Trump manages to look like a slob in white tie and tails.
Good Morning!!
As I write this, Trump and PM May are giving a joint press conference in London. One of the questions Trump was asked about was the massive protests against his visit. Trump claimed that he didn’t see any protests and that there were thousands of people in the streets cheering for him. Reports of protests are “fake news.” He reiterated his attacked on London Mayor Sadiq Kahn, praised May on Brexit said it would be good for the UK. He also ranted about immigration. Of D-Day, Trump said it was “a liberation like few people have seen before.” I doubt if Trump knows anything about D-Day or World War II.
After a day of pomp and pageantry with the British royals, Tuesday was shaping up to be a day of politics and protests. Trump is scheduled to have meetings at Downing Street and protesters are hoping that they can be close enough — and loud enough — to be heard.
The road outside of Downing Street was sealed off with steel barricades, and there was a heavy police presence.
But in nearby Trafalgar Square, one of the main gathering places in central London, the so-called “Carnival of Resistance” was in full swing.
One of the main features was a talking Trump robot who as sitting on a toilet and saying, “You’re fake news! I’m a very stable genius!”
What an embarrassment Trump is! Any why on earth did all his children–even Tiffany–go with him on the trip? Why were they at the state dinner yesterday?
The great British tradition of creating witty — and sometimes rude — placards was on full display. One protester held aloft a sign that read: “British Humour: the gift of a book to an illiterate man — well played Your Majesty.”
Another man was pushing a shopping cart filled with toilet paper featuring Trump’s face on it. “Come on down to Trafalgar and get your Donald Trump toilet paper,” he said.
The protests come a day after a lavish state banquet hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
President Trump July 24, 2018:
"Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening." https://t.co/YjgLiJECOM
Why was Ivanka there? Even more to the point, why were Donald Trump Jr., Eric, and Tiffany there? I heard someone on TV say it looked like a Trump family visit to Disneyland.
At a grand banquet table in a red-carpeted Buckingham Palace ballroom, the Queen, a couple of princes, dukes and duchesses, and lords and ladies were intermixed with the Trump family: a President, a first lady, four of his five children, and two of their spouses.
Queen Elizabeth II formally invited just President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump to travel to London for an official State Banquet at Buckingham Palace. But the event became more of an extended family affair, with Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and his wife Lara, and Tiffany Trump all joining the exclusive party.
Protesters fill the streets in London
The President’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, was already set to attend in her capacity as a formal adviser to the President, and a senior member of his administration. Her husband, Jared Kushner, is also part of the United States delegation attending the ceremonial events.
For the President, bringing his adult children, in his view, is akin to showcasing his version of royalty. In an interview ahead of the trip with the British tabloid newspaper The Sun, Trump said he wanted Ivanka, Donald Jr., Eric and Tiffany to hold a “next generation” meeting with the Prince William and his wife, Kate, and Prince Harry.
“I think my children will be meeting them,” said Trump. “It would be nice.”
Though they mingled at the State Banquet, there were no plans for a sit-down meeting, a royal source told CNN International correspondent Max Foster.
“Next generation?” These people actually think Trump will pass on the presidency to his offspring?
A key witness in former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian election interference has been charged with transporting child pornography last year, according to court documents.
George Nader, who has a previous conviction on such charges, was charged in federal court in Virginia and is expected to make an initial court appearance in New York.
Nader played an unusual role as a kind of liaison between Trump supporters, Middle East leaders and Russians interested in making contact with the incoming administration in early 2017.
Officials said Nader, 60, was charged by criminal complaint over material he was traveling with when he arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport on Jan. 17, 2018, from Dubai. At the time, he was carrying a cellphone containing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, officials said. The charges were unsealed after his arrest Monday morning at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.
The charges carry a penalty of 15-40 years in prison.
Nader was known to Trump associates as someone with political connections in the Middle East who could help them navigate the diplomacy of the region.
He helped arrange a meeting in the Seychelles in January 2017 between Erik Prince, a Trump supporter who founded the private security firm Blackwater, and a Russian official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The purpose of the meeting was of particular interest to Mueller’s investigators, and some questions about it remain unanswered, even after Mueller issued a 448-page report on his findings.
Paul J. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman who is serving a federal prison sentence, is expected to be transferred as early as this week to the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City, where he will most likely be held in solitary confinement while facing state fraud charges, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Mr. Manafort was convicted last year on federal bank fraud, tax and conspiracy charges in two related cases and is serving a seven-and-a-half-year federal prison sentence in Pennsylvania. The Manhattan district attorney obtained an indictment of Mr. Manafort on state mortgage fraud charges in an effort to ensure he would still face prison if Mr. Trump pardoned him for his federal crimes.
Mr. Manafort, 70, will most likely be arraigned on the new charges in State Supreme Court in Manhattan later this month and held at Rikers, though his lawyers could seek to have him held at a federal jail in New York, the people with knowledge said….
A law-enforcement official familiar with the correction department’s practices, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss security measures, said Mr. Manafort would most likely be housed in a former prison hospital on the island. That is where most high-profile detainees are held, including police officers, those accused of killing police officers, politicians and celebrities.
