The Trump Presidency - how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Hair

Do you suggest they shoot them at the border or something? I don’t understand how spending more money on housing migrants is a problem.


Yes, the most absurd answer is what I want...

The problem is that this is not what Congress approved. There is also a storm about to hit Puerto Rico again and then it will hit Florida. Since FEMA did such a bang up job last time a hurricane hit Puerto Rico, do we really want to take money from that budget to prevent them from doing their job?
 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immi...e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html?noredirect=on

Trump tells his aids to break the law to fast track his border fence and build it within the next 14 months, offering pardons to anyone accused of wrongdoing.

I'll take "Corruption" for 1,000, Alex

President Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project.
He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly, those officials said.
Trump has repeatedly promised to complete 500 miles of fencing by the time voters go to the polls in November 2020, stirring chants of “Finish the Wall!” at his political rallies as he pushes for tighter border controls. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed just about 60 miles of “replacement” barrier during the first 2½ years of Trump’s presidency, all of it in areas that previously had border infrastructure.

The president has told senior aides that a failure to deliver on the signature promise of his 2016 campaign would be a letdown to his supporters and an embarrassing defeat. With the election 14 months away and hundreds of miles of fencing plans still in blueprint form, Trump has held regular White House meetings for progress updates and to hasten the pace, according to several people involved in the discussions.
When aides have suggested that some orders are illegal or unworkable, Trump has suggested he would pardon the officials if they would just go ahead, aides said. He has waved off worries about contracting procedures and the use of eminent domain, saying “take the land,” according to officials who attended the meetings.
“Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you,” he has told officials in meetings about the wall.
“He said people expected him to build a wall, and it had to be done by the election,” one former official said.
Asked for comment, a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Trump is joking when he makes such statements about pardons.

Deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said Tuesday that the president is protecting the country with the addition of new border barriers.
“Donald Trump promised to secure our border with sane, rational immigration policies to make American communities safer, and that’s happening everywhere the wall is being built,” Gidley said. He called internal criticisms of the president “just more fabrications by people who hate the fact the status quo, that has crippled this country for decades, is finally changing as President Trump is moving quicker than anyone in history to build the wall, secure the border and enact the very immigration policies the American people voted for.”
“President Trump is fighting aggressively for the American people where other leaders in the past have rolled over, sold out, and done absolutely nothing,” he said.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper is expected to approve a White House request to divert $3.6 billion in Pentagon funds to the barrier project in coming weeks, money that Trump sought after lawmakers refused to allocate $5 billion. The funds will be pulled from Defense Department projects in 26 states, according to administration officials who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the matter.

Trump’s determination to build the barriers as quickly as possible has not diminished his interest in the aesthetic aspects of the project, particularly the requirement that the looming steel barriers be painted black and topped with sharpened tips.
In a meeting at the White House on May 23, Trump ordered the Army Corps and the Department of Homeland Security to paint the structure black, according to internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post.
Administration officials have stopped trying to talk him out of the demands, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is preparing to instruct contractors to apply black paint or coating to all new barrier fencing, the communications show.

Trump conceded last year in an immigration meeting with lawmakers that a wall or barrier is not the most effective mechanism to curb illegal immigration, recognizing it would accomplish less than a major expansion of U.S. enforcement powers and deportation authority. But he told lawmakers that his supporters want a wall and that he has to deliver it.

Trump talked about the loud cheers the wall brought at rallies, according to one person with direct knowledge of the meeting.
Former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly would often tell administration officials to disregard the president’s demands if Kelly did not think they were feasible or legally sound, according to current and former aides.

