DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalPelosi Weighs in: Trump's Speech 'Utterly Disconnected From the Cruel Reality of His Conduct'
Source: Mediaite
by Lindsey Ellefson 11:12 pm, February 28th, 2017
Following Donald Trumps joint address to Congress this evening, Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement:
https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/836784833586135041
She noted that Trump, in her view, speaks in a way that is totally disconnected from his actions.
Similarly, colleague Chuck Schumer said much the same on MSNBC:
https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/836785219474620417
Read more: http://www.mediaite.com/online/pelosi-weighs-in-trumps-speech-utterly-disconnected-from-the-cruel-reality-of-his-conduct/
Claire McCaskill: Trumps Biggest Issue is a 'Death Struggle With the Truth'
by Jon Levine | 10:02 am, March 1st, 2017
As official Washington continues to parse and dissect the meaning of President Donald Trump‘s Tuesday night’s speech to a joint session of Congress, Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) closed out — The Morning Joe After — with their takes on what it all meant.
“There is a low bar here,” said McCaskill bluntly noting that Trump’s sustained coherency was above most pundits’ expectations. McCaskill, however, spoke approvingly of Trump’s proposed ideas for paid family leave and federal infrastructure projects.
Still, the conservative Missouri Democrat hammered the President citing what she called his, “death struggle with the truth,” adding later that he had “told countless lies to the American people.”
Both McCaskill and Manchin decried the lack of a viable Republican alternative for the Affordable Care Act and pleaded on-air for reforming the current law rather than an outright repeal. McCaskill said current Republican plans were “a pretzel that is not going to twist.”
more + video
http://www.mediaite.com/online/claire-mccaskill-trumps-biggest-issue-is-a-death-struggle-with-the-truth/
Donald Trump Finally Sounds Presidential. For 60 Minutes.
BELIEVE IT
Donald Trump Finally Sounds Presidential. For 60 Minutes.
Government isn’t a speech, and he’s the same as he ever was—and with the same bad ideas for the country.
MICHAEL TOMASKY
03.01.17 1:00 AM ET
OK. There’s no denying that that was a better speech than any of us expected. Mind you, that’s because expectations were so crazy low. There was nothing in the speech about the size of his inaugural crowd (or the size of his anything else), nothing about the losers or fakers in the media, nothing about the failing New York Times, nothing about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lousy ratings. He managed to sound, for the first time, like a real-life president of the United States.
He also did a better job than expected with respect to the human moments. He handled the tribute to William Ryan Owens, the Navy SEAL who was killed in the Yemen raid, much more deftly than I would have thought. Owens’s widow seemed to be moved, talking to her husband in the big upstairs. It was clear that his White House could sense that, after Owens’s father criticized Trump harshly over the weekend, they needed to change that story fast, and he did.
Whether it was complete cynicism or not, Trump changed it, through tonight’s visual. It will lessen the questions about the raid, although it shouldn’t, and that fact speaks to the anomaly at the center of the speech, which is that a lot of what he said in this speech constituted the opposite of what his administration has been doing in its first five weeks and what it’s going to do tomorrow and the next day and the next day.
Take, sticking with the way Trump used the audience members, the young woman in the wheelchair, Megan Crowley, who was diagnosed with a rare illness as an infant and wasn’t expected to live past age five. It was a heart-warming story, that her father fought for her and now at age 20 she’s a student at Notre Dame. (Notre Dame! What could be better as a Republican applause line?)
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/01/donald-trump-finally-sounds-presidential-for-60-minutes.html
Generals May Launch New ISIS Raids Without Trump's OK
SHADOW WARRIOR
Generals May Launch New ISIS Raids Without Trump’s OK
The commander in chief is taking heat—and hearing cheers—for a raid in Yemen that killed a SEAL. But for the next mission, Trump may take himself out of the loop altogether.
KIMBERLY DOZIER
03.01.17 9:00 AM ET
The White House is considering delegating more authority to the Pentagon to greenlight anti-terrorist operations like the SEAL Team 6 raid in Yemen that cost the life of a Navy SEAL, to step up the war on the so-called Islamic State, multiple U.S. officials tell The Daily Beast.
President Donald Trump has signaled that he wants his defense secretary, retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, to have a freer hand to launch time-sensitive missions quickly, ending what U.S. officials say could be a long approval process under President Barack Obama that critics claimed stalled some missions by hours or days.
