同情特朗普

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神秘高官《纽约时报》匿名爆料 特朗普骂“谋反”
4日，“水门事件”记者伍德沃德的新书《恐惧》中刚刚描述了特朗普政府内部人员的“行政政变”，引起媒体巨大关注。

当地时间9月5日，《纽约时报》“火上浇油”，一场真正的“谋反大戏”就上演了……

当天，特朗普身边的一名神秘高官在《纽约时报》上发表了一篇文章：《我是特朗普政府中的一名抵抗者》。

《纽约时报》截图

该文章表示，包括自己在内的很多人，每天都在努力抵抗上司特朗普的奇思妙想、反复无常，以保护美国。还真的考虑过“弹劾特朗普”。

其实这样的说法并不新奇，但重点是，这人就在特朗普身边，而特朗普还不知道他是谁！《纽约时报》表示已经确认了该高官身份，但是为了保护他不被开除，选择了匿名。

气得特朗普，5日一整个下午都在发推特，一会儿气得只打了一个词：“谋反？”一会儿说要《纽约时报》把这个胆小的匿名者交给政府。

《纽约时报》配图

这名神秘的高官在文中表示，特朗普没有完全理解，他的政府中许多高官都在努力工作，为了挫败他的一些议程和坏想法。作者也是其中之一。

“我们希望政府能够成功，也相信政府的许多政策已经让美国变得更安全、更繁荣。但我们认为，我们的首要任务是对国家负责。而总统却继续以一种不利于国家健康的方式，危害美利坚合众国。”

“正因如此，特朗普任命的许多人都发誓，要尽我们所能保护我们的民主制度，同时挫败特朗普那些误人的冲动，直到他下台。”

作者还抱怨特朗普没什么原则性。除了“反媒体”，还“反贸易、反民主”。

“尽管特朗普是共和党人，但他对保守派长期支持的理想几乎没有什么好感：自由思想、自由市场和自由人民。”

一名高级官员最近向作者抱怨：“几乎没有人知道他是否会在一分钟内改变主意。”在椭圆形办公室的会议上，特朗普很容易对他在一周前做出的重大决策发生转变。

但作者希望美国人相信，房间里有成年人，这是一种安慰。

文章还提到此前因为俄罗斯“双面间谍”事件，美国驱逐俄外交官，特朗普十分不情愿，还抱怨了好几个星期。

“鉴于特朗普的不稳定，在内阁中早有传言，用第25条修正案罢免总统。但是没有人想要促成一场宪法危机。因此，我们将尽我们所能，引导政府朝着正确的方向前进，直到一切都结束。”

特朗普：谋反？

据美联社消息，5日下午，白宫新闻发言人桑德斯对此回应称，该文作者是一个“懦夫”，应该“做正确的事，辞职”。她还表示，《纽约时报》要道歉。

同一天下午，特朗普在白宫的一场活动上超级生气，他对着镜头说：“如果失败的《纽约时报》发表了匿名社论，你们会相信吗？匿名意味着胆小，一篇胆小的社论。”

“哪天我不当总统了”，他自信地说，“大概6年半之后吧，《纽约时报》和CNN这些假新闻，都会破产！因为没啥可写了。”

BBC视频截图

大概当地时间下午2点45分，他将这个视频在推特上发布，用了喜欢的福克斯新闻的视频源。

下午3点多，可能是越想越生气，又发了一条推特，这时气得只剩一个词：“谋反？”

到了近5点，似乎气还没消，想来想去，还是让《纽约时报》快点把匿名者交给政府吧！

推特截图

BBC表示，《纽约时报》的这篇文章是继伍德沃德新书后，对特朗普的第二记重拳。

其实从4日下午到5日凌晨，特朗普一直在发推特怼伍德沃德的新书。只是他没想到，让人气炸的事情真是一件接一件！哼！

关于匿名文章作者，特朗普的女儿女婿盯上了一个人。

 

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[ottawa_tj]

名正言顺的swamp，连这rental的钱都进了自己golf club的腰包了！

 

[ottawa_tj]

 

[Teddy]

That is a treasonous act! - according to the president.

 

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Any problem?

 

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(CNN) President Donald Trump spent the morning bragging about the economy. At least one of his claims didn't come close to being true.