During a conference call last week, officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection told Army Corps engineers that the hundreds of miles of fencing must be completed before the next presidential election, according to administration officials with knowledge of the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal communications.
“Border Patrol insists on compressed acquisition timelines, and we consent. Their goal is to get contracts awarded, not for us to get a quality contract with a thoroughly vetted contractor,” said one senior official who is concerned the agency has been hurried to hand out contracts as quickly as possible.
Military officials expect more contract protests because the arrangements have been rushed, the official added. The Army Corps already has had to take corrective actions for two procurement contracts, after companies protested.
The companies building the fencing and access roads have been taking heavy earth-moving equipment into environmentally sensitive border areas adjacent to U.S. national parks and wildlife preserves, but the administration has waived procedural safeguards and impact studies, citing national security concerns.
“They don’t care how much money is spent, whether landowners’ rights are violated, whether the environment is damaged, the law, the regs or even prudent business practices,” the senior official said.
CBP has suggested no longer writing risk-assessment memos “related to the fact that we don’t have real estate rights and how this will impact construction,” the official said.
While Trump has insisted that the barriers be painted, the cost of painting them will reduce the length of the fence the government will be able to build. According to the internal analysis, painting or coating 175 miles of barriers “will add between $70 million and $133 million in cost,” trimming the amount of fencing the Army Corps will be able to install by four to seven miles.

In June, teams of U.S. soldiers painted a one-mile section of fence in Calexico, Calif., at a cost of $1 million. The coating, known as “matte black” or “flat black,” absorbs heat, making the fence hot to the touch, more slippery and therefore tougher to climb, according to border agents.
At Trump’s behest, the Army Corps also is preparing to instruct contractors to remove from the upper part of the fence the smooth metal plates that are used to thwart climbers. The president considered that design feature unsightly, according to officials familiar with his directives.
Instead, contractors have been asked to cut the tips of the steel bollards to a sharpened point. Trump had told aides this spring he thought the barrier should be spiked to instill a fear of injury.
The change in the bollard design is likely to reduce the overall length of the barrier by two to three miles, according to the administration’s cost assessments.
CBP has used a pointed design in the past, according to agency officials, either by installing a pyramid-shaped cap or making what the agency refers to as a “miter cut” in the metal.
Trump remains keen to tout incremental progress toward his wall-building commitments, and in recent weeks, top Homeland Security officials have taken to Twitter to promote the advances.

In recent days, DHS leaders including acting CBP chief Mark Morgan and the top official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ken Cuccinelli, have tweeted photos of border fence construction, echoing promises that 450 miles of new barrier will be completed by next year. Another senior administration official credited both men with injecting urgency, saying that “things are starting to crank away,” even though Cuccinelli’s agency is not involved in the project.
Dan Scavino Jr., the White House social media director, has asked for video footage and photos of equipment digging up the desert and planting the barriers so that administration officials can tweet about it, aides said.
Administration officials involved in the project also defended the president’s use of eminent domain laws to speed the process.
“There is no more constitutionally permissible public purpose for eminent domain than national defense,” said a current administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record about the contracting process.
“Our intention is to negotiate with every property owner, and every property owner will receive fair market value for the land,” the official said. “But the land that is needed is not replaceable land. This is not like building a hospital or even a school. There is no alternative land to the border.”
CBP and Pentagon officials insist they remain on track to complete about 450 miles of fencing by the election. Of that, about 110 miles will be added to areas where there is currently no barrier. The height of the structure will vary between 18 and 30 feet, high enough to inflict severe injury or death from a fall.
The Border Patrol’s strategic planning and analysis office has not made a final decision on the black paint or other White House design requests .
“Ultimately, we’ll do our assessment and determine what is the best for us operationally,” said Brian Martin, the office’s chief, adding that the agency is waiting to get border agents’ feedback on whether the coating would be beneficial.
Martin also said CBP would continue to install anti-climb panels on portions of the barrier already under contract, calling the design “very vital to overall effectiveness.” But he and other CBP officials said that some new portions of barriers will have the panels and that others will not, a determination that he said will be guided by necessity, not aesthetics.

Trump has recently urged the Army Corps to award a contract to a company he favors, North Dakota-based Fisher Industries, though the firm has not been selected. Fisher has been aggressively pushed by Trump ally Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who briefly held up the confirmation of a Trump budget office nominee last month in an attempt to put pressure on the Army Corps.
Cramer demanded to see the contracts awarded to Fisher’s competitors, lashing out at the “arrogance” of the Army Corps in emails to military officials after he was told the bidding process involved proprietary information that could not be shared. The CEO of Fisher Industries is a major backer of Cramer and has donated to his campaigns.

Cramer visited the El Paso area Tuesday to tour border facilities and view a span of privately funded border fencing Fisher built as a showcase for what it claims are superior construction techniques. Cramer posted videos of his tour to social media. He undertook the tour “to see the crisis at our border firsthand.”
The senator had asked Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the commander of the Army Corps, to meet him at the site, but Semonite is traveling in Brazil, where the Trump administration has offered to help fight wildfires in the Amazon.
In an email to The Post, Cramer said he met with CEO Tommy Fisher on Tuesday at a span of fencing the company built on private land; he said Army Corps officials joined them at the site.
“The agents on the ground said the walls have been very helpful in slowing illegal crossings,” Cramer wrote. “I’m not a wall-building expert, but at the pace of the last few years, it’s hard to see how 450 miles gets built with the same process. . . . I wish DHS would engage a whole bunch of builders and innovators rather than rely on the same decades old bureaucracy.”
Cramer said he shared the president’s “frustration” with the pace of progress.
Several administration officials who confirmed the White House’s urgency said they expect to be able to deliver on Trump’s demands because the actual construction of the barriers is typically the last step in the process.
“There is a long lead time to acquiring land, getting permits and identifying funding,” the official said. “I think you will see a dramatic increase in wall construction next year because all of the work over the past two years has primed the pump.”
 
Yes, the most absurd answer is what I want...

The problem is that this is not what Congress approved. There is also a storm about to hit Puerto Rico again and then it will hit Florida. Since FEMA did such a bang up job last time a hurricane hit Puerto Rico, do we really want to take money from that budget to prevent them from doing their job?
So why is your problem with Trump and not Congress that is refusing to address the issue of housing migrants?
 
I have problems with both Trump and Congress. Congress has failed on addressing such issues for a long time, but Trump does not get to do as he pleases with money that is allocated for other purposes.
 
Trump is now railing against the Washington Post, claiming they made up the story that he offered pardons to his aids to fast-track his border wall. He claims they made the story up to disparage him.

For all those crying "fake news" at every negative story of Trump (Level, looking at you, buddy), answer me this: Why would the Washington Post, or any other news outlet, risk their credibility and advertising money making up a story like this? Every day there is something else Trump does that is on video, recorded, or tweeted that is newsworthy and a scandal unto itself - so why would anyone need to make up a false story? The paper has very little to gain and a whole lot to lose.

Or, and hear me out on this one, is it more likely that Tump is an incompetent narcissistic assclown - which is consistent with all of his behavior to date? He's a self-proclaimed billionaire who refuses to show his tax returns, he's a self-proclaimed genius who refuses to release his transcripts, he's proclaimed himself to be "stable" despite a long and escalating pattern of unstable behavior, and he has told more demonstrable lies than any president in history - from his inauguration to August 5th, 2019, he's told 12,019 lies or said something intentionally misleading. That's averaging out to over one lie every two hours.

So please, explain to me why the press is the problem, why the press lacks credibility, and why we should trust the word of Little Cheetolini over the world's news outlets?

In the mean time, let me help with the "whataboutism" that in inevitably going to be brought up. Today is the 5th anniversary of one of Obama's greatest scandals: The Tan Suit.
 
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Yeah that shit's fucked up

But wait! There's more! Now the Trump administration is going full Super Villain and going after sick and dying children.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino...icy-seeks-deport-sick-dying-children-n1047901

In what advocates and Democrats say is a “new low” for President Donald Trump and his administration, children getting life-saving medical care are being put in line for deportation.
Each year, the country gets about 1,000 applications from people for permission to stay in the country and not face deportation so family members can get or continue lifesaving medical care that is not available in their home countries.

But the administration quietly told families who were granted permission to stay and with children and family members receiving this kind of medical care that their permission to stay has been rescinded and they have 33 days to leave the country. The policy is being applied retroactively to any requests filed on or before Aug. 7.
Among those facing deportation is Jonathan Sanchez, 16, who has cystic fibrosis.
His mother, Mariela Sanchez, told NBC 10 in Boston that her family arrived in the United States in 2016 and she had recently applied for the medical exemption. After losing a daughter to the hereditary and incurable disease because doctors in Honduras did not diagnose it, she knows what would have happened to her son if he was not getting the care in the U.S.
“He would be dead,” she told the station.
“This is a new low even for Donald Trump,” Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said in a conference call with reporters Thursday.

