A Complete Breakdown Of Donald Trump’s 23rd Unpresidential Week As POTUS

At Rantt News, we try to remain measured…but this is absurd
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by: Ahmed Baba on July 2, 2017

President Donald Trump (AP/Evan Vucci)

The President of the United States just shared a video depicting himself violently tackling and punching a media organization…

Let’s put this in perspective. 241 years ago, one of the most pivotal pieces of writing was signed by some of the most brilliant men in history, setting in motion what would become the most powerful nation on Earth. 241 years after brilliance was put to parchment, idiocy is put to iPhone — 140 characters at a time.

Over the lifetime of our democracy, we’ve had unfortunate leaders at very consequential moments. You could point to Johnson for his botching of the South’s Reconstruction, to Jackson for the trail of tears, or to W for the Iraq War. We can debate the merits and decency of all our past presidents, but the mantle of least intelligent president of all time has been earned by Donald John Trump. And this week he proved that with every action he took, leading many to have only one thing on their minds: The 25th Amendment.

This week was turbulent. The President of the United States attacked media organizations on Twitter (literally), wore his misogyny, and admitted to the attempted blackmail of Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. The Trump administration’s thinly veiled nationwide voter suppression conquest was in full sight. A component of the Muslim ban went into effect. The Senate’s Obamacare repeal/tax cut effort was delayed. And all the while, the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives rose significantly.

During this consequential time in human history, the American people demand steadfast leadership. As the Republican Party continues to wait for Trump to miraculously find his mind, the American people are growing impatient wondering when the Grand Old Party will finally find their spine.

Here’s a complete breakdown of Trump’s 23rd week as POTUS:

Alternative Healthcare Facts And A Preemptive Defense Of Collusion

Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway and ABC Anchor George Stephanopoulos

As the nation reviewed the details of the Senate’s healthcare plan and anxiously awaited the incoming damage report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Trump administration used the one defense they know best: Blatant lying.

Kellyanne Conway went on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday and told George Stephanopoulos that when it comes to the Senate’s healthcare plan, “These are not cuts to Medicaid.” The Better Care Reconciliation Act proposed by the GOP cuts Medicaid outlays by roughly $772 Billion…

While we’re on the topic of fake news, Fox News continued their propaganda pushing. On Friday, Sean Hannity questioned whether it would’ve been a crime for the Trump campaign to coordinate the release of the emails stolen from the DNC by Russian hackers. Then on Sunday, Brit Hume reiterated this talking point asking:

“Can anybody identify the crime? Collusion, while it would be obviously alarming and highly inappropriate for the Trump campaign, of which there is no evidence, by the way, of colluding with the Russians. It’s not a crime.”

I’ll answer your question Brit…the answer is yes. It’s called Treason.

Meanwhile…

  • After sending out some tweets referencing the extensive Washington Post report about the Obama administration’s handling of Russia’s interference, Trump accused Hillary Clinton of colluding with her own party to beat Bernie Sanders. This is the first of many tweets this week referencing collusion, foreshadowing the bombshell news to come later in the week

While the nation sat on the edge of their seats, anxiously awaiting the fate of their healthcare system, President Trump spent yet another weekend golfing.

You took the words right out of my mouth Donald.

  • The Washington Post reported that a month before the election, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner finalized a $285 million refinancing loan from Deutsche Bank who at the time “was negotiating to settle a federal mortgage fraud case and charges from New York state regulators that it aided a possible Russian money-laundering scheme. The cases were settled in December and January”

23rd Week (June 26–30)

Monday, June 26

The CBO Damage Report

President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (left), and House Speaker Paul Ryan (right) (AP/Evan Vucci)

On Monday, the long-awaited CBO report for the Senate GOP’s healthcare bill was released and it outlined a devastating future. Without diving too heavily into the details here, it projected 22 million more to be uninsured by 2026, with 15 million of them to lose coverage next year. That is 1 million less than the House bill’s 23 million projection, but 1 million more than the House bill’s 14 million expected to lose coverage in 2018.

President Trump’s Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders went on to cherry pick the CBO’s $321 billion deficit reduction projection while at the same time attempting to discredit the remainder of the report. Needless to say, putting lives at risk wouldn’t be worth $3 trillion dollars in deficit reduction, let alone $300 billion.

This is where things got interesting. The CBO report put Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s effort to push a motion to begin a debate on the bill this week on rocky footing. He only needed 50 votes to pass the bill given Vice President Mike Pence’s tie-breaking vote, so he couldn’t afford to lose 3 of the 52 Republicans currently serving in the Senate.

McConnell had already lost one vote pre-CBO. Republican Nevada Senator Dean Heller (up for reelection in 2018), already announced his opposition on Friday before the CBO report was released, proclaiming:

“This bill would mean a loss of coverage for millions of Americans and many Nevadans. I’m telling you right now, I cannot support a piece of legislation that takes insurance away from tens of millions of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Nevadans.”

Immediately after the CBO report was released, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said he would vote no. Then, Senator Susan Collins of Maine announced she would vote no as well.

