Tag: Trump adminisration

Bluster, bombast, backing down: What happens when someone says no to Trump?

New York Mayor Ed Koch with Donald and Ivana Trump in 1983. The mayor and the mogul battled publicly for years. Credit: Ron Galella, WireImage, Getty Images

As president and during four decades in business, Donald Trump has built his brand by promoting himself as someone who never backed down. When he was hit, he often said, he’d hit back a hundred times harder.

But at pivotal moments throughout his career, when confronted by people wielding equal or greater power, Trump has proved to be someone who does back down.

This week, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pulled her invitation to President Trump to deliver the State of the Union address in the House chamber this coming Tuesday, the faceoff between congressional leader and president seemed to portend a rift that could extend well beyond the government shutdown.

View the complete January 24 article by Marc Fisher on The Washington Post website here.

‘Rubbing salt in the wounds’: Trump won’t take yes for an answer at NATO

The following article by Philip Rucker, John Hudson and Josh Dawsey was posted on the Washington Post website July 11, 2018:

President Trump checks time prior to a dinner with other leaders at the NATO. Credit: Geert Vanden Wijngaert, AP

BRUSSELS — For a president who loves declaring victory, the NATO summit here Wednesday could have provided a perfect opportunity.

After a year of haranguing by President Trump, Western leaders had agreed to his administration’s long-sought priorities on defense spending and counterterrorism — and were prepared to let him take all the credit.

But Trump had other plans.

View the complete article on the Washington Post website here.

Sessions invoking secession sets his critics up to revisit concerns about the AG’s history on race

The following article by Eugene Scott was posted on the Washington Post website March 8, 2018:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions scolded Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who warned the city of a possible ICE raid last month. (Reuters)

While attacking his political rivals in California on Wednesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a bizarre comparison that left some questioning the former senator from Alabama’s recollection of American history.

He was speaking before law enforcement officials at the California Peace Officers Association’s annual gathering, a day after suing California over sanctuary city laws that he said violated the Constitution, obstructed immigration enforcement and put officers in danger. Continue reading “Sessions invoking secession sets his critics up to revisit concerns about the AG’s history on race”

Trump’s disgraceful use of ‘dreamers’ as a bargaining chip

The following commentary by the Washington Post’s Editorial Board was posted on their website January 4, 2018:

Protesters who call for an immigration bill addressing the so-called dreamers, young adults who were brought to the United States as children, rally on Capitol Hill in December. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

AFTER ALL of President Trump’s bluster about his “great love” for “dreamers,” brought to this country as children through no fault of their own, it turns out he’s content to use them as leverage in a high-stakes game of political horse-trading. Mr. Trump seems willing to strip them of jobs, security and homes unless Democrats buckle on a range of Republican immigration priorities, including an even longer-standing object of the president’s ardor: a beautiful border wall.

In September, it was Mr. Trump who terminated the Obama-era protection for dreamers that shielded them from deportation while granting them work permits if they had clean records and met certain other requirements. At the time, he gave Congress six months to fashion a legislative fix; failing that, the president suggested he would act unilaterally to ensure their protection. Continue reading “Trump’s disgraceful use of ‘dreamers’ as a bargaining chip”