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In whirlwind 100 hours, the President shows the world his ‘Trump First’ foreign policy

(CNN)All the world’s a personal political stage for President Donald Trump, who has just orchestrated the most eccentric 100 hours in the history of modern US diplomacy.

As the face of America abroad, Trump palled around with dictators, elevated his blood relatives over his foreign policy officials and staged a historically audacious photo op by walking onto the soil of America’s last Cold War rival North Korea in an episode that in the short term is likely to do more for his reelection hopes than global peace.
Trump’s weekend was a sign of how American foreign policy has now mostly become an expression of his unrestrained character, personal hunches, non-strategic instincts and sudden changes of mind. It revealed as never before how the new US approach to the world is often confusing and lacks internal coherence.
    And it again showcased the President’s open admiration of global strongmen who squelch democracy, as he boasted of his great friendships with men such as Kim Jong Un, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
    Trump appeared highly satisfied with his work abroad, which showed how he has turned the US away from its traditional role as a force for global stability into an agent of unpredictability — a transformation Trump promised on the campaign trail in 2016.
    “So many amazing things happened over the last three days. All, or at least most of those things, are great for the United States. Much was accomplished!” Trump wrote in a late night Sunday tweet after getting home to the White House.
    While foreign policy traditionalists and Trump’s critics are horrified about how he handles national security, the President’s behavior is often interpreted by supporters as evidence that someone is standing up for US interests overseas and that conventional approaches, which they blame for disadvantaging America, are being shattered.
    On the policy side, The New York Times reported that the administration may be contemplating a deal to “freeze” North Korea’s nuclear program — a huge reversal that would mirror the Iran nuclear deal from which Trump withdrew. Tehran, meanwhile, is blaming his walkout for its decision to bust limits on the enrichment of low grade uranium imposed under the Obama-era agreement, further raising already alarming risks of a war.
    Trump also backed down on his policy on the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei — saying it did not represent a “great national emergency” — even though his team has spent months warning US allies not to use its technology in new 5G networks, citing the firm’s alleged links to Chinese intelligence. The move appeared designed to ease the trade war he started with Beijing — and boosted markets, always a politically appealing result for the President.
    Many foreign policy experts believe the President cannot afford to go into the election with tariffs still causing pain for US consumers — and with Chinese retaliation targeting farmers into Midwestern states that form his political power base.
    Trump’s personal diplomatic blitzkrieg is also an indication of how the President plans to use his position and huge global influence to boost his 2020 hopes by creating powerful political imagery that is quickly embraced by the conservative media machine at home as evidence of great strength and statesmanship.
    On a weekend that shattered most remaining taboos of American foreign policy, Trump stepped into North Korea alongside Kim and proclaimed it a “great honor” to stand alongside one of the cruelest tyrants of the current age. American warnings about the North’s gross human rights abuses, political executions and concentration camps didn’t get a mention.
    He hinted at his main motivation — making a media splash — in a tweet on Monday morning.
    “It was great to call on Chairman Kim of North Korea to have our very well covered meeting. Good things can happen for all!” Trump wrote.
    In other eye-opening moments at the G20 summit in Japan and in South Korea, Trump took potshots at the press while alongside Kim and Putin — ignoring murders of scores of journalists in Russia. Trump also mocked those who think he should defend US democracy by joking with Putin that he should not “meddle” in the 2020 election. It was just the latest occasion when the President has trampled the assessments of his own intelligence agencies about Russian interference in 2016 in front of the man who is accused of playing in the election to help him beat Hillary Clinton.
    Putin’s crooked grin said everything about a man who has made damaging the West’s reputation and democratic institutions his life’s work after becoming embittered at the fall of the Soviet Union while a KGB officer in East Germany.
    Trump led the rehabilitation of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, saying it was a “great honor” to be with a “friend of mine” and refused to blame him for the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi — ignoring assessments by the UN and his own intelligence agencies that the assassination was linked to the royal court.
    The President’s daughter Ivanka Trump caused one of the biggest stirs of the President’s trip. Despite having no official diplomatic role beyond her efforts to elevate women in business, Trump nudged into photo ops and conversations with world leaders.
    In one of the most startling episodes of the weekend, Ivanka Trump appeared in an official White House video to offer a readout of talks between the President and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Last week, Ivanka Trump’s husband Jared Kushner, who also has no previous foreign policy experience, was in Bahrain trying to sell the administration’s new peace plan — part of his vast and often mysterious foreign policy portfolio.
    Both of them have been heavily criticized given that their foreign policy roles open them to accusations of blatant conflicts of interests given their wide business interests in the Middle East and Asia.
      While Ivanka Trump was stealing the spotlight, some of Trump’s official aides took a back seat over the weekend, none more so than national security adviser John Bolton, who was in Mongolia rather than the Korean peninsula when the President met Kim and other North Korean officials who have objected to his hawkish line on negotiations with the North.
      Speculation is rising in Washington over Bolton’s position — since two weeks ago the President also repudiated another of his hardline positions — by pulling back from a strike on Iran to avenge the shooting down of a US drone.

      Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/01/politics/us-diplomacy-100-hours/index.html

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      Student debt and tuition: Warren v. Sanders v. everyone else

      (CNN)Higher education has become a focus of the ideas primary waged on the left flank of the Democratic presidential primary.

      There are also multiple proposals to help with education for children by raising teacher pay (Sen. Kamala Harris of California), providing free lunches (Sanders and former HUD Secretary Julian Castro) and providing freeor subsidized child care (Warren). Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey has an interesting proposal to give every young child a nest egg they could use on higher education. But it is the proposals from Sanders and Warren that may get the most attention, particularly among the young voters Democrats hope will turn out.

      How to cancel student loan debt

        Sanders unveiled a plan for mostly free tuition before the presidential campaign, but Warren was the first to propose massive debt forgiveness. Sanders has now joined her, but there are key differences in their plans.
        Warren would forgive some debt, she says, for 95% of the people who have it. It would focus on people at lower incomes, giving $50,000 in debt forgiveness to every person with household income under $100,000.
        The benefit would then slide by $1 for every $3 additional of income. Someone in a household with $160,000 would get $30,000 and someone in a household with $250,000 would get none. The main target of this benefit would be debt held by the US government, but she says private debt would also be eligible. She says the total cost of the onetime benefit would be $640 billion.
        Sanders’ plan is less progressive, more generous and more than twice as expensive. He’d enact a onetime cancellation of the $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion in student debt held by all Americans.
        He says the plan would address racial and gender inequality, because women and racial minorities tend to hold more student loan debt, and would help struggling Americans with as much as $3,000 per month that’s currently going to make payments on student loans.
        Both Warren and Sanders would increase spending on Pell grants for non-tuition expenses and funding for schools that target minority students, like historically black colleges and universities.

        Free tuition

        In addition to canceling debt, Sanders and Warren would seek to make public school tuition largely free.
        Sanders would pay $48 billion per year to cover two-thirds of tuition at two- and four-year public colleges and universities. He’d put new requirements on public schools to qualify for the money.
        Warren would similarly pair with states to split the cost. Not all states might take part, as occurred with the Affordable Care Act, when the government partnered with states to expand Medicaid coverage. In that case, the federal government covered more of the cost.
        Other Democrats have less generous proposals.

