Donald Trump has passed the 10,000 falsehoods mark since taking office, according to fact-checkers, his flights of rhetoric at recent rally appearances seeing him hit an astonishing average of 23 untruths per day.
The president complained to Fox News on Sunday the US-Mexico border is now “like Disneyland” since his administration stopped separating migrant families, a remark that followed another wild address to supporters in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Saturday night, where he derided sanctuary cities, spread an extraordinary lie about abortion and imitated the accent of King Salman of Saudi Arabia.
The White House is meanwhile continuing to push back against congressional investigations into Mr Trump, with counsel Kellyanne Conway warning he could use his executive privilege to avoid co-operating with subpoenas and attorney-general William Barr threatening to back out of appearances before the House and Senate judiciary committees.
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Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
President Trump spent his weekend playing golf with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe before jetting out to address a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin (more on which shortly), only to then return to the links in Virginia.
The tone of the tweet below finds the president protesting too much that the pair were working - no, really! - talking matters of international import rather than sunning themselves in the fresh air.
He did take time away from his putter to call into Maria Bartiromo on Fox News's Sunday Morning Futures (broadcasting live from El Paso, Texas), complaining that the US-Mexico border was now "like Disneyland" for the asylum-seeking families of Central America since his administration stopped separating children from their parents at detention centres in the wake of an international outcry.
"We have the worst immigration laws ever", he griped. "Literally you have ten times more families coming up because they won't be separated from their children... It's a disaster."
Stressing the need for reforms, he said: "We're going for a much bigger package. We're making a plan and talking about immigration laws on a much larger scale... We need workers, we're doing a plan based on merit."
Trump also took aim at the immigration court system, which faces a severe backlog of cases.
"What we need is new laws... We have a court system that has 900,000 cases behind it. In other words, they have a court that needs to hear 900,000 cases," Trump said. "It's just a situation Congress can fix... and they don't get off their ass."
The president believes tackling illegal immigration to be a crucial election issue in 2020 and forced out homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other ranking officials earlier this month as a prelude to the introduction of harsher measures.
Trump had been in rare form in Wisconsin on Saturday night, addressing loyalists in Green Bay rather than be teased at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington.
While he can't take mockery himself, he can certainly give it out. He referred to his potential 2020 opponents by his favourite nicknames "Sleepy Joe" [Biden], "Crazy Bernie" [Sanders] and "Pocahontas" [Elizabeth Warren], to the delight of the crowd.
But that was nothing.
The president told his supporters the idea of dumping migrants on liberal-minded sanctuary cities was "my sick idea", called the FBI and Justice Department "scum", parodied the accent of King Salman of Saudi Arabia and warned that Democrats want to "take your guns away", a matter of hours after a shooter attacked a synagogue in Poway, California.
He also branded Jussie Smollett "a disgrace to our nation" and defended his withdrawal from the 2015 Paris climate change accords. Oh - and suggested newborn babies were being legally executed in American clinics.
“The baby is born, the mother meets with the doctor, they take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully, and then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby,” Trump said to a chorus of boos.
Here's Colin Drury's account of another wild evening.
This of course came in the wake of President Trump's equally inflammatory appearance before the National Rifle Association's convention in Indianapolis on Friday, where he re-enacted the terror attack on the Batalcan in Paris of November 2015 (!), among other startling statements.
Here's Clark Mindock's report.
Back in Washington, White House counsel Kellyanne Conway appeared on CNN's State of the Union with Jake Tapper on Sunday to warn the president could use his executive privilege to shield former adviser Don McGahn from taking part in further congressional investigations into his administration.
"Executive privilege is always an option, it's always on the table. But Don McGahn has already talked under oath for 30 hours. And this is just presidential harassment," Conway said.
McGahn was cited over 150 times in FBI special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russian election hacking and House Democrats are now keen for him to testify, particularly regarding Mueller's account that the president had ordered that he himself be fired, only for McGahn to refuse, therein potentially saving his boss from an obstruction of justice charge.
Here's Dave Maclean with more.
In another instance of the White House resisting congressional oversight, Trump's attorney-general William Barr is threatening to pull out of scheduled appearance before the House and Senate judiciary committees later this week to testify regarding the Mueller report.
The Justice Department has told the House Judiciary Committee it has objections over the format of planned questioning, disapproving of plans to allow lawyers from both sides to question Barr in addition to committee members.
House committee chairman Jerry Nadler has threatened to use subpoena powers should the attorney-general refuse to attend.
Here's Adam Forrest's report.
Having said the president took if easy over the weekend aside from his appearance in Wisconsin, he did make time to insult Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden on Twitter.
And, more interestingly, Fox News pundit Andrew Napolitano, a legal expert who last week ran a feature suggesting there was enough evidence in the Mueller report to make an obstruction of justice case against the president.
