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By backing Paul Ryans health-care bill, Donald Trump has staked his Presidency on a proposal that would hurt many of his own supporters.CreditPHOTOGRAPH BY DINA LITOVSKY / REDUX

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House Majority Leader, went on Sean Hannitys show on Thursday night and tried to talk up the awful health-care bill that his party had just rushed through two committees. His message was aimed at the ultra-conservative groups, such as the Freedom Caucus and Heritage Action for America, that have come out strongly against the proposed legislation. McCarthy didnt try to claim that the bill would make health care more affordable or widely available. Instead, he defended its conservative bona fides, twice pointing out that it would repeal all the taxes that were introduced under the Affordable Care Acttaxes that mainly hit the one per cent.

Hannity, who is one of President Trumps biggest boosters, didnt hide his loyalties or his concern about the political firestorm that the bill has set off. This has to work: there is no option here, he said at one point. Later, he warned, As soon as it passes, you own it.

Intentionally or not, Hannity summed up the political dilemma facing Trump and his Administration. The White House has embraced Paul Ryans handiworkthe House Speaker is the bills top backerand they are now trying together to persuade the full House and the Senate to vote for at least some version of it. But if the bill does pass and Trump signs it into law, what happens then? The health-care industry will be thrown into turmoil; many millions of Americans will lose their coverage; many others, including a lot of Trump voters (particularly elderly ones), will see their premiums rise sharply; and Trump will risk being just as closely associated withTrumpcare as Barack Obama was with Obamacare.

Two questions arise: Why did Ryan and his colleagues propose such a lemon? And why did Trump agree to throw his backing behind it?

The first question is easier to answer. For seven years, promising to get rid of Obamacare has been a rallying cry for Republicans on Capitol Hillone supported by both Party leaders and activists, as well as by big donors, such as the Koch brothers. It was inevitable that, if the G.O.P. ever took power, it would move to fulfill this pledge, despite the human costs of doing so.

What wasnt anticipated was that the Republican leadership would run into hostility from the right. But that, too, is explainable. After Novembers election, Ryan and his colleagues were forced to face the reality that fully repealing the A.C.A. would require sixty votes in the Senate, which wasnt achievable. Many of the things that ultra-conservatives see as shortcomings in the bill now being consideredsuch as the retention of rules dictating what sorts of policies insurers can offerare in there to make sure that the Senate can pass the bill as part of the budget-reconciliation process, which requires just fifty-one votes. As McCarthy explained to Hannity, The challenge is the process of how we have to do this.

The more interesting question is why Trump would stake his credibility on such a deeply regressive, and potentially unpopular, proposal.During the campaign, he frequently promised to repeal Obamacarebut it wasnt one of his main issues. Clamping down on immigration, embracing economic protectionism, rebuilding infrastructure, and blowing a raspberry at the Washington establishment were much more central to his platform.

Early in the campaign, in fact, Trump praised socialized medicine, and promised to provide everybody with health care. As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland, he said in August, 2015, during the first Republican debate. A month later, he told 60 Minutes, I am going to take care of everybody. I dont care if it costs me votes or not. Everybodys going to be taken care of much better than theyre taken care of now.

Part of what is going on is that Trump needs a quick legislative success. He is keenly aware that, by this stage in his Presidency, Obama had signed a number of important bills, including a big stimulus package. Trump also badlyneeds to change the subject from Russia. It might sound crazy to suggest that a President would embrace a bill that could do him great harm in the long term just for a few days respite, but these are crazy times.If nothing else, the political furor surrounding the House G.O.P. proposal has eclipsed the headlines about Trump claiming that Obama wiretapped him. For much of this week, Trump has ducked out of sight, letting Ryan and his bill take the spotlight.

Thats not the only way the Russian story may have played into this. As the pressure grows for a proper independent probe of Trumps ties to Moscow, he must retain the support of the G.O.P. leadership, which has the power to block such an investigation. It has long been clear that the relationship between the Republican Party and Trump is based on a quid pro quo, at least tacitly: in return for dismissing concerns about his authoritarianism, self-dealing, and Russophilia, the Party gets to enact some of the soak-the-poor policies it has long been promoting. For a time, it seemed like Trump was the senior partner in this arrangement. But now Republicans like Ryan have more leverage, and Trump has more of an incentive to go along with them.

