Category: Unpresidential

Trump to stay at Doonbeg, his money-losing golf course threatened by climate change

President Trump arrived at his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, on Wednesday for a two-night stay — pausing between official events in Europe to visit a business that has cost him $41 million and never reported turning a profit.

Trump, coming off an official state visit to Britain, landed at Shannon Airport in the west of Ireland and met briefly with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar before flying to Doonbeg, about 40 miles away.

The Irish Times reported that Trump originally wanted to meet with Varadkar at his golf club, but Varadkar wanted to meet at another nearby hotel. The two leaders settled on an awkward compromise: the VIP lounge at the airport.

Trump will leave Doonbeg on Thursday, visiting France for D-Day commemorations. He will return to Doonbeg on Thursday night, before flying home Friday.

Despite the odd geography of that schedule — which requires flying hundreds of miles west to Ireland, then hundreds more miles back east to France — Trump said he stayed at Doonbeg for convenience.

“We’re going to be staying at Doonbeg in Ireland because it’s convenient and it’s a great place. But it’s convenient,” Trump said before he left Washington.

The visit marks the third time Trump has paused during an overseas trip to visit one of his businesses, which he has maintained ownership of as president. He made a brief stop at his Waikiki hotel in Hawaii on the way to Asia in 2017 and spent two nights at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland last summer.

This visit has brought a large contingent of U.S. and Irish officials, as well as police and security forces, to a village of about 750 people. It was not clear how many of them, besides Trump, were staying at the Doonbeg course’s 120-room hotel.

But if they wanted to stay in Doonbeg, they didn’t have many other choices. TripAdvisor lists three hotels, total. Trump’s hotel is rated No. 1. The No. 3 is not a typical hotel but a group of “camping pods” that resemble cozy wooden sheds.

The visit is also bringing worldwide publicity to a course that Trump bought in 2014, after its former owners had struggled to turn a profit.

Trump paid $11.9 million, according to Irish corporate records. After that, Trump put in an additional $30 million into renovating and operating the property, without taking a mortgage loan.

Doonbeg was one of 14 properties that Trump bought without loans between 2006 and 2014, an all-cash spending binge that topped $400 million — defying his history as the heavy-borrowing “King of Debt.” The Trump Organization has explained this unusual spending — which defies the usual practices of the debt-loving real estate industry — by saying its other businesses produced enough cash to make it easy.

“I took a chance, I bought it and — no options, no nothing, just bought it for cash, no mortgage, no debt, no nothing,” Trump told The Washington Post in 2016. “I don’t have debt on any of them. I don’t have debt on very much, period.”

Since then, Doonbeg has never reported turning a profit, losing more than $1 million every year from 2014 to 2017, according to Irish corporate records.

In 2018, the course’s revenue rose slightly — up about 2 percent from $14.2 million to $14.5 million, according to Trump’s latest U.S. financial disclosures. But those disclosures do not show whether the course turned a profit, and the Irish records that would show profit or loss are not yet available.

The course is now waiting on two decisions from Irish planning authorities that the Trump Organization says are crucial to the club’s future.

One is on a proposed sea wall to stop the Atlantic Ocean from eroding away part of the golf course.

The Trump Organization cited climate change in its application for the permit, according to a Politico report from 2016, saying that sea-level rise and more-powerful storms had worsened the threat of erosion. Trump the politician, of course, has questioned idea that climate change is a threat at all — defying the overwhelming scientific consensus and his own golf course’s assessment of its future.

The application for that sea wall is now before Ireland’s national planning authority.

In 2018, the Trump Organization also applied to local authorities to expand the hotel by adding more than 50 new rental cottages and a large ballroom for events. It is awaiting approval from local officials.

At Doonbeg, Trump is likely to find something that escaped him in London: a warm welcome. Trump’s club employs more than 200 people, making it one of the largest employers in a rural area of County Clare. Reporters visiting the area in advance of his visit found that locals — even those who disagreed with his politics — thanked him for bringing customers and money to Doonbeg.

“People divorce Donald Trump the owner of the golf course from his politics,” said James Griffin, a member of the Trump club interviewed by the Irish Times. “People have their own ideas about his policies. The big thing here are the jobs he supports.”

[Washington Post]

EPA chief attacks the media in speech to agency science advisers

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Andrew Wheeler, chose to go “off script” Wednesday morning when he warned the agency’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) against trusting the media.

“I caution you to be careful what you read in the media,” Wheeler said, concluding his remarks to the public meeting — the first time the SAB has meet in a year.

