Trump spends more time than predecessors in White House bubble

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In his first 100 days in office, Donald Trump made fewer appearances outside of the presidential bubble than his three immediate predecessors, venturing less beyond the White House or his private Mar-a-Lago estate, according to a Reuters review.
The U.S. president cast himself during his election campaign last year as a Washington outsider and a populist champion, and often seemed most comfortable at raucous campaign rallies.
Trump still constantly tells Americans what is on his mind through prolific use of Twitter messages, but he has not traveled out into the country often since taking office on Jan. 20.
Trump made comments at official appearances 132 times in the first 100 days, compared with 139 by Barack Obama in the same period, 177 by George W. Bush and 162 by Bill Clinton. (http://tmsnrt.rs/2p8M8EU)
Some 22 of his appearances were in settings other than the White House, Air Force One, a government agency or at Mar-a-Lago, a Florida resort that his administration has called the “winter White House.” That compares to 62 such appearances by Obama in his first 100 days, 80 for Bush and 46 for Clinton.
Reuters reviewed public remarks delivered by the presidents using White House websites, pool reports and documents archived by the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Trump made public comments on five separate occasions at Mar-a-Lago. None of the other three presidents spoke to the public from a personal residence during their first 100 days, although Bush spoke twice at Camp David, the rustic presidential retreat in Maryland.
Asked about his travel, Trump’s advisers say he is focused on implementing the promises he made at his campaign rallies.
    “There is obviously a premium on his time,” said White House spokeswoman Natalie Strom. “We proceed with any additional travel very thoughtfully.”
    Bradley Blakeman, who was deputy assistant for scheduling and appointments under Bush, said Trump may be missing out on opportunities to sell his message to the public.
“Deals are made in Washington on Pennsylvania Avenue, but they are sold on Main Street, USA,” Blakeman said. “It’s an important part of the bully pulpit.”
    He said Trump should do targeted events focused on specific legislative priorities that will get coverage by local news outlets, where stories on presidential visits tend to be more positive than in the national media.
    During his first 100 days, Bush visited more than half a dozen schools in Washington and at least five different states as he promoted his education initiative, No Child Left Behind.
    Trump’s first major legislative push has focused on reforming the U.S. healthcare system, but he has not yet delivered remarks at a medical facility.
In an interview with Reuters last week, Trump lamented the confining nature of the presidency with its 24-hour Secret Service protection.
“You’re really into your own little cocoon, because you have such massive protection that you really can’t go anywhere,” he said.
Still, he remains a constant focus of public attention, helped by his use of Twitter, a tool that was seldom used or was entirely unavailable to his most recent three predecessors.
“Interaction online does not completely replace the value of in-person appearances, but you can’t ignore the fact that there is no limit on the amount of people the president’s tweets can reach,” Strom said.
Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said that while Trump’s use of social media had opened a new chapter in presidential communication, his lack of sustained attention on any one issue undercut his message.
    “There’s not a focus there. When a president is all over the map, then he loses his power,” Jacobs said.

