Tag Archive for: THE WHITE HOUSE

VIDEO: Karoline Leavitt Brings Receipts Of Dems Echoing Trump’s Concerns About Trade Policy

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt brought receipts of prominent Democrats making the same critiques about trade policy as President Donald Trump during Tuesday’s press briefing.

Trump has come under Democratic scrutiny for imposing reciprocal tariffs on foreign imports in order to create fairer trade practices and return manufacturing to the U.S. Leavitt said that Democrats simply do not want to admit that they agree with Trump on the need to change current trade practices, which prompted her to read direct quotes from high-profile Democrats who expressed concern over the status quo on foreign trade.

“Everybody in Washington [D.C.], whether they want to admit it or not, knows that this president is right when it comes to tariffs and when it comes to trade,” Leavitt said. “In fact, Democrats have long said that the United States of America has been ripped off by the countries around the world. They just don’t want to admit it now because it’s President Trump saying that.”

The press secretary quoted former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said in June 1996 that her colleagues must “fight against the status quo trade policies that had contributed to America’s trade deficit with China.” She further quoted now-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and former Democrat Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown remarks from 2007 and 2012, when they both sounded the alarm on the U.S.’s trade deficit costing American workers “millions of jobs.”

WATCH:

“These are the words of Democrats years ago,” Leavitt said. “It is about time America finally has a president who is taking action to restore those millions of jobs back to the United States of American to boost our manufacturing industry. He’s doing what’s right for the American people. It will take a lot of labor, it will take a lot of effort. That’s exactly what the American people elected this president to do.”

CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings said he found it “amusing” on Monday that Democrats have suddenly become proponents of free trade and lower taxes while they criticize Trump’s attempts to cut corporate and capital gains taxes.

Trump’s officially imposed the tariffs on April 2, which he deemed “Liberation Day,” with the intention of preventing foreign nations from “ripping off” the U.S. and to help American workers. Several union workers celebrated the tariffs, stating that their industries will benefit from more job positions and more domestic production.

The tariffs caused U.S. stocks to take a steep downturn, with the Dow Jones sinking by 2,200 points on Friday. The markets faced a positive rebound on Tuesday as the Dow jumped 179 points.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow on Monday that up to 70 countries have gotten in contact with Trump to begin negotiations. Trump stated on Truth Social that nations across the globe are talking with the U.S. to negotiate on tariffs.

“Countries from all over the World are talking to us. Tough but fair parameters are being set. Spoke to the Japanese Prime Minister this morning. He is sending a top team to negotiate! They have treated the U.S. very poorly on Trade. They don’t take our cars, but we take MILLIONS of theirs. Likewise Agriculture, and many other ‘things.’ It all has to change, but especially with CHINA!!!” Trump said.

The administration is set increase tariffs on Chinese tariffs to 104% due to the country’s retaliation against the U.S., Leavitt said. The White House had initially planned in February to impose 20% tariffs on China for its role in causing the fentanyl epidemic, while Canada and Mexico received 25% tariffs for the flow of fentanyl and illegal immigration coming into the U.S.

The tariffs led former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to cave to the president’s demands on the border. Trudeau invested billions in securing Canada’s border and appointed a “Fentanyl Czar,” while Sheinbaum deployed 10,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

AUTHOR

Nicole Silverio

Media reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

EXCLUSIVE: Musk Quietly Inserts DOGE Across Federal Agencies In Move That Could Uproot $162,000,000,000 Govt Industry

As federal employees launched protests of entrepreneur Elon Musk’s disruption of federal agencies last week, the Office of Personnel Management quietly released a memo shoring up the formal structure of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

An OPM memo dated Feb. 4 seeks the redesignation of chief information officers across the government from career positions political appointees. OPM has recommended that every agency send a request to OPM to reclassify its CIO role from career reserved to “general” by Feb. 14.

The new CIO positions will be working with DOGE, a source familiar confirmed to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The new memo gives the greatest detail about how DOGE will operate within the federal government since a Jan. 20 executive order. Yet it has been entirely overlooked by the legacy press, which has relied largely on career officials within the government who characterize DOGE’s actions as extra-governmental. Democrats like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have sought to portray the effort as a “coup.”

However, the memo shows that DOGE is attempting to regularize its operations within the federal government.

“It is a focus of President Trump’s administration to improve the government’s digital policy to make government more responsive, transparent, efficient, and accessible to the public, and to make using and understanding government programs easier,” the memo reads.

Unlike most major institutions, the federal government has no central IT department. InsteadIT responsibilities are dispersed across federal agencies which in turn spend billions on contractors and disparate artificial intelligence technologies. Musk’s housecleaning could reshape this $163 billion industry.

DOGE is the renamed U.S. Digital Service. The U.S. Digital Service is a small office within the White House created to build the health care exchanges under the Affordable Care Act and advises on technical strategy. How the DOGE office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building will liaison with CIOs throughout the government is not yet clear.

Washington Post report revealed Monday that Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old DOGE team member known online as “Big Balls,” has been stationed at the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology. The Bureau of Diplomatic Technology provides IT services.

