twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op woensdag 06-06-2018 om 23:30:03 Interesting note in the middle of Page 6 of the Stormy Daniels complaint: "Mr. Cohen recorded calls that he had with Mr. Davidson wherein Mr. Davidson disclosed client confidences and other confidential information relating to Ms. Clifford." https://t.co/Ro040i8GAV reageer retweet

twitter:

Mediaite twitterde op woensdag 06-06-2018 om 14:01:41 Dem Senator Joe Manchin: 'Im Open to Supporting' Trump in 2020 https://t.co/bZUpph06un https://t.co/wdEaZAp3JU reageer retweet

quote:

“We just kind of do the man-bump type thing. That’s it. And I think he’s pulling me as much as I’m pulling him,” Manchin said in describing his physical embraces with the president.

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 00:13 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Lijkt me slim voor iemand in zijn positie. Alhoewel hij ook weer niet zo ver moet gaan dat hij Democratisch enthousiasme gaat demperen.

quote:

Wikistrat bills itself as a ‘crowdsourced’ analysis agency based in Washington. But interviews with current and former employees and documents tell a very different story.

In the fall of 2016, Donald Trump Jr. and other key aides to the future president reportedly met in Trump Tower with Joel Zamel, the founder of a company called Wikistrat.

Wikistrat bills itself as a “crowdsourced” geopolitical analysis firm based in Washington, D.C. But interviews with current and former employees and documents reviewed by The Daily Beast tell a different story: that the vast majority of Wikistrat’s clients were foreign governments; that Wikistrat is, for all intents and purposes, an Israeli firm; and that the company’s work was not just limited to analysis. It also engaged in intelligence collection.

Robert Mueller’s office is investigating Wikistrat and Zamel, according to The Wall Street Journal, as the special counsel’s probe expands into Middle Eastern governments’ attempts to influence American politics.

SPOILER

Publicly, Wikistrat touts its crowdsourcing interface it has described as “Wikipedia meets Facebook” to develop reports for clients. The documents also highlight Wikistrat’s heavy reliance on “gamification”—applying game design features to encourage user engagement—to solicit information from sources. Former Wikistrat employees say its founder viewed himself as the Mark Zuckerberg of the national-security world.

But despite the firm’s purported commitment to “transparent, open-source methodologies,” the documents provided to The Daily Beast show something different: that the company exploits “in country… informants” as sources.

Wikistrat’s “About” page includes mention of “on-the-ground collection.”

And according to internal Wikistrat documents marked “highly confidential and sensitive material,” 74 percent of the firm’s revenue came from clients that were foreign governments.

Although Wikistrat’s clients were overwhelmingly foreign governments, the company boasted incredible access to top U.S. military and intelligence officials. The firm’s advisory council lists former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden, former national security adviser James L. Jones, former deputy director of the National Security Council Elliott Abrams, and former acting director of the Defense Intelligence Agency David Shedd, among others.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the company’s website is adorned with the insignias of U.S. military agencies and that it claims D.C. as its headquarters.

But exactly how much of a connection these advisers have with the company isn’t totally clear. “I have always been informal… but I support the concept of their work (as my quote [on Wikistrat’s website] points out),” Hayden told The Daily Beast in an email. “There is no paperwork between us and I have never been to a board meeting.”

A former senior analyst for Wikistrat, James Kadtke, described his experience with the company to The Daily Beast. A physicist by training, Kadtke worked as a defense and technology adviser to Sen. John Warner from 2002-05 and as a senior fellow at the National Defense University before joining Wikistrat in 2016.

When Kadtke first interviewed with a couple of Wikistrat executives to discuss working for them, he said it became obvious to him that there was more to this company than meets the eye.

“It was clear to me that both of these guys had intelligence backgrounds, intelligence professionals, not academics or analysts,” Kadtke told The Daily Beast. “They were using their experts for tacit information going on in various parts of the world. I got the impression they were doing things outside of Wikistrat. It seemed mysterious.”

Working for Wikistrat didn’t seem to clear up Kadtke’s questions. Kadtke said that, in retrospect, Wikistrat appeared to be more about intelligence collection than anything else.

Elad Schaffer, the Wikistrat CEO who succeeded Zamel this year, did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked about Kadtke’s remarks about intelligence collection, one former high-ranking employee said, “Could he [Wikistrat’s founder] have done this? Yes, by all means,” adding that Wikistrat’s work “was not limited to geopolitics.”

HUSH HUSH

The documents provide rare insight into a company that Wikistrat employees repeatedly described as extraordinarily secretive.

“Joel ran a very compartmentalized organization,” one former high-ranking staffer said.

“I felt like I had no real visibility into what the company was really doing,” another former senior employee said.

“He was very secretive, everything was highly compartmentalized… It was clear that he kept the entire company in the dark. Even [company executives] didn’t have the whole picture,” a former employee said, adding that if someone took a photo at a company gathering, Zamel would leave the room.

“He never allowed anyone to get near his phone, his laptop, stuff like that.”

Even in the internal company documents, which include a page about the company’s leadership, photos of each of the executives are included—except Zamel’s.

“I suspected he was involved in other stuff simply because a man without secrets doesn’t need to be secretive. If he had nothing to hide, he would’ve been much more open. I thought he was involved in other operations.”

THE ISRAEL CONNECTION

If Wikistrat was engaged in intelligence collection, an obvious question arises: For whom?

Much of the reporting so far has focused on Wikistrat’s relationship with the United Arab Emirates. For instance, The New York Times recently reported a secretive Trump Tower meeting three months before the 2016 presidential election, between Donald Trump Jr., Zamel, and George Nader, an emissary for the UAE. The meeting drew comparison to the infamous Trump Tower meeting between Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin.

Zamel is reported to have pitched Trump Jr. on a social-media manipulation strategy to help his father win the election. After Trump was elected, Nader is said to have paid Zamel a large sum of money—as much as $2 million.

In light of the scrutiny of Zamel’s ties to the UAE, it’s natural that news coverage would focus on that country. But Wikistrat may, in fact, have stronger ties to Israel.

Zamel is a citizen of Israel and master’s graduate of IDC Herzliya—a small, elite college that’s often compared to U.S. Ivy League schools—where he studied government, diplomacy, and strategy, specializing in counterterrorism and homeland security.

(The internal documents reviewed by The Daily Beast confirm that Zamel also owned the lion’s share—86 percent—of Wikistrat, with the next biggest shareholder possessing less than 6 percent of the company.)

Though Wikistrat’s website lists its location as Washington, Kadtke said the company was run out of Israel the entire time he worked there.

A former Wikistrat employee confirmed the company was run out of Tel Aviv, with the D.C. office only handling sales and business development, he said.

“He knew a whole lot of people there [in Israel]. One of his connections was the former head of the [Israeli] intelligence directorate, Amos Yadlin.”

In fact, each of Wikistrat’s principals listed Tel Aviv as their address in a 2015 copy of Wikistrat’s Virginia business license.

Former employees say that at the core of Wikistrat’s leadership were three Israelis: Daniel Green, the CTO, Elad Schaffer, formerly the COO and now the CEO, and Zamel, the founder and, until this year, its CEO.

“Those people were very close, and it wasn’t just professional,” one former employee said.

That former employee added, “I had an initial conversation with Joel where I said, ‘One of the issues you’re going to run into, if you want to be focused on [U.S.] government work, you’re going to run into problems every day because of the Israeli connection.’ He said, ‘Well, why is that? They’re amazing allies?’”

“There were many conversations internally [about this]... Israel is one of the top counterintelligence concerns for the U.S.”

One of the internal documents reviewed by The Daily Beast lists a former “major in [an] elite Israeli intelligence-analysis unit,” Shay Hershkovitz, as its chief security officer and director of analytic community. That document also describes Schaffer as a former “counterterrorism officer for Israeli intelligence.”

“Elad was involved in a very elite, select group of individuals performing a very important mission… dealing with the height of the global war on terrorism,” one former employee said. “He did some collaborative work with U.S. special-operations counterparts who were working in the Middle East to deal with threats coming from al Qaeda.”

“Elad kept a very low profile.”

Schaffer did not respond to a request for comment.

‘FLYNN TOOK A REAL SHINING TO JOEL’

Zamel apparently wanted former national security adviser Michael Flynn to be a member of the firm’s advisory board; Zamel spoke with him about it on multiple occasions around the time Flynn was forming his ill-fated Flynn Intel Group, a former high-ranking Wikistrat employee told The Daily Beast.

“Flynn took a real shining to Joel,” the source said.

Another former Wikistrat employee appeared to confirm Zamel’s links to Flynn, saying a mutual contact, Adam Lovinger, helped introduce Zamel to numerous Pentagon officials. Lovinger, a Pentagon strategist and former Trump NSC analyst, had been named to the National Security Council by Flynn and was reportedly associated with Flynn Intel Group.

Flynn Intel Group would later be investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller in connection to a $530,000 payment it received from a company owned by a Turkish businessman close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Lovinger told The Daily Beast that he had introduced Zamel to Pentagon officials after a Navy commander brought him to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment.

“I know both Joel and Mike Flynn, but I don’t know the extent of their relationship,” Lovinger added.

Zamel had apparently been introduced to Flynn by Bijan Kian, Flynn Intel Group’s former vice chairman of its board of directors, according to one source. Kian had been a partner at Flynn Intel Group and served as point man on Flynn’s discussions with Zamel.

Neither Flynn nor Kian responded to requests for comment.

“Joel Zamel has never met Michael Flynn,” Zamel’s attorney, Marc Mukasey, told The Daily Beast via telephone. Asked about Zamel’s relationship with Kian, Mukasey hung up.

However, shortly after this report’s publication, Mukasey confirmed via email that Zamel had indeed communicated with Flynn. In an email to The Daily Beast, Mukasey wrote: “Regarding Joel and Wikistrat, your information and your statistics and your numbers and your descriptions are flat-out wrong. You’ve been fed misinformation (likely by a disgruntled ex-employee) or you’re simply making things up. By way of example, there was one—and only one—conversation with Flynn.”

BUT WHY?

The appeal of working with a high-profile intelligence officer like Flynn is easy to see. What’s more opaque is why Zamel moved away from harvesting “crowdsourced” intel to making foreign deals.

The allure of quick and easy money from extravagantly wealthy Middle East leadership figures, coupled with an increasingly personal relationship with them, represented a “shiny object” that lured Zamel away from Wikistrat’s original mission, a former senior Wikistrat employee said.

And although Zamel was rich, he might not have been wealthy enough to float Wikistrat on his own.

“It was never clear to me how much Joel was actually paying out of pocket to subsidize the company vs. what was brought in,” another former employee said. “Clients paid decently but not enough to sustain the company. So Joel was either substantially funding the company or we were getting money from somewhere else. That naturally leads you to focus on non-U.S. sources of income.”

The documents appear to corroborate this, showing that Wikistrat had been losing large amounts of money. For example, an income statement summary shows Wikistrat’s income as -$603,000 in 2013, -$110,000 in 2014, and a projected -$773,000 for 2016.

Kadtke said that, toward the end of 2017, Wikistrat’s ordinary operations (i.e., war games and analysis) went “way down.”

“Around the beginning of 2017, the three people I knew there left very abruptly… The last study on the website was January 2017 (they used to do a lot). They seemed to have ceased operations,” Kadtke said. “It was very strange to me that they just sort of collapsed. It was probably a three-month period after which everyone I knew there left.”

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op woensdag 06-06-2018 om 23:41:09 Thank you to everyone at @FEMA HQ for today’s briefing on preparations for the upcoming hurricane season. Disaster response and recovery is best achieved when it’s federally supported, state managed, and locally executed – this is the successful model we will continue to build. https://t.co/xpm7IRiZwn reageer retweet

Trump praises Pruitt, snubs Sessions at FEMA

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The scene: A FEMA briefing in which Trump and a number of his Cabinet officials were seated around a table. For most of the Cabinet officials, Trump was effusive in his praise of the job they were doing. And then there was Sessions.

[..]

"Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you very much."

Eleven words. And five of those 11 are either Sessions' name or his title!!! Trump was even capable of coming up with 91 nice words about Pruitt, his beyond embattled EPA administrator.

It's like if you are at a big company dinner and your boss praises everyone else and then turns to you and says: "Chris Cillizza. He works here. Chris Cillizza."

Ice cold.

Most other Cabinet members -- or, really, people -- would have quit long before this most devastating of embarrassments. Jeff Sessions isn't most people.

CNN

SPOILER

Just kidding

quote:

The meeting was supposed to be about hurricane preparedness, as disaster officials gathered at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters days after the start of the 2018 season.

But President Trump had a lot else on his mind, turning the closed-door discussion into soliloquies on his prowess in negotiating airplane deals, his popularity, the effectiveness of his political endorsements, the Republican Party's fortunes, the vagaries of Defense Department purchasing guidelines, his dislike of magnetized launch equipment on aircraft carriers, his unending love of coal and his breezy optimism about his planned Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

SPOILER

"It's an interesting journey. It's called the land of the unknown -- who knows? We'll maybe make a deal. Maybe not. As I say to everybody, are you going to make a deal?" Trump said, according to audio of the FEMA meeting obtained by The Washington Post. "Maybe and maybe not. Who knows?"

The president's 40-minute briefing session behind closed-doors came after he spoke to cameras for about 15 minutes. He briefly referred to Puerto Rico -- where authorities now say thousands died as a result of last year's hurricane. The Trump administration was roundly criticized for its performance, and hundreds of thousands in the U.S. territory remain without electricity.

Trump did not mention Puerto Rico's victims but thanked Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) for helping and noted that the power company was "in bankruptcy prior to the hurricane." He said the recovery was a "tough job." He also mentioned Puerto Rico in passing once with the cameras rolling.

"There has never been a season like the last 12 or 13 months," he said of the hurricane season. "I've never seen anything like it."

Hurricane briefings usually give politicians a chance to look decisive, and Trump bragged to friends last fall that his administration had handled a slew of hurricanes quite well. Many of Trump's thoughts Thursday, however, did not relate to hurricanes.

When Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan began speaking, Trump within 10 seconds moved the conversation to negotiating airplane prices. He said the government was getting ripped off on ships and planes because the "ordering process for the military is so bad. . . . It's not a competitive bid."

"We saved $1.6 billion on Air Force One," he said. "Can you believe it? I got involved in the negotiations. The press refuses to report that, but that's okay. . . . People were really surprised."

Military officials have not been able to explain where Trump got such a figure. A Defense Department official told Bloomberg News this year that the department had no information to back up that claim.

"I got involved with Boeing and was able to cut down the F-18 by millions of dollars," Trump added.

He then complained that the military was too frequently buying new and in his view, unnecessary, equipment -- citing aircraft technology as an example.

"Part of it is, they want to have all new. Instead of having the system that throws the aircraft off the plane, which was always steam," he said. "They now have magnets. They're using magnets instead of steam. . . . They spent hundreds of millions of dollars, I'm hearing not great things about it. It's frankly ridiculous."

The room did not respond to his assessment. Shanahan said he would brief Trump and Kelly on changes to the guidelines soon and would begin bringing him receipts. Trump said he appreciated that.

A few minutes later, he analyzed election results in California, noting that he endorsed the Republican gubernatorial candidate, who made it onto the November ballot. Trump is highly unpopular in California, according to public and White House polls, with under a 40 percent approval rating. He attacked Gavin Newsom, the Democrat, saying he had "done nothing."

"I endorsed him," he said of Republican John Cox. "He really has been a very good candidate. I watched him last night. . . . We won every seat that I endorsed. The ones we didn't give, they didn't do too well, as you probably know."

Trump touted generic polls that show Republicans closing the gap in the midterm elections before dismissing the idea of generic polls. He said the Republican Party was down 17 points two months ago in one unnamed poll. Now, he said, that was changing.

"I don't know if that means anything. I've never heard of a generic poll. I'm not sure I believe in a generic poll when you have so many races between the Senate and the House," he said. "We've never been up in a generic poll, and now we're up in two of them. . . . The Republican Party has . . . never been up in generic polls. And now it's up in two of them."

For several minutes, Trump told the gathered officials, and others dialed in via a secure line, about the economy, ticking off companies and taking credit for their successes.

Trump lauded the Taiwanese company Foxconn for creating a plant in Wisconsin, where it will make Apple equipment, and said he was pleased with Apple CEO Tim Cook for promising to build a "hell of a nice plant." He said it would not have happened without him.

The Foxconn deal has drawn questions about the $3 billion incentive package the state approved, The Washington Post has reported.

"In the old days, I would have been the real estate broker in that deal," Trump said of the Foxconn project.

He lauded Exxon for promising an investment of $60 billion. The company has said it is investing $50 billion. Some of the projects were already planned, but the company said more than $35 billion was for unannounced projects.

"Money they would have never spent without us," the president said.

