Trump wants to claw back the national monuments – claw them back from the people in order to give them to developers and ranchers.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing his interior secretary to review the designation of dozens of national monuments on federal lands, as he singled out “a massive federal land grab” by the Obama administration.

It was yet another executive action from a president trying to rack up accomplishments before his first 100 days in office, with Saturday marking that milestone.

The latest move could upend protections put in place in Utah and other states under a 1906 law that authorizes the president to declare federal lands as monuments and restrict their use.

During

Oh god why do they do this? Why do they parade their rudeness and bad behavior in public?

Brad Jaffy tweets two photos, one of the Prime Minister’s office readout of Trudeau’s phone call with Trump, the other the White House readout of the same call.

Left: Prime Minister's office readout of Trudeau's phone call with Trump

Right: White House readout of the very same call

Um… pic.twitter.com/asAxPMGhMp

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) April 26, 2017

Or maybe it’s more cowardice than laziness. Business Insider elaborates:

The US and Canada are embroiled in an escalating fight over trade policy, and the tensions between the close allies seemed evident in the readouts both countries released of a phone call on Tuesday

Bahahahaha Trump is telling astronauts to hurry up and get to Mars in the next three years.

At a push, he wants people on the planet by the end of his second term, which would come in 2025 if he were to be elected again. The President told the astronauts that they need to speed up to meet his target.

Does Trump think the astronauts do the engineering? Does he think astronauts are the only people there are at NASA?

Nasa’s plan of a mission to Mars by the 2030s was already highly ambitious. It has been funded through a bill that Mr Trump just recently signed into law – which the astronauts had to remind him of during

Donnie from Queens filled us in on the French election today.

Very interesting election currently taking place in France.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2017

You get the feeling he’s not sure where France is? And knows nothing whatever about it?

The AP interviewed him on Friday. The transcript is scary.

I think I’ve established amazing relationships that will be used the four or eight years, whatever period of time I’m here. I think for that I would be getting very high marks because I’ve established great relationships with countries, as President el-Sissi has shown and others have shown. Well, if you look at the president of China, people said they’ve never seen anything like what’s going

Trump put out a statement on Earth Day yesterday.

“My Administration is committed to keeping our air and water clean, to preserving our forests, lakes, and open spaces, and to protecting endangered species,” the statement read.

What a shameless liar. He just repealed a regulation protecting streams and other waterways a couple of weeks ago.

Here are some of the actions the Trump administration has taken on environmental issues so far:

• Trump signed an executive order rolling back former president Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The Clean Power Plan was aimed at reducing carbon emissions, reducing American reliance on coal and other fossil fuels, and promoting the use of alternative sources of energy to curb global warming
• Trump signed a bill

It turns out that Trump didn’t know much about how to be president when he started.

Trump’s ascension to the presidency is an unlikely story. The flashy New York billionaire and former reality TV star cuts a very different image than any American president before him. He’s the first with no government, military or political experience. In an age of frustration with the political establishment on both sides of the aisle, that background had a certain appeal.

Only to people who don’t think.

No one would say that about any other job that relies on skills and knowledge. Why does anyone say it about as skill-heavy a job as being president? Why does anyone encourage this ridiculous idea? Pig-ignorance … Read the rest

Our orange Nazi will be holding another rally next weekend. How many rallies is that now? Four since he took office? Five?

President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he is holding a rally the same night as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

“Next Saturday night I will be holding a BIG rally in Pennsylvania. Look forward to it,” the president tweeted.

A rally why? He never explains that. Why does he keep throwing rallies?

Well we know the main reason. He’s a narcissist with an unslakable ravenous hunger for attention and applause. It’s the best fun he knows of, standing facing a big crowd of people who all think he’s the coolest Nazi ever. But that’s not a genuine … Read the rest

From Vox last week:

President Donald Trump recounted an absolutely astounding detail about one of his conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping in comments published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday afternoon. Apparently, Trump came into his first meeting with the Chinese leader, in early April, convinced that China could simply eliminate the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear program. Xi then patiently explained Chinese-Korean history to Trump — who then promptly changed his mind.

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” the president told the Journal. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. … But it’s not what you would think.”

Typical, innit.

He was telling us … Read the rest

Oh look, another glaring conflict of interest:

Exxon Mobil is pursuing a waiver from Treasury Department sanctions on Russia to drill in the Black Sea in a venture with Rosneft, the Russian state oil company, a former State Department official said on Wednesday. An oil industry official confirmed the account.

The waiver application was made under the Obama administration, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity, and the company has not dropped the proposal.

Exxon applied for the waiver while Obama was in office, so my goodness what a nice stroke of luck for them that when Obama left office the new guy put the CEO of Exxon in as Secretary of State. How touchingly generous of … Read the rest

Past Donnie on Twitter:

Why does Obama believe he shouldn't comply with record releases that his predecessors did of their own volition? Hiding something?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2012

My goodness, you lying sack of shit. Tax returns? White House visitor logs? Hiding something?

