Monday, February 20, 2017 6:17:42 PM
Trump is working hard to Make China Great Again
Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and President Trump.
February 16, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2017/02/16/64e31d98-f48e-11e6-b9c9-e83fce42fb61_story.html [with comments]
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Maddow: What it looks like when a president fails
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/16/17
Rachel Maddow reviews the series of failures Donald Trump has suffered since taking office, from withdrawn nominees to the resignation of NSA Mike Flynn, to the collapse of his only significant initiative, his executive order travel ban. Duration: 20:13
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/what-it-looks-like-when-a-president-fails-879259715698 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkO8fXEie9U [with comments] [to have this one, included in the post to which this is a reply, here with its official MSNBC YouTube]
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Report: Flynn may have committed felony re: Russia contact
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/16/17
The Washington Post reports Michael Flynn may have lied to the FBI about his discussions with Russia about sanctions, but Trump is still focused on attacking the media and leakers. Ari Melber speaks with Naveed Jamali, Jack Rice, and Rick Wilson. Duration: 13:14
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/report-flynn-may-have-committed-felony-re-russia-contact-879308355709 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtW-pSTYTEA [with comments] [to have this one, included in the post to which this is a reply, here with its official MSNBC YouTube]
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Trump repeatedly talks about himself at marathon news conference
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
2/16/17
Talking about his negotiating skills, his ratings draw, his poll numbers & more, Pres. Trump talked a lot about himself at Thursday's news conference. MSNBC's Brian Williams reacts with his panel[, including Malcolm Nance]. Duration: 4:09
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/trump-repeatedly-talks-about-himself-at-marathon-news-conference-879330883909 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV481wx7lng [with comments] [to have this one, included in the post to which this is a reply, here with its official MSNBC YouTube]
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President Trump's Bats**t Press Conference: The Daily Show
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWhs_6x42TyRM4Wstoq8HA , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWhs_6x42TyRM4Wstoq8HA/videos ]
During a no-holds-barred press conference, President Trump lashes out at the media, pushes lies about his Electoral College victory and boasts that he's not anti-Semitic.
[originally aired February 16, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSx-N9ayCvU [with (over 5,000) comments]
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Donald Trump and the Culture of Lying
This week, Donald Trump devoted a White House press conference to accusing his perceived enemies of spreading falsehoods. Sissela Bok, the author of a seminal book on political lying, joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss Trump’s continued assaults on the truth.
February 17, 2017
http://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/donald-trump-and-the-culture-of-lying [ http://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/donald-trump-and-the-culture-of-lying?mbid=gnep&intcid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true ] [with embedded audio]
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Full Show - The Death Of The FakeStream Media Is Here - 02/17/2017
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvsye7V9psc-APX6wV1twLg / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos ]
On this Friday, Feb. 17th 2017 edition of the Alex Jones Show, we look into the rise of the surveillance state in opposition to President Trump as the technocrats roll out mass spying to control everything. Author David Horowitz explains the reasoning behind some of the actions Trump has taken which the media has ignored. And social commentator Mark Dice explains the mass brainwashing the elites do to segments of the population to keep them in check.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=darNeeV9iq4 [with comments] [a must-watch]
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President Trump's full speech at Boeing
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by CNN [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCupvZG-5ko_eiXAupbDfxWw / http://www.youtube.com/user/CNN , http://www.youtube.com/user/CNN/videos ]
Once a target of President Trump's Twitter ire, Boeing has risen to significant influence inside the White House. Trump is the first sitting president to visit Boeing's fast-expanding campus in South Carolina.
Remarks by President Trump at Unveiling of Boeing 787 Dreamliner Aircraft
February 17, 2017
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/17/remarks-president-trump-unveiling-boeing-787-dreamliner-aircraft [official transcript]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAgICPAar14 [with comments] [official White House upload at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmrYTIsL81Q (with comments)]
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The economic reality behind the Boeing plane Trump showed off
Workers walk outside the Boeing South Carolina Plant on Wednesday.
February 17, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/17/the-economic-reality-behind-the-boeing-plane-trump-showed-off/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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Exclusive: Trump presser convinced NSC candidate Harward to decline Trump offer
All In with Chris Hayes
2/17/17
Robert Harward, the widely respected retired vice admiral who declined the Trump administration's offer, did so, according to a source, after the White House could not satisfy his conditions and after watching President Trump's press conference yesterday. Duration: 2:04
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/exclusive-trump-presser-convinced-nsc-candidate-harward-to-decline-879994947802
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Rep. Castro: Trump admin. coming for undocumented immigrants
All In with Chris Hayes
2/17/17
After meeting with President Trump's acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Rep. Joaquin Castro concludes the president is serious about rounding up and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Duration: 4:34
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/rep-castro-trump-admin-coming-for-undocumented-immigrants-880002627838
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Scott Pruitt won't get a warm welcome at EPA
All In with Chris Hayes
2/17/17
An enemy of the Environmental Protection Agency has been confirmed as its leader. And the staff is revolting. Duration: 2:51
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/scott-pruitt-won-t-get-a-warm-welcome-at-epa-880004163759
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Trump hits new low as war with press moves beyond just talk
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/17/17
Rachel Maddow looks at the ways in which Donald Trump is trying to delegitimize, manipulate, and even eliminate the free press in the United States. Duration: 19:12
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-hits-new-low-as-war-with-press-moves-beyond-just-talk-880046659880
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JFK on the importance of the press to a free society
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/17/17
Rachel Maddow shares video of President John F. Kennedy in 1962, talking about the value of a free press despite disagreeing with its recent treatment of him after the Bay of Pigs invasion. Duration: 1:58
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/jfk-on-the-importance-of-the-press-to-a-free-society-880072259938
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Judge's e-mail order could move Pruitt from frying pan to fire
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/17/17
Rachel Maddow reports on the confirmation of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA despite the best efforts of environmentalists, but notes that in just a few days, thousands of pages of Pruitt e-mails will be release on a judge's order that could complicate the start of his tenure. Duration: 4:51
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/pruitt-e-mails-could-mean-frying-pan-to-fire-880049219971
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American voters call Congress members to account with town halls
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/17/17
Tara Burnette, a South Carolina voter, talks with Rachel Maddow about her petition drive to get her senators to hold a town hall to hear the concerns of their constituents. Duration: 9:33
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/american-voters-call-congress-members-to-account-with-town-halls-880056899597
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Campaigner-in-Chief Trump: The election is over – time to govern
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/17/17
President Trump hits the road this weekend with a rally in in Florida and he's already talking up "massive crowds." MSNBC's Ari Melber looks at whether campaign-mode Donald Trump will be able to do the hard work of governing. Duration: 4:54
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/campaigner-in-chief-trump-the-election-is-over-time-to-govern-880053827540
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Donald Trump loses another top candidate to replace Flynn
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/17/17
Gen. David Petraeus is the second candidate to find the situation of being Donald Trump's National Security Adviser untenable. Ari Melber talks to David Rothkopf and Rick Stengel about dysfunction in the Trump Administration and its consequences. Duration: 8:21
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/donald-trump-loses-another-top-candidate-to-replace-flynn-880051779812
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Trump fixates on Clinton, declares media 'the enemy'
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/17/17
Ari Melber breaks down why Donald Trump couldn’t stop talking about Hillary Clinton at his press conference and why he’s escalating his attacks on the media. Duration: 2:33
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/trump-fixates-on-clinton-declares-media-880054851906
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Inside Trump's Nixonian strategy to make the media the enemy
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/17/17
In 1972, President Nixon said, "the press is the enemy," in a phone call with Henry Kissinger. Trump tweeted Friday the media is "the enemy of the American people!" Ari Melber unpacks this declaration with Nancy Giles, Mark Thompson and Erin Gloria Ryan. Duration: 5:07
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/inside-trump-s-nixonian-strategy-to-make-the-media-the-enemy-880058435528
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Censorship In Trump Era
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by Mike Malloy [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpU4j-LN_aibXA1gONvWzxw / http://www.youtube.com/user/hschulein , http://www.youtube.com/user/hschulein/videos ]
This is how the muzzling starts: not with a boot on your neck, but with the fear of one that runs so deep that you muzzle yourself.
Maybe it’s the story you decide against doing because it’s liable to provoke a press-bullying president to put the power of his office behind his attempt to destroy your reputation by falsely calling your journalism “fake.”
Maybe it’s the line you hold back from your script or your article because it could trigger a federal leak investigation into you and your sources (so, yeah, jail).
Or, maybe it’s the commentary you spike because you’re a publicly supported news channel and you worry it will cost your station its federal financing.
Full editorial: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/media/trump-era-media-censorship.html
[originally aired February 17, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Xpr1luLvM [with comments]
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Trump Defends Himself By Citing Rush Limbaugh
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by Mike Malloy
President Donald Trump deemed his Thursday press conference a success because conservative right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh complimented his performance. The commander in chief took to Twitter Friday to dispel the prevailing narrative in the media — that the conference was abnormal, even unhinged.
Limbaugh provided his listeners a live listen to the Thursday presser, offering intermittent commentary when ever he felt necessary. Unlike most political commentators, Limbaugh lauded the president’s attacks on the press. He said that Trump was “taking these people to school.”
Full story: http://www.salon.com/2017/02/17/donald-trump-defends-his-press-conference-by-citing-a-positive-review-from-rush-limbaugh/
[originally aired February 17, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CwT3VxObuQ [with comments]
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Let´s Party With The Trumps
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by Mike Malloy
President Donald Trump may have been elected as the nominee of a party that prides itself on fiscal conservatism, but he and his family are preparing to blow taxpayers out of the water as they continue with their posh lifestyle.
From the president’s frequent trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and his sons’ upcoming trip to the United Arab Emirates to open a golf course in Dubai to the First Lady’s decision to reside at Trump Tower in New York City, the lifestyle choices of Trump and family are running up taxpayers’ tab in an unprecedented manner.
Full story: http://www.salon.com/2017/02/17/president-trumps-family-is-living-large-and-american-taxpayers-are-paying-for-it/
[originally aired February 17, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCkSFf9g4Wo [with comments]
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The Trump Circus | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by Real Time with Bill Maher [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy6kyFxaMqGtpE3pQTflK8A / http://www.youtube.com/user/RealTime , http://www.youtube.com/user/RealTime/videos ]
Bill reacts to another chaotic week for the White House in his Real Time monologue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7OH3ae7Wtg [with comments]
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Milo Yiannopoulos Interview | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by Real Time with Bill Maher
The controversial senior editor of Brietbart News and author of the upcoming book, "Dangerous," joins Bill Maher to discuss free speech and his reputation as an internet troll.
Bill Maher Lets ‘Impish Brit’ Milo Yiannopoulos Off Easy
“Stop taking the bait,” Maher scolds liberals.
02/18/2017 Updated February 18, 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yiannopoulos-maher-real-time_us_58a7d013e4b037d17d2820b1 [with this YouTube embedded]
Bill Maher lets Milo Yiannopoulos attack female comedians unchecked on HBO’s ‘Real Time’
February 18, 2017
If Milo Yiannopoulos hoped that Bill Maher and HBO would provide him a new platform to renew attacks on familiar targets, his wish was granted.
[...]
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/tv/ct-bill-maher-milo-yiannopoulos-real-time-20170218-story.html [with comments]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lImHh7fqrQo [with (over 13,000) comments]
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New Rule: The Magic R | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by Real Time with Bill Maher
In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher wonders why Republicans have "Patriotic Immunity" and disputes the notion that they inherently love America more than Democrats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFWv42U1l4A [with comments]
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MILO Confronts the Panel | Overtime with Bill Maher (HBO)
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by Real Time with Bill Maher
Bill and his Overtime panelists – Milo Yiannopoulos, Larry Wilmore, Malcolm Nance and Fmr. Rep. Jack Kingston – answer viewer questions after the show.
Here’s A Fact-Check On Milo Yiannopoulos’ Incendiary Claims About Trans People
In short: He’s wrong, wrong, wrong. Absolutely wrong.
02/18/2017 Updated February 18, 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/milo-yiannopoulos-transgender-people-truth_us_58a84dcae4b07602ad551487?jdsd5c6w4qp8pvi [with this YouTube embedded]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cDLflyQ8TA [with (over 36,000) comments]
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Candidate Donald Trump Attacks President Donald Trump
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig/videos ]
Wise words from our President, or a hypocritical blast from the past?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxhf0iLXm70 [with comments]
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Stephen Apologizes On Behalf Of All Steves: Bannon, Miller, Mnuchin
Published on Feb 18, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
It was the best of Steves, it was the worst of Steves.
[originally aired February 17, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEea_wNQUM8 [with comments]
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Moby Isn't A Credible Source, But Neither Is Kellyanne Conway
Published on Feb 18, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
With Moby and Tom Arnold threatening to share juicy intelligence on our President, The Late Show went digging for more insider information from random celebrities.
[originally aired February 17, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyfFZLQRWcw [with comments]
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Red Alert! Total Martial Law Takeover in America
Published on Feb 18, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
The intelligence community, the mainstream media and the corrupt DC establishment are waging a coup against President Donald Trump attempting to sabotage the first days of his presidency.
Alex Jones explains the engineered takedown of society and ties it in with previous military training targeting the American people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0upQBMglYE [with comments]
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Trump called the news media an ‘enemy of the American People.’ Here’s a history of the term.
By Amanda Erickson
February 18, 2017
President Trump is not known for his subtlety. But even by this standard, his tweet Friday night was extreme. Trump called the news media “the enemy of the American People.”
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
3:48 PM - 17 Feb 2017
[ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832708293516632065 (with {over 75,000} comments)]
The New York Times, which among others was called out specifically, labeled it [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html ] “a striking escalation” from a leader who “routinely castigates journalists.”
Gabriel Sherman, national affairs editor at New York magazine, described it [ http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39015559 ] as “full-on dictator speak.”
They're not being pedantic.
Enemy of the people is a phrase “typically used by leaders to refer to hostile foreign governments or subversive organizations,” the New York Times wrote. “It also echoed the language of autocrats who seek to minimize dissent.”
Where did the expression come from? In its original incarnation, enemy of the people wasn't code for “enemy of my regime.” In one of its earliest uses, the phrase was used to describe a leader himself — Nero. The Roman ruler was [ http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/nero ] a disastrous emperor, and a careless one to boot. As his country fell into ruin, strained by construction costs and a massive devaluation of the imperial currency, Nero vacationed in Greece. He enjoyed musical performances and theater. He took a chariot to some Olympic Games. He considered whether to build a canal across the Isthmus of Corinth.
When he got back home, the political class was angry. And he didn't do himself any favors by ignoring a revolt in Gaul. The Senate grew so infuriated that they declared Nero an enemy of the people and drew up plans for his arrest and execution. Nero took his own life after a failed attempt to flee.
The term fell out of fashion among the political class, though it popped up in literature and art. Most famously, Henrik Ibsen wrote an 1882 play called “An Enemy of the People.” It features a doctor who's almost run out of town because of an article he's written bashing the government. The idea came to Ibsen after his own brush with infamy — his play “Ghosts” challenged the hypocrisy of Victorian morality, and was deemed indecent.
Adolf Hitler was allegedly an Ibsen fan. (Some historians say they believe that he read the plays as prophecy of the Third Reich.) He reportedly read “An Enemy of the People” closely, even weaving [ http://njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/101206/ltAssertingHitlers.html ] some key lines into speeches. His administration deployed this rhetoric to describe Hitler's main enemy: the Jews. “Each Jew is a sworn enemy of the German people,” Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in 1941 [ http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb1.htm ]. “... If someone wears the Jewish star, he is an enemy of the people. Anyone who deals with him is the same as a Jew and must be treated accordingly. He earns the contempt of the entire people, for he is a craven coward who leaves them in the lurch to stand by the enemy.”
