Trump Wants A Quick Final Agreement And A Rebounding Economy - He Will Get Neither

It looks like a bit of realty finally sunk into Trump's tiny brain. He finally realized that his ridiculous and unnecessary war with Iran has just made an already bad economy even worse - and that was likely to be devastating to Republicans in the November elections - leaving him an even weaker lame duck president.

He made a bad temporary agreement with Iran, and has quickly arranged for negotiations to reach a final agreement to actually end the war and open the Strait of Hormuz for good. He hopes a quick final agreement will result in a rebounding economy and save the GOP in the coming elections.

There are two problems with that. First, even if a quick agreement is reached, it is extremely unlikely to fix the economy before the elections. Second, Trump is a terrible negotiator. He is just a bully who tries to force the other side to give in to what he wants - and he is already threatening Iran with more devastation if they don't bend to his will.

Bombing the hell out of Iran didn't work the first time, and it won't work if he resumes it. He would have to put American troops on the ground to really change the current situation - and the American people aren't going to like that. It would make his situation worse - not better.

Complicating things further is the fact that the Iranians are good negotiators.  They stretched out the negotiations with President Obama for two years to get the best deal possible.

They know that Trump is in serious political trouble, and they aren't going to agree to a quick agreement unless he gives them everything they want - including the kitchen sink! They know he is going to be in an even weaker position after the November elections, and they won't agree to anything before then.

Through his own incompetent actions Trump has put himself between a rock and a hard place, and Iran is not going to let him extricate himself.

There will be no final agreement before the elections.

Most Americans Don't Believe Trump Is A Good Negotiator

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll - done between April 10th and 13th of a nationwide sample of 1,748 adults (including 1,573 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.1 points for adults and 3.0 points for registered voters. 

GOP To Cut Help For Poor To Protect Tax Cuts For Rich

 

The following is by E.J. Dionne, Jr. in The Washington Post:

The moment negotiations over the debt ceiling with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy started, it was obvious President Biden would have to give in to Republican demands for some spending cuts. The question now is how big they’ll be and how long they’ll last.

Here’s what must not happen: Our country’s least advantaged citizens should not be forced to pay the largest price to prevent an economic catastrophe. Making the poor poorer should never happen; it certainly shouldn’t happen on a Democratic president’s watch.

That issue is at the heart of this needless and destructive battle. House Republicans decided to hold the economy hostage to slash assistance for low-income Americans while protecting tax cuts for the wealthy.

That’s a factual statement, not a partisan complaint.

McCarthy (R-Calif.) is not only refusing to put any of the Trump-era tax cuts for the best-off and corporations on the table; he also wants to make them permanent, adding $3.5 trillion to the deficit over a decade. So much for “deficit reduction” as the central purpose of this exercise.

In the meantime, the GOP’s desire to concentrate cuts on what is blandly called “domestic discretionary spending” would force the heaviest reductions on programs that help the least well-off, such as Head Start and assistance for food, child care and housing. Republicans mercifully say they want to protect veterans’ programs, but that only forces deeper reductions elsewhere.

A revealing example: The House appropriations bill for agriculture released last week guts the 2021 pandemic-era increase to benefits for fruits and vegetables under the Women, Infants and Children program, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) reported affect “nearly 1.5 million pregnant, postpartum, or breastfeeding participants and roughly 3.5 million children aged 1 through 4."

Then there is the GOP’s insistence on “work requirements” for recipients of various government assistance programs. These would not help anyone get jobs but would tie up working people eligible for assistance in bureaucratic red tape.

“Despite rhetoric rooted in racist stereotypes, most people who can work do work,” said CBPP President Sharon Parrott. People turn to core government programs, she told me, “because their jobs don’t pay enough to make ends meet or they are out of work, often temporarily. If we want to help people succeed in jobs and have the freedom to thrive, we should invest in high quality job training and child care, not take away basic assistance they count on.”

Parrott’s view is shared well beyond the Democratic Party’s progressive wing. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) flatly declared last week that “work requirements are a nonstarter.”

This speaks to the difficulty of building majorities in the House and Senate for any accord McCarthy and Biden might reach. Because his party’s right wing will oppose anything short of its maximum demands, McCarthy cannot deliver a majority for a deal without large numbers of Democratic votes. They will be hard to get for a proposal remotely as draconian as his ultras want, one reason progressives are pushing Biden to bypass the debt ceiling by invoking the 14th Amendment’s requirement that the government honor its obligations.

