We have no idea if her abrupt decision was somehow connected to her ethics woes. But they are substantial, and she departs with her once-spotless reputation badly tarnished. As our watchdog group has documented, Haley has, over the course of her tenure in the Trump administration, exemplified the ethical problems that have afflicted it from the president on down. Indeed, her resignation became public a day after we filed our latest of several complaints against her,
.. a disregard for our most basic ethics laws — in her case, ethics regulations governing gifts to officials and the Hatch Act limiting her political activity.
.. Haley accepted flights on private planes likely worth tens of thousands of dollars from several businesspeople who had supported her past campaigns, which could violate ethics rules and standards. In doing so, she risked creating at least the appearance that she sold access to the highest level of American foreign policy to businesses that had donated to her campaign for governor. Like Pruitt’s notorious luxury condo rental that he priced at $50 a night, far below market rates, Haley reported the value of her flights on these private jets at only hundreds of dollars apiece. That strains credulity when flights on private jets routinely cost far more.
.. many of her flights were on aircraft owned by the donors’ companies, and it is unclear whether the executives repaid the companies for the full value of the flights.
.. Haley’s obsequious performance during her resignation announcement underscored this president’s complete personal sway over his administration. She entered the job as a former adversary of Trump’s, and she showed an independent streak while serving. That was not in evidence as she praised the president, sang the unseen “genius” of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and declared that “the U.S. is respected.” The president’s disdain for ethical values, which Haley has regrettably emulated, has helped make the opposite true.
The Cosmic Joke of Donald Trump’s Power
How much power will a president with such tenuous claim to it get to wield? How profound and durable an impact will such a shallow and fickle person make?
.. Donald Trump barely won the White House, under circumstances — a tainted opponent, three million fewer votes than she received, James Comey’s moral vanity and Russia’s amoral exertions — that raise serious questions about how many Americans yearned to see him there.
.. In his heart of hearts, he doesn’t give a damn about rolling back abortion rights. Any sane analysis of his background and sober read of his character leads to that conclusion. Yet this man of all men — a misogynist, a philanderer, a grabber-by-the-you-know-what — may be the end of Roe v. Wade.
.. So many of Trump’s positions, not just on abortion but also on a whole lot else, were embraced late in the game, as matters of political convenience. They were his clearest path to power. Then they were his crudest way to flex it.
.. Now they’re his crassest way to hold on to it. He will almost certainly move to replace Kennedy with a deeply, unswervingly conservative jurist not because that’s consistent with his own core (what core?) but because it’s catnip to the elements of his base that got him this far and could carry him farther.
.. Never mind how much it exacerbates this country’s already crippling political polarization
.. his is a moment, if ever there was one, to set a bipartisan example and apply a healing touch.
.. Trump will gladly cleave the country in two before he’ll dim the applause of his most ardent acolytes.
.. Get ready: He’ll crow and taunt. He’s already crowing and, characteristically, making Kennedy’s retirement all about him.
.. He will bully, both ideologically and tactically. And he will get his way, because — this is part of that cosmic joke — the advantages seem always to cut his way. The obstacles teeter and collapse.
.. Other presidents have had to worry about getting 60 votes in the Senate for Supreme Court nominations to proceed. Not Trump.
.. McConnell used the “nuclear option” once already, for Neil Gorsuch, rendering a Democratic filibuster irrelevant. So the precedent has been set.
.. In fact three of them — Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — supported Gorsuch’s confirmation last year. It’s no accident that North Dakota, which Trump won by nearly 36 points, was the site of his rally on Wednesday night.
.. his sneering, gloating, uncompromising response to that aren’t a familiar combination.
.. It’s impossible to square the roughly 77,000 votes by which he won the Electoral College with the license that he has given himself and the rein that the members of his adopted party have given him.
.. the truth about Trump is the opposite of the story he tells. He points to Robert Mueller’s investigation and to negative media coverage and portrays himself as a modern-day martyr.
.. But he’s the luckiest man alive. Although he savaged the G.O.P. en route to its presidential nomination, he was greeted in Washington by a mum McConnell, a blushing Paul Ryan and a mostly obsequious Republican congressional majority.
.. with a handpicked replacement for Kennedy, he’d probably have “fewer checks on his power than any president in his lifetime
.. “The media, normally the last check on a president with total control of government, has lost the trust of most Republicans and many Democrats, after two years of Trump pummeling.”
.. That doesn’t account for a Democratic takeover of at least one chamber of Congress, the importance of which cannot be overstated.
.. conscience. A better man might shudder somewhat at the division that he was sowing and the wreckage in his wake. Trump merely revels in his ability to pull off what nobody thought he could. Shamelessness is his greatest gift. How unfunny is that?
How Mnuchin Keeps a Steady Grip in a Tug of War on Trade
Two weeks ago, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, declared that the trade war with China was “on hold” and that the United States would temporarily holster its tariffs. The reassuring comments calmed markets and raised hopes that Mr. Mnuchin, one of President Trump’s most enduring and trusted advisers, was winning the internal trade battle that has gripped the White House.
Then Mr. Trump weighed in. In a one-two punch last week, the president doubled down on the trade war with China and threw in ones with Canada, Mexico and Europe for good measure.
.. The scolding laid bare the uncomfortably familiar spot that Mr. Mnuchin finds himself in: trying to be a voice of moderation and a statesman in an administration that sees diplomatic norms and protocols as signs of weakness.