Around the same time, leaders of the Soviet Union were transforming enemy of the people into a major tool for oppression and silencing enemies. Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Bolsheviks, used “the peoples' enemies” as a label to stigmatize anyone who didn't fall into line when the revolution happened. Enemies of the people were ostracized and even their friends were under suspicion.
For foes of Joseph Stalin, being branded an enemy of the people was a death sentence. The Soviet leader deployed that language against politicians and artists he didn't like. Once branded, the accused were sent to labor camps or killed. Best case? An enemy would be denied education and employment. “It is one of the most controversial phrases in Soviet history,” Mitchell Orenstein, professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania, told Voice of America [ http://www.voanews.com/a/donald-trump-attack-on-media-enemy-of-people-historic-echoes/3729946.html ].
“For both Lenin and Stalin, journalists and intellectuals who didn't share their point of view were among the most hated enemies,” University of Washington professor Serhiy Yekelchyk told VOA. “In attacking them, both appealed to the people.”
Chinese dictator Mao Zedong deployed the phrase against people critical of his policies and dictates. The leader, who created a famine that killed 36 million Chinese, was obsessed with identifying and rooting out his enemies. As Zhengyuan Fu explained in “Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics [ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521442281 ]”, every member of Chinese society, even children, were called on to root out the landlords, teachers, intellectuals and artists who opposed Mao. He wrote [ https://books.google.com/books?id=uGZIziWmlmsC&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=ENEMY+OF+THE+PEOPLE+CCP&source=bl&ots=iTOR5gmBRr&sig=o0SCniXFn_pUUrUZbLGtGJuN-fc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFrNmXjpjSAhXIYyYKHYpCBzMQ6AEIPTAF#v=onepage&q=ENEMY%20OF%20THE%20PEOPLE%20CCP&f=false ]:
Members of society are divided into two major categories: the “people” and the “class enemy.” People describes the in-group, within which are workers, poor and lower-middle-class peasants, soldiers and cadres. The “class enemies of the people” refers to the out group … a highly arbitrarily assigned group whose members are defined by the party state.
While the “people” are described in terms of “warmth, friendliness, candor, courage, and everything that is good,” the class enemies are depicted as “cruel, cunning, morally degrading, always scheming, and evil,” Fu writes. In the enemies camp [ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/feb/24/cultural-revolution-portraits-xu-weixin ] were who often were imprisoned.
Today, enemy of the people is still deployed. But mostly, you hear it from dictators. (Heads of former Soviet countries are particularly fond [ http://www.dw.com/en/belarus-declares-rammstein-a-public-enemy/a-5277932 ] of the construction. Old dog, new tricks, etc.) It's never before been uttered by the leader of the free world. One more way in which Trump's presidency truly is unprecedented in U.S. history.
Eliot A Cohen
@EliotACohen
The language of an aspiring tyrant. And no, not a joke, and not an exaggeration, and not a thought spasm from a disordered intellect.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832708293516632065 ...
4:06 PM - 17 Feb 2017
[ https://twitter.com/EliotACohen/status/832712876318076934 (with comments)]
© 2017 The Washington Post (emphasis in original)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/18/trump-called-the-news-media-an-enemy-of-the-american-people-heres-a-history-of-the-term/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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‘That’s how dictators get started’: McCain criticizes Trump for calling media ‘the enemy’
February 18, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/18/thats-how-dictators-get-started-mccain-criticizes-trump-for-calling-media-the-enemy/ [with embedded videos, and comments]
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Donald Trump and the Enemies of the American People
President Trump seems determined to exploit the public’s mistrust of the media to the hilt, if only to distract his base from the disappointments that are sure to come.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JABIN BOTSFORD / THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY
By David Remnick
February 18, 2017
When the leaders of the Bolshevik movement - Lenin, Stalin, and the rest - used the term vrag naroda, an “enemy of the people,” it was an ominous epithet that encompassed a range of “wreckers” and “socially dangerous elements.” Enemies included clergy, intellectuals, monarchists, Trotskyists, “rootless cosmopolitans,” and well-to-do farmers. To be branded an enemy of the people was to face nearly inevitable doom; such a fate was soon followed by a knock on the door in the middle of the night, a prison cell, the Gulag, an icy ditch - a variety of dismal ends. To be called an “enemy of the people” did not mean you had to hold oppositional thoughts or commit oppositional acts; it only meant that the dictator had included you in his grand scheme to insure the compliance of the population.
Robespierre, one of the architects of the Jacobin Reign of Terror, set out to “horrify” the opposition, and his instruments were the epithet, righteousness, and the blade. “The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation,” he said. “It owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death.”
In 1917, the same year as the Bolshevik seizure of power, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin published an essay in Pravda called “Enemies of the People,” in which he lionized the Jacobin Terror as “instructive.” His party, “the Jacobins of the twentieth century,” he wrote, should follow suit, if not with the guillotine then with mass arrests of “the financial magnates and bigwigs.” Once in power, Lenin was far more brutal than the revolutionary French. He built the first outposts of the gulag archipelago. Stalin, Lenin’s energetic successor, expanded the system from western Russia to the Sea of Okhotsk, ten time zones to the east.
Now Donald Trump, the elected President of the oldest democracy on earth, a real-estate brander and reality-TV star, has taken not to Pravda but to his own preferred instrument of autocratic pronouncement - the tweet - to declare the media “the enemy of the American People [ https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/832708293516632065 ].” Here is the declaration in full:
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
3:48 PM - 17 Feb 2017
[ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832708293516632065 (with {over 75,000} comments)]
For months, cool, responsible heads have been counselling hot, impulsive heads to avoid overreacting to Trump. We must give him a chance. We must not in all our alarm compare him to all the tin-pot dictators and bloody authoritarians who have disgraced history. The Oval Office - its realities and traditions - will temper his rages. His aides, his son-in-law, and his daughter will “soften” his impulsivity. Besides, he doesn’t really mean all he says. Even as Trump was signing one chilling executive order after another - all with the cool counsel of Steve Bannon, late of Breitbart - we were assured that everything was fine. He was simply fulfilling the agenda of his campaign. Calm down. Don’t react to every tweet. Don’t take the bait.
Then came his press conference, last week, his first solo press conference in office, and it was epochal. Ostensibly an occasion to announce a replacement appointment to the Department of Labor after the first had to step aside, Trump instead took it upon himself to denounce repeatedly and at length the sinful, dishonest press and the “very fake news” it produces. It was unforgettable. With all his nastiness, his self-admiring interruptions and commands (“Sit down! Sit down!”) Trump resembled an oversauced guy at a bar who was facing three likely options in the near term: a) take a swing at someone, b) get clocked by someone else, or c) pass out and wake up on a hard, alien cot.
But the venue was not a bar. It was the White House, and this was hardly a joke. What Trump resembled at the lectern was an old-fashioned autocrat wielding a very familiar rhetorical strategy.
Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, makes the point that autocrats from Chavez to Erdogan, Sisi to Mugabe, all follow a general pattern. They attack and threaten the press with deliberate and ominous intensity; the press, in turn, adopts a more oppositional tone and role. “And then that paves the way for the autocrat’s next move,” Simon told me. “Popular support for the media dwindles and the leader starts instituting restrictions. It’s an old strategy.” Simon pointed to Trump’s lack of originality, recalling that both Nestor Kirchner, of Argentina, and Tabare Ramon Vazquez, of Uruguay, referred to the press as the “unelected political opposition.” And, as Simon has written [ http://www.cjr.org/opinion/trump-chavez-media.php ], it was the late Hugo Chavez who first mastered Twitter as a way of bypassing the media and providing his supporters with alternative facts.
Trump, as indulgent parents say of an indolent child, is “not a big reader.” He may not hear every historical echo in his “enemy of the American people” tweet. What he does know, however, is that the American trust in “the media” - that generalized term that stretches from the Times to NewsMax - is miserably low. He is determined to exploit that to the hilt, if only to distract his base from the disappointments that are sure to come. On Saturday evening, he held a rally in Melbourne, Florida, and doubled down on the familiar theme: putting himself in the same league as Lincoln and Jefferson, he told the crowd, “Many of our greatest Presidents fought with the media and called them out.” The agenda is always to divide. “They have their own agenda, and their agenda is not your agenda,” he said.
At the same time, there are distinct signs that Trump is losing ground among members of the conservative media who had initially cut him some slack, not least because they felt the liberal media had been besotted by Barack Obama. The attacks on the legitimacy of the courts, on the intentions of the intelligence agencies, and on the patriotism of the press have become too evident, too repulsive to be discounted as mere sideshow. Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman from Florida and the co-host of “Morning Joe,” tweeted [ https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/832724853346033666 ] a telling call to the right on Friday: “Conservatives, feel free to speak up for the Constitution anytime the mood strikes. It is time.”
It’s true that Trump has not arrested any journalists [yet]. He has not shuttered any newspapers or television stations or Web sites [yet]. I went to work at The New Yorker on Friday and helped close a new issue that includes a deeply reported and tough-minded Letter from Washington, by Nicholas Schmidle, about the Michael Flynn affair [ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/michael-flynn-general-chaos ], as well as a Comment by George Packer that notes that Trump, at his press conference, “behaved like the unhinged leader of an unstable and barely democratic republic.” Yes, there was a little trouble with a Xerox machine, but no one at the office counted it a threat to the First Amendment. In the meantime, the New York Times and the Washington Post are engaged in a ferociously competitive battle to cover this new Administration that has bolstered the forces of fact and truth, and no one has shut off their computers or phones [yet], either. At CNN, Jeff Zucker, the network president, has gotten telephone calls of bitter complaint from Jared Kushner about the coverage of his father-in-law, but if the performance of Jake Tapper and others there is any indication, the attempt to intimidate CNN has not [yet] deflated any spirits. The journalists at Mother Jones, MSNBC, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, NPR, The National Review, the Marshall Project, ProPublica, and many other outlets are [still, so far, one fucking month in] doing their work with determination and seriousness.
In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, as in every genuinely authoritarian state, there are no “enemies” - or, at least, none with the capacity to challenge power. Calling on all the repressive means available in such a state - compliant courts and legislatures; the elimination of political competition; comprehensive censorship of television - soaring popularity ratings are achieved. President Trump may wish for such means, just as he wishes for such popularity. For all the chaos and resulting gloom these past weeks, it has been heartening to see so many “enemies of the American people” - protesters, judges, journalists, citizens of all kinds, even some [. . .] members of Congress - [still, for now, one fucking month in] do their work despite Presidential denunciation, not necessarily as partisans of one party or another but as adherents to a Constitution.
© 2017 Condé Nast
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-and-the-enemies-of-the-american-people
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LIVE: Trump Calls The News Media "Enemy Of The American People"
Streamed live on Feb 18, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
Alex Jones breaks down the latest Trump news, the strength of the US Economy, and MSM attacks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWuE6Tg_2Gw [with comments]
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In Trump’s Volleys, Echoes of Alex Jones’s Conspiracy Theories
Alex Jones on Friday before hosting his radio show in Austin, Tex. His platforms have gotten record traffic in the Trump era.
Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
By Jim Rutenberg
FEB. 19, 2017
Way back on Friday, President Trump declared that several news organizations — ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, The New York Times — were “the enemy of the American people.” You know who’s not the enemy, in his book?
Alex Jones.
Mr. Jones, in case you aren’t aware, is the conspiracy-theorizing, flame-throwing nationalistic radio and internet star who’s best known for suggesting that Sept. 11 was an inside job [ http://www.infowars.com/flashback-alex-jones-said-911-inside-job-on-the-day-it-happened/ ], that the Sandy Hook school shooting was “completely fake [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_NQYKzBvPQ (next below; with comments)]”
Mr. Jones, 43, has been around for a while. Like every media outfit in the Trump era, his platforms have gotten record traffic and, he told me last week, seen increases in revenue, with ads for water purification systems and for supplements to enhance “brain force” and virility.
But he is apparently taking on a new role as occasional information source and validator for the president of the United States, with whom, Mr. Jones says, he sometimes speaks on the phone.
Millions of listeners and viewers tune in to Mr. Jones on his websites (Infowars chief among them), on Facebook and through old-fashioned radio, and their loyalty partly explains how Mr. Trump maintains a hard-core faithful who don’t believe a word they read about him in a newspaper like this one.
His audience, Mr. Jones told me, is “the teeth of the Trump organization on the ground — the information-warfare, organic internal resistance.” Sure enough, on Saturday the journalist McKay Coppins of The Atlantic tweeted from Florida, “Spotted at Trump rally: More than one InfoWars t-shirt.”
McKay Coppins
@mckaycoppins
Spotted at Trump rally: More than one InfoWars t-shirt
4:25 PM - 18 Feb 2017
[ https://twitter.com/mckaycoppins/status/833079961514803200 (with comments)]
Where Mr. Jones’s content fits in Mr. Trump’s broad media diet isn’t clear. White House officials declined to talk about it in detail. (Hey, Mr. President, I’m trying.) But as Mr. Trump pushes full steam ahead on his effort to delegitimize American journalism, he is lending credence to a number of out-there Jonesisms, adding yet another “pinch yourself, this is happening” element to our national journey into the upside-down.
You can look no further than Mr. Trump’s description of the press as “the enemy of the American people” on Friday, which was reminiscent of Mr. Jones’s use of the same phrase in 2015, as Mr. Jones noted on Sunday [ https://twitter.com/RealAlexJones/status/833328212293861376 ] on Twitter.
Alex Jones
@RealAlexJones
Poweful! @realDonaldTrump calls out the true enemy in this video report.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BWuE6Tg_2Gw ;[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWuE6Tg_2Gw , the YouTube just above, preceding this article]
… and I coin it 2015.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohoh1vtxqVo [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohoh1vtxqVo , next below; with comments] ...
[ https://twitter.com/RealAlexJones/status/833328212293861376 (with comments)]
Two weeks ago, Mr. Trump’s quickly debunked allegation [ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/06/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrong-media-not-reporting-terrorism-a/ ] that the news media covered up terrorism by Islamic extremists echoed reports on Infowars, including one [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/06/trumps-suggestion-that-the-media-is-ignoring-terrorist-attacks-has-a-familiar-source-infowars/ ] headline that blared: “Scandal: Mass Media Covers Up Terrorism to Protect Islam.”
Brandt
@UrbanAchievr
"Where does he get this stuff?"
2:02 PM - 6 Feb 2017 - Manhattan, NY
[ https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/828695323312812033 ]
Before that, there was Mr. Trump’s false claim that millions of unauthorized immigrants voted illegally [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/us/politics/donald-trump-congress-democrats.html ] for Hillary Clinton, which Infowars had asserted in November [ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/nov/18/blog-posting/no-3-million-undocumented-immigrants-did-not-vote-/ ] and then repeated, giving “oxygen to the lies,” as CNN put it [ http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/26/media/infowars-alex-jones-donald-trump/ ] then. Then again, others in the right-leaning internet ecosystem had forwarded the illegal voting report, too.
Mr. Jones’s influence could be seen more directly last spring when Mr. Trump told a crowd in California that “there is no drought [ http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/06/09/donald-trump-dought-california-fact-check-jake-tapper-origwx-fy.cnn/video/playlists/jake-tapper-factcheck-org/ ]” — oh, yes, there was [ https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/us/california-drought-tests-history-of-endless-growth.html ] — and suggested that reports of one were part of a plot to protect a “three-inch fish.” It was very similar to reports in Infowars suggesting the drought [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgFPKHlOPJY (next below; with comments)]
Mr. Jones demurred when it came to his influence on Mr. Trump, which he said the “MSM” (mainstream media) overstated to undermine the president. “MSM tries to say Alex Jones is an eight-headed kook with all these warts and Trump’s copying everything he says,” Mr. Jones told me. “It’s just not true.”
For instance, he said, when he urged Mr. Trump to address illegal voting allegations during one phone conversation, “he said, ‘I already know, I’m making a speech in two days.’” (Mr. Trump, he said, “was an Infowarrior before I was born.”)
