Trump enters the stage

The above is testament to the idea that idealism is alive and well, and those who claimed that action preceded essence were merely over focused on an ethereal presence, whereby middle class industrial nueve riches made a permanent mark on history. It is not too uncommon a veritable ironic nite. by no less then Heidegger to declare the death of philosophy, for those who have not learned its message are condemned to repeat them.

Irony is not merely lost on the shallow people.

Concerned over President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, the FBI reportedly opened an investigation into whether Trump was secretly working on behalf of Russia, according to a New York Times report published Friday night.

The bureau opened the counterintelligence inquiry days after Comey was ousted in May 2017, the Times reported, citing several people, including former law enforcement officials, familiar with the probe.

Investigators were specifically looking into whether Trump’s firing of Comey posed a national security threat as well as whether it was an obstruction of justice, considering the FBI’s broader investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Former law enforcement officials told the Times that the criminal aspect (whether Trump obstructed justice) and counterintelligence aspect (whether Trump was working covertly for Russia) of the investigation were combined into one inquiry because it would have been considered a national security threat if Trump had indeed ousted Comey to impede the Russia investigation.

According to the Times, Trump at least twice linked his decision to fire Comey with the Russia investigation, prompting counterintelligence officials to probe the president’s actions.

First, two days after Comey’s dismissal, Trump told NBC News’ Lester Holt that he had “this Russia thing” in mind when he decided to fire the FBI director.

“In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said: ’You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won,” the president told Holt at the time.

Second, Trump reportedly drafted a letter to Comey, slamming him for refusing to say that he wasn’t the focus of the Russia investigation.

Shortly after Comey was fired, special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to oversee the broader investigation into Russia and the election. It’s unclear if Mueller is still investigating the counterintelligence inquiry into Trump.

National Security

Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration
By Greg Miller

Politics

‘In the White House waiting’: Inside Trump’s defiance on the longest shutdown ever
By Robert Costa, Josh Dawsey, Philip Rucker, Seung Min Kim

January 12, 2019 at 5:32 PM

President Trump speaks to reporters during his visit to the Capitol to meet with Senate Republicans on Jan. 9. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
When President Trump made a rare journey to the Capitol last week, he was expected to strategize about how to end the government shutdown he instigated. Instead, he spent the first 20-odd minutes delivering a monologue about “winning.”

“We’re winning” on North Korea, the president told Republican senators Wednesday at a closed-door luncheon. “We’re winning” on Syria and “we’re winning” on the trade war with China, too. And, Trump concluded, they could win on immigration if Republicans stuck together through what is now the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history, according to officials who attended the presidential pep talk.

The problem was that Trump offered no path to victory — other than brinkmanship.

Talks between the two parties remained stalled this weekend after the president torpedoed his last negotiating session with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) by walking out of the room.

With Trump determined to deliver on his signature campaign promise of building a border wall and Democrats standing firm against what they view as an immoral and ineffective solution to illegal immigration, there is no end in sight to the dysfunction.

Trump was nevertheless confident on Saturday about his handling of the standoff. “I do have a plan on the Shutdown,” he tweeted. “But to understand that plan you would have to understand the fact that I won the election, and I promised safety and security for the American people.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) address reporters outside the White House on Jan. 9 after a meeting with President Trump. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The president who pitched himself to voters as a world-class dealmaker has proven to be an unreliable negotiator. Grappling for the first time with a divided government, Trump has contradicted himself, sent miscues and spread falsehoods. He has zigzagged between proudly claiming ownership of the shutdown and blaming it on Democrats, and between nearly declaring a national emergency to construct the wall without congressional approval and backing off such a legally and politically perilous action.

As Washington braced for a snowstorm on Saturday morning, Trump was hunkered down in his private quarters at the White House and tweeting taunts to Democrats. “I am in the White House waiting for you!” he wrote in one message. The president claimed in another that there was no chaos in his administration — “In fact, there’s almost nobody in the W.H. but me,” he wrote — and argued that the onus was on Democrats to buckle and agree to fulfill his demand for $5.7 billion in wall funding.

Out of work and behind on her bills, a furloughed food inspector for the FDA in Ohio says she may have to leave government service if the shutdown goes on much longer. (Ray Whitehouse/The Washington Post)
The government could reopen if Trump agreed to sign legislation funding the government, versions of which already have passed both chambers of Congress, and table the polarizing debate over border security.

In the weeks leading up to December’s deadline to fund the government, Trump was warned repeatedly about the dangers of a shutdown but still opted to proceed, according to officials with knowledge of the conversations.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told the president that he had no leverage and that, without a clear strategy, he would be “boxed in a canyon.” He tried to make the case to Trump that even if Pelosi and Schumer were interested in cutting a deal with him, they would be constrained from compromising because of internal Democratic Party pressures to oppose Trump’s wall, these officials said.

Then-House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) talked with Trump by phone for 45 minutes the day before the shutdown, warning that he saw no way to win as he paced in a Capitol hallway just outside a conference room where House Republicans were meeting. Then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) warned about the perils of a shutdown during the Christmas season.

Inside, some of the more hard-line members urged a showdown over border wall funding, arguing that Trump’s core supporters would revolt otherwise. But McCarthy asked, “Tell me what happens when we get into a shutdown? I want to know what our next move is.”

A senior White House official characterized Republican leaders as “supportive” throughout the shutdown.

President Trump salutes as a U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopter passes over the Rio Grande on the southern border in McAllen, Tex., on Jan. 10. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Trump’s advisers are scrambling to build an exit ramp while also bracing for the shutdown to last weeks longer. Current and former aides said there is little strategy in the White House; people are frustrated and, in the words of one, “freaking out.”

The shutdown was born out of frustration. Angry that he was stymied by party leaders and his own aides from getting more money for the wall in 2018, rattled by conservative criticism and stung by his party’s midterm defeats, Trump decided in late December to plunge into a border fight after being encouraged by Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), both hard-line conservatives. It was a startling decision to McConnell and others, who thought they had White House assurances that a shutdown would be avoided.

“He has no choice here,” said Newt Gingrich, a Trump supporter who was House speaker in the Clinton administration and during the second-longest shutdown, an episode widely viewed as a disaster for Republicans. “He has to win. His entire reputation, his entire relationship with the base, it’s all a function of being committed on big things and not backing down. If he backs down on this, Pelosi will be so emboldened that the next two years will be a nightmare.”

A federal employee with colon cancer grapples with complicated insurance problems as a result of the partial government shutdown. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)
As the shutdown dragged on, aides said, Trump has bragged that he looked “tough” and that his supporters had his back. He has viewed the past three weeks more as an hour-to-hour public relations fight than as a painstaking legislative negotiation, trying to sway opinion with a prime time Oval Office address and a high-profile trip to Texas to survey the U.S.-Mexico border.

“He is determined, as he has been from day one, not to break faith with the people who brought him to the presidency,” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution. “I’ve never seen a president who is more indifferent to expanding his appeal.”

Trump has exhibited more determination than calculation. Over the holidays, he inhabited the White House largely alone, tweeting out his demands and grievances. Several senior West Wing officials described the building as a “ghost town” or a “no man’s land.”

Only after Christmas did administration officials begin realizing the full scale of the logistical problems a prolonged shutdown would cause. Aides said Trump has been largely uninterested in the minutiae of managing government agencies and services.

Farmer John Boyd, 53, of Baskerville, Va., is facing a double calamity: tariffs have sunk the prices of crops like soybeans, but financial relief from the federal government hasn’t come because the Department of Agriculture is closed. (Lee Powell/The Washington Post)
During negotiation sessions, Trump’s attention has veered wildly. At one such meeting with Pelosi and Schumer in the White House Situation Room earlier this month, the president went on a long diatribe about unrelated topics. He trashed the Iran nuclear deal, telling Democrats they should give him money for the wall because, in his view, they gave President Barack Obama money for the agreement with Tehran. He boasted about his wisdom in ordering the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. And he raised the specter of impeachment, accusing Pelosi of wanting to try to force him from office — which she denied.

Eventually, he was moved back to the budget talks.

During last week’s Senate lunch, Trump praised his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un while delineating his foreign policy accomplishments. “I don’t know why I get along with all the tough ones and not the soft ones,” he quipped, referring to dictators and allies, according to attendees.

Also at the lunch, Trump asked Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to stand up for applause and thanked Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for supporting him on TV. He obliquely knocked the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) for not voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, attendees said.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) warned Trump that declaring a national emergency could set a precedent for Democrats to follow on other issues, should they win the White House. But Trump assured them he would win reelection in 2020.

Vice President Pence speaks to reporters on Jan. 9 after a meeting with congressional leadership at the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Vice President Pence, after being roasted by critics last month for sitting idly during Trump’s contentious televised meeting with Pelosi and Schumer, jumped into the negotiations in recent weeks, doing what one of his longtime allies described as a “reimagining” of his dutiful and low-key approach.

But Pence’s efforts were challenged from the start as his initial pitch to Senate Democrats — in which he floated lowering the demand from $5.7 billion for wall funds — was dismissed by Trump days later, even though Pence delivered the offer at the president’s behest.

Still, Pence, whose aides say he has a preternatural calm, shifted and became a salesman for the president’s position and worked to lay the groundwork for possible executive action.

Democratic aides, however, were irritated by Pence’s dogged emphasis on a crisis during last weekend’s talks and the administration’s lack of preparation on the exact numbers of its requests.

“They’re sitting there going, ‘Where are the numbers? What is going on here?’ ” said a senior House Democratic aide briefed on the discussions.

Some White House officials privately groused that meetings were pointless and believed it was beneath the office of the vice president to negotiate with congressional staffers.

President Trump holds up a photo of a “typical standard wall design” as he speaks on Jan. 11 during a roundtable discussion on border security in the Cabinet Room of the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Exasperated, a small group of Republican lawmakers tried to determine a way out last week. Led by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), they met Wednesday in Graham’s office with White House legislative affairs director Shahira Knight and senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to discuss a broader immigration deal that could include protections for undocumented children in exchange for $5.7 billion in wall funding.

