On Venezuela, Trump sides with Putin over his own team

msnbc

A few months ago, Axios had an interesting report on Donald Trump’s perspective on Venezuela, which had been shaped in part on the president’s interactions with “the Venezuelan expats who frequent his golf club” in south Florida. As crises in the South American country mounted, this did not inspire confidence in the future of the administration’s policy.

Late last week, however, anxieties grew more acute. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the case that Russia had effectively “invaded” Venezuela, and as a consequence, Moscow was exerting undo control over developments in the country. It was a message Pompeo – the United States’ chief diplomat and the man responsible for executing the American president’s foreign policy – had pushed repeatedly in a variety of forums.

Similarly, White House National Security Advisor Michael Bolton thought it was his job to push back against Russian interference in Venezuelan affairs. All of which made this Oval Office exchange between a reporter and Donald Trump on Friday afternoon that much more notable.

Q: Mr. President, you spoke with Vladimir Putin earlier today.

TRUMP: Yes, I did.

Q: What options are you looking at to get humanitarian assistance to Venezuela?

TRUMP: Yeah, I had a very good talk with President Putin – probably over an hour. And we talked about many things. Venezuela was one of the topics. And he is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela.

President Trump Is Spending $20 Billion on an Aircraft Carrier. The Navy Wanted That Money for Cybersecurity

time

In March, a report to the Secretary of the Navy warned that the service is preparing for the wrong war, one fought not with bombs and artillery but with terabytes and artificial intelligence.

“We find the Department of the Navy preparing to win some future kinetic battle, while it is losing the current global, counter-force, counter-value, cyber war,” the report says.

President Donald Trump, however, this week ordered the Navy to continue preparing for the last war, surprising Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer and Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson, on Tuesday by reversing his February decision to retire the 21-year-old nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman.

President Trump's Tariffs Will Hurt America More Than China

forbes

Let’s stop pretending. An import tariff is nothing but a tax on consumers and businesses. Not in the exporting country, but the importing one. So the 10% tariff on $200bn of Chinese imports that President Trump has just imposed is in reality a new tax on Americans. And it will hurt America much more than China.

Stocks tumble as Trump threatens to raise Chinese import tariffs

.ft

US stocks opened sharply lower on Monday after Donald Trump threatened to raise tariffs on all Chinese imports to 25 per cent, sharply ratcheting up pressure on Beijing to make concessions in trade talks and sending global equities markets sliding.  The US president made the threat in a number of tweets on Sunday and Monday just a few days ahead of a make-or-break round of trade negotiations scheduled to begin on Wednesday.

cbsnews

In renewing a threat to sharply raise tariffs this week on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods from China, President Trump said in a tweet on Sunday that the levies have had little impact on U.S. consumers -- it is the Chinese who are bearing the brunt of the trade war between the world's two biggest economies, he claimed.

Yet research suggests otherwise, showing that American consumers and businesses are taking the biggest hit in the form of higher prices and costs. That's especially true in areas of the country that typically vote for Republican candidates, like farming communities in the Midwest, according to one recent study by economists from UCLA, University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University and the World Bank.

bloomberg

Trade wars are good, and easy to win. So President Donald Trump said last year as he embarked on his first round of tariffs on foreign imports.

It seems that things have proven so good and easy that he’s readying for another bout. Trump is prepared to increase a 10 percent levy on $200 billion of imports from China to 25 percent on Friday, he tweeted on Sunday — instantly popping any hopes that trade talks were on their final approach toward an amicable resolution.

The president had a justification for casually slapping a $30 billion trade impost via tweet — the Chinese will pay anyway:

RASHIDA TLAIB SLAMS 'NYT' FOR HEADLINE ON GAZA VIOLENCE; OMAR SILENT

.jpost

  

Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. (photo credit: REUTERS/REBECCA COOK AND ERIC MILLER/REUTERS)

US Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib slammed a New York Times headline that framed the violence in Israel as being initiated by a barrage of rockets from Gaza.

"When will the world stop dehumanizing our Palestinian people who just want to be free?" she tweeted. "Headlines like this & framing it in this way just feeds into the continued lack of responsibility on Israel who unjustly oppress & target Palestinian children and families."

Hostilities flare up as rockets hit Israel from Gaza

bbc

Militants in the Gaza Strip have fired more than 200 rockets into Israel, the army says, prompting air strikes and tank fire on the Palestinian territory.

Three Israelis were wounded by the rockets. Israeli fire killed three Palestinians, including a mother and her baby daughter, Gaza officials say.

EU calls for halt to rocket fire from Gaza into Israel

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/262668

The European Union (EU) on Saturday called for rocket fire from Gaza into Israel to "stop immediately" and threw its backing behind efforts by Egypt and the United Nations to calm the situation.

"The rocket fire from Gaza towards Israel must stop immediately. A de-escalation of this dangerous situation is urgently needed to ensure that civilians' lives are protected," EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said in a statement.

"Israelis and Palestinians both have the right to live in peace, security and dignity."

Gaza terrorists on Saturday fired over 200 rockets at Israel, which responded by striking Hamas and Islamic Jihad military targets, officials said, as another escalation between them threatened a fragile ceasefire.

