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Donald Trump Says 'Negative Polls Are Fake News' New York Times Opposition to President Trump's travel restrictions on certain countries was mounting on Monday, but Mr. Trump remained defiant and unbowed. Mr. Trump turned to Twitter early Monday and began challenging polls that showed his travel order was not ... Donald Trump denounces negative polls, coverage as fake newsSalon Donald Trump says 'any negative polls are fake news'The Independent all 33 news articles »

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Donald Trump Says 'Negative Polls Are Fake News' - New York Times

Its widely known that 19 th Century Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz once said, Poor Mexico: So far from God; so close to the United States. Its less well-known that his predecessor, Sebastin Lerdo de Tejada, looked at the stretch of land between the two countries and said, Between the strong and the weak, the desert. There was little doubt who was who.

Starting with Franklin Roosevelt, U.S. presidents have worked to heal those historical grievances and build a closer, more mature partnership. But now, President Donald Trump's talk of sending in troops to deal with "bad hombres;" building a wall between our countries; imposing a 20% border tax, and re-negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement in a way that helps the U.S. while hurting Mexico threaten to return us to the bad old days. This stance won't just hurt America economically. If we humiliate Mexico, a proud and important country, we will undo years of progress; stoke anti-American sentiment; and possibly turn a friend into an enemy making both countries less secure.

I say this as an American citizen who has seen the relationship from both sides of the border. As an impulsive young college student on the G.I. Bill in the early 1950s, I was inspired by the movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre to move to Mexico in search of gold. Mexicans joked that I was the only American who'd ever swam the wrong way across the Rio Grande.

I never did find gold but I did find manganese. It helped me build a global mining business. My customers included the U.S. government, which needed our manganese for its strategic stockpile. For decades, I lived and worked among some of the most famous artists and intellectuals in Mexico, along with old miners, prospectors, and working-class Mexicans of all backgrounds. What I found were people willing to work hard to create a stronger and more prosperous future for their country.

After signing NAFTA in 1993, America's partnership with Mexico our third-largest trading partner helped build a nation where its citizens don't have to go north to have a future. Contrary to Trumps alternative facts, illegal immigration from Mexico has been falling since 2009, as a Washington Post article recently reported. Mexico and the U.S. have worked to share intelligence and fight drug trafficking and transnational crime. The U.S. has also relied on Mexico to stop between 200,000 and 300,000 undocumented immigrants from entering Central and South America before they ever reach the U.S. border.

By putting Mexico in the crosshairs, Trump threatens to halt all of that progress. One idea that Trump is considering is a 20% border tariff against imports from Mexico to pay for a southern wall. As many wonder how the tariff could get passed along to U.S. consumers in the form of more expensive items in the grocery store and at Wal-Mart , U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham may have captured the sentiment best in a recent tweet . "Simply put, any policy proposal which drives up costs of Corona, tequila, or margaritas is a big-time bad idea. Mucho sad."

But there's far more at stake in our relationship with Mexico. Having a prosperous, peaceful, and friendly neighbor along our 1,900-mile southern border is vital to Americas national security. What difference does it make when a neighbor is hostile and unstable? Just ask South Korea.

The stronger Mexico is economically, the less incentive there is for residents to cross the border, and the more resources Mexico has to invest in security, development, and institutions all of which benefit the U.S. The answer to making America great again is not to make Mexico more poor. President Trump's position has already driven the peso to a record low against the U.S. dollar. More isolation could tank Mexico's economy ironically, creating precisely the conditions that could drive undocumented immigration through the roof.

In just about two weeks as president, Trump has managed to bring old resentments back. His threat to send the U.S. army to Mexico reminded me of an experience I had in the central Mexican village of Charcas in the mid-1960s. With my business more established, I had helped build a school there and visited a classroom one day, when I saw a map of North America in which the U.S. looked much smaller. Meanwhile, Mexico stretched over the entire American West. As I gazed in wonder, a little girl looked up and asked: "Seor Weiss, why did you steal half our country?"