In declared war zones, U.S. commanders have the authority to make such calls, but outside such war zones, in ungoverned or unstable places like Somalia, Libya, or Yemen, it can take permissions all the way up to the Oval Office to launch a drone or a special-operations team.
Trump’s subsequent defense of the Yemen raid, and discussion of accelerating other counterterrorist operations, shows his White House will be less risk averse to the possibility of U.S.—or civilian—casualties, unlike the Obama White House, which military officials say was extremely cautious, to the point of frustrating some military commanders and counterterrorist operators.
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/03/01/generals-may-launch-new-isis-raids-without-trump-s-ok.html
Oprah Says She's Rethinking If She Could Be President
Talk-show host and national darling Oprah Winfrey says she’s reconsidering the possibility of a presidential run in the wake of President Trump’s election to the public office. Winfrey made the comments during an interview with Bloomberg Media’s David Rubenstein. “Have you ever thought that, given the popularity you have—we haven’t broken the glass ceiling yet for women—that you could actually run for president and actually be elected?” he asked. Before, she said, she’d “never considered the question, even a possibility.” But now, after seeing Trump win, “I just thought, ‘Oh... oh?’” Rubenstein said, “Because, it’s clear you don’t need government experience to be elected president of the United States.” She responded: “That’s what I thought. I thought, ‘Oh gee, I don’t have the experience, I don’t know enough’... And now I’m thinking—Oh.”
VIEW IT AT BLOOMBERG
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03/01/oprah-rethinks-presidential-run-in-wake-of-trump.html?via=desktop&source=copyurl
Trump reprises his bleak vision of America but offers few ideas for fixing it - WaPo Editorial Board
By Editorial Board February 28 at 11:29 PM
PRESIDENT TRUMP opened his first speech to a joint session of Congress in a conciliatory tone, declaring that he had come to “deliver a message of unity and strength” and proclaiming “a new surge of optimism” and “the renewal of the American spirit.” But the sunny tone and a laudable condemnation of recent attacks on minorities soon gave way to the same dark and false vision of the country featured in the president’s grim inaugural address — one in which borders are open, drugs are pouring in, illegal immigrants prey on law-abiding Americans and globalization has impoverished vast swaths of the nation. When it came to specific policy proposals, Mr. Trump similarly offered a few encouraging signs — but many more reasons for skepticism.
In describing his bleak vision of a ruined United States exploited by foreigners, Mr. Trump wrote a series of checks he almost certainly cannot cash. He promised that “dying industries will come roaring back to life,” that “crumbling infrastructure will be replaced” and “our terrible drug epidemic will slow down and ultimately stop.”
Encouragingly, Mr. Trump told news anchors before his address that he is open to an immigration reform that includes a pathway to legal status for undocumented people. Yet the president only obliquely referenced this head-turning position in his speech. Similarly, he called for new policy on child-care accessibility and family leave, as well as expanding drug “treatment for those who have become so badly addicted.” Yet repealing the Affordable Care Act, as he proposed, would likely make life much harder for those who need new family benefits and addiction treatment.
The president called to “restart the engine of the American economy,” in part by making it “much, much harder for companies to leave,” which implies ruinous protectionism or other government misdirection of investment. Mr. Trump decried foreign duties on American goods after bragging that he tore up the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement that would have lowered those very duties.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-reprises-his-bleak-vision-of-america--but-offers-few-ideas-for-fixing-it/2017/02/28/e976533a-fe2b-11e6-99b4-9e613afeb09f_story.html?utm_term=.f40745613e3b&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
Trump's speech to Congress was mostly devoid of substance
By Jennifer Rubin February 28 at 10:23 PM
Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.
Vice President Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan listen as President Trump addresses a joint session of Congress.
On the positive side, President Trump’s speech began with a long overdue condemnation of the anti-Semitic attacks across the nation and the shooting in Kansas. He did not repeat his claim from a press briefing earlier in the day that desecration at Jewish cemeteries may have been the work of people who wanted to make him look bad. The speech was not as gloomy or sinister as his inaugural address. (“A new national pride is sweeping across our nation.”) There was no message about “carnage.” And he did not rail at the press. So he did not feed the narrative that he is unstable or plagued by paranoid delusions.
