Trump, smarting, insults his intelligence

Intel inside

Donald Trump is a man of many contradictions. "There's always a tweet" is a social media pastime for Trump watchers who comb Twitter archives for the bountiful examples of the president at odds with himself. A Los Angeles ad man sold 1,000 flip-flops (as in sandals), each with irreconcilable Trump tweets printed on the left and right feet.

It really rankles Trump though when he is contradicted by others, especially when they're his appointees. In the cases of Rex Tillerson and James Mattis, he saved his worst until they were gone. But after his intelligence chiefs on Tuesday gave assessments on North Korea, Iran and other trouble spots that were stark mismatches for Trump's views, he didn't wait.

"The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran," said one Wednesday morning tweet. "Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!" said another. Take that, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

It's not the first time Trump has put more faith in his brain trust of one than in the intel community. He vacillates between grudging public acceptance of their findings about 2016 Russian election interference and none at all.

But the president needs to listen to them, members of both parties said Wednesday. “They’re not always right but they are the best we have, and we need to rely on them,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). "It is a credit to our intelligence agencies that they continue to provide rigorous and realistic analyses of the threats we face," said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

Trump's sources and methods are often a mystery, such as recent claims in support of his border wall plan: about women being bound and gagged with tape as they are smuggled in from Mexico, traffickers with "stronger, bigger and faster vehicles" than U.S. law enforcement officers, and a Muslim prayer rug being found on the U.S. side.

Nothing from U.S. enforcement agencies stands up those stories. But cinephiles have noticed they match up with plot points in a fictional 2018 Hollywood film about drug cartels and terrorists, "Sicario: Day of the Soldado." For more on Trump vs. the intel honchos, see Newsday's story by Laura Figueroa Hernandez.

Janison: A choice not to echo

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't share Trump's eagerness to swiftly disengage from Syria and Afghanistan, nor do a growing number of other Republicans. Warning against "a precipitous withdrawal from either conflict," McConnell pushed an amendment to a Mideast policy bill acknowledging that jihad organizations there and in Afghanistan "continue to pose a security threat to us here at home."

As with the intel chiefs, it's a sign that Trump can't automatically count on his appointees and congressional allies to be an echo rather than a voice. McConnell said he's with Trump when he takes "traditional Republican positions," such as cutting taxes or naming conservative judges. "If Marco Rubio had been president, we’d have done it. If Jeb Bush had been president, we’d have done it," McConnell said.

See Dan Janison's column for Newsday.

Seeing what sticks to the wall

Lawmakers on both sides expressed cautious optimism Wednesday that they could reach an agreement to boost border security as they began negotiations over Trump’s demand for money for a border wall, Newsday's Tom Brune reported.

Democrats offered to expand the $1.6 billion they’ve proposed for border security, and Republicans appeared to offer some flexibility on what would work as a wall or barrier. Trump, in a tweet, assumed a hard-line posture.

“If the committee of Republicans and Democrats now meeting on Border Security is not discussing or contemplating a Wall or Physical Barrier, they are Wasting their time," he said.

The 17 House and Senate members of the conference committee face a Feb. 15 deadline to cut a deal and get Trump to agree to it before government funds run out again. Failure could cause another shutdown or lead Trump to declare a national emergency to try to get his wall money.

One for the Good Book

Trump's tweet on Tuesday touting efforts to bring optional Bible literacy classes in public schools was a revelation, sort of, to a former pastor of Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which Trump used to attend.

"I was @realDonaldTrump's pastor for 5 years @MarbleChurch. I assure you, he had the 'option' to come to Bible study," tweeted the Rev. David Lewicki, who served as an associated pastor there for six years. "He never 'opted' in. Nor did he ever actually enter the church doors. Not one time." Though Trump married the first two of his three wives there, the church in 2015 said Trump was not an "active" member.

But press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested He doesn't regard Trump as a stranger.

"I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that He wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that's why he's there," she said in an interview shown Wednesday by the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Foxconn job?

Trump joined the groundbreaking ceremony last June for Taiwan-based electronics giant Foxconn's new plant in Wisconsin. The president credited the promise of thousands of manufacturing jobs to his economic policies.

Foxconn announced Wednesday it was dropping plans to make LCD display screens there because it would cost too much compared with alternatives in other countries. Instead, the facility will become a research hub staffed mostly by scientists and engineers, not blue-collar workers.

Critics called the move a bait-and-switch. Wisconsin state and local governments promised roughly $4 billion to the company.

Checking their documents

After getting embarrassed by a Washington Post story of undocumented workers at their club in Westchester County, Eric Trump announced the Trump Organization will begin using the federal government's E-Verify electronic system at all of its properties to check the legal status of employees at all of its properties.

The president's son tried to throw some what-aboutism shade in a tweet at Amazon, whose boss Jeff Bezos also owns the Post. "It is shocking that aside from their corporate office, @Amazon doesn't use E-Verify for their 600,000+ employees yet we are attacked . . . " Eric Trump wrote.

Amazon tweeted back: "Amazon.com, Inc. and its affiliates and subsidiaries use E-Verify in the U.S. for our more than 300,000 U.S.-based employees, corporate or otherwise. We enrolled in the program on May 17, 2010."

Eric Trump's tweet appears to have since been deleted.

What else is happening:

• An undocumented Guatemalan woman who was fired from the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, after she publicly disclosed her immigration status plans to attend Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday, as the guest of Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.).
• The Trump administration has launched its new policy requiring asylum-seekers at the southern border to wait in Mexico until U.S. immigration courts are ready to take up their cases. Immigration advocates say they will challenge the move in court.
• Trump complained in a Daily Caller interview late Wednesday that former Speaker Paul Ryan reneged on a promise to get him border-wall funding in return for signing a spending package before the GOP lost the House. Trump didn't explain how Ryan could have gotten it past the Senate and a likely Democratic filibuster.
• Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-Garden City) was named the chairwoman of a Homeland Security subcommittee, giving her a heightened role on border security debate issues, Newsday's Brune reports.
• Tell-all books or lobbying gigs aren't the only way for Trump alumni to cash in. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is charging $200,000 for speaking gigs, CNBC reported. The price goes up if she has to travel outside the country.
• Federal prosecutors charge that confidential material from the Russia investigation, given to lawyers for an accused Russian company, was altered and released online as part of a disinformation campaign to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller's probe.
• Former Starbucks CEO and possible third-party 2020 contender Howard Schultz has a spotty record of showing up to vote, reports The Seattle Times. Records show he cast ballots in just 11 of 38 elections dating back to 2005. He didn't miss any presidential years, but state and local contests weren't his cup of, um, tea.