April 29, 2017

Friday Talking Points (434) -- 99 Days And Counting...

Tomorrow, in case you hadn't heard, will be Donald Trump's 100th day as president. Grading his performance has been a weeklong event in the media. Rather than our normal Friday format, what follows is our honest evaluation of Trump's first 100 days, which might be summed up as: "Coulda been better, coulda been a lot worse."

The most heartening conclusion for liberals, after 99 days, is that Trump's incompetence is his saving grace. Imagine how much worse things could have been right now if Trump really did have his act together, in other words.

The most obvious conclusion to be drawn is one that everyone should know already -- Trump likes style a lot more than he has ever cared about substance. He loves signing things in media photo opportunities, not caring in the slightest what is actually on the papers he's signing. The media attention is what he craves, not making actual policy changes. Which, as previously mentioned, is a huge relief to his political opponents.

Most presidents pay attention to the voters they didn't convince, in their first 100 days. Some sort of effort at reaching out to the other side of the aisle normally gives an incoming president a "honeymoon" period with the public, as even those who hadn't voted for him decide to give him the benefit of the doubt. Trump -- again, unsurprisingly -- didn't do any such thing, and the concrete result was the complete absence of a honeymoon. The highest job approval average he's managed yet has been 46 percent -- which is smaller than the percent that actually voted for him.

Trump has lurched between trying to please his base by making good on promises he made on the campaign trail and smacking his base in their metaphorical face by either completely flip-flopping on other promises or just going along with anything Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell put on his desk, no matter how bad the impact of such actions among his own base is going to be.

A perfect example of this is Trump now bragging about how many executive orders he's signed. All throughout the campaign, Trump excoriated President Obama for doing exactly the same thing. "Tyranny!" was the cry, or "He thinks he's an emperor, not a president!" Concerns about tyrannical imperialism are heard no more, however, because Trump is now downright proud of doing exactly what he supposedly disapproved of when Obama was doing it. Such a reversal has been par for the course for Trump. Everything he said on the campaign trail was some sort of performance art, as far as Trump is concerned, and he will be held to none of it now that he's in office. On balance, this is a good thing, because it allows him to disavow all sorts of inane things he promised he'd do.

In fact, Trump has seemed to get into the most trouble when he actually tries to follow through on his promises. Perhaps he's learning the lesson "don't even try," one would like to think.

But we do try to be fair, so let's take a realistic look at what Donald Trump has and has not accomplished during his first 99 days in office. These can be broken down into four main categories: stuff he's undone, stuff he's done, stuff he's tried but failed at, and stuff he hasn't done at all.



Stuff Trump has undone

Republicans in Congress have -- very quietly -- been undoing all they can of Barack Obama's legacy. They discovered a law that had only been used once before, which allowed them to undo Obama's final actions as president. They've only got a few more weeks of this legislative window being open, though, so this will soon cease to be even a possibility. But the larger impact of their frenzied undoing may be that it becomes a regular event. Congresses in future may go through similar "tear it all down" periods at the start of future presidents' terms, in other words. Time will tell.

The reason they (and Trump) have been very quiet about all this is that most of the regulations they've been so busy overturning were actually good ones that poll very favorably with the public. There simply was no outcry to undo this stuff -- in some cases, exactly the opposite was true. What possible constituency of actual voters were demanding that everyone's browser history be sold to the highest bidder? If the media hadn't been so distracted by all of Trump's tweets and other bumbling, this would have been an incredibly unpopular thing to do, but Congress snuck it by while most people weren't even looking.

The other Obama actions that Republicans overturned were almost as breathtaking as the browser history fire sale. Who was demanding that mentally unfit people be given easier access to purchase guns, after all? Other rules overturned (that few noticed) have resulted in the following: making it easier for coal companies to destroy streams and rivers with toxic pollution, making savings for retirement harder, letting Wall Street completely off the leash again, allowing Trump to "take back" designations of National Monuments from previous presidents, not requiring federal contractors to disclose violations of labor regulations, getting rid of a rule requiring records of worker injuries, and allowing bears to be shot while hibernating. Other than a few small interest groups (and a few large corporate interests), who was clamoring for any of this to happen?

What's really astonishing about all of this is that this is the area where Trump has actually accomplished the most. Bills passed Congress, Trump signed them, and the new policy became law. The way things are supposed to normally work in Washington, in other words. But due to Trump's amusing antics (on Twitter and in person), the media largely yawned at all of it. If these new laws had been the only thing happening, more attention would have been paid, and the public may have gotten outraged over at least a few of these extremely unpopular actions.

Trump has been most effective when the media is not paying attention -- a fact which surely must annoy him on some level.



Stuff Trump has done

A recent Saturday Night Live sketch had "Trump" in the Oval Office, demanding to be read a list of his accomplishments in advance of the 100-day milestone. The list consisted of: "Neil Gorsuch is on the Supreme Court," and nothing else.

It was funny because it's so close to being the entire truth. Trump has not managed to achieve any major goal at all during his first 100 days beyond getting his nominee confirmed to the highest court in the land. All of those grandiose things he promised while campaigning -- many of which he promised "on Day One" -- simply have not happened. No major bill has even made it through a single chamber of Congress, much less been put on Trump's desk. The wall remains unbuilt. Obamacare still exists. Muslims are not being banned, nor are they being subjected to "extreme vetting." China is now our best buddy. There is no magic plan to defeat ISIS.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves -- this category is supposed to be stuff Trump actually has done. And, late-night comedy aside, Trump has managed to score some minor victories even while his major promises remain almost completely unfulfilled.

To accurately measure Trump's 100 days, we started with his own explicit 100-days promises. Trump, very late in the campaign, gave a speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was in many ways the most concrete speech he ever gave as a candidate, because it made 28 solid promises that Trump said he would achieve in his first 100 days. Read off a TelePrompTer (rather than ad-libbed), Trump pledged to the public that these things would all be quickly accomplished.

Trump has successfully done five of them, and partially done at least seven more. Here are the things Trump promised that he achieved, in some fashion or another {Note: in all of the below lists, many items have been reworded for brevity, but the ones in quotes are taken directly from Trump's speech}:

• Federal workforce hiring freeze (this was temporary and has already been lifted, but Trump did follow through on his promise early in his term).


• Requirement that every new regulation requires getting rid of two other regulations (Trump signed this into being, but the effects of it have yet to be seen, really).


• Allowing the Keystone XL pipeline (and other pipeline projects) to move forward.


• Withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal (largely symbolic, since it was dead on arrival in Congress, but Trump did formally withdraw very early on in his presidency).


• Nominate a Supreme Court justice.

On that last one, Trump was even more successful than he promised, since he couched it as "begin the process of selecting a replacement," but he not only named Gorsuch, he also got the Senate to confirm him. So on the one big thing he's achieved, he actually did better than he promised.

Trump has at least partially succeeded on several other promises:

• Lift restrictions on oil and coal.


• "Cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama" (Trump has certainly tried his best to live up to this one).

The other three on this list all deal with lobbying. Trump promised a 5-year ban on White House and congressional officials becoming lobbyists, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government, and a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for elections. While some of this was announced by the White House, there also have been stories of "waivers" being issued already, so that Trump White House officials can indeed move right into a cushy lobbying job. Also, all that insistence on stopping foreign influence has to be seen as more than a little ironic, given all the problems Trump and his team have been having over Russian influence in his own campaign. So Trump may have achieved some sort of Potemkin-village "lobbyist ban" (to use an appropriate Russian metaphor), but in reality the swamp has not been drained one tiny bit.

There are two other items that Trump could claim at least partial credit on as well:

• "I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately."


• "Begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won't take them back."

On the first, Trump just announced a new tariff on Canadian softwoods. But all Trump really promised was to begin the process, so perhaps other tariffs will be forthcoming in the next 100 days. On the second, Trump has indeed created a much more aggressive deportation policy, but he hasn't gone nearly as far as many of his supporters had hoped. This too will be a developing story, but in all fairness Trump has to be given some sort of credit for at least starting the processes he said he would.



Stuff Trump tried but failed to do

There are three big items in this category. Two of which failed (so far) in the courts, and one of which failed (so far) in the House of Representatives. Here they are, in Trump's language from the Gettysburg speech:

• "Suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting."


• "Cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities."


• "Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications."

Trump has tried to do the first one twice now, and both times federal judges have stopped him. Trump made it pathetically easy for judges to rule against him because all the judges have to do is to listen to Trump's announcement of the policy idea on the campaign trail to see how unconstitutional the intent behind it truly is. Trump wasn't helped by a Chris Christie interview, either, where Christie admitted that Trump directed him to "make a Muslim ban legal" somehow.

Just last week, another federal judge halted Trump's policy towards sanctuary cities as well. The federal government is not supposed to blackmail states or cities in this fashion, to put it bluntly.

But while Trump has so far been stymied, liberals shouldn't get complacent about the status quo quite yet. Yes, Trump has been blocked. But Trump can appeal, and he just put a staunch conservative on the Supreme Court -- so he might just win these cases in the end.

As for repealing and replacing Obamacare, Trump doesn't even get partial credit. All throughout the campaign, Trump promised voters the moon, the sun, and the stars on healthcare reform. His plan would be wonderful. He knew how to fix everything. Everyone would be covered. Everyone's costs would go down. It would be far, far better than Obamacare in every conceivable way. Trust him, he knew exactly what to do.

Once in office, Trump did nothing. Not a thing. He had no plan. He couldn't come up with even the bare-bones outline of a plan. Not even a one-page memo on what his goals were. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Trump never had a plan and couldn't create one if his life depended on it (as indeed many Americans' lives do).

Then Trump thought he was saved by Paul Ryan's hastily-assembled trainwreck of a bill. "Aha!" Trump thought, "I'll just get behind this and sign it and then I can say I repealed Obamacare!"

