Israel punishes hunger strikers for demanding their rights

Palestinian boys take part in a rally in support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails, in the West Bank city of Nablus, 20 April.
Ayman AmeenAPA images

Charlotte Silver-22 April 2017

Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners entered day six of their hunger strike on Saturday, while Israeli authorities ratcheted up their punitive measures in an attempt to weaken the collective action.

On 17 April, 1,500 Palestinians launched a mass hunger strike with a long list of demands, including improved medical care and conditions and more family visits.

While several men on strike have already been hospitalized, Israeli leaders are refusing to negotiate with the prisoners’ demands.

“When it comes to the hunger strike by terrorists in Israeli jails, I take the approach of Margaret Thatcher,” Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman wrote on Facebook, in reference to the former British prime minister who notoriously allowed Irish hunger strikers to die in prison in 1981.

Israel currently holds more than 6,000 Palestinian political prisoners. Hundreds are detained without any charge or trial, and thousands after trials in Israel’s military courts which have a nearly 100 percent conviction rate.

Targeting leaders of the strike, Israeli authorities began confiscating personal belongings and clothes, banning television, forcibly relocating strikers to different sections of prisons and placing dozens in solitary confinement.

“In Nitzan and Ramla prisons, Israeli officials used police dogs on hunger-striking Palestinian detainees and seized the Quran from prisoners,” the Ma’an News Agency reported on Saturday, citing the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society.

Retaliation for New York Times article

Among those placed in solitary confinement are Marwan Barghouti, who initiated the mass hunger strike, and Karim Younes, the Palestinian who has reportedly served the longest uninterrupted sentence in an Israeli prison.

Barghouti, a prominent figure in Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, may be further punished for his op-ed published in The New York Times on 16 April explaining the reasons for the strike.

The Palestinian Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs cited claims by Israel that Barghouti’s wife “smuggled” the article out of prison.

But Israeli public security minister Gilad Erdan said authorities are investigating whether it was his lawyers.

Erdan added that if it is discovered that his lawyers did help Barghouti publish the article, they may be banned from visiting him.

Michael Oren, Israel’s former US ambassador who now works for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, suggested the The New York Times may have played a role.

“If someone in the paper helped him [smuggle the article out of prison], The New York Times should be held accountable,” Oren said, suggesting that the paper’s Jerusalem bureau could be closed.

Ma’an News Agency reported that lawyers have already been banned from visiting Ashkelon prison and access to other prisons has been inconsistent.

The Palestinian Authority’s prisoners’ committee said on Wednesday that Israel’s ministry of justice has confirmed that it would be illegal to prohibit all hunger strikers from seeing their lawyers.

Lawyers representing striking prisoners are now boycotting Israeli military courts.

Taunting hunger strikers

Public security minister Erdan, like Lieberman, has vowed to ignore the hunger strikers’ demands.

“There is no real justification for this strike,” Erdan said. “Terrorists aren’t in prison to get good conditions. They’re there to be punished. A hunger strike shouldn’t change our behavior as the state toward the prisoners.”

Erdan spearheaded legislation to legalize force-feeding of Palestinian hunger strikers in 2015, when he likened hunger strikes to suicide bombs.

On Thursday, Israelis fired up a barbecue in the parking lot of Ofer prison, where Palestinians inside had refused food for several days, to “celebrate the hunger strike.”

Lahav Harkov‏Verified account @LahavHarkov

National Union youth (far right) hold a BBQ outside the Ofer Prison to mock the families visiting Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike

5:22 AM - 20 Apr 2017

The people behind the barbecue are affiliated with the far-right Jewish Home party, a member of Netanyahu’s coalition government.

Several dozen detainees reportedly resumed eating after five days on strike, but have been replaced by hundreds more joining the protest.

Philippines: 9,000 drug deaths ‘false news’, actual toll under 1,400

A drug suspect lies lifeless after a shooting in the Philippines. Duterte's drug war has claimed over 7,000 lives so far. Source: Reuters/Czar Dancel

22nd April 2017

MALACANANG has branded as “false news” recent reports citing police numbers allegedly showing the death toll in the Philippine drug war to have surged past 9,000.

Local media quoted presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella denying the claim and insisting the actual data was a mere fraction of that.

