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Here Are Your Highlights of Today’s Trump Press Meltdown

by LuisMGITinfw Posted on February 16, 2017

Mother Jones

Donald Trump went full Sarah Palin today at his press conference. It was glorious. I think you have to watch it to really get the full effect, but here are a few highlights.

First off, the word of the day is mess:

To be honest, I inherited a mess. It’s a mess. At home and abroad, a mess….I just want to let you know, I inherited a mess….ISIS has spread like cancer — another mess I inherited….And you look at Schumer and the mess that he’s got over there and they have nothing going.

Fact check: Delusional. Trump inherited an economy in pretty good shape. Crime has steadily decreased over the past decade. ISIS is losing ground and close to defeat. Illegal immigration has been stable for many years. Test scores for schoolkids are up. Fewer than a dozen American soldiers have died in combat in the past year. Obamacare has cut the number of people without health insurance almost in half. The budget deficit is down to 3 percent of GDP. After years of stagnation, wages are finally starting to go up. Unemployment and inflation are both low.

I put it out before the American people, got 306 electoral college votes….270 which you need, that was laughable. We got 306 because people came out and voted like they’ve never seen before so that’s the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan.

Fact check: Also delusionial. He got 304 electoral votes, and Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Obama all did better.

We’ve begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare….I know you can say, oh, Obamacare. I mean, they fill up our rallies with people that you wonder how they get there, but they are not the Republican people our that representatives are representing.

Fact check: Plausible! Trump and the Republicans in Congress probably do think they represent only Republicans.

The leaks are real. You’re the one that wrote about them and reported them, I mean the leaks are real. You know what they said, you saw it and the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.

Fact check: Huh?

If the information coming from those leaks is real, then how can the stories be fake?

The reporting is fake. Look, look…You know what it is? Here’s the thing. The public isn’t — you know, they read newspapers, they see television, they watch. They don’t know if it’s true or false because they’re not involved. I’m involved. I’ve been involved with this stuff all my life. But I’m involved. So I know when you’re telling the truth or when you’re not. I just see many, many untruthful things.

Fact check: True. Trump almost certainly does see many, many untruthful things.

I mean, I watch CNN, it’s so much anger and hatred and just the hatred. I don’t watch it any more….Well, you look at your show that goes on at 10 o’clock in the evening. You just take a look at that show. That is a constant hit….Now, I will say this. I watch it. I see it. I’m amazed by it.

Fact check: Schrödinger’s cat. Trump both watches and doesn’t watch CNN.

We had Hillary Clinton try and do a reset. We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20 percent of the uranium in our country. You know what uranium is, right? This thing called nuclear weapons like lots of things are done with uranium including some bad things.

Fact check: Half true. No, Hillary Clinton didn’t give Russia any uranium. (She was one of many who approved a deal for the Russian atomic energy agency to buy a Canadian company that controls 20 percent of the US uranium reserves. But none of it can exported outside the US.) However, it is true that bad things can be done with uranium.

QUESTION: Let’s talk about some serious issues that have come up in the last week that you have had to deal with as president of the United States. You mentioned the vessel — the spy vessel off the coast of the United States.

TRUMP: Not good.

QUESTION: There was a ballistic missile test that many interpret as a violation of an agreement between the two countries; and a Russian plane buzzed a U.S. destroyer.

TRUMP: Not good.

….QUESTION: So when you say they’re not good, do you mean that they are…

TRUMP: Who did I say is not good?

QUESTION: No, I read off the three things that have recently happened. Each one of them you said they’re not good.

TRUMP: No, it’s not good, but they happened.

QUESTION: But do they damage the relationship? Do they undermine…

TRUMP: They all happened recently.

Fact check: True. These are all things that happened recently.

JAKE TURX, A REPORTER FOR A SMALL ULTRA-ORTHODOX JEWISH PUBLICATION: Despite what some of my colleagues may have been reporting, I haven’t seen anybody in my community accuse either yourself or anyone on your staff of being anti-Semitic. We understand that you have Jewish grandchildren. You are their zaidy. However, what we are concerned about, and what we haven’t really heard being addressed, is an uptick in anti-Semitism and how the government is planning to take care of it… There has been a report out that 48 bomb threats have been made against Jewish centers all across the country in the last couple of weeks. There are people who are committing anti-Semitic acts or threatening to…

TRUMP: he said he was gonna ask a very simple, easy question. And it’s not, its not, not — not a simple question, not a fair question. OK sit down, I understand the rest of your question.

So here’s the story, folks. Number one, I am the least anti- Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism, the least racist person….See, he lied about — he was gonna get up and ask a very straight, simple question, so you know, welcome to the world of the media. But let me just tell you something, that I hate the charge, I find it repulsive.