        Opposition among Democrats to free college

        Some Democrats have rejected these types of proposals.
        “As a progressive, I have a hard time getting my head around the idea of a majority who earn less because they didn’t go to college subsidizing a minority who earn more because they did,” said South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who owes more than $130,000 in student loans, back in April.
        Other critics agree it’s unfair for the people who have diligently been working to pay loans off but would see no benefit under such programs. Buttigieg would rather expand Pell grants to help low-income students.
        Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is also opposed. She would do things like freeze loan rates and, like former Vice President Joe Biden, has backed free community college.
        Biden has suggested support for free college in the past and includes free community college in his own proposal, but he does not have an announced plan for four years of free tuition.

        How to pay for it

        Sanders would institute a tax of 0.5% on stock trades — 5 cents on a trade of $100 — which he says would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years.
        Warren’s tax is something else entirely and would do onits own to combat inequality. She’d place a 2% tax on household wealth over $50 million and a 3% tax on wealth over $1 billion. That’s a game changer in US tax law, since it would specifically target the wealthy, and it would be something new for the US government to track wealth, as opposed to income, before a person dies.
        It would be a controversial thing indeed, but it’s not without support even among the nation’s billionaires. An open letter from the likes of George Soros and others backed the idea of a wealth tax Monday.

        Is this a crisis?

        As CNN first reported in April, there is bipartisan agreement that something must be done about student loans, although for different reasons.
        Conservatives like Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have called the state of student loans a crisis because they represent such a large portion of the US balance sheet.
        The federal government basically took over the student loan industry in 2010, when it became the lender for federally guaranteed student loans. It currently holds more than $1 trillion in student debt. In fact, student loan debt is the federal government’s largest single asset, according to the Treasury Department’s annual report.
        But it is not making a ton on that investment, according to several reports from the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office, especially since students can now tie loan repayment to income and lengthen the terms of their loans.

        More people borrowing more money

        Student debt has become a topic of national concern in a very short time.
        ANew York Federal Reserve Bank study on household debt released in March found that student debt represented a larger piece of Americans’ personal balance sheets than credit cards or auto loans. It’s still dwarfed by home loans, but more people are borrowing for college, they’re borrowing more money and they’re taking longer to pay it off, according to the report. The number of borrowers climbed from 2.5 million to more than 4 million between 2005 and 2015 and the average amount borrowed grew from $20,000 to nearly $35,000.

        The growth in borrowing was compounded by the Great Recession, when many out-of-work Americans went back to school.

        More debt is changing the way Americans live

        A separate report by the Fed, which was published in January and cited by Warren when she announced her plan, argued there is a direct correlation between a drop in homeownership among younger Americans after the Great Recession and a rise in student debt.
        That was also the time when strapped states slashed funding for state-funded colleges and universities. Most states have not returned to pre-recession spending on higher education, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank. This lack of government funding and rising costs have been passed on to students.

        Who borrows the money?

        Student loans are felt disproportionately in minority communities and among low-income Americans. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report, in data cited from 2012, more than three-fourths of students from the bottom quarter in income had student loans, versus a little more than half of students from the top quarter of families income-wise. More than 80% of African American students graduating from public institutions had loans, far more than the 64% of total students.
        First-generation students are more likely to fall behind on payments, according to the Fed in 2016 — 11%, compared with 5% of people whose parents went to college. Just 5% of white students who take loans for their own education will fall behind, compared with 14% of African American students and 27% of Latino students.

        The counterargument

        Not everyone agrees there is a crippling student loan crisis in the same stark terms as Warren and Sanders.
        “My primary objection to what Warren proposed is it’s spending a lot of tax dollars for people who probably don’t need it,” said Beth Akers, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a think tank that promotes free market ideas. She argued back in April that even with Warren’s proposed cap of $250,000 for any sort of loan forgiveness, the plan would be giving a lot to people who are paying off their loans just fine.
        Clearly there are people who will need help repaying their loans, but the government already has those systems in place, she said.
          “A lot of times we’re talking about the Warren plan relative to this imaginary status quo where students’ loans are crushing, inescapable things, when in reality we actually have a very robust safety net for borrowers that ties payments to their incomes and makes them eligible for forgiveness if they have low income over an extended period of time,” she said.
          DeVos has proposed cutting elements of those programs in every year of the Trump administration.

          Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/24/politics/student-debt-tuition-bernie-sanders/index.html

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          Cuba Fast Facts

          (CNN)Here’s some background information about Cuba, a communist country located in the Caribbean Sea, approximately 90 miles south of Florida.