“On the number of extrajudicial deaths, the persistent news reports of 7,000 killed, which is now being said to be close to 9,000 is false news,” he was quoted by Inquirer as saying in a statement.

He said Philippine National Police (PNP) numbers show the total number of deaths recorded between July 1, 2016, and March 24, 2017, were 6,011.

Of the total, he said only 1,398 cases were drug-related.

This, Abella pointed out, was a far cry from the 9,000 figure being bandied about in foreign media reports.

SEE ALSO: Philippines: Declining popularity of drug war media’s fault – police

On Thursday, US deputy assistant secretary of state for Southeast Asia Patrick Murphy was quoted in several reports as saying the United States shared Manila’s objective of wiping out the illicit drug trade and wanted to help.

He added, however, that the US was also deeply concerned over the growing number of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines and talk that the fight to eliminate the drug scourge is taking placed “outside the rule of law”.

A Reuters report on Murphy’s remarks said police data issued this month showed nearly 9,000 people, most of them drug users and dealers, have met their end since President Rodrigo Duterte took office some 10 months ago.

Duterte, who won the presidency on an anti-drugs platform, has since coming to power remained steadfast in his pledge to rid his country’s streets of the drug menace.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Source: Reuters/Erik De Castro

Responding to Murphy, Abella reportedly insisted that local authorities follow “operational protocols” when carrying out the government’s war on drugs.

“We share the concern of US Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asia Patrick Murphy, who has been quoted in the media saying that ‘there are elements of the drug war that are operating outside the rule of law’,” he said.

“Local authorities follow operational protocols and the proper enforcement of our laws requires the use of reasonable force merited by the attendant circumstances,” he added.

He also gave his assurance that those who acted outside their scope of power would face appropriate action.

“Those who breach procedures are made to answer before the law.  The Philippine National Police has an Internal Affairs Service (IAS) tasked to probe police accused of such violations,” he said.

SEE ALSO: Duterte tops TIME’s ‘most influential’ reader poll

He urged for fairness amid widespread concern over the Philippines’ drug war, saying those judging from afar should consider the views of Filipinos who want to see their country prosper.

“We expect fairness and not a rush to judgment. Right now the people appreciate the changes and the way these are carried out,” he said, according to Sun Star.

“We ask to be understood not just from a single perspective, but from the point of view of Filipinos who desire change, stability and fairness.” 

French elections: Kremlin’s Cat Eyes

Marine Le Pen visits the Museums of the Moscow Kremlin on March 17 2017. Kremlin Press Office, CC BY

by Andrey Shcherbak-Apr 20, 2017

Apr 20, 2017

( April 20, 2017, Moscow, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Ukrainian crisis, from the Maidan protests and the annexation of Crimea to the violent conflict in Donbass, has led to an unprecedented deterioration of relations between Russia and the West. As early as 2014, the West imposed diplomatic and economic sanctions on Russia. 

The logic behind these actions was straightforward and clear. Initially, the sanctions targeted higher Russians officials, freezing their assets and restricting their entry to Europe and the United States. Later, they were followed by “sectoral” sanctions that aimed to restrict Russian companies’ access to western technologies and investment.

The sanctions were meant to undermine Vladimir Putin’s legitimacy among the Russian elite and the general population, and have contributed to the economic crisis in the country.

The West thought that a “tattered economy” in Russia would force Putin to step back from his foreign policy strategies because of domestic discontent. It was naïve enough to expect the Kremlin to do nothing but sit and wait.

Russia’s counter-strategy in France

For the last few months, Moscow’s counter strategy has included building political alliances with “pro-Russian” political forces in the West as well as pro-Russian candidates running for top political position in countries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Serbia.

Russia’s unequivocal support for Donald Trump in the recent US presidential campaign was the first try.

Although I do not believe Russia directly intervened in the US presidential election campaign or that Russian hackers played a decisive role in it, I must admit that Moscow has never so directly interfered in a Western election before.

In the French presidential campaign, which officially started on April 10, the Kremlin has obviously decided to support the candidates from both the right and far-right – François Fillon and Marine Le Pen.

Both candidates have showed positive attitudes towards Putin and, most importantly, they advocate ending French support for sanctions against Russia.

