Trump New Lows Tracker. Bulletin No. 3 (New Lows Nos. 6- 10)

The peculiar and depressing genius of the Trump administration is that each new outrage tends to erase or blur memories of its predecessors. That has never been more true than at the present moment. Given the whistleblower’s complaint, Trump’s responses, and then his brazen attempt to recruit both Ukraine and China in aid of his re-election bid, the notion of bothering with a New Lows Tracker may seem quaint. Nevertheless, even if Trump’s antics during the prior weeks do not become Articles of Impeachment, they are worth recording since individually and collectively they contribute to the mosaic of the most spectacularly unfit president in our history.

No. 6. Trump’s Courtship of Putin. Russia was expelled from the then-Group of Eight in 2014 because of Vladimir Putin’s invasion and illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and the further Russian attacks against Ukraine in its Donbas region. Nothing in the intervening years has changed or mitigated those facts. If anything, Russia’s behavior in Ukraine and elsewhere, has confirmed the appropriateness of its exclusion. Yet in August, Trump proposed to the other members of the G-7 Russia’s readmission, “I think it would be better to have Russia inside the tent than outside the tent.” Trump then added the bizarre assertion that Russia’s annexation of Crimea had somehow been the fault of Barack Obama. Trump’s offer to sponsorship of Russia’s readmission was received with a conspicuous lack of enthusiasm, but Putin would have to give him credit for trying.

No. 7. Peddler-in-Chief for the Trump Organization. Also at the G-7 Conference, Trump seized the occasion to propose that next year’s conference be held at the Trump National Doral golf resort in Miami. Ever the marketer, Trump extolled the glories of his property:

We have incredible conference rooms, incredible restaurants. And we have many hundreds of acres so that in terms of parking, in terms of all of the things that you need, the ballrooms are among the biggest in Florida, and the best.

As Dana Milbank tartly remarked in the Washington Post, “Trump is essentially requiring foreign governments to pay him the very definition of unconstitutional emoluments. Is this a president or a timeshare salesman?”

Then, in the first week in September, the irrepressible salesman focused on a smaller target. Vice President Pence was headed to Dublin for a conference, and Trump “suggested” that Pence and his entourage stay at the Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg, a small town on Ireland’s southwest coast. The downside, of course, was that since Doonbeg is on the opposite side of the country, Pence was required to commute to conference meetings by flights in Air Force Two. Ah, but for the chance to stay at a Trump resort…. The ever-compliant Pence accepted Trump’s suggestion and later defended his decision with the interesting rationale that he wanted to visit Doonbeg so that he could have dinner with his family in that town at a pub owned by a distant cousin.

In a request for documents from the Vice President’s office, House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings was unsympathetic: “The Committee does not believe that U.S. taxpayer funds should be used to personally enrich President Trump, his family, and his companies.” (He did not address the use of taxpayer funds to facilitate a reunion between the Vice-President and his cousin.)

No. 8. Hurricane Dorian: Governing by Sharpie and the Corruption of NOAA. On Sunday, September 1, Trump tweeted that Alabama as well as Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia, would “most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.”

Another president might have expressed thanks for the updated information, but not Donald Trump. After media reports noted the discrepancy, Trump doubled down as is his fashion. In a meeting in the Oval Office on Wednesday, September 4, Trump displayed a NOAA forecast map to demonstrate that Alabama had indeed been threatened by Hurricane Dorian. The map appeared to have been crudely altered by hand, its forecast extended to show that the storm would impact Alabama:

After the Sharpie map was met with derision in the media, Mick Mulvaney, the Acting White House Chief of Staff, ordered Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, to have the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) publicly disavow the Birmingham forecasters’ position that Alabama had not been at risk. On Friday, NOAA dutifully complied, reportedly under threat of firings from Ross. In an unsigned statement released Friday night, NOAA disowned the Birmingham station’s tweeted forecast, claiming that “The Birmingham National Weather Service’s Sunday morning tweet spoke in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.”

While the NOAA statement cited, and provided a link to, Hurricane Advisories Nos. 15-41 as its basis, Advisory No. 32, the most recent prior to Trump’s tweet; showed that the storm had already turned north and that only a small corner of Alabama had as much as a 10% chance of tropical storm force winds:

Moreover another version of Advisory No. 32, not linked to the NOAA statement, showed the hurricane forecasted to go nowhere near Alabama:

On Sunday, the Acting Chief Scientist of NOAA, Craig McLean, sent an email to colleagues indicating that he would investigate the NOAA statement to determine if it violated NOAA standards on scientific integrity:

My understanding is that this intervention to contradict the forecaster was not based on science but on external factors including reputation and appearance, or simply put, political.

The content of this news release is very concerning as it compromises the ability of NOAA to convey life-saving information necessary to avoid substantial and specific danger to public health and safety. If the public cannot trust our information, or we debase our forecaster’s warnings and products, that specific danger arises.