"We're setting records like we've never seen before," Trump said. "Whether it's the employment records I went over, whether it's the number of companies pouring into the country. We have tremendous number of companies coming back. Nobody had any idea this was going to happen. I did. . . . Things are happening that they've never seen before."

He encouraged Energy Secretary Rick Perry to make an announcement about helping coal companies. "I'd love to put it out -- 'clean coal, nuclear,' it's a very important message," he said. He said Perry needed to have a news conference. The energy secretary acquiesced.

More than anything, Trump was determined to convince the Cabinet members that he was doing a terrific job - and that they were, too. In private, Trump has derided many of his Cabinet members and has fired several. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who has repeatedly clashed with Trump over immigration, thanked him for his "unfailing support of the department."

"I understand a big story is being done in a major newspaper talking about what a great Cabinet this is," he said, without specifying the outlet. "What a great Cabinet this has turned out to be."

"Our level of popularity is great," he added.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 04:00:28 In closed-door remarks at FEMA today, Trump said: "We saved $1.6 billion on Air Force One... Can you believe it? I got involved in the negotiations."Military officials haven't been able to explain where Trump got such a figure. https://t.co/ItX2HtyQet reageer retweet

twitter:

christinawilkie twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 02:37:15 On April 11, I called Trump’s favorite architect to ask about jobs he did in Eastern Europe that recently drew Mueller’s eye.Within hours, John Fotiadis closed down his 10 yr old architecture firm, deleted his portfolio and left Twitter. He’s still MIA.https://t.co/1hSyqfbARP reageer retweet

twitter:

jules_su twitterde op woensdag 06-06-2018 om 23:29:56 I am laughing so goddamn hard at this video of Trump inexplicably putting his water bottle on the floor, and Pence immediately doing the same for no reason whatsoever. https://t.co/qEFPzKClYj reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 09:39 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:
In luchtiger 'nieuws'.

twitter:

jules_su twitterde op woensdag 06-06-2018 om 23:29:56 I am laughing so goddamn hard at this video of Trump inexplicably putting his water bottle on the floor, and Pence immediately doing the same for no reason whatsoever. https://t.co/qEFPzKClYj reageer retweet

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 09:44 schreef icecreamfarmer_NL het volgende:

[..]

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 09:44 schreef icecreamfarmer_NL het volgende:

[..]

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:08 schreef Chewie het volgende:

[..]

Is dat Melania naast hem of een real doll?

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 09:55 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

https://www.pedestrian.tv(...)ooter-nursery-rhyme/

Gezongen op de melodie van Twinkle Twinkle little star.

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:13 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Totaal krankzinnig. Wat is Amerika toch een verziekte samenleving geworden.

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 05:07 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

christinawilkie twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 02:37:15 On April 11, I called Trump’s favorite architect to ask about jobs he did in Eastern Europe that recently drew Mueller’s eye.Within hours, John Fotiadis closed down his 10 yr old architecture firm, deleted his portfolio and left Twitter. He’s still MIA.https://t.co/1hSyqfbARP reageer retweet

Meet the New York architect who was a key figure in Donald Trump's deals and connections in Eastern Europe

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:08 schreef Chewie het volgende:

[..]

Is dat Melania naast hem of een real doll?

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:19 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]

Is er een verschil behalve prijs?

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:17 schreef Refragmental het volgende:

[..]

Geestelijke gezondheidszorg is daar helaas een ondergeschoven kindje.

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:17 schreef Refragmental het volgende:

[..]

Geestelijke gezondheidszorg is daar helaas een ondergeschoven kindje.

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:33 schreef archito het volgende:

[..]

Haha, nou doe je het er gewoon om.

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:41 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Dat is een deel van het probleem, ja.

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:44 schreef Refragmental het volgende:
Overigens, dit is niet een discussie voor hier, volgens mij loopt daar al een topic voor.

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:43 schreef Refragmental het volgende:

[..]

Ik denk eerder de kern van de zaak.
Of ben je echt van mening dat zonder vuurwapens er niet op een andere manier slachtoffers zullen worden gemaakt?

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:52 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Je was een beetje voorbarig over Avenatti laatst. Dat hij zijn client genadeloos heeft laten vallen klopt toch niet helemaal...

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 03:52 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op woensdag 06-06-2018 om 23:41:09 Thank you to everyone at @FEMA HQ for today’s briefing on preparations for the upcoming hurricane season. Disaster response and recovery is best achieved when it’s federally supported, state managed, and locally executed – this is the successful model we will continue to build. https://t.co/xpm7IRiZwn reageer retweet

Trump praises Pruitt, snubs Sessions at FEMA

[..]

Je zou haast medelijden krijgen met de arme man

SPOILER

Just kidding

Trump kon zich zoals gewoonlijk maar weer moeilijk bij het onderwerp houden waar de briefing voor bedoeld was:

In private FEMA remarks, Trump's focus strays from hurricanes

[..]

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 04:00:28 In closed-door remarks at FEMA today, Trump said: "We saved $1.6 billion on Air Force One... Can you believe it? I got involved in the negotiations."Military officials haven't been able to explain where Trump got such a figure. https://t.co/ItX2HtyQet reageer retweet

Nahja iig heeft iedereen bij deze vertoning FLOTUS weer eens kunnen zien.

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:42 schreef Refragmental het volgende:

[..]

Juist. Want kijken naar het onderliggend probleem, dat doen we hier niet.

quote:

US diplomats evacuated from China amid 'sonic attack' concerns

Two American diplomats stationed in China were reportedly evacuated from the region after being sickened by a mysterious ailment linked to odd sounds.

The two Americans evacuated worked at the American Consulate in the southern city of Guangzhou, the New York Times reported Wednesday, adding that their colleagues and relatives are also being tested by a State Department medical team.

American officials have been worried for months that American diplomats and their families in Cuba -- and now China -- have been subjected to a "sonic attack," leading to symptoms similar to those "following concussion or minor traumatic brain injury," the State Department said in a statement Tuesday.

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 12:43 schreef thesiren.nl het volgende:
"What is the point of saying that there was a spy in the campaign when there was none?" Rooney said in an interview on Wednesday. "You know what I’m saying? It’s like, ‘Lets create this thing to tweet about knowing that it’s not true.’ … Maybe it’s just to create more chaos but it doesn’t really help the case."

Until Wednesday, no other Republican lawmakers had backed Gowdy's view.

That changed early in the day when Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said he agreed with Gowdy's "initial assessment" of the matter. He emphasized that the House is still seeking answers, but Ryan said he'd seen "no evidence" that the FBI acted inappropriately.

https://www.politico.com/(...)pygate-rooney-629550
De eerste afvalligen?

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 13:54 schreef Ulx het volgende:
https://mobile.twitter.co(...)944906379266/photo/1

King Me the First of the USA

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 14:20 schreef Ulx het volgende:
En zoals te verwachten: Men gaat zonder voorbereiding naar Singapore. Preparations are overrated.

https://www.politico.com/(...)n-north-korea-630362

We zullen zien...

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 14:32 schreef AnneX het volgende:

[..]

lang leve gut feelings

Stiekem zullen ze toch wel hebben voor bereid / doorgesproken, de amateurs.

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 12:50:00 The alleged Eagles fans who were attending Trump's 'Celebration of America' were apparently RNC staffers. An RNC intern tells @phillydotcom that she received a mass email from the White House earlier in the day, inviting her to attend the event. https://t.co/O1Eiiq6EVr reageer retweet

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 14:40 schreef AnneX het volgende:
Tis me wat.

Overigens bedacht ik mij, dat die mevrouw als first offender door team Obama niet was gesignaleerd en daarom van Trump gratie kreeg.

quote:

Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law Professor: “It all proves that we never needed a Special Councel....All of this could have been done by the Justice Dept. Don’t need a multi-million dollar group of people with a target on someone’s back. Not the way Justice should operate.” So true!

quote:

Stormy Daniels' lawyer calls Rudy Giuliani an 'absolute pig' over comments

Rudy Giuliani and Michael Avenatti may be thousands of miles apart, but they are on each other's minds. Well, sorta.

Avenatti slammed Giuliani on Wednesday night over comments he made about his client, Stormy Daniels, that questioned her credibility because she made adult films.
"The business you were in entitles you to no degree of giving your credibility any weight," Giuliani said of Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford.

"Explain to me how she could be damaged. I mean, she has no reputation. If you're going to sell your body for money, you just don't have a reputation. I may be old fashioned, I dunno."

(..)

Bron: CNN

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 17:22 schreef skysherrif het volgende:
https://twitter.com/AbeShinzo/status/1004740027736133633

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 17:29 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

[..]

was deze neem ik aan?
[ afbeelding ]

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 17:29 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

[..]

was deze neem ik aan?
[ afbeelding ]

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 16:48 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

Ah, de old fashioned Giuliani die bezig is met zijn derde scheiding. En wat zou Melania Trump van deze teksten vinden?

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Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 10:08 schreef Chewie het volgende:

[..]

Is dat Melania naast hem of een real doll?

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BREAKING: Trump on June 12 North Korea summit: “I don’t think I have to prepare that much. It’s about attitude.” per @justinsink

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 20:38 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
We hadden al een phone booth, appartement, bankstel, dure pennen, een Chick-Fil-A, oude matrassen, een tripje naar Marokko, salarisverhoging voor vrienden, tripjes naar Disneyland en de Superbowl (ik mis nu vast nog van alles), maar daar kunnen we vandaag aan toevoegen: hydraterende lotion. Kolderiek corrupt.

Pruitt enlisted security detail in picking up dry cleaning, moisturizing lotion:
https://www.washingtonpos(...)m_term=.06698e7c0a02

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 20:38 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
We hadden al een phone booth, appartement, bankstel, dure pennen, een Chick-Fil-A, oude matrassen, een tripje naar Marokko, salarisverhoging voor vrienden, tripjes naar Disneyland en de Superbowl (ik mis nu vast nog van alles), maar daar kunnen we vandaag aan toevoegen: hydraterende lotion. Kolderiek corrupt.

Pruitt enlisted security detail in picking up dry cleaning, moisturizing lotion:
https://www.washingtonpos(...)m_term=.06698e7c0a02

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 05:00:00 Scott Pruitt ate lunch so often in the White House mess that he was rebuked.A White House staffer told agency chiefs of staff that Cabinet members shouldn't treat the mess as their personal dining hall, Politico reports. https://t.co/AxGDfHYg5C reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 20:38 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
We hadden al een phone booth, appartement, bankstel, dure pennen, een Chick-Fil-A, oude matrassen, een tripje naar Marokko, salarisverhoging voor vrienden, tripjes naar Disneyland en de Superbowl (ik mis nu vast nog van alles), maar daar kunnen we vandaag aan toevoegen: hydraterende lotion. Kolderiek corrupt.

Pruitt enlisted security detail in picking up dry cleaning, moisturizing lotion:
https://www.washingtonpos(...)m_term=.06698e7c0a02

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 21:08 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 05:00:00 Scott Pruitt ate lunch so often in the White House mess that he was rebuked.A White House staffer told agency chiefs of staff that Cabinet members shouldn't treat the mess as their personal dining hall, Politico reports. https://t.co/AxGDfHYg5C reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 21:08 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

[..]

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 05:00:00 Scott Pruitt ate lunch so often in the White House mess that he was rebuked.A White House staffer told agency chiefs of staff that Cabinet members shouldn't treat the mess as their personal dining hall, Politico reports. https://t.co/AxGDfHYg5C reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 16:48 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

Ah, de old fashioned Giuliani die bezig is met zijn derde scheiding. En wat zou Melania Trump van deze teksten vinden?

quote:

Melania Trump's spokeswoman distances first lady from Giuliani comments on Daniels affair

Melania Trump on Thursday seemed to distance herself from Rudy Giuliani's comments that she believes President Trump's denials that he had an affair with adult-film star Stormy Daniels.

"I don't believe Mrs. Trump has ever discussed her thoughts on anything with Mr. Giuliani," Stephanie Grisham, the first lady's communications director, said in a statement to The Hill.

Maggie Haberman of The New York Times first reported Grisham's response.

The first lady's rebuke of Giuliani comes one day after the president's attorney commented on Daniels' allegations during an appearance at the "Globes" Capital Market Conference in Israel.

"She believes her husband and she doesn't think it's true," Giuliani, said, arguing that Daniels has no credibility because of her profession.

quote:

FCC Emails Show Agency Spread Lies to Bolster Dubious DDoS Attack Claims (Gizmodo)

As it wrestled with accusations about a fake cyberattack last spring, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) purposely misled several news organizations, choosing to feed journalists false information, while at the same time discouraging them from challenging the agency’s official story.

Internal emails reviewed by Gizmodo lay bare the agency’s efforts to counter rife speculation that senior officials manufactured a cyberattack, allegedly to explain away technical problems plaguing the FCC’s comment system amid its high-profile collection of public comments on a controversial and since-passed proposal to overturn federal net neutrality rules.

The FCC has been unwilling or unable to produce any evidence an attack occurred—not to the reporters who’ve requested and even sued over it, and not to U.S. lawmakers who’ve demanded to see it. Instead, the agency conducted a quiet campaign to bolster its cyberattack story with the aid of friendly and easily duped reporters, chiefly by spreading word of an earlier cyberattack that its own security staff say never happened.

The FCC’s system was overwhelmed on the night of May 7, 2017, after comedian John Oliver, host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, directed his audience to flood the agency with comments supporting net neutrality. In the immediate aftermath, the agency claimed the comment system had been deliberately impaired due to a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS). Net neutrality supporters, however, accused the agency of fabricating the attack to absolve itself from failing to keep the system online.

The system similarly crashed after Oliver ordered his viewers to the FCC website in 2014. The FCC, at the time led by Democrat Tom Wheeler, determined that the comment system had been affected by a surge of internet traffic. The issue was compounded, sources told Gizmodo, by a weakness in the system’s out-of-date software.

Importantly, the agency never blamed a malicious attack for the system’s downtime in 2014—not in any official statement.

But in May 2017, under the Trump-appointed chairman, Ajit Pai, at least two FCC officials quietly pushed a fallacious account of the 2014 incident, attempting to persuade reporters that the comment system had long been the target of DDoS attacks. “There *was* a DDoS event right after the [John Oliver] video in 2014,” one official told reporters at FedScoop, according to emails reviewed by Gizmodo.

SPOILER

David Bray, who served as the FCC’s chief information officer from 2013 until June 2017, assured reporters in a series of off-the-record exchanges that a DDoS attack had occurred three years earlier. More shocking, however, is that Bray claimed Wheeler, the former FCC chairman, had covered it up.

According to emails from Bray to reporters, Wheeler was concerned that if the FCC publicly admitted there was an attack, it would likely incite “copycats.”

“That’s just flat out false,” said Gigi Sohn, former counselor to Chairman Wheeler. “We didn’t want to say it because Bray had no hard proof that it was a DDoS attack. Just like the second time.”

Bray’s exchanges with reporters, which took place via email, were obtained by American Oversight, a watchdog group, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Gizmodo reviewed the more than 1,300 pages of records last week.

The FCC has not responded to requests for comment.


_{FCC official alleges that the former chairman, Tom Wheeler, concealed a DDoS attack from the public. - Screenshot: FCC email}

In August, Gizmodo revealed that Bray had been the anonymous source behind reports that the FCC had been “hacked” in 2014. Multiple FCC sources—including a security contractor who worked on the comment system at the time—confirmed that no evidence was ever found showing a malicious attack caused the system’s downtime during Oliver’s show.

Multiple sources said that Bray, the senior official responsible for maintaining the comment system, had alone pushed the cyberattack narrative internally. When he was unable to produce proof, they said, he reached out to a reporter. After requesting anonymity, Bray contradicted the agency’s official story, claiming an attack was responsible. The conflicting accounts led to confusion in the press over whether Oliver’s call to action was actually responsible for the FCC’s technical failures.

“The security team was in agreement that this event was not an attack,” a former FCC security contractor told Gizmodo of the 2014 outage. “The security team produced no report suggesting it was an attack. The security team could not identify any records or evidence to indicate this type of attack occurred as described by Bray.” The contractor’s statements were supported by Sohn and confirmed by two other sources with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named or quoted.

“I have seen no evidence of a DDoS attack on the FCC comment system,” FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told Gizmodo. “But I did see millions of Americans write in to the FCC to stop its misguided effort to roll back net neutrality. It’s time for the agency to own up to what really happened.”

Bray is not the only FCC official last year to push dubious accounts to reporters. Mark Wigfield, the FCC’s deputy director of media relations, told Politico: “there were similar DDoS attacks back in 2014 right after the Jon Oliver [sic] episode.” According to emails between Bray and FedScoop, the FCC’s Office of Media Relations likewise fed cooked-up details about an unverified cyberattack to the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal apparently swallowed the FCC’s revised history of the incident, reporting that the agency “also revealed that the 2014 show had been followed by DDoS attacks too,” as if it were a fact that had been concealed for several years. After it was published, the Journal’s article, authored by tech reporter John McKinnon, was forwarded by Bray to reporters at other outlets and portrayed as a factual telling of events. Bray also emailed the story to several private citizens who had contacted the FCC with questions and concerns about the comment system’s issues.