Graham saw an opening to broker an accord between Trump, whom he had come to call a friend, and Senate GOP moderates who were urging aggressive steps to reopen the government.

Following the passage of criminal-justice reform legislation that he championed, Kushner carried himself with the confidence of a White House chief of staff, according to congressional aides.

One GOP senator, who like other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said he appreciated Kushner’s “good attitude” but said that senators “really doubt whether he can do anything” to convince Trump to soften his hard-line tactics and back a bipartisan immigration deal.

After meeting with McConnell last Thursday, Graham and three colleagues — Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — presented their plan to Pence. He then relayed the idea to Trump, who was flying to Texas for his border tour.

But the president said no. Pence then told Graham and Alexander that Trump appreciated their proposal but was not interested in re-opening the government until the Democrats were willing to negotiate on the wall.

“I have never been more depressed about moving forward than I am right now,” Graham told reporters that afternoon. He then walked off, muttering: “I’m going to the gym.”

The next day, Graham called for drastic measures: “It is time for President Trump to use emergency powers.”

Damian Paletta, Sean Sullivan and Erica Werner contributed to this report.

Robert Costa is a national political reporter for The Washington Post. He covers the White House, Congress, and campaigns. He joined The Post in January 2014. He is also the moderator of PBS’s “Washington Week” and a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.

Josh Dawsey is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017. He previously covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal.

Philip Rucker is the White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. He previously has covered Congress, the Obama White House, and the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns. Rucker also is a Political Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. He joined The Post in 2005 as a local news reporter.

Seung Min Kim is a White House reporter for The Washington Post, covering the Trump administration through the lens of Capitol Hill. Before joining The Washington Post in 2018, she spent more than eight years at Politico, primarily covering the Senate and immigration policy.

© 1996-2019 The Washington Post

???

Is he the man by choice by measure of his character, or, is his manifest destiny?

So many questions and so few answers, given the window of opportunity to solve them. Will AI be able to fine tune them, without taking over?

Black Mirror’s Charlie Brooker Predicted Trump—Here’s What He (and His Show) Have to Say About the Future
ANNA PEELE
December 12, 2017 11:25 AM

Maarten de Boer/Getty Images
Netflix’s tech cynic anthology Black Mirror has been oddly prophetic. The same goes for its creator Charlie Brooker. But the new fourth season of the spiritual Twilight Zone heir has moments that are, dare we say, optimistic? Brooker tells us why he’s “contrarily hopeful” about the world.
Four years before David Cameron was accused of performing a sex act on a (dead) pig, Charlie Brooker wrote an episode of Black Mirror where the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom performed a sex act on a (live) pig. Four years before Donald J. Trump was sworn in President of the United States, Brooker wrote an episode of Black Mirror in which a populist movement gets a lewd, inflammatory cartoon to run for public office. It almost makes you feel like you should set aside December 29 to watch the fourth season of Brooker’s Black Mirror (he runs the Netflix series with producer Annabel Jones) just to know what dystopic development to prepare for next.

Luckily, in Brooker’s hands a bleak sense of humor accompanies news of our nightmare future; each episode of the (truly super) funny anthology series has an entirely new plot and cast and explores the very human impulses that create technology, and the very human weaknesses that are enabled and exploited by it. In other words, we did this to ourselves—the Snapchat is coming from inside the house. Black Mirror is basically a televised version of the “This is fine” meme with extra panels where we find out how the be-hatted pup wound up in the room and accidentally set it on fire—maybe someone told him there was a rare Pokemon in there and he knocked over a festive scented candle catching it?—and realizing, too late, that he needs to get the fuck out.

The six new episodes of Black Mirror cover digital ills both current and upcoming—think video games, dating apps, and consciousness-uploading devices—and feature a bananas lineup of directors and actors that includes Jodie Foster, David Slade, Jesse Plemons, and Andrea Riseborough. Brooker took a break from working on his next, highly classified project to talk to GQ about Trump, Get Out, and why Batman is so depressed.

GQ: What’s this top-secret thing you’re working on now?

Charlie Brooker: I wish I could tell you. But you can probably guess what it is.

Is it the Twilight Zone?

I’m not allowed to say! I’m looking forward to the Twilight Zone from Jordan Peele…if anyone’s gonna reboot the Twilight Zone, then there’s the man to do it.

Did you see Get Out?

I loved Get Out. In fact, Jordan Peele did send me a message because he was a big fan—he’d seen [Get Out star] Daniel Kaluuya on Black Mirror. And I hadn’t had a chance to get out and see his movie, so I was embarrassed and I didn’t reply. It was so embarrassing. But I saw it and thought it was fucking brilliant and that Daniel was brilliant.

I’m so excited—he’s going to be in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther.

As is Letitia Wright from [season four Black Mirror episode] “Black Museum.” We saw an audition tape [from her] and there was a voice reading the other lines off-camera. I was like, “Hang on…is that Daniel Kaluuya?” It must have been in a trailer on [the set of] Black Panther.

Watching newer Black Mirror episodes makes me feel like you’ve turned into a real romantic.

Do you think?

Your tender underbelly definitely shows in “Hang the DJ,” the dating app episode from the new season.

To be honest, it’s probably a consequence of us going from three episodes a season to six—you’ve gotta have a soft center in the chocolate box. With “Hang the DJ,” I was concerned that it was more comedic and much lighter than we normally do for Black Mirror. But that’s what people are picking out as one they enjoy. It’s interesting when we confound our own expectations of what the show is.

It’s not really that surprising, because “San Junipero” was the one everyone went nuts over last season. People like to feel good.

I mean, there are episodes where a giant fucking boot comes down and crushes everyone.

Yep.

But overall there’s probably a bit more hope in this season because it was being written from July 2016 to February 2017, and I didn’t know what state the world was going to be in by the time it aired. I didn’t want it to just be horrifying and awful, although obviously that’s also the thing that people tune in for.

People have been making the joke that 2017 is a viral marketing campaign for Season Four of Black Mirror. Because I don’t know if you’ve heard, but things aren’t so great over here, Charlie.

I picked up on that. Ours has always been a worried show, but I don’t see it as being particularly reactive to the moment in which it’s being written. I started writing this season just after Brexit, but I didn’t sit down and go, “What’s the Brexit episode?” Though it’s really weird—I sort of thought, Well, there’s nothing in this season that’s gonna come, like, remotely true. But we’ve got this memory device in “Crocodile,” and somebody showed me a device that you can connect to a mouse’s brain and show it a face and then pull out a likeness of that face like ten minutes later. So what do I know?

More than you think, apparently! When we talked last fall you told me Trump was going to win. So, since you’re a prophet: what happens next?

I get contrarily hopeful—when everyone in the world is worried, I think, Oh, I can take the day off. So there won’t be a nuclear war with North Korea, I’ve decided. With Trump in America, the fact that the lines are drawn and that everyone is so polarized and concerned and worried and fractious makes me feel like that has to solve itself somehow. I don’t think it’s going to end in a civil war, if that’s any consolation.

I’m thrilled to hear it.

I mean, is that your perspective?

I don’t know if I think we’re going to have a civil war, but the people who love Trump aren’t just going to calm down and feel good about things if, like, Elizabeth Warren beats Trump in 2020.

But haven’t they always been there and always been that angry?

Sure.

And of that 33% [who approve of Trump’s performance], how many are actually that furious? There are people who you can disagree with vehemently politically, but most people are fundamentally decent.

Plus, think of how much harder it is to actually fight in a civil war than to live your life just being kind of ambiently dissatisfied with the government.

Oh, my God, yeah. It would be such a pain in the ass. So what percentage of that percentage that you’re worrying about would actually [join a civil war?] What would happen if Trump was replaced by someone else is you’d get those people shouting at the TV and grumbling and complaining online. But that’s the hopeful view.

If this were an episode of Black Mirror and you were writing a story where the government had to try and appease those angry people, what would you have it do?

The basic problem is that the pie is not being sliced correctly, isn’t it? That is the thing that is driving everything. But don’t ask me how to solve that, ‘cause I ain’t got a fucking clue.

One of the things I love about Black Mirror is that the bad guys tend to wind up in a prison of their own making. I was thinking of which real-life villains would be good for that and imagining PayPal founder Peter Thiel having to be a banker forever, trapped in a virtual money gulag.

That’s a mean thought you’re having there, isn’t it?

I mean…yes. But you’re the one who came up with this concept!

Yeah, but I put fictional people in there. It’s like in “White Christmas.” Rafe Spall’s character ends up in eternal hell for like millions of years—someone worked out [the math]. It would be inhuman. You’re a terrible person! Just like the spectators in “White Bear.” That’s what you’re like. Would you not feel a glimmer of sympathy?

Okay, you could keep them in there until they learn their lesson, not actually for eternity. Maybe there’s a parole board…

You’re setting yourself up as a tyrant there, aren’t you? I mean, this is the problem. Often in Black Mirror someone’s got a technological thing that they believe they’re going to use in a good way, and they end up doing something terrible. So who’s to say that inflicting this cruel and inhuman…what’s that quote about gazing into the abyss? [“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.—Friedrich Nietzsche”] Careful what you wish for.

You’ve convinced me, Charlie! I’m bad; torture is bad. Would you trust yourself to be a moral arbiter?

No! Definitely not. Years ago, I did a show in the UK that was a Daily Show-esque thing [called 10 O’Clock Live]. And every so often people would say things like, “If [only] you guys were running the country…” And you’d think, “Are you joking? We’d be the worst people, just lazy and stupid.” I can’t complete the simplest strategy game. When I tried to play SimCity, it inevitably ended up being a fucking disaster. Roads didn’t even join up. So I should never be put in charge of any system ever.

I suppose if one person has too much control and isn’t taking in input, things always get screwed up. Like me torturing Peter Thiel, or Michael, the architect Ted Danson plays on The Good Place. Or Trump.

