Trump enters the stage

With the most concise precision , albeit the largest possible brushstrokes its possible to evaluate what is beginning to look like a very scripted executive agenda.

The collusion is not based prejoritively
on matters of gaining personal fortune, except on a transformative attempt to disentangle disentangle very big material indebtedness on part of Trump, that is as best and irksome , as it is borderline criminal.

That debt fits in nicely with the social/personal conflation of the capital -political debt of the U.S., being the number 1 debtor to the world , particularly to China.

That being said, this U.S. degradation has not been overlooked world-wide, and the script called for urgent and heavy handed measures.

As such a transfer of causes to an internationally precluding collusive social abberance had to negate any critical buildup of national adhesion on basis of various fragmented institutionalized vested interests along the lines of racial, ethnic, political and financial differences.

The scripting of outsourcing outsourcing not merely labor, but of production and home basis , by corporations of various types did nothing but make a return such as proposed by Trump virtually impossible.

He had known that all along, and the Make America Great Again was but a battle cry to bring in the message like honey to the bee

Trump was set up and scripted because of his obvious symbolic voice, developed in Apprentice, as a harangue of a late tolling bell which even at this late hour, was able to connect freedom with laissez faire.

That really, Trump a would be centrist , doesn’t at all care for parry affiliation or concern had some guessing as.to why he did not represent party policy .

He is as crazy as a fox, as he is a self described manageable genius.

The borderline condition of the index of a national prototype can at this point connect the real with the most symbolic, therefore engendering the much discussed wall.

That a society is pushed into a false sense of security in terms of such blatency, and become policy, is proof positive .

Of course only a one per cent Is able to come even near to such approximations, and the script called for a delayed , day by day analysis, of how actions and reactions play out on the national and international stage.

The worst possible scenario would envolve some sort of sebere economic decline, and the economy can be expected to be the focal point of the State of the Union address.

The crux of the above derived from the most collusive of.political/economic ideas, vis., that of the ages’ old debate on the spiritual/material synthesis of substantially perceived social processes.

Sarah Sanders at news conference:

CNN) White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said she believes God wanted President Donald Trump to win the 2016 election, the Christian Broadcasting Network reported on Wednesday.

“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that’s why he’s there,” Sanders told CBN’s David Brody and Jennifer Wishon, according to a transcript of the interview provided by CBN.

This is possible, but how likely? For Theists it is not inconceivable, however politicians use God for their own political purposes, in Trump’s case it is his hard core constituents.

Thursday, Jan 31, 2019

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
Mueller says Russians are using his discovery materials in disinformation effort
The information appears to have come from the materials shared with attorneys for Concord Management, one of several Russian entities accused of election meddling.

Robert Mueller’s office says the Russians are trying to use the investigation’s findings in a disinformation campaign. Alex Wong /

Russians are using materials obtained from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office in a disinformation campaign apparently aimed at discrediting the investigation into Moscow’s election interference, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.

One or more people associated with the special counsel’s case against Russian hackers made statements last October claiming to have stolen discovery materials that were originally provided by Mueller to Concord Management, Mueller’s team said in court documents filed on Wednesday in the Russian troll farm case.

That discovery — evidence and documents traded between both sides of a lawsuit — appears to have been altered and disseminated as part of a disinformation campaign apparently aimed at discrediting the ongoing investigations in Russian interference in the U.S. political system, according to the documents.

Concord Management, a company owned by a Russian oligarch known as President Vladimir Putin’s “chef,” is one of three Russian entities that were accused by the special counsel last February of helping to mastermind the social media meddling into the 2016 election. Thirteen Russian citizens were also indicted and accused of taking part in the widespread effort.

According to the documents filed Wednesday, a Twitter account called @HackingRedstone tweeted: “We’ve got access to the Special Counsel Mueller’s probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case Concord LLC v. Mueller. You can view all the files Mueller had about the IRA and Russian collusion. Enjoy the reading!”

The account has since been suspended.

Prosecutors said that a link attached to the tweet “contained file folders with names and folder structures that are unique to the names and structures of materials (including tracking numbers assigned by the Special Counsel’s Office) produced by the government in discovery.”

Prosecutors added, “The fact that the webpage contained numerous irrelevant files suggest that the person who created the webpage used their knowledge of the nonsensitive discovery to make it appear as though the irrelevant files contained on the webpage were the sum total evidence of ‘IRA and Russian collusion’ gathered by law enforcement in this matter in an apparent effort to discredit the investigation.”

The Internet Research Agency, or IRA, is a St. Petersburg-based firm whose key executives have also been indicted by Mueller on charges of defrauding the United States.

The special counsel’s office said the account used to publish the discovery materials was registered by a user with an IP address in Russia.

The filing states that the FBI has found no evidence that U.S. government servers, including servers used by the special counsel’s office, had been breached. Rather, the information appears to have come from the materials shared with attorneys for Concord Management.

According to prosecutors, attorneys for Concord Management said that they received calls from reporters about the information, but they had not been hacked. Instead, Mueller’s team notes, the defense told them it appears to have come from a 2014 hack that was disseminated online — a hypothesis that was not consistent with the facts, federal prosecutors said.

Tom Winter
Tom Winter is a producer and reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit based in New York, covering crime, courts, terrorism, and financial fraud on the East Coast.

Trump won on baby immigration, today in California, feds arrested numerous Chinese scams, where high profile travel agencies were busted on charges of bringing in pregnant Chinese women, usually well heeled, who delivered their babies with the intention of giving prestige to their offspring, by securing them US citizenship. In one case a Chinese milionaress, bought properties and luxury cars, but when it was time to pay her 50M hospital bill, she stuck the hospital declaring she was indigent.

This is a win win for Trump , for he promised to eliminate this kind of behavior.

On the negative side, trump got burned for warning another government shutdown if Pelosis’s denial of any funding for his wall is sustained.

Trump on Gen. McCrystal:

President Donald Trump is at war with the generals.

The latest salvo in that war came on New Year’s morning – not traditionally a time for recrimination – in a presidential tweet that denigrated retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Trump tweeted, “‘General’ McChrystal got fired like a dog by Obama. Last assignment a total bust. Known for big, dumb mouth. Hillary lover!”

Huh? How does he get away with stuff like this ?

CONGRESS
Trump’s foreign policy faces growing dissent in Congress
On Syria, North Korea and NATO, Trump’s policies are being rebuked by both parties.

Mitch McConnell listens to President Donald Trump during a meeting with Republican House and Senate leadership in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington on Sept. 5, 2018.Leah Millis / Reuters file

Feb. 1, 2019, 5:00 AM ET
By Leigh Ann Caldwell and Josh Lederman
WASHINGTON — Congress is sending President Donald Trump a strong message of discontent with his foreign policy in a number of critical areas, a growing rebuke that increasingly includes members of Trump’s own Republican Party.

On Afghanistan and Syria, the GOP-run Senate has issued a stern warning against the president’s plans to withdraw troops. Lawmakers in the House and Senate are questioning Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea, his easing of sanctions on a Russian oligarch and even his intent to stay involved in Yemen’s civil war. And his threats to pull out of NATO are causing consternation on Capitol Hill.

The bipartisan rebuke has left the president increasingly standing alone on consequential issues of international affairs. He is seeing pushback from every corner of the ideological spectrum and across both parties.

In the latest reproach, the Senate Thursday overwhelmingly passed an amendment that disapproves of the sudden withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Syria. Forty-three Republicans backed the measure.

Perhaps an even more critical component of the resolution is that it was authored by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has been careful not to publicly split with the president. It was also backed by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and James Risch, R-Idaho, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., voted against the amendment because he said he doesn’t know if Trump is “right or wrong” on Syria.

But Kennedy minced no words when he said there is no coherent policy in the Middle East. “Our Middle East policy right now looks like something my dog’s been keeping under our back porch. Nobody knows what it is, but it’s ugly,” he told NBC News.

The newfound willingness to challenge the president on foreign policy by Republicans reflects tensions over his unconventional or seemingly impulsive decisions that simmered quietly during his first two years but were rarely voiced in public. Two years in, and following midterm elections in which dozens of Republicans lost their House seats, Trump’s party appears more willing to directly confront him on his more controversial decisions.

McConnell’s amendment, for example, is part of a larger Middle East bill that slaps new sanctions on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and shores up U.S. support for Israel and Jordan. Two Senate Republican aides say it was deliberately introduced as the first piece of legislation in the new Senate and given the designation Senate Bill 1 in a conspicuous bid to push back at Trump’s Syria withdrawal and remind the president that Congress has a role in foreign policy.

While the measure is mostly symbolic, it reflects concern among Republicans about the message that Trump’s Syria move sent to Israel and Jordan — U.S. allies and Syrian neighbors intimately affected by the decision to withdraw U.S. troops. The move essentially allowed lawmakers to go around the president to show the two countries that at least Congress has their back.

In recent years, most mainstream Republicans have advocated an active U.S. role overseas to ensure national security at home, a world view that has at times been an awkward fit with Trump’s “America First” doctrine. Still, polls show that, by and large, most rank-and-file Republicans continue to support Trump’s foreign policy.

Thursday’s action was only the latest example of a newfound willingness by Congress to insert itself in trying to issue a course correction. Lawmakers are also expressing condemnation on issues of trade, Russia, North Korea, Yemen and NATO.

In some places the president is indulging his inclination to extricate the U.S. from overseas entanglements by withdrawing troops in Afghanistan and Syria, threatening a retreat from NATO and contemplating reducing troops on the Korean Peninsula.

But in other areas he’s showing more willingness to take an active role in overseas affairs, intervening diplomatically in Venezuela and maintaining a presence in Yemen’s civil war, giving critics of all stripes space to interject.

James Carafano, foreign policy scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation who advised the Trump presidential transition, said there are legitimate concerns about some of the president’s foreign policy pronouncements. He cited issues raised in Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ resignation letter in December — which suggested Trump was insufficiently supportive of U.S. allies — as a critique that had resonated with many conservatives.

“The president is an unconventional statesman, we get that,” Carafano said. “Nothing in the Constitution says that he can’t be. But he does have a responsibility to make sure his administration’s policies are clear and consistently understood by our friends and enemies. And sometimes, it’s not.”