Feds decline to charge Louisiana policemen in fatal shooting

BATON ROUGE, La. (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors said on Wednesday they would not charge two Louisiana police officers in the fatal shooting of a black man last summer, prompting family members of the slain man to call for a state investigation.
The death of Alton Sterling, 37, in Baton Rouge, the state capital, was one in a series of racially charged police killings that inflamed a national debate over treatment of minorities, and especially young black men, by law enforcement.
The July 5, 2016 shooting prompted nationwide protests including a demonstration two days later in Dallas at which five law enforcement officers were fatally shot by an African-American former U.S. serviceman.
As of nightfall on Wednesday, the streets of Baton Rouge were quiet, with a few protesters gathering under intermittent rain.
In announcing the decision not to file federal charges against officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake, U.S. Attorney Corey Amundson told reporters in Baton Rouge there was “insufficient” evidence to prove civil rights violations.
Amundson said investigators could not determine whether Sterling was reaching for a gun at the time he was shot.
Members of Sterling’s family, in a simultaneous news conference, called on Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry to pursue state criminal charges against the officers.
“Open up your heart, your eyes, and give us the justice that we deserve,” said Quinyetta McMillon, the mother of Sterling’s oldest son, fighting back tears.
Lawyers for the family said U.S. officials told them Salamoni was recorded on video threatening to kill Sterling less than 90 seconds before firing the fatal shots.
A lengthy summary of the Justice Department’s findings released on Wednesday did not include that detail.
Landry warned that a state investigation, which was delayed to allow the federal probe to proceed, “could take a considerable amount of time.”
The decision not to charge the two officers by the U.S. Department of Justice came amid scrutiny of how aggressively President Donald Trump’s administration will seek to hold police officers accountable in such situations.
Both Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have criticized the Obama administration, saying it targeted police unfairly in civil rights investigations.
Sessions is still responsible for deciding whether to bring charges in other high-profile police killings, including the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York and the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland that same year.
The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s state chapter, Marjorie Esman, however, said the decision was consistent with the Obama administration’s approach in similar cases, given the high legal standard in federal civil rights cases.
Wednesday’s events came a day after a white former South Carolina officer pleaded guilty in the 2015 shooting of an unarmed black man and a Texas officer was fired for shooting an unarmed 15-year-old boy on Saturday.
Sterling was shot outside a convenience store after a resident reported he had been threatened by a black man selling CDs. Officers said that Sterling was attempting to pull a loaded gun out of his pocket when Salamoni opened fire, according to the Justice Department summary.
The two officers are on paid administrative leave pending an internal police investigation.
Salamoni’s attorney, John McLindon, said he expects the state will come to the same conclusion as the federal probe.
“There’s not going to be any finding of any criminal conduct,” McLindon said by phone Wednesday evening.
Lake’s lawyer, Fred Crifasi, said the officer was relieved by the Justice Department’s decision but would not comment further.

