Trump's press secretary claims he wasn't briefed on Russia bounty intel

Israel coronavirus cases continue to rise, 432 confirmed in 24 hours

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/Y47SFC30Q

The Health Ministry says 3.5% of those tested, found positive for coronavirus with numbers growing in hard-hit Jerusalem and Ashdod; 43 hospitalized in serious condition, 24 on ventilators

 

Coronavirus: Has China or the US tested more?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53221801

Trump's claim

"We have more cases because we do the greatest testing... Other countries, they don't test millions."

The US has carried out almost 31 million coronavirus tests, according to the latest data.

That is more than any other Western country, but significantly less than China's reported total of over 90 million.

Based on these figures, China has carried out about one test for every 15 people, compared with about one in 11 in the US. So that's slightly more per head of population in the US.

This has got to be the worst of Trump's outrages

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/29/opinions/russian-bounties-trump-outrage-opinion-begala/index.html

"Dignified transfer." That's what the military calls the solemn process of returning fallen heroes to the family they loved and the country they served. If you have ever witnessed it, you're never quite the same after. August 13, 1998, was by far the most difficult day I had as a senior White House aide to President Clinton. Al Qaeda terrorists led by Osama bin Laden had bombed our embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, a week earlier. Twelve Americans were killed; some were State Department servants, others were Marines. All were heroes.

 

Yes, like you I thought I had lost my capacity to be shocked by Trump. Trump himself has witnessed a dignified transfer. He has seen the flag-draped coffins unloaded, heard the muffled sobs of the heartbroken, seen the bottomless grief in the eyes of a child who's lost a parent. How can it be that, after reportedly being briefed about Putin targeting American troops for death Trump has offered Putin rewards, like an invitation to rejoin the leading democracies of the G-7 and come to the US for a meeting of the leaders of the free world. An American president who truly loved the troops might perhaps invite Putin to join bin Laden at the gates of hell.

From pandering to Putin to abusing allies and ignoring his own advisers, Trump's phone calls alarm US officials

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/29/politics/trump-phone-calls-national-security-concerns/index.html

In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.

EU preparing to reopen its borders -- but probably not to Americans

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/29/europe/eu-travel-ban-us-coronavirus/index.html

The European Union is preparing to reopen its external border to 15 countries outside of the bloc as early as Wednesday. However, one country that won't be featured on the proposed list is the United States of America, according to two EU diplomats.

The diplomats, who were not permitted to discuss the matter before the EU's 27 member states had reached an agreement, have confirmed to CNN that EU governments have been given until lunchtime Tuesday to agree on the list of 15 countries allowed entry.

On the proposed list of 15 nations is China, where the virus originated. However, the EU will only offer China entry on the condition of reciprocal arrangements. The other 14 countries are: Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia, Uruguay.

As had been widely expected, the US -- where the coronavirus is currently resurging -- will not be on that list.

 

2020 Becomes the Dementia Campaign

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/07/2020-dementia-campaign-123106

The two people most likely to control the U.S nuclear arsenal, and with it the capacity to blow up civilization, through January 2025 are both well into their 70s and facing pervasive public speculation that they are becoming senile.

That is some funny stuff, no?

 

President Donald Trump’s own public blunders—saying that his father was born in Germany when it was really his grandfather or referring to Apple CEO Tim Cook as “Tim Apple”—have prompted commentary throughout his term questioning whether his cognitive faculties are deteriorating.

Hear why Roberts sided with liberals on Supreme Court abortion ruling

What's going on between Russia, US and Afghanistan?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53220163

Ambiguity

This episode also throws a stark light on the current state of US-Russia relations. US policy towards Moscow is suffering from a kind of schizophrenia.

On the one hand, the US is wary of Russian nuclear modernisation and suspicious of its broader plans in the Middle East and elsewhere; but on the other, this administration is strangely accepting of Russian denials, for example concerning its alleged intrusion into the US election campaign.

Much of this ambiguity is down to the person of President Trump himself, whom many see as rather admiring of strong, dictatorial leaders.

And to this extent, the handling of this intelligence report casts another light on the whole foreign policy process within the Trump administration.

It will add weight to those critics from both the Democratic side of politics and more hardline Republicans, like the former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who argue in their different ways that there is no strategic direction, no joined up thinking, and no leadership from the top.

Joe: GOP Senators, Speak Out For Our Troops Today | Morning Joe | MSNBC

Trump Says ‘Nobody Briefed’ Him On Alleged Russian Plot Offering Bounties On U.S. Soldiers

Trump's Response to Putin's Bounty on US Troops - "There Have Not Been Many Attacks on Us"

Trump Fights the Last War

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/trump-fights-the-last-war/

The president reasons: “Based on decisions being rendered now, this list is more important than ever before (Second Amendment, Right to Life, Religious Liberty, etc.).” Lest we miss the characteristically Trumpian subtlety, he adds, “VOTE 2020!”

If you needed a laugh to get you through just-another-day-at-the-Apocalypse, our “Conservative” president then proceeded to post no fewer than 21 tweets describing the combined hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure spending he plans to shovel out to states he hopes to win in November.

By the way, with Trump in the White House and the McConnell-led Republican Senate having slyly buried periodic public debates over the debt limit, the nation is now over $26 trillion in the red. If you’re keeping score, that’s an increase of over $6 trillion since January 20, 2017. Obama spending was unprecedented, but Trump is on pace to exceed it. And don’t tell me about the unforeseen coronavirus crisis; debt was already accumulating mountainously before the lockdown, and the president keeps saying more infrastructure spending is imperative — it may be the only thing he and congressional Democrats can agree on.

The point being that the president is not a conservative, in the sense either of political ideology or temperament. He has some conservative sensibilities and has mastered some right-wing tropes. But he’s not a conservative thinker wedded to a conservative policy agenda. That’s hardly a revelation. He’s not wired to think in those terms. He’s not a progressive, either.

 

As the pandemic rages, Trump indulges his obsessions

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/29/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-russia/index.html

"If wearing masks is important, and all the health experts tell us that it is in containing the disease in 2020, it would help if from time to time the President would wear one to help us get rid of this political debate that says if you're for Trump, you don't wear a mask, if you're against Trump, you do," the Tennessee Republican said on CNN's "Inside Politics."