I hate even the question because people that know me and you heard the prime minister, you heard Ben Netanyahu yesterday, did you hear him, Bibi? He said, I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time and then he said, forget it. So you should take that instead of having to get up and ask a very insulting question like that.

Fact check: Incoherent. Turx explicitly tried to assure Trump that nobody thought he was anti-Semitic, but Trump’s skin is so thin that he immediately decided Turx was calling him a racist and an anti-Semite. I wonder why?

By the way, the entire point of this press conference seemed to be directed at one thing: accusing the press of being horrible and dishonest. This came up in nearly every Trump answer. This is a great strategy for shoring up his base, of course. As near as I can tell, conservatives all thought this dumpster fire of a press conference was a terrific performance.

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Here Are Your Highlights of Today’s Trump Press Meltdown

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Congress Just Got a Lot Closer to Defunding Planned Parenthood

by JanetCouture134 Posted on February 16, 2017

Mother Jones

On Thursday afternoon, the House voted to approve a resolution that is widely seen by advocates as a step towards defunding Planned Parenthood. Should it become law, the measure would weaken contraceptive access across the country.

The bill, HJ Resolution 43, allows states to withhold Title X family planning funds—about $300 million distributed to states annually—from providers who also offer abortion care, a group that includes Planned Parenthood affiliates. In December, Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule that anticipated this sort of effort by prohibiting states from withholding Title X family planning money from Planned Parenthood and other providers. This House resolution proposed overturning that HHS rule via the 1996 Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to repeal new regulations within 60 days of their passage. A version of this bill is also moving through the Senate.

At a House committee hearing earlier this week, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) called this bill “the most serious threat women have faced so far this Congress.” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) called this the Republicans’ “first salvo” in defunding Planned Parenthood.

This development comes on the heels of several actions by the Trump administration and Congress that threaten women’s health care. They include Congressional efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act’s mandate requiring insurance coverage for contraception; the approval by the House of a bill to codify the Hyde Amendment, which prevents the use of federal funds for most abortions; and Trump’s expansion of the global gag order, which prohibits health providers overseas from receiving any US funding if they so much as mention abortion as an option for patients.

In the last Congress, a broader bill to deny federal funds to Planned Parenthood passed both chambers, but was vetoed by then-President Barack Obama. In contrast, Trump’s campaign said often that defunding Planned Parenthood would be a top priority for his administration.

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Congress Just Got a Lot Closer to Defunding Planned Parenthood

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Trump’s New Labor Nominee Oversaw Politicized Hiring at Justice Department

by LienGalarza Posted on February 16, 2017

Mother Jones

At a press conference Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump announced Florida International University College of Law Dean R. Alexander Acosta as his next nominee to oversee the US Department of Labor. The decision comes after a slew of scandals and mounting pressure from Republicans derailed Trump’s previous pick, fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, who withdrew his name from contention on Wednesday, a day before his confirmation hearing was scheduled.

Trump lauded Acosta’s credentials as a Harvard Law School graduate, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, and a member of the National Labor Relations Board, emphasizing that Acosta had previously been confirmed by the Senate three times. “I’ve wished him the best,” Trump told reporters. “I think he’ll be a tremendous secretary of labor.” If confirmed, Acosta would be the only Latino in Trump’s Cabinet.

But Trump didn’t mention one of Acosta’s less admirable roles. Acosta served as assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 2003 to 2005 under President George W. Bush—the first Latino in that role—and was at the center of a scandal over hiring practices. During Acosta’s tenure, Brad Schlozman, a deputy assistant attorney general, “improperly considered political and ideological affiliations” when he hired attorneys to work at the Civil Rights Division, according to a Justice Department inspector general report written in 2008. “Attorneys hired by Schlozman were more than twice as likely to be Republican or conservative than those attorneys Scholzman was not involved in hiring,” the report found. That consideration, the report concluded, violated the Civil Service Reform Act and department policy that bars discrimination in hiring based on political and ideological affiliations.

The agency concluded that Acosta and other Civil Rights Division managers failed to “exercise sufficient oversight to ensure that Schlozman did not engage in inappropriate hiring and personnel practices.” Specifically, Acosta and Deputy Attorney General Wan Kim “failed to ensure that Schlozman’s hiring and personnel decisions were based on proper considerations,” the report noted.