Last week the House of Representatives spoke with a near-unanimous voice, voting 357-22 to prohibit the use of funds to withdraw from NATO, something the president threatened to do during his campaign and at times throughout his presidency.

On Venezuela, there’s wide agreement on Capitol Hill among Republicans and Democrats that the president is following the lead of Sen. Marco Rubio. The Florida Republican was instrumental in the White House’s decision to back Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó over President Nicolás Maduro, according to Senate aides. And now that White House has adopted that position, Congress is attempting to ensure that there is a strategy in place to address the fallout.

At a bipartisan briefing for staff on Wednesday by the White House, State Department, Defense Department and USAID officials, Senate staff strongly pushed for answers about the humanitarian plan, security at the embassy and what a political transition in the South American country would look like, according to a Senate source.

“They are building the plane while flying it,” one Democratic Senate aide familiar with the briefing said.

Senators are also pushing for insight ahead of Trump’s upcoming meeting with North Korea President Kim Jong Un.

Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., confirmed that he spoke Wednesday by phone with the U.S. special representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, about the upcoming summit. Gardner, who has not been pleased with the lack of information coming from the administration on North Korea, said he didn’t want to get into too many details about the call but said: “The hope is that those concrete actions will be taken in the lead-up to any summit. If there’s no concrete action, I don’t think they should meet.”

Gardner also confirmed that he and Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., will reintroduce the North Korea Policy Oversight Act, which is essentially a bill to monitor the administration on North Korea talks. The 2018 version requires oral and written briefings from the White House on the negotiations, continued sanctions and “underscores the importance" that the number of U.S. forces on the peninsula are not part of the negotiations with North Korea.

As the special counsel investigation continues into potential Trump campaign collusion with Russia, Republicans have also shown increasing willingness to call out the president on policies they see as insufficiently tough on Moscow. In January, after Trump’s Treasury Department said it would ease sanctions on companies that had been controlled by Russian oligarch and Vladimir Putin ally Oleg Deripaska, 11 Republicans joined Democrats in an attempt to keep the sanctions in place. The bill failed narrowly in the Senate.

In the House, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have introduced a number of pieces of legislation to oversee the president’s foreign policy. Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., has introduced biting bills that would financially prevent the administration from removing troops from Syria and South Korea and withdrawing from NATO.

His goal, he said, is "to remain engaged internationally so we can shape events and to maintain and build strong allies.”

“Congress needs to claw back its authority, particularly on foreign policy,” Gallagher told NBC News.

The flurry of movement comes as a coalition of senators on the left and the right has reintroduced a measure cutting off U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen despite the president’s intention to continue that support. The measure passed the Senate last year, an unexpected move that reflected growing frustration with Saudi Arabia after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of the Saudi government.

“It strikes me as the Senate reasserting its traditional role in foreign policy,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who advises numerous GOP senators. “President Trump is a nontraditional president. Some of his nontraditional positions on foreign policy diverge rather markedly from many of the senators, particularly on the Republican side.”

Leigh Ann Caldwell
Leigh Ann Caldwell is a political reporter for NBC News who covers Capitol Hill and elections.

Josh Lederman
Josh Lederman is a national political reporter for NBC News.

U.S.
DONALD TRUMP JR. WILL BE INDICTED BY MUELLER, FORMER PROSECUTOR SAYS, AND WILL HELP TO ENSNARE HIS FATHER
By Christina Zhao On Saturday, February 2, 2019 - 16:03

Donald Trump Jr. speaks to West Virginia voters at a campaign event for Republican U.S Senate candidate Patrick Morrisey October 22, 2018 in Inwood, West Virginia. On Saturday, a federal prosecutor on MSNBC predicted that Donald Trump Jr. will get indicted and special counsel Robert Mueller will use that as leverage against his father President Donald Trump.

U.S. DONALD TRUMP RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

Donald Trump Jr. will be indicted and used by special counsel Robert Mueller to ensnare his father President Donald Trump, a former prosecutor predicted.

During a segment on MSNBC’s AM Joy on Saturday, Paul Butler, a former Department of Justice public corruption prosecutor, and host Joy Reid discussed the latest developments in Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between Trump’s campaign team and Moscow officials.

“Does Mueller have to indict Trump in order to put the proper coda at the end of the long symphony?” Reid asked the ex-prosecutor.

“Mueller is not going to indict Trump, because he’s going to follow the DOJ employee handbook, but he has leverage over the president in terms of Donald Trump, Jr.,” Butler explained. “We’ve seen Mueller use people’s kids to get to folks in the past. He could do this with Donald Trump, Jr.”

He continued: “Trump, Jr. went into the Senate Intelligence Committee, took an oath to tell the truth, and lied his butt off.”

“You think he will get indicted?” Reid asked.

“If Roger Stone and Michael Cohen get indicted for lying to the Intelligence Committee and Donald, Jr. lied, then he gets indicted too,” Butler responded.

Earlier this week, Rep. Jackie Speier (CA), a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee who grilled the president’s eldest son on his Russian contacts in December 2017, restated her concerns that Trump Jr. lied to the committee after suggesting in December that he lied on “at least two occasions.”

When asked by MSNBC Live host Katy Tur on Tuesday whether she suspected that anyone in Trump’s circle, in addition to the president’s former adviser Roger Stone, lied to the committee, she suggested Trump Jr. without directly naming him.

“I am concerned that other people lied to the committee and I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out through the Mueller investigation and report that he has identified others,” the Democratic representative said.

“Who potentially do you think could have lied?” Tur pressed.

“Well, I’m not going to go there with you right at the moment, but I think you could probably figure out. People within the Trump Organization who have testified before the committee,” Speier said, a description that pointed to Trump Jr.

After attending a Trump tower meeting in June 2016 where he was offered information about former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Trump Jr. told the committee he didn’t disclose the meeting to his father. However, Trump’s former attorney and personal “fixer” Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress last year, disagreed with Trump Jr.’s claims.

How now bipartisan members are not listening to a closed door compromise on the wall, and the public threats over another gov.shot down, which Triump claims disadvantaged Dems and not Republicans is another fluke. I’m addition Fox News is getting disillusioned with Trump
There also has been withdrawal from the nuclear treaty with the Russians bilaterally.

This really so far, has been am incredible two years in Trump’s presidency, and with increasing earnestness all eyes and ears are on his State of the Union Message next Wednesday.

While the part of the U.S. is awaiting the much heralded State of the Union speech, there is a thread running like a silent spring in the undertow of common co isciousness, that may have been overlooked.

Transcendence has to do with small gradients in a temporal continuum, where signs can be used to set up a forecast of things to come as associated with what has passed.

The rate of change of both before and after, barring occasions of radical change, may be inscribed in various data basis.

I’m am not inscribing the following in social sciences, for the reason that it is a hidden area of interchange of economic national prevelance, which effects the current political arena .

Many times, populations get caught up in political movements per se, without looking under the patent legal justifications which so much account for the focus of justice has masked over the latency below.

In particular, lest be forgotten the following facts, which have pushed not only the U.S., but the whole world into a disaster, albeit caused singularly by very bleak U.S. troubles.

The picture mist 3rd world countries have of America is a land of non comparable standards of living, and relative stability.

Here is one disturbing thought, that is, about ten years or Maybe even twenty years ago, when faced with the question of why such powers as China and Saudi Arabia should finance the U.S. economy, to sustain one of the highest per-capita earning nations in the world, some people were aghast with wonder how and why this could occur. Wherein in in their respective countries, gross poverty and high unemployment caused their currencies high levels of inflationary spirals to occur.

In China, the biggest U.S. holder of debt ever, in the world, this seemed an anathema.

There is the obvious here as to China’s motivation, at a time of Chinese advent of Goulash Capitalism, of how that term may be applied by the transformative ideologies instituted by Hungary’s Kadar and Yogislavia’s Titi, which later did offer ramifications toward Polish Solidarity and the Perestroika of the USSR.

China was torn, and She was very sensitive to trade, because of thesis level production into as of yet, anything but sub marginal goods.

But lets transcend these to a period only 20-25 year hence.

After the great WW2, the U.S. was fkufh from all sources as the primary agency possessing war loot, a stable and productive economy, the inheritance of most of what was left of the British Empire, and the source of the leading currency , while possessing the greatest market capitalization and consumer market.

Back even in the 1960’ the breakdown of some indicators went down as following:

1 pack of cigarettes : 25 cents
1 month rental. :50-60 $ month
1 gallon regular leadsd gas :19c/gall.
a bankable fortune: 100,000.00 $
Cost of an average hone: 20,000-30M$
Cost of new Cadillac Eldorado 2,500$

Today, these sums can easily be multiplied X10, and that’s on the low side.

Now wages back then were in the minimum rate $2.00 an hour (mid 1960’s) and if you were bringing home $100.00 a week, you were doing well.
Nowadays the minimum pay is only X5 the rate, unless all states raise it, as did New Jersey did recently.

The differential between X5 and X10 is 2, meaning the standard of living in that time has halved This is significant, and even if some economist would look to the early twentieth century , it would be useless to point to the penny candy, the penny stamp, since values was still on precious metal standard, and it held steady from the late nineteen century.

Social -psychological reality is unhappy on downward mobility, so as to be expected, such notions as implied by the happy melting pot, don’t sound so encouraging. This Marx predicted.

Now the Irony of the fall of Communis, coming at a time of a critical economical Capitalistic debacle, can not miss an observant eye either.

There is much more to the eye than it usually sees, and this is a paradigm moment for such.

Did the bankruptcy of communism cause an exorbitation of economic well being for the U.S., or did these two events have one but a casual effect?

Hard to say, but probably the vacuums created by severe market and political changes all interfaced. While all this may be thought of circumstantial , the fact remains, is that geopolitical competition bared its fangs in an age where the NWO is an unavoidable concept, which is dominated by the market place of mostly internationalized corporations. They have nothing else up their sleeve other then some sort of equalization, along the lines of the usual:

The power to the inception, capitalization and utilization by control of economic entities. National entities, by consequence, become 2nd tier movers, and this is why, Trump is merely a figurehead, he appears vested in national significance , as the cradle of democratic principles and institutions, but fade as the primary shakers of what comes down politically and economically.