And Trump can’t pardon Manafort for those state charges.
Trucks passing the border from El Paso into Juárez, Mexico. Paul Ratje/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Congressional Republicans have begun discussing whether they may have to vote to block President Trump’s planned new tariffs on Mexico, potentially igniting a second standoff this year over Trump’s use of executive powers to circumvent Congress, people familiar with the talks said.
The vote, which would be the GOP’s most dramatic act of defiance since Trump took office, could also have the effect of blocking billions of dollars in border wall funding that the president had announced in February when he declared a national emergency at the southern border, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are private.
Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on Mexico — with which the United States has a free-trade agreement — rely on the president’s declaration of a national emergency at the border. But the law gives Congress the right to override the national emergency determination by passing a resolution of disapproval.
Congress passed such a resolution in March after Trump reallocated the border wall funds, but he vetoed it. Now, as frustration on Capitol Hill grows over Trump’s latest tariff threat, a second vote could potentially command a veto-proof majority to nullify the national emergency, which in turn could undercut both the border-wall effort and the new tariffs.
We’ll see if they have the guts to do it.
What else is happening? What stories have you been following?
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It’s the weekend, and I hope all you Sky Dancers are finding ways to take care of yourselves as Trump works to destroy democracy and civility in our country. We can only hope that House Democrats in the House will find some way to rid us of the evil monster.
Thanks to Trump and the NRA funded GOP, we have a mass shooting just about every day in the U.S. Yesterday’s was a horrific one in which a “disgruntled employee” murdered 12 co-workers and injured others. The new twist in this one was that the shooter used a silencer so that people wouldn’t be warned by hearing gunshots.
The man who shot and killed 12 people at a government building Friday was identified as a 15-year employee of the city Department of Public Works and all but one of his victims were city employees, authorities announced Saturday.
DeWayne Craddock, of Virginia Beach, was an engineer who served as a project manager and contact for a number of utility projects, according to posts on the Virginia Beach web site.
Authorities solemnly read the names of each of the victims at the outset of a press conference on Saturday morning, saying all worked for the Department of Public Works and the Department of Public Utilities, except for one contractor.
They were listed as Laquita C. Brown of Chesapeake; Tara Welch Gallagher of Virginia Beach; Mary Louise Gayle of Virginia Beach; Alexander Mikhail Gusev of Virginia Beach; Katherine A. Nixon of Virginia Beach; Richard H. Nettleton of Norfolk; Christopher Kelly Rapp of Powhatan; Ryan Keith Cox of Virginia Beach; Joshua A. Hardy of Virginia Beach; Michelle “Missy” Langer of Virginia Beach; Robert “Bobby” Williams of Chesapeake; and Herbert “Bert” Snelling of Virginia Beach.
“They leave a void we will never be able to fill,” city manager Dave Hansen said at the press conference.
Police Chief James A. Cervera declined to discuss a motive for the spree, but said Craddock was still a city employee at the time of the shooting and used a city issued badge to gain entry to a building in the city’ sprawling municipal complex.
Read more at the WaPo.
Trump’s latest effort to destroy the economy is his “plan” to impose tariffs on good from Mexico. That could mean we’ll be paying a lot more for fruit and vegetables at the grocery store. But that’s only the beginning of the damage Trump is trying to do.
Amid calls for impeachment, a persistently underwater approval rating, subpoenas for financial records and an. ever-growing list of scandals, the strong economy is pretty much the only thing President Trump has going for him right now. It’s his best shot at reelection.
And for some reason he seems keen on destroying it.
On Thursday evening the Trump administration announced that it would impose a new 5 percent tariff on Mexican imports, ratcheting up in increments to 25 percent by Oct. 1. This is allegedly to pressure Mexico to stop the flow of immigrants coming to the United States.
This decision is so mind-bogglingly stupid, it’s hard to keep track of all the reasons it’s dumb.
Here’s the list of stupid reasons Rampell discusses. Go to the article to read the details.
Americans are paying these tariffs.
This will seriously screw up supply chains and hurt American companies.
We don’t know the full economic cost of the tariffs, but it would be painful for the United States.
Mexico does not have power to do the thing Trump seems to be asking the country to do.
There is no plan. There was never a plan.
This new self-inflicted trade-war wound gives us less leverage in negotiating a new trade deal with China (and the European Union and Japan, both of which we’re alsosimultaneously trade-warring with).
It will also damage our ability to negotiate with China (and the E.U. and Japan) because it proves, once again, that Trump can’t be trusted to keep his word, including in the form of a signed international agreement.
The decision to impose tariffs — and thereby harm red-state farmers and manufacturers — could cause a rift with the Republican lawmakers who have been protecting him.
If Trump does indeed manage to wreck the Mexican economy, that would likely increase the flow of immigrants trying to cross the border into the United States.
Big state economies that border Mexico exported a large volume of goods to that country in 2017. Texas had nearly $98 billion in exports, and California had nearly $27 billion. While it doesn’t border Mexico, auto-industry supply chains contribute to Michigan’s $12.5 billion in exports in that year.