"The GDP Rate (4.2%) is higher than the Unemployment Rate (3.9%) for the first time in over 100 years!" the president said in a tweet.

The first two numbers are correct, although they measure completely different things, and in different ways.
The overall US economy grew at a 4.2% annual rate in the second quarter. Unemployment was between 3.8% and 4% during the quarter, and it came in at 3.9% in August.

That's all good news.

"It's definitely better when it's true than when it's not," said Justin Wolfers, professor of economics at University of Michigan. "I like high GDP growth and low unemployment."

But Trump got it wrong — way wrong — when he said it hasn't happened in a century.

In the last 70 years, it's happened in at least 62 quarters, most recently in 2006.

"He wasn't even in the neighborhood of right," Wolfers said in an interview.

Kevin Hassett, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, acknowledged to reporters later in the day that the president's tweet was incorrect. He pointed out it was the first time in 10 years that GDP growth exceeded the unemployment rate.

"And at some point, somebody probably conveyed it to him, adding a zero to that, and they shouldn't have done that," he said.
Wolfers had tweeted a response to Trump's claim soon after he made it. In fact, it took him two tweets to list all the quarters in which economic growth was higher than the unemployment rate. He added a chart.

"It certainly not a natural comparison," Wolfers said. "I've never seen it made before. It's not one that a macroeconomist would make. They're not comparable."

That's not just because lower unemployment is better, while higher GDP is preferable.

The unemployment rate is a monthly reading on the percentage of people in the labor force who are looking for work. It is a snapshot of a current condition.

GDP is a reading of the output of the overall economy. When economists talk about GDP growth, they're not talking about a snapshot of a current condition. They are measuring the change compared with a year earlier. Quarterly GDP growth is also adjusted to come up with the annual rate.

 

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White House economist Kevin Hassett on Monday fact-checked a seemingly extraordinary claim about the country's GDP growth rate overtaking the unemployment rate for the first time in 100 years.

The only catch ... the claim was made by his boss, President Trump.

"So I can tell you what is true," Hassett, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers said from the podium of the White House briefing room in response to a question about Trump's tweet from Monday morning. "What is true is that it's the highest in 10 years. And at some point, somebody probably conveyed it to him, adding a zero to that, and they shouldn't have done that."

“I'm not the chairman of the Council of Twitter Advisers," Hassett said about the tweet.

Earlier in the day, Trump made the claim on Twitter that "The GDP Rate (4.2%) is higher than the Unemployment Rate (3.9%) for the first time in over 100 years!"

The Gross Domestic Product rate and the unemployment rate both measure important -– but separate and unique-- rates of change for the economy. The GDP is the rate of the entire economic output for the United States and it’s used to measure, on a quarterly basis, the overall health of the economy. The GDP rate Trump's tweet refers to is for the second quarter of 2018 -- and while that rate might continue the for the rest of the year it's not a sure thing by any means.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, which comes out each month, is the percentage of unemployed people out of the entire labor force. While the two rates are related in the sense they're indicators of how well the economy is doing, it’s like comparing apples and oranges.

Still, the last time the GDP was higher than the unemployment rate was in 2006, when President Bush was in the Oval Office, and since the government began tracking economic numbers in the 1940s, the GDP has been higher than the unemployment rate dozens of times, according to economic data tools from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Hassett denied that his presence at Monday's White House press briefing, the first in 19 days, was because former President Obama claimed on Friday that the Trump administration inherited an economic recovery spurred by his presidency. Standing at the podium with charts marked in blue, for the time when Obama was in office, and red, when Trump came to office, Hassett touted economic growth under the Trump administration.

His briefing, Hassett said, was not in reaction to Obama and had been in the works for weeks.

“We were prepared to do this briefing a few weeks ago, and there's not in any way a timing that's related to President Obama's Friday remarks,” Hassett said.

And with regard to Obama's claim?

"I can promise you that economic historians will look back and say there was an inflection point when President Trump was elected," Hassett said.

On Friday, Obama said that the recovery started when he was in office.

