Fake News Trump pulled out of Syria (ODT)
via U.S. Troops To Stay In Afghanistan Several More Years, Says General
Category: Trumpland Revealed
The anonymous author of a widely anticipated book on the Trump White House has described the US president as spiraling from crisis to crisis “like a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower”, according to scathing extracts published by the Washington Post on Thursday.
The unnamed author, identified only as “a senior official in the Trump administration”, also says that colleagues considered resigning en masse in order to raise alarm about the president’s conduct, but ultimately decided against it, according to the Post.
via Trump quashes hopes of early resolution to US-China trade dispute | Business | The Guardian
The abandonment of about a dozen outposts across northeastern Syria likely constitutes the largest mass closure of military bases of the Trump presidency. (Since the Pentagon refuses to provide an accurate count of overseas outposts, however, there’s no way to make certain of that.) Still, while this reduction of outposts in Syria is significant, it hardly constitutes a substantial drawdown of U.S. forces in the region (especially at a moment when President Trump may be sending tanks and armored vehicles, with all the necessary supporting forces, into the area around Syria’s oil fields). With the president either reshuffling troops in Syria or merely relocating them elsewhere in the Middle East and a new contingent of American forces deploying to Saudi Arabia, there will actually be a net gain in U.S. troops in the region at this moment of supposed reduction.
via America: Bases, Bases, Everywhere, and Not a Base in Sight
Republicans and even Trump was wrong in thanking Tim Morrison (ODT)
The witness, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, is a decorated Iraq War veteran who advises the National Security Council on Ukraine and Russia. According to his prepared testimony, Vindman notified White House lawyers on two occasions in July that President Donald Trump and his aides had politicized aid to Ukraine, by pressing Ukraine’s president to help smear Democrats in return for nearly $400 million in security assistance.
While Republicans leaned in to the anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty, framing Vindman in a manner once used to attack the French army captain Alfred Dreyfus — a Jewish French army officer falsely accused and convicted of spying for Germany in 1894 — the colonel told the House inquiry that he had a refugee’s “deep appreciation for American values and ideals and the power of freedom.”
via Republicans Accuse Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman of Dual Loyalty
cost savings to bringing the troops home, but he put up spending on the Department of Defense $130 billion a year. The 2015 Defense budget was $586 billion and that in 2019 was $716 billion.
via No, Trump isn’t Bringing Troops home: Not those in Syria, or any of the 60,000 in the Mideast
![Trump holds a campaign rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota [Leah Millis/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/10/11/8160c50c536b4ac88dff7f37781dad3a_18.jpg "Trump impeachment inquiry: 10 developments you may have missed")
Trump declares all American Institutions corrupt and therefore has the right of executive privilige. The right od a Dictator (ODT)
By contrast, the new report paints a picture of widespread opposition to the president’s actions within his own White House.
Four, and possibly more, national security officials in the White House were concerned about Trump’s actions, according to the report, both before and after the president’s now-infamous July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In the call, Trump strongly indicated that U.S. assistance to Ukraine could be contingent on Zelensky giving him what he wanted, specifically: investigations into the 2016 election and former Vice President Joe Biden.
What’s not so obvious is that this conspiracy extends to the rule of law. According to this skewed version of reality, corruption has penetrated the bedrock institutions of American society: the political sphere, the intelligence agencies, the mainstream media. Corruption has transformed the very fabric of politics, culture, and law.
To root out corruption, then, it’s necessary to step outside the rule of law. Donald Trump hasn’t declared a state of emergency. But he is acting as if he has (which, in case you’re wondering, is illegal). His decision not to cooperate with congressional inquiries, including the most recent impeachment inquiry, is also part of this unstated state of emergency.
It’s all OBSTRUCTION of a Co-Joint Congressional Committee (ODT)
via Here’s Another Impeachable Offense: Trump’s War on the Constitution – Mother Jones
The waning of American Democracy and power in less than 3 years. The moral bankruptcy of a Nation in full relief (ODT)
The Trump administration has blocked a planned deposition from Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union and a central figure in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, according to a statement by his lawyer.
