The president’s crack Monday afternoon about “Pocahontas”—aka Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren—was classic Donald Trump.
The setting was inappropropriate: Trump was commemorating the Navajo Code Talkers in a ceremony in the Oval Office and was joined by three of the 13 surviving World War II veterans. The comment was immaterial to the event: “You were here long before any of us were here, although we have a representative in Congress who, they say, was here a long time ago,” Trump told the honorees. “They call her ‘Pocahontas.’” The point was—well, there was no point.
In her briefing several minutes later, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked why Trump would say something many Native Americans might find offensive. “I think what most people find offensive is Senator Warren lying about her heritage to advance her career,” Sanders responded.
She has a point here: Warren did, in fact, misrepresent her ancestry a few times during her career as an academic, continuing during her 2012 race to stand by her unsubstantiated claim she had Cherokee heritage. The assertion she did this to “advance her career” is dubious, as is the assumption what “most people find offensive” is Warren’s claim, not Trump’s gauche and insensitive comment in the presence of elderly Native American war heroes.
What should concern the White House (beyond the president’s cringe-inducing utterances) is that his name-calling distracts from a potential substantive policy victory—namely the wresting away control from liberals the leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Before she was a senator, Warren was the driving force behind the creation of the CFPB in the Dodd-Frank financial services bill of 2010. The Bureau’s unprecedented independence from Congress and trademark regulatory overreach has been a frustration for Republicans, and the departure of the Obama-appointed Richard Cordray gave President Trump an opportunity to make a course correction—and as Shannen Coffin and others have argued effectively, there are justifiable reasons for Trump to name an acting director of his own choosing.
But needlessly targeting Warren for ridicule in the middle of a CFPB leadership dispute—and about which Warren was already scheduled to speak on numerous TV networks—makes Trump’s attempts to change the agency look less principled and more personal.
About That Leadership Dispute—The White House said Monday that Trump’s pick for interim director of the CFPB, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney, had assumed charge of the office without incident.
“Director Mulvaney has taken charge of that agency, and he has the full cooperation of the staff and appeared there this morning, and things went very well on his first day over at CFPB,” Sarah Sanders said. “The law is extremely clear . . . Director Mulvaney is the acting director here.”
Sanders also said that the White House expected the agency to operate “much better than it has in the past” under Mulvaney, although she declined to criticize the deputy director, Leandra English, whom Richard Cordray had tapped to replace him.
“She’s still the deputy director and has a legal standing in that capacity, but not as the director,” Sanders said. “I’m not saying that we do have anything against her. I’m saying that we want Director Mulvaney to lead this agency, and that’s a decision that the president is allowed to make.”
On the President’s Schedule—Trump will visit with the Republican Senate conference Tuesday at the Capitol. Trump’s drop-in comes days before an expected Senate vote on tax reform. It’s also the first meeting Trump will have with GOP senators since his break from nearly all of them on the issue of Roy Moore’s fitness for office.
Must-Read of the Day—The Washington Post averted an attempted undercover sting by the right-wing activists at Project Veritas, who were trying to bait the paper into publishing a false sexual misconduct allegation against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. It’s a story you have to read to believe—and there’s accompanying video you have to see, too.
Speaking of video, the infamous Access Hollywood tape from 2005 of a lewd conversation between Donald Trump and host Billy Bush is back in the news. The release of the video in October 2016 prompted a rare apology from candidate Trump for his remarks about grabbing women by the genitals. Now, a year later, the White House isn’t saying whether the president believes the tape was fabricated or not.
According to a Sunday New York Times article, Trump “suggested to a senator earlier this year” that the tape was not authentic, “and repeated that claim to an adviser more recently.”
Asked about the report on Monday, Sarah Huckabee Sanders demurred: “Look, the president addressed this. This was litigated and certainly answered during the election by the overwhelming support for the president and the fact that he’s sitting here in the Oval Office today. He’s made his position on that clear at the time, as have the American people and their support of him.”
Sanders added that the president’s comments were actually referring to unfair media reporting about the tape in the months since, but declined to offer any specifics about which stories he was referring to.
“What accounts are being reported now that weren’t reported last year? What accounts are you talking about?” a reporter asked.
“The ones that are current that he’s questioning,” Sanders responded.
Congress Watch—There’s another House retirement, reports Politico, but from a Democrat: Luis Gutierrez, a fierce and bombastic proponent of comprehensive immigration reform.
Column of the Day—Joe Nocera’s elegy for Time magazine and Time, Inc., which was purchased by Meredith Corp. this weekend, is an entertaining look back at an era of boom and excess for magazines. Within living memory, Nocera writes, “Time magazine made in the $100 million range, People made over $400 million, and Time Inc. had earnings that came in a hair under $1 billion.”
“The idea that it would all come to an end one day was unimaginable,” he continues. “But that day has come.”
Song of the Day—“Hello It’s Me” by Todd Rundgren
