“Multiple administration officials tell Fox News that when Robert Mueller met with President Trump in May of 2017, Mueller was indeed pursuing the open post as the director of the FBI – something the former Russia probe special counsel denied under oath during congressional testimony this summer.
These officials also told Fox News government documents showed Mueller was pursuing the job as a candidate himself.
It came as emails released this month through a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative group Judicial Watch seemed to indicate Mueller knew there was a real possibility he could be named special counsel if he wasn’t chosen as the next FBI director.
“The boss and his staff do not know about our discussions,” then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in an email to Mueller on May 12, 2017. Rosenstein’s boss was then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russia probe, meaning the president would not have known either.
A source close to Rosenstein confirmed to Fox News that he had confidential conversations with Mueller about whether he would be willing to serve in the event he needed to appoint a special counsel. These conversations began on May 12, 2017, prior to Mueller’s meeting with the president on May 16, 2017, the source acknowledged.”
“Corruption, Cont’d: Comey Spox Got Gifts From CNN And NYT, Lied To Investigators”
“Alert Jeff Daniels! James Comey’s FBI apparently suffered an epidemic lack of candor, as well as unreported media contacts. An earlier inspector general report got Comey’s deputy Andrew McCabe fired for both issues, and potentially prosecuted for obstructing an investigation into leaks. Comey himself has been spinning the truth at best for two-plus years, another probe concluded. And now a new IG report has concluded that Comey spokesperson Michael Kortan repeatedly lied to investigators about an unreported gift from CNN and NYT reporters, the Daily Caller reported earlier today:
The FBI’s top press officer during the Hillary Clinton and Trump-Russia investigations accepted tickets to a Washington Nationals game from a CNN correspondent and lied about it repeatedly during interviews with the Justice Department’s inspector general, according to a report obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Michael Kortan, who served as assistant director of public affairs, displayed a “lack of candor” during multiple interviews under oath with the DOJ watchdog about how he obtained the tickets, who he went with, and whether he reimbursed the CNN journalist, according to the report.
“The OIG…concluded that Kortan lacked candor under oath when he provided answers to OIG’s questions relating to the September 2016 tickets that were misleading and false,” reads the report, which the DCNF obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.”
“BIG: James Clapper Admits He Was Following Orders From His ‘Commander-In-Chief, President Obama’”
“In the transcript and the video below, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, speaks to CNN’s Jim Sciutto and makes the stunning admission that he’d been following Obama’s orders – and he says it twice.
This is very big news because it’s the first time a member of the deep state has admitted that President Obama was not only aware of the investigation, but was issuing orders to his team. “What were we supposed to have done…blown off what the then commander-in-chief, President Obama, told us to do?” And, as if we missed it the first time, he says it again. “It’s kind of disconcerting now to be investigated for, you know having done our duty and done what we were told to do by the president.”
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And Fraud #4 The Dip Schiff.
President Trump: • Released the Ukraine Call Transcript. • Released Whistleblower Complaint.
Adam Schiff: • Made up lines from the Transcript. • Lied about contact with the Whistleblower. • Will not release the Volker Transcript.
“Waiting for the headline: ‘Strong Trump economy yields record revenues'”
“Why do supposed journalists, in collusion with other Democrats, continue to lie to the public that Trump’s tax cuts cost the government trillions of dollars when that is demonstrably not true?
Here’s the Congressional Budget Office report about taxes and federal revenues:
Total Receipts: Up by 4 Percent in Fiscal Year 2019
Receipts totaled $3,462 billion in fiscal year 2019, CBO estimates. The increase relative to last year was the result of changes in receipts from the following sources:
Individual income and payroll (social insurance) taxes together rose by $107 billion (or 4 percent).
Amounts withheld from workers’ paychecks rose by $78 billion (or 3 percent). That change largely reflects increases in wages and salaries that were partly offset by a decline in the share of income withheld for taxes. The Internal Revenue Service issued new withholding tables in January 2018 to reflect changes made by the 2017 tax act (Public Law 115-97). All employers were required to begin using the new tables by February 15, 2018. Those new withholding rates were in effect this entire fiscal year but for only seven and a half months of the same period last year.
Nonwithheld payments of income and payroll taxes rose by $10 billion (or 1 percent).
Income tax refunds were down by $23 billion (or 9 percent), further boosting net receipts.
Unemployment insurance receipts (one kind of payroll tax) declined by $4 billion (or 9 percent).
Corporate income taxes increased by $25 billion (or 12 percent). Those receipts reflect activity in both 2018 and 2019.
It is clear that Trump’s tax cuts, in conjunction with regulatory decreases, have yielded much greater economic growth than expected, which yielded higher revenue than the CBO and others projected.
This also happened with President George W. Bush’s limited, and President Ronald Reagan’s across-the-board, tax cuts.
It is especially impressive that the U.S economy is doing so much better than Europe’s, and it is precisely because Trump’s policies are so much better than policies that advocate for bigger government.”
Not every problem can be solved by America. It is time to leave the solution to Syria’s tragic conflict to others.”
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is threatening to unilaterally establish a “safe zone” inside Syria: “there is no other choice but to act on our own,” he declared. In response, U.S. officials are contemplating withdrawing the 1,000 or so America military personnel stationed alongside Kurdish fighters in the area. “It’s a perfect storm; it’s really ugly,” complained an unnamed official to the Wall Street Journal. In fact, U.S. forces should have been withdrawn long ago.
Although Washington denounces any suggestion that spheres of interest claimed by China or Russia should be respected, U.S. officials routinely insist on such zones for America. But not just in Central or Latin America. Most members of Washington’s foreign-policy community believe that the entire world is America’s sphere of interest.
How else to explain U.S. intervention in multiple civil wars in the Middle East? In 1982 President Ronald Reagan sent Marines, backed by naval forces, to Lebanon, in which many warring groups were battling for control. Americans became just another combatant as the USS New Jersey bombarded Shia and Druze positions. Lebanese fighters, lacking a navy or air force, retaliated with unorthodox (“terrorist”) tactics. After the attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks Reagan acknowledged that he had blundered taking sides in the bitter conflict. He took the only sensible step and withdrew American personnel.
After ousting Afghanistan’s Taliban from power in retaliation for hosting the terrorist group Al Qaeda, President George W. Bush transformed America’s mission into nation-building. After three administrations and more than eighteen years the civil war has yet to be won. And virtually no one believes that it can be won, at least not at a reasonable cost, though most officials refuse to admit the truth to the public. American military personnel continue to die to spare successive presidents the embarrassment of acknowledging failure on their watch.