When Acosta first took over as law school dean in 2009, H. T. Smith, director of FIU’s trial advocacy program, told the Miami New Times that Acosta’s stint at the Civil Rights Division “caused a rift with the black community,” adding that the former Miami prosecutor needed to meet with faculty members to heal that divide. The NAACP’s Miami-Dade branch expressed concern, telling the Miami Herald at the time of Acosta’s hire that his “lack of diversity in hiring and promotion while serving as U.S. attorney gives cause for concern for his consideration as dean of FIU’s College of Law.”

Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, condemned the “egregious conduct” that played out during Acosta’s time at the Justice Department. “It is hard to believe that Mr. Acosta would now be nominated to lead a federal agency tasked with promoting lawful hiring practices and safe workplaces,” Clarke said in a statement released after Trump’s announcement.

Read the full 2008 inspector general report:

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Justice Department Inspector General Report Acosta Hiring Practices (PDF)

Justice Department Inspector General Report Acosta Hiring Practices (Text)

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Trump’s New Labor Nominee Oversaw Politicized Hiring at Justice Department

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Trump Repeatedly Ducks Questions About Alleged Campaign Contacts With Russia

by ClaudioMoffat38 Posted on February 16, 2017

Mother Jones

In a wide-ranging and at-times erratic press conference that lasted more than an hour Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump said he had “nothing to do” with any possible contacts between his campaign associates and Russia during last year’s election. But he repeatedly declined to assure reporters that no such contacts took place.

“Well I had nothing to do with it,” Trump said when pressed on whether his campaign aides had conversations with Russian intelligence. “I have nothing to do with Russia. I have no deals there.”

At another point during the press conference, he said “nobody that I know of” from his campaign had contacts with Russia during the election.

The press conference took place two days after the New York Times reported that according to current and former US officials, intercepted phone calls showed that “members of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.” On Thursday, Trump referred to that story as “a joke.” He decried “fake news put out by the media,” which he claimed was spread by “people, probably from the Obama administration, because they’re there, because we have our new people going in place, right now.”

On Monday night, Lt. General Mike Flynn resigned as Trump’s national security adviser following a Washington Post story revealing that Flynn had discussed US sanctions against Russia with the Russian ambassador after the election but before Trump took office—despite denials to Vice President Mike Pence, among others.

Trump said Thursday that Flynn’s talks with the Russian ambassador weren’t the problem; rather he fired Flynn for lying to Pence: “He didn’t tell the vice president of the United States the facts, and then he didn’t remember, and that just wasn’t acceptable to me,” Trump said.

Trump denied ordering Flynn to discuss sanctions with the Russian ambassador, adding that Flynn was “doing his job.”

“Flynn was calling other countries and his counterparts,” said Trump. “So it certainly would have been okay with me if he did it. I would have directed him to do it if I thought he wasn’t doing it. I didn’t direct him, but I would have directed him because that’s his job.”

Trump characterized the various stories about Russia as “ruse” used to distract from Hillary Clinton’s election loss. “You can talk all you want about Russia, which was all a fake news fabricated deal to try and make up for the loss of the Democrats, and the press plays right into it,” he said.

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Trump Repeatedly Ducks Questions About Alleged Campaign Contacts With Russia

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Donald Trump Rants and Raves At Press

by EmmaJyylkepeom Posted on February 16, 2017

Mother Jones

President Donald Trump intensified his attack on the media in a wild press conference Thursday, once again characterizing the press as “dishonest” in response to recent reports that have depicted an administration increasingly in turmoil. He also defended Michael Flynn, who resigned Monday as national security adviser, amid mounting evidence that he misled administration officials about his phone calls to the Russian ambassador.

“If anything, he did something right,” Trump said of Flynn. While he denied ordering Flynn to discuss easing American sanctions against Russia, he said that doing so would have been acceptable.

“Mike was doing his job, he was calling countries and his counterparts,” he said. “So it certainly would have been okay with me if he did it. I didn’t direct him, but I would have directed him because that’s his job.”

Asked repeatedly if his campaign aides were in contact with Russian officials during the 2016 election campaign, Trump dodged the questions, saying only, “I had nothing to do with it.”

Trump began the press conference by announcing his second pick for labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, following Andrew Puzder’s decision to withdraw his nomination yesterday. Trump dedicated only a brief moment to discussing Acosta before he turned to his main message for the afternoon: his grievances with the press. “Many of our nation’s reporters and folks will not tell you the truth,” Trump said in his attacks against the media and the ongoing leaks. “We have to find out what’s going on because the press is honestly out of control.”

Trump complained of the “mess” he inherited from the past administration and disputed reports that the White House is in disarray. “It is the exact opposite,” he said. “This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.”

Asked how he could simultaneously complain about leaks by government officials and claim that the news reports based on them were false, Trump said, “The leaks are real. The leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.”