“Kevin McCarthy does not know how many votes he has,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told Politico, speaking not just as a leading progressive but also a shrewd vote counter. “He can’t even go to the White House and say, if you give me this, I will have X votes.”

McCarthy also has to wonder if coming to terms with Biden would prompt a challenge to his leadership from hard-liners. He no doubt hoped that Friday’s brief Republican walkout from the talks would persuade his right flank that he’s taking a hard line.

Democrats once hoped that enough Republicans who represent districts the president carried in 2020 would be amenable to a clean debt ceiling increase. But these vulnerable members of the GOP had close ties to McCarthy and an aversion to handing Democrats a victory. So to get McCarthy into the room with Biden, they went along with some harsh cuts in the speaker’s bill even while saying they opposed them — clearly hoping that Democratic negotiators would save them from themselves.

Biden’s lieutenants and his allies in Congress insist that they are not repeating the errors of President Barack Obama’s debt ceiling strategy in 2011. They say they have already pushed Republicans back from some of their more extreme demands, forced them to make public the sweep of the cuts they originally sought, and are trying to avoid binding future Congresses to budget decisions won through extortion. And they expect to save Biden’s signature programs on clean energy and student debt.

But this sorry episode, made possible by an irrational debt ceiling law that ought to have been repealed long ago, should never have happened. The fact that Americans with the lowest incomes are political pawns in this exercise is a moral stain on our country.

Democrats Are Just Being Democrats - The Bills Will Pass

The news media has been rife with stories about the war (rift) in the Democratic Party. They look at the top-down Republican Party (where Trump gives the orders and everyone marches in lock-step), and assume the the Democratic Party just do the same. But that has never been how things work in the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is a big tent party. It has liberals, moderates, and conservatives -- and it includes people of all colors and religions (including no religion). It is natural for such a wide assortment of people to disagree -- and they do frequently. As a life-long Democrat, I remember butting heads with fellow Democrats many times -- on issues and candidates. I also remember shaking hands (or hugging) those same Democrats after a decision has been made, and working with them. That's what Democrats do.

And it's what they've always done. Decades ago, Will Rogers said he wasn't a member of any organized party -- he was a Democrat. There's some truth in that. Democrats argue, and it can look disorganized -- but they also get things done.

Republicans run people who disagree with them out of their party. Democrats don't. They fight, and then make-up -- and march together in unison.

And since that's what it is like for the base, it should come as no surprise that it works the same way for our elected officials. Some are elected from blue states or districts, and some are elected from purple states or districts -- and every now and then some are elected from red states or districts. And they will represent the people that elected them. 

That is what is happening now. The moderates and progressives are arguing about what should be in the Build Back Better bill, and what it should cost (and how it will be paid for). That is normality for the Democratic Party, and it is also normal for them to negotiate a solution. That negotiation is happening right now.

There will be a consensus solution. It won't be everything the progressives want, and it will be more than the moderates want, but it will be acceptable to both -- and it will be a huge benefit for the people of this country.

I believe that, because I've seen it happen time after time. 

Infrastructure Talks Stopped Because The GOP Was Lying

 

The infrastructure negotiations between Biden and the GOP representative (Sen. Shelley Moore Capito) have been called off by president Biden. He finally realized that the Republicans weren't serious about negotiating. They were just stalling.

The top part of the chart above (from MSNBC.com) is what the Republicans would like you to believe was happening -- that they had come within 43% of what President Biden wanted. They were lying (something they've become very good at doing).

The bottom part of the chart shows what really happened -- that while Biden was willing to cut his proposal in hall, the Republicans were only willing to give him 15% of what he was asking for! It turns out that much of the spending they were including in their proposal was for projects already approved by Congress -- not new projects.

Now there are more negotiations happening with a bipartisan group of senators. This won't go anywhere though. The first thing they said was that there will be no new taxes (on the rich or corporations). But what is needed is too expensive to do with new revenue, and there is broad support by the public to raise taxes on corporations and the rich to pay for infrastructure.

There will be no infrastructure bill unless the Democrats use the reconciliation process and go it on their own. The question now is how long it's going to take to get Senator Manchin on board for that. He's currently in that bipartisan group of senators now negotiating.