These hard no’s were followed by GOP Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Senator Mike Lee of Utah. There were five no’s by the end of the day, and still no word from McConnell on the path forward…

Meanwhile…

  • In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court reinstated a portion of Trump’s Muslim ban executive order. The courts allowed the travel ban on visitors from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days and the 120 days hold on all refu­gees entering the US to proceed as planned. The catch: “The government may not bar those with a ‘bona fide’ connection to the United States, such as having family members here, or a job or a place in an American university.” It was set to take effect in 72 hours.
  • Trump was reportedly eager to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at the incoming G20 summit in Germany
  • Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador that Trump and his associates can’t seem to recall meeting, is being recalled back to Russia
  • America Politics First, a White House supported group, launched a $1 million ad campaign against Heller after he announced his opposition to the GOP’s healthcare bill
  • The White House issued is statement claiming that they “identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime” and warned that Assad and his military would “pay a heavy price” if they went through with it. This statement reportedly caught multiple military officials off guard
  • The Miami Herald reported that Igor Zorin, a Russian government official, has spent almost $8 million on Trump properties in Florida
  • President Trump continued his paranoid Twitter tirade, denying collusion between his campaign, and saying Obama did nothing about Russia’s interference in the election (which is false). At the same time, Benjamin Wittes, the Editor-in-Chief at Lawfare whose known for teasing big stories before they hit, continued hinting at an incoming big story. It seemed it was going to be related to collusion. As we saw later in the week, that was indeed the case

Tuesday, June 27

Abandon Ship

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Aaron P. Bernstein /Reuters)

After the fallout from the CBO report, McConnell announced that he would be delaying the vote on their healthcare bill until after the July 4th congressional recess. Some additional Senators announced their opposition after the delay was announced. Afterward, Trump hosted the GOP Senators at the White House to try and seek compromise on the healthcare bill. The meeting didn’t seem to do much, other than producing these great glimpses from inside.

Mitch McConnell has his work cut out for him. The GOP will have to try and draft a bill that locks down the votes of both the moderate and extreme right-wing of their party. We’ll see how this plays out.

Meanwhile…

  • The Guardian reported that during the height of the Great Recession in June of 2009, President Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow “approved plans to push poor and jobless people to donate money to his Christian nonprofit, which since 2000 has steered more than $60m to Sekulow, his family, and their businesses.”
  • Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort “disclosed Tuesday that his consulting firm had received more than $17 million over two years from a Ukrainian political party with links to the Kremlin”
  • President Trump started his morning attacking the press once again after the retraction of a false Trump-Russia CNN report. Trump seemed to take this one retraction as vindication and felt it then discredited all Trump-Russia stories

These tweets come as the White House has taken unprecedented steps to limit press access. They’ve been holding off-camera briefings lately and may with they had held this particular briefing off-camera…After Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to echo President Trump’s attacks on the media, reporter Brian Karem stood up and defended everyone in the room, calling Sanders’ comments inflammatory and proclaiming that the White House reporters were here to ask questions and do their jobs.

Karem was immediately deemed a hero and became an instant star on Twitter, going from a few hundred followers to almost 80k since his epic defense of the media. Bravo Mr. Karem. Bravo.

Wednesday, June 28

An Abuse Of Power

President Donald Trump pauses while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Friday, Feb. 24, 2017, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The relationship between the President of the United States and the press has always been shaky. You can go as far back as John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts or as recently as Richard Nixon, but the great leaders who have held the office in the past have always understood that the press is supposed to be adversarial. The press is an unspoken check on the President’s power. Seeking truth, exposing injustice and corruption in an effort to make sure those in charge don’t get too drunk with power and neglect the people they are sworn to serve. The press is the Fourth Estate, as Edmund Burke put it. President Trump does not understand any of this. On Wednesday, he proved this once again by sending out a barrage of tweets attacking the press.

That last tweet was particularly alarming. Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, so President Trump attacked Bezos’ other company because he is unhappy with the Washington Post’s coverage. This was concerning given the fact that during the campaign when speaking of Amazon Trump stated, “If I become president, oh do they have problems.” For many, the reason behind the Bezos attack was clear:

What fake TIME cover you ask? The one that The Washington Post revealed hangs at Trump’s golf courses.

Meanwhile…

  • CNN reported that Trump’s advisers are having a hard time convincing him that Russia still poses a threat to the US despite their unprecedented interference in our democracy
  • President Trump held a fundraising event for his re-election at his own DC hotel. Given the fact that his trust is structured in a way that allows him to pull profits whenever he chooses, he personally profited from this event
  • Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has grown frustrated. Politico reported:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s frustrations with the White House have been building for months. Last Friday, they exploded. The normally laconic Texan unloaded on Johnny DeStefano, the head of the presidential personnel office, for torpedoing proposed nominees to senior State Department posts and for questioning his judgment.

  • A Washington Post report of the Senate’s meeting with Trump revealed how Senators saw the President

Thursday, June 29

A Tale Of Disgrace And Collusion

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

On Thursday, President Trump reminded Americans that he is still that misogynistic, impulsive bully we grew to know during the campaign. Trump sent out tweets attacking Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, getting particularly nasty when speaking of Mika…

The universal condemnation came swiftly from all sides, including the GOP.