But Ryancare was (and continues to be) nothing short of a spectacular failure. When the public learned what was in it (and how many of them would lose health insurance), only 17 percent backed the Ryancare plan. During the same period a rather astonishing thing happened -- Obamacare suddenly became very popular, for the first time since the law's passage. Obamacare began polling at higher than 50 percent approval, something it had never managed previously, as the public finally learned what all of the components of it were (all of which were under threat of removal in Ryancare). So the only thing Paul Ryan achieved was to make Obamacare a success. That's gotta hurt -- but don't worry, Obamacare covers that pain.

The White House increased the pressure on Ryan as the 100-days marker approached, and there was supposed to be a last-minute push to revive Ryancare -- after making it even worse in an attempt to get Tea Partiers to vote for it. No vote has happened, because by making it worse Ryan alienated moderate members of his own party. All of Trump's pressure tactics have not even moved the bill through the Republican House.

So not only did Trump fail to come up with his own big, beautiful healthcare plan (as he had promised), the one he got behind is a total Dumpster fire and will not pass even one house in Congress. That is an abject failure, any way you look at it.



Stuff Trump hasn't done

The first eighteen points on Trump's Gettysburg agenda were actions he was going to personally take as president. He has failed to deliver on four of them:

• Propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on Congress.


• Label China a currency manipulator (Trump completely flip-flopped on this one).


• Renegotiate or withdraw from NAFTA (this one is somewhat of an embarrassment for Trump, since he was all set to announce he was withdrawing on his 100th day, but then some advisors talked him down off the ledge, so now he's merely promising to renegotiate at some unspecified future point).


• "Cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America's water and environmental infrastructure."

Anyone think that last one is going to happen? Billions for water and environmental infrastructure? Yeah, right. Trump has (so far) not backed out of the Paris agreement on climate change, but could do so at any time.

But the big list of things Trump has not even attempted yet is the last ten items in his Gettysburg speech. This was a list of all the wonderful bills Trump was going to personally propose to Congress, and "fight for their passage within the first 100 days." Not a single one of them has happened. Trump has gone zero-for-ten, on a list he created.

Donald Trump has not proposed a single item on this list as a bill Congress could pass. Here are eight of the ten things Trump promised, but has not delivered:

• "End The Offshoring Act. Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free."


• "American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral."


• "School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends Common Core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2- and 4-year college more affordable."


• "Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families."


• "End Illegal Immigration Act. Fully funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first."


• "Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars."


• "Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides veterans with the ability to receive public V.A. treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values."


• "Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics."

Not a single item on that list has appeared from the White House.

The remaining two Trump tried to "accomplish" right before the bell rang, but can't be counted as any sort of serious efforts towards achievement. The first was:

• "Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the F.D.A.: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications."

Trump gets no credit for this, even with the Ryancare bill, because he never came up with even a shadow of his own plan, which is why it's in both our "tried and failed" and "didn't even try" categories. The final item is one where Trump thought he could do his homework on the bus and hand it in for some sort of partial credit:

• "Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate."

Trump did announce his "tax plan" this week. It was a joke, really -- a one-page document with fewer than 200 words, and only seven actual numbers. All that talk about big benefits for the middle class didn't make the final cut, although all the goodies for corporations did. But a one-page memo isn't any sort of "Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act." It's a one-page memo, no more. And even Trump advisors aren't now cheerfully talking about four percent growth rates, instead they're guardedly speaking of three percent growth. In the first quarter of this year, the American economy grew at 0.7 percent, if anyone wants a reality check.

We wrote yesterday about one glaring conclusion that pretty much everyone in the political and media world has missed, when considering Trump's tax plan -- with one change, Trump would save himself 81 percent of the taxes he paid on the one form we have for him (from 2005). Thank you, Rachel Maddow and DCReport.

Trump paid $38.4 million in taxes, on gross earnings of over $150 million. But if the Alternative Minimum Tax is abolished (as Trump's tax plan calls for), he would only have paid $7.2 million in taxes in 2005. That's an effective rate of only 4.7 percent, and it would mean Trump would save a whopping 81 percent of his tax bill. Why aren't Democrats screaming this from the mountaintops? We have no idea, because it's pretty obvious and pretty egregious. It would make a dandy talking point, in other words, for any Democrat who cares to point it out.



Other Trump promises

All of the items we discussed above come directly from that one Trump speech in Gettysburg. But Trump made plenty of other promises to the voters, and he's either failed to follow through or completely reversed course on so many of them it's hard to keep track of them all.

Trump was going to release his tax returns, now he's not ever going to. He was going to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal, but has not. He was going to pay off the entire national debt in a few years (sometimes ten, sometimes eight, sometimes "in my first term&quot , and yet everything he's even proposed at this point would explode the deficit and debt enormously (his tax plan, by some estimates, would blow a $7-trillion hole in the budget, in the first ten years alone). He was going to appoint a special prosecutor to hound Hillary Clinton, but (thankfully) decided not to. He was going to sue all the women accusing him of sexual misconduct, but (thankfully) decided not to. NATO was obsolete, until it suddenly wasn't.

First, Trump already had a secret plan to defeat ISIS. Then he was going to have one "in his first 30 days." Then he punted entirely to "the generals," who were going to create such a plan in 30 days. It's been 99 days, and no plan has been announced. Thankfully, he's largely following the Obama plan, which has been chalking up success after success in the fight against ISIS (especially in Iraq).

Trump was also going to reverse Obama's Cuba policy, but hasn't. He was going to sock it to all those nasty hedge fund managers by eliminating the carried interest loophole, but this didn't make it into his tax memo.

Trump was going to build a wall, deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants, and institute "extreme vetting" in 90 days. None of these have happened. Trump is caught in the fight over what was supposed to be a "temporary travel ban" and apparently forgotten about why it was only going to be temporary (because once the extreme vetting started, it wouldn't have been necessary).

Here's a Trump promise for anyone craving a belly laugh: "I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off." Or you could listen to any of the numerous times Trump took Obama to task for playing too much golf -- all real knee-slappers, now.

Trump has followed through on a few of his campaign promises, to be scrupulously fair. He signed a bill allowing states to defund Planned Parenthood. He promised to accept no salary, and donated his first paycheck to the National Park Service (while simultaneously proposing a budget which would severely slash their funding).



Conclusions

On big-picture items, Trump's first 100 days certainly resembles that SNL list. He got a Supreme Court justice confirmed, and not much else. No big legislative victories at all -- not even if you only count "passed the House of Representatives" (usually a pretty low bar, when your own party controls it).

On smaller-bore stuff, Trump is touting his achievements using the same executive powers he once disparaged Barack Obama for using (Trump even sneered at Obama because he "couldn't get anything through Congress&quot . But while Trump gets his signing ceremonies for each of these, most of them don't really have any effect at all. He signs orders which instruct a cabinet member to, essentially, do their job. "Use the powers of your office to get some stuff done" isn't really that groundshaking a policy statement, in other words.

The Trump administration's incompetence is at least partially a self-inflicted wound. Trump has famously disdained staffing the executive branch, letting hundreds of positions remain unfilled. Because of this, he has nobody to go to who has the experience of actually turning policy ideas into legislation. So nothing gets sent to Congress, and the policy goal remains no more than an early-morning Trump tweet. Call it "small government in action" (or, perhaps, "inaction&quot .

This is good news for liberals, of course, because as we began by pointing out, the first 100 days would have been a lot worse if Trump did actually have a full and experienced staff who knew how to get things done.

On the domestic policy front, Trump has done nothing major. He has not proposed an actual piece of legislation yet. He put out a bare-bones budget paper which is never going to see the light of day in Congress (it's too brutal for even Republicans to act on), and he put out a one-page memo of bullet points on taxes. That's it.

On the foreign policy front, Trump has not started World War III or dropped a nuclear weapon on anyone. This normally wouldn't be seen as much of an achievement, but for Trump it truly is. Sad!

Snark aside, though, we already wrote about Trump's first-100-days military actions earlier, where he has had mixed success at best. He launched a botched raid in Yemen, he sent 59 cruise missiles into Syria, and he dropped one whale of a big bomb in Afghanistan. He finally figured out where his aircraft carrier was, and it's now where he said it was supposed to be a few weeks ago.

More generally in foreign policy, Trump has tried to appear distant from Russia and has fully embraced China. Tensions are at an all-time high with North Korea, but with all the bluster coming from the White House, Trump is seriously constrained by what he can even threaten, due to nobody wanting to see North Korea destroy Seoul.

Trump cleaned out the incompetents he originally hired in the national security area, and the second-stringers he put in are actually sane and know the limits of American military power, so that's something in his favor. The whole Michael Flynn fiasco may still come back to bite Trump, though, if recent revelations of illegal payments from Russia are any indication. The whole "Russian influence" storyline is not going away any time soon, either, on a more general level.

One thing Trump has been able to achieve success at is keeping his base happy. No matter how many times Trump fails to come through on his promises to the working class, they still solidly support him for now. Over 90 percent of Trump voters say they'd still vote for him, which is kind of astonishing, but has to be seen as a clear win for Trump at this point.

Overall, however, Trump making zero moves towards Democrats or even independents has kept his poll numbers historically low. On job approval, Trump's average has fluctuated from just under 40 percent to a high of 46 percent. That represents not just the lowest first-100-days ratings since polling began, but a jaw-droppingly-low ceiling of support. Trump likes superlatives (especially about himself), but it's doubtful he'll be bragging about being the "Most unpopular president ever!" any time soon. Trump had no honeymoon, because he refused to even attempt reaching out to anyone other than his base, and he hasn't even gotten a bump in the polls after successful military actions (the traditional "rally 'round the president" bump for Trump was only two percent -- much lower than usual).

Donald Trump's first 100 days are almost over. So far, they've been pretty unimpressive. Granted, this measure may be a false one to judge the success of any president (nobody remembers George W. Bush's first 100 days, they remember what happened after 9/11, for instance). But at this point in time, it's what we've got to work with.