Asian stocks retreat, dollar holds near six-week high on hawkish Fed

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Asian stocks retreated on Thursday, taking their cues from a subdued session on Wall Street, while the dollar retained gains made after the Federal Reserve’s hawkish policy statement.
European markets looked more positive, with financial spreadbetters expecting Britain’s FTSE 100 and Germany’s DAX to open 0.2 percent higher and France’s CAC 40 to start the day up 0.1 percent.
At the end of its two-day meeting, the Fed kept its benchmark interest rate steady, as expected, but downplayed weak first-quarter economic growth and emphasized the strength of the labor market, a sign it was still on track for two more rate increases this year.
Futures traders are now pricing in a 72 percent chance of a June rate hike, from 63 percent before the Fed’s statement, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool.
The dollar stood at 112.765 yen, slightly higher than Wednesday and at its strongest level since March 20.
The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of trade-weighted peers, climbed 0.1 percent to 99.309, building on Wednesday’s 0.2 percent jump.
“The key over the coming weeks will be the economic data from the U.S. but, in addition, the (Fed) will be closely watching Washington and negotiations surrounding the new administration’s tax cut plans,” said Lee Ferridge, head of multi-asset strategy for North America at State Street Global Markets.
“Should the data hold up (or better still, improve from here), while the chances of a late summer tax cut agreement remain intact, then the market will likely price in a June move.”
Attention now turns to U.S. non-farm payrolls for March, due on Friday, after separate data showed private employers added 177,000 jobs in April. That was higher than expected but the smallest increase since October.
Economists polled by Reuters expect U.S. private payroll employment likely grew by 185,000 jobs in April, up from 89,000 in March.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slid 0.4 percent on Thursday, dragged lower by commodities, energy and financials stocks.
Japan is closed for the Golden Week holiday.
Chinese stocks pared earlier losses to trade flat, as gains in small-caps offset a cooling in China’s services sector growth to its slowest in almost a year in April as fears of slower economic growth dented business confidence.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 0.4 percent.
Australian shares were also 0.4 percent lower.
“May is a notoriously cruel month for Asia with foreign exchange, equities and domestic bonds all losing in historical average returns,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch strategists led by Claudio Piron wrote in a note.
South Korea’s KOSPI bucked the weaker trend, jumping 0.7 percent and hovering just a touch below an all-time high hit earlier in the session on strong corporate earnings.
Rising exports point to continued profit growth in the second quarter, with sentiment supported by hopes for economic stimulus from a new president.
Overnight, Wall Street closed flat to lower.
The Nasdaq fell 0.4 percent as Apple shares slid after reporting lower than expected iPhone sales on Tuesday.
Facebook and Tesla also dropped during the session and after hours despite upbeat quarterly results, also weighed on the index.
Political concerns, which have taken a backseat recently, may re-emerge, with a U.S. House of Representatives vote on a revised bill to repeal Obamacare due later in the session after two failed attempts to corral enough support to pass the legislation.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Republican leadership is confident there is enough backing for the bill to pass, after key moderate leaders met with President Donald Trump on Wednesday. Even if the bill passes the House, it could face an uphill battle in the Senate.
In Europe, Germany ended higher but Britain and France closed lower on Wednesday. The pan-European STOXX 600 index lost 0.04 percent to slip from a 20-month high.
The euro ticked up 0.1 percent to $1.08945 on Thursday, after losing 0.4 percent on Wednesday as the dollar strengthened on the Fed’s statement.
Following a debate between French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron, who will face off in the second round of the presidential election on Sunday, a poll showed some 63 percent of voters found market favorite Macron to be more convincing.
In commodities, oil prices slipped on Thursday after a smaller-than-expected decline in U.S. inventories last week.
U.S. crude pulled back 0.25 percent to $47.69 a barrel. On Wednesday, it touched its lowest level in over five weeks before closing higher.
Global benchmark Brent fell 0.2 percent to $50.70.
Gold inched up 0.1 percent to $1,239.80 an ounce, making up some of Wednesday’s 1.5 percent loss.

Heritage Foundation Cartoons

Conservative U.S. think tank Heritage Foundation fires leader

The Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank that has gained influence in Republican-controlled Washington, fired its leader Jim DeMint on Tuesday, and sources close to the situation said the organization’s leadership determined he had veered too far from its conservative principals and too close to U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House.
A scathing statement from Thomas A. Saunders III, chairman of The Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees, did not go into specifics of any disagreement but did cite problems with internal communications and other “management issues.”
“After a comprehensive and independent review of the entire Heritage organization, the Board determined there were significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of internal communications and cooperation,” Saunders said in a statement.
“While the organization has seen many successes, Jim DeMint and a handful of his closest advisers failed to resolve these problems.”
Two political operatives who work with the organization said DeMint’s opponents argued that he had grown too close to Trump and too far from the conservative principles on which the organization was founded.
Ed Feulner, who previously served as the Heritage president, will return to the role in an interim capacity until a replacement is found, according to a statement from the Heritage board.
DeMint, a former senator from South Carolina, took over the organization in 2013 after he retired from public office. Since then, he has transformed the organization once known for research and white papers into a political behemoth. For instance, he created an arm of the organization devoted entirely to influencing elections and pushing lawmakers to side with the group’s policy positions.
But as DeMint transformed the organization, unease grew within its ranks, according to the sources.
After Trump was elected, more than a dozen staffers from the Heritage Foundation and its political arm Heritage Action were deployed as volunteers to help with the transition process. Heritage staffers worked on teams deployed to set up a Trump government at the EPA, the Office of Management and Budget and the departments of Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, State and Treasury. An additional seven volunteers on the transition team had ties to Heritage, either having worked there before or working as a non-staff expert with the think tank.

