Last August during an Oval Office meeting, Trump pressed aides, asking why can’t the US invade Venezuela to topple Maduro.
“why can’t the U.S. just simply invade the troubled country?”
According to AP News, then-Secretary of State Tillerson and national …
The post Is President Trump Seeking a Pretext for War against Venezuela? “Why Can’t the U.S. Simply Invade the Troubled Country?” appeared first on Global Research.
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Not only did the “Gang of Eight” know that Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe were plotting a coup against a sitting president, Judicial Watch has announced that it has filed a lawsuit to get to the bottom of the treasonous attempt.
According to statements made by former acting FBI Director McCabe, top Justice Department officials considered asking Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment against President Donald Trump in order to remove him from office.
McCabe said Tuesday “that none of the top eight congressional leaders objected when he briefed them in 2017 on the bureau’s decision to open a counterintelligence investigation.”
“The purpose of the briefing was to let our congressional leadership know exactly what we’d been doing,” McCabe claimed.
McCabe admitted that he ordered the investigation, but said others were involved, notably Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
“And I told Congress what we had done,” he said.
“No one objected,” he added in the interview. “Not on legal grounds, not on constitutional grounds and not based on the facts.”
However, independent government watchdog, Judicial Watch, wants the truth.
The group filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for all records of communication of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the Office of the Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or the Office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussing how to remove President Trump from office based on ‘unfitness.’
“Additionally, the lawsuit seeks all recordings made by any official in the Office of the Attorney General or Deputy Attorney General of meetings in the Executive Office of the President or Vice President.
“The suit was filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to three separate FOIA requests dated September 21, 2018 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:19-cv-00388)). The lawsuit seeks all written and audio/visual records of any FBI/DOJ discussions regarding the 25th Amendment and plans to secretly record President Trump in the Oval Office.”
President Trump recently tweeted: “The biggest abuse of power and corruption scandal in our history, and it’s much worse than we thought. Andrew McCabe (FBI) admitted to plotting a coup (government overthrow) when he was serving in the FBI, before he was fired for lying & leaking.”
“It is no surprise that we are facing an immense cover-up of senior FBI and DOJ leadership discussions to pursue a seditious coup against President Trump,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “This effort to overthrow President Trump is a fundamental threat to our constitutional republic so Judicial Watch will do everything it can in the courts to expose everything possible about this lawlessness.”
The “Gang of Eight” included, at the time, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), then-Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Rosenstein has denied that he was involved with the plot, or that he suggested wearing a wire to entrap the president for the coup, saying McCabe’s claim is “inaccurate and factually incorrect.”
McCabe later walked back his remarks, with a spokesperson issuing a statement that he did not “participate in any extended discussions about the use of the 25th Amendment, nor is he aware of any such discussions.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham vowed to conduct oversight over “those who watch us.”
“It’s one of the most significant moments in American history if it’s true,” Graham said. “You had the acting head of the FBI talking to the deputy attorney general about replacing the president. So what I’ll do — oversight is part of my job. We do have checks and balances, so the Congress will watch those who watch us. I’ll try to find out who was in these meetings and talk to all of them, and figure out who is lying because somebody’s lying.”
Many people agree. They want to know who’s lying too, who tried to oust a sitting president, and why the government has repeatedly denied requests under the FOIA law.
Just hours after Bernie Sanders announced that he will be seeking the 2020 Democratic nomination, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who came ever-so-close to endorsing the “Democratic Socialist” in 2016, even threatening his relationship with the all-powerful Clintons by delaying his endorsement of Hillary by a few months, revealed that – once again – he would not be endorsing Bernie during the 2020 primary.
According to Bloomberg, not only did de Blasio decline to endorse Bernie Sanders’ bid for the Oval Office, the newly reelected New York City mayor affirmed that he hasn’t ruled out a 2020 bid of his own.
“I think Bernie did an incredible service for this country in his campaign in 2016, and it fundamentally changed the debate,” de Blasio said of the Vermont senator during a news conference in Brooklyn on Tuesday. “I think we’re in a new situation here. There’s obviously a different dynamic, and I think everyone should assess the current situation we’re in.
“I do not rule out any particular path for myself,” de Blasio said when asked by reporters whether he’s
By flirting with a Sanders endorsement in 2016, de Blasio tried to show that he might be willing to put his principles above his allegiance to Hillary, whose 2000 Senate campaign he managed. De Blasio also worked in the Clinton administration. And the former president swore him in when he started his first term as mayor.
Since then, De Blasio has made three-well publicized appearances with Bernie – who has already started staking his campaign on both his opposition to Trump and his support for pioneering support for a $15 minimum wage and Medicare for All – and even asked the Vermont Independent Senator to swear him in for his second term.
But it’s clear that de Blasio, riding high after his highly publicized tut-tutting of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in the New York Times, feels he has a shot at being the progressive, billionaire-bashing champion that the Democratic Party will inevitably choose to go up against Donald Trump in 2020.
Update2: According to Bloomberg, while the trade talks with China have been productive, Lighthizer noted that technology issues and the protection of US Intellectual Property (IP) are the “thorniest” issues. The US Trade Rep. added that President Trump is closely involved in the negotiations.
Earlier in the day the White House reiterated that it would adhere to a March 1 deadline to slap new tariffs on Beijing if a deal isn’t reached by then.
Lighthizer and Mnuchin will embark on a trip to China to continue the discussions “as soon as mid-February” according to the report.