Still, even if he had more leeway to speak out against the House G.O.P. bill, is there any reason to think he would? The thing always to remember about Trumpand this week has merely confirmed itis that he is a sham populist. A sham authoritarian populist, even.

Going back tolate-nineteenth-century Germany, many of the most successful authoritarian populists have expanded the social safety net. Otto von Bismarck, the first Chancellor, introduced health insurance, accident insurance, and old-age pensions. The actual complaint of the worker is the insecurity of his existence, he said in 1884. He is unsure if he will always have work, he is unsure if he will always be healthy, and he can predict that he will reach old age and be unable to work.

During the twentieth century, Argentinas Juan Pern, Malaysias Tunku Abdul Rahman,and Singapores Lee Kuan Yew were among the authoritarian leaders who followed Bismarcks example. Today, if you look at the election platform of Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French National Front, you see something similar. Like Trump, Le Pen is a nativist, a protectionist, and an Islamophobe. But she is not proposing to dismantle any of the many social benefits that the French state provides. Rather, she says she will expand child-support payments and reduce the retirement age to sixty.

Trump, on the other hand, has little to offer ordinary Americans except protectionist rhetoric and anti-immigrant measures. Before moving to gut Obamacare, he at least could have tried to bolster his populist credentials by passing a job-creating infrastructure bill or a middle-class tax cut. Instead, hes staked his Presidency on a proposal that would hurt many of his supporters, slash Medicaid, undermine the finances of Medicare, and benefit the donor class. Thats not populism: its the reverse of it. And it might be a political disaster in the making.

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Exposed: Donald Trump's Sham Populism - The New Yorker

BEDMINSTER, N.J. In rural New Jersey, the presidents business has proposed an unusual real estate project.

It wants to build a cemetery.

Or maybe not. Or maybe two.

According to plans filed with local and state authorities, the Trump Organization has proposed to build a pair of graveyards at the site of its tony Trump National Golf Club Bedminster course.

One would be small: 10 plots overlooking the first hole. It was intended or so they said for Trump and his family. Mr. Trump ... specifically chose this property for his final resting place as it is his favorite property, his company wrote in a filing with the state in 2014.

The other proposed cemetery would have 284 lots for sale to the public. There, buyers could pay for a kind of eternal membership in Trumps club even if it isnt clear Trump himself would ever join them.

Those are the plans.

But Trump has been talking about cemeteries here for 10years and he has shown the same unpredictable decision-making style about his death that he has about so many things in his life. His plans have gone through at least five major overhauls. Trump has reconsidered his own burial spot at least twice.

Local officials were left puzzling, wondering what angle Trump was playing.

Did the worlds most famous Manhattanite really want to be buried in nowheresville New Jersey?

If not ... well, why in the world was he pretending like he did?

It never made any sense to me, said Robert Holtaway, a longtime town official who heard Trumps plans on the Bedminster Land Use Board. But, he said, we dont question motives. Were there as a land-use board.

The two latest cemetery plans have now both been approved by local officials. But construction has not begun on either one. The question of how to proceed or whether to proceed is now left to Trumps sons Eric and Donald Jr., who have taken day-to-day control of the Trump Organization.

Both Eric Trump and a Trump Organization spokeswoman declined to comment about what they planned to do.

President Trump already has a family burial plot: His parents and his brother Fred are buried together at All Faiths Cemetery in Queens.

So it was a surprise, back in 2007, when Trump announced he wanted a mausoleum for himself in New Jersey.

Its never something you like to think about, but it makes sense, Trump told the New York Post. He was 60years old at the time. This is such beautiful land, and Bedminster is one of the richest places in the country.

[Do President Trumps business conflicts violate the Constitution?]

The plan was big: 19 feet high. Stone. Obelisks. Set smack in the middle of the golf course. In Bedminster a wealthy horse-country town 43miles west of New York City officials had some concerns about hosting a reality TV stars tomb. The huge structure would seem garish, out of place. And there were ongoing worries that the spot might become an attractive nuisance, tempting curiosity-seekers to trespass on club grounds.

