Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Trump battles NY Times on Afghanistan story, deletes inflammatory video
https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-battles-ny-times-on-afghanistan-story-deletes-inflammatory-video
The president’s first instinct, as always, was to blame the press.
When
a damaging story emerged, Donald Trump said he hadn’t been told about
it, and besides, it was another “phony hit job” by the New York Times,
and the paper should name its unnamed sources which, he said, were
probably made up.
Trump went further yesterday, calling the report
“possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News New
York Times, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!”
Much remains
murky about what the president was or wasn’t told about Russia and
Afghanistan. But unnamed administration officials have since confirmed
the guts of the story to the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NBC,
CNN and the AP, among others.
Kayleigh McEnany kept the focus on the Times yesterday, telling “Fox
& Friends” that “it is truly egregious when you have anonymous
sources spewing out this information on the pages of the New York Times
anonymously, giving them false information.” I understand the
frustration about leaks, which have plagued Trump from the beginning,
but it’s hard to simultaneously argue that the information is both
classified and false.
Some Republicans, led by Liz Cheney, have
joined Democrats in demanding to know why the president wasn’t briefed,
if that’s the case.
Pentagon says ‘no corroborating’ evidence to stand up NYT report on Russian bounties
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pentagon-says-no-corroborating-evidence-to-stand-up-nyt-report-on-russian-bounties
The Defense Department said late Monday that there
is “no corroborating evidence” to support the explosive New York Times
report last week that said the Russian military offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Robert O’Brien, the national security adviser, said in a statement
that since the allegations in the report were not verified by the
intelligence community, Trump has not been briefed on the matter.
A White House official told Fox News on Monday that Trump has now
been briefed on the issue. It’s unclear exactly when this briefing took
place, but the official says it took place sometime “after the NY Times
reported on unverified intelligence.”
The statement is at odds with the White House, which insisted that Trump has still not been briefed.
St. Louis couple pulls firearms on protesters cutting through their private street
"The peaceful protesters were not the
subject of scorn or disdain by the McCloskeys," their attorney, Albert
S. Watkins, said in a statement to CNN. "To the contrary, they were
expecting and supportive of the message of the protesters. The actions
of violence, destruction of property and acts of threatening aggression
by a few individuals commingling with the peaceful protesters, gave rise
to trepidation and fear of imminent and grave."
Watkins
says his clients acted, "lawfully on their property," and that "their
actions were borne solely of fear and apprehension, the genesis of which
was not race related. In fact, the agitators responsible for the
trepidation were white."
Golden State Killer pleads guilty to 13 murders
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53226327
Joseph DeAngelo, the man known as
the Golden State Killer, has admitted to 13 murders in a deal with US
prosecutors meant to spare him the death penalty.
Trump is facing the thing he dreads most
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/29/opinions/trump-facing-thing-dreads-most-dantonio/index.html
Declaring in 2016 that "I alone can fix it," Donald Trump made the country's fate all about him. He promised
so much "winning" we'd get sick of it, and asked "What have you got to
lose?" As President he made everything into a fight between Team Trump
(good) and everyone else (bad). He bullied those he couldn't persuade
and even survived an impeachment trial. But now, confronted with a
pandemic, an economic crisis, and a moment of reckoning over racism, the
limit of the president's method is obvious, and he seems on the brink
of becoming the thing he most dreads: A loser.
With his limited mind, deficient heart
and empty soul on full display, Trump is discovering that a man who
declares "I alone can fix it" runs the risk of being blamed when
everything breaks down. This is why his 2016 campaign aide Sam Nunberg says Trump
is risking one of the worst defeats in history and political TV host
Joe Scarborough is speculating about Trump quitting. Trump is "acting
like he doesn't want to get re-elected," says Scarborough. "He's acting like he really wants to lose badly and take the Republican Party down with him."
Exposed by his own actions, the man who
makes everything into a referendum on himself has given Americans
another clear choice. He has demonstrated that what we've got to lose
are our lives and that the choice really is between him, or us. Now
we'll have to decide whether we will all join Team America and deliver
to the bully his just deserts.