He’s odd, isn’t he? Because he, on the one hand, is incredibly opinionated, and on the other you can read interviews with him where he seems to just say what he wants the person to hear.

It’s because the thing that drives Trump is people liking him. So if he’s in a room with you, he says whatever he needs to get you to “yes.” If he’s on a stage, he says whatever he needs to get to you to chant.

But his approval ratings are low. Hasn’t anyone pointed out to him that if he suddenly decided to do the opposite of everything he’s doing, that might mean that suddenly 70% of people [would approve of him]? Imagine if he turned up on TV tomorrow and said, “Fuck all that!” Wouldn’t he be received rapturously as a hero by a huge swath of the people?

That’s literally an episode of Seinfeld. But Trump would never do that because he’s like a monkey. He sticks his hands through slots in his cage to pick up two grapes—that’s the 30% of people who like him. But then someone puts a bunch of bananas on his side of the cage, which is the 70%. In order to get the bananas he has to drop the grapes, but he won’t let go of the thing that’s already in his hand in order to get the better thing.

So what—you have to saw off his hand? Or you have to keep piling up bananas until it becomes irresistible. Or you just wait for the grape to rot.

There you go. On Black Mirror, characters tend to be driven by a fear of being found out.

Like Kelly in “Shut up and Dance,” who’s being blackmailed.

One thing that terrifies me about all the recent news of real-life sexual predators is that they don’t seem to be scared of being found out at all.

I suppose the thing is that all that stuff is about power, isn’t it? Or they’ve not contemplated it because of the power structure surrounding them. On Black Mirror, we don’t tend to deal with big, powerful people, because when you look at a Weinstein or something you think, “Is he capable of feeling anything?” We’ve always wanted the stories to feel very relatable. Having said that, our very first episode had a prime minister, but we immediately strip him of all his power, basically. If [an episode were going to be] about the high-flying CEO figure, I’d think, “Who cares about the fucking head of whatever multi-corp? I don’t give a shit.”

You even have to do that with superheroes now. Bruce Wayne is, like, clinically depressed.

It’s true. [When I was young] Bruce Wayne was someone you looked up to because he was rich. Whereas now you’d be like, “I’m never gonna be Bruce Wayne. Fuck that fucking asshole!” And that’s because the pie isn’t being sliced fairly.

Gimme some pie, Bruce!

Where’s my fucking pie?

© Condé Nast 2019

Durkheim

Observing like an outsider, it feels that when you know that everything you’re doing is being recorded, social facts tend to feel more and more coercive. This is so true that even in the aesthetics of the episode we can see that everything is extremely clean, uptight, a perfect environment boxed in social facts and cutting edge technology. Almost everybody acts like a perfect individual. Think about all the things you do, not because you really wanted to, but because it was expected from you. Going to med school to praise your parents, for example.

Of course, even with all of this plasticity, nothing can bend the drama and the conflict that humankind makes, and it happens here in this episode: lack of trust and paranoia.

Public vigilance — discipline power and social control

There’s an example of public use of the memory device right in the beginning of the episode. Liam’s going to the airport and a security guard stops him, he has to show the guard his last 24 hours and a little bit more. That’s the new tactic for anti terrorism and other criminal matters that could happen if a dangerous person got into the airport. It’s not shown, but it’s implicit that this method of crime preventing it’s a usual thing, probably working in many other different social ambient. In Black Mirror, through the memory device, there are many possibilities of control, of vigilance. It’s not only about cameras around, authority and institutions, it’s a camera literally inside you. Think about that: even if you’re completely alone, you will still record what you’re doing, and a random police officer can demand it to see fast-forward. There’s a huge camp for cyber criminology studies here, because when the institutions get advanced, the criminal elements tend to be one step ahead.

, talking about social coSontrol is talking about Michel Foucault. To him, in many different ways, society works as a chain of control. Almost everywhere, there’s a pre-established order, there’s some kind of authority, a center of power. Like in a classroom, for example, there’s a professor, a teacher, and students that should obey.

Our society work with many points of power and control, between two people, between the State and it’s people. Foucault says that this control is ready to make people “docile bodies”. In case somebody doesn’t know what a docile body is:

“Discipline manufactures submissive and exercised bodies, docile bodies, which are based on efficient gesture. It increases the force of the body in economic terms of usefulness and decreases those same forces, in political terms of obedience.” — Foucault.

Side-by-side were the dystopian and utopian trajectories facing modern civilization — the spectre of a nuclear apocalypse and shimmer of space-age apotheosis. Not surprisingly, The Twilight Zone featured episodes showing the horrors of nuclear war and bizarre journeys into outer space. Throughout its five-year run, The Twilight Zone depicted numerous scenarios related to existence in the then modern world and the vast universe.

In many ways, Serling and The Twilight Zone were philosophically grounded in the mid-20th century existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, yet the series repeatedly pointed toward issues that would soon be addressed by theorists and philosophers emerging in the 1960s: Marshall McLuhan, Guy Debord, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard, among others. By the end of the 1960s, there had been no nuclear war, but NASA had landed humans on the moon in a triumphal moment viewed on global television and celebrated worldwide as a great human achievement. “We did it” cheered the humans on planet Earth.

But once NASA pulled the plug on the Apollo missions and everyone realized they would not be drinking martinis at a hotel on the moon, a new utopian destination appeared on the horizon. Outer space was replaced by cyberspace as the next human destination. Personal computers and laptops thrived and began linking up via the internet and World Wide Web. Chat rooms evolved into social media echo chambers. Google, YouTube, and Facebook became the archivists of our information, imagery, and selves. Television eventually migrated online with digital users, their hands tightly gripped around their mobile phones, poised for a selfie moment or status update.

How can such ponderings into the Nietzchean Abyss that the Superman can reflect on in a burst of joyful Dionysus experience before plunging back , icarus was way ahead, not to feel betrayed?

How cannot Trump feel in his roller coaster ride, where , not given an opportunity to ever have gone underground, merely simulate, such, by figuring apprentices who really resembles himself?

He is acting as seen from a dark mirror, but not for his wealth of escape routes, may view himself as though a mirror, darkly?

Now this:

The Trump Impeachment
Unfit To Lead
Donald Trump’s Latest Psycho Tweetstorm: The BEST REASON YET to Invoke the 25th Amendment
By News Corpse / Daily Kos (01/12/2019) - January 12, 20191100

The Ring of Fire / YouTube
The rapidly declining mental state of Donald Trump has been the subject of untold numbers of articles and analyses, including by professionals who view the President as a malignant narcissist who is a danger to the nation and the world. But there is no better indicator of the hazards Trump’s psychoses represent than his own frenzied ravings on Twitter.

When Trump gets a full head of steam, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the tsunami of lunacy that he unleashes. It’s pointless even to try. Take for example his outburst on Saturday morning. He was triggered by a report in the New York Times (which isn’t failing, it’s enjoying record success) that disclosed the existence of an FBI investigation into whether Trump was/is an asset of the Russian government.

There is abundant evidence to support that contention. Including his open infatuation with Vladimir Putin; his attacks on the media; his maligning of our allies in NATO and the European Union; his opposition to sanctions on Russia; his rejection of American intelligence in favor of information from Putin and the Kremlin; his refusal to accept that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election; his firing of FBI Director James Comey and others; his chumminess with Russian operatives in the White House; his threats aimed at his own cabinet for pursuing legitimate investigations into Russian espionage against the U.S.; and so much more.

However, to hear Trump tell it, it’s all a paranoid conspiracy against the greatest president of all time who is being attacked for his awesomeness and purity of heart. After reading the article in the Times (or having excerpts read to him), Trump mounted his Twitter machine and disgorged a steady stream of manic gibberish, almost all of which he has previously unfurled in numerous episodes of derangement. But reading it all of a piece is shocking, and not a little frightening. So buckle up:

Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!

…Funny thing about James Comey. Everybody wanted him fired, Republican and Democrat alike. After the rigged & botched Crooked Hillary investigation, where she was interviewed on July 4th Weekend, not recorded or sworn in, and where she said she didn’t know anything (a lie),….

….the FBI was in complete turmoil (see N.Y. Post) because of Comey’s poor leadership and the way he handled the Clinton mess (not to mention his usurpation of powers from the Justice Department). My firing of James Comey was a great day for America. He was a Crooked Cop……

……who is being totally protected by his best friend, Bob Mueller, & the 13 Angry Democrats – leaking machines who have NO interest in going after the Real Collusion (and much more) by Crooked Hillary Clinton, her Campaign, and the Democratic National Committee. Just Watch!

I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again!

Lyin’ James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter S and his lover, agent Lisa Page, & more, all disgraced and/or fired and caught in the act. These are just some of the losers that tried to do a number on your President. Part of the Witch Hunt. Remember the “insurance policy?” This is it!

This sounds more like a mental patient who has been hospitalized after running through the streets naked shouting at random cars and store mannequins, than a president. He is consumed with paranoia and a devout belief in his superiority and goodness. And his perceived enemies are unambiguously evil, omnipresent, and determined to destroy him. That isn’t the profile of a world leader. It’s the diagnosis for a psychopath. And for the sake of the nation – and the planet – Trump needs to be removed from office and placed in a facility where he can either get medial attention and be punished for his obvious crimes.

Any other president, with any other controlled Senate, would have been impeached a year ago. Any doubt still exist that Republicans are traitors along with the moron-in-chief? Why haven’t people taken to the streets before this? We need to act, because congress sure isn’t. Our country, our way of life, our lives are in imminent danger.

Trump is mentally disable. The country maybe in shutdown, but is brain has always been shutdown. Time to go!

How credible is this view? I do not have tea leaves

U.S.
MUELLER DRAFT REPORT SAYS TRUMP ‘HELPED PUTIN DESTABILIZE THE UNITED STATES’, WATERGATE JOURNALIST SAYS
By Jason Lemon On Sunday, January 13, 2019 - 14:45

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a joint press conference after their summit on July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Finland
PHOTO: CHRIS MCGRATH/GETTY IMAGES

U.S. DONALD TRUMP RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein has said that he’s been told that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will show how President Donald Trump helped Russia “destabilize the United States.”

