January 2, 2018

As protests rage in Iran, Trump blames Obama for foolishly giving funds to Iranian government

Source: Politico




By LOUIS NELSON 01/02/2018 07:49 AM EST

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that “the U.S. is watching” ongoing anti-government demonstrations in Iran, blaming the nuclear deal struck with the support of former President Barack Obama for lining the pockets of the Iranian government.

“The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their ‘pockets,’” the president wrote on Twitter. “The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!”

Tuesday marked the sixth day of protests in Iran, where a flagging economy and an uptick in food prices have prompted demonstrators to chant anti-government slogans. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that at least nine people had been killed overnight, including a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, raising the overall death toll from the protests to at least 20. In Tehran, the Iranian capital, 450 protesters have been arrested since demonstrations began, the AP reported.

Trump’s Tuesday tweet echoed similar sentiments he has expressed online over the last three days, slamming the Iranian government. He has long been critical of the landmark nuclear deal negotiated in part by the Obama administration, taking steps last year to imperil it without fully making good on his campaign promise to remove the U.S. from it entirely.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/02/trump-iran-tweet-protests-obama-319919

January 2, 2018

Trump backs protesters -- as long as they're not protesting him

By MATTHEW NUSSBAUM 01/02/2018 08:54 AM EST

President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced support for anti-government protests in Iran in recent days, joining a bipartisan and international chorus in support of the peaceful demonstrators.

“Big protests in Iran,” Trump tweeted on New Year’s Eve. “The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!”

“Iran, the Number One State of Sponsored Terror with numerous violations of Human Rights occurring on an hourly basis, has now closed down the Internet so that peaceful demonstrators cannot communicate. Not good!” he added later. He returned to the theme on Monday: “Iran is failing at every level despite the terrible deal made with them by the Obama Administration. The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food & for freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!”

Trump’s support for the Iranian demonstrators stands in stark contrast to his frequent criticism of Americans who protest his own government in the United States. He frequently called for violence against protesters at his campaign rallies, where protesters were routinely roughed up by crowds, and has mocked those who marched in the wake of his election and inauguration. And he spent weeks this fall calling for NFL players who protested police brutality during the national anthem to be fined or fired.

more
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/02/trump-protests-iran-demonstrations-united-states-319923?lo=ap_b1

January 2, 2018

Golfer: Trump didnt stop to take any calls while golfing

BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 01/02/18 08:47 AM EST

https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/948177717933105152

A man who recently golfed with President Trump said the commander-in-chief did not take any phone calls when the two played a game.

“No, it was all golf. He was fully in the moment and with us. We played with two other guys and he was great with them too,” Taylor Funk told CNN’s “New Day” when asked if Trump also worked while playing golf.

Trump on Monday returned from his Mar-a-Lago club, where he spent the Christmas and New Year holidays with his family. The president had arrived at what he has dubbed “the winter White House” on Dec. 22.

The president visited the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla. for seven straight days, capping off his final visit to the club on New Year’s Day.

more
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/367021-golfer-trump-didnt-stop-to-take-any-calls-while-golfing

January 2, 2018

Donald Trump's Year of Living Dangerously

Donald Trump’s Year of Living Dangerously

It’s worse than you think.

By SUSAN B. GLASSER January/February 2018

hen President Donald Trump sat down for dinner on September 18 in New York with leaders of four Latin American countries on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly, anxieties were already running high.

There was the matter of Mexico and his promise to build that “big, beautiful wall,” presumably to keep not just Mexicans but all of their citizens out of the United States too. And the threat to blow up the North American Free Trade Agreement. And then, a month earlier, seemingly out of nowhere, Trump had volunteered that he was considering a “military option” in Venezuela as that country’s last vestiges of democracy disappeared. Amid the international furor over his vow to rain down “fire and fury” on North Korea in the same golf-course press conference, the news that the president of the United States was apparently considering going to war with its third-largest oil supplier had gotten relatively little attention. But the leaders from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Panama invited to the dinner remembered it well.