In doing so, the FCC was apparently using the Journal as a way to bolster its own unsubstantiated claims, which the agency’s security staff, and its former leadership, had internally dismissed.

In several emails, the FCC encouraged journalists to compare the 2017 incident to a DDoS attack on the Pokémon Go mobile game a year before. Michael Krigsman, a columnist for ZDNet, took the bait, despite the FCC continuing to withholding any proof an attack occurred. Krigsman wrote, unqualifiedly: “It’s similar to the distributed denial of service attack on Pokemon Go in July 2016.”

(In later exchanges with Bray, Krigsman turned on one of his own colleagues, who had published a story about the FCC’s refusal to release proof there was an attack. In one email, Krigsman encouraged the FCC to demand a correction for the story, while instructing Bray to complain to his colleague’s boss. Amazingly, Krigsman then encouraged the FCC to publicly admonish his own publication.)

Krigsman’s own flattering piece about Bray was, like the Journal’s report, circulated to security reporters and described as a “good article that does get the technical facts correct on what happened.”


_{ZDNet columnist Michael Krigsman telling the FCC’s David Bray to demand his own publisher issue a correction. - Screenshot: FCC email}

Bray’s claim that Wheeler knew that DDoS attacks had occurred, but withheld it from the public “out of concern of copycats,” is an allegation that has never been made publicly. It is also refuted by numerous former and current FCC officials with whom Gizmodo spoke recently and over the past year.

Wheeler declined our request to comment.

Bray’s claim about Wheeler also appears in a draft copy of a blog post written by Bray on Chairman Pai’s behalf. It appears to have never been published online. One line from the draft reads: “This happened in 2014, though at the time we chose not to talk about the automated programs denying service to the commenting system since we didn’t want to invite copycats.”

As with Bray’s claim about a 2014 attack, the FCC has repeatedly failed to present any evidence that its servers—which, unlike in 2014, now reside on a cloud infrastructure—were bombarded by malicious traffic following Oliver’s net neutrality segment last year. However, in response to inquiries from Senators Ron Wyden and Brian Schatz last year, the FCC stated that the disruption was caused by what it called “a non-traditional DDoS attack.” (Bray was also the first official to claim a DDoS attack occurred in May 2017.)

The agency said it detected “patterns of disruptions that show abnormal behavior outside the scope of a lobbying surge,” which it said included an “extremely high level of atypical cloud-based traffic” directed toward the comment system’s API interface. “From our analysis of the logs, we believe these automated bot programs appeared to be cloud-based and not associated with IP addresses usually linked to individual human filers,” the agency said.

The FCC has refused to release any documentation showing an investigation into the comment system’s downtime occurred. According to the FCC, the FBI declined to investigate the matter, saying it “did not appear to rise to the level of a major incident that would trigger further FBI involvement.” The FBI declined to confirm or deny any contact with the FCC about the issue.

The fact that an investigation at the FCC would have been carried out by an official who had earlier refused to accept the formal findings of the FCC’s own security professionals, and then anonymously leaked claims contradicting them, only further casts suspicion on the FCC’s story.


_{Screenshot: FCC email}

Last July, the agency refused to release more than 200 pages of documents related to the incident in response to a FOIA request filed by Gizmodo. In a formal letter, the agency claimed that while its IT staff had observed a cyberattack taking place, those observations “did not result in written documentation.” A federal watchdog investigation, which is ongoing, followed in October.

In the more than 1,300 emails released to American Oversight last month, the FCC redacted every internal conversation about the 2017 incident between FCC employees, citing either attorney-client communications or deliberative process privilege. (The FOIA exemption appears to be very liberally applied, as it is typically reserved for discussions in which “governmental decisions and policies are formulated.”)

The agency also redacted every discussion between staff last year regarding how to respond to inquiries about the incident from U.S. senators; all internal discussions about how to respond to members of the press; as well as an internal newsletter from the day after the agency claims it was attacked.

Demonstrating how overeager the agency is to redact emails from public records, its attorneys also redacted a year-old Politico newsletter in full:


_{Screenshot: FCC emails}

In addition to being acquired by American Oversight, the records were produced in a lawsuit brought by BuzzFeed reporter Kevin Collier, who told Gizmodo that he intends to challenge the redactions in court. (Collier is represented pro bono by New York attorney Dan Novack, who also represents Gizmodo in an ongoing case against the FBI.)

“Some of these messages are probably correctly redacted, but avoiding potential embarrassment is not a legitimate reason for the government to conceal an email,” Austin Evers, American Oversight’s executive director, said. “We were skeptical of the FCC’s explanations about its online comment system issues last May, and it’s clear that we still don’t have the full story about what happened.”

Read the full collection of FCC emails below.

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 22:44 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

[..]


[..]

http://thehill.com/blogs/(...)t-lady-from-giuliani

twitter:

atrupar twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 15:44:10 Here's @morningmika saying she heard from "someone who spoke to Donald Trump recently" who said Trump's biggest complaint about being president is that "he's not allowed to watch porn in the White House." https://t.co/yUcQFwLbwK reageer retweet

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 23:07 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Ondertussen in the oval office

twitter:

atrupar twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 15:44:10 Here's @morningmika saying she heard from "someone who spoke to Donald Trump recently" who said Trump's biggest complaint about being president is that "he's not allowed to watch porn in the White House." https://t.co/yUcQFwLbwK reageer retweet

quote:

Asked about Donald Trump, Johnson was positive about the US President and even joked that he wouldn’t mind having him lead the Brexit negotiations.

“I am increasingly admiring of Donald Trump,” Johnson said. “I have become more and more convinced that there is method in his madness.”

“Imagine Trump doing Brexit,” Johnson said. “He’d go in bloody hard… There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But actually you might get somewhere. It’s a very, very good thought.”

Running through the threats and opportunities for Britain’s foreign policy, Johnson said he wanted a “much more energetic” approach to the UK’s diplomacy.

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 23:33 schreef Monolith het volgende:
BoJo is inderdaad een van de weinigen die de incompetentie van Trump evenaart.

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 23:57 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

[..]

En de megalomania, BoJo wil een eigen vliegtuig nu, door de staat betaald uiteraard, en dan niet in dat saaie grijs van het reguliere regeringsvliegtuig, natuurlijk.

quote:

Op donderdag 7 juni 2018 20:38 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
We hadden al een phone booth, appartement, bankstel, dure pennen, een Chick-Fil-A, oude matrassen, een tripje naar Marokko, salarisverhoging voor vrienden, tripjes naar Disneyland en de Superbowl (ik mis nu vast nog van alles), maar daar kunnen we vandaag aan toevoegen: hydraterende lotion. Kolderiek corrupt.

Pruitt enlisted security detail in picking up dry cleaning, moisturizing lotion:
https://www.washingtonpos(...)m_term=.06698e7c0a02

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 00:28 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Zolang de EU niet betaalt is het ok.

twitter:

EmmanuelMacron twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 21:49:49 The American President may not mind being isolated, but neither do we mind signing a 6 country agreement if need be. Because these 6 countries represent values, they represent an economic market which has the weight of history behind it and which is now a true international force https://t.co/UA86fcjozs reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 00:52 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

EmmanuelMacron twitterde op donderdag 07-06-2018 om 21:49:49 The American President may not mind being isolated, but neither do we mind signing a 6 country agreement if need be. Because these 6 countries represent values, they represent an economic market which has the weight of history behind it and which is now a true international force https://t.co/UA86fcjozs reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 01:06 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Ik denk dat Macron en Trump het uit hebben gemaakt.

quote:

A White House economic analysis of President Trump’s trade agenda has concluded that Mr. Trump’s tariffs will hurt economic growth in the United States, according to several people familiar with the research.

The findings from the White House Council of Economic Advisers have been circulated only internally and not publicly released, as is often the case with the council’s work, making the exact economic projections unknown. But the determination comes as top White House officials continue to insist publicly that Mr. Trump’s trade approach will be “massively good for the U.S. economy.

twitter:

NatashaBertrand twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 01:01:43 NEWS: Feinstein wants to talk to an ex-Congressman about his ties to Russia & the Trump campaign. The congressman, Curt Weldon, said last year at a private meeting that Viktor Vekselberg's NYC fund had financed the promotion of that so-called "peace plan." https://t.co/1UC08lljVU reageer retweet

quote:

An ex-congressman has attracted scrutiny from the Senate Judiciary Committee, as it continues to investigate whether President Donald Trump’s campaign conspired with Moscow to sway the 2016 presidential election.

Curt Weldon, a Republican and former Pennsylvania congressman, lost his re-election campaign more than a decade ago following an FBI probe into his ties to two Russian companies. He has “connections to both Russia and the Trump campaign” that are raising suspicions among senators, a spokeswoman for Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said. Feinstein is the committee’s ranking member, and wants to interview Weldon, the spokeswoman said.

The reasons for the committee’s interest in Weldon are murky, but his ties to Russia are significant. Members of Congress believe, for example, that Weldon may lead to answers about why the Trump administration sought to lift sanctions on Russia in the aftermath of the 2016 election despite a public statement by intelligence agencies that the Kremlin tried to help Trump win. Weldon may also have information about the role a Russian oligarch may have played in trying to influence the Trump administration—though Weldon denied this when I asked him about it.

Additionally, Weldon appears to have knowledge of a key instance in which a foreign national sought to influence the president through one of his closest advisers—a central theme of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russia’s election interference.

SPOILER

At issue is the question of whether the president and his associates have sought to trade favors with foreign entities for personal gain. Mueller has been investigating, for example, whether Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, tried to use his position to repay old debts to a Russian oligarch, and whether Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have influenced Trump’s foreign-policy decisions based on their business interests. Mueller is also investigating foreign-linked donors to Trump’s inauguration fund.

Asked how Weldon was connected to the campaign, Feinstein’s office would not elaborate, citing the sensitivity of the Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation. Weldon declined multiple interview requests. But a letter Feinstein sent last year to Trump’s longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen, may provide a clue. In it, Feinstein asked for all of Cohen’s communications “to, from, or copied to” Weldon, as well as correspondence “related to” Weldon, along with nearly two dozen other people.

Weldon’s name stuck out—he had served as a member of Congress and had not been mentioned previously in relation to the Russia investigation. But his connection to Cohen may lie in a mutual acquaintance who has since testified before Mueller’s grand jury: a former member of the Ukrainian Parliament named Andrii Artemenko.

In January 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Artemenko met with Cohen at a New York City hotel to discuss bringing peace to Russia and Ukraine. Also present was Felix Sater, a friend of Cohen’s and a former business partner of Trump’s. All three men confirmed to me that this meeting took place. When Artemenko pitched the peace plan, which involved lifting sanctions on Russia in exchange for Russia’s retreat from eastern Ukraine, Cohen said he would deliver it to then–National-Security adviser Michael Flynn, according to The New York Times. Artemenko told the newspaper that he had received encouragement for his peace plan from top aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Artemenko also told me that he had gotten “confirmation” that the peace plan had been left on Flynn’s desk. But Cohen walked back his story after the meeting was exposed by the Times, insisting that he had thrown the plan in the garbage. (Flynn has not responded to multiple requests for comment.)

Weldon, who has known Artemenko, the Ukrainian politician, for more than a decade, was furious that The New York Times had learned about the meeting, according to a person who spoke with him at a separate gathering last March, two weeks after the story in the Times had been published. “We were so close,” Weldon complained, this source recalled. Then Weldon dropped a bombshell: “He said [he and Artemenko] had already secured funding for the promotion of the plan from Viktor Vekselberg’s fund in New York City.”

Vekselberg, a Russian oligarch who attended Trump’s inauguration, was questioned by Mueller’s team late last year, according to The New York Times. The peace plan would have benefited Vekselberg: He has been doing business in the United States since at least 1990, when he co-founded the conglomerate Renova Group as a joint U.S.–Russian venture. Attempts to reach Vekselberg through his business were unsuccessful.

The New York City fund Weldon was allegedly referring to was Columbus Nova, the lone U.S. investment arm of Renova, according to the source who spoke to Weldon in March. Months later, given recent developments in the Russia Probe, the detail about Columbus Nova is shocking. When this source relayed the conversation with Weldon to me earlier this year, it had not yet been reported that Columbus Nova gave more than $500,000 to Cohen’s LLC, Essential Consultants, over a seven-month period in 2017. Weldon’s alleged reference to Columbus Nova, and his comment about Vekselberg’s role in funding the plan’s promotion, renews questions about what that $500,000 was actually for.

The New York Times has reported that Cohen and Vekselberg met 11 days before Trump’s inauguration, and discussed U.S.–Russia relations. Columbus Nova acknowledged in a statement that it hired Cohen “after the inauguration” for consulting work, but insisted that Vekselberg had nothing to do with it. “Columbus Nova itself is not now, and has never been, owned by any foreign entity or person including Viktor Vekselberg or the Renova Group,” the statement read. Columbus Nova did not mention in the statement that its president, Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg’s cousin. The company did acknowledge it had hired Cohen as a “business consultant.”

According to the BBC, Cohen has in the past leveraged his relationship with the president to land a lucrative deal with a foreign entity. The outlet reported last month that Ukraine paid Cohen at least $400,000 to arrange a meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in June 2017. (Poroshenko and Cohen have both denied that money was exchanged.)

Neither Cohen nor his attorney responded to multiple requests for comment regarding the payments Cohen’s company received from Columbus Nova in 2017. They also ignored repeated questions about whether the money was connected to the proposed Russia-Ukraine peace plan. Weldon told me in a LinkedIn message: “I have never met Viktor Vekselburg [sic] and am not aware of any peace plan that he would have funded.” He then made a reference to his work with Ukraine’s Rada, or parliament, during his time in office. “As one of the founders of the Rada/Congress Relationship during my 29 years in Congress, I spent much time on US/Ukraine relations and tried repeatedly to strengthen the US/Ukraine relationship.”

Artemenko, the Ukrainian, told me that he and Weldon have known each other for more than 10 years, but tried to minimize the significance of their appearance together at an event, in February 2016, about “how Americans can promote peace and stability in Ukraine.” Last year, Weldon asked his colleague Tommy Allen, the founder of Allen Tactical Security Consultants, to vet Artemenko’s plan, Allen told me. “We were at a meeting in Washington, and Artemenko walked in because he was meeting with Curt,” Allen said. “We tried to warn him off of Artemenko, because you never know who the oligarchs are behind these guys, and the players behind the players tend to stay pretty static.” Allen said he did “not recall” Weldon ever asking anyone for money. “The individuals I know of who were providing funding were all U.S. entities.”

Fast forward to another meeting in Washington, the one in March 2017, where Weldon told my source about Vekselberg’s role in the peace plan. Only four or five people were in the room, and the gathering “had nothing do with politics—it only had to do with Curt [Weldon]’s businesses,” this source said. Still, Weldon “couldn’t help himself” when the topic of Russia came up. “He started saying, ‘Putin is not that bad. The U.S. is much worse in many ways.’ He was very cynical.” That’s when he started complaining about the peace plan’s demise, this source said.

Felix Sater, who says he initiated the conversation between Artemenko and Cohen about the peace plan told me he didn’t remember Vekselberg’s name coming up when they gathered in New York. He also said that, as far as he knew, Columbus Nova hadn’t been involved. He noted, however, that Cohen had been looking for new clients around that time. “It seems clear,” Sater said, “that the company was paying for access.”

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 03:30:57 Trump's transition team told the Obama W.H. about Mike Flynn’s conversations with Sergey Kislyak, according to Ben Rhodes' memoir. That stands in contrast to claims the Obama team unmasked Flynn’s name after learning of the Kislyak convo from intercepts. https://t.co/IiqjfVbno7 reageer retweet

quote:

The Trump transition team told Barack Obama’s White House about Mike Flynn’s fateful conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, according to a senior Obama aide’s new memoir. That account stands in contrast to oft-repeated claims that the Obama team unmasked Flynn’s name after learning of the Kislyak conversation from surveillance intercepts.

Ben Rhodes, an Obama deputy national security adviser and a long-time right-wing bête noire, often features prominently in accusations from Donald Trump’s allies that the outgoing White House improperly “unmasked” Flynn from surveillance intercepts and then leaked his name to discredit him. In October, Rhodes testified behind closed doors to the House intelligence committee probe controlled by Trump ally Devin Nunes about unmasking.

But in his just-released book, The World as It Is, the former senior National Security Council staffer writes that the Obama White House learned about the Flynn-Kislyak talks from the Trump team itself. If Rhodes’ claim is true, then Obama aides had no need to “unmask” any surveillance intercept of Kislyak’s phone calls to determine Flynn was the interlocutor.