Meanwhile, states with smaller economies and that are geographically further away from Mexico exported fewer goods. Hawaii’s goods exports to Mexico in 2017 came to only about $1.4 million, and Alaska exported just $21 million in goods.
Click on the link to check out where your state stands. It looks like states that voted for Trump in 2016 will suffer the greatest damage.
Next week Trump takes his trail of destruction to Europe, beginning with a state visit to the UK. After that he’ll visit Ireland and wrap up the trip at the D-Day commemoration in France.
The Atlantic: Don’t Expect Trump’s Europe Trip to Go Smoothly.
Facing troubles at home, beleaguered presidents often look abroad for a reset. Richard Nixon dashed off to the Middle East to “wage peace” as his presidency wobbled during Watergate. Bill Clinton flew to Russia and northern Europe a couple of weeks after admitting his affair with Monica Lewinsky….
With congressional Democrats mulling impeachment, the Europe trip should be a welcome reprieve. What’s different in the Trump era is that the president doesn’t necessarily want one. Seldom do Trump trips go smoothly. In past visits to Europe he’s ignited international incidents of varying degrees, insulting his hosts or threatening to unravel historic alliances. But always, his mind seems elsewhere.
Heading into the four-day trip, the president appears squarely focused on the domestic scandals that his predecessors seemed only too happy to escape. That much was clear from his recent trip to Tokyo, where Trump toasted the new Japanese emperor at a banquet in the Imperial Palace. At different moments in his stay he mocked Democrats for considering impeachment, tweeted that he “smiled” when North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un insulted his potential rival in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, and boasted that he’d weathered Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. “No obstruction, no collusion, no nothing,” Trump said at a news conference, standing beside his host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
President Donald Trump has taken this trusty playbook for deflecting domestic scandal and turned it inside out: When traveling overseas, Trump makes clear that he’d just as soon cannonball right back into the morass he left behind.
I have no doubt Trump will embarrass himself and make sane Americans shudder.
LONDON — Britain and the U.S. may have a special relationship but President Donald Trump’s state visit will be a diplomatic balancing act for the U.K., where Trump is deeply unpopular.
Cat sleeps in vineyard
Trump’s trip comes as the U.K. is facing its most significant crisis since the Second World War.
In an interview Friday with the British tabloid The Sun, Trump said Boris Johnson — the divisive populist and ex-foreign secretary who is favorite to replace May — would make an “excellent” prime minister.
“I think Boris would do a very good job. I think he would be excellent,” Trump said.
The president also referred to the American-born Duchess of Sussex as “nasty” over comments she made in 2016 threatening to move to Canada if Trump won the White House.
But he wished her well in her new life as a princess. “I am sure she will do excellently,” he added.
The comments threatened to overshadow the build up to Trump’s long-awaited state visit.
Back here at home, Trump’s personal Attorney General Bill Barr will likely be stirring up trouble as he tries to defend Trump’s indefensible criminal behavior and help him destroy what’s left of our democracy. The latest:
After the legal Establishment had granted him the benefit of the doubt, Attorney General William Barr has shocked his erstwhile supporters with his aggressive and frequently dishonest interventions on behalf of President Trump. The spectacle of an esteemed lawyer abetting his would-be strongman boss’s every authoritarian instinct has left Barr’s critics grasping for explanations. Some have seized on the darker threads of his history in the Reagan and Bush administrations, when he misled the public about a secret Department of Justice memo and helped cover up the Iran-Contra scandal.
But Barr’s long, detailed interview with Jan Crawford suggests the rot goes much deeper than a simple mania for untrammeled Executive power. Barr has drunk deep from the Fox News worldview of Trumpian paranoia….
Barr, as he has done repeatedly, provides a deeply misleading account of what Robert Mueller found. “He did not reach a conclusion,” he says. “He provided both sides of the issue, and … his conclusion was he wasn’t exonerating the president, but he wasn’t finding a crime either.”
As Mueller stated in the report and again at his press conference, he felt bound by a policy preventing him from charging the president with a crime, or even saying the president had committed a crime. Mueller’s view is that his job vis-à-vis presidential misconduct is to describe the behavior and leave it up to Congress to decide if it’s a crime. Several hundred former federal prosecutors have stated, and Mueller clearly signaled, the actions he described in the Mueller report are crimes, or would be if the president could be charged with a crime.
I’ll end there and open the floor to you to discuss these stories and others of your own choosing. Have a great weekend Sky Dancers!
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Trump apparently worked himself up into a frenzy last night. He woke up an sent out a series of angry tweets, in one of which he admitted for the first time that Russia helped him get elected. He actually deleted the first tweet but sent out another in which he made the same admission.
Russia, Russia, Russia! That’s all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax…And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected. It was a crime that didn’t exist. So now the Dems and their partner, the Fake News Media,…..
….say he fought back against this phony crime that didn’t exist, this horrendous false accusation, and he shouldn’t fight back, he should just sit back and take it. Could this be Obstruction? No, Mueller didn’t find Obstruction either. Presidential Harassment!
A little later Trump emerged from the White House and unleashed a rage-filled 17 minute rant in which he angrily denigrated Robert Mueller. He also contradicted his own tweet, claiming that Russia didn’t help him in 2016.
