monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Hackers from North Korea are reported to have stolen a large cache of military documents from South Korea, including a plan to assassinate North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un.
Rhee Cheol-hee, a South Korean lawmaker, said the information was from his country's defence ministry.
The compromised documents include wartime contingency plans drawn up by the US and South Korea.
They also include reports to the allies' senior commanders.
The South Korean defence ministry has so far refused to comment about the allegation.
Plans for the South's special forces were reportedly accessed, along with information on significant power plants and military facilities in the South.
Mr Rhee said some 235 gigabytes of military documents had been stolen from the Defence Integrated Data Centre, and that 80% of them have yet to be identified.
The hack took place in September last year. In May, South Korea said a large amount of data had been stolen and that North Korea may have instigated the cyber attack - but gave no details of what was taken.
North Korea denied the claim.
South Korea's state-run Yonhap news service reports that Seoul has been subject to a barrage of cyber attacks by its communist neighbour in recent years, with many targeting government websites and facilities.
The isolated state is believed to have specially-trained hackers based overseas, including in China.
North Korea has accused South Korea of "fabricating" the claims.
News that Pyongyang is likely to have accessed the Seoul-Washington plans for all-out war in the Koreas will do nothing to soothe tensions between the US and North Korea.
The two nations have been at verbal loggerheads over the North's nuclear activities, with the US pressing for a halt to missile tests and Pyongyang vowing to continue them.
The North recently claimed to have successfully tested a miniaturised hydrogen bomb, which could be loaded onto a long-range missile.
In a speech at the UN in September, US President Donald Trump threatened to destroy North Korea if it menaced the US or its allies, and said its leader "is on a suicide mission".
Mr Kim responded with a rare statement, vowing to "tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire".
Mr Trump's latest comment took the form of a cryptic tweet at the weekend, where he warned that "only one thing will work" in dealing with North Korea, after years of talks had proved fruitless. He did not elaborate further.

In order to maintain and nurture his base, Trump will continue to embrace conflict, which will probably solidify his historically low approval ratings. Trump cannot win a two-person race this way. But he can prevail in a field with strong independent candidates on the ballot.

So for Democrats and others who want to beat Trump, unifying behind one candidate will be essential. In addition, Trump must carry Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2020 to win. Efforts should begin now to chip away at his support in these states.

It would be as big a mistake to assume that Trump cannot win reelection in 2020 as it was for those of us who never thought that he could become president in the first place.

US President Donald Trump has challenged his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, to an IQ test, in the latest sign of discord between the two.
He made the remark in a magazine interview when asked about reports that Mr Tillerson had called him a moron.
"I think it's fake news," Mr Trump told Forbes, "but if he did that, I guess we'll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win."
Mr Trump is due to have lunch on Tuesday with Mr Tillerson.
Reports have swirled of a schism in the Trump administration between the commander-in-chief and his top diplomat, as the US faces a host of vexatious foreign policy conundrums, from North Korea to Iran.
Last week Mr Tillerson called a news conference to deny reports that he was considering quitting.
But the former ExxonMobil chief executive did not refute an NBC News report that he had called his boss a moron after a July meeting at the Pentagon.
Earlier this month, Mr Trump publicly undercut the former Texas oilman by tweeting that he was "wasting his time" trying to negotiate with nuclear-armed North Korea.
Last week the New York Times reported that Mr Tillerson was astonished at how little Mr Trump grasps the basics of foreign policy.
According to the newspaper, quoting sources close to the secretary of state, Mr Trump has been irritated by Mr Tillerson's body language during meetings.
Mr Tillerson is said to roll his eyes or slouch when he disagrees with the decisions of his boss.

Although they aren't addressed in the linked article, you presented one or two assumptions as if they were fact.

President Donald Trump’s approval ratings have dipped in every state — even ones that won him the election.

Two polls tracking Trump’s approval rating since January show the president has grown increasingly unpopular in the eight months he’s been in office, even in deeply red states and swing states.

Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, informed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that he will not be cooperating with any requests to appear before the panel for its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and would plead the Fifth, according to a source familiar with the matter.

A former naval-officer-turned-energy consultant, Page came under fire last year after reports emerged that he had met with high-level associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in 2016. While Page denied those meetings occurred, the Trump campaign distanced itself from the adviser not long after, with former officials saying that Page and Trump had never met.

Page also attracted attention earlier this year after it was revealed that he once came under scrutiny by the FBI for his contact with a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013. Page was never charged with a crime, and the association happened years before he came into Trump’s orbit.

Mr. Trump poses such an acute risk, the senator said, that a coterie of senior administration officials must protect him from his own instincts. “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him,” Mr. Corker said in a telephone interview. …

Without offering specifics, he said Mr. Trump had repeatedly undermined diplomacy with his Twitter fingers. “I know he has hurt, in several instances, he’s hurt us as it relates to negotiations that were underway by tweeting things out,” Mr. Corker said.

All but inviting his colleagues to join him in speaking out about the president, Mr. Corker said his concerns about Mr. Trump were shared by nearly every Senate Republican.

“Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here,” he said, adding that “of course they understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.”

Jay Rosen‏Verified account
@jayrosen_nyu
The Washington Post newsroom is 50 percent male, 50 percent female.

President Trump has made 1,318 false or misleading claims over 263 days

If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed...and we will deserve it.

Any doubt left Trump is completely unhinged? His assertion Ted Cruz's father was associate with Lee Harvey Oswald should remove ALL doubt.

You remind me of Steves.