The overarching conclusion that has to be drawn is that Trump is an ineffectual president. He doesn't know much about following through when it comes to governing, which is obvious in many ways. He still loves making news (especially with his tweets), but it usually turns out to be a lot of sound and fury, signifying not very much. The other conclusion worth drawing is that Trump is a very reactive president. His daughter can show him something on cable news, and he is immediately convinced that he should launch a missile attack. He planned on announcing his withdrawal from NAFTA, and then a few phone calls changed his mind. Right or wrong, he makes snap decisions with immediate consequences. He has shown a willingness to ignore just about any of his campaign promises, and his base forgives him for doing so each and every time.

Of course, to be fair, he could always improve. Eventually maybe he'll staff up the departments under his control with some people with real governing experience. Eventually maybe his "we're going to study this for the next few months" executive orders may come to fruition, and actual policy may appear. Eventually he may figure out how to work with the Republican Congress to actually pass some bills. Anything's possible, in other words.

For now, though, liberals are all breathing a lot easier after seeing Trump's peripatetic first 100 days. Trump can't seem to get his act together on multiple issues, and the Republican Congress is fast becoming the "can't-do" Congress. That's all to the good, when you consider what their stated goals are. Other than confirmation battles, we simply haven't had a big showdown in the Senate yet -- because the House hasn't been able to pass any important bills. Today, we avoided a government shutdown, showing (for the time being) that Paul Ryan is fully aware of the futility of letting the Tea Party run rampant over must-pass bills. Democrats are cheerfully embracing the concept of congressional gridlock, in much the same way Republicans did after Barack Obama became president. Nothing getting done is a lot better than seeing them competently pass a Republican agenda, in other words.

Meaning that Trump's first 100 days were a lot better than any liberal probably hoped for. Trump couldn't get anything done, Paul Ryan couldn't get anything done, and this was all good news. The White House spent all their time and energy over internal squabbling and jockeying for access to Trump.

So, realistically, we've got to end with an honest statement to sum up Donald Trump's first 100 days: "It could have been a lot worse." Let's hope that he stays just as unfocused and ineffective for his entire term in office, because so far that has been the best restraint on the damage he could be capable of. That's not exactly a rousing statement for the history books, but it is an honest assessment of Trump's first 100 days in office. It could have been much, much worse.




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April 21, 2017

Friday Talking Points (433) -- Trump Suffering From "100 Days Envy"

We'd like to boldly add a new disease's definition to the political lexicon. We feel this is necessary since Donald Trump seems to have caught a rather drastic case of "100 Days Envy." Symptoms are a tendency to flail around looking for a legislative win you can brag about, and an unnatural fear of being called a loser by the entire planet's media for not even coming close to fulfilling pretty much any of the grandiose promises you made for your first 100 days in office.

The only cure for such a malady is time. Give it a few more weeks, and the media will probably forget all about how much fun it is to mock your lack of achievements. It'll all get better soon, but you're going to have to take your medicine while it happens, sorry about that.

Heh. To put all of this another way: next week's scheduled "100 Days Schadenfreudefest" has already begun, here at Friday Talking Points headquarters.

We have to wonder, given Trump's masochistic fascination with Saturday Night Live, if this all wasn't spurred on by Alec Baldwin's Trump portrayal last week, during which he asked that the list of his 100-days accomplishments be read to him. The list consisted of: "1. Confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court," and nothing else. This is but a harbinger of the coming flood of "100 days" stories written in the next week, all of which will conclude exactly the same thing: Trump has absolutely squandered any political capital he might once have had. He got a Supreme Court justice confirmed, and that is indeed the extent of his major accomplishments. Which is one of the big reasons why he's now less popular than United Airlines.

This is all the more schadenfreude-y because Trump himself promised so much for his first 100 days. Here's but one of his tweets with a list of things he'd accomplish. Note well -- only one thing on that list has actually even been attempted. It then failed spectacularly (the "repeal and replace" fiasco in the House). And remember all that talk about how we'd "get tired of winning" and beg Trump to slow down with all the winning because we couldn't take it? With one week to go, is anyone now tired of Trump's incessant winning? Didn't think so.

Panic is reportedly setting in over at the White House. The new idea is to try to jam through the "repeal and replace Obamacare" bill once again. A quick review -- this bill had an artificial deadline set originally (by Paul Ryan), was so hastily constructed that the final version didn't even get a chance to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office, and did not have the support of enough Republicans to get passed. This was due to two groups, one of which thought the bill was pretty awful because it kicked 24 million people off health insurance, and the other that (incredibly) thought that that the bill wasn't awful enough.

Now the White House is setting its own artificial deadline (pass it before Trump's 100 days are up, so he's got something to brag about), it is being so hastily constructed that the final version will not have enough time for the C.B.O. to score it, and (amazingly) has been tailored to be even more awful than the first go-round, in order to tempt Tea Partiers to vote for it. This is going to lose even more centrist Republican votes, and is likely doomed to failure even in the House.

Wow. It's like déjà vu all over again (as Yogi Berra famously said). Here's Trump, predicting victory: "The plan gets better and better and better, and it's gotten really good, and a lot of people are liking it a lot. We have a good chance of getting it soon. I'd like to say next week, but we will get it." This is, of course, fake news. The plan is actually getting worse and worse, and a lot of people are hating it a lot -- a lot of Republican people, even.

And they're going to attempt to do all this in the midst of a looming deadline of a government shutdown if a continuing resolution budget bill doesn't pass. Good luck, guys!

But because at this point it's hard not to feel sorry for Trump, we'd like to offer up a suggestion to both the White House and the Republicans running Congress. Why not pass a single-page "We hate Obamacare" resolution? Just fill it up with all the "Obamacare is bad... mmm'kay?" stuff you want (with apologies to Mr. Mackey). However, the one-page bill wouldn't actually change anything, it would just be a way for you to express your displeasure to the world.

See, Trump doesn't really care what he signs, as long as he gets to sign something. This is obvious -- compare what he said he wanted to do on healthcare before he got elected with the garbage-fire that is the Ryancare bill. Trump doesn't care, so just pass some meaningless "sense of the Congress" resolution about how much the GOP hates Obamacare. Kind of like all those dozens and dozens of bills the House passed back when they knew Obama would veto them.

This way, everybody wins. Trump gets to sign something, he gets to brag about it, Republicans get to vent, but (crucially) nobody's health insurance gets taken away. The perfect solution!

In keeping with this reach-across-the-aisle (with tongue firmly in cheek) attitude, we'd now like to say something positive about a Donald Trump photo-op. No, really! Trump went up to a Snap-On tools factory to announce a crackdown on H-1B visas, and we honestly have to admit that even we were impressed by the backdrop -- an American flag mosaic made entirely of Snap-On tools. Now that was a nice flag! Maybe it's a "guys who love tools" thing, we don't know, but we were indeed impressed with whoever had the initiative to put such a cool thing together for a presidential visit. Well done! And, incredibly enough, even on message for Trump's speech! Somebody at Snap-On deserves a raise....

Also pleasant to see on television last week was the news that Bill O'Reilly will not be appearing on television anymore. Yep, Bill-O has finally been dumped by Fox News. Only a decade or so after the world learned what a complete and utter pig he is -- on a regular basis -- towards women he wants to have sex with (no matter what they thought of the prospect). Really, this should come as no surprise to anyone, since we've had the transcripts for a long time now. But when advertisers started dropping Bill like a hot potato, Fox finally acted. "About time" doesn't even begin to cover it. Like Glenn Beck before him, Bill O'Reilly got the boot because he was starting to affect the company's bottom line and attracting massive protests right outside their front door. The one iron-clad law of working for a corporation has always been: "Everybody can be replaced -- even you." Especially when the company's trying to buy Europe's Sky News network.

Hey hey, ho ho, Bill O'Reilly's got to go.

To close on a more positive note, we would like to point out that this weekend is the second in a string of three where anti-Trump protests are happening, so we'd encourage everyone to attend the nearest march for science this weekend. Technically, this one is not so much "anti-Trump" as "anti-anti-science" -- fighting the tide of politicians refusing to believe the data in front of them, on all sorts of important issues. So it's not an "anti-Trump" rally so much as an "anti-Republican idiocy" rally, really. Hopefully all the marches all get good weather and overwhelming turnout!



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A special House election happened in Georgia this week. Democrat Jon Ossoff got a whopping 48.1 percent of the vote, in a "jungle primary" that had more candidates on the ballot than the Republicans put up for president last time around. Ossoff's nearest competitor was a Republican who pulled in just under 20 percent of the vote.

That's impressive -- a 28-point margin win! Especially considering this is Newt Gingrich's old House seat. Which is why Jon Ossoff is easily our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

Ossoff beat expectations handily, since most polls showed him with support in the 41-45 percent range. He did five points better than his polling average, which can only be called extremely impressive in such a red district. This also showed the Democrats' turnout was much better than anyone expected, and the Republican turnout was down from what they'd expected. This is all to the good.

However...



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...Jon Ossoff also failed to gain an absolute majority of the vote (by two points), which means there will be a runoff election in June where he faces off against a single Republican opponent.

That was very disappointing to a whole lot of Democrats, which is why we've also got to hand Ossoff the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award as well.

If Ossoff had cleared the 50-percent bar and won the seat outright (no runoff necessary), then Democrats across the country would have rejoiced and proclaimed the inevitability of a "wave election" coming in 2018 which would sweep the Republicans out of power in at least one house of Congress. Whether this would become true or not, this would have energized the party's faithful by giving them a clean win in a previously staunch Republican district to crow about. By falling short, Democrats now have to pin their hopes on either the Georgia runoff or a special House election in Montana where they think they have a good shot at another upset.

Ossoff still has a chance, of course. There were other Democrats in the race, who (together) pulled in about a single percent of the vote. This means 49 percent of the people who voted in the special election voted for a Democrat. So all Ossoff might have to do to win in June would be to pick up a single additional point -- putting the race squarely in the "tossup" category.

But for the next two months, Ossoff won't have the luxury of being able to stay largely above the fray, as he did in the primary phase (when all the Republicans were mostly focused on attacking each other). Now it will be a one-on-one partisan race, meaning Ossoff's going to have to go on the offense a lot more. We'll see if he can maintain his sunny atmosphere throughout.

