If You Didn’t Already Think Trump Was Unfit for Office, Syria and Ukraine Should Change Your Mind

https://time.com/5704178/trump-character-unfit-office/

Throughout the 2016 presidential primaries and through the presidential campaign, those of us who were classified as “Never Trump” or “anti-Trump” conservatives repeated the same mantra, time and time again: Character is destiny. A man’s temperament, knowledge, and integrity inevitably shape his conduct. As much as voters may hope that the weight of the office or the influence of advisers can shape or influence a flawed president, those flaws will still burst forth — especially when a man is as headstrong as Donald Trump.

So now Trump’s character has free reign. Just this week we learned that he tried to engineer a jolting surprise meeting (with photographers present to document the moment) between grieving British parents and the American diplomat who killed their son and then fled the country under diplomatic immunity. It’s hard to conceive of a more insensitive idea. And then today we learned that Trump intends to host the 2020 G7 summit at his company’s own property, the Trump Doral resort near Miami. Only a man who cares nothing for reasonable advice (or negative public perception) could engage in such brazen self-dealing.

As US withdraws, Jerusalem spooked by Moscow’s growing control over Middle East

https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-us-withdraws-jerusalem-spooked-by-moscows-growing-control-over-middle-east/

On the other hand, Israel must come to terms with the fact that the balance of power in the Middle East has fundamentally changed, and it no longer has an ally with boots on the ground in the vicinity, warned Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US.

“I’m concerned. We have relied for the last 45 years on a Pax Americana that no longer exists. I am not saying that the US won’t come to our assistance [in case of war] but we can’t be certain of it anymore,” he told The Times of Israel. “We have to internalize that that’s the situation.”

The United States is an ally; Russia is not, Oren stressed. “It’s useless for us to pretend that Russia is going to be an ally, but we don’t have to make them enemies either. We can reach a modus vivendi with them.”

Trump's Doral Resort Will Host the G7. That Will Only Raise More Ethical Questions - draining the swamp trump style!

Mulvaney cited the physical layout of the resort, with separate buildings that could hold each country’s delegation, as a major factor in the White House deciding to host the event there. He said that the White House didn’t pick the resort because it may lead to future business that could enrich Trump. “Consider the possibility that Donald Trump’s brand is strong enough as it is,” Mulvaney said. “It is the most recognizable name in the English language and probably in the world.”

Rabbi Dovid Weiss: Zionism has created 'rivers of blood' | Talk to Al Jazeera

Holocaust libel trials: The tragic case of Rudolph Kastner.

'Get Over It.' Trump Tied Ukraine Funding to an Investigation of the DNC, Says Mick Mulvaney

https://time.com/5703826/trump-ukraine-dnc-investigation-mulvaney/

“The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the things he was worried about in corruption with that nation. And that is absolutely appropriate,” Mulvaney told reporters in the White House briefing room. In response to a question about whether the White House told Ukraine that funding will not flow to the unless the investigation into the Democratic server happened as well, Mulvaney said: “We do that all the time with foreign policy.”

Mulvaney confirmed that Trump had also brought up the debunked conspiracy that Ukrainian individuals were involved in the investigation into the Russian hacking of the DNC server in 2016. There was no such involvement. “Did he also mention to me in [the] past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely,” Mulvaney said of a conversation he had with Trump. “No question about that. But that’s it, and that’s why we held up the money.”

Political influence in foreign policy is “going to happen,” Mulvaney said. “I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy,” said Mulvaney. “That is going to happen. Elections have consequences, and foreign policy is going to change from the Obama administration to the Trump administration.” One consequence — domestic politics bleeding into Trump’s foreign policy — has now spilled into the open.

The US and Turkey reached a Syrian ceasefire. But what does that mean?

https://www.vox.com/2019/10/17/20919566/turkey-syria-us-ceasefire-erdogan-pence-kurds

According to Pence, Turkey has agreed to a 120-hour (five-day) ceasefire, during which time fighters in the YPG — the main Syrian Kurdish fighting force in the region that has helped the US fight ISIS for several years now — would withdraw from a 20-mile “safe zone” near the border with Turkey. The agreement also requires the YPG to turn over its heavy weaponry and dismantle its fortifications.

In exchange, the United States will not place any more sanctions on Turkey, and if a permanent ceasefire goes into effect, then the US will remove the sanctions and penalties already placed on Turkey for its invasion.