So, it turned out, did Trump. After the photo op was over and the cameras had left the room, Trump dominated the long table. His vice president, Mike Pence, was to his right; Pence had just spent nearly a week on a conciliatory, well-received tour of the region, the first by a high-ranking administration official since Trump’s inauguration. To Trump’s left was his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. “Rex tells me you don’t want me to use the military option in Venezuela,” the president told the gathered Latin American leaders, according to an account offered by an attendee soon after the dinner. “Is that right? Are you sure?” Everyone said they were sure. But they were rattled. War with Venezuela, as absurd as that seemed, was clearly still on Trump’s mind.

By the time the dinner was over, the leaders were in shock, and not just over the idle talk of armed conflict. No matter how prepared they were, eight months into an American presidency like no other, this was somehow not what they expected. A former senior U.S. official with whom I spoke was briefed by ministers from three of the four countries that attended the dinner. “Without fail, they just had wide eyes about the entire engagement,” the former official told me. Even if few took his martial bluster about Venezuela seriously, Trump struck them as uninformed about their issues and dangerously unpredictable, asking them to expend political capital on behalf of a U.S. that no longer seemed a reliable partner. “The word they all used was: ‘This guy is insane.’”

more
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/02/donald-trump-foreign-policy-analysis-dangerous-216202

January 2, 2018

'This guy's insane': Report reveals South American leaders feared Trump planned to invade Venezuela

Source: RawStory




BRAD REED
02 JAN 2018 AT 08:11 ET

This past August, President Donald Trump floated the idea of using military force against Venezuela’s government.

This idea didn’t sit well at all with other leaders in the region, and a new report from Politico claims that the leaders of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Panama all told Trump that they opposed invading Venezuela during a meeting at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

“[Secretary of State Rex Tillerson] tells me you don’t want me to use the military option in Venezuela,” Trump told the leaders during their meeting, according to Politico. When the leaders all responded that they were opposed to using military force against Venezuela, Trump seemed shocked. “Is that right?” he asked them. “Are you sure?”

A former U.S. official who was briefed on the meeting tells Politico that the leaders of the countries “just had wide eyes about the entire engagement” and walked away from it fearing Trump’s mental state could spark major wars in South America.

Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/2018/01/this-guys-insane-report-reveals-south-american-leaders-believed-trump-planned-to-invade-venezuela/

January 2, 2018

Rupert Murdoch's son privately expressed embarrassment over elements of Fox News: report

BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 01/02/18 08:31 AM EST

Rupert Murdoch's son has reportedly privately expressed embarrassment over some parts of Fox News' coverage.

The New York Times reported that one of Murdoch's sons, James, has been skeptical of some aspects of the network's coverage. He has some progressive views, according to The Times, and has expressed embarrassment over Fox News' coverage of areas such as climate change.

President Trump is known to frequently watch Fox News and often tweets about the network's coverage of his administration.

Last month, a report said that Trump had called Rupert Murdoch, 21st Century Fox Executive Chairman, ahead of Disney's announcement that it would purchase much of his company to make sure the deal wouldn't impact Fox News.

more
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/367019-rupert-murdochs-son-privately-expressed-embarrassment-over-elements-of-fox

January 2, 2018

Trump: Time for DOJ to act on Abedin, Comey?

Source: The Hill




BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 01/02/18 08:03 AM EST

President Trump on Tuesday appeared to call for the Justice Department (DOJ) to "act" on former Hillary Clinton adviser Huma Abedin and former FBI director James Comey.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948174033882927104

Trump appeared to be referring to a report in The Daily Caller News Foundation that said Abedin had forwarded State Department emails to her personal Yahoo account.

Those emails, according to that report, included passwords to government systems and were forwarded to her personal Yahoo account before a breach at Yahoo that affected every customer account.

Last month, the State Department released portions of 2,800 emails and other documents belonging to Abedin that were recovered by the FBI last year on Abedin's estranged husband Anthony Weiner's computer last year.



Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/367016-trump-time-for-doj-to-act-on-abedin-comey

January 2, 2018

Anthony Scaramucci Is Telling Pals That Donald Trump Wants Him Back

Trump, meanwhile, once wondered if his short-lived communications director was on drugs.