Bazillions of dollars from both sides have already been spent on this race, and that flood of money and advertising is only going to increase. We feel sorry for anyone attempting to watch television for the next few months in Atlanta, that's for sure.

The contest will very likely become a referendum on Donald Trump. Trump's not very popular even with Republican voters in this district, so his performance over the next two months will likely influence the race.

But the big disappointment this week was clearly that we have to go through this phase at all. If Ossoff had pulled in two percent more last Tuesday, he'd be on his way to being sworn in right now, because no runoff would have even happened. For that disappointment, Ossoff becomes the winner of both the MIDOTW and the MDDOTW -- a convergence which has only happened three previous times in this column's history.

{Jon Ossoff is currently a candidate for office, and it is our longstanding policy not to provide links to campaign sites. Therefore, to either commiserate with or congratulate Jon Ossoff, you'll have to search out his contact information on your own, sorry.}

{Editorial note: For the record, the three previous dual award winners were: Joe Biden won both awards in FTP 223 (8/17/12) for two remarks he had made that week; Eric Holder in FTP 144 (10/22/10) for settling a decades-old case brought by Native Americans against the federal government but also for weighing in (unethically, if not illegally) on the side of defeating California's first attempt (Proposition 19) at legalizing recreational marijuana; and Hillary Clinton way back in FTP 22 (3/7/08), for winning the Rhode Island, Ohio, and Texas primaries, but also for how she campaigned in these states (which saw the first airings of the infamous "3:00 A.M." ad) -- and for blowing the line: "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night" in her SNL appearance. This column was even subtitled "Hillary Sweeps The Awards!" which is why we're pointing out the relative rarity of such an occurrence -- only the fourth time in 433 Fridays!}



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[center]Volume 433 (4/21/17)[/center]

Another mixed bag of talking points this week. Which includes a fun one towards the end, where you get to make up your own conspiracy theories! So without further ado, let's just get right to it.



Maybe Matt Lauer can help?

This is already a running joke on late-night television.

"Perhaps Donald Trump should appoint Waldo to run the Navy. Maybe he could find where our aircraft carriers are in all of that ocean. No, wait -- I've got a better idea! Let's get Matt Lauer on the case. He could fly around the world and broadcast 'Where in the world is the U.S.S. Carl Vinson' segments! Now that'd be good television -- or at least better than the White House clown show we saw over the past few weeks on the issue."



Like a lead balloon

More bad news for Trump from Gallup.

"In the past month, Donald Trump's poll numbers have taken quite a few major hits. On the question of whether Trump keeps his promises or not, he fell from 62 percent believing he kept his word to only 45 percent in one month's time. This drop was across the board -- among women, men, millennials, baby boomers... pretty much everybody. Among independents, the drop was from 59 percent to 43 percent. But that's not the only metric where Trump's numbers are tanking -- once again, it's pretty much across the board. 'Strong and decisive leader' went from 59 percent to 52 percent. 'Trump can bring about changes this country needs' went from 53 percent to 46 percent. He's really in the toilet on 'honest and trustworthy,' which went from 42 percent to a dismal 36 percent. And we're not even at 100 days yet, so those numbers can fall even further! Donald Trump is definitely going to set all kinds of records for 'most unpopular president ever,' that's for sure. No wonder he's so worried that he hasn't done much of anything in his first 100 days...."



Who's gonna pay? Mexico!

So it goes, in Trump's fantasyland.

"Remember when Donald Trump used to give rallies and call out to his audience: 'Who's gonna pay for the wall?' and they'd scream back: 'Mexico!' at the top of their voices? Well, if indications are correct, Trump is about to threaten to shut down the government if he doesn't get what he's asking for -- which is forcing American taxpayers to pay for his wall to nowhere. He went from guaranteeing Mexico would pay for his folly to now throwing a tantrum if Congress doesn't force all of us to pay for it, because he never had a plan to make Mexico pay for it in the first place. That's a pretty stunning broken promise, and Trump's only going to call attention to his hypocrisy if he chooses to have this fight next week."



Headline of the week

Nothing like showing our best... um, face... to the world.

"Donald Trump announced he's going to name none other than Scott Brown to be America's ambassador to New Zealand. This prompted one of the biggest newspapers in New Zealand to run one of the best headlines I've seen in a long time: 'Man tipped for US ambassador role in NZ a former nude model who supports waterboarding.' That about sums it up, don't you think?"



Want to save a quick billion?

This isn't going to happen any time soon, but sooner or later someone's going to notice it on Capitol Hill.

"Congress is about to tackle the budget, tax reform, and if rumors are true they're also going to revisit healthcare reform. They should really check out a recent study which shows how they could save a cool billion dollars a year on Medicaid alone. All they'd have to do for these savings to appear would be to approve medical marijuana. That's it. Prescriptions for pain pills would go down, life would get better for patients, and the federal government could pocket a billion dollars a year in savings. Just by making this one change."



He's Hillary's love child!

Open the floodgates! Release the conspiracies!

"While much more media attention was paid to Bill O'Reilly being forced out of a job, we found the news from Representative Jason Chaffetz even more interesting. Chaffetz chairs the House committee whose duty it is to oversee government, and he sure had a fine old time investigating Hillary Clinton within an inch of her life last year. However, since Trump has taken over, Chaffetz has been refusing to investigate anything Donald Trump does. So he's stepping down from the committee, and now it seems he might even just quit Congress before his term is up, ostensibly to run for governor of Utah. But it only seems appropriate that conspiracy theories are now popping up for why Chaffetz is abruptly stepping down. After all, he never met a Hillary conspiracy story that wasn't worth the committee's time to investigate, so turn-about is indeed fair play. There are already unfounded rumors that he's secretly gay or is being blackmailed somehow by the Russians, but surely we can do better than that! Maybe he was raised by Bigfoots! Bigfeet? Whatever... or perhaps he gets regularly probed by aliens on invisible spacecraft? No, wait -- I've got it! He's the secret love-child of Orrin Hatch and Hillary Clinton! I think that's worth investigating, don't you?"



Shooting the....

The Washington Post had an amusing article this week on the (ahem) oratory style of the new head of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez. It would have been a lot more amusing, though, if they had run it with a more-accurate title, such as: "Tom Perez Talks Some Shit." Perez was asked about his use of this particular word, and responded very candidly. In fact, our talking point from Perez consists of the only quotes from the article which don't actually contain rough language (you'll have to read it for yourself to see what else he had to say!). Speaking of his penchant for vulgarity, Perez responded:

When asked about the Democratic mantra of "when they go low, we go high," though, Perez showed some real backbone -- which is really why we're highlighting his comments this week:





[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank[/center]

April 15, 2017

Friday Talking Points (432) -- Trump Advisor Apologizes Without Getting Fired!

This week saw some history made in the Trump White House. For the first time (at least in our memory), a White House top aide actually apologized for saying something stupid. So far, being Donald Trump (or being a Trump spokesperson) has meant never having to say you're sorry over any idiocy that gets said or tweeted, but this week saw Sean Spicer being forced to apologize for apparently forgetting about that whole Holocaust thing. While defending Adolf Hitler, on the first day of Passover, no less.

While there were loud cries for Spicer to be fired over the idiocy that came out of his mouth, and while Trump famously doesn't think anyone should ever apologize for anything, it looks like Spicer's job is safe for the time being. This proves that apologizing will not automatically get you fired by Trump, which is why it is such a historic milestone. Perhaps others will learn a lesson from this episode? One can only hope.

Spicer was trying to justify attacking Syria when he came up with this doozy of a statement:

Loud protests interrupted him, after which he bizarrely continued:



Um, "Holocaust center"? Seriously? And this guy is supposed to be the most accomplished communicator in the entire White House? Wow. Spicer tried to both defend his comment and walk it back, later. Later still, he appeared on CNN and gave a much more convincing apology, essentially stating he never should have gone there in the first place.

There was other news in the "Republicans crashing and burning" category this week, of varying permanence. Rumors are swirling inside the Beltway that Steve Bannon may be on the way out of Trump's White House, which would indeed be a wonderful thing if it came to pass. Also wonderful if true is the rumor that Bill O'Reilly's hastily-announced "vacation" from his Fox News show might just become permanent. He's lost something like half of his advertisers so far, so at this point he's kind of a liability. Will Bill-O return at all? Stay tuned!

In the "definitely permanent" subcategory, Republican Governor of Alabama Robert Bentley was forced to resign this week under a cloud of scandal surrounding his extramarital affair with a political aide. Bentley was facing imminent impeachment proceedings as well as criminal charges for misusing campaign funds, and he cut a deal to give back $37,000, perform 100 hours of community service, and to never again run for office. That's pretty permanent, you've got to admit. From the governor's mansion to getting your mug shot taken, all in one week!

Speaking of sleazy, Salon ran an article this week on what Rudy Giuliani's been up to with the tagline: "New Gig Almost Too Sleazy To Be True." Rudy's gone from calling the Obama administration's deal to return $440 million of Iran's funds from U.S. banks "trading with the enemy," to now defending in federal court a Turkish businessman accused of doing exactly that -- trading with the enemy -- in deals with Iran. Lo, how the righteous have fallen, we suppose.

What else? A top Republican lawmaker in North Carolina intelligently killed a bill some of his fellow Republicans had introduced to outlaw all gay marriages (even ones performed in other states). The "Uphold Historical Marriage Act" would have followed the state's embarrassment over the "bathroom bill," so the speaker of the statehouse declared the bill dead on arrival, sparing North Carolina Republicans some more egg on their face.

From the Department of Karma comes word that Representative Joe Wilson from South Carolina -- the guy who infamously called out "You lie!" during an Obama State Of The Union speech -- was just roundly heckled at a town hall meeting, complete with a 30-second chant of "You lie!" when he tried to claim he had done everything he could to stop violence against women. The crowd's reaction was entirely justified, since Wilson voted against extending the federal Violence Against Women Act in 2013. Everyone all together now: "Karma, Karma, Karma, Karma Chameleon...."