Mr. Jones said that conversation had taken place earlier in the campaign, not on the phone call immediately after the election that my colleague Maggie Haberman reported on [ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/us/politics/alex-jones-trump-call.html ], in which Mr. Jones said the president had thanked him for his support. Mr. Jones told me that he had spoken with Mr. Trump since that call, though an aide to the president, communicating on the condition of anonymity, played down the frequency of their contact.
Either way, Mr. Jones is hoping his organization will qualify for a coveted White House press credential. He says it’s not something he’s pining for or needs, but he doesn’t see why Infowars shouldn’t get one when “Trump’s calling CNN fake.”
The White House said it had yet to receive a proper application from Infowars and therefore could not comment on whether it would get one. Mr. Jones said the delay might be related to a bureaucratic snag. “They say it’s going to get rectified,” he said.
One ally in his corner is Roger Stone, the longtime Republican operative and informal adviser to Mr. Trump, whose matchmaking brought them together and led to the 2015 Infowars interview during which Mr. Trump told Mr. Jones that “you have an amazing reputation [ http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-praises-9-11-truther-alex-jones/ ].”
Mr. Stone said in an interview, “They are reaching millions of people, and these people are steadfast and loyal Trump supporters.”
Two of the major internet tracking companies, Quantcast and Alexa, reported that in January Infowars had an average of around eight million (Quantcast) or 8.7 million (Alexa) global visitors, who viewed its pages nearly 50 million times. As of Sunday Quantcast ranked [ https://www.quantcast.com/top-sites/US/4 ] its traffic above that of the fact-checking site Politifact.com [ http://www.politifact.com/ ].
Those numbers miss the audiences for his national radio show and his team’s videos on YouTube, where the biggest of his 18 channels has 1.2 billion views [ https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/about ], and on Facebook, where they draw many millions of views. (One, by his editor at large, Paul Joseph Watson, lists 18.1 million views.)
Mr. Jones’s growth has astounded those who have followed a progression that began on cable access in Austin, Tex., in the early 1990s, moved to radio and then to the bigger national footprint he began building online.
“When I was first dealing with Alex, he had a staff of three people and was broadcasting his apocalyptic messages from” a spare bedroom “with choo-choo wallpaper,” said the author Jon Ronson [ http://www.jonronson.com/ ], who wrote about Mr. Jones in his 2002 book, “Them [ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/books/beyond-the-fringe.html ],” and revisited him in “The Elephant in the Room [ https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Room-Journey-Campaign-Alt-Right-ebook/dp/B01LXOO7UQ ]” last year. “In the summer, he had a staff of between 50 and 75 people in this huge industrial space as big as a mainstream TV network.”
Mr. Jones says it’s hardly CNN-size (and, for the record, he says, he believes Sandy Hook may have happened).
Last week, Mr. Jones’s conspiracy workshop was busy making the case that the leaks that forced Michael T. Flynn’s resignation as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser were part of a “counter coup [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRMa9-Rgutk (the Ron Gibson upload of the full February 14, 2017 Alex Jones Show; the original Alex Jones upload of same included in the post to which this is a reply)]” by what he has called “criminal, corporate elements inside the C.I.A.” working “to basically overthrow Trump.”
It’s the sort of message that resonates with his segment of Trump voters because, Mr. Jones said, “the public doesn’t have any trust in the system.”
“They believe the social contract is broken,” he continued, “and they’re able to interact with the new diverse pantheon of the internet-based media.” In other words, with people like him.
It makes you wonder: If Watergate had broken in this media environment, would President Richard Nixon have had to resign? Would enough people have believed it?
I put the question to Bob Woodward, who broke that scandal for The Washington Post with Carl Bernstein. He said it would have turned out the same. “The evidence was so strong, because of the tapes — these things turn on the facts,” he said. “It would be: Can you get information and sources and testimony from witnesses and documents that show what happened.”
Given that no alternative reality was strong enough to save Mr. Flynn’s job, for instance, I’d have to agree. That said, if you live in Mr. Jones’s world, Mr. Flynn’s ouster would seem to be the height of injustice, delivered by the news media on behalf of those “criminal, corporate elements inside the C.I.A.” So, yes, you would see the press as the enemy.
© 2017 The New York Times Company (emphasis in original)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/media/alex-jones-conspiracy-theories-donald-trump.html
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Chaos in the White House: 'There's never been anything like this'
After the fastest, most furious week yet for the Trump administration, America’s elder statesmen say they have never seen such turmoil or ineptitude
18 February 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/18/trump-administration-chaos-white-house [with embedded videos]
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Michael Flynn, General Chaos
“I like to think that I helped get Donald Trump elected President,” Flynn said. “Maybe I helped a little, maybe a lot.”
What the removal of Flynn as the national-security adviser reveals about Donald Trump’s White House.
February 27, 2017 Issue
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/michael-flynn-general-chaos [ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/michael-flynn-general-chaos?mbid=gnep&intcid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true ]
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NSC Official Fired After Reportedly Criticizing Trump, Aides
Craig Deare.
Craig Deare had been selected for role by Michael Flynn
Expected to return to post at National Defense University
February 18, 2017 Updated February 18, 2017
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-18/nsc-official-fired-after-reportedly-criticizing-trump-top-aides
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Trump, an Outsider Demanding Loyalty, Struggles to Fill Top Posts
Elliott Abrams met with President Trump about becoming deputy secretary of state, but was rejected because of past criticism.
FEB. 18, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/politics/trump-candidates-top-posts.html [with comments]
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This Is What Obamacare’s Critics Won’t Admit Or Simply Don’t Understand
Real people with serious medical issues are finally getting the help they need.
02/18/2017 Updated February 18, 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obamacare-what-went-right-critics_us_58a725dce4b045cd34c11b4c?f01pxf6bkdftotj4i [with embedded videos]
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DeVos criticized teachers at D.C. school she visited — and they are not having it
February 18, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2017/02/18/devos-criticized-teachers-at-d-c-school-she-visited-and-they-are-not-having-it/ [with embedded video, and (nearly 4,000) comments]
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Leaked Trump tape: 'You are the special people'
Full audio recording from Bedminster, NJ
02/16/17 05:32 PM EST
[ http://www.politico.com/video/2017/02/170216-trump-bedminsteraudio-full-062271 (embedded)]
Exclusive audio shows how Trump lets loose at his clubs — inviting guests to join him on staff interviews
02/18/17 Updated 02/18/17
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-leaked-audio-clubs-guests-235161 [with comments]
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Trump’s ‘Winter White House’: A Peek at the Exclusive Members’ List at Mar-a-Lago
Mar-a-Lago, the members-only club in Palm Beach, Fla., is being called the winter White House. The entry fee for members was doubled, to $200,000, shortly after President Trump took office.
FEB. 18, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/mar-a-lago-trump-ethics-winter-white-house.html
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Holding Trump Accountable
Illustration by Tom Bachtell
After a month in office, he has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. But the only people with real leverage over him won’t use it.
By George Packer
February 27, 2017 Issue
Section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution allows for the removal of a President who can no longer discharge his duties but is unable or unwilling to say so. It empowers the Vice-President, along with “a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide,” to declare the President unfit and to install the Vice-President as Acting President. Section 4 has never been invoked. In 1987, when Ronald Reagan appointed Howard Baker to be his new chief of staff, the members of the outgoing chief’s team warned their replacements that Reagan’s mental ineptitude might require them to attempt the removal of the President under Section 4. Baker and his staff, at their first official meeting with Reagan, watched him carefully for signs of incapacity—but the President, apparently cheered by the arrival of newcomers, was alert and lively, and he served out the rest of his second term.
After a month in office, Donald Trump has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. The disability isn’t laziness or inattention. It expresses itself in paranoid rants, non-stop feuds carried out in public, and impulsive acts that can only damage his government and himself. Last week, at a White House press conference, the President behaved like the unhinged leader of an unstable and barely democratic republic. He rambled for nearly an hour and a half, on script and off; he flung insults at reporters; he announced that he was having fun; and he congratulated himself so many times and in such preposterous terms (“this Administration is running like a fine-tuned machine”) that the White House press corps could only stare in amazement. The gaudy gold drapery of the East Room contributed to the impression that at any moment Trump might declare himself President for Life, and a flunky would appear from behind the curtain to pin the Medal of National Greatness on his suit jacket, while, backstage, officials and generals discussed his overthrow. Trump experienced such a deep need to get back on top by lashing out that he apparently overrode the objections of his advisers, felt much better afterward, then prepared to go to Florida to sustain his high at the first rally of his reëlection campaign.
While the White House isolates itself in power struggles, the Administration is in nearly open revolt. Career diplomats are signing statements of dissent or leaving the State Department, while key posts remain unfilled. Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency fought to stop Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pro-industry nominee, from taking over as their new boss. And other government officials, after weeks of hearing Trump belittle their agencies, are feeding the press information about Russian involvement with his campaign.
Foreign leaders, depending on their orientation, are watching this spectacle with disbelieving alarm or with calculating interest. Allies such as Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau, of Canada, and Shinzo Abe, of Japan, flatter the President in order to avoid the fate of Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, whom Trump first berated and then hung up on during their get-to-know-you phone call. Vladimir Putin is already testing Trump, by sending Russian fighter jets to buzz a U.S. Navy ship. Xi Jinping is positioning China to fill the void in the Pacific Rim which will be left by Trump’s policy of America First. Pragmatists in Iran are trying to judge whether the new American government can be counted on to act rationally—exactly what U.S. officials always wondered about the fractured leadership of the Islamic Republic.
It won’t get better. The notion that, at some point, Trump would start behaving “Presidential” was always a fantasy that has the truth backward: the pressure of the Presidency is making him worse. He’s insulated by sycophants and by family members, and he can still ride a long way on his popular following. Though the surge of civic opposition, the independence of the courts, and the reinvigoration of the press are heartening, the only real leverage over Trump lies in the hands of Republicans. But Section 4 won’t be invoked. Vice-President Mike Pence is not going to face the truth in the private back room of a Washington restaurant with Secretaries Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, and Wilbur Ross, or in the offices of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Republican leaders have opted instead for unconstrained power.
They need Trump to pass their agenda of rewriting the tax code in favor of the rich and of gutting regulations that protect the public and the planet—an agenda that a majority of Americans never supported—so they are looking the other way. Even the prospect of Russian influence over our elections and our government leaves these American patriots unmoved. Senator John Cornyn, of Texas, the Republican whip, made it plain: Trump can go on being Trump “as long as we’re able to get things done.” Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky, explained, “We’ll never even get started with doing the things we need to do, like repealing Obamacare, if we’re spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans.”
The growing Russian scandal will challenge the willingness of the Party to hold the President accountable. So far, the situation is not encouraging. The heads of the key House and Senate committees are partisans who are doing as little as possible to expose corruption and possible treason in the White House. The few critical Republican voices—Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins, and Representative Mark Sanford—are ineffective. Perhaps Party leaders are privately searching their souls; perhaps, as with the old Bolshevik Rubashov, in Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” ideology and power have rendered them incapable of independent moral judgment. Whatever the case, history won’t be kind to them.
An authoritarian and erratic leader, a chaotic Presidency, a supine legislature, a resistant permanent bureaucracy, street demonstrations, fear abroad: this is what illiberal regimes look like. If Trump were more rational and more competent, he might have a chance of destroying our democracy [hey George, you smug fucking idiot, nicely flippant and totally self-contradictory finish to an otherwise worthy piece, whistling right past the waiting open grave you just depicted; as so many including Trump himself have documented and made clear, Trump IS destroying our democracy, and you just laid out why he will NOT be stopped, at the very least not until he, with the continuing help of his fellow Christo-fascists, has done MUCH more damage].
© 2017 Condé Nast
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/holding-trump-accountable [ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/holding-trump-accountable?mbid=gnep&intcid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true ]
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Lawmakers say Trump’s words matter — and hurt the country’s standing abroad
President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak at a news conference on Feb. 15 at the White House in Washington.
February 18, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/lawmakers-say-trumps-words-matter--and-are-hurting-the-countrys-standing-abroad/2017/02/17/1cacaa9e-f55b-11e6-a9b0-ecee7ce475fc_story.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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2/18/17 President Trump Rally - Melbourne, Florida - Diamond & Silk Firing Up The Crowd (audio)
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by xxx ttt [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV1x-I6ZveB8dIpiKTH3aNA , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV1x-I6ZveB8dIpiKTH3aNA/videos ]
Did not see any good video of Diamond and Silks EPIC introduction. I am hoping someone comes through with one. Until then we have this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mauzHAUnNE [with comment]
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First Lady MELANIA TRUMP Prays and Give a WONDERFUL SPEECH at President Donald Trump Rally Melbourne
Published on Feb 18, 2017 by Entertainment News Politics [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy8Lq7my3GBcdg7W-_3u3MQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/LiquidMoves , http://www.youtube.com/user/LiquidMoves/videos ]
First Lady MELANIA TRUMP Prays and Give a WONDERFUL SPEECH at President Donald Trump Rally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMr9yXOuR9w [with comments] [to cover for the flaw in the coverage of Melania's demonic incantations in the YouTube next below]
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LIVE STREAM: President Donald Trump Putting Americans Back to Work Rally from Melbourne Florida
Streamed live on Feb 18, 2017 by
LIVE STREAM: President Donald Trump Putting American Back to Work Rally LIVE from Melbourne-Orlando Florida.
President Donald Trump will host a rally at 5 pm Eastern Time on Saturday, February 18th, 2017. This is the first such event since becoming President.
President Donald Trump to speak Saturday in Melbourne
President Trump is making the Space Coast one of his early visits as he begins his term in the White House.
At the Orlando-Melbourne International Airport, preparations were underway at the hangar where the president will speak.
“We’re excited about it. And I think our citizenry is excited about it, as well,” said Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey.
The rally is at 5 p.m. Saturday, and will be open to ticket-holders only.
Transcript: President Donald Trump’s rally in Melbourne, Florida
/cdn3.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/53307925/Screen_Shot_2017_02_18_at_5.50.31_PM.0.png)
Feb 18, 2017
http://www.vox.com/2017/2/18/14659952/trump-transcript-rally-melbourne-florida
Donald Trump Appears To Make Up Sweden Terror Attack
It didn’t happen.
02/18/2017 Updated February 18, 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-sweden-terror-lie_us_58a8f397e4b045cd34c263d3?anssl7a58hh44e7b9 [with embedded videos]
Sweden has no idea what Trump meant when he said, ‘You look at what’s happening ... in Sweden’
February 19, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/19/sweden-has-no-idea-what-trump-meant-when-he-said-you-look-at-whats-happening-in-sweden/ [with embedded videos, and (over 6,000) comments]
Trump admits false ‘last night in Sweden’ claim was something he heard ‘broadcast on Fox News’
19 Feb 2017
Pres. Donald Trump admitted on Sunday that the terror attack he said happened in Sweden on Friday night [ https://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/trump-cites-non-existent-terrorist-attack-last-night-in-sweden-to-justify-muslim-ban-at-florida-rally/ ] was actually something he saw — but didn’t fully understand — on Fox News.
[...]
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/trump-admits-false-last-night-in-sweden-claim-was-something-he-heard-broadcast-on-fox-news/ [with comments]
Trump Pursues His Attack on Sweden, With Scant Evidence
A group of refugees walking on a highway in Denmark toward Sweden in 2015. Statistics in Sweden found no appreciable increase in crimes from 2015, when the country processed a record 163,000 asylum applications, to 2016.
FEB. 20, 2017
LONDON — President Trump escalated his attack on Sweden [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/sweden/index.html ]’s migration policies on Monday, doubling down on his suggestion — based on a Fox News report — that refugees in the Scandinavian country were behind a surge in crime and terrorism.