She was talking about the half Mexico had lost in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that had ended the Mexican-American War in 1848, which the map represented. That legacy is a big part of why Mexico has often had a difficult relationship to say the least with its powerful neighbor.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox says Trump represents the return to that time of "the ugly American" and the "hated gringo." Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has instituted difficult but crucial reforms supported by the U.S., has seen his approval ratings essentially tank after meeting with Trump. Meanwhile, populist and extreme left-winger Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has been called Mexico's Trump, is gaining ground for the 2018 presidential elections.

What can we do? I agree with The Economist's recent suggestion on how to handle a bully. Mexico should highlight its many positive contributions; try to influence Trump to re-negotiate rather than scrap NAFTA, and strengthen Mexico's domestic economy.

Mexico should also open regular channels with some of the Trump Administration's more practical officials like newly appointed U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis. In Mexico, U.S. Ambassador Roberta Jacobson a career diplomat should focus on public outreach to show that our president's disrespect does not represent the American people.

And for the rest of us in the U.S., we should all watch a 2004 film directed by Sergio Arau called " A Day Without a Mexican." It imagined what would happen in California if Mexicans suddenly disappeared from every job. The result was chaos. The film's message? We should appreciate what we have before it's gone.

To do otherwise wouldn't just be mucho sad but mucho dumb.

Stanley A. Weiss is a global mining executive and founder of Washington-based Business Executives for National Security. His memoir, "Being Dead is Bad for Business, will be published by Disruption Books on February 28, 2017.

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Hey Donald Trump: Making Mexico Go Broke Would Actually Be Mucho Dumb - Fortune

Lawyers for Washington state and Minnesota have told a federal appellate court that restoring President Donald Trump's ban on refugees and travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries would "unleash chaos again."

The filing with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco came early Monday after the White House said it expected the federal courts to reinstate the ban.

Washington and Minnesota said their underlying lawsuit was strong and a nationwide temporary restraining order was appropriate. If the appellate court reinstated Trump's ban the states said the "ruling would reinstitute those harms, separating families, stranding our university students and faculty, and barring travel."

The rapid-fire legal maneuvers by the two states were accompanied by briefs filed by the technology industry arguing that the travel ban would harm their companies by making it more difficult to recruit employees. Tech giants like Apple and Google, along with Uber, filed their arguments with the court late Sunday.

Trump's executive order was founded on a claim of national security, but lawyers for the two states told the appellate court the administration's move hurts residents, businesses and universities and is unconstitutional.

The next opportunity for Trump's team to argue in favor of the ban will come in the form of a response to the Washington state and Minnesota filings. The 9th Circuit ordered the U.S. Justice Department to file its briefs by 5 p.m. CST Monday. It had already turned down a Justice request to set aside immediately a Seattle judge's ruling that put a temporary hold on the ban nationwide.

In the latest filing, lawyers for Washington state and Minnesota said: "Defendants now ask this Court to unleash chaos again by staying the district court order. The Court should decline."

Bob Ferguson, Washington state's attorney general, said "we don't argue" that Trump has authority to act in the interest of national security. But in an interview on NBC's "Today" show, he also said "we have checks and balances" in the country, maintaining the president's order was "unconstitutional" and saying president's don't have "unfettered authorization" in these cases.

That ruling last Friday prompted an ongoing Twitter rant by Trump, who dismissed U.S. District Court Judge James Robart as a "so-called judge" and his decision "ridiculous."

Trump renewed his Twitter attacks against Robart on Sunday. "Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!" He followed with another tweet saying he had instructed the Homeland Security Department to check people coming into the country but that "the courts are making the job very difficult!"

Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday that "we don't appoint judges to our district courts to conduct foreign policy or to make decisions about the national security." Trump himself had offered an optimistic forecast the previous night, telling reporters during a weekend at his private club in Florida: "We'll win. For the safety of the country, we'll win."

The government had told the appeals court that the president alone has the power to decide who can enter or stay in the United States, an assertion that appeared to invoke the wider battle to come over illegal immigration.

Congress "vests complete discretion" in the president to impose conditions on entry of foreigners to the United States, and that power is "largely immune from judicial control," according to the court filing.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, predicted the appeals court would not have the last word. "I have no doubt that it will go to the Supreme Court, and probably some judgments will be made whether this president has exceed his authority or not," she said.