          Area: 110,860 sq km (slightly smaller than Pennsylvania)
          Population: 11,116,396 (July 2018 est.)
            Median age: 41.8 years
            Capital: Havana
            Ethnic Groups: white 64.1%, mixed 26.6%, black 9.3% (2012 est.)
            GDP (purchasing power parity): $137 billion (2017 est.)
            GDP per capita: $12,300 (2016 est.)
            Unemployment: 2.6% (2017 est., according to official figures. Unofficial estimate is double that number.)
            Other Facts:
            Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Cuba was receiving subsidies worth $4 billion-$6 billion a year.
            The United States pays Cuba approximately $4,085 a year to lease the 45 square miles that the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station occupies. Cuba has not accepted the payment since 1959.
            Timeline:
            1492 – Explorer Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Cuba and claims it for Spain. Spain controls the island until 1898, making it a hub for the slave trade and the export of sugar and coffee.
            1898 – The United States assists Cubans in winning independence from Spain during the Spanish-American War. The Treaty of Paris gives the US temporary control of Cuba.
            1902 – Cuba gains independence from the United States.
            1903 – The new Republic of Cuba leases 45 square miles of land in Guantánamo Bay to the United States for construction of a naval station. Building on the naval station begins that same year.
            1952 – Former President Fulgencio Batista stages a coup with the support of the army, and assumes power.
            July 26, 1953 – Fidel Castro and approximately 150 others attack the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Batista regime.
            October 16, 1953 – Castro is sentenced to 15 years in prison.
            May 15, 1955 – Castro and his brother, Raul, are released as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners.
            December 2, 1956 – Eighty-two exiles land in Cuba, on a yacht named Granma. Most are killed immediately. The survivors, including the Castros, flee to the Sierra Maestra Mountains. During 1957-1958, they wage a guerrilla campaign from this base, which includes skirmishes with government troops and burning sugar crops.
            January 1, 1959 – Batista is overthrown by Castro’s forces.
            1960 – Cuba nationalizes approximately $1 billion of US-owned property on the island. In response, the United States places a trade embargo on Cuba.
            January 1961 – The United States and Cuba end diplomatic relations.
            April 1961 – The United States backs Cuban exiles in an unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
            October 1962 – The United States discovers that the Soviet Union is building missile installations in Cuba. The standoff ends with the Soviet Union withdrawing the missiles and the United States promising not to invade Cuba.
            1977 – The US Interests Section in Havana is opened.
            April-September 1980 – Fidel Castro allows anyone who wants to leave Cuba to freely depart from the port of Mariel. Approximately 124,000 Cuban migrants enter the United States.
            October 1983 – US troops invade the Caribbean island of Grenada, after a group of military officers aligned with Cuba stage a coup.
            1994 – The United States and Cuba sign an agreement designed to halt the flow of illegal aliens from Cuba to the US.
            1996 – US President Bill Clinton signs the Helms-Burton Act into law, tightening sanctions against Cuba.
            January 1998 – Pope John Paul II visits Cuba.
            September 1998 – Ten people are arrested in Florida and charged with spying for the Cuban government. The criminal complaint alleges the eight men and two women tried to infiltrate Cuban exile groups and US military installations. Five of the defendants are later identified as Cuban intelligence officers Ruben Campa (aka Fernando Gonzalez), Rene Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Luis Medina (aka Ramon Labanino) and Antonio Guerrero.
            1999 – Clinton eases travel restrictions to Cuba.
            November 1999 – Five-year-old Elian Gonzalez is found in the water between Cuba and Florida, the only survivor of a group attempting to reach the United States by boat. A long custody battle between Gonzalez’ father in Cuba and relatives in Florida strains relations between Cuba and the United States. The standoff ends with US federal agents forcibly removing the boy from his great-uncle’s home. Gonzalez and his father return to Cuba in June 2000.
            June 9, 2001- The five Cuban agents are convicted of spying against the United States. Additionally, Gerardo Hernandez is convicted of contributing to the deaths of four members of the anti-Castro group Brothers to the Rescue, shot down by Cuban fighter jets in 1996.
            2002 – Former US President Jimmy Carter visits Cuba, the first former or sitting president to visit since 1928.
            August 2005 – The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturns the spying convictions of the Cuban Five. The ruling is reversed in August 2006.
            July 31, 2006 – A statement read on Cuban TV announces that Fidel Castro is undergoing intestinal surgery and has provisionally handed over power to his younger brother, Raul.
            February 19, 2008 – Due to ailing health, Fidel Castro announces his resignation as president in a letter published in the middle of the night in the online version of Cuba’s state-run newspaper, Granma.
            February 24, 2008 – Raul Castro is chosen by Cuba’s National Assembly to be the country’s new president.
            December 2009 – American Alan Gross is jailed while working as a subcontractor on a US Agency for International Development project aimed at spreading democracy. His actions are deemed illegal by Cuban authorities. He is accused of trying to set up illegal internet connections on the island. Gross says he was trying to help connect the Jewish community to the internet and was not a threat to the government.
            October 2011 – A member of the Cuban Five, Rene Gonzalez, is released on probation after serving 13 years in prison.
            February 24, 2013 – Raul Castro is re-elected to a second five-year term. Later during a nationally televised speech, Castro announces that he will step down from power in 2018 when his term is over.
            February 2014 – ACuban Five member Ruben Campa (aka Fernando Gonzalez) is released from prison after serving more than 15 years.
            December 17, 2014 – Cuba releases American contractor Alan Gross as a “humanitarian” gesture after five years in prison. As part of a deal between the United States and Cuba, the United States releases three Cuban intelligence agents convicted of espionage in 2001; in return, Cuba frees an unidentified US intelligence source who has been jailed in Cuba for more than 20 years.
            December 17, 2014 – US President Barack Obama announces plans to immediately begin discussions with Cuba to re-establish diplomatic relations, and that the US will re-open an embassy in Havana. The administration will also allow some travel and trade that had been banned under a decades-long embargo instated during the Kennedy administration.
            January 12, 2015 – Cuba has released a total of 53 political prisoners as part of its rapprochement deal with the United States, according to a US official.
            January 15, 2015 – The Obama Administration announces details of the softened travel regulations: Cuban Americans visiting family, US officials on government trips, journalists on assignment and regular citizens visiting for educational, cultural, or religious reasons will no longer need permission first. Americans will also be able to use credit cards, a prior restriction.
            January 22, 2015 – During a historic round of diplomatic talks between the United States and Cuba, the Cuban delegation expresses “serious concerns” about the United States and human rights, citing detentions in Guantanamo Bay, “police abuse” in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York, and racial and gender inequalities.
            January 26, 2015 – Fidel Castro writes that although he “doesn’t trust US policies and have not exchanged a word with them, this does not mean however that I would oppose a peaceful solution to conflicts or threats of war.”
            April 11, 2015 – Ending a decades-long standstill in US-Cuba relations, President Raul Castro meets for an hour during the Summit of the Americas with Obama, the first time the two nations’ top leaders have sat down for substantive talks in more than 50 years.
            April 14, 2015 – Obama recommends that Cuba be removed from the US government’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
            May 29, 2015 – The United States officially removes Cuba from its list of countries that sponsor terrorism, setting the two nations up for a full renewal of diplomatic ties.
            July 1, 2015 – Obama announces that the United States is restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba and that the American embassy in Havana will open during the late summer, with a visit from Secretary of State John Kerry.
            July 20, 2015 – Cuba and the United States officially re-establish diplomatic relations after 54 years.
            August 14, 2015 – The US Embassy officially re-opens in Havana.
            December 17, 2015 – The US State Department announces that the United States and Cuba have agreed to resume commercial air travel between the two countries for the first time in more than half a century. The Federal Aviation Administration must ensure certain safety regulations are in place before flights can resume, according to a State Department official.
            December 29, 2015 – Five Central American countries and Mexico reach an agreement that will help about 8,000 stranded Cuban immigrants make their way to the United States. Since the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba, and the loosened requirements for travel outside of Cuba, the number of individuals trying to migrate to the United States has spiked.
            January 12, 2016 – The first group of Cuban migrants leaves Costa Rica for El Salvador on their way to Mexico. Once in Mexico, the migrants are on their own to attempt passage to the United States.
            February 18, 2016 – Obama announces on Twitter that he will visit Cuba in March, becoming the first sitting US president to visit Cuba in 88 years.
            March 15, 2016 – The US Treasury Department announces a further loosening of restrictions, which includes allowing US travelers to engage in individual educational tours of Cuba. Effective on March 16, Cuba and the United States will resume postal service, nearly five decades after direct mail service was interrupted.
            March 20, 2016 – Obama arrives in Cuba, beginning a historic two-day visit to the island that includes meetings with Raul Castro and anti-government dissidents.
            May 1, 2016 – For the first time in decades, a US cruise ship sets sail for Cuba as salsa music plays and protesters picket nearby.
            June 10, 2016 – The Department of Transportation approves American Airlines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Silver Airways, Southwest Airlines and Sun Country Airlines to offer flights between the United States and Cuba.
            August 31, 2016 – The first direct US commercial flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Cuba touches down in Santa Clara. JetBlue Flight 387 is the first in more than 50 years to carry passengers to the island since Obama’s announcement to reengage with Cuba.
            November 30, 2016 – The ashes of former leader Fidel Castro are carried from the capital, Havana, to Santiago, the birthplace of his revolution. It is the start of a journey that reverses the route Castro took across the island after seizing power in 1959.
            January 12, 2017 – Obama announces he is ending the longstanding “wet foot, dry foot” policy that allows Cubans who arrive in the United States without a visa to become permanent residents.
            September 29, 2017 – The US State Department orders families and nonessential personnel out of Cuba after a review of US diplomats’ safety following a series of sonic attacks that began in November 2016.
            November 8, 2017 – The Treasury Department announces new sanctions and travel restrictions on Cuba to take effect November 9.
            March 19, 2018 – Miguel Díaz-Canel is officially named as the new leader of Cuba, one day after a secret vote in the country’s National Assembly. Díaz-Canel, 57, was selected by a vote of 603-1 as the unopposed candidate to replace Raul Castro. This is the first time in nearly six decades that Cuba is being led by a man not named Castro.
            July 23, 2018 – Cuba’s National Assembly endorses a draft of a new constitution, according to Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba’s Communist Party. Changes include allowing a path to the legalization of same-sex marriage. The draft must pass through a popular vote to become law.
              February 24, 2019 – Cubans vote in favor of approving a new constitution. The new document replaces the 1976 Soviet-era charter enacted under. It protects private property and foreign investment, and for the first time places two five-year terms on the office of the presidency. However, following a backlash by conservative religious groups, the government backed off from language that would have legalized same-sex marriage in the constitution.
              June 4, 2019 – The US announces major new restrictions on US citizens traveling to Cuba, blocking the most common way Americans are able to visit the island — through organized tour groups that license US citizens to travel automatically — and banning US cruise ships from stopping in the country.

              Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2014/01/14/world/americas/cuba-fast-facts/index.html

              telecommunications

              Rural America feels the sting of Trump’s China trade war

              (CNN)President Donald Trump’s trade war with China is biting rural America.

              Farmers in the heartland, many of whom backed Trump because of his promise to rein in the top US economic competitor, are anxious about the threat of renewed retaliatory tariffs after China canceled purchases of US soybeans last year.
              Both Walmart and Macy’s say they might need to raise prices if Trump goes ahead with expanding tariffs to cover almost everything China exports to the US, from toys to clothes and hardware.
                And his move this week to limit the reach of major Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, which sells cheap equipment chiefly to small, rural phone and internet service providers, could wind up raising prices for customers in the heartland.
                Telecom companies in rural areas may face increased costs or network disruptions if they are unable to buy the gear they need from Chinese suppliers — and that could affect customers who depend on those connections.
                “Farmers, ranchers, small businesses in rural America, the people who support those businesses in rural America — your teachers, all that,” said Carri Bennet, the general counsel for the Rural Wireless Association, a trade group representing rural telecom companies. “Our members are in small, little communities mainly of under 10,000 people … It doesn’t help them. It ends up hurting them.”
                Concerns about higher costs stem from the fact that many small and rural telecom providers rely on low-cost transmitters and receivers made by Huawei, the world’s largest supplier of telecom equipment. Larger carriers such as Verizon and AT&T do not use Huawei equipment. (AT&T is the owner of CNN’s parent company WarnerMedia.)
                Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday barring the use of telecom gear from sources deemed to be a national security risk. While the order did not mention Huawei or China by name, the administration moved quickly to place Huawei on a Commerce Department trading blacklist minutes after Trump signed the order, all but ensuring it will be covered by the administration’s new rules.
                Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Thursday on Fox Business that the administration is willing to work with small and rural carriers to ensure they will not be forced to “rip everything out” that is made by Huawei under the order. And White House officials have said they will be taking input from businesses about how to structure the implementation of the new rules.
                But being unable to purchase new Huawei gear could still leave those carriers stuck with aging infrastructure that can’t be replaced if it malfunctions, degrades or is destroyed by the weather, said Bennet.
                “You wouldn’t be able to make a 911 call if the network is down,” she said, particularly in rural areas where bigger carriers don’t offer any service at all.
                The complications surrounding the executive order reflect how a number Trump’s initiatives have led to unintended consequences.
                Farmers have already been struggling to adapt to Chinese tariffs on US soybeans, corn and wheat.
                “Farmers were [Trump’s] base,” John Wesley Boyd Jr., a Virginia-based soybean farmer, told CNN’s Brianna Keilar in a recent interview. “They helped elect this President … and now he’s turning his back on America’s farmers when we need him the most.”
                Trump offered subsidies last year and has said he will push to expand those payments to help farmers out until a trade deal is reached.
                But the impact of Trump’s latest escalations go beyond just agriculture.
                About 2.1 million workers in aircraft manufacturing, beer brewing, tobacco and dozens of other industries stand to be affected by the trade war, according to an April study by the Brookings Institution. The impact would be evenly distributed between red and blue counties, Brookings found.
                But a similar study by Axios last week found that Trump’s recent escalations could wind up affecting more than five times as many workers. The hardest hits will affect industries based in “rural, deeply red, already-struggling parts of the country,” including miners in Texas, furniture makers in North Carolina and sawmills in Alabama.
                In the tech industry, as many as 1 million jobs are at risk due to the trade war in states such as Texas, Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania, according to the Consumer Technology Association.
                  And, the CTA said, the trade war has forced US businesses to pay nearly $750 million in tariffs for products related to 5G, the mobile data technology the US says is key to economic development.
                  As a result, American businesses are paying more for infrastructure even as Trump prepares to meet with Democratic leaders next week to discuss funding for a $2 trillion infrastructure proposal.

                  Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/19/politics/china-trade-war-trump-rural/index.html

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                  Woman accused of illegal entry to Mar-a-Lago had numerous electronic devices, thousands in cash

                  West Palm Beach, Florida (CNN)Yujing Zhang, the woman who allegedly breached security at President Donald Trump’s private Florida club while carrying Chinese passports and a flash drive containing malware late last month, had a signal detector, other electronic devices and thousands of dollars in cash in her hotel room, federal prosecutors said Monday, suggesting the possibility she was trying to spy on the US.

                  Prosecutors say they found multiple electronic devices in her hotel room, including a signal detector that can seek out and detect hidden cameras, another cell phone, nine USB drives and five SIM cards. There were also several credit cards in her name in the room–at the upscale Colony Hotel a block from the beach. She also had more than $8,000 in US and Chinese currency, with $7,500 of it in $100 bills.
                  Prosecutors have called Zhang a flight risk because she has next to no ties to the US. The federal magistrate judge who held the hearing Monday will decide next week if Zhang should stay in jail until she is tried, or be released to live in the US as she awaits trial.
                   
                   
                   
                  Zhang, 32, has not yet entered a plea to the criminal charges she faces, and prosecutors said they plan to formally indict her in the coming week.
                   
