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WASHINGTON PresidentDonald Trumppaused after falsely claiming Monday that hes signed more bills and Im talking about through the legislature than any president ever.

I better say think, otherwise theyll give you a Pinocchio, Trump said, referring to The Washington Posts rating system for fact-checking politicians statements. And I dont like those, I dont like Pinocchios.

It took roughly 8.5 minutes for Trump, who has an extensive history of lies, to deliver what appears to be another doozy taking credit for the creation of tens of thousands of new mining jobs.

In Pennsylvania, two weeks ago,they opened a mine, the firstmine that was opened in decades. Opened a mine! he said during a speech to kick off the White Houses Made in America week, referring to the states new coal mine. And you know all the people that were saying the mining jobs?Well we picked up 45,000 mining jobs in a very short period of time. Everybody was saying, well,you wont get any mining jobs. We picked up 45,000 mining jobs.

And the miners are very happy with Trump and with Pence, Trump boasted. And were very proud of that.

While Americas miners may be happy with the administrations push for increased fossil fuel development, theres a problem: The number of coal mining jobs has increased by roughly 800 since Trump became president.

In a pair of posts to Twitter, Washington Post Fact Checker columnist Glenn Kessler addressed both Trumps Pinocchio comment and his claim about mining jobs.

Well, this is how you end up with Pinocchios! Kessler wrote, linking to the Posts fact-check of a similar claim made by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency last month.

In a series of TV interviews on June 4, in which he defended Trumps decisiontowithdrawthe U.S. from thehistoric Paris Agreement on climate change, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt bragged that the administration had added 50,000 jobs.

Since the fourth quarter of last year until most recently, weve added almost 50,000 jobs in the coal sector, he told NBCs Meet the Press. In the month of May alone, almost 7,000 jobs.

However, there are only 50,800 coal mining jobs nationwide, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In another interview June 4 with Fox News, Pruitt said that since the fourth quarter weve had almost 50,000 jobs created in the mining and coal sector alone, being careful to not pin the number specifically to coal.

For his claim, Pruitt earned four Pinocchios the worst kind of falsehood from the Post.PolitiFact gave Pruitts claim a grade ofmostly false.

The Washington Post noted in its analysis that the increase in all mining and logging jobs since Trump took office was, at the time, around 33,000. Including preliminary figures for June, BLS estimates roughly 47,000 new mining and logging jobs have been added since December.

Trump didnt mention logging in his remarks Monday.

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8 Minutes After Saying 'I Don't Like Pinocchios,' Donald Trump's Nose Grows - HuffPost

WASHINGTON White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday appeared to be confused aboutDonald Trump Jr.s June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer, claiming it was about adoptions contradicting both Donald Trump Jr. and the president, who have both confirmed the true reason for the meeting.

During an off-camera briefing with reporters, Spicer claimed that the president has made it clear through his tweet, and there was nothing as far as we know that would lead anyone to believe that there was anything except for a discussion about adoption,referring to the original reason Trump Jr. gave for meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Veselnitskaya has lobbied against the Magnitsky Act, a law passed by Congress in 2012 that imposed sanctions on Russian officials. In retaliation for the sanctions, the Kremlin imposed a ban on Americans adopting Russian children.

But both Trump Jr. and the president have affirmed that the real reason the younger Trump took the meeting was he was looking to obtain damaging information on campaign opponent Hillary Clinton.

The presidents tweet that Spicer referred to on Monday lays that out quite clearly, defending Trump Jr.s meeting as politics.

As detailed in emails released by Trump Jr. himself last Tuesdayin response to the New York Times uncovering the meeting, he clearly took the meeting after being offered information that he was told would incriminate Clinton and was part of Russia and its governments support for Mr. Trump.

If it is what you say I love it, Trump Jr. replied to an email from music publicist Rob Goldstone.

Later Tuesday, Trump Jr. defended the meeting in an interview with Fox News Sean Hannity, saying that it was simply part of normal campaign business.

Someone has information on our opponent. You know, things are going a million miles an hour. You know what its like to be on a campaign, he told Hannity. Wed just won Indiana but were talking about a contested convention. Things are going a million miles an hour again. And, hey, wait a minute. Ive heard about all these things, but maybe this is something. I should hear him out.

The president has also affirmed several times that the meeting was about Clinton. When asked about it last Thursday, he defended his son,claiming that most people would have taken that meeting,as it was very standard and part ofopposition research.

The meeting is the clearest indication yet that the Trump campaign may have colluded with Russia to influence last years election, a possibility that is the subject of multiple investigations.

