Laffer is a great name for the orange moron's performance in Helsinki

What we learned from Trump’s worst foreign policy week ever

The five main takeaways from Trump’s disastrous Russia week.

President Donald Trump just survived one of the most disastrous weeks of his presidency.

In the process, however, he demonstrated just how poorly he handles foreign policy issues — and undermined our persistent, misplaced hope that he will somehow do better.

Instead of defending US interests at his press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 16, Trump kowtowed to the dictator. He bought Putin’s denials that Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016 presidential election, even though Trump’s top intelligence officials have repeatedly stated that Russia did — and provided evidence of this fact weeks before Trump was inaugurated.

The US president also failed in other ways. He didn’t shame Putin for working with Iran to prop up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and relentlessly bombing innocent civilians. He also didn’t push back on Putin’s attempt to take over Georgia in 2008, or his invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Trump’s performance was so bad, in fact, that the administration received widespread, bipartisan condemnation for it, and even official congressional action in the form of a nonbinding resolution to rebuke it.

The president doesn’t seem to be bothered by any of this. He just invited Putin to the White House for another meeting in the fall. What’s really surprising about this past week is how caught off guard the American people were by what transpired.

Here are the five main takeaways, in case you missed the action.

Trump often insists on going rogue, no matter the situation

Trump’s staff gave him around 100 pages of briefing materials before his Putin meeting, telling him exactly what he should and shouldn’t say. He ignored almost all of it, and the entire meeting went “very much counter to plan,” a source told the Washington Post on July 16.

Yeah, no kidding.

But Trump made it worse. Roughly 24 hours after he sided with Putin over US intelligence officials on the question of whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election, his staff convinced Trump to reverse course. Reading from a prepared statement, Trump said that he accepted the intelligence community’s conclusion that Moscow meddled.

Then came his next sentence: “Could be other people also, a lot of people out there.”

POTUS: "I accept our intelligence community's conclusion that Russia's meddling in the 2016 election took place. Could be other people also...There was no collusion at all." https://fxn.ws/2uwvEeB

2:05 PM - Jul 17, 2018
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You could almost hear the sounds of his staffers’ palms hitting their foreheads.

Even when Trump tried to do damage control, he couldn’t. And there’s one simple reason for that: Trump can’t control himself.

The president’s staff surely knows this and tries their best to work around it. But the implications for America’s foreign policy are staggering: No matter what Trump’s team says or does, Trump will act the way he wants to.

That means that perhaps more than any other president, Trump will conduct US foreign policy as his own vanity project — and not solely in the interest of the people he serves.

Trump’s foreign policy: keep your friends far and your enemies close

There does seem to be a method to Trump’s global madness: He likes to lambaste allies but flatter and cajole America’s adversaries.

Take his trip to NATO last week:

He blasted allies for not spending enough on defense, calling them “delinquent,” and even suggesting they double their commitments.
He repeatedly interrupted NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, at one point making the alliance leader praise him.
He insulted Germany, calling it a “captive to Russia” because it imports energy from the country.
And all of that took place at the opening breakfast of the two-day summit.

Things just went downhill from there. Trump arrived 30 minutes late to a meeting on Russian aggression, skipped at least two scheduled meetings with world leaders, and threatened to “go it alone” if European allies didn’t pay more for their own defense, seeming to suggest he might pull the US out of the alliance.

Trump ultimately declared the summit a success in a bizarre impromptu press conference shortly after, claiming he got allies to pay up for defense and declaring himself “a very stable genius.” (French President Emmanuel Macron disputes that NATO countries agreed to Trump’s demands.)

Compare all of that to Trump’s Monday with Putin. A two-hour, one-on-one meeting with no staff around. A long, bilateral working lunch with staff to discuss further details of the US-Russia relationship. Then a 45-minute press conference where the president proceeded to praise Putin and Russia. It was vaguely reminiscent of Trump’s time with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un a month earlier.

There’s one potential reason why the president acts this way: Trump believes America’s friends should do more to promote US interests, and feels he must be nice to adversaries to get them on Washington’s side.

Whatever the reason may be, Trump has completely flipped decades of American foreign policy on its head — and this past week was the strongest example of it yet.

Republicans have a bending — but not breaking — point

The backlash was swift after Trump’s disastrous press conference with Putin on Monday — and much of it came from the president’s own party.

Even reliable White House allies, like House Speaker Paul Ryan, issued statements slamming Trump’s refusal to admit that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election. “There is no question that Russia interfered in our election and continues attempts to undermine democracy here and around the world,” Ryan said in a statement hours after the press conference. “The president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally.”

Republicans stood up to Trump again on Wednesday. The White House didn’t rule out letting Russians interrogate 11 Americans — including a former US ambassador to Moscow — for alleged crimes for which there is no evidence.

The next day, the GOP-led Senate passed a resolution with a unanimous 98-0 vote discouraging the US from handing over current or former US officials to the Kremlin.

But the resolution was nonbinding, meaning Congress has no way of actually implementing it, and there are no consequences if it does happen.

What’s worse, the GOP rejected two other nonbinding proposals before voting on the one it passed. The first one expressed the Senate’s support for the US intelligence community and Mueller’s probe, and the other also backed US spies and called for hearings about the Trump-Putin meeting to learn about what they said to each other.

So when faced with three resolutions, all of which were symbolic, Republicans only backed the weakest of them. It shows the GOP will bend when it comes to Trump’s handling of Russia, but not even Trump’s performance in Helsinki could get Republicans to break with him.

There’s a massive breakdown in American foreign policy

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats likely knows the names of Chinese spies posing as students at American universities, which US grids Iranian hackers gained access to, and even what you just texted your cousin.