In other anti-women news, President Trump signed into law the ability of individual states to defund Planned Parenthood. Tellingly, unlike most of his bill signings, Trump did so with no media in the room.

It was hard to find any good news this week, but we'll end on a hopeful note anyway. When Congress returns after their long spring break, they'll have only days to put together a deal to keep the government open for business. This is a short-term budget deal to continue the money flowing for the current budget year. The positive news is that, for once, both political parties seem to be already working together to avoid any threat of a government shutdown. We'll see how it all turns out -- we fully suspect the Tea Partiers will make a last-minute attempt to include all sorts of poison pills in the bill (such as funding Trump's border wall, for instance), but for now the signs that bipartisan compromise might win the day seem to be fairly good.



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We've got one special award to hand out and one Honorable Mention this week before we get to our main award.

He's not eligible for our regular awards since he's (1) not a Democrat, and (2) not even an American, but we had to create a special Impressive Foreign Leadership Of The Week award this week for Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of our neighbor to the north, Canada.

This week, legislation was introduced to fully legalize marijuana for recreational uses across all of Canada. This would make it only the second country on the planet to do so (Uruguay already claimed first-ever status, a few years back). What's really impressive about this development, though, isn't that the bill was introduced but rather that the bill was introduced because Trudeau campaigned on it. He promised the voters he'd legalize weed, and now he is following through on his promise.

We consider this an inspirational political tale, and one we sincerely hope Democrats in the U.S. of A. learn from. It is not political suicide to run on legalization. In fact, it drives a segment of one-issue voters to the polls. Sooner or later American politicians will (hopefully) follow in Trudeau's footsteps. One can only hope.

One American politician staged a rather amusing bit of political theater this week, which is why West Virginia Governor Jim Justice deserves an Honorable Mention award. While explaining why he was going to veto the budget his legislature had sent him (in which Republicans refused to raise any taxes and instead would grab $90 million from the state's rainy-day fund), Justice unveiled three props to describe the bill. First up was an empty hamburger bun -- a "nothingburger." Next was a mayonnaise sandwich. Justice unveiled the third while saying: "We all should take ownership for this, but what we have is nothing more than bunch of political bull you-know-what. For that very reason, I'm signing my name on the budget veto, and I hope and pray that the silliness will stop and we'll do the right thing." On top of a pile of papers (the budget bill) was a goodly-size bovine patty. And not the type you'd be interested in seeing fill up that nothingburger, either. Yep, Governor Justice brought some actual bullshit into the conversation on his state's budget. As political theater, it was absolutely priceless.

But our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award goes to none other than Bernie Sanders. First came the news that Bernie topped the list of "most popular senators" with a 75 percent approval rating from his constituents in Vermont. Vermont voters are overall pretty happy about their representation in the Senate, because Pat Leahy came in second on this list. At the very bottom? The least popular senator was none other than Mitch McConnell (at 44 percent approval in his home state). Seems about right. Bernie didn't just top this list, though, he's also the most popular politician in the entire country as well, with a nationwide approval rating of 61 percent. Seems that actually standing up for what you believe is quite popular -- who knew?

But Bernie didn't win the MIDOTW award for just being popular, he also has to be at least partially credited with a big win in the leadership category as well. This week, New York state passed a law giving any student (from a family that annually earns less than $125,000) free tuition at state universities. The new program will begin to take effect this fall. While New York legislators (and Governor Andrew Cuomo) deserve a lot of credit for this milestone, does anyone truly believe it would have happened if Sanders hadn't championed the issue during his presidential run?

Bernie was criticized by establishment Democrats (led by Hillary Clinton) during the campaign for being too idealistic. His plans simply weren't practical. They were not sufficiently incremental. They were pie-in-the-sky that sober Democrats were supposed to cynically scoff at.

In reality, most of Bernie's platform was indeed possible, given a sufficient amount of political willpower. New York just proved that in a very big way. Sometimes big political dreams can come true.

So Bernie Sanders -- both the most popular senator in his own state and the most popular politician in all of America -- was at least partially vindicated this week by New York's new free-tuition program. Showing such leadership is what makes you politically popular, and it's also enough to win you another Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

{Congratulate Senator Bernie Sanders on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.}



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At times, we hand out the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award not for disappointing personal or political behavior, but rather for disappointing results. This is one of those weeks.

James Thompson bravely ran in a special House seat election in Kansas, to replace a GOP representative who had been tapped to lead the C.I.A. When the votes were counted, Thompson fell seven points short of victory.

This showing was actually pretty impressive for a Democrat, since his margin was 20 points better than Hillary Clinton did in this district only five months ago. This is a pretty reliably-red district that gave Trump 60 percent (and Mitt Romney 62 percent) of their votes. So it is notable indeed that a Republican only squeaked by with a seven-point margin.

This was only the first of five special elections happening since Trump won. Of the others, one is reliably Democratic (in California). This leaves three Republican districts, and Democrats are actually competitive in at least two of them -- a race in Georgia and one in Montana. The Georgia contest will happen next week, which will be watched much more closely than the Kansas election, because Democrats have a better chance for an upset (in Newt Gingrich's old district!).

Thompson did his best, so this week's MDDOTW award doesn't really reflect on him personally. We should also hand out (Dis-)Honorable Mention awards to both the state and the national Democratic Party apparatus, which didn't invest much of any money in this race (the Republicans got scared at the last minute and made a major push, which is when some party resources could have helped Thompson).

Democrats looking for an upset House win as a harbinger of a wave election in 2018 will have to wait at least another week. If Thompson had won, it would have been enormous news for Democrats to tout about the size of the anti-Trump backlash. Because he didn't, though, he sadly wins our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week -- but through no real fault of his own.

{In fact, because we feel that James Thompson ran the best campaign he could given the resources available, we cannot in good conscience urge anyone to express their displeasure to him personally.}



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[center]Volume 432 (4/14/17)[/center]

The first two of these are bit unusual, since one is a call to action rather than a normal talking point, and the second can only be delivered by one particular Democrat.

While Congress enjoys yet another multi-week vacation (out of the many, many they take each year), we certainly hope that everyone else gets at least some time to relax in spring break fashion. With that in mind (especially for our penultimate talking point this week), let's get started.



Resist!

This one isn't so much a talking point as a call to action.

"For the next three weekends, I would like to encourage anyone in the D.C. area and beyond to show up at the anti-Trump rallies which have been planned. The resistance to Trump and all he stands for needs to grow in size over time, to build momentum for stopping his radical agenda. Trump's approval ratings are the lowest of any new president since polling began, and we have to drive that message home over and over again. For the next three weeks, protests are planned to very publicly show this disapproval, and anyone with the means to show up and stand up for what they believe should make the effort to show Trump how big the resistance to him is getting."



Want a tax deal? Show us your taxes!

This is actually from an earlier article we wrote this week, and is quite specific. While most of these talking points are constructed for any Democrat to use, this one can only be realistically delivered by Chuck Schumer. Earlier this week, he floated an excellent idea. Now he just needs to make his position unequivocal. So this is what we'd like to hear Schumer say, this weekend:

"You know what? I think every American who is currently filling out their income tax returns deserves to see President Trump's taxes. So I'd like to announce that Senate Democrats will have absolutely no interest in making any deal with Republicans on tax reform -- unless part of that deal is the public release of Trump's tax returns for 2015 and 2014. If we're going to negotiate over how to change America's tax system, then the public deserves to know precisely how each proposed change will personally affect the president. It's only fair, after all, and we don't think this is too much to ask."



Flip-flops in the Oval Office?

Trump seems to be flipping and flopping more than a dying fish, these days. So point it out!

"Donald Trump apparently needs his very own Ministry of Truth to clean up after him. He's been changing his mind on so many issues, it'd actually be hard for him to erase all his previous statements and positions even if he did have an Orwellian department dedicated to fixing the past. Just this week alone, they'd have had to issue some sort of statement to keep everyone informed about Trump's flip-flops: 'China now doubleplusgood. China not manipulating currency, and Trump never said they were. NATO now plusgood, and Trump never said they were plusungood. Janet Yellen now good, and low interest rates now plusgood. Export-Import Bank now plusgood, and Trump never called for it to be abolished on the campaign trail. Also, Trump never said he'd pay off the national debt in four years, because everyone has always known this is impossible to do. Bombing Syria now doubleplusgood idea, and all those Trump tweets calling it doubleplusungood when Obama was in office have gone down the memory hole. And finally, Russia is now doubleplusungood -- indeed, Russia has always been doubleplusungood. Oh, and war with Eastasia has been scheduled for this weekend, just for everyone's information.' Orwell would have felt right at home watching Trump's flip-flops. And remember -- all of these 180-degree shifts have come in the past week alone. Looks like Trump is on track to break more campaign promises in his first 100 days than any U.S. president ever!"



Dogs won't eat the dogfood

Hoo boy. They're not even trying to defend Ryancare....

"Republican House member Greg Walden just got an earful at a town hall meeting this week, and even through he was one of the House leaders who crafted the Ryancare bill to throw 24 million people off their health insurance, it seems he wasn't even interested in trying to defend Ryancare to his constituents. Instead, he tried to convince the crowd that the new Republican plan was good because of all the parts of Obamacare it kept. That's a far cry from where Republicans have stood on 'repeal and replace' for the past seven years, it should be noted. Now that we've seen what people like Walden came up with, the GOP seems to be in a defensive crouch. This led one audience member to tell Walden: 'Why don't you go back to Washington in the spirit of bipartisanship, grow a pair, sit down with Nancy Pelosi and say "Let's fix Obamacare"?' Boy, that's gotta hurt. I wonder if Obamacare covers treatment for that burn...."



Because the first one went so well

Rarely does political thinking enter the realm of "from before Noah's flood," but when it does there's a dandy word to describe it.

