China has moved 150,000 troops and medical supplies to its North Korean border fearing a refugee crisis in the event of US airstrike, it has been claimed.
In criticizing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that even Adolf Hitler did not sink to that level of warfare, despite Hitler's use of gas chambers to kill millions of Jews.
When given the chance to clarify his comment — uttered during Passover, the most celebrated Jewish holiday in the United States — Spicer then said Hitler took Jews “into the Holocaust center” but that Hitler “was not using the gas on his own people in the same way that Assad is doing.”
Spicer brought up Hitler unprompted during Tuesday's White House briefing while emphasizing how seriously the United States takes Assad's use of chemical weapons.
“We didn't use chemical weapons in World War II. You know, you had a, you know, someone as despicable as Hitler who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said. “So you have to if you're Russia, ask yourself: Is this a country that you, and a regime, that you want to align yourself with? You have previously signed onto international agreements, rightfully acknowledging that the use of chemical weapons should be out of bounds by every country.”
[What happens when you tie your career to Donald Trump? Ask Sean Spicer in a few months.]
Later in the briefing, a reporter read Spicer's comments back to him and gave him the opportunity to clarify. Spicer's answer only added more confusion.
“I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no — he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing,” Spicer said, mispronouncing Assad's name. “I mean, there was clearly, I understand your point, thank you. Thank you, I appreciate that. There was not in the, he brought them into the Holocaust center, I understand that. What I am saying in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent, into the middle of towns, it was brought — so the use of it. And I appreciate the clarification there. That was not the intent.”
Bureau said to have secured court an order to monitor Page’s communication during the election because it believed he was acting as a Russian agent
The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of Carter Page, an adviser to the then presidential candidate Donald Trump, because the government had reason to believe Page was acting as a Russian agent, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Page is among the Trump associates under scrutiny as the FBI and congressional committees investigate whether his presidential campaign had ties to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Trump has denied any wrongdoing, but the investigations could shadow his presidency for months or even years.
The Post, citing unnamed law enforcement and other US officials, said the government surveillance application laid out the basis for believing that Page had knowingly engaged in intelligence activities on Russia’s behalf. The newspaper said the application included contacts Page had with a Russian intelligence operative in 2013.
Those contacts are detailed in a 2015 court filing involving a case against three men charged in connection with a cold war-style Russian spying ring. According to the filing, Page provided one of the men documents about the energy industry. He was not charged as part of that case.
An FBI spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment from the Associated Press.
Page, who has denied having improper ties to Russia, told the AP Tuesday he was “happy” that the court order had been revealed and blamed the Obama administration for trying to “suppress dissidents who did not fully support their failed foreign policy”.
“It will be interesting to see what comes out when the unjustified basis for those Fisa requests are more fully disclosed over time,” said Page, using an acronym to refer to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The Fisa court and its orders are highly secretive. Judges grant permission for surveillance if they agree there’s probable cause that the target is an agent of a foreign power. Though the standard is a high bar to meet, applications are hardly ever denied.
The Post reported that a 90-day warrant was issued for Page and had been renewed more than once by the Fisa court.
Page was a little-known investment banker when Trump announced him as a member of his foreign policy advisory team early last year. Trump aides insist the president has no relationship with Page and did not have any dealings with him during the campaign.
Page’s relationship with Russia began to draw scrutiny during the campaign after he visited Moscow in July 2016 for a speech at the New Economic School. While Page said he was traveling in a personal capacity, the school cited his role in the Trump campaign in advertising the speech.
Page was sharply critical of the US in his remarks, saying Washington had a “hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change”.
Days later, Page talked with Russia’s ambassador to the US at an event on the sidelines of the Republican national convention. Jeff Sessions, now the US attorney general, spoke with the Russian envoy at the same event, a conversation he failed to reveal when asked about contacts with Russians during his Senate confirmation hearings.
The campaign began distancing itself from Page after his trip to Russia, saying he was only an informal adviser. By the fall, he appeared to have cut ties to the Republican campaign.
It is unclear how Page got connected with the Trump campaign. One campaign official said Page was recruited by Sam Clovis, an Iowa Republican operative who ran the Trump campaign’s policy shop and is now a senior adviser at the agriculture department. Those who served on the campaign’s foreign policy advisory committee also said they had limited contact with Page.
But in a letter Page sent to the Senate intelligence committee last month, he cast himself as a regular presence in Trump Tower, where the campaign was headquartered.
“I have frequently dined in Trump Grill, had lunch in Trump Cafe, had coffee meetings in the Starbucks at Trump Tower, attended events and spent many hours in campaign headquarters on the fifth floor last year,” Page wrote. He also noted that his office building in New York “is literally connected to the Trump Tower building by an atrium”.