Trump offered a concession.

The tomb would be versatile.

It could also be a festive wedding ... tomb.

Were planning a mausoleum/chapel, Trump said, according to a news report from the time.

That didnt do it.

Give me a break. Give me a break, Holtaway, the town official, remembered thinking. Why would anyone ever get married in a building with no windows?

Trump withdrew the plan to be buried in New Jersey. But five years later, he was back with another one. Now, the mausoleum was out but, instead, he had a plan to build a large cemetery with more than 1,000 graves, including one for him.

The idea, apparently, was that Trumps golf-club members would buy the other plots, seizing the chance at eternal membership.

Its one thing to be buried in a typical cemetery, said Ed Russo, a consultant who represented Trump here. But its another if youre buried alongside the fifth fairway of Trump National.

The town was, again, skeptical. So Trump whittled it down to just 10 graves, enough for himself and his family members.

Which family members, exactly?

Only the good Trumps, Russo said, according to a video of the town land-use board. He did not elaborate.

The town approved.

The state approved, granting a cemetery license in late 2014.

Then Trump changed his mind.

Russo told the town that Trump might want to be buried somewhere in Florida, after all. Trump lived part time at his Mar-a-Lago Club before his election. (And, now, after the election as well.)

Then, with approval for the small cemetery in hand, Trump came back with a new plan, for a bigger cemetery. This time, the plan was for 284 graves. The cemetery would be run by a nonprofit organization, and Trumps golf course would handle maintenance, grass-cutting and grave-digging.

This plan, on the surface, made little sense.

For one thing, it would be a very poor way to make money.

The cemetery business is bad in New Jersey, because the land is expensive, plots sell for cheap and cremation is stealing their customers.

You need volume to succeed. And the volume at Trumps cemetery would be very low.

Trumps cemetery with people selected by a kind of membership committee would handle just one to two burials per year, officials said. Cemetery plots in New Jersey cost, at most, a few thousand dollars each. The money, such as it was, would go to the nonprofit company.

But maybe the point wasnt to make money. Could this whole thing have been a scheme to reduce the Trump Organizations real estate taxes? After all, nonprofit cemeteries pay no taxes on their land.

Thats possible, experts said.

But, in this case, the savings would hardly be worth the trouble. Thats because Trump had already found a way to lower his taxes on that wooded, largely unused parcel. He had persuaded the township to declare it a farm, because some trees on the site are turned into mulch. Because of pro-farmer tax policies, Trumps company pays just $16.31 per year in taxes on the parcel, which he bought for $461,000.

Its always been my suspicion that theres something we dont know about the explanation behind the seemingly inexplicable cemetery plan, said Bedminster land-use board member Nick Strakhov. So why were they doing it?

I did not ask, Strakhov said. Its an obvious question.

The land use board approved unanimously, after some inconclusive quizzing (Strakhov had to be absent and didnt vote).

Now, the Trump Organization still needs to apply for state approval for this larger, public cemetery.

And it still needs to settle the larger question: Does President Trump still want to be buried in New Jersey? Other presidents have chosen to be buried at their presidential libraries. Trump, like any president, also has the option of Arlington National Cemetery.

A White House spokeswoman said she did not know of any public statements by Trump on the subject.

Seeking answers, The Washington Post reached Russo, the consultant who had spent years as the point person for Trumps cemetery plans. Russo has written a book about his work with Trump on various land-use projects. It is called Donald J. Trump, An Environmental Hero.

It was a brief call. Russo said he was driving, and that he might call back.

The Post tried to get in one quick question. Were the cemetery plans still on?

Russo laughed. Pretty funny, he said. I have to drive here. So I will do that.

He did not call back.

Jonathan OConnell contributed to this report.

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The mystery of Donald Trump and the New Jersey cemetery - Washington Post

Believe it or not, President Trump has been in office for 50 days. The White House released a list of his accomplishments. We provided a reality check. USA TODAY

While candidate Trump questioned the validity of the monthly reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the new president welcomed Friday's better-than-expected report showing that the economy added 235,000 jobs last month.