“Robert Mueller should have never been chosen,” Trump said of the former special counsel, who was appointed by former deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein, a Republican Trump appointee.
Trump told reporters that he considered Mueller “totally conflicted” because he had discussions about the position of FBI director early in the Trump administration and is friendly with former FBI director James B. Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017.
“He loves Comey,” Trump claimed. “Whether it’s love or a deep like, he was conflicted.” [….]
Trump also cited a “business dispute” with Mueller on which he did not elaborate. In the past, White House aides have pointed to an alleged dispute over membership fees at Trump National Golf Club in Northern Virginia….
“You know who got me elected? I got me elected,” he said. “Russia didn’t help me at all. Russia, if anything, I think, helped the other side.” [….]
In his comments to reporters, Trump downplayed the prospect of impeachment. A growing number of Democrats were advocating that course on Wednesday after Mueller’s appearance.
“It’s a dirty, filthy disgusting word and it has nothing to do with me,” Trump said. “There was no high crime and there was no misdemeanor.”
It doesn’t matter whether Trump knew ahead of time (though no one should believe his denial). This is how mob families work. You do what you need to do to keep the Boss happy. This is how our country is being run. https://t.co/6THe9u78ir
This morning’s rant continued as Trump unleashed a number of insults about McCain and how Trump was “never a fan.” He also denied demanding that John McCain’s name be hidden on the U.S. Navy battleship named after McCain’s father and grandfather while Trump was in Japan.
The White House asked the Navy to hide a destroyer named after Senator John McCain in order to avoid having the ship appear in photographs taken while President Trump was visiting Japan this week, White House and military officials said Wednesday.
Although Navy officials insisted they did not hide the ship, the John S. McCain, they did give all of the sailors aboard the day off on Tuesday as Mr. Trump visited Yokosuka Naval Base.
USS Battleship John McCain
Two Navy sailors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that the McCain sailors were not invited to hear Mr. Trump speak that day aboard the amphibious assault ship Wasp, while sailors from other American warships at the base were.
A Navy service member based on Yokosuka said that all of the American warships in the harbor were invited to send 60 to 70 sailors to hear Mr. Trump’s address, with the exception of the McCain. When several sailors from the McCain showed up anyway, wearing their uniforms with the ship’s insignia, they were turned away, the service member said.
White House aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to speak publicly, confirmed the request was made but said that Mr. Trump did not know about it. A United States official said on Wednesday that the White House sent an email to the Navy with the request on May 15.
[Emphasis added] Raise your hand if you believe Trump had nothing to do with the request.
On the other hand, sailors wearing MAGA patches in support of Trump were allowed to attend the speech.
The Navy is conducting a review to examine whether President Donald Trump-themed patches worn by sailors on their uniforms during the President’s visit to the USS Wasp violated Navy rules.
“Navy leadership is aware of the incident and reviewing to ensure the patch doesn’t violate DoD policy or uniform regulations,” US Navy spokesperson Lt. Sam Boyle told CNN.
Several service members aboard the USS Wasp were seen wearing the patches when Trump addressed sailors on Tuesday. The patches showed a Trump-like image and the slogan “Make Aircrew Great Again.” [….]
Close-up of the MAGA patch
Military personnel often wear unofficial unit patches, sometimes imbued with humorous images, as part of an effort to build unit cohesion and morale.
However, service members are prohibited from exhibiting political messages while in uniform.
Unit commanders are usually responsible for ensuring that the unofficial patches do not violate military regulations.
Department of Defense guidelines say that “active duty personnel may not engage in partisan political activities and all military personnel should avoid the inference that their political activities imply or appear to imply DoD sponsorship, approval, or endorsement of a political candidate, campaign, or cause.”
Trump faces more legal trouble about that massage parlor owner in Florida Cindy Yang.
Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., this week sent subpoenas to Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, and Trump Victory, a political fundraising committee, demanding they turn over all records relating to Republican Party donor Li “Cindy” Yang and several of her associates and companies, the Miami Herald has learned.
Cindy Yang with Donald Trump
Yang, a South Florida massage-parlor entrepreneur, is the target of a public corruption investigation seeking to determine if she funneled money from China to the president’s re-election campaign or otherwise violated campaign-finance laws. She became a GOP donor in the 2016 election cycle and opened a consulting company that promised Chinese businesspeople the chance to attend events at Mar-a-Lago and gain access to Trump and his inner circle. Some of those events were campaign fundraisers that required guests to buy tickets for entry, payments that are considered political contributions. Foreign nationals are prohibited from donating to U.S. political campaigns.
Investigators are seeking evidence from Mar-a-Lago and Trump Victory as they build a potential case against Yang and possibly others close to her. The president’s club and the fundraising committee are not the targets of the investigation. The subpoenas cover records from January 2017 to the present. A spokeswoman for Yang did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One subpoena, issued by a federal grand jury in West Palm Beach, compels Mar-a-Lago to turn over all documents, records and communications relating to Yang, as well as 11 other people, one charity and seven companies affiliated with her, according to a person familiar with the investigation who asked for anonymity to discuss an ongoing probe. The people named in that subpoena include Yang’s family members, former employees at her massage parlors and several donors to Trump Victory. Prosecutors were trying to serve the subpoena to Mar-a-Lago through a South Florida law firm, the source said.