Clinton says Comey’s letter, Russian hackers cost her the election

Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday she was on the path to victory in the 2016 presidential election until late interference by Russian hackers and FBI Director James Comey scared off some potential supporters.
In her most extensive public comments on the Nov. 8 election, Clinton told a New York conference she was derailed by Comey’s Oct. 28 letter informing Congress the Federal Bureau of Investigation had reopened a probe of her use of a private email server and by the WikiLeaks release of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails, allegedly stolen by Russian hackers.
“If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” she told a women’s conference moderated by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
“It wasn’t a perfect campaign, but I was on the way to winning until a combination of Comey’s letter and Russian WikiLeaks,” the Democrat said of the loss to Republican Donald Trump. “The reason why I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last 10 days.”
Clinton, who said she is going through the “painful process” of writing a book dealing in part with the election, also said misogyny played a role in her defeat. Becoming the first woman U.S. president would have been “a really big deal,” she said.
Clinton took personal responsibility for the campaign’s mistakes, but did not question her strategy or her staff. “I was the candidate, I was the person who was on the ballot. I am very aware of the challenges, the problems, the shortfalls that we had,” Clinton said.
She said she had no doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to influence the election for Trump, and bluntly criticized the new U.S. president for some of his foreign policy views and for tweeting too much.
“I’m back to being an activist citizen – and part of the resistance,” she said.
Clinton said broader negotiations involving China and other countries in the region were critical for convincing North Korea to rein in its nuclear program. She questioned Trump’s recent suggestion he would be willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un under the right circumstances.
“You should not offer that in the absence of a broader strategic framework to try to get China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, to put the kind of pressure on the regime that will finally bring them to the negotiating table,” Clinton said.
She also said she supported the recent missile strikes ordered by Trump in Syria but was unsure if they would make a difference. “There is a lot that we don’t really yet fully know about what was part of that strike,” she said.

Macron and Le Pen to square off in French pre-election TV debate

France’s presidential rivals, centrist Emmanuel Macron and the far-right’s Marine Le Pen, go head-to-head on Wednesday in a televised debate in which sparks are sure to fly as they fight their corner in a last encounter before Sunday’s runoff vote.
Opinion polls still show Macron, 39, holding a strong lead of 20 points over the National Front’s Le Pen with just four days to go to the final vote, in what is widely seen as France’s most important election in decades.
Voters are choosing between Macron, a strongly Europe-minded ex-banker who wants to cut state regulations in the economy while protecting workers, and Le Pen, a eurosceptic who wants to ditch the euro currency and impose sharp curbs on immigration.
Macron finished only three points ahead of Le Pen in the first round on April 23, but he is widely expected now to pick the bulk of votes from the Socialists and the center-right whose candidates were eliminated.
Though Le Pen has a mountain to climb to catch Macron, the 2017 campaign for the Elysee has been packed with surprises, the exchanges between the two have become noticeably sharper and the 48-year-old National Front veteran has shown she is capable of catching him out with clever public relations maneuvering.
Macron warned he would not pull his punches in Wednesday night’s televised encounter against a rival whose policies he says are dangerous for France.
“I am not going to employ invective. I am not going to use cliches or insults. I’ll use hand-to-hand fighting to demonstrate that her ideas represent false solutions,” he told BFM TV.
Le Pen, who portrays Macron as a candidate of high finance masquerading as a liberal, said: “I shall be defending my ideas. He will be defending the posture that he has adopted.”
“His program seems to be very vague, but in reality it is a simple continuation of (Socialist President) Francois Hollande’s government,” she said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday.
MUST-WATCH EVENT
In that interview she reaffirmed she wanted to take France out of the euro and said she hoped the French people would have a national currency in their pockets within two years.
An Elabe poll for BFM TV and L’Express published on Tuesday showed Macron winning 59 percent of the votes in the second round versus 41 percent for Le Pen. Other pollsters have consistently shown roughly the same figures.
Commentators said Wednesday’s debate could still have an influence, particularly on potential abstainers, many of whom voted for the candidate of the hard left who came fourth in the April 23 first round.
“What he (Macron) has to do it to convince the people who didn’t vote for him (in the first round) and who do not agree with his program that they will be respected,” said one outgoing government minister, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The final face-to-face debate between rivals in a French presidential election, aired live, is a ‘must-watch’ event across the country, when the candidates take the gloves off to land whatever punches they can.
Some clashes have entered into political legend.
Valery Giscard d’Estaing, a center-right candidate, famously bested the Socialist Francois Mitterrand in 1974 when the latter referred to “a matter of heart” when discussing an economic point.
Giscard d’Estaing hit back saying “You don’t have a monopoly on the heart, Monsieur Mitterrand” – a phrase which stuck and which he later said helped his victory over the Socialist in what was an extremely tight contest.
In 2002 conservative Jacques Chirac, then the incumbent in the Elysee, refused to debate with Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of Marine Le Pen, after the National Front’s founder unexpectedly got through to the second round.
Chirac said no debate was possible “in the face of intolerance and hate”, a reference to Le Pen’s policies and thinking, which were considered to be xenophobic.
Chirac defeated Le Pen senior in a landslide.