Despite both fathers and sons insistence that the meeting was routine, many expertsbelieve it violated campaign finance lawsthat make itillegalto solicit, accept or receive contributions and donations from foreign nationals. Legal experts say this generally includes political opposition research.

Republican political operatives told HuffPost last week that itwould be unheard offor campaign veterans to take such a meeting, and that they would have reported it to the FBI.

Excerpt from:
Sean Spicer Still Insists Donald Trump Jr. Meeting Was About Adoptions - HuffPost

Garbled grammar aside, Trump's essential message is this: My approval rating isn't bad at all!

Except, he's wrong.

Here's George H.W. Bush back to Jimmy Carter:

Bush, Ronald Reagan and Carter were all in the stratosphere compared to Trump at the six-month mark of their presidencies. Worth noting: Bush and Carter went on to lose their re-election bids three and a half years later -- a sign that you always need to be cautious about making predictions after just 6 months.

Then, finally, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford:

So here are the facts: Donald Trump is less popular at the six-month mark of his presidency than eight of the nine men who have held the office before him. He's as unpopular as the ninth, who pardoned a president embroiled in the most serious scandal ever to hit the presidency.

That's probably not something he'll be touting on Twitter anytime soon.

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3 charts that show why Donald Trump's low approval ratings aren't normal at all - CNN International

Trumps decision to postpone the so-called U.S. startup visa program is the worst possible news for U.S. cities that are emerging innovation hubs.

Judging from President Donald Trumps announced intention to kill a program aimed at allowing foreign founders of successful startup firms to stay in the United States, he is not content with being the most anti-immigration, anti-environment and anti-free press U.S. leader in recent memory. He now wants to become the most anti-innovation one.

In a move that has drawn fire from some of the best-known U.S. technology innovators, the Trump administrations Department of Homeland Security announced July 10 that it will postpone until March 14, 2018 and may ultimately eliminate the so-called U.S. startup visa program.

The program, the International Entrepreneur Rule, was supposed to start this month. It was launched by former president Barack Obama toward the end of his term, and the Obama administration had estimated at the time that it would draw about 2,940 applications for temporary visas annually.

To be eligible for these visas, foreign innovators had to show that they had raised at least $250,000 from established U.S. investors, or more than $100,000 in U.S. government grants.

The foreign entrepreneurs had to own at least 10 percent of their startups, and had to be actively involved in their operations. If approved, their visas would be good for 30 months, and could be extended if their startups proved successful.

When I first read about this decision, I could hardly believe it. Anybody who has ever set foot in Silicon Valley, or in emerging innovation centers such as Austin or Miami, knows that foreigners are a driving force of U.S. scientific, technological and business innovations.

Some of the best-known U.S. innovators are foreign born, including Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Sergey Brin of Google and Garrett Camp of Uber. If Musks SpaceX company, which already employs about 6,000 people, succeeds in its goal of sending the first U.S. manned mission to Mars, it will be thanks to an immigrant.

Immigrants have founded 51 percent of the current crop of U.S. startups valued at more than $1 billion, according to a recent study by the National Foundation for American Policy. The study showed that 44 immigrant-founded companies had a collective market value of $168 billion.

For Miami, which was recently ranked by the Kauffman Foundations 2017 Index of Startup Activity as the No. 1 city with the highest rate of entrepreneurs opening new businesses, Trumps latest decision is next to his decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord on climate change the worst possible news.

Miami ranks No. 1 in the nation in immigrant-founded businesses with employees, according to another Kaufmann Foundation study cited by The Miami Heralds Nancy Dahlberg.

Vivek Wadhwa, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of a new book on innovation titled The driver in the driverless car, did not mince words when I asked him about Trumps decisions to delay and possibly kill the foreign entrepreneurs visa program.

The startup visa was the closest thing to a free lunch for the United States, Wadhwa told me. It would have enabled entrepreneurs all over the world to bring their ideas, inventions and money here to create jobs. No jobs are taken away, only new jobs created.

He added, The Trump administrations decision will only hurt U.S. competitiveness and help countries that are competing with it. It is the peak of stupidity and xenophobia, the most foolish of all policy decisions.

Likewise, the U.S. National Venture Capital Association, which represents startup investors, said in a statement that Trumps decision represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the critical role immigrant entrepreneurs play in growing the next generation of American companies.

My opinion: The delay and possible elimination of the startup visa program is an idiotic idea, even by Trump administration standards. While Canada, France, Singapore, Chile and several other countries are offering visas and financial incentives to foreign entrepreneurs, the United States is doing the opposite.