Those were a few of the remarks, but it leaves one wondering where the GOP’s widespread condemnation was when in 2015, then candidate Trump made those crude remarks about journalist Megyn Kelly:

“She gets out there and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions, and you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her … wherever.”

While the GOP acted surprised by this, us humans with common sense saw this coming from a mile away. Did the GOP really think once you bestowed power upon this over confident and reckless guy, he would suddenly become a decent human? Michelle Obama was proven right…

Meanwhile…

  • Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the President’s disgusting tweets, stating:

“The only person I see a war on is this president and everybody that works for him. I don’t think you can expect someone to be personally attacked, day after day, minute by minute, and sit back. The American people elected a fighter.”

  • The travel ban went into effect at 8 pm on Thursday
  • News broke that Vice President Mike Pence will replace his Chief of Staff Nick Ayers, who is a leader in the America First Policies group that ran that $1 million ad campaign against Senator Heller
  • The NRA released a deplorable ad that seemed to call for armed violence

  • As news of President Trump’s upcoming sideline meeting with Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit broke, The Guardian reported that President Trump may offer up one-sided concession to Russia, like rolling back parts of Obama’s sanctions simply in an attempt to improve relations…Offering one-sided concessions to a nation that your campaign is suspected of colluding with is not a good look
  • Speaking of collusion, the story Wittes has teased since last week was dropped by the Wall Street Journal. The report is one that if true, is some of the most definitive proof of attempted collusion thus far. It revealed that GOP operative Peter Smith sought Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails from who he thought were Russian hackers…And he was coordinating it with none-other than Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn…The report mentions that this info is consistent with what has been looked into by investigators probing Russia’s interference. In other words, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is on it. Peter Smith (81 years old), who died days after interviewing with the Wall Street Journal in May of this year, was a longtime hater of the Clintons, having been involved in the funding of anti-Clinton research in the 90s

Friday, June 30 (with some weekend bonuses)

The 25th Amendment

On Friday, rather than stay silent or apologize for his disgusting behavior the previous day, Trump doubled down. But this time, he revealed something quite self-incriminating.

Joe Scarborough gave a different depiction of events.

Joe essentially outlined that Trump threatened to use a National Enquirer story as blackmail, threatening to deploy it if Morning Joe didn’t change their coverage. It was reported that Jared Kushner was one of the White House officials who reached out to Joe. This is the President of the United States attempting to strong-arm members of the press and harassing their family in order to change their coverage. And Trump’s own tweet seems to confirm it…

Joe and Mika touched on this with an op-ed titled “Donald Trump is not well,” where they also made another startling assertion:

“We have known Mr. Trump for more than a decade and have some fond memories of our relationship together. But that hasn’t stopped us from criticizing his abhorrent behavior or worrying about his fitness. During the height of the 2016 presidential campaign, Joe often listened to Trump staff members complain about their boss’s erratic behavior, including a top campaign official who was as close to the Republican candidate as anyone.

We, too, have noticed a change in his behavior over the past few years. Perhaps that is why we were neither shocked nor insulted by the president’s personal attack. The Donald Trump we knew before the campaign was a flawed character but one who still seemed capable of keeping his worst instincts in check.”

Meanwhile…

  • The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, aka the commission created to detect voter fraud based on Trump’s conspiracy theories, requested names, addresses, birth dates and party affiliations of registered voters all 50 states. Many saw right through this as the massive voter suppression effort it really is.

So far, at least 29 states are pushing back on the request. Even the vice chair of the commission, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) won’t even comply with his own request.

  • Minutes after Senator Ben Sasse was on Fox News calling for a repeal now and replace later strategy, President Trump took to Twitter agreeing

According to the CBO, if Obamacare was repealed with no replacement 32 million people would lose healthcare.

  • Former Chair of the Congressional Oversight Committee Rep. Jason Chaffetz officially resigned to begin his tenure at Fox News
  • More details on Peter Smith’s operation broke from the Wall Street Journal. It was revealed that some of Trump’s closest advisors were on Smith’s recruitment list, including Bannon and Conway…

On Sunday, President Trump not only went below the dignity of the office of the presidency…he went below the dignity of a decent human being. After the day before tweeting he would begin calling CNN, Fraud News Network, he sent out a video depicting himself violently body slamming and punching the news organization. Many saw this as an incitement of violence.

CNN responded with quite the power statement:

Almost immediately #25thAmendment began trending on Twitter as the nation demanded Trump’s Cabinet or Congress move to remove this man who is clearly unfit, from office…Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is clear.

Donald Trump is incapable of comprehending the weight of the office of the presidency, and therefore unworthy of its designation. Whether it’s through his tweets, carelessness with classified information, or embarrassing behavior with allies abroad, he can’t seem to grasp that his actions have monumental consequences. If he can’t understand that depicting himself, the President of the United States, assaulting a member of the Fourth Estate is completely unacceptable, then he is too far gone.

Donald Trump is an embarrassment to the title of President, American, and man.

When will the GOP learn that their escapade to pass their unpopular agenda is not worth having an unstable fool in the highest office in the land?

I don’t know. But what I do know is the America people, and the people of this planet, are fed up.

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