The memo states that the new DOGE-aligned CIOs will take on a major role in public policy on technology.

The memo gives some insight into what they will prioritize, like improving government procurement policies and privacy, and deprioritize, namely diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

“Poor technology-procurement policies can endanger property and privacy rights. Inadequate security policies can lead to vulnerabilities and hacks,” it states. “Emphasis on policies like [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility] siphons labor and resources from other core government objectives.”

The Biden administration helped lay the groundwork for the change. Two earlier OPM memos cited in the Feb. 4 memo broadened the authority of government appointees to look outside of government for highly technical roles, including one released in the final months of the last administration.

2018 OPM memo under the first Trump administration noted “severe shortages of candidates and/or critical hiring needs” for STEM and cybersecurity. A September 2024 memo released under the Biden administration noted that “severe shortage of talent” in cybersecurity and other high-tech sectors persisted.

The new memo states that moving certain CIO positions away from career positions could help to alleviate it by dramatically increasing the number of candidates available to fill these important roles.

The move is in keeping with public statements about DOGE made by Musk and former DOGE co-lead and potential Ohio gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy about improving the federal government’s tech infrastructure, including examining the vendors the U.S. government works with and the fact that these systems don’t communicate across agencies.

Musk’s biography on his website X reads “White House Tech support.”

“My preferred title in the new administration is Volunteer IT Consultant,” Musk wrote on X on Dec. 9. “We can’t make government efficient & fix the deficit if the computers don’t work.”

“The federal government is the world’s largest IT customer… In theory, this *should* give us great buying power to negotiate good deals for taxpayers, but of course that’s not what happens,” Ramaswamy said on Dec. 5. “If the federal government were serious about reducing costs, it would procure government-wide licenses.”

Despite the intense focus on DOGE, there has been little discussion of the federal government’s existing methods for managing data and records.

The top five contractors on IT together took in $45 billion in 2024, according to Washington Technology, a trade publication that uses federal procurement data, USASpending.gov and company Security and Exchange Commission filings.

Musk’s SpaceX was the 39th largest federal contractor in government technology at approximately $1 billion. That represents about one third of Musk’s reported $3 billion in contracts with the U.S. government. Musk’s contracts in IT include the delivery of Starlink satellite internet units and services to national and state parks and the State Department, and the provision of a satellite network called Starshield to the U.S. Space Force.

While Musk’s potential conflicts have been in the spotlight, all of the top five current contractors on government IT have either a former government official or member of Congress on their boards of directors, and sometimes multiple government officials. They include a former admiral, a former Pentagon acquisitions officialjoint chiefs of staff leadership, a former deputy secretary of defense, and a former chair of the Armed Services Committee.

In addition, all of these companies use various artificial intelligence technologies across all of their federal contracts, many of them non-open source.

Musk and DOGE were dealt a setback on Saturday when District Judge Paul Engelmayer ordered a temporary stop on DOGE’s work with U.S. Treasury data, citing cybersecurity concerns. The suit was filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James and 18 other state attorneys general.

A Washington Post story reported Friday night that Booz Allen Hamilton had described the DOGE team’s access to Treasury data — reportedly “read only” access that doesn’t allow for data manipulation — as “the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of Fiscal Services has ever faced.”

The company put out a statement hours after the assessment became public.

“Booz Allen did not conduct a threat assessment or make recommendations regarding DOGE,” a statement read. “Commentary provided in a draft document by a subcontractor contained unsubstantiated personal opinions. … Booz Allen has terminated the subcontractor.”

Booz Allen Hamilton is the government’s fourth largest contractor on IT issues, taking in $8.2 billion in 2024.

AUTHOR

Emily Kopp

Contributor.

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Inside the DOGE Revolution

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Trump Campaign’s Simple Plan To Destroy Kamala Harris: Get Her Off-Script

The Trump campaign believes there is an easy way to defeat Vice President Kamala Harris in November: get her off-script in front of voters and reporters.

There have been rumblings since President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race about whether or not former President Donald Trump would debate Harris, fueled by Trump’s comment he wasn’t “thrilled” about debating for ABC News and the campaign’s indication that a previously agreed-upon September debate with Biden is null and void. Harris has even quipped back at Trump, “What happened to ‘any time, any place?’”

However, Trump has also said he does feel an obligation to debate Harris and will “absolutely” do so, and according to individuals familiar with the former president’s thinking, the current chatter about whether the debate will happen or not is more smoke than fire.

“This seems like the game before the game,” one source familiar with the campaign’s plans told the Daily Caller. A Trump ally also indicated that Trump is holding out to see if Harris will agree to debate on Fox News rather than ABC.

“”I mean, clearly they understand he’s going to have to debate her and is going to debate her more than once,” one Trump ally said. “Yeah, that’s not something she excels at, that’s for sure.”

A number of allies close to Trump and some officials on his campaign said a debate between Trump and Harris plays right into their hands due to their desire to get her off-script in front of large audiences. Her penchant for gaffes and awkward moments in interviews and live events will help drive voters away, they told the Caller. After all, that’s what ultimately killed Biden’s reelection bid.