Bernstein, who is renowned for his coverage of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of former President Richard Nixon, appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday to discuss two bombshell reports released this weekend, one from The New York Times and one from The Washington Post, which revealed new details about whether or not Trump and his aides have colluded with Russia.

The Post reported that Trump has gone to “extraordinary lengths” to conceal direct conversations he has had with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Times article revealed that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Trump after he fired former bureau director James Comey in 2017, suspecting the president could be working on behalf of Russia. Trump has angrily denied allegations that he worked with Russia and has regularly attacked the media for reporting on the investigation. But Bernstein slammed Trump’s dismissal of the probe.

“This is about the most serious counterintelligence people we have in the U.S. government saying, ‘Oh, my God, the president’s words and actions lead us to conclude that somehow he has become a witting, unwitting, or half-witting pawn, certainly in some regards, to Vladimir Putin,'” Bernstein explained during his appearance on Reliable Sources .

“From a point of view of strength… rather, he has done what appears to be Putin’s goals. He has helped Putin destabilize the United States and interfere in the election, no matter whether it was purposeful or not,” the journalist added. He then explained that he knew from his own high-level sources that Mueller’s report would discuss this assessment.

“And that is part of what the draft of Mueller’s report, I’m told, is to be about,” he said. “We know there has been collusion by [former national security adviser Michael] Flynn. We know there has been collusion of some sort by [Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul] Manafort. The question is, yes, what did the president know and when did he know it?”

Trump has defended himself against such reports, arguing, inaccurately, that he has taken a hardline stance against Russia.

“I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again! [sic],” he wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

However, the president’s 2016 campaign remains the subject of a special investigation led by Mueller. Several former high-ranking Trump aides have been indicted in the probe and last week, it was revealed that Manafort shared confidential polling data with an associate linked to Russian-intelligence.

RELATED STORIES
Expert: Trump ‘Aiding & Abetting’ Russian Intelligence
Trump Says NYT Report Is “Insulting”
FBI May Have Classified Evidence on Trump: Former Chief
Trump’s administration recently moved to remove financial sanctions on an ally of Putin, and has recently pulled troops out of Syria – a long-standing demand from the Russian President.

© Copyright 2019 NEWSWEEK

One off the wall scenario:

Remember the ’ better be red than dead’ cliche of the 50’ s and the 60’s in a vastly longer perceived U.S. time then Euro-Russian?

Given all the perceived hoopla of advanced Russian weaponry, or even without credibility of such , is it even remotely possible that the agreement/collusion was in fact made, in order to escape the ideological struggle, which was described in c. 1982-86, as a forgone assessment?

Could this be ledgered as a preemptive attempt describing as among leading possibilities?

And now, because unforseen and uninformed hi partisan information sharing, had to be slowly abandoned do to political pressure?

Both Trump and Putin may be heading for the Nobel Peace Prize, if they are able to pull it off!

As uncertain such possibility , given what has been happening, it can not be entirely ruled out.

But then:

washingtonpost.com/amphtml/ … 20%251%24s

And this:

President Trump went to ‘extraordinary lengths’ to hide details of Putin meetings, report says
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference after their summit on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland.
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference after their summit on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki, Finland.
CHRIS MCGRATH, GETTY IMAGES
WILLIAM CUMMINGS | USA TODAY | 4 hours ago

President Donald Trump went to “extraordinary lengths” to keep details from his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin secret – even from officials within his own administration, The Washington Post reported this weekend, citing unnamed sources.

After meeting with Putin at the 2017 Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, Trump took his interpreter’s notes and told him not to discuss the meeting with anyone, including other U.S. officials, the Post reported.

The paper said Trump’s handling of the Hamburg meeting was “part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny and preventing even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries.”

No detailed record exists from five of Trump’s interactions with the Russian leader since taking office, the Post reported. It was unclear if that was the only time Trump took his interpreters’ notes, but the paper said several administration officials have been unable to obtain a readout from his meeting last year with Putin in Helsinki.

New York Times: FBI investigated President Trump for possible secret Russian favors

Trump: NYT report on FBI fear that he worked for Russia is ‘most insulting article’ ever

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was present at the meeting in Hamburg. The Post said Tillerson did not answer questions about Trump asking the interpreter to keep details of the meeting quiet, or if Trump took the interpreter’s notes.

Fiona Hill, a senior Russia adviser on the National Security Council, and former State Department official John Heffern asked Trump’s interpreter for more information about the Hamburg meeting, which is how they learned of the president’s request to keep the details under wraps, the Post reported.

In a news conference after the meeting, Tillerson said Putin denied interfering in the 2016 election, but refused to say how Trump responded to the denial, per the Post. Officials told the Post that the only detail from the meeting that the interpreter did share was that Trump told Putin, “I believe you.”

Trump denied the report during an interview with Fox News host Jeanine Pirro on Saturday. He called the Post “basically the lobbyist for Amazon,” because it is owned by the tech giant’s CEO Jeff Bezos, a Trump critic.

“I’m not keeping anything under wraps,” Trump said. “I couldn’t care less.”

“I have a one-on-one meeting with Putin like I do with every other leader. I have many one-on-one, nobody ever says anything about it,” Trump told Pirro. “But with Putin, they say, ‘Oh, what did they talk about?’”

“I meet with Putin, and they make a big deal. Anybody could have listened to that meeting. that meeting is up for grabs,” Trump said, adding that he and Putin spoke about Israel and “lots of other things.”

Trump dismissed the “whole Russia thing” as a “terrible hoax” and said he won in 2016 because he “was a better candidate than Hillary Clinton,” not because of collusion with Russian efforts to undermine her campaign.

“The fact is, I was obviously a good candidate. I won every debate. I won everything I did, and I won, and I won easily – 306-223, I believe,” Trump said, referring to his performance in the Electoral College.

Democrats were alarmed by The Washington Post report.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., has sought details from Trump’s meetings with Putin and, after the 2018 Helsinki meeting, called for the president’s interpreter to testify before Congress.

Trump’s interpreter: Should she be compelled to tell what she heard during private meeting with Putin?

In August, she and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a letter requesting records from that meeting, including the interpreter’s notes. They cited the “extraordinary and, to our knowledge, unprecedented circumstances of President Trump’s two hour, one-on-one meeting with a leader identified as a threat to the United States by President Trump’s own National Security Strategy.”

“When he takes the interpreter’s notes and wants to destroy them so no one can see what was said in written transcript, you know it raises serious questions about the relationship between this president and Putin,” Sen. Dick Durbin said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said if the Post’s report is accurate, Trump “broke all protocol.”

“The American government does not know what was discussed between Trump and Vladimir Putin in that, frankly, pathetic, embarrassing encounter where Trump was kowtowing on the world stage to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki,” Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Analysis: Friends or foes? Trump’s embrace of Putin prompts backlash

Helsinki transcript: White House says it was not ‘malicious’

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., plans to seek more information about Trump’s meetings with Putin.

“It’s been several months since Helsinki and we still don’t know what went on in that meeting,” Engel told the Post. “It’s appalling. It just makes you want to scratch your head.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Sunday that he accepted Trump’s denial and said those one-on-one meetings are part of the president’s personal style.

“He likes to create a personal relationship, build that relationship, even rebuild that relationship like he does with other world leaders around,” McCarthy said on “Face the Nation.”

When asked if thought Trump’s interpreter should be asked to testify, McCarthy said, “I want this president to be able to build the relationship, even on a personal level, with all the world leaders.”

Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin
Originally Published 9 hours ago
Updated 4 hours ago

© Copyright Gannett 2019

Vow:how long do we need to be kept in stiches until Mueller is finished. I’m beginning to feel that they are really using him. How long until something real be done besides merely throwing in possibilities? Everybody likes a happy end, of course.

And now:

MarketWatch
Trump taunts Jeff Bezos, lashes out at Elizabeth Warren amid new Russia revelations
By Mike Murphy
Published: Jan 13, 2019 10:16 pm ET
President praises National Enquirer
President Donald Trump attends a Cabinet meeting on Jan. 2.
President Donald Trump attends a Cabinet meeting on Jan. 2.
As questions about his relationship with Russia continue to swirl, President Donald Trump spent his Sunday night lashing out at perceived enemies, taunting Washington Post owner — and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN chief executive — Jeff Bezos over his divorce and mocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Native American heritage.

“So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post,” Trump tweeted.

A little background: On Saturday, the Post reported that Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal notes and transcripts of his one-on-one meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Post noted that withholding details of those potentially important meetings was prevented “even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries.” (Separately, the New York Times reported Friday that the FBI opened an investigation into whether Trump was working for Russia after he fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017. In an telephone interview with Fox News on Saturday, Trump was asked if he has ever worked for Russia, but dodged answering the question.)

Meanwhile, Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, who have been separated for months, announced their divorce last week ahead of a series of National Enquirer exposés, which included text messages and photos documenting his relationship with another woman.

The Enquirer has long been friendly to Trump, offering “catch-and-kill” deals to kill potentially embarrassing stories about Trump, and the Enquirer and David Pecker, chairman of Enquirer publisher American Media Inc., were implicated in the Michael Cohen case. In December, the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office said it would not prosecute American Media for suppressing a story from a former Playboy model who claimed to have a years-long affair with Trump, in exchange for cooperation with the investigation.

Last week, some had speculated that the Enquirer targeted Bezos because of Trump’s animosity toward him. Sources with ties to the Enquirer said Bezos was targeted “because he’s the world’s richest man and a newsworthy subject,” according to CNN.

About 20 minutes after his attack on Bezos, Trump lashed out at Warren, D-Mass., a vocal critic of the president, mocking an Instagram video she did and again calling her by a derisive nickname.

