Source: The Hill

President Trump on Monday called a caravan of Central American migrants heading toward the U.S.-Mexico border an "invasion" and pledged to use the military to stop people from entering the U.S.

"This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!" the president tweeted.

Trump offered no evidence while claiming there are "Many Gang Members and some very bad people" traveling in the caravan.

...

They also point out that the suspects in last week's mail-bomb scare and the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue echoed some of that rhetoric. The alleged Pittsburgh gunman, Robert Bowers, denounced the "third-world caravan" as a group of "invaders" in a social media post.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/413624-trump-calls-migrant-caravan-an-invasion

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https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting/h_0c180f52c8d032fd47eef570cc5065c2

Bowers blamed Jews for helping 'invaders' in the migrant caravans

Robert Bowers’ anti-Semitism fueled other hate speech that he published and shared on Gab.com

Bowers made anti-Semitic comments alongside xenophobic content, claiming that Jews were helping transport members of the migrant caravans in Latin America. He shared a video that another Gab.com user posted, purportedly of HIAS, a Jewish refugee support group, on the US-Mexico border.

In another post, Bowers described HIAS' overall efforts as, "sugar-coated evil."

He believed that those in the migrant caravans were violent because they were attempting to leave countries that had high levels of violence. And Bowers repeatedly called them “invaders.”

Source: The Hill

The Trump administration is planning hours-long downtimes for maintenance on healthcare.gov during the coming ObamaCare sign-up period.

The administration drew criticism for a similar move last year from advocates who said the downtime would hinder efforts to sign people up for coverage, but the administration counters that maintenance downtime happens every year and is designed to occur during the slowest periods on the site.

The maintenance schedule is the same as last year, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Tuesday, meaning healthcare.gov is scheduled to be offline for maintenance from 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. each Sunday during the sign-up period, except for the final Sunday, for a total of 60 hours of downtime.

Officials said that is the maximum possible downtime, and said that last year the actual downtime was significantly less than what was scheduled, at 21.5 hours out of a scheduled 60.

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/410574-trump-officials-plan-maintenance-downtime-for-healthcaregov-during

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Source: CNN

Former CIA Director John Brennan just tweeted a strongly worded reaction to President Trump's news conference, saying it "was nothing short of treasonous."

Here's his tweet:

https://twitter.com/JohnBrennan/status/1018885971104985093?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-putin-helsinki/index.html

Source: WP/AP

TEL AVIV, Israel — Ripped men in white underwear, pink bunny ears and black bow ties gyrated through the streets of Israel’s Tel Aviv on Friday along with drag queens and others to loud trance music for the annual Gay Pride Parade — the biggest event of its kind in the region.

The Tel Aviv Municipality said over 250,000 people celebrated at the city’s 20th Gay Pride Parade, an event that draws people from around the world to party.

...

Israel has emerged as one of the world’s most gay-friendly travel destinations in recent years, in sharp contrast to the rest of the Middle East where gay culture is often not tolerated or even persecuted.

...

Sahreef Awad, an Arab participant from Israel, said “There’s no difference between anyone, it’s just like, you know, culture, color, nationality, it doesn’t matter, come one, it’s like, we are all people, that’s what matters, love is love, so love wins, yeah!”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/bunny-ears-bow-ties-at-annual-gay-pride-parade-in-tel-aviv/2018/06/08/681d3972-6b0b-11e8-a335-c4503d041eaf_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.04f9941dda47

Source: The Hill

Trump says he will ask kneeling athletes to recommend people for him to pardon 'because that's what they're protesting'

President Trump said Friday that he would ask athletes who kneel during the national anthem to recommend people for him to pardon.

Trump has been highly critical of athletes kneeling during the anthem, calling it disrespectful to the country. Most recently, he disinvited Super Bowl champions the Philadelphia Eagles to the White House over their differing stances on the protests.

“They’re not proud enough to stand for our national anthem, I don’t like that,” Trump said to reporters outside the White House on Friday, before criticizing the protests as “talk, talk, talk.”

Instead, he said, he plans to ask kneeling athletes to recommend “friends of theirs or people that they know about” who they think should be pardoned.

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/391331-trump-says-he-will-ask-kneeling-athletes-to-recommend-people-for-him

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Source: CNN

Washington (CNN)Rudy Giuliani told an audience in Israel that he does not think first lady Melania Trump believes that President Donald Trump had an affair with Stormy Daniels.

"She believes her husband, and she doesn't think it's true," Giuliani said at the "Globes" Capital Market conference in Tel Aviv.

The former GOP mayor of New York also attacked Daniels, an adult film actress who alleges she had an affair with Trump more than a decade ago, personally and denied that sex workers had credibility.

"I respect women -- beautiful women and women with value -- but a woman who sells her body for sexual exploitation I don't respect," Giuliani said. "Tell me what damage she suffered. Someone who sells his or her body for money has no good name."

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/06/politics/giuliani-stormy-daniels-trump-melania/index.html

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Source: The Hill

Former FBI Director James Comey admits in a new interview that he doesn't know if the so-called "pee tape" — one of the more salacious items in the "Steele dossier" — exists.

The "golden showers" allegation, which first surfaced in the unverified dossier created by former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, claims Trump ordered two prostitutes to urinate on a bed once used by the Obamas at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton.

In excerpts from an interview airing on an ABC News "20/20" special this Sunday, Comey says that its "possible" that the alleged incident occurred, and that he was careful not to tell Trump whether he believed the allegations or not.

“I honestly never thought this words would come out of my mouth, but I don't know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” Comey told ABC. “It's possible, but I don't know.”

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/382976-comey-its-possible-that-so-called-pee-tape-is-real

Source: The Sun UK


THE US President is widely expected to green-light revenge attacks on the President Bashar Assad regime in the coming days supported by Britain and France.


AN US aircraft carrier is on its way and a guided missile destroyer is reportedly lurking off the coast of Syria amid calls for revenge for Assad's poison gas attack.

It comes as Donald Trump renewed his vow to decide on his military response to the outrage which left scores dead “probably by the end of today".

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Meanwhile USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier strike group was on its way to the Syrian coast armed with cruise missiles and an array of warplanes.

Yet it emerged today Russia has started jamming US military drones operating over Syria seriously affecting America's ability to strike targets.

Read more: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6019299/uss-harry-s-truman-missiles-deployed-mediterranean-syria/

Source: CNBC

President Donald Trump claimed in a tweet Friday that the latest indictment issued by special counsel Robert Mueller showed that his presidential campaign "did nothing wrong" during the 2016 election.

"Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President," Trump tweeted as he departed the White House for south Florida, the location of his private Mar-a-Lago club. "The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!"

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/16/trump-tweets-russia-started-anti-us-campaign-long-before-he-ran-for-president.html

Source: CNN

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump continues to tell his associates he believed the highly controversial Republican memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools could help discredit the Russia investigation, multiple sources familiar with White House discussions said.

The President continues to direct some of his anger toward his Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

In phone calls last night and over the past days, Trump has told friends he believes the memo would expose bias within the agency's top ranks and make it easier for him to argue the Russia investigations are prejudiced against him, according to two sources.

Trump was upset Wednesday in the wake of the FBI's statement challenging the release of the a controversial memo crafted by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes, a Trump ally. The statement was issued just hours after the President made clear he wanted the document public.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2018/02/01/politics/nunes-memo-donald-trump/index.html?adkey=bn