monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Bush, for example

On "The Ingraham Angle," Laura Ingraham said Trump should wear this criticism from Bush as a "badge of honor."

She said Bush -- like his brother Jeb -- was never comfortable with the conservatism of Ronald Reagan, Pat Buchanan or Newt Gingrich, let alone that of Trump.

She said globalist elites like Bush don't like seeing Trump succeed, so they come out of the woodwork with criticism.

Ingraham said Bush should understand -- especially after the American people spoke in the 2016 election -- there is no constituency for perpetual military intervention, open borders and unpoliced international trade deals.

"The president should wear the tired Bush critiques as a badge of honor," Ingraham said. "Trump is doing what previous administrations were unwilling or unable to do."

For much of the past year, President Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President's Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.

Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings.

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account
@realDonaldTrump
Fact--Obama does not read his intelligence briefings nor does he get briefed in person by the CIA or DOD. Too busy I guess!
1:15 PM - 30 Sep 2014

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account
@realDonaldTrump
Obama has missed 58% of his intelligence briefings. But our president does make 100% of his fundraisers.
1:37 PM - 6 Oct 2014

For much of the past year, President Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors:

certainly a fair representation of the views of the far left.

If the left doesn't want to be denounced as treasonous America-hating scum, maybe they should stop expressing support for terrorists and evil dictators and stop trying to undermine America's defenses

Code:

2. another Trump official David Sorensen resigned today over domestic abuse



A speechwriter has become the second White House aide this week to resign amid allegations of domestic abuse.

David Sorensen denies his former wife's allegations he was violent and emotionally abusive.

His departure comes just days after another Trump official, Rob Porter, quit over allegations of abuse from two ex-wives, something he denies.

Questions have been raised over how long it took the White House to act on the accusations facing Mr Porter.

Mr Sorensen's ex-wife Jessica Corbett told the Washington Post that he was physically abusive to her while they were married.

She said that on separate occasions her former husband ran a car over her foot, threw her against a wall and extinguished a cigarette on her hand.

In response, Mr Sorensen released a statement in which he said he had "never committed violence of any kind against any woman in my entire life" and that instead it was he who had been physically abused.

He said he was considering legal action, but said he quit because he "didn't want the White House to have to deal with this distraction".

White House officials said they learned of the accusations by Mr Sorensen's wife late on Thursday.

"We immediately confronted the staffer, he denied the allegations and he resigned today," deputy press secretary Raj Shah said.

Allegations of domestic abuse against Mr Porter involving two ex-wives surfaced on Tuesday.

It is alleged that the former White House staff secretary gave one ex-wife a black eye while another filed a restraining order. He denies both.

On Friday, Mr Trump paid tribute to Mr Porter, who quit his White House position on Wednesday.

Speaking in the Oval Office Mr Trump said: "We found out about it recently and I was surprised by it, but we certainly wish him well and it's a tough time for him."

But Mr Trump did not refer to Mr Porter's accusers.

His comments sparked criticism from Democrats, with former Vice-President Joe Biden saying Mr Trump had downplayed the allegations against Mr Porter.

"That's like saying: 'That axe murderer out there, he's a great painter'", Mr Biden said.

The case has put pressure on Mr Trump's Chief-of-Staff John Kelly, who has denied reports he offered to resign over his handling of the accusations.

After initially praising Mr Porter as a man of "integrity", Mr Kelly later released a statement saying he was shocked by the claims and stressed domestic violence was unacceptable.

US media report that Mr Kelly and other White House officials were aware for several months of the domestic abuse accusations because they were holding up Mr Porter's security clearance application.

Mr Shah said that Mr Trump was not aware of any security issues before Tuesday and was "disheartened" and "saddened" by the accusations.

White House communications director Hope Hicks' handling of the controversy has also reportedly displeased Mr Trump.

The 29-year-old aide has recently been in a relationship with Mr Porter, a Harvard graduate and former Oxford Rhodes Scholar.

Mr Trump was reportedly not consulted when Ms Hicks helped draft an initial statement defending Mr Porter.

According to CBS News, Mr Porter approached White House Counsel Don McGahn in January 2017 to inform him his ex-wives might say unflattering things about him to background check investigators.

In June 2017, Mr Porter's preliminary file was sent from the FBI to the White House security office, containing the abuse allegations.

In November, Mr McGahn received a call from an ex-girlfriend of Mr Porter alleging physical violence by the aide.

Mr McGahn told the White House chief of staff there was an issue with Mr Porter's security clearance, although he was vague, reports CBS.

Mr Porter told Mr Kelly his ex-wives were saying false things about him.

A White House spokesman said on Thursday that Mr Kelly did not realise the extent of the claims until a photo of one of Mr Porter's former wives, Colbie Holderness, suffering a black eye, emerged on Wednesday.

Donald Trump has blocked the release of a Democratic rebuttal to a Republican memo alleging bias against the US president over the FBI's Russia probe.

The White House said on Friday Mr Trump could not declassify the memo because of "sensitive passages" that create "concerns for national security".

A congressional panel this week voted unanimously to release the document.

Democrats say their memo contains corrections to errors and omissions in the Republican document.

After the House Intelligence Committee voted this week to release a Democratic rebuttal to the Nunes memo, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders assured us that the White House would be evenhanded. “As stated many times,” Sanders said, “the administration will follow the same process and procedure with this memorandum from the minority as it did last week, when it received the memorandum from the majority.”

That is simply not what happened.

The White House announced Friday night (translation: news-dump o'clock) that it would not immediately approve the release of the Democratic memo. It instead instructed Democrats to work with the Justice Department to adjust the memo so that it could be released publicly.

It's entirely possible this won't make a huge difference in the memo's content and impact. But let's be clear: This is not how the White House treated the Nunes memo.

When it was confronted with a decision about whether to release that memo, it did so over the objections of the FBI. The FBI publicly objected to the Nunes memo's release, suggesting the document left out key facts and was misleading. “As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about the material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the FBI said in an extraordinary public rebuke.

And even before all of that — and before he had even reviewed the memo — Trump and the White House made clear they would release the GOP memo. Trump told a Republican lawmaker after his State of the Union address Jan. 30 that he would "100 percent” release the memo.

In this case, by contrast, the White House wasn't nearly so eager to commit to a memo's release and is now suggesting it is bowing to concerns from the very same federal law enforcement entities whose objections it disregarded last time. It will argue that it is just handling classified information with care, but it did not demonstrate that level of care last week when it forced through the Nunes memo.
... ... ...

The most recent Washington Post-ABC poll has found that approval from white women has fallen since the president’s first 100 days. While most white women voted for Trump in 2016, his approval rating has fallen 10 points since then, and strong disapproval of the president by this group rose 12 points, from 39 percent to 51 percent.

The group of women Trump performed best with was white women without college degrees. Many of these women found his message championing traditional values and an economic message benefiting working-class families in Middle America more attractive than Clinton’s progressive promise to continue the Obama legacy.

But that has recently changed. The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein recently wrote:

“In the Rustbelt states that decided 2016, Trump has slipped into a much more precarious position with these women: Gallup put his 2017 approval with them at 45 percent in Pennsylvania, 42 percent in Michigan, and 39 percent or less in Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Compared to his 2016 vote, his 2017 approval among blue-collar white women in the Rustbelt represented some of his largest declines anywhere — 18 percentage points in Ohio and 19 in Wisconsin and Minnesota.”