Trump sent 18 tweets on Puerto Rico on Saturday. And made things a whole lot worse

Trump spent the next eight(!) hours tweeting a series of attacks against the so-called “fake news” media for allegedly misrepresenting the actions of his administration in Puerto Rico.
.. Trump provided no evidence for his claims. Or, really, explained what he meant by them. CNN, for its part, has provided significant coverage of the recovery efforts — highlighting both stories of inspiration and the real struggles of many on the island to cope with the lack of electricity and increasing shortages of water and food
.. None of that comes even close to Trump’s claim that the news networks are working to “disparage our great First Responders” or that the media is “doing their best to take the spirit away from our soldiers.”

What Trump is doing — in his attacks on Yulin Cruz and the media — is trying to divide the country as a way to deflect blame for his administration’s performance.
“They” are lazy and want everything done for them. “They” are being nasty because Democrats told them to. “They” aren’t rooting for our first responders. “They” are trying to convince people that our soldiers aren’t doing a good job.
Trump’s willingness to divide, to turn every situation in which he is questioned or criticized into an “us” vs “them” is well documented by now. The 2016 election was an 18-month master class in how to divide the country for your own political gain. Trump’s handling of the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and his deliberate decision to pick a fight with (mostly black) NFL players over the national anthem illustrate that same perpetual need to divide.
.. That default divisiveness makes Trump different than every person who has held the office before him. For the 43 previous presidents, their ultimate goal was to find ways to remind people in the country of our common humanity, to take the high road, to appeal to our better angels. Many of them missed that mark — often badly — but it was always their North Star.

It is not for Trump. Not close. For Trump, the lone goal is winning at all costs.
.. 18 tweets. 11 hours. Full of blame, anger and victimhood. Totally devoid of hope, inspiration or unity.

This is Trumpism.

Why Trump Could Use More Economists

Better, Mick Mulvaney said, for opponents of legislation to supply their studies and advocates to supply their own. “And if it works, they would get re-elected and if it doesn’t, they don’t.”

 Mr. Mulvaney’s critique would be more convincing if the administration had in fact put forth its own estimates of the economic effects of its proposals. It hasn’t. Its failure to account for the trade-offs of tax cuts (bigger deficits) or reduced subsidies for health care (more uninsured) are one reason Mr. Trump’s agenda is moving so slowly.
.. Forecasts will be wrong more often than right. But they provide a benchmark against which to test proposals based on theory and evidence rather than instinct or unproven ideological priors.
..That discipline has been lacking in Mr. Trump’s administration. When Mr. Trump announced last week he was pulling out of the Paris climate accord, he cited not internal research on the economic harms of the deal, but a private study commissioned by two groups critical of greenhouse gas regulation. His budget two weeks ago was noteworthy for both forecasting 3% growth, much faster than what independent analysts think plausible, and the absence of any detailed analysis of how it will be achieved. Administration officials then contradicted each other on whether tax cuts would be financed with other tax increases.
.. This may reflect the absence of economists in its hallways, a result of Mr. Trump’s apparent early disdain for experts in general.
.. “I sleep better knowing James Mattis is defense secretary and I will sleep better if Kevin Hassett is confirmed as CEA chair.”

What If Trump Took His Wiretap Story Seriously?

Nothing Trump’s own administration has said or done so far indicates that it takes his accusations seriously. And that starts at the top with the president himself. Trump explicitly accused his predecessor of misconduct on the level of “Watergate,” and then moved on to tweeting about his feud with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

.. Trump press aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders went on ABC to say that her boss may have been onto something — which means she can’t vouch for the accuracy of his assertion.

.. Sean Spicer, his press secretary, has taken a similar tack: Trump’s claim has become a troubling report, on his telling. He then said that since oversight is continuing, the White House would have no further comment on the matter, a stance that was hard to square with Trump’s decision to give it maximum publicity. Spicer didn’t let an hour pass without commenting on it again.

In any other administration, this would be bizarre behavior. For this one, it’s par for the course.

.. The possibility that Trump has some legitimate grievance about the behavior of the Obama administration can’t be ruled out. But there’s no reason to take that possibility more seriously than Trump himself seems to be taking it.

Trump Digs In on Wiretap, No Matter Who Says Differently

The former president denied it. So did the former national intelligence director. The F.B.I. director has said privately that it is false. The speaker of the House and the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees — all three Republican — see no indications that it happened.

But President Trump insists he is right. No matter how many officials, even in his own party, dismiss his unsubstantiated claim that President Barack Obama secretly tapped his phones last year, the White House made clear on Thursday that it would stand by the assertion.

.. Much like his longstanding assertion that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States, Mr. Trump dismisses contrary information with undiminished surety.

.. One report that Mr. Spicer read contended that Mr. Obama used Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, the signals agency known as GCHQ, to spy on Mr. Trump. In effect, the White House was embracing a claim that the United States’ closest ally collaborated with a president against a presidential candidate.

.. Mr. Trump and Mr. Spicer have both noted that in two Twitter posts the president used quotation marks around the phrases “wires tapped” or “wire tapping,” which they said indicated that they were not meant to be taken literally.

“That really covers surveillance and many other things,” Mr. Trump told Tucker Carlson in an interview on Wednesday night on Fox News. “Nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that’s a very important thing.”

.. Mr. Trump also suggested that he had secret evidence no one else had seen. He told Mr. Carlson that he “will be submitting things before the committee very soon

.. Mr. Trump was already angry that two courts had blocked his temporary travel ban even though he had been assured by his staff that his latest one would pass judicial muster.