In his ruling, Robart said it was not the court's job to "create policy or judge the wisdom of any particular policy promoted by the other two branches," but to make sure that an action taken by the government "comports with our country's laws."

Whatever the outcome and however the case drags on, a president who was used to getting his way in private business is finding, weeks into his new job that obstacles exist to quickly fulfilling one of his chief campaign pledges.

"The president is not a dictator," said Feinstein, D-Calif. "He is the chief executive of our country. And there is a tension between the branches of government."

The Twitter attacks on Robart appointed by President George W. Bush prompted scolding from fellow Republicans as well as Democrats.

"We don't have so-called judges," said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb. "We don't have so-called senators. We don't have so-called presidents. We have people from three different branches of government who take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution."

However, Pence defended the president, saying he "can criticize anybody he wants." The vice president added that he believes the American people "find it very refreshing that they not only understand this president's mind, but they understand how he feels about things."

Trump's order applied to Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen Muslim-majority countries that the administration said raise terrorism concerns. The order had caused unending confusion for many foreigners trying to reach the United States, prompting protests across the United States and leading to multiple court challenges.

The State Department said last week that as many as 60,000 foreigners from those seven countries had had their visas canceled. After Robart's decision, the department reversed course and said they could travel to the U.S. if they had a valid visa.

The department also advised refugee aid agencies that refugees set to travel before Trump signed his order would now be allowed in.

The Homeland Security Department no longer was directing airlines to prevent visa-holders affected by Trump's order from boarding U.S.-bound planes. The agency said it had "suspended any and all actions" related to putting in place Trump's order.

Pence appeared on ABC's "This Week," CBS' "Face the Nation," NBC's "Meet the Press" and "Fox News Sunday. McConnell was on CNN, Feinstein spoke on Fox and Sasse was interviewed by ABC.

Associated Press

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2 states say allowing Donald Trump's travel ban would 'unleash chaos again' - Chicago Tribune

While the rest of the Republican establishment was in full-fledged panic that Donald Trump was marching to the nomination, Kevin McCarthy made a different calculation altogether.

The intensity of support for Trump and his appeal to new voters could help the GOP win, the House majority leader mused in the heat of the presidential primary in March. Trumps message ... if you look at different pockets, he brings Democrats over, McCarthy said at a policy forum in Sacramento, California.

Story Continued Below

Those encouraging words and continued loyalty, as the affable 52-year-old Californian stuck by Trump when other Republicans bailed in the final weeks of the campaign has produced one of the most unsung alliances in Washington these days.

McCarthy speaks with Trump several times a week by phone. And Trump dotes on McCarthy, too, even referring to the No. 2 House Republican as my Kevin.

They have a good relationship: Trump trusts Kevin, said Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican whos close to McCarthy. Kevin reached out early on to have a dialogue and they just developed a trust over time.

Its a surprising reversal of fortune for McCarthy, who just 16 months ago had to ditch his bid for speaker in the face of conservative opposition. Now, ironically, the guy who failed to replace John Boehner has sway with the White House matched by few others in Congress.

The unlikely friendship between the "drain the swamp" president and a career politician grew in part because of Trumps rocky history with Speaker Paul Ryan. Multiple sources told POLITICO that McCarthy acted as a conciliator between the two men during the campaign defusing tensions when Ryan criticized Trump or Trump attacked Ryan.

Trump said as much during an inauguration luncheon last month.

Kevin would call me in the heat of battle, right Kevin? And Id be fighting with Paul, Trump said. "And I appreciate it, Kevin!"

The shuttle diplomacy went both ways. McCarthy had urged Ryan to stand by Trump despite his never-ending controversies. And after the election, when Trumps supporters were urging the new president to dump Ryan, McCarthy made the case that Trump needed the policy-savvy speaker to get his agenda through Congress.

When Trump was waffling on Paul, [McCarthy would] call Trump and say, Listen Youre going to need traditional Republican voters, and a lot of them like Paul. It doesnt help rally people to your cause when you attack Paul, said a source close to McCarthy. And likewise with Paul, [McCarthy] was saying, Youve got to find a way to get there with Trump.