"Jeff Sessions seems to be trapped in time and stuck in a bout of what can only be called antediluvian thinking. Not only is he ramping up Trump's promised 'deportation force' but he's also indicated that he's about to launch a whole new War On Drugs. Even though eight states and Washington D.C. have legalized marijuana for recreational use and even though more than half of the states have legal medical marijuana, Sessions is chomping at the bit to shut it all down. Because, you know, the first War On Drugs was such a smashing success. He'd better hurry, though, because when California starts legal recreational sales next year, he's going to need hundreds of thousands of new federal cops to even make an attempt at shutting down a marketplace of 40 million people. Antediluvian seems the right word to use for someone who seems hell-bent on copying King Canute's order for the tide to retreat. Thankfully, Sessions will likely be about as successful in his madcap scheme to lock up every pot smoker in the country as King Canute was at turning back the tide."



The Easter Bunny speaks

Just in case anyone's forgotten already, a little over a month ago photos were dug up of Sean Spicer wearing the Easter Bunny costume for the White House Easter Egg Roll. But, alas, it seems that even with a former Bunny in the press office, Trump might be headed for an embarrassment this Easter weekend.

"Will Trump's first White House Easter Egg Roll be as much of a trainwreck as all the other things he touches? Salon reported this week that it might just be a 'disaster in the making.' Seems that area public schools haven't heard anything from the White House, when they normally get 4,000 tickets to distribute to children. Military families who usually get 3,000 tickets have also not been contacted. Even members of Congress haven't heard a peep about the tickets they normally get. While the event usually is staffed by 1,000 volunteers, this year they're only going to have 200 on hand. They've only ordered half the normal amount of wooden eggs to hand out as souvenirs, even though the company who makes them publicly begged the White House to 'Please reach out,' on Twitter. Team Trump was so late in organizing the event that only one PBS Sesame Street character will attend. Maybe they can get Sean Spicer to dress up as the Easter Bunny again -- maybe that'd help?"



Court jester

Not that it was ever really in doubt or anything, but with all the palace intrigue in the Trump White House, we now have an official Court Jester to provide some comedic relief.

"Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson was in the news this week. On a visit to some public housing in Florida, Carson got stuck in an elevator and had to be rescued by the fire department. Can't wait to see how Saturday Night Live handles this one! After getting rescued, Carson returned to Washington to work on the Trump administration's plans for slashing the safety net's budget. Because, you know, if the elevator had just been allowed to grind to a permanent halt, then the problem never would have happened -- the brain surgeon would have taken the stairs!"



[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank[/center]

April 8, 2017

Friday Talking Points (431) -- Rampant Republican Hypocrisy On Syria

It turns out that Donald Trump is pretty good at predicting his own future behavior. You just have to change the names, that's all. A while back, Trump tweeted out the following: "Now that Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin -- watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate."

This week, Donald Trump's poll numbers matched the lowest point Barack Obama ever hit (in his whole eight years) on the Real Clear Politics "daily average job approval" polling page: only 39.8 percent of Americans approved of the job Trump has been doing. Days later, Trump launched an airstrike on Syria. "Desperate" indeed.

But maybe Trump's not all that great at predicting the future. After all, Syria wasn't mentioned in Trump's tweet. On Syria, Trump had plenty of other advice to give Obama on Twitter. He warned Obama not to follow through on his "red line" threat, and now that the airstrike has happened, other Trump tweets are being dug up, including: "What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long term conflict? Obama needs Congressional approval." Also, in the same vein: "The President must get Congressional approval before attacking Syria -- big mistake if he does not!" Trump, of course, did not bother getting congressional approval before launching last night's attack. Republicans in Congress -- who previously demanded such approval when Obama was in charge -- shrugged and cheered Trump on. No real surprise there.

For the first time, however, Trump opponents don't really have much to fall back on. Asking Congress to approve anything is a good way to get nothing done (as Obama found out, when he did ask Congress to approve escalating the war in Syria -- and they ignored him). Trump's action was decisive and fairly quick, which would simply not have been possible with Congress involved.

But the real reason (which, in all honesty, we have to point out) that Trump's political opponents are stymied right now is that nothing would have been different under President Hillary Clinton. How can we state this in such bold fashion? Because she told us so yesterday, mere hours before Trump launched the missiles. Here is what Clinton said:

So, in this particular case, we would be in exactly the same situation now if Hillary had won the Electoral College. The missiles would have been launched, and Syrian airfields would have been attacked. That doesn't leave much of any room for saying "things would be different if Trump weren't in charge," really.

It may be tough for Democrats to admit, but politically Trump just had his best week so far. Not only will he likely get a "rally 'round the president in times of war" boost in his poll numbers, but he also scored his only real victory to date in Congress this week. Democrats successfully filibustered the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, but then Mitch McConnell went ahead and dropped the nuke, changing the Senate rules so that a majority vote is all that is needed for Supreme Court justice confirmations. While most Americans weren't paying much attention to the "changing the Senate rules" story, the upshot is that Donald Trump has seated his first Supreme Court justice. That is a solid political victory -- the only one he's really had so far from Congress.

Trump, of course, doesn't see things quite this way. On Air Force One, he was quoted saying: "I think we've had one of the most successful 13 weeks in the history of the presidency." Um, no, not really. In the first place, he's only actually been president for 11 weeks, and so far only one of them could even remotely be called "successful" in any way, when measured by actual accomplishments.

Oddly enough, Trump is taking a lot of heat from a very unexpected corner: the alt-right. Since they absolutely live for conspiracy theories, the lunatic righties are now convincing themselves that the Syrian nerve gas attack was either (1) a "false-flag" operation, not actually launched by Assad's forces, or (2) completely faked, and didn't actually happen. Either way, the thinking (if you can even call it that) goes that Trump was duped into attacking Syria, which goes against his entire "America First" campaign theme and all those "I won't get involved in Syria" campaign promises. Warped though this thinking may be, the conclusion is in some ways correct -- Trump castigated Clinton (and all his GOP opponents) for wanting to escalate the war in Syria, preferring to stay out of the mess and let them fight it out on their own. Now, he's apparently changed his mind.

The most bizarre flip-flop, though, happened in the space of a single week. The Trump administration, last week, decided to change America's official policy towards Assad, stating that it will be "up to the Syrian people" to decide whether Assad stays or goes. This is Assad's own position, it bears pointing out, and a drastic shift from calling for regime change. One chemical attack later, Trump moved 180 degrees in the opposite direction, directly attacking Assad's forces for the first time since the war began. That's a pretty big shift in a pretty short period of time, and just adds to the perception that Trump is creating his foreign policy in a very day-to-day and reactionary manner.

The fallout from the Syrian strike is yet to be determined. We didn't kill any Russian soldiers, which is good news indeed. Trump seems to have forewarned the Russians that the strike was coming, which may have helped avoid such an awkward situation. But now Russia has backed out of the agreement with the U.S. to work together to avoid belligerence between the two countries' military flights over Syria, which could have serious consequences in the weeks to come. Trump's attack so far seems to be seen by most of the world as an appropriate level of retaliation for the chemical weapons attack earlier in the week. If Trump does not escalate further, then the prevailing view of this being a measured response will likely prevail. After all, even Hillary Clinton probably would have done pretty much the same thing.

Of course, the media absolutely loved the attack, because they know that war means people watch more news. Nowhere was this more evident than watching Brian Williams literally rhapsodizing over the "beautiful" missile launches on air, complete with Leonard Cohen quotes. But then does anyone really expect anything different, at this point, from BriWi?

As usual in the age of Trump, there was so much going on this week that we're going to have to just whip through the rest of the news in lightning fashion. Even the story of the Senate going nuclear on Supreme Court confirmations -- a story which normally would have dominated news coverage all week -- was pushed to the side and treated almost as a footnote.

Early in the week, Trump made another of his accusations of criminal behavior by the Obama administration, and as usual he had absolutely no evidence to back his claim up. Trump seems to think Susan Rice broke the law, but didn't give any details. We're also still waiting on any proof whatsoever that Obama wiretapped Trump Towers, if you'll remember.

Trump seems to want to pin the blame for leaks on Rice (again, with zero evidence), but perhaps this was mere deflection from the fact that the Republican chair of the committee supposedly investigating such leaks (and Russian interference in our election) himself had to step down from the committee over charges that he leaked classified information. There's some irony for you.

Remember that time when Michael Flynn had to resign as a top Trump aide over conversations with Russian officials? Remember when Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself over the investigation because of his own conversations with Russian officials? Well, we're betting that Jared Kushner won't face anywhere near the same consequences for conveniently "forgetting" to list a bunch of contacts with Russian officials on his security disclosure forms. What's he going to do, after all -- step down from being Trump's son-in-law?

Speaking of stepping down, Steve Bannon was booted out of his principals seat on the National Security Council. Seems Bannon -- and possibly Reince Priebus -- are on thin ice because Jared doesn't much approve of them. The palace intrigue just never stops in the Trump White House. Will Bannon and Priebus be around next week? Stay tuned!

Vice President Mike Pence tried once again to revive the Republican "repeal and replace Obamacare" effort, without any noticeable success. He tried making the GOP plan even more awful -- by removing protections for people with pre-existing conditions, no less -- in an attempt to sway the Tea Partiers. Moderate Republicans recoiled in horror, and the goal of having some sort of bill together before the Easter congressional break utterly failed to materialize. Paul Ryan smartly kept out of the entire process this time, so we can't even call this "Ryancare 2.0." Now Republicans head back to their districts, where assumably some of them are going to get an earful from their constituents -- unless they all chicken out of even holding any town halls at all.

And finally, Trump just got a fairly disappointing jobs report, with fewer than 100,000 jobs created last month. Wait for it... wait for it... it's "all Obama's fault," right? We haven't actually heard any White House excuses on this yet, but we're betting we already know what they're going to say.



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We have two Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week awards to hand out this week, for very different reasons.

It mostly happened in the middle of the night and into the wee hours of the morning, but Senator Jeff Merkley made some history of his own in the Senate this week by mounting a "talking filibuster" against the Gorsuch confirmation. He spoke for 15 hours and 28 minutes, which puts him eighth on the list of the longest filibusters in history -- only two minutes behind Huey Long's 1935 talkathon.

