1. Trying to sell Trumpcare
Vice-president Mike Pence and health and human services secretary Tom Price headed to the Capitol on Tuesday after the Congressional Budget Office’s damning report on the Trumpcare bill yesterday, to try and convince skeptical Republicans.
Summary
White House press secretary Sean Spicer criticized media coverage of the Congressional Budget Office report yesterday, noting that the CBO did not predict accurate figures of how many people would be insured with Obamacare and he doesn’t trust their numbers.
“When they’ve come to counting people they’ve been wrong, and vastly so,” said Spicer in his daily press briefing on Tuesday.
Cruzing for a bruising
“This is not the mandate that we were elected to fulfill.”
– Senator Ted Cruz, who lead the charge against Obamacare but says the “most troubling aspect” of Trumpcare is the expected rising insurance premiums.
2. Snow slows down politics
The snow storms hitting the east coast delayed Trump’s meeting with German leader Angela Merkel, which was rescheduled until Friday.
But the snow didn’t stop Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the deputy crown prince and minister of defense of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who had lunch with the president.
3. Surveilling Trump's claims
White House press secretary Sean Spicer says Trump is “extremely confident” that the Department of Justice will provide evidence that he was surveilled during the election campaign.
Yesterday, Spicer claimed that Trump’s use of quotation marks around “wire tapping” justified his unsubstantiated claim, because he meant broader surveillance, not just wire tapping.
Summary
Spicer on microwave surveillance: "There's pretty sound evidence...that the microwave is not a sound way of surveilling someone..." pic.twitter.com/BAtiF4m90u
— Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) March 14, 2017
5. Tillerson used alias email address
US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who used to head ExxonMobil, used an alias email address under the pseudonym “Wayne Tracker” to send and receive information about climate change, according to the New York attorney general.
4. Muslim fears on eve of new travel ban
“Could it get as bad as us wearing yellow Ms on our shirts and having to go to a camp? Yeah, it could get that bad.”
– Dr Ed Tori from the Islamic Society of Baltimore.
At mosque Obama visited, fear replaces hope as new Trump travel ban looms
Updated
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...and another thing
"Whiteout" NYer cover that won't run. Too "pointed". pic.twitter.com/waVlccTKc9
— Carter Goodrich (@Cartergoodrich2) March 14, 2017