François Fillon, for example, has garnered Moscow’s sympathy by repeatedly claiming that sanctions on Russia have no effect and by pushing the idea of officially recognising Russian jurisdiction over Crimea.

But Marine Le Pen – with her image of being a “Frexit” advocate and her commitment to anti-Americanism and populism – seems to be Putin’s best friend in Old Europe.

Her recent visit to Moscow, a meeting with Vladimir Putin and her talk in the State Duma are clear signals that she remains the Kremlin’s favourite.

And even if, until now, there is no clear evidence of Russian hacking in the French election process, Russian involvement is well documented.

For Marine Le Pen, it includes media promotion and financial support, as well as informal contacts with top Russian officials and businessmen.

French turbulence

What the Kremlin could not have foreseen is the turbulence that has caused in the French election campaign. In particular, as François Fillon became engulfed in a corruption scandal, his chance of getting to the second round diminished significantly.

According to polls, Emmanuel Macron, the former economy minister who runs on a centrist platform and would be a less helpful candidate for Moscow, could win in the second round against Marine Le Pen.

The Kremlin has clearly taken that into account. Last week, the French polling watchdog warned of news reports coming from Russia with the aim of trying to re-boost Fillon’s campaign.

As for left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, he seems to be a surprise for the Kremlin. Although he made a few pro-Russia statements, including criticising the new Ukrainian government and stating that he would support leaving the European Union and NATO if elected, Mélenchon’s political and ideological platform has nothing in common with Putin’s regime.

Emancipation, anti-capitalism and the expansion of the social welfare state absolutely contradict the Russian oligarchs’ wild capitalism, corruption and hypocrisy that are key features of Putin’s Russia today.

Remove sanctions, destroy European unity

No doubt, the key goal of any Russian interventionist strategy is to reduce the burden of sanctions. In the long run, the Kremlin also aims to undermine European unity and thus be able to work with a divided Europe.

It’s worth noting that all this is not just the whim of an autocratic leader. The Ukrainian crisis demonstrated that further EU enlargement to the East is unacceptable for Moscow and that the Kremlin would be ready to deter this perceived offence by all possible means.

For public opinion in Russia, the shift of previously pro-Russian – or at least neutral – regimes toward the West, together with the NATO’s “open door policy” is seen as a threat to national security.

Without resistance to EU and NATO expansion, many people in Russia believe that the country’s western border would be surrounded by hostile regimes repeatedly demanding deployment of NATO forces.

The Kremlin’s strategy might become successful due to the fact that many people in the EU – and we are not talking about the elites – are, in fact, opposed to the Union’s enlargement, as was shown when Dutch voters rejected a referendum on closer EU links to Ukraine in 2016.

And politicians representing such EU-skeptic groups surfing on the current nationalist wave are potential partners for the Kremlin.

Populism in France would be a win for Russia

The French election can be explored through another perspective as well.

One can argue that any further victory of right-wing populists in Europe will contribute to the legitimisation of the Russian political regime.

Putin’s agenda for his third presidency was built on so-called “conservative shift”, with an emphasis on “traditional values”, increasing the role of religion and the Russian Orthodox Church, and establishing the lower classes as the social base of the regime.

The latter is likely to align Russia ideologically with Brexit supporters, European nationalist parties and probably the French right populist electorate as well. Thus, Russian leaders repeatedly stress political parallels with the West.

In the long run, that would be the way to create a Moscow-based conservative “internationalism”, with the possibility of seeing Vladimir Putin as a symbol of resistance against America if his country’s current relations with the US deteriorates even further.

But wild accusations that Putin could steal the French presidential election are baseless. Any claims that the Kremlin – or any other foreign power – can have a significant impact on the will of French voters are certainly an exaggeration.

To quote Vladimir Putin himself regarding the US presidential campaign: “Is America some kind of banana republic? America is a great power.”

The same comment applies to France. But, depending on who is elected, the next French president could have a very different attitude toward Moscow. And even if Marine Le Pen loses the upcoming election – as she most probably will – her supporters will not disappear overnight.

The Kremlin has no power either to extend or reduce the right-wing electorate in Europe. But the Russian leadership is already engaged in long-term cooperation with politicians who represent this sector of the population.