"I fought hard to bring the conference together behind Trump," McCarthy told POLITICO in an interview, when asked why Trump was fond of him. "Part of my job was helping him understand who could be his allies inside Congress. But also showing the assets of [a President] Trump to the members."

McCarthy and Trump didn't know each other before the campaign. That changed in March, after Trump spotted a Sacramento Bee story quoting McCarthy saying he thought the ex-reality TV star could be a boon to Republicans.

McCarthy hadnt endorsed Trump by then. In fact, his fellow Republicans gave him flack for suggesting a few days earlier on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Trump had momentum to win the primary. But Trump was grateful and tweeted out the story with praise: Thank you Kevin. With unification of the party, Republican wins will be massive!

A few weeks later, Trump called McCarthy from his cellphone. And going forward, McCarthy made a point of checking in with Trump several times a week.

The bond with Trump came at a sensitive time for McCarthy. He stumbled badly during an October 2015 TV interview when he suggested the House Benghazi investigation was designed to hurt Hillary Clinton politically. Republicans were furious, and a week later McCarthy had to drop his bid for speaker.

McCarthy used his exhaustive knowledge of the House Republican Conference accumulated over years of corralling votes as a former whip to advise Trump. Republicans joke that the onetime deli owner can recall not only their kids' names but which subjects they're failing and their favorite colors.

He likes to reach out and has friendships ... everywhere," said Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.).

McCarthy would call up Trump with intel on how lawmakers were reacting to something the candidate said or proposed. When their schedules overlapped, theyd try to get together meeting up, for example, on Trumps private jet after one California rally.

Trump would tease McCarthy about helping him win California; McCarthy would fill in Trump on the latest in Congress.

Kevin appreciated the larger political dynamic, which was that for Republicans to broadly be successful, we needed Trump to be successful, said a source close to McCarthy. He knew it wouldnt be helpful for us to be attacking Trump or for Trump to be attacking us. The perception that would be created outside D.C. wouldnt be good for anybody establishment Republicans or Trump voters.

McCarthy's toughest test in his role as middleman between Trump and D.C. Republicans came during the low point of Trump's general election campaign: the publication of the "Access Hollywood" video showing Trump bragging about groping women. As senior Republicans debated how to handle the situation and a parade of vulnerable lawmakers cut bait McCarthy urged caution.

His message, as described by sources who spoke with him: Take a deep breath, but don't abandon our nominee.

He thought the idea that somehow Trump would drop out, or the party would remove him, was preposterous, said the source close to McCarthy. So, at the end of the day, whether we had differences or not it didnt serve either sides interest to be shooting at each other.

Ryan, for his part, said he was "sickened" by the video and canceled a joint campaign appearance with Trump in Wisconsin. Ryan also told the Republican conference on a private call that quickly leaked to the media that he would no longer defend the candidate. Furious, Trump responded by calling Ryan a very weak and ineffective leader.

McCarthy again found himself playing mediator. He called up Trump to tell him that headlines about Ryan dumping him were overplayed. McCarthy explained that Ryan was trying to give moderate members of the conference cover, and he pointed out that Ryan didnt withdraw his endorsement.

Nowadays, McCarthy talks to Trump mostly about the House legislative schedule, which McCarthy oversees as majority leader. Trump recently hired two McCarthy staffers to join the White House, including his former floor director, Ben Howard.

The president himself has publicly said how much he likes Kevin, and that corroborates what we know to be true privately, said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a close friend of McCarthys. I think President Trumps relationship with Paul [Ryan] is quite good. But I just think there is a consistency and a familiarity with Kevin and theres nothing wrong with having two people you can call as opposed to just one.

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Donald Trump's guy on Capitol Hill - Politico

As president, Ronald Reagan spoke movingly of the shock and horror he felt as part of a military film crew documenting firsthand the atrocities of the Nazi death camps.

The story wasnt true.

Years later, an adamant, finger-wagging Bill Clinton looked straight into a live TV camera and told the American people he never had sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

He was lying.