Trump went on to complain about how he has been covered by the media, predicating that:

the media will say, “Donald Trump rants and raves at the press.” I’m not ranting and raving. I’m just telling you. You know, you’re dishonest people. But — but I’m not ranting and raving. I love this. I’m having a good time doing it. But tomorrow, the headlines are going to be, “Donald Trump rants and raves.” I’m not ranting and raving. Go ahead.

Watch the whole press conference below:

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Donald Trump Rants and Raves At Press

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Trump Asks African-American Reporter to Arrange Meeting with Congressional Black Caucus

by MartinaWagstaff Posted on February 16, 2017

Mother Jones

During a chaotic and rambling press conference on Thursday, April Ryan, an African-American journalist with the American Urban Radio Networks, asked President Donald Trump if he would be arranging a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss actions he might be taking to help inner cities.

“Well I would,” Trump said. “Do you want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours? Set up the meeting!”

The bizarre exchange follows Trump’s repeated claims that he is the “least racist person” people would ever meet.

Following the press conference, Ryan appeared on MSNBC to discuss Trump’s comments. “I’m not a facilitator, I’m not a convener,” she said. “I am a White House correspondent. I am a reporter—a journalist.”

She did go on to note that many of the CBC members she covers were eager to meet with Trump about the administration’s policy agenda. Indeed, shortly after the press conference concluded, the CBC tweeted the following:

Ryan said on MSNBC that she would be happy to cover such a meeting between Trump and the CBC as a reporter. But she added: “I will not convene, facilitate, nothing.”

Watch:

This story has been updated with April Ryan’s MSNBC comments.

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Trump Asks African-American Reporter to Arrange Meeting with Congressional Black Caucus

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Trump Is Not Doing Well In the Polls

by sally53758829715 Posted on February 16, 2017

Mother Jones

Pew offers up the following comparison today:

Well, at least Trump is #1 at something. In related news, I was looking at Pollster yesterday and found something odd. I’ve mentioned before that although Trump’s disapproval rating has gone up since Inauguration Day, so has his approval rating. But it turns out that if you look only at live phone polls—generally considered the highest quality polls—his approval rating has actually plummeted by six points:

I know that there are differences between phone, IVR, and Internet polls, and IVR polls are generally considered pretty high quality these days. But the IVR/Internet polls show Trump’s approval up four points, while the live phone polls show his approval down six points. That’s a net ten point difference, which is huge.

It’s early days, and maybe it’s just a matter of small sample sizes or something. But I wonder what’s really going on with Trump’s approval rating?

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Trump Is Not Doing Well In the Polls

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Trump Knew About Michael Flynn Situation for "Weeks," Sean Spicer Says

by AlfonzoIRKZ Posted on February 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that President Donald Trump has known for several weeks that his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, may have been untruthful about his communications with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

“We’ve been reviewing and evaluating this issue with respect to General Flynn on a daily basis for a few weeks trying to ascertain the truth,” Spicer said.

According to Spicer, then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed the White House last month that Flynn may have misled the administration about the nature of his December phone calls with Kislyak. “Immediately after the Department of Justice notified the White House counsel of the situation, the White House counsel briefed the president and a small group of senior advisers,” Spicer said.

Spicer maintained that the decision to remove Flynn did not stem from legal concerns but a “trust” issue.

The statement that Trump has known about the issue for weeks appears to directly contradict the administration’s previous comments on the controversy, including Trump’s own remarks aboard Air Force One last week. On Friday, Trump claimed he was unfamiliar with the allegations—raised in a Washington Post story—that before Trump took office, Flynn had discussed easing sanctions against Russia with Kislyak.

“What do you think about reports that Gen. Flynn had conversations with the Russians about sanctions before you were sworn in?” a reporter asked Trump on Friday.

“I don’t know about it, I haven’t seen it,” he responded. “What report is that?”

After a reporter mentioned the Post story, Trump added, “I haven’t seen that. I’ll look into it.”

When asked about that exchange on Tuesday, Spicer insisted that the president was not denying that he knew about the Justice Department’s warning, but was instead simply claiming not to have seen the specific Post story in question.

During Tuesday’s press briefing, Spicer also said that Trump had asked Flynn to step down from his post because of the “evolving and eroding level of trust” between Flynn and the president. Hours earlier, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway made multiple media appearances in which she claimed Flynn resigned on his own.

Shortly after Tuesday’s briefing, the New York Times reported that the had FBI interviewed Flynn during his brief tenure as national security adviser about his conversation with Kislyak. As the Times noted, the revelation “raises the stakes of what so far has been a political scandal” because “if he was not entirely honest with the FBI, it could expose Mr. Flynn to a felony charge.”