Mr. Trump set off consternation and ridicule [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/world/europe/last-night-in-sweden-trumps-remark-baffles-a-nation.html ] on Saturday when he seemed to falsely imply to an adoring throng at a rally in Florida [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/politics/donald-trump-rally-melbourne-florida.html ] that a terrorist attack had occurred in Sweden, which has admitted tens of thousands of refugees in recent years.
On Sunday, as questions swirled, a White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that “he was talking about rising crime and recent incidents in general, not referring to a specific issue.”
Mr. Trump then said on Twitter [ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/833435244451753984 ] that he was referring to a Fox News segment about an American filmmaker who argues that the police in Sweden were covering up a migrant-driven crime wave.
Officials in both countries expressed alarm and dismay on Monday at Mr. Trump’s remarks. Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said [ https://twitter.com/SenBobCasey/status/833449667056771072 ] the president should get his information from intelligence agencies and not from television. The Swedish Embassy in Washington offered the Trump administration [ https://twitter.com/SwedeninUSA ] a briefing on its immigration policies. Sweden’s prime minister, Stefan Lofven, said he was surprised by Mr. Trump’s comments, and noted that Sweden ranks highly on international comparisons of economic competitiveness, human development and income inequality.
“We have challenges, no doubt about that,” he allowed, adding: “We must all take responsibility for using facts correctly and for verifying anything we spread.”
Yet even before the prime minister spoke, Mr. Trump pursued his attack. On Twitter, he suggested [ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/833681539997253636 ] that the news media was covering up problems related to migration in Sweden.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Give the public a break - The FAKE NEWS media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT!
8:15 AM - 20 Feb 2017
[ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/833681539997253636 (with {over 30,000} comments)]
Immigration is, in fact, a hotly debated issue in Sweden, Germany and many other European countries, and a subject of frequent news coverage.
Moreover, statistics in Sweden do not back Mr. Trump’s claims. Preliminary data released last month [ https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics.html ] by Sweden’s crime prevention council found no appreciable increase in crimes from 2015, when the country processed a record 163,000 asylum applications, to 2016. The council did note an increase in assaults and rapes last year, but also recorded a drop in thefts, robberies and drug offenses.
Officials say they have not seen any evidence for the claim, prevalent in right-wing media like Breitbart and Infowars, that migration has driven a surge in crime. The government has not provided a breakdown of crime statistics according to the ethnic or national background of suspects since 2005, though one right-wing party has called on the government [ http://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/krav-ny-undersokning-av-utrikesfodda-och-brott ] to provide updated statistics.
“The general crime rate in Sweden is below the U.S. national average,” the State Department noted last May [ https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=19681 ].
Although terrorism is a concern for Sweden — an Iraqi-born Swede carried out a suicide bombing [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/world/europe/13sweden.html ] in central Stockholm in 2010 — the authorities say they are equally worried about racist hate crimes [ http://www.government.se/492382/contentassets/e6047ff54c00452895005f07e2e2ba39/a-comprehensive-approach-to-combat-racism-and-hate-crime ], including attacks on migrants.
Carl Bildt, a former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden, made a jab at Mr. Trump [ https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/833696821058928641 ] on Twitter: “Just a piece of friendly advice: when you are in a hole, stop digging.”
[...]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/world/europe/trump-pursues-his-attack-on-sweden-with-scant-evidence.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGdeS2CvWrM [Melania's demonic incantations (her reading-from-notes recital of the Lord's Prayer partially dropped; complete in the YouTube just above) begin at c. the 2:01:30 mark; Trump's performance begins at c. the 2:04:15 mark; with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykx3Ui7aC2k (with comments), and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8JZ56zITiQ (with comments)] [and see also in particular (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128831840 (an earlier reply to the post to which this is a reply, which includes another, slightly truncated at the start full-event YouTube and, in full, the Time transcript of the Trumps) and following]
*
LIVE: Analysis of Historic Trump Speech in Florida
Streamed live on Feb 19, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o6epjscfwI [with comments]
--
Utah Republican argues against equal pay for women: It’s ‘bad for families’ and society
Snow rests on the sign on the Utah state Capitol on the opening day of the 2017 session in Salt Lake City, Jan. 23.
Militia Etheridge
@MaryEmilyOHara
Utah GOP chair's letter to editor published TODAY (not in the year 1624)
4:37 PM - 16 Feb 2017 - Brooklyn, NY
[ https://twitter.com/MaryEmilyOHara/status/832358266617335808 (with comments)]
February 19, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/02/19/utah-republican-argues-against-equal-pay-for-women-its-bad-for-families-and-society/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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AP FACT CHECK: The audacity of hype
In this Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017 photo, President Donald Trump pauses while speaking during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington.
[ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/whitehouse/ap-fact-check-the-audacity-of-hype/2017/02/19/02f949d2-f6b3-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_story.html (no comments yet)]
February 19, 2017
WASHINGTON — In the Washington week that wasn’t, President Donald Trump’s new administration whirred like a “fine-tuned machine,” piling on big-league accomplishments at a pace never before seen.
Immigration agents newly empowered by Trump’s call to secure borders sent hordes of bad foreigners back home, validating a president who won the most lopsided Electoral College victory since Ronald Reagan.
That’s what the audacity of hype looks like.
In the Washington week that actually was, Trump fired his national security adviser for misleading the vice president, was rebuffed by his next choice, saw a Cabinet nominee’s prospects flame out, and stirred anxiety among some fellow Republicans over the tumult holding up Trump’s agenda. Immigration officials announced a sizable but routine roundup of people living in the country illegally, which resulted in fewer arrests than raids mounted under President Barack Obama almost two years earlier.
Trump was called out on his latest of many boasts about the Electoral College, which handed him one of the narrowest victories since Reagan — sixth out of eight — and not one of the biggest.
A look at some of his statements in the past week:
[...]
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/80366038c4a94ff4a3ba421eb0903a4c/ap-fact-check-audacity-hype
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Ex-officials: Israeli leader spurned secret peace offer
Feb. 19, 2017
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/eccdd7b6df8840b985263b271bd824ad/israeli-leader-lauds-new-day-relations-trumps-us
*
Israeli opposition head: Netanyahu caved on peace initiative
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly cabinet meeting, in Jerusalem, Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017.
[ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israeli-opposition-netanyahu-blinked-on-peace-initiative/2017/02/20/248034c0-f75e-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_story.html (with comments)]
Feb. 20, 2017
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's opposition leader said Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ready to freeze settlement construction in most of the West Bank and reach out to regional Arab nations but ultimately backed out for fear of losing his grip on power.
Isaac Herzog, head of the opposition Zionist Union, said he was prepared to join Netanyahu's government based on a secret regional peace initiative brokered by then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that would have limited settlement growth to just the major blocs that Israel is expected to keep in any peace accord. But he said the talks broke down when Netanyahu caved under pressure from his hard-line allies.
"Netanyahu fled away, turned his back as opposed to his commitments to third parties ... and simply reneged on the basic understanding that we had," Herzog told participants at the annual Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization gathering in Jerusalem. "History will judge Netanyahu on that failure."
Herzog's comments were the latest revelations about secret peace negotiations that have shaken up Israeli politics and raised new doubts over the genuineness of Netanyahu's stated commitment to pursuing Middle East peace, expressed most recently in a White House press conference last week with President Donald Trump.
Former American officials have confirmed a report Sunday in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Netanyahu turned down an offer that would have secured regional recognition of Israel as a Jewish state — a key Netanyahu demand — alongside a renewal of peace talks with the Palestinians with the support of the Arab countries.
[...]
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6eab95d053224432a9e50fd130c97cd1/israeli-opposition-netanyahu-blinked-peace-initiative
--
Trump Delivers On Plans To Reignite American Economy: 2/19/17 Full Show
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
On this Sunday, Feb. 19 edition of the Alex Jones Show [with appearances by Jerome Corsi and Owen Shroyer], we report on how President Trump is putting his business skills to use in the White House, particularly by shutting down establishment media. The president intentionally held a rally in Florida on Saturday to talk to the people directly about the state of the country while cutting out the middleman media. We also look into what to expect geopolitically in the next few weeks as the communist Chinese try to expand their power.
Gallup Daily: Trump Job Approval
[most recently: approve 42%, disapprove 53%]
http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
[most recently: approve 51%, disapprove 49%]
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/prez_track_feb20
President Trump Job Approval
[most recent RCP Average: approve 44.7%, disapprove 50.4%]
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dxZMq13vh4 [with comments] [a must-watch] [and see in particular (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128820389 and preceding and following]
--
Putin: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by LastWeekTonight [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3XTzVzaHQEd30rQbuvCtTQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight , http://www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight/videos ]
Vladimir Putin is known as a ruthless leader and master manipulator. John Oliver enlists a group of singing dancers to explain that to Donald Trump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0utzB6oDan0 [with (already over 15,000) comments]
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Here We Go Again: Russia Accused Of Cyberattacks In Another Election
Emmanuel Macron, a French presidential candidate and strong supporter of the European Union, has been targeted by hackers.
02/20/2017 Updated February 20, 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russia-election-hack_us_58aa6654e4b07602ad55f562 [with embedded video]
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Russia Compiles Psychological Dossier on Trump for Putin
Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
NBC News
by Bill Neely
EXCLUSIVE News Feb 20 2017, 9:40 am ET
MOSCOW - A dossier on Donald Trump's psychological makeup is being prepared for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Among its preliminary conclusions is that the new American leader is a risk-taker who can be naïve, according to a senior Kremlin adviser.
Trump "doesn't understand fully who is Mr. Putin - he is a tough guy," former Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Fedorov told NBC News.
The file is being compiled by retired diplomats and some of Putin's staff, he added.
The attempt to get inside the U.S. president's mind is aimed at helping Putin plan for his first meeting with America's new leader, the date for which is yet to be decided.
"Very serious preparatory work is going on in the Kremlin, including a paper - seven pages - describing a psychological portrait of Trump, especially based on this last two to three months, and the last weeks," added Fedorov, who said he has known Trump since 2000.
The dossier was being revised regularly, he said, adding that many in the Kremlin believed that Trump viewed the presidency as a business.
Fedorov added: "Trump is not living in a box - he is living in a crowd. He should listen to the people around him especially in the areas where he is weak."
It is normal for any president or leader to be fully briefed before entering negotiations for the first time with a rival leader, but preparing a detailed dossier on the mind and instincts of a U.S. leader is unusual.
Putin's government is growing increasingly concerned about Trump's battles in Washington [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-defends-mike-flynn-blasts-fake-news-administration-leaks-n721906 ], according to Fedorov and former lawmaker Sergei Markov, who remains well-connected at the Kremlin.
It is worried the president will not have the political power to improve relations with Russia, as he has indicated he might try to do [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-praises-putin-clinton-defends-email-n644621 ], and even, perhaps, lift some U.S. sanctions.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia conducted a covert hacking operation to undermine the U.S. election process [ http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/report-putin-russia-tried-help-trump-discrediting-clinton-n703981 ], which evolved into an attempt to help Trump win the White House. They also believe with "a high level of confidence" that Putin became personally involved in the campaign to interfere in the election [ http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-officials-putin-personally-involved-u-s-election-hack-n696146 ].
The White House's connection with the Kremlin - and how deep it runs - remains under scrutiny, which has only ramped up last week when Mike Flynn resigned from his role as national security adviser after admitting to misleading Vice President Mike Pence [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/mike-pence-told-about-flynn-warning-11-days-after-trump-n720836 ] and other senior administration officials about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States in December.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has no government or diplomatic experience, but boasts exceptionally close ties with Moscow and Putin.
And former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort - who resigned in August amid questions about his ties to pro-Russia interests in Ukraine — told NBC News last week that he had "no contact knowingly with Russian intelligence officials." Manafort was reportedly one of the Trump campaign officials whose communications were investigated by the FBI [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/politics/russia-intelligence-communications-trump.html ], according to The New York Times.
During the election campaign, Trump spoke fondly of Putin [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-praises-putin-clinton-defends-email-n644621 ]. But earlier this month, Trump told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-challenged-about-putin-says-our-country-s-so-innocent-n716906 ] that while he respects Putin "that doesn't mean I'm going to get along with him."
Meanwhile, the creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election has won bipartisan support [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/russia-s-election-interference-cummings-wants-9-11-commission-style-n722276 ].
The issue of Russia "is now a kind of banana skin for Trump - that's why we should avoid any kind of step that could damage Trump," said Fedorov. "Trump cannot come to a meeting with Putin as a loser - he must sort out his domestic problems first."
Fedorov added that Trump's "constant battle with the mass media" was "worrying us."
The U.S. president "is dancing on thin ice," he said. "It's a risky game."
A former prime minister under Putin said the Kremlin is taking no pleasure at Trump's struggles.
"Absolutely not - not laughing," Mikhail Kasyanov said. "The situation is very serious and the whole of [Putin's] team, they are nervous."
Many in the Kremlin believe hardliners in America - in Congress and the military - want to sabotage the president and his plans for better ties with Russia.
Some even talk of a conspiracy against Trump. Markov, the former lawmaker, told NBC News that he believes America's intelligence services "want to overthrow President Trump in a coup" because of his desire to improve relations with Russia.
Flynn was a victim of U.S. intelligence services, according to Markov.
So while many in Russia celebrated Trump's election, the mood in Moscow was changing from delight at Trump's election to doubt about his ability to deliver on a better relationship with Russia, he added.
"Donald Trump has done nothing good for Russia, nothing," Markov said. "But they already attack him."
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-compiles-psychological-dossier-trump-putin-n723196 [with embedded video]
--
Police: Hunters Shot Each Other Near The Border, Then Blamed Immigrants
[ https://twitter.com/CBS7News/status/832250701308891140 (with comments)]
Hunters had claimed they had been attacked “ambush style.”
02/20/2017
Two men who were shot in Texas [ http://huffingtonpost.com/news/texas ] last month and had blamed immigrants crossing the border with Mexico [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/mexico ] were actually shot by members of their own hunting party, according to an indictment issued last week.
Walker Daugherty and Edwin Roberts were wounded in the incident [ https://apnews.com/6cb4c81139024035af7bc406447e716f ] on January 6, The Associated Press reported.
Daugherty and his fiancee told police they were shot by undocumented immigrants from Mexico [ http://www.cbs7.com/content/news/Hunting-guides-charged-in-connection-to-Presidio-County-ranch-shooting-413885063.html ], per CBS 7 in Odessa, Texas. However, the station said police now believe Daugherty actually shot Roberts and another member of the party, Michael Bryant, shot Daugherty.
[...]
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller cited the shooting as “proof” that the border wall proposed by President Donald Trump [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/donald-trump ] was needed.
When confronted about previous inaccurate Facebook messages, Miller said his social media posts shouldn’t be held to the same standard as those of a news organization - but then cited a news organization in defense of himself.
“It’s like Fox News,” Miller told KUT radio. “I report and you decide if it’s true or not [ http://kut.org/post/sid-miller-defends-fake-news-his-facebook-page-im-not-news-source-updated ].”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hunter-shooting-texas-border_us_58aa7eeae4b037d17d292817
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in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (other) following (including in particular the current http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128821089 [and any future following], http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128821580 [and any future following), and http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128831840 and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128832130 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128832203 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128832226 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128839436 and preceding and following, and http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128840280 and preceding [and any future following]), see also (linked in):
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Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and President Trump.