“Every time Kamala Harris opens her mouth she’s off-script. Her record is the most dangerously liberal record in existence and no amount of scripting can change that,” Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump campaign official, told the Caller.

Trump campaign spokesperson Brian Hughes said the more Harris has to explain her record, the better it will be for Trump.

“Biden acted like a California liberal, Kamala actually is one. The more she’s forced to explain her dangerously liberal record, the more Americans will see she’s wrong on the border, wrong for fixing out of control inflation, and wrong on restoring our nation to a strong position in the world,” Hughes said.

Harris has run into problems during her time as vice president during unscripted interviews. In a 2021 interview with Lester Holt, Harris repeatedly dodged questions about visiting the southern border, resulting in a viral moment so damaging that it reportedly prompted her team to change their entire media strategy.

In a 2022 interview with Chuck Todd, Harris said that the U.S.-Mexico border is “secure” despite record numbers of illegal aliens crossing into the U.S. In another 2021 interview, Harris said she was the last one in the room when Biden made the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, saying she felt comfortable with the decision. Thirteen American servicemembers were killed during the withdrawal, and it marked a turning point in Biden’s approval rating that the president never recovered from.

“She has to perform on the stump. She’s now running for president. She’s the presumptive Democratic nominee. Can’t hide her in the closet, can’t hide her in the basement,” one Trump ally told the Caller. “She’s got to not make mistakes and not say crazy things. She has to make sense, first of all, which is often a problem for her.”

One Trump spokesperson did clarify that the campaign believes Harris’ record speaks for itself, whether she has a gaffe-filled debate appearance or not.

“If Kamala Harris hits the campaign trail, it’s certain that America will get the chance to see how dangerously liberal she is, but do we need her to do that to win? No. She’s not even the nominee, but Harris-Biden’s record of failure speaks for itself,” they said.

Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Daily Caller editor Vince Coglianese on his radio show Friday that Harris is “just as frankly incompetent as Joe Biden was” and “she has a very hard time speaking fluid, serious sentences.”

“Her laugh is something that I think is distasteful to a lot of Americans. But not only that, her word salads, which we’ve seen again in numerous occasions, even in the most serious of times when she’s meeting with foreign leaders, she really made a fool of herself and a mockery of this country. And it is her record again that she is going to need to answer for,” Leavitt added.

Harris has been quick out of the gate since becoming the presumptive nominee, raising record-breaking sums of money and delivering teleprompter-driven stump speeches Biden was incapable of that have excited Democrats. But like with Biden, the real test will come when there’s no safety net, like on a debate night or during a tough interview in primetime.

AUTHOR

HENRY RODGERS

Chief national correspondent.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Trump Has Secured Funding For More Than Half Of Border Wall

One hundred eleven miles of new or replacement wall is either being built or is in progress on the southern border after Trump’s first two years in office, an administration official tells The Daily Caller.

All told, the administration has secured funding for approximately 445 miles of the total 722 miles desired by the Trump administration, a Caller analysis finds. The analysis holds only if all national emergency and executive action funding is upheld in court challenges.

The administration official stressed that this figure constitutes only 18-foot bollard wall fencing or 32-foot levee wall fencing, which is the barrier that Trump has emphasized as necessary.

The wall accounting begins in Fiscal Year 2017 in which $341 million was obligated for replacement wall in California, New Mexico, and Texas. This money funds construction for 40 miles of new or replacement wall of which 37 miles is completed or in progress.

$1.375 billion was then appropriated in 2018 to build upwards of 82 miles of new or replacement border wall. The administration official noted that approximately 74 miles of new or replacement wall has been completed or is in progress with these dollars. This particular wall was built or replaced in the Rio Grande Valley Sector on the border in South Texas and other locations.

Fiscal Year 2019 saw a major fight between Trump and Congress over border wall funding, with the administration demanding $5.7 billion and Democrats offering up no more than $1.375 billion, not to be used for a wall. Ultimately, after a nearly 35-day partial government shutdown and three weeks of negotiation, Trump accepted $1.375 billion in congressionally appropriated funding and declared a national emergency at the southern border.

Trump’s national emergency declaration and other executive action allowed him to tap $600 million from the Treasury asset forfeiture fund, $2.5 billion of drug enforcement money, and $3.6 billion under his authority as commander in chief.

The national emergency declaration was quickly challenged in court by 16 states, organized by the State of California and filed in the Federal District Court in San Francisco, which appeals to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Officials could not provide a complete estimate of the wall that will be built with the 2019 funds, though they noted that it costs approximately $25 million per mile, putting an estimate at 323 miles of additional border wall. The administration official cautioned that wall funding costs can vary because of terrain but noted that Trump’s actions lack the restrictions of previous appropriations to build wall in much needed areas, like the Rio Grande Valley Sector.

COLUMN BY

Saagar Enjeti

Saagar Enjeti

White House Correspondent. Amber Athey contributed to this report.

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