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Monday, 10/16/17Watch the full episode of Monday night's The Rachel Maddow Show.
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NAFTA negotiations aren't exactly going well for Team Trump
In the spring, as Donald Trump's presidency reached the 100-day mark, he was reportedly looking for some kind of bold and dramatic action -- and he settled on canceling the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) As Trump acknowledged in April, "I was all set to terminate. I looked forward to terminating. I was going to do it."
As we've discussed, this obviously didn't happen, thanks in large part to conversations the American president had with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts.
Instead, officials from the three North American countries are engaged in ongoing talks to update the trade agreement, and by all accounts, the NAFTA negotiations aren't going especially well, and already expected to go well beyond their original deadline. The CBC reported this morning on one of the problems plaguing the process:
The source says it appears some members of the U.S. delegation are uncomfortable with the demands they are presenting, which appear to have been dictated to them by the Trump administration.
"They don't like what they are doing," says the source, who was not authorized to speak about the talks on the record.
There also appears to be a sense of confusion about the overall U.S. vision for NAFTA and who is really running the show.
I haven't seen comparable reports from U.S. news outlets, but this story out of Canada is very easy to believe.
Trump offers new 'instructions' to U.S. intelligence agencies
Donald Trump faced a problem last week. The international nuclear agreement with Iran has proven to be effective and stabilizing, but the president, reflexively opposed to each of his predecessor's accomplishments, had concluded he hated the Iran deal anyway.
The dilemma, of course, was coming up with a coherent justification for putting the policy's future at risk. For the most part, Trump stuck to demonstrably false claims, but there was another point in the president's speech on Friday that stood out for me.
"There are also many people who believe that Iran is dealing with North Korea. I am going to instruct our intelligence agencies to do a thorough analysis and report back their findings beyond what they have already reviewed."
If we accept the rhetoric -- part of the prepared written remarks -- at face value, Trump seemed to concede that there is no meaningful evidence that Iran is dealing with North Korea. If such proof existed, he would've said so, instead of referring to some vague "people" who "believe" the allegation.
But therein lies the point: the president has apparently decided to "instruct" intelligence agencies to take another look at the claim Trump seems eager to believe, telling intel professionals to go "beyond what they have already reviewed."
The not-so-subtle message seemed to be, "I didn't like what the intelligence said, so try again to tell me what I want to hear."
Faced with a scandal, Trump's pick for drug czar quits
Following explosive reporting this week from the Washington Post and CBS's "60 Minutes," Donald Trump is suddenly in need of a new drug czar.
Rep. Tom Marino has withdrawn from consideration as the White House's pick for drug czar following a bombshell report that he championed a bill that hindered federal agents from going after the Big Pharma firms that flooded the country with addictive opioids.
President Donald Trump made the announcement Tuesday morning on Twitter. "Rep.Tom Marino has informed me that he is withdrawing his name from consideration as drug czar," Trump wrote. "Tom is a fine man and a great Congressman!"
Given the available information, it's difficult to argue with this outcome. The Post reported that as the opioid crisis intensified, Congress "effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation's streets." The point of the measure was to "weaken aggressive DEA enforcement efforts against drug distribution companies that were supplying corrupt doctors and pharmacists who peddled narcotics to the black market."
Leading the way was Tom Marino, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, who was the beneficiary of generous contributions from the drug industry.
Had Trump nominated Marino to almost any administrative post, it would've been difficult to defend the GOP lawmaker, but given the fact that the president wanted the GOP lawmaker to serve as the nation's drug czar, this week's revelations were disqualifying.
As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) put it yesterday afternoon, "Confirming Representative Marino as our nation's drug czar is like putting the wolf in charge of the hen house."
The Pennsylvanian Republican's withdrawal does not, however, mean the story is over.
The wrong president to honor 'National Character Counts Week'
For many years, various presidents in both parties have issued proclamations recognizing days, weeks, and months in recognition of worthy causes, and for the most part, these proclamations have gone largely overlooked.
But there's something about Donald Trump that puts some of these presidential declarations in an unfortunate light. For example, it's now "National Character Counts Week" in the United States. Trump's proclamation read in part:
"We celebrate National Character Counts Week because few things are more important than cultivating strong character in all our citizens, especially our young people. The grit and integrity of our people, visible throughout our history, defines the soul of our Nation. This week, we reflect on the character of determination, resolve, and honor that makes us proud to be American. [...]
"Character is built slowly. Our actions -- often done first out of duty -- become habits ingrained in the way we treat others and ourselves. As parents, educators, and civic and church leaders, we must always work to cultivate strength of character in our Nation's youth."
Reading this, and realizing that it's intended to be the words of Donald Trump, it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Is this the president who's seriously going to reflect on how "we treat others"?
Didn't Trump just yesterday smear his presidential predecessors by lying about their interactions with the families of American soldiers killed in action?
I'm reminded of a recent column from the Washington Post's Michael Gerson, a former chief speechwriter for George W. Bush, who wondered whether Trump is "morally equipped to be president." The piece highlighted Trump's "vulgarity and smallness, which have been the equivalent of spray-painting graffiti on the Washington Monument."
After making a mess, Trump wants credit for others' clean-up effort
Donald Trump delivered some brief remarks before the start of a cabinet meeting yesterday, and seemed especially animated about the Affordable Care Act. "Obamacare is finished. It's dead. It's gone," the president said, sounding a bit like a mob boss. "It's no longer -- you shouldn't even mention. It's gone. There is no such thing as Obamacare anymore."