The Libyan civil war was followed by chaos: conflict among multiple factions, the rise of the Islamic State, and another full-scale civil war, which was fueled by America’s Gulf State allies. Even worse is Washington’s support for Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates in an aggressive war undertaken to restore a pliant ruler to power in Yemen. The Gulf “coalition” has created mass humanitarian horror, reduced pressure on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, forced the long independent Houthis to rely on Iran for assistance, showcased the Saudis’ extraordinary military ineffectiveness, and underwritten separatists fighting to break up the country. Washington did all this to reassure the regime in Riyadh, which is fundamentally hostile to American values and interests.
This is an extraordinary record of failure. Seemingly serious policymakers were wrong to believe U.S. intervention would enhance U.S. security; they were especially wrong to believe that victory was achievable. Most extraordinary was how officials seemed incapable of learning from any experience before them.
Then there is the war in Syria. Washington had much to dislike about the secular family dictatorship that warred against Israel and allied with Moscow. However, Damascus never threatened America and of late refused even to confront Israel. Moreover, the Assad family, minority Alawites, ran a secular regime that acted as a barrier to radical Sunnis who were responsible for most terrorist attacks against the United States, as well as other Western nations and Arab allies. The regime was repressive, but so are virtually all of America’s Mideast partners. And the United States recently suffered through the debacle in Iraq, which made a bad situation far worse.”
“Senate Intel Report Shows Russian Disinformation Fueled Resistance Movement Post-Election”
“A Senate Intelligence Committee report published Tuesday on Russia’s election meddling in 2016 determined that Russian trolls played a role amplifying online resistance to President Donald Trump.
Russian trolls at the Internet Research Agency (IRA) were instrumental in stirring up strife inside the U.S. following the election, according to the report, which focuses on social media disinformation. IRA operatives flooded social media with hashtags promoting resistance, the report notes.
“After Election Day, Left-leaning IRA accounts were promoting hashtags such as ‘#Impeach45,’ ‘#Resist,’ and ‘#GunReformNow,’” the report notes, adding that “right-leaning IRA accounts were focused on the NFL kneeling controversy,” as well as hashtags criticizing the FBI.
Russian operatives also tried to play both sides of the field, staging both pro-Trump and anti-Trump rallies.
“A mid-November 2016 rally in New York was organized around the theme, ‘show your support for President-Elect Donald Trump,’ while a separate rally titled, ‘Trump is NOT my President,’ was also held in New York, in roughly the same timeframe,” the report states.
Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina chaired the bipartisan panel that cobbled together the second volume of its report.”
No wonder they want to hide this person, since they’re a partisan hack.
The IC inspector general told lawmakers that the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower had a working relationship with one of the current 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, according to three sources with knowledge of the testimony. https://t.co/YwNrz4SaE8
“TRUMP REFUSES TO PARTICIPATE IN IMPEACHMENT FARCE
Today, President Trump’s White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, directed an eight-page letter to Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, et al., declining on behalf of President Trump to participate in the Democrats’ sham impeachment proceeding. The letter, embedded below, is excellent. Some would say, brilliant. It attacks the Democrats’ constitutionally defective and politically motivated proceeding at its root. You should read it all. This is the letter’s introduction:
I write on behalf of President Donald J. Trump in response to your numerous, legally unsupported demands made as part of what you have labeled–contrary to the Constitution of the United States and all past bipartisan precedent–as an “impeachment inquiry.” As you know, you have designed and implemented your inquiry in a maimer that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.
For example, you have denied the President the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present, and many other basic rights guaranteed to all Americans. You have conducted your proceedings in secret. You have violated civil liberties and the separation of powers by threatening Executive Branch officials, claiming that you will seek to punish those who exercise fundamental constitutional rights and prerogatives. All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent. Never before in our history has the House of Representatives–under the control of either political party–taken the American people down the dangerous path you seem determined to pursue.
Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen. Many Democrats now apparently view impeachment not only as a means to undo the democratic results of the last election, but as a strategy to influence the next election, which is barely more than a year away. As one member of Congress explained, he is “concerned that ifwe don’t impeach the President, he will get reelected.”1 Your highly partisan and unconstitutional effort threatens grave and lasting damage to our democratic institutions, to our system of free elections, and to the American people.
For his part, President Trump took the unprecedented step of providing the public transparency by declassifying and releasing the record of his call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. The record clearly established that the call was completely appropriate and that there is no basis for your inquiry. The fact that there was nothing wrong with the call was also powerfully confirmed by Chairman Schiff’s decision to create a false version of the call and read it to the American people at a congressional hearing, without disclosing that he was simply making it all up.
In addition, information has recently come to light that the whistleblower had contact with Chairman Schiff’s office before filing the complaint. His initial denial of such contact caused The Washington Post to conclude that Chairman Schiff “clearly made a statement that was false.”2 In any event, the American people understand that Chairman Schiff cannot covertly assist with the submission of a complaint, mislead the public about his involvement, read a counterfeit version of the call to the American people, and then pretend to sit in judgment as a neutral “investigator.”
For these reasons, President Trump and his Administration reject your baseless, unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process. Your unprecedented actions have left the President with no choice. In order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the Executive Branch, and all future occupants of the Office of the Presidency, President Trump and his Administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances.
“Former Rep. Bob Barr: I Worked On The Clinton Impeachment — And Trump Is Not Impeachable”
“Speaking as a former federal prosecutor and impeachment manager in the Senate trial of former President Clinton, and after having reviewed carefully the content and context of the Ukraine call and what we have learned about it subsequently, it is clear that no federal laws were broken and nothing close to an impeachable offense took place.
In fact, in that call the president of the United States was doing precisely what a president should have been doing. In the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump emphasized that his administration was serious about getting to the bottom of corruption in Ukraine that had affected and had been affected by the United States. Our president made clear he was referring to evidence that Ukrainian interests had been involved corruptly in our 2016 election, and that a high government official in our country — former Vice President Joe Biden — had improperly interfered with that country’s effort to discover and prosecute corrupt acts.”
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“The fact that one focus of Trump’s demands that Ukraine clean up its act as a prerequisite to continued support from America might also involve an individual now seeking to challenge Trump for the presidency, does not in any way diminish or undercut the propriety of Trump’s insistence that the Ukrainian president take steps to get to the bottom of what corruption already had occurred involving the two countries; and also to ensure that going forward the same corrupt acts would not recur.
To claim, as many have done — including Napolitano — that it is a crime for Trump to insist that Ukraine investigate past corrupt acts involving the United States, and that the country stop doing so moving forward, simply because Joe Biden now has chosen to challenge Trump politically next year, undercuts the very power of a president to protect our country from foreign interference and to investigate corrupt acts by former U.S. officials. Biden is deserving of no such self-imposed immunity.
Moreover, such a warped view of presidential actions turns on its head our system of criminal justice, in which it is the executive branch (headed by the president) that investigates and prosecutes violations of federal law. It was clear in that July 25 call that President Trump was letting President Zelensky know that our attorney general — the head of our Department of Justice that is responsible for such investigations — would be doing just that. To now assert that for this President Trump should be removed from office and prosecuted criminally, is absurd.