“When you hear how great the economy’s doing right now, let’s just remember when this recovery started,” Obama said. “When you hear about this economic miracle that’s been going on, when the job numbers come out, monthly job numbers, suddenly Republicans are saying it’s a miracle. I have to kind of remind them, actually, those job numbers are the same as they were in 2015 and 2016.”

In another Trump tweet Monday, he appeared to mischaracterize a comment Obama made more than two years ago, writing: “President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP,” stated President Obama. I guess I have a magic wand ..."

Obama used the words "magic wand" on the campaign trail in June 2016 while criticizing Trump's claims that he would boost American manufacturing jobs by getting American companies to produce more goods in the U.S.

“He just says, 'Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.' Well, what, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And, usually, the answer is he doesn’t have an answer,” Obama said then.

Obama did not mention the GDP.

 

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(CNN)　The number almost hits you in the face: Less than one in three people in the new CNN-SSRS poll believe that President Donald Trump is honest and trustworthy.

Two-thirds of the country don't think you can trust this president! They don't think he is honest! That's a remarkable finding.
It's also virtually the exact same way that voters judged Trump on the question of being honest and trustworthy on November 8, 2016 -- the day he was elected president.

Yup.

According to the 2016 exit poll, just 33% said Trump was honest and trustworthy while 64% said he wasn't. Trump, not surprisingly, won 94% of the vote among the people who said he was honest and trustworthy. Far more remarkably, he won 20% of the vote among people who said he wasn't. So, one in every five people who voted for Trump did not believe he was honest or trustworthy.

All of this is to say that while most politicians would see just one third of voters viewing them as honest as a political catastrophe, that number may matter less to Trump's political future than you might think. The vast preponderance of voters in the 2016 election thought he was neither honest nor trustworthy -- and he won anyway!

What that tells us is that other factors mattered more in voters' minds than Trump's truthfulness. They viewed him as a change agent in a moment in which they badly wanted to shake up the status quo. They saw him as unconventional in a moment where conventional thinking had failed them. And perhaps most importantly, they didn't trust the person Trump was running against; just 36% said Hillary Clinton was honest and trustworthy while 61% said she wasn't. With the whole thinking-you-can-believe-and-trust-your-president thing off the table, voters went with the candidate who seemed more likely to bring change.

It remains to be seen whether that same dynamic will hold in 2020 for Trump. What's clear is this: He has done nothing to reassure voters that he can or should be trusted. In his first 592 days in office, Trump said 4,713 things that were either misleading or outright false, according to a count maintained by The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog. That's an average of eight falsehoods or mistruths a day. EIGHT.

And it's not just minor things on which Trump is fudging the facts. He is trying to suggest that Bob Woodward's book detailing the first year of the Trump White House is a fiction while also decrying and trying to root out those within the White House walls who leaked information to Woodward. Trump initially cited a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as the reason for his firing of former FBI Director James Comey only to acknowledge to NBC's Lester Holt that he was going to fire Comey with or without the memo because he was thinking about "this Russia thing." Trump initially said he had no idea about either the payment made by Michael Cohen to porn star Stormy Daniels or where the money came from. It turned out that the money came from Trump himself.

The record is stunning. This is a President who simply lacks concern for ensuring that what he says comports with fact. In a normal world, that would be almost immediately disqualifying for a president. But in a normal world, Donald Trump never even sniffs the presidency.

He was not punished for his lack of truthfulness during the campaign (and the exit polls suggest people were well aware of it). Does that mean that we are in some sort of post-truth political moment where people expect politicians to lie to them and, as a result, don't penalize the pols who do exactly that? Is Trump a lone exception to this rule, as he is to so many other conventional political ideas? Or was the willingness to give him a pass on, you know, telling the truth simply a moment in time -- the result of an overwhelming desire to try something different and the belief that Clinton wasn't any better?

We won't know those answers until 2020. But don't assume that simply because two thirds of voters don't trust Trump, he's a stone-cold loser in his re-election race. If being regarded as honest and trustworthy was a sine qua non for voters, Trump wouldn't have been elected in the first place.

