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Give Donald Trump credit for coming clean. Hes always been a pro-wrestling promoter at heart, not a president, trading in faked-up victories and doing anything for better ratings.

There is no doubt that the video Trump tweeted out on Sunday, cartoonishly showing himself beating up on CNN at a pro wresting event, was an encouragement to violence against the media. Nothing new there. Whats more fascinating is just how right he looked in that environment. Trump never looks comfortable behind his desk in the Oval Office. At a professional wrestling match, he belongs.

EDITORIAL

Everything about Trump exudes pro-wrestling fakery. He brags and exaggerates and claims victories that everybody except for a few sad souls who think pro wrestling is legit knows are not real victories. Did you see Hulk Hogan excuse us, Donald Trump brag on Monday about the great jobs numbers his administration has racked up? Truth is, job growth in the United States has slowed since Trump took office.

With every new outrageous tweet, Trump adds to the evidence that he is temperamentally unfit to be president and lazy to boot. What kind of president, if he is hard at work on the big issues of our day terrorism, health care reform, tax reform and the like has time to stew about what a couple of talking heads on CNN say about him?

And yet Trump spends his mornings clicking through the cable news shows and lashing out in his resentment, going particularly hard on women critics. Joe Scarborough on CNN becomes Psycho Joe in a Trump tweet, and Mika Brzezinski becomes low I.Q. Crazy Mika who was bleeding badly from a face-lift the last time Trump saw her at Mar-a-Lago.

This stuff plays fine with Trumps angry political base, who are always happen to see another villain in the ring get slammed to the mat. There actually is a wrestler, Dan Richards, who goes by the villainous stage name of Progressive Liberal.

The rest of America, including a majority of Republicans, sees Trump for the boor and misogynist he is.

Send letters to: letters@suntimes.com

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Donald Trump, America's professional wrestler in chief - Chicago Sun-Times

This story was updated on Monday, July 3 at 12:53pm.

Charlie Gard was born with a rare genetic condition and has suffered from brain damage and loss of muscle function. After British doctors advised his parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, that they should end life support for the terminally ill 10-month-old, they raised nearly 2 million dollars to transfer Charlie to the U.S. for experimental treatment. But three separate British courts intervened, siding with medical specialists who said that further prolonging treatment would cause the baby significant harm. In June, the European Court of Human Rights weighed in on the parents final appeal. They lost. Charlie would be taken off of life support.

Since then, the global reaction has been chaotic, with leaders from the pope to the president of the United States weighing in on the case.

First, the Vaticans Pontifical Academy for Life issued a statement, seeming to side with the European courts. We must also accept the limits of medicine and avoid aggressive medical procedures that are disproportionate to any expected results or excessively burdensome to the patient or the family, wrote Vincenzo Paglia, the bodys president. While people should never deliberately end a human life, he added, sometimes we ... have to recognize the limitations of what can be done.

Then the pope weighed inand said almost exactly the opposite. Francis is following with affection and sadness the case of little Charlie Gard and expresses his closeness to his parents, a Vatican press office statement said. For this he prays that their wish to accompany and treat their child until the end is not neglected.

On Monday, President Trump added his support with a tweet supporting Charlie and his family.

Charlies case touches on some of the most sensitive moral and political questions about the role of the state at the end of life. The decisions of the European courts represented the final word on whether Charlies parents could pursue treatment in the U.S., and after the ruling, Yates and Gard claimed the hospital had denied permission for them to take Charlie back to their home to die. Yates and Gard have framed the medical dispute as Charlies fight, developing a large social-media following as they chronicled their effort to pursue further treatment for their son. The case also has religious dimensions: On their instagram page, Yates and Gard documented their celebration of their sons baptism and showed him clutching a pendant of St. Jude, the Catholic figure most often associated with hospitals and medical care. Media in the U.K. have followed the Gard familys case closely and the court orders to end Charlies life have been fiercely criticized by conservatives in the U.S. and abroad.

With the Church weighing in, the case took on a whole new dimension. The competing statements seemed to reveal an internal dispute over end-of-life issues within the Vatican. But they also teed up Trumps intervention. Religious conservatives in the U.S. were outraged over the Pontifical Academy for Lifes original statement: Besides being patronizing, the Vaticans statement is a gross distortion of the situation, wrote Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review. It portrays the Gards as acting alongside the doctors, but subject to outside manipulation. The Gards are resisting the doctors. The Gards are not facing their decisions. They are facing authorities that have overridden them.