Other attempts to characterize Trump’s actions during, surrounding, or following that call as violations of federal campaign laws, the bribery statute, or the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, are equally inapplicable and unsupported by the facts or any reasonable interpretation of the statutes themselves.
Another avenue down which Trump’s critics travel is just as barren. Claiming that the administration’s moves to protect the July 25 call, and probably others between Trump and foreign leaders, by placing them in a more secure database, is hardly nefarious or evidence of a criminal state of mind. The administration already had been plagued by leaks and mischaracterizations of Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders. Taking steps to protect such critical and sensitive communications is not only understandable but absolutely responsible.
Trump was acting responsibly and presidential. He deserves our appreciation, not our opprobrium.”
“GOP Rep. Ralph Abraham introduces resolution to expel Nancy Pelosi from House”
“A Louisiana Republican congressman introduced a resolution Tuesday to expel Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., from the House of Representatives, the latest sign that frustration in the GOP is building as Democrats continue their impeachment inquiry against President Trump.
Rep. Ralph Abraham’s resolution stands no realistic chance of passing in the Democratic-controlled House. Likewise, Republicans have argued that Democrats’ potential articles of impeachment are all but certain to stall if they ever reach the Senate.
“Nancy Pelosi’s vicious crusade against our lawfully-elected President is nothing more than a politically-motivated witch hunt and it must be stopped,” Abraham said in a statement. “She has disgraced the people’s House and weaponized the Speaker’s gavel for her party’s political gain.”
Abraham added: “House Democrats spent nearly three years obsessed with election meddling only to dwarf any such efforts with their own deceitful plan to nullify the 2016 election and prevent President Trump from winning in 2020. I have introduced a resolution calling for her to be expelled from the House and for the Speaker’s Office to be vacated.”
Fox News is told that the resolution has been closely held, and hasn’t secured many Republican cosponsors — but that Abraham’s office expects it to gain traction.”
China has forcibly detained over one million Muslims in a brutal, systematic campaign to erase religion and culture in Xinjiang. China must end its draconian surveillance and repression, release all those arbitrarily detained, and cease its coercion of Chinese Muslims abroad.
Today, I am announcing visa restrictions on Chinese government and Communist Party officials believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, the detention or abuse of Uighurs, Kazakhs, or other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang.
“Durham investigation into origins of 2016 Trump campaign surveillance expands its scope”
” John Durham, the U.S. attorney reviewing the origins of the 2016 counterintelligence investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign, is probing a wider timeline than previously known, according to multiple senior administration officials.
Fox News previously reported that Durham would be reviewing the days leading up to the 2016 election and through the inauguration.
However, based on what he has been finding, Durham has expanded his investigation adding agents and resources, the senior administration officials said. The timeline has grown from the beginning of the probe through the election and now has included a post-election timeline through the spring of 2017, up to when Robert Mueller was named special counsel.
Attorney General Bill Barr and Durham traveled to Italy recently to talk to law enforcement officials there about the probe and have also had conversations with officials in the U.K. and Australia about the investigation, according to multiple sources familiar with the meetings.
Barr assigned Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, back in May to conduct the inquiry into alleged misconduct and improper surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016, as well as whether Democrats were the ones who’d improperly colluded with foreign actors.
The attorney “is gathering information from numerous sources, including a number of foreign countries. At Attorney General Barr’s request, the president has contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the attorney general and Mr. Durham to appropriate officials,” Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said last month.
Durham, known as a “hard-charging, bulldog” prosecutor, according to a source, has been focusing on the use and assignments of FBI informants, as well as alleged improper issuance of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants. Durham was asked to help Barr to “ensure that intelligence collection activities by the U.S. government related to the Trump 2016 presidential campaign were lawful and appropriate.”
Democrats increasingly have targeted Barr. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said late last month that Barr has “gone rogue,” alleging an attempted “cover-up” of the whistleblower complaint that has led to a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump.”
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They’re targeting him because they know what he will find, and how bad that will be for them. 🙂
“Trump Campaign Accuses Minneapolis ‘Radical Leftist’ Mayor of Extortion Over Security Bills for Planned Rally”
“The police union took Trump’s side, claiming the mayor is trying to “bully” Trump and confirmed the government has “not charged nearly that much for other events.”
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“It looks like Frey has chosen another route to stop Trump’s rally. He provided the Target Center with a security bill for $530,000. Trump’s campaign said the total “is more than 26 times the estimated security costs for a 2009 Target Center health care rally held by President Barack Obama.”
Security for Obama’s rally totaled only $20,000.
The campaign wrote:
Democrat Mayor Frey is using the bogus security charges to pressure the Target Center, site of the contracted October 10, 2019 rally, into preventing Minnesota residents from exercising their First Amendment rights in support of President Trump.
Frey’s city government preemptively informed the Target Center that it would be responsible for $530,000 in security and other costs related to the event. The Target Center attempted to pass the costs on to the Trump campaign under threat of withholding the use of the arena.
The Trump campaign informed the Target Center that the U.S. Secret Service is solely responsible for coordinating security and that withholding the use of the arena would be viewed as a breach of contract and result in court action. Additionally, the ridiculous sum of $530,000 is more than 26 times the estimated security costs for a 2009 Target Center health care rally held by President Barack Obama. Police officials estimated that the costs then were around $20,000. Again, the costs are a matter between the city and the Secret Service.
“We are well aware of Mayor Frey’s vocal partisan opposition to President Trump and calls to disrupt the rally,” read a letter from Trump law firm Jones Day to the Target Center’s management firm. “This last-minute squeeze seems to be nothing but a pretextual political effort with serious First Amendment ramifications.”
Campaign manager Brad Parscale slammed Frey for his “outrageous abuse of power” in an attempt “to deny the rights of his own city’s residents just because he hates the President.”
The radical Mayor of Minneapolis, @Jacob_Frey, is abusing his power in an attempt to block the President's supporters from seeing him speak on Thursday.
Thank you to Lt. Bob Kroll of the great Minneapolis Police Department for your kind words on @foxandfriends. The Police are fighting the Radical Left Mayor, and his ridiculous Uniform Ban. Actually, I LOVE the Cops for Trump shirts. Want to bring some home. I am with you 100%!!!!
The short, plain, just-the-pertinent-facts version from World Magazine (really much appreciated for those of us who don’t have time to read all the daily back-and-forth, partisan drama in this saga but are trying to nominally keep up):
The White House declared Tuesday it would not participate in the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and other top Democrats, White House counsel Pat Cipollone accused them of violating the due process of law by not holding a formal vote in the House to open the impeachment inquiry.
Can the Trump administration do that? The executive branch can make it significantly harder for House Democrats to obtain information. The White House has blocked Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, from speaking to investigators, and the State Department has not handed over requested documents. The Trump administration said the impeachment process was partisan and unconstitutional, and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani called it “the McCarthy committee on steroids.” Democrats will likely respond by issuing subpoenas and looking to the courts to referee.
