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Trump’s Niece to Publish Book With ‘Harrowing’ Revelations

A niece of President Trump will divulge a series of damaging stories about him in an upcoming book,
the first time that the president could be forced to grapple with unflattering revelations by a member
of his own family.

The niece, Mary Trump, will release the book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created
the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” on July 28, according to Ms. Trump’s publisher, Simon & Schuster.
The Daily Beast first reported on the book on Sunday.

In the book, Ms. Trump, 55, will say she was a primary source for The New York Times’s coverage of
Mr. Trump’s finances and provided the newspaper with confidential tax documents. A spokeswoman
for The Times declined to comment on Sunday. The White House did not respond to a request for
comment.

Three journalists from The Times received the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting last year for
their work providing an unprecedented look at the Trump family’s finances and contradicting Mr.
Trump’s image as a self-made billionaire.

Ms. Trump is the daughter of Fred Trump Jr., the president’s older brother, who died in 1981. She has
mostly kept out of the public eye, except for a family feud over the will of the Trump family patriarch,
Fred Trump Sr., who died in 1999.

Revenge, as Mary Trump seems well aware, is a dish best served cold. Twenty years after a bitter familial feud over her grandfather’s will, Donald Trump’s niece looks like she is finally about to wreak vengeance on her uncle.

The Daily Beast reported on Monday that Mary, 55, who is the daughter of Donald’s late brother Fred Trump Jr, has written a “harrowing and salacious” book about the president. Too Much and Never Enough will be published in the US on 28 July, a month before the Republican National Convention. The timing is clearly designed to do maximum damage.

Why the bad blood? Well, for one thing, Mary reportedly blames Donald for mistreating her alcoholic father – behaviour she believes contributed to his death from a heart attack at the age of 42. Then there was the fight over Fred Trump Sr’s estate in 2000. Mary and her brother, Fred Trump III, claimed they were dealt with unfairly in their grandfather’s will as a result of “fraud and undue influence” by Donald and two of his siblings. The ill will is said to have escalated when Donald, in retaliation for the lawsuit, cut off medical insurance for Fred III’s seriously ill infant son, who required round-the-clock care. Fred III was quoted as saying: “Our family puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional.”

Dysfunctional is an understatement. The appearance-obsessed Trumps project an image of unity, but, behind the polished facade, they seem to loathe and distrust each other. This is not surprising, considering that one of Donald’s favourite mantras to his kids growing up was reportedly: “Don’t trust anyone.” According to a GQ profile of Donald Trump Jr, the president used to ask his children whether they trusted him. When they replied: “Of course,” he would tell them off for not learning their lesson. Maybe he had a point: Mary’s book (which is also said to contain “damning” comments from Donald’s sister, the retired federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry) marks the first time a Trump has written a critical tell-all about the president, but I would be surprised if it were the last time one of his own undermined him. The question is: which Trump will turn on the president next?

Donald probably does not need to worry much about his oldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr: they seem too stupid to be scheming. (Years of unfettered hair gel abuse may have rotted their brains.) Ivanka, however, seems more than capable of sacrificing dear daddy to advance her ambitions. Indeed, an interesting feature of Trump’s presidency has been the frequent “leaks” to the press declaring how Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, are diligently working behind the scenes to exert a moderating influence on the president. If these mysterious leaks are to be believed, Javanka have saved us from Donald’s worst instincts.

But Ivanka is too obvious. It is always the quiet ones you have to watch out for – and you don’t get much quieter than Melania Trump. The first lady says so little that Ivanka has reportedly nicknamed her “the Portrait”; Melania, in turn, calls Ivanka “the Princess”.

Melania may be taciturn, but she is no dummy – nor is she a pushover. According to a new unauthorised biography of Melania (which the White House has dismissed as “fiction”), an enterprising Ivanka tried to rename the First Lady’s Office the “First Family Office”, but Melania was having none of it. She also, apparently, put an end to Ivanka treating the White House as if it was her own home. In addition, it has been widely reported that she used her husband’s presidency as an opportunity to renegotiate her prenuptial agreement – staying in New York during the first few months he was in office as leverage for negotiations. “That woman! She will be the end of him,” one of Trump’s friends was reportedly overheard saying about Melania’s refusal to move to Washington. Who knows, those may be prophetic words. Perhaps Melania will end up finishing what Mary has started.

President Donald Trump is coming to town this week for a campaign rally. It will be his first since such events were suspended earlier this year because of the COVID-19 shutdown. We don’t know why he chose Tulsa, but we can’t see any way that his visit will be good for the city.

Tulsa is still dealing with the challenges created by a pandemic. The city and state have authorized reopening, but that doesn’t make a mass indoor gathering of people pressed closely together and cheering a good idea. There is no treatment for COVID-19 and no vaccine. It will be our health care system that will have to deal with whatever effects follow. The public health concern would apply whether it were Donald Trump, Joe Biden or anyone else who was planning a mass rally at the BOK.
...
When the president of the United States visits your city, it should be exciting. We think a Trump visit will be, but for a lot of the wrong reasons, and we can’t welcome it.