Merkley knew this wasn't going to make any difference. He even politely scheduled it for the middle of the night, when few would even notice it. But he stood and talked for 15-and-a-half hours, which is a feat of stamina that is well worth noting. For making this effort and for mounting the eighth-longest filibuster ever, we feel Merkley deserves a MIDOTW award, at the very least.

Our second winner this week hit a milestone of fundraising, instead of a milestone of speechifyin'. On April 18, Georgia is going to have a special House election. Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff reported a whopping $8.3 million raised in three months. To put that in some perspective, this is seventeen times the average raised in the 2016 campaign cycle. That's a pretty stunning amount of money for a single House seat, in other words (check out the chart in that Washington Post article, which shows just how impressive this haul is).

Now, this is a Republican district, so no matter how much money Ossoff raises, he still might lose. But the district has a lot of affluent Atlanta suburbs, with many Republican voters who are not that thrilled with Donald Trump. The voting may go beyond the first round if no candidate achieves better than 50 percent of the vote, but Ossoff is currently polling at around 40 percent -- far better than any of the Republicans in the race.

This will be a very closely-watched election, for obvious reasons, but win or lose we have to say we are indeed impressed with the massive campaign chest that Jon Ossoff has put together so far. One final note: Ossoff raised most of his money online, proving once again that grassroots donations can be a very powerful force for Democrats. We wish Ossoff luck in his upcoming election, as we award him a Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week for his fundraising prowess.

{Congratulate Senator Jeff Merkley on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts. As a standing policy, we do not link to candidate websites, so you'll have to seek out Jon Ossoff's site on your own, however.}



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This one's pretty obvious this week, so this is going to be a short segment.

We have three Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week awards to hand out this week, for the three senators who voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. All three are worried about their re-election chances (in purple or red states), so they crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP rather than backing up the Democratic caucus.

There's really nothing much more that needs be said, really. Our MDDOTW winners this week are: Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, and Joe Manchin.

{Contact Senator Joe Donnelly on his Senate contact page, Senator Heidi Heitkamp on her Senate contact page, and Senator Joe Manchin on his Senate contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.}



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[center]Volume 431 (4/7/17)[/center]

It's still pretty early to accurately gauge the political reaction and fallout over Trump's Syrian airstrike, so we'll probably have a lot clearer talking points on the subject next week. This week, for the most part, we're more focused on pointing out the rampant hypocrisy emanating from the Republican side of the aisle. Oh, and we've got a belated April Fool's Day joke at the end, just because.



Now we see why he didn't show up

This makes a lot more sense, now.

"Donald Trump turned down the opportunity to throw out the traditional first pitch at the Washington Nationals season-opener this week. No reason was given, which led many to speculate that he was afraid he'd get resoundingly booed if he showed up. This sounds a lot more plausible now, with the news that a massive banner, 'styled like a Russian flag,' was unfurled at the game which read: 'Impeach Trump #Resist.' No wonder he didn't show up, if that was the reception he was likely to get!"



Sheer GOP hypocrisy

Strange how stories change when the shoe's on the other foot, isn't it?

"There's a long list of Republicans -- around 100 of them, in fact -- who signed a letter in 2013 warning President Obama that it would be unconstitutional for him to order airstrikes on Syria over the issue of chemical weapons. Obama dutifully asked Congress for an authorization for the use of military force, and Congress refused to grant it. These days, however, some of the same people who signed this letter are praising Trump's recent airstrike on Syria. Here's just one example, from Marco Rubio. After voting against giving Obama the authority to strike Syria, Rubio explained his vote by saying the president: 'was proposing what they called pinprick strikes, basically a symbolic strike to send a message, but not backed up by a clear plan.' That was then. Now that Trump has done exactly the same thing -- with no clear plan in sight -- Rubio has nothing but praise for him, saying: 'Tonight's actions show the days of being able to attack with impunity when it comes to Assad are over.' Curious how his opinion on the desirability of airstrikes shifts so dramatically depending on who is in the White House, isn't it? And Rubio's certainly not the only Republican expressing such changes of heart this week."



Beautiful babies who can't come in

Speaking of hypocrisy...

"Donald Trump seemed to get quite emotional when talking about the youngest victims of the Assad chemical weapons attack, calling them 'children of God' and 'beautiful babies' in the past few days. He seemed downright empathetic to their plight, in fact. But apparently Trump is not so moved by the plight of the babies to go so far as to perhaps allow a few of them into the United States as refugees. When a national security spokesman was asked point-blank whether the Trump administration would consider changing their 'no Syrian refugees' position, though, the answer was: 'No, that wasn't discussed as any part of the deliberations.' So forgive me if I'm not all that moved by Trump's crocodile tears over the beautiful babies. Because apparently he still thinks they're all terrorists in swaddling clothes, or something."



Tell us what you really feel, John

John McCain won the quote of the week from the Republican side of the aisle, that's for sure.

"Senator John McCain -- before the voting began -- had this to say about anyone who was supporting the nuclear option of changing the Senate rules for Supreme Court nominations, and I quote: Whoever says that is a stupid idiot, who has not been here and seen what I've been through and how we were able to avoid that on several occasions. And they are stupid and they've deceived their voters because they are so stupid. Unquote. Sounds like he felt pretty strongly about it, doesn't it? But then when it came to vote, McCain went right ahead and voted with (in his words) all the other stupid idiots in his party. Looks like he is comfortable talking the 'maverick' talk, but not so much when it comes to walking the 'maverick' walk."



Uncorking a few truths

Republican Senator Bob Corker admitted a few ugly truths in the debate over the Gorsuch nomination this week, for which he should be applauded. He not only admitted that Harry Reid had used the first nuclear option when Republicans were attempting to block Obama from three appeals court nominations (who were "actually pretty decent," according to Corker), because Republicans "did not want the balance of the D.C. Circuit to change because it was at four to four" -- but he also admitted that the way Merrick Garland was treated by Republicans is what led to this point in history: "It was a pretty audacious move, let's face it, and obviously it created some hard feelings on the other side."

Corker went further, however, and predicted that the legislative filibuster is also not going to be around for much longer, despite all the statements to the contrary by his fellow Republicans, which was the truly amazing part of his speech. Democrats will quite likely dig this speech up in the future, when it actually happens, which is why we are including it today as a talking point:





50 and counting...

Bill O'Reilly had a tough week all around, which he fully deserved.

"Why is everyone so surprised that Bill O'Reilly is a serial sexual predator? I mean, I'm old enough to remember when he confused a loofah with falafel in an obscene phone call, back in 2004. Does anyone really think that was enough embarrassment to make him stop? Now it turns out that Fox News has paid out over ten million dollars to other women Bill has harassed over the years. This time, at least, corporate America is not amused -- the number of advertisers who have pulled their ads from his show is now over 50 and climbing by the day. Looks like falafel-boy is finally getting his comeuppance. To which I say: it's about time."



From Russia, with humor

Russians aren't generally known for their humor. In fact, this week it was announced that it is now illegal in Russia to portray Vladimir Putin as a gay clown. Which, of course, prompted many to do just that, but that's really to be expected. But the Russian Foreign Ministry apparently had some fun on April Fool's Day, which we have to admit is pretty hilarious. They posted on a Facebook page a spoof answering machine message from their office, which said the following (in both Russian and English):





[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank[/center]

April 1, 2017

Friday Talking Points (430) -- A Fool's Paradise

Will tomorrow be any different at the White House? Since we all seem to now be living in Bizarro World, wouldn't that tend to make you think that we'd get no foolishness from our president on April Fool's Day? I mean, in an April Fool's Year, shouldn't one day be set aside for nonfoolery? Maybe even that's too much to ask from this fool's paradise of a White House.

It's not just the White House, either. This week we saw the spectacle of the chair of the House committee investigating Russian meddling in the election trying a desperate stunt to reclaim the political narrative. Devin Nunes apparently met with White House personnel, then held a splashy news conference, went and briefed the president about what Trump's own staff told Nunes, and then just for good measure gave another press conference. This was all somehow supposed to vindicate Trump's conspiracy theory that Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower (which it didn't, since it is not true). What it did instead was convince everyone in America that Nunes is patently unqualified to lead any sort of investigation of the White House. We're actually surprised Nunes didn't appear at his pressers with a big bucket in hand. "Chairman, can you tell us why you've got that bucket?" "This? Oh, this is just some water Trump asked me to carry for him." All Nunes accomplished, at week's end, was the complete destruction of his own credibility. He also spurred the Senate to move forward on its own investigation, which could be much more effective in the end.

The Russia story may have given birth to a new political metaphor. We'd certainly never heard it before, but we bet it'll be more widely used in the future, because "it's got legs," as they say. Instead of the old "waiting for the other shoe to drop," we heard Trump's Russian problems recently described as "a centipede -- because there are so many shoes dropping, one after the other." Legs, indeed.

This week, unlike last, didn't have any major legislative defeats for President Donald Trump, but this was the week when the polling reflected how the public saw the doomed Ryancare trainwreck from last Friday. To be blunt, it's not pretty. Donald Trump hit a lower point (a dismal 35 percent job approval rating) on the respected Gallup poll than Barack Obama ever hit during his eight years in office. And it hasn't even been three months yet! That's a record, but likely one Trump won't be bragging about any time soon. At least he's doing better than Speaker Paul Ryan, whose own approval rating is down to 21 percent after the fiasco. You don't hear either of them talking much about a "mandate" or doing what "the people" want anymore, which is probably no coincidence.

Other fallout from the destruction of Ryancare: Kansas actually voted to expand Medicaid. Kansas! The governor then vetoed the bill, but the fact that it got this far (and almost had a veto-proof majority behind it) is telling indeed. Charles Krauthammer darkly warns that we're all on the road to single-payer now (which, to him, is the equivalent of a highway to Hell). The myth of Paul Ryan as the wonkiest Republican around is finally being questioned by a few inside-the-Beltway folks. Oh, and Donald Trump and the Tea Party are now waging open warfare on Twitter.