"I talked to the president prior to this and he said to quote him very clearly," Trump spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters. "'They may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now.'"

Spicer and Trump both tweeted about the jobs report shortly after it was released an apparent violation of a federal rule that forbids public officials from commenting within an hour of the release.

Spicer said the rule was designed to address potential market fluctuations based on an analysis of the jobs numbers.

"I apologize if we're a little excited," Spicer said.

Trump's tweet: aretweet of the Drudge Report's proclamation of "GREAT AGAIN."

A screenshot of President Trump's retweet on March 10, 2017(Photo: Twitter)

Spicer's tweet:

They weren't alone in their excitement.

Contributing: Jessica Estepa

Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2murUXr

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Donald Trump now likes jobs reports - USA TODAY

This years Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which took place the weekend before last, provided a window into how Donald Trump is handling the religious right, which has had setbacks during the Obama era, as LGBTQ rights surged. I chatted with quite a few social conservatives in the crowd, and last week I published my interviewwith Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at the notoriously anti-LGBTQ Family Research Council (FRC) who also served as the domestic policy chair of Donald Trumps transition team.

The Blackwell interview was quite illuminating. He was candid about how a religious freedom executive order, which would allow for discrimination against LGBT people and others, was still coming from the presidents desk, despite the Trump administration playing it down after a draft had leaked last month. Blackwell, former Ohio Secretary of State, is a devout warrior among evangelical crusaders. Hes passionate and forthright in his beliefs and enjoys discussing them.

I had interviewed Blackwell in 2008 at the GOP convention in a thirty-minute discussion in which he defended his claim that homosexuality is comparable to arson and kleptomania, because it is, in his view, a compulsion that can be contained, repressed or changed, though thats in complete opposition to the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and just about every other authority on the subject. Blackwell seemed to imply, against all scientific evidence, that anyone could succumb to this compulsion hence the religious right claim that homosexuality is a choice even including himself.

Ive never had to make the choice because Ive never had the urge to be other than a heterosexual, Blackwell had told me. But if in fact I had the urge to be something else I could have in fact suppressed that urge.

People like Blackwell dont change their minds easily about these things. And here he is now, newly emboldened, having served on Trumps transition team and readying for the anticipated religious freedom order, working for a group, the Family Research Council (FRC), that is to the Trump administration what Jerry Falwells Moral Majority was to the Reagan administration in the 80s.

Tony Perkins, president of FRC, has steadfastly supported Trump and had driven evangelicals to turn out to vote for him by a large percentage, just as Falwell did for Ronald Reaganin 1980 and 1984. While both Reagan and Trump were divorced celebrities who came out of decadent Hollywood and New York respectively before entering politics, theyve each been viewed as speaking the language of evangelical Christians, presenting themselves as unlikely but committed fighters for social conservatives.

The president said when he was a candidate that there is a war on Christianity in America, the former head of FRCs Center for Religious Liberty, Ken Klukowski, told me at CPAC, regarding Trump. And as someone who is a religious liberty lawyer who frequently represents the evangelical and Catholic communities in this country, thats exactly the sort of language that most people in that situation use. There has been unprecedented hostility against people of devout faiths in recent years. So the problem is there. Its been clearly defined. The president is aware of it.

During the 1980 election campaign, meeting with evangelical church leaders in Dallas, Reagan cemented his relationship with evangelical voters, famously saying, I know you cant endorse me, But . . . I want you to know that I endorse you.

Its a strikingly similar statement to many of Trumps promises to evangelical leaders: Short on details, big on commitment and promise. At the time of Reagans election, evangelicals believed they were were in the wilderness and saw a country in moral decay in which tradition was uprooted, coming off of the 60s and 70s civil rights and liberation movements for women, people of color and gays.

Many evangelical leaders had believed they were betrayed by President Jimmy Carter, an evangelical himself. He was pilloried by social conservatives for supporting abortion rights and not referencing God in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1980 (in contrast to Reagan who did so at the Republican National Convention). In that context, the fact that someone like Reagan was even speaking up for evangelicals and promising to push their agenda including against abortion was enough to galvanize them.