Theresa May’s election ‘power grab’ slammed by EU’s Guy Verhofstadt

European parliament’s Brexit coordinator says result of snap election on 8 June will be an irrelevance in Brussels

Guy Verhofstadt has dismissed Theresa May’s claim that the election will help Britain secure a better deal. Photograph: Stephanie Lecocq/EPA

Daniel Boffey in Brussels-Saturday 22 April 2017

Theresa May’s claim that she will be strengthened in the Brexit talks by a general election victory has been dismissed as nonsense by the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, who has condemned the prime minister as a political opportunist.

In an outspoken attack, Guy Verhofstadt suggests the prime minister was motivated by party political considerations rather than the national interest in calling a poll for 8 June.

Writing in the Observer, the former Belgian prime minister, who will play a key role in the coming Brexit negotiations, describes the election announced by May on Tuesday as “an attempted power grab by the Conservative party, who wish to take advantage of a Labour party seemingly in disarray to secure another five years of power, before the reality of Brexit bites”.

Verhofstadt further claims that putting more Tory MPs in the House of Commons will do nothing to bolster the British prime minister when it comes to the talks in Brussels. The latest polls have the Tories about 20 percentage points ahead of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party.

“The theory espoused by some, that Theresa May is calling a general election on Brexit in order to secure a better deal with the EU, is nonsensical,” he says.

“We can only conclude that many British politicians and the media still don’t fathom how article 50 will work in practice. Will the election of more Tory MPs give Theresa May a greater chance of securing a better Brexit deal? For those sitting around the table in Brussels, this is an irrelevance.”

Justifying her surprise decision to call a general election, May told the Commons last Wednesday that every vote for the Conservatives would “make me stronger when I negotiate for Britain with the European Union”.

She claimed that she needed protection from the Labour party, who had threatened to vote down a future deal; the Liberal Democrats, who wished to grind business to a halt; and the House of Lords, which has an anti-Brexit majority.

However, it has been suggested that rather than seeking to bolster herself against opponents of Brexit by gaining a larger majority, May is actually hoping to diminish the power of the hardline Brexiters in her own party, who would rather the UK crash out of the EU without a deal than see her come to a compromise.

Describing the latest developments in British politics as surreal, Verhofstadt writes: “Many in Brussels remain concerned that the chances of a deal are being eroded by the British prime minister’s tough negotiating red lines and her lack of political room for manoeuvre domestically, yet there is no guarantee that a sprinkling of additional Conservative MPs on the backbenches of the House of Commons will provide this.”

He adds: “As with the Brexit referendum, which many European leaders saw as a Tory cat-fight that got out of control, I have little doubt many on the continent see this election as once again motivated by the internal machinations of the Tory party.”

With reference to a TV clip of a dismayed British voter being told of another election in the UK, which went viral on the internet last week, he writes: “The BBC video of Brenda from Bristol, so openly decrying another political campaign, was viewed far beyond the white cliffs of Dover. Indeed, it appears this election is being driven by the political opportunism of the party in government, rather than by the people they represent.”

Verhofstadt strikes a pessimistic note about the Brexit talks, which will now take place after the UK’s general election in June. He warns that, as it stands, “unless the UK government requests transitional arrangements to the contrary, and these requests are agreed by all EU countries, UK citizens will have no more of a right to holiday, travel and study in EU countries than tourists from Moscow or students from Mumbai”.

He also lambasts David Davis’s Department for Exiting the European Union for claiming that the two EU agencies currently based in London – the European Banking Authority and the European Medicines Agency – might stay in the UK after Brexit. The department made the claim after this newspaper 

revealed that the selection criteria for the coming contest between member states seeking to gain the agencies are to be published at the end of this month.

Verhofstadt writes: “As the Observer has reported, leaving the European Unionmeans the EU agencies based in the United Kingdom will be relocated.

“I expect this will be approved by EU leaders as soon as June, if not before. Contrary to the obscure claims by UK government officials, the EU’s ‘crown jewels’ of the European Banking Authority and the European Medicines Agency will not remain in a post-Brexit Britain, paid for by EU countries.

“This is not, as the Daily Express has already decried, a ‘punishment’. This is another logical consequence of Theresa May’s article 50 letter. This decision will not be up for negotiation.”

The president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, will be meeting May in Downing Street on Wednesday to discuss the process for the two years of negotiations allowed under article 50 of the Lisbon treaty.