February 16, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2017/02/16/64e31d98-f48e-11e6-b9c9-e83fce42fb61_story.html [with comments]
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Maddow: What it looks like when a president fails
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/16/17
Rachel Maddow reviews the series of failures Donald Trump has suffered since taking office, from withdrawn nominees to the resignation of NSA Mike Flynn, to the collapse of his only significant initiative, his executive order travel ban. Duration: 20:13
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/what-it-looks-like-when-a-president-fails-879259715698 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkO8fXEie9U [with comments] [to have this one, included in the post to which this is a reply, here with its official MSNBC YouTube]
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Report: Flynn may have committed felony re: Russia contact
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/16/17
The Washington Post reports Michael Flynn may have lied to the FBI about his discussions with Russia about sanctions, but Trump is still focused on attacking the media and leakers. Ari Melber speaks with Naveed Jamali, Jack Rice, and Rick Wilson. Duration: 13:14
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/report-flynn-may-have-committed-felony-re-russia-contact-879308355709 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtW-pSTYTEA [with comments] [to have this one, included in the post to which this is a reply, here with its official MSNBC YouTube]
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Trump repeatedly talks about himself at marathon news conference
The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
2/16/17
Talking about his negotiating skills, his ratings draw, his poll numbers & more, Pres. Trump talked a lot about himself at Thursday's news conference. MSNBC's Brian Williams reacts with his panel[, including Malcolm Nance]. Duration: 4:09
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/trump-repeatedly-talks-about-himself-at-marathon-news-conference-879330883909 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV481wx7lng [with comments] [to have this one, included in the post to which this is a reply, here with its official MSNBC YouTube]
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President Trump's Bats**t Press Conference: The Daily Show
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by The Daily Show with Trevor Noah [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWhs_6x42TyRM4Wstoq8HA , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwWhs_6x42TyRM4Wstoq8HA/videos ]
During a no-holds-barred press conference, President Trump lashes out at the media, pushes lies about his Electoral College victory and boasts that he's not anti-Semitic.
[originally aired February 16, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSx-N9ayCvU [with (over 5,000) comments]
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Donald Trump and the Culture of Lying
This week, Donald Trump devoted a White House press conference to accusing his perceived enemies of spreading falsehoods. Sissela Bok, the author of a seminal book on political lying, joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss Trump’s continued assaults on the truth.
February 17, 2017
http://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/donald-trump-and-the-culture-of-lying [ http://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/donald-trump-and-the-culture-of-lying?mbid=gnep&intcid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true ] [with embedded audio]
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Full Show - The Death Of The FakeStream Media Is Here - 02/17/2017
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvsye7V9psc-APX6wV1twLg / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos ]
On this Friday, Feb. 17th 2017 edition of the Alex Jones Show, we look into the rise of the surveillance state in opposition to President Trump as the technocrats roll out mass spying to control everything. Author David Horowitz explains the reasoning behind some of the actions Trump has taken which the media has ignored. And social commentator Mark Dice explains the mass brainwashing the elites do to segments of the population to keep them in check.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=darNeeV9iq4 [with comments] [a must-watch]
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President Trump's full speech at Boeing
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by CNN [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCupvZG-5ko_eiXAupbDfxWw / http://www.youtube.com/user/CNN , http://www.youtube.com/user/CNN/videos ]
Once a target of President Trump's Twitter ire, Boeing has risen to significant influence inside the White House. Trump is the first sitting president to visit Boeing's fast-expanding campus in South Carolina.
Remarks by President Trump at Unveiling of Boeing 787 Dreamliner Aircraft
February 17, 2017
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/02/17/remarks-president-trump-unveiling-boeing-787-dreamliner-aircraft [official transcript]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAgICPAar14 [with comments] [official White House upload at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmrYTIsL81Q (with comments)]
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The economic reality behind the Boeing plane Trump showed off
Workers walk outside the Boeing South Carolina Plant on Wednesday.
February 17, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/17/the-economic-reality-behind-the-boeing-plane-trump-showed-off/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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Exclusive: Trump presser convinced NSC candidate Harward to decline Trump offer
All In with Chris Hayes
2/17/17
Robert Harward, the widely respected retired vice admiral who declined the Trump administration's offer, did so, according to a source, after the White House could not satisfy his conditions and after watching President Trump's press conference yesterday. Duration: 2:04
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/exclusive-trump-presser-convinced-nsc-candidate-harward-to-decline-879994947802
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Rep. Castro: Trump admin. coming for undocumented immigrants
All In with Chris Hayes
2/17/17
After meeting with President Trump's acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Rep. Joaquin Castro concludes the president is serious about rounding up and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Duration: 4:34
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/rep-castro-trump-admin-coming-for-undocumented-immigrants-880002627838
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Scott Pruitt won't get a warm welcome at EPA
All In with Chris Hayes
2/17/17
An enemy of the Environmental Protection Agency has been confirmed as its leader. And the staff is revolting. Duration: 2:51
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/scott-pruitt-won-t-get-a-warm-welcome-at-epa-880004163759
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Trump hits new low as war with press moves beyond just talk
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/17/17
Rachel Maddow looks at the ways in which Donald Trump is trying to delegitimize, manipulate, and even eliminate the free press in the United States. Duration: 19:12
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-hits-new-low-as-war-with-press-moves-beyond-just-talk-880046659880
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JFK on the importance of the press to a free society
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/17/17
Rachel Maddow shares video of President John F. Kennedy in 1962, talking about the value of a free press despite disagreeing with its recent treatment of him after the Bay of Pigs invasion. Duration: 1:58
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/jfk-on-the-importance-of-the-press-to-a-free-society-880072259938
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Judge's e-mail order could move Pruitt from frying pan to fire
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/17/17
Rachel Maddow reports on the confirmation of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA despite the best efforts of environmentalists, but notes that in just a few days, thousands of pages of Pruitt e-mails will be release on a judge's order that could complicate the start of his tenure. Duration: 4:51
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/pruitt-e-mails-could-mean-frying-pan-to-fire-880049219971
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American voters call Congress members to account with town halls
The Rachel Maddow Show
2/17/17
Tara Burnette, a South Carolina voter, talks with Rachel Maddow about her petition drive to get her senators to hold a town hall to hear the concerns of their constituents. Duration: 9:33
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/american-voters-call-congress-members-to-account-with-town-halls-880056899597
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Campaigner-in-Chief Trump: The election is over – time to govern
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/17/17
President Trump hits the road this weekend with a rally in in Florida and he's already talking up "massive crowds." MSNBC's Ari Melber looks at whether campaign-mode Donald Trump will be able to do the hard work of governing. Duration: 4:54
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/campaigner-in-chief-trump-the-election-is-over-time-to-govern-880053827540
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Donald Trump loses another top candidate to replace Flynn
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/17/17
Gen. David Petraeus is the second candidate to find the situation of being Donald Trump's National Security Adviser untenable. Ari Melber talks to David Rothkopf and Rick Stengel about dysfunction in the Trump Administration and its consequences. Duration: 8:21
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/donald-trump-loses-another-top-candidate-to-replace-flynn-880051779812
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Trump fixates on Clinton, declares media 'the enemy'
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/17/17
Ari Melber breaks down why Donald Trump couldn’t stop talking about Hillary Clinton at his press conference and why he’s escalating his attacks on the media. Duration: 2:33
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/trump-fixates-on-clinton-declares-media-880054851906
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Inside Trump's Nixonian strategy to make the media the enemy
The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
2/17/17
In 1972, President Nixon said, "the press is the enemy," in a phone call with Henry Kissinger. Trump tweeted Friday the media is "the enemy of the American people!" Ari Melber unpacks this declaration with Nancy Giles, Mark Thompson and Erin Gloria Ryan. Duration: 5:07
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/inside-trump-s-nixonian-strategy-to-make-the-media-the-enemy-880058435528
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Censorship In Trump Era
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by Mike Malloy [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpU4j-LN_aibXA1gONvWzxw / http://www.youtube.com/user/hschulein , http://www.youtube.com/user/hschulein/videos ]
This is how the muzzling starts: not with a boot on your neck, but with the fear of one that runs so deep that you muzzle yourself.
Maybe it’s the story you decide against doing because it’s liable to provoke a press-bullying president to put the power of his office behind his attempt to destroy your reputation by falsely calling your journalism “fake.”
Maybe it’s the line you hold back from your script or your article because it could trigger a federal leak investigation into you and your sources (so, yeah, jail).
Or, maybe it’s the commentary you spike because you’re a publicly supported news channel and you worry it will cost your station its federal financing.
Full editorial: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/media/trump-era-media-censorship.html
[originally aired February 17, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Xpr1luLvM [with comments]
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Trump Defends Himself By Citing Rush Limbaugh
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by Mike Malloy
President Donald Trump deemed his Thursday press conference a success because conservative right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh complimented his performance. The commander in chief took to Twitter Friday to dispel the prevailing narrative in the media — that the conference was abnormal, even unhinged.
Limbaugh provided his listeners a live listen to the Thursday presser, offering intermittent commentary when ever he felt necessary. Unlike most political commentators, Limbaugh lauded the president’s attacks on the press. He said that Trump was “taking these people to school.”
Full story: http://www.salon.com/2017/02/17/donald-trump-defends-his-press-conference-by-citing-a-positive-review-from-rush-limbaugh/
[originally aired February 17, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CwT3VxObuQ [with comments]
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Let´s Party With The Trumps
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by Mike Malloy
President Donald Trump may have been elected as the nominee of a party that prides itself on fiscal conservatism, but he and his family are preparing to blow taxpayers out of the water as they continue with their posh lifestyle.
From the president’s frequent trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and his sons’ upcoming trip to the United Arab Emirates to open a golf course in Dubai to the First Lady’s decision to reside at Trump Tower in New York City, the lifestyle choices of Trump and family are running up taxpayers’ tab in an unprecedented manner.
Full story: http://www.salon.com/2017/02/17/president-trumps-family-is-living-large-and-american-taxpayers-are-paying-for-it/
[originally aired February 17, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCkSFf9g4Wo [with comments]
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The Trump Circus | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by Real Time with Bill Maher [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy6kyFxaMqGtpE3pQTflK8A / http://www.youtube.com/user/RealTime , http://www.youtube.com/user/RealTime/videos ]
Bill reacts to another chaotic week for the White House in his Real Time monologue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7OH3ae7Wtg [with comments]
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Milo Yiannopoulos Interview | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by Real Time with Bill Maher
The controversial senior editor of Brietbart News and author of the upcoming book, "Dangerous," joins Bill Maher to discuss free speech and his reputation as an internet troll.
Bill Maher Lets ‘Impish Brit’ Milo Yiannopoulos Off Easy
“Stop taking the bait,” Maher scolds liberals.
02/18/2017 Updated February 18, 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yiannopoulos-maher-real-time_us_58a7d013e4b037d17d2820b1 [with this YouTube embedded]
Bill Maher lets Milo Yiannopoulos attack female comedians unchecked on HBO’s ‘Real Time’
February 18, 2017
If Milo Yiannopoulos hoped that Bill Maher and HBO would provide him a new platform to renew attacks on familiar targets, his wish was granted.
[...]
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/tv/ct-bill-maher-milo-yiannopoulos-real-time-20170218-story.html [with comments]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lImHh7fqrQo [with (over 13,000) comments]
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New Rule: The Magic R | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by Real Time with Bill Maher
In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher wonders why Republicans have "Patriotic Immunity" and disputes the notion that they inherently love America more than Democrats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFWv42U1l4A [with comments]
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MILO Confronts the Panel | Overtime with Bill Maher (HBO)
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by Real Time with Bill Maher
Bill and his Overtime panelists – Milo Yiannopoulos, Larry Wilmore, Malcolm Nance and Fmr. Rep. Jack Kingston – answer viewer questions after the show.
Here’s A Fact-Check On Milo Yiannopoulos’ Incendiary Claims About Trans People
In short: He’s wrong, wrong, wrong. Absolutely wrong.
02/18/2017 Updated February 18, 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/milo-yiannopoulos-transgender-people-truth_us_58a84dcae4b07602ad551487?jdsd5c6w4qp8pvi [with this YouTube embedded]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cDLflyQ8TA [with (over 36,000) comments]
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Candidate Donald Trump Attacks President Donald Trump
Published on Feb 17, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig/videos ]
Wise words from our President, or a hypocritical blast from the past?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxhf0iLXm70 [with comments]
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Stephen Apologizes On Behalf Of All Steves: Bannon, Miller, Mnuchin
Published on Feb 18, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
It was the best of Steves, it was the worst of Steves.
[originally aired February 17, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEea_wNQUM8 [with comments]
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Moby Isn't A Credible Source, But Neither Is Kellyanne Conway
Published on Feb 18, 2017 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
With Moby and Tom Arnold threatening to share juicy intelligence on our President, The Late Show went digging for more insider information from random celebrities.
[originally aired February 17, 2017]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyfFZLQRWcw [with comments]
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Red Alert! Total Martial Law Takeover in America
Published on Feb 18, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
The intelligence community, the mainstream media and the corrupt DC establishment are waging a coup against President Donald Trump attempting to sabotage the first days of his presidency.
Alex Jones explains the engineered takedown of society and ties it in with previous military training targeting the American people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0upQBMglYE [with comments]
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Trump called the news media an ‘enemy of the American People.’ Here’s a history of the term.
By Amanda Erickson
February 18, 2017
President Trump is not known for his subtlety. But even by this standard, his tweet Friday night was extreme. Trump called the news media “the enemy of the American People.”
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
3:48 PM - 17 Feb 2017
[ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832708293516632065 (with {over 75,000} comments)]
The New York Times, which among others was called out specifically, labeled it [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/business/trump-calls-the-news-media-the-enemy-of-the-people.html ] “a striking escalation” from a leader who “routinely castigates journalists.”
Gabriel Sherman, national affairs editor at New York magazine, described it [ http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39015559 ] as “full-on dictator speak.”
They're not being pedantic.
Enemy of the people is a phrase “typically used by leaders to refer to hostile foreign governments or subversive organizations,” the New York Times wrote. “It also echoed the language of autocrats who seek to minimize dissent.”
Where did the expression come from? In its original incarnation, enemy of the people wasn't code for “enemy of my regime.” In one of its earliest uses, the phrase was used to describe a leader himself — Nero. The Roman ruler was [ http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/nero ] a disastrous emperor, and a careless one to boot. As his country fell into ruin, strained by construction costs and a massive devaluation of the imperial currency, Nero vacationed in Greece. He enjoyed musical performances and theater. He took a chariot to some Olympic Games. He considered whether to build a canal across the Isthmus of Corinth.
When he got back home, the political class was angry. And he didn't do himself any favors by ignoring a revolt in Gaul. The Senate grew so infuriated that they declared Nero an enemy of the people and drew up plans for his arrest and execution. Nero took his own life after a failed attempt to flee.
The term fell out of fashion among the political class, though it popped up in literature and art. Most famously, Henrik Ibsen wrote an 1882 play called “An Enemy of the People.” It features a doctor who's almost run out of town because of an article he's written bashing the government. The idea came to Ibsen after his own brush with infamy — his play “Ghosts” challenged the hypocrisy of Victorian morality, and was deemed indecent.
Adolf Hitler was allegedly an Ibsen fan. (Some historians say they believe that he read the plays as prophecy of the Third Reich.) He reportedly read “An Enemy of the People” closely, even weaving [ http://njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/101206/ltAssertingHitlers.html ] some key lines into speeches. His administration deployed this rhetoric to describe Hitler's main enemy: the Jews. “Each Jew is a sworn enemy of the German people,” Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in 1941 [ http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb1.htm ]. “... If someone wears the Jewish star, he is an enemy of the people. Anyone who deals with him is the same as a Jew and must be treated accordingly. He earns the contempt of the entire people, for he is a craven coward who leaves them in the lurch to stand by the enemy.”
Around the same time, leaders of the Soviet Union were transforming enemy of the people into a major tool for oppression and silencing enemies. Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Bolsheviks, used “the peoples' enemies” as a label to stigmatize anyone who didn't fall into line when the revolution happened. Enemies of the people were ostracized and even their friends were under suspicion.
For foes of Joseph Stalin, being branded an enemy of the people was a death sentence. The Soviet leader deployed that language against politicians and artists he didn't like. Once branded, the accused were sent to labor camps or killed. Best case? An enemy would be denied education and employment. “It is one of the most controversial phrases in Soviet history,” Mitchell Orenstein, professor of Russian and East European studies at the University of Pennsylvania, told Voice of America [ http://www.voanews.com/a/donald-trump-attack-on-media-enemy-of-people-historic-echoes/3729946.html ].
