Donald Trump was so incensed by reporting over his erroneous suggestion Hurricane Dorian could have hit Alabama that he summoned Fox News correspondent John Roberts to the Oval Office on Thursday to argue about the gaffe, according to CNN, part of a day spent obsessing over the matter on Twitter.
Mr Trump’s presentation of a weather map of the storm’s path he appeared to have doctored himself with a black Sharpie prompted 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg to comment: “I feel sorry for the president, and that is not the way we should feel about the most powerful figure in this country.”
Meanwhile, a new investigation into an unexplained $50m (£41m) construction loan the president took out to build his Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago a decade ago appears to leave him open to allegations of tax fraud, concerns that have festered since he broke with White House custom by refusing to release his returns.
To add to the president's mounting controversies,
House Democrats are demanding information about the spending of taxpayer money at the president's hotels and properties. They're seeing violations of the US Constitution that some think could bolster the case for his impeachment.
There have been "multiple efforts" by Mr Trump and administration officials to spend federal money at his properties, including Vice President Mike Pence's stay this week at a Trump resort in Doonbeg, Ireland, the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform Committees said in letters Friday to the White House, federal agencies and the Trump Organisation.
The Democrats describe Mr Pence's visit, and the possibility that next year's Group of Seven summit will be held at Mr Trump's Miami-area Doral golf resort , as corrupting the presidency. Payments from foreign officials are particularly troubling, they say, considering the emoluments clause in the Constitution that bans the president from taking gifts from other governments.
"We have been focused on the Mueller report, and that is a very small part of the overall picture," said Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, a member of the Judiciary panel. "We must get America focused on the ongoing violations against basic constitutional principles."
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said taxpayer spending in Mr Trump's business empire is "of grave concern" to his panel, which is weighing whether to recommend articles of impeachment. Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings said his committee "does not believe that U.S. taxpayer funds should be used to personally enrich President Trump, his family and his companies."
The Democrats insist they are not pivoting their investigations away from former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report, which did not exonerate the president of obstruction of justice. But with many of their subpoenas bogged down in court, and Mr Mueller's findings fading in the public's attention, a soft reboot is clearly underway, with a new focus on other allegations of possible wrongdoing by the president.
David Cicilline, another Democrat on the Judiciary panel, says he believes the misuse of public funds or other examples of financial corruption make Americans especially angry. And while people have heard a lot about the Mueller report, they may know less about the emoluments clause, he said.
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Donald Trump was so incensed by reporting over his erroneous suggestion Hurricane Doriancould have hit Alabama that he summoned Fox News correspondent John Roberts to the Oval Office on Thursday to argue about the gaffe, according to CNN.
Anchor Jake Tapper reports that Roberts was beckoned inside after completing his 3pm update to camera on the latest ludicrous episode to embroil the president and later circulated an email to Fox colleagues explaining what went on.
"He stressed to me that forecasts for Dorian last week had Alabama in the warning cone," Roberts wrote. "He insisted that it is unfair to say Alabama was never threatened by the storm."
Roberts said Trump was "just looking for acknowledgment that he was not wrong for saying that at some point, Alabama was at risk - even if the situation had changed by the time he issued the tweet" on Sunday morning, in which he said the state "will most likely be hit."
The president also provided Roberts with (more) graphics to make his points.
In case you're late to the matter, Trump has been unable to admit that Sunday tweet was wrong all week, despite being contradicted by government meteorologists seeking to avert mass panic, and the scandal is now in its fifth day.
Trump made matters worse on Wednesday by presenting a map of the storm's path that he appeared to have doctored himself with the Sharpie pen on his desk, although naturally he denied doing so or knowing who had. That detail provoked a fresh deluge of ridicule by memes on social media.
“No one else writes like that on a map with a black Sharpie,” an anoymous official told The Washington Post, pinning the blame squarely on Trump.
As Roberts' colleague Shep Smith put it so expertly last night: "Some things in Trumplandia are inexplicable".
His Chris Riotta on Sharpiegate's origins.
Trump continued to obsess over the matter yesterday in incredibly undignified manner, even for him.
He got homeland security and counterterrorism adviser Peter J Brown, a rear admiral, to issue a statement backing up the initial Alabama projection...
...and continued to froth about it on Twitter while the storm itself continued its menacing progress along the coastlines of Georgia and South Carolina.
2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg appeared on CNN's New Day and was asked about all this and responded wryly: “I feel sorry for the president, and that is not the way we should feel about the most powerful figure in this country.”
Chris Riotta has more from Mayor Pete.