Trying To Negotiate With Congressional GOP Is Pointless

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy demanded that Democrats give in to Republican wishes regarding the proposed January 6th Investigation Committee. Democrats agreed to what McCarthy wanted. So what happened? McCarty (and his Senate counterpart - McConnell) came out in opposition to the committee anyway.

It points out a fact that has grown very clear. The congressional GOP is really not interested in negotiating. They only want to oppose everything the Democrats try to do. Trying to negotiate with them is pointless, and it's time Democrats realize this -- and get down to governing without the Republicans.

The following article is by Steve Been at MSNBC.com:

On a variety of issues, Republicans in D.C. have an annoying habit of making unreasonable demands, assuming their requests will scuttle a deal. Then, Democrats, eager to pay high prices in the interest of governing, give in to their unreasonable demands, at which point Republicans decide they're against the deal anyway.

We saw this in 2014, for example, when Republican insisted that then-President Barack Obama embrace something called "chained CPI" -- a controversial change to how Social Security benefits are calculated -- as part of a long-term debt-reduction deal. The White House reluctantly agreed, at which point Republicans criticized their own idea and walked away from the negotiating table.

We saw it again throughout Donald Trump's term, especially on the issue of immigration. Even after congressional Democrats, desperate to protect Dreamers, offered him tens of billions of dollars to construct a giant border wall, the Republican balked.

Yesterday, it happened again, when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-N.Y.) announced his opposition to a bipartisan deal on creating a Jan. 6 commission.

By all accounts, there's no real ambiguity as to what happened. The House GOP leader encouraged one of his allies to work on a deal, and McCarthy made sure to include unreasonable demands he expected Democrats to reject. Instead, the minority leader's ally "secured almost all the concessions McCarthy had sought."

Indeed, John Katko said the agreement he reached with House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) is "nearly identical" to the one House Republicans originally proposed in January.

And yet, McCarthy wouldn't take "yes" for an answer. In fact, last night, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) formally notifiedhis members that the GOP leadership is recommending a "no" vote on the agreement Republicans helped negotiate.

To be sure, we know why. Donald Trump, for example, is demanding that the debate over a commission come to an immediate end, and McCarthy is reportedly scared about having to be a key witness in the investigation.

But let's not miss the forest for the trees. Democrats, once again, invested time and effort into good-faith negotiations. Democrats, once again, made their own bill worse, on purpose, in order to get Republican buy-in for the proposal. And Democrats, once again, were told their concessions weren't enough for their GOP counterparts, who don't mind throwing their own ideas -- and their own negotiators -- under the bus. . . .

While we wait for the final outcome, the lesson should be obvious: negotiating with Republican leaders is generally pointless. There's no shortage of issues on which President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are ready to deal -- infrastructure, voting rights, immigration, et al. -- but they're working with GOP counterparts who've proven they won't take "yes" for answer.

All of which leads to the inevitable question of why Democrats even bother, when they have the option of trying to govern without them.

Erdogan Plays Trump/Pence/Pompeo For The Fools They Are

The letter above is the one that Donald Trump sent to President Erdogan of Turkey. Trump allowed Turkey to invade Syria to destroy the Kurds. But after substantial blowback from the American public (and legislators in Trump's own party), Trump tried to save face with that letter. He thought the letter made him look like a strong leader, and even passed out copies of it to legislators and the press. Personally, I think the letter just makes Trump look weak and stupid.

Trump then sent Pence and Pompeo to Turkey to "negotiate" a ceasefire. The results of that negotiation just confirmed that Trump is indeed weak and stupid (and so are Pence and Pompeo). All three of those U.S. politicians are bragging about the wonderful ceasefire they accomplished. But the truth is they accomplished nothing but to give Turkey everything it wanted.

Turkey gets to keep the 22 mile "safe zone" inside Syria. They also get to populate that safe zone with their Arab militia. The Kurds must get out of that safe zone (which is their homeland). No new sanctions will be levied against Turkey, and as Turkish troops leave the safe zone (which will be then patrolled by the Turkish-supported militia) the sanctions already levied will be removed.

