A bomb attack claimed by Islamic State has killed US troops in northern Syria, weeks after President Donald Trump said the group was defeated there and he would withdraw all American forces.
The “core” problem is that “we have a president without shame who is backed by a party without spine that is supported by a network called Fox News without integrity,” Friedman said. “Fasten your seatbelt.”
Trump has told “one too many lies,” Friedman said. “I don’t know whether it’s lie number 6,000 or 7,000 — The Washington Post has been keeping tab — but … we’re in a moment now where people simply don’t believe a word out of his mouth. When he can stand up and say, ‘I never said Mexico would pay for the wall,’ we’re through the looking glass.”
Mr Trump, as we well know, isn’t particularly partial to “facts”. He didn’t care about them in 1989 when he took out a full page ad in the New York Times calling for the death penalty for a group of innocent teenagers, and he doesn’t care about them now.
Mr Trump knows he’s lying. He doesn’t care. His supporters know he’s lying. They don’t care either.
“I want people to treat us fairly and they’re not. And it’s not — there’s no angles. There’s no angles. There’s nothing — you know, when a country sends us 200 soldiers to Iraq or sends us a hundred soldiers from a big country to Syria or to Afghanistan and then they tell me a hundred times, oh, we sent you soldiers, we sent you soldiers. And that’s 1/100th of the money they take advantage of, they’re just doing it to make me happy. I’ve heard past Presidents say they’ve involved in the Afghanistan war because they sent us a hundred soldiers. Yet it’s costing us billions of billions of dollars. I get along with India and the prime minister and he’s constantly telling me he built a library in Afghanistan. You know what that is? That’s like five hours of what we spend. And he tells it is and he’s very smart and we’re supposed to say oh, thank you for the library. I don’t know who’s using it in Afghanistan but one of those things.”
Trump’s surprise visit to a US military base in Iraq on the day after Christmas has provoked a strong critique among some Iraqis, who mind that Trump slipped in and out to visit the Ain al-Assad base in al-Anbar Province but did not bother to meet with any Iraqi officials. It was as if Iraq were an empty vessel useful only for hosting the US military.
Trump has made a poor impression in Iraq by saying the US should have “taken Iraqi oil” as a reward for having invaded the country in 2003. He also keeps asking the politicians in Iraq to use their oil money to pay the United States’ military expenses incurred during the invasion and occupation of the country.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. It doesn’t justify a reason for keeping it. Not all of Trump’s declarations are wrong but nor do they mollify the rightfull opposition to him him. (ODT)
Abandoning the American-backed Kurdish allies, Pentagon officials have argued, will hamper future efforts by the United States to gain the trust of local fighters, from Afghanistan to Yemen to Somalia.
It is worth remembering that even high-ranking military personnel from within the US government have ‘blown the whistle,” on behind-the-scenes tactics. In 2007 General Wesley Clark, a four star US General and NATO’s supreme allied commander, for example, listed a number of countries including Iraq, Iran and Syria that the US planned to take down long before 9/11, simply because they have “a good military and can take out governments.” (source)
Maj. Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan…
President Trump regularly fumes during meetings and calls his aides and advisers “fucking idiots.” He watches ever more TV, wonders why the press covers him so critically, and distrusts advisers who tell him that even as president he doesn’t always have the authority to make his wishes come true.
All this and more is outlined in a lengthy New York Times piece published Saturday outlining how at almost two years in, Trump’s presidency is unravelling, as he grows ever more “isolated,” “more sure of his own judgement,” and intent on following through on it at all costs.
The piece is based on more than 30 interviews with Trump’s inner circle—personal friends, political allies, former administration staffers, and more. “The portrait that emerges,” notes the Times “suggests a president who revels in sharp swings in direction, feels free to disregard historic allies and presides over near constant turmoil within his own team as he follows his own instincts.” More from the Times:
Trump shared the title this year with such luminaries Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un, and the entirety of the United Kingdom, among others.