Again, with Dorian still a cause for concern, Trump also found time to go after Will & Grace actress Debra Messing, attacking her for calling for a blacklist of celebrities who attend his fundraisers and for liking a controversial tweet about a church sign on which African Americans voting for Trump were accused of suffering from mental illness.
The fact that he's still angered by the cancellation of Roseanne Barr's comeback series last year is just too ridiculous for words.
Messing posted this yesterday by way of response and, judging by her Twitter feed, has only been encouraged to redouble her efforts in campaigning against him.
Clark Mindock has more.
Meanwhile, a new investigation into an unexplained $50m (£41m) construction loan the president took out to build his Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago a decade ago appears to leave him open to allegations of tax fraud, concerns that have festered since he broke with White House custom by refusing to release his returns.
The piece by Russ Choma of Mother Jones examines the loan held by a Trump Organization company called Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC, of which Trump told The New York Times in 2016: "We don’t assess any value to it because we don’t care. I have the mortgage. That is all there is. Very simple. I am the bank."
A personal financial disclosure filed by the president indicates the loan in question earns no revenue, suggesting he pays no interest on it, and identifies it as a "springing loan", a classification that allows the owner to impose harsh repayment terms, something Trump would hardly be likely to inflict on himself.
The creditor from whom he acquired the $50m is not identified, but he is known to have received $640m (£520m) from Deutsche Bank and another $130m (£106m) from Fortress Investment Group towards the Chicago development. Both are possible sources for the money.
Trump's project was hit by disaster when the financial crisis struck in 2008, leaving him facing $800m (£650m) in debt and about to default on a payment of $330m (£268m) to Deutsche, at which point he brazenly sued them for causing the economic meltdown. He eventually wiggled out of that situation by getting a new loan from the German bank's private lending arm to pay off its commercial division, seemingly doing so without purchasing any debt.
That leaves Fortress, which accepted a 50 cents on the dollar repayment plan from Trump, netting them $48m (£39m) instead of $100m (£81m). That deal could have represented a "discounted payoff" - accounting for the mystery loan, assuming it was written off as a debt repaid - unless, alternatively, Trump purchased the debt back.
In that case, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would consider the $50m as money earned and thus taxable income. Trump could have got around this by getting a corporation to purchase the debt from him, a tactic known as "debt parking". This is a legal grey area - to debt park on a temporary basis is tolerated but it must eventually be repaid. To not do so is to violate federal tax laws.
“If he didn’t actually buy the loan, this is just garden-variety fraud,” Georgetown law professor Adam Levitin tells Choma.
Back to Hurricane Dorian briefly, Trump's new press secretary Stephanie Grisham went after CNN yesteraday after they produced a bad map blunder of their own, misidentifying Alabama as Mississippi.
The network wasted no time in offering a stinging response to her criticism.
Here's Greg Evans for Indy100.
Grisham's predecessor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, makes her debut as a pundit on Trump's favourite breakfast show Fox and Friends this morning. He hasn't been shy about promoting the appearance.
Sanders, incidentally, is about to write a memoir about her chaotic White House tenure.
Lily Puckett has more.
Trump's Interior Department broke the law during the month-long government shutdown back in January by illegal diverting national park fees to keep facilties open, a DC watchdog has concluded.
Entrance fees paid by visitors are designated solely for maintenance, not daily operations, according to federal guidelines, but the administration ignored the rules to ensure parks stayed open with a skeleton staff. Doing so meant rubbish bins were later left overflowing and vandals able to chop down precious trees unimpeded due to the drain on resources.
"Interior disregarded not only the laws themselves but also the congressional prerogatives that underlie them. Instead of carrying out the law, Interior improperly imposed its own will," the Government Accountabilty Office (GAO) said in its official finding.
House Democrats had opposed the move at the time and on Thursday congresswoman Betty McCollum, chair of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, offered an indignant response.
"The administration should now immediately report this violation and take corrective actions as required by law. This should put the administration on notice that their illegal actions will not be tolerated. As stated in the GAO opinion: 'With this decision, we will consider such violations in the future to be knowing and willful violations' and I agree," she said.
“The administration played a shell game with national park money in order to keep parks open,” added Theresa Pierno, CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, in a statement of her own.
Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, has resigned his post without ever releasing the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan he has been working on with the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Kushner's wife, Ivanka Trump, insists there's nothing fishy about it and the project is alive and well.
US defence secretary Mark Esper has said that European nations will have to "pick up the tab" for their own security projects in the wake of the Pentagon diverting money away to pay for Trump's border wall with Mexico.
