[AMV] Amerikaanse politiek #536 Lawless president

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The first was a series of interviews by Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former aide to the President, in which she alleged -- among other things -- that she had been offered money to stay silent after leaving the White House. Manigault Newman also claimed that she secretly taped White House chief of staff John Kelly firing her in the Situation Room. (Omarosa's tell-all memoir of her time in the White House comes out this week.)
The second came when Trump -- amid a now-regular Twitter tirade regarding the special counsel probe -- derided Attorney General Jeff Sessions as "scared stiff and Missing in Action." (And, yes, that capitalization is in the original tweet.)
The twin episodes highlight the "why" behind the massive staff volatility in Trump's White House: He relies almost totally on his gut in the hiring process, he plays aides against each other for sport, he runs incredibly hot and cold on staff, and he is more than willing to publicly embarrass or shame those who work for him.
The Trump of "The Apprentice" -- which, by the way, is where the billionaire's path first crossed with Omarosa -- is the Trump that now sits behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
The difference is that Trump was solely playing for ratings on "The Apprentice," whereas now he is trying desperately to effectively run a government. Turnover -- or the threat of firings -- was the name of the game in Trump's reality TV world. In the White House, all of the turmoil adds to the already palpable sense of chaos that surrounds 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Already, 57% of Trump's "A Team" staffers have left the White House in just its first year and a half, according to statistics maintained by Brookings Institute's Kathryn Dunn Tenpas. That nearly equals the turnover among top staffers for the entire first terms of Barack Obama (71% turnover), George W. Bush (63%), Bill Clinton (74%) and George H.W. Bush (66%).
(Tenpas' data may actually undersell the changes in Trump's administration, given that she only counts one departure for each office. So, while Trump has had five communications directors since being elected President, they only count as one departure in Tenpas' calculations.)

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kylegriffin1 twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 13:30:00 Trump starts his day at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ.This is Trump's 189th day at a Trump property as president and his 146th day at a Trump golf club as president. reageer retweet

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TODAYshow twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 13:07:11 #Breaking: @OMAROSA provides @NBCNews with this exclusive excerpt of a recording of a phone call that she says she received from President Trump the day after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired her. https://t.co/OJe47RdcDC reageer retweet

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2018 13:40 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Die Omarosa toch

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TODAYshow twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 13:07:11 #Breaking: @OMAROSA provides @NBCNews with this exclusive excerpt of a recording of a phone call that she says she received from President Trump the day after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired her. https://t.co/OJe47RdcDC reageer retweet

twitter:

TODAYshow twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 13:37:48 “Is he [President Trump] lying?” @savannahguthrie asks @OMAROSA about latest tape of conversation she says she had with President Trump the day after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired her https://t.co/pfgiR2oej3 reageer retweet

twitter:

TODAYshow twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 13:42:17 .@OMAROSA says she is not concerned about legal consequences for taping in the Situation Room because she says she has "protections." https://t.co/olyW6qiQsv reageer retweet

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2018 13:40 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Tja, de best people, he?

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2018 13:40 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Die Omarosa toch

twitter:

TODAYshow twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 13:07:11 #Breaking: @OMAROSA provides @NBCNews with this exclusive excerpt of a recording of a phone call that she says she received from President Trump the day after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fired her. https://t.co/OJe47RdcDC reageer retweet

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“Omarosa? Omarosa what’s going on? I just saw on the news that you’re thinking about leaving? What happened?” Trump is heard saying on the tape, which Newman said was made one day after her termination in December 2017 when Trump called her.

Newman responds, “General Kelly—General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave.”

“No…I, I, Nobody even told me about it,” Trump replies.

Newman then says, “Wow,” before Trump reiterates his shock.

“You know they run a big operation, but I didn’t know it,” Trump is heard saying on the tape. "I didn’t know that. Goddamn it. I don’t love you leaving at all.”

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Op zondag 12 augustus 2018 23:58 schreef Oostwoud het volgende:

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RealJamesWoods twitterde op zondag 12-08-2018 om 23:22:27 Facts are tough on Democrats... https://t.co/dd6AD2nziU reageer retweet

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President Donald Trump is distorting the truth on U.S. economic growth and jobs, pointing to record-breaking figures that don’t exist and not telling the full story on black unemployment.

He cites the highest-ever gross domestic product for the U.S. that’s not there and predicts a spectacular 5 percent annual growth rate in the current quarter that hardly any economist sees. On black joblessness, he boasts of a “new” record low, but the numbers in fact have recently ticked upward, with greater declines seen during the Obama administration.

The statements marked a week of fiction in which Trump also made erroneous claims about the California wildfires and the Russia investigation and falsely declared that his tariffs on foreign goods will help erase $21 trillion in national debt.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders skimmed over the facts in asserting that his “Medicare for all” plan would reduce U.S. health spending by $2 trillion.

A look at the claims:

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twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 15:27:08 Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard.... reageer retweet

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2018 15:30 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 15:27:08 Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will. She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart. I would rarely see her but heard.... reageer retweet

Oh, dan hoorde ik wat anders op de opname.

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2018 15:37 schreef DustPuppy het volgende:

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What you are hearing and reading is not what's happening!

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jimsciutto twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 15:44:37 Breaking: Trump-appointed federal district judge has upheld Robert Mueller’s appointment and Constitutional authority in the Special Counsel’s case against Russian social media propagandists Concord Management and Consulting. reageer retweet

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realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 15:50:27 ...really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired! reageer retweet

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2018 15:51 schreef Nintex het volgende:

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realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 15:50:27 ...really bad things. Nasty to people & would constantly miss meetings & work. When Gen. Kelly came on board he told me she was a loser & nothing but problems. I told him to try working it out, if possible, because she only said GREAT things about me - until she got fired! reageer retweet

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2018 15:54 schreef Nintex het volgende:
The Apprentice is gewoon door gegaan in het Witte Huis.