The second subpoena, for Trump Victory, was served to attorneys at a Washington, D.C., law firm. It seeks campaign-finance records relating to Yang and her associates.
Click the link to read the rest.
As Trump focuses on attacking the people on his enemies list, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are moving us closer to war with Iran.
March 20, 2003 – War With Iraq – Shock & Awe . . . And Then Invasion.
The U.S. military’s guided bombs brought “shock and awe” to Baghdad in 2003 when American forces invaded Iraq 16 years ago to hunt for weapons of mass destruction. They never found any. Many observers, today, consider that war a failure.
Now, half of all Americans believe the U.S. will go to war with Iran “within the next few years,” according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll released in late May amid increased tensions between the two countries, longtime geopolitical foes.
The escalating Tehran-Washington crisis comes as the White House claims, without providing detail or public evidence, that Iran poses an increased threat to American forces and facilities in the Middle East – one year after Trump withdrew from an accord between Iran and world powers aimed at limiting Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
Is Iran doomed to be an Iraq redux? This is just one of the questions raised by a crisis that has eerie parallels to the missteps that led to the Iraq War in 2003, where the buildup to conflict was precipitated by faulty intelligence and confrontational foreign policymakers such as John Bolton in President George W. Bush’s administration.
Read all about it at the link above. Meanwhile, does anyone know what Trump foreign policy is?
Tuesday’s New York Times story on the serious disagreements between President Donald Trump and national security adviser John Bolton misses the bigger picture—namely, that Trump is having disagreements with his entire foreign policy team. To put it another way, it is impossible to say just what U.S. foreign policy is—or, to put it more starkly still, the United States has no foreign policy.
The Times story focuses on disputes over Iran and North Korea.
Bolton has described North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s latest short-range missile tests as violations of a U.N. Security Council resolution; Trump says they’re no big deal. Bolton has called for regime change in Iran; Trump said last week in Japan that he’s fine with the current regime, as long as it stays away from nuclear weapons.
But this dispute involves more players than Trump and Bolton. State Department spokespeople, as well as National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, have said—in agreement with Bolton—that the North Korean tests violated a Security Council resolution. Trump stands utterly alone in his view that Kim is an honorable, trustworthy partner.
On Iran, in contrast with what Trump says now, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently laid out 12 preconditions for holding talks. Among the demands were that Tehran stop testing ballistic missiles, stop assisting militias in the region, and make several other concessions that would amount, in effect, to a regime change.
And of course, there are his long-standing disputes, over a host of issues, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, various combatant commands, and pretty much the entire intelligence community.
Imagine if you were a world leader who wants to align, or improve relations, with the United States. What do you do? Do you agree with—and act in ways that advance the policies of—the president, the secretary of state, or the national security adviser? It’s impossible to placate all of them simultaneously. So you begin to wonder: Who speaks for the United States?
Please read the whole thing.
So . . . that’s what’s happening so far this morning. What stories are you following?
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I’m not sure how much sense this post is going to make. I’ve been nauseated for days from an antibiotic called Clindamycin that I was prescribed after some dental work. I have one more dose to take this afternoon, and then I can begin trying to soothe my poor shredded stomach lining and esophagus.
It’s a somewhat slow news day following the Memorial Day weekend. Trump just returned to the U.S. from Japan. I just wish he had stayed there, but I imagine the Japanese were glad to be rid of him. As usual, Trump made a complete and utter fool of himself during his trip, praising brutal dictator Kim Jong Un and attacking Joe Biden.
Backing ruthless dictators over our allies in the region? This does not show American strength: Still angling for a deal, Trump backs Kim Jong Un over Biden, Bolton and Japan https://t.co/CSHd6YqERP
Trump ought to be in the middle of an easy two-week cruise of flattering coverage and statesman-like imagery, with British royals set to follow Japan’s imperial court and roll out the red carpet pageantry that he loves next week.
He could have stepped away from the perpetually raging Washington storm, especially since Congress is on a recess that could offer a timeout from his separation-of-powers showdown with Democrats.
But asking Trump to avoid controversy is like expecting a moth to avoid a light bulb. So the President made a conscious choice to use his brief trip to Asia to whip up new outrage back home over the 2020 election and his handling of North Korea.
President Donald Trump often gripes about his bad press — but as his state visit to Japan shows, sometimes he’s his own worst enemy.
Standing next to Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe, Trump praised Kim Jong Un and said that North Korea’s recent missile launches were no big deal. He seem thrilled that Kim had called Biden a “low IQ individual” and ignored Kim’s attacks on John Bolton.
Trump and Abe news conference at Akaska Palace on Monday
“Kim Jong Un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low-IQ individual. He probably is, based on his record,” Trump said alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe….
…by aligning himself with a murderous tyrant who leads a hostile power against a political rival, the President also seemed to be inviting other foreign leaders to do what they can to help his re-election, whatever the consequences for American democracy….
It was an odd way to pay back Japan for its lavish hospitality, which saw Trump become the first foreign leader to meet the new Emperor, Naruhito, and attend a sumo wrestling tournament with Abe.