That last one is the most interesting, of course. Trump is trying to threaten the Freedom Caucus in the House, even going so far as to say he'll fight them during primary season. Last week, he had nothing but kind words for both Ryan and the Tea Partiers, but that didn't last long. By week's end, he was naming individual Freedom Caucus members and trying to strongarm them into blind obedience of all things Trump. Not with any noticeable success, so far.

No wonder Trump needs to take so many vacations. He hasn't even gone 100 days yet, and so far he's spending one in every three days at his own properties. And playing a lot of golf -- thus breaking yet another of his campaign promises (he used to routinely badmouth Barack Obama for golfing while president).

Speaking of broken Trump promises, it now seems that Trump isn't going to "tear up" NAFTA after all. He'll be content to just tinker around the edges of it, according to the White House. How long is it going to take before his followers realize the con job he pulled on them?

So far, Trump hasn't lost his key base. A recent poll found that "as few as 3 percent of Trump voters would recast their ballot if given the chance." But there are notable exceptions within that three percent, including one woman whose husband is now being deported. She took Trump at his word that only the "bad hombres" would be deported, it seems. Another broken promise!

It got little attention this week, but Trump is also trying the "Bill Clinton defense" in a sexual harassment case against him by a former contestant on his television show. Trump's legal team is arguing that he's so gosh-darned busy presidenting that he shouldn't have to deal with legal cases against him until after he leaves office. Trump might want to check with Bill how that all worked out in the courts, previously.

Outside of presidential political news, North Carolina tried to pull their own con job on the N.C.A.A., by "repealing" the bathroom bill that has been causing so much lost revenue for the state. The college sports organization gave them until this week to repeal the law or else no championship games in any sports would be scheduled in North Carolina for the next five years. So the politicians put together a bill which on the face of it appears to repeal the discriminatory law, but in reality does nothing of the sort. Gay rights and transgender rights groups denounced the sham, but (as of this writing) the N.C.A.A. has not taken a position on it yet, so we'll see what they have to say about the "repeal."

In marijuana news, Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Earl Blumenauer introduced a comprehensive legislative package to end the federal War On Weed altogether, and it is impressive in its scope. Check out their press release for more information, if interested.

And kudos once again for the Washington Post for extended reporting on a subject other news organizations have been ignoring for decades -- the ongoing shameful abuse of "asset forfeiture," which is a legal term that really means "highway robbery by police officers and federal agents." Don't believe me? This is how it works: you are pulled over to the side of the road or stopped at an airport, and then a law enforcement officer steals your money. The officer doesn't charge you with any crime, mind you, and you never get a day in court where you are presumed innocent. Instead, the money they stole is presumed guilty (of being linked to drug crime or anything else the cops make up on the spot out of thin air), and then you have to sue them to get it back, by proving the money's innocent.

Don't think this is a big problem? Well, a new report shines some light on just how big a problem it truly is:

That's just the cash they stole, mind you. That doesn't even count all the property they also stole. Here are figures for just one year alone, with a little needed context:



Got that? In 2014, the cops stole more than the robbers did! That's stunning. In fact, it brings to mind (in a very literal way) a popular T-shirt and bumpersticker slogan: "Don't steal -- the government hates the competition."



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Before we get to the main award, there are a few other folks who need recognition. If we handed out awards to Republicans, we would certainly be giving both Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins some praise this week for voting against the bill to allow states to defund Planned Parenthood. Alas, they needed one other Republican to break ranks, which didn't happen. But their aisle-crossing was noteworthy and appreciated nonetheless.

We have an Honorable Mention award to hand out this week as well, to the organization Stay Woke, which created the Our States webpage. This is an effort to shift some of the progressive energy out there by concentrating it on state-level politics. As one of the founders explained recently:



This is an excellent idea, and we wish them all kinds of success. In between fighting odious Republican legislation at the federal level, everyone should feel free to get involved at the state level as well, where your voices may be even more effective in changing some minds!

But our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week was none other than Chuck Schumer. Now, we're fully aware that this is an incredibly biased pick for us to make, because the reason we're handing Chuck the MIDOTW award is that he seemingly took our advice to heart in almost verbatim fashion.

Last week in this space, we went on an extended rant on the failure of Ryancare. This ended by examining whether Democrats should even consider working with Donald Trump at all, and it concluded:



Now here was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, appearing on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos last Sunday:



That's pretty close, we have to admit. In fact, we cannot remember any previous instance of a politician getting so close to what we urged them to say in these Friday columns. So although awarded solely because of our own inherent bias, we feel we'd be hypocrites not to hand Chuck Schumer this week's MIDOTW award. Well done, Chuck -- we still feel this is exactly the message to be sending to Trump and any moderate Republicans right now. Let's fix any Obamacare problems, and let's stop all the chest-beating over "repeal and replace" for good. Because that's really the only way forward, at this point.

{Congratulate Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.}



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Normally we tend to hand out these awards to figures in national politics. Sometimes we dip down to state-level politics. But this week, we're giving the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to the mayor of Baltimore. Here's the whole reason why:



For breaking a big campaign promise, for siding with businesses instead of workers, and for a big failure of leadership, Catherine Pugh is easily our Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week. With disappointing Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?

{Contact Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh on her official contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.}



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[center]Volume 430 (3/31/17)[/center]

Kind of a mixed bag of talking points this week. We've got some ridicule for the Trump administration (naturally), as well as two viewpoints of the state of politics right now -- one from the left and one from the right. Plus the usual tomfoolery. Having said all of that, let's get right to it....



Immunity, then and now (part 1)

Michael Flynn's back in the news, begging for immunity in exchange for his testimony.

"Donald Trump today encouraged his former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, to ask for immunity for his testimony to Congress. Strange how his view of asking for such immunity has changed over time. Allow me to read a few quotes from when Trump was campaigning: 'The reason they get immunity is because they did something wrong. If they didn't do anything wrong, they don't think in terms of immunity.' That's back when the subject was an investigation of Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, of course. He even went further, while campaigning, saying: 'If you're not guilty of a crime, what do you need immunity for, right?' Now that it's one of his aides, however, Trump seems to have changed his mind rather dramatically. Odd, isn't it?"



Immunity, then and now (part 2)

Ah, but it gets even better.

"I'm going to read a quote from an appearance on Meet The Press last year: 'When you get immunity, that means that you have probably committed a crime.' That's pretty unequivocal, right? The person who said that was none other than Michael Flynn, while campaigning for Donald Trump. This is the same Michael Flynn who just asked Congress for immunity for his testimony. So, by his own measure, should we all now assume that Michael Flynn -- who spent the shortest time in office of any National Security Advisor ever, before he resigned in disgrace -- has, in his own words 'probably committed a crime'? Maybe that's the first question Congress should ask him. I mean, he himself set this standard, right?"



Sheer idiocy

One of the stupider things any member of Congress has ever uttered was said this week.

"Representative Ted Yahoo... oh, excuse me, that should be 'Yoho,' my apologies... this week tried to defend Devin Nunes bizarre stunt with a jaw-dropping misunderstanding of the requirements of his own job. Yoho said of Nunes: 'You've got to keep in mind that he works for the president. He answers to the president.' OK, let's take this real slow, Representative Yoho. There are three co-equal branches of government. They don't 'work for each other' in any way, shape, or form. They are, in fact, separate. That's what that whole 'separation of powers' thing is all about. A member of the House is a part of the legislative branch, which does not work for the executive branch at all! What's really stunning about this idiocy is that Nunes is the chair of a committee that is actually investigating the executive branch. That's about as far away from 'working for the president' as you can imagine! Someone needs to buy Representative Yoho a fifth-grade civics textbook."



Not what they had intended

Republicans are responsible for one big public opinion victory, but it wasn't exactly what they were shooting for.

"In the past few months, Republicans have grappled with turning their wildly overstated campaign rhetoric on Obamacare into reality. They failed miserably at what they promised their own voters they would do, that's for sure. But they did make one rather notable achievement -- for President Obama. During the debate over the Ryancare bill, in public opinion polling Obamacare hit the highest approval it has ever seen. A clear majority of Americans now approve of Obamacare -- something that has not been true since the day it passed. That's something Obama himself never managed, which is why it's so remarkable. Maybe Joni Mitchell was right -- 'you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.' Because America took a hard look at what Republicans wanted to do to it, Obamacare is now more popular than ever. Barack Obama should really write a thank-you note to Paul Ryan for this achievement."



Nihilism on the right

These next two are direct opposites. The first is from Michel Gerson, who worked for George W. Bush. He wrote an extraordinarily gloomy article this week on the state of the Republican Party. By the end, he's slipped into sheer partisan nihilism. Think that's overstating it? Here's how he ends his article:





;Revitalization on the left

Want to read something more cheerful, after that? Then take a look at an extraordinary article by a Democratic House staffer, who writes this week about being on the other end of the phone line during the overwhelming public response that has been almost continuous since Trump took office. Eric Harris, who works for Representative Gwen Moore, had nothing but praise for the energy and public participation that has been taking place, and reveals how heartening it is to be on the receiving end. Anyone who has ever considered phoning their congressional representative on any issue should really read the entire article.





OK, Congressman, let's see your browsing history!

Fair play, right?

"Republicans in Congress once again stuck a thumb in the eye of all of their own voters, by passing a bill nobody in their right mind wanted, supported, or ever even asked for. The GOP successfully overturned an Obama regulation which would have kept your browsing history private. That's right, the Republicans voted to let giant corporations sell people's browsing history for cold cash to anyone willing to pay. This has led to an instant response online. If these members of Congress think this is such a great idea, then maybe we should get some money together and buy their own browsing histories. I'm sure they wouldn't have any problem seeing this information publicly displayed, since they just voted to remove privacy protections for all Americans. So let's see what computers on Capitol Hill have been busy doing, shall we? Seems only fair, right?"



[center]Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank[/center]