As I said, Turkey got everything it wanted. The Kurds got nothing. Syria got nothing. And the United States got nothing, except to get played by another dictator. Trump will continue to brag about his great accomplishment. Lying is how he handles everything. But the world will know -- the U.S. leader is weak and stupid.

Don't Believe The Hype - Trump Backed Down (Again)

(The caricature of Donald Trump is by DonkeyHotey.)

With only a couple of days to go before his tariffs on all Mexican products were to begin, Trump declared victory and claimed he had negotiated a great deal with Mexico.

That's just another Trump lie. The truth is that nothing new was gained through the last minute negotiating. Everything Trump claimed he got was already agreed to by Mexico long ago. Trump just chickened out and backed down because he finally realized his stupid tariff was opposed by most people (even the people in his own party).

Here's part of how The New York Times describes Trump's latest attempt to claim a false victory:

The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with the United States over the past several months, according to officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations.

Friday’s joint declaration says Mexico agreed to the “deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border.” But the Mexican government had already pledged to do that in March during secret talks in Miami between Kirstjen Nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, and Olga Sanchez, the Mexican secretary of the interior, the officials said.

The centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s deal was an expansion of a program to allow asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their legal cases proceed. But that arrangement was reached in December in a pair of painstakingly negotiated diplomatic notes that the two countries exchanged. Ms. Nielsen announced the Migrant Protection Protocols during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee five days before Christmas.

And over the past week, negotiators failed to persuade Mexico to accept a “safe third country” treaty that would have given the United States the legal ability to reject asylum seekers if they had not sought refuge in Mexico first. . . .

Having threatened Mexico with an escalating series of tariffs — starting at 5 percent and growing to 25 percent — the president faced enormous criticism from global leaders, business executives, Republican and Democratic lawmakers, and members of his own staff that he risked disrupting a critical marketplace.

After nine days of uncertainty, Mr. Trump backed down and accepted Mexico’s promises.

Trump Fails Again (Because He's A Terrible Negotiator)

(Cartoon image is by Daryl Cagle at cagle.com.)

During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump told Americans he would solve all the nation's problems because he was a "great negotiator". That was just another of his many lies. He has only one negotiating skill -- bullying. That may work against small businesses, but it doesn't work when dealing with other nation's -- especially dictators.

The truth is that Trump has failed at every one of his attempts to negotiate, and he failed again in Hanoi this week. Here's what the editorial board of The Washington Post had to say about it:

The failure of President Trump’s summit meeting with Kim Jong Un revealed the fundamental weakness of Mr. Trump’s strategy for addressing the growing nuclear threat from North Korea. The president supposed that his personal and improvisational diplomacy, featuring unwarranted and unseemly flattery of a murderous tyrant, would make possible the substantive steps toward disarmament that the regime has resisted for decades. Instead, he was presented by Mr. Kim with a patently unacceptable offer that left him no choice but to walk away.

It’s good that he did walk away, but Mr. Trump’s miscalculation leaves U.S.-North Korean relations in disarray, even as the regime continues to produce material for weapons and long-range missiles capable of striking the United States. It calls for a fundamental reshaping of the U.S. approach — one that is more realistic about the nature of the Kim regime, including its horrific human rights violations.

If the administration had pursued a more substantive approach to the negotiations, Mr. Kim would have known the position he brought to Hanoi was a non-starter. By Mr. Trump’s account, the 35-year-old ruler offered to shut down the North’s Yongbyon nuclear complex in exchange for the removal of all sanctions — something that would have left his regime in possession of other nuclear facilities, not to mention its existing arsenal. (North Korea says it asked for nullification of five U.N. resolutions that contain most, but not all, sanctions.) Pyongyang has twice before struck deals to close Yongbyon, only to renege. Even if its closure were guaranteed in this instance, it would fall far short of the minimum the United States should require for the lifting of sanctions.

Mr. Kim may have believed that he could bamboozle Mr. Trump, who at their last meeting abruptly agreed to suspend U.S. military exercises with South Korea in exchange for an ambiguous statement about denulearization. Since then, Mr. Trump has waved around flattering letters he received from Mr. Kim, spoken about falling in love with him and ceased U.S. efforts to call attention to the crimes against humanity Mr. Kim is credibly accused of. Meanwhile, international economic pressure on the regime eased.