What he doesn’t know is what Trump said to Putin during their meeting. That’s right: The person charged with knowing many of the world’s secrets doesn’t know what his boss said in a high-stakes meeting.

That was just one of many shocking, and uncharacteristically candid, revelations Coats offered a crowd at the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday.
It gets worse. Coats also said he had no idea Trump had planned to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then-Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the White House in May 2017 — and he also had no clue that Trump had invited Putin to a second meeting in Washington.

When NBC’s Andrea Mitchell broke that news to Coats during their interview, he was clearly caught off guard. “Say that again?” he said, laughing nervously as the audience joined him. “Okay. That’s going to be special.”

The White House, naturally, is unhappy. “Coats appeared to be laughing at the president, playing to his audience of the intellectual elite in a manner that was sure to infuriate Trump,” an administration official told the Washington Post.

What this petty squabble shows is two amazing breakdowns in the way this White House runs. First, the president’s top officials don’t know what Trump may or may not have agreed to with Putin. And second, at least one top Trump official doesn’t seem to care who knows about it.

This is not normal. But then again, we shouldn’t be surprised.

The surprising thing about Trump’s Helsinki meeting? That we were all surprised.

Here’s a question I wrestle with: Trump is not a normal president, so why do we keep expecting him to act normally?

I asked myself this again during the reaction to Trump’s press conference with Putin. The political community was shocked — SHOCKED! — that he would side with Putin over American intelligence officials, brag about his election win, and repudiate special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe in front of the entire world instead of, well, acting presidential and defending US interests.

But why did we expect anything else? Trump has frequently upended our expectations about how an American president should act while abroad — just like he has upended many other norms of the presidency.

And it’s not just with Putin. Trump has also:

Called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — a brutal dictator who starves and imprisons millions of people — “very honorable” in the lead-up to their June summit.

Snubbed German Chancellor Angela Merkel by not shaking her hand during their March 2017 Oval Office meeting.

Pushed the leader of Montenegro, a NATO ally, out of the way for a group photo.

Refused to affirm NATO’s Article 5, which says an attack on one is an attack on all, during a May 2017 visit to alliance’s headquarters. (He later did affirm Article 5 weeks later, and the White House tells me America’s commitment to NATO is “ironclad.”)

I could go on, but you get the idea. The Putin meeting was arguably worse than any of the above examples, but the point remains the same: Trump is a disaster when he represents America around the world. That he was a disaster again in Helsinki should have come as no surprise to anyone.

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/20/17595476/ ... -takeaways

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White House: Trump will consider letting Russia question investor, former ambassador

President Donald Trump will consider allowing Russian investigators to question U.S.-born investor Bill Browder, former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and others after President Vladimir Putin floated the idea, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday.

“He said it was an interesting idea. He didn’t commit to anything,” Sanders said at the daily press briefing. “He wants to work with his team and determine if there’s any validity that would be helpful to the process…It was an idea they threw out.”

Later in the day, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert called the concept "absolutely absurd."

"The fact that they want to question 11 American citizens, and the assertions that the Russian government is making about those American citizens — we do not stand by those assertions," Nauert said.

In a joint press conference with Trump Monday, Putin proposed that the U.S. allow Russian officials to interview Americans in exchange for Russia allowing U.S. officials to interview Russians, such as the 12 people recently indicted for their role in hacking Democratic computer systems in 2016.

“This kind of effort should be a mutual one,” Putin said Monday. “We would expect that the Americans would reciprocate.”

The idea was “an incredible offer,” Trump said.

The Russian leader mentioned Browder, whom, he said, “we have an interest of questioning" over tax issues. Browder has been at odds with the Kremlin for years, including because of his advocacy for efforts to sanction Russians suspected of committing human rights violations.

On Tuesday, the Russian Prosecutor General’s office released a wishlist of potential people to extradite, including members of the State and Homeland Security departments and members of the CIA. McFaul, a former ambassador who had strained relations with the Kremlin and has since said he was banned from traveling to Russia, was also included.

"I hope the White House corrects the record and denounces in categorical terms this ridiculous request from Putin," McFaul tweeted Wednesday. "Not doing so creates moral equivalency between a legitimacy US indictment of Russian intelligence officers and a crazy, completely fabricated story invented by Putin."
It would be an extraordinary step to allow Russian investigators access to current or former U.S. officials. Browder, though born in the U.S., is now a British citizen, so it is unclear how a deal involving him would work.

The U.S. does not currently have an extradition treaty with Russia. U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman said Sunday on NBC that Moscow would “no doubt” try to change that.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/ ... ing-731616

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Senate Rebuffs Russia Interviews of Americans in Rebuke to Trump

The Republican-led Senate effectively rebuked President Donald Trump for considering Russia’s request to question U.S. officials, giving voice to growing unease over the president’s shifting policies toward his country’s biggest adversary after his summit with Vladimir Putin.

In a resolution adopted 98-0 on Thursday, senators called on the U.S. to refuse to make any officials available for interrogation by Putin’s government. Minutes before the vote was scheduled to begin, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement rejecting the Russian proposal. CONVENIENT

"It is a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it," Sanders said. A day earlier she didn’t shoot down the idea, instead saying Trump was “going to meet with his team” about it.

The measure that forced the White House’s hand is nonbinding. But the vote marked a rare decision by Republican leader Mitch McConnell to take up a resolution written by top Democrat Chuck Schumer undercutting the GOP president.