Flynn “took a couple of weeks after his own appointment to accept Susan Rice’s invitation to meet,” Rhodes writes. “His own transition team volunteered to us that he’d met with Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, before meeting with the American official he was replacing.”

Rhodes didn’t hear about that firsthand, he clarified, as the Trump transition team didn’t deal with Rhodes. (“You’re kind of PNG,” Rhodes quotes the outgoing Obama team’s transition director telling him, meaning ‘persona non grata,’ someone who is not welcome.) Instead, Rhodes’ White House colleagues informed him of the Trump team’s disclosure of the meetings.

SPOILER

“This was the first time I heard about Flynn talking to Kislyak,” Rhodes told The Daily Beast. “I never unmasked any Trump campaign official or associate—not a single time. The ‘unmasking scandal’ was a completely craven and disingenuous farce masquerading as outrage, all intended to keep Americans from focusing on the real story of the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.”

Rhodes said the Trump transition did not tell its Obama counterpart what Flynn discussed with Kislyak.

“This likely would not have been the conversation where they talked about our Russia sanctions, as that would have been later, but I learned about that from reading about it in a column by [Washington Post writer] David Ignatius,” Rhodes said.

Ignatius published that column on Jan. 12, 2017, citing a “senior U.S. government official” saying Flynn called Kislyak “several times on Dec. 29,” when Obama placed new sanctions on Russia and expelled Russian “diplomats” in retaliation for Russian election interference. Days later, Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who ran the Trump transition team, incorrectly claimed on Face the Nation that Flynn “did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia.” The following month, after The Washington Post reported Flynn had indeed discussed Russia’s response to the sanctions with Kislyak, Trump fired Flynn, his first national security adviser, ostensibly for lying to Pence.

Asked about Rhodes’ claim, Pence’s office declined to comment. An attorney for Flynn, Robert Kelner, did not respond to a request for comment.

In December 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about Kislyak “telling him that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request,” according to court papers. Flynn agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in return for leniency.

The unmasking allegations have typically focused on Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser and Rhodes’ boss; Trump baselessly implied Rice is a criminal. Rice denied the allegations in an April 2017 interview with MSNBC, and specifically denied leaking Flynn’s name: “I leaked nothing to nobody.” Rice did not respond to messages seeking comment.

But Rhodes has been a target of the unmasking allegations as well. The Guardian and The New Yorker reported last month that the Israeli private-intelligence firm Black Cube, which was hired by Trump allies to find discrediting information on Rhodes as a supporter of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, was also tracking “rumors that Rhodes was one of the Obama staffers responsible for ‘unmasking’ Trump transition officials who were named in intelligence documents.”

Nunes, the chairman of the House intelligence committee and a member of the Trump transition team, championed Flynn even after Trump fired him. At a March 20, 2017, committee hearing, Nunes’ GOP colleague Tom Rooney of Florida asked the NSA director: “Hypothetically, if the NSA obtained the communication of General Flynn while he was communicating with the surveillance target legally, would you please explain how General Flynn’s identity could be unmasked?”

Days later, Nunes subsequently attempted to pivot the Russia inquiry toward the unmasking allegations. In a dramatic press conference, Nunes accused U.S. surveillance of improperly incidentally collecting information on Trump aides before unnamed officials “unmasked” it—an accusation subsequently revealed to have come from the White House itself and laundered through Nunes. Nunes’ allegation conspicuously followed Trump’s baseless accusation that Obama had ordered the Trump campaign wiretapped, something then-FBI Director James Comey said at Nunes’ March 20, 2017, hearing was bogus.

In August, Nunes asked then-National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers to disclose how many “unmasking” requests Rhodes had made to the NSA. Sean Hannity of Fox News threatened to sue Rhodes, former national security adviser Susan Rice and anyone on the Obama team who might have placed Hannity under surveillance, despite admitting Hannity had no evidence for ever being under surveillance. (Rhodes had no authority to task the NSA to surveil anyone, let alone a specific American, a process requiring a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.)

After Rhodes testified to the House intelligence committee’s Russia inquiry in October, the GOP chairman of the inquiry, Texas’ Mike Conaway, said Rhodes had “answered my questions.”

Yet with Trump intensifying his counternarrative that he is the victim of a politically motivated “witch hunt”—that is, Mueller’s inquiry into his campaign’s ties to Russia—right-wing media continues to consider Rhodes a central figure in the imagined “unmasking” scandal. “The question remains what did [Obama] know, what did Kerry, what did Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes know,” Hannity mused on May 21.

The answer seems to be: what Trump’s own transition told Rhodes’ colleagues.

twitter:

MSNBC twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 04:34:13 BREAKING: Former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer has been indicted for lying to the FBI about "repeated contacts with reporters," according to a statement form the DOJ. https://t.co/8iNC7SoGXK reageer retweet

twitter:

maddow twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 04:32:59 PDF of the indictment... https://t.co/QI4lfNPYrl reageer retweet

quote:

A former Senate Intelligence Committee aide was arrested Thursday in an investigation of classified information leaks where prosecutors also secretly seized years' worth of a New York Times reporter's phone and email records.

The former aide, James A. Wolfe, 57, was charged with lying repeatedly to investigators about his contacts with three reporters. According to the authorities, Mr. Wolfe made false statements to the F.B.I. about providing two of them with private information related to the committee's work. They did not say whether it was classified.

Mr. Wolfe was slated to appear before a federal judge on Friday in Washington. Reached Thursday evening before his arrest, Mr. Wolfe declined to comment.

Mr. Wolfe's case led to the first known instance of the Justice Department going after a reporter's data under President Trump.

The seizure -- disclosed in a letter to the reporter, Ali Watkins -- suggested that prosecutors under the Trump administration will continue the aggressive tactics employed under President Barack Obama.

SPOILER

Mr. Trump has complained bitterly about leaks and demanded that law enforcement officials seek criminal charges against government officials involved in illegal and sometimes embarrassing disclosures of national security secrets.

Investigators sought Ms. Watkins's information as part of an inquiry into whether James A. Wolfe, the Senate Intelligence Committee's former director of security, disclosed classified secrets to reporters. F.B.I. agents approached Ms. Watkins about a previous three-year romantic relationship she had with Mr. Wolfe, saying they were investigating unauthorized leaks.

News media advocates consider the idea of mining a journalist's records for sources to be an intrusion on First Amendment freedoms, and prosecutors acknowledge it is one of the most delicate steps the Justice Department can take. "Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of democracy, and communications between journalists and their sources demand protection," said Eileen Murphy, a Times spokeswoman.

A prosecutor notified Ms. Watkins on Feb. 13 that the Justice Department had years of customer records and subscriber information from telecommunications companies, including Google and Verizon, for two email accounts and a phone number of hers. Investigators did not obtain the content of the messages themselves. The Times learned on Thursday of the letter, which came from the national security division of the United States attorney's office in Washington.

The records covered years' worth of Ms. Watkins's communications before she joined The Times in late 2017 to cover federal law enforcement. During a seven-month period last year for which prosecutors sought additional phone records, she worked for Buzzfeed News and then Politico reporting on national security.

Shortly before she began working at The Times, Ms. Watkins was approached by the F.B.I. agents, who asserted that Mr. Wolfe had helped her with articles while they were dating. She did not answer their questions. Mr. Wolfe was not a source of classified information for Ms. Watkins during their relationship, she said.

Mr. Wolfe stopped performing committee work in December and retired in May.

Ms. Watkins said she told editors at Buzzfeed News and Politico about it and continued to cover national security, including the committee's work. Ben Smith, the editor in chief of Buzzfeed News, said in a statement, "We're deeply troubled by what looks like a case of law enforcement interfering with a reporter's constitutional right to gather information about her own government."

A Politico spokesman, Brad Dayspring, said that the situation was "managed accordingly" after Ms. Watkins disclosed the matter, and that her primary beat was national security and law enforcement, not solely the committee, which other reporters primarily covered.

Ms. Watkins also told editors at The Times about the previous relationship when she was hired to cover federal law enforcement.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said last year that the Justice Department was pursuing about three times as many leak investigations as were open at the end of the Obama administration. Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department prosecuted more leak cases than all previous administrations combined.

"The attorney general has stated that investigations and prosecutions of unauthorized disclosure of controlled information are a priority of the Department of Justice," John Demers, a top Justice Department official, said in a statement announcing Mr. Wolfe's arrest.

Ms. Watkins's personal lawyer, Mark J. MacDougall, said: "It's always disconcerting when a journalist's telephone records are obtained by the Justice Department -- through a grand jury subpoena or other legal process. Whether it was really necessary here will depend on the nature of the investigation and the scope of any charges."

The investigation came to light after the Senate Intelligence Committee made a cryptic announcement on Wednesday that it was cooperating with the Department of Justice "in a pending investigation." Earlier, the Senate quietly and unanimously adopted a resolution to share committee information with the Justice Department "in connection with a pending investigation arising out of the unauthorized disclosure of information."

Mr. Wolfe, a former Army intelligence analyst, worked for the committee in a nonpartisan capacity for nearly 30 years. He worked closely with both Democrats and Republicans on the committee.

When law enforcement officials obtained journalists' records during the Obama administration, members of Congress in both parties sounded alarms, and the moves touched off such a firestorm among advocates for press freedom that helped prompt the Justice Department to rewrite its relevant guidelines.

Under Justice Department regulations, investigators must clear additional hurdles before they can seek business records that could reveal a reporter's confidential sources, such as phone and email records. In particular, the rules require the government to have "made all reasonable attempts to obtain the information from alternative, non-media sources" before investigators may target a reporter's information.

In addition, the rules generally require the Justice Department to notify reporters first to allow them to negotiate over the scope of their demand for information and potentially challenge it in court. The rules permit the attorney general to make an exception to that practice if he "determines that, for compelling reasons, such negotiations would pose a clear and substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation, risk grave harm to national security, or present an imminent risk of death or serious bodily harm."

Top Justice Department officials must sign off on any attempt to gain access to a journalist's communications records.

It is not clear whether investigators exhausted all of their avenues of information before confiscating Ms. Watkins's information. She was not notified before they gained access to her information from the telecommunications companies. Among the records seized were those associated with her university email address from her undergraduate years.

"We intend to get to the bottom of these leaks. I think it has reached epidemic proportions," Mr. Sessions said in November during testimony on Capitol Hill. "It cannot be allowed to continue, and we will do our best effort to ensure it does not continue."

"Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of democracy," Ms. Murphy said. "This decision by the Justice Department will endanger reporters' ability to promise confidentiality to their sources and, ultimately, undermine the ability of a free press to shine a much-needed light on government actions. That should be a grave concern to anyone who cares about an informed citizenry."

The Intelligence Committee is responsible for carrying out oversight of American intelligence agencies, including the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, and their secretive operations. It is one of the most tightly secured groups in Congress, with strict rules for lawmakers and the professional staff governing the circulation and release of sensitive, and often classified, information that passes before the committee.

As security director, Mr. Wolfe would have been responsible for ensuring that those rules were upheld. When the committee became a matter of intense interest as it undertook a bipartisan investigation of Russia's election meddling, Mr. Wolfe played a more visible role ushering witnesses in and out of the committee's secured office space.

The committee's members and aides have prided themselves on keeping sensitive information closely held, particularly as it began its high-profile Russia investigation requiring scores of private witness interviews and reviews of highly sensitive intelligence and law enforcement documents related to the case.

quote:

The special counsel’s accusation this week that Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, tried to tamper with potential witnesses originated with two veteran journalists who turned on Mr. Manafort after working closely with him to prop up the former Russia-aligned president of Ukraine, interviews and documents show.

The two journalists, who helped lead a project to which prosecutors say Mr. Manafort funneled more than $2 million from overseas accounts, are the latest in a series of onetime Manafort business partners who have provided damaging evidence to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Their cooperation with the government has increasingly isolated Mr. Manafort as he awaits trial on charges of violating financial, tax and federal lobbying disclosure laws.

Mr. Manafort’s associates say he feels betrayed by the former business partners, to whom he collectively steered millions of dollars over the years for consulting, lobbying and legal work intended to bolster the reputation of Viktor F. Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine. Mr. Manafort has told associates that he believes Mr. Mueller’s team is using the business partners to pressure him to flip on Mr. Trump in a manner similar to the one used to prosecute the energy giant Enron in the early 2000s by a Justice Department task force that included some lawyers now serving on Mr. Mueller’s team.

SPOILER

“Anybody who is a student of the Enron prosecution sees a very close parallel,” said Michael R. Caputo, a former Trump campaign operative, who has known Mr. Manafort for three decades and spoke with him on Wednesday. Another associate said Mr. Manafort and some of his close allies were reading a book by the conservative lawyer and commentator Sidney Powell that claims misconduct in the Enron prosecution. And Mr. Caputo, who was interviewed by Mr. Mueller’s team last month, said that “when Paul decided to fight, he knew the lay of the land.”

Prosecutors assert that Mr. Manafort’s fight included trying to shape the accounts that former business partners offered prosecutors. In court filings this week, they said that starting in late February, Mr. Manafort repeatedly tried to reach the two journalists — with whom he had fallen out of contact until recently — to coordinate their accounts about their work to tamp down international criticism of Mr. Yanukovych for corruption, persecuting rivals and pivoting toward Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin. The prosecutors did not name the journalists, but three people familiar with the project identified them as Alan Friedman and Eckart Sager.

Both men fended off the overtures, which included phone calls and encrypted text messages from Mr. Manafort and a longtime associate, whom prosecutors have not named but was identified by people close to Mr. Manafort as Konstantin V. Kilimnik, a former Russian Army linguist who prosecutors claim has ties to Russian intelligence.

Instead of engaging, Mr. Friedman and Mr. Sager informed Mr. Mueller’s team of the efforts to reach them, according to prosecutors. Mr. Friedman accused Mr. Manafort of trying to “suborn perjury” by persuading him to lie to investigators, according to a declaration by an F.B.I. agent on the case. Neither Mr. Friedman nor Mr. Sager could be reached for comment.

The prosecutors are arguing that because of these allegations, a federal judge should revise the terms of Mr. Manafort’s bail or even send him to jail while he awaits trial. Mr. Manafort, who posted a $10 million bond and has been confined to his home since October, has until Friday at midnight to respond to the prosecutors’ accusations. His spokesman brushed aside prosecutors’ allegations of witness tampering, but declined to comment on Mr. Manafort’s relationship with Mr. Friedman and Mr. Sager.

They join a growing list of lobbyists, consultants and lawyers who worked on various contracts related to Mr. Yanukovych’s government, political party or supporters and are now cooperating with the government’s prosecution of Mr. Manafort. His associates say he was most stung by the decision of his longtime business partner, Rick Gates, who served as Mr. Trump’s former deputy presidential campaign manager, to cooperate as part of a deal in which he pleaded guilty to financial fraud and lying to investigators.

Alex van der Zwaan, who worked with Mr. Gates and Mr. Kilimnik on a report used to defend Mr. Yanukovych against accusations of prosecuting a rival for political purposes, cooperated with Mr. Mueller’s team before he pleaded guilty in February to lying to investigators. A former lawyer with the international firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, he was sentenced to 30 days and a hefty fine.

Other former associates who have cooperated with Mr. Mueller’s team include employees from the lobbying firms Mercury Public Affairs and the Podesta Group, both of which worked for a nonprofit based in Brussels called the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, which was overseen by Mr. Manafort.

The effort complemented the one with which Mr. Friedman and Mr. Sager were involved from 2011 until 2014 to enlist prominent European politicians to vouch for Mr. Yanukovych. From overseas bank accounts, Mr. Manafort funneled $2.4 million to fund the activities of the coalition overseen by Mr. Friedman and Mr. Sager, which helped place op-eds in the Western news media and arrange speaking engagements.

Mr. Sager, for example, worked with Mr. Manafort and others to arrange a March 2013 visit to Washington by Romano Prodi, the former prime minister of Italy and the former president of the European Commission. Mr. Prodi met with key members of Congress, including Representative Ed Royce of California, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, the committee’s ranking Democrat.

Mr. Friedman helped prepare an Op-Ed by Mr. Prodi that was published by The New York Times in February 2014, according to prosecutors. The piece argued that Mr. Yanukovych could bring Ukraine back from the brink of collapse and that European leaders should not threaten sanctions against him or the nation.

The day after the commentary was published, Mr. Yanukovych fled Ukraine amid protests of his government’s corruption and pivot toward Moscow, eventually arriving in Russia and effectively ending his presidency.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Prodi said that he wrote the Op-Ed, although he acknowledged that he and Mr. Friedman, whom he said he knew only as an author and columnist and not as a lobbyist, had “exchanged views” and maybe “some language.” He added, “When I write an article and sign this document, it’s my responsibility.” He said that he had no knowledge of Mr. Manafort’s involvement, but, after checking his records, he confirmed that Mr. Sager “arranged my appointments in Washington.”