__________________________________
Today, Donald Trump sent 37 tweets attacking past presidents, current politicians, and U.S. law enforcement; misspelling basic words; and lying about literally everything.
Because those are totally normal things for a sitting president to do.
So are you and your son signing up to go get shot at Ricky? To bravely stand in the middle of a fight other started and you have no place in?
Of course not. You just talk. You expect someone else to fight. Just like the rest of the world.
And it’s called foreign policy you hack, but you knew that. Yes it’s often ugly, and there are winners and losers. Just like with the last election you can’t seem to get over. You lost. Move on.
You should be. Because like it or not, you’re advocating going to war with a NATO ally. You should be embarrassed. You spouted off repeatedly about Trump being mean to our NATO allies by daring to suggest they pony up their fair share, yet here you are wanting to bomb one.
Trump is speaking out against it. But short of putting US troops at risk, what else could he do? Turkey has a legitimate right to secure their country, whether Ricky and the pundits like it or not.
And what exactly would a few hundred US soldiers possibly accomplish here against an army?
If he was the heartless, cruel, and soulless person they claim he is, he’d being doing this on our southern border. But they’re drama queens, and he’s not.
“Trump calls Turkey assault on Syria a ‘bad idea,’ at least 7 civilians reported dead”
“President Trump called Turkey’s ongoing military assault in Syria a “bad idea” Wednesday as activists and war monitor reported at least seven civilians killed in the strikes.
Trump’s comments come hours after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the launch of Operation Peace Spring — a mission that will “neutralize terror threats against Turkey and lead to the establishment of a safe zone, facilitating the return of Syrian refugees to their homes,” escalating the long-standing feud between Ankara and Kurdish forces.
Trump was heavily criticized throughout the week following his decision Sunday to pull American troops out of northern Syria, leaving the Kurdish forces — who have been longtime U.S. allies in the fight against ISIS in Syria — in peril. Ankara views the Syrian Kurdish forces as terrorists allied with a Kurdish insurgency within Turkey.
“The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea,” Trump said in a statement released by the White House. “Turkey has committed to protecting civilians, protecting religious minorities, including Christians, and ensuring no humanitarian crisis takes place—and we will hold them to this commitment.”
“There are no American soldiers in the area,” he added.”
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“The Kurds requested air support from American forces in response to the strikes. But U.S. military officials tell Fox News that Trump has ordered them to not get involved.
A small group of Turkish forces first entered northeastern Syria Wednesday morning near the towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, Bloomberg reported. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency later said Turkish artillery units have been shelling suspected Syrian Kurdish targets in Tal Abayd, while two mortar shells fired from Ras al-Ayn struck the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says one fighter from the Syrian Democratic Forces has been killed so far and six others have been wounded. An SDF spokesperson also says two civilians have been killed as a result of the “Turkish bombardment” of the village of Mashrafa and four civilians were killed in Tirbespiye.
The developments come after the Kurds called on their people Wednesday to move toward the border with Turkey and “carry out acts of resistance.”
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And some people want to put US troops in the middle, seriously?
For what purpose?
C’mon Ricky, you’re so quick to criticize the people who have to make the tough decisions. What would you do?
Two to three days ago, even The Cult was harshly critical of Dear Leader’s treatment of the Kurds on this site. Is there brainwashing medicine in the Kool-Aid?
Ricky does have a point. When Trump commits a serious error, it takes his supporters a few days to recover. Once the Trump line has been established, the supporters are back in business.
No one is asking the US to fight the Turks. The Turks would not have invaded without US and Russia permission. The Russians would love the Kurds out of the away to help reestablish Assad. The US has no strategic reason to support the Turks nor Assad. Trump could’ve said no. My guess is Erdogan outlined his plans and Trump said no problem just let me move our advisers out of firing range. He probably had no idea that it was a mistake.
His comments, They never helped us in Normandy, suggests he has no idea of their importance as the US most reliable Mideast ally, more reliable than Israel or the Saudis
While I disagree, it’s a president’s decision to make. You know nothing of the details, yet you act as if you do.
And again, if the rest of the world ever just once stepped up and did their part, none of this would be happening.
Where is the UN, who should be setting up and monitoring a DMZ type operation to protect both sides interest and to broker peace?
Oh that’s right, they’re broke.
So everyone just makes it our problem. Obama did this, Trump promised to remove US troops, provide money and hardware to the Kurds, and get out. That is exactly what he is doing. There’s gonna be pain when we leave, because there was already pain for a thousands years in that area. And it will continue for the foreseeable future as well. Those are facts. Some of them suck, but reality tends to do that.
The Turks have been announcing this for weeks. It was happening with or without our approval. To suggest otherwise is simplistic. As is the idea that 50 to 500 US troops would do anything besides become collateral damage if it escalated. Those aren’t Canadian troops, so I really don’t give a rat’s butt what your opinion is. It’s irrelevant.
And this is just silly.
“the US most reliable Mideast ally, more reliable than Israel or the Saudis”
The Saudi’s I might agree on. Israel is the only democratic nation in the area, and one of our few real allies there.
The Kurds are an enemy of my enemy is my friend deal. Always was. We provide money and equipment, they do the heavy lifting. Why, because they’d be slaughtered without that hardware and help. They still have that. They will need to cede the territory back to Turkey and Syria or fight for it. But that’s not our fight to have.
Also, the SDF and the like would turn in a minute were the aid to stop. There’s no good way to exit this short of a UN operation, so just tear off the band aid. Again, I wish things were different, because the reality sucks, but it is what it is.
The UN isnt there bc the Russia Turkey and Syria dont want it. A DMZ would normalize the present situation not something other countries want.
The Turks, Assad and Hussein all treated the Kurds with genocidal intent. By giving permission, (and he did, you dont need a transcript to make an inference) Trump will be complicit to any war crimes committed. Again there’s no need to fight Turks….they wouldn’t enter without Assad, Russian and US permission.
Wandering Views 
Let’s get to it.
First up, where’s the money corrupt Democrats? And further vindication that Trump was right.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/10/07/sharyl_attkisson_where_did_the_91_billion_for_hurricane_recovery_in_puerto_rico_go.html
“Sharyl Attkisson: Where Did The $91 Billion For Hurricane Recovery In Puerto Rico Go?”
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Followed by….
LikeLike
We’ll stick with corrupt pols for a bit.
Next up, Ricky’s favorite frauds.
Fraud #1
Mueller caught lying under oath.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/robert-mueller-fbi-director-job-trump-meeting
“Multiple administration officials tell Fox News that when Robert Mueller met with President Trump in May of 2017, Mueller was indeed pursuing the open post as the director of the FBI – something the former Russia probe special counsel denied under oath during congressional testimony this summer.