Even after the summit’s failure, Mr. Trump persisted in sending the wrong messages. At a news conference in Hanoi, he cast doubt on the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that North Korea is continuing to expand its nuclear arsenal and declined to say whether he would still demand complete denuclearization before lifting sanctions. He again questioned the costs of the U.S.-South Korean military alliance.

Worst of all, Mr. Trump offered Mr. Kim a pass on the case of American Otto Warmbier, saying he accepted the dictator’s word that he did not know about the gross mistreatment that led to Warmbier’s death. If Mr. Kim can obtain Mr. Trump’s sanction for such atrocities, it’s no wonder he would offer only one-sided deals.

Mr. Trump said Mr. Kim had assured him that North Korea would not return to nuclear or missile testing; if that remains true, there will still be time and opportunity for negotiation. But it ought now to be clear that the president’s shallow and slapdash attempts at dealmaking are not going to succeed.

Trump Is A Bad Negotiator Because He Can't Be Trusted

The charts above reflect the results of a recent Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between January 9th and 13th of a national sample of 1,209 voters, with a margin of error of 3.3 points.

During the presidential campaign of 2016, Donald Trump told voters that he could solve America's problems because he was a great negotiator. But he has not been able to complete any negotiations of substance. He claimed that he had negotiated North Korea into giving up its nuclear weapons, but that was not true. North Korea continues to refine nuclear material, make nuclear bombs, and make missiles capable of carrying those bombs.

He claimed to have negotiated a great deal to replace NAFTA. Another lie. The new deal is just the same NAFTA with some minor changes.

And after withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Accords and the Iran Treaty, he has utterly failed to negotiate a better deal (or any deal at all) for either of those.

The truth is that Trump is a terrible negotiator. Why? Because he cannot be trusted. He lies continuously, and even when he agrees to something, he often changes his mind and breaks his word. The leaders of other countries know this, and so do American voters (see charts above).

Here's how Noah Bierman describes it in the Los Angeles Times:

Sen. Mitch McConnell was jolted with a fresh reminder of President Trump’s capriciousness last month: The majority leader persuaded Republican colleagues to take a politically difficult vote to temporarily fund the government, but not a border wall, only to see Trump withdraw support — initiating the longest shutdown in history.

House Republicans learned the same lesson early in Trump’s presidency when he rallied them to repeal Obamacare, then described their effort as “mean.”

As Trump reaches the halfway mark of his term on Sunday, he has left a trail of negotiating partners from both chambers of Congress, both political parties and countries around the world feeling double-crossed and even lied to.

The result is that the president who campaigned as the world’s best deal-maker, vowing that he alone could fix Washington’s dysfunction, has been stymied as he looks for achievements before facing the voters again. Two years in, the man who built a political reputation as a guy who tells it like it is has lost the essential ingredients to closing deals: credibility and trust. 

Trump Is Utterly Incompetent At Political Negotiating

(This caricature of "great negotiator" Donald Trump is by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump told voters that he, and only he, could solve the problems facing this country. He told them that was because he was a great negotiator -- the best negotiator in the world. It hasn't worked out that way though.

It turns out that the only negotiating tactics that he has are threats and bullying. Those may have worked in the business world (at least to some extent). But the political world is different.

He has received a rude political awakening. In politics, his opponents are not intimidated by his threats and bullying. They expect real negotiating, with a give and take from both sides -- and they are well versed in the art of political negotiating. Trump is not.

It turns out that Trump is thoroughly incompetent in political negotiating -- maybe the worst in the world.

Here's how Greg Sargent describes Trump's negotiating skills in The Washington Post:

As we suffer through what by this weekend will be the longest government shutdown in history, the entire country is learning an awful truth: Trump is a deal-maker of absolutely stunning ineptitude, and we’re all paying the price for it.

We don't yet know how the shutdown is going to be resolved, but we do know that Trump has bumbled his way through this conflict with such incompetence that even his most ardent defenders would have a hard time claiming he has any idea what he's doing.

First, he supported a temporary bill to fund the government, one that passed the Senate unanimously, but when the likes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh criticized him for being weak, he quickly shifted his position and refused to sign any spending bill that didn’t have funding for a border wall. Then he went on live television and told Democratic leaders, “I am proud to shut down the government. ... I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it,” thereby making his later (and inevitable) attempts to blame the Democrats almost comical.

