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Trump Fired Back Hard After the Koch Network Says It Won’t Endorse as Many Republicans

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After Koch network political organization Americans for Prosperity announced it wouldn’t support the Republican candidate in a key Senate race, President Donald Trump fired back on Twitter on Tuesday morning.

Trump tore into the powerful Koch brothers, saying he didn’t need their support or money for political success. . .

Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, singled out Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) as an example of the type of Republican the organization would no longer be supporting, saying his record on financial issues was inconsistent. . .

Trump’s response to the Koch network criticism of GOP lawmakers was to say the Koch brothers were overrated and not respected by “real” Republicans.

“I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas,” Trump wrote. “They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more. I made them richer. Their network is highly overrated, I have beaten them at every turn. They want to protect their companies outside the U.S. from being taxed, I’m for America First & the American Worker — a puppet for no one. Two nice guys with bad ideas. Make America Great Again!” (Read more from “Trump Fired Back Hard After the Koch Network Says It Won’t Endorse as Many Republicans” HERE)

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Here’s Another Big Fact the Obama Administration Hid to Pass Obamacare

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Over the weekend, Politico ran a report about how a “Trump policy shop filters facts to fit his message.” The article cited several unnamed sources complaining about the office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and its allegedly politicized role within the current administration.

One of the article’s anonymous sources called ASPE’s conduct over the past 18 months “another example of how we’re moving to a post-fact era.” Richard Frank, a former Obama appointee and one of the few sources to speak on the record, said that he found the current administration’s “attack on the integrity and the culture of the office…disturbing.”

For all its focus on the Trump administration, the Politico article omitted another key story—one I told its reporter about last week, but did not make it into the article. During the early years of the Obama administration, ASPE lay at the heart of the failure of the CLASS Act, a $70 billion Obamacare program.

As a congressional staffer conducting oversight of the CLASS Act in 2011-12, I reviewed thousands of pages of e-mails and documents from the months leading up to Obamacare’s passage. Those records strongly suggest that ASPE officials, including Frank, withheld material facts from Congress and the public about CLASS’s unsustainability, because full and prompt disclosure could have jeopardized Obamacare’s chances of passage. . .

The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, or CLASS for short, intended to provide a voluntary insurance benefit for long-term care. Included as part of Obamacare, the program never got off the ground. In October 2011, HHS concluded it could not implement the program in an actuarially sound manner; Congress repealed the program entirely as part of the “fiscal cliff” deal enacted into law in the early days of 2013. (Read more from “Here’s Another Big Fact the Obama Administration Hid to Pass Obamacare” HERE)

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Maxine Waters Responds Defiantly to Trump’s Threat to Shut Down the Government

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Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) responded with scorn and defiance to a tweet from President Donald Trump threatening to shut down the government if his border wall wasn’t funded by Congress. . .

“A shutdown, a government shutdown isn’t good for either party. Nobody looks good when one happens,” said anchor David Gura. “How did you react to what the president tweeted this morning? How real a threat do you think it is we could be facing a government shutdown in the fall?” . . .

“He’s not going to shut down anything,” she claimed. “As a matter of fact, people will remember that he said he was going to build this wall, and he was going to make Mexico pay for the wall. They said they weren’t going to pay for anything.”

“Now he wants the American citizens to pay for this wall,” Waters continued, “American citizens are not going to pay for this wall.”

“He’s not going to shut down the government,” she concluded, “and we are not going to be intimidated by his bluffing and his bullying.”

(Read more from “Maxine Waters Responds Defiantly to Trump’s Threat to Shut Down the Government” HERE)

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Trump Asked If He Has a ‘Red Line’ on Border Funding — His Response Invokes Obama

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By The Daily Caller. President Trump answered tough questions about his border wall and immigration plan Monday at the White House during a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giuesppe Conte. . .

“Are you saying you would be willing to shut the government down in September if it does not fully fund $25 billion for the border wall and also deliver the immigration priorities that you listed in your tweet? Or are you leaving some room for negotiation there?” [Saagar] Enjeti asked. Earlier Monday, Trump threatened shutting down the government in a tweet:

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As a follow up, Enjeti asked “Is the $25 billion a red line for you?” The Trump administration is requesting $25 billion for the creation of a border wall.

