Trump has delivered what Russia wants in Syria — at zero cost — and 'Putin likely can't believe his luck'

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-russia-free-hand-syria-putin-cant-believe-luck-2019-10?r=US&IR=T

Russian President Vladimir "Putin likely can't believe his luck" at US President Donald Trump's withdrawal of US troops from the Kurdish region on the border of Syria and Turkey, a Western military official from the anti-ISIS coalition told Insider.

Donald Trump ad misleads about Joe Biden, Ukraine and the prosecutor

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/oct/11/donald-trump/trump-ad-misleads-about-biden-ukraine-and-prosecut/

A campaign ad from President Donald Trump claims it has "facts" about the Bidens and Ukraine, but instead mashes ideas together to create a highly misleading 30-second tale.

"Fact: Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor," the narrator says, and then cuts to a clip of a Biden statement: "if the prosecutor is not fired you’re not getting the money. Well son of a bitch, he got fired."

The ad then continues:

"Fact: the prosecutor said he was forced out for leading a corruption probe into Hunter Biden's company. Fact: Democrats want to impeach President Trump for discussing this investigation with Ukraine's President. Fact: Donald Trump won but Democrats want to overturn the election."

The ad distorts the known facts about Ukraine prosecutor general Viktor Shokin and Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, where Biden’s son Hunter Biden served on the board.

The Trump campaign announced the TV ad on Oct. 9. It has also been visible on social media.

Key takeaways:

• Biden did want Shokin fired, but western leaders had widely criticized the prosecutor general as corrupt and ineffective. Biden was leading a widespread consensus in asking for removal.

• A former Ukrainian official said the investigation into Burisma was dormant under Shokin.

• Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry for Trump’s statements suggesting he wanted Ukraine to investigate a political rival in exchange for political favors.

"Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor."

Biden did call for Ukraine to fire Shokin, but the ad fails to note that there were widespread calls for his ouster.

Biden assumed a lead role in U.S. diplomacy toward Ukraine after a popular revolution in early 2014 that led to pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country. Shokin became top prosecutor in 2015, after Yanukovych went into exile. A frustrated Biden in Dec. 2015 threatened to withhold $1 billion unless Shokin was fired, in hopes that a new prosecutor would do more to enforce the law. According to Biden, it worked.

The Trump campaign ad includes a clip of Biden’s partial reports at a Jan. 23, 2018, event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. Biden spoke about getting a commitment from then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and from then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

"I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours," Biden recounted. "If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a b----. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time."

"Fact: the prosecutor said he was forced out for leading a corruption probe into Hunter Biden's company."

There is evidence that many Western leaders and institutions, as well as Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, viewed Shokin as corrupt and ineffective for failing to prosecute anybody of significance, and for protecting members of Yanukovych’s and Poroshenko’s circles.

When Shokin was fired in the spring of 2016, press reports explicitly linked his ouster to corruption.

Did Sons of Top Democrats Do Business in Ukraine As Part of Clinton-Linked Conspiracy?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sons-top-democrats-ukraine-clinton/

Rating

Mostly False

About this rating 

What's True

Hunter Biden sat on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma from 2014 to 2019. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2015 that Ukrainians had donated more than citizens of any other country to the Clinton Foundation between 1999 and 2014.

What's False

However, we found no evidence that either Hunter or Joe Biden engaged in any wrongdoing in relation to Burisma or Ukraine, or that any of Mitt Romney's sons worked for energy companies linked to Ukraine. John Kerry's stepson never conducted any business in Ukraine, and the association between Ukraine and a Paul Pelosi Jr.-linked energy company is bogus. We also found no evidence exists of any connection between donations to the Clinton Foundation and any of the aforementioned activities.

Trump has been clobbered by the courts -- and there may be more ahead

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/12/politics/trump-courts-immigration-tax-returns/index.html

The third branch of government last week began to exact a revenge on the President. And there's likely to be more bad news for Donald Trump from the federal courts system as the US House's impeachment inquiry progresses.

Seven separate federal courts dealt major blows to Trump, on everything from his immigration policy to attempts to get his tax returns. The biggest bludgeon came from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, that esteemed bench that regularly handles separation of powers questions. The Circuit sided 2-1 with the House over its subpoena for eight years of Trump's accounting records.

Why 2 Arrested Rudy Giuliani Associates Are Key For Impeachment Inquiry | Velshi & Ruhle | MSNBC

Why Shep Smith finally walked out of Fox News for good

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/11/media/fox-news-shepard-smith/index.html

Last month Shep Smith decided that he had simply had enough.