                  “She lies to everyone she encounters,” prosecutor Rolando Garcia said.
                  “Her ties are all in China,” he later added.
                  Zhang arrived in Newark on a flight from Shanghai on March 28, Garcia said. She went to Mar-a-Lago on March 30. This wasn’t the first time she visited the country in recent years.
                  Zhang arrived at Mar-a-Lago via taxi-to “acquaint” herself with club grounds, her defense attorney said, before the planned private but canceled event, which promoters had pledged the President’s sister would attend. After giving the Secret Service her last name and showing her passports, making it through two security checkpoints and taking a golf cart ride with a club staffer, the Secret Service found she was carrying a thumb drive with malware, as well as a laptop, an external hard drive and four cell phones. She was charged with two counts — making false statements to federal authorities and a misdemeanor offense of entering a restricted area without authorization.
                  She has not been charged with any offenses that nod to international spying. However, the FBI has been investigating the Zhang incident as part of a Chinese espionage effort.

                  Secret Service missteps

                  In the first hour of the hearing, Zhang’s defense attorney focused on how the Secret Service let her on the property, determined Zhang may have lied, and steps they took in questioning her that afternoon and night.
                  “The only thing Ms. Zhang did was give a very common Chinese name” to gain access to Mar-a-Lago, public defender Robert Adler said in court. “And, it was decided she be let in. I don’t understand how this could support a trespassing charge.”
                  The agent who questioned her, Samuel Ivanovich, testified on Monday for about an hour about what happened that day.
                  Adler used Ivanovich’s testimony to show flaws in the Secret Service’s procedures. For instance, a Secret Service agent who spoke Mandarin was called in to help with translations hours into Zhang’s questioning. Adler also had Ivanovich admit that the agency that protects the President largely relied on Mar-a-Lago staff to determine whether to admit Zhang, didn’t see red flags in the devices she carried when they showed up at a metal detector checkpoint inside the club, and asked no further questions of Zhang when she first arrived once they believed she was related to another club member with the same last name. Adler pointed out her name was extremely common in China–one of the three most common last names in the country.
                  The Secret Service has no audio security recordings of its interactions with her and what she said on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago, Ivanovich also said.
                  Ivanovich, being questioned about the malware allegedly found on Zhang’s thumb drive, said the agent examining the drive found a malicious “file” that began to install onto an agent’s computer, and the agent looking at it said that had never happened before, and it was “very out of the ordinary” when conducting a criminal analysis.
                  The agent looking at the drive had to stop the analysis and shut down his computer.

                  Mar-a-Lago security

                  Trump has described the Zhang case as a “fluke situation,” but the case so far has highlighted the possibility of security flaws at Trump’s private club.
                  Zhang talked her way into the club, carrying a large number of electronic devices including malware on a thumbdrive. At first, she told a special agent at Mar-a-Lago she wanted to visit the pool at the beach club–even though she wore a long gray dress and had no bathing suit. The Mar-a-Lago beach club manager then noted her last name matched that of a club member, and the club waved her in, believing her to be the club member’s daughter, and “due to a potential language barrier issue,” authorities wrote in her criminal complaint.
                  A golf cart shuttle driver then took her to the club’s main reception area, where Zhang told a Secret Service agent she sought to attend a “United Nations Friendship Event” on the premises.
                  Adler showed in court fliers that advertised in Chinese a similar-sounding event for that day. The fliers included a photo of Trump’s sister, and may have come from a Florida businesswoman and a Chinese businessman who promoted events and attempted to profit off of political heavyweights he met in America. In essence, Adler said, the businesswoman Cindy Yang “bundled” the Mar-a-Lago event, then a man named Charles Lee “repackaged” the event, collecting $20,000 from Zhang so she could attend. Adler had a wire transfer receipt from Chinese contacts that showed this, he said to the judge.
                  Zhang had told authorities who were questioning her that her Chinese friend “Charles,” whom she communicated with over a chat app, had sent her from Shanghai to speak with the President’s family about Chinese and American foreign economic relations, according to the complaint.
                  The case comes as Democrats in Congress press for more information about security at Mar-a-Lago and, separately, for an FBI investigation into Florida businesswoman Li “Cindy” Yang’s efforts to interact with Trump, after she appeared to have pitched to Chinese clients the opportunity to interact with the President and spend time at Mar-a-Lago with the President at a Super Bowl party.

                  Previous hearing

                  Zhang’s two court appearances have run unusually long, with more details than usual about her and her case being presented to the judge. At the previous hearing, she admitted to owning a BMW and a home in China worth more than 1 million American dollars, and asked extensively about how she may get in contact with an attorney or find phone numbers of contacts in America if she were detained in a Florida jail.
                  She said she worked as an investor and consultant who sought to develop business contacts in the US, but kept some money in a Wells Fargo account here–thousands less than what she actually had in her hotel room, the prosecutors say.
                   
                  She has been in jail since her arrest, with a court-appointed public defender representing her.
                  The federal magistrate judge, William Matthewman, even noted the astuteness of her questions and her intelligence at the previous hearing. There’s been some dispute over how well Zhang speaks and understands English, and the court has provided her with a language interpreter at both court hearings.

                  Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/08/politics/mar-a-lago-yujing-zhang/index.html

                  Health Care

                  John McCain pretty much killed Trumpcare and the bill’s sponsor tweeted a surprising response

                  Sorry, Lindsey.
                  Image: Getty Images

                  The latest trainwreck of a GOP health care plan looks likely to die — and, once again, John McCain could be the dude who killed it. 

                  On Friday, the Republican senator announced he would vote against the Graham-Cassidy bill. With zero support likely from Democrats, and Republicans Rand Paul and Susan Collins against it, that pretty much dooms the measure. 

                  SEE ALSO: Jimmy Kimmel tears apart his critics on health care bill

                  One of the men behind the bill — Sen. Lindsey Graham — was likely frustrated. But he still had some kind words for his colleague and longtime friend. 

                  McCain, Graham, and Joe Lieberman are known as the “three amigos” of the senate. Apparently, that’s a sacred bond that can’t be broken by torpedoing your friend’s terrible health care bill.

                  Remember, it was McCain who dramatically killed the last GOP effort to repeal Obamacare. His heroics the second time around are being praised by people across the political spectrum. 

                  The Arizona senator’s decision was met with support from Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has proposed his own “Medicare for all” plan, at a rally in San Francisco.

                  Jimmy Kimmel was pretty happy too, after absolutely slamming the plan on his show. 

                  Don’t relax yet, though. It’s possible that before the Sept. 30 deadline, Republicans somehow get the necessary votes for a bill that would — according to the Brookings Institution — cause 21 million people to lose their health insurance every year from 2020 to 2026. 

                  Thank you McCain and Collins (and I guess Paul, even though he’s not supporting the bill because it’s not draconian enough) for hopefully saving the country from this monstrosity. 