Trump took the opportunity to dunk on his predecessor President Obama in the response.

“I have no red line unlike President Obama. I just want great border security. Okay?” Trump said. (Read more from “Trump Asked If He Has a ‘Red Line’ on Border Funding — His Response Invokes Obama” HERE)

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Trump Praises Italy’s Immigration Policies

By Reuters. U.S. President Donald Trump praised Italy’s increasingly hard-line approach to immigration on Monday, at the start of a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at the White House.

“I agree very much with what you are doing with respect to migration, and illegal immigration, and even legal immigration,” Trump told Conte in the Oval Office. “He has taken a very firm stance on the border, a stance that few countries have taken. And frankly he is doing the right thing in my opinion.”

Conte took office last month promising to bring radical change to Italy, including more generous welfare provision and a crackdown on immigration.

Immigration was a major election issue after an influx of hundreds of thousands of mostly African asylum seekers. Italy has seen more than 650,000 migrants reach its shores since 2014.

Conte has said his government would end “the immigration business.” (Read more from “Trump Praises Italy’s Immigration Policies” HERE)

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MSM: Therapists Claim Anxiety Disorders Are Being Caused by Trump

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By The Blaze. Mainstream media outlets are promoting a story that claims therapists are treating more patients for anxiety because of the words and actions of President Donald Trump. . .

The alleged disorder supposedly affects both Trump supporters and non-supporters, and is related to some of his policies and tweets, according to reports.

In a piece that sounds more like satire, Canada’s CBC News cites several therapists who say their patients are afraid Trump may “blow us all up.”

“There is a fear of the world ending,” Washington, D.C., therapist Elisabeth LaMotte told the news outlet. “It’s very disorienting and constantly unsettling.”

The supposed stress and collective anxiety is referred to as “Trump Anxiety Disorder,” abut there is no official diagnosis. (Read more from “MSM: Therapists Claim Anxiety Disorders Are Being Caused by Trump” HERE)

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In a Divided U.S., Therapists Treating Anxiety Are Hearing the Same Name Over and Over: Donald Trump

By CBC. “Is he gonna blow us all up?”

So inquired one of Elisabeth LaMotte’s patients recently, fretting out loud about the volatility of U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions during a therapy session at her Washington practice.

It was a rhetorical question — one that predated Trump’s threats of a showdown with Iran this week. But if the question wasn’t meant in earnest, the politically induced anxiety LaMotte is hearing about from her clients certainly is, says the founder of the D.C. Counselling and Psychotherapy Center.

She refers to it as a “collective anxiety” among patients who feel on edge about how potentially dire the president’s decisions could be.

“There is a fear of the world ending,” she said. “It’s very disorienting and constantly unsettling.” (Read more from “In a Divided U.S., Therapists Treating Anxiety Are Hearing the Same Name Over and Over: Donald Trump” HERE)

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Trump Claims He Has Highest Poll Numbers in the History of the Republican Party

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By Daily Wire. . .The president doesn’t name the poll or polls referenced in the tweet, nor does he elaborate in subsequent tweets.

According to a New York Times chart compiled using data from Gallup, President Trump’s approval among Republicans is indeed quite high, sitting at roughly 90%. However, at this point in his presidency, he still falls well below George W. Bush, who saw an incredible increase in support following the 9/11 terror attacks.

Moreover, as many other media outlets are reporting, reliable presidential approval polling doesn’t appear to stretch any further back than Harry Truman, who became president in April of 1945 following the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Election polling by Gallup appears to go back to 1936. (Read more from “Trump Claims He Has Highest Poll Numbers in the History of the Republican Party” HERE)

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Trump Backers Stand by President in Face of Russia Criticism — CBS Poll

By CBS News. Nearly all Americans say Russian meddling in the 2018 midterm elections would be unacceptable, even if their party was the beneficiary of any interference. But the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign remains a divisive political issue, with Republicans more likely to doubt the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies and more likely to back the president, a new CBS News poll found.

