Also, more Americans than just the president's base supporters do not necessarily disagree with the Administrations mends as much as the president's method and madness.Case in point is the deployment of National Guard troops to the southern border. As The New York Times Helene Cooper pointed out, Presidents Bush and Obama sent the National Guard there. However, Mr. Trump is bent on creating hysteria, xenophobia and fear to justify these actions. Until the wall is built, the 'military,' as Mr. Trump purposely phrases it as such, has to guard the border.
Even with the tariffs that the president is imposing, many agree that something needs to be done about China's unfair trade practices and their constant theft of American intellectual property. When Mr. Todd asked, Peter Navarro, the Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, about the president's tariff announcements and whether they were negotiating tactics or policy, the director said, "both," but in the meantime there's much economic uncertainty being created. Tariffs need to be carefully negotiated, not tweeted as a blanket statement and then later walk some back through exceptions - e.g., steel and aluminum. The president has to be willing to face the political repercussions of the hit American farmers are surely going to take when China implements tariffs in kind. When the president makes mad statements, others (namely China) will get mad back.
Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) was right when he said that not doing the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TTP) was a mistake. With that partnership the United States could have locked in a multi-national trade deal with countries right on China's doorstep, and that would have created more leverage for the U.S. to deal with China. Senator Rounds also went on to explain that the president said that it would be better to negotiate with each country one on one, but none of these deals have been put in place yet.
It's also worth noting the refreshing appeal the Senator made for the Administration to stop fighting with Mexico and Canada on trade - our two best partners.
With regard to Syria, the president who has famously said that he would never show his hand when it came to foreign policy said that we're pulling our troops out of Syria where they have provided instrumental assistance in liberating cities once occupied by ISIS. Now, in light of another reported chemical attack, tacitly supported by the Kremlin, the president is 'boxed in' and there's a lot of pressure to respond as the National Review's Rich Lowry explained. The last time there was a chemical attack, the administration responded with a highly publicized missile attack. Ms. Cooper reported that U.S. military leaders are formulating multiple strike possibilities. Yet, according to the president, we disengaging from Syria.
Pulling back from promoting and selling American products, ceding our foreign policy to Russia and Iran in the Middle East and building a wall to keep 'them' out aren't nationalistic, it's isolationist. Donald Trump is a great salesman, but he doesn't sell American strength and prosperity to the rest of the world, he only sells himself to Americans.
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Mr. Lowry stated that the president is 'dug in' on his support for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, despite Mr. Pruitt's many ethics violations. However, what he also essentially said was that Mr. Pruitt should own these excesses and vow to correct them, but that won't happen.
Mr. Pruitt is a conservative hero and and giving him the boot is not the way to endear yourself to the conservative base. With that, what everyone pointed out today, Mr. Pruitt has carried out a great deal of Mr. Trump's agenda, more so than any other cabinet member.
Chuck Todd asked Senator Rounds, a Pruitt admirer, why one could not like his regulation rollbacks, but not his ethics violations, to which Mr. Rounds doubled up on the administrator's achievements. Scott Pruitt is the poster child for conservative zero-sum politics and as long as he's winning, it doesn't matter how much of the taxpayers' money he spends on himself. Just a check, I did a quick search of regulations that illustrate what Mr. Pruitt was has been accomplishing.
President Trump signed an executive order on February 28, 2017 directing EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to review and rescind or replace the 2016 Waters of the U.S. Rule (also known as the “Clean Water Rule”), and on June 27, 2017, EPA and the Corps released a proposal to rescind the rule.
On April 25, 2017, the Trump Administration halted, indefinitely, certain compliance deadlines in the 2015 Steam Electric Effluent Limitations Guidelines (“ELG”) Rule, which set, for the first time, limits on toxic water pollution from coal-fired power plants.
On September 14 2017, the Pruitt EPA announced that it would be reconsidering its Coal Ash Disposal Rule, the first federal rule governing disposal of coal ash, the by-product created from burning coal. Coal ash (also called coal combustion residuals) contains toxic pollutants including arsenic, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium that can leach into groundwater, surface water, or air and threaten health and the environment without proper disposal controls.
On October 10, 2017, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt issued a notice proposing a repeal of the Clean Power Plan, which requires utilities to reduce carbon emissions from existing facilities by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, for rollback.
On April 2, 2018, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that his agency plans to eliminate new greenhouse gas reduction targets for cars and trucks that would double fuel efficiency by 2025.
I sourced these from the Environmental Integrity Project, which I'm sure someone, if not many people, will accuse of bias, but these are all documented by other sources or put into writing by the president himself, so you be the judge as to whether you think these regulations should have been reversed. In my humble opinion, these are all moves that set the country back, and in addition stifle ever-necessary energy innovation.
And finally, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Let's just say that with regard to Mr. Zuckerberg's appearance on Capitol Hill this week, Charles Cook, the Cook Political Report, summed it up best. If Mark Zuckerberg had appeared before Congress right away, it would have been bad, but now it's going to be horrific. "Roasted" was the term Rich Lowry used.
Mr. Zuckerberg's days of apologies and self-regulating half-measures are coming to a conclusion. It's just not going to work anymore that he's the individual who decides who gets your data and how much of it.
But here's the rub: When you have erudite old white men predominantly presiding over Congress who don't understand the back end of social media, regulation is going to be slow and ineffective. Conversely, this is why Mr. Wylie's insights are quite credible when he explains that it could be a lot more than 87 million people who have had their data shared with third parties.
Panel: Doris Kearns-Goodwin, presidential historian; Helene Cooper, The New York Times; Rich Lowry, the National Review; Charlies Cook, the Cook Political Report
One more thing...
As a former teacher, I can safely say that teachers need to be paid more... much more. And states like Oklahoma that cut funding for their schools should be ashamed of themselves. Hard stop.
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