Presidents of all stripes and both major political parties have bent, massaged or shaded the truth, elided uncomfortable facts or otherwise misled the public unwittingly or, sometimes, very purposefully.

Its not surprising, said Charles Lewis, a journalism professor at American University who wrote a book chronicling presidential deceptions. Its as old as time itself.

But White House scholars and other students of government agree there has never been a president like Donald Trump, whose volume of falsehoods, misstatements and serial exaggerations on matters large and wincingly small place him in a class by himself, as Texas A&Ms George Edwards put it.

He is by far the most mendacious president in American history, said Edwards, a political scientist who edits the scholarly journal Presidential Studies Quarterly. (His assessment takes in the whole of Trumps hyperbolic history, as the former real estate developer and reality TV personality has only been in office since Jan. 20.)

Edwards then amended his assertion.

I say mendacious, which implies that hes knowingly lying. That may be unfair, Edwards said. He tells more untruths than any president in American history.

The caveat underscores the fraught use of the L-word, requiring, as it does, the certainty that someone is consciously presenting something as true that they know to be false. While there may be plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest a person is lying, short of crawling inside their head it is difficult to say with absolutely certainty.

When Trump incessantly talks of rampant voter fraud, boasts about the size of his inaugural audience or claims to have seen thousands of people on rooftops in New Jersey celebrating the Sept. 11 attacks, all are demonstrably false. But who can say if he actually believes it, asked Lewis, or whether hes gotten the information from some less-than-reliable news site?

Reagan, who is now among the most beloved of former presidents, was famous for embroidering the truth, especially in the homespun anecdotes he loved to share.

In the case of the Nazi death camps, there was some basis for his claim to be an eyewitness to history: Serving stateside in Culver City during World War II, Reagan was among those who processed raw footage from the camps. In the sympathetic telling, the barbarity struck so deeply that Reagan years later assumed he had been present for the liberation.

Even when he admitted wrongdoing in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal, which cast a dark stain on his administration, Reagan did so in a way that suggested he never meant to deceive.

A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages, Reagan said in a prime-time address from the Oval Office. My heart and my best intentions still tell me thats true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.

Clinton, who famously parsed and tweezed the English language with surgical precision, offered a straight-up confession when admitting he lied about his extramarital affair with Lewinsky, which helped lead to his impeachment.

I misled people, including even my wife, Clinton said, a slight quaver in his voice as he delivered a nationwide address. I deeply regret that.

President Obama took his turn apologizing for promising if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it under the Affordable Care Act; millions of Americans found that not to be true, and PolitiFact, the nonpartisan truth-squadorganization, bestowed the dubious 2013 Lie of the Year honor for Obamas repeated falsehood.

We werent as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place, Obama said in an NBC interview. I am sorry that so many are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me.

Trump, by contrast, has steadfastly refused to back down, much less apologize, for his copious misstatements. Rather, he typically repeats his claims, often more strenuously, and lashes out at those who point out contrary evidence.

Theres a degree of shamelessness Ive never seen before, said Lewis, the American University professor, echoing a consensus among other presidential scholars. Theres not a whole lot of contrition there.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, has suggested Trump is unfairly being held to a more skeptical standard by a hostile press corps. Ive never seen it like this, he said at one of his earliest briefings. The default narrative is always negative, and its demoralizing.

Gil Troy, a historian at Montreals McGill University, agreed the relationship between the president and those taking down his words has changed from the days when a new occupant of the White House enjoyed a more lenient standard at least at the start of an administration which allowed for the benefit of the doubt.

That, Troy said, is both Trumps fault he brings a shamelessness and blatancy to his prevarications that is without precedent and the result of a press corps that feels much more emboldened, much more bruised, much angrier after the antagonism of his presidential campaign.

Since taking office, there has been no less hostility from on high; rather, echoing his pugnacious political strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, Trump has declared the media to be the opposition party.

Were watching the birth pangs of a new press corps and a new series of protocols for covering the president, Troy said.

It is sure to be painful all around.

mark.barabak@latimes.com

@markzbarabak

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There's a long history of presidential untruths. Here's why Donald Trump is 'in a class by himself' - Los Angeles Times