“If Elizabeth Warren, often referred to by me as Pocahontas did this commercial from Bighorn or Wounded Knee instead of her kitchen, with her husband dressed in full Indian garb, it would have been a smash!”

Trump deleted his original post, but posted an identical one soon after.

While apparently stewing at the White House, Trump was also facing no easy way to resolve the 23-day-old government shutdown, which a majority of Americans blame him and the GOP for, according to new polls released Sunday.

Trump taunts Jeff Bezos, lashes out at
Copyright ©2019 MarketWatch, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Another twist

nytimes.com/2019/01/13/us/p … 20%251%24s

China is still the world’s No. 2 economy and is still the monster of emerging markets, but regardless of those bonafides, Xi Jinping’s country is losing the trade war in nearly every way imaginable.

Reported Forbes. The particulars may not be too much of interest, but its noteworthy that, this one could be perceived as a Trump win, and bringing overall performance on a personal, as well as on a partisan level of involvement. If enough Republican wins come through, it will enhance Trump’s personal favor, and give him added political capital to boost his effort to at least compromise on the wall.

WW3 THREAT: China develops ‘impenetrable’ system too strong for hypersonic missiles
WW3 news: Xi Jinping

WW3 news: Xi Jinping (Image: GETTY)
A TOP Chinese defence strategist claims to have created an “Underground Steel Great Wall” defence to nullify the threat of future hypersonic weapons destroying their arsenal.
By BILL MCLOUGHLIN
PUBLISHED: 02:27, Tue, Jan 15, 2019
UPDATED: 02:38, Tue, Jan 15, 2019
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Google+Share with EmailShare via Whatsapp
Qian Qihu, 82, won the prestigious 2018 State Preeminent Science and Technology Award due to his contributions to national defence for the system which he described as the country’s “last national defence line”. The system is a series of elaborate defensive facilities located deep under the mountains and reduces the vulnerability of entrances and exists to those facilities. Qian told the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper The Global Times: “The development of the shield must closely follow the development of spears.

WW3: Top Russian diplomat warns US missile bases in Japan fall-out

World War 3: Iran blasts meddling France over missiles programme

“Our defence engineering has evolved in a timely manner as attack weapons pose new challenges.”

If the country’s missile interception system, anti-missile system or air defences fail, this steel wall will be able to thwart attacks.

The defence system is a huge addition for Beijing as it can withstand hypersonic missiles - weapons which America and Russia are heavily developing.

Qian also added that hypersonic weapons can penetrate any other current anti-missile installation in the world, putting China once step ahead of its competitors.

READ MORE: WW3: US Navy head travels to China for talks to avoid ‘miscalculation’

WW3 News: DF-21D missile

According to a report from CNBC last March, Vladimir Putin debuted new nuclear and hypersonic weapons which he described as “invincible”.

Mr Putin apparently unveiled the Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missile, touted as hitting Mach 10 - 10 times the speed of sound - speeds, while the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, is said to be capable of travelling up to Mach 20.

In August, China ’s Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics announced that it had tested a missile which they described was capable of riding its own shock waves and reached a speed of Mach 6 - six times the speed of sound.

The US is still trying to keep up in the race for the new missile and US Deputy Secretary of Defence Patrick Shanahan said: “We are going to fly sooner and more often than people have ever expected.”

World War 3 FEARS: Turkey REFUSES to reject deal with Russia

Washington is also planning to loosen US nuclear weapon constraints and is developing low-yield nuclear warheads.

As America looks to try and keep up with it’s two major rivals, relations between America and the other two powers have eroded.

Washington has accused Moscow of intervening in sovereign affairs while the FBI is also investigating claims that Trump worked on behalf of Putin.

In terms of US-China relations, the two countries remain locked in a trade war while China has continued to flex its muscle in the South China Sea.

Copyright ©2019 Express Newspapers.

Russian media threatens Europe with 200-megaton nuclear ‘doomsday’ device
Alex Lockie Jan 14, 2019, 5:00 PM

RIA Novosti/Reuters
Russian media appeared to threaten Europe and the world by saying that a new nuclear torpedo could create towering tsunami waves and destroy vast swaths of Earth’s population.
A Russian professor told a Russian paper that the new torpedo could create waves 1,300 to 1,600 feet high and wipe out all life nearly 1,000 miles inland with an alleged 200-megaton nuclear warhead.
The US has no defenses against such a weapon.
Russia and its media often overstate the capability and meaning of their nuclear weapons, but Russia really did build this new nuclear weapon, which suggests they take the hype seriously.
Russian media appeared to threaten Europe and the world with an article in MK.ru, saying that a new nuclear torpedo could create towering tsunami waves and destroy vast swaths of Earth’s population.

Russia’s “Poseidon” nuclear torpedo, which leaked in 2015 before being confirmed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2018, represents a different kind of nuclear weapon.

The US and Russia have, since the end of World War II, fought to match and exceed each other in a nuclear arms race that resulted in both countries commanding fleets of nuclear bombers, submarines, and silos of intercontinental missiles all scattered across each country.

But Russia’s Poseidon takes a different course.

“Russia will soon deploy an underwater nuclear-powered drone which will make the whole multi-billion dollar system of US missile defense useless,” MK.ru said, according to a BBC translation, making reference to the missile shield the US is building over Europe.

“An explosion of the drone’s nuclear warhead will create a wave of between 400-500 (1,300-16,00 feet) meters high, capable of washing away all living things 1,500 (932) kilometers inland,” the newspaper added.

Previously, scientists told Business Insider that Russia’s Poseidon nuke could create tsunami-sized waves, but pegged the estimate at only 100-meter-high (330 feet) waves.

While all nuclear weapons pose a tremendous threat to human life on Earth because of their outright destructive power and ability to spread harmful radiation, the Poseidon has unique world-ending qualities.

What makes Poseidon more horrific than regular nukes
An LGM-30 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile being serviced in a silo.Department of Defense via Federation of American Scientists
The US designed its nuclear weapons to detonate in the air above a target, providing downward pressure. The US’ nuclear weapons today have mainly been designed to fire on and destroy Russian nuclear weapons that sit in their silos, rather than to target cities and end human life.

But detonating the bomb in an ocean not only could cause tsunami waves that would indiscriminately wreak havoc on an entire continent, but it would also increase the radioactive fallout.

Russia’s Poseidon missile is rumored to have a coating of cobalt metal, which Stephen Schwartz, an expert on nuclear history, said would “vaporize, condense, and then fall back to earth tens, hundreds, or thousands of miles from the site of the explosion.”

Potentially, the weapon would render thousands of square miles of Earth’s surface unlivable for decades.

“It’s an insane weapon in the sense that it’s probably as indiscriminate and lethal as you can make a nuclear weapon,” Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told Business Insider.

Can Russia take over the world with this weapon? No.
A briefing slide of the alleged Status-6 nuclear torpedo captured from Russian television.BBC
MK.ru quoted a professor as saying the Poseidon will make Russia a “world dictator” and that it could be used to threaten Europe.

“If Europe will behave badly, just send a mini-nuclear powered submarine there with a 200-megaton bomb on board, put it in the southern part of the North Sea, and ‘let rip’ when we need to. What will be left of Europe?” the professor asked.

While the Russian professor may have overstated the importance of the Poseidon, as Russia already has the nuclear firepower to destroy much of the world and still struggles to achieve its foreign-policy goals, the paper correctly said that the US has no countermeasures in place against the new weapon.

US missile defenses against ballistic missiles have only enough interceptors on hand to defend against a small salvo of weapons from a small nuclear power like North Korea or Iran. Also, they must be fired in ballistic trajectories.

Read more: US ballistic missile defense just doesn’t work - but we keep spending billions and billions on it

But the US has nuclear weapons of its own that would survive Russia’s attack. Even if Russia somehow managed to make the whole continent of Europe or North America go dark, submarines on deterrence patrols would return fire and pound Russia from secret locations at the bottom of the ocean.

Russia’s media, especially MK.ru, often use hyperbole that overstates the country’s nuclear capabilities and willingness to fight.

But with the Poseidon missile, which appears custom-built to end life on Earth, Russia has shown it actually does favor spectacularly dangerous nuclear weapons as a means of trying to bully other countries.

  • Copyright © 2018 Insider Inc.

WASHINGTON — There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.

Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia
Image

Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.

A move to withdraw from the alliance, in place since 1949, “would be one of the most damaging things that any president could do to U.S. interests,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama.

“It would destroy 70-plus years of painstaking work across multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic, to create perhaps the most powerful and advantageous alliance in history,” Ms. Flournoy said in an interview. “And it would be the wildest success that Vladimir Putin could dream of.”

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle implied on Tuesday without citing evidence that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is being blackmailed by President Trump.

Ruhle hosted a panel discussion about why Graham has pivoted from being a past critic of Trump to one of the president’s biggest allies in the Senate.

“It could be that Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham,” Ruhle said before quickly ending the segment. “We’re gonna leave it there.”

And Pelosi’s take now on Tump’s State of The Union address:

Live TV
Nancy Pelosi just pulled a major power move on Donald Trump’s State of the Union
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 2:22 PM EST, Wed January 16, 2019

(CNN) Sometimes the best power moves in politics are conveyed in the most mundane language.

“Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29,” wrote Speaker Nancy Pelosi to President Donald Trump on Wednesday.

Make no mistake: Pelosi’s decision to disinvite Trump from delivering his “State of the Union” address to Congress is a total power play designed to remind Trump that a) Congress is a co-equal branch of government and b) his willingness to keep the government shuttered until he gets money for a border wall is going to have impacts on him, too.

Just in case you missed that message, Pelosi delivered it again in an interview with CNN’s Ashley Killough. “This is a housekeeping matter in the Congress of the United States, so we can honor the responsibility of the invitation we extended to the President,” said Pelosi. “He can make it from the Oval Office if he wants.”

“He can make it from the Oval Office if he wants(!)”