“For both Lenin and Stalin, journalists and intellectuals who didn't share their point of view were among the most hated enemies,” University of Washington professor Serhiy Yekelchyk told VOA. “In attacking them, both appealed to the people.”
Chinese dictator Mao Zedong deployed the phrase against people critical of his policies and dictates. The leader, who created a famine that killed 36 million Chinese, was obsessed with identifying and rooting out his enemies. As Zhengyuan Fu explained in “Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics [ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521442281 ]”, every member of Chinese society, even children, were called on to root out the landlords, teachers, intellectuals and artists who opposed Mao. He wrote [ https://books.google.com/books?id=uGZIziWmlmsC&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=ENEMY+OF+THE+PEOPLE+CCP&source=bl&ots=iTOR5gmBRr&sig=o0SCniXFn_pUUrUZbLGtGJuN-fc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFrNmXjpjSAhXIYyYKHYpCBzMQ6AEIPTAF#v=onepage&q=ENEMY%20OF%20THE%20PEOPLE%20CCP&f=false ]:
Members of society are divided into two major categories: the “people” and the “class enemy.” People describes the in-group, within which are workers, poor and lower-middle-class peasants, soldiers and cadres. The “class enemies of the people” refers to the out group … a highly arbitrarily assigned group whose members are defined by the party state.
While the “people” are described in terms of “warmth, friendliness, candor, courage, and everything that is good,” the class enemies are depicted as “cruel, cunning, morally degrading, always scheming, and evil,” Fu writes. In the enemies camp [ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/feb/24/cultural-revolution-portraits-xu-weixin ] were who often were imprisoned.
Today, enemy of the people is still deployed. But mostly, you hear it from dictators. (Heads of former Soviet countries are particularly fond [ http://www.dw.com/en/belarus-declares-rammstein-a-public-enemy/a-5277932 ] of the construction. Old dog, new tricks, etc.) It's never before been uttered by the leader of the free world. One more way in which Trump's presidency truly is unprecedented in U.S. history.
Eliot A Cohen
@EliotACohen
The language of an aspiring tyrant. And no, not a joke, and not an exaggeration, and not a thought spasm from a disordered intellect.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832708293516632065 ...
4:06 PM - 17 Feb 2017
[ https://twitter.com/EliotACohen/status/832712876318076934 (with comments)]
© 2017 The Washington Post (emphasis in original)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/18/trump-called-the-news-media-an-enemy-of-the-american-people-heres-a-history-of-the-term/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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‘That’s how dictators get started’: McCain criticizes Trump for calling media ‘the enemy’
February 18, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/18/thats-how-dictators-get-started-mccain-criticizes-trump-for-calling-media-the-enemy/ [with embedded videos, and comments]
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Donald Trump and the Enemies of the American People
President Trump seems determined to exploit the public’s mistrust of the media to the hilt, if only to distract his base from the disappointments that are sure to come.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JABIN BOTSFORD / THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY
By David Remnick
February 18, 2017
When the leaders of the Bolshevik movement - Lenin, Stalin, and the rest - used the term vrag naroda, an “enemy of the people,” it was an ominous epithet that encompassed a range of “wreckers” and “socially dangerous elements.” Enemies included clergy, intellectuals, monarchists, Trotskyists, “rootless cosmopolitans,” and well-to-do farmers. To be branded an enemy of the people was to face nearly inevitable doom; such a fate was soon followed by a knock on the door in the middle of the night, a prison cell, the Gulag, an icy ditch - a variety of dismal ends. To be called an “enemy of the people” did not mean you had to hold oppositional thoughts or commit oppositional acts; it only meant that the dictator had included you in his grand scheme to insure the compliance of the population.
Robespierre, one of the architects of the Jacobin Reign of Terror, set out to “horrify” the opposition, and his instruments were the epithet, righteousness, and the blade. “The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation,” he said. “It owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death.”
In 1917, the same year as the Bolshevik seizure of power, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin published an essay in Pravda called “Enemies of the People,” in which he lionized the Jacobin Terror as “instructive.” His party, “the Jacobins of the twentieth century,” he wrote, should follow suit, if not with the guillotine then with mass arrests of “the financial magnates and bigwigs.” Once in power, Lenin was far more brutal than the revolutionary French. He built the first outposts of the gulag archipelago. Stalin, Lenin’s energetic successor, expanded the system from western Russia to the Sea of Okhotsk, ten time zones to the east.
Now Donald Trump, the elected President of the oldest democracy on earth, a real-estate brander and reality-TV star, has taken not to Pravda but to his own preferred instrument of autocratic pronouncement - the tweet - to declare the media “the enemy of the American People [ https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/832708293516632065 ].” Here is the declaration in full:
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
3:48 PM - 17 Feb 2017
[ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832708293516632065 (with {over 75,000} comments)]
For months, cool, responsible heads have been counselling hot, impulsive heads to avoid overreacting to Trump. We must give him a chance. We must not in all our alarm compare him to all the tin-pot dictators and bloody authoritarians who have disgraced history. The Oval Office - its realities and traditions - will temper his rages. His aides, his son-in-law, and his daughter will “soften” his impulsivity. Besides, he doesn’t really mean all he says. Even as Trump was signing one chilling executive order after another - all with the cool counsel of Steve Bannon, late of Breitbart - we were assured that everything was fine. He was simply fulfilling the agenda of his campaign. Calm down. Don’t react to every tweet. Don’t take the bait.
Then came his press conference, last week, his first solo press conference in office, and it was epochal. Ostensibly an occasion to announce a replacement appointment to the Department of Labor after the first had to step aside, Trump instead took it upon himself to denounce repeatedly and at length the sinful, dishonest press and the “very fake news” it produces. It was unforgettable. With all his nastiness, his self-admiring interruptions and commands (“Sit down! Sit down!”) Trump resembled an oversauced guy at a bar who was facing three likely options in the near term: a) take a swing at someone, b) get clocked by someone else, or c) pass out and wake up on a hard, alien cot.
But the venue was not a bar. It was the White House, and this was hardly a joke. What Trump resembled at the lectern was an old-fashioned autocrat wielding a very familiar rhetorical strategy.
Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, makes the point that autocrats from Chavez to Erdogan, Sisi to Mugabe, all follow a general pattern. They attack and threaten the press with deliberate and ominous intensity; the press, in turn, adopts a more oppositional tone and role. “And then that paves the way for the autocrat’s next move,” Simon told me. “Popular support for the media dwindles and the leader starts instituting restrictions. It’s an old strategy.” Simon pointed to Trump’s lack of originality, recalling that both Nestor Kirchner, of Argentina, and Tabare Ramon Vazquez, of Uruguay, referred to the press as the “unelected political opposition.” And, as Simon has written [ http://www.cjr.org/opinion/trump-chavez-media.php ], it was the late Hugo Chavez who first mastered Twitter as a way of bypassing the media and providing his supporters with alternative facts.
Trump, as indulgent parents say of an indolent child, is “not a big reader.” He may not hear every historical echo in his “enemy of the American people” tweet. What he does know, however, is that the American trust in “the media” - that generalized term that stretches from the Times to NewsMax - is miserably low. He is determined to exploit that to the hilt, if only to distract his base from the disappointments that are sure to come. On Saturday evening, he held a rally in Melbourne, Florida, and doubled down on the familiar theme: putting himself in the same league as Lincoln and Jefferson, he told the crowd, “Many of our greatest Presidents fought with the media and called them out.” The agenda is always to divide. “They have their own agenda, and their agenda is not your agenda,” he said.
At the same time, there are distinct signs that Trump is losing ground among members of the conservative media who had initially cut him some slack, not least because they felt the liberal media had been besotted by Barack Obama. The attacks on the legitimacy of the courts, on the intentions of the intelligence agencies, and on the patriotism of the press have become too evident, too repulsive to be discounted as mere sideshow. Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman from Florida and the co-host of “Morning Joe,” tweeted [ https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/832724853346033666 ] a telling call to the right on Friday: “Conservatives, feel free to speak up for the Constitution anytime the mood strikes. It is time.”
It’s true that Trump has not arrested any journalists [yet]. He has not shuttered any newspapers or television stations or Web sites [yet]. I went to work at The New Yorker on Friday and helped close a new issue that includes a deeply reported and tough-minded Letter from Washington, by Nicholas Schmidle, about the Michael Flynn affair [ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/michael-flynn-general-chaos ], as well as a Comment by George Packer that notes that Trump, at his press conference, “behaved like the unhinged leader of an unstable and barely democratic republic.” Yes, there was a little trouble with a Xerox machine, but no one at the office counted it a threat to the First Amendment. In the meantime, the New York Times and the Washington Post are engaged in a ferociously competitive battle to cover this new Administration that has bolstered the forces of fact and truth, and no one has shut off their computers or phones [yet], either. At CNN, Jeff Zucker, the network president, has gotten telephone calls of bitter complaint from Jared Kushner about the coverage of his father-in-law, but if the performance of Jake Tapper and others there is any indication, the attempt to intimidate CNN has not [yet] deflated any spirits. The journalists at Mother Jones, MSNBC, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, NPR, The National Review, the Marshall Project, ProPublica, and many other outlets are [still, so far, one fucking month in] doing their work with determination and seriousness.
In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, as in every genuinely authoritarian state, there are no “enemies” - or, at least, none with the capacity to challenge power. Calling on all the repressive means available in such a state - compliant courts and legislatures; the elimination of political competition; comprehensive censorship of television - soaring popularity ratings are achieved. President Trump may wish for such means, just as he wishes for such popularity. For all the chaos and resulting gloom these past weeks, it has been heartening to see so many “enemies of the American people” - protesters, judges, journalists, citizens of all kinds, even some [. . .] members of Congress - [still, for now, one fucking month in] do their work despite Presidential denunciation, not necessarily as partisans of one party or another but as adherents to a Constitution.
© 2017 Condé Nast
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/donald-trump-and-the-enemies-of-the-american-people
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LIVE: Trump Calls The News Media "Enemy Of The American People"
Streamed live on Feb 18, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
Alex Jones breaks down the latest Trump news, the strength of the US Economy, and MSM attacks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWuE6Tg_2Gw [with comments]
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In Trump’s Volleys, Echoes of Alex Jones’s Conspiracy Theories
Alex Jones on Friday before hosting his radio show in Austin, Tex. His platforms have gotten record traffic in the Trump era.
Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
By Jim Rutenberg
FEB. 19, 2017
Way back on Friday, President Trump declared that several news organizations — ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, The New York Times — were “the enemy of the American people.” You know who’s not the enemy, in his book?
Alex Jones.
Mr. Jones, in case you aren’t aware, is the conspiracy-theorizing, flame-throwing nationalistic radio and internet star who’s best known for suggesting that Sept. 11 was an inside job [ http://www.infowars.com/flashback-alex-jones-said-911-inside-job-on-the-day-it-happened/ ], that the Sandy Hook school shooting was “completely fake [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_NQYKzBvPQ (next below; with comments)]”
and that the phony Clinton child-sex trafficking scandal known as Pizzagate warranted serious investigation [ http://wonkette.com/609513/alex-jones-pulls-video-urging-fans-to-investigate-pizzagate-after-fan-investigated-it-with-a-gun ] (which one Facebook fan took upon himself [ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/us/edgar-welch-comet-pizza-fake-news.html ] to do, armed with an AR-15).
Mr. Jones, 43, has been around for a while. Like every media outfit in the Trump era, his platforms have gotten record traffic and, he told me last week, seen increases in revenue, with ads for water purification systems and for supplements to enhance “brain force” and virility.
But he is apparently taking on a new role as occasional information source and validator for the president of the United States, with whom, Mr. Jones says, he sometimes speaks on the phone.
Millions of listeners and viewers tune in to Mr. Jones on his websites (Infowars chief among them), on Facebook and through old-fashioned radio, and their loyalty partly explains how Mr. Trump maintains a hard-core faithful who don’t believe a word they read about him in a newspaper like this one.
His audience, Mr. Jones told me, is “the teeth of the Trump organization on the ground — the information-warfare, organic internal resistance.” Sure enough, on Saturday the journalist McKay Coppins of The Atlantic tweeted from Florida, “Spotted at Trump rally: More than one InfoWars t-shirt.”
McKay Coppins
@mckaycoppins
Spotted at Trump rally: More than one InfoWars t-shirt
4:25 PM - 18 Feb 2017
[ https://twitter.com/mckaycoppins/status/833079961514803200 (with comments)]
Where Mr. Jones’s content fits in Mr. Trump’s broad media diet isn’t clear. White House officials declined to talk about it in detail. (Hey, Mr. President, I’m trying.) But as Mr. Trump pushes full steam ahead on his effort to delegitimize American journalism, he is lending credence to a number of out-there Jonesisms, adding yet another “pinch yourself, this is happening” element to our national journey into the upside-down.
You can look no further than Mr. Trump’s description of the press as “the enemy of the American people” on Friday, which was reminiscent of Mr. Jones’s use of the same phrase in 2015, as Mr. Jones noted on Sunday [ https://twitter.com/RealAlexJones/status/833328212293861376 ] on Twitter.
Alex Jones
@RealAlexJones
Poweful! @realDonaldTrump calls out the true enemy in this video report.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BWuE6Tg_2Gw ;[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWuE6Tg_2Gw , the YouTube just above, preceding this article]
… and I coin it 2015.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohoh1vtxqVo [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohoh1vtxqVo , next below; with comments] ...
8:51 AM - 19 Feb 2017
[ https://twitter.com/RealAlexJones/status/833328212293861376 (with comments)]
Two weeks ago, Mr. Trump’s quickly debunked allegation [ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/06/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrong-media-not-reporting-terrorism-a/ ] that the news media covered up terrorism by Islamic extremists echoed reports on Infowars, including one [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/06/trumps-suggestion-that-the-media-is-ignoring-terrorist-attacks-has-a-familiar-source-infowars/ ] headline that blared: “Scandal: Mass Media Covers Up Terrorism to Protect Islam.”
Brandt
@UrbanAchievr
"Where does he get this stuff?"
2:02 PM - 6 Feb 2017 - Manhattan, NY
[ https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/828695323312812033 ]
Before that, there was Mr. Trump’s false claim that millions of unauthorized immigrants voted illegally [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/us/politics/donald-trump-congress-democrats.html ] for Hillary Clinton, which Infowars had asserted in November [ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/nov/18/blog-posting/no-3-million-undocumented-immigrants-did-not-vote-/ ] and then repeated, giving “oxygen to the lies,” as CNN put it [ http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/26/media/infowars-alex-jones-donald-trump/ ] then. Then again, others in the right-leaning internet ecosystem had forwarded the illegal voting report, too.
Mr. Jones’s influence could be seen more directly last spring when Mr. Trump told a crowd in California that “there is no drought [ http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/06/09/donald-trump-dought-california-fact-check-jake-tapper-origwx-fy.cnn/video/playlists/jake-tapper-factcheck-org/ ]” — oh, yes, there was [ https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/us/california-drought-tests-history-of-endless-growth.html ] — and suggested that reports of one were part of a plot to protect a “three-inch fish.” It was very similar to reports in Infowars suggesting the drought [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgFPKHlOPJY (next below; with comments)]
was manufactured and promoting the fish theory [ http://www.infowars.com/environmentalists-caused-california-drought-to-protect-this-fish/ ].
Mr. Jones demurred when it came to his influence on Mr. Trump, which he said the “MSM” (mainstream media) overstated to undermine the president. “MSM tries to say Alex Jones is an eight-headed kook with all these warts and Trump’s copying everything he says,” Mr. Jones told me. “It’s just not true.”
For instance, he said, when he urged Mr. Trump to address illegal voting allegations during one phone conversation, “he said, ‘I already know, I’m making a speech in two days.’” (Mr. Trump, he said, “was an Infowarrior before I was born.”)