The danger that China will resurface with an old adversary, Russia, is the reason for all the savor rattling, which in all probability, merely an attempt to hold their indigenous populations hostages, while securing their safety; knowing well, the ever increasing expandability of human work is easily replaced by robotics.

This is what is being approached slowly, not so overtly, for all who cared to read futuristic narratives.

So lets see Trump, painted as a political amature, glean through his upcoming speech.

The wall again:

Sen. Tammy Baldwin said Monday that the prospect of a national emergency declaration from President Donald Trump to begin construction on his long-promised border wall has “many Republicans shaking in their boots” because of the precedent it could set for future Democratic presidents.

The Wisconsin Democrat told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday that such an emergency declaration, a step Trump has said he could take if lawmakers fail to pass legislation that includes funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, would be quickly tied up in court with legal challenges. The declaration would unlock military resources for wall construction and, Baldwin cautioned, set a standard for executive action that Republicans could come to regret.

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NATIONAL
Trump to call for unity, face skepticism in State of Union
February 5, 2019 at 3:00 AM MST - Updated February 5 at 3:00 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House says President Donald Trump will call for optimism and unity in his State of the Union address, using the moment to attempt a reset after two years of bitter partisanship and deeply personal attacks.

But will anyone buy it?

Skepticism will emanate from both sides of the aisle when Trump enters the House chamber for the prime-time Tuesday address to lawmakers and the nation. Democrats, emboldened after the midterm elections and the recent shutdown fight, see little evidence of a president willing to compromise. And even the president’s staunchest allies know that bipartisan rhetoric read off a teleprompter is usually undermined by scorching tweets and unpredictable policy maneuvers.

Still, the fact that Trump’s advisers feel a need to try a different approach is a tacit acknowledgement that the president’s standing is weakened as he begins his third year in office.

The shutdown left some Republicans frustrated over his insistence on a border wall, something they warned him the new Democratic House majority would not bend on. Trump’s approval rating during the shutdown dipped to 34 percent, down from 42 percent a month earlier, according to a recent survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders indicated the president would highlight what he sees as achievements and downplay discord.

“You’re going to continue see the president push for policies that help continue the economic boom,” Sanders said Monday night while appearing on “Hannity” on Fox News. “You’re also going to see the president call on Congress and say, ‘Look, we can either work together and get great things done or we can fight each other and get nothing done.’ And frankly, the American people deserve better than that.”

But Washington’s most recent debate offered few signs of cooperation between Trump and Democrats. Under pressure from conservative backers, Trump refused to sign a government funding bill that did not include money for his long-sought border wall. With hundreds of thousands of Americans missing paychecks, Trump ultimately agreed to reopen the government for three weeks to allow negotiations on border security to continue.

With the new Feb. 15 funding deadline looming, Trump is expected to use his address to outline his demands, which still include funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He’s teased the possibility of declaring a national emergency to secure wall funding if Congress doesn’t act, though it appeared unlikely he would take that step Tuesday night. Advisers have also been reviewing options to secure some funding without making such a declaration.

“You’ll hear the State of the Union, and then you’ll see what happens right after the State of the Union,” Trump told reporters.

The president’s address marks the first time he is speaking before a Congress that is not fully under Republican control. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who won plaudits from Democrats for her hard-line negotiating tactics during the shutdown, will be seated behind the president — a visual reminder of Trump’s political opposition.

In a letter Monday night to House Democrats, Pelosi wrote that she hopes “we will hear a commitment from the President on issues that have bipartisan support in the Congress and the Country, such as lowering the price of prescription drugs and rebuilding America’s infrastructure.”

In the audience will be several Democrats running to challenge Trump in 2020, including Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

Another Democratic star, Stacey Abrams, will deliver the party’s response to Trump. Abrams narrowly lost her bid in November to become Georgia’s first black governor, and party leaders are aggressively recruiting her to run for Senate.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer previewed Democrats’ message for countering Trump, declaring Monday, “The number one reason the state of the union has such woes is the president.”

While White House officials cautioned that Trump’s remarks were still being finalized, the president was expected to use some of his televised address to showcase a growing economy. Despite the shutdown, the U.S. economy added a robust 304,000 jobs in January, marking 100 straight months of job growth. That’s the longest such period on record.

Trump and his top aides have also hinted that he is likely to use the address to announce a major milestone in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria. Despite the objections of some advisers, Trump announced in December that he was withdrawing U.S. forces in Syria.

In a weekend interview with CBS, Trump said efforts to defeat the IS group were “at 99 percent right now. We’ll be at 100.”

U.S. officials say the Islamic State group now controls less than 10 square kilometers (3.9 square miles) of territory in Syria, an area smaller than New York’s Central Park. That’s down from an estimated 400 to 600 square kilometers (155 to 230 square miles) that the group held at the end of November before Trump announced the withdrawal, according to two officials who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

However, a Defense Department inspector general report released Monday said the Islamic State group “remains a potent force of battle-hardened and well-disciplined fighters that could likely resurge in Syria” absent continued counterterrorism pressure. According to the Pentagon, the group is still able to coordinate offensives and counteroffensives.

Administration officials say the White House has also been weighing several “moonshot” goals for the State of the Union address. One that is expected to be announced is a new initiative aimed at ending transmissions of HIV by 2030.

Trump’s guests for the speech include Anna Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old woman whose life sentence for drug offenses was commuted by the president, and Joshua Trump, a sixth-grade student from Wilmington, Delaware, who was allegedly bullied because of his last name. They will sit with first lady Melania Trump during the address.


Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Darlene Superville, Matthew Lee and Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.


Follow Julie Pace at twitter.com/jpaceDC

Copyright 2019 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

≡on the eve of talk of ‘Unity’ on the President’s State of the Union speech in the Congress

Here’s what the timing of the Trump inauguration subpoena means for the Mueller investigation: national security expert

05 FEB 2019 AT 16:14 ET

Independent national security journalist Marcy Wheeler detailed how the timing of the Southern District of New York’s subpoena for a trove of information from Donald Trump’s inaugural committee may signal a change in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

On Monday evening, ABC News reported that the SDNY had subpoenaed the Trump inaugural committee, and subsequent reports revealed that the committee is accused of money laundering and making false statements.

“The subpoena seeks information relating to a bunch of conspiracy-related crimes,” Wheeler noted, “parallel to the crimes Mueller looked at in the Russian investigation, but including other countries.”

The inaugural committee subpoena may also help explain why Guy Petrillo, an alum of the Southern District, recently stopped representing Michael Cohen, the journalist added.

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“Since Cohen refused to cooperate with SDNY on what would have been this investigation,” she wrote, “he’s likely to face further criminal exposure for his efforts to get rich off the big party.”

Wheeler went on to say that she suspects the SDNY “is only now getting around to digging into what is surely a vast swamp of corruption because Mueller asked them to wait” until the inauguration portion of his own investigation was done.

This subpoena, and a potential ending of the special counsel’s investigation into the inauguration, may be in line with reports that Mueller will soon wrap up his probe, the national security expert added.

It also “may mean that after the results in Mueller’s Russian investigation soften Trump up,” Wheeler concluded, “this investigation will just be ripening, possibly even at a time where Trump can be indicted.”

STATE Of THEUNION

President Donald Trump used his State of the Union speech Tuesday to trash ‘ridiculous’ investigations by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and congressional Democrats – and threatened to hold up legislation if they continue.

As evidence that President Donald Trump’s businesses and other entities are the subjects of a range of serious criminal investigations, beyond even Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, his allies are reportedly worried about his criminal exposure. One of the most damaging pieces of information to come out against the president thus far emerged when Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, told a federal court that he violated campaign finance laws at the direction of his former employer.

And even though, now this development:

Until recently, it was easy to like Steve Schmidt. How could we not, especially given the former George W. Bush and John McCain adviser’s majestically-worded MSNBC takedowns of Donald Trump? That said, a new 2020 election poll indicates that the left’s still new-smelling affair with Schmidt is over, to put it mildly. We’ll circle back to this.

Schmidt’s authoritative panic-button rants about Trump’s toxicity and the dangers of his presidency have been nothing short of legendary — so much so that it helped many of us bury our warranted suspicions over Schmidt’s role in the awfulness of the Bush-Cheney administration followed by his active participation in the frenetic rise of Sarah Palin.

These are just tidbits before coming to the significance of of the State of the Union.

The sobering fact is that Trump did not divide the country, because the country was reactionary for a very long time, and Trump was the ideal candidate. The Republicans needed him and now one hears a sad swan song out of some Republicans criticising him, even Fox News shaming him, but its merely a sham, like always, hedging their bags , obviously back peddling a bit , so as to soften the contours of their agenda, with an eye to two years from nlw5, when it will be the Senate’s turn not to appear sour graped.

No , Trump is no different from any other venture capitalist turned actor turned politician, their allegiance belongs home, and their only regret is when they are found out.

For more than a month, Mr. Trump has threatened to invoke a state of emergency along the southern border with Mexico, in an attempt to circumvent Congress, which has refused to give him $5.7 billion for a border wall.

But it was not until this week that Senate Republicans — many of whom vehemently oppose the idea on the grounds that it tramples legislative prerogative — made it clear that diverting funding from other projects for a wall, in the name of a national emergency, was a nonstarter.

For the moment, Mr. Trump heeded their wishes. The emergency declaration was not among hisdemands for increased border security.

It was, to a significant degree, an act of political self-protection

On unity:

The agenda I will lay out this evening is not a Republican agenda or a Democrat agenda,” Mr. Trump said, opening his speech on a conventionally presidential note on Tuesday. “It is the agenda of the American people.”

A couple of hours earlier, during a private lunch with network anchors that did not stay private long, Mr. Trump called Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, “nasty,” described former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as “dumb,” ripped into Senator John McCain, and derided Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.”

On the Mueller Investigation

Mr. Trump suggested that investigations into his conduct posed a threat to national security.:

Then, about 15 minutes into the address, Mr. Trump hit on an issue foremost in his consciousness — the looming threat of congressional investigations into his conduct.