Trump, who has consistently expressed his verbal support for religious freedom, has now stepped in, cementing the issue as an international cause for conservatives. Upon learning of baby Charlie Gard's situation, President Trump has offered to help the family in this heartbreaking situation, the White House said in a statement issued on Monday afternoon. Although the President himself has not spoken to the family, he does not want to pressure them in any way, members of the administration have spoken to the family in calls facilitated by the British government. The President is just trying to be helpful if at all possible.

Its not clear how the presidents statement would change the Gard familys situation: They already had the money for Charlies treatment and had sought to bring him to the U.S. The American president cant change the way European courts work, or annul their authority. But Trump has marked a difference in orientation between at least one part of Europe and the United States. While the high courts of Europe have asserted their authority and doctors right to decide when and how Charlie dies, the president of the United States has decided he will champion the familys choice to decideno matter whether or not he actually has the ability to intervene in one British babys life.

Original post:
Donald Trump Offers to Help Charlie Gard - The Atlantic

Here is a new strategy for the resistance: Bleed on em. On Thursday morning, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to attack MSNBC commentator Mika Brzezinski with insults so medieval they might have been funny had they not come from the presidents fingertips.

First Trump called Brzezinski low I.Q. Crazy Mika which in psychology is what we refer to as projection. There is nothing dumber, or more insane, than the commander in chief taking time out of his day to personally attack a TV host when he should be governing the country. It seems like Trump realizes this and is now calling others what he most fears about himself. But heck forget the tax returns! Show us that bell curve, baby! If we are going to talk about IQs, my moneys on Mika.

He next tried his well-worn I didnt want her she wanted me! approach to discrediting Brzezinski. After making her sound desperate for wanting to interview him (you know, as journalists are wont to do), Trump then dropped the line that has women across the country viewing their hemoglobin in a brand new way:

Thats right, ladies and gentlemen: Mika is dumb and shes ugly! If only she had asked Melania for the name of her doctor! Then he might have granted her the interview! And grabbed her by the crotch too. You know how he feels about beautiful women.

As long as they arent bleeding.

Thursday morning was not the first time Trump has expressed a deep fear of womens blood and tried to encourage others to join in. After Megyn Kelly proved to be a tough moderator during the first Republican debate, Trump said in an interview with CNN, She gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions. You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.

Bleeding from the face, bleeding from the eyes, bleeding out of her wherever. It makes a gal want to send him a copy of The Red Tent, doesnt it?

But he would probably take that as bullying. As deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to the incident, according to The Hill: I dont think that the president has ever been someone who gets attacked and doesnt push back. This is a president who fights fire with fire and certainly will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media and the liberal elites within the media.

Folks, its official. Donald Trump is the most insecure man in America.

And no, he cant sit with us.

Tribune Content Agency

Cassady Rosenblum is a writer and former teacher. She studies investigative reporting at the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

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Donald Trump, the most insecure man in America - Chicago Tribune

Late last month, President Trump touted his legislative prowess, boasting, "I will say that never has there been a president with few exceptions, in the case of FDR he had a major Depression to handle who's passed more legislation, who's done more things than what we've done."

And he tweeted about signing 38 bills (he's now up to 41).

The president isn't the only one who's talking about how much legislation has been enacted during his young presidency. On Mr. Trump's 150th day in office, House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes claimed on a radio show KMJ radio that Mr. Trump "got more bills signed into law...this Congress working with this president, than any president previously before at this stage in the game."

As the president conceded in his tweet, there are "a few exceptions." Politifact pointed out that "not only did Roosevelt and Truman sign more bills through 150 days, so did Presidents Jimmy Carter, 48, and Bill Clinton with 41. President George H. W. Bush signed the same number as Trump, 39."

And nearing six months into his presidency, none of those dozens of measures include any of Mr. Trump's major campaign promises. He has not repealed and replaced Obamacare, nor has he delivered the biggest tax cut since Ronald Reagan. He has not secured funding to build a "big, beautiful wall" on the Mexican border -- which would need to have funds appropriated for it (even if Mexico were to agree to pay for it).