Page, a former Merrill Lynch investment banker who worked out of its Moscow office for three years, now runs Global Energy Capital, a firm focused on energy sectors in emerging markets. According to the company’s website, he has advised on transactions for Gazprom and RAO UES, a pair of Russian entities.
Classified docs contradict Nunes surveillance claims, GOP and Dem sources sayThe crenellated California Republican, Devin Nunes, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, on Thursday, voiced his intentions of keeping away from the investigation of the committee into the Russia’s intervention in the last US presidential election.
The House Committee on Ethics claimed that Mr. Nunes was under scrutiny owing to public reports that said “may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information”. The Ethics Committee confirmed that the mere fact of investigation of allegations against Mr. Nunes, does not indicate any proof that any violation has indeed occurred. The statement by House Committee of Ethics was shortly followed by Mr. Nunes open renouncing of his probe into Russian interference.
After a review of the same intelligence reports brought to light by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal, multiple sources in both parties tell CNN.
Their private assessment contradicts President Donald Trump's allegations that former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice broke the law by requesting the "unmasking" of US individuals' identities. Trump had claimed the matter was a "massive story."
Russia uses Donald Trump’s arguments to question U.S. intelligenceVladimir Putin has said trust between Russia and the United States has deteriorated since President Donald Trump took office.
"One could say that the level of trust on a working level, especially on the military level, has not improved, but rather has deteriorated," Mr Putin said in an interview when asked about relations with Washington since Mr Trump became president.
President Donald Trump‘s frequent questioning about the integrity of his spy agencies is coming back to haunt him.
As his administration used U.S. intelligence to pressure Moscow over its support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin parroted back Trump’s doubts about the reliability of U.S. spy agencies.
“It reminds me of the events in 2003 when U.S. envoys to the Security Council were demonstrating what they said were chemical weapons found in Iraq,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters Tuesday, in response to U.S. agencies blaming Syria’s government for using chemical weapons. “We have seen it all already.”
Trump used the same argument in December, when the intelligence community issued its official assessment that Russia interfered with the U.S. election. Rejecting the assessment, Trump comparing the analyses to the false claims in the lead up the Iraq War.
“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the Trump transition team said in a statement.
“Is that nepotism? Absolutely. Is that also a beautiful thing? Absolutely. Family business is a beautiful thing. The same applies for Ivanka. Ivanka is by his side in Washington.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/12/politics/trump-russia-china-nato-syria/The Trump administration has scrapped an Obama-era plan to set stringent new rules for companies that manage federal student loans, stirring a debate about how to stem a rise in Americans defaulting on student debt.
It was almost as if Donald Trump's outsider presidential campaign never happened Wednesday as he rushed to embrace establishment political and national security positions he once publicly abhorred.
Within a few hours of extraordinary political shape-shifting, Trump abandoned stances that were at the bedrock of his establishment-bashing campaign. NATO, he said, is "no longer obsolete." And he backed down a threat to brand China a currency manipulator.
Then, days after his administration had seemed to accept a ultra realist approach that would allow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to remain in control of his shattered nation, Trump decried him as a "butcher" over chemical weapons attacks on civilians -- fueling speculation he now advocates regime change.
That position, sure to antagonize Russia, came as the President adopted the most skeptical view he has yet displayed on the possibility of improving relations with the Kremlin, a position he once advanced as a candidate and that flew in the face of geopolitical realities and universal elite opinion in Washington.
"Right now we are not getting along with Russia at all. We may be at an all-time low in terms of relationship with Russia," Trump said at a White House news conference, in stark tones at odds with his former vows to ease the new chill in ties with the US nuclear foe.
Donald Trump does five policy flip-flops on one dizzying dayIn another reversal, Trump praised Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, whom he had previously pledged to replace when her term expires, and once accused of holding interest rates low as a political boost for former President Barack Obama.
It was not clear whether Trump's sudden policy flips were the product of a new outlook and worldview. But previous presidents have often remarked that the world looks a lot different from the Oval Office than from a campaign rally.
Donald Trump: China 'not a currency manipulator'Candidate Donald Trump could not have been clearer. On the first day of his presidency, he wrote in late 2015 his administration would deem China a “currency manipulator.”
He repeated his allegation of Chinese manipulation in rally speeches and interviews over the course of the 2016 campaign. Even after his first day in the Oval Office came and went, even after expert after expert pointed out that China had stopped devaluing its yuan, Trump was unrelenting.
“You know, when you talk about, when you talk about currency manipulation, when you talk about devaluations, they are world champions,” he told the Financial Times last week. “And our country hasn’t had a clue, they haven’t had a clue . . . but I do.”
Trump did another interview with a business-focused newspaper on Wednesday. This time, there was no hint of the China-bashing rhetoric of the last two years.
Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he would not label China as a manipulator after all. His explanation: “They’re not currency manipulators.”