Evangelicals have similarly expressed being in the wilderness during the Obama era, a period in which they experienced major defeats as LGBT rights surged forward with Obamas repeal of dont ask, dont tell and at the Supreme Court with marriage equality. Like Reagan, Trump not only held himself out as someone whod fight to take them back to a long lost era Make America great again! but also presented himself as a leader taking on enemies of religious freedom around the world. For Reagan, it was the evil empire of the Soviet Union, presented as an existential threat (ironic, given Trumps current view of Russia), and for Trump it is Muslims, whom he portrays as a evil religious and existential threat. Both men augmented their fight for evangelicals against immorality within the country with battles against those outside the country who are perceived as threatening to religious liberty.

So, with Trump using the Reagan playbook, here is how things will go down. He will string them along with a lot of flowery statements, including biblical references, and make grand promises, such as allowing them to have a tax exemption while engaging in political activity repealing the Johnson Amendment in the U.S. tax code which will likely never happen. Hell hope that nominating a judicial originalist like Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court will satisfy them. And hell give them morsels here and there, meant to placate them, but they cant be too radical since that could cause too much outrage in the larger electorate.

Perhaps most consequentially, Trump wont speak up or devote resources to issues or crises that arise affecting LGBTQ people as the AIDS epidemic did in a catastrophic way in the 80s, ignored by Reagan until it was out of control. Silence and ignorance allowing people to literally be harmed, suffer or die can go a long way at satisfying those who hate us. Weve already seen this with the Trump administrations decision not to continue defending a court challenge by several states against Obama administration guidelines to protect transgender students and then rescinding the guidelines entirely.

But, while at first being thankful that Trump is even paying attention to them, evangelical leaders will soon become vocal and demanding, as they did with Reagan. (This is already starting to happen).

The big difference thirty years later, however, is the organization and energy of the those of us who fight for equality. And that brings me back to CPAC. Blackwell spoke about the religious freedom order which would allow for discrimination against LGBTQ people as being redrafted to stand up to judicial scrutiny. But its also likely being re-written to withstand public scrutiny too. Last months leaked draft of the order and we should be thankful for whistleblowers who are revealing some of the horrific plans the Trump administration has under wraps caused an uproar in the media and among the public that forced the Trump administration into retreat, even if temporarily.

After the Muslim ban fiasco, the Trump team surely didnt want another disaster, even as religious groups continue to pressure Trump for the executive order. Both situations showed how public outcry and the courts could help keep the administration in check, even as its made a second attempt on the Muslim ban (if a weakened version). LGBT rights have come into the mainstream, unlike in the 80s when queers were almost universally feared and shunned.

Religious conservatives will become louder, but theres only so far that that Reagan playbook can take Trump today. He can be pushed back, and stopped, if we stand firm and organize. Thats especially true if LGBTQ activists dont begin to compromise on rights a strategy some LGBT activists have actually suggested which would be an enormous trap.

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Donald Trump And The Reagan Playbook On LGBTQ Rights - Huffington Post

The Trump-normalizing going on now has long since passed the rationalizing that were happening mid-campaign.CreditPHOTOGRAPH BY TY WRIGHT / GETTY

Thats crazy! That is the instant, intuitive, and, one might think, only possible response of a sane person to a weeks worth of tweets from President Donald Trump. Only crazy people make reckless charges, without any plausible foundation, and then simply shrug and sit on them. Take one recent example: How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy! This charge is mindboggling, not least for being self-exploding. For Obama to have wiretapped Trump (put aside that thats not, technically speaking, what is done any longer; the President may have been moved by vague memories of how the feds brought down John Gotti), Obama would have needed his own private team of plumbers to break into, or hack the systems of, Trump Tower. And no one in his right mind suggests that Obama ever had such a team. The most obvious alternative would be that it was done by the F.B.I., in response to a court order spurred by genuine suspicion of grave wrongdoing. In that scenario, Trump would be asserting that someone in the Department of Justice had grounds for such suspicion, sufficient to convince a judge. But he couldnt possibly have intended to say that. All this suggests that he may not be capable of the normal logic of normal people, of any kind of political bent. And that, folks, would be crazy.