He framed the speech as a look ahead to the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding. (“What will America look like as we reach our 250th year? What kind of country will we leave for our children? I will not allow the mistakes of recent decades past to define the course of our future.”) This was, by far, the most presidential we have seen him.
He also talked in a more reasoned fashion about immigration. “I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nation’s security, and to restore respect for our laws,” he said. “If we are guided by the well-being of American citizens then I believe Republicans and Democrats can work together to achieve an outcome that has eluded our country for decades.” What that would entail is far from clear, especially because his base is opposed to any comprehensive immigration reform. (Unfortunately, he also fanned the myth that immigrants disproportionately commit more crimes, choosing to single them out with a special office within the Department of Homeland Security.)
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/02/28/trumps-speech-to-congress-was-devoid-of-substance/?tid=pm_opinions_pop&utm_term=.52fd539fd5ee
Read a translation of the Spanish-language Democratic response to Trump's speech
By Bastien Inzaurralde March 1 at 1:14 AM
Astrid Silva, an immigration activist and “dreamer,” delivered the Democratic response to President Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. Below is the English translation of Silva’s response.
Good evening. My name is Astrid Silva and I am a “dreamer” and activist from the great state of Nevada. My family came to this country when I was 4 years old, looking for a better life. And like many of you, it is the only home that I have known. It is an honor for me to be here today to give the Democratic response in Spanish to the first speech by President Trump before Congress.
I am here representing the Democrats, the Latinos and the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are an integral part of this country and who constitute the values and the promise of the United States, and whom Trump is threatening with his mass deportation plan.
The speech by President Trump that we heard moments ago was divisive and its goal is to cause fear and terror in communities across the country. This serves as evidence and notice that the plans and vision of President Trump and the Republicans go completely against our values as Democrats, as Americans and as human beings.
The United States is not a country guided by hatred, fear and division as he makes it look like. Our country is guided by respect, hard work, sacrifice, opportunities and hope. In this country, there is no place for discrimination, racial prejudice or persecution.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/01/read-a-translation-of-the-spanish-language-democratic-response-to-trumps-speech/?utm_term=.2c360e65d95a&wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1
The 2018 Florida governor's race just got its first serious candidate
By Amber Phillips March 1 at 7:00 AM
Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, a rising star in the Democratic Party, is running for governor of Florida in 2018.
Gillum, 37, is the first of many candidates expected to enter the open race from both sides of the aisle. (Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, is term-limited.) Gillum announced his candidacy in a gauzy, biographical-type video Wednesday morning. And Gillum’s biography is expected to be one of his strengths in the race: He grew up one of seven children. His father was a construction worker and his mother a bus driver.
“We’d get up at 4 o’clock, 4:30 in the morning to make sure my mom would be on time driving the bus,” Gillum says in the video. “ . . . Growing up in Miami, every one of my older brothers had some kind of criminal-background history.”
In many ways, Gillum’s candidacy is exactly what the Democratic Party is looking for, said Susan MacManus, a political-science professor at the University of South Florida. He’s a telegenic, articulate, young person of color running for statewide office at a time when the party has struggled with turnout among young and black voters.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/03/01/the-2018-florida-governors-race-just-got-its-first-serious-candidate/?utm_term=.5eb77275f170&wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1
Trump seeks to parlay post-speech boost into action on contentious agenda
By Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and John Wagner March 1 at 9:24 AM
President Trump sought Wednesday to build on the momentum of a speech that invigorated fellow Republicans, as the hard work of turning his vision into policy loomed.
Following his first joint address to Congress — in which Trump won high marks for his muscular but measured tone — he planned to meet with leading lawmakers and members of his own team for talks on how to advance his sweeping agenda.
Later in the week, Trump and Vice President Pence will hit the road to pitch their plans beyond the Beltway.
While Trump garnered enthusiastic applause from the Republican side of the aisle for marquee items such as replacing President Barack Obama’s health care law and retooling the tax code, major differences remain within the GOP on the specifics of how to move forward. And Democrats pounced Wednesday on the lack of concrete plans offered by Trump to this point.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/trump-seeks-to-parlay-post-speech-boost-into-action-on-contentious-agenda/2017/03/01/e09a382e-fe41-11e6-99b4-9e613afeb09f_story.html?utm_term=.1922d745fed5&wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1
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Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
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