Here it is for your viewing pleasure.
Trump's criticism of a Fox presenter is a rare event indeed.
The president is notorious for his close to ties to the Rupert Murdoch-owned right-wing broadcaster - watching Fox and Friends every morning, taking nightly calls with the channel's big beasts Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs and regularly retweeting favourable coverage from the outlet or attacking its rivals.
There has also been a huge degree of cross-pollination between the White House and Fox in the last two years, with employees of one frequently going to work for the other. Former Fox executive Bill Shine, for instance, became a communications official in the Trump White House in 2018, resigning the position in March to be an adviser on Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke is the latest to call out this decidedly toxic relationship, saying the White House has “free rein, almost” over what is broadcast on the cable television network.
Speaking at a campaign event in San Francisco, former Texas congressman O’Rourke, one of 20 candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, commented: “You have members of the organisation moving into the White House, you have a White House with free rein, almost, over what is broadcast over one of the most widely watched cable networks in the country today."
On Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, O’Rourke said he believed Trump had invited Russia to interfere, even if special counsel Robert Mueller concluded after a 22-month investigation that Trump and his campaign did not collude with Moscow.
“I don’t know if collusion is a term of art in the law, but he certainly invited their participation,” O’Rourke said.
While Trump chose to miss the White House Correspondents' Dinner for the third consecutive year, 2019's black tie gathering of the Washington press corps was a more dour affair than usual, historian Ron Chernow a less explosive host than stand-up Michelle Wolf, who had infuriated the president with a coruscating roast in 2018.
Chernow, whose biography of Alexander Hamilton inspired the hit musical from Lin-Manuel Miranda, did take Trump to task for his frequent attacks on the press.
"When you chip away at the press, you chip away at our democracy," Chernow said.
More damning was White House Correspondents’ Association president Oliver Knox, who said the president's anti-media rhetoric was placing journalists in danger around the world.
Knox said his own 11-year-old son had asked him, in tears: "Is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?”
“I’ve had to tell my family not to touch packages on our stoop,” he added.
“I’ve had death threats, including one this week. Too many of us have. It shouldn’t need to be said in a room full of people who understand the power of words, but ‘fake news’ and ‘enemies of the people’ are not pet names, punchlines, or presidential,” Knox said, a remark met with thunderous applause.
Chernow, whose biography of Alexander Hamilton inspired the hit musical from Lin-Manuel Miranda, did take Trump to task for his frequent attacks on the press.
"When you chip away at the press, you chip away at our democracy," Chernow said.
More damning was White House Correspondents’ Association president Oliver Knox, who said the president's anti-media rhetoric was placing journalists in danger around the world.
Knox said his own 11-year-old son had asked him, in tears: "Is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?”
“I’ve had to tell my family not to touch packages on our stoop,” he added.
“I’ve had death threats, including one this week. Too many of us have. It shouldn’t need to be said in a room full of people who understand the power of words, but ‘fake news’ and ‘enemies of the people’ are not pet names, punchlines, or presidential,” Knox said, a remark met with thunderous applause.
President Trump's response to the horrific shooting at the Poway synagogue in California on Saturday - in which one person was killed and three injured - has been far more presidential than many of his recent public statements.
He tweeted the following on Saturday:
He also personally called Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, whose life was saved by congregant Lori Gilbert-Kaye at the expense of her own when she shielded him from the gunman's bullets, to offer his commiserations.
"He was just so comforting," Goldstein said at a press conference on Sunday afternoon. "I’m really grateful to our president for taking the time and making that effort to share with us his comfort and consolation.”
“He shared with me condolences on behalf of the United States of America... We spoke about the moment of silence. And he spoke about his love of peace and Judaism and Israel."
While this is very commendable, the president's selective approach to these matters remains unsettling.
He has still said nothing about the burning of three black churches in Louisiana in late March and early April - a white suspect, the son of a sheriff's deputy, has been charged - and remains notorious for his failure to condemn deadly neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017.
Former top Justice Department official Sally Yates said on Sunday that if Donald Trump were not president, he would have been indicted on obstruction charges in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
Yates, a career federal prosecutor who rose to acting attorney-general before Trump fired her in 2017 less than two weeks into his presidency, told NBC's Meet the Press the president was shielded by department guidelines that a sitting president should not be indicted.
"I've personally prosecuted obstruction cases on far, far less evidence than this," Yates said. "And yes, I believe, if he were not the president of the United States, he would likely be indicted on obstruction."
Yates told NBC there was a larger question raised by the report, which she said painted a "devastating portrait" of a campaign that welcomed Russian intervention, lied about it and then tried to cover it up.
"Is this the kind of conduct that we should expect from the president of the United States?" she said. "I mean, when the Russians came knocking at their door, you would expect that a man who likes to make a show of hugging the flag would've done the patriotic thing and would've notified law enforcement."