These officials also told Fox News government documents showed Mueller was pursuing the job as a candidate himself.
It came as emails released this month through a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative group Judicial Watch seemed to indicate Mueller knew there was a real possibility he could be named special counsel if he wasn’t chosen as the next FBI director.
“The boss and his staff do not know about our discussions,” then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in an email to Mueller on May 12, 2017. Rosenstein’s boss was then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had recused himself from the Russia probe, meaning the president would not have known either.
A source close to Rosenstein confirmed to Fox News that he had confidential conversations with Mueller about whether he would be willing to serve in the event he needed to appoint a special counsel. These conversations began on May 12, 2017, prior to Mueller’s meeting with the president on May 16, 2017, the source acknowledged.”
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Fraud #2 Leaky Comey and his corrupt pals.
https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2019/10/08/corruption-contd-comey-spox-got-gifts-cnn-nyt-lied-investigators/
“Corruption, Cont’d: Comey Spox Got Gifts From CNN And NYT, Lied To Investigators”
“Alert Jeff Daniels! James Comey’s FBI apparently suffered an epidemic lack of candor, as well as unreported media contacts. An earlier inspector general report got Comey’s deputy Andrew McCabe fired for both issues, and potentially prosecuted for obstructing an investigation into leaks. Comey himself has been spinning the truth at best for two-plus years, another probe concluded. And now a new IG report has concluded that Comey spokesperson Michael Kortan repeatedly lied to investigators about an unreported gift from CNN and NYT reporters, the Daily Caller reported earlier today:
The FBI’s top press officer during the Hillary Clinton and Trump-Russia investigations accepted tickets to a Washington Nationals game from a CNN correspondent and lied about it repeatedly during interviews with the Justice Department’s inspector general, according to a report obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Michael Kortan, who served as assistant director of public affairs, displayed a “lack of candor” during multiple interviews under oath with the DOJ watchdog about how he obtained the tickets, who he went with, and whether he reimbursed the CNN journalist, according to the report.
“The OIG…concluded that Kortan lacked candor under oath when he provided answers to OIG’s questions relating to the September 2016 tickets that were misleading and false,” reads the report, which the DCNF obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.”
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Fraud #3 James “Obama Ordered the Code Red” Brennan.
https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2019/10/08/big-james-clapper-admits-commander-chief-president-obama-told-act/
“BIG: James Clapper Admits He Was Following Orders From His ‘Commander-In-Chief, President Obama’”
“In the transcript and the video below, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, speaks to CNN’s Jim Sciutto and makes the stunning admission that he’d been following Obama’s orders – and he says it twice.
This is very big news because it’s the first time a member of the deep state has admitted that President Obama was not only aware of the investigation, but was issuing orders to his team. “What were we supposed to have done…blown off what the then commander-in-chief, President Obama, told us to do?” And, as if we missed it the first time, he says it again. “It’s kind of disconcerting now to be investigated for, you know having done our duty and done what we were told to do by the president.”
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And Fraud #4 The Dip Schiff.
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Now some good news.
More winning. 🙂
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/waiting_for_the_headline_strong_trump_economy_yields_record_revenues.html
“Waiting for the headline: ‘Strong Trump economy yields record revenues'”
“Why do supposed journalists, in collusion with other Democrats, continue to lie to the public that Trump’s tax cuts cost the government trillions of dollars when that is demonstrably not true?
Here’s the Congressional Budget Office report about taxes and federal revenues:
Total Receipts: Up by 4 Percent in Fiscal Year 2019
Receipts totaled $3,462 billion in fiscal year 2019, CBO estimates. The increase relative to last year was the result of changes in receipts from the following sources:
Individual income and payroll (social insurance) taxes together rose by $107 billion (or 4 percent).
Amounts withheld from workers’ paychecks rose by $78 billion (or 3 percent). That change largely reflects increases in wages and salaries that were partly offset by a decline in the share of income withheld for taxes. The Internal Revenue Service issued new withholding tables in January 2018 to reflect changes made by the 2017 tax act (Public Law 115-97). All employers were required to begin using the new tables by February 15, 2018. Those new withholding rates were in effect this entire fiscal year but for only seven and a half months of the same period last year.
Nonwithheld payments of income and payroll taxes rose by $10 billion (or 1 percent).
Income tax refunds were down by $23 billion (or 9 percent), further boosting net receipts.
Unemployment insurance receipts (one kind of payroll tax) declined by $4 billion (or 9 percent).
Corporate income taxes increased by $25 billion (or 12 percent). Those receipts reflect activity in both 2018 and 2019.
It is clear that Trump’s tax cuts, in conjunction with regulatory decreases, have yielded much greater economic growth than expected, which yielded higher revenue than the CBO and others projected.
This also happened with President George W. Bush’s limited, and President Ronald Reagan’s across-the-board, tax cuts.
It is especially impressive that the U.S economy is doing so much better than Europe’s, and it is precisely because Trump’s policies are so much better than policies that advocate for bigger government.”
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That’s how you do it folks.
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While I disagree with some of this and the withdrawal, it makes some good points.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/trumps-triumph-america-finally-leaves-syria-86326
“Trump’s Triumph? America Finally Leaves Syria.
Not every problem can be solved by America. It is time to leave the solution to Syria’s tragic conflict to others.”
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is threatening to unilaterally establish a “safe zone” inside Syria: “there is no other choice but to act on our own,” he declared. In response, U.S. officials are contemplating withdrawing the 1,000 or so America military personnel stationed alongside Kurdish fighters in the area. “It’s a perfect storm; it’s really ugly,” complained an unnamed official to the Wall Street Journal. In fact, U.S. forces should have been withdrawn long ago.
Although Washington denounces any suggestion that spheres of interest claimed by China or Russia should be respected, U.S. officials routinely insist on such zones for America. But not just in Central or Latin America. Most members of Washington’s foreign-policy community believe that the entire world is America’s sphere of interest.
How else to explain U.S. intervention in multiple civil wars in the Middle East? In 1982 President Ronald Reagan sent Marines, backed by naval forces, to Lebanon, in which many warring groups were battling for control. Americans became just another combatant as the USS New Jersey bombarded Shia and Druze positions. Lebanese fighters, lacking a navy or air force, retaliated with unorthodox (“terrorist”) tactics. After the attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks Reagan acknowledged that he had blundered taking sides in the bitter conflict. He took the only sensible step and withdrew American personnel.
After ousting Afghanistan’s Taliban from power in retaliation for hosting the terrorist group Al Qaeda, President George W. Bush transformed America’s mission into nation-building. After three administrations and more than eighteen years the civil war has yet to be won. And virtually no one believes that it can be won, at least not at a reasonable cost, though most officials refuse to admit the truth to the public. American military personnel continue to die to spare successive presidents the embarrassment of acknowledging failure on their watch.