White House Was Reportedly Aware of Intel on Russian Bounties for U.S. Troops in 2019
https://time.com/5861541/white-house-russia-bounties-2019/
Top officials in the
White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence
indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the
deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously
reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the
intelligence.
The assessment was included in at least one of
President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the
time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John
Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence
assessment in March 2019.
Multiple intelligence streams suggest Russians paying bounties for US troops, Trump not briefed: official
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/multiple-intelligence-streams-russian-bounties-for-us-troops-trump-not-briefed
Meanwhile, a White House official acknowledged to Fox News on Monday
that Trump has now been briefed on the intelligence behind reports of
Russian bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. It’s unclear exactly
when this briefing took place, but the official says it took place
sometime “after the NY Times reported on unverified intelligence.”
This
statement is at odds with answers Kayleigh McEnany, White House press
secretary gave to members of the White House press corps during Monday’s
briefing. McEnany said - “The president has not been briefed on the
matter” – and gave multiple variations of that answer throughout the
briefing. But the White House official said, “Kayleigh meant the
President had not been previously briefed on the matter (before the NYT
report came out)”
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.
Monday, June 29, 2020
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.
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.
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."
Russian Bounty Report Seems Like the Kind of Thing Trump Should’ve Known, GOP Says
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/russian-bounty-report-seems-like-kind-of-thing-trump-shouldve-known-gop-says
Conservative commentator David Frum noted that the story being reported by the Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal “doesn’t mean it’s certainly true.” What it does mean, Frum wrote
on Twitter, is that “very credible people in [the] U.S. intelligence
service are angry and alarmed. Angry and alarmed enough to provide
evidence to three leading media sources.” In addition to Trump’s denial,
Frum cited former Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell’s claim that he never “heard” of the bounties and that of John Ratcliffe, the office’s current director, who tweeted that he had never “briefed” the president. But, he added,
“it’s also not impossible” for these three officials to be “telling a
version of the truth,” noting the possibility that “the information was
withheld from Trump by briefers who have learned not to upset him”—given
previous reports
of Trump staff keeping Russia-related things from the president so as
not to piss him off—as well as “that Grenell during his tenure at ODNI
was simply not doing the work.” Frum remarked it to be “noteworthy” that
no denials have come from the Pentagon, the C.I.A., or the National
Security Council, all of which the Times said declined to comment.
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Trump retweets video of supporter shouting 'white power'
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53212685
In the tweet, which was later deleted, the president thanked "the
great people of The Villages" - referring to the retirement community
north-west of Orlando where the rally took place. "The Radical Left Do
Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you
soon!!!," he wrote.
The video included in the tweet showed a Trump
supporter in a golf cart raising a clenched fist and shouting "white
power". He appeared to be responding to a protester calling him a racist
and using profanities. Other anti-Trump protesters shouted "Nazi" and
other accusations at the rally-goers.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said the president "did not hear the
one statement made on the video" but saw "tremendous enthusiasm from
his many supporters".
Top conservatives demand answers on reports Russia paid Taliban to kill US troops
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/top-congressional-conservatives-demand-answers-from-white-house-on-reports-russia-paid-taliban-to-kill-us-troops
One of the top Republican lawmakers in the House joined on Sunday a growing list of legislators calling on the Trump administration to explain what it knew about the reports that Russian intelligence agents offered to pay bounties to Afghan militants who killed U.S. troops in the country.
House Republican Conference chair Liz Cheney of
Wyoming tweeted on Sunday morning that if the reports in the New York
Times about the bounties is true, then the White House needs to explain
what it knew about the intelligence and how it responded. Cheney, the
third-ranking Republican in the House, specifically focused on the
denials by both Trump and White House staff that neither the president
nor Vice President Pence were briefed on the matter, and asked for more
information on why this is the case.
"If reporting about Russian
bounties on US forces is true, the White House must explain: 1. Why
weren’t the president or vice president briefed?" Cheney tweeted. "Was
the info in the PDB? 2. Who did know and when? 3. What has been done in
response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?"
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