While prosecutors are now relying on Mr. Friedman’s and Mr. Sager’s accounts to accuse Mr. Manafort of trying to undermine the case that he evaded lobbying laws, Mr. Friedman and Mr. Sager have been accused of misrepresenting themselves as independent journalists while being paid by foreign governments or their intermediaries. Mr. Friedman’s firm, Fact-Based Communications, went bankrupt several years ago after disclosures that the Malaysian government was paying the company at the same it was producing supposedly independent documentaries and reports about Malaysia.

Mr. Friedman, who worked at various points for The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and The International Herald Tribune, has continued to work as a journalist in Italy, where he wrote an authorized biography of the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. In mid-2016, when Mr. Manafort was serving as Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Mr. Friedman had a one-on-one interview with Mr. Trump. Since then, he has criticized the president.

One former official at Fact-Based Communications said it would not be hard to imagine Mr. Friedman turning on a business partner if it served his ends.

“Loyalty did not always feature strongly among his values,” Neil Boyde, a former chief financial officer at the company, said in an interview.

Mr. Sager, a former producer for CNN, was accused last year of publishing articles that defended corrupt Azerbaijani interests in exchange for $2.6 million from Azerbaijani sources. The allegations were made in a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an international network of investigative journalists.

twitter:

CNNPolitics twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 04:05:22 President Trump will skip the climate portion of G7 after Twitter spat with French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau https://t.co/pnZkhXYlCg https://t.co/HF4HZYATgN reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 04:47 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

MSNBC twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 04:34:13 BREAKING: Former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer has been indicted for lying to the FBI about "repeated contacts with reporters," according to a statement form the DOJ. https://t.co/8iNC7SoGXK reageer retweet

twitter:

maddow twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 04:32:59 PDF of the indictment... https://t.co/QI4lfNPYrl reageer retweet

Ex-Senate Aide Charged in Leak Case Where Times Reporter's Records Were Seized

[..]

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 04:23 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

NatashaBertrand twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 01:01:43 NEWS: Feinstein wants to talk to an ex-Congressman about his ties to Russia & the Trump campaign. The congressman, Curt Weldon, said last year at a private meeting that Viktor Vekselberg's NYC fund had financed the promotion of that so-called "peace plan." https://t.co/1UC08lljVU reageer retweet

Senate Investigators May Have Found a Missing Piece in the Russia Probe

An ex-congressman has alleged ties to the Trump campaign—as well as to powerful figures in Russia and Ukraine.
Finding out what he knows is crucial, a top Democrat in the Senate says.

[..]

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 05:36 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

CNNPolitics twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 04:05:22 President Trump will skip the climate portion of G7 after Twitter spat with French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau https://t.co/pnZkhXYlCg https://t.co/HF4HZYATgN reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 09:45 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

[..]

Als hij maar zo min mogelijk tijd hoeft door te brengen met (o.a.) zijn NAVO bondgenoten. Trump heeft lovendere woorden voor Kim dan voor Trudeau.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 10:00 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Je zou bijna gaan denken dat Trump daadwerkelijk handelt in opdracht van de Russen.

En toch geloof ik daar niet in. Wel is het zo dat de koers die door deze administratie is uitgestippeld (voor zover je kunt spreken van een koers), vooral in het voordeel lijkt te werken van Poetin.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 10:00 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Je zou bijna gaan denken dat Trump daadwerkelijk handelt in opdracht van de Russen.

En toch geloof ik daar niet in. Wel is het zo dat de koers die door deze administratie is uitgestippeld (voor zover je kunt spreken van een koers), vooral in het voordeel lijkt te werken van Poetin.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 10:14 schreef icecreamfarmer_NL het volgende:

[..]

Het is werkelijk waar ongelofelijk hoe die clown in een jaar tijd al zijn vrienden weet te beledigen.
Wat denkt hij er mee te bereiken.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 05:36 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

CNNPolitics twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 04:05:22 President Trump will skip the climate portion of G7 after Twitter spat with French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau https://t.co/pnZkhXYlCg https://t.co/HF4HZYATgN reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 10:23 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Het is America First. Het is America Decides.

Zoiets denk ik.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 10:14 schreef icecreamfarmer_NL het volgende:

[..]

Het is werkelijk waar ongelofelijk hoe die clown in een jaar tijd al zijn vrienden weet te beledigen.
Wat denkt hij er mee te bereiken.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 10:30 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:

[..]

Gewoon een makkelijk excuus om niet geconfronteerd te hoeven worden met ingewikkelde zaken als klimaatverandering.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 12:25:35 Looking forward to straightening out unfair Trade Deals with the G-7 countries. If it doesn’t happen, we come out even better! reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 12:43 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 12:25:35 Looking forward to straightening out unfair Trade Deals with the G-7 countries. If it doesn’t happen, we come out even better! reageer retweet

Que?

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 12:43 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 12:25:35 Looking forward to straightening out unfair Trade Deals with the G-7 countries. If it doesn’t happen, we come out even better! reageer retweet

Que?

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 12:43 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 12:25:35 Looking forward to straightening out unfair Trade Deals with the G-7 countries. If it doesn’t happen, we come out even better! reageer retweet

Que?

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 12:45 schreef archito het volgende:

[..]

Beter zonder deal dan met een unfaire deal of is geen deal sowieso beter volgens Trump? Lekker vaag weer in ieder geval.

Heeft iemand trouwens een idee hoe dat zit met die 300% tariffs?

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:00 schreef Ulx het volgende:

[..]

Hij ook niet. Hier tweet hij 270%.

https://twitter.com/realD(...)030839019802625?s=19

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:07 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:
Op zich is natuurlijk niets mis het uiten van kritiek op bestaande handelsafspraken. Maar van TTIP en TPP wil Trump dan weer niets weten en door zelf tarieven te verhogen verergert hij de situatie alleen maar.

Er zit gewoon geen enkele logica achter zijn optreden.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:10 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Interessant om te lezen:

Romney: Trump will be reelected in 2020
https://www.politico.com/(...)election-2020-632995

samenvatting:

1. Economie VS blijft sterk. Aantal banen groeit.
2. Democraten komen met kansloze (“out of the mainstream”) kandidaat.
3. Trump wordt makkelijk herkozen in 2020.
Dat is de voorspelling van Mitt Romney, republikein, oud-presidentskandidaat en Trumphater.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:10 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Interessant om te lezen:

Romney: Trump will be reelected in 2020
https://www.politico.com/(...)election-2020-632995

samenvatting:

1. Economie VS blijft sterk. Aantal banen groeit.
2. Democraten komen met kansloze (“out of the mainstream”) kandidaat.
3. Trump wordt makkelijk herkozen in 2020.
Dat is de voorspelling van Mitt Romney, republikein, oud-presidentskandidaat en Trumphater.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 12:43 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 12:25:35 Looking forward to straightening out unfair Trade Deals with the G-7 countries. If it doesn’t happen, we come out even better! reageer retweet

Que?

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:15 schreef remlof het volgende:

[..]

Wat een mafklapper.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:11 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:
Vrees dat de westerse alliantie acht jaar Trump niet overleeft.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:10 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:
Interessant om te lezen:

Romney: Trump will be reelected in 2020
https://www.politico.com/(...)election-2020-632995

samenvatting:

1. Economie VS blijft sterk. Aantal banen groeit.
2. Democraten komen met kansloze (“out of the mainstream”) kandidaat.
3. Trump wordt makkelijk herkozen in 2020.
Dat is de voorspelling van Mitt Romney, republikein, oud-presidentskandidaat en Trumphater.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:30 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Een McGovern-Nixon scenario dus.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:39 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:
Persoonlijk denk ik dat hoe meer de opiniemakers, media en wie nog meer inhakken op trump, hoe meer zijn achterban zich gesterkt zien op hem te stemmen.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:39 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:
Persoonlijk denk ik dat hoe meer de opiniemakers, media en wie nog meer inhakken op trump, hoe meer zijn achterban zich gesterkt zien op hem te stemmen. Iedere brainfart die wilders liet waarbij de halve tweede kamer naar de interruptie microfoon rende en de media boe en bah van riepen zorgde volgens mij ook vooral dat half Limburg jubelde.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:39 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:
Persoonlijk denk ik dat hoe meer de opiniemakers, media en wie nog meer inhakken op trump, hoe meer zijn achterban zich gesterkt zien op hem te stemmen. Iedere brainfart die wilders liet waarbij de halve tweede kamer naar de interruptie microfoon rende en de media boe en bah van riepen zorgde volgens mij ook vooral dat half Limburg jubelde.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:39 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:
Persoonlijk denk ik dat hoe meer de opiniemakers, media en wie nog meer inhakken op trump, hoe meer zijn achterban zich gesterkt zien op hem te stemmen. Iedere brainfart die wilders liet waarbij de halve tweede kamer naar de interruptie microfoon rende en de media boe en bah van riepen zorgde volgens mij ook vooral dat half Limburg jubelde.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:47 schreef Chewie het volgende:
Alleen het kiesmannenstelsel is nog in het voordeel van de Republikeinen.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:48 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

Wat is het alternatief: doodzwijgen of negeren?

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:48 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

Wat is het alternatief: doodzwijgen of negeren?

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:50 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Dat is het stokpaardje van Piet.

Hij roept al jaren dat het succes van Wilders (voor zover je daarvan kunt spreken) is toe te schrijven aan de media.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:55 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:

[..]

Media en de politiek die als dolle kippen rondhollen als hij een scheet laat.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:56 schreef Chewie het volgende:
Leuke G7 top wordt het dan, de rest van de leiders die net doen of Trump er niet bij is

Krijg gelijk een South Park flashback, Trump als Cartman die in de hemel probeert te komen met behulp van Butters (Pence duh)

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:55 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Zijn scheten zijn nou eenmaal relevant, net zoals die van de machtigste leider ter wereld dat ook zijn.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 10:00 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Je zou bijna gaan denken dat Trump daadwerkelijk handelt in opdracht van de Russen.

En toch geloof ik daar niet in. Wel is het zo dat de koers die door deze administratie is uitgestippeld (voor zover je kunt spreken van een koers), vooral in het voordeel lijkt te werken van Poetin.

twitter:

ZekeJMiller twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 14:13:43 On South Lawn before departing for Canada, Trump calls for Russia to be reinstated in G-8 (which has been the G-7 since the annexation of Crimea) reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 14:48 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Nadat Warriors en Cavaliers zeiden niet naar het WH te komen bij winst....

heeft Trump besloten ze niet uit te nodigen.....

Bam! Dat zal die sporters pijn doen!

quote:

Trump says he is considering pardon for Muhammad Ali

President Trump said on Friday that he may pardon the late boxing champion Muhammad Ali.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House as he prepared to leave for the Group of Seven Summit in Quebec, Trump said he was thinking about pardoning someone who was "not very popular."

"I'm thinking about Muhammad Ali," Trump said.

Ali refused to be inducted into the U.S. military in 1967 during the Vietnam War, citing religious objections. As a result, he was stripped of his heavyweight title, charged with draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison.

Ali stayed out of prison as his case was appealed in the court system. The Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971. Ali died in 2016 at the age of 74.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 12:43 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 12:25:35 Looking forward to straightening out unfair Trade Deals with the G-7 countries. If it doesn’t happen, we come out even better! reageer retweet

Que?

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Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 14:53 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

[..]

http://thehill.com/homene(...)don-for-muhammad-ali
Een pardon voor een veroordeling die reeds ongedaan gemaakt is? En "not very popular"?

quote:

(CNN)President Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani shared his thoughts Wednesday during a speaking engagement about first lady Melania Trump and the allegations her husband had an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels.

"She believes her husband," Giuliani said at the "Globes" Capital Market conference in Tel Aviv. "And she knows it's untrue."
Thursday afternoon, the first lady's communications director fired back at Giuliani.
"I don't believe Mrs. Trump has ever discussed her thoughts on anything with Mr. Giuliani," East Wing communications director Stephanie Grisham told CNN in a statement.

It was a sharp rebuke to Giuliani, who according to Grisham's statement, would have had no knowledge based in fact about Melania Trump and her feelings about the alleged extramarital dalliance.
The first lady has never publicly addressed the Daniels story, choosing instead a path of avoiding all press interviews and not responding, via Grisham, to repeated requests for comment from the media.

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.
When asked by CNN for his response to the statement from the first lady's office, Giuliani said he didn't regret his comments.
"I don't regret saying it because I believe it," he said.
He added, "Yes I believe that she (the first lady) knows him well enough to know this one is -- what's the word, fakakta?"
Giuliani also said he hasn't interviewed Melania Trump about the Stormy Daniels issue.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 14:37 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Ja, dat zou je bijna wel gaan denken inderdaad.

twitter:

ZekeJMiller twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 14:13:43 On South Lawn before departing for Canada, Trump calls for Russia to be reinstated in G-8 (which has been the G-7 since the annexation of Crimea) reageer retweet

twitter:

jimsciutto twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 15:26:07 Russia was kicked out for its illegal annexation of Crimea. #Russia still controls Crimea and large parts of Eastern #Ukraine. What has changed? https://t.co/xonoHexDcP reageer retweet

twitter:

tedlieu twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 15:38:09 One thing that has changed since Russia illegally invaded Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea is the following: Russia helped @realDonaldTrump win the electoral college. https://t.co/prbFdTZMJ4 reageer retweet

twitter:

SethAbramson twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 15:24:51 Trump's demand that Putin be restored to his place in the once-upon-a-time G8—currently G7—must be explained as exactly what it is: *sanctions relief*.The entire Trump-Russia scandal is about Trump trading sanctions relief for business opportunities in Russia. It's that simple. reageer retweet

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Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 15:34 schreef OllieA het volgende:
Only the best.

[..]

https://edition.cnn.com/2(...)-giuliani/index.html

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Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:55 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Zijn scheten zijn nou eenmaal relevant, net zoals die van de machtigste leider ter wereld dat ook zijn.

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Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 10:14 schreef icecreamfarmer_NL het volgende:

[..]

Het is werkelijk waar ongelofelijk hoe die clown in een jaar tijd al zijn vrienden weet te beledigen.
Wat denkt hij er mee te bereiken.

quote:

Trump: Doctors say first lady 'can't fly for one month'

President Trump is giving more details on his wife’s medical procedure last month, saying Melania Trump is on doctor’s orders not to fly.

“The first lady’s great,” Trump told reporters Friday on the South Lawn before heading to Canada to attend the Group of 7 (G-7) summit.

“She has to — because she wanted to go — can't fly for one month. Doctors say,” Trump said.

Melania Trump’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, confirmed earlier this week that the first lady wouldn’t be joining her husband for the G-7 summit or for the president’s meeting with Kim Jong Un in Singapore on Tuesday.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 14:37 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

[..]

Ja, dat zou je bijna wel gaan denken inderdaad.

twitter:

ZekeJMiller twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 14:13:43 On South Lawn before departing for Canada, Trump calls for Russia to be reinstated in G-8 (which has been the G-7 since the annexation of Crimea) reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 16:31 schreef Montov het volgende:

[..]

Russia First!

Trump en co zullen dit wel uitleggen als iets dat Amerika juist helpt, net zoals het helpen van China dat is. Of Israel. Of Saoudi-Arabie. Dat maakt dat hele America First verhaal ook zo opportunistisch. Het is een makkelijk excuus om te klagen over zaken die je niet leuk vindt.

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Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 13:30 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Een McGovern-Nixon scenario dus.

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Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 17:08 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:

[..]

yep, Bernie vs Trump

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Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 17:08 schreef martijnde3de het volgende:

[..]

yep, Bernie vs Trump

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Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 10:00 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

[..]

Je zou bijna gaan denken dat Trump daadwerkelijk handelt in opdracht van de Russen.

En toch geloof ik daar niet in. Wel is het zo dat de koers die door deze administratie is uitgestippeld (voor zover je kunt spreken van een koers), vooral in het voordeel lijkt te werken van Poetin.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 19:38 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Trump beantwoord vragen voor hij naar de G7 vertrekt.

President Trump Press Conference Before Departing For G7 Summit 6/8/18

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 20:00:13 Just breaking on @MSNBC: Paul Manafort has been hit with a second superseding indictment. https://t.co/fGa40YJjt7 reageer retweet

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Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on a U.S. lobbying effort on Ukraine’s behalf, was indicted on federal charges Friday by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

quote:

Manafort and Kilimnik were both hit with new charges accusing of using intimidation or force against a witness to obstruct justice, and also with tampering with a witness, victim or informant.

twitter:

MichaelAvenatti twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 15:59:12 @scottrholz Yes - warrants were executed on Mr. Davidson the same day as Cohen. reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 20:14 schreef Montov het volgende:

twitter:

MichaelAvenatti twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 15:59:12 @scottrholz Yes - warrants were executed on Mr. Davidson the same day as Cohen. reageer retweet

De voormalige advocaat van Stormy is op dezelfde manier behandeld als de advocaat van Trump... Het balletje blijft rollen daar.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 19:38 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Trump beantwoord vragen voor hij naar de G7 vertrekt.