Of course, we are quickly counselled never to say this, in part because calling Trump crazy would be, in plain English, an insult to crazy people. Diagnosis should be left to those with expertise in it; mental illness is not a category to be used casually to describe those whose behavior we find squalid or even abhorrent. And calling people crazy, to take it to the next dimension, is what totalitarian societies do when they want to lock dissidents away.

Understood. But it is still important, for the sake of sanity, to assert that there is a meaningful sense of the word crazy that doesnt demand medical diagnosis. It arises, instead, from an intelligent description of the normal workings of human minds and human relationships. And its important to preserve that sense for common usage, because we often need to distinguish between normal people we disagree with or even think may be actively doing wrongsay, taking health insurance away from millions of people in blind pursuit of an ideological passionand people who are dangerous because they have passed beyond the ability to actively reason with evidence about the world.

When Patsy Cline sings about being crazy for loving you, it doesnt mean that shes clinically diagnosable, and we would be as blind as, well, the guy in the song is to warn others from calling her so. It means that her love has robbed her (or himWillie Nelson wrote the song) of all rationality. Its crazy to be in love with the object of the song because he (or she) isnt capable of reciprocating that love.It is less than a diagnosis, but is more than a metaphor. When it happens in real life, we sound more impatient, but we use the same language: Youre crazy to go on texting that guy/girl after everything he/she has put you through. (And then they always do. And then we sigh.)

Crazy lovers are pitiful, or pathetic, or, often enough, poignant figures. Crazy politicians are not. The Trump-normalizing going on now has long since passed the practice we might call rationalizing up to the closest reasonable position, which was happening mid-campaign. That was when his talk of a border wall paid for by Mexico was imagined as, really, a mere reinforced fence, while a Muslim ban became a more watchful eye on refugees, just as sexual predation became locker-room talk. The normalizing that goes on now is the normalizing that one sees in old tales of crazy monarchs making pronouncements that everyone, including those closest to the ruler, knows are pure fantasy, unhinged from realitythree million illegal voters and the evil conspiracy of Barack Obamabut are talked around or through or about or down or all around until the mad king is placated, for a moment.

One theory, of course, has it that this is a strategic form of crazy, a way of distracting the public from Trumps circles Russian connections or the disastrous dismantling of Obamacare. But something similar happens with all the patent untruths Trump tells. Just as the media have a hard time calling crazy things crazy, we are also now reluctant to call lies, lies, even when it doesnt seem that theres anything else youcancall them. Again, the rationale is not ridiculous: a lie is more grave than an untruth, which can be merely a mistaken conviction, and it implies conscious intention to deceive rather than inward-turning self-deception. But, really, the word lie isnt an accusation when it comes to things like the Obama wiretapping; its a description. The alternative, of course, is to believe that extravagantly obvious untruths are sincerely held, in which case they could only be called crazy.

The great enablers in this business are not so much members of the media, who struggle every day between familiar practices and wild times, but the Republican representatives and senators who, by shrugging off the loony on a daily basis, do more than anyone else to make it normal. And here, perhaps, lies a link too easily overlooked. Its not just a tribal reflex on the part of the Republicans to defend a President of the same party; its a necessity of the numbers. (There were three million more votes for the Democratic candidate for President and approximately six million more votes for Democrats in Senate racesyes, it was designed to be unjust, but that does not make it less unjustand this was, of course, the second time in five elections that the Presidential candidate who won the most votes was denied the office, a previously unprecedented thing.) As Timothy Snyder explains in his fine and frightening recent pamphlet On Tyranny, a minorityparty now has near-total power and is therefore understandably frightened of awakening the actual will of the people. Snyder writes, The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular and several that are genuinely unpopularand thus must either fear democracy or weaken it. This is a toxic combination: a screw-loose leader ready to say anything, an unpopular party that wants to keep him from being exposed for what he iseven as the door swings wildly on whatevers left of its hingesfor fear of having its policies exposed for what they are. Its, well, crazy. And where we are.

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The Words We Use About Donald Trump - The New Yorker