Mr. Jones said that conversation had taken place earlier in the campaign, not on the phone call immediately after the election that my colleague Maggie Haberman reported on [ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/us/politics/alex-jones-trump-call.html ], in which Mr. Jones said the president had thanked him for his support. Mr. Jones told me that he had spoken with Mr. Trump since that call, though an aide to the president, communicating on the condition of anonymity, played down the frequency of their contact.
Either way, Mr. Jones is hoping his organization will qualify for a coveted White House press credential. He says it’s not something he’s pining for or needs, but he doesn’t see why Infowars shouldn’t get one when “Trump’s calling CNN fake.”
The White House said it had yet to receive a proper application from Infowars and therefore could not comment on whether it would get one. Mr. Jones said the delay might be related to a bureaucratic snag. “They say it’s going to get rectified,” he said.
One ally in his corner is Roger Stone, the longtime Republican operative and informal adviser to Mr. Trump, whose matchmaking brought them together and led to the 2015 Infowars interview during which Mr. Trump told Mr. Jones that “you have an amazing reputation [ http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-praises-9-11-truther-alex-jones/ ].”
Mr. Stone said in an interview, “They are reaching millions of people, and these people are steadfast and loyal Trump supporters.”
Two of the major internet tracking companies, Quantcast and Alexa, reported that in January Infowars had an average of around eight million (Quantcast) or 8.7 million (Alexa) global visitors, who viewed its pages nearly 50 million times. As of Sunday Quantcast ranked [ https://www.quantcast.com/top-sites/US/4 ] its traffic above that of the fact-checking site Politifact.com [ http://www.politifact.com/ ].
Those numbers miss the audiences for his national radio show and his team’s videos on YouTube, where the biggest of his 18 channels has 1.2 billion views [ https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/about ], and on Facebook, where they draw many millions of views. (One, by his editor at large, Paul Joseph Watson, lists 18.1 million views.)
Mr. Jones’s growth has astounded those who have followed a progression that began on cable access in Austin, Tex., in the early 1990s, moved to radio and then to the bigger national footprint he began building online.
“When I was first dealing with Alex, he had a staff of three people and was broadcasting his apocalyptic messages from” a spare bedroom “with choo-choo wallpaper,” said the author Jon Ronson [ http://www.jonronson.com/ ], who wrote about Mr. Jones in his 2002 book, “Them [ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/books/beyond-the-fringe.html ],” and revisited him in “The Elephant in the Room [ https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Room-Journey-Campaign-Alt-Right-ebook/dp/B01LXOO7UQ ]” last year. “In the summer, he had a staff of between 50 and 75 people in this huge industrial space as big as a mainstream TV network.”
Mr. Jones says it’s hardly CNN-size (and, for the record, he says, he believes Sandy Hook may have happened).
Last week, Mr. Jones’s conspiracy workshop was busy making the case that the leaks that forced Michael T. Flynn’s resignation as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser were part of a “counter coup [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRMa9-Rgutk (the Ron Gibson upload of the full February 14, 2017 Alex Jones Show; the original Alex Jones upload of same included in the post to which this is a reply)]” by what he has called “criminal, corporate elements inside the C.I.A.” working “to basically overthrow Trump.”
It’s the sort of message that resonates with his segment of Trump voters because, Mr. Jones said, “the public doesn’t have any trust in the system.”
“They believe the social contract is broken,” he continued, “and they’re able to interact with the new diverse pantheon of the internet-based media.” In other words, with people like him.
It makes you wonder: If Watergate had broken in this media environment, would President Richard Nixon have had to resign? Would enough people have believed it?
I put the question to Bob Woodward, who broke that scandal for The Washington Post with Carl Bernstein. He said it would have turned out the same. “The evidence was so strong, because of the tapes — these things turn on the facts,” he said. “It would be: Can you get information and sources and testimony from witnesses and documents that show what happened.”
Given that no alternative reality was strong enough to save Mr. Flynn’s job, for instance, I’d have to agree. That said, if you live in Mr. Jones’s world, Mr. Flynn’s ouster would seem to be the height of injustice, delivered by the news media on behalf of those “criminal, corporate elements inside the C.I.A.” So, yes, you would see the press as the enemy.
© 2017 The New York Times Company (emphasis in original)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/media/alex-jones-conspiracy-theories-donald-trump.html
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Chaos in the White House: 'There's never been anything like this'
After the fastest, most furious week yet for the Trump administration, America’s elder statesmen say they have never seen such turmoil or ineptitude
18 February 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/18/trump-administration-chaos-white-house [with embedded videos]
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Michael Flynn, General Chaos
“I like to think that I helped get Donald Trump elected President,” Flynn said. “Maybe I helped a little, maybe a lot.”
What the removal of Flynn as the national-security adviser reveals about Donald Trump’s White House.
February 27, 2017 Issue
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/michael-flynn-general-chaos [ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/michael-flynn-general-chaos?mbid=gnep&intcid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true ]
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NSC Official Fired After Reportedly Criticizing Trump, Aides
Craig Deare.
Craig Deare had been selected for role by Michael Flynn
Expected to return to post at National Defense University
February 18, 2017 Updated February 18, 2017
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-18/nsc-official-fired-after-reportedly-criticizing-trump-top-aides
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Trump, an Outsider Demanding Loyalty, Struggles to Fill Top Posts
Elliott Abrams met with President Trump about becoming deputy secretary of state, but was rejected because of past criticism.
FEB. 18, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/politics/trump-candidates-top-posts.html [with comments]
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This Is What Obamacare’s Critics Won’t Admit Or Simply Don’t Understand
Real people with serious medical issues are finally getting the help they need.
02/18/2017 Updated February 18, 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obamacare-what-went-right-critics_us_58a725dce4b045cd34c11b4c?f01pxf6bkdftotj4i [with embedded videos]
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DeVos criticized teachers at D.C. school she visited — and they are not having it
February 18, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2017/02/18/devos-criticized-teachers-at-d-c-school-she-visited-and-they-are-not-having-it/ [with embedded video, and (nearly 4,000) comments]
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Leaked Trump tape: 'You are the special people'
Full audio recording from Bedminster, NJ
02/16/17 05:32 PM EST
[ http://www.politico.com/video/2017/02/170216-trump-bedminsteraudio-full-062271 (embedded)]
Exclusive audio shows how Trump lets loose at his clubs — inviting guests to join him on staff interviews
02/18/17 Updated 02/18/17
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-leaked-audio-clubs-guests-235161 [with comments]
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Trump’s ‘Winter White House’: A Peek at the Exclusive Members’ List at Mar-a-Lago
Mar-a-Lago, the members-only club in Palm Beach, Fla., is being called the winter White House. The entry fee for members was doubled, to $200,000, shortly after President Trump took office.
FEB. 18, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/mar-a-lago-trump-ethics-winter-white-house.html
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Holding Trump Accountable
Illustration by Tom Bachtell
After a month in office, he has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. But the only people with real leverage over him won’t use it.
By George Packer
February 27, 2017 Issue
Section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution allows for the removal of a President who can no longer discharge his duties but is unable or unwilling to say so. It empowers the Vice-President, along with “a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide,” to declare the President unfit and to install the Vice-President as Acting President. Section 4 has never been invoked. In 1987, when Ronald Reagan appointed Howard Baker to be his new chief of staff, the members of the outgoing chief’s team warned their replacements that Reagan’s mental ineptitude might require them to attempt the removal of the President under Section 4. Baker and his staff, at their first official meeting with Reagan, watched him carefully for signs of incapacity—but the President, apparently cheered by the arrival of newcomers, was alert and lively, and he served out the rest of his second term.
After a month in office, Donald Trump has already proved himself unable to discharge his duties. The disability isn’t laziness or inattention. It expresses itself in paranoid rants, non-stop feuds carried out in public, and impulsive acts that can only damage his government and himself. Last week, at a White House press conference, the President behaved like the unhinged leader of an unstable and barely democratic republic. He rambled for nearly an hour and a half, on script and off; he flung insults at reporters; he announced that he was having fun; and he congratulated himself so many times and in such preposterous terms (“this Administration is running like a fine-tuned machine”) that the White House press corps could only stare in amazement. The gaudy gold drapery of the East Room contributed to the impression that at any moment Trump might declare himself President for Life, and a flunky would appear from behind the curtain to pin the Medal of National Greatness on his suit jacket, while, backstage, officials and generals discussed his overthrow. Trump experienced such a deep need to get back on top by lashing out that he apparently overrode the objections of his advisers, felt much better afterward, then prepared to go to Florida to sustain his high at the first rally of his reëlection campaign.
While the White House isolates itself in power struggles, the Administration is in nearly open revolt. Career diplomats are signing statements of dissent or leaving the State Department, while key posts remain unfilled. Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency fought to stop Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pro-industry nominee, from taking over as their new boss. And other government officials, after weeks of hearing Trump belittle their agencies, are feeding the press information about Russian involvement with his campaign.
Foreign leaders, depending on their orientation, are watching this spectacle with disbelieving alarm or with calculating interest. Allies such as Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau, of Canada, and Shinzo Abe, of Japan, flatter the President in order to avoid the fate of Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, whom Trump first berated and then hung up on during their get-to-know-you phone call. Vladimir Putin is already testing Trump, by sending Russian fighter jets to buzz a U.S. Navy ship. Xi Jinping is positioning China to fill the void in the Pacific Rim which will be left by Trump’s policy of America First. Pragmatists in Iran are trying to judge whether the new American government can be counted on to act rationally—exactly what U.S. officials always wondered about the fractured leadership of the Islamic Republic.
It won’t get better. The notion that, at some point, Trump would start behaving “Presidential” was always a fantasy that has the truth backward: the pressure of the Presidency is making him worse. He’s insulated by sycophants and by family members, and he can still ride a long way on his popular following. Though the surge of civic opposition, the independence of the courts, and the reinvigoration of the press are heartening, the only real leverage over Trump lies in the hands of Republicans. But Section 4 won’t be invoked. Vice-President Mike Pence is not going to face the truth in the private back room of a Washington restaurant with Secretaries Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, and Wilbur Ross, or in the offices of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Republican leaders have opted instead for unconstrained power.
They need Trump to pass their agenda of rewriting the tax code in favor of the rich and of gutting regulations that protect the public and the planet—an agenda that a majority of Americans never supported—so they are looking the other way. Even the prospect of Russian influence over our elections and our government leaves these American patriots unmoved. Senator John Cornyn, of Texas, the Republican whip, made it plain: Trump can go on being Trump “as long as we’re able to get things done.” Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky, explained, “We’ll never even get started with doing the things we need to do, like repealing Obamacare, if we’re spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans.”
The growing Russian scandal will challenge the willingness of the Party to hold the President accountable. So far, the situation is not encouraging. The heads of the key House and Senate committees are partisans who are doing as little as possible to expose corruption and possible treason in the White House. The few critical Republican voices—Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins, and Representative Mark Sanford—are ineffective. Perhaps Party leaders are privately searching their souls; perhaps, as with the old Bolshevik Rubashov, in Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” ideology and power have rendered them incapable of independent moral judgment. Whatever the case, history won’t be kind to them.
An authoritarian and erratic leader, a chaotic Presidency, a supine legislature, a resistant permanent bureaucracy, street demonstrations, fear abroad: this is what illiberal regimes look like. If Trump were more rational and more competent, he might have a chance of destroying our democracy [hey George, you smug fucking idiot, nicely flippant and totally self-contradictory finish to an otherwise worthy piece, whistling right past the waiting open grave you just depicted; as so many including Trump himself have documented and made clear, Trump IS destroying our democracy, and you just laid out why he will NOT be stopped, at the very least not until he, with the continuing help of his fellow Christo-fascists, has done MUCH more damage].
© 2017 Condé Nast
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/holding-trump-accountable [ http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/holding-trump-accountable?mbid=gnep&intcid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true ]
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Lawmakers say Trump’s words matter — and hurt the country’s standing abroad
President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak at a news conference on Feb. 15 at the White House in Washington.
February 18, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/lawmakers-say-trumps-words-matter--and-are-hurting-the-countrys-standing-abroad/2017/02/17/1cacaa9e-f55b-11e6-a9b0-ecee7ce475fc_story.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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2/18/17 President Trump Rally - Melbourne, Florida - Diamond & Silk Firing Up The Crowd (audio)
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by xxx ttt [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV1x-I6ZveB8dIpiKTH3aNA , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV1x-I6ZveB8dIpiKTH3aNA/videos ]
Did not see any good video of Diamond and Silks EPIC introduction. I am hoping someone comes through with one. Until then we have this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mauzHAUnNE [with comment]
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First Lady MELANIA TRUMP Prays and Give a WONDERFUL SPEECH at President Donald Trump Rally Melbourne
Published on Feb 18, 2017 by Entertainment News Politics [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy8Lq7my3GBcdg7W-_3u3MQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/LiquidMoves , http://www.youtube.com/user/LiquidMoves/videos ]
First Lady MELANIA TRUMP Prays and Give a WONDERFUL SPEECH at President Donald Trump Rally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMr9yXOuR9w [with comments] [to cover for the flaw in the coverage of Melania's demonic incantations in the YouTube next below]
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LIVE STREAM: President Donald Trump Putting Americans Back to Work Rally from Melbourne Florida
Streamed live on Feb 18, 2017 by
LIVE STREAM: President Donald Trump Putting American Back to Work Rally LIVE from Melbourne-Orlando Florida.
President Donald Trump will host a rally at 5 pm Eastern Time on Saturday, February 18th, 2017. This is the first such event since becoming President.
President Donald Trump to speak Saturday in Melbourne
President Trump is making the Space Coast one of his early visits as he begins his term in the White House.
At the Orlando-Melbourne International Airport, preparations were underway at the hangar where the president will speak.
“We’re excited about it. And I think our citizenry is excited about it, as well,” said Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey.
The rally is at 5 p.m. Saturday, and will be open to ticket-holders only.
Transcript: President Donald Trump’s rally in Melbourne, Florida
/cdn3.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/53307925/Screen_Shot_2017_02_18_at_5.50.31_PM.0.png)
Feb 18, 2017
http://www.vox.com/2017/2/18/14659952/trump-transcript-rally-melbourne-florida
Donald Trump Appears To Make Up Sweden Terror Attack
It didn’t happen.
02/18/2017 Updated February 18, 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-sweden-terror-lie_us_58a8f397e4b045cd34c263d3?anssl7a58hh44e7b9 [with embedded videos]
Sweden has no idea what Trump meant when he said, ‘You look at what’s happening ... in Sweden’
February 19, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/19/sweden-has-no-idea-what-trump-meant-when-he-said-you-look-at-whats-happening-in-sweden/ [with embedded videos, and (over 6,000) comments]
Trump admits false ‘last night in Sweden’ claim was something he heard ‘broadcast on Fox News’
19 Feb 2017
Pres. Donald Trump admitted on Sunday that the terror attack he said happened in Sweden on Friday night [ https://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/trump-cites-non-existent-terrorist-attack-last-night-in-sweden-to-justify-muslim-ban-at-florida-rally/ ] was actually something he saw — but didn’t fully understand — on Fox News.
[...]
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/trump-admits-false-last-night-in-sweden-claim-was-something-he-heard-broadcast-on-fox-news/ [with comments]
Trump Pursues His Attack on Sweden, With Scant Evidence
A group of refugees walking on a highway in Denmark toward Sweden in 2015. Statistics in Sweden found no appreciable increase in crimes from 2015, when the country processed a record 163,000 asylum applications, to 2016.
FEB. 20, 2017
LONDON — President Trump escalated his attack on Sweden [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/sweden/index.html ]’s migration policies on Monday, doubling down on his suggestion — based on a Fox News report — that refugees in the Scandinavian country were behind a surge in crime and terrorism.