President Trump Press Conference Before Departing For G7 Summit 6/8/18

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 20:32 schreef Szura het volgende:

[..]

Is het tegenwoordig ook al die kutsmiley van je waard als ie een paar vraagjes beantwoordt?

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 19:38 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Trump beantwoord vragen voor hij naar de G7 vertrekt.

President Trump Press Conference Before Departing For G7 Summit 6/8/18

quote:

Chinese government hackers have compromised the computers of a Navy contractor, stealing massive amounts of highly sensitive data related to undersea warfare — including secret plans to develop a supersonic anti-ship missile for use on U.S. submarines by 2020, according to American officials.

The breaches occurred in January and February, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The hackers targeted a contractor who works for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, a military organization headquartered in Newport, R.I., that conducts research and development for submarines and underwater weaponry.

The officials did not identify the contractor.

Taken were 614 gigabytes of material relating to a closely held project known as Sea Dragon, as well as signals and sensor data, submarine radio room information relating to cryptographic systems, and the Navy submarine development unit’s electronic warfare library.

The Washington Post agreed to withhold certain details about the compromised missile project at the request of the Navy, which argued that their release could harm national security.

The data stolen was of a highly sensitive nature despite being housed on the contractor’s unclassified network. The officials said the material, when aggregated, would be considered classified, a fact that raises concerns about the Navy’s ability to oversee contractors tasked with developing cutting-edge weapons.

The breach is part of China’s long-running effort to blunt the U.S. advantage in military technology and become the preeminent power in east Asia. The news comes as the Trump administration is seeking to secure Beijing’s support in persuading North Korea to give up nuclear weapons, even as tensions persist between the United States and China over trade and defense matters.

The Navy is leading the investigation into the breach with the assistance of the FBI, officials said.

SPOILER

Navy spokesman Cmdr. Bill Speaks said, “There are measures in place that require companies to notify the government when a ‘cyber incident’ has occurred that has actual or potential adverse effects on their networks that contain controlled unclassified information.”

Speaks said “it would be inappropriate to discuss further details at this time.”

Altogether, details on hundreds of mechanical and software systems were compromised — a significant breach in a critical area of warfare that China has identified as a priority, both for building its own capabilities and challenging those of the United States.

“The United States consistently has been able to use highly compartmented security systems to protect its most innovative and dynamic defense advancements, and any time one of those is penetrated you give up an enormous advantage in surprise,” said James Stavridis, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a retired admiral who served as supreme allied commander at NATO.

“So if it is true that this was a penetration of one of those very compartmented systems, that is a significant reversal for the United States,” he said. Stavridis had no independent knowledge of the breach.

Undersea priority

The Sea Dragon project is an initiative of a special Pentagon office stood up in 2012 to adapt existing U.S. military technologies to new applications. The Defense Department, citing classification levels, has released little information about Sea Dragon other than to say that it will introduce a “disruptive offensive capability” by “integrating an existing weapon system with an existing Navy platform.” The Pentagon has requested or used more than $300 million for the project since late 2015 and has said it plans to start underwater testing by September.

Military experts fear that China has developed capabilities that could complicate the Navy’s ability to defend U.S. allies in Asia in the event of a conflict with China.

The Chinese are investing in a range of platforms, including quieter submarines armed with increasingly sophisticated weapons and new sensors, Adm. Philip S. Davidson said during his April nomination hearing to lead U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. And what they cannot develop on their own, they steal — often through cyberspace, he said.

“One of the main concerns that we have,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “is cyber and penetration of the dot-com networks, exploiting technology from our defense contractors, in some instances.”

In February, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats testified that most of the detected Chinese cyber-operations against U.S. industry focus on defense contractors or tech firms supporting government networks.

In recent years, the United States has been scrambling to develop new weapons or systems that can counter a Chinese naval buildup that has targeted perceived weaknesses in the U.S. fleet. Key to the American advantage in any faceoff with China on the high seas in Asia will be its submarine fleet.

“U.S. naval forces are going to have a really hard time operating in that area, except for submarines, because the Chinese don’t have a lot of anti-submarine warfare capability,” said Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “The idea is that we are going to rely heavily on submarines in the early effort of any conflict with the Chinese.”

China has made closing the gap in undersea warfare one of its three top military priorities, and although the United States still leads the field, China is making a concerted effort to diminish U.S. superiority.

“So anything that degrades our comparative advantage in undersea warfare is of extreme significance if we ever had to execute our war plans for dealing with China,” Stavridis said.

The U.S. military let its anti-ship weaponry languish after the Cold War ended because with the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Navy no longer faced a peer competitor on the seas. But the rapid modernization and buildup of the Chinese navy in recent years, as well as Russia’s resurgent forces at sea, have prompted the Pentagon to renew heavy investment in technologies to sink enemy warships.

The introduction of a supersonic anti-ship missile on U.S. Navy submarines would make it more difficult for Chinese warships to maneuver. It would also augment a suite of other anti-ship weapons that the U.S. military has been developing in recent years.

Ongoing breaches

For years, Chinese government hackers have siphoned information on the U.S. military, underscoring the challenge the Pentagon faces in safeguarding details of its technological advances. Over the years, the Chinese have snatched designs for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter; the advanced Patriot PAC-3 missile system; the Army system for shooting down ballistic missiles known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense; and the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship, a small surface vessel designed for near-shore operations, according to previous reports prepared for the Pentagon.

In some cases, suspected Chinese breaches appear to have resulted in copycat technologies, such as the drones China has produced that mimic U.S. unmanned aircraft.

Speaks, the Navy spokesman, said: “We treat the broader issue of cyber intrusion against our contractors very seriously. If such an intrusion were to occur, the appropriate parties would be looking at the specific incident, taking measures to protect current information, and mitigating the impacts that might result from any information that might have been compromised.”

The Pentagon’s Damage Assessment Management Office has conducted an assessment of the damage, according to the U.S. officials. The Office of the Secretary of Defense declined to comment.

Theft of an electronic warfare library, Stavridis said, could give the Chinese “a reasonable idea of what level of knowledge we have about their specific [radar] platforms, electronically and potentially acoustically, and that deeply reduces our level of comfort if we were in a close undersea combat situation with China.”

Signals and sensor data is also valuable in that it presents China with the opportunity to “know when we would know at what distance we would be able to detect their submarines” — again a key factor in undersea battles.

Investigators say the hack was carried out by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, a civilian spy agency responsible for counterintelligence, foreign intelligence and domestic political security. The hackers operated out of an MSS division in the province of Guangdong, which houses a major foreign hacking department.

Although the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is far better-known than the MSS when it comes to hacking, the latter’s personnel are more skilled and much better at hiding their tracks, said Peter Mattis, a former analyst in the CIA counterintelligence center. The MSS, he said, hack for all forms of intelligence: foreign, military and commercial.

In September 2015, in a bid to avert economic sanctions, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to President Barack Obama that China would refrain from conducting commercial cyberespionage against the United States. Following the pact, China appeared to have curtailed much, although not all, of its hacking activity against U.S. firms, including by the People’s Liberation Army.

Both China and the United States consider spying on military technology to fall outside the pact. “The distinction we’ve always made is there’s a difference between conducting espionage in order to protect national security and conduct military operations, and the theft of intellectual property for the benefit of companies inside your country,” said Michael Daniel, the White House cybersecurity coordinator under Obama.

quote:

McCain statement on Trump calling for Russia to be readmitted to G7

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) blasted President Donald Trump for wishing Russia was readmitted to the Group of Seven (G-7) nations.

“Vladimir Putin chose to make Russia unworthy of membership in the G-8 by invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea. Nothing he has done since then has changed that most obvious fact,” McCain said in a statement. “Every day, Russian-led separatist forces are killing Ukrainians in the Donbass. Every day, Putin’s forces are helping the Assad regime slaughter the Syrian people. And every day, through assassinations, cyber-attacks, and malign influence, Russia is assaulting democratic institutions all over the world.”

“The President has inexplicably shown our adversaries the deference and esteem that should be reserved for our closest allies,” he continued. “Those nations that share our values and have sacrificed alongside us for decades are being treated with contempt.”

“This is the antithesis of so-called ‘principled realism’ and a sure path to diminishing America’s leadership in the world,” McCain predicted.

quote:

A prominent GOP donor and President Donald Trump supporter helped EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt choose the head of the influential scientific body charged with reviewing EPA's regulations, according to newly released documents.

Doug Deason, a Dallas businessman, submitted a list of names of candidates for Pruitt's Science Advisory Board in August that had been supplied by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, on whose board he serves.

Deason and his father, Darwin Deason, donated over $900,000 in 2016 alone to help elect Trump and other Republican candidates. His influence over the SAB appointments is the latest example of the high-level access that politically powerful conservatives have to the EPA administrator. Deason is known to be a friend of Pruitt's.

Deason and his wife have also been donors to the Koch brothers' network of organizations that raise money for Republicans running for state and national office.

Last year, Pruitt overhauled EPA's advisory boards, banning scientists who received EPA funding and replacing many of them with employees of energy companies and state agencies. The new emails, released under the Freedom of Information Act to the Sierra Club, show that some of those appointments were made at the suggestion of campaign contributors and oil and coal industry officials.

SPOILER

Deason's full list, which EPA did not provide, was drafted by Kathleen Hartnett White, a TPPF fellow whose nomination to run the Council on Environmental Quality flopped in the Senate after a poor showing in her confirmation hearing and her lack of scientific credentials. She had drawn fire from environmentalists and Democrats for comments dismissing climate change and downplaying the dangers of pollutants like smog.

Reached via email, Deason acknowledged that he had made the recommendations. And he did not believe Pruitt's job at EPA was in danger, saying he "is out of the woods from what I have been told by contacts in the White House. Time to move on [to the] real story." EPA did not dispute that Deason was involved in the process, but said others put forward nominations too.

Pruitt has regularly sought to build connections with top GOP donors, including some whose businesses are heavily regulated by EPA. He has huddled with Steve Chancellor, a coal executive who raised over $1 million for Trump, POLITICO reported. And he sat in coveted courtside seats at a University of Kentucky basketball game with tickets from billionaire coal magnate and Republican funder Joe Craft, whose wife is Trump's ambassador to Canada, The New York Times has reported.

Deason’s top recommendation to Pruitt was Michael Honeycutt, a toxicologist at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, who was subsequently appointed to lead the Science Advisory Board, which counsels the agency on how it uses science to write regulations and is currently reviewing sweeping rule changes Pruitt is implementing. Honeycutt has been a critic of EPA's regulations, and cast doubt on its assessments of the dangers of mercury, arsenic and ozone pollution.

According to internal emails, Deason told Pruitt’s then-scheduler Sydney Hupp in May 2017 that Pruitt “asked that I help them add a few experts on a new proposed Science Advisory Board.” EPA didn’t publicly request candidates until June.

Months later, Deason forwarded White’s list to Pruitt’s chief of staff Ryan Jackson. TPPF Executive Director Kevin Roberts said White “especially recommends Dr. Michael Honeycutt of the TCEQ,” and attached his bio first.

EPA argues Honeycutt was not chosen on Deason's recommendation alone, saying in an emailed statement from a spokesman that “he is a well-qualified and respected toxicologist, he has been nominated by multiple people and considered for EPA science advisory committees for the last several years.”

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the watchdog group Public Citizen, said Deason's influence in the process "raises serious concerns."

"That should have been a merit-based process of selection and not based on the wishes of personal friends and major party donors," Holman said. "It's a sad reflection of what we're seeing going on throughout the Trump administration. Trump values millionaires and billionaires and those who are very wealthy as being the type of people who are running our government, so that's who he listens to — it's really a takeover of our government by the very wealthy."

Deason's initial email to Hupp about the science boards was sent before he met with Pruitt on May 18, an appointment that the agency never disclosed. Deason also set up a meeting that day between Pruitt and his business partner Roy Bailey, the managing director at his private equity firm. The Dallas Morning News has reported that Bailey was also a major fundraiser for Trump.

Bailey brought along executives from Intrexon, a biotechnology company whose subsidiary now has a proposal before the agency to deploy genetically engineered mosquitoes to reduce the population of Zika-carrying mosquitoes in South Florida.

Bailey set up the meeting as a personal favor for the company’s CEO, R.J. Kirk, who is a friend, Intrexon said.

“I truly believe that Scott and his team would benefit greatly from meeting with RJ,” Deason told Hupp. “If Scott and/or Ryan Jackson have any time I would really appreciate it if they would give RJ 15 mins or so. They will learn a lot!”

Pruitt’s public calendar lists the meeting with Intrexon but does not note Bailey’s attendance. The administrator’s more detailed internal calendar item for the meeting, obtained under pubic records laws, lists Bailey and Intrexon executives, but not Deason.

The records noted that Intrexon's technology, which was previously under the FDA's jurisdiction, "will fall under the purview of the EPA."

Asked about the donors' role in the meeting, the EPA spokesman said "Administrator Pruitt meets with a wide range of regulated stakeholders and these meetings are no different.”

Deason has been a staunch supporter of Pruitt during his recent scandals, and has pressed his White House contacts to keep Pruitt at EPA, suggesting that if reports that Trump chief of staff John Kelly was pushing for his ouster, then Kelly “has no spine,” according to Bloomberg.

He also helped book Pruitt as a speaker at a TPPF and Heritage Foundation event in Washington on Nov. 30, emailing Pruitt and Jackson directly.

Jackson thanked Deason for “the help on the science boards,” noting in an email in October that they would be announced in the next few weeks. And Deason followed up after the announcement, writing, “Great news on the Science Boards, Ryan. Scott knocked it out of the park yesterday.”

The American Petroleum Institute also put forward six of its own recommendations for various science boards, and two of those ultimately landed positions advising EPA: Merl Lindstrom, the vice president of technology for Phillips 66, and Robert Merritt, a retired geoscience manager from oil giant Total SA. API Director of Federal Relations Hilary Moffett in August sent the list of candidates to Jackson and Deputy Assistant Administrator for Research and Development Richard Yamada.

Separately, Betsy Monseu, head of the American Coal Council, recommended two of the group’s members who were not ultimately picked. The organization itself did not take an official position, but Monseu emailed her names to EPA air office adviser Mandy Gunasekara in July.

The EPA spokesman said the agency had more than 700 applicants for its science boards and sought a "wider range of voices to weigh into" the selection process and now has "highly qualified" boards that are "independent and geographically diverse."

twitter:

joshscampbell twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 20:29:31 In my years as an FBI agent, I never encountered an innocent subject who actively worked to obstruct an investigation that would have proved their innocence. reageer retweet

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 20:32 schreef Szura het volgende:

[..]

Is het tegenwoordig ook al die kutsmiley van je waard als ie een paar vraagjes beantwoordt?

twitter:

thehill twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 21:55:07 Trump breaks with Sessions, says he'll likely support bill letting states set their own marijuana policies https://t.co/EAXgFS8OQa https://t.co/0fdHTScMuH reageer retweet

quote:

"We appreciate President Trump's sentiment, but a pardon is unnecessary. The US Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Muhammad Ali in a unanimous decision in 1971," said Ali's lawyer Ron Tweel in a statement.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 22:15 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Likely? Net zo likely als dat hij zeker DACA wetgeving zou steunen?

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 23:11 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Er zijn de laatste dagen weer een hoop polls uitgekomen waarin de Dems een duidelijke voorsprong nemen, dubbele cijfers zelfs. Tegelijkertijd blijft Tumps approval ook klimmen. De mate waarin die twee gelijklopen lijkt toch minder te zijn dan ik dacht. Dat zou de GOP zorgen moeten baren: zelfs met een sterke economie en een stijgende approval van Trump lopen ze flink achter. Het volk snakt echt naar meer controle op Trump.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 23:10 schreef Monolith het volgende:

[..]

Afgezien daarvan maakt het niet veel uit. Je kunt staten wel hun eigen wet laten maken, maar nog steeds federale agenten laten optreden vanwege federale wetten. Dat er onder Obama minder werd opgetreden was vooral gedoogbeleid.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 juni 2018 20:32 schreef Szura het volgende:

[..]

Is het tegenwoordig ook al die kutsmiley van je waard als ie een paar vraagjes beantwoordt?

quote:

Imposing a 25% tariff on steel imports and a 10% tariff on aluminum imports
Support 31%
Oppose 50%

QuinnipiacPoll 5/31-6/5

https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2547

quote:

Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 00:12 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Nog een poll, Trump's tariffs zijn niet populair onder Amerikanen:

[..]

quote:

Striking a note for transparency, a federal judge ruled on Friday that President Trump and his longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, cannot proceed in total secrecy as they weigh in on the final stages of a laborious review of a huge trove of materials seized from Mr. Cohen during a series of raids by the authorities in April.