The House has passed a version of the health care bill, but the Senate has not yet reached an agreement on a version of its own. It postponed a vote that had been scheduled just before the July 4 recess, and it's not yet evident that Senate Republicans will be able to settle on a plan that 50 of them can agree upon, which is the number they'll need for passage. Should they pass a bill, it would also have to be reconciled with the House version passed in May.

The tax legislation was supposed to follow the passage of the health care bill, and the White House has said it expects to have a bill before Congress by early September.

As for Mr. Trump's oft-mentioned southern border wall, Congress did not include money for the wall it its 2017 budget, and it remains to be seenwhether the wall will ever be funded.

The largest number of bills Mr. Trump has signed -- 15 -- roll back Obama administration regulations.

Here's a list of the bills signed by the president, courtesy of CBS News' in-house presidential tracker, White House correspondent Mark Knoller. The bill text is from Congress.gov.:

1) Jan. 20, 2017: In the Capitol after his swearing-in, the president signed a bill to waive a restriction that would have kept Gen. James Mattis, (USMC ret) from serve as Secretary of Defense. The law prohibits former military personnel from serving as defense secretary within seven years of retirement. Mattis retired in 2013.

2) Jan. 20, 2017: H.R.72. This bill authorizes the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to obtain federal agency records required to discharge the GAO's duties (including audit, evaluation, and investigative duties), including through bringing civil actions to require an agency to produce a record. No provision of the Social Security Act shall be construed to limit, amend, or supersede the GAO's authority to: (1) obtain information or inspect records about an agency's duties, powers, activities, organization, or financial transactions; or (2) obtain other agency records that the GAO requires to discharge its duties.

3) Feb. 14, 2017: H. J. Res. 41: This joint resolution nullifies the "Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers" rule finalized by the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 27, 2016. (The rule, mandated under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, requires resource extraction issuers to disclose payments made to governments for the commercial development of oil, natural gas, or minerals.)

4) Feb. 16, 2017: H.J.Res 38: To repeal Obama Admin rule barring dumping of surface mining waste into streams.

5) Feb. 28, 2017: H.R.321 Inspiring the Next Space Pioneers, Innovators, Researchers, and Explorers (INSPIRE) Women Act. The bill directs NASA "to encourage women and girls to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), pursue careers in aerospace," by supporting NASA programs: NASA GIRLS and NASA BOYS, Aspire to Inspire, and Summer Institute in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Research.

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NASA video shows the launch of a Terrier-Improved Malemute suborbital sounding rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The rocket di...

6) Feb. 28, 2017: H.R.255 "Promoting Women in Entrepreneurship Act" authorizes the National Science Foundation" to encourage its entrepreneurial programs to recruit and support women to extend their focus beyond the laboratory and into the commercial world."

7) Feb. 28, 2017: H.J.Res. 40, "nullifies the Social Security Administration's rule implementing the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Improvement Amendments Act of 2007." The measure blocks an Obama Administration rule providing Social Security information for gun buyer background checks.

8) Feb. 28, 2017: H.R.609 designates the Department of Veterans Affairs health care center in Center Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania, as the "Abie Abraham VA Clinic".

9) Feb. 28, 2017: S.442 - National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017, the first NASA budget authorization in six years. The measure calls for a $19.5 billion budget for the agency for fiscal year 2017.

10) Feb 28, 2017: H.J. Res. 37: This joint resolution nullifies the rule finalized by the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on August 25, 2016, relating to revising the Federal Acquisition Regulation to implement Executive Order 13673 concerning contractor compliance with labor laws.

11) H.J. Res. 44: This joint resolution nullifies the rule finalized by the Department of the Interior on December 12, 2016, relating to revising regulations that establish the procedures used to prepare, revise, or amend land use plans pursuant to the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976.

12) H.J. Res. 57: This joint resolution nullifies the rule finalized by the Department of Education on November 29, 2016, relating to accountability and state plans under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

13) H.J. Res. 58: This joint resolution nullifies the "Teacher Preparation Issues" rule finalized by the Department of Education on October 31, 2016. The rule implements requirements related to assessing the quality of teacher preparation programs under title II (Teacher Quality Enhancement) of the Higher Education Act of 1965.