Wheeler was specifically referring to a tweet by Yahoo News journalist Alexander Nazaryan on Monday which quoted Wheeler telling the National Press Club, “‘The media does a disservice to the American public’ by reporting on global warming, says EPA head Andrew Wheeler. Wants more positive coverage.”

And indeed, on Monday, Wheeler did take time to list five things he believes the press “consistently gets wrong” — this included reporting that the environment is getting worse. Instead, the press should be talking more about how it’s been getting better since the 1970s, Wheeler argued.

Nazaryan’s tweet was quickly circulated around the internet, including by a New York Times journalist and the Sierra Club. In response, the EPA sent out a press release stating that the tweet was “misleading,” and accused the Yahoo journalist of choosing to “deliberately spread false information on Twitter.”

This argument was reiterated on Wednesday by Wheeler, who said the fact that the Sierra Club started promoting the tweet made him wonder whether the media and environmental groups were “colluding” for fundraising purposes.

Under the Trump administration, however, the EPA has actively worked to rollback environmental protections, often in line with fossil fuel or other industry interests. Most recently this includes challenging the underlying risk calculations that support clean air rules.

The media has played a critical role in reporting on, and investigating, not just these various policy decisions but also potential ethics controversies and conflicts of interest plaguing the agency.

But Wheeler urged scientists not to trust the media and come to him or other top EPA officials if they had questions or concerns.

This isn’t the first time that the Trump administration’s EPA has “fact-checked” the media or been antagonistic toward reporters. Last year, reporters from major news outlets, including the Associated Press and CNN, were banned from attending a summit on harmful chemicals; one journalist was even forcibly removed by security.

And in September 2017, the EPA’s press office sent out a press release titled “EPA Response To The AP’s Misleading Story,” which accused AP reporter Michael Biesecker of writing an “incredibly misleading story” about Superfund sites and Hurricane Harvey. (The EPA did not, however, contradict any facts in Biesecker’s story.)

Meanwhile, the EPA has used articles written by climate science deniers, including the Heartland Institute and the Daily Caller, as their own press releases rather than citing expert staff members — a move which the National Association of Science Writers labeled “unprofessional” and “unethical.”

All of this is part of the larger confrontational relationship with the press promoted by President Donald Trump, who consistently calls media “fake news” and has repeatedly encouraged violence against the media.

[ThinkProgress]

Trump likens Irish border to wall between US and Mexico

Donald Trump has started his visit to Ireland by comparing its post-Brexit border with Northern Ireland to the US border with Mexico, along which he wants to build a permanent wall.

Trump, sitting next to a visibly uncomfortable taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, waded into the Brexit debate minutes after Air Force One touched down at Shannon airport on Wednesday afternoon.

“I think it will all work out very well, and also for you with your wall, your border,” he said at a joint press conference. “I mean, we have a border situation in the United States, and you have one over here. But I hear it’s going to work out very well here.”

Varadkar interjected that Ireland wished to avoid a border or a wall, a keystone of Irish government policy.

“I think you do, I think you do,” Trump said. “The way it works now is good, you want to try and to keep it that way. I know that’s a big point of contention with respect to Brexit. I’m sure it’s going to work out very well. I know they’re focused very heavily on it.”

In London on Tuesday Trump met the Brexiter politicians Nigel Farage, Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, all of whom have played down the idea that the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland will be a problem after the UK leaves the EU.

Trump echoed their confidence in Shannon. “There are a lot of good minds thinking about how to do it and it’s going to be just fine. It ultimately could even be very, very good for Ireland. The border will work out.”

The Irish government has mounted an intense, three-year diplomatic effort arguing the opposite, that Brexit threatens peace and prosperity on the island of Ireland.

The US president’s comments were an awkward start to what is expected to be a low-key end to his visit to Europe, with much of his time spent at his golf and hotel resort in Doonbeg, County Clare. From Shannon airport he took a short helicopter ride to his resort on the Atlantic coast.

Addressing the media after Trump’s departure, Varadkar said he explained the history of the border and the Troubles in their private meeting. “We talked Brexit. President Trump shares our objective to keep the border open.” He said Trump had not elaborated on why he thought Brexit could benefit Ireland.

The two leaders also discussed trade, visas and taxes paid by US corporations with operations in Ireland.

The Irish president, Michael D Higgins, made an unexpected intervention on the eve of the visit by calling Trump’s policy on the climate emergency “regressive and pernicious”, a critique protesters will echo at rallies in Shannon and Dublin.

Trump told reporters he was unaware of Higgins’ comments and reiterated that the US had enjoyed cleaner air and water since he became president, a claim he also made in London.