Mr. Trump set off consternation and ridicule [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/world/europe/last-night-in-sweden-trumps-remark-baffles-a-nation.html ] on Saturday when he seemed to falsely imply to an adoring throng at a rally in Florida [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/politics/donald-trump-rally-melbourne-florida.html ] that a terrorist attack had occurred in Sweden, which has admitted tens of thousands of refugees in recent years.
On Sunday, as questions swirled, a White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that “he was talking about rising crime and recent incidents in general, not referring to a specific issue.”
Mr. Trump then said on Twitter [ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/833435244451753984 ] that he was referring to a Fox News segment about an American filmmaker who argues that the police in Sweden were covering up a migrant-driven crime wave.
Officials in both countries expressed alarm and dismay on Monday at Mr. Trump’s remarks. Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said [ https://twitter.com/SenBobCasey/status/833449667056771072 ] the president should get his information from intelligence agencies and not from television. The Swedish Embassy in Washington offered the Trump administration [ https://twitter.com/SwedeninUSA ] a briefing on its immigration policies. Sweden’s prime minister, Stefan Lofven, said he was surprised by Mr. Trump’s comments, and noted that Sweden ranks highly on international comparisons of economic competitiveness, human development and income inequality.
“We have challenges, no doubt about that,” he allowed, adding: “We must all take responsibility for using facts correctly and for verifying anything we spread.”
Yet even before the prime minister spoke, Mr. Trump pursued his attack. On Twitter, he suggested [ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/833681539997253636 ] that the news media was covering up problems related to migration in Sweden.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Give the public a break - The FAKE NEWS media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT!
8:15 AM - 20 Feb 2017
[ https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/833681539997253636 (with {over 30,000} comments)]
Immigration is, in fact, a hotly debated issue in Sweden, Germany and many other European countries, and a subject of frequent news coverage.
Moreover, statistics in Sweden do not back Mr. Trump’s claims. Preliminary data released last month [ https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics.html ] by Sweden’s crime prevention council found no appreciable increase in crimes from 2015, when the country processed a record 163,000 asylum applications, to 2016. The council did note an increase in assaults and rapes last year, but also recorded a drop in thefts, robberies and drug offenses.
Officials say they have not seen any evidence for the claim, prevalent in right-wing media like Breitbart and Infowars, that migration has driven a surge in crime. The government has not provided a breakdown of crime statistics according to the ethnic or national background of suspects since 2005, though one right-wing party has called on the government [ http://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/krav-ny-undersokning-av-utrikesfodda-och-brott ] to provide updated statistics.
“The general crime rate in Sweden is below the U.S. national average,” the State Department noted last May [ https://www.osac.gov/pages/ContentReportDetails.aspx?cid=19681 ].
Although terrorism is a concern for Sweden — an Iraqi-born Swede carried out a suicide bombing [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/world/europe/13sweden.html ] in central Stockholm in 2010 — the authorities say they are equally worried about racist hate crimes [ http://www.government.se/492382/contentassets/e6047ff54c00452895005f07e2e2ba39/a-comprehensive-approach-to-combat-racism-and-hate-crime ], including attacks on migrants.
Carl Bildt, a former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden, made a jab at Mr. Trump [ https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/833696821058928641 ] on Twitter: “Just a piece of friendly advice: when you are in a hole, stop digging.”
[...]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/world/europe/trump-pursues-his-attack-on-sweden-with-scant-evidence.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGdeS2CvWrM [Melania's demonic incantations (her reading-from-notes recital of the Lord's Prayer partially dropped; complete in the YouTube just above) begin at c. the 2:01:30 mark; Trump's performance begins at c. the 2:04:15 mark; with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykx3Ui7aC2k (with comments), and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8JZ56zITiQ (with comments)] [and see also in particular (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128831840 (an earlier reply to the post to which this is a reply, which includes another, slightly truncated at the start full-event YouTube and, in full, the Time transcript of the Trumps) and following]
*
LIVE: Analysis of Historic Trump Speech in Florida
Streamed live on Feb 19, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o6epjscfwI [with comments]
--
Utah Republican argues against equal pay for women: It’s ‘bad for families’ and society
Snow rests on the sign on the Utah state Capitol on the opening day of the 2017 session in Salt Lake City, Jan. 23.
Militia Etheridge
@MaryEmilyOHara
Utah GOP chair's letter to editor published TODAY (not in the year 1624)
4:37 PM - 16 Feb 2017 - Brooklyn, NY
[ https://twitter.com/MaryEmilyOHara/status/832358266617335808 (with comments)]
February 19, 2017
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/02/19/utah-republican-argues-against-equal-pay-for-women-its-bad-for-families-and-society/ [with embedded video, and comments]
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AP FACT CHECK: The audacity of hype
In this Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017 photo, President Donald Trump pauses while speaking during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington.
[ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/whitehouse/ap-fact-check-the-audacity-of-hype/2017/02/19/02f949d2-f6b3-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_story.html (no comments yet)]
February 19, 2017
WASHINGTON — In the Washington week that wasn’t, President Donald Trump’s new administration whirred like a “fine-tuned machine,” piling on big-league accomplishments at a pace never before seen.
Immigration agents newly empowered by Trump’s call to secure borders sent hordes of bad foreigners back home, validating a president who won the most lopsided Electoral College victory since Ronald Reagan.
That’s what the audacity of hype looks like.
In the Washington week that actually was, Trump fired his national security adviser for misleading the vice president, was rebuffed by his next choice, saw a Cabinet nominee’s prospects flame out, and stirred anxiety among some fellow Republicans over the tumult holding up Trump’s agenda. Immigration officials announced a sizable but routine roundup of people living in the country illegally, which resulted in fewer arrests than raids mounted under President Barack Obama almost two years earlier.
Trump was called out on his latest of many boasts about the Electoral College, which handed him one of the narrowest victories since Reagan — sixth out of eight — and not one of the biggest.
A look at some of his statements in the past week:
[...]
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/80366038c4a94ff4a3ba421eb0903a4c/ap-fact-check-audacity-hype
--
Ex-officials: Israeli leader spurned secret peace offer
Feb. 19, 2017
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/eccdd7b6df8840b985263b271bd824ad/israeli-leader-lauds-new-day-relations-trumps-us
*
Israeli opposition head: Netanyahu caved on peace initiative
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly cabinet meeting, in Jerusalem, Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017.
[ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israeli-opposition-netanyahu-blinked-on-peace-initiative/2017/02/20/248034c0-f75e-11e6-aa1e-5f735ee31334_story.html (with comments)]
Feb. 20, 2017
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's opposition leader said Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ready to freeze settlement construction in most of the West Bank and reach out to regional Arab nations but ultimately backed out for fear of losing his grip on power.
Isaac Herzog, head of the opposition Zionist Union, said he was prepared to join Netanyahu's government based on a secret regional peace initiative brokered by then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that would have limited settlement growth to just the major blocs that Israel is expected to keep in any peace accord. But he said the talks broke down when Netanyahu caved under pressure from his hard-line allies.
"Netanyahu fled away, turned his back as opposed to his commitments to third parties ... and simply reneged on the basic understanding that we had," Herzog told participants at the annual Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization gathering in Jerusalem. "History will judge Netanyahu on that failure."
Herzog's comments were the latest revelations about secret peace negotiations that have shaken up Israeli politics and raised new doubts over the genuineness of Netanyahu's stated commitment to pursuing Middle East peace, expressed most recently in a White House press conference last week with President Donald Trump.
Former American officials have confirmed a report Sunday in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Netanyahu turned down an offer that would have secured regional recognition of Israel as a Jewish state — a key Netanyahu demand — alongside a renewal of peace talks with the Palestinians with the support of the Arab countries.
[...]
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6eab95d053224432a9e50fd130c97cd1/israeli-opposition-netanyahu-blinked-peace-initiative
--
Trump Delivers On Plans To Reignite American Economy: 2/19/17 Full Show
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by The Alex Jones Channel
On this Sunday, Feb. 19 edition of the Alex Jones Show [with appearances by Jerome Corsi and Owen Shroyer], we report on how President Trump is putting his business skills to use in the White House, particularly by shutting down establishment media. The president intentionally held a rally in Florida on Saturday to talk to the people directly about the state of the country while cutting out the middleman media. We also look into what to expect geopolitically in the next few weeks as the communist Chinese try to expand their power.
Gallup Daily: Trump Job Approval
[most recently: approve 42%, disapprove 53%]
http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx
Daily Presidential Tracking Poll
[most recently: approve 51%, disapprove 49%]
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/prez_track_feb20
President Trump Job Approval
[most recent RCP Average: approve 44.7%, disapprove 50.4%]
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dxZMq13vh4 [with comments] [a must-watch] [and see in particular (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128820389 and preceding and following]
--
Putin: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Published on Feb 19, 2017 by LastWeekTonight [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3XTzVzaHQEd30rQbuvCtTQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight , http://www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight/videos ]
Vladimir Putin is known as a ruthless leader and master manipulator. John Oliver enlists a group of singing dancers to explain that to Donald Trump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0utzB6oDan0 [with (already over 15,000) comments]
--
Here We Go Again: Russia Accused Of Cyberattacks In Another Election
Emmanuel Macron, a French presidential candidate and strong supporter of the European Union, has been targeted by hackers.
02/20/2017 Updated February 20, 2017
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russia-election-hack_us_58aa6654e4b07602ad55f562 [with embedded video]
--
Russia Compiles Psychological Dossier on Trump for Putin
Former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
NBC News
by Bill Neely
EXCLUSIVE News Feb 20 2017, 9:40 am ET
MOSCOW - A dossier on Donald Trump's psychological makeup is being prepared for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Among its preliminary conclusions is that the new American leader is a risk-taker who can be naïve, according to a senior Kremlin adviser.
Trump "doesn't understand fully who is Mr. Putin - he is a tough guy," former Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Fedorov told NBC News.
The file is being compiled by retired diplomats and some of Putin's staff, he added.
The attempt to get inside the U.S. president's mind is aimed at helping Putin plan for his first meeting with America's new leader, the date for which is yet to be decided.
"Very serious preparatory work is going on in the Kremlin, including a paper - seven pages - describing a psychological portrait of Trump, especially based on this last two to three months, and the last weeks," added Fedorov, who said he has known Trump since 2000.
The dossier was being revised regularly, he said, adding that many in the Kremlin believed that Trump viewed the presidency as a business.
Fedorov added: "Trump is not living in a box - he is living in a crowd. He should listen to the people around him especially in the areas where he is weak."
It is normal for any president or leader to be fully briefed before entering negotiations for the first time with a rival leader, but preparing a detailed dossier on the mind and instincts of a U.S. leader is unusual.
Putin's government is growing increasingly concerned about Trump's battles in Washington [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-defends-mike-flynn-blasts-fake-news-administration-leaks-n721906 ], according to Fedorov and former lawmaker Sergei Markov, who remains well-connected at the Kremlin.
It is worried the president will not have the political power to improve relations with Russia, as he has indicated he might try to do [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-praises-putin-clinton-defends-email-n644621 ], and even, perhaps, lift some U.S. sanctions.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia conducted a covert hacking operation to undermine the U.S. election process [ http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/report-putin-russia-tried-help-trump-discrediting-clinton-n703981 ], which evolved into an attempt to help Trump win the White House. They also believe with "a high level of confidence" that Putin became personally involved in the campaign to interfere in the election [ http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-officials-putin-personally-involved-u-s-election-hack-n696146 ].
The White House's connection with the Kremlin - and how deep it runs - remains under scrutiny, which has only ramped up last week when Mike Flynn resigned from his role as national security adviser after admitting to misleading Vice President Mike Pence [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/mike-pence-told-about-flynn-warning-11-days-after-trump-n720836 ] and other senior administration officials about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States in December.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has no government or diplomatic experience, but boasts exceptionally close ties with Moscow and Putin.
And former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort - who resigned in August amid questions about his ties to pro-Russia interests in Ukraine — told NBC News last week that he had "no contact knowingly with Russian intelligence officials." Manafort was reportedly one of the Trump campaign officials whose communications were investigated by the FBI [ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/politics/russia-intelligence-communications-trump.html ], according to The New York Times.
During the election campaign, Trump spoke fondly of Putin [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-praises-putin-clinton-defends-email-n644621 ]. But earlier this month, Trump told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-challenged-about-putin-says-our-country-s-so-innocent-n716906 ] that while he respects Putin "that doesn't mean I'm going to get along with him."
Meanwhile, the creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election has won bipartisan support [ http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/russia-s-election-interference-cummings-wants-9-11-commission-style-n722276 ].
The issue of Russia "is now a kind of banana skin for Trump - that's why we should avoid any kind of step that could damage Trump," said Fedorov. "Trump cannot come to a meeting with Putin as a loser - he must sort out his domestic problems first."
Fedorov added that Trump's "constant battle with the mass media" was "worrying us."
The U.S. president "is dancing on thin ice," he said. "It's a risky game."
A former prime minister under Putin said the Kremlin is taking no pleasure at Trump's struggles.
"Absolutely not - not laughing," Mikhail Kasyanov said. "The situation is very serious and the whole of [Putin's] team, they are nervous."
Many in the Kremlin believe hardliners in America - in Congress and the military - want to sabotage the president and his plans for better ties with Russia.
Some even talk of a conspiracy against Trump. Markov, the former lawmaker, told NBC News that he believes America's intelligence services "want to overthrow President Trump in a coup" because of his desire to improve relations with Russia.
Flynn was a victim of U.S. intelligence services, according to Markov.
So while many in Russia celebrated Trump's election, the mood in Moscow was changing from delight at Trump's election to doubt about his ability to deliver on a better relationship with Russia, he added.
"Donald Trump has done nothing good for Russia, nothing," Markov said. "But they already attack him."
©2017 NBCNews.com
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-compiles-psychological-dossier-trump-putin-n723196 [with embedded video]
--
Police: Hunters Shot Each Other Near The Border, Then Blamed Immigrants
[ https://twitter.com/CBS7News/status/832250701308891140 (with comments)]
Hunters had claimed they had been attacked “ambush style.”
02/20/2017
Two men who were shot in Texas [ http://huffingtonpost.com/news/texas ] last month and had blamed immigrants crossing the border with Mexico [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/mexico ] were actually shot by members of their own hunting party, according to an indictment issued last week.
Walker Daugherty and Edwin Roberts were wounded in the incident [ https://apnews.com/6cb4c81139024035af7bc406447e716f ] on January 6, The Associated Press reported.
Daugherty and his fiancee told police they were shot by undocumented immigrants from Mexico [ http://www.cbs7.com/content/news/Hunting-guides-charged-in-connection-to-Presidio-County-ranch-shooting-413885063.html ], per CBS 7 in Odessa, Texas. However, the station said police now believe Daugherty actually shot Roberts and another member of the party, Michael Bryant, shot Daugherty.
[...]
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller cited the shooting as “proof” that the border wall proposed by President Donald Trump [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/topic/donald-trump ] was needed.
When confronted about previous inaccurate Facebook messages, Miller said his social media posts shouldn’t be held to the same standard as those of a news organization - but then cited a news organization in defense of himself.
“It’s like Fox News,” Miller told KUT radio. “I report and you decide if it’s true or not [ http://kut.org/post/sid-miller-defends-fake-news-his-facebook-page-im-not-news-source-updated ].”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hunter-shooting-texas-border_us_58aa7eeae4b037d17d292817
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in addition to (linked in) the post to which this is a reply and preceding and (other) following (including in particular the current http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128821089 [and any future following], http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128821580 [and any future following), and http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128831840 and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128832130 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128832203 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128832226 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128839436 and preceding and following, and http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128840280 and preceding [and any future following]), see also (linked in):
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http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128832205 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128833755 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128835289 and preceding (and any future following),
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128839108 and preceding and following,
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128839358 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128832391 and preceding (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128835105 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128837354 (and any future following)
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128839140 and following,
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http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=128845919 and following
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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