With President Trump actively distorting the truth and many of his own colleagues helping him do it, the Fox News star prided himself on anchoring a newscast that countered the network's pro-Trump opinion shows.

The way Smith saw it, he was making sure that accurate information was getting on Fox's air.

"I wonder," he told a Time magazine reporter last year, "if I stopped delivering the facts, what would go in its place in this place that is most watched, most listened, most viewed, most trusted? I don't know."

But he reached a breaking point. Sometime in September, according to a well-placed source, he went to Fox News management and asked to be let out of his long-term contract. Tensions with the opinion shows were getting to be too much.

Rav Yaakov - when is moshiach coming

אמת ליעקב דברים פרק לב פסוק לו

(לו) כי ידין ה' עמו גו' ואפס עצור ועזוב.

הנה בסנהדרין [דף צ"ז ע"א] ילפינן מהכא שאין בן דוד בא עד שיתייאשו מן הגאולה כביכול אין סומך ועוזר לישראל, ועיי"ש. והנה מאמר חז"ל זה טעון ביאור, וכי תנאי הוא שחס ושלום ישתכח עיקר א' מהשלש עשרה עיקרים, והלא הרמב"ם מנה תקות הגאולה בין העיקרים. אבל הכוונה בזה הוא שכל זמן שכלל ישראל מצפה לגאולה שתבוא באופן טבעי, והיינו שירחמו עלינו אומות העולם ויתנו לנו איזה מקום לבנות לנו מולדת וכדומה, ודאי לא תבוא הגאולה, כי חסד לאומים חטאת ובאמת שנואים אנחנו מכל יושבי תבל, ורק אם נתייאש לגמרי מאשליות כאלו ונבין כי אין לנו לישען אלא על אבינו שבשמים אז יבוא בן דוד ויגאלנו גאולה אמיתית, והבן.

וזה גם הטעם במה שאמר הקדוש ברוך הוא למשה לילך לפרעה ולדרוש ממנו כי יוציא את בני ישראל ממצרים, ומיד לאחר זה הכביד פרעה את עולו עליהם עד כי לא שמעו אל משה מקוצר רוח ומעבודה קשה, והיינו שרצה הקדוש ברוך הוא שיבינו בני ישראל כי לא פרעה הוא המשחררם וכאילו בטובו וחסדו תלוי הדבר, אלא אדרבה - לאחר שראו שמשה ביקש מפרעה לשחררם והוא סירב באמרו מי ד' אשר אשמע בקולו, מיד נתייאשו בני ישראל מלצפות שאמנם תבוא הגאולה באופן טבעי ושוב לא תלו תקוותם בפרעה, ולכן מיד אחר זה באה הגאולה האמיתית, ודו"ק.

TRUMP CALLS TURKEY BIG TRADING PARTNER A DAY AFTER THREATENING TO 'OBLITERATE' ITS ECONOMY

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-turkey-flip-flop-obliterate-f-35-fighter-jets-economy-us-trading-partner-kurds-erdogan-1463862

Just hours after President Donald Trump threatened to "obliterate" Turkey's economy, he described the country as one of America's biggest and most honest trading partners.

The president's inconsistency was evident between Monday and Tuesday as he reminded his critics that Turkey is a "big trading partner" with the U.S. The president's contradictory words lent credence to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham's claim Monday that Trump's announcement about pulling out U.S. forces from northern Syria, where they are stationed alongside Kurdish forces, was an "impulsive decision."

Dramatically softening his tone, Trump on Tuesday touted Turkey's participation in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program, although in July the administration kicked the Turks out of the aircraft program for purchasing Russian S-400 missile defense systems.

Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. forces from northern Syria has been widely labeled a "disaster" by even his staunchest GOP defenders and has also been characterized as "abandoning" the Kurds, who helped take down the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in Syria. Turkish opposition figure Meral Akensar, head of the Iyi Party, called Trump's move a "diplomatic catastrophe," Reuters reported.

"So many people conveniently forget that Turkey is a big trading partner of the United States, in fact they make the structural steel frame for our F-35 Fighter Jet," Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. "They have also been good to deal with, helping me to save many lives at Idlib Province, and returning, in very good health, at my request, Pastor Brunson, who had many years of a long prison term remaining. Also remember, and importantly, that Turkey is an important member in good standing of NATO. He is coming to the U.S. as my guest on November 13th. #ENDENDLESSWARS."