Trump administration blocks testimony of central figure in impeachment inquiry
Republican talking points have focused on denying that there was an explicit quid pro quo in Trump’s phone call, even though the White House readout has him saying, “The United States has been very, very good for Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily” and asking for a “favor.” But Taylor’s texts indicate that, as the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, he interpreted Trump’s message as an invitation to trade a politically motivated investigation for U.S. assistance and a White House visit.
via Trump-Ukraine Call Was Anything but “Routine,” Texts Show
FACT
When he isn’t raving about how the deep state is conspiring against him, Donald Trump loves to boast about the economy, claiming to have achieved unprecedented things. As it happens, none of his claims are true. While both GDP and employment have registered solid growth, the Trump economy simply seems to have continued a long expansion that began under former president Barack Obama. In fact, someone who looked only at the past 10 years of data would never guess that an election had taken place.
via Brace yourself: the Trump slump hits US economy and the world
It should be underlined, though, that the possibilities for foreign interference in US elections is a much bigger phenomenon than simply this sort of organized-crime style arm twisting by a president.
The Republican-majority Supreme Court has gutted campaign finance law and has allowed essentially anonymous money to flood into campaigns. The Roberts court, in striking down McCutcheon v. FEC”> in McCutcheon v. FEC limits on individual spending on campaigns, opened the door to Donald Trump to simply buy the 2016 election. If he had tried to do that in the 1990s he’d have gone to jail just for that infraction.
In addition, since the money is anonymous, it can be foreign. I wrote on this issue earlier,
It’s legal because I’m President. I can rob a bank shoot you it’s legal (ODT)
via Trump Now Wants China To Investigate The Bidens | HuffPost Australia
Show your hand Giuliani or fold (ODT)
“You’ve heard President Trump talk. That’s President Trump,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. Richard Nixon, who resigned in the midst of the Watergate impeachment inquiry because his party began to abandon him.
“The big difference between this and Watergate is “It was a bipartisan effort and you certainly don’t have that here.”
Trump’s hold on the Republican Party makes it nearly impossible to foresee a scenario in which the GOP-controlled Senate convicts Trump if he were impeached by the Democratic-run House.
The president is acutely well aware that it’s his party alone that can protect him. In the midst of the past week’s firestorm, he tweeted to Republicans: “Stick together, play their game and fight hard Republicans.”
He later deleted the tweet.
For Trump, A High-Velocity Threat Like None He’s Ever Faced | HuffPost
Still, when Joe Biden went to Ukraine, he was not trying to protect his son — quite the reverse.
The then-vice president issued his demands for greater anti-corruption measures by the Ukrainian government despite the possibility that those demands would actually increase – not lessen — the chances that Hunter Biden and Burisma would face legal trouble in Ukraine.Giuliani, Trump, and their lackeys began spreading the false accusation that Biden had traveled to Ukraine to blackmail the government and force officials to fire the country’s chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to derail an investigation into Burisma.
Shokin had been forced from office at Biden’s urging because he had failed to thoroughly investigate corruption and stifled efforts to expose embezzlement and misconduct by public officials. Biden did threaten to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees unless Shokin was ousted. But that was because Shokin had blocked serious anti-corruption investigations, not because he was investigating Burisma.
The whistleblower who revealed that President Donald Trump sought foreign help for his reelection and that the White House sought to cover it up is a CIA officer who was detailed to work at the White House at one point, according to three people familiar with his identity.
The man has since returned to the CIA, the people said. Little else is known about him. His complaint made public on Thursday suggested he was an analyst by training and made clear he was steeped in details of American foreign policy toward Europe, demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of Ukrainian politics and at least some knowledge of the law.
The department’s criminal division reviewed the matters and concluded that there was no basis for a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s behavior. Law enforcement officials determined that the reconstructed transcript of the call did not show that Mr. Trump had violated campaign finance laws by soliciting from a foreign national a contribution, donation or thing of value.
If history is a fair judge (and if humankind even has a history after Trump and his minions finish destroying the environment), Barr will be remembered as the most corrupt, treacherous, mendacious, and treasonous attorney general in American history.
And when I say treasonous, I mean treasonous. Ever since he obtained the attorney general’s office, Barr has used it for one purpose: To cover up the criminality of Trump.
Читайте больше на http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/142765-trump_treason/
There are plenty of reasons the White House might not want the whistleblower complaint to come out. It could have more details that go beyond what’s in a transcript. It might have other instances of impropriety by the president.
The whistleblower complaint absolutely has to come out. It’s very clear that Congress not only has a right but has a responsibility to this material.
On Thursday night, the Post reported that the complaint “centers on Ukraine,” fueling speculation it is related to the Trump team’s public efforts to compel that nation’s government to reopen an investigation with the intention of damaging the 2020 presidential campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden. In a combative CNN interview later that night, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani confirmed that he had “ask[ed] Ukraine to look into Joe Biden.”
It’s early in the life of this story and while the reporting thus far seems ominous, there are a host of unanswered questions.