(The translation of ‘Vollpfosten’ to ‘idiot’ doesn’t really capture the flavor of the word. Dumbass is much closer.)
Video and picture is from their 2017 Awards show, which Trump dominated.
President Trump says “yellow vest” protests were prompted by environmental legislation
Said protesters were chanting “we want trump” but footage was from London
French Foreign Minister reminded Mr Trump that the French government does not comment on US politics
if the president’s Twitter feed is any indication, he isn’t handling it well. He took to his favorite medium Friday morning to accuse Mueller of “Conflicts of Interest” and criticize a potential forthcoming public report from Mueller as being part of a “Witch Hunt.” He also pushed back on an Atlantic article yesterday suggesting that Trump and his team were unprepared to respond to Mueller’s findings.
You can read the nearly 1,000-character freak-out here:
US President Donald Trump has attacked his French counterpart in a series of tweets just two days after returning from commemorations to mark 100 years since the end of World War I in Paris.
Mr Trump lashed out over Mr Macron’s suggestion Europe should build up militaries
He also complained about tariffs on US wine and attacked Mr Macron’s popularity
The complaints struck a nerve in France on the anniversary of the Paris terror attacks
At a weekend commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the president who proudly declares himself a “nationalist” stood apart, even on a continent where his brand of populism is on the rise.
A conclusion in the Maryland emoluments case—or any of the several other ones—may be years away, but a decision to allow the discovery process to go forward is potentially enormously damaging to Trump—politically and personally. The plaintiffs in the case are arguing that Trump’s hotel is being paid substantial sums of money by foreign governments—amounts significant enough to potentially affect the president’s decision-making process. Practically speaking, Trump’s continued ownership of the hotel, along with the lack of any transparency on how the hotel operates, means a foreign government—or anyone else—who wanted to put money in Trump’s pocket has an extremely easy way to do it. The act of booking a block of hotel rooms or a ballroom at a Trump property would be, in effect, a personal payment to the president.
The woman had just settled into her plane seat and fallen asleep when she was awoken by an unwanted touch – a hand from behind her grabbing the right side of her breast.
And the man authorities say is responsible allegedly cited President Donald Trump’s past lewd language about women as justification for his alleged sexual assault.
plenty of Washington think tankers and pundits, not to mention senior members of the Trump administration, are reluctant to speak out against Saudi Arabia and have been busy smearing Jamal Khashoggi instead. Much of this has to do with Donald Trump’s financial interest in Saudi Arabia, as well as the fact that Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are obsessed with Iran, and are bent on going after Iran, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is their key ally in that aggressive endeavor. In this week’s episode, Mehdi Hasan is joined by The Intercept’s D.C. bureau chief, Ryan Grim, and the founder of the National Iranian American Council, Trita Parsi, to deconstruct the evil Justice League of Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mohammed bin Salman.
As criticism mounted over the country’s alleged role in the disappearance and possible death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Trump administration reportedly urged the leaders of Saudi Arabia Friday to stick to killing random Yemeni civilians. “The potential murder of a high-profile journalist critical of their regime raises grave concerns for us, and we appeal to the leaders of Saudi Arabia to restrict their extrajudicial murders to Yemeni people who don’t have any public platform,” said President Trump, adding that the White House would not sit idly by as the Saudis caused the deaths of innocent people unless they were Yemeni children in a school bus or a group of Yemeni people attending a wedding.
The president has long sold himself as a self-made billionaire, but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s.
Here are five eye witness accounts, one a police document, that I am persuaded establish beyond doubt that Kavanaugh binge drank and was an aggressive, mean drunk and that he lost control of his inhibitions:
IN the UN they Laughed At Him. In a Safe Crowd They Laughed with Him. Trump Often Forgets Where He Is.(ODT)
The President of the United States of America stood on a stage at a Make America Great Again Rally and, on live tv, mocked and ridiculed a woman who was sexually assaulted at age 15. And the crowd in the room cheered, laughed and chanted “lock her up”
LOCK HER UP.