First, he offered what amounted to a plea for the new Democratic majority in the House to avoid “ridiculous partisan investigations” and cautioned his enemies not to seek “revenge” against him.

Then came the bluntest of threats to the woman sitting behind him, Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just doesn’t work that way!” he said.

“We must be united at home to defeat our adversaries abroad,” he said.

Then to unite his party,

He attempted to unite divided Republicans.
Already facing a divided Congress, Mr. Trump has been rebuked by members of his own party in recent days over his decision to pull troops from Syria and his demands for a border wall.

In response, he invoked two issues that have been used to rally divided conservatives for decades — the fights against abortion and socialism.

Other issues:

There could be no greater contrast to the beautiful image of a mother holding her infant child than the chilling displays our nation saw in recent days,” he said, referring to efforts by Democrats in New York and Virginia to loosen restrictions on abortion rights.

In recent days, Republicans on Capitol Hill have been circulating talking points urging them to highlight plans by Democrats, including the freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, to increase taxes on the wealthy.

“Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” Mr. Trump said. “America was founded on liberty and independence — and not government coercion, domination and control.”

Women’s issues:

He defended his record on women’s issues.
Mr. Trump dedicated several minutes to listing his economic accomplishments on behalf of women as he faced row upon row of seats occupied by Democratic women wearing white, in a visual demonstration of their unprecedented power in a House run by one of their own.

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“No one has benefited more from our thriving economy than women, who have filled 58 percent of the newly created jobs last year,” said Mr. Trump, who seemed genuinely surprised by the thunderous applause it evoked from women on both sides of the aisle.

“You weren’t supposed to do that,” said the president, who went on to praise the record-breaking election of 117 women to Congress in 2018.

That, too, garnered a hearty ovation. He has a long way to go, however.

Recent polls show that large majorities of women disapprove of his performance.

On the wall

As President Trump veered into immigration, partisan tension soared.
With 10 days left for Congress to pass a border security package and avert another government shutdown, Mr. Trump devoted a significant portion of his speech to making the case for his signature campaign proposal: a wall at the southern border.

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“This is a smart, strategic, see-through steel barrier — not just a simple concrete wall,” he said, adding, “Simply put, WALLS WORK and WALLS SAVE LIVES.

But as Mr. Trump raised the time frame to keep the government fully funded, the Democrats tensed and Republicans continued to applaud.

Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, buried her head in her hands. As he detailed a litany of familiar talking points about caravans marching toward the United States, there was a disgruntled round of groans, punctuated by a couple boos as they looked around at each other, shaking their heads.

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[Trump wants a border wall. Here’s what’s in place already.]

Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, whose district includes most of El Paso, was visibly angry after Mr. Trump referenced her district and the decrease in crime. She appeared to mouth that it was safe before the wall and after the wall.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” she mouthed to her colleagues, her arms crossed as other representatives looked over in her direction.

There were also some unhappy murmurs when he described the increase in troops at the southern border and scoffs at his description of the “savage MS-13 gang.”

The women in white took their bows.
The audience for Mr. Trump’s State of the Union address looked like a striking sea of white, with Democratic women — many dressed in white in a nod to the women’s suffragist movement — sitting together. Midway through the president’s speech, they did something completely unexpected: They stood up and cheered.

“No one has benefited more from our thriving economy than women, who have filled 58 percent of the newly created jobs last year,” Mr. Trump said, prompting the women to roar their approval. After all, many of them had new jobs, in the House, which they took from men.

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“You weren’t supposed to do that,” the president said, smiling.

When President Trump mentioned the record number of women in Congress during his State of the Union address, many Democratic women who had not previously applauded stood and cheered.
IMAGE BY ERIN SCHAFF FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
“All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the work force than ever before,” Mr. Trump went on, adding, “Don’t sit yet you’re going to like this.”

And then he delivered his biggest applause line: “Exactly one century after Congress passed the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in Congress than at any time before.”

It was a striking moment for a president who has been routinely accused of misogyny, who paid hush money to a pornographic film actress and a Playboy model and who spoke in vulgar terms as he admitted on videotape that he had sexually assaulted women.

The Democratic response: Race and voting rights.
Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia legislature, narrowly lost her bid to be the first African-American woman governor in the South, but it was the way she lost — amid charges of voter suppression and vote rigging — that really rankled.

ADVERTISEMENT
In choosing Ms. Abrams to give the Democratic response, her party’s kleaders were tapping a crusader for voting rights, and that is what she delivered.

“While I acknowledged the results of the 2018 election here in Georgia, I did not and we cannot accept efforts to undermine our right to vote,” Ms. Abrams said. “This is the next battle for our democracy, one where all eligible citizens can have their say about the vision we want for our country. We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a ‘power grab.’ Americans understand that these are the values our brave men and women in uniform and our veterans risk their lives to defend.”

She also tackled race, even as a Democratic governor, Ralph Northam of Virginia, fights for his political survival after photos of a man in black face and another in a Ku Klux Klan robe emerged in his medical school yearbook.

“We fought Jim Crow with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, yet we continue to confront racism from our past and in our present,” she said, “which is why we must hold everyone from the very highest offices to our own families accountable for racist words and deeds — and call racism what it is: Wrong.”

ADVERTISEMENT
President Trump announces next meeting with Kim Jong-un
Mr. Trump plans to sit down with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, this month in Vietnam, a country chosen as a neutral location for their second nuclear summit meeting, but one that also has plenty of symbolic significance.

Mr. Trump hopes the meeting will jump-start a diplomatic effort that has stalled since their first encounter, last June in Singapore. While North Korea since then has refrained from overtly provocative actions like testing nuclear warheads or ballistic missiles, it has yet to agree to actually give up any piece of its atomic arsenal.

“Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong-un is a good one,” Mr. Trump said. “Chairman Kim and I will meet again on February 27th and 28th in Vietnam.”

Trump to Meet With Kim Jong-un in VietnamFeb. 5, 2019
Trump warns House Democrats: Don’t investigate me or my administration.
After spending the first portion of his speech patting himself on the back for what he views as his administration’s accomplishments, including low unemployment, Mr. Trump issued a stern warning to the Democrats now in charge of the House.

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“An economic miracle is taking place in the United States — and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics or ridiculous partisan investigations,” he said. “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just doesn’t work that way!”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi smirked behind him.

Representative Adam Schiff of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, smiled. He has already begin examining whether money laundering could have motivated Mr. Trump’s coziness with Russian oligarchs.

The speech was longer than last year’s, but short of the record.
This year’s State of the Union address was the second longest in recorded history, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The project’s data dates back to 1964. Tonight’s address surpassed Mr. Trump’s first State of the Union by about two minutes, but falls short of former President Bill Clinton’s 2000 address by about six minutes.

Who Are the Trumps’ State of the Union Guests?Feb. 4, 2019
Striking a theme of unity with some notes off key.
President Trump delivered a message of bipartisan unity on Tuesday night in his first address to Congress in the new era of divided government, but any hope of enduring harmony was dispelled long before he arrived at the Capitol.

ADVERTISEMENT
Mr. Trump, who has warred with Democrats for weeks over his plan to build a wall along the nation’s southwestern border, hoped to use the nationally televised speech to present himself as a leader who can work across party lines even as he continued to press lawmakers to give him money for the barrier.

Image
President Trump shook hands with Speaker Nancy Pelosi before giving the State of the Union.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
“Together, we can break decades of political stalemate,” Mr. Trump told lawmakers from the rostrum of the House of Representatives. “We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future. The decision is ours to make.”

Mr. Trump signaled that he will not back off his hard-line immigration policies that have polarized the country. “No issue better illustrates the divide between America’s working class and America’s political class than illegal immigration,” he was to add, according to excerpts released by the White House. “Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards.”

Read more from Peter Baker.

Jumping the gun.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi was spared any discomfort that might have come with the ritual introduction of the president of the United States. The president jumped the gun.

ADVERTISEMENT
Before she could utter the traditional, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you the president of the United States,” Mr. Trump had already started speaking.

Image
President Trump delivering the State of the Union address on Tuesday at the Capitol.CreditErin Schaff for The New York Times
While Mr. Trump forgot to have Ms. Pelosi introduce him, another Republican president — George W. Bush — made a big deal of Ms. Pelosi’s introduction of him in 2007, the year she first became speaker.

“Tonight, I have a high privilege and distinct honor of my own — as the first President to begin the State of the Union message with these words: Madam Speaker,” Mr. Bush said then.

Here’s what Mr. Trump has said so far and how it stacks up against the facts.
President Trump said that more people are working in the United States than at any time in history.

This is misleading.
While the total number of people working in the United States is higher than ever, it is not because of the president’s policies. It is because more people than ever live in the United States. The more relevant way to look at this is the labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of people working as a portion of the population. That is nowhere near a record.

President Trump said the American economy is considered “far and away the hottest economy anywhere in the world.”

This is false.
The American economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2018, the most recent available data. Growth in Latvia and Poland was almost twice as fast. Same for China and India. Even the troubled Greek economy posted stronger growth. And a wide range of economic analysts estimate that the growth of the American economy slowed in the fourth quarter, and slowed even further in the first month of 2019.

In excerpts released before his speech, President Trump took credit for America’s superstar status in the world, saying other countries are envious of the economy and that its military is the most powerful.

This is misleading.
America has long been considered the world’s superstar, a status that predates Mr. Trump’s time in office, going back to the end of World War II. And while the American economy has been growing during Mr. Trump’s presidency, it is a continuation of the trend since June 2009.

ADVERTISEMENT
[You can find more fact checks here.]

“Could you believe it? He choked like a dog.”
At a private lunch for television anchors on Tuesday, Mr. Trump put the lie to what his counselor, Kellyanne Conway, called a coming pitch for “c-o-m-i-t-y.”

Some bon mots offered up:

On the prospects of facing former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 campaign: “Biden was never very smart. He was a terrible student. His gaffes are unbelievable. When I say something that you might think is a gaffe, it’s on purpose; it’s not a gaffe. When Biden says something dumb, it’s because he’s dumb.”

On Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts: “I hope I haven’t wounded Pocahontas too badly,” he said. “I’d like to run against her.”

On Senator Schumer: “Schumer,” he added, “can be a nasty son of a bitch.”

And on the embattled Virginia governor, Ralph Northam: “Did you see that news conference?” Mr. Trump asked. “Could you believe it? He choked like a dog.”

ADVERTISEMENT
For good measure, the president took another shot at the late Senator John McCain: “By the way,” Mr. Trump said, “he wrote a book and the book bombed.”

Rick Perry, your designated survivor, finds his bunker.
Every year, one member of the president’s cabinet is held in a secure location, in case catastrophe strikes. Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate, hasn’t been much in evidence since he joined the Trump administration as the energy secretary.

He won’t be in evidence at the State of the Union address either. He is the designated survivor, spirited, well, somewhere.

Trump Asks for Unity, but Presses Hard Line on Immigration

On race issues:

The Democratic response: Race and voting rights.
Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia legislature, narrowly lost her bid to be the first African-American woman governor in the South, but it was the way she lost — amid charges of voter suppression and vote rigging — that really rankled.

ADVERTISEMENT

In choosing Ms. Abrams to give the Democratic response, her party’s leaders were tapping a crusader for voting rights, and that is what she delivered.

“While I acknowledged the results of the 2018 election here in Georgia, I did not and we cannot accept efforts to undermine our right to vote,” Ms. Abrams said. “This is the next battle for our democracy, one where all eligible citizens can have their say about the vision we want for our country. We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a ‘power grab.’ Americans understand that these are the values our brave men and women in uniform and our veterans risk their lives to defend.”

She also tackled race, even as a Democratic governor, Ralph Northam of Virginia, fights for his political survival after photos of a man in black face and another in a Ku Klux Klan robe emerged in his medical school yearbook.

“We fought Jim Crow with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, yet we continue to confront racism from our past and in our present,” she said, “which is why we must hold everyone from the very highest offices to our own families accountable for racist words and deeds — and call racism what it is: Wrong.”

ADVERTISEMENT

President Trump announces next meeting with Kim Jong-un
Mr. Trump plans to sit down with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, this month in Vietnam, a country chosen as a neutral location for their second nuclear summit meeting, but one that also has plenty of symbolic significance.

Mr. Trump hopes the meeting will jump-start a diplomatic effort that has stalled since their first encounter, last June in Singapore. While North Korea since then has refrained from overtly provocative actions like testing nuclear warheads or ballistic missiles, it has yet to agree to actually give up any piece of its atomic arsenal.

“Much work remains to be done, but my relationship with Kim Jong-un is a good one,” Mr. Trump said. “Chairman Kim and I will meet again on February 27th and 28th in Vietnam.”

Trump to Meet With Kim Jong-un in VietnamFeb. 5, 2019
Trump warns House Democrats: Don’t investigate me or my administration.
After spending the first portion of his speech patting himself on the back for what he views as his administration’s accomplishments, including low unemployment, Mr. Trump issued a stern warning to the Democrats now in charge of the House.

ADVERTISEMENT
“An economic miracle is taking place in the United States — and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics or ridiculous partisan investigations,” he said. “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just doesn’t work that way!”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi smirked behind him.

Representative Adam Schiff of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, smiled. He has already begin examining whether money laundering could have motivated Mr. Trump’s coziness with Russian oligarchs.

The speech was longer than last year’s, but short of the record.
This year’s State of the Union address was the second longest in recorded history, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The project’s data dates back to 1964. Tonight’s address surpassed Mr. Trump’s first State of the Union by about two minutes, but falls short of former President Bill Clinton’s 2000 address by about six minutes.

Who Are the Trumps’ State of the Union Guests?Feb. 4, 2019
Striking a theme of unity with some notes off key.
President Trump delivered a message of bipartisan unity on Tuesday night in his first address to Congress in the new era of divided government, but any hope of enduring harmony was dispelled long before he arrived at the Capitol.

ADVERTISEMENT
Mr. Trump, who has warred with Democrats for weeks over his plan to build a wall along the nation’s southwestern border, hoped to use the nationally televised speech to present himself as a leader who can work across party lines even as he continued to press lawmakers to give him money for the barrier.

Image
President Trump shook hands with Speaker Nancy Pelosi before giving the State of the Union.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
“Together, we can break decades of political stalemate,” Mr. Trump told lawmakers from the rostrum of the House of Representatives. “We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future. The decision is ours to make.”

Mr. Trump signaled that he will not back off his hard-line immigration policies that have polarized the country. “No issue better illustrates the divide between America’s working class and America’s political class than illegal immigration,” he was to add, according to excerpts released by the White House. “Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards.”

Read more from Peter Baker.

Jumping the gun.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi was spared any discomfort that might have come with the ritual introduction of the president of the United States. The president jumped the gun.

ADVERTISEMENT
Before she could utter the traditional, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you the president of the United States,” Mr. Trump had already started speaking.

Image
President Trump delivering the State of the Union address on Tuesday at the Capitol.CreditErin Schaff for The New York Times
While Mr. Trump forgot to have Ms. Pelosi introduce him, another Republican president — George W. Bush — made a big deal of Ms. Pelosi’s introduction of him in 2007, the year she first became speaker.

“Tonight, I have a high privilege and distinct honor of my own — as the first President to begin the State of the Union message with these words: Madam Speaker,” Mr. Bush said then.

Here’s what Mr. Trump has said so far and how it stacks up against the facts.
President Trump said that more people are working in the United States than at any time in history.

This is misleading.
While the total number of people working in the United States is higher than ever, it is not because of the president’s policies. It is because more people than ever live in the United States. The more relevant way to look at this is the labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of people working as a portion of the population. That is nowhere near a record.

President Trump said the American economy is considered “far and away the hottest economy anywhere in the world.”

This is false.
The American economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2018, the most recent available data. Growth in Latvia and Poland was almost twice as fast. Same for China and India. Even the troubled Greek economy posted stronger growth. And a wide range of economic analysts estimate that the growth of the American economy slowed in the fourth quarter, and slowed even further in the first month of 2019.

In excerpts released before his speech, President Trump took credit for America’s superstar status in the world, saying other countries are envious of the economy and that its military is the most powerful.

This is misleading.
America has long been considered the world’s superstar, a status that predates Mr. Trump’s time in office, going back to the end of World War II. And while the American economy has been growing during Mr. Trump’s presidency, it is a continuation of the trend since June 2009.

ADVERTISEMENT
[You can find more fact checks here.]

“Could you believe it? He choked like a dog.”
At a private lunch for television anchors on Tuesday, Mr. Trump put the lie to what his counselor, Kellyanne Conway, called a coming pitch for “c-o-m-i-t-y.”

Some bon mots offered up:

On the prospects of facing former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 campaign: “Biden was never very smart. He was a terrible student. His gaffes are unbelievable. When I say something that you might think is a gaffe, it’s on purpose; it’s not a gaffe. When Biden says something dumb, it’s because he’s dumb.”

On Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts: “I hope I haven’t wounded Pocahontas too badly,” he said. “I’d like to run against her.”

On Senator Schumer: “Schumer,” he added, “can be a nasty son of a bitch.”

And on the embattled Virginia governor, Ralph Northam: “Did you see that news conference?” Mr. Trump asked. “Could you believe it? He choked like a dog.”

For good measure, the president took another shot at the late Senator John McCain: “By the way,” Mr. Trump said, “he wrote a book and the book bombed.”

Rick Perry, your designated survivor, finds his bunker.
Every year, one member of the president’s cabinet is held in a secure location, in case catastrophe strikes. Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate, hasn’t been much in evidence since he joined the Trump administration as the energy secretary.

He won’t be in evidence at the State of the Union address either. He is the designated survivor, spirited, well, somewhere.

And finally, including an announcement on a new visit with North Korean Leader Kim in Vietnam,

this:

An economic miracle is taking place in the United States — and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics or ridiculous partisan investigations,” he said. “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just doesn’t work that way!”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi smirked behind him.

Representative Adam Schiff of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, smiled. He has already begin examining whether money laundering could have motivated Mr. Trump’s coziness with Russian oligarchs.

The speech was longer than last year’s, but short of the record.
This year’s State of the Union address was the second longest in recorded history, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The project’s data dates back to 1964. Tonight’s address surpassed Mr. Trump’s first State of the Union by about two minutes, but falls short of former President Bill Clinton’s 2000 address by about six minutes.

Who Are the Trumps’ State of the Union Guests?Feb. 4, 2019
Striking a theme of unity with some notes off key.
President Trump delivered a message of bipartisan unity on Tuesday night in his first address to Congress in the new era of divided government, but any hope of enduring harmony was dispelled long before he arrived at the Capitol.

Mr. Trump, who has warred with Democrats for weeks over his plan to build a wall along the nation’s southwestern border, hoped to use the nationally televised speech to present himself as a leader who can work across party lines even as he continued to press lawmakers to give him money for the barrier.

President Trump shook hands with Speaker Nancy Pelosi before giving the State of the Union.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
“Together, we can break decades of political stalemate,” Mr. Trump told lawmakers from the rostrum of the House of Representatives. “We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future. The decision is ours to make.”

Mr. Trump signaled that he will not back off his hard-line immigration policies that have polarized the country. “No issue better illustrates the divide between America’s working class and America’s political class than illegal immigration,” he was to add, according to excerpts released by the White House. “Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards.”

Jumping the gun.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi was spared any discomfort that might have come with the ritual introduction of the president of the United States. The president jumped the gun.

Before she could utter the traditional, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you the president of the United States,” Mr. Trump had already started speaking.

President Trump delivering the State of the Union address on Tuesday at the Capitol.CreditErin Schaff for The New York Times
While Mr. Trump forgot to have Ms. Pelosi introduce him, another Republican president — George W. Bush — made a big deal of Ms. Pelosi’s introduction of him in 2007, the year she first became speaker.

“Tonight, I have a high privilege and distinct honor of my own — as the first President to begin the State of the Union message with these words: Madam Speaker,” Mr. Bush said then.