The Libyan civil war was followed by chaos: conflict among multiple factions, the rise of the Islamic State, and another full-scale civil war, which was fueled by America’s Gulf State allies. Even worse is Washington’s support for Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates in an aggressive war undertaken to restore a pliant ruler to power in Yemen. The Gulf “coalition” has created mass humanitarian horror, reduced pressure on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, forced the long independent Houthis to rely on Iran for assistance, showcased the Saudis’ extraordinary military ineffectiveness, and underwritten separatists fighting to break up the country. Washington did all this to reassure the regime in Riyadh, which is fundamentally hostile to American values and interests.
This is an extraordinary record of failure. Seemingly serious policymakers were wrong to believe U.S. intervention would enhance U.S. security; they were especially wrong to believe that victory was achievable. Most extraordinary was how officials seemed incapable of learning from any experience before them.
Then there is the war in Syria. Washington had much to dislike about the secular family dictatorship that warred against Israel and allied with Moscow. However, Damascus never threatened America and of late refused even to confront Israel. Moreover, the Assad family, minority Alawites, ran a secular regime that acted as a barrier to radical Sunnis who were responsible for most terrorist attacks against the United States, as well as other Western nations and Arab allies. The regime was repressive, but so are virtually all of America’s Mideast partners. And the United States recently suffered through the debacle in Iraq, which made a bad situation far worse.”
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This is somewhat amusing. The Resistance was aiding the Russians all along.
These morons are what they claim Trump to be, Russian tools.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/08/senate-intelligence-russian-misinformation-trump/
“Senate Intel Report Shows Russian Disinformation Fueled Resistance Movement Post-Election”
“A Senate Intelligence Committee report published Tuesday on Russia’s election meddling in 2016 determined that Russian trolls played a role amplifying online resistance to President Donald Trump.
Russian trolls at the Internet Research Agency (IRA) were instrumental in stirring up strife inside the U.S. following the election, according to the report, which focuses on social media disinformation. IRA operatives flooded social media with hashtags promoting resistance, the report notes.
“After Election Day, Left-leaning IRA accounts were promoting hashtags such as ‘#Impeach45,’ ‘#Resist,’ and ‘#GunReformNow,’” the report notes, adding that “right-leaning IRA accounts were focused on the NFL kneeling controversy,” as well as hashtags criticizing the FBI.
Russian operatives also tried to play both sides of the field, staging both pro-Trump and anti-Trump rallies.
“A mid-November 2016 rally in New York was organized around the theme, ‘show your support for President-Elect Donald Trump,’ while a separate rally titled, ‘Trump is NOT my President,’ was also held in New York, in roughly the same timeframe,” the report states.
Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina chaired the bipartisan panel that cobbled together the second volume of its report.”
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No wonder they want to hide this person, since they’re a partisan hack.
——
https://twitter.com/ShrinkGov/status/1181658151625658369
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Trump is refusing to play along.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/10/trump-refuses-to-participate-in-impeachment-farce.php
“TRUMP REFUSES TO PARTICIPATE IN IMPEACHMENT FARCE
Today, President Trump’s White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, directed an eight-page letter to Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, et al., declining on behalf of President Trump to participate in the Democrats’ sham impeachment proceeding. The letter, embedded below, is excellent. Some would say, brilliant. It attacks the Democrats’ constitutionally defective and politically motivated proceeding at its root. You should read it all. This is the letter’s introduction:
I write on behalf of President Donald J. Trump in response to your numerous, legally unsupported demands made as part of what you have labeled–contrary to the Constitution of the United States and all past bipartisan precedent–as an “impeachment inquiry.” As you know, you have designed and implemented your inquiry in a maimer that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.
For example, you have denied the President the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present, and many other basic rights guaranteed to all Americans. You have conducted your proceedings in secret. You have violated civil liberties and the separation of powers by threatening Executive Branch officials, claiming that you will seek to punish those who exercise fundamental constitutional rights and prerogatives. All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent. Never before in our history has the House of Representatives–under the control of either political party–taken the American people down the dangerous path you seem determined to pursue.
Put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen. Many Democrats now apparently view impeachment not only as a means to undo the democratic results of the last election, but as a strategy to influence the next election, which is barely more than a year away. As one member of Congress explained, he is “concerned that ifwe don’t impeach the President, he will get reelected.”1 Your highly partisan and unconstitutional effort threatens grave and lasting damage to our democratic institutions, to our system of free elections, and to the American people.
For his part, President Trump took the unprecedented step of providing the public transparency by declassifying and releasing the record of his call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. The record clearly established that the call was completely appropriate and that there is no basis for your inquiry. The fact that there was nothing wrong with the call was also powerfully confirmed by Chairman Schiff’s decision to create a false version of the call and read it to the American people at a congressional hearing, without disclosing that he was simply making it all up.
In addition, information has recently come to light that the whistleblower had contact with Chairman Schiff’s office before filing the complaint. His initial denial of such contact caused The Washington Post to conclude that Chairman Schiff “clearly made a statement that was false.”2 In any event, the American people understand that Chairman Schiff cannot covertly assist with the submission of a complaint, mislead the public about his involvement, read a counterfeit version of the call to the American people, and then pretend to sit in judgment as a neutral “investigator.”
For these reasons, President Trump and his Administration reject your baseless, unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process. Your unprecedented actions have left the President with no choice. In order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the Executive Branch, and all future occupants of the Office of the Presidency, President Trump and his Administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances.
Well said!”
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“Not every problem can be solved by America.” True, dat.
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Trump is not impeachable. 🙂
https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/07/barr-clinton-impeachment-trump/?utm_medium=push&utm_source=daily_caller&utm_campaign=push
“Former Rep. Bob Barr: I Worked On The Clinton Impeachment — And Trump Is Not Impeachable”
“Speaking as a former federal prosecutor and impeachment manager in the Senate trial of former President Clinton, and after having reviewed carefully the content and context of the Ukraine call and what we have learned about it subsequently, it is clear that no federal laws were broken and nothing close to an impeachable offense took place.
In fact, in that call the president of the United States was doing precisely what a president should have been doing. In the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump emphasized that his administration was serious about getting to the bottom of corruption in Ukraine that had affected and had been affected by the United States. Our president made clear he was referring to evidence that Ukrainian interests had been involved corruptly in our 2016 election, and that a high government official in our country — former Vice President Joe Biden — had improperly interfered with that country’s effort to discover and prosecute corrupt acts.”
—
“The fact that one focus of Trump’s demands that Ukraine clean up its act as a prerequisite to continued support from America might also involve an individual now seeking to challenge Trump for the presidency, does not in any way diminish or undercut the propriety of Trump’s insistence that the Ukrainian president take steps to get to the bottom of what corruption already had occurred involving the two countries; and also to ensure that going forward the same corrupt acts would not recur.