SPOILER

For two months now, Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen’s lawyers have been fighting with prosecutors in Manhattan over how to handle the millions of documents and data files that federal agents hauled away from Mr. Cohen’s office, apartment and hotel room. The chief dispute concerned the question of who should get to determine what materials were protected by the attorney-client privilege that Mr. Trump enjoys in his dealings with Mr. Cohen. Those determinations are important because any file covered by that privilege could be withheld from the prosecutors who are investigating Mr. Cohen’s various business projects, including some involving Mr. Trump.

The battle over the materials — a vast cache of Mr. Cohen’s papers, data files from several of his iPads, cellphones and computer drives, and even the contents of one of his shredders — could determine how much and what kinds of evidence the government has at its disposal as it pursues its investigation.

But even though the judge in the case, Kimba M. Wood, solved the quarrel with a compromise in April, appointing an independent arbiter known as a special master to oversee the review of the materials, she still allowed Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen to make objections to the special master’s findings — and that led to a new dispute this week.

On Wednesday, the president’s lawyers, writing on behalf of him and Mr. Cohen, asked Judge Wood for permission to file their objections under seal directly to her, keeping them from the eyes of both the public and the prosecutors handling the case.

Within a day, the prosecutors responded with a more limited proposal, arguing that while Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen did not have to disclose the contents of the files they felt were privileged, there was “no reason why the government and the public should be deprived of access” to the legal analysis that led to their decisions.

In her one-paragraph ruling on Friday, Judge Wood sided with the prosecutors, saying that the Trump and Cohen legal teams had to submit their objections to the special master’s findings publicly “except for those portions that divulge ‘the substance of the contested documents.’”

A group of news organizations, including The New York Times, had written in support of the government’s position, claiming that the “public has a right to know” what categories of files Mr. Trump and Mr. Cohen were trying to keep secret, if not precisely what was in them.

twitter:

ABC twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 01:00:19 President Trump jokes with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau about the future of of NAFTA during G7 Summit. “Justin has agreed to cut all tariffs and all trade barriers between Canada and the United States, so I’m very happy.” https://t.co/nOEs7eqB7Q https://t.co/IgwI8ZFawO reageer retweet

twitter:

JustinTrudeau twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 04:10:22 Progressive trade deals create jobs & opportunities for people - it’s why we signed CETA. Today in Charlevoix, I spoke with @eucopresident & @JunckerEU about the benefits of CETA and how we can continue to work together to create economic growth that benefits everyone. https://t.co/G8X3uBmUW7 reageer retweet

SPOILER

twitter:

JustinTrudeau twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 15:56:02 Kicking off day 1 at the @g7, meeting with PM @theresa_may. We covered a lot of topics this morning, and focused on working together to increase trade between Canada and the UK - creating more jobs and building stronger economies. https://t.co/2i2LYnM1uc reageer retweet

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twitter:

JustinTrudeau twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 00:04:51 Today at the @g7, I sat down with Chancellor Merkel to talk about a wide variety of global issues that we can continue to work on together – in particular, we focused on promoting gender equality, clean energy, and preparing our citizens & economies for jobs of the future. https://t.co/yrrZAqWplH reageer retweet

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twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 03:24:22 My thoughts and prayers are with the families of our serviceman who was killed and his fellow servicemen who were wounded in Somolia. They are truly all HEROES. reageer retweet

quote:

The revelation that federal prosecutors seized years’ worth of email and phone records from a New York Times reporter drew criticism on Friday from news organizations and press rights groups, which expressed outrage at the first known instance of the Trump administration’s pursuing the private communications of a journalist.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called the move “a fundamental threat to press freedom.” The Times, in its own statement, called the seizure “an outrageous overreach” and raised concerns about a chilling effect on journalists’ ability to report on the government.

The records were seized from Ali Watkins, a reporter for The Times in Washington, amid a Justice Department investigation into a former high-ranking aide at the Senate Intelligence Committee who was suspected of leaking classified information to reporters.

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The aide, James A. Wolfe, 57, who retired last year, was arraigned in federal court on Friday on charges of lying to investigators about his contacts with several journalists. He has denied that he gave classified material to journalists, and prosecutors, for now, have charged him only with making false statements to the F.B.I.

The Justice Department ramped up investigations into journalists and their sources under President Barack Obama, and the Trump administration was widely expected to follow suit. On Friday, President Trump called Mr. Wolfe “a very important leaker” and said his arrest “could be a terrific thing.”

“I’m a very big believer in freedom of the press, but I’m also a believer that you cannot leak classified information,” Mr. Trump added.

Ms. Watkins, 26, joined The Times in December. She and Mr. Wolfe had been in a three-year relationship, which drew the attention of prosecutors who were investigating unauthorized leaks from the Senate Intelligence Committee, including articles that Ms. Watkins had written for two previous employers, Politico and BuzzFeed News.

In February, Ms. Watkins received a letter from the Justice Department informing her that records from two personal email accounts and a phone number had been seized. Obtaining a journalist’s data without permission is considered by First Amendment advocates to be a highly aggressive form of government intrusion.

Ms. Watkins, after consulting with her lawyer, decided not to disclose the letter to The Times, according to Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the newspaper. Editors learned of the seizure from Ms. Watkins on Thursday, as reporters were working on an article about Mr. Wolfe’s impending arrest.

“We obviously would have preferred to know, but the real issue here is the government’s intrusion into a reporter’s private communications,” Ms. Murphy said. “This should be a grave concern to anyone who cares about an informed citizenry.”

She added that Ms. Watkins would remain on her current beat, covering federal law enforcement.

“We support her,” Ms. Murphy said.

Ms. Watkins disclosed the relationship with Mr. Wolfe to The Times after she was hired, and before she started work at the paper on Dec. 18. On Thursday, Ms. Watkins told her editors that Mr. Wolfe was not a source of classified information for articles she had written during their relationship, which ended last year.

Ms. Watkins joined McClatchy Newspapers as an intern in 2013, and became a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize there two years later as part of a reporting team that revealed C.I.A. spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

She went on to cover national security matters, including the committee’s work, at The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed and Politico. The records seized by the Justice Department span her time at those news outlets, as well as her undergraduate years at Temple University, when she was a reporting intern in Washington.

Law enforcement officials did not obtain the content of the messages, according to the letter sent to Ms. Watkins by the Justice Department, but the information now in their possession — whom Ms. Watkins was communicating with, and when — could reveal her contacts. Reporters often rely on the trust of insiders who can offer insight into the workings of government, but often need their identities protected to preserve their livelihoods and, in some sensitive cases, avoid prosecution.

Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department prosecuted more leak cases than all previous administrations combined. Mr. Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said last year that the Justice Department was pursuing about three times as many leak investigations as were open at the end of the Obama era.

Documents filed in the indictment of Mr. Wolfe suggested that prosecutors were especially interested in a scoop by Ms. Watkins published in BuzzFeed in April last year. The article revealed that Russian spies had tried to recruit Carter Page, a former Trump adviser, in 2013 — information that had been furnished to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“I’m not going to comment at all on a reporter’s sources in the middle of an unjustifiable leak hunt,” Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, said on Friday. He added that he was “baffled” by the Justice Department’s aggressive action against Ms. Watkins, given that Mr. Page had confirmed the information in the article.

Brad Dayspring, a spokesman at Politico, where Ms. Watkins worked as a reporter for part of 2017, said that she had disclosed her relationship with Mr. Wolfe “early on in her tenure” there, and that her role at the news outlet had been “managed accordingly” afterward.

When Ms. Watkins joined The Times, Mr. Wolfe was no longer working at the Intelligence Committee. On Dec. 14, days before her start date, F.B.I. agents approached Ms. Watkins and asserted to her that Mr. Wolfe had provided her with information; she did not answer their questions. Ms. Murphy, the Times spokeswoman, said Ms. Watkins had disclosed that conversation with the F.B.I. to her editors at the paper.

Around the same time, according to court documents, Mr. Wolfe was also meeting with F.B.I. agents in Washington. Asked by the agents if he had engaged in regular electronic communication with a reporter, he answered no.

Presented with photographs of himself with Ms. Watkins, Mr. Wolfe admitted that he had lied, the documents said. But he maintained that he had never disclosed to her any classified information that he had learned from his role on the Intelligence Committee.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 03:53 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 03:24:22 My thoughts and prayers are with the families of our serviceman who was killed and his fellow servicemen who were wounded in Somolia. They are truly all HEROES. reageer retweet

En naast Nambia hebben we nu ook Somolia.

quote:

Trump's surprise G-7 pitch: 'We should at least consider no tariffs'

LA MALBAIE, Quebec — President Donald Trump on Friday floated the idea of ending all tariffs and trade barriers between the U.S. and its G-7 allies — an unexpected pitch that comes amid a tit-for-tat trade war Trump recently launched.

Trump offered the aspirational proposal at the end of a contentious meeting on trade disputes at the G-7 summit in Quebec, an annual gathering of the leaders from seven major industrialized nations. During the private gathering, Europe’s major economic powers pushed back hard against Trump’s repeated assertions that the U.S. is a victim of unfair trade practices.

“We should at least consider no tariffs, no barriers — scrapping all of it,” Trump said, according to officials who were listening and taking notes.

Trump floated the idea — which was received as somewhat rhetorical — as the meeting was breaking up and was quickly challenged by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who asked, “What about subsidies?”

[..]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded positively to Trump’s suggestion Friday, telling him: “We’ll take it as a starting point.”

Such a sweeping end to tariffs and trade barriers is typically the result of a landmark free trade agreement. The U.S. and the EU had been contemplating just such a deal, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, but it was abandoned after Trump won the 2016 election. Three days after taking office, Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from another such landmark deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the Obama administration negotiated with 11 Pacific rim nations.

After an angry tirade on Twitter on Thursday night, in which he lashed out at Trudeau, the summit host, and French President Emmanuel Macron, Trump used the afternoon session to run through his litany of complaints, citing specific trade deficits between the U.S. and allies in certain sectors.

European leaders, who had met to coordinate how they would handle the combustible American president, pushed back hard, but also heaped praise on Trump, hoping to butter him up. For example, they told Trump that millions of European citizens own Apple iPhones.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 06:46 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:

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He doesn't only create jobs, he creates COUNTRIES

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 09:09 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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https://www.politico.com/(...)tariffs-trade-611888
Krijgen we straks een verlaging van tarieven, en z'n fans zullen "MAGA, winning!" roepen, ook al komt het neer op een verwaterde versie van TTIP en TPP.

The "Art of the deal", deals opzeggen, een hoop dreigen, dan minder goede deals afsluiten en een overwinning claimen...

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 09:09 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:
European leaders, who had met to coordinate how they would handle the combustible American president, pushed back hard, but also heaped praise on Trump, hoping to butter him up. For example, they told Trump that millions of European citizens own Apple iPhones.

The leaders came armed with an array of their own statistics aimed at demonstrating to Trump that he was not right to view the U.S. as a victim. Macron, in particular, implored Trump to understand that tariffs alone were not a cause of trade imbalances. He explained that France runs trade deficits with Germany and the United Kingdom on manufactured goods, even though all three countries are part of the EU single market and have zero tariffs between them.

“Why is this happening?” Macron asked, according to an official. “Because French like German cars.”

twitter:

rweingarten twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 21:13:14 @DNC #RBC just changed the rules to ensure to run for President as a Democrat you need to be A Democrat https://t.co/RyHhV0Exhr reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 09:09 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

[..]

https://www.politico.com/(...)tariffs-trade-611888
Krijgen we straks een verlaging van tarieven, en z'n fans zullen "MAGA, winning!" roepen, ook al komt het neer op een verwaterde versie van TTIP en TPP.

The "Art of the deal", deals opzeggen, een hoop dreigen, dan minder goede deals afsluiten en een overwinning claimen...

quote:

Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 10:35 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

twitter:

rweingarten twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 21:13:14 @DNC #RBC just changed the rules to ensure to run for President as a Democrat you need to be A Democrat https://t.co/RyHhV0Exhr reageer retweet

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 10:35 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

twitter:

rweingarten twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 21:13:14 @DNC #RBC just changed the rules to ensure to run for President as a Democrat you need to be A Democrat https://t.co/RyHhV0Exhr reageer retweet

[ afbeelding ]

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 10:43 schreef Knipoogje het volgende:

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Haha, geen Bernie praktijken meer waarin een independent inziet dat ie als independent geen kans maakt en snel onder de vlag van de democraten mee gaat doen.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 10:43 schreef Knipoogje het volgende:

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Haha, geen Bernie praktijken meer waarin een independent inziet dat ie als independent geen kans maakt en snel onder de vlag van de democraten mee gaat doen.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 10:03 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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We krijgen niks, want Trump roept maar wat. Hij weet niet eens wat een handelsverdrag precies inhoudt. Wel weet hij dat er handelsbarrières bestaan in de vorm van tarieven. Dus begint hij daar weer wat over te blaten.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 10:51 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Ik weet niet hoe de procedure verloopt, maar volgens mij kun je alsnog vrij eenvoudig lid worden van de partij en je dan kandidaat stellen.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 10:21 schreef nostra het volgende:

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Alsof je je neefje van 16 helpt oefenen voor zijn vmbo-eindexamen economie.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 10:43 schreef Knipoogje het volgende:

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Haha, geen Bernie praktijken meer waarin een independent inziet dat ie als independent geen kans maakt en snel onder de vlag van de democraten mee gaat doen.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 11:27 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Bernie trekt zich daar niks van aan, hoor. Die doet in Vermont als Democraat mee aan de primary voor de Senaatsverkiezingen, maar accepteert vervolgens de nominatie niet. Dan weet hij in ieder geval zeker dat er geen Democraat meedoet en hij als independent kan runnen. Ook niet helemaal louche als je het mij vraagt. Je zit in een partij of je zit er niet in. Lijkt me dus een terechte regel.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 11:17 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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Maar het is zinloos, het gaat Trump helemaal niet om de feiten. Hij heeft toegegeven dat hij niet wist of de VS een handelstekort had tov Canda, maar het toch als argument gebruikte in z'n gesprek met Trudeau.
Trump is slechts geïnteresseerd in scoren bij z'n achterban, en in minder regels en meer voordelen voor bedrijven in de VS (en voor de Trump Corporation). Het trade deficit is niet meer dan een middel om het patriotisme van z'n achterban te bespelen, net als z'n gedoe over de NFL.

twitter:

dennisrodman twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 12:24:11 1 year ago June 15 I gave this book "Art of the Deal" to Minister Kim Il Guk in Pyongyang, NK. Hoping everyone reads it before the historic Singapore Summit on June 12. We've got the greatest negotiator of all time @realDonaldTrump to show the world how it's done#Peace #Love https://t.co/ERxXNnR20k reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 13:22 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Mijn bezwaar tegen Bernie is dat hij te oud is.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 14:03 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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De generatie van Trump, Sanders, Biden en Clinton moet inderdaad gewoon lekker met pensioen gaan. Europa heeft het beter begrepen:


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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 14:06 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Hoe bepaalt deze grafiek of iemand establishment of anti-establishment is?

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 14:03 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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De generatie van Trump, Sanders, Biden en Clinton moet inderdaad gewoon lekker met pensioen gaan. Europa heeft het beter begrepen:


[ afbeelding ]

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 14:25 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:

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May is anti Establishment??

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 14:27 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Klaarblijkelijk, net als Macron. Trudeau dan weer niet. Komt op mij over als een nogal ambivalente indeling.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 14:25 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:

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May is anti Establishment??

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 14:09 schreef Knipoogje het volgende:
http://www.foxnews.com/

Hillary op de voorpagina
En verder een hele pagina aan anti-climate change, anti-transgender, anti-liberale media... lijkt Breitbart wel

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 15:12 schreef Nintex het volgende:

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Manafort pushing back, Go paulie!

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:14 schreef nostra het volgende:
Politics
Trump delivers his most defiant trade threat yet to leaders at G-7, floats end to tariffs and penalties for those who don’t agree

President Trump told foreign leaders at the Group of Seven summit that they must dramatically reduce trade barriers with the United States or they could lose access to the world’s largest economy.

Trump, in a news conference before leaving for Singapore, described private conversations he held over two days with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada. He said he pushed them to consider removing every single tariff or trade barrier on American goods, and that in return he would do the same. But if steps aren’t taken, he said, the penalties would be severe.

“We’re the piggy bank that everybody is robbing,” Trump said. “And that ends.”

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 15:24 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Dus hoezo juich je voor hem?