“This administration is now deporting kids with cancer. Perhaps that is why it was too ashamed to announce this policy change publicly," said Markey, who has been trying to draw national attention to the issue since it was first reported in Boston by WBUR-FM, a public radio station.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News. In a previous statement, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has said that it was no longer considering nonmilitary requests for deferred action "to focus agency resources on faithfully administering our nation’s lawful immigration system."

The change was not made public and members of the public were not given a chance to provide comment before it went into effect. Families simply received letters telling them they had 33 days to leave.
“They are telling these people they need to leave on their own,” Anthony Marino, director of immigration legal services,said on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” about the families with seriously ill relatives now facing deportation.
“I don’t know how they expect parents to pull their children from hospital beds, disconnect them from lifesaving treatments and go some place where they are know they are going to die," said Marino. "But that is what they are telling them to do.”
In Miami, attorney Milena Portillo told The Miami Herald that families who have applied for the medical deferments include a girl with an eye malignancy, a girl with cerebral palsy and the father of three children — who are American citizens — who has a terminal liver illness.
“We as a country, we are losing our humanitarian side,” Portillo told the Herald. “We’re not reviewing case by case, but we’re just giving a blanket ‘no’ to everyone.”
Rep. Ayana Pressley, D-Mass., cited in the Thursday call the case of a young boy, Samuel, 5, who is from Brazil. She said he is unable to eat solid food and without care at Boston Children’s Hospital will not be able to receive the nutrients he needs to live.

"With this decision, again this administration has hit a new low," Pressley said. "To be fighting for your life, imagine on top of that facing deportation."
The American Immigration Lawyers Association called on the USCIS to reverse the policy change. It has asked people to contact elected leaders to change it.
Backlash over the changes has led to confusion over which Department of Homeland Security agency, the USCIS or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, must enforce the new policy, as the agencies have pointed to each other as having jurisdiction.
Medical deferrals are not the only denials. USCIS told NBC News that it applies to all other deferred action requests outside of the military and immigrants enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program or DACA.
The policy change is another in a series of actions the administration has taken that have had direct impact on children, both who are immigrants and those who are U.S. citizens.

The administration has taken numerous children from their parents at the border and some have yet to be reunited.
The administration changed the so-called public charge rule so that immigrants wanting a green card or to come to the country must prove they are unlikely to ever need public assistance, such as access to health care.
In the time the rule was being drafted and copies of it were leaked, immigrant parents with American citizen children dropped out of programs such as the Women, Infants, Children program or WIC, that provides health care and nutritious food for very young children, even though their children have a right to such programs.
“There can be no other explanation for why you would target such a small and vulnerable community other than if your goal was to spread fear and hardship,” Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., said.
“This is all in character for an administration that is separating families and abusing children in prison camps at the border," Chu added.
Chu has filed a bill to defund the public charge rule but said “it’s clear that this administration will not stop looking for any opportunity to wage war on immigrants.”

Alright, LeVel, begin your dance. I'm really curious how you make "deporting sick and dying children who are here for lifesaving medical care back to their home countries and nearly certain painful death" not sound like an absolute dick move.
 
Sick people are icky, why would we allow them in at all? /sarcasm
 
My wife actually just reminded me of a time she was trying to help get a kid here for just this kind of a medical care, not only is it insanely difficult and expensive but the parents have to pay upfront, so this isn't even the case of tax payers footing the bill on any level. (Not that I would be against a portion of my taxes going to help sick children)
 
(Not that I would be against a portion of my taxes going to help sick children)
But that's socialism! Anything that's not letting the poor starve and die painfully is!
 
Trump lie number... hell, who knows?


And a set of facts to counter the misinformation.

 
Trump lie number... hell, who knows?


And a set of facts to counter the misinformation.



Well...he was specifically talking about Detroit ("one of the smallest there").There are only a few automakers there, so being one of the biggest also makes it one of the smallest. It's like getting 1st and last place in a contest that you're the only contestant in. So he's not technically wrong. ;)
 
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