The EU will formalise its broad political goals for the negotiations at a summit next Saturday in Brussels. The more detailed European commission directives for its chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, will be adopted at the end of May, after which the EU will be ready to start talks, with citizens’ rights, the UK’s financial liabilities and the border in Ireland the priorities.

Keir Starmer, the shadow brexit minister, said: “Guy Verhofstadt asks, ‘what is the purpose of this general election’? The answer is simple. The prime minister is attempting to crush all challenge to her hard Tory Brexit approach at home and to negotiate by threat and demand abroad. As Guy Verhofstadt rightly points out, far from helping negotiations with the EU, the prime minister’s stance is eroding the chances of achieving the best deal for Britain.”

Russian Planes Buzz Alaska Four Nights in a Row

BY PAUL MCLEARY-APRIL 21, 2017 

American and Canadian fighter planes scrambled to intercept two Russian TU-95 “Bear” bombers Thursday night, marking the fourth consecutive night of Russian probes near the Alaskan coast, U.S. defense officials said Friday.

At no point did the Russian aircraft cross into American or Canadian airspace, but the incursions into the Air Identification Zones — which extend beyond the territorial waters of the U.S. and Canada — represent a sharp increase in activity in the area, which has seen no Russian activity at all since 2015.

The flights may also herald the return of Moscow’s 60-year-old nuclear capable bomber to the international stage, after the entire fleet was grounded in 2015 after a rash of accidents.

Over the past several years, Moscow has played a high-speed game of cat-and-mouse with U.S. and NATO aircraft and naval vessels in the Baltic and Black Seas regions, but this level of activity hasn’t been seen near Alaska since 2014, one defense official told FP.

It’s unclear what the overall objective of the Russian passes are, but they’re in keeping with tactics Russian pilots have employed in recent years in the Baltic and Black sea regions, where NATO pilots regularly intercept aircraft sent by the Kremlin to skirt the airspace of NATO countries.

Over the Baltic, just off the coastlines of NATO members Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Russian military aircraft were intercepted 110 times by allied planes in 2016. That was a decrease from the 160 recorded intercepts in 2015, but it has been enough to keep both sides well-versed in the protocols of flying in close proximity.

In February, several Russian aircraft buzzed the USS Porter in the Black Sea in an incident the skipper of the American guided missile destroyer called “unsafe.” That included passes by an Il-38 sub-hunting plane, followed by two Su-24 fighter-bombers and a Su-24.

The latest round of flights began Monday night, when two Bear bombers were tracked near Alaska, prompting the scramble of two U.S. F-22s to intercept them. Two more Bears showed up on Tuesday night, during which U.S. officials say an AWACS E-3 surveillance plane was sent to track them. On Wednesday, a Russian IL-38 maritime patrol and anti-submarine plane was spotted in the same area, and was followed by American planes.

A spokesperson for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) told FP that on Thursday evening, the American F-22s and Canadian CS-18 Hornets didn’t attempt to make radio contact with the Russian bombers, and the Russians never attempted to communicate with U.S. or Canadian military installations on the ground. But “at no time did the Russian bombers enter sovereign North American airspace,” on any of the four nights, the spokesperson said.

According to information provided by NORAD, U.S. aircraft have intercepted Russian planes about 60 times since 2007.

Earlier this month, Japan scrambled 14 fighter jets to intercept the Bear bombers and an IL-20 surveillance plane that had crossed to within 40 miles of the Japanese coast, and in late January, a pair of Russian bombers circumnavigated Japan for the first time in a year.

Photo Credit: U.S. Navy

Trump's First 100 Days: More Frightening, or More Pathetic?

Photo Credit: DonkeyHotey/Flcikr

By Heather Digby Parton / Salon-April 21, 2017

There is a lot of chatter these days about the looming milestone of the “first 100 days” of the Donald Trump administration and how he measures up in presidential history. This trope goes back to Franklin Roosevelt’s first term, when he took office in 1933 amid the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in America history, and promised to get to work immediately to bring relief to millions of suffering Americans. He declared a bank holiday to stop the run on withdrawals and called Congress immediately into session to pass legislation to help farmers and the unemployed and create a federal jobs program.