"Let this resolution be a warning to the administration that Congress will not allow this to happen," Schumer of New York said on the Senate floor just before the vote. “I call on President Trump to say once and for all, not through his spokespeople, that the lopsided, disgraceful trade he called an ‘incredible offer’ is off the table.”

Some administration officials have said they are concerned there may be no shaking a public perception that Trump is too cozy with Putin. It was only three days ago that Trump stood next to the Russian president in Helsinki and questioned U.S. intelligence findings that the Kremlin meddled in the 2016 election.

Since then Trump issued a belated clarification, undercut the reversal with qualifiers, made new comments contradicting U.S. intelligence and then sent his spokeswoman out to deny it happened. Further, the lack of a public explanation of what Trump and Putin may have agreed to during more than two hours in private has left the entire U.S. policy toward Russia unclear.

“What did you agree to in that room?” Democratic Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania said on the Senate floor before the vote, saying the only accounts so far have come from Russian officials.

‘Meet With His Team’

At the summit with Trump in Helsinki, Putin proposed letting Russians observe interrogations of former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and other Americans. In exchange, U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller could send members of his team to watch Russian questioning of 12 Russian intelligence agents indicted by a U.S. grand jury last week in connection with hacking Democratic Party email accounts before the 2016 election.

After the Senate’s unanimous vote, McFaul wrote on Twitter, "98-0. Bipartisanship is not dead yet in the US Senate. Thank you all for your support."

Allowing the interrogation of a former American ambassador would be an unprecedented breach in protections traditionally provided to the nation’s diplomats.

‘Look Weak’

Trump’s willingness to entertain the request makes him “look weak in the eyes of Vladimir Putin,” McFaul said Thursday. “We look like we won’t push back on outrageous, crazy ideas,” McFaul, who served as ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, said on MSNBC. “That is not even good for President Trump.”

The Democratic resolution, S.Res. 584, says, “It is the sense of Congress that the United States should refuse to make available any current or former diplomat, civil servant, political appointee, law enforcement official, or member of the Armed Forces of the United States for questioning by the government of Vladimir Putin.”

While McFaul’s name wasn’t mentioned at the news conference held by the U.S. and Russian leaders in Helsinki, Trump described Putin’s proposed reciprocal interrogations as an “incredible” deal.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said at the Aspen Security Conference on Wednesday that listening in as Russia interrogates suspects wanted by the U.S. is “certainly not high on our list of investigative techniques.” And letting Russians come to the U.S. to observe questioning, he said wryly, is “probably even lower on our list.”

‘Grave Concern’

The Republican-led Senate effectively rebuked President Donald Trump for considering Russia’s request to question U.S. officials, giving voice to growing unease over the president’s shifting policies toward his country’s biggest adversary after his summit with Vladimir Putin.

In a resolution adopted 98-0 on Thursday, senators called on the U.S. to refuse to make any officials available for interrogation by Putin’s government. Minutes before the vote was scheduled to begin, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement rejecting the Russian proposal.

"It is a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it," Sanders said. A day earlier she didn’t shoot down the idea, instead saying Trump was “going to meet with his team” about it.

The measure that forced the White House’s hand is nonbinding. But the vote marked a rare decision by Republican leader Mitch McConnell to take up a resolution written by top Democrat Chuck Schumer undercutting the GOP president.

"Let this resolution be a warning to the administration that Congress will not allow this to happen," Schumer of New York said on the Senate floor just before the vote. “I call on President Trump to say once and for all, not through his spokespeople, that the lopsided, disgraceful trade he called an ‘incredible offer’ is off the table.”

Some administration officials have said they are concerned there may be no shaking a public perception that Trump is too cozy with Putin. It was only three days ago that Trump stood next to the Russian president in Helsinki and questioned U.S. intelligence findings that the Kremlin meddled in the 2016 election.

Since then Trump issued a belated clarification, undercut the reversal with qualifiers, made new comments contradicting U.S. intelligence and then sent his spokeswoman out to deny it happened. Further, the lack of a public explanation of what Trump and Putin may have agreed to during more than two hours in private has left the entire U.S. policy toward Russia unclear.

“What did you agree to in that room?” Democratic Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania said on the Senate floor before the vote, saying the only accounts so far have come from Russian officials.

‘Meet With His Team’

At the summit with Trump in Helsinki, Putin proposed letting Russians observe interrogations of former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and other Americans. In exchange, U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller could send members of his team to watch Russian questioning of 12 Russian intelligence agents indicted by a U.S. grand jury last week in connection with hacking Democratic Party email accounts before the 2016 election.

After the Senate’s unanimous vote, McFaul wrote on Twitter, "98-0. Bipartisanship is not dead yet in the US Senate. Thank you all for your support."

Allowing the interrogation of a former American ambassador would be an unprecedented breach in protections traditionally provided to the nation’s diplomats.

‘Look Weak’

Trump’s willingness to entertain the request makes him “look weak in the eyes of Vladimir Putin,” McFaul said Thursday. “We look like we won’t push back on outrageous, crazy ideas,” McFaul, who served as ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, said on MSNBC. “That is not even good for President Trump.”

The Democratic resolution, S.Res. 584, says, “It is the sense of Congress that the United States should refuse to make available any current or former diplomat, civil servant, political appointee, law enforcement official, or member of the Armed Forces of the United States for questioning by the government of Vladimir Putin.”

While McFaul’s name wasn’t mentioned at the news conference held by the U.S. and Russian leaders in Helsinki, Trump described Putin’s proposed reciprocal interrogations as an “incredible” deal.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said at the Aspen Security Conference on Wednesday that listening in as Russia interrogates suspects wanted by the U.S. is “certainly not high on our list of investigative techniques.” And letting Russians come to the U.S. to observe questioning, he said wryly, is “probably even lower on our list.”