After three days of pomp, pageantry and politics during his state visit to Britain, Trump and his entourage, which includes his wife, Melania, and his four adult children, will be mostly out of the public gaze in the remote, windswept landscape of Loop Head peninsula.

On Thursday, Trump will travel to France for D-day commemorations before returning to Doonbeg, where he is due to play a round of golf on Friday before flying home.

The Irish police deployed 1,500 uniformed officers plus 500 members of specialised units, including divers and armed and air support, to secure Shannon airport and Doonbeg.

Trump’s 162-hectare (400 acre) resort was in lockdown and closed to the public. Newly installed surveillance cameras with night-vision capability fed images to a police control room.

Roads to the adjacent village of Doonbeg remained open. Locals have erected US flags and expressed hope Trump would visit one of their pubs, despite him being teetotal.

The resort employs more than 300 people during summer and is an economic lifeline for the region. Fr Joe Haugh, the parish priest, said: “The people are 99.9% behind him.”

Elsewhere, there were protests by individuals and groups opposed to the US president’s record on the environment and the rights of women, immigrants, ethnic minorities and LGBT people.

Demonstrators set up a “peace camp” outside Shannon airport, and the Trump blimp used by protesters in London was due to appear at a rally in Dublin on Thursday.

The visit has created a political and diplomatic challenge for the Irish government. Trump is not popular in Ireland. Varadkar reportedly asked to have the meeting at Shannon airport, a neutral venue, rather than in Trump’s resort.

The hosts, however, are keen to lobby the US president over trade, visas for Irish workers and support for the peace process. They also want to explain the potential impact of Brexit on the border and try to placate Trump over Ireland’s low-tax regime and use of Huawei technology in the new 5G network.

Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, sought a delicate balance when asked about Higgins’ criticism of Trump’s climate policies. The Irish president caught the mood of the Irish people quite well, he told RTÉ, but regressive was “a better adjective” than pernicious.

The hosts will be hoping Trump does not broach a source of personal irritation. Environmental objections have stalled a sea barrier he wishes to build to protect his resort from erosion. The US president has described the battle as an “unpleasant experience”.

[The Guardian]

Trump Invents Quote From Kevin McCarthy to Tout Support on Tariffs, Border Policy

It would appear that President Donald Trump drastically twisted a recent quote from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in order to claim he’s on solid political footing with his plans to put tariffs on Mexico.

On Wednesday, Trump thanked McCarthy on Twitter because he supposedly said this about the president’s plans:

There’s just a slight problem: that quote doesn’t seem to exist anywhere except in Trump’s tweet.

Politico traced the so-called quote to an interview McCarthy gave to Laura Ingraham on Tuesday night, during which, the Fox News host asked him about Trump’s tariffs.

Here are those remarks in full:

“No. No, we support this president. And why, when you’re about to have a meeting – the secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, is meeting with Mexico tomorrow. We want to solve this crisis at the border – Why wouldn’t you help them be as strong as they can be? Stand up with him, and you know what, if you give the president his strongest hand, you’ll never end up with tariffs and we’ll have a border that is secure.”

As you can see, this is rather different from how McCarthy supposedly said that support for Trump’s tariffs “makes any measure the President takes on the Border totally Veto proof.”

[Mediaite]

Trump Lashes Out at ‘Washed Up Psycho’ Bette Midler for Sharing Fake Quote

President Donald Trump sounded off on Twitter Tuesday, calling Bette Midler a “washed up psycho” and “sick scammer” after she apologized for sharing a fake quote attributed to him online.

“Washed up psycho @BetteMidler was forced to apologize for a statement she attributed to me that turned out to be totally fabricated by her in order to make ‘your great president’ look really bad. She got caught, just like the Fake News Media gets caught. A sick scammer!” he tweeted. Currently on a state visit to the U.K., he sent the tweet at 1:30 a.m. London time.

On Sunday, the actress had shared a fabricated quotation that appeared to be from Trump in a made-up interview with People Magazine in 1998. “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They love anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific,” the quote read. She captioned the tweet, “He certainly knew his crowd.”

Midler deleted the post on Monday and apologized, saying “It sounds so much like him that I believed it was true!”

This isn’t the first time Trump has tweeted about Midler. In a tweet from 2012, he said, “While @BetteMidler is an extremely unattractive woman, I refuse to say that because I always insist on being politically correct.” In another tweet from the same year, he claimed to never have liked her persona or singing and hadn’t heard her name in years. He doubled down on that point in 2014, saying she “sucked” during her performance at the Academy Awards.