About a minute later, in reference to rising premiums, Trump added, "This is an Obamacare mess."
As a simple matter of logic, both statements can't be true. If the ACA no longer exists, it can't be the source of ongoing troubles in the health care sector. Either there is "such a thing" as the Affordable Care Act or there isn't, and the president probably ought to pick one.
But Trump's confusion isn't just creating contradictions. By taking a series of steps to sabotage the nation's system -- including last week's decision to scrap cost-sharing-reduction payments -- the president is directly responsible for pushing higher costs onto many American consumers. Trump nevertheless added yesterday that everything is going according to plan.
"In my opinion, what's happening is, as we meet -- Republicans are meeting with Democrats because of what I did with the CSR, because I cut off the gravy train. If I didn't cut the CSRs, they wouldn't be meeting. They'd be having lunch and enjoying themselves, all right?"
Actually, no. It's all wrong, not all right.
Trump rationalizes his failures: 'I'm not going to blame myself'
One of the earliest controversies of Donald Trump's presidency came after he authorized a mission in Yemen, which claimed the life of Navy SEAL William "Ryan" Owens. The president couldn't have dealt with the developments in a worse way.
Trump exploited Owens' death, made dubious claims about the mission, and ultimately tried to avoid responsibility for the operation he personally authorized. "This was something that was, you know, just, they wanted to do," the president said, referring to U.S. generals. "They came to see me they explained what they wanted to do, the generals ... and they lost Ryan."
It was a quote that, under normal political conditions, might have come to define Trump's presidency, haunting him at every turn. And while that obviously didn't happen, the president's response was nevertheless an early reminder that in Trump World, the buck always stops somewhere else.
Trump drove this point home during remarks at a White House cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon:
"Despite what the press writes, I have great relationships with actually many senators, but in particular with most Republican senators. But we're not getting the job done.
"And I'm not going to blame myself, I'll be honest. They are not getting the job done.... We've had other things happen, and they're not getting the job done."
It was a rare example of the president correcting himself in public. Initially, Trump said "we're" not getting the job done, suggesting he and other Republicans collectively need to pick up their game, before he realized that he should clarify matters. "They're" not getting the job done.
The president's responsibility allergy has never been clearer.
Monday's Mini-Report, 10.16.17
Today's edition of quick hits:
* Iraq: "After weeks of threats and posturing, the Iraqi government began a military assault on Monday to curb the independence drive by the nation's Kurdish minority, wresting oil fields and a contested city from separatists pushing to break away from Iraq."
* Somalia: "A huge truck bomb blast in Somalia's capital has killed 276 people and wounded roughly 300 more, the country's information minister said Sunday. It is believed to be the single deadliest attack ever in the Horn of Africa nation."
"Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, "five years a Taliban captive after abandoning his post in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty Monday to desertion and misbehavior-before-the-enemy charges that could put him in prison for life."
* Austria's "right-wing parties made strong gains in parliamentary elections on Sunday, after a campaign in which the main contenders competed with tough stances on immigration."
* That's quite a sentence: "Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday again declined to clearly say he hadn't called President Donald Trump 'a moron,' but he did deny a Republican senator's claim that he had been castrated as the nation's top diplomat."
* Duterte: "President Trump will meet with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte during a marathon trip to Asia next month, the White House announced Monday."
* Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump's new choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security, lead a DHS team during Hurricane Katrina that "was widely criticized for its passive and clumsy response."
Trump forced to walk back ridiculous falsehood about Obama
Part of the problem with Donald Trump's presidency is his profound ignorance of history. This tends to get him into trouble because, when Trump does something he's proud of, he boasts that he's the first president to do it -- largely because he has no idea what his predecessors did and didn't do during their tenures.
After his recent trip to Puerto Rico, for example, the president bragged, "I guess it's one of the few times anybody has done this. From what I am hearing it's the first time that a sitting president has done something like this." And while it's true presidential travel was limited before airplanes were invented, in recent decades, plenty of presidents have traveled to areas affected by natural disasters. Lobbing paper towels at people may have been a presidential first, but the trip itself was routine.
Today, something similar happened. Nearly two weeks ago, four American soldiers were killed in Niger, and before this afternoon, Trump had said literally nothing about it. Asked about his silence at a White House event, the president said he had not yet contacted the fallen Americans' families because he wanted "a little time to pass." He added that he's written letters to those families, but they haven't been sent yet.
Let's note for context that since the ambush that claimed those four servicemen's lives, Trump has golfed five times.
The president then decided to brag about how awesome he thinks he is as compared to his predecessors.
"The traditional way, if you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls. A lot of them didn't make calls," he said. "I like to call when it's appropriate, when I think I'm able to do it."
Even by Trump standards, this was a breathtaking lie. In fact, Alyssa Mastromonaco, a deputy chief of staff in the Obama White House, quickly explained that Obama (and other previous presidents) often called the families of Americans killed in action. Disgusted by Trump's smear, Mastromonaco went to describe Trump as "a deranged animal."
But then something interesting happened: the president was fact-checked in real-time, and Trump was forced to backpedal.
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About The Rachel Maddow Show
Launched in 2008, “The Rachel Maddow Show” follows the machinations of policy making in America, from local political activism to international diplomacy. Rachel Maddow looks past the distractions of political theater and stunts and focuses on the legislative proposals and policies that shape American life - as well as the people making and influencing those policies and their ultimate outcome, intended or otherwise.