‘Grave Concern’

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters Wednesday that a Russian grilling of a former diplomat “would be a grave concern to our former colleagues.” She said the Russians are making “absolutely absurd” assertions about 11 American citizens they want to question, although she declined to rule out the Russian proposal when asked about it repeatedly.

Also on Thursday, McConnell ordered Senate committees to review additional sanctions and “additional measures that could respond to or deter Russian malign behavior.”

A number of senators have signed on to a bill offered by Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Democrat Chris Van Hollen of Maryland that would impose stiff sanctions on Russia’s energy and banking sectors if the Director of National Intelligence -- not Trump -- certifies that Russia interfered in any future election.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -americans

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The Memo: Summit fallout hits White House

President Trump has endured one of the worst weeks of his tenure since Monday’s disastrous press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin — and he is not out of the woods yet

The initial storm over the news conference was prolonged by a series of missteps and fresh controversies for the administration.

Trump’s subsequent invite to Putin to visit Washington in the fall was met with consternation even by many Republicans. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was apparently taken by surprise when the news of the invite was given to him at a live event in Aspen, Colo., by Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.

The White House also took almost 24 hours to clear up confusion as to whether it would be willing to make American citizens available for questioning by Russian authorities — the kind of request that had previously been considered out of bounds by members of both parties.

Then there was another mini-drama over whether Trump had meant, in comments to the media as they were being ushered out of the White House Cabinet room, that he did not believe Russia was still targeting the United States.

The entire saga has left Republicans reeling and dismayed.

“Frankly, it has been two really terrible weeks,” said Doug Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee, referring not just to the Helsinki summit with Putin but also to the president’s travels elsewhere in Europe that came before.

“Helsinki was such a disaster that we have lost sight of the disasters that came before that in Brussels and London,” Heye said. “Then, from a PR perspective, obviously the back and forth they’ve had this week has also been a disaster — and not how crisis communications is handled, to put it mildly.”

Even those Republicans who did not take quite so apocalyptic a view of the events of the week are desperate for the controversy to end.

“They’ve got to get off Russia,” said GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. “Do I think July 16 will be the day that determines who wins the House? I don’t. But [Russia] crowds out a stellar Supreme Court pick and the strong economy and anything else they are trying to push.”

Barring a real cataclysm, the Putin furor seems certain to extend at least through the weekend. There is also the possibility of further drama. Figures outside the administration — including former CIA Director John Brennan — have called on people serving in Trump’s national security team to resign in protest. Meanwhile, Trump aides are reportedly furious at Coats’s public remarks.

Some Republican lawmakers were forthright in their criticism of Trump in the immediate wake of the Putin press conference. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called it “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in recent memory.”

But GOP condemnation seemed to taper off as Trump sought to walk-back some of his most controversial comments. He insisted that he had “full faith” in U.S. intelligence agencies during one appearance at the White House, while he indicated during an interview with CBS News that he held Putin personally responsible for Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Republican lawmakers are also reacting to polls that have shown the president with approval ratings of around 90 percent among GOP voters. Amid this week’s firestorm, a CBS News poll found that 68 percent of Republican voters approved of his handling of the summit with Putin.

Democrats and other Trump critics acknowledge his strength with his base. But they also note that the opinion of his hardcore supporters is not the be-all and end-all. Republican candidates in November’s midterm elections — as well as the president himself in 2020 — will need to have some capacity to win the support of less committed Republican-leaning voters and independents.

It is in this regard that the Putin debacle may be so damaging, they say.

“I have believed for a long time that the 40 percent or so that are with him are probably not going to ever budge, on anything,” said Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who worked on Sen. Doug Jones’s (D-Ala.) shock victory earlier this year. “But the problem is that [the Russia controversy] just completely locked out the other 60 percent. I don’t think he’ll get them.”

Trippi argued that the atmosphere of chaos and confusion that has enveloped the White House this week is at least as damaging — if not more so — than any specifics of the administration’s Russia policy.

“It’s like Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride,” Trippi said, adding that many people, including the share of Republican voters who did not approve of the president’s conduct in Helsinki, “want to get off.”

Even figures who are normally supportive of the president acknowledge that a corner needs to be turned soon.

“I think the administration has weathered the storm, but they need to get back on track with affirmative policies like tax reform,” said Brad Blakeman, a veteran of President George W. Bush’s White House.

“They need to get away from foreign policy for a while and trade more on domestic policies.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... hite-house

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1. ‘UNACCEPTABLE

Russia’s Top Diplomat Complains to Pompeo About ‘Fabricated Charges’ Against Maria Butina

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to release a Russian woman accused of working as a Kremlin agent in the U.S., claiming the charges against her are “fabricated.” Lavrov brought up the issue during a phone call about improving bilateral relations following President Trump’s meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, according to a statement from the ministry. The pair’s chat came just days after the accused Russian, Maria Butina, was denied bail and ordered to remain behind bars until her trial. Lavrov “stressed the unacceptability of the actions of the U.S. authorities who arrested Russian citizen Butina on the basis of fabricated charges, and the need for her early release,” the statement said. The two are said to have also “exchanged views on prospects for further building relations.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russias-t ... a?ref=home

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Why I’m No Longer a Russiagate Skeptic

Facts are piling up, and it’s getting harder to deny what’s staring us in the face.

When I wrote, back in February, that I was skeptical that President Donald Trump would ever be proved to have secretly colluded with Russia to sway the 2016 election in his favor, I mistyped.

What I meant to write was that I wasn’t skeptical.