The Pentagon announced on Wednesday it would pull funding from 127 Defence Department projects abroad and at home, including schools and daycare centres for military families, as it diverts $3.6bn (£2.9bn) to pay for Trump's epoch-making white elephant
The president believes immigration to be a winning issue at the ballot box in 2020 and declared a national emergency over the issue earlier this year in an effort to redirect funding from Congress to build his wall along the US southern border, which he originally said would be paid for by Mexico.
Mark Esper (EPA)
"The message that I've been carrying, since when I was acting secretary to today, has been about the increase in burden sharing," Esper told reporters in London on Thursday.
"So part of the message will be 'Look, if you're really concerned then maybe you should look to cover those projects for us' because that's going to build infrastructure in many cases in their countries," he added. "Part of the message is burden-sharing, 'Maybe pick up that tab.'"
Some of the projects affected are in Europe, like $21.6m (£17.6m) for port operation facilities in Spain and $59m (£48m) for munitions storage in Slovakia. The defunded projects also include schools for the children of military personnel in Germany and the United Kingdom.
The fund diversion has been heavily criticised by US lawmakers, who say it puts national security at risk and circumvents Congress.
Esper will meet his British and French counterparts in the coming days.
The Trump administration has repeatedly called on Nato countries to pay at least 2 per cent of their gross domestic product for defence.
This morning, Esper says Iran is "inching toward" a place where talks could be held, days after Trump left the door open to a possible meeting with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani at the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York.
"It seems in some ways that Iran is inching toward that place where we could have talks and hopefully it'll play out that way," Esper said at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London.
Friction between the two countries has grown since Trump last year withdrew from a 2015 international accord, under which Iran had agreed to rein in its nuclear programme in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.
Washington has since renewed and intensified its sanctions, slashing Iran's crude oil sales by more than 80 per cent.
Rouhani said on Wednesday Iran would take another step away from the 2015 deal by starting to develop centrifuges to speed up its uranium enrichment, but he also gave European powers two more months to try to save the multilateral pact.
Vice president Mike Pence is returning to the US from his European tour today, where his hotel arrangements in Ireland were the most noteworthy event.
In Iceland yesterday though his motorcade was confronted by rainbow flags, seen as a clear protest at his "anti-gay" voting record and reputed personal beliefs...
...while in London he was told in no uncertain terms by prime minister Boris Johnson that Britain's National Health Service (NHS) is "not on the table" in any post-Brexit trade talks.
The PM said he would not allow the NHS to be carved up in by America in future negotiations and added that Britain was "not too keen on that chlorinated chicken".
In a dig at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his decision to block a general election, Johnson added: "We have a gigantic chlorinated chicken of our own on the opposition benches."
He made the comments at 10 Downing Street before being told to "shut up" by aides, with journalists whisked away to allow the pair to continue their bilateral talks.
Very hard to argue with this sentiment.
Having said that, this is a masterpiece.
On a more serious note, this is what we should be focusing on regarding Hurricane Dorian as the Bahamas struggles to come to terms with the devastation wrought in the storm's aftermath.
The Trump administration has unveiled its plan for ending government control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant mortgage finance companies that nearly collapsed in the financial crisis 11 years ago and were bailed out at a total cost to taxpayers of $187bn (£152bn).
The administration's plan calls for returning the lenders to private ownership and therein reducing the risk to taxpayers, doing so while preserving homebuyers' access to 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages, a pillar of housing finance. Steve Mnuchin's Treasury Department published the plan on Thursday and submitted it to Trump, who first called for it back in March.
While not prominently in the public eye, the two companies perform a critical role in the housing market. Together they guarantee roughly half of the $10trn (£8.1trn) US home loan market.
(AP)
Fannie and Freddie, operating under so-called government conservatorships, have actually become profitable again in the years since the 2008 rescue and have repaid their bailouts in full to the Treasury.
The administration initially looked to Congress for legislation to overhaul the housing finance system and return the companies to private shareholders. But Congress hasn't acted and now officials say they will take administrative action for the core change, ending the Fannie and Freddie conservatorships.
The new plan would make the companies privately-owned yet government "sponsored" companies again. Their profits would no longer go to the Treasury but would be used to build up their capital bases as a cushion against possible future losses.
Trump's long-standing beef with California looks set to continue as his administration moves forward with a proposal to revoke part of the state's authority to set its own automobile gas mileage standards.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was preparing paperwork for the White House for the move on Thursday, meant to help the administration set a single, less rigorous mileage standard enforceable nationwide.
Trump has pushed for months to weaken Obama-era mileage standards nationwide and has targeted California's decades-old power to set its own mileage standards as part of that effort. But administration moves to rescind authority that Congress granted probably would end up in court. When George W Bush challenged California's greenhouse gas emissions and mileage-setting ability, California fought it. The Obama administration subsequently dropped the Bush effort.