Let that sink in. They are cheering to lock up the victim of a sexual assault.
And for what? For coming forward? For sharing her story?
There is a reason why so few women come forward with their stories of sexual abuse and assault. Even now, in the era of MeToo, women (and men) are terrified. They are scared to not be believed, so be victim shamed, asked if they had too much to drink or if they dressed slutty. They are scared to be accused of lying to get back at a man who scorned them. They are scared to be mocked.
And Donald Trump. What does he do? He mocks a victim from the Presidential podium.
The embarrassing exchange came when Trump boasted that his administration had accomplished more over two years than “almost any administration” in US history, eliciting audible guffaws in the cavernous chamber hall.
The President appeared startled. “Didn’t expect that reaction,” he said, “but that’s OK.”
Members of the audience chuckled again – perhaps this time in sympathy.
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News Man Andrew Bolt seemed to have left a lot of facts go missing in his recent commentary on the matter in Australia. So has Fox News USA boosting the Trump SCOTUS nominee.(ODT)
The local newspaper in Montgomery County, Maryland, is reporting that investigators there are aware of a fourth accuser (counting attorney Michael Avenatti’s anonymous one). The Sentinel writes: “Government investigators confirmed Monday they’re aware of a potential second sexual assault complaint in the county against former Georgetown Prep student and Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh. While investigators weren’t specific and spoke on background, they said they are looking at allegations made against Kavanaugh during his senior year in high school after an anonymous witness voluntarily came forward to speak with them this weekend.”
This fourth witness is obviously corroborating the allegations of Professor Christine Blasey Ford, a prominent specialist in psychiatry at Palo Alto and Stanford Universities, who says that at a high school party in Montgomery County, Kavanaugh and a friend forced her into a room and down on a bed and then Kavanaugh lowered himself on her and attempted to rape her.
Kavanaugh vehemently denies the charges of all four women.
Seventeen years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US government and media outlets have decided that Al-Qaeda is now a rebel group worthy of our sympathy. The cynical narrative change is par for the course, experts told RT.
As somber newspaper headlines mark the anniversary of the devastating attacks, some commentators have pointed out that the terrorist group accused of murdering 3,000 Americans seventeen years ago is now occupying northeastern Syria – with the US threatening to take military action if the “rebels” are evicted from the region by the Syrian army and its allies.
America may be, it is no longer — in the phrase coined 20 years ago by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright — the “indispensable nation.” Abroad or even at home, with the president facing increasingly strong headwinds on climate change at the state and local level, we’re entering a new world order on the heels of the collapsed American domination of the past three-quarters of a century.
Whilst the Trump case might be a fascinating study for medicos interested in the twists and turns of forensic psychiatry, it tragically threatens the entire world and all of us who live upon this fragile planet we call home.
The sudden change of approach sent the president’s critics in the media and the online #Resistance movement into disarray. Here was Trump actually agreeing with them that Russia was meddling in US elections – then amplifying that argument by claiming Moscow would do so on their behalf, not his.
Federal investigators have an audio recording in which then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and his personal attorney Michael Cohen discussed in late 2016 making payments for the story of Playboy centrefold Karen McDougal, who allegedly had an extramarital affair with Trump, according to two people familiar with the tape.
Nobody knows what happened in Helsinki but Andrew Bolt knows and said so in his editorial referring to the important and specific conversations that occurred (ODT)
The top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said Mr Trump should not meet privately with Mr Putin until Americans learn what happened at their first summit in Helsinki earlier this week.
“Until we know what happened at that two-hour meeting in Helsinki, the President should have no more one-on-one interactions with Putin. In the United States, in Russia, or anywhere else,” Senator Schumer said in a statement.
Even Mr Coats said he did not know what had happened in Helsinki.