Last week’s events have nullified my previous skepticism. To recap: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein revealed indictments against 12 Russians for the hacks of the Democratic National Committee, and we learned that Russian hackers went after Hillary Clinton’s private office for the first time on the very day Trump said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” At the NATO summit in Brussels, Trump attacked a close European ally—Germany—and generally questioned the value of the alliance. Next, he visited the United Kingdom and trashed Prime Minister Theresa May. Then, in Helsinki, he met with Vladimir Putin privately for two hours, with no U.S. officials present other than a translator. After this suspicious meeting, he sang the Russian strongman’s praises at a news conference at which he said he viewed Putin’s denials on a par with the unanimous and unchallenged conclusions of America’s intelligence agencies.
With every other world leader, the physically imposing Trump attempts to dominate—witness his alpha-male handshakes with French President Emanuel Macron or his flamboyant man-spreading next to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Yet with the diminutive Putin—who is maybe 5 feet, 6 inches tall—he’s oddly submissive. During the public portion of their encounter, Trump was slumping in his chair, as if defeated. Why? Why did he insist on a one-on-one meeting with Putin in the first place?

And why does Trump inevitably return to questioning the irrefutable evidence that Russia meddled in the 2016 election? We can dispense with the explanation, conveyed anonymously by senior administration officials, that “his brain can’t process that collusion and cyberattacks are two different things.” We can also forget about the widely held theory that he views the various Russia investigations as a threat to the legitimacy of his election, and therefore a devastating blow to his sense of self-worth.

Or, at least, neither offers a sufficient explanation for why Trump consistently parrots Russian talking points on NATO, the American media, U.S. troop deployments, Ukraine and the legitimacy of the postwar liberal order. What does any of that have to do with his tender ego? Do we really think Trump has an informed position on, say, Montenegro’s history of aggression? Could Trump find Montenegro on a map?

Nor is it credible to point to actions his administration has taken that are “tough on Russia.” Trump has questioned proposals to supply the Ukrainian government with anti-tank missiles and sniped at Congress for wanting to impose fresh sanctions on Moscow.

What about my argument that Trump was constitutionally incapable of keeping a secret? That, too, is no longer operative. Since I first wrote, we’ve learned that Trump—a skinflint who once had his own charity pay a $7 fee to register his son for the Boy Scouts—was willing to shell out $130,000 of his own money to hush up a fling with a porn actress, Stormy Daniels. And he still hasn’t copped to sleeping with her, despite the discovery of their nondisclosure agreement and contemporaneous evidence that the affair really happened. None of this leaked out until well after the election, proving that Trump is indeed capable of keeping his yap shut when he wants. Not convinced? How about the fact that Brett Kavanaugh’s name didn’t leak out as Trump’s latest Supreme Court pick until minutes before the announcement?

Politically speaking, Trump’s devotion to his pro-Putin line doesn’t make sense. Yes, the GOP base is impressionable, and perhaps Republican voters would accept it if Trump came out and said, “You bet, Russia helped get me elected, and wasn’t that a good thing? We couldn’t let Crooked Hillary win!” But nobody would say his odd solicitousness toward the Kremlin leader is a political winner, and it certainly causes an unnecessary amount of friction with Republicans in Congress. He’s kept it up at great political cost to himself, and that suggests either that he is possessed by an anomalous level of conviction on this one issue, despite his extraordinary malleability on everything else—or that he’s beholden to Putin in some way.

You don’t have to buy Jonathan Chait’s sleeper agent theory of Trump to believe that something is deeply weird about all this. Nor do you need to be convinced that Putin is hanging onto a recording of something untoward that may have taken place in a certain Moscow hotel room. You don’t even have to buy the theory that Trump’s business is overly dependent on illicit flows of Russia money, giving Putin leverage. As Julia Ioffe posits, the kompromat could well be the mere fact of the Russian election meddling itself.

As for my argument that Trump’s collection of misfit toys was too incompetent, and too riven by infighting, to collaborate with Russia, this one might still be true. There were certainly sporadic, repeated attempts by some on or around the campaign to collaborate, but we don’t know if, or how, those flirtations were consummated. But certainly, the intent was there, as Donald Trump, Jr. has said publicly. They were all too happy to accept Russian help, even if they weren’t sure they would be enough to win in the end.


We might never get clear evidence that Trump made a secret deal with the Kremlin. It would be great to see his tax returns, and perhaps Mueller has evidence of private collusion that we have yet to see. These details matter. But in a larger sense, everything we need to know about Trump’s strange relationship with Russia is already out in the open. As The Donald himself might say, there’s something going on.

If Trump is indeed a tool of Putin, what might we expect him to do next? Well, I wouldn’t be sleeping too soundly in Kiev, Podgorica or Riga right now. If the Kremlin tests America’s wobbling commitment to NATO, watch how Trump responds. And pay attention, too, to what the White House says about Russia’s absurd demand that the U.S. hand over former ambassador to Moscow Mike McFaul—Wednesday’s spectacle of Sarah Huckabee Sanders refusing to immediately rule out the idea flies in the face of decades of American diplomacy. Trump may have grudgingly admitted that Russia did the deed, but nobody should be surprised if he starts shedding doubt on it all over again. Maybe, just maybe, he can’t admit that Moscow tried to put him in the Oval Office because he’s under strict instructions not to.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... tic-219022

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Coats faces greater scrutiny as fallout from Russia summit spreads

Trump is said to be exasperated with his national intelligence director, but a direct challenge could lead to a congressional firestorm.

As the fallout from his Russia summit spills into the weekend and spreads among his staff, President Donald Trump is retreating to the site of his most consequential personnel decision, the dismissal of FBI Director James Comey last spring.