He has so far managed to stay in Mr. Trump’s good graces while advocating a more free-trade approach, but that balancing act is showing signs of strain.
.. Mr. Mnuchin, unflappable in public, is privately making his case with a president
.. The internal tensions boiled over in May during a trade mission Mr. Mnuchin led to China, when he dressed down Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump’s hawkish trade adviser, by reminding him where he stood in the administration’s pecking order after Mr. Navarro confronted him about being sidelined from the talks.
.. Current and former White House and Treasury officials say Mr. Mnuchin has managed to thrive by employing a mix of assertiveness and obsequiousness, staking out his position to the president but quickly changing course to carry out Mr. Trump’s marching orders, even if his message did not win the day.
.. Mr. Trump tweeted that he was going to find a way to help put back in business a Chinese telecommunications company that had been punished for violating American sanctions on Iran and North Korea. The decision blindsided administration officials and lawmakers
.. Mr. Mnuchin, along with the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, was dispatched to Capitol Hill to try to calm angry Republican lawmakers and explain the rationale behind allowing the company, ZTE, to remain in business.
.. those close to the secretary say he has learned to appreciate Mr. Trump’s use of the threat of tariffs as a negotiating tool.
.. focused on the president’s desire to see the bilateral trade deficit reduced, rather than emphasizing some of the other trade barriers
.. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former top strategist, has said that Mr. Mnuchin is in over his head in the negotiations and that he is letting Mr. Trump’s leverage slip away by failing to force China to make major changes to its industrial policy.
.. it was apparent that the Chinese government was trying to elevate Mr. Mnuchin’s role in the negotiations because they see him as the American official most likely to cut a deal.
.. “Among the possible choices, they see Mnuchin as being less hawkish than some of the other counterparts,”
.. populist voices outside the administration have already been heckling Mr. Mnuchin as inept amid reports that the United States was on the verge of making an agreement with China that was viewed as merely symbolic.
.. Mr. Mnuchin has at times found himself the subject of derision, characterized as a fawning banker who cannot tell the president “no.”
.. Last year, the Treasury secretary was scoffed at by economic policymakers from across the political spectrum for insisting that the $1.5 trillion Trump tax cuts would pay for themselves.
.. Mr. Mnuchin told members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus to “vote for the debt ceiling for me.” His plea was met with groans and hisses.
.. Last August, fellow alumni of Yale, where Mr. Mnuchin earned a bachelor’s degree, called on the secretary to resign when he defended Mr. Trump’s handling of racially inspired violence in Charlottesville, Va. A month later, Lawrence Summers, a Clinton administration Treasury secretary, called Mr. Mnuchin the “greatest sycophant in cabinet history” for supporting Mr. Trump’s criticism of football players who knelt during the national anthem.
.. points to his role in successfully steering the Republican tax cut package, which many said would never pass, through Congress.
.. Within the Treasury Department, Mr. Mnuchin has developed a reputation as a micromanager. He resisted choosing a full-time deputy for more than a year, preferring to oversee everything from carrying out the new tax law to overseeing financial sanctions.
.. When the Internal Revenue Service systems failed on Tax Day, the response to the crash was slowed because Mr. Mnuchin was in New Hampshire
.. He had required that any big decisions be cleared by him
.. Mr. Mnuchin’s closest aides describe him as a collegial and mentoring figure.
.. Despite his earnest persona on television, he is known to possess a wry sense of humor
The Republican Grovelling at the White House Was an Alarm Call for 2018
This has been a year of extraordinary accomplishment for the Trump Administration,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, said. “Thank you, Mr. President, for all you are doing.” Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, added that passing the tax bill “could not have been done without exquisite Presidential leadership.” Senator Orrin Hatch, of Utah, spoke directly to Trump, saying, “You are one heckuva leader, and we’re all benefitting from it.” And Congresswoman Diane Black, of Tennessee, put it even more bluntly. “Thank you, President Trump, for allowing us to have you as our President,” she said.
It is well known that Trump, his ego as fragile as an eggshell, demands constant flattery. But this was cravenness of a level rare even for Washington. Perhaps the Republican senators and representatives were taking their cue from Mike Pence. At an end-of-year Cabinet meeting that was held shortly before the celebration on the South Lawn, the Vice-President praised his boss fourteen times in three minutes—once every 12.5 seconds, the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake pointed out—and after Pence had finished his obsequious speech, other Cabinet members chimed in with their own gushing tributes.
.. Not only do we have a chronically insecure President with Napoleonic pretensions. We also have Republican leadership that is happy to feed those pretensions in order to get its way. For much of 2017, many Trump antagonists, myself included, have taken consolation from the belief that he wasn’t achieving much.
.. The appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court received a lot of attention, of course. At least equally important, though, was the appointment of more than seventy conservative judges to lower courts. And right-wing zealots have also been parachuted into the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and other regulatory agencies, where they are busy stripping away many of the protections that previous Administrations put in place, such as clean-air regulations, workplace rules, and guarantees of net neutrality.
.. the introduction of tax breaks for private-school tuition fees. Ted Cruz wasn’t exaggerating when he described the latter provision, which he proposed, as potentially the biggest piece of federal school-choice legislation in history.
.. Paul Ryan has already signalled what that means: a renewed assault on Medicare and Medicaid.