aware that Lieutenant General Michael Flynn was acting as a foreign agent when he appointed him to be the national security advisor?

MR. SPICER: I don’t believe that that was known. I would refer you to General Flynn and the Department of Justice in terms of the filings that have been made.

Q Had the President have known that, would he have appointed him?

MR. SPICER: I don’t know, John. That’s a hypothetical that I’m not prepared to ask. I don’t know what he discussed prior to being appointed in terms of his background, his resume, his client base. I don’t know any of that.

And further down in the briefing:

Q Sean, two questions for you. One, back to General Flynn, how concerning is it to the President and to the White House that a registered foreign agent was selected to become -- was the national security advisor for a brief period of time?

MR. SPICER: Look, I think this is what he did for a living. And as the President said in the press conference, talking to individuals that are within the realm of the duties that you’re going to perform is part of your job.

Q compensated for

MR. SPICER: I understand that but he was being compensated, he wasn’t being compensated as part of the transition, as far as I’m aware. And so he was a private citizen at the time. And when you’re a private citizen, you’re allowed to engage in legal activities.

I don’t have anything further on that, but I think there’s nothing nefarious about doing anything that’s legal as long as the proper paperwork is filed.

So some flimflam, causing obfuscation, and I now have no idea what Angry Spice was talking about. Which I suppose was what he intended.

Some explanation here: www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-michael-flynn-turkey-government-lobbying-national-security-adviser-russia-meetings-us-a7619866.html

It's worth reading all of, but here's an extract.

President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who was fired from his prominent White House job last month, has registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for $530,000 worth of lobbying work before Election Day that may have aided the Turkish government.

Paperwork filed Tuesday with the Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Unit said Flynn and his firm were voluntarily registering for lobbying from August through November that “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” It was filed by a lawyer on behalf of the former US Army lieutenant general and intelligence chief.

After his firm's work on behalf of a Turkish company was done, Flynn agreed not to lobby for five years after leaving government service and never to represent foreign governments.
...
A Turkish businessman who hired Flynn's consulting firm told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the amended filings were made in response to pressure from Justice Department officials in recent weeks. The businessman, Ekim Alptekin, said in a phone call from Istanbul that the changes were a response to “political pressure” and he did not agree with Flynn's decision to file the registration documents with the Justice Department.

I've been absent today because I'm planning a Disneyland long weekend. My son and I are going to escape the madness.

Heard on NPR today that the Senate does not have the required number of votes to pass their DonTcare (love that!) bill. Four GOP senators have 'crossed the aisle' and have said that they cannot vote for it 'as it is now written'. This would defeat the bill by only two votes. One senator has suggested they send it back to committee before submitting it for a full vote.

As far as the education bill proposed, I'm not surprised by a single thing in it. The GOP is very pro-private (religious) education and very 'non-inclusive' as far as special needs children go. And as far as ESL (English as a Second Language) education? With the anti-immigrant stance I guess it's only to be expected. Although I often wonder what their stance would be if the student's 'first language' was German, Swedish, or French instead of Spanish, Arabic, or an Asian language. Somehow one never hears them yammering on about stopping or reducing immigration from Western European countries.

Four senators now?

One can only begin to imagine the pressure they're under.

Thanks for the transcript excerpt, Pausing. The lines are very blurred, are they not? Spicer may asser it is "legal" for Flynn to work as a foreign agent while a private citizen - if I understood his yammering correctly - but that does not mean it was wise to do so, or equally wise of the Administration to appoint him knowing his history. Or - they did know his history, were fine with that, and were pleased to make use of his contacts. Or, they didn't do their due diligence before appointing him, and were not aware. That's perhaps more likely.

But, but Cozie - DT posted a lovely picture on the POTUS twitter a few hours ago of him laughing "with the legislators": "Great legislative affairs meeting this afternoon at the @WhiteHouse.". They all looked so happy!

I suspect the lines are only 'blurred' - if they are - if you're being legalistic rather than ethical, Pausing. (I seem to recall, fairly recently, a financier who withdrew from a nomination by the administration because of potential perceptions of conflict. Said person being renowned, apparently, as quite the beacon of ethical behaviour.)