 

[咋整～]

看情势2020年Trump 当选的机率还是相当的高。
村长可以再多同情四年。

 

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Mulroney praises 'civilized, modest' leadership of Bush Sr. in contrast to Trump
Former PM says he had an easier time dealing with the U.S. than Trudeau's had
Peter Zimonjic · CBC News · Posted: Sep 11, 2018 5:28 PM ET | Last Updated: 6 hours ago

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney took the unusual step of comparing the leadership style of U.S. President Donald Trump to the statesmanlike leadership of former American presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush senior and Bill Clinton. (Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press)

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney lavished praise on former U.S. president George Bush senior Tuesday, saying he was a "fantastic" guy whose example offered a sharp contrast to that of the current tenant of the White House.

Mulroney also praised Trudeau for enlisting the help of former Conservative federal politicians Rona Ambrose and James Moore to present a united front on NAFTA, saying the former Harper cabinet ministers should be praised for putting their own political affiliations aside for the greater good of the country.

Mulroney employed the tactic himself when he was prime minister. He hired Simon Reisman, a Liberal who had negotiated the Canada-U.S. auto pact for former Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson, to negotiate free trade with the U.S.

"I think there are times when it's important that we set aside politics and come together as colleagues who can help the country a little bit and that's what I'm pleased to do," he said. "I have been working with Mr Trudeau for, certainly, a couple of years on this, and (Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland), who is doing an excellent job by the way."

Giving Trump a win
Mulroney said Trudeau is not the only one facing challenges in trying to renegotiate NAFTA. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, he said, is facing his own challenges.

"There's no doubt that Bob Lighthizer is dealing with a special situation down there and the American side are on a pretty short leash because of President Trump's arguments," Mulroney said.

Specifically, Mulroney suggested Lighthizer has been somewhat confined to getting Canada to compromise on supply management in the dairy sector so that Trump can deliver the win he promised to Wisconsin farmers.

"You have to be foolish not to understand that there's not going to be a deal, period, unless there's a compromise in that area, because that's what [Trump] campaigned on and it's stuck to him, he stuck with it," he said. "So if we do not find a way to accommodate some of that, then we are not going to have a deal."

'I've never seen language like this'
This isn't the first time Mulroney has been critical of the Trump administration. In the fallout from Canada's G7 summit in June, a clearly upset Trump took to Twitter to call Trudeau "dishonest" and "weak" after the prime minister said he would not be bullied by the U.S. in NAFTA talks.

That message was quickly picked up by the president's senior officials, who echoed Trump's attack on Trudeau.

"There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door," trade adviser Peter Navarro told Fox News after Trump's Twitter attack.

When asked about the comments at the time, Mulroney said he was not impressed.

"I've never seen language like this. Least of all from subordinates of the president directed at the prime minister of their greatest friend and ally," he said. "This, I've never seen before. Nor has anybody else."

 

[ottawa_tj]

又一本书？《Full Disclosure》by Stormy...

都tm想占Trump便宜！

 

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Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday meant to punish foreign entities for interfering in US elections, an attempt to demonstrate muscle on an issue he's been accused of downplaying.

The order, which will allow new sanctions against Russian or other foreign actors, was inked on Wednesday morning. The White House hopes the order will help dispel the notion that Trump has allowed election meddling to go unchallenged.

Both Republicans and Democrats criticized the move as insufficient, however.

"Today's announcement by the administration recognizes the threat, but does not go far enough to address it. The United States can and must do more. Mandatory sanctions on anyone who attacks our electoral systems serve as the best deterrent," wrote Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Florida and Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland. The two lawmakers have introduced a bill that would require such mandatory sanctions earlier this year.

In the works for months, the order will allow the director of National Intelligence, with input from other intelligence agencies, to assess and identify foreign actors responsible for election meddling, and direct the Treasury Department to apply sanctions.

The targets could include foreign individuals, companies or governments accused of attempting to breach election systems, or spreading disinformation in a bid to alter the vote.

The entire process, from detection to imposing sanctions, could take up to 90 days -- including two 45-day assessment periods within the intelligence community and the broader administration. But the executive branch, including the President, will have the final say in whether sanctions will be applies.

Part of the order includes declaring a "national emergency" that will allow sanctions to move forward.

Most American intelligence agencies have determined Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential contest in Trump's favor, and top officials have warned foreign actors continue to work toward affecting the outcomes of future US contests. That includes the November 6 midterm congressional elections.

