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Donald Trump made it clear at the beginning of his campaign that he wasn’t going to follow the normal rules or tone of politics. We’re keeping track of all the ways his presidency veers from the norm in terms of policy and rhetoric.

Day 281 Oct. 27

Trump dressed up as a pediatric nutritionist for Halloween

For Halloween, President Trump dressed up as pediatric nutritionist, eyeballing a group of costumed children trick-or-treating in the Oval Office before determining they were thin enough to eat some candy.

“You have no weight problems; that’s the good news, right?” the president told them. “So, you take out whatever you need, okay? If you want some for your friends, take ’em. We have plenty.”

Trump then slid a box of commemorative White House candy across his desk toward each child.

But none of the Princess Leias, witches and Darth Vaders escaped criticism — they are, after all, born to members of the White House press pool.

“I cannot believe the media produced such beautiful children,” Trump said, adding, “How the media did this, I don’t know.”

In case his disdain for their mothers and fathers wasn’t clear, the president also queried the kids, asking them, “Are you gonna grow up to be like your parents?” Then he shook his head and grimaced, indicating they should not.

But in the end Trump offered the press pool a rare compliment: “You did a good job. You did a good job — here you did a good job.” Spooky!

— Gabrielle Bluestone

Day 280 Oct. 26

Looks like we’ll have to wait to see if Ted Cruz’s dad killed JFK

The Trump administration can’t even get something straightforward like a document dump right.

The remaining few thousand classified files from the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy were scheduled to be released on Thursday, but an administration foul-up has reportedly held up the process. Intelligence agencies failed to put the memo specifying which documents need to remain under wraps on Trump’s desk in time for the Thursday deadline, according to NBC News.

What should have been an easy release of documents whose declassification was planned months and years in advance was made all the more embarrassing because Trump himself hyped up the occasion in a Wednesday tweet.

The conspiracy surrounding who really shot JFK intensified last summer, when Trump suggested on the campaign trail that Ted Cruz’s father was involved — a theory some “investigative reporters” found to be not totally implausible.

“I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump said at the time. “It’s horrible.”

The White House told reporters more information would be forthcoming. A representative for the National Archives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. For all we know, Rafael Cruz really did do it.

— Noah Kulwin

Day 279 Oct. 25

Trump applauds Chinese leader for becoming as powerful as Mao

Chinese President Xi Jinping consolidated his power at the Communist Party congress this week and looks to be keeping it indefinitely — and President Donald Trump thinks that’s pretty cool.

At the end of the conference, the party voted unanimously to put “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era,” the Chinese president’s political doctrine, into the Chinese constitution. There’s only one other Chinese leader to have their “thought” enshrined in the constitution — Mao Zedong, the authoritarian communist who held power for over 30 years.

Trump and Xi had a phone conversation on Wednesday, during which Trump says he was able to “congratulate him on his extraordinary elevation.”

And though his second term is supposed to be his last, no one’s in line to take power when it ends in 2022. And none of the members of the new politburo are young enough to succeed him.

The move is certainly on-brand for Trump, who tends to fawn over strongman leaders. He had a chummy phone call with Rodrigo Duterte, the leader of the Philippines who’s killed thousands of people in the drug war he’s waging, and Trump not only invited the autocratic Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the White House — he called to apologize after Erdogan’s bodyguards were arrested for brutalizing protesters, an incident that resulted in 19 people being indicted. The president has also deemed Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has jailed journalists and authorized police to torture without consequence, a “fantastic guy.”

Day 278 Oct. 24

Tiny company linked to Trump admin will make millions off Puerto Rico

A tiny, two-year-old company that was just awarded the largest government contract in Puerto Rico’s recovery effort has some questionable connections to the Trump administration.

The company, Whitefish Energy, is based in Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s hometown of Whitefish, Montana, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. It’s CEO, Andy Techmanski, even knows Zinke, whose son worked construction for him. Zinke, however, dismissed the connection and said “everybody knows everybody” in Whitefish.

Although the Department of the Interior isn’t directly involved in selecting contractors for recovery work, the decision to award the $300 million contract to Whitefish, which only had two full-time employees when Maria made landfall, is unusual. Rather than ask utility companies across the country for help, through what are called “mutual aid” agreements, Puerto Rico turned to a single company.

— Alex Lubben

Trump blames lawyer for delay in posting grieving family’s check

Donald Trump blamed his legal counsel Monday for a delay in sending a $25,000 personal check to the family of a dead soldier.

The Washington Post revealed last week that Trump had failed to honor a June promise to send money to the family of Army Cpl. Dillon Baldridge, who was killed in Afghanistan earlier that month.

The check finally arrived Monday, with a note.

“I am glad my legal counsel has been able to finally approve this contribution to you,” Trump wrote. “I hope this will make things a bit easier, but nothing will ever replace your son, Dillon. He was an American hero.”

The date on the check confirmed it was sent on the very same day the Post published its story.

Despite the delay, the family told ABC11 they are “speechless,” adding they’d “use the money to honor Dillon’s legacy.”

Trump is currently embroiled in a second Gold Star controversy, having disputed claims made by the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson that he was disrespectful during a condolence phone call last week.

— David Gilbert

Day 277 Oct. 23

Trump is paying his aides’ legal fees in Russia probe, report says

In an administration under investigation for allegations of collusion with Russia, even the lawyers need lawyers. So it’s no shock that the legal bills are starting to pile up.

Now, President Donald Trump is putting up almost half a million of his own cash to “defray the costs of legal fees” for his current and former aides, a White House source told Axios.