                  WATCH: Stephen Colbert and ‘SNL’ have figured out the right way to use President Trump

                  Read more: http://mashable.com/2017/09/22/john-mccain-tweet-graham-cassidy-healthcare-bill/

                  Health Care

                  John McCain won’t back Graham-Cassidy bill, likely ending GOP health care push

                  (CNN)Sen. John McCain announced Friday in a statement that he cannot “in good conscience” vote for the GOP’s latest plan to overhaul Obamacare, likely ending Republicans’ latest effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

                  “I cannot in good conscience vote for the Graham-Cassidy proposal,” the Arizona Republican said in a statement. “I believe we could do better working together, Republicans and Democrats, and have not yet really tried. Nor could I support it without knowing how much it will cost, how it will (affect) insurance premiums, and how many people will be helped or hurt by it. Without a full CBO score, which won’t be available by the end of the month, we won’t have reliable answers to any of those questions.”
                  McCain’s “no” vote makes it very likely Republicans won’t be able to repeal and replace Obamacare before September 30, as Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said he would not back the effort and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is also expected to vote “no” on the proposal.
                    Republicans need at least 50 votes to pass the measure under the process of reconciliation.
                    McCain was one of three most-watched members on the fence and considered a key vote on the bill. Without his support, Republicans would need to get Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, as well as Collins to sign on. It’s unlikely considering the fact that Collins said Friday afternoon that she was leaning against the bill and had key concerns that the legislation did not do enough to protect individuals with pre-existing conditions.
                    “I’m leaning against the bill,” Collins said Friday at a Portland, Maine, event, according to The Portland Press Herald.
                    A Republican aide involved in the process said Friday afternoon that GOP leaders are at the “evaluating options” stage right now.
                    The aide added, “I’m not breaking news telling you this isn’t good.”
                    Paul, the only other Republican other than McCain who has so far definitively come out against Graham-Cassidy, is “unlikely” to change his mind even if changes are made to the bill, his spokesman Sergio Gor told CNN.
                    McCain’s announcement comes despite that one of the bill’s key sponsors — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — is a close confidant. The thinking was if anyone could convince McCain to vote “yes,” it would be Graham.
                    “I take no pleasure in announcing my opposition. Far from it,” McCain said. “The bill’s authors are my dear friends, and I think the world of them. I know they are acting consistently with their beliefs and sense of what is best for the country. So am I.”
                    McCain has said for weeks that he would not support health care legislation that had not gone through “regular order,” meaning Senate hearings, an amendment process and a rigorous floor debate.
                    Graham said he “respectfully” disagrees with McCain and will “press on” with his legislation.
                    “My friendship with John McCain is not based on how he votes but respect for how he’s lived his life and the person he is,” Graham said in a statement and on Twitter.
                    McCain voted “no” on the last health care proposal in July for the same reason. McCain’s dramatic floor vote, which happened just weeks after he was diagnosed with brain cancer, came in the early morning and was captured as one of his most “maverick” moments in the Senate.

                    Democrats praise McCain

                    Just moments after McCain announced his opposition, Democrats seized on the opportunity to bring back bipartisan talks that had stalled last week.
                    Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee had held bipartisan hearings over the last month on how to stabilize Obamacare marketplaces and were making progress in their negotiations. But the House leadership made it clear last week that the chamber probably would not be able to pass such a bill.
                    As soon as McCain announced his opposition, Murray announced she was still open to reigniting those talks.
                    “I agree with Senator McCain that the right way to get things done in the Senate — especially on an issue as important to families as their health care — is through regular order and working together to find common ground,” Murray said. “I’m still at the table ready to keep working, and I remain confident that we can reach a bipartisan agreement as soon as this latest partisan approach by Republican leaders is finally set aside.”
                    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also praised McCain shortly after his announcement.
                    “John McCain shows the same courage in Congress that he showed when he was a naval aviator,” the New York Democrat said in a statement. “I have assured Senator McCain that as soon as repeal is off the table, we Democrats are intent on resuming the bipartisan process.”
                    For her part, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said her members would continue working “to put the stake in the heart of this monstrous bill.”
                    “This weekend, we will continue to highlight the devastating costs Republicans are trying to inflict on hard-working Americans,” she said in a letter to colleagues.
                    This story has been updated and will update with additional developments.

                    Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/22/politics/john-mccain-health-care/index.html

                    expense manager

                    Secret Service can’t pay agents for Trump and his family, report says

                    Washington (CNN)The Secret Service cannot pay hundreds of agents to protect President Donald Trump and his large family, according to a report published Monday morning.

                    Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles told USA Today more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances — which were meant to last the entire year.
                    “The president has a large family, and our responsibility is required in law,” Alles told USA Today. “I can’t change that. I have no flexibility.”
                      Later Monday morning, Alles told CNN in a statement that the problem isn’t just related to the Trump administration and has been going on for many years.
                      “This issue is not one that can be attributed to the current administration’s protection requirements but, rather, has been an ongoing issue for nearly a decade due to an overall increase in operational tempo,” he said in the statement.
                      Trump has taken trips almost every weekend of his presidency so far, to his properties in New Jersey, Virginia and Florida, as well as internationally — and his adult children also require protection during their business trips and vacations.
                      In Trump’s administration, 42 people have protection, which includes 18 members of his family — an increase from the 31 people who had Secret Service protection in Obama’s administration.
                      In June, CNN reported that the Secret Service was relaxing its drug policy for potential hires, as Alles laid out a plan to swell the agency’s ranks by more than 3,000 employees in the coming years.
                      “I think between that and the fact that he has a larger family, that’s just more stress on the organization. We recognize that,” Alles said at the time, and added that he had been allocating resources in accordance.
                      According to the report, Alles has met with congressional lawmakers to discuss planned legislation to increase the combined salary and overtime cap for agents — from $160,000 per year to $187,000. He told USA Today this would be at least for Trump’s first term.
                      But he added that even if this were approved, about 130 agents still wouldn’t be able to be paid for hundreds of hours already worked.
                      However, Alles said in a statement to CNN that the agency has the funding for the rest of the fiscal year.
                      “The Secret Service has the funding it needs to meet all current mission requirements for the remainder of the fiscal year and compensate employees for overtime within statutory pay caps,” he said in the statement. “The Secret Service estimates that roughly 1,100 employees will work overtime hours in excess of statutory pay caps during calendar year 2017. Our agency experienced a similar situation in calendar year 2016 that resulted in legislation that allowed Secret Service employees to exceed statutory caps on pay.”
                      The statement continued: “To remedy this ongoing and serious problem, the agency has worked closely with the Department of Homeland Security, the administration, and the Congress over the past several months to find a legislative solution.”
                      The White House said in a statement that Trump “is committed to ensuring the Secret Service and all of those protecting our country have all the resources they need. We are going to continue to work with Congress on this important issue, which requires their actions.”
                      In April, CNN reported that Trump’s travel to his private club in Florida has cost more than an estimated $20 million in his first 80 days in office, putting the President on pace to surpass former President Barack Obama’s eight years of spending on travel — in only his first year in office.
                      Before and during the campaign season, Trump regularly criticized Obama for costing the American taxpayer money every time he took a trip, and Trump the candidate repeatedly called for belt-tightening across government agencies.
                      In 2014, Trump tweeted: “We pay for Obama’s travel so he can fundraise millions so Democrats can run on lies. Then we pay for his golf.”
                      Golf, by the way, is also one of Trump’s regular presidential pastimes.

                      Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/21/politics/secret-service-donald-trump-family/index.html

                      Health Care

                      The 48 most revealing lines of Steve Bannon’s ’60 Minutes’ interview

                      (CNN)Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon sat down with “60 Minutes” for his first major interview since leaving 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Known for his rhetorical bomb-throwing and willingness to poke the political establishment in the eye, Bannon did not disappoint in his conversation with Charlie Rose.

