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The president, too, thinks this is all just a game.

By any normal metric, Sean Spicer has had a dismal run as Donald Trump's press secretary. Normally press secretaries try their best to never directly lie to the press, lest they lose credibility with the press. Sean Spicer literally lied about the size of Trump's inauguration crowd on the first day. Normally press secretaries attempt to avoid being the focus of a story, so that they can ensure that the president's agenda is getting attention. Sean Spicer regularly badgers (and again lies to) reporters to such an extent that Melissa McCarthy regularly performs as Spicer on SNL. Normally press secretaries don't compare people to Hitler, and if for some terrible misguided reason they do, they certainly don't have that comparison make the point that Hitler is less bad than someone else. Sean... Well, Sean did this:

So normally a president would consider all the things a press secretary has done wrong, especially if any of those things are Nazi-adjacent, and if the mistakes are big enough, he'd fire that person. Donald Trump? Well, according to a new report from The Washington Post, this is just another time when Donald Trump flies in the face of "normal."

During a small working lunch at the White House last month, the question of job security in President Trumps tumultuous White House came up, and one of the attendees wondered whether press secretary Sean Spicer might be the first to go.

The presidents response was swift and unequivocal. Im not firing Sean Spicer, he said, according to someone familiar with the encounter. That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in.

Trump even likened Spicers daily news briefings to a daytime soap opera, noting proudly that his press secretary attracted nearly as many viewers.

President Donald Trump doesn't necessarily like or dislike Sean's performance, y'know, in communicating the White House's strategies to the worldhe just thinks Spicer makes for good TV. Now, sure, that's great news for CNN head Jeff Zucker and his many "characters in a drama," but it's less great news for people who want the government to function. And speaking of the government running with all the efficiency and success of Trump Steak/Wine/Ice/Vodka/University, this anecdote from Newt Gingrich shows just how time in the West Wing is being spent:

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CNNs Jeff Zucker Thinks This Is All Just a Game

Gingrich added that sometimes after an appearance on Fox & Friends, hell have just left the studio and not even reached his car when his cellphone will ring: the president calling to tell him, That was good.

I write a couple blog posts a day for this website, and I don't have time to watch as much Fox & Friends as Donald Trump does. I just imagine that every briefing he has is like the couple on a date at a sports bar, where one person is looking over the other's shoulder, watching the TV when they're supposed to be hearing a story about how Karen was a nightmare at work. Only, in Trump's case, "Karen" is "Kim Jong-un" and "work" is "a potential nuclear war." To review: We have an uninformed boob in the White House spending all his time yelling at cable news and cheering because the male version of the Cathy comic strip that he hired to be his press secretary is getting a lot of eyeballs for whatever Hitler comment he's made today.

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Donald Trump Won't Fire Sean Spicer for the Dumbest, Trumpiest Reason Ever - GQ Magazine

Just before 7 am eastern time, Trump tweeted this:

But! Wait! There's a bunch of things wrong with this Trump tweet.

The most obvious is that the media didn't create the idea of the first 100 days as an important moment, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did. Roosevelt saw the first 100 days of his term in 1933 as an absolutely essential moment to re-build momentum and optimism in a country that was still reeling from the Great Depression. He helped pass 15 major pieces of legislation through a willing Congress.

Now, onto the other problems with Trump's tweet.

If you recall the 2016 campaign, one of Trump's central arguments during it was that the nation's capitol was horribly run by incompetent people. That if you elected someone who knew their way around a boardroom, you'd see a rapid improvement in peoples' quality of life.

Nothing in Washington is that easy. There's a reason, for example, that six previous presidents failed to overhaul the nation's healthcare system and it cost the seventh, Barack Obama, control of the House and Senate to get it done. Big, complex issues are, well, big and complex. You don't just snap your fingers and get them done.

Then there's the specific construct of the 100 days as a critical way station by which to judge a president. Trump, today, says it is a pointless media construct that henever bought into.

"On Nov. 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our country, secure our communities and honesty to our government. This is my pledge to you. And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a government of, by and for the people. And importantly, we will make America great again. Believe me."

"President Donald Trump has far more than three years left in his first term. But inside his pressure cooker of a White House, aides and advisers are sweating the next three weeks....The date, April 29, hangs over the West Wing like the sword of Damocles as the unofficial deadline to find its footing or else."

So, President Trump was for the 100 days mark mattering before he was against it. It doesn't matter now and it's a media creation now because the report cards on Trump's first 100 days aren't so rosy. You can bet that if Trump was getting good marks for his first 100 days in office, this marker would be a critical and essential judgment on his presidency.

Go here to read the rest:
Donald Trump just pulled a major flip-flop on his first 100 days in office - CNN

By Matthew Algeo By Matthew Algeo April 21 at 7:36 PM

In his first 88 days in office, President Trump went golfing 14 times an average of once every 6.3 days. At that rate, hell end up golfing far more frequently than President Barack Obama, who golfed once every 9.5 days and whom Trump often criticized for spending too much time on the links.

Golf is always a risky undertaking for a president. Trump might want to consider the case of the first golfing president: William Howard Taft, with whom Trump shares some striking similarities.