The President’s comments also opened new divisions between Bolton and him, which raised fresh questions about the national security adviser’s position and the true nature of US foreign policy with several crises, including with Iran, escalating.
North Korea was quick to try to widen the rift with a vitriolic dispatch from its official news agency, KCNA, branding Bolton a “war maniac” with a “different mental structure from ordinary people.”
President Donald Trump is isolating himself from allies and even his own advisers on North Korea, eager to insist that his denuclearization efforts will be successful going into a 2020 re-election bid.
The widening gap was starkly apparent Monday morning, when Trump publicly disagreed with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a joint press conference when asked about recent North Korean missile tests.
Abe had previously called the tests of several short-range ballistic missiles “quite a regrettable act” that violated a United Nations Security Council resolution, echoing language that Trump’s own national security adviser, John Bolton, had used on Saturday.
But the president on Monday, at the end of his short trip to Japan to meet the new emperor, insisted that he was not “personally” bothered by the tests and was “very happy with the way it’s going” in his efforts to engage North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Notably, Trump said he did not think the tests violated the U.N. resolution.
Tornadoes hit parts of Ohio and Indiana last night.
Catastrophic damage after tornado hit Dayton, Ohio
Dayton, Ohio, and surrounding communities were under a tornado emergency as a dangerous tornado was reported on Monday night. At least one fatality has been reported in Celina as of Tuesday morning.
The National Weather Service (NWS) called it a life-threatening situation as the tornado swept through the heavily populated area.
“A large, dangerous tornado touched down last night in northwest Montgomery County. We are focused on supporting life-saving measures, such as shutting down gas lines or locating people who are trapped by debris,” a post on the county’s Twitter page said. “Call 911 or contact your local fire station for emergency assistance.”
Overnight and early morning pictures on social media showed strewn trees and severely damaged homes in the area. Law enforcement reported that the New Life Worship Center just north of Dayton was completely destroyed.
The City of Dayton is asking residents to conserve water as power has been lost at both water plants and pump stations. The City of Dayton has also issued a boil water advisory for water customers in all of Dayton and Montgomery Counties, officials tweeted on Tuesday morning. The city is setting up water distribution centers at some Red Cross shelters and other locations.
Dayton was hit hard last night. Praying for everyone affected.
I have put together all of the pictures I could find, showing the true horror of the tornados last night… pic.twitter.com/x0DsaocVqc
Multiple tornadoes touched down in Ohio and Indiana on Monday night into Tuesday morning, bringing widespread reports of devastating damage along with scattered reports of injuries.
Footage on social media and from local news outlets showed roofs blown off homes, downed trees and power lines, and roads littered with debris. No deaths were reported as of Tuesday morning, and the extent of injuries was not immediately known.
Storm damage on Tuesday in Brookville, Ohio, northwest of Dayton.CreditCreditJohn Minchillo/Associated Press
As daylight broke on Tuesday, emergency responders and homeowners were still surveying the damage, which was spread across much of Ohio….
The damage also extended to Indiana. The National Weather Service in Indianapolis said early Tuesday that it would send a team to survey tornado damage in Pendleton, about 100 miles west of Dayton and 35 miles northeast of Indianapolis.
More details at the NYT.
Maybe this is why Nancy Pelosi is hesitant to begin impeachment hearings.
GOP senators say that if the House passes articles of impeachment against President Trump they will quickly quash them in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has broad authority to set the parameters of a trial.
While McConnell is required to act on articles of impeachment, which require 67 votes — or a two-thirds majority — to convict the president, he and his Republican colleagues have the power to set the rules and ensure the briefest of trials.
“I think it would be disposed of very quickly,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
“If it’s based on the Mueller report, or anything like that, it would be quickly disposed of,” he added.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to McConnell’s leadership team, said “nothing” would come of impeachment articles passed by the House….
Senate Republicans say that an impeachment trial would be given the bare minimum amount of floor time.
This is why House Democrats should simply open an impeachment inquiry and hold open hearings right through the 2020 election if necessary.
Attendance at the former vice president’s launch rally paled next to some of his rivals. In his first Iowa visit, he didn’t match the crowds that greeted Elizabeth Warren or even the less well-known Pete Buttigieg in their initial visits. So far, he’s kept his events to smaller venues where there’s little danger of empty seats.
In the eyes of Biden’s progressive critics — as well as President Donald Trump, who has publicly mocked him for it — the seeming lack of excitement or teeming masses at his events is a leading indicator of a lack of passion for his candidacy.
“I started to think the polls were wrong about Biden because it’s not what we’re seeing on the ground,” said Aimee Allison, founder and president of She the People, a national network devoted to promoting women of color….
“Inspiration is the X-factor and we’re waiting for the inspiration from Biden,” she said. “When the inspiration isn’t there, the turnout from the core of the Democratic base — women of color — isn’t there. And then we lose.”
I hope that means that Biden will lose ground once he has to face charismatic candidates like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren in the debates.