What Pelosi is saying there is, essentially, this: Look, Trump can give a speech if he wants. But we are not giving him the platform of a bipartisan session of Congress to do it unless and until he reopens the government. (House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland went a step further in an interview with CNN’s Kate Bolduan Wednesday afternoon, declaring that “the State of the Union is off.”)

This is the longest shutdown in US history
This is the longest shutdown in US history
And from a logistical standpoint, Pelosi is well within her rights to rescind the invitation. As CNN’s Phil Mattingly and Ted Barrett explain:

"It’s the House speaker’s prerogative to invite the President to give the State of the Union. While there’s no precedent for it (that we’re aware of), if Pelosi decides the President shouldn’t go to the Capitol to speak on January 29, the President will not go on January 29.

“Keep in mind, in order to green light the State of the Union, both the House and the Senate have to pass resolutions. Neither have done so yet — and Pelosi controls whether the House passes one at all.”

It’s in keeping with her repeated and pointed emphasis – in public and private – that the new Democratic majority in the House stands on equal footing with Trump, and will remind him of that fact whenever she/they deem it necessary.

In her initial letter inviting Trump to deliver the “State of the Union” on January 29, Pelosi made sure to note: “The Constitution established the legislative, executive and judicial branches as co-equal branches of government, to be a check and balance on each other.” And, when asked by The New York Times earlier this month whether she considered herself to be Trump’s equal, Pelosi responded: “The Constitution does.”

View this interactive content on CNN.com
Pelosi’s latest effort to assert the power of the House – and her party – over Trump will play extremely well with her base who wants maximum confrontation with and embarrassment of Trump.

There’s an argument to be made, however, that it could backfire on Pelosi – and in the process hand Trump a much-needed foothold in a debate he is very much losing at the moment.

Donald Trump Jr., in an interview with the conservative Daily Caller website, gave a preview of what the argument coming out of the White House might sound like when he said this Wednesday:

“Speaker Pelosi is clearly attempting to block my father from giving his State of the Union speech, not because 20% of the government is shut down, but because she is terrified of him having another opportunity to speak directly to the American people about her party’s obstruction, unfiltered and without her friends in the media running interference for her.”

Pelosi – and Democrats – will, of course, scoff at that logic. They will note that Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was the one who designated the SOTU speech as a special security event. And that it is Trump who continues to demand $5 billion for his border wall – keeping the government closed until he gets it. And that Pelosi is doing what she feels is the best course to keep everyone safe under the current circumstances.

But the question is whether voters who may not like Trump but who just want the government to reopen and politicians to get back to working for the people who voted them into office will see Pelosi’s move to effectively cancel the State of the Union as an unnecessary provocation. And whether Trump, who is desperately in search of a life preserver in this whole mess, can seize on Pelosi’s decision as evidence that the left is trying to silence him.

My guess is he’s going to try like hell to make that case.

View on CNN
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Juliani’s fine tooth comb:

Rudy Giuliani says Trump didn’t collude with Russia but can’t say if campaign aides did
By Caroline Kelly, CNN
Updated 10:55 PM EST, Wed January 16, 2019

article video
(CNN) Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that he never denied President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign, only that the President himself was not involved in collusion.

In an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “Cuomo Prime Time,” Giuliani, a former New York mayor and Trump’s attorney, said he doesn’t know if other people in the campaign, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, were working with the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential race.

“I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or people in the campaign,” Giuliani said.

He added, “I said the President of the United States. There is not a single bit of evidence the President of the United States committed the only crime you can commit here, conspiring with the Russians to hack the DNC.”

It’s another remarkable statement from Giuliani, given that the President and his supporters have repeatedly denied any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. A person familiar with the matter told CNN last week that Manafort, while serving as Trump’s campaign chairman, tried to send internal polling data from the Trump campaign with two Kremlin-supporting Ukrainian oligarchs through his associate Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national who is linked to Russian intelligence.

When Cuomo asked if Manafort sharing such data with foreign agents constituted collusion, Giuliani said Trump never shared the polling data himself and only found out about it recently in the news.

“Donald Trump wasn’t giving polling data to anyone,” Giuliani said, adding, “he did not know about it until it was revealed a few weeks ago in an article.”

Trump himself has tweeted at least 13 times directly saying there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. The latest such denial came on December 10.

“Democrats can’t find a Smocking (sic) Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking (sic) Gun…No Collusion.’ @FoxNews. That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,” Trump tweeted, referencing a quote that was said on Fox News.

The President reacting to a filing in the court case of his former attorney, Michael Cohen, and the money paid to two women during the 2016 campaign who allege they’ve had extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied both allegations.

Trump later added, “Which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s - but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!”

In the interview with Cuomo, Giuliani challenged special counsel Robert Mueller to provide evidence of wrongdoing by the President.

“Let’s see if he’s got anything – I challenge him to show us some evidence that the President was involved in anything approaching criminal conduct,” Giuliani said.

He added, “If you want to do an ethics investigation fine, do an ethics investigation. But you don’t need a special prosecutor for that.”

Later in the interview, Giuliani shot down reports that he had said Trump’s legal team should get to edit Mueller’s report before it goes public.

Giuliani told Cuomo that he only meant Trump’s legal team should get to see Mueller’s final report before it goes public in order to write a response, but stressed that he does not want to alter the report and supports as much of it being published as national security allows.

“Of course I should (be able to view it first), I should be allowed to respond,” Giuliani said, adding that “it’s fair that we get an opportunity to do that.”

“I don’t want to change the report, I want to respond to the report,” he added.

Giuliani said that he would ideally like the report to be published unredacted so that he and fellow Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow could provide a complete counterargument, and that he would not be able to edit the report regardless.

“As his lawyer, I’d honestly like you to see the whole report because I think Jay and I could knock the hell out of it,” he said.

“First of all, they wouldn’t let me change the report. Secondly; I’ve been a lawyer too long to think I’d ever do that. Third, I want them to write the garbage they’re going to write because I want to answer it,” Giuliani added.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.

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Defensive weapons :star wars redux

washingtonpost.com/amphtml/ … e-defenses

Impeach? Do they understand the ramifications?

Note: the harrowing similarity with the Weimar Republic is obvious from an economic point of view::: both eras represented a critical stage in international economic crises, The Great Depression had global ramifications, namely a test of confidence of Capital, and it shook the world to its heals. That WW 1 was a preparation to test the limits ofomg vested interests, against the growing interests of new economically determined ones, which disqualified them, actually started with the wars of of the 19 th hundreds, fermenting waves of social anxiety.

That these catapulted after the near win of Communism from the 30’ s on, noted by Marx, and revolutionized nearly half of the world population. The razor edged conflict between right wing seated capital, communism sought the center of national socialism, in an optional synthesis against pure social Heglelian dialectic.

Where are we now? A resentment where the last resort to bridge the failing gap between communism and the failing capital, in a desperate and no win situation, is to bring back the last alternative. sans a .minimal European bite, -by solving it in the last bastion of progressive thought: the U.S…

Without this ideogical transmutation, the regressive retreat into social-political & eco comic madness may really ensue.

The may sacrifice Trump in a vast political act, but the process has gone on too long, to successfully revert to a. nominal status quo.

Flash:

MEDIA
‘Resign Or Be Impeached’: Dems Erupt Over Bombshell Trump Obstruction Report
Calls for Trump to leave office grow after report claimed he told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.
By Ed Mazza
01/18/2019 05:25 AM ET
|
Updated 10 hours ago

The bombshell report BuzzFeed published on Thursday that said President Donald Trump directed his personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress lit up social media.

Some of the first to react included Democratic lawmakers:

Others on Capitol Hill vowed to investigate:

Outside of Congress, the BuzzFeed report created a buzz throughout Twitter into the pre-dawn hours on Friday:

The Washington Post
Democracy Dies in Darkness

National Security
In a rare move, Mueller’s office denies BuzzFeed report that Trump told Cohen to lie about Moscow project

The office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on Friday denied a report from BuzzFeed News that Michael Cohen, a former lawyer to President Trump, lied to Congress per Trump’s order. (Richard Drew/AP)
By Devlin Barrett ,
Matt Zapotosky and
Karoun Demirjian January 18 at 9:00 PM
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s office on Friday denied an explosive report by BuzzFeed News that his investigators had gathered evidence showing President Trump directed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about a prospective business deal in Moscow.

“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony are not accurate,” said Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller.

The statement was remarkable on several levels — first, the special counsel’s office speaks exceedingly rarely, and second, the statement seemed to drive a stake through a sensational allegation that Democratic lawmakers suggested earlier in the day could spell the end of the Trump presidency. As earthshaking as the claims in the story were, no other media organizations were able to match them.

The story published by BuzzFeed on Thursday night attributed to two federal law enforcement officials an incendiary assertion: that Mueller had collected emails, texts and testimony indicating Trump had directed Cohen to lie to Congress about the extent of discussions surrounding a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow. That project never came to pass, but Cohen pleaded guilty last year to lying to Congress about the matter.

The BuzzFeed report strongly implied the president might have committed a crime, dramatically raising speculation of possible impeachment. Within hours, Democrats in Congress were publicly demanding answers.

The potential consequences of the report were so severe — immediate congressional investigations and a possible legal showdown with the White House — that Mueller decided to take the surprising step of publicly denying his investigation had gathered any such evidence.

Trump calls Cohen ‘weak,’ dismisses scrutiny of Moscow project
President Trump on Nov. 29 said his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen is lying to federal prosecutors about a Trump real estate project in Moscow. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

[Read the criminal information document filed against Michael Cohen]

The special counsel’s office has only rarely issued public statements since it was created in May 2017; it had never previously issued a public statement regarding evidence in its investigation into Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Inside the Justice Department, the statement was viewed as a huge step, and one that would have been taken only if the special counsel’s office viewed the story as almost entirely incorrect. The special counsel’s office seemed to be disputing every aspect of the story that addressed comments or evidence given to its investigators.

The explicit denial by the special counsel’s office is likely to provide further ammunition to complaints by Trump and his supporters that press coverage of him is unfair and inaccurate.