”We got what we wanted. This is not a ceasefire. We [will] only halt our operations,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said.

The guardrails are off the Trump presidency

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/18/politics/donald-trump-impeachment-turkey-kurds-g7-mulvaney/index.html

That apt mission doctrine for a presidency blazing with abuses of power, conflicts of interest and unhinged behavior is the work of White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, whose barn burner of a briefing on a day of political train wrecks, staggering misdirection and reality bending sent a clear message.

Democrats can impeach President Donald Trump, Republicans can bemoan his betrayal of the Kurds and the media can fact-check him till the cows come home -- but nothing is going to restrain or moderate him. In fact, he's becoming ever more incorrigible.

The President's brazen willingness to do exactly what he wants -- key to his appeal to voters angry with the political establishment in 2016 -- shone through a wild few hours that briefly stole the spotlight from the Democratic impeachment inquiry.

Trump unhappy with Mulvaney's press briefing in which he acknowledged quid pro quo, source says

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/17/politics/trump-unhappy-mulvaney-quid-pro-quo/index.html

President Donald Trump is not pleased with acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney's press briefing and his acknowledgment on Thursday of a quid pro quo, according to a source close to the President.

"He was not happy," the source said.

Mulvaney shocked reporters when he admitted the Trump administration had held up military funding to Ukraine to press the country to investigate the handling of a Democratic National Committee server hacked in the 2016 election. When told that he had described a quid pro quo arrangement for the military funding, Mulvaney said, "We do that all the time with foreign policy" and later added, "Get over it. There's going to be political influence in foreign policy."

How Amazon Has Transformed the Hasidic Economy

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/nyregion/hasidic-jews-amazon.html

Amazon has become a lucrative place to do business for many Hasidic Jews, offering anonymity to a largely insular community and allowing women to work from home.

Donald Trump and Bill Barr Are Setting a Religious War Trap

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/donald-trump-bill-barr-setting-religious-war-trap.html

Paul Krugman was not wrong to observe that there was a reason these three people, all at the epicenter of a sprawling national scandal over a shadowy foreign policy dedicated to boosting Trump’s 2020 electoral fortunes, might choose this as their path of deflection:

This outburst of God-talk is surely a response to the way the walls are closing in on Trump, the high likelihood that he will be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. Trump’s response to his predicament has been to ramp up the ugliness in an effort to rally his base. The racism has gotten even more explicit, the paranoia about the deep state more extreme. But who makes up Trump’s base? The usual answer is working-class whites, but a deeper dive into the data suggests that it’s more specific: It’s really evangelical working-class whites who are staying with Trump despite growing evidence of his malfeasance and unsuitability for high office.

In Krugman’s view, this comes down to the “the efforts of Trump’s henchmen to use the specter of secularism to distract people from their boss’s sins.”

William Barr’s Wild Misreading of the First Amendment

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/william-barrs-wild-misreading-of-the-first-amendment

This 5-Hour Window Could be Key to Trump’s Impeachment Inquiry

Litany of Defeat: Trump Defends Rising Costs of "Strategically Brilliant" Mideast Retreat

https://time.com/5702769/litany-of-defeat-trump-defends-rising-costs-of-strategically-brilliant-mideast-retreat/

Trump said it was “a good thing” that Russian forces had begun supporting the Kurds. On Tuesday, Russians were already sleeping in bunks at bases that American troops had spent years building and provisioning only to abandon them in haste just hours earlier. Trump’s former counter-ISIS envoy Brett McGurk wrote on Twitter that U.S. forces were “executing [an] emergency ‘break glass’ evacuation procedure reserved for an extreme worst-case scenario.” The result, says Hagel is a big win for Russian president Vladimir Putin. “Russia comes out the big winner in the Middle East,” Hagel said. “Putin n

129 REPUBLICANS REBUKE TRUMP AS HOUSE VOTES TO CONDEMN PRESIDENT'S SYRIA TROOP WITHDRAWAL

Trump claimed that as U.S. soldiers are extracted from Syria amid Turkey's military offensive, "our soldiers are not in harm's way."

"The Kurds are much safer now. They know how to fight," he said. "Like I said, they're not angels... but they fought with us."

The president continued: "They have a problem with Turkey. They have a problem at a border. It's not our border... They've got a lot of sand over there. There's a lot of sand that they can play with."

However, a senior Department of Defense official told Newsweek that Trump's assertion that U.S. soldiers were not in harm's way was not true.