                      Below are the 48 most revealing lines from Bannon about President Donald Trump, his time in the White House and the Republican Party.
                      1. “The Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election.”
                        Think about this statement. Republicans are in control of the House, the Senate and the White House. This should be an absolute Republican Golden Age. Instead, Bannon sees an ongoing civil war in which the GOP establishment continues to try to rob the populist strain in the party of its rightful credit and power.
                        2. “They do not want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented.”
                        The “they” here is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. And it’s not entirely what “they” have blocked of Trump’s agenda but presumably Bannon means failing to repeal Obamacare or approve funding for the border wall? (Worth remembering: Trump didn’t really run on a set of issues; he ran on a willingness to say controversial and un-politically correct things.)
                        3. “The ‘drain the swamp’ thing was — is Mitch McConnell was day one did not want to — did not want to go there. Wanted us to back off.”
                        McConnell has been in the Senate since 1985. He is a consummate insider who has made his name in Washington by his ability to outmaneuver his opponents using Senate arcana. He literally is the so-called “swamp” and has made a very good living for himself and his party by being just that.
                        4. “They’re going to be held accountable if they do not support the President of the United States.”
                        The former top strategist for the Republican President is openly threatening members of his party who disagree with Trump. Oh, also this news that Bannon is organizing primary challengers against GOP incumbents who don’t fall in line with Trump.
                        5. “The swamp is a business model. It’s a successful business model.”
                        He’s not wrong.
                        But it’s also worth noting that draining the swamp is a business model, too. Lots of outside groups and political consultants have raised lots of money and gotten very rich by promising to drain the swamp.
                        6. “In the 48 hours after we won, there’s a fundamental decision that was made … We embraced the establishment.”
                        This was, to Bannon’s mind, a very bad decision.
                        7. “So he looks around and I’m wearin’ my combat jacket, I haven’t shaved, I got — you know, my hair’s down to here …”
                        Bannon is talking about Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who apparently made the decision to embrace the establishment after Trump won. But, it’s an important point. Bannon — all double button-down shirts and unruly hair — didn’t look like official Washington. Kushner, suit and tie at all times, did.
                        8. “That would be probably — that probably would be too bombastic even for me, but maybe modern political history.”
                        Bannon is responding to Rose’s question of whether the firing of former FBI Director James Comey was the biggest mistake in political history. Suffice to say, it’s so far the worst mistake of Trump’s political history.
                        9. “By the Easter break, we’ll do repeal and replace.”
                        Bannon argued that Ryan promised Trump that Congress would get rid of the Affordable Care Act in the spring, handle tax reform over the summer and do infrastructure in the fall. It, um, hasn’t played out like that.
                        10. “I think their choice is going to be you’re not going to be able to totally repeal it.”
                        This is right. And John Boehner, the former speaker of the House, was right when he predicted Republicans wouldn’t repeal Obamacare. The issue? Getting rid of it sounds good. But replacing it with something else is very complicated and Republicans don’t agree on how to do it.
                        11. “I’m worried about losing the House now because of this — of — because of DACA.”
                        Bannon opposes the six-month window Trump gave Republican in Congress to get something done on DACA. His worry — Republicans debate and debate it but get nothing done in time — is a legitimate one.
                        12. “I think what we have to do is focus on the American citizens.”
                        This is Bannon’s politic(!) way of saying that he thinks Trump should have simply ended DACA.
                        13. “I think — I think as — as the work permits run out they self deport.”
                        “The answer is self-deportation.” — Mitt Romney, 2012.
                        14. “There’s no path to citizenship, no path to a green card and — no amnesty. Amnesty is non-negotiable.”
                        Bannon’s view is not uncommon among Republicans in Congress — especially in the House. That reality makes clear how hard it will be for Ryan and McConnell to find any sort of deal on DACA that a majority of their conference will be for.
                        15. “You couldn’t be more dead wrong. America was built on her citizens.”
                        This response from Bannon comes in response to Rose pointing out that the US was conceived as a melting pot. Bannon, um, disagrees. Vehemently.
                        16. “Economic nationalism is what this country was built on. The American system.”
                        Bannon’s argument — which he goes into slightly more detail on with Rose — is that the US has to look out for itself and its manufacturing sector, first, second and last. And that people who aren’t citizens aren’t part of that equation.
                        17. “Because unable to really to come to grips with the problems in the church, they need illegal aliens, they need illegal aliens to fill the churches.”
                        Um, what? By Bannon’s logic, the reason the Catholic Church opposes the repeal of DACA is because they know the faith is struggling and the only way to make their numbers is to allow undocumented immigrants to pack into their church services.
                        Bet you didn’t know that.
                        18. “I’m a street fighter. That’s what I am.”
                        Hadoken!
                        Also, same. Except the exact opposite.
                        19. “Donald Trump’s a fighter. Great counter puncher. Great counter puncher. He’s a fighter.”
                        The “counterpuncher” thing is straight from the mouth of Trump. What’s interesting about it is that it’s not totally true. Trump does do best when he is in a back and forth with someone — President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, etc. But, it’s not at all clear to me that Trump is always counterpunching. It feels like he is just punching a fair amount of the time.
                        20. “I was the only guy that said he’s talking about something, taking it up to a higher level.”
                        Bannon on Trump on Charlottesville. It’s not clear to me how Trump’s attempts at both-side-ism when dealing with neo-Nazis and white supremacists was him “taking it up to a higher level.”
                        21. “When you side with a man, you side with him. I was proud to come out and try to defend President Trump in the media that day.”
                        So, because Bannon said he was for Trump and had worked to get him elected, the only honorable thing to do was to defend Trump on Charlottesville? That is, to me, odd logic.
                        22. “I’m talking about obviously, about Gary Cohn and some other people. That if you don’t like what he’s doing and you don’t agree with it, you have an obligation to resign.”
                        Cohn, the chief economic adviser to Trump, is Jewish. In an interview with the Financial Times post-Charlottesville, Cohn said Trump “can and must do better” in condemning hate groups. That, according to Bannon, is a bridge too far — and Cohn should have resigned.
                        23. “David Duke — the President has condemned David Duke and what David Duke stands for.”
                        Eh …
                        In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper in February 2016, Trump said this of Duke: “I don’t know — did he endorse me, or what’s going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke; I know nothing about white supremacists.”
                        He later blamed a bad earpiece for the comments.
                        24. “I don’t need to be lectured — by a bunch of — by a bunch of limousine liberals, OK from the Upper East Side of New York and from the Hamptons, OK, about any of this.”
                        Remember that at the heart of Bannonism (and Trumpism) is a hatred for elites. That distaste comes out in this quote from Bannon. He views elitists as having lectured him his whole life about how to act and what to say — even though they allegedly lack the life experience he has.
                        25. “There’s nothing to the Russia investigation. It’s a waste of time.”
                        I don’t know if Bannon is echoing Trump here or the other way around. Either way, this is exactly what Trump continues to say about the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
                        26. “I think it’s far from conclusive that the Russians had any impact on this election.”
                        This is a common talking point from the President — and others around him. But it misses the point. No one is alleging that Russian altered the election results. Trump won. Period.