And now his attempts at "negotiating" are abysmal. He stalked out of a meeting with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi when they wouldn't give in, then went to Twitter to lob juvenile insults at them. That won't get him any closer to a deal, but it does provide some insight into where Trump is coming from.

As Shannon Pettypiece and Margaret Talev point out, the dramatic exit is a negotiating tactic Trump has used for many years. In his pre-political life, they report, “Trump was known to have done the same thing when a deal wasn’t going his way. He even walked out of a judge’s chambers during divorce proceedings.” Like most of what Trump believes about deal-making, it’s based on the presumption that he’s the one with the power, and if he’s enough of a bully then those on the other side of the table will eventually just give him what he wants.

When he was a private citizen, that was often the case. If he was negotiating with a vendor — probably a small-businessperson who was eager to do work for someone so famous — he could bully them into terms advantageous to him. If they didn’t like it, he could find someone else to sell him the bathroom fixtures or curtains (and they probably didn’t realize that chances were he’d stiff them on the bill). It was all based on the idea that the other person needed him but that he didn’t need them. So aggression was the only tactic necessary.

When he ran for president, he figured he could use the same technique. During the 2016 campaign, he said that the way to deal with China was to say, “Listen you mother f---ers, we’re going to tax you 25 percent.” Next thing you know they’d quake before his manly power and give us back all the manufacturing jobs that have been lost over the past couple of decades. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened.

One of the consequences of Trump’s simplistic view of negotiating is that he doesn’t know what to do when faced with a situation where the other person has just as much power as him, and things such as yelling and walking out of the room in a huff don’t make them knuckle under.

The truth that Trump still doesn’t grasp is that presidential negotiating is much more complicated than negotiating something like brand licensing agreements. It requires knowledge of often complex policy issues and a deep understanding of all the forces at play with the other side. And that might be where Trump’s failure is the most profound.

When he negotiated with, say, a developer in Panama who wanted to slap the Trump brand on an apartment building, it was relatively simple: This guy wants the prestige of the Trump name, and we just need to find a mutually agreeable price. But members of Congress have motivations, incentives and constraints that are vastly more complex: ideology, policy preferences, worries about reelection, multiple constituencies whose desires need to be considered, concerns about the next presidential election, and more. In order to successfully negotiate with them, you need to understand all those factors to find a successful resolution.

But Trump shows no sign of believing he has to understand any of that. You see it in foreign policy, too: Trump thought that he could charm Kim Jong Un into giving up nuclear weapons, but didn't bother to understand what those weapons represent to Kim and why he might be so loath to part with them. The result is that the weapons are still there, and Trump's talk of winning a Nobel Peace Prize because he negotiated such a great deal now makes him look like a fool.

Nor does Trump realize that unlike with his private business, as president he has to negotiate again and again with the same people. As a businessman he could con someone out of his or her life savings or refuse to pay a bill, and it wouldn’t matter because there were always more suckers to be found. But now he has to negotiate with people who have learned that they can’t trust his word, and he might make you a promise today that he breaks tomorrow.

Trump Cuts Humanitarian Aid To Palestine

(This photo of a Palestinian family is from nacoesunidas.org.)

The "great negotiator" has developed a new policy to encourage negotiations between Palestinians and Israel. Of course, it's not a fair policy. Trump wants to force Palestinians to comply with whatever Israel wants.

In the last three weeks, Trump has cut humanitarian aid to Palestine. Three weeks ago, Trump cut $300 million in aid to Palestine for humanitarian aid and development. Two weeks ago, he cut another $200 million in aid for schools and health clinics. Last week, he cut an additional $25 million in aid destined for sic East Jerusalem hospitals that serve Palestinians.

He says he cutting the money to make the Palestinians come back to the negotiating table. He completely ignores the fact that Israel is the biggest obstruction to continuing negotiations. If they negotiate, they would have to stop stealing Palestinian lands to build new Jewish settlements -- and they might even have to give that land back. They are not going to do that -- and the easiest way to do that is make unreasonable demands on the Palestinians to negotiate -- which they have effectively done for years now.

Trump's policy might make sense if he had cut the aid to BOTH SIDES to bring them to the negotiating table. But he didn't do that. The U.S. continues to send Israel about $3.1 billion in aid -- and Trump has said he wants to increase that to $3.3 billion in 2019.