14) March 28, 2017 S. 305, the "Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017," which encourages the display of the U.S. flag on March 29, National Vietnam War Veterans Day.

15) March 31, 2017: H.J.Res. 42, which nullifies the Department of Labor's Federal-State Unemployment Compensation Program; Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 Provision on Establishing Appropriate Occupations for Drug Testing of Unemployment Compensation Applicants;

16) March 31, 2017: H.R. 1362, which designates the Department of Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinic in Pago Pago, American Samoa, the Faleomavaega Eni Fa'aua'a Hunkin VA Clinic; and

17) March 31, 2017: S.J.Res. 1, which approves the location of a memorial to commemorate and honor the members of the Armed Forces who served on active duty in support of Operation Desert Storm or Operation Desert Shield.

18) April 3, 2017: H.J.Res. 69, which nullifies the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service's final rule relating to non-subsistence takings of wildlife on National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska;

19) April 3, 2017: H.J.Res. 83: which nullifies the Department of Labor's rule titled Clarification of Employer's Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness; and

20) April 3, 2017: H.R. 1228, which provides for the appointment of members of the Board of Directors of the Office of Compliance to replace members whose terms expire during March and May of 2017; and

21) April 3, 2017: S.J.Res. 34, which nullifies the Federal Communications Commission's rule on privacy of customers of broadband and other telecommunications services.

22) April 13, 2017: H.J.Res. 67, which nullifies the Department of Labor's rule on Savings Arrangements Established by Qualified State Political Subdivisions for Non-Governmental Employees. This means that the bill rolls back the HHS regulation that barred states from blocking federal funds to family planning providers that perform abortions. They can now block those funds.

23) April 13, 2017: H.J.Res. 43, which nullifies the Department of Health and Human Services rule prohibiting recipients of Title X grants for the provision of family planning services from excluding a subgrantee from participating for reasons other than its ability to provide Title X services. This bill, along with H.J. Res. 67, were the 12th and 13th bills signed by President Trump to nullify regulations issued in the last months of the Obama administration.

24) April 18, 2017: H.R. 353, the "Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017," which reauthorizes and modifies the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's: (1) weather research and forecasting programs; and (2) tsunami detection, forecast, warning, research and mitigation programs.

25) April 19, 2017: S. 544, A bill to amend the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 to modify the termination date for the Veterans Choice Program, and for other purposes. Bill eliminates August 7 termination date of the Veterans Choice Program; to modify reimbursement and cost-recovery procedures for care provided under the Program; and to authorize the sharing of certain veterans' medical records with medical service providers outside the Department of Veterans Affairs.

26) April 19, 2017: S.J.Res. 30 reappoints Steve Case as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution;

27) April 19, 2017: S.J.Res. 35 appoints Michael Govan as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution; and

28) April 19, 2017: S.J.Res. 36 appoints Roger W. Ferguson as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.

29) April 28, 2017: H.J.Res. 99 is the continuing resolution to fund the government with appropriations for fiscal year 2017, and for other purposes.

30) May 05, 2017: H.R. 244: Spending bill to avert government shutdown. It provides fiscal year (FY) 2017 full-year appropriations through September 30, 2017, for all agencies except those covered by division A of the Continuing Appropriations and Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act 2017, and Zika Response and Preparedness Act (Public Law 114-223). Division A provided full-year funding through September 30, 2017, for projects and activities of the Federal Government included in the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017.

31) May 8, 2017: H.R. 534, the "U.S. Wants to Compete for a World Expo Act," which authorizes the Secretary of State to take such actions as necessary for the United States to rejoin the Bureau of International Expositions.

32) May 12, 2017: S. 496, which nullifies the rule issued by the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration entitled "Metropolitan Planning Organization Coordination and Planning Area Reform".

33) May 16, 2017: The "Modernizing Government Travel Act" requires the General Services Administration to prescribe regulations to provide for the reimbursement for the use of a transportation network company or innovative mobility technology company by any Federal employee traveling on official business.

34) May 17, 2017: H.J.Res. 66 nullifies the Department of Labor's rule on Savings Arrangements Established by States for Non-Governmental Employees.