A lot of undecided and independent voters have had enough with Obama’s lack of transparency. I don't blame them.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2012

Why is @BarackObama spending millions to try and hide his records? He is the least transparent President–ever–and he ran on transparency.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2012

All recent Presidents have released their transcripts. What is @BarackObama hiding?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

Our authoritarian president congratulated Erdoğan on his winning sweeping new powers in a referendum conducted while most dissenters are languishing in prison. Of course he did.

Trump’s call came as the Turkish government announced late on Monday night that it would be extending the state of emergency in the country by three more months.

International observers monitoring the Turkish referendum concluded in a preliminary report on Monday that the campaign and vote took place in a political environment where the “fundamental freedoms essential to a genuinely democratic process were curtailed”.

And Donnie from Queens is down with that.

Trump’s congratulatory message strikes a starkly different tone from the statement issued by the US state department on Monday, which urged Erdoğan

Trump is tweeting.

I did what was an almost an impossible thing to do for a Republican-easily won the Electoral College! Now Tax Returns are brought up again?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2017

Non sequitur, Donnie. Irrelevant. Not the point. We know you won the Electoral vote; that doesn’t make your tax returns no longer of interest. On the contrary: it makes them far more so. You’re not a private individual. We need to know exactly how you’ve been enriching yourself all these years.

Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2017

Duh, we know the election is over, that’s … Read the rest

But meanwhile we can’t let Trump’s reckless Twitter-threats at North Korea distract us from the less dramatic ongoing corruption and secrecy of his disgustingly sleazy self-interested administration. The NY Times and Pro Publica are collaborating to cover the subject. The Times today:

President Trump is populating the White House and federal agencies with former lobbyists, lawyers and consultants who in many cases are helping to craft new policies for the same industries in which they recently earned a paycheck.

Remember yesterday’s news about how they’ve made the visitor logs secret? Yeah.

The result is potential conflicts of interest not just with Trump but across the whole executive branch.

In at least two cases, the appointments may have already led

Jay Willis at GQ says Twitter had oughta shut down Donnie’s Twitter before he sets off the nuclear holocaust.

One of the biggest irritants to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, apparently, has been Donald Trump’s “provocations” on social media. The country’s vice foreign minister ominously declared that the president “makes trouble” with his “aggressive” tweets, warning that his government is ready for war if Trump wants the same. Here’s the evidence, complete with an inane “U.S.A.” coda, like Trump briefly got caught up in another late-night viewing of that 30 for 30 about the Miracle on Ice:

The “U.S.A.” is a strikingly stupid touch – as if this were a god damn football game, or a plain old unsublimated … Read the rest

What could possibly go wrong?

The Trump Administration will not disclose logs of those who visit the White House complex, breaking with his predecessor, the White House announced Friday.

The decision, after nearly three months of speculation about the fate of the records, marks a dramatic from the Obama Administration’s voluntary disclosure of more than 6 million records during his presidency. The U.S. Secret Service maintains the logs, formally known as the Workers and Visitors Entry System, for the purpose of determining who can access to the 18-acre complex.

White House communications director Michael Dubke said the decision to reverse the Obama-era policy was due to “the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of

The news outlets are excited that Bannon may be on his way out. I can’t get all that excited about it, myself – he’s loathsome and he doesn’t belong there times a billion, but it’s not as if his departure will make anything better. It’s all too clear that nothing will make anything better, because Trump is Trump and isn’t going to morph into a reasonable adult devoted to the general welfare.

But anyway, Bannon may be on the We Don’t Like Him Any More list.

In an interview with the New York Post’s Michael Goodwin, Trump seems to push away Bannon.

“I like Steve, but you have to remember, he was not involved in my campaign until

Jenna Johnson at the Post shows how completely random Trump’s thinking is and how frivolously he expresses it in an interview on Fox Business Network this morning.

Soon after the strike, Trump delivered a statement Thursday night from his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., saying that he was moved to act after reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons to kill “helpless men, women and children,” including “beautiful babies.” After delivering those scripted remarks, the president retreated from public discussion of the attack, while his aides tried to explain how this strike fits with Trump’s “America First” doctrine and campaign pledge not to get involved with conflicts in other countries.

It doesn’t, of course. Either he didn’t … Read the rest

Apparently Trump can’t figure out for himself that gassing civilians is not ok. Apparently he needs a baby-mama to tell him – and she has to be his daughter.

President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a missile strike against Syria following a deadly chemical attack in the northwestern part of the country was influenced by his “heartbroken and outraged” daughter Ivanka, according to one of her brothers.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Eric Trump said Ivanka likely swayed their father. “Ivanka is the mother of three kids and she has influence,” he said. “I’m sure she said, ‘Listen, this is horrible stuff.’ My father will act in times like that.”

Really. He’s that dumb? He’s so dumb … Read the rest

That evil piece of shit. EVIL.

The Trump administration informed Congress on Monday that it had terminated United States funding for the United Nations Population Fund, the world’s leading provider of family planning services, including contraception, to women in at least 155 countries.

The United States is one of the top donor nations to the United Nations, and the denial of funding was one of President Trump’s biggest moves yet to reduce financing for family planning.

Rich thieving rapist American white guy cuts off funding for contraception so that more poor brown women around the world will be forced to conceive and bear children they don’t want to conceive and bear.

In a letter to the Senate