Trump’s return to his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, where he often surrounds himself with close friends and family, follows a calamitous week, beginning with the news conference in Finland with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and ending with news that the president’s longtime personal attorney made a recording of Trump talking about payments related to a former Playboy model.

Trump loyalists have come to see the White House staff’s response as insufficiently supportive, as officials inside struggle to explain the president’s seesaw statements about Putin and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The hair-trigger situation culminated in an on-brand yet off-message remark by his director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, stirring further angst among some in the president’s inner circle.

Trump, according to two outside allies, has grown exasperated with Coats, whom he blindsided Thursday when White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced on Twitter that the administration was working to bring Putin to Washington this fall. The news landed while Coats was in the middle of a live interview with NBC in Aspen, Colorado.

Republicans in Congress have managed to block measures backing the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. But the Trump allies told POLITICO that directly confronting, let alone firing, Coats — who before the latest blow-up over Russia was believed to be weighing his own retirement date — could create an uncontainable firestorm on Capitol Hill.

One former Trump senior official described the situation to POLITICO in one word: “meltdown.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment, including whom the president will meet with this weekend.

On Friday, Coats called and spoke with Vice President Mike Pence, according to a person familiar with the conversation. In the past he has said he has a good relationship with Trump, and in late 2016, when he was still a U.S. senator representing Indiana, he praised the president-elect’s negotiating skills.

Coats, who strongly denied plans to retire when asked by POLITICO in February, was seen by intelligence-watchers as bringing a calming stability amid friction between Trump and the national security establishment.

Still, some who have kept in contact with his office had been saying for months that it made sense that Coats, who came out of retirement last year when Trump selected him, wouldn’t want to stay in the intelligence role indefinitely.

For one thing, Coats turned 75 in May — and he previously indicated that he didn’t want to work long past that age, according to several of these people.

“He was not particularly eager to take the job to begin with and was sort of talked into it on the theory of when the president asks, you should serve,” one former high-ranking intelligence official, who is in regular contact with current intelligence leaders, said early this year. Like others who spoke to POLITICO, the former official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations.

As the director of national intelligence, Coats is in charge of coordinating the work of 17 military and civilian intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency and FBI — a task he has carried out with a notably low public profile. His time in that office coincided with the rise of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the former CIA director, who served a much more vocal role for the Trump administration on issues such as Iran and North Korea. Both men, in their roles, provided Trump with his daily intelligence briefing, Pompeo explained earlier this year during an event at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

A second former senior intelligence official said of the post of director of national intelligence: “The role typically has been low-key. But Director Coats has been particularly absent from public view.”

‘I was just doing my job,’ Coats says, defending Russian election meddling findings

In his statement to POLITICO in February, Coats said that in the coming months, he would be “excited to lead the upcoming announcement and implementation of the ODNI transformation and IC future-focused initiatives my team has been working on for the past year, which will help ensure the Intelligence Community is best positioned to address the current and future threats facing our nation.”

A Coats retirement or dismissal would set the stage for a potentially contentious fight over who should replace him, particularly with Trump’s outreach to Putin reaching new levels of engagement and the upcoming midterm elections.

Among the agencies Coats works with, the FBI in particular has come under heavy criticism from the White House and congressional Republicans who accuse it of being biased in its investigation of whether Trump team colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. The bureau is also looking at whether Trump and his aides may have obstructed justice in the probe.

Trump’s struggle with the intelligence community was already well underway when he announced Coats’ selection in early January 2017.

This was a rocky period when the incoming president was repeatedly casting doubt on intelligence agencies’ conclusion that top Moscow officials had orchestrated a sweeping digital influence campaign eventually aimed at putting the billionaire in the Oval Office. Similar to his more recent attacks on the FBI, Trump argued then that intelligence agencies were pushing a false narrative aimed at undermining his administration.

Soon after the election, The Intercept reported that Trump and his top advisers had worked on a plan to scale back the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — and had even discussed scraping the director post entirely. For both Republicans and Democrats rattled by the reports, Coats was a reassuring presence.

“He seems like a reasonable person, gets along with people, isn’t going to rock the boat, willing to do it,” the former senior official told POLITICO. “Put that all together, I could see how they arrived at him.”

Indeed, Coats’ confirmation hearing reflected a sense that the former lawmaker — who had also served as an ambassador to Germany during the George W. Bush administration — was taking the job out of a sense of duty.

“You’ve agreed to do a job that many have called thankless — why?” Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Chairman, asked Coats.

“I believe, if asked by your leader of your country to serve your country again, the answer needed to be yes,” he responded.

Trump’s intelligence chief on upcoming Putin visit: ‘That’s gonna be special’

But Coats’ role was soon complicated by the rise of Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas who had made a name for himself on the House Intelligence Committee and the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Observers speculated that Pompeo’s rise as Trump’s go-to person on intelligence issues might have made the job less desirable for Coats.

Trump and much of his national security team view the CIA, not ODNI, as the embodiment of the American intelligence apparatus, according to current and former intelligence-focused individuals both on and off Capitol Hill. Well before Pompeo was elevated to secretary of state, Trump’s team turned to him to deliver public remarks on the Iran nuclear deal, North Korea and WikiLeaks — which he labeled a “non-state hostile intelligence service” — and to forcefully push back on criticism of Pompeo’s recent meetings with two Russian spy chiefs.

Last November, at Trump’s request, Pompeo met with William Binney, a former National Security Agency official turned surveillance critic who has disputed Russian involvement in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee leading up to the 2016 election. Many observers thought the meeting lent credence to a notion that Pompeo’s own agency has discredited.