LACHLAN MARKAY
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
01.01.18 8:30 PM ET

Losing your job in a fit of self-immolation after a mere ten days may seem like the type of professional stumble that doesn’t lend itself to a comeback. But Anthony Scaramucci, a.k.a. the Mooch, appears to be positioning himself to give politics another go.

The former White House communications director has privately told friends and associates that the president and other members of the Trump family, including White House adviser and first daughter Ivanka Trump, miss him and want him back in the West Wing. Three sources close to Scaramucci have independently told The Daily Beast that the Mooch continues to brag that he and President Donald Trump talk on the phone, and that the Mooch believes his resurrection in Trump-world could be imminent. One of these sources said that the Mooch claimed he was flying out to either Washington, D.C. or Mar-a-Lago early this month to meet Trump to talk about it.

There are several major hurdles the Mooch must clear before all systems are a go. Most serious among them: Trump himself doesn’t appear to be on board. In fact, it’s not clear if President Trump, or Ivanka, is even in touch with the sacked comms director.

Virtually no one in or outside of the Trump White House who The Daily Beast contacted for this story believed the Mooch’s claims. This included several of the Mooch’s friends and also Trump aides.

more
https://www.thedailybeast.com/anthony-scaramucci-is-telling-pals-that-donald-trump-wants-him-back?ref=home

January 1, 2018

'Extreme tribalism' claws at the Republicans

Katie Glueck, McClatchy Washington Bureau Published 5:04 p.m. ET Jan. 1, 2018

WASHINGTON — In Washington, President Donald Trump struggles with record-low approval ratings — but 80 percent of Republicans rate him highly.

In Montana, Republican Greg Gianforte assaulted a reporter before a special congressional election, but he triumphed anyway, with Trump hailing his “great win.” And in Alabama, failed Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore was accused of child molestation, but 91 percent of Republican voters still backed him, as did Trump himself.

The tensions between a Republican base unshakably committed to the Trump party line and a broader populace that is becoming ever more disillusioned have some conservatives worried about what Trumpian tribalism means electorally and to the soul of their party as the 2018 election year opens.

“It’s not about ideology anymore. It’s about loyalty to the president,” Rep. Charlie Dent, a retiring Pennsylvania Republican, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “Now the litmus test has changed. The issue is loyalty to the man, to the president.”

more
http://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/news/2018/01/01/extreme-tribalism-claws-republicans/109082420/

January 1, 2018

Trump Jr. starts off 2018 by attacking Hillary Clinton with conspiracy claims from WikiLeaks

ERIC W. DOLAN
01 JAN 2018 AT 17:20 ET

President Donald Trump’s eldest son on Monday promoted a conspiracy that originated with the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. The conspiracy promoted by Donald Trump Jr. alleges that the New York Times “colluded” with Hillary Clinton while she was the Secretary of State.

“The double standard never ends. Every day @realDonaldTrump’s win is that much more impressive when you realize all he was actually up against,” Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter.

The tweet linked to an article published on the conservative Daily Wire website, which claimed that an email released by WikiLeaks on Sunday night was “proof” that the New York Times “colluded” with the State Department in 2010.

The email released by WikiLeaks was authored by New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane. The email shows that he provided the State Department with information about when the newspaper planned to publish articles about a trove of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks alleged the New York Times was providing Clinton with “up to 9 days in advance to spin the revelations or create diversions.”

Shane, however, dismissed the allegations as “nonsense.” In a series of tweets, he explained that the newspaper worked with the State Department to protect dissidents from hostile retailation from foreign governments.

https://twitter.com/ScottShaneNYT/status/947472786074849280
https://twitter.com/ScottShaneNYT/status/947473293652779016
https://twitter.com/ScottShaneNYT/status/947474365846839296
https://twitter.com/ScottShaneNYT/status/947474765144641536
https://twitter.com/ScottShaneNYT/status/947475202698629122
https://twitter.com/ScottShaneNYT/status/947480416562401280

more
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/01/trump-jr-starts-off-2018-by-attacking-hillary-clinton-with-conspiracy-claims-from-wikileaks/