On Monday, one closely watched model moved to predict more than 200,000 deaths nationally by October. A scientist from the University of Washington who co-created the model said “premature relaxation of social distancing … means more projected deaths”. Oklahoma is among states which have reopened since late May.

At the White House, Mike Pence claimed that “in a very real sense”, Oklahoma had “flattened the curve” of new Covid-19 infections.

“Today their hospital capacity is abundant,” said Pence, who leads the White House coronavirus task force and will attend the rally in Tulsa. “The number of cases in Oklahoma has declined precipitously and we feel very confident going forward with the rally this coming weekend.”

But what he said was untrue.

At the weekend, Oklahoma reported its highest daily total of new Covid-19 cases, 225, since the pandemic began. On Sunday, Tulsa county reported its largest single-day increase since early March. On Monday, state statistics showed the seven-day rolling average for new cases in Tulsa county was 65, up on a previous peak of 26 in early April.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland record 8,417 cases in Oklahoma and 359 deaths and show a most recent daily count of 186 new cases.

Pence falsely claims Oklahoma has 'flattened the curve' ahead of Trump rally
At the White House, Mike Pence claimed that “in a very real sense”, Oklahoma had “flattened the curve” of new Covid-19 infections.

But what he said was untrue.

• An Iowa poll for the Des Moines Register by respected pollster Ann Selzer last week showed Trump up by just one point (44-43), after it showed him up 10 in March (51-41). The new poll tied for Trump’s smallest margin to date — in any poll — in a state he won by nine points in 2016.
• A Wisconsin poll for Fox News early this month showed Biden up nine points (49-40) after leading by five (46-41) in January. The new poll tied for Trump’s biggest deficit to date in a state he won by one point in 2016.
• A CNN poll last week showed Biden up 14 points (55-41) nationally after it showed him up five points (51-46) last month.
• A Washington Post-ABC News poll from late May showed Biden up 10 points nationally (53-43) after it showed him up just two (49-47) in March.
• A Fox News poll in late May showed Biden up eight points nationally (48-40) after it showed him tied with Trump (42-42) in April.
• A CNBC poll in late May showed Biden up seven nationally (48-41) — his biggest margin to date in a poll that earlier in the month showed him up three.

Other national polls don’t show such significant changes in Biden’s favor. An NPR-PBS-Marist poll had Biden up six points in February and seven points today. An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll had Biden up by seven in both April and today. And Monmouth had Biden up nine points last month and up 11 points this month.

What none of these polls show, though, is Biden’s margin getting smaller. And many of them show it getting significantly bigger. Indeed, when it comes to high-quality national polls, to find one that shows Biden’s lead shrinking by even a point, you have to go back to April, according to RealClearPolitics’s compilation of polls.

Nato’s secretary general has said no timeline or firm plan has been agreed for Donald Trump’s proposed withdrawal of 9,500 US troops from Germany, suggesting it could be softened if Berlin agrees to increase its defence budget.

Jens Stoltenberg said it was “not yet decided how and when this decision will be implemented” the day after the US president accused Germany of being “delinquent” for spending less than 2% of its GDP on its military.

The Nato chief said he expected an “ongoing dialogue” on the issue would be at the heart of discussions during a two-day summit of the alliance’s defence ministers due on Wednesday and Thursday.
[...]
The Nato chief argued that the military presence in Germany, which dates back to the end of the second world war, was not just necessary for the defence of Europe but enabled US operations across two other continents.

Facilities such as the Ramstein airbase and the Landstuhl military hospital “are essential for what the US has done over decades in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, and in Africa”, Stoltenberg said.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, the US ambassador to Nato, confirmed that no withdrawal plans had been finalised by the White House or the Pentagon. “I don’t think that we have any kind of timeline,” the diplomat added.

The ambassador acknowledged details were sketchy: “We do know that the president said yesterday that there would be a drawdown from Germany. He has, as far as we know, tasked the military to assess our force structure in Europe.”
[...]
German indignation at Trump’s plans has more to do with tone than substance: many German politicians concede there is a debate to be had about updating the balance of US troops in Germany.

But Jürgen Hardt, a foreign policy spokesman for Angela Merkel’s CDU, complained that Trump was putting “further strain” on transatlantic relations.

“He is using the strategic presence of troops as a threat to force through political decisions in other areas, such as energy policy,” Hardt said, adding that using such pressure as a means to communicate among allies was “not acceptable”.

"He saw Chinese students? " What makes he think they are Chinese?

Trump’s 2020 polls are getting worse. Here’s proof.

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Trump’s 2020 polls are getting worse. Here’s proof.

You keep posting stuff like this and Trump will send you a cease and desist letter.

in a Lewis Carroll story.