Trump has also continued to toy with overhauling the U.S. intelligence apparatus, according to news reports. Foreign Policy reported last month that the president might choose Stephen Feinberg, a billionaire private equity executive, to helm a key intelligence advisory board.

During this period, Coats has mostly stayed out of the spotlight.

If Coats were to step down, Trump might struggle to get a successor confirmed, given the looming 2018 midterms and the Russia controversy. Observers have also long speculated that career intelligence professionals might not want the job, given the contentious relationship between Trump and the broader intelligence community.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/ ... sia-735089

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For Supreme Court, Trump chose a nominee ‘who’d have his back’

Over the course of many years, the right has created an intellectual architecture that exists for a single purpose: to scrutinize jurists for their fealty to the conservative cause. The result is a dynamic in which Donald Trump and his White House team didn’t have to come up with a short list of Supreme Court nominees; the president could outsource the heavy lifting to interest groups that were only too pleased to deliver such a list to the Oval Office.

With this in mind, Trump was given the task of simply choosing from a list that was prepared for him, and to no one’s surprise, he chose Brett Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge in Washington.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) once famously described Kavanaugh as the “Forrest Gump of Republican politics,” because he’s popped up in so many of the major events of the last generation. Bush v. Gore? Kavanaugh was there. The investigation into Vince Foster’s suicide? Kavanaugh was there. Ken Starr’s investigation into the Clinton-Lewinski affair? Kavanaugh was there. The Elian Gonzales controversy? Kavanaugh was there.

It’s this background that likely would’ve made the conservative judge a favorite of any Republican president filing a vacancy on the high court. What’s unique to this president, however, are the unique circumstances he finds himself in: Donald Trump is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, as well as multiple civil suits.

And that’s one of the key elements that makes his nomination of Brett Kavanaugh so important. The Washington Post explained a couple of weeks ago:

U.S. Circuit Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy who was nominated replace him, has argued that presidents should not be distracted by civil lawsuits, criminal investigations or even questions from a prosecutor or defense attorney while in office. […]

Having observed the weighty issues that can consume a president, Kavanaugh wrote, the nation’s chief executive should be exempt from “time-consuming and distracting” lawsuits and investigations, which “would ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis.”

As the dust settles on last night’s news, this is the angle that warrants considerable attention: the sitting president facing potential legal liability specifically chose a judge who believes sitting presidents should never have to face legal liabilities.
Or as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said on the show last night, Trump was presented with plenty of choices, but he picked someone for the Supreme Court whom he knew would “have his back.”

Let’s not lose sight of landscape: the president’s former national security advisor will be in court today for the start of his criminal sentencing process. The man who oversaw the president’s political operation is facing multiple felony counts and is already sitting in a jail cell. The president’s longtime personal attorney is facing possible felony charges and he’s just hired a defense attorney with experience from the Clinton impeachment saga.

Trump himself may find himself in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s legal crosshairs, at which point it may fall to the Supreme Court to answer weighty questions of historic significance. Can the president be subpoenaed to testify? Can the president be criminally indicted? Can the president pardon himself? Can the president pardon others if the purpose of those pardons is to undermine the case against himself? Can states bring charges against those who’ve received federal pardons from the president? Can the president simply dispense with an ongoing probe in which he’s the subject?
These are, by and large, unsettled questions, which may soon need answers thanks to the scope of Trump’s ongoing scandals.

And there’s Brett Kavanaugh, who’s already said in writing that a president should not have to deal with such burdens. We’re left with a dynamic in which Trump was handed a Supreme Court short list to choose from, and he may very well have prioritized self-preservation, picking the judge who’s most likely to protect this president’s fate.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show ... e-his-back

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For those that believe the "crumbs" BS from politicians and fake news ...

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Tax cuts only help the wealthy, right? American paychecks show otherwise

By Kay Coles James, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers

Like you, we are seeing something wonderful and—until recently—unusual as we enter stores: taped to the front window or hanging behind the counter is a “Help Wanted” sign.

What a welcome change from previous summers! Every month this year has posted strong jobs reports, and the unemployment rate among minorities is now at an historic low. Just last month, another 213,000 jobs were added as businesses continued the longest-running job growth trend in our history.

Since Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December, Uncle Sam has been demanding less from us in tax payments. And as a result, American families across the country are better off now because they are benefiting from bigger paychecks and more jobs.

This year alone, the average household in Washington State’s 5th District will see a tax cut of 13 percent and an increase in take-home pay of more than $17,000 over the next 10 years, according to a new study from The Heritage Foundation. President Donald Trump promised a tax cut for the middle class, and that’s just what Congress delivered.

Meanwhile, residents of New York’s 15th District, one of the lowest income districts in America, saw their income taxes cut by about 30 percent. Next time you hear someone say that Trump’s tax cut benefits only the wealthy, remind them of the folks in South Bronx who will see their 2018 tax bill cut by a third.

The benefits of tax reform are just getting started, and we want to keep that momentum going.

Each year the new tax law is in place, American workers and their families will reap larger rewards. More than 650 companies are using the tax cuts for employee bonuses, pay increases, charitable contributions, and new investments. For example, Premera Blue Cross announced it is dedicating $40 million to community reinvestment. Hope House—a women’s shelter in Eastern Washington—will receive $1 million to help more women find permanent homes, according to a recent story.

Inland National Bank, a regional independent community bank in Spokane, Washington, is another great example. INB announced it has shared its tax savings with its employees by raising their base pay to $15 an hour and providing bonuses.