To claim, as many have done — including Napolitano — that it is a crime for Trump to insist that Ukraine investigate past corrupt acts involving the United States, and that the country stop doing so moving forward, simply because Joe Biden now has chosen to challenge Trump politically next year, undercuts the very power of a president to protect our country from foreign interference and to investigate corrupt acts by former U.S. officials. Biden is deserving of no such self-imposed immunity.
Moreover, such a warped view of presidential actions turns on its head our system of criminal justice, in which it is the executive branch (headed by the president) that investigates and prosecutes violations of federal law. It was clear in that July 25 call that President Trump was letting President Zelensky know that our attorney general — the head of our Department of Justice that is responsible for such investigations — would be doing just that. To now assert that for this President Trump should be removed from office and prosecuted criminally, is absurd.
Other attempts to characterize Trump’s actions during, surrounding, or following that call as violations of federal campaign laws, the bribery statute, or the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, are equally inapplicable and unsupported by the facts or any reasonable interpretation of the statutes themselves.
Another avenue down which Trump’s critics travel is just as barren. Claiming that the administration’s moves to protect the July 25 call, and probably others between Trump and foreign leaders, by placing them in a more secure database, is hardly nefarious or evidence of a criminal state of mind. The administration already had been plagued by leaks and mischaracterizations of Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders. Taking steps to protect such critical and sensitive communications is not only understandable but absolutely responsible.
Trump was acting responsibly and presidential. He deserves our appreciation, not our opprobrium.”
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Yes please! 🙂
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-rep-introduces-resolution-to-expel-nancy-pelosi-from-house
“GOP Rep. Ralph Abraham introduces resolution to expel Nancy Pelosi from House”
“A Louisiana Republican congressman introduced a resolution Tuesday to expel Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., from the House of Representatives, the latest sign that frustration in the GOP is building as Democrats continue their impeachment inquiry against President Trump.
Rep. Ralph Abraham’s resolution stands no realistic chance of passing in the Democratic-controlled House. Likewise, Republicans have argued that Democrats’ potential articles of impeachment are all but certain to stall if they ever reach the Senate.
“Nancy Pelosi’s vicious crusade against our lawfully-elected President is nothing more than a politically-motivated witch hunt and it must be stopped,” Abraham said in a statement. “She has disgraced the people’s House and weaponized the Speaker’s gavel for her party’s political gain.”
Abraham added: “House Democrats spent nearly three years obsessed with election meddling only to dwarf any such efforts with their own deceitful plan to nullify the 2016 election and prevent President Trump from winning in 2020. I have introduced a resolution calling for her to be expelled from the House and for the Speaker’s Office to be vacated.”
Fox News is told that the resolution has been closely held, and hasn’t secured many Republican cosponsors — but that Abraham’s office expects it to gain traction.”
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Good.
————
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You can bet there are some Deep Staters sweating it out now. 🙂
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/durham-investigation-trump-campaign-surveillance-expanded-scope
“Durham investigation into origins of 2016 Trump campaign surveillance expands its scope”
” John Durham, the U.S. attorney reviewing the origins of the 2016 counterintelligence investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign, is probing a wider timeline than previously known, according to multiple senior administration officials.
Fox News previously reported that Durham would be reviewing the days leading up to the 2016 election and through the inauguration.
However, based on what he has been finding, Durham has expanded his investigation adding agents and resources, the senior administration officials said. The timeline has grown from the beginning of the probe through the election and now has included a post-election timeline through the spring of 2017, up to when Robert Mueller was named special counsel.
Attorney General Bill Barr and Durham traveled to Italy recently to talk to law enforcement officials there about the probe and have also had conversations with officials in the U.K. and Australia about the investigation, according to multiple sources familiar with the meetings.
Barr assigned Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, back in May to conduct the inquiry into alleged misconduct and improper surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016, as well as whether Democrats were the ones who’d improperly colluded with foreign actors.
The attorney “is gathering information from numerous sources, including a number of foreign countries. At Attorney General Barr’s request, the president has contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the attorney general and Mr. Durham to appropriate officials,” Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said last month.
Durham, known as a “hard-charging, bulldog” prosecutor, according to a source, has been focusing on the use and assignments of FBI informants, as well as alleged improper issuance of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants. Durham was asked to help Barr to “ensure that intelligence collection activities by the U.S. government related to the Trump 2016 presidential campaign were lawful and appropriate.”
Democrats increasingly have targeted Barr. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said late last month that Barr has “gone rogue,” alleging an attempted “cover-up” of the whistleblower complaint that has led to a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump.”
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They’re targeting him because they know what he will find, and how bad that will be for them. 🙂
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Trump has broken them.
And they have the nerve to say he’s the one destroying norms….
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/10/trump-campaign-accuses-minneapolis-radical-leftist-mayor-of-extortion-over-security-bills-for-planned-rally/
“Trump Campaign Accuses Minneapolis ‘Radical Leftist’ Mayor of Extortion Over Security Bills for Planned Rally”
“The police union took Trump’s side, claiming the mayor is trying to “bully” Trump and confirmed the government has “not charged nearly that much for other events.”
——
“It looks like Frey has chosen another route to stop Trump’s rally. He provided the Target Center with a security bill for $530,000. Trump’s campaign said the total “is more than 26 times the estimated security costs for a 2009 Target Center health care rally held by President Barack Obama.”
Security for Obama’s rally totaled only $20,000.
The campaign wrote:
Democrat Mayor Frey is using the bogus security charges to pressure the Target Center, site of the contracted October 10, 2019 rally, into preventing Minnesota residents from exercising their First Amendment rights in support of President Trump.
Frey’s city government preemptively informed the Target Center that it would be responsible for $530,000 in security and other costs related to the event. The Target Center attempted to pass the costs on to the Trump campaign under threat of withholding the use of the arena.
The Trump campaign informed the Target Center that the U.S. Secret Service is solely responsible for coordinating security and that withholding the use of the arena would be viewed as a breach of contract and result in court action. Additionally, the ridiculous sum of $530,000 is more than 26 times the estimated security costs for a 2009 Target Center health care rally held by President Barack Obama. Police officials estimated that the costs then were around $20,000. Again, the costs are a matter between the city and the Secret Service.
“We are well aware of Mayor Frey’s vocal partisan opposition to President Trump and calls to disrupt the rally,” read a letter from Trump law firm Jones Day to the Target Center’s management firm. “This last-minute squeeze seems to be nothing but a pretextual political effort with serious First Amendment ramifications.”
Campaign manager Brad Parscale slammed Frey for his “outrageous abuse of power” in an attempt “to deny the rights of his own city’s residents just because he hates the President.”
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The short, plain, just-the-pertinent-facts version from World Magazine (really much appreciated for those of us who don’t have time to read all the daily back-and-forth, partisan drama in this saga but are trying to nominally keep up):
https://world.wng.org/content/white_house_says_house_inquiry_unconstitutional
_____________________________
White House says House inquiry unconstitutional
The White House declared Tuesday it would not participate in the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and other top Democrats, White House counsel Pat Cipollone accused them of violating the due process of law by not holding a formal vote in the House to open the impeachment inquiry.