The order, however, will apply beyond just Russia to other foreign entities that are seeking to influence US elections.

Trump was derided in July for not publicly confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin about the election interference during a summit in Helsinki. Instead, he seemed to accept Putin's denials that Moscow sought to influence the presidential contest.

Lawmakers have accused the administration of shirking its responsibility to protect US elections and have been preparing measures to force Trump's hand. The executive order is partly an attempt to preempt those efforts.
The administration has worked to appear tough on election meddling, despite Trump's wavering.

Trump's national security adviser John Bolton denied that harsh reaction to Trump's Helsinki meeting with Putin was partly what spurred the decision to sign the new order.

"Zero," he said when asked what role the backlash played. "The President has said repeatedly he is determined there not be foreign interference (in US elections)."

 

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Stormy Daniels vowed to hold President Donald Trump’s feet to the fire and continue to try to legally force him to sit for a deposition about their alleged affair and a $130,000 hush money payment.

Her comments came in an appearance with attorney Michael Avenatti on ABC’s “The View” Wednesday, days after lawyers for Trump and his former personal attorney Michael Cohen each filed court motions indicating they would no longer challenge the validity of the non-agreement, or seek to legally enforce the deal.

Daniels – who has been embroiled in a lawsuit against Trump and Cohen that seeks to invalidate the agreement and let her speak without fear of legal retribution -- said there was a time when that would have been enough. She has previously offered publicly to return all the money and dissolve the agreement so that she could continue to tell her story.

But that time, she said Wednesday, has passed.

“I realized that, ‘Now you want to make that offer? Oh, now you want to make this offer?'” she said sarcastically. “But everybody remembers for months, we offered to return the money and … they wouldn’t accept it.

“But no -- now it’s gone too far and I think there’s a bigger picture here.”

Craig Ruttle/AP, FILE
Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, leaves federal court after reaching a plea agreement in New York City, Aug. 21, 2018.

Trump has denied the allegation and maintained that he did not know about the settlement agreement until after it was signed. He has recently acknowledged reimbursing Cohen for the costs of the deal.

They used to call John Gotti -- they called him the Teflon Don, and they used to claim he was untouchable...right up until he wasn’t, and he died in a penitentiary.

Last month, Cohen pleaded guilty to felony violations of campaign finance laws and said he had been directed by Trump to make payments to two women during the 2016 campaign to keep them from publicly claiming to have had affairs with him.

For his part, Avenatti acknowledged that the lawsuit is in part motivated by politics, and compared the president of the United States to the late New York mafia don John Gotti.

Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for adult film actress Stormy Daniels, speaks to the press after a court hearing at the United States Courthouse, July 27, 2018, in Los Angeles.

Asked whether he thought his efforts would turn any Trump supporters against the president, Avenatti said he hoped so.

“We don’t know what impacts the Trump based until something actually impacts the Trump base,” he said on “The View.”

“They used to call John Gotti -- they called him the Teflon Don, and they used to claim he was untouchable, right up until he wasn’t, and he died in a penitentiary."

Now you want to make that offer? Oh, now you want to make that offer?

In the closing days of the 2016 presidential election, Daniels and her attorney agreed to a $130,000 settlement agreement that prevented her from publicly discussing her alleged sexual encounter with the future U.S. president during a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006.

For months, Trump and Cohen insisted in court that the agreement was binding, and even threatened to sue to recover the $130,000 after Daniels began speaking out about their alleged affair. Cohen made the payment, which Trump maintains he did not know about until after it was signed. He more recently acknowledged having reimbursed Cohen.

Over the weekend, Trump and Cohen each filed notices with the court indicating they would no longer contest Daniels’ claims that the deal was invalid, nor would they seek to enforce the deal. They also promised not to sue Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, over any alleged breaches of the non-disclosure agreement.

With that, Trump’s attorney, Charles Harder, asked the judge to remove Trump from the lawsuit.

Avenatti, who is publicly mulling a Democratic run for the presidency in 2020, mocked the president in a tweet last weekend, saying in part that “never before have I seen a defendant so frightened to be deposed as Donald Trump, especially for a guy that talks so tough.” Avenatti went on to call Trump – who he has been gleefully trolling for months – “all hat and no cattle.”