The Trump plan would have to be posted in the Federal Register and subject to public comment.
His administration has tried to ease or remove scores of environmental regulations that it regards as unnecessary and burdensome. The tougher mileage standards were a key part of the Obama administration's efforts to reduce climate-changing fossil fuel emissions.
California has sued the Trump administration 27 times on environmental matters alone, often as part of a group of states. Counting preliminary injunctions, California has won in court 19 times, according to Sarah Lovenheim, a spokeswoman for California attorney general Xavier Becerra. The latter, a Democrat, made clear his state would battle this move as well. "California will continue its advance toward a cleaner future. We're prepared to defend the standards that make that promise a reality," he said in a statement.
The mileage move would target California's half-century-old authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own, tough tailpipe emission standards, which are closely linked to fuel efficiency.
California's long struggles with smog mean the state has been setting its own standards since before the 1970 law was written. Congress allowed California to seek waivers from the national standards for that reason.
About a dozen states have opted to follow California's pollution and mileage standards. The waiver has allowed California, the state with the highest population and by far the biggest economy, to steer the rest of the nation toward cutting down on car and truck emissions that pollute the air and alter the climate.
Margo Oge, director of the EPA's Office of Transportation and Air Quality from 1994 to 2012, said the Trump administration is likely to lose in a court challenge of California's powers. "There is nothing under the Clean Air Act that allows the EPA to revoke a waiver that was given to the state," she said. "They cannot do that, in my view, based on 20 years managing the programme."
The Trump administration has proposed freezing gas mileage requirements for automakers at 2021 levels, thus eliminating Obama-era regulations that require them to rise about 5 per cent per year on average for the fleet of new cars sold in the US. A final proposal is expected next month.
Trump's own administration, in documents proposing to freeze the standards, puts the cost of meeting the Obama-era requirements at around $2,700 (£2,195) per vehicle. It claims buyers would save that much by 2025, over standards in place in 2016. But that number is disputed by environmental groups and is more than double the estimates from the Obama administration.
Consumer Reports found that the owner of a 2026 vehicle will pay over $3,300 (£2,683) more for gasoline during the life of a vehicle if the standards are frozen at 2021 levels.
Many in the auto industry don't like the far tougher Obama-era mileage standards and fear it won't be able to meet them, as US consumers keep shifting away from sedans to less-efficient trucks and SUVs. Most automakers favor increasing mileage requirements at a lower rate than set under Barack Obama. They also want one US standard to avoid having to engineer separate vehicles for California and the states that follow its rules.
In July, four automakers - Ford, Honda, BMW and Volkswagen - broke from the rest of the industry and struck a deal with California agreeing to 3.7 per cent increases in mileage per year. That's less than the 5 per cent annual increase under the Obama-era standards. The side deal has irked Trump, who has chastised Ford in tweets.
AP
Donald Trump is once again attacking the Federal Reserve in a series of morning tweets, writing "Where did I find this guy Jerome? Oh well, you can't win them all," referring to the Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
The president is also sharpening his attacks against the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals programme, otherwise known as DACA, in his morning tweets. He's saying the programme "will go before the Supreme Court" while adding a "bipartisan deal" would be made to replace it -
Donald Trump suggested the Supreme Court “must” rule against the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals plan, otherwise known as DACA, after it granted an appeal to his decision to end the youth immigration programme.
Mr Trump attacked Barack Obama and his initiative in a tweet posted on Friday morning, writing: “DACA will be going before the Supreme Court. It is a document that even President Obama didn’t feel he had the legal right to sign - he signed it anyway!”
Mr Trump’s claim that his predecessor did not feel he possessed the legal right to create the immigration plan, which provides protections to undocumented immigrants who arrived to the US at an early age, is entirely unfounded. Mr Obama released a statement shortly after Mr Trump sought to revoke protected status for DACA recipients in 2017, saying his administration created the plan “ based on the well-established legal principle of prosecutorial discretion, deployed by Democratic and Republican presidents alike, because our immigration enforcement agencies have limited resources, and it makes sense to focus those resources on those who come illegally to this country to do us harm.”
In his attacks against the programme, Mr Trump added: “Rest assured that if the [Supreme Court] does what all say it must, based on the law, a bipartisan deal will be made to the benefit of all!”
Joe Biden is also getting grief over the environment after attending a fundraiser on Thursday evening in New York hosted by Andrew Goldman, a former aide during his Senate days who has since co-founded a fossil fuel company, Western LNG.
He did say this about Vladimir Putin at the event, however.