[Variety]

Trump Calls U.K. Protests ‘Fake News’, Claims There Were ‘Thousands of People in the Streets’ Cheering Him

President Donald Trump claimed there were throngs of “thousands” cheering him during his UK visit, and called reports of protests “fake news.”

At a joint press conference with outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May in London Tuesday, Trump was asked about the massive protests taking place during his current trip. Despite evidence to the contrary, Trump insisted those protests were “fake news.”

“As far as the protests, I have to tell you, because I commented on it yesterday,” Trump said, referring to his tweets on the subject.

“We left the prime minister, the Queen, the Royal family, there were thousands of people in the streets cheering,” Trump said. “And even coming over today, there were thousands of people cheering, and then I heard that they were protesting.”

“I said ‘Where are the protests? I don’t see any protests,’” Trump insisted. “I did see a small protest today when I came, very small, so a lot of it is fake news, I hate to say.”

“But you saw the people waving the American flag, waving your flag, it was tremendous spirit and love,” Trump continued. “There was great love, it was an alliance. And I didn’t see their protests until just a little while ago, and it was a very very small group of people put in for political reasons. So it was fake news. Thank you.”

[Mediaite]

Reality

Trump: ‘Foolish’ for GOP to try to stop tariffs on Mexico

President Trump on Tuesday insisted he will follow through with new tariffs on Mexico if it does not do more to curb illegal migration and said it would be “foolish” for congressional Republicans to try and stop him.

“We are going to see if we can do something, but I think it’s more likely that the tariffs go on,” Trump said during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May.

Addressing deliberations by Republicans on a measure that could limit his tariff power, Trump said, “I don’t think they will do that. I think if they do, it’s foolish.”

Trump’s proposed tariffs on Mexican imports are scheduled to take effect on Monday. A 5 percent tariff on all goods would be imposed, and it could grow to 25 percent by October unless Trump is satisfied with steps taken by Mexico on immigration.

A team of Mexican diplomats is in Washington this week seeking to convince the administration to back away from the plan, which has also unsettled U.S. businesses. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to break off from Trump’s European trip to attend the meetings.

Asked if Mexico has done enough to avoid the tariffs, Trump responded “no, we haven’t started yet” and reaffirmed the tariffs will begin “next week.”

But the president added the two countries would be talking over the coming weeks and months and expressed hope Mexico will “step up and give us security for our nation.”

Trump’s tariffs, which were opposed by some of his closest trade advisers, have also run into resistance on Capitol Hill where Republicans who traditionally support free trade want the president to change course, fearing they could derail efforts to ratify a new North American trade pact.

Some GOP senators have floated the possibility of passing legislation to disapprove of the Mexico tariffs and curtail his ability to unilaterally impose tariffs in the future, but there are differences on how to proceed.

Trump suggested GOP lawmakers would be punished politically for going against him, claiming he has a 94 percent approval rating among Republican voters and pointing out “there’s nothing more important than borders” for his base.

It remains unclear what Mexico might have to do in order to satisfy the president’s concerns.

In announcing the tariffs, Trump tweeted that all illegal immigration would have to “STOP” but administration officials later said there was no specific goal that would need to be met and instead the Mexican government would have to show progress on securing its border with Guatemala, deporting migrants and cracking down on criminal gangs.

Trump Tells Demonstrable Lies in Front of Entire World During International Press Conference

President Donald Trump remained true to form by telling multiple demonstrable falsehoods on the international stage, claiming, among other things, that he has “record” approval among Republicans.

On Tuesday, Trump held a joint press conference in London with outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May, and managed to cram several whoppers into the 13-minute question and answer period.

For example, he was asked about the possibility that congressional Republicans might block his most recent threatened tariffs against Mexico.

“I don’t think they will do that, I think if they do it’s foolish,” Trump said, and went on to add “I’ve had tremendous Republican support, I have a 90 percent, 94% approval rating as of this morning in the Republican Party.”

“That’s an all-time record, can you believe that? Isn’t that something?” he asked May. “I love records. But we have a 94% approval rating in the Republican Party.”

But as the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale noted in real time, Trump’s actual approval rating among Republicans is actually not “94 percent,” and never has been, while former President George W. Bush repeatedly reached 99 percent among Republicans following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Trump was also asked for his impressions on Brexit, and could no resist making a familiar boast.

“Well I don’t like to positions in things that I’m not really, I understand the issue very well,” Trump said. “I really predicted what was going to happen. Some of you remember that prediction, it was a strong prediction made at a certain location on a development we were opening the day before it happened. and I thought it was going to happen because of immigration more than anything else.”