Trump is the puppet of darker forceshere at play (ODT)
via Pompeo Manipulatively blames Iran as Saudi Arabia loses 58% of Oil Production to Houthi Attack
As for Trump himself, German sees in the president a man whose entire life and business history, not to mention his associates, reeks of potential criminal liability. And still, he seemed to generate a considerable amount of wealth and obtain the most powerful position in the world without a serious look from the FBI along the way. “The practical immunity Trump and his retinue enjoyed as they amassed wealth and power also gives lie to his supporters’ contention that Mueller, Comey, and the FBI somehow had it in for Trump and manufactured a case against him,” German writes. “The failure to prioritize the economic crimes of the politically powerful left the nation vulnerable to a hostile foreign nation’s effort to delegitimize U.S. elections. This is exactly the sort of threat a domestic intelligence agency is supposed to protect against.”
How FBI Increased Its Power After 9/11 and Put Trump in Office
Bolton’s recess appointment as United Nations ambassador in 2005 was widely viewed as a sign of the George W. Bush administration’s contempt for the institution. (Bolton had famously remarked that if the U.N. headquarters “lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”)
via Bolton Tried His Best to Draw the U.S. Into War. Luckily He Failed.
Many will rightly celebrate the departure of the US national security adviser. But however welcome the news, it reflects the deeper problems with this administration
During a Monday press spray with the annoying chopper behind him, Trump belittled the victims of Hurricane Dorian (and the Bahamas in general) and claimed that many gang members and drug dealers were trying to get into the country along with the survivors.
America has a long-standing tradition of allowing survivors of natural disasters to enter the US, but The NY Times reported that evacuees were treated horribly, “The confusion over who could come was highlighted over the weekend when 119 people from the Bahamas were ordered to get off a ferry bound for Florida because they did not have the necessary United States travel visas.”
Off-camera, a reporter asked how the United States is handling this precarious situation and instead of extending the hand of warmth and hopefulness, Trump smeared the people of the Bahamas in his usual vicious fashion.
via Trump Attacks Hurricane Dorian Survivors As ‘Drug Dealers And Very Bad People’ | Crooks and Liars
Trump and Bolton offer differing narratives on ‘resignation’
In the end, it appears the President was also happy to see Mr Bolton leave. The men were even unable to agree on the circumstances of his departure.
In the President’s version, he told Mr Bolton his services weren’t required last night before asking for his resignation this morning.
Mr Bolton says he offered to resign last night, but the President said they would discuss it today.
It’s better not to be a “more normal country” if that means being as prone to invasions and coups as the United States, top Russian ministers have said, firing back at bizarre remarks by a new Pentagon chief.
It would be “great” if the West “could get Russia to behave like a more normal country,” Mark Esper, the newly appointed defense secretary, was reported to have claimed while visiting Paris this week.
“Otherwise, we should have been acting like the US, bombing Iraq and Libya in blatant violation of international law… We should have supported coups, violent and anti-constitutional, like the US and its closest allies did in February 2014 [in Ukraine].”
According to a Politico report Friday night, the House Oversight Committee has for months been investigating why military spending has been increasing at a Scottish airport near President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort, and why U.S. military personnel are staying at the Trump property on routine trips. But the Sunday political talk shows mostly failed to cover this news, with only CBS’ Face the Nation mentioning the resort in Scotland as part of the context to a larger pattern of Trump using U.S. government business to boost his resort properties.
via Sunday shows mostly ignore Trump’s Turnberry corruption | Media Matters for America
The True Invaders of Planet Earth
Here’s the strange thing, though: in this century, there has been only one true invader on planet Earth and it’s not those desperate Central Americans fleeing poverty, drugs, violence, and hunger (for significant aspects of which the U.S. is actually to blame).
via Trumpism as the Invasion of the Attention-Snatchers, & Other Invasions
It’s Mad Mad World one we can’t it seems just stop and get off (ODT)
The CNN confirmation of Trump lying most often to reporters arrived the same week he unveiled perhaps the most ridiculous and moronic lie of his presidency—or least of the past month. That’s when Trump’s White House took a Sharpie marker to an official government map of the projected course of Hurricane Dorian, and enlarged the path’s possible cone to include Alabama. It was a pathetic and childish attempt to bolster his earlier, reckless assertion that Alabama was ever in danger from the storm, a claim that the National Weather Service aggressively debunked.
Trump lies about everything. Always. And that’s especially true when he grants access to reporters.
via Confirmed: Trump Lies to Reporters More Often than He Lies to Any Other Group | The Smirking Chimp
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