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During South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s visit to the White House to discuss what the two countries could do about North Korea’s increasingly aggressive nuclear program, Trump said that the “era of strategic patience with the North Korean regime has failed.” Unfortunately, the U.S. doesn’t have a lot of options — Bill Clinton’s lead negotiator with the Hermit Kingdom explained to VICE News why diplomatic negotiations probably won’t work.
Trump flip-flopped and called on Republican senators to repeal Obamacare without a replacement. Previously, the president said both must happen at the same time. Repealing the Affordable Care Act without replacing it would leave millions more people uninsured than the Senate’s replacement plan would.
Also on Friday, Trump announced he was sending “federal help” to Chicago to combat crime after the Chicago Sun-Times had already confirmed the White House sent 20 agents to Chicago from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to work with local cops to track down gun-trafficking rings and solve gun-murder cases.
A day after Trump fired off a couple vicious tweets about “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski’s “bleeding” face-lift, she expressed that she was “fine,” and her co-host (and fiancé) Joe Scarborough added, “We’re fine; our country is not.” The “Morning Joe” personalities also accused the president and his top aides of blackmail: White House staffers allegedly called the couple about a soon-to-drop negative National Enquirer piece about them but said if they apologized for their coverage, the president, who claims he’s friends with the publisher, would tell the tabloid to chuck the story.
Ten red states — Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia — are threatening to sue the Trump administration if it doesn’t end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which provides temporary protection for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children.
Months before the U.S. election, a GOP opposition researcher worked with former national security adviser Mike Flynn to hunt down Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails, sources and email correspondence revealed to the Wall Street Journal. The operative, however, denies Flynn was involved but admitted the two knew each other.
Trump signed an executive order to revive the National Space Council, which was established under George H. Bush but has been defunct since 1993. The council includes top officials — including the secretaries of state and defense, as well as the head of NASA — working to advance space exploration.
After months of speculation that the Trump administration would ease regulations on the for-profit education industry, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos finally announced a halt of increased Obama-era rules that would have protected students against fraudulent schools.
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Day 163 — July 1
11 angry tweets
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Trump tweeted that the “FAKE & FRAUDULENT NEWS MEDIA is working hard” to convince his allies that the president should curb his erratic social media use. But Trump promised that he wouldn’t be dissuaded from the heroic act of tweeting — and made good on his word by tweeting 11 times that day on a wide variety of topics:
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Greta Van Susteren’s firing at NBC
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Changing #FakeNewsCNN’s name to #FraudNewsCNN
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Speaking of the Celebrate Freedom Concert, which was meant to honor veterans, Trump spent a large portion of his speech railing on people who don’t say “Merry Christmas.”
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Day 164 — July 2
A Trump smackdown
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The president struck a more measured tone on Twitter with a relatively quietmessage about supporting veterans. But things got ugly again when he tweeted a video of himself repeatedly body-slamming a WWE performer with a CNN logo for a head.
The official @POTUS account also retweeted the video, which thrilled Trump’s most ardent supporters but drew widespread condemnation elsewhere. A few top Republicans criticized the tweet, and Democrats and journalists accused the president of inciting violence.
“It is a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters,” read CNN’s response. “Instead of preparing for his overseas trip, his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, dealing with North Korea, and working on his healthcare bill, he is involved in juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office. We will keep doing our jobs. He should start doing his.”
Thousands of protesters gathered in 45 cities across the country to call for Trump’s impeachment.
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Day 165 — July 3
Trump wonders why Kim Jong Un loves missiles so much
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North Korea successfully fired its first intercontinental ballistic missile, which experts say has the range to hit Alaska. The test prompted a response from the president that prodded China to take greater action against North Korea.
“North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life?” Trump tweeted. “Hard to believe that South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!”
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Day 166 — July 4
Prepping for Putin
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The White House confirmed on Independence Day that Trump would meet with Vladimir Putin in person at the G20 summit. And aides planned to prepare the president for the high-stakes encounter in a form very familiar to him: tweets, anonymous officials told the Los Angeles Times. The aides reportedly created a list of tweet-length sentences that Trump could use as talking points.
Trump — a loud critic of Obama’s frequent golfing as president — spent his holiday at the golf course (his 36th visit to the green as president, which far outpaces his predecessor).
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Day 167 — July 5
"So much for China working with us"
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The U.S. and South Korea conducted a joint missile drill in response to North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile test. The same day, the Trump administration vowed to be even tougher on North Korea and proposed more stringent United Nations sanctions against “any country that does business with this outlaw regime.”
Trump went on to lambast China’s relationship with North Korea in a series of tweets. “Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40% in the first quarter,” Trump tweeted. “So much for China working with us — but we had to give it a try!”
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Day 168 — July 6
Ethics chief quits over ethical concerns
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Frustrated with the limitations of his role as government ethics chief, Walter Shaub, an Obama appointee, bid the White House goodbye. In an exit interview on CNN just hours later, Shaub skewered the president for a lack of transparency and for appearing to profit from his office.
“America should have the right to know what the motivations of its leaders are, and they need to know that financial interests, personal financial interests, aren't among them,” Shaub told CNN.
Trump can now pick Shaub’s replacement, though the person will have to be confirmed by the Senate.
A day before meeting with Putin, Trump admitted that Russia interfered with the U.S. election — sort of. The president said that Russia probably did but also blamed unspecified “other countries” and that “nobody really knows.”
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos found herself, and her department, named in a lawsuit for halting increased Obama-era regulations on for-profit schools. Although the education secretary claims the rules are unclear and wants to review them, a group of 18 states sued on Thursday, decrying the move as illegal.
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Day 169 — July 7
Ethics chief quits over ethical concerns
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After months of frenzied news reporting surrounding the connections between Trump’s administration and Putin, the two world leaders finally shook hands — which looked more like an awkward Tinder date than a diplomatic sit-down at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe couldn’t even keep a straight face.
And before the meetings started, Trump raged on Twitter about a number of topics: the Democrats, the intelligence community, and of course, fake news.
Trump also met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto at the summit and took the opportunity to reiterate his demand that the U.S. neighbor to the south pay for his proposed border wall. (Numerous Mexican officials have said multiple times that no, it won’t.)
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