Here’s what Mr. Trump has said so far and how it stacks up against the facts.
President Trump said that more people are working in the United States than at any time in history.

This is misleading.
While the total number of people working in the United States is higher than ever, it is not because of the president’s policies. It is because more people than ever live in the United States. The more relevant way to look at this is the labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of people working as a portion of the population. That is nowhere near a record.

President Trump said the American economy is considered “far and away the hottest economy anywhere in the world.”

This is false.
The American economy expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2018, the most recent available data. Growth in Latvia and Poland was almost twice as fast. Same for China and India. Even the troubled Greek economy posted stronger growth. And a wide range of economic analysts estimate that the growth of the American economy slowed in the fourth quarter, and slowed even further in the first month of 2019.

In excerpts released before his speech, President Trump took credit for America’s superstar status in the world, saying other countries are envious of the economy and that its military is the most powerful.

This is misleading.
America has long been considered the world’s superstar, a status that predates Mr. Trump’s time in office, going back to the end of World War II. And while the American economy has been growing during Mr. Trump’s presidency, it is a continuation of the trend since June 2009.

[You can find more fact checks here.]

“Could you believe it? He choked like a dog.”
At a private lunch for television anchors on Tuesday, Mr. Trump put the lie to what his counselor, Kellyanne Conway, called a coming pitch for “c-o-m-i-t-y.”

Some bon mots offered up:

On the prospects of facing former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 campaign: “Biden was never very smart. He was a terrible student. His gaffes are unbelievable. When I say something that you might think is a gaffe, it’s on purpose; it’s not a gaffe. When Biden says something dumb, it’s because he’s dumb.”

On Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts: “I hope I haven’t wounded Pocahontas too badly,” he said. “I’d like to run against her.”

On Senator Schumer: “Schumer,” he added, “can be a nasty son of a bitch.”

And on the embattled Virginia governor, Ralph Northam: “Did you see that news conference?” Mr. Trump asked. “Could you believe it? He choked like a dog.”

For good measure, the president took another shot at the late Senator John McCain: “By the way,” Mr. Trump said, “he wrote a book and the book bombed.”

Rick Perry, your designated survivor, finds his bunker.
Every year, one member of the president’s cabinet is held in a secure location, in case catastrophe strikes. Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate, hasn’t been much in evidence since he joined the Trump administration as the energy secretary.

He won’t be in evidence at the State of the Union address either. He is the designated survivor, spirited, well, somewhere.

The speech was predictable, and Trump looked and acted presidential, especially pleased when the women Democrats all dressed in white cheered Trump and clapped at his remarks toward women, as the represented suggested of the past.
The black women did not please him as much as they implied civil rights violations with documented voter suppression efforts.

The feeling one gets is, that Trump is getting stronger and bolder, with half of his first term under his belt, and the only problem he has is the ongoing investigation, that he is trying real hard to put behind. No surprises, but the sustaining boldness and continuing bad taste which he has pretty much normalized idionsynchratically as a stylalystic matter, pretty much balanced by some of his alleged successes, which the Democrats countered with the fact that the economic upturn started under Obama’s administration, after all he salvaged the effects o of the Great Recession.The outstanding question remains over the legal difficulties he is in, and whether legal and political policy can sustain the investigation not only until the end of his first term, but enable a second run, in spite of an uphill battle?

Tax return controversy:

BI INTELLIGENCE
EDITION

  • Copyright © 2019 Insider Inc. All rights reserved.
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Republicans are begging a top Democrat to drop the quest for Trump’s tax returns
Joe Perticone 51m
President Donald Trump speaks during the National Prayer Breakfast, Thursday, Feb. 7, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump. AP Photo/ Evan Vucci
Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee requested that the Democrat in charge change course on obtaining President Trump’s tax returns.
The top Republican on the committee, as well as the ranking members on its oversight subcommittee, characterized it as an abuse of authority.
The House Ways and Means Committee is holding its first hearing on presidential tax returns on Thursday.
WASHINGTON — Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee asked the new Democratic chairman to drop the quest to obtain President Donald Trump’s tax returns from the Treasury Department.

In a letter to Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal, who is the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, on Thursday, Republican Reps. Kevin Brady and Mike Kelly pleaded with the chairman to not pursue Trump’s tax returns, citing privacy concerns and what they characterized as an abuse of authority.

Read more: Democrats will be able to make Trump’s tax returns public if they take back Congress. Here’s how.

“Some of the proposals our Committee is considering this week leave us deeply concerned. We believe all Americans have a fundamental right to the privacy of the personal information found in their tax returns,” the letter read. “This isn’t about the tax returns of the presidents and vice-presidents but about making sure Congress does not abuse its authority. This is about protecting the private tax returns of every American.”
Brady, the House Ways and Means Committee’s ranking Republican, and Kelly, the top Republican on the subcommittee on oversight, added that Democrats “appear willing to sacrifice this critical protection for political gain” and that revealing the president’s tax returns would set a “dangerous precedent.”

“When we start making exceptions for one taxpayer, it begins the process of eroding and threatening the privacy rights of all taxpayers,” they wrote. “This is a risk we cannot and should not take.”

The letter goes on to characterize the quest for Trump’s tax returns, which is entirely legal, as “weaponizing our nation’s tax code by targeting political foes.”

The Republicans concluded by suggesting the committee “veer away from this dangerous path and work together to develop common sense improvement to our ethics laws.”

The letter comes as the committee is set to hold its first hearing on obtaining tax returns from presidents and vice presidents since the Democrats took back majority control of the House in January.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said Thursday that his committee’s Russia investigation has yet to find evidence of collusion between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Kremlin but will soon release a report on the Obama administration’s response to Russian interference in the last presidential election.

But then,

President Donald Trump on Thursday called the oversight investigations into his administration “a continuation” of a “witch hunt.” | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump responded Thursday to the first waves of oversight investigations into his administration launched by the new Democratic majority in the House, alleging that he is being unfairly subjected to “unlimited presidential harassment” that no previous president has faced.

“So now Congressman Adam Schiff announces, after having found zero Russian Collusion, that he is going to be looking at every aspect of my life, both financial and personal, even though there is no reason to be doing so,” the president tweeted. “Never happened before! Unlimited Presidential Harassment.

“PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT! It should never be allowed to happen again!”

On Wednesday, House Intelligence Chairman Schiff (D-Calif.) announced the parameters of his committee’s revived Russia investigation, which he said would “go beyond” Russian interference in the 2016 election and include whether Trump or his associates “have sought to influence U.S. government policy in service of foreign interests” and “whether any foreign actor has sought to compromise or holds leverage, financial or otherwise, over Donald Trump, his family, his business, or his associates.”

A spokesman for Schiff’s office did not immediately return a request for comment on the president’s complaint.

Schiff’s announcement came one day after the president called for unity between Republicans and Democrats in his State of the Union address and said “if there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” an apparent dig at Democrats’ plans to conduct rigorous oversight in the second half of Trump’s first term.

Trump responded to Schiff on Wednesday, calling him a “partisan hack” and arguing that there was “no basis” for an investigation of his finances, which he has called a red line in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The investigation by Schiff’s committee is one of a slew that the president will face in a newly divided government that is now getting up to full steam after a monthlong government shutdown. House Democrats are gearing up to investigate everything from the president’s tax returns and immigration policies to the conduct of his scandal-ridden Cabinet members and his administration’s security clearance practices as they wield subpoena power in the House for the first time in nearly a decade.

In another tweet on Thursday, the president wrote that “the Dems and their committees are going ‘nuts.’” He said “Republicans never did this to President Obama, there would be no time left to run government,” though Republicans did launch investigations into the Obama administration that Democrats similarly denounced as hyperpartisan.

Trump alluded to the prospect of facing more investigations, writing, “I hear other committee heads will do the same thing.”

Story Continued Below

And he appeared to complain that the bevy of investigations into his administration was diverting resources, writing that the probes are “even stealing people who work at White House!” and calling the investigations “a continuation” of a “witch hunt"
© 2019 POLITICO LLC

Executive Unfittness:

Mr. Trump’s strength among Republicans is more precarious than it appears,” Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner write in today’s Times. “For reasons both substantial and practical, we believe his disgorgement by Republicans can happen, might happen — and should happen. Contrary to conventional wisdom, removal by his party would be as healthy for America’s democracy as his removal by the voters, perhaps more so.” (I agree.)

Trump offers socialism for the rich, capitalism for everyone else
Robert Reich
Trump is promoting socialism for the rich and harsh capitalism for everyone else in other ways

Mon 11 Feb 2019 06.00 EST Last modified on Mon 11 Feb 2019 06.02 EST

‘America will never be a socialist country,’ Trump said in his State of the Union address.

“America will never be a socialist country,” Donald Trump declared in his State of the Union address. Someone should alert Trump that America is now a hotbed of socialism. But it is socialism for the rich. Everyone else is treated to harsh capitalism.

In the conservative mind, socialism means getting something for doing nothing. That pretty much describes the $21bn saved by the nation’s largest banks last year thanks to Trump’s tax cuts, some of which went into massive bonuses for bank executives. On the other hand, more than 4,000 lower-level bank employees got a big dose of harsh capitalism. They lost their jobs.

Banks that are too big to fail – courtesy of the 2008 bank bailout – enjoy a hidden subsidy of some $83bn a year, because creditors facing less risk accept lower interest on deposits and loans. Last year, Wall Street’s bonus pool was $31.4bn. Take away the hidden subsidy and the bonus pool disappears.

Under socialism for the rich, you can screw up big time and still reap big rewards
Trump and his appointees at the Federal Reserve are easing bank requirements put in place after the bailout. They’ll make sure the biggest banks remain too big to fail.

Trump is promoting socialism for the rich and harsh capitalism for everyone else in other ways. GM has got more than $600m in federal contracts, plus $500m in tax breaks. Some of this has gone into the pockets of GM executives. Chairman and CEO Mary Barra raked in almost $22m in total compensation in 2017 alone.

But GM employees are subject to harsh capitalism. GM is planning to lay off more than 14,000 workers and close three assembly plants and two component factories in North America by the end of 2019.