In September 2018, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it was not his decision to release the pastor, who had been living in Turkey for over two decades. Andrew Brunson was accused of being involved in a coup against Erdogan, as well as in the opposition movement led by Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in exile in the U.S. Before being released soon after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's insistence, Brunson was facing life in prison if convicted of the terrorism charges against him.

The latest on the Trump impeachment inquiry

https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/impeachment-inquiry-10-11-19/index.html

Giuliani's intrigue comes back to haunt Trump

Analysis by CNN's Stephen Collinson

Rudy Giuliani is supposed to be extricating Donald Trump from his career-threatening mess over Ukraine, but now his own foreign freelancing seems to have seriously undercut the President's core impeachment defense.

Corruption indictments filed Thursday against two Giuliani fixers who investigated Joe Biden do not just introduce the first criminal jeopardy into the cast of characters in the wider Ukraine intrigue. They also present a new moment of political peril for Trump, and raise new questions about the ethics and credibility of the company that he keeps.

Trump’s False Tweets on Syria

https://www.factcheck.org/2019/10/trumps-false-tweets-on-syria/

After announcing a withdrawal of U.S. troops in Syria at the border with Turkey, President Donald Trump tweeted incorrect statements about the conflict.

On Oct. 7, Trump claimed the United States’ involvement in Syria was originally supposed to last “30 days,” but experts told us they had never heard of such a plan. When the Obama White House first announced the deployment of special operations troops in 2015, Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters, “I don’t have a specific date to give you when they will come out.”

Trump says he 'doesn't know' Giuliani's Ukrainian associates. Here's what we do know

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/10/politics/donald-trump-lev-parnas-igor-fruman-ukraine/index.html

For Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, becoming powerful Republican donors didn't take very long.

With almost no record of political giving before February 2018, the two men found themselves posing for photographs with President Donald Trump and meeting for breakfast with the President's son within a few months of their first donations to GOP campaigns.

Federal prosecutors said Thursday those donations were actually funded by foreign nationals -- and that Parnas and Fruman illegally funneled the funds through a company meant to conceal its origins.

Trump Boasted That His Border Wall Was 'Virtually Impenetrable.' Then an 8-Year-Old Girl Climbed a Replica

https://time.com/5694432/girl-climbs-border-wall-replica/

When President Donald Trump announced that his signature wall at the U.S.’s southern border would be “virtually impenetrable” while visiting San Diego last month, Rick Weber, who co-founded the Muir Valley rock climbing park in Rogers, Kentucky, was listening.

“You don’t tell a bona fide rock climber something’s impossible to climb,” Weber tells TIME.

Weber took the President’s claim as a challenge. He says he constructed his own replica of the wall, relying on the wall’s official dimensions as well as recent images of the structure. This weekend, Weber is planning to invite climbers attending the “Rocktoberfest” rock climbing festival at the nearby Red River Gorge canyon system in Kentucky to climb the model. Guests will be challenged to compete to climb up and over the wall in the fastest time.

Several people have already managed to climb up the wall replica, including 8-year-old Lucy Hancock. Hancock didn’t use any ropes or other tools to climb the wall, but wore a belay, a safety device designed to catch a falling climber. An adult climber, Erik Kloeker, was up and over the wall in about 40 seconds.

Republican anger grows as Trump disavows Kurds by saying they didn't help during WWII

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/09/politics/turkey-syria-us-anger-ramifications/index.html

Republicans savaged President Donald Trump Wednesday for allowing Turkey to attack US allies in Syria as the President offered varying reasons for giving Turkey the green light, including the fact that Kurds did not fight alongside the US in World War II.

Turkey launched its military operation to flush Kurds allied with the US out of northeastern Syria sparking outrage in Congress, creating rare bipartisan unity about the risks to the Kurds, US national security interests, regional stability and the fight against ISIS.

Trump apparently gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the go-ahead on Sunday to proceed with his long-planned move against Kurdish fighters who make up part of the Syrian Defense Forces and who lost thousands of men fighting with the US against ISIS.

Fox News Poll: Record support for Trump impeachment

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-record-support-for-trump-impeachment

Just over half of voters want President Trump impeached and removed from office, according to a Fox News Poll released Wednesday.

A new high of 51 percent wants Trump impeached and removed from office, another 4 percent want him impeached but not removed, and 40 percent oppose impeachment altogether. In July, 42 percent favored impeachment and removal, while 5 percent said impeach but don’t remove him, and 45 percent opposed impeachment.