The following day, the Director of the National Weather Service, Louis Uccellini, bluntly and explicitly affirmed the action of the Birmingham forecasters. Outside the government, criticism of the NOAA statement from meteorologists and former NOAA officials was widespread and severe. Inevitably, and appropriately, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology announced the opening of an investigation, demanding documents from Secretary Ross.

In this case, it appears that no lasting harm was done by the NOAA statement apart from a stain on the agency’s reputation, an injury from which, presumably, it will recover over time. The episode, however, illustrates the perils when facts are willfully manipulated or ignored in service of political ends or, as it appears in this case, simply catering to the president’s always-needy ego. Dorian has come and gone, but the Sharpie mentality of the president and his enablers lives on. It has echoes in, among other places, the president’s claims that it was Ukrainians, and not Russians, who meddled in the 2016 election.

No. 9. Pillaging the Pentagon to Build the Wall. Just as the political winds of #SharpieGate were reaching their peak, a smaller but more significant storm was getting started at the Pentagon. The latter storm was generated with an announcement by Defense Secretary Mark Esper that $3.6 billion in military projects would be canceled to provide funding for Trump’s border wall—an action taken in direct defiance of Congressional spending decisions.

Congress had approved $1.375 billion for wall construction in this year’s budget, far less than the $5.7 billion that the White House sought. Trump grudgingly accepted the money to end a 35-day government shutdown in February, but simultaneously declared a national emergency to take money from other government accounts, identifying up to $8.1 billion for wall construction. The transferred funds include $600 million from the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund, $2.5 billion from Defense Department counter-drug activities and then the $3.6 billion appropriated specifically for military construction.

As described by the Washington Post, the $3.6 billion in canceled projects include a wide range of badly-needed work, much of it long overdue:

The defunded projects include a Maryland child-care facility for soldiers’ children, Virginia warehouses designed to hold hazardous materials and a secure facility for classified cyberwarfare operations. They are among 127 military construction projects across 23 states, three U.S. territories and 20 countries that have been sidelined to pay for fencing and barriers on the border with Mexico. Shooting ranges, airfields, drone facilities, schools, a missile field and a treatment center for working dogs are among the projects that have seen their funding rescinded.

As a matter of law, the use of national emergency authority to override Congressional spending decisions is highly questionable: no previous president has used the authority to provide funding that Congress has refused, and the action is being challenged in the courts. (The previous reprogramming of $2.5 billion in counter-drug funding did not rely on the national emergency declaration and was enjoined by lower courts; the Supreme Court, set aside the injunction by a 5-4 vote, allowing construction to go forward as the litigation proceeds.)

In the meantime, the Senate voted on September 25 to overturn the national emergency declaration by a vote of 54-41. Notably, those voting to overturn included 11 Republicans: Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Roy Blunt (Mo.), Susan Collins (Maine), Mike Lee (Utah), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rand Paul (Ky.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mitt Romney (Utah), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Roger Wicker (Miss.). The vote, however, was well short of the 2/3 margin required to overturn the inevitable veto.

It is possible, though unlikely, that additional Republican Senators can be persuaded to defend Congressional prerogatives. As Susan Collins argued:

Let me be clear: The question before us is not whether to support or oppose the wall, or to support or oppose the President. Rather, it is: Do we want the Executive Branch — now or in the future — to hold a power that the Founders deliberately entrusted to Congress?

For Trump, however, funding the wall is another milestone in his erosion of constitutional norms.

No. 10. Soliciting the Aid of Foreign Countries for Trump’s Re-election Bid. Trump’s attempt to enlist Ukraine to assist in his re-election was discussed in the last blog and only a brief update is needed here.

The quasi-transcript of the July 25 call between Trump-Zelensky clearly reflected on its face the parties’ understanding of the quid pro quo involved–investigation by Ukraine related to the 2016 election and investigation of Hunter and Joe Biden. That conclusion was buttressed by the texts between and among State Department personnel released to the House Intelligence Committee last week. Those who continue to deny the existence of a quid pro quo are relying on that old Trump standby “What are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

Unable to come up with any plausibly innocent explanation of his telephone conversation with President Zelensky, and his request for an investigation of the Bidens, Trump doubled down. On October 3 he publicly urged both Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens. As Sally Yates, Acting Attorney General under the Obama administration put it: “The president is trying to hypnotize the American people into believing that it can’t be wrong if he says it out loud.” While many Democrats reacted with disbelief, Republicans were largely stunned into silence, the exceptions offering criticism being Senators Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse and Susan Collins.

The comments directed to China were uniquely problematic, coming on virtually the eve of difficult and delicate trade negotiations. The Chinese may be forgiven if they find us to be, well, inscrutable. Some readers may think that Trump’s toxic outreach to Ukraine and China is the New Low to end all New Lows. Perhaps. But that probably underestimates the capacity of our president to find new opportunities for misbehavior. Stay tuned.