Trump weighed in Friday night on Twitter, criticizing BuzzFeed. “A very sad day for journalism, but a great day for our country!” he tweeted.

Following the special counsel’s denial, BuzzFeed insisted its story was correct. In a statement, the website’s top editor, Ben Smith, said, “We stand by our reporting and the sources who informed it, and we urge the Special Counsel to make clear what he’s disputing.”

The story had claimed Cohen had acknowledged to Mueller’s prosecutors that the president directed him to deceive Congress about key facts linking the president to the proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow. BuzzFeed also said Mueller learned about the directive to lie from “interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.”

Mueller’s denial, according to people familiar with the matter, aims to make clear that none of those statements in the story are accurate.

Cohen is due to testify before a House committee in early February. He pleaded guilty in November to lying under oath to Congress about the Moscow project negotiations, and court documents filed in connection with that plea indicated he did so to align his statements with the political messaging of Trump and his aides on the question of Russian contacts.

As part of that plea, Cohen admitted he had falsely told Congress that Trump’s effort to build an apartment tower in Moscow ended in January 2016, when in fact it had continued until June of that year.

In court documents, Cohen admitted that he briefed Trump on his ongoing negotiations with Russian officials about the proposed deal and said that he had consulted with Trump’s team before his false testimony before Congress. But those documents did not indicate that Trump played a direct role in his false testimony.

In December, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for those lies and unrelated financial crimes.

Cohen and his representatives did not immediately respond to messages Friday night. Earlier in the day, Lanny J. Davis, a legal and communications adviser to Cohen, said of the BuzzFeed story: “Out of respect for Mr. Mueller’s and the Office of Special Counsel’s investigation, Mr. Cohen declined to respond to the questions asked by the reporters and so do I.”

The BuzzFeed report was incendiary in large part because it cast Cohen’s lies to Congress in a far more nefarious light — that he had done so at the specific instruction of the president.

The president’s attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, challenged the Justice Department to “reveal the leakers” behind BuzzFeed’s reporting and chided Democrats who, he suggested, should refrain from investigating the president until Mueller concludes his investigation. “There may be nothing to legitimately investigate,” he said on Twitter.

“I commend Bob Mueller’s office for correcting the BuzzFeed false story that Pres. Trump encouraged Cohen to lie,” Giuliani wrote in a separate tweet. “I ask the press to take heed that their hysterical desire to destroy this President has gone too far. They pursued this without critical analysis all day. #FAKENEWS

The claims in the news report had prompted Democrats, who control the House, to ratchet up their investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, including allegations that the Trump campaign cooperated with Russian operatives and that Trump has since sought to obstruct an ongoing probe by Mueller.

“If the @BuzzFeed story is true, President Trump must resign or be impeached,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted after the story was published.

“We know that the President has engaged in a long pattern of obstruction,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote in a tweet Friday promising to “get to the bottom” of the allegations in BuzzFeed’s report.

Like predicted, political back peddling for setting of a balanced public policy
is in the works.

The Trump Impeachment
Unfit To Lead
Trump makes a ‘major announcement’
By Mark Sumner / Daily Kos (01/19/2019) - January 19, 2019348

Guardian News / YouTube Five times Donald Trump refused to…
Guardian News / YouTube
It appears that Trump will be looking for $5.7 billion for a very permanent wall, in exchange for his support of a very temporary extension of rights for some immigrants. We’ll be back after the speech for a recap, but if you must watch …. here you go.

5a349c60b42c75.086796361513397344738.png
Nancy Pelosi has issued a tweet responding to what Trump is expected to say. Check below the line.

Much of Trump’s speech seemed like a tired retread of his Oval Office moment from last week. Much of what was added to it were either inaccurate numbers — such as using the health care cost for all drugs, including cigarettes and alcohol, and attributing that cost to drugs illegally brought across the border.

The biggest news out of this that Mitch McConnell, in his starring role as Trump’s footstool, will present this Trump-prepared bill to the Senate after refusing to allow the Senate to vote on numerous bills that passed the House. Which is not how legislation is supposed to work.

Ted Lieu
:heavy_check_mark:

Dear @realDonaldTrump: Thank you for your concessions. Democrats look forward to working with you on a comprehensive immigration bill that includes DACA. But we can’t do that in a shutdown. We will never allow a shutdown as a negotiating tactic. Need to reopen government first.

Scott Wong
:heavy_check_mark:
@scottwongDC
DEMS are panning Trump’s wall-for-DACA & TPS deal. They say:
– Ds were not consulted on this proposal
– BRIDGE Act does not fully protect Dreamers and is not a permanent solution.
– Includes the “same wasteful, ineffective” wall
– This plan CANNOT pass the House or Senate

The biggest impression of Trump’s offer to give a few crumbs in exchange for everything on his wish list.

Yale Historian Thinks Trump Will Try to Stage a Coup

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Live TV
Mystery company in Mueller-related case is wholly-owned by foreign government
By Katelyn Polantz and Ariane de Vogue, CNN
Updated 12:34 PM EST, Tue January 22, 2019

Washington (CNN) An attempt before the Supreme Court for a company to dodge a grand jury subpoena related to the Mueller investigation revealed a new twist Tuesday: that the company is wholly owned by a foreign government.

In essence, the foreign nation is fighting off the US Justice Department’s attempt to collect information as it builds a criminal case.

The development comes in a redacted petition the country filed with the Supreme Court that was made public Tuesday.

RELATED: Supreme Court again takes no action on DACA

The case concerns an unnamed corporation that is fighting a subpoena request from a DC-based grand jury. Lower courts have ruled that the company must turn over the information and imposed a $50,000 fine for every day it failed to do so following the appeal.

CNN previously reported that prosecutors from the special counsel’s office were involved in the case at its early stages, suggesting that special counsel Robert Mueller sought the information from the company for grand jury proceedings related to his criminal investigations. The case then continued through the court system with an unusual amount of secrecy around it, so that even the lawyers involved could not be seen at a later hearing.

In ruling against the company, the appeals court said the request fell within an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that limits foreign governments from being sued in US courts. The court also held that the company had not shown that its own country’s law bar compliance.

Overall, the country argues to the Supreme Court that a ruling forcing it to turn over information to the US in a criminal investigation will upset international diplomacy.

“The D.C. circuit’s parade of horribles finds no support in U.S. history. Since America’s founding, foreign states have been immune from American criminal jurisdiction, and yet the United States is not overrun with criminal syndicates backed by foreign states,” the attorneys for the foreign country wrote.

Regarding hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines it will have to pay for noncompliance, “The conflict is real and, like the other questions presented, has ramifications for America’s relationships with other countries,” the filing adds.

One of the firms involved in the challenge is Alston & Bird, CNN has reported, a firm that has previously represented Russian interests, including working for a Russian oligarch and a contractor of the Russian government.

After receiving the grand jury subpoena around summer 2018 and refusing to turn over the information, a trial-level federal judge held the company – meaning the country, too – in contempt of court. The company then lost several attempts it made to appeal the decision, until it finally reached the Supreme Court.

At one point during the earlier court proceedings, as the company tried to fight the subpoena, the country that owned it argued it should “not have to suffer the indignity of a contempt order,” according to its Supreme Court brief.

Still, it lost before the appellate court for the DC Circuit and was fined $50,000 for each day it didn’t comply with the subpoena. Last week, the Supreme Court denied an emergency request from the company to freeze the financial penalty, pending appeal.

RELATED: Supreme Court allows transgender military ban to go into effect

Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law, said the ruling could mean the court will eventually rule against the company.

“All the court is doing is allowing the corporation to file their full appeal under seal, with a redacted version for the public, without any suggestion of how the Justices are likely to rule on that appeal,” Vladeck said. “Indeed, the fact that the justices already refused to put the lower-court rulings on hold strongly implies that the court will turn the corporation’s case away once it is fully briefed.”

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© 2019 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Live TV
The Washington Post: Former White House aide describes ‘absolutely out of control’ White House staff in new book
By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
Updated 10:02 AM EST, Tue January 22, 2019

article video
Washington (CNN) Former White House communications aide Cliff Sims describes scenes of an “absolutely out of control” White House staff, President Donald Trump berating the then-speaker of the House from his own party over loyalty and the President walking out of policy meetings in his upcoming book, according to excerpts published by The Washington Post.

The stories are recounted in Sims’ book “Team of Vipers,” out next week and obtained in advance by the Post.

Trump took Paul Ryan to task over Ryan’s loyalty to him after the former House speaker criticized Trump’s handling of the deadly 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia, rally, according to the excerpts.

“Paul, do you know why Democrats have been kicking your a-- for decades? Because they know a little word called ‘loyalty,’” Trump told Ryan over the phone. “Why do you think Nancy [Pelosi] has held on this long? Have you seen her? She’s a disaster. Every time she opens her mouth another Republican gets elected. But they stick with her…Why can’t you be loyal to your president, Paul?”

Trump also brought up how Ryan distanced himself from Trump in 2016 after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump could be heard bragging about being able to grope women.

“I remember being in Wisconsin and your own people were booing you,” Trump told the Wisconsin Republican, according to the excerpt. “You were out there dying like a dog, Paul. Like a dog! And what’d I do? I saved your a–.”

Cillizza: This Paul Ryan-Donald Trump anecdote is so, so painful
The White House did not immediately offer comment to CNN on the released excerpts. CNN has reached out to Sims for comment.

Throughout the book, Sims recounts “scenes of chaos, dysfunction and duplicity among the president, his family members and administration officials,” the Post reported.

“It’s impossible to deny how absolutely out of control the White House staff — again, myself included — was at times,” he wrote.

Sims also writes in his book that Trump was so disinterested during an Oval Office meeting with Ryan about the Republican health care bill that he walked out and turned on his TV in another room, according to the Post. Vice President Mike Pence had to convince the President to return to the Oval Office and continue the meeting, Sims wrote, according to the Post.