Trump keeps talking about saving coal miners jobs, as if that decaying and polluting industry represented Americas future. On the contrary, it represents Americas past, and Trumps ignorance about the knowledge economy that is driving the future will put the U.S. economy at risk. He is rapidly becoming the anti-innovation president.

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Donald Trump, the anti-innovation president - The Seattle Times

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon joined Donald Trump's presidential campaign in August 2016. But the former executive chairman of the right-wing website Breitbart News has been part of Mr. Trump's trusted circle for many years.

The new book "Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency" (Penguin) chronicles the intertwined paths of both men, and how they reached the White House.

Penguin

Author Joshua Green writes: "Any study of Trump's rise to the presidency is therefore unavoidably a study of Bannon, too."

Green, a senior national correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek, has known Bannon since 2011 and has talked to him on and off the record ever since. "He was a filmmaker, he was this kind of fringe character in Washington that not a lot of people knew or thought would be important," Green said.

The book details how Bannon and Mr. Trump came together, as well as the rise of the alt-right and Bannon's years-long plot to tear down Hillary Clinton which, Green says, was what endeared him to Mr. Trump and helped him get elected.

Of Bannon, Green said, "Here's a guy who was very smart, who succeeded in all sorts of different realms, but came from a blue-collar family, deeply traditional Catholic background. Managed to get into Harvard Business School. Survived by his own wits at Goldman Sachs and Hollywood. I think that really gave him a connection to Trump, who saw him as a dealmaker, as someone who spoke his language, as somebody who's comfortable with moguls, and somebody who had ideas that Trump recognized at an intuitive level could advance Trump's career.

Time

"And of course then they had kind of a falling out when Bannon's profile rose to a level that Trump wasn't comfortable with," as personified by a Feb. 13, 2017 Time magazine cover shot of Bannon, labeled "The Great Manipulator."

"He had this kind of dramatic fall, and now he's back," Green said.

When asked what Bannon accomplished for the president, Green replied, "I think he did two things for Donald Trump: One is, Bannon was the mastermind of an interlocking group of political organizations funded by a right-wing billionaire whose mission was to tear down Hillary Clinton. The goal wasn't to do that for Trump; this was long before Trump was the nominee, but it was clear Clinton was probably going to be the Democratic candidate, and Trump wound up being the beneficiary of Bannon's efforts.

"We saw in the Republican primaries Donald Trump doesn't think a lot about policy but he's able to kind of dominate the opponents in a way most politicians aren't, and he used a lot of Bannon's ideas to do that and to knock out what everybody thought was the strongest Republican presidential field.

"The other thing he did is, when [Bannon] took over Trump's campaign in August, Trump was really floundering in the polls. Bannon managed to get Trump focused away from Megyn Kelly, away from the Khan family, and use all that anti-Hillary knowledge to keep him focused on the opposition."

Green acknowledged there was a lot of political overlap between the two, as Trump always had populist populist impulses, even if his earlier target was trade with Japan rather than trade with China. "I think Bannon really brought the idea of illegal immigration and understood its power as a political issue, and Trump really became the vessel for those ideas, and it's what carried him to the White House," Green said.

"They're not together on everything. Bannon, like most of us -- certainly myself -- did not understand from the get-go what a powerful politician Donald Trump was going to be. Bannon was advising him informally as long ago as 2010, thought he was an interesting guy, but nobody thought he was going to win the nomination or the presidency," Green said.

When asked if Bannon believes Mr. Trump could have won the presidency without his aid, Green replied, "I think if you tortured Bannon, he wouldn't answer that question. But my answer to that question is no, I don't think he could have. Bannon's efforts, specially the book 'Clinton Cash,' which Bannon helped mastermind, really tarnished his opponent in a way that she never fully recovered from.

"And then on the flip side his ability to keep Trump focused on Clinton in the homestretch of the race, and then you have the James Comey revelations, and suddenly Trump was able to pull ahead. I give Bannon a lot of credit for having helped Trump do that."

Barely six months into his administration, Mr. Trump's approval ratings are at record lows.

"He's lost a lot of support he had with independents, but his base has stuck with him," Green said. "The kind of people that Steve Bannon talks to has so far have stuck with him. The question is going to be, can Trump ever deliver anything for these people legislatively, or is he going to spend four years in national scandal? Ultimately he needs to deliver for them economically and fulfill some of these promises he made. There's no sign yet that he's really going to be able to do that in any area, other than cracking down on illegal immigration, which of course was one of Trump's big promises."

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"Devil's Bargain": How Steve Bannon helped elect Donald Trump - CBS News