Since then, all presidents come up for a 100-day report card. Most recently, President Barack Obama entered office during a major economic upheaval unleashed by a global financial crisis which had unfolded during the presidential campaign. He warned that it wasn’t going to be easy, asking for the nation’s patience and saying, “The first hundred days is going to be important, but it’s probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference.”

During his transition period, Obama had been focused on finding bipartisan support for a stimulus plan to stop the bleeding of jobs and home foreclosures and managed to get it passed in eight days, with support from a handful of Republicans. He passed a budget resolution and signed major legislation on worker’s rights and health care that had been stalled or vetoed under President George W. Bush. Obama also issued executive orders on numerous topics, from closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay to new government ethics rules. At the 100-day mark, 65 percent of Americans approved of the job he was doing, with only 29 percent disapproving.

Back on the campaign trail in 2016, Donald Trump portrayed the nation as a desperate dystopian hellscape and promised his adoring followers that he would make America great again. But he he went beyond that. From NAFTA to inner-city crime to bringing back jobs to undocumented immigrants to undoing regulations and fighting ISIS, Trump promised to fix it all “very, very quickly.” Sometimes he’d add that it would “happen so fast your head will spin.”

Indeed, Trump’s pitch to his voters was that none of these were difficult issues and that the problem had been our “stupid” leaders who just didn’t know what they were doing. He famously said in his nominating convention speech, “I alone can fix it,” making it clear that he planned to do it all at once.

Just before the election, Trump released his plan for the first 100 days and it was extremely ambitious. 

He promised to reverse every Obama executive order he could think of and issue as many of his own as possible on the very first day. His ill-conceived travel ban was the most controversial and a few of his promises, like his pledge to “propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress,” have been quietly shelved. Others, in light of subsequent events, now seem mordantly amusing, such as “a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.”

Trump didn’t manage to do everything on his list the first day but he fulfilled many of those promises during the first few months, most of them serving as props for his tedious daily signing photo-ops, even if they don’t really add up to any substantial accomplishments. And while his “big, beautiful wall” may be indefinitely put on hold (because it was an imbecilic idea in the first place) he’s made real progress on his draconian immigration crackdown.

The Department of Homeland Security under former Gen. John Kelly and the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions have most definitely taken off the gloves, and plans are underway for an even more drastic crackdown. In fact, Sessions is systematically carrying out Trump’s “law and order” campaign pledges by turning back voting rights enforcement, “reviewing” police consent decrees, talking up the drug war and rejecting forensic science that leads to fewer innocent people being convicted.

But presidents are generally not considered to have had a successful first 100 days without any major legislative achievement, particularly when their party controls both houses of Congress. And the great negotiator presented himself as someone who could make “deals” almost magically. Indeed, it was the single most important skill he allegedly possessed. He was so good at it he would make Mexico pay for the wall and singlehandedly renegotiate all the trade deals so thoroughly that our trading partners would give up all their jobs and profits and thank us for the privilege.

Unfortunately for the president, he does not have even one real legislative victory. His most substantial achievement is a bill allowing hunters to kill bear cubs in their dens during hibernation. His only serious attempt at negotiating a legislative deal was so badly botched it ended in ignominious failure after just 18 days of debate in the House. That, of course, was the health care bill meant to “repeal and replace” 

Obamacare. Recent rumors of a quick revival are, according to savvy observers, a product of White House hype and desperation for a 100-day “win,” rather than a sign of any real movement on the issue.

In other words, Trump’s 100-day achievements have consisted of him signing some orders, getting his picture taken with people around a big table, instituting “law and order” through his henchman Jeff Sessions — and failing to get even one major piece of legislation passed into law, despite his party’s congressional majorities.

According to the latest Gallup Poll, he has the worst average approval rating (41 percent) during this period of any president in that survey’s history, and by a margin of 14 points. Nonetheless, Trump says it’s been the most successful first 100 days in history, telling Fox Business News:

We freed up so much and we’re getting great, great credit for it. We have done so much for so many people. I don’t think that there is a presidential period of time in the first 100 days where anyone has done nearly what we’ve been able to do.

o borrow one of his favorite phrases: That’s fake news. And it’s so profoundly delusional that it’s actually kind of sad.

 

Heather Digby Parton, also known as "Digby," is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.