In his book, Sims recounted how White House staff failed to check the facts on former press secretary Sean Spicer’s statement to the media about Trump’s presidential inauguration crowd size since it was hurried in an effort to appease Trump, the Post reported.

According to Sim’s account in “Team of Vipers,” Trump also created an “enemies list” made up of members of his own administration, which Axios first reported.

CNN’s Allie Malloy contributed to this report.

© 2019 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Now what’s wrong with Giuliani?

WHITE HOUSE
“Trump Is Screaming. He’s So Mad at Rudy”: Giuliani’s Fate Is Uncertain After Botched Interviews
As Giuliani’s unforced errors pile up, former West Wing officials and 2016 campaign veterans are privately debating what’s gone wrong with Rudy.
GABRIEL SHERMANJANUARY 22, 2019 7:05 PM
Rudy Giuliani sitting at a table.
Giuliani attends the Conference In Support Of Freedom and Democracy In Iran on June 30, 2018.
By Anthony Devlin/Getty Images.
Every time Rudy Giuliani opens his mouth in front of a reporter, something bad seems to happen. Donald Trump’s beleaguered lawyer has, over the past few weeks, given one disastrous interview after another. The latest fiasco came Monday, when Giuliani participated in a rambling Q&A with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner. After telling Chotiner he only had a moment before he took a shower, Giuliani unspooled a series of bizarre responses, at one point in the conversation even admitting he worried that his legacy would be that “he lied for Trump.”

Trump is “furious” with Giuliani’s recent botched press appearances, two Republicans briefed on the president’s thinking told me. What makes the most recent interviews so frustrating to Trumpworld is that, on Friday, the president secured his biggest victory yet when Robert Mueller’s spokesman issued a rare public denial of BuzzFeed’s explosive report alleging Trump had directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump Tower Moscow. “Before Rudy stepped in it, Mueller had basically called BuzzFeed ‘fake news,’” a Republican close to the White House said. According to sources, a debate is playing out inside the West Wing over Giuliani’s future. Trump is being encouraged by several people, including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, to dump Giuliani before it’s too late, while outside advisers Corey Lewandowski and Dave Bossie are lobbying Trump to keep Giuliani. “Trump is screaming. He’s so mad at Rudy,” one of the sources said. (“No, he’s not pissed. He just wants it clarified,” Giuliani told CNN’s Dana Bash on Tuesday, when asked about the president’s response to the interviews.) The White House had not responded to a request for comment by press time.

As Giuliani’s unforced errors pile up, former West Wing officials and 2016 campaign veterans are privately debating what’s gone wrong with Rudy. Why, they ask, is he making statements that so obviously damage his client? A former White House official speculated that maybe Giuliani “has lost his mind.” But there are other, more charitable ways of interpreting Giuliani’s interviews. As I’ve previously reported, the Trump-Giuliani relationship hasn’t been good for weeks. Giuliani has said privately that he “hates the job” and that Mueller’s final report will be “horrific” for Trump. Facing these challenges and pressures, it’s understandable he would make mistakes, the thinking goes. “Everyone who works for Trump screws up because there’s no way to please the guy,” an outside Trump adviser said.

But, frustrating as the job may be, Giuliani also may be addicted to it. Friends said the former New York mayor was embittered after being out of the limelight for years following his failed 2008 presidential campaign. He’s been exhilarated by the press attention that comes with being Trump’s lawyer. Sources said Giuliani often books his own interviews and frequently texts with television news anchors. “There’s a school of thought that it’s better to be famous and ridiculed than ignored,” a Giuliani friend told me. But the media environment has become vastly more complicated than it was a decade ago, the last time Giuliani was on the national stage, and he has struggled to adapt. “This has been a trial by fire for him,” the friend said. “He can’t just say whatever he wants, because he’s being fact-checked on Twitter. Every time he does anything he gets caught

Related
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Trump Goes Off the Rails on 30th Day of Shutdown

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Michael Cohen postpones congressional testimony because of threats to family from Trump and Giuliani
Dan Mangan
Kevin Breuninger
Published 8 Hours Ago Updated 5 Hours Ago
CNBC.com
President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, is postponing his plan to testify before Congress in February because of concerns about his family’s safety, according to Lanny Davis, Cohen’s advisor.
Davis cited “ongoing threats” to Cohen’s family from Trump and the president’s current personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in the decision to postpone his Feb. 7 appearance before the House Oversight Committee.
Trump as recently as last week had urged people to “watch” Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman.

President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, on Wednesday postponed his plan to testify before Congress in February because of concerns about his family’s safety, Cohen’s adviser Lanny Davis said.

Davis cited “ongoing threats” to Cohen’s family from Trump and the president’s current personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in the decision to delay his appearance before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, where he was expected to talk at length about the president.

That voluntary Feb. 7 appearance is a month before Cohen is due to begin serving a three-year prison sentence for multiple crimes, some of which relate to Trump.

It is now not clear when — or even if — Cohen would be willing or able to testify anytime soon, given that looming sentence.

Davis, in his statement Wednesday, said, "Due to ongoing threats against his family from President Trump and Mr. Giuliani, as recently as this weekend, as well as Mr. Cohen’s continued cooperation with ongoing investigations, by advice of counsel, Mr. Cohen’s appearance will be postponed to a later date.

“Mr. Cohen wishes to thank Chairman Cummings for allowing him to appear before the House Oversight Committee and looks forward to testifying at the appropriate time. This is a time where Mr. Cohen had to put his family and their safety first.”

Trump later told reporters, when asked about Cohen: “I would say he’s been threatened by the truth.”

“He’s only been threatened by the truth, and he doesn’t want to do that probably for me or other of his clients,” Trump said. “He has other clients also, I assume, and he doesn’t want to tell the truth for me or other of his clients.”

Drew Angerer | Getty Images
Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, arrives with his family at federal court for his sentencing hearing on December 12, 2018 in New York City.
Giuliani had no immediate comment.

Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Cohen’s concern for safety was “legitimate” given the “attacks” by Trump and Giuliani.

But they also said they expected Cohen to appear before their committee at some point.

Trump last week urged people to “watch” Cohen’s father-in-law, Fima Shusterman, who was placed on probation in the mid-1990s after pleading guilty in a case in which he was charged with conspiring to defraud the IRS.

And Trump’s other comments about Cohen days before that spurred Cummings, Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., to warn the president against trying to “discourage intimidate or otherwise pressure a witness not to provide testimony to Congress.”

Giuliani, in an appearance on CNN last Sunday, had said Cohen is lying about Trump, and also said that Shusterman may have ties to organized crime.

A former New York City mayor and federal prosecutor, Giuliani, further said that Shusterman was involved in criminal activity with Cohen, and that Cohen is withholding information about that activity because testifying about it would be dangerous for his father-in-law.

A source close to Cohen told NBC News that Cohen’s wife and father-in-law were particularly afraid about Cohen’s upcoming scheduled appearance in Congress, and that they feel directly targeted by Trump.

Cohen’s wife, Laura, was afraid of going to the hearing in person because she believed she was at risk of being attacked.

“The threats are real,” the source says, “Trump knows what he’s doing.”

Cohen had served for years as Trump’s personal lawyer, and once bragged of being willing to take “a bullet” for the president.

But he fell out with Trump in early 2018, after FBI agents raided his office and several residences in New York as part of a criminal investigation.

Cohen, 52, pleaded guilty later in the year to financial crimes, campaign finance violations and to lying to Congress.

Cohen admitted facilitating hush money payments to two women, porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, shortly before the 2016 presidential election to keep them quiet about their alleged affairs with Trump. The president has denied having the affairs.

Cohen also confessed to misleading Congress in 2017 about when an aborted plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow actually ended, and about the extent of Trump’s involvement in that project.

For months before he was sentenced in December, Cohen had cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller, prosecutors in New York and other authorities who are investigating Trump.

His continued cooperation with Mueller after his sentencing was expected to lead to limitations on the information he could share during his testimony before Congress.

On Jan. 12, Trump, during an interview with Jeanine Pirro on Fox News, blasted Cohen, as he has done on prior occasions.

“Look, I was a client of his,” Trump said. “You’re supposed to have lawyer-client privilege, but it doesn’t matter because if I’m a very honest person, frankly.”

“But he’s on trouble on some loans and fraud and taxi cabs and stuff that I know nothing about. And in order to get his sentence reduced, he says, ‘I have an idea, I’ll give you some information on the president.’”

Trump then told Pirro that Cohen “should give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at. Because where does that money — that’s the money in the family.”

“And I guess he didn’t want to talk about his father-in-law – he’s trying to get his sentence reduced. So it’s pretty sad. It’s weak and it’s very sad to watch a thing like that,” the president said.

On Wednesday, Cummings and Schiff, the chairmen of the House committees, reiterated a warning to Trump that they made on this heels of his comments to Pirro.

“As we stated previously with our colleague, Chairman Jerry Nadler of the Judiciary Committee, efforts to intimidate witnesses, scare their family members, or prevent them from testifying before Congress are textbook mob tactics that we condemn in the strongest terms,” Cummings and Schiff said.

“Our nation’s laws prohibit efforts to discourage, intimidate, or otherwise pressure a witness not to provide testimony to Congress. The President should make no statement or take any action to obstruct Congress’ independent oversight and investigative efforts, including by seeking to discourage any witness from testifying in response to a duly authorized request from Congress.”

“We understand that Mr. Cohen’s wife and other family members fear for their safety after these attacks, and we have repeatedly offered our assistance to work with law enforcement to enhance security measures for Mr. Cohen and his family,” Cummings and Schiff said in a joint statement.

However, the chairmen, in their joint statement, also said that when their committees began talking to Cohen about appearing before them, “not appearing before Congress was never an option.”

“We will not let the President’s tactics prevent Congress from fulfilling our constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities. This will not stop us from getting to the truth,” Cummings and Schiff said.

“We expect Mr. Cohen to appear before both Committees, and we remain engaged with his counsel about his upcoming appearances.”

Vl