Mod: Poor Donald hasn't been able to go to Mar-A-Lago yet this Christmas break because of the government shutdown he initiated over his wall. Meaning he is all alone in the White House, and not in the least bit happy about it. You can imagine the hijinx.
Trump Gets Into Holiday Spirit By Raging At Everyone On Christmas Eve (
Huffington Postlink):
President Donald Trump spent
Christmas Eve“all alone” in the
White House railing on
Twitter against just about everyone as financial markets plunged and the federal government shutdown appeared likely to stretch into January.
In a wild and misleading series of tweets on Monday,
Trump lashed out at
Democrats for opposing taxpayer funding for his proposed southern border wall ― which he repeatedly promised
Mexico would pay for ― and said he was waiting at the
White House for them to “come back and make a deal” on border security.
Most lawmakers have left town amid a stalemate on legislation to reopen the government, which partially shut down Saturday and forced hundreds of thousands of federal workers off the job.
Democrats have ardently rejected
Trump’s demands for $5 billion to build the wall, and anticipate more leverage once they take the
House majority in January.
Even some top
Republicans have become exasperated at
Trump’s behavior.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the retiring
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, accused the president over the weekend of manufacturing the “juvenile” showdown so he “can look like he’s fighting” to please his core supporters.
Trump shot back at “
Little Bob Corker,” his derisive nickname for the senator, on Monday, as well as
Brett McGurk, the
U.S. envoy in charge of defeating the
Islamic State in the
Middle East who announced he’s quitting over
Trump’s abrupt decision to pull
U.S. troops out of
Syria.
Both men,
Trump tweeted, were responsible for
President Barack Obama’s “horrific”
Iran nuclear deal that he terminated earlier this year.
And, as television news continued to focus on the extraordinary resignation of
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who also quit in protest of
Trump’s
Syria pullout,
Trump sought to reassert his worldview that allies are taking unfair advantage of the
U.S. and its taxpayers. “
General Mattis did not see this as a problem. I DO, and it is being fixed!”
Trump tweeted on Monday, repeating his claim that the
U.S. is “subsidizing” the militaries of other nations by remaining in
Syria.
But what appeared to spook
Wall Street most was
Trump’s continuing tirade against
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom the president reportedly considered ousting over fed policy raising interest rates. After
Trump bizarrely complained the
Federal Reserve doesn’t “have a feel” for the markets and “is like a powerful golfer who can’t score because he has no touch” ― major indexes dove more than 2 percent in the worst
Christmas Eve trading day ever, extending the worst plunge since the 2008 financial crisis. The tech-heavy
NASDAQ lost more than 5 percent, continuing a nosedive of more than 20 percent since its Aug. 29 peak.
Trump’s Treasury secretary,
Steve Mnuchin, may have actually contributed to the mayhem.
Mnuchin over the weekend announced he had called
CEOs of major
U.S. banks from his vacation in
Cabo San Lucas,
Mexico, and assured them the markets had “ample liquidity available for lending to consumer, business markets, and all other market operations.” The unusual calls left the
CEOs “totally baffled,” according to
CNN, and
Mnuchin’s perplexing statement injected a fresh dose of uncertainty into jumpy markets,
The New York Times observed.
“It’s
Christmas Eve and
President Trump is plunging the country into chaos,”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a joint statement on Monday. “The stock market is tanking and the president is waging a personal war on the
Federal Reserve– after he just fired the
Secretary of Defense.”
Mod: Apparently even Santa wasn't safe.Trump asks 7-year-old 'Are you still a believer in Santa?'(
CNNlink): At what age do children wise up to the truth about
Santa?
President Trump would like to know.
In a
Christmas Eve call with a young child Monday night,
Trump asked a 7-year-old named
Coleman whether he or she still believes in
Santa Claus, saying that was a "marginal" age for knowing the truth.
"Are you still a believer in
Santa? Because at seven, it's marginal, right?"
Trump asked the child.
The call came around 6:30 p.m. as the
President and first lady
Melania Trump spoke on separate phones to children whose calls to
NORAD had been patched through to the
White House lines.
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