Trump struggles to win over moderate Republicans on healthcare overhaul

Time was running short for President Donald Trump to attract enough votes to pass a new bill to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system this week as Republican party moderates held out, fearing a backlash from voters worried about losing insurance benefits.
A senior House of Representatives Republican aide said on Tuesday night no decision had been made on bringing legislation to the floor this week before the House is due to start a week-long break late on Thursday.
A bill would need to be filed by late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning to hold the vote before the break.
Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who heads the conservative House Freedom Caucus faction that helped block Trump’s first attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, said earlier on Tuesday Republicans were still “a handful of votes away.”
The lack of movement among Republicans puts Trump in danger of his second major legislative setback, raising questions about his ability to secure passage of other parts of his agenda, including a major tax reform plan.
Most House Freedom Caucus Republicans have gotten on board with the new proposal, but Democrats are vowing to oppose any attempt to unravel Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare overhaul.
The latest Republican plan would allow states to opt out of Obamacare provisions that force insurers to charge sick and healthy people the same rates. That is seen as a concession to conservatives to attract their votes.
Trump insisted in an interview with CBS News that aired on Sunday that the protections for those with pre-existing conditions would remain.
“I think it’s time now” for a healthcare vote, the Republican president said at the White House on Tuesday.
Even if a plan passes the House, it is expected to face a tough fight in the Senate, where Republicans have a narrower majority.
OPPOSITION
Republicans contend that Obama’s signature 2010 healthcare law, which allowed some 20 million Americans to gain medical insurance, is too intrusive and expensive.
The White House sent Vice President Mike Pence to the Capitol on Tuesday to meet Republican holdouts on the party’s latest effort to pass a healthcare overhaul.
Republicans remain divided over key aspects of the healthcare bill, with some lawmakers worrying about a potential spike in the number of people without coverage, or sharp increases in insurance premiums.
Representative Daniel Webster, whose central Florida district is home to many retirees, said Pence told him he would try to work out problems caused by proposed Medicaid spending caps that would limit nursing-home beds.
“I just think it’s going to cost us a lot in Florida,” Webster said.
Another Florida Republican, Thomas Rooney, said confusion over the potential loss of coverage for pre-existing conditions had his constituents scared that “they’re going to die because of a vote that we might be taking.”
Conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and Heritage Action started to increase pressure on moderate Republicans who were resisting the bill, such as Representative Billy Long of Missouri.
“Billy is using liberal talking points to distort the truth,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh said, adding that Long “may want to keep Obamacare.”
Left-leaning groups, including the Center for American Progress (CAP), were pushing their members to call lawmakers to urge them to oppose the healthcare bill, including via 7,000 medicine bottles delivered to congressional districts. Emily Tisch Sussman, a CAP organizer, said those efforts had generated “tens of thousands” of phone calls.
Patient advocacy groups, including the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association, also oppose the reworked bill, while the American Medical Association and others have expressed concerns.