The Republican National Committee has reportedly put forth around $430,000 to hire lawyers for Trump and his oldest son, Don Jr., who generated his own controversy when he admitted that he met with a Russian attorney with ties to the Kremlin who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. Instead of paying the RNC back, however, Trump will match the amount with his personal funds, according to the source.

Axios wasn’t clear which Trump campaign officials would be getting some of the money, but another source told Axios that at least one prominent figure in the Russia probe won’t be getting anything from the president: former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who recently began asking the general public for help with the “enormous expense of attorneys’ fees and other related expenses.”

— Rex Santus

Soldier’s widow wonders why Trump can’t remember her husband’s name

The latest Trump administration scandal is forcing a bizarre question on the American people: Do you believe the president or the widow of a fallen soldier?

Myeshia Johnson, the wife of a U.S. Army sergeant who died in Niger earlier in October, went on Good Morning America on Monday to share her side of the story about a condolence call she received from the president.

Trump had previously attacked Florida Democrat Rep. Frederica Wilson’s account of the call — that Trump forgot her husband’s name, Sgt. La David Johnson, and said her husband “knew what he was signing up for.” Wilson’s a friend of the Johnsons who listened in when Trump called Myeshia.

But Johnson told Good Morning America on Monday that what Rep. Wilson said was “100 percent correct.”

“I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband’s name, and that’s what hurt me the most because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country, why can’t you remember his name?” Johnson said.

Minutes later, Trump denied Johnson’s characterization of the call on Twitter.

Even before Johnson spoke out, Trump tried to discredit Wilson’s version of the encounter.

Trump also claimed last week that he’d called “virtually all” families who lost loved ones in the military while he’s been president. But the Trump administration is now reportedly rush-shipping condolence letters to military families.

— Joshua Marcus

McCain took a jab at Trump for dodging the Vietnam draft

Without even mentioning Donald Trump’s name, veteran Arizona Sen. John McCain took another jab at the president on Sunday by slamming draft dodgers who “found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur.”

Trump famously avoided deployment to Vietnam with five deferments, including a 1968 doctor’s note for bone spurs on his heels. Spurs are calcifications that form on the edges of normal bone that can irritate and inflame the surrounding tissue, although they sometimes go unnoticed as well.

“One aspect of the conflict, by the way, that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America, and the highest income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur,” McCain told C-SPAN3 in the latest installment of a long-running feud with Trump.

Last Monday, the Republican senator slammed “half-baked, spurious nationalism” as unpatriotic — another dig at the White House. And in early September, Trump sent a flurry of tweets slamming McCain for his “no” vote on the Obamacare repeal.

Even as a candidate, Trump belittled McCain’s military service in Vietnam. Trump said McCain is only considered a war hero because he was captured and tortured as a prisoner of war. “I like people that weren’t captured,” Trump said at the time. The president has never apologized, according to McCain.

— Paul Vale

Day 274 Oct. 20

Trump nominees that haven’t been Senate-confirmed are working anyway

President Trump has complained the Senate’s taking too long to confirm his nominees for federal agency posts. So it seems, for some of them at least, he’s found a solution: Let them work without going through the standard congressional approval process.

Four nominees at three government agencies were found to be essentially doing the work they would be doing in the post they’re nominated for — but they haven’t been approved by the Senate yet, according to Politico.

While Trump’s complained that Senate Democrats have been slow to approve his nominees, Democrats have said Trump’s been slow to nominate.

But Trump’s flouting of the Senate approval process could be a violation of an obscure 1998 law called the Vacancies Act, passed after President Bill Clinton tried to put a Justice Department official in a post doing work very similar to a post that required Senate approval, after the Senate had already rejected him for that post.

The nominees in question are:

• Susan Bodine, nominated for the head of enforcement position at the Environmental Protection Agency but not yet approved, who’s been acting as an adviser to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. (Bodine was a partner at a law firm that represents polluters before her appointment to work at the EPA.)
• Michael Dourson, nominated in July to be the head of the EPA’s chemical pollution office, is also currently advising Pruitt on chemical safety. (Dourson, for the last several decades, has advised some of the chemical companies he will be tasked with regulating as part of his role at the EPA.)
• Trump appointed Mary Waters in July to serve as the assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs at the State Department. She’s been doing the job she’s hasn’t yet gotten Senate approval for for months already, according to multiple anonymous sources that spoke to Politico. (Waters served in President George W. Bush’s Department of Agriculture.)
• Russell Vought is Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. He hasn’t been approved yet, but he’s already a senior adviser to OMB chief Mick Mulvaney. A White House official even told Politico that Vought is acting as the de facto deputy director of the agency. (Vought took heat from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during a confirmation hearing in June for writing an op-ed claiming that Muslims “do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”)

— Alex Lubben

Trump wrongly links rise in U.K. crime to “radical Islamic” terrorism

In an apparent attempt to justify his travel ban, Donald Trump linked a rise in the U.K. crime rate to the spread of “radical Islamic terror.” But the increase has little to do with terrorism.

In an early-morning tweet on Friday, Trump said: “Just out report: “United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.” Not good, we must keep America safe!”

Trump was apparently referencing a report published by the U.K. Office for National Statistics on Thursday, which does show a 13 percent rise in crime in the U.K. for the year through the end of June. The text, however, mentions the words “terror” or “terrorist” just five times and never “Islamic terrorism.” Instead, knife and sex crimes have mainly caused the increased rate.

The main reference to terrorism in the report said that the terror attacks in Manchester and London this past year accounted for 35 of the 664 total murders. But that’s a decrease of 2 percent compared to the previous year.

A significant increase of 59 percent did occur in the number of attempted murder offenses, which the report largely attributed to terror-related cases. But attempted murders are a minute portion of the total number of crimes in the 13 percent increase.

— David Gilbert