All Trump's action has done is show that the United States is no longer a fair broker in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Trump wants whatever Israel wants -- and he's willing to starve the Palestinians and deny them medical care to accomplish that.

Trump's action is shameful, unfair, and immoral. That shouldn't surprise us, since he is a shameful, unfair and immoral person.

Trump Is No Dealmaker - Just A Bully And A Con Man

Donald Trump claims to be a great negotiator and dealmaker, but the truth is that he's yet to make a single deal since being sworn in to office.

Here's how Robert Reich (pictured) sums up Trump's dealmaking prowess:

Trump promised to be America’s dealmaker in chief. 

“We need a leader that wrote The Art of the Deal,” he said in the speech announcing his candidacy. “I’m a negotiator. I’ve done very well over the years through negotiation,” he said during a Republican debate. “That’s what I do, is deals,” he said in May. “I know deals, I think, better than anybody knows deals.”

Rubbish. So far, Trump has made no deals at all, and the ones he thinks he’s made have unraveled.

He has no deal with North Korea. Following his June 12 summit with Kim Jong Un, Trump declared on Twitter that “there is no longer a nuclear threat” from North Korea.

In fact, recent satellite images show that North Korea has upgraded a nuclear facility. It also appears to be finalizing the expansion of a ballistic missile manufacturing site.

Instead of surrendering its nuclear stockpile, American intelligence says North Korea is considering ways to conceal it at secret production facilities. 

As if to drive home the point that there’s been no deal, just after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Pyongyang to start filling in the “nitty-gritty details” of Kim’s vague commitment, the North accused the Trump administration of pushing a “unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization,” calling it “deeply regrettable.” 

Trump apologists say the supposed deal with North Korea will take time. 

Maybe. But Kim got everything he wanted from the summit – an American president appearing to grant North Korea co-equal status, and cancellation of joint military exercises with South Korea – without conceding anything on weapons and missile programs.

Trump has no trade deals, either. Instead, he’s launched  simultaneous trade wars with Europe, China, Canada, and Mexico.

After slapping tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports, China has retaliated with tariffs on $34 billion of American exports. Trump is now threatening tariffs on nearly everything China exports to the United States, as well as a clampdown on Chinese investment here.

After Trump raised tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, they also retaliated. They promise further retaliation if Trump acts on his threat to place a 20 percent tariff on imported cars and car parts.

Are these Trump’s negotiating tactics? “Every country is calling every day, saying, let’s make a deal, let’s make a deal,” he boasted last week.

More rubbish. Trump’s actions have poisoned relations to such an extent that instead of joining the United States to, say, push China to open its markets, our trading partners – including China – are starting to join together to stop Trump from doing worse damage.

Meanwhile, talks to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada are dead, partly because Trump’s bullying has generated so much animosity across our two neighbors’ borders.

Trump has no deal on Iran, either. No deal on Syria. No deal on the Qatar blockade. No deal on Israel and the Palestinians.

Trump will soon meet with Vladimir Putin – with no agenda.

Over the past few weeks, Trump has given away his bargaining leverage with Putin, anyway. He’s called for Russia to be readmitted to the Group of 7 industrial powers, suggested it has a legitimate claim to Crimea because a lot of Russian speakers live there, and expressed more doubts about whether Moscow meddled in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has no deal on climate change. He simply pulled out of the Paris accords.

No deal with the Group of 7 leading economic powers. He merely refused to sign the communiqué his own team had agreed to. And no deal with NATO countries on increasing their military spending.

“No deal” also describes Trump’s relations with the Republican Congress.

He got no deal on replacing the Affordable Care Act, so Trump is quietly repealing it administratively. At least 5 million people will lose coverage. 

No deal on gun control. After the Parkland shooting, Trump promised to tighten background checks for gun buyers and said he’d consider raising the age for buying certain types of guns. He subsequently gave up, bowing to the NRA. 

No deal on DACA or immigration, despite Trump’s promises. No budget deal, despite his assertions.

The tax deal wasn’t really Trump’s – it was a deal between the Republican Senate and Republican House, with Trump bloviating from the sidelines.

One of the biggest cons from the biggest conman to occupy the Oval Office is that he’s a dealmaker.

He’s not. All he really knows is how to bully friends, stage photo ops with enemies, and claim victory.