By his own admission, Taft was addicted to golf. He played so often during the 1908 presidential campaign that his predecessor and political mentor, Theodore Roosevelt, urged him to give up the game. Roosevelt, who despised golf, told Taft he had received literally hundreds of letters from people complaining about Taft playing a rich mans game.

But Taft was unrepentant and disputed the notion that golf was a rich mans pursuit, writing: I know that there is nothing more democratic than golf; that there is nothing which furnishes a greater test of character and self-restraint, nothing which puts one more on an equality with ones fellows, or, I may say, puts one lower than ones fellows, than the game of golf.

Taft was a bad golfer he rarely broke 100 but his love of the game was absolute. He called it a splendid form of exercise. Taft, who was famously obese, credited the game for putting him in the splendid physical condition necessary for the strenuous work of the campaign.

The election results seemed to vindicate Taft: He soundly defeated the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan. He also continued to golf throughout his presidency, frequently slipping out of the White House to sneak in an afternoon round at the Chevy Chase Club. In August 1909, he golfed on 20 of the months 31days. Taft, whod been reluctant to run for president in the first place, began to seem disengaged from the job.

As a president, a popular joke went, Taft is an excellent golfer.

Like Trump, Taft was confronted by a great schism within the Republican Party. Roosevelt came to believe that Taft was too conservative and decided to challenge him for the 1912Republican nomination. This ended the two mens long friendship.

That summer, Roosevelt went to the Republican convention in Chicago to lobby delegates while Taft stayed back in Washington and golfed at Chevy Chase. Taft still won the nomination, but his seeming indifference was widely criticized. President Taft played golf while the Republican party was being roasted and Nero of old fiddled while Rome burned, a Seattle newspaper noted. Is this history repeating itself?

Roosevelt, of course, ran as a third-party candidate in the 1912 election against Taft and the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson. Tafts golfing became a campaign issue. One of Roosevelts surrogates, Kansas Gov. Walter Stubbs, claimed that Taft preferred golf to work. The Wichita Beacon, a pro-Roosevelt newspaper, observed: It is said that Taft plays better golf than politics. And he generally loses at golf.

Still, Taft refused to give up the game he loved. He would golf, even if it cost him votes. Between July 4 and Election Day, a span of 125days, he golfed at least 34 times once every 3.6 days. The game helped Taft cope with the pressure of the campaign, as well as the collapse of his friendship with Roosevelt.

Like Trump, Taft was fanatical about golf. Like Trump, he seemed to take little joy in the presidency and find relief on the links. Like Trump, he was overweight yet extolled the physical benefits of the game. Like Trump, he was confronted by a recalcitrant faction within his party.

Wilson was elected president on Nov. 5, 1912. Roosevelt finished second.

Taft came in third, winning just two states (Utah and Vermont). The next morning, he got up early and went golfing.

See the original post:
The president who golfed too much (it's not Donald Trump) - Washington Post

New York Times

Paris, Donald Trump, General Motors: Your Friday Briefing New York Times The 11 French presidential candidates spoke on television on Thursday night. They were told of the gun attack in Paris during the program. Credit Pool photo by Martin Bureau. (Want to get this briefing by email? Here's the sign-up.) Good morning.

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Paris, Donald Trump, General Motors: Your Friday Briefing - New York Times

Except, not really.

Here's what we actually know about attempts to resuscitate the health care law that failed to even make it to a floor vote in the GOP-controlled House last month:

2. The changes being discussed involve the curtailing or, at the least, re-jiggering of one of the most popular elements of Obamacare: Prohibiting insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.

3. Outside of a very small group of negotiators, the new and improved bill is a mystery to members of Congress who are expected to be briefed on it over the weekend.

4. Congress must pass a government funding bill next week or watch the government shut down -- a result that would be a catastrophe for Republicans in power.

None -- and I mean NONE -- of those things would lead me or any veteran Congress-watcher to conclude that Trump's optimism about the "really, really good" plan that that "people are liking" a lot is based in anything close to political reality.

I get what Trump is up to here. He's trying to fake it until he makes it. If I say the bill is getting way better and that lots of people like it, I'll create a self-fulfilling prophecy and build some actual momentum for the legislation when Congress comes back next week.

It's not the worst strategy and it's born, of course, from Trump's experience as a developer and reality TV star. Create your own reality and then exert pressure to bend other people to believe it. And, if it doesn't work, declare victory and move on.

The problem for Trump is that Congress doesn't work like a business you are the boss of or a reality TV show that, um, you are the boss of. The House is essentially comprised of 435 small businessmen and women, all of whom view themselves as the boss of their own fiefdoms.

Faking it until you make it doesn't work on this crowd. Especially when, like Trump, your approval ratings are mired in the low 40s -- and are even lower in many of the country's swing districts where Republicans need to win to hold onto their House majority in 2018.

Trump simply lacks the political leverage at the moment to turn his happy talk into actual results. No member of Congress worried about their chances of winning next November is going to take a rushed vote on a health care bill they have barely even seen but that fiddles with the pre-existing condition clause -- or any of the other popular elements of Obamacare.

Trump may declare victory no matter what happens in Congress next week. But that won't change the fact that simply saying the health care bill is "better and better and better" doesn't make it true.

Excerpt from:
Donald Trump's 'fake it until you make it' strategy on healthcare won't work - CNN