Despite Israel's best efforts to avoid civilian casualties, three Gazans including a baby and her mother died in the strikes, the Gaza Health Ministry claimed Saturday.

The latest flare-up came with Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the blockaded Gaza Strip, seeking further concessions from Israel under the ceasefire.

"Only a political solution can put an end to the violence," the EU statement said

Obama Didn’t Give Iran ‘150 Billion in Cash’

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/obama-didnt-give-iran-150-billion-in-cash/

Quick Take

A viral meme distorts the facts about the Iran nuclear agreement. The deal, approved by six countries and the European Union, gave Iran access to its own frozen assets.

Full Story

As a candidate during the 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump criticized the international agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons’ program — formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — that had been adopted the year before. He suggested that the U.S. had returned $150 billion to Iran as part of the deal.

That’s not true. We’ve written about this issue before. PolitiFact and the Washington Post have, too.

But Trump has repeated the claim as recently as December, when he tweeted: “The Democrats and President Obama gave Iran 150 Billion Dollars and got nothing, but they can’t give 5 Billion Dollars for National Security and a Wall?”

Trump’s bogus claim now has been repeated in a meme that references the president’s declaration of a national emergency to redirect federal funds for a proposed wall on the southern border.

Secular Education in Hasidic Yeshivas - Panel on "Deep Dive" Fox Nation

Dossier Not What ‘Started All of This’

Factcheck

In an interview about the special counsel’s report, Rep. John Ratcliffe said that what “started all of this” was “a fake, phony dossier.” But a House Republican intelligence committee memo said it was information about a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser that sparked the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the election.

Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican who is a member of the House intelligence committee, said in the interview on Fox Business Network that “I had seen every classified document that any member of Congress was allowed to see. So I wasn’t surprised at all at the findings” of the special counsel investigation, as revealed in a four-page memo on March 24 by Attorney General William P. Barr. He then turned to the dossier.   

Explained 

What Started the Trump-Russia Investigation? Not the Steele Dossier as Trump Claims

haaretz

Republican memo released in February affirmed a story from the New York Times which traces the beginning of the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia to campaign aide George Papadopoulos

FOX NEWS' CHRIS WALLACE WARNS OF OWN NETWORK'S BIAS: 'OPINION PEOPLE' ON FOX 'MAY BE PUSHING POLITICAL AGENDA' ON MUELLER LETTER

Newsweek

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Wednesday warned viewers that some opinion-based coverage of special counsel Robert Mueller’s letter to Attorney General William Barr on his own network may be biased and to set the record straight, he went over the “facts.”

Without naming specifically which hosts he was referring to, Wallace urged viewers to focus on the “facts” and to disregard the other Fox News figures downplaying of the significance of Mueller’s letter during a Wednesday appearance on Shepard Smith Reporting.

“I know there are some people who don’t think this March 27 letter is a big deal,” Wallace said. “Some opinion people, some opinion people who appear on this network, who may be pushing a political agenda.”

“But, you know, we have to deal in facts. And the fact is that this letter from the special counsel, and it was one of at least three contacts with the Attorney General between March 25 and March 27, was a clear indication that the [special counsel] was upset, very upset, with the letter that had been sent out by the Attorney General, and wanted it changed, or wanted it at least added to and the Attorney General refused to do so,” he continued. “He felt the Attorney General’s letter was inaccurate.”

“What he says in the letter is, ‘You didn’t reflect what we found in the report,’ and there were a lot of people—having read now the full report, or as much as it has not been redacted—agree that he didn’t reveal what was fully in the report,” the host added.

“Again, those aren’t opinions, that’s not a political agenda, those are the facts.

James Comey: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr

nytimes

People have been asking me hard questions. What happened to the leaders in the Trump administration, especially the attorney general, Bill Barr, who I have said was due the benefit of the doubt?

How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like “no collusion” and F.B.I. “spying”? And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being “frustrated and angry,” something he would never say to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger?

How could he write and say things about the report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, that were apparently so misleading that they prompted written protest from the special counsel himself?

How could Mr. Barr go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and downplay President Trump’s attempt to fire Mr. Mueller before he completed his work?

And how could Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, after the release of Mr. Mueller’s report that detailed Mr. Trump’s determined efforts to obstruct justice, give a speech quoting the president on the importance of the rule of law? Or on resigning, thank a president who relentlessly attacked both him and the Department of Justice he led for “the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations”?

What happened to these people?

I don’t know for sure. People are complicated, so the answer is most likely complicated. But I have some idea from four months of working close to Mr. Trump and many more months of watching him shape others.

Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.

But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. 

TEN KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM WILLIAM BARR’S SENATE HEARING ON RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN 2016 ELECTION

newsweek

Atttorney General William Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday afternoon about the specifics of the report prepared by special counsel Robert Mueller on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections and possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump. There, Barr answered questions about his conclusion that there was no obstruction of justice and that the president had been cleared of wrongdoing.

Underlying the hearing was a last-minute revelation that Mueller had written a letter to Barr saying that he disagreed with Barr’s four-page summary of his report, and the two had followed up with a phone call.

Below are 10 standout moments from Wednesday’s hearing: