President Donald Trump used a speech to the National Boy Scout Jamboree in Beaver, W.Va., Monday (July 24) to attack the news media, politicians and Washington.

That is according to a transcript of his remarks supplied by the White House.

"Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts? Right?," he said to the scouts after opening his speech with a veiled reference to his accusation that the media underreported the size of his inaugural audience, saying: "The press will say it’s about 200 people. It looks like about 45,000 people," and saying that "[t]onight, we put aside all of the policy fights in Washington, D.C., you’ve been hearing about with the fake news and all of that."

But while he signaled it was not a night to speak about politics, he could not help talking about it anyway.

"You know, I go to Washington and I see all these politicians and I see the swamp," he said. "And it’s not a good place. In fact today I said we ought to change it from the word swamp to the word cesspool or, perhaps, to the word sewer."

He was referring to a recent tweet aimed at the mainstream media and politicians. "But it’s not good. Not good. And I see what’s going on, and believe me I’d much rather be with you. That I can tell you."

The president could not help but return to his criticism of TV and crowd size, saying: "And by the way, where are our Indiana Scouts tonight?  [Applause.] I wonder if the television cameras will follow you. They don’t like doing that when they see these massive crowds. They don’t like doing that."

And then again later: "I’m waving to people back there so small I can't even see them. Man, this is a lot of people. Turn those cameras back there, please. That is so incredible. By the way, what do you think the chances are that this incredible, massive crowd, record-setting is going to be shown on television tonight? One percent or zero? The fake media will say: President Trump spoke before a small crowd of Boy Scouts today."

And while he said it was not a time to speak about politics, he attacked Hillary Clinton, spent a good deal of time talking about vote counts in the election, and characterized Obamacare as a horrible thing that needs killing, even joking about threatening to fire HHS Secretary Tom Price if he didn’t round up the votes to do so.

WASHINGTON — A look at the recent filings from ISPs asking a federal appeals court to take another look at the FCC’s Title II decision makes clear how important they think it is to keep challenging the reclassification of Internet access as a common-carrier service under that section of the Telecommunications Act.

These are the same folks who agreed to the Federal Communications Commission’s compromise bright-line network-neutrality rules under a non-Title II approach — admittedly as the lesser of two evils — and have been trying to get back to that original compromise ever since FCC chairman Tom Wheeler and his fellow Democrats chose the “nuclear” option of Title II.

Related:Opponents Plot a Title (II) Rematch

But while that concern is clearly real, the ISPs’ driving home of the importance of the case in those filings is also a legal calculation — one meant to be a signal to the U.S. Supreme Court if the case eventually winds up there.

DIVVYING UP ARGUMENTS

Cable and telecom Internet-service providers divided up their arguments this time around, filing at least four separate petitions asking the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to review last month’s three-judge decision to uphold the Open Internet order.

That FCC order included bright-line rules against blocking, degrading and anticompetitive paid prioritization, as well as a general-conduct standard to target other potential threats to the Internet’s so-called virtuous circle. The bright-line rules are also being applied to mobile broadband for the first time, and interconnections are being considered under Title II on a case-by case basis.

Related:Top Takeaways From the Title II Decision

Each petition targets a different issue. CTIA—The Wireless Association, which represents cellphone carriers, is focusing on applying the regulations to mobile for the first time, which it says the FCC can’t do.

Cable’s main trade groups — the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and the American Cable Association — are focusing on procedure, arguing that the FCC failed to justify its 180-degree turn from non-Title II-based rules and illegally failed to give notice of “key aspects” of that change.

But they share the common theme that this is a huge, potentially historic decision.

In its filing, telco trade group USTelecom cited the FCC’s Republican commissioners as calling the agency’s decision, and by extension the court’s upholding of that decision, a “monumental shift” toward government control.

USTelecom said the decision on whether Congress deeded the FCC that power is “is a question of exceptional importance to the assignment of power within our government.” The court did not rule on the wisdom of the FCC’s Title II approach, only that it was within its authority to make the decision, and that the decision was not arbitrary and capricious.

The NCTA and ACA call the Title II ruling “one of the most consequential telecommunications rulemakings in American history” and said the court panel’s decision to uphold it “eviscerates” procedural protections.

CTIA, which represents wireless carriers, called it an issue of “exceptional importance” whose impact on the country will be immense.

Given that it would be unusual to grant an en banc rehearing with the full appeals court, billing the decision is an effort to get that court to weigh in, but beyond that, it is a signal to the Supreme Court.

The highest court will generally weigh in to clear up splits that occur when two appeals courts disagree, but that is not the case here.

HOPE SPRINGS FROM ‘BURWELL’

A recent Obamacare decision out of the Supreme Court, though, appeared to buttress the “major questions” doctrine.

Of that decision, called King v. Burwell, attorney Adam White of Boyden Gray said in a post on Scotusblog that “[c]ourts will need to ask whether the policy matter at hand is of such economic or political significance that it cannot be presumed to have been committed to the agency’s discretion by Congress.” ISPs are banking on meeting that threshold.

Courts have generally given significant, so-called Chevron deference to federal agencies as the subject-area experts per another Supreme Court decision. ISPs are hoping the Burwell decision signals a new carve-out for important decisions.

Andrew Schwartzman, a veteran attorney who backs the Open Internet rules, called that view a stretch. “The idea of using this case [Burwell] for such a challenge is ridiculous. The Supreme Court has already said [in Brand X] —when it narrowly upheld the FCC’s earlier classification of ISPs as information services — that the reclassification issue was properly delegated to the FCC. I doubt that there is any other statute in the last few decades which so clearly delegated so much to the FCC for decision.”