Can the Trump administration do that? The executive branch can make it significantly harder for House Democrats to obtain information. The White House has blocked Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, from speaking to investigators, and the State Department has not handed over requested documents. The Trump administration said the impeachment process was partisan and unconstitutional, and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani called it “the McCarthy committee on steroids.” Democrats will likely respond by issuing subpoenas and looking to the courts to referee.
__________________________________
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A typical day in the old Idiocracy:
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A shameful and embarrassing day to be an American.
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No loyalty, no honor, no brain.
https://twitter.com/coconstitution1/status/1181952657658978304?s=21
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So are you and your son signing up to go get shot at Ricky? To bravely stand in the middle of a fight other started and you have no place in?
Of course not. You just talk. You expect someone else to fight. Just like the rest of the world.
And it’s called foreign policy you hack, but you knew that. Yes it’s often ugly, and there are winners and losers. Just like with the last election you can’t seem to get over. You lost. Move on.
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And speaking of ashamed and embarrassed…..
You should be. Because like it or not, you’re advocating going to war with a NATO ally. You should be embarrassed. You spouted off repeatedly about Trump being mean to our NATO allies by daring to suggest they pony up their fair share, yet here you are wanting to bomb one.
You’re a hypocritical hack.
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Trump is speaking out against it. But short of putting US troops at risk, what else could he do? Turkey has a legitimate right to secure their country, whether Ricky and the pundits like it or not.
And what exactly would a few hundred US soldiers possibly accomplish here against an army?
If he was the heartless, cruel, and soulless person they claim he is, he’d being doing this on our southern border. But they’re drama queens, and he’s not.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/trump-turkey-syria-kurdish-troops-military-assault
“Trump calls Turkey assault on Syria a ‘bad idea,’ at least 7 civilians reported dead”
“President Trump called Turkey’s ongoing military assault in Syria a “bad idea” Wednesday as activists and war monitor reported at least seven civilians killed in the strikes.
Trump’s comments come hours after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the launch of Operation Peace Spring — a mission that will “neutralize terror threats against Turkey and lead to the establishment of a safe zone, facilitating the return of Syrian refugees to their homes,” escalating the long-standing feud between Ankara and Kurdish forces.
Trump was heavily criticized throughout the week following his decision Sunday to pull American troops out of northern Syria, leaving the Kurdish forces — who have been longtime U.S. allies in the fight against ISIS in Syria — in peril. Ankara views the Syrian Kurdish forces as terrorists allied with a Kurdish insurgency within Turkey.
“The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea,” Trump said in a statement released by the White House. “Turkey has committed to protecting civilians, protecting religious minorities, including Christians, and ensuring no humanitarian crisis takes place—and we will hold them to this commitment.”
“There are no American soldiers in the area,” he added.”
————-
“The Kurds requested air support from American forces in response to the strikes. But U.S. military officials tell Fox News that Trump has ordered them to not get involved.
A small group of Turkish forces first entered northeastern Syria Wednesday morning near the towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, Bloomberg reported. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency later said Turkish artillery units have been shelling suspected Syrian Kurdish targets in Tal Abayd, while two mortar shells fired from Ras al-Ayn struck the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says one fighter from the Syrian Democratic Forces has been killed so far and six others have been wounded. An SDF spokesperson also says two civilians have been killed as a result of the “Turkish bombardment” of the village of Mashrafa and four civilians were killed in Tirbespiye.
The developments come after the Kurds called on their people Wednesday to move toward the border with Turkey and “carry out acts of resistance.”
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And some people want to put US troops in the middle, seriously?
For what purpose?
C’mon Ricky, you’re so quick to criticize the people who have to make the tough decisions. What would you do?
I mean besides tweet your displeasure……
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Two to three days ago, even The Cult was harshly critical of Dear Leader’s treatment of the Kurds on this site. Is there brainwashing medicine in the Kool-Aid?
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Ricky does have a point. When Trump commits a serious error, it takes his supporters a few days to recover. Once the Trump line has been established, the supporters are back in business.
No one is asking the US to fight the Turks. The Turks would not have invaded without US and Russia permission. The Russians would love the Kurds out of the away to help reestablish Assad. The US has no strategic reason to support the Turks nor Assad. Trump could’ve said no. My guess is Erdogan outlined his plans and Trump said no problem just let me move our advisers out of firing range. He probably had no idea that it was a mistake.
His comments, They never helped us in Normandy, suggests he has no idea of their importance as the US most reliable Mideast ally, more reliable than Israel or the Saudis
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While I disagree, it’s a president’s decision to make. You know nothing of the details, yet you act as if you do.
And again, if the rest of the world ever just once stepped up and did their part, none of this would be happening.
Where is the UN, who should be setting up and monitoring a DMZ type operation to protect both sides interest and to broker peace?
Oh that’s right, they’re broke.
So everyone just makes it our problem. Obama did this, Trump promised to remove US troops, provide money and hardware to the Kurds, and get out. That is exactly what he is doing. There’s gonna be pain when we leave, because there was already pain for a thousands years in that area. And it will continue for the foreseeable future as well. Those are facts. Some of them suck, but reality tends to do that.
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HRW,
The Turks have been announcing this for weeks. It was happening with or without our approval. To suggest otherwise is simplistic. As is the idea that 50 to 500 US troops would do anything besides become collateral damage if it escalated. Those aren’t Canadian troops, so I really don’t give a rat’s butt what your opinion is. It’s irrelevant.
And this is just silly.
“the US most reliable Mideast ally, more reliable than Israel or the Saudis”
The Saudi’s I might agree on. Israel is the only democratic nation in the area, and one of our few real allies there.
The Kurds are an enemy of my enemy is my friend deal. Always was. We provide money and equipment, they do the heavy lifting. Why, because they’d be slaughtered without that hardware and help. They still have that. They will need to cede the territory back to Turkey and Syria or fight for it. But that’s not our fight to have.
Also, the SDF and the like would turn in a minute were the aid to stop. There’s no good way to exit this short of a UN operation, so just tear off the band aid. Again, I wish things were different, because the reality sucks, but it is what it is.
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The UN isnt there bc the Russia Turkey and Syria dont want it. A DMZ would normalize the present situation not something other countries want.
The Turks, Assad and Hussein all treated the Kurds with genocidal intent. By giving permission, (and he did, you dont need a transcript to make an inference) Trump will be complicit to any war crimes committed. Again there’s no need to fight Turks….they wouldn’t enter without Assad, Russian and US permission.
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Btw, Minneapolis mayor wants money upfront because Trump is notorious for not paying his bills. El paso is still looking to get paid.
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Yeah, talk to me when Obama pays his HRW, because he was notorious for that.
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