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Trump Knew About Michael Flynn Situation for "Weeks," Sean Spicer Says

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The Question the White House Won’t Answer: Did Trump’s Campaign Have Contact With Russia?

by cheriehatten008 Posted on February 14, 2017

Mother Jones

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The first question at White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s daily briefing on Tuesday—half a day after the news broke that national security adviser Michael Flynn had resigned—focused on a key issue: Flynn’s contacts with the Vladimir Putin regime during the campaign. Flynn has been under fire for his post-election conversations with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, during which he discussed the sanctions President Barack Obama was imposing on Russia as punishment for Moscow’s meddling in the US election. But ABC News’ Jonathan Karl asked whether any Trump associates were in touch with the Russian government before the election.

This is important, for that would mean that Trump folks were in contact with the Putin regime while it was attacking American democracy. Trump and his team have adamantly denied there were any interactions with Russian officials. At a press conference in mid-January, Trump ignored a question about such contacts. Once the event was over, he said, “No contact.” Days later, on Face the Nation, incoming Vice President Mike Pence said the Trump campaign had no interactions with Moscow. Host John Dickerson asked him, “Did any adviser or anybody in the Trump campaign have any contact with the Russians who were trying to meddle in the election?” Pence declared, “Of course not. And I think to suggest that is to give credence to some of these bizarre rumors that have swirled around the candidacy.”

Yet the Washington Post reported days ago that Kislyak told the newspaper he had been in touch with Flynn since before the election. The ambassador declined to say what he and Flynn had discussed. And the newspaper reported that the Flynn-Kislyak conversations “were part of a series of contacts between Flynn and Kislyak that began before the Nov. 8 election and continued during the transition, officials said.” These facts and Kislyak’s comment undercut Trump’s and Pence’s assertions there were no pre-election contacts.

So what was Spicer to say when Karl posed this query? At first, Spicer said that Flynn did speak to the Russian ambassador during the transition. No, Karl protested, that’s not the question. What about before the election? Spicer then sputtered out this reply: “There’s nothing that would conclude me that anything different has changed with respect to that time period.”

That contorted reply would seem to mean that the White House is sticking to its previous denial. But this assertion runs contrary to what is now the public record: that the Trump campaign was in contact with Putin’s man in Washington while Putin was subverting an American election to help Trump. What was going on? What was said? What messages did Flynn send to the Putin regime? These are the obvious questions that warrant answers. They are also dangerous questions for Trump. And that’s why Spicer cannot acknowledge the hard truth that the Flynn scandal started before the election. These contacts deserve as much, if not more, attention than the conversations that triggered this controversy, for they are relevant to the fundamental subject at hand: Trump’s relationship with the autocratic leader who mounted an operation to subvert American democracy to assist Trump.

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The Question the White House Won’t Answer: Did Trump’s Campaign Have Contact With Russia?

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Donald Trump Is Turning His Mar-a-Lago Estate Into a National Security Nightmare

by DominikBrunning Posted on February 13, 2017

Mother Jones

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President Donald Trump was reportedly alerted to the news of North Korea’s missile firing on Saturday, while dining with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago, the exclusive club owned by Trump that the administration has dubbed the “Winter White House.”

As the two leaders learned of the unfolding international crisis, so, too, did the private citizens and resort members who happened to be dining alongside them. Quick to realize he was witnessing something unusual and highly shareable, club member Richard DeAgazio swiftly took out his camera phone to capture the incident and post the resulting photos to Facebook:

Hours before, DeAgazio also posted photos of himself posing with a man he described as carrying the “nuclear football” that enables the president to launch a nuclear attack from afar. He has since deactivated his Facebook account.

But DeAgazio isn’t alone in turning Mar-a-Lago’s social-media tag into a bizarre window into the American presidency. Here are some other snapshots from this past weekend alone, including one of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn jogging with some Secret Service agents.

The social-media postings have sparked widespread alarm over the extraordinary security risks Trump poses by governing from his Palm Beach estate, where hundreds of members and staff who lack proper security clearances are free to roam while high-level meetings and even international crises take place.

“There’s no excuse for letting an international crisis play out in front of a bunch of country club members like dinner theater,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) fired off in a tweet on Monday.

With Trump scheduled to ditch the White House for Florida for the third time since his inauguration this coming weekend, there are likely to be future photos offering regular Americans, who can’t shell out the recently doubled $200,000 membership fee, more glimpses of the luxe and occasionally top-secret life at Mar-a-Lago.

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Donald Trump Is Turning His Mar-a-Lago Estate Into a National Security Nightmare

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