Speaking before an audience of roughly 200 people during a Saturday campaign stop in Des Moines, Klobuchar described Trump’s inauguration as “dark” and recalled how she sat on the stage between John McCain and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that day while Trump delivered a speech about rampant crime, rusted-out factories and “American carnage.” The fiery populist rhetoric apparently reminded McCain of various authoritarian figures from throughout history.
“John McCain kept reciting to me names of dictators during that speech because he knew more than any of us what we were facing as a nation. He understood it,” Klobuchar said on Saturday, according to NBC News. “He knew because he knew this man more than any of us did.”
Megan McCain wasn’t happy; she apparently thinks no one is allowed to talk about her late father (a public figure) except for family members. She tweeted:
“On behalf of the entire McCain family — @amyklobuchar please be respectful to all of us and leave my father’s legacy and memory out of presidential politics,”
Good luck with that, Meghan.
Well, this isn’t much of a post–as I said, it’s a slow news day. What stories have you been following?
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Trump has left the country for a few days; perhaps we’ll get a break from his insane tantrums over this Memorial Day weekend. Donald and Melania are in Japan for a ceremonial state visit.
Significant challenges lie ahead, especially as the United States and Japan begin thorny trade talks and Mr. Trump confronts new provocations from North Korea.
So to keep close ties with Mr. Trump — Mr. Abe’s occasional golf buddy and the world leader on the other end of more than 40 discussions or visits since the 2016 election, according to White House officials — the prime minister has planned a visit dripping in a level of ceremony that money can’t buy.
All of Mr. Abe’s plans are meant to remind Mr. Trump, the leader of Japan’s most important ally, not to forget about his closest friend in Asia. There will be sumo wrestling with a customized Trump trophy. There will be a meeting with the new Japanese emperor. There will be a state banquet.
For Mr. Abe, the flattery is the product of close study of a president who sees diplomacy as an entirely personal endeavor. But two and a half years into the relationship, some observers at home and abroad are questioning whether the overtures have paid off.
With Japan’s economy in a slowdown, Mr. Abe is pursuing a bilateral trade deal with Mr. Trump and is trying to ward off a longstanding threat by the Trump administration to enact damaging auto tariffs. White House officials have said not to expect such a trade-related accord to come out of Mr. Trump’s visit this week.
On matters of security, Mr. Trump’s overtures to Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, continue to rattle the Japanese, who have feared becoming sidelined. White House officials this week stressed the importance of the alliance in deterring aggression from Japan’s neighbors, but emphasized that this visit is a heavily ceremonial one.
Not always an eager traveler, Trump has complained in the past about the pace of his foreign travel or the accommodations arranged for him abroad. It’s his aides, however, who sometimes dread boarding Air Force One for a lengthy flight overseas, knowing full well the boss will make little use of the bed wedged into the nose of the plane.
“It’s like being held captive,” one official said of traveling with the President on Air Force One.
Current and former officials have described White House trips as grueling endeavors accompanied by long hours, but several privately said the flights overseas are easily the worst. The duration can stretch nearly 20 hours. Sleeping space is limited. The televisions are streaming Fox News constantly. And if the headlines flashing across the bottom of the screen are unfavorable to their boss, aides know it’s time to buckle up for a turbulent ride.
The President boarded Air Force One Friday for the 14-hour flight to Tokyo, and his staff were gearing up for a particularly hellish ride. An event the previous day was supposed to focus on relief for farmers who have been hurt by tariffs, but it quickly devolved into a venting session for Trump, who called the Democratic House speaker “crazy” and said Democrats were trying to inflict a “thousand stabs” on him.
“Keep stabbing,” he said in the Roosevelt Room, while surrounded by farmers in cowboy hats.
The experience of overseas travel with Trump is almost exactly like traveling overseas with a poorly behaved toddler:
Trump won’t stop watching television. The screen-addicted president just keeps doing what he does at home, which is binge-watch TV for hours and get angry. The difference is that, on the plane, they can’t get away:
Trump will spend hours reviewing cable news coverage recorded on a TiVo-like device or sifting through cardboard boxes of newspapers and magazines that have been lugged aboard. He’ll summon sleeping staffers to his office at moments the rest of the plane is dark, impatient to discuss his upcoming meetings or devise a response to something he saw in the media.
Like at home, Trump’s method of governing is to see things on television that anger him and order his staffers to make them go away: “Trump has long insisted that he is treated unfairly by the news media, and if he sees something on television that bothers him — ‘which he invariably will,’ one official quipped — he instructs his staff to fix it, no matter if they are at the White House or flying over the Atlantic Ocean,” according to CNN.
On Trump’s Air Force One, the overnight is dark and full of terrors.
Trump won’t go to sleep. The president and First Lady are the only passengers equipped with lie-flat beds. Despite this, Trump resists his staff’s attempts to get him to go to sleep. Trump “will hold court for hours on end, despite staffers encouraging him to join first lady Melania Trump in the private cabin and get some rest,” the story notes. “He will not go to sleep,” reports a source. Unfortunately, Trump is well past the age at which pediatricians recommend sleep-training.
Other complaints: Trump hates foreign TV and foreign food and he can’t stand it when he has to sit through meetings that aren’t all about him. Read more details at New York Magazine.