This was only one of five separate reversals on a day that was dizzying even by Trump-era dizziness standards.
Over the course of two interviews and a news conference, the president and his administration managed to discard his previous views on China, NATO, interest rates, the national debt and the Export-Import Bank.
Trump Signals Steve Bannon Could Be On His Way OutDonald Trump has said his administration will not label China a currency manipulator, rowing back on a campaign promise.
The US president also left open the possibility of re-nominating Janet Yellen as the head of the Federal Reserve, despite having criticised her.
In an interview with the New York Post's Michael Goodwin, Trump seems to push away Bannon.
"I like Steve, but you have to remember, he was not involved in my campaign until very late," Trump said. "I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn't know Steve. I'm my own strategist, and it wasn't like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary."
Senior White House budget adviser Marcus Peacock is leaving President Donald Trump’s administration to become the second in command at a high-profile business lobby group in Washington that’s looking to increase its influence.
Peacock, a top policy expert in the Office of Management and Budget, joined the Business Roundtable Wednesday and will lead policy work on the group’s key issues related to Trump’s agenda, including tax legislation, infrastructure spending and regulatory reform, the roundtable said.
Peacock will recuse himself from lobbying OMB for six months, the roundtable said. When he joined the Trump administration, Peacock signed an ethics pledge required by the president that would’ve banned him from lobbying his former office for five years. The White House granted him a waiver from that commitment, the roundtable said. At OMB, Peacock served as a special government employee -- a temporary position that allows a person to work no more than 130 days in a year.
U.S. greenback takes tumble after Donald Trump says currency is ‘getting too strong’Aug. 19 was an eventful day for Paul Manafort.
That morning, he stepped down from guiding Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, after a brief tenure during which Mr. Trump won the Republican nomination, Democrats’ emails were hacked and the campaign’s contacts with Russia came under scrutiny. Dogged by revelations about past financial dealings in Ukraine, Mr. Manafort retreated from public view.
But behind the scenes, he was busy with other matters. Papers were recorded that same day creating a shell company controlled by Mr. Manafort that soon received $13 million in loans from two businesses with ties to Mr. Trump, including one that partners with a Ukrainian-born billionaire and another led by a Trump economic adviser. They were among $20 million in loans secured by properties belonging to Mr. Manafort and his wife.
The purpose of the loans is unstated in public records, although at least some of them appear to be part of an effort by Mr. Manafort to stave off a personal financial crisis stemming from failed investments with his son-in-law.
The transactions raise a number of questions, including whether Mr. Manafort’s decision to turn to Trump-connected lenders was related to his role in the campaign, where he had agreed to serve for free.
They also shine a light on the rich real estate portfolio that Mr. Manafort acquired during and after the years he worked in Ukraine. Mr. Manafort, often using shell companies, invested millions of dollars in various properties, including apartments and condos in New York, homes in Florida and Virginia and luxury houses in Los Angeles.
The U.S. dollar and Treasury yields tumbled on Thursday after President Donald Trump said he preferred the Federal Reserve keep interest rates low as the dollar is getting too strong, and said he would not label China a currency manipulator.
The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six trade-weighted peers, plunged 0.7 percent to 100.07.
What's up with all these type of spam posts without an opinion given? Don't want to go back and read a bunch of pages so I'm not sure your angle here.Russia Suspends Cooperation With U.S. in Syria After Missile Strikes
On Thursday evening Hillary Clinton calls for U.S. to bomb Syrian air fields
Kushner Omitted Meeting With Russians on Security Clearance Forms
Kim Jong-un declares he’s on ‘the brink of a war’ with US as Donald Trump is urged to assassinate North Korean despot
He hates freedom and returns to greatnessWhat's up with all these type of spam posts without an opinion given? Don't want to go back and read a bunch of pages so I'm not sure your angle here.
Look, all I know is that whenever @BirdWatcher gives me a useful rating I get proud as fuckWhy are people calling Trump news articles spam?
Lol if u look back, I created a thread called "the Trump shit show" as a spot for real news, but it didn't catch on. Probably because ei spammed it for a couple days lolIts not my fault @Splinty and his cronies fled this thread as soon as real news started to get posted about Trump. Before it was just an echo hall of pro Trump circle-jerk propaganda copied and pasted from The_Donald.
As soon as it lost its 'safe spot' designation all the pro Trump snowflakes fled.
Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, said that he has "no recollection" of discussing, during a trip to Moscow last summer, a possible easing of U.S. sanctions against Russia but that "something may have come up in a conversation."
Because it's all fake news.Why are people calling Trump news articles spam?
It's not the material but the delivery.Why are people calling Trump news articles spam?
Did you need more funny cartoons and pictures? Would that keep you more engaged in the discussion?It's not the material but the delivery.