                          Bannon: GOP wants to ‘nullify’ 2016 election

                        What is at issue is how Russia tried to meddle in the election, whether and where they had success and if anyone in Trumpworld colluded with the Russians to make all of this happen.
                        27. “I don’t think the President goes out of his way — what his point is, why pick another fight?”
                        “Donald Trump’s a fighter. Great counterpuncher. Great counterpuncher. He’s a fighter.” — Steve Bannon, #18
                        28. “He criticizes the Russians all the time.”
                        He really doesn’t.
                        29. “The elites in this country have got us in a situation, we’re at not economic war with China, China is at economic war with us.”
                        “The elites.” (See #23)
                        30. “That’s the geniuses of the Bush administration. I hold these people in contempt, total and complete contempt.”
                        I wrote last week about how Trump had killed the Republican Party George W. Bush tried to build.
                        31. “They’re idiots, and they’ve gotten us in this situation, and they question a good man like Donald Trump.”
                        Don’t hold back, Steve! Tell us what you really think!
                        32. “The Condi Rice, the George W. Bush, his entire national security apparatus.”
                        It’s interesting to me that in the entire Bannon interview so far, he’s attacked Democrats not at all and Republicans a whole lot.
                        33. “Reince started off and Reince said, ‘You have — you have two choices. You either drop out right now, or you lose by the biggest landslide in American political history.'”

                          Bannon: Cohn should have resigned

                        Bannon on the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape — and how he was the only one who told Trump to stay in the race and ignore it. (I wrote more about this last Friday.)
                        34. “Christie, because of — Billy Bush — weekend — and — was — was — not looked at for a cabinet position.”
                        The New Jersey governor disagrees.
                        35. “Actually, the Grim Reaper.”
                        36. “You can call me anything you want. OK?”
                        Um, OK?
                        37. “I’m not cut out to be a staffer.”
                        One-thousand percent true. It was always an odd fit for Bannon to be in the White House staff. He is a charge the gates kind of guy. Not a stand behind them one.
                        38. “I cannot take the fight to who we have to take the fight to when I’m an adviser to the President as a federal government employee.”
                        It’s a fascinating window into Bannon’s thinking that he believes he can only have real influence on who he needs to influence by being something other than the chief strategist to the president of the United States.
                        39. “A Darwinian environment for ideas is positive.”
                        This sounds like a Decemberists lyric.
                        40. “I think what he does on Twitter is extraordinary. He disintermediates the media.”
                        Two sentences that explain why Trump will never, ever give up his Twitter feed — regardless of whether Bannon (or Trump) is right about social media.
                        41. “The pearl-clutching mainstream media.”
                        I rarely wear pearls to the office. And, when I do, I try not to clutch them.
                        42. “I don’t think he needs — The Washington Post and The New York Times and CBS News. And I don’t believe he thinks that they’re looking out what’s in his best interest, OK?”
                        (screams) The media’s job is not to look out for any President’s “best interest.”
                        43. “(General Kelly’s) not going to be able to control it either because it’s Donald Trump.”
                        Bannon couldn’t be more right about this. Trump is Trump. No one will change that.
                        44. “Hillary Clinton’s not very bright.”
                        The hottest of hot takes.
                        45. “Sherrod Brown gets this. Tim Ryan gets this … The people around (Chuck) Schumer get this.”
                        The Bannon endorsement! My guess is that these three Democrats will not be touting Bannon’s kind words about them.
                        46. “And (Bernie Sanders) did not have the guts to take on Hillary Clinton in that primary.”
                        I’m not sure it was about guts but there’s no question that Sanders could have gone after Clinton WAY harder than he did in the 2016 Democratic primary.
                        (Greg Krieg and I talked about that here.)
                        47. “I think he’s at 30 — I think he’s 36% or 38% because he hasn’t — we haven’t gotten the wall built.”
                        That is not the reason I would have cited for Trump’s low approval ratings.
                        48. “We’re going to win in ’18 and we’ll pick up six or seven Senate seats. I think we’ll pick up a couple of seats in the House. And he’ll win in a huge landslide in ’20.”
                        This prediction is predicated on Trump continuing to do what he promised to do as a candidate, according to Bannon.

                        Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/11/politics/bannon-60-minutes/index.html

                        Health Care

                        Bannon: GOP ‘trying to nullify’ Trump’s election

                        Washington (CNN)Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon claimed “the Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election” in an interview that aired on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday night.

                        Naming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan specifically, Bannon told CBS’s Charlie Rose: “They do not want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented. It’s very obvious.”
                        Bannon recalled a meeting with McConnell in Trump Tower, when the Kentucky Republican asked Trump to clamp down on his “drain-the-swamp” rhetoric.
                          “Oh, Mitch McConnell when we first met him, I mean, he said — I think in one of the first meetings in Trump Tower with the President — as we’re wrapping up, he basically says, ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this ‘drain-the-swamp’ talk,'” Bannon recalled. “He says, ‘I can’t — I can’t hire any smart people,’ because everybody’s all over him for reporting requirements and — and the pay, et cetera, and the scrutiny. You know, ‘You gotta back off that.'”
                          Steve Bannon just destroyed Reince Priebus on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape
                          Asked about attacking the very people Trump needs to enact his agenda, Bannon said GOP leaders won’t provide such help “unless they’re put on notice.”
                          “They’re going to be held accountable if they do not support the President of the United States,” he said. “Right now there’s no accountability. … They do not support the President’s program. It’s an open secret on Capitol Hill. Everybody in this city knows it.”
                          Catholic bishops strike back at Bannon
                          Neither McConnell nor Ryan’s offices immediately responded to CNN requests for comment about Bannon’s remarks.
                          Bannon criticized the House and Senate leadership for what he said was their overpromising and underdelivering on health care, saying they told the White House that they would repeal and replace Obamacare in the first few months of the administration and the new Congress before moving on to a tax overhaul by summer and infrastructure legislation by year’s end — none of which, as of yet, has happened.
                          While Bannon said he does not entirely blame the Republican leaders for their inability to move such major legislation, he said they were unaware of the divisions within their own party.
                          “There is wide discrepancy in the Republican Party, as we know today, now that we’re in it,” Bannon said. “But I will tell you, leadership didn’t know it at the time. They didn’t know it ’til the very end.”
                          Bannon was ousted in mid-August amid a reshuffling of power within the White House, just a few weeks after retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly took over as chief of staff with a goal of instilling order in a chaotic operation beset by internal divisions, staff infighting and a storm of controversies.
                          Bannon has since returned to his role as executive chairman at the conservative online publication Breitbart News, a job he held before joining Trump’s campaign. Sunday’s interview is the first time has spoken out publicly since his firing.
                          His exit meant one of the White House’s most controversial staffers, the man generally perceived as the driving force behind Trump’s “nationalist” ideology, would no longer be at the center of the Trump universe.

                          Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/10/politics/steve-bannon-donald-trump-mitch-mcconnell-paul-ryan-60-minutes/index.html