When he was in business, Trump perfected the art of using bankruptcy to shield himself from the consequences of bad decisions – socialism for the rich at its worst – while leaving employees twisting in the wind.

Now, all over America, executives who run their companies into the ground are getting gold-plated exit packages while their workers get pink slips.

Sears is doling out $25m to the executives who stripped its remaining assets and drove it into bankruptcy, but has no money for the thousands of workers it laid off.

As Pacific Gas and Electric hurdles toward bankruptcy, the person who was in charge when the deadly infernos roared through Northern California last year (caused in part by PG&E’s faulty equipment) has departed with a cash severance package of $2.5m . The PG&E executive in charge of gas operations when records were allegedly falsified left in 2017 with $6.9m.

Under socialism for the rich, you can screw up big time and still reap big rewards. Equifax’s Richard Smith retired in 2017 with an $18m pension in the wake of a security breach that exposed the personal information of 145 million consumers to hackers.

Wells Fargo’s Carrie Tolstedt departed with a $125m exit package after being in charge of the unit that opened more than 2 million unauthorized customer accounts.

Most Americans are subject to an increasingly harsh and arbitrary capitalism in which they’re working harder but getting nowhere
Around 60% of America’s wealth is now inherited. Many of today’s super-rich have never done a day’s work in their lives.

Trump’s response has been to cut the estate tax to apply only to estates valued at over $22m per couple. Mitch McConnell is now proposing that the estate tax be repealed altogether.

What about the capitalist principles that people earn what they’re worth in the market, and that economic gains should go to those who deserve them?

America is on the cusp of the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in history. As rich boomers expire over the next three decades, an estimated $30tn will go to their children.

Those children will be able to live off of the income these assets generate, and then leave the bulk of them to their own heirs, tax-free. (Capital gains taxes don’t apply to the soaring values of stocks, bonds, mansions, and other assets of wealthy people who die before they’re sold.)

After a few generations of this, almost all of the nation’s wealth will be in the hands of a few thousand non-working families. To the conservative mind, the specter of socialism conjures up a society in which no one is held accountable, and no one has to work for what they receive. Yet that’s exactly the society Trump and the Republicans are promoting for the rich.

Meanwhile, most Americans are subject to an increasingly harsh and arbitrary capitalism in which they’re working harder but getting nowhere, and have less security than ever.

They need thicker safety nets and deserve a bigger piece of the economic pie. If you want to call this socialism, fine. I call it fair.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good

Ok I accept all of that which is said; now please how do we change it. How do we regain control of the electoral system - our electoral system -and how do we prevent “dark money” from persuading people to vote against their own best interests.
We all know the bit about: People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. – The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter X. but do we read on ….It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. . . . A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows, and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary. An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding upon the whole.
As others have written: “the only way businessmen can succeed in a ‘conspiracy against the public’ is if they are given protection by government regulation. If not, the pressures of competition will ensure that conspiring businesses are quickly undermined by their competitors”.

Thus we need government for and by the people to be empowered to regulate in the best interests of the people it serves and if the buggers do not wish to pay taxes or to be regulated then let them go elsewhere but also deny them access to our markets and borders.

Looks like poster-child for socialism AOC’s mind-warpingly unreal and dangerous policies for the environment and tax will safely see Trump re-elected in 2020.

© 2019 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

DONALD TRUMP
Trump might consider other options to build wall even if he signs spending deal, White House official says
On Monday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers reached an agreement on border security to keep the government open past Friday.
Image: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally at El Paso County Coliseum in El Paso
President Donald Trump speaks at El Paso County Coliseum in Texas on Feb. 11, 2019.Leah Millis / Reuters

Feb. 12, 2019, 7:37 AM PST
By Allan Smith
Even if President Donald Trump signs off on a newly reached bipartisan agreement to keep the government open that does not provide what he has sought in border wall funding, other options are still on the table to build a more substantial barrier, a White House official tells NBC News.

The White House is considering using executive action to redirect federal funding to build a larger barrier at the U.S. southern border than what Congress agreed upon Monday night. And, separately, Trump has kept the door open to declaring a national emergency to fund the wall, which would likely draw legal challenges.

The government is set to run out of funding again later this week after having been partially shut down for 35 days earlier this year — the longest shutdown in U.S. history. That shutdown occurred because lawmakers did not provide Trump with his demand for $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall. But Trump eventually relented and signed a short term funding package, set to expire Friday.

Congress reaches agreement, but where does Trump stand?
On Monday, a bipartisan group of congressional negotiators announced they reached an “agreement in principle” to avert another shutdown and further fund border security, though it would not include money for a concrete wall. The agreement would provide nearly $1.4 billion for new border fencing, which could include steel slats and other “existing technologies,” and an additional $1.7 billion for other Homeland Security priorities like new technology and more customs officers, multiple sources told NBC News. The deal funds about 55 miles of new border barrier.

“We reached an agreement in principle,” Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told reporters. “Our staffs are going to be working feverishly to be putting all the details together, and that’s all we can tell you now.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday that it was “certainly good news” that negotiators had reached an agreement.

Recommended
Senate has uncovered no direct evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russia
“I look forward to reviewing the full text as soon as possible, and hope the Senate can act on this legislation in short order,” McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor.

Speaking with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday, Trump said he could not go into the details of the agreement, which was reached just prior to his interview.

But some of Trump’s allies were apoplectic about the agreement. Fox News host Sean Hannity said on his Monday program that the deal was trash.

“$1.3 billion? That’s not … even a wall, a barrier,” he said, asking how any Republican could support “this garbage compromise.”

Allan Smith
Allan Smith is a political reporter for NBC News.

NBC NEWS / POLITICS
Flight attendants union warns of possible airport chaos if there’s another shutdown
02:15
NBC NEWS / NIGHTLY-NEWS

Border war: Beto O’Rourke says ‘walls don’t save lives.’ Trump: 'Beto was defeated.

dailysoundandfury.com/bbc-journ … mpaign=tti

Conservative Republican negotiators – Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Rep. Kay Granger of Texas – a deal with Democrats last night even as Trump roared about the wall in El Paso
Back-to-back blows of mid-term election defeat and the shutdown have heightened the willingness of GOP lawmakers to distinguish between their own political interests and those of the president.
Stuck between hard-core supporters and the majority Americans opposed to the wall and another shutdown, Trump today pronounced himself “not happy” — but didn’t threaten a veto. He lacks good choices.

President Donald Trump will likely approve a congressional spending deal struck Tuesday, but first he is engaging in what allies called foot-dragging theatrics aimed at his disgruntled conservative supporters.

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - While speaking at a rally in El Paso, Texas on Monday night, President Donald Trump took aim at U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono.

He called her “crazy” for supporting an effort to switch the country from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

“You know, this crazy senator from Hawaii, they said, ‘Do you like it?’ and she said, ‘Yes, I like it very much,’” Trump said, referring to the so-called Green New Deal. “How are we getting to Hawaii on a train? She didn’t think about that one, but she’s thinking about it, she’ll figure it out.”

Freshman Democrat U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the measure that calls for aggressive action to combat climate change, including repairing and upgrading U.S. infrastructure to make them more energy efficient and building resilience against climate change-related disasters.-

Another great move based on subliminal ethnic bias.

Trump to declare national emergency!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcb-Fsx_phM[/youtube]

youtu.be/7rXhXLsNJL8

youtu.be/fYWH4VTYRsA

youtu.be/orL-w2QBiN8

The New York Times

|

Rift Between Trump and Europe Is Now Open and Angry

Vice President Mike Pence and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany
Feb. 17, 2019
MUNICH — European leaders have long been alarmed that President Trump’s words and Twitter messages could undo a trans-Atlantic alliance that had grown stronger over seven decades. They had clung to the hope that those ties would bear up under the strain.

But in the last few days of a prestigious annual security conference in Munich, the rift between Europe and the Trump administration became open, angry and concrete, diplomats and analysts say.

A senior German official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on such matters, shrugged his shoulders and said: “No one any longer believes that Trump cares about the views or interests of the allies. It’s broken.”

The most immediate danger, diplomats and intelligence officials warned, is that the trans-Atlantic fissures now risk being exploited by Russia and China.

Even the normally gloomy Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, happily noted the strains, remarking that the Euro-Atlantic relationship had become increasingly “tense.”

“We see new cracks forming, and old cracks deepening,” Mr. Lavrov said.

The Europeans no longer believe that Washington will change, not when Mr. Trump sees traditional allies as economic rivals and leadership as diktat. His distaste for multilateralism and international cooperation is a challenge to the very heart of what Europe is and needs to be in order to have an impact in the world.

But beyond the Trump administration, an increasing number of Europeans say they believe that relations with the United States will never be the same again.

Karl Kaiser, a longtime analyst of German-American relations, said, “Two years of Mr. Trump, and a majority of French and Germans now trust Russia and China more than the United States.”

American troops near Manbij, Syria, last year. President Trump’s plan to withdraw United States forces from the country will help Russia and Iran, some European leaders say.CreditMauricio Lima for The New York Times
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a former adviser to the German president and director of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund, said, “If an alliance becomes unilateral and transactional, then it’s no longer an alliance.”

There were signs that not all American and European leaders were willing to surrender the alliance so easily.

To show solidarity with Europe, more than 50 American lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats — a record number — attended the Munich Security Conference. They came, said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, “to show Europeans that there is another branch of government which strongly supports NATO and the trans-Atlantic alliance.”

The most visible pushback against Washington came from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany — who delivered an unusually passionate speech — and from her defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen. They spoke about the dangers of unilateral actions by major partners without discussing the consequences with allies.

They cited Mr. Trump’s recent announcements that American troops would leave northern Syria and Afghanistan, as well as the administration’s decision to suspend one of the last remaining arms-control agreements: the ban on land-based intermediate range missiles.

That decision affects European security, and there has been no alternative strategy, Ms. Merkel said. Abandoning the treaty, despite Russia’s violations, helps decouple Germany from the American nuclear umbrella.

“We sit there in the middle with the result,” Ms. Merkel said.