35) June 2, 2017: The "Public Safety Officers' Benefits Improvement Act of 2017" was a bipartisan bill that would help speed which modifies eligibility requirements for the Public Safety Officers' Benefits (PSOB) program administered by the Department of Justice; and requires the Department to exercise due diligence, and transparency, to expeditiously adjudicate PSOB claims; and

36) June 2, 2017: The "American Law Enforcement Heroes Act of 2017" authorizes the Department of Justice to award community oriented policing services grants for the purpose of prioritizing the hiring and training of veterans as career law enforcement officers.

37) June 6, 2017: An act naming a federal building and U.S. courthouse the "Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and United States Courthouse."

38) June 6, 2017: The "DHS Stop Asset and Vehicle Excess Act or the DHS SAVE Act," which requires the Under Secretary for Management of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to oversee and manage vehicle fleets throughout DHS; and imposes new requirements on DHS components regarding the management of those fleets.

39) June 14, 2017: The "Follow the Rules Act," which gives whistleblower protections to federal employees who refuse to violate federal rules and regulations. A federal court had issued a ruling protecting federal workers from employer retaliation if they refused to violate federal law, but it did not apply the same safeguards for those who refuse to obey an order that would violate a rule or regulation.

40) June 23, 2017: The VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, which aims tomake it easier to fire bad employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and give more protection to employees who bring misconduct to light. It gives VA Secretary David Shulkin more authority to fire misbehaving or underperforming employees, shorten the appeals process for that firing, and prohibits employees from being paid while they pursue the appeals process. It also includes new protections againstretaliation for workerswho file complaints with the VA general counsel's office, and shortens the process for hiring new employees to fill a workforce shortage at the VA.

41) June 30, 2017: H.R. 1238, the "Securing our Agriculture and Food Act," requires the Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to carry out a program to coordinate DHS efforts related to defending the food, agriculture, and veterinary systems of the United States against terrorism and other threats.

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What are the bills Donald Trump has signed? - CBS News

For a minute there, things were looking up for President Donald Trump. By late last week,his approval rating was hovering around 40percent, which isn't great but marked an improvement for the former reality TV star. But then Trump spent the holiday weekend railing against the press andblasting off tweetstormsandthe president's approval rating took a plunge.

Gallup's tracking poll pegged Trump's approval at just 37 percent to start off July, while disapproval stood at 57 percent. Last week, Gallup found the president's approval rating had briefly climbedto 40 percent before the fall-off back into the 30s.

The Gallup poll interviewed 1,500 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Trump's 37 percent approval rating is dismal, especially for a president so early in his tenure, when the American peopletypically afford the office a grace period of sorts. Around this point in his first term, for instance, former President Barack Obama had a 60 percent approval rating.

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Things have gotten so bad for Trumpthat far more people support impeaching him than support the job he's doing in the Oval Office. A surveyin recent weeks from Public Policy Pollinga firm that does public surveys as well as polling for Democratic candidatesfound that 47 percent of voters supported impeaching Trump. Americans could,perhaps, feel that way because 49 percent believed the president had obstructed justice in the ongoing investigation into his ties to Russia, according to thePublic Policy Polling survey.

Even Trump's average approval rating is a long ways off from the support for his impeachment. The weighted average from data-focused website FiveThirtyEight pegged his approval rating at just 39.5 percent Monday, while 54.4 percent disapproved. The FiveThirtyEight average adjusts for polls' quality, recency, sample size and partisan lean.

Despite a dismal approval rating, it was more of the same from Trump Monday morning. He redoubled his efforts to trash the press, tweeting,"At some point the Fake News will be forced to discuss our great jobs numbers, strong economy, success with ISIS, the border & so much else!" This followed numerous anti-press tweets over the weekend, including a bizarre post with a video of himwrestling a person with a CNN logo instead of a head. (This doctored video was harvested froma Trumppro wrestling appearance.)

Meanwhile, calls for Trump's impeachment have surged. Dozens of marches against the president took place in towns across the country over the weekend, including one in Los Angeles. California RepresentativeBrad Sherman, a Democrat who has drafted articles of impeachment against the president, delivered remarks at the end of the march.

"We have to act now to protect our country from abuse of power and impulsive, ignorant incompetence," Sherman said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"Lock him up," the crowd chanted in response.

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Support for Donald Trump's Impeachment Is Way Higher Than His Latest Approval Rating - Newsweek