Moscow has launched an extraordinary threat to target Australian journalists based on its false belief the Australian Federal Police are investigating the Kremlin-backed news outfit Russia Today.In a statement issued on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow “reserves the right to take retaliatory measures whenever the rights of Russian journalists are being infringed upon” and threatened “tit-for-tat” measures. What it actually seems like is a cover up, a smokescreen to promote Murdoch Media. The major supporter of guess who? Yes, Trump but that’s too simple.Trump is in business a multiple failure near bankruptcy, yet making $$$ from Russian investors who have been his bankers and saviors and it’s time to pay up and drop the sanctions. Putin and the FSB are pulling the strings. The rest of the Corporate world will adjust however ordinary people will pay with $$$ & cents they can illaford to lose. (ODT)
US President Donald Trump has publicly dismissed his own intelligence reports on Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, saying he preferred to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “extremely strong and powerful” denial.
In a surprise twist to the pair’s much-anticipated meeting in Helsinki, the US President said, after hearing Putin’s side of the story, that he didn’t see any reason to believe Russia had interfered – despite his own spy chief, director of national intelligence Dan Coats, telling him the opposite
There are three reasons why it will be difficult for Trump to confront Putin in any meaningful way in Helsinki.
First, he seems to share a mystical affinity with the strongman who rules his nation with apparent impunity.
Second, Trump was the beneficiary of Russia’s meddling. Accepting the existence of election interference
Third, interpersonal conflict doesn’t come naturally to Trump. This may be surprising given his penchant for starting fights. But Trump’s stoushes are usually initiated via media interviews or tweets; rarely does he confront a fellow leader face-to-face. This week Trump bagged German leader Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May behind their back, only to turn docile when they got in the same room.
The indictment issued against 12 Russian intelligence officers on Friday, local time, offers Trump a simple choice for the Helsinki summit: to aggressively rebuke Putin – both in rhetoric and policy terms – or to look a coward and a dupe in front of the whole world.
Hundreds of thousands of anti-Trump demonstrators took to the streets of London and in separate protests across the U.K. on Friday in a massive and historic show of opposition to a sitting U.S. president.
Trump, as he tends to, was operating on a different frequency, claiming that he, brilliant chap that he is, had the formula for how May might best get a workable Brexit through. If only the prime minister had listened instead of chasing her own flight of fancy.
May was not the only British politician rostered for a tongue lashing. London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who reached some prominence criticising Trump’s election promise to temporarily suspend Muslim immigration to the United States, also came in for special mention. “I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad.” Reflecting on the problems facing European cities as a result, he told The Sun that London had “a mayor who has done a terrible job in London. He has done a terrible job.” The mayor had blotted his copybook by doing “a very terrible job on terrorism” and, just for good measure, crime in general.
Having said earlier in the week that the issue of whether May should continue a British prime minister was “up to the people”, Trump had his own views about who would make a suitable replacement. The blundering, now ex-foreign secretary Boris Johnson, a person with his own conditioning of Trumpism, would “make a great prime minister.”
LIAR’s POKER and BLUSTER FUCK all for DOMESTIC POLITICS and FOX NEWS (ODT)
“Everyone’s agreed to substantially up their commitment. They’re going to up it at levels that they’ve never thought of before,” Trump told reporters. “The commitment was at 2 percent, ultimately that’ll be going up quite a bit higher than that.”
The statement was disproven by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who said 29 members of NATO simply reiterated that they were planning to gradually increase defense spending to the 2 percent benchmark. No changes were apparently promised on how fast non-compliers like Germany would raise their military budgets, according to statements by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Everyone agreed to raise spending as they agreed in 2014, and everyone agreed to respect the commitments they made. We reaffirmed a credible budget strategy that meets our needs,” Macron told journalists.
Trump just made the claim that Germany gets 70% of its energy from Russia (via imports of natural gas). It is being pointed out that this assertion, like most things that come out of Trump’s mouth, is completely untrue.
