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[Malyse]

Welcome to month two, which looks eerily like month one.

• Week 1 Thread
• Week 2 Thread
• Week 3 Thread
• Week 4 Thread

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-week-5-42e02307c34c#.ms0a6ga7o

Last week, President Donald Trump's possible ties to Russia dominated the news. But as soon as he gave his first big campaign speech, that issue quickly faded away as the top news story for the week, just like it did in the immediate aftermath of his inauguration.
And much like in the first month of his presidency, month two is focused on cementing Trump's xenophobic agenda, complete with crackdowns on undocumented immigrants and a Muslim Ban 2.0.

It's unclear if this is a cycle that will keep repeating or not. Either way, let's dive into Week 5.

The Big News

• Xenophobe in chief: A new memo leaked last Friday proposed using 100,000 National Guard troops as a deportation force, and two memos released Tuesday lay out an ”instruction manual for mass deportation." Such enforcement could cost the economy trillions of dollars. This is all in addition to a new Muslim ban executive order coming next week, which will only have ”minor technical differences" from the first one that's still held up in court.
• Dropping the T: Trump's Departments of Justice and Education abandoned Obama-era protections for transgender students, prompting new legal questions in ongoing trans rights cases. The administration insisted allowing discrimination against trans students was an important ”states' rights" issue, but the move prompted massive protests supporting trans youth. Transgender inmates could be next.
• Obstructing justice: White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus reportedly tried to convince the FBI to ”knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump's associates and Russians known to U.S. intelligence."
• From inside the house: High-ranking Trump assistant Sebastian Gorka reportedly helped found a fascist political party in Hungary, working closely with that country's anti-Semitic hard right.
• The end of clean power: Newly confirmed EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, whose nomination was forced through without seeing thousands of secret emails between him and oil and gas companies, made clear that the Clean Power Plan is going away and didn't even mention climate change once in his first speech.
• A new war on drugs: The White House indicated Thursday a plan to crack down on legalized recreational marijuana.

What you might have missed

• Cooking the books: Trump wants economic advisers to make up the numbers to look like the country is achieving the GDP growth he wants to be able to brag about.
• Rerigging the system: Trump's first budget proposal would cut a grant program that helps low-income people hire lawyers.
• Fiscal conservative: Trump's first month of travel expenses were almost as high as President Obama's for his entire first year. Meanwhile, his federal hiring freeze has forced several Army bases to suspend their child care programs because of staff shortages.
• Flights of fancy: Trump's sons, Eric and Don, Jr., traveled to Dubai for the opening of Trump's new golf course, which, in addition to costing the taxpayers more for their Secret Service coverage, highlighted many conflicts of interest the President still has with his businesses.
• ”Trump" in China: When China granted Trump the trademark to his name, it may have both violated Chinese law and created a new legal conflict for Trump.
• Calling the bluff: Federal election officials, those tasked with maintaining the integrity of elections, are holding Trump accountable for his baseless claims that there was massive voter fraud.

Broken Promises

A ThinkProgress review of Trump's first month found that he broke 64 promises he made on the campaign trail, keeping only seven. Many of these broken promises were things he said that he'd do, but didn't. A few of the broken promises from the past week include:

• Trump promised to label China a currency manipulator, but hasn't.
• Trump promised his kids would do no new business deals while he was in office, but they did.
• Trump promised to be ”so presidential you won't even recognize me."
• Trump promised not to tweet anymore because it's ”not presidential."

This is not normal

• Mar-a-Lobby: Members of Trump's Mar-a-Lago club apparently have plenty of opportunity to talk to the president about his policy decisions. Although Trump has denied this, his spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed this week that Mar-a-Lago makes him accessible to ”regular Americans." Membership recently doubled in cost to $200,000.
• Unskew the poll: Trump's campaign launched a survey to see if Americans agree with his recent assertion that the media is their ”enemy," then he got upset when people who didn't agree with him were actually taking the survey.
• Too foggy a day: London's mayor doesn't want to permit Trump to visit because of his immigration policies.

Lie, lies, lies

• False proposition: The White House specifically said Trump wouldn't use Air Force One as a prop, then Saturday's campaign rally took place in an airplane hangar as everyone watched the President's plane arrive.
• Not extreme enough vetting: During his campaign speech, Trump said that thousands of people were let into the country with ”no documentation."
• Swedish fishy: Trump also claimed at his rally that there had been a terrorist attack in Sweden. As many suspected had been the case, Trump later admitted that he had misinterpreted something he'd heard the night before on Fox News, and Fox News unsurprisingly came to his defense. A week later he was still making the same claim.
• Not so routine: Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly claimed that ”criminal aliens routinely victimize Americans and other legal residents." They don't. A senior White House official likewise told CNN that ”the refugee program has been a major incubator for terrorism," with no evidence to support the claim.

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Sleepy puppy!

Sleepy kitty!

Sleepy bunny!

 

[Kyleripman]

Thanks for posting, this is useful. And maddening, and depressing...but nice to have this kind of stuff collected in one place!

 

[RoKKeR]

I want off this ride.

 

[David___]

5 weeks out of the minimum of 208 weeks. Wonderful

 

[madstarr12]

Oh boy, only about 2% done with this guy.....potentially