President Donald Trump’s declassification order Thursday night has set up a showdown between his own Justice Department and the intelligence community that could trigger resignations and threaten the CIA’s ability to conduct its core business — managing secret intelligence and sources.
Trump’s order directed intelligence agencies to fully comply with Attorney General William Barr’s look at “surveillance activities” during the 2016 election — a probe that Trump’s allies see as a necessary check on government overreach but that critics lambaste as an attempt to create the impression of scandal. Numerous former intelligence officials called the move “unprecedented,” saying it grants the attorney general sweeping powers over the nation’s secrets, subverts the intelligence community and raises troubling legal questions….
“I could see something of a showdown happening here, where the CIA says, ‘We’re not comfortable with the declassification of this material and we won’t provide it without the assurance that you won’t declassify it,’” said a former senior Justice Department official who served under both Trump and President Barack Obama, and requested anonymity to discuss the directive more freely. “They feel that these are their sources, their connections.”
Later on Friday, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats issued a carefully worded statement, confirming that his agencies will turn over “all of the appropriate information” for the DOJ review. But, Coats added, “I am confident that the Attorney General will work with the [intelligence community] in accordance with the long-established standards to protect highly-sensitive classified information that, if publicly released, would put our national security at risk.”
It appeared unprecedented to give an official who is not in charge of an intelligence agency the power to reveal its secrets. Current and former intelligence officials said they were concerned that Barr could selectively declassify information that paints the intelligence agencies and the FBI in a bad light without giving a complete picture of their efforts in 2016.
Officials are also concerned about the possible compromise of intelligence sources, including those deep inside the Russian government.
Ordinarily, any review of intelligence activities would be done by the Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats. But in giving that authority to Barr, the president has turned to someone he perceives as a loyalist and who has already said that he thinks the government spied on the Trump campaign.
“This is a complete slap in the face to the director of national intelligence,” said James Baker, the former FBI general counsel. “So why is the attorney general doing the investigation? Probably because the president trusts the attorney general more,” said Baker, now a director at the R Street Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.
Trump’s desire to investigate the investigators who uncovered the Russian plot to elect him president has taken on a special urgency since the release of the Mueller Report, with Trump repeatedly accusing government officials of “treason,” and the White House declaring: “This whole thing was a TAKEDOWN ATTEMPT at the President of the United States.”
On Thursday night, after Trump had spent days excoriating the purportedly “treasonous” investigators by name, he announced he had granted Barr the “full and complete authority” to declassify documents relating to the Russia probe. The White House also stated that Trump had directed intelligence agencies to “quickly and fully” cooperate with the investigation into the investigation.
It’s reminiscent of Nixon’s secret scheme to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies,” as then-White House Counsel John Dean put it, by manipulating “grant availability, federal contract, litigation, prosecution, etc.” Nixon directed the IRS provide potentially damaging information against some of his enemies. Although the agency’s commissioner refused Nixon’s demand, the scheme became part of the impeachment case against Nixon, which accused him of illegally endeavoring “to obtain [information] from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens.”
While much of Nixon’s scheme was forestalled, Trump appears poised to effectuate his. Barr recently named Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham (best known for investigating the FBI’s corrupt relationship with Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger) to head up an inquiry into the “origins” of the Russia investigation. Unnamed government officials have attempted to minimize the significance of the inquiry by stating to the press that it does not currently entail the use of grand jury subpoenas, but that of course could change at any time—indeed, Senator Lindsey Graham is publicly demanding as much.
Barr, meanwhile, has become remarkably open about his intent to follow the president’s lead by making the investigators the focus of as much opprobrium as possible.
First Amendment advocates are deeply concerned that Trump and Barr’s Justice Department are using Julian Assange to set a course that will rein in investigative journalism. As much as I despise Assange, I have to agree that charging him with espionage could very well lead to frightening attempts by Trump and Barr to control the press.
On Thursday, Julian Assange became the first person to face prosecution in the United States for publishing classified information, although newspapers routinely publish government secrets that have been leaked to them. Defending the unprecedented move, Assistant Attorney General John Demers declared that “Julian Assange is no journalist.” Millions of Americans no doubt agree. And yet, in making this distinction, the Justice Department is drawing a line the First Amendment simply doesn’t draw — and threatening the freedom of every news outlet in the process.
The federal indictment alleges that Assange solicited and received classified information from Chelsea Manning and published that information through WikiLeaks. The documents he published included official assessments of detainees at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; files relating to rules of engagement for U.S. troops in the Iraq War; and State Department cables. Some revealed damning information about the conduct of American soldiers and other government officials. In a few cases, they included the names of foreign citizens who provided the U.S. with intelligence.
Assange is being charged under the Espionage Act, a law passed during World War I to punish spies and traitors. But in recent years, the law increasingly has been used against government employees who leak classified information to the media. The Obama administration brought eight prosecutions for media leaks — more than all previous administrations combined — and the Trump administration has upped the ante, bringing seven prosecutions in the space of two years.
Please read the rest at the WaPo. Trump and Barr are acting out Trump’s claim that the press is “the enemy of the people.”
That’a all I have room for today, although there is lots more breaking news. What stories have you been following?
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You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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