Trump’s is a business failure had he invested his fathers inheritance $200 mill 40 years ago at compound interest and did nothing he’d have $12 Billion today. However he’s got $4 Billion according to those that know. So the man has squandered $8 Billion on bankruptcies and failed ventures which put’s him up there with the worst business brains in the USA and now he’s running the place and proving he’s even worse. (ODT)
Senate Democrats trying to rally opposition to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh are portraying him as a potential threat to the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that of the 25 names on President Donald Trump’s list of possible high court nominees, “he chose the candidate who he thought would best protect him from the Mueller investigation.
I wrote at the time, and still believe, that Trump was right to meet with Kim. But if the president really trusts the handshake promise of a murderous dictator to give up the nuclear weapons he sees as an airtight insurance policy, then the president is a fool.
Trump is giving power to Russia and China while taking it away from the United States and the Atlantic alliance. Some greatness.
A successful summit will require Trump to reject this neoconservative doctrine. If Trump can pull this off with Bolton sitting by him, Trump’s critics will look very silly. Do Bolton and the Deep State have a way of baking failure into the summit that will ensure the continuation of Russia’s enemy status, thereby sustaining the enormous budget and power of the US military/security complex? Is Trump a superman who can overcome this powerful vested interest about which President Eisenhower warned Americans in 1961? How much stronger is this complex more than half a century later after being nourished by decades of Cold War and War on Terror?
Assad and no doubt Iran are convinced that negotiations with Washington are a waste of time. Assad has concluded that “the problem with US presidents is that they are hostage to lobbyists. They can tell you what you want to hear, but they do the opposite. That’s the problem, and it’s getting worse and worse. Trump is a stark example. That’s why when talking to the Americans, discussing something with them does not settle anything. There will not be any results. It’s a simple waste of time.”
Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened Harley-Davidson with a “big tax” and said the motorbike company’s decision to shift some motorcycle production overseas, “will be the beginning of the end”.
Trump campaigned in 2016 on being tougher against radical Muslim movements such as ISIL, al-Qaeda and Boko Haram. He even went so far as to blame all of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims for these tiny groups (which have largely been defeated by other Muslims).
But one of the horrible practices of these radical groups was stealing children from their parents– especially female children, and making them disappear into social death.
Social death is a conception put forward by Orlando Patterson to help define slavery. Slaves are cut off from their families on a permanent basis.
Now it transpires that the Department of Homeland Security (which is lying to us assiduously) cannot even account for the whereabouts of the children taken, who have disappeared into a huge bureaucratic gulag. One Federal judge expressed astonishment, pointing out that arrestees are given a receipt for their personal property when sent to jail but that the parents here don’t appear to have been given a way of rediscovering their children. The militarization of the situation only makes it seem more like an Islamic State operation.
Confusion over President Donald Trump’s order to allow migrant families to remain together after they illegally enter the United States led to a tense argument at the White House late Thursday as senior officials across the federal government clashed over how to carry it out, according to several people briefed on the meeting.
CHAOS (ODT)
Media reports alleging SDTX cases were dropped or dismissed are inaccurate and misleading,” the office said in its statement, referring to the Southern District of Texas. Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent 35 prosecutors to the southwest border to help handle the surge in cases created by the zero-tolerance policy; the Defence Department deployed an additional 21 lawyers to handle immigration prosecutions.
Federal immigration courts faced a backlog of more than 700,000 cases in May, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, at Syracuse University. In some courts, the average wait for an immigration hearing was over 1400 days; some hearings are being scheduled beyond 2021 before an available slot on the docket is found.
Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Pentagon is preparing to shelter as many as 20,000 migrant children on four military bases: Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas; Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas; Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas; and Dyess Air Force Base near Abilene, Texas.
It was not immediately clear Friday where the parents of children would go if they will no longer be separated from their families.