Half of Republicans say that hearing criticisms of President Trump on the Russia issue makes them want to defend him more. Another 42 percent say they want to wait to see what the facts show.

Seventy percent of Republicans call the Russia investigation a “witch hunt,” while Democrats call it a “critical” matter of national security (77 percent). Democrats, however, say they believe the issue speaks to the president’s character (79 percent) as well as national security, but Republicans disagree, seeing it as a deliberate attempt to slow the president’s agenda (81 percent) and feeling he is facing more resistance from the political establishment than other presidents have (86 percent). (Read more from “Trump Backers Stand by President in Face of Russia Criticism — CBS Poll” HERE)

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Rudy Giuliani Drops Bombshell on Cohen Tapes

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President Donald Trump’s lead attorney, Rudy Giuliani, made the talk show rounds this weekend to give insight into the president’s strategy for handling tapes made by his former attorney, Michael Cohen. According to Giuliani, experts believe someone may have “messed with” a tape obtained by CNN, and that of 183 Cohen tapes obtained by investigators, Trump appears on only one.

Speaking to Fox News Saturday evening, Giuliani claimed experts and “retired FBI agents” who’ve listened to the tapes believe someone may have “played” with the contents, and that the recording, heard on CNN, is a “tape of a tape.”“Now that we’ve seen the full scope of Cohen and Lanny Davis’ deception, we don’t trust anything,” Giuliani declared, adding that he and his legal team are working on obtaining the original recording to determine whether Cohen cut, edited, or mixed the tape. . .

Giuliani also told Fox that he believes there are other tapes, but that those tapes don’t feature the president. He repeated the claim on “Face the Nation” Sunday morning, telling host John Dickerson that the Trump legal team knows of “something like 183 recordings,” one that features Cohen speaking to the president about paying a hefty sum to a Playboy model, and “11 or 12 others” that feature Cohen speaking with reporters about his interactions with Trump. (Read more from “Rudy Giuliani Drops Bombshell on Cohen Tapes” HERE)

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This Is What Trump Will Resort to If Wall Isn’t Built

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President Trump said in Sunday morning tweet that he’d be “willing to ‘shut down'” the federal government if Congress does not send him a bill to secure the U.S. border — a bill that includes the wall. . .

Trump once again made his case that many people sneaking into America are using children for “sinister purposes.” He also ripped the “dumbest” immigration laws and said people should vote Republican in the mid-terms if they want the border secured. (Read more from “This Is What Trump Will Resort to If Wall Isn’t Built” HERE)

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Protesters Heckle Border Patrol Commissioner During Interview – Here’s What They Did

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On Friday, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) commissioner Kevin McAleenan became the latest Trump administration official to face public harassment over the family migrant crisis at the border.

According to the Washington Examiner, McAleenan encountered three protesters while attending an event at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C.:

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Standing in the audience, another protester appeared to complain that detaining children and parents was not a bipartisan goal. As he left the room, he quoted the poem on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.”

The Bipartisan Policy Center described the event as a forum for discussing the agency and its challenges.

(Read more from “Watch: Protesters Heckle Border Patrol Commissioner During Interview” HERE)

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Trump Slams Cohen Claim That He Knew of Trump Tower Meeting With Kremlin Lawyer

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President Trump on Friday slammed his longtime lawyer’s claim that he knew about a Trump Tower meeting during the campaign between his son Donald Trump Jr. and a Kremlin-associated lawyer who promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

“I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr,” the president wrote on Twitter early Friday. “Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?).”

Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, a target in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, accused the then-presidential candidate of having advance notice of the infamous June, 2016 meeting, CNN reported. He is reportedly willing to make that claim to Mueller’s investigators.

Trump’s mention of taxi cabs refers to a federal investigation into Cohen’s business affairs, including his owning New York City taxicab medallions.

Cohen has distanced himself from his former client of over a decade since coming under scrutiny for claims that he paid off women who had affairs with Trump to defuse negative stories about the candidate during the campaign. (Read more from “Trump Slams Cohen Claim That He Knew of Trump Tower Meeting With Kremlin Lawyer” HERE)

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