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:30 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
De EU heft in totaal 3% op Amerikaanse goederen die geimporteerd worden. Er is reden te denken dat hij denkt dat BTW onderdeel is van de "oneerlijke" tarieven tegen de VS.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:31 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:

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Vanaf juli 25% op Bourbon en Amerikaanse whiskey.

https://www.thedrinksbusi(...)whiskey-and-bourbon/

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:30 schreef Zwoerd het volgende:

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Kan hier niet wat tegen gedaan worden door de moderators? Telkens die tweets plaatsen in combinatie met sigaar of zonnebril smileys. Of zoals nu dat juichen voor alle figuren rond Trump. Maar nooit eens reageren als er om uitleg wordt gevraagd.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:31 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:

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Vanaf juli 25% op Bourbon en Amerikaanse whiskey.

https://www.thedrinksbusi(...)whiskey-and-bourbon/

twitter:

CBSNews twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 16:36:02 President Trump says the U.S. relationship with its allies "is a 10" following G-7 summit https://t.co/syywHUMwLG https://t.co/mtKO3vrHT7 reageer retweet

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President Trump says he'd likely support bill to end federal pot ban

President Trump said Friday he'd likely support a bipartisan bill that would end the federal ban on pot and defer to states' laws on marijuana legalization — a break from Attorney General Jeff Sessions stance on cannabis enforcement.

Before leaving the White House for the G-7 Summit, Trump told reporters he "probably will end up supporting" the bill, which Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., unveiled Thursday.

"I support Senator Gardner. I know exactly what he's doing," Trump said. "We're looking at it. But I probably will end up supporting that."

Trump's backing would signal a turn from his Justice Department's stance on marijuana legalization.

In January, Sessions rescinded an Obama-era memo assuring state-regulated marijuana dealers that federal prosecutors would leave them alone if they followed state regulations intended to keep pot out of the hands of kids and money out of the hands of drug cartels.

Trump had indicated on the 2016 campaign trail that he'd support states' laws on cannabis. In March, Gardner said Trump agreed to respect state-legalized pot, indicating a break from Sessions.

Gardner's bipartisan legislation, which also has backing in the House of Representatives, would bar the federal government from interfering with any state-approved marijuana legalization and permit marijuana businesses to use the federal banking system.

"We need to take a states' rights approach to the legal marijuana question," Gardner tweeted Thursday. "Our bill does not legalize marijuana. Instead, it allows the principle of federalism to prevail as the founding fathers intended and leaves the marijuana question up to the states."

Nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana use, but it remains a Schedule 1 drug, meaning the Drug Enforcement Agency considers it to have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

However, many Americans view of cannabis has changed in recent years. According to a January poll by the Pew Research Center, more than 60% of Americans believe recreational marijuana should be legal, double its popularity in 2000.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:28 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Dat neemt toch niemand serieus?
Zou hij inmiddels al snappen dat de Fransen, Italianen en Duitsers die keuze niet zelf maken?

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:40 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Ik hoop vooral dat de Brexit niet leidt tot tarieven op Schotse whisky.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:42 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

CBSNews twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 16:36:02 President Trump says the U.S. relationship with its allies "is a 10" following G-7 summit https://t.co/syywHUMwLG https://t.co/mtKO3vrHT7 reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:52 schreef nostra het volgende:
En passant geeft meneer ook aan dat hij minder dan een minuut nodig zal hebben met Kim om vast te stellen of hij serieus is. Altijd handig, die vooraf afgegeven signalen in een onderhandeling.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:57 schreef Ulx het volgende:
Macron-baas weet hoe je Trump moet aanpakken.

The imprint of French President Emmanuel Macron's thumb can be seen across the back of Trump's hand after they shook hands at the G7. Great frame from ⁦@LeahMillis⁩ https://t.co/VA8RlkYX8a

quote:

Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:42 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

CBSNews twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 16:36:02 President Trump says the U.S. relationship with its allies "is a 10" following G-7 summit https://t.co/syywHUMwLG https://t.co/mtKO3vrHT7 reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:47 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 18:16 schreef monkyyy het volgende:

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Zou hij dat nou zeggen om Sessions dwars te zitten? Trump was erg antidrugs.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 17:42 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

CBSNews twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 16:36:02 President Trump says the U.S. relationship with its allies "is a 10" following G-7 summit https://t.co/syywHUMwLG https://t.co/mtKO3vrHT7 reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 18:32 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:
Samenvatting van de G-7 is eigenlijk dat iedereen weer even bevestigd krijgt dat Trump hemeltergend weinig dingen weet.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 18:32 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:
Samenvatting van de G-7 is eigenlijk dat iedereen weer even bevestigd krijgt dat Trump hemeltergend weinig dingen weet.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 19:02 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:
Trump denkt dat hij op het wereldtoneel dingen gedaan krijgt met bully-tactics. Dat werkt misschien in dat louche vastgoedwereldje waar hij actief was, maar op geopolitiek niveau zijn de kaarten toch net even anders geschud.

Laat Trump lekker het woord bij de daad voegen en zijn bondgenoten de toegang tot de Amerikaanse markt ontzeggen. Eens zien hoeveel profijt de VS daarvan heeft.

Bizar dat geen enkele Republikein op de rem durft te trappen. Obama had deze koers moeten volgen. Dan was het rode deel van het congres ontploft.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 19:44 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Zoals ook in het stukje van Politico staat zien de bondgenoten van de VS ook dat Trump gevoelig is voor daadkracht, waardoor ze er zelf ook gewoon met gestrekt been in gaan. Trump veroorzaakt feitelijk een tragedy of the commons scenario.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 11:27 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:

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Bernie trekt zich daar niks van aan, hoor. Die doet in Vermont als Democraat mee aan de primary voor de Senaatsverkiezingen, maar accepteert vervolgens de nominatie niet. Dan weet hij in ieder geval zeker dat er geen Democraat meedoet en hij als independent kan runnen. Ook niet helemaal louche als je het mij vraagt. Je zit in een partij of je zit er niet in. Lijkt me dus een terechte regel.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 20:03 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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Het lijkt ook bedoeld om een ander voorstel goedgekeurd te krijgen: superdelegates niet laten stemmen tijdens de eerste ronde van de presidentiële primaries. Dat zou een overwinning voor het Sanders kamp zijn, hij heeft campagne gevoerd om de invloed van de superdelegates in te perken.
Er is sowieso tegenstand, één superdelegate stuurde een email met de vraag of ze "paid thugs" zouden inzetten om John Lewis, Maxine Waters etc.. (zwarte congresleden) in elkaar te slaan als ze zouden komen stemmen, met een foto erbij van John Lewis die in de jaren zestig door politie aangepakt werd.

Het niet toestaan van independent candidates kan het "anti-Sanders" kamp misschien overtuigen om de voorstellen goed te keuren.
https://www.washingtonpos(...)m_term=.09758723630e

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 18:53 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Deze foto kwam bij me voorbij van de spox van Merkel:
[ afbeelding ]

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 20:18 schreef Monolith het volgende:

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Toch snap ik die hele heisa om superdelegates niet zo. Wanneer hebben die nou recentelijk tegen de wens van de kiezer in de andere kandidaat genomineerd?

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 20:49 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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Misschien omdat ze een demotiverend effect hebben? Als de voorkeuren van de superdelegates reeds bij het begin van de primaries bekend zijn, en de media die ook meenemen in hun prognoses, dan kan een outsider reeds bij de start zo'n achterstand hebben dat het zinloos lijkt om op hem/haar te stemmen...

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 18:53 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Deze foto kwam bij me voorbij van de spox van Merkel:
[ afbeelding ]

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 19:02 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:
Trump denkt dat hij op het wereldtoneel dingen gedaan krijgt met bully-tactics. Dat werkt misschien in dat louche vastgoedwereldje waar hij actief was, maar op geopolitiek niveau zijn de kaarten toch net even anders geschud.

Laat Trump lekker het woord bij de daad voegen en zijn bondgenoten de toegang tot de Amerikaanse markt ontzeggen. Eens zien hoeveel profijt de VS daarvan heeft.

Bizar dat geen enkele Republikein op de rem durft te trappen. Obama had deze koers moeten volgen. Dan was het rode deel van het congres ontploft.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 18:53 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Deze foto kwam bij me voorbij van de spox van Merkel:
[ afbeelding ]

CNBC's John Harwood: 'I'm Concerned About The President's State Of Mind, He Did Not Look Well'

quote:

John Harwood: "I don't think the up shot of this press conference was about tariffs. I'll be honest as a citizen I'm concerned about the president's state of mind. He did not look well to me in that press conference. He was not speaking logically or rationally. I don't think those things are true, and there's something about his affect which was oddly kind of languid from him. I don't know what it means, but he did not look well to me."

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 21:21 schreef Mani89 het volgende:

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Wat een schitterende foto.

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 22:43 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

CNBC's John Harwood: 'I'm Concerned About The President's State Of Mind, He Did Not Look Well'

[..]

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 22:43 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

CNBC's John Harwood: 'I'm Concerned About The President's State Of Mind, He Did Not Look Well'

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twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 22:57:12 The United States will not allow other countries to impose massive Tariffs and Trade Barriers on its farmers, workers and companies. While sending their product into our country tax free. We have put up with Trade Abuse for many decades — and that is long enough. reageer retweet

twitter:

kylegriffin1 twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 23:05:14 Justin Trudeau just announced that he warned Trump Canada's own tariffs against the U.S. will come into effect on July 1, says Canadians 'will not be pushed around.' https://t.co/okvlaFsUpK reageer retweet

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 23:11 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:
Trudeau says all G-7 members signed joint statement, despite tensions with Trump

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Op zaterdag 9 juni 2018 23:15 schreef Tijger_m het volgende:

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Wat stond er in? "We dont like Mondays!"?

twitter:

CBCPolitics twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 15:27:35 U.S. President Donald Trump showed up late to this morning's working breakfast on empowering women. Justin Trudeau had completed his opening remarks, and the co-chair of the meeting was in the middle of her remarks when Trump arrived. https://t.co/7otrMJU9AM #hw #cdnpoli https://t.co/kbEvLiIK48 reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 10-06-2018 om 01:03:16 Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market! reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 10-06-2018 om 01:03:16 Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market! reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 10-06-2018 om 01:04:54 PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, “US Tariffs were kind of insulting” and he “will not be pushed around.” Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy! reageer retweet

twitter:

_JakubJanda twitterde op vrijdag 08-06-2018 om 15:30:31 I just spoke to a friend in US government."It seems that we are going to war with Canada." reageer retweet

twitter:

SenJohnMcCain twitterde op zondag 10-06-2018 om 02:55:52 To our allies: bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & supportive of alliances based on 70 years of shared values. Americans stand with you, even if our president doesn’t. reageer retweet

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 03:13 schreef Kijkertje het volgende:

twitter:

SenJohnMcCain twitterde op zondag 10-06-2018 om 02:55:52 To our allies: bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & supportive of alliances based on 70 years of shared values. Americans stand with you, even if our president doesn’t. reageer retweet

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 01:19 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Jawel, het is Trump gelukt, na het eerder al aan de stok te hebben gekregen met de paus heeft hij nu ruzie met.. Canada.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 10-06-2018 om 01:03:16 Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market! reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 10-06-2018 om 01:04:54 PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, “US Tariffs were kind of insulting” and he “will not be pushed around.” Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy! reageer retweet

Trump die een ander de les leest over "false statements": .

twitter:

paulkrugman twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 18:39:54 Really, really bad. Trump is throwing a temper tantrum, threatening dire retaliation against our allies for high tariffs THAT DON'T EXIST. You can't reach a deal with someone who demands you stop doing something you aren't doing 1/ https://t.co/xGjrqY9fgk reageer retweet

twitter:

paulkrugman twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 18:41:40 It's sort of the trade equivalent of basing immigration policy on a crime wave by undocumented immigrants that exists only in Trump's fevered racist imagination. But unlike little kids torn from their parents, major economies can and will strike back 2/ reageer retweet

twitter:

paulkrugman twitterde op zaterdag 09-06-2018 om 18:44:58 The intellectual basis for this tantrum, to the extent there is one, is a basic misunderstanding of how VATs work. But Trump will never admit that he was wrong, and was listening to the wrong people. Right now, corporate America should be terrified 3/ reageer retweet

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 01:19 schreef westwoodblvd het volgende:
Jawel, het is Trump gelukt, na het eerder al aan de stok te hebben gekregen met de paus heeft hij nu ruzie met.. Canada.

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 10-06-2018 om 01:03:16 Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market! reageer retweet

twitter:

realDonaldTrump twitterde op zondag 10-06-2018 om 01:04:54 PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, “US Tariffs were kind of insulting” and he “will not be pushed around.” Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy! reageer retweet

Trump die een ander de les leest over "false statements": .

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 07:40 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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En nu zouden de tarieven op staal en aluminium een reactie geweest zijn op de melk heffingen.

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 07:40 schreef crystal_meth het volgende:

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En nu zouden de tarieven op staal en aluminium een reactie geweest zijn op de melk heffingen.

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 08:17 schreef nostra het volgende:

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En had hij dus langs het congres gemoeten.

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 08:37 schreef Szura het volgende:
Zagen jullie die kneus bij Nieuwsuur gisteren nog analyseren dat het eigenlijk best wel meeviel hoe de top was verlopen?

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Trump says he’ll size up Kim Jong Un ‘within the first minute’ of Singapore summit

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“Within the first minute, I’ll know. My touch, my feel — that’s what I do,” Trump said during a news conference in Quebec as he prepared to depart the Group of Seven summit en route to Singapore, where he is scheduled to meet Kim on Tuesday.

“You know the way they say you know if you like somebody in the first five seconds?” he added. “Well, I think very quickly I’ll know whether something good is going to happen. I think I’ll also know whether it will happen fast.”

Trump’s remarks came two days after he said he didn’t need to do a lot of preparation ahead of the historic summit because the interpersonal relationship between the two leaders would be the more important factor. Foreign policy analysts have said that Kim is likely to attempt to get Trump to agree on mostly symbolic steps, including a peace deal to formally end the Korean War, while biding time on significant commitments toward denuclearization.

“I think that he’s going to surprise on the upside, very much on the upside, we’ll see,” Trump said in Quebec of Kim. “But this has never been done, never been tested.”

As he has in recent days, however, the president sought to tamp down expectations, after once having pledged to demand that Kim rapidly turn over his nuclear arsenal. Instead, Trump acknowledged, the summit is unlikely to achieve a major breakthrough, stating that at minimum he would like to “start a dialogue” with Kim.

“I’d like to accomplish more than that,” Trump said. But if not, “at least we’ll have met each other, we’ll have seen each other; hopefully, we’ll have liked each other. We’ll start that process. . . . But I think it will take a little bit of time.”

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Bron: WaPo

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 08:45 schreef Ludachrist het volgende:
Wel fijn dat hij totale denuclearisatie al niet meer als een keiharde eis ziet. Gewoon een beetje kletsen en Trump is al tevreden.

En ideaal om dat zonder voorbereiding te doen. Dan weet de rest van zijn team ook niet wat ze wel en niet kunnen doen, en staan alle neuzen waarschijnlijk niet eens dezelfde kant op over het doel van de missie. Maar wel een fotomomentje en hopelijk een mooi cadeau van Kim, dus dat is waardevol genoeg.

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 09:58 schreef Doublepain het volgende:
Morgen wordt er geschiedenis geschreven Dat ik dit mag meemaken, toch prachtig ofniet?

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:03 schreef Boze_Appel het volgende:

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Je verwacht dat er daadwerkelijk iets uit gaat komen behalve een foto-op?

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:06 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:
Morgen? Wat is er morgen dan? De summit/photo-op was de 12e toch?

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:17 schreef Doublepain het volgende:

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Alleen al het feit dat de leider van amerika en NK in een omtrek van 1 km zullen zijn is al bijzonder zat

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:18 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Het gegeven is inderdaad bijzonder, al valt het direct een prestatie van Trump te noemen. Een uitnodiging accepteren kan iedereen.

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:17 schreef Doublepain het volgende:

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Maandagmifdag zal de eerste gesprekken plaatsvinden van wat ik las

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:18 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Het gegeven is inderdaad bijzonder, al valt het direct een prestatie van Trump te noemen. Een uitnodiging accepteren kan iedereen.

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:19 schreef ExtraWaskracht het volgende:

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Oh, ok. Ik ben benieuwd.

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:21 schreef Doublepain het volgende:
Jezus wat een negativiteit

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:21 schreef Doublepain het volgende:

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Jezus wat een negativiteit

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:28 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Is er dan reden voor optimisme? Iets meegekregen van Trumps optreden tijdens de G7? Die man spoort niet.

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:26 schreef Ringo het volgende:

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Over Trump kun je niet negatief genoeg zijn.

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Op zondag 10 juni 2018 10:17 schreef Ringo het volgende:
Die foto gaat er glorieus komen, en Trump beleeft zijn Mr Gorbachev Moment (“tear down this wall”). Mission accomplished.