But Trump, who has told this lie repeatedly, actually visited his Turnberry, Scotland golf course the day after the Brexit results, and held a press conference praising the results.

[Mediaite]

Trump Marks UK Arrival By Calling for Boycott of AT&T to ‘Force Changes’ With CNN’s ‘Fake News’

President Donald Trump has just arrived in the United Kingdom for a multi-day diplomatic visit to America’s longest and strongest ally, and what is his first message upon arrival? What else — the blaming of CNN’s coverage and questioning of their new corporate owner, AT&T.

Trump tweeted:

Shortly after he followed with a strong suggestion of boycotting AT&T because of CNN’s coverage:

What was happening on CNN just before Trump tweeted? A deep dive segment into Trump’s denial of calling Meghan Markle “nasty” despite audio existing in which he clearly says of Prince Harry’s wife “I didn’t know that she was nasty.”

NY Times reporter Maggie Haberman was featured in this segment from London, and mere minutes before Trump fired the anti-CNN salvo, she offered this analysis of the “nasty” dust-up:

This is a classic of the Donald Trump genre. He’ll say something that could be interpreted in two ways. He could say she’s personally nasty or her comments were nasty. He wasn’t clear. Instead of owning it he torches anyone who notes it and says he didn’t do it in the first place. Then people talk past each other as to what he meant. He clearly said it. He was responding to something she had said two and a half years ago that he appeared surprised by. He did use the word nasty. He has a habit of saying that things didn’t happen when there isn’t audio or video. Sometimes he does it when there is.

[Mediaite]

Trump Lands In U.K. For State Visit, And Insults London’s Mayor

President Trump received a royal salute as he arrived in Britain for a state visit Monday, making his way to Buckingham Palace to greet Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the royal family. Scripted to the minute, the carefully choreographed visit also included a review of an honor guard at the palace.

Standing on Buckingham Palace’s west terrace, Trump and first lady Melania Trump watched as rows of redcoated soldiers arrayed themselves across the palace’s garden. As a military band played the U.S. national anthem, he then walked with Prince Charles down to the lawn to inspect the guard of honor, stopping occasionally to talk with service members.

Accompanying the president was an entourage that included his daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump and her husband, the senior adviser Jared Kushner, along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway and immigration adviser Stephen Miller.

The Trumps will spend much of the day at Buckingham Palace, eating lunch with the queen and having tea with Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall. A state banquet will follow, around 7:40 p.m. local time.

Much like last summer, Trump’s visit comes as the U.K. struggles to find a way to exit the European Union. And on Tuesday, he will meet with Prime Minister Theresa May, who will leave office this month after failing to reach a deal that was politically palatable in both the U.K. and the EU.

On Wednesday, the Trumps will take part in a D-Day ceremony in Portsmouth, England. From there, they are scheduled to make a stop in Ireland before flying to France for a brief visit with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The goal of the U.K. visit, the White House says, is to “secure a stronger and more prosperous international relationship.” It adds that while in England, Trump plans to discuss a new trade agreement with the U.K. as it negotiates the severing of ties with the European Union.

Another chief topic will be security, from the fight against ISIS to America’s contentious relationship with China and Iran, as well as the situation in North Korea.

The state visit might be more officious and formal than Trump’s tour of the U.K. last summer, but that didn’t stop the president from insulting London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Twitter as he arrived — just as he did last June.

“He is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London, not me,” Trump said. The president added that Khan “reminds me very much of our very dumb and incompetent Mayor of NYC, de Blasio, who has also done a terrible job — only half his height.”

The clash started over the weekend, when Khan said the U.K. was being “un-British” in hosting and celebrating Trump. Writing in The Observer newspaper, the mayor cited Trump’s response to a white supremacist rally in Virginia, his immigration policies and other factors.

The U.S. president, Khan said, is part of a global threat that sows dangerous divisiveness and wins power through fear.

As NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports from London, “Khan said Trump’s electoral tactics — along with leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — recall the quote: ‘divisive tropes of the fascists of the 20th century.’ “

After arriving for his multiday state visit, Trump also complained that because Fox News was not available, he had to watch CNN.

The president tweeted:

“Just arrived in the United Kingdom. The only problem is that @CNN is the primary source of news available from the U.S. After watching it for a short while, I turned it off. All negative & so much Fake News, very bad for U.S. Big ratings drop. Why doesn’t owner @ATT do something?”

[NPR]

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