Stories like these are being told and retold all across America. In every state, businesses have passed the benefits of the tax cuts on to their employees. And in every single congressional district, taxpayers are seeing a tax cut.

For the first time in American history, there are more jobs available than people looking for them. Rather than sitting on the sidelines, more workers are eagerly looking for work—which is readily available. A majority of the uptick in new job seekers is fueled by women, individuals with disabilities, and minorities, looking for their first job or reentering the workforce after a poor economy pushed them out many years ago.

Opponents of this conservative pro-growth agenda are mounting a campaign to roll back the tax cuts and reverse the great economic growth we are now seeing. We cannot let this this happen. Americans are better off now than they were two years ago—the economy is booming again. Since some of the tax cuts passed by Congress last year are not permanent, they instead need to be extended and made permanent.

All Americans deserve to enjoy freedom, opportunity, and prosperity. And permanently extending the 2017 tax cuts is a vital step to ensure that they—as well as their children and grandchildren—are able to do exactly that.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers represents Washington’s 5th congressional district since 2005.

(As I mentioned, when tax cuts went into effect my pay check (bi-weekly) was 39 bucks higher. Then, after years of no raise, my company gave me a 2 dollar an hour raise last month. So I am now making $100 a week more due to the tax cuts. That is real money for a blue collar working stiff like me)

You're going to need the extra bucks to pay for the Trump tariffs and the sky high oil prices that are coming when Trump invades Iran and grabs their oil.

Oh, the sky is falling again! ... Every time Trump does anything it's going to be the end of life as we know it. And it always ends up just fine.

What do you propose, Seagull? Continue to let every country take advantage of us? Huge trade imbalances? Steal our property? Do nothing?

Sorry, your current President isn't wired that way. He's going to straighten this out. One way or the other. Might sting for a minute but eventually they will come around. They need the U.S. market a hell of a lot more than we need them.

In the meantime I might just have to do without cheaply made Chinese products. I buy American any chance I can any way.

As far as Iran. I'm sure they were a topic of conversation in Helsinki last week. That's why Trump is upping the rhetoric. He sounds like a confident man. As far as oil. Recently the U.S. became the World's largest oil producer, we just surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia. Not to mention a crap ton of reserve. I'm sure we'll manage.

All this Iran bullshit is about oil and Vlad and Trump's plot to take over Iran's oil fields. Trump has already talked about seizing Iraqi oil and military threats to Venezuela and their oil.

Why was Tillerson named SOS in the first place? Russia and Oil...... and how to manipulate the market. Just the Crimea sanctions were in the way and Trump and Flynn's plan to remove them.

White House fails to address omission in Trump-Putin transcript

(CNN)More than a week later, the White House has still not corrected a key omission in its official transcript of President Donald Trump's news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The White House's official transcript of the news conference omits the first part of a reporter's question to Putin: "President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election?" Instead, the official transcript only includes the second part of the question: "And did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?"

The omission appears to be due to an issue with an overlap between simultaneous translation of Putin's remarks and the first part of the reporter's question to Putin in the audio feed the stenographers rely on. Private transcription services also made the same error.

White House transcripts, which are considered the official record of the President's comments, are compiled by White House stenographers who are career officials, not political appointees.

"This was by no means malicious," a White House official said of the omission, explaining that the audio mixer at the site did not bring up the audio levels of the reporter's microphone up in time to catch the beginning of the question because the translator was still speaking.

The audio mixing issue also led to the first part of the question being omitted in the White House's video feed of the event.

The omission muddles the meaning of Putin's response to the question, in which he confirmed for the first time that he wanted Trump to win the 2016 presidential election.

"Yes, I did. Yes, I did," Putin said. "Because he talked about bringing the US-Russia relationship back to normal."

The White House has not responded to requests for comment about why the transcript has not been corrected.

The White House last faced scrutiny over an omission in an official transcript last January when the transcript omitted a key portion of the back and forth between Trump and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. In that case, the White House released a corrected transcript the next day.

The White House's failure to correct the official record of the news conference comes as it is also facing criticism for suspending the longtime practice of releasing official White House readouts of the President's calls with foreign leaders -- another key official US government accounting.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/25/politics ... index.html

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‘UNHEARD OF’

CNN Reporter Kaitlan Collins Banned by White House for Asking Trump Questions

The reporter’s CNN colleagues and others were quick to defend her after the ‘disgraceful’ and ‘highly alarming’ move.

CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins asked President Donald Trump questions he didn’t like. So the White House barred her from attending his Rose Garden press availability Wednesday afternoon.

Collins had been serving as the official “pool reporter” for the White House press corps during an Oval Office photo-op earlier Wednesday when she did her job, and asked the president some questions about the news of the day.

“Did Michael Cohen betray you, Mr. President?” she asked. “Mr. President, are you worried about what Michael Cohen is about to say to the prosecutors? Are you worried about what is on the other tapes, Mr. President?” When Trump declined to answer, she tried, “Why is Vladimir Putin not accepting your invitation, Mr. President?”

Trump didn’t answer, and Collins was then summoned to the office of Trump’s new deputy chief of staff for communications — and former Fox News executive — Bill Shine.

Collins says he (Bill Shine, former Fox News executive) told her she was “disinvited from the press availability in the Rose Garden today” because she had “shouted” questions he and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders deemed “inappropriate.”

“I was there to represent all of the networks and therefore asked about the questions of the day along with the other reporters and my colleagues in that room,” Collins said on CNN shortly after the incident at the White House. “Because of that the White House blocked me from going to an open press event here at the White House that all reporters are allowed to go because they did not like the questions that I asked President Trump about the news of the day.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cnn-repor ... p?ref=home

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