Reality checks Trump’s border plans

Pass the MAGA hat

“There’s nothing like doing things with other people’s money,” Donald Trump once boasted. In a sense, his latest moves to curb illegal immigration at the Mexican border depend on other people’s assets.

Trump vowed “we’re going to be guarding our border with the military.” But for many reasons — including the law — Trump can’t exercise his power as commander-in-chief to use the regular military for the job or unilaterally order in National Guard forces.

So the administration is asking governors to sign off on contributing Guard units for support roles. The three border states with Republican governors — Texas, Arizona and New Mexico — were expected to go along quickly. It’s unclear whether California Democrat Jerry Brown — a foe of Trump immigration policies — will cooperate.

Since Congress wouldn’t give Trump the $25 billion he wanted for a border wall, Trump also has been asking if the Defense Department could take over the project and pay for it from its budget.

The answer: a limited maybe. “We are looking into options for the military to build a wall on military installations on the border,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said.

One possible site, The Wall Street Journal [pay site] reported, is an Air Force bombing range in Arizona along 31 miles of border where there have been some illegal crossings. It was unclear if the Defense Department owns much more land close enough to the border where barriers could be built.

See Newsday’s story by Laura Figueroa Hernandez.

Janison: Perfectly unclear

Trump keeps making statements that sound strident but give the public only the muddiest idea of what he’s going to do. It doesn’t necessarily help to be inside the White House either.

New Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow was asked by reporters outside the White House if he agreed with Trump’s tweet that “you can’t lose” a trade war.

Kudlow replied: “I’m not sure what exactly he’s referring to.”

Neither was the stock market, which saw another day of down-and-up swings. See Dan Janison’s column for Newsday.

World of hurt

Kudlow and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tried to soothe worries about trade battles as China announced plans for $50 billion in retaliatory tariffs on 106 U.S. exports, including soybeans, cars, aircraft and chemicals.

“These are just the first proposals ... I doubt if there’d be any concrete action for several months,” said Kudlow. Sanders acknowledged, “We may have a little bit of short-term pain, but we’re certainly going to have long-term success.”

Trump’s tweets had more of a go-for-broke tone. “We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago ... When you’re already $500 Billion DOWN, you can’t lose!”

Pruitt: It’s a toxic crock

How’s EPA chief Scott Pruitt’s job security looking? Sanders said: “We’re reviewing the situation. When we have had a chance to have a deeper dive on it, we’ll let you know the outcomes of that.”

Facing a host of ethics questions, Pruitt gave interviews to select conservative outlets, blaming a “toxic” Washington and saying the political left is out to get him. Which didn’t explain this exchange with Fox News.

Q. “Is draining the swamp renting an apartment from the wife of a Washington lobbyist?”

A. “I don’t think that that’s even remotely fair to ask that question.”

Pruitt also denied he was responsible for finagling raises for two friends he hired as EPA aides after the White House turned him down. He said he was unaware of the raises until Tuesday and is trying to find out how that happened.

Trump spurns warnings on Syria

Trump is pushing for a quick U.S. military withdrawal from Syria, rejecting concerns from the Pentagon, State Department and CIA that ISIS fighters remain active in Syria and the terrorist group’s total defeat has yet to be achieved.

Trump has signaled to his advisers that ideally, he wants all troops out within six months.

As the White House was talking up a withdrawal, the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran were meeting in Ankara to hash out their own plans for Syria’s future. A call between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu grew tense because of Israel’s concerns that its enemies will gain a further foothold in a neighboring country, The Associated Press reported.

Hears grievance on Amazon

Despite his threats against Amazon, Sanders said Trump “is not involved” in the Pentagon’s consideration of the tech giant’s bid for a multibillion-dollar cloud computing contract.

But one of Trump’s guests at a private White House dinner Tuesday night was chief executive Safra Catz of Oracle, a competitor for the contract, who complained to Trump about how the Pentagon is running the process, according to Bloomberg News.

Amazon is a Trump target because its CEO, Jeff Bezos, also owns The Washington Post.

What else is happening:

• Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s departing national security adviser, said in a speech that “we have failed to impose sufficient costs” on Russia for its increased aggression around the world. He spoke hours after Trump said, “Nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have.”
• Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) stands to benefit against a Republican challenger because tariffs are popular among working-class voters in his state and he's been an economic nationalist since long before Trump.
• The Cambridge Analytica scandal advanced a notch when Facebook admitted that the data of some 87 million users was shared improperly with the Trump-linked political firm, the Times reports.
• Robert Mercer, the right-wing Long Island billionaire, contributed $2 million to a secretive group that targeted anti-Muslim ads to swing voters in the 2016 election through Google and Facebook, opensecrets.org reveals.
• Trump appears to tout a fake boost in his ratings, according to the AP.
• The United States is expected to impose additional economic sanctions against Russia by Friday, targeting oligarchs with ties to President Vladimir Putin, officials told The Washington Post.
• Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has been questioning Russian oligarchs who traveled into the U.S., CNN reports. Investigators are asking whether wealthy Russians illegally funneled cash donations directly or indirectly for Trump’s 2016 campaign and his inauguration.
• Trump confidant Roger Stone predicted “devastating” WikiLeaks disclosures about the Clinton Foundation on the same August 2016 day he emailed an associate claiming to have had dinner with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, CNN reports. Stone now denies he met with Assange.
• A security advocacy group tested the 26 email domains managed by the Executive Office of the President and found that only one fully implements a security protocol that verifies the emails as genuinely from the White House, Axios reported.
• The U.S. Chamber of Commerce chided Trump, though not by name, for his attacks on Amazon. “It’s inappropriate for government officials to use their position to attack an American company,” chamber official Neil Bradley told The New York Times.