Yates was fired by Trump after she took the extraordinarily rare step of defying the White House and refused to defend new travel restrictions targeting seven Muslim-majority nations.
Republicans have been heavily attacked for their unwavering support of President Trump in the wake of the Mueller report and the damaging behind-the-scenes snapshot it offers of his administration, most notably by Paul Krugman of The New York Times, whose article on "The Great Republican Abdication" drew fire from the big man himself last week.
Here's a particularly craven example of what Krugman was referring to, courtesy of Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin - also speaking on Meet the Press - who somehow found it within himself to defend Trump calling the Justice Department and FBI "scum" on Saturday night.
Here's Trump's latest tweet.
It's regarding his phone call with Rabbi Goldstein and gives a needlessly graphic account of the grieving man's injuries.
Nice work from The Washington Post.
President Trump's latest speeches take him past the 10,000 false claims mark.
That's 23 lies per day, according to The Post's Glenn Kessler.
Here's a nice bit of perspective from Kessler's colleague, Philip Bump.
Also appearing on the Sunday talk shows was Trump's pick for the board of the Federal Reserve, Stephen Moore, who says there is a "smear campaign" being waged against him, after past writings and comments about women sparked renewed criticism from Democrats.
Moore, during an interview on ABC's This Week, said there were a handful of reporters dedicated to digging up negative information on his personal life and past statements.
Moore said the president asked him to appear on the show, where he denounced negative news reports as a "character assassination."
Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, giving them the final say on whether Moore's promised nomination is confirmed.
Democratic Senators have criticised Moore for his policy positions, including his longtime support of tax cuts to stimulate the economy, as well as his comments about women.
"If I become a liability to any of these senators, I would withdraw," Moore told ABC. "I don't think it's going to come to that. I think most fair-minded people think this has been kind of a sleaze campaign against me.
"I just think the perception is very different from the reality in terms of my attitude towards women."
Moore said he had apologised for writing a column 18 years ago in which he jokingly called women's participation in basketball "a travesty," adding he would never write such a "politically incorrect column" today.
Moore also has come under fire for 2014 comments referring to cities in the US Midwest, such as Cincinnati, as the "armpits of America."
Some economists and Democratic lawmakers have questioned Moore's competence, citing his support for tying policy decisions to commodity prices and his fluctuating views on rates.
Moore was an adviser to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and has commented on the economy in various media. In 1999 he co-founded the Club for Growth, an organisation calling for lower taxes and limited government.
Trump has broken from tradition by frequently and publicly pressuring the Fed. He has accused the non-partisan central bank under chairman Jerome Powell, who Trump appointed to the job last year, of hurting the economy and stock market. Moore has said he agrees with Trump that rates should be reduced.
"It was a terrible decision by the Fed," Moore said of the Fed decision to raise interest rates in December. "The stock market fell by 2,500 points in the subsequent weeks of that, and then of course the Fed had to reverse course, put its tail between its legs and admit that people like Donald Trump and I were right and that they were wrong."
Trump also had planned to nominate former pizza chain executive Herman Cain for a Fed seat, but Cain withdrew from consideration last week, saying it would reduce his income and influence.
Cain, whose bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 was derailed by accusations of sexual harassment, would have had a difficult confirmation process because four Republican senators had expressed reservations about him.
Here's an unexpected change of pace for you.
DJ and musician Moby recounted an extraordinary anecdote to The Sunday Times over the weekend about the time he rubbed his penis against Donald Trump for a dare at a dull party in New York.
"In 2001, I found myself on my way to a party on Park Avenue," Moby explained. "The party wasn’t that exciting. It was mainly full of businessmen and real estate developers, most notably Donald Trump, who was standing a few yards away, talking loudly to some other guests.”
Moby was challenged to enliven matters by a friend.
“I drank a shot of vodka to brace myself, pulled my flaccid penis out of my trousers and casually walked past Trump, trying to brush the edge of his jacket with my penis.
“Luckily he didn’t seem to notice or even twitch. I returned to my friends and ordered another drink.”
He did so with the immortal words: “I think I knob-touched Donald Trump”.
Here's Hugh Hewitt for Indy Voices on why Trump will win with ease in 2020.
Former CIA director John Brennan has railed against Trump‘s “sociopathic ramblings” after he called special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation an attempted “coup” on his presidency.
Here's more.
Here's one for you sports fans.
President Trump tweeted his congratulations to Ohio State University defensive end Nick Bosa - who has been picked up by the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL Draft - erroneously believing the rookie to be a MAGA supporter.
But Bosa has since deleted earlier tweets in favour of Trump, apologising for them as a "bad decision".
Here's Ed Malyon.
Here's a little on the Trump camp's view of their 2020 prospects.
And this is what they're up to in Texas.