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realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 11-03-2013 om 02:05:20 Omarosa always promises and delivers high drama... reageer retweet

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2018 15:53 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Met andere woorden: Je zegt aardige dingen over Trump en je mag je baantje houden, al kun je er geen moer van.

Trump on Omarosa: ‘She’s a lowlife’

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Op maandag 13 augustus 2018 16:01 schreef Hyperdude het volgende:

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Trump on Omarosa: ‘She’s a lowlife’

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paulkrugman twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 16:16:58 A funny thing happens when you demonize universal health care, nutritional aid, and unemployment benefits as "socialism": lots of people decide socialism is OK https://t.co/5Pjjd5ymxO reageer retweet

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paulkrugman twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 16:20:16 I was going to write something about how Erdogan's behavior mirrors Trump's, and how the Turkish crisis is the kind of thing that happens when an ignorant autocrat runs things. But I realized I already did https://t.co/g7jQToii9z reageer retweet

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An anti-establishment leader takes power after a contentious election. His administration quickly proves itself remarkably corrupt; but he subverts the legal system and is able not only to suppress investigations into his corruption — his supporters denounce it all as a “witch hunt” — but also to consolidate his rule and undermine institutions (the “deep state”) that might have limited his power.

Am I talking about Donald Trump? I could be. But the figure I actually have in mind is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, whose success in getting away with obvious corruption by politicizing law offers a disturbing preview of how Trump may become the authoritarian ruler he clearly wants to be. Not surprisingly, Trump, who basically seems to like dictators in general, has expressed admiration for Erdogan and his regime.

Authoritarian instincts and contempt for rule of law aren’t the only things Erdogan and Trump have in common. Both also have contempt for expertise. In particular, both have surrounded themselves with people notable both for their ignorance and for their bizarre views. Erdogan has advisers who believe that he is under psychic assault; Trump has advisers who yell profanities at each other while on trade missions.

But does it matter? In America, stocks are up and the economy keeps chugging along. Erdogan has presided over an actual economic boom. Investors and markets don’t seem to mind the craziness at the top. The fact that economic policymakers have no idea what they’re talking about doesn’t seem to make any difference.

Until it does.

The truth is that most of the time the quality of economic leadership matters much less than most people — economic leaders included — believe. Really destructive policies, like those driving Venezuela into the ditch, are one thing. But run-of-the-mill policies like changes in tax law, even if they’re pretty big and clearly irresponsible, rarely have dramatic effects.

Last year, for example, Trump and his allies in Congress rammed through a nearly $2 trillion tax cut. That’s a pretty big number, even for an economy as large as ours. But aside from fueling an unprecedented wave of stock buybacks, the tax cut is having little discernible effect, good or bad. There’s no sign of the investment boom advocates promised, but there’s also no sign that investors are losing faith in U.S. solvency.

Basically, as long as the economy isn’t being hit by major shocks, political posturing hardly matters. Someone looking at U.S. growth in G.D.P. or employment over the past few years who didn’t know we’d had an election in 2016 would have no reason to suspect that anything important had changed.

But when big shocks do hit, the quality of leadership suddenly matters a lot. Which is what we’re seeing in Turkey now.

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An aside: Even if the quality of economic leadership matters a lot only during crises, you might expect markets to think ahead and incorporate the risk of badly handled future crises into stock and bond prices. Somehow, though, that almost never happens.

What we get instead are long stretches of complacency followed by sudden panic. Students of international macroeconomics are fond of quoting “Dornbusch’s law” (named after my late teacher Rudiger Dornbusch): “Crises take longer to arrive than you can possibly imagine, but when they do come, they happen faster than you can possibly imagine.”

What’s happening in Turkey is a classic currency-and-debt crisis, of a kind we’ve seen many times in Asia and Latin America. First, a nation becomes popular with international investors and runs up substantial foreign debt — in Turkey’s case, largely debt owed by domestic corporations.

Then it starts, for whatever reason, to lose its luster: Right now, emerging markets in general are being weighed down by a rising dollar and rising U.S. interest rates. And at that point a self-reinforcing crisis becomes possible: External factors cause a loss in confidence, which causes a country’s currency to drop, but the falling currency causes the domestic value of those foreign debts to explode, worsening the economy, leading to further declines in confidence, and so on.

At such a time, the quality of leadership suddenly matters a great deal. You need officials who understand what’s happening, can devise a response and have enough credibility that markets give them the benefit of the doubt. Some emerging markets have those things, and they are riding out the turmoil fairly well. The Erdogan regime has none of that.

So is the turmoil in Turkey a preview of what will happen under Trump? Not in detail: Although America borrows a lot abroad, it borrows in its own currency, which means that it isn’t vulnerable to a classic emerging-markets crisis.

But there are lots of ways things can go wrong, ranging from foreign policy crises — that Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t look too plausible now, does it? — to trade wars, and it seems safe to say that the Trump team isn’t ready for any of these possibilities. Maybe it won’t have to deal with any really serious challenges. But what if it does?

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op maandag 13-08-2018 om 16:21:46 While I know it’s “not presidential” to take on a lowlife like Omarosa, and while I would rather not be doing so, this is a modern day form of communication and I know the Fake News Media will be working overtime to make even Wacky Omarosa look legitimate as possible. Sorry! reageer retweet