The Syria pullout, she continued, could only help Russia and Iran. That view was echoed by the French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who called American policy in Syria “a mystery to me.”

When he was told by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, that the United States would preserve “some capacity” in Syria, the normally diplomatic Mr. Le Drian said, sarcastically: “Oh, that’s good news. I didn’t know.” And then he added acerbically, “That fills me with joy.”

Europeans are angry that renewed American sanctions on Iran hurt European companies far more than American ones.CreditArash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Vice President Mike Pence, who spoke after Ms. Merkel in Munich, met stony silence when he tried to pressure allies to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, a sign of the continuing anger at Washington’s decision to scrap the deal unilaterally. European allies regard the pact as vital to European security and to the preservation of nuclear nonproliferation.

Even more, the Europeans are angry that renewed American sanctions hurt European companies far more than any American ones.

Ms. Merkel said the split over Iran “depresses me very much,” but she stressed that Europe and the United States were ultimately pursuing the same goal. She said the deal was one way to have influence over Iran — influence she clearly felt that Washington was throwing away.

Mr. Pence, in his speech, praised Mr. Trump and what he called the restoration of American leadership of the West. But Europeans were not convinced.

“It’s very odd to talk of American leadership of the alliance when it’s Trump who has caused the crisis,” said Marietje Schaake, a Dutch member of the European Parliament. “The Trump administration is seen by many Europeans as chiefly responsible for the tensions and the weakening of the West.”

Nathalie Tocci, a senior adviser to the European foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said that for Europeans, the divide went “to the heart of how we view international relations and our national interest.”

“We’re small and understandably need partnership both inside Europe and outside, with NATO,” Ms. Tocci said.

But that is also a sign of European weakness and division. “We want to believe it will be fine again later because we have no alternative,” she said.

Image
President Trump with NATO leaders in Brussels last year. The Europeans no longer believe that Washington will change, not when Mr. Trump sees traditional allies as economic rivals and leadership as diktat.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
It means the dependency on the United States will continue, even as the Europeans look for ways not to depend on Washington as much, analysts say.

The Europeans “are beginning to do what we should,” Ms. Tocci said — spend more on the military, discuss some sort of European army in coordination with NATO, think more strategically as Europe in the face of Russia and China. “But no one believes it’s doable in the short run,” she added, and many believe it’s not easily doable at all.

Europeans are waiting for change in the White House, Ms. Tocci and others said.

“The Europeans are holding their breath and thinking that it’s maybe only two more years,” said Victoria Nuland, a former senior American official. “At the same time, they don’t want to do anything to wreck things further or to insult Trump personally and risk an angry response.”

A growing number of European voices warn that the current trans-Atlantic discord has more fundamental roots, and that there will be no returning to the past.

Mr. Trump is not the cause, said Norbert Röttgen, the chairman of the German Parliament’s foreign relations committee, but a symptom of the tectonic shifts in geopolitics that have led to the return of great power rivalry and centrifugal forces away from multilateralism.

“In the post-Trump era, there is no return to the pre-Trump era,” he said. “The status quo was Europe’s security is guaranteed by the United States. That won’t happen again.”

Jan Techau, director of the Europe Program at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin, worries that the intervening gap will mean strategic vulnerability to Russia and China. The United States faces “a superpower’s dilemma,” Mr. Techau said.

It has to “pressure allies to do more,” he said. “At the same time, the message has to be ‘We will always be there.’”

“Trump does not understand the price he pays in strategic terms when he bashes his allies so publicly and openly,” Mr. Techau added.

If there is any ambiguity, he said, Russia and China know that the security guarantee is no longer real. “When that protection goes,” he said, “then this strategic space is up for grabs.”

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Trump is powerless to stop New York’s federal prosecutors — and they could damage him in ways Mueller can’t: report
Trump eating McDonald’s fast food/Instagram
written by
Brad Reed / Raw Story
February 18, 2019
President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors, but yet another major threat to his presidency hasn’t been getting nearly the same attention.…
President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors, but yet another major threat to his presidency hasn’t been getting nearly the same attention.

As Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn reports, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has been running aggressive investigations into Trump’s inauguration committee and into his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen, and the president appears to have no way to shut down their probe.

“Manhattan-based federal prosecutors can challenge Trump in ways Mueller can’t,” Samuelsohn writes. “They have jurisdiction over the president’s political operation and businesses — subjects that aren’t protected by executive privilege, a tool Trump is considering invoking to block portions of Mueller’s report.”

Samuelsohn also claims that “legal circles are… buzzing over whether SDNY might buck DOJ guidance and seek to indict a sitting president,” which is something that most legal experts do not expect Mueller to do even if he reports hard evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

What has to be even more worrying for the president, Samuelsohn argues, is that the SDNY’s investigations will likely last well past Mueller’s probe, which could badly damage Trump’s 2020 reelection bid.

A terrified Trump trashes McCabe, Sessions, Mueller, FBI, and DOJ in late night-early AM tweetstorm
States prepare legal challenge to Trump’s emergency declaration — slamming president for jeopardizing disaster funds

Paul Manafort is keeping one big secret — and that’s a ticket out of jail for both him and Donald Trump
9

Noam Chomsky: Those who failed to recognize Trump as the greater evil made ‘a bad mistake’.

Pence in Europe gets cold shoulder:

The Trump Impeachment
World
WATCH: Pence Met with Icy Silence in Munich, Praising Trump and Attempting to Bully Leaders on Foreign Policy
By Julia Conley / Common Dreams (02/16/2019) - February 16, 2019634

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Vice President Mike Pence received an icy response from world leaders at the Munich Security Conference Saturday, as he made clear his aim for the weekend was to promote his President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda.

The vice president began his remarks by telling world leaders, “I bring greetings from the 45th president of the United States of America, President Donald Trump”—and was met with a long silence before describing Trump’s accomplishments as “extraordinary” and “remarkable.”

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Addressing U.S. allies at the Munich Security Conference, Mike Pence is met with silence as he tells the audience: “I bring greetings from the 45th president of the United States of America, President Donald Trump.”

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In addition to heaping praise on the president, Pence chastised European and Asian leaders for remaining in compliance with the Iran nuclear deal and called on them to join the U.S. in recognizing Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela, weeks after the right-wing opposition leader declared himself the head of the country despite President Nicolas Maduro winning re-election last May.

Pence urged the E.U. to “step forward for freedom” by recognizing Guaido as president.

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US Vice President Mike Pence calls on the European Union to recognise Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s president

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Millions of Venezuelans in recent days have signed an open letter rejecting the United States’ attempt to intervene and pressure the country and international community to recognize Guaido.

Slamming European countries for “undermining U.S. sanctions” by staying in the painstakingly-reached Iran nuclear deal, Pence called on world leaders to turn away from Iran while accusing the country of antisemitism.

“The Iranian regime openly advocates another Holocaust and it seeks the means to achieve it,” said Pence.

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called Pence’s accusation “laughable.”

“Iran has always supported the Jews,” he told Der Spiegel. “We are just against Zionists.”

“Iran’s historic and cultural record of coexistence and respect for divine religions, particularly Judaism, is recorded in reliable historic documents of various nations,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi added in a statement.

“The principle that underlies our foreign policy is the aggressive and occupying nature of the Zionist regime [Israel] … which is a killing machine against the Palestinian people,” he said.

Regarding Iran, German Chancellor Angela Merkel also addressed the conference, defending the decision of Germany and other European nations to stay in the nuclear agreement and observing the Trump administration’s isolation in the debate over the deal.

Merkel has observed “the Europeans on one side and the Americans on the other side,” she said—a dynamic which was illustrated by the conference’s reception of the vice president.

DONALD TRUMP
By Jane C. Timm
President Donald Trump on Monday seconded the allegation that there had been a coup attempt against him before heading out to play golf at his Florida club on Presidents Day.

The president tweeted a quote from Fox News guest Dan Bongino alleging “an illegal coup attempt” against him, adding “true!”

The message capped off a series of angry tweets Trump wrote on Monday about former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who gave an explosive interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday alleging that FBI Deputy Director Andrew Rosenstein repeatedly discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. The 25th Amendment is the part of the Constitution that details succession if a president dies or becomes otherwise incapacitated.

The conversations came in the chaotic days after James Comey was fired as FBI director, McCabe told CBS, as the FBI became increasingly convinced that the president was obstructing into the agency’s investigation in Russian meddling in the U.S. election. Rosenstein went as far to offer to wear a wire to the White House to gather information, McCabe said. (Officials have previously told NBC News Rosenstein made the remark sarcastically.)

McCabe was later fired for lying to FBI investigators who were investigating a media leak, something McCabe said was well within the rights of his role to give. His latest media swing comes shortly before the release of a book about his time at the FBI.

The Department of Justice said in a statement that they saw McCabe’s telling of “events as inaccurate and factually incorrect” saying that the department’s "Inspector General found that Mr. McCabe did not tell the truth to federal authorities on multiple occasions, leading to his termination from the FBI.”

In a string of five tweets Monday, Trump wrote that there were “so many lies” in McCabe’s interview, calling it “deranged.”

“This was the illegal and treasonous ‘insurance policy’ in full action!” Trump wrote in another tweet.

In his Sunday interview, McCabe said that the president repeatedly worried the FBI by showing an affinity for Russia. In one meeting, McCabe said the president told an FBI agent that he did not believe U.S. intelligence on North Korea because President Vladimir Putin had disputed it.

“Essentially, the president said he did not believe that the North Koreans had the capability to hit us here with ballistic missiles in the United States. And he did not believe that because President Putin had told him they did not. President Putin had told him that the North Koreans don’t actually have those missiles,” McCabe said in the interview on Sunday night.

“Intelligence officials in the briefing responded that that was not consistent with any of the intelligence our government possesses to which the president replied, ‘I don’t care. I believe Putin,’" McCabe added, calling Trump’s reaction “astounding” and “shocking.”

McCabe was fired just hours before he became eligible to collect his pension, after a career within the FBI. He said on CBS he is considering suing to try and collect that pension.

Jane C. Timm is a political reporter and fact checker for NBC News.
© 2019 NBC UNIVERSAL