Update: After an Oval Office meeting between Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and President Trump, Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer announced that he and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin “will be going over there (China) shortly and then we’ll see where we are,” adding that while they had made “substantial progress” following two intense days of discussions, there is “much work to do” and “a lot more issues to cover.” The trip will be scheduled for after the Chinese New Year which takes place on February 5.
#NEW In meeting between Chinese Vice Premier and President Trump in the Oval Office, Trade Rep Lighthizer announces he and Treasury Secy Mnichin “will be going over there (China) shortly and then we’ll see where we are.”
— Greta Wall (@GretaLWall) January 31, 2019
Lighthizer added that China and the US are more or less in continuous negotiations, and that he thinks progress has been made. According to reports, China’s Liu said he hopes to accelerate the 90-day period for a deal, and that he agrees with Lighthizer on several topics.
If both Lighthizer AND Mnuchin are going at the same time…. https://t.co/BIOqLrtctL
— Karthik Sankaran (@RajaKorman) January 31, 2019
***
With the second day of trade talks between China and the US drawing to a close, President Trump said he would either strike a very big trade deal with China or “postpone” it, but it was not clear precisely what he was referring to.
“This isn’t going to be a small deal with China. This is either going to be a very big deal, or it’s going to be a deal that we’ll just postpone for a little while,” Trump told reporters at the White House, without elaborating.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump tweeted that trade “meetings are going well with good intent and spirit on both sides. China does not want an increase in Tariffs and feels they will do much better if they make a deal”, although he later qualified by saying that there would be no deal unless China opened it economy to “manufacturing, farmers and other US businesses and industries.”
Looking for China to open their Markets not only to Financial Services, which they are now doing, but also to our Manufacturing, Farmers and other U.S. businesses and industries. Without this a deal would be unacceptable!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 31, 2019
While the world’s two largest economies are trying to strike a deal on trade by March 1, to avoid a planned increase in the tariff rate imposed on Chinese imports by the United States, the market has already priced in a favorable outcome even though as Rabobank’s Michael Every speculated, “with the Fed having delivered unto Trump what is Trump’s, and the Dow over 25,000, does he really need that easy deal, or can he let his team push back harder?”
Separately, during the same press conference, Trump said he would not accept a deal to avert another government shutdown without money for his long-desired border wall, pushing back on Democrats who stressed their opposition to a wall.
“If they’re not going to give money for the wall…it’s not going to work,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump said he would wait to see if Congress can come up with an agreement before the Feb. 15 funding deadline before he decides whether to declare a national emergency in a bid to build the wall on his own.
Citing what he said is a threat posed by a new migrant caravan making its way toward the U.S., Trump claimed that “Nancy Pelosi will be begging for a wall.” Earlier on Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Democrats remain adamantly opposed to wall funding, but could provide money for new fencing and other barriers in a spending bill.
“There’s not going to be any wall money in the legislation,” Pelosi said during her weekly press briefing in the Capitol. “However, if they have some suggestions about certain localities where technology, some infrastructure [is appropriate], … that’s part of the negotiation.”
Trump also said that “if walls are immoral, maybe we should take down all the walls that are built right now. You will see a mess like you’ve never seen before.”
WATCH: President Trump, in a meeting with American manufacturers to sign an executive order, addresses negotiations over border wall https://t.co/OGpTsnr7VY pic.twitter.com/ytkUdz4fsd
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 31, 2019
Despite the temporary reopening of the government last Friday, the president cast doubt on bipartisan spending talks, arguing earlier in the day that Republicans were “wasting their time” by engaging with Democrats who oppose wall funding. While Trump has previously said he would be open to calling structures along the border “steel slats” or a “barrier,” he said Thursday he would return to demanding a wall.
“Lets just call them WALLS from now on and stop playing political games! A WALL is a WALL!” Trump tweeted.
Today, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney explained that President Trump is committed to border security, and that he will do it “with or without Congress.”
In fact, Mulvaney said that another government shutdown was not off the table and that the president is not afraid of one.
Mulvaney reiterated the threat that the president has stated in the past, that a state of emergency to direct construction of a border barrier—which is something that many of the democrats in congress previously voted for and supported—is not off the table either.
If congress continues to draw the line in the sand over border security, the national emergency is likely.
“It’s still better to get it through legislation,” Mulvaney said on “Fox News Sunday,” calling congressional action “the right way” to secure wall funds.
“At the end of the day, the president’s commitment is to defend the nation and he’ll do it either with or without Congress,” he stated.
The emergency powers, if invoked, would surely set off a flurry of leftist lawsuits aimed at prohibiting the president from performing his job, through the powers provided in the constitution. Many people know that democrats fight constitutional rights that don’t align with their globalist, socialist agenda.
On Friday, President Trump heard the pleas of government workers ignored by democrats, and signed a bill to fund the government for three weeks.
The measure “provided the opportunity for a bipartisan conference of lawmakers to negotiate border security funding.”
Mulvaney blasted naysayers who claimed the president was a wimp, saying that Trump will “be judged by what happens at the end of this process, not what happened this week.”
He’s absolutely right. Many conservatives are sick and tired of ‘commentators’ trying to force the president to act hastily, when they have no idea about the pressures involved in the office.
The president is besieged and attacked on every side. He has been surrounded by a ‘team of vipers’ for the past months, even in the Oval Office.
However, there is no denying that the president is a masterful negotiator. He is also smarter than democrats think.
Mulvaney wouldn’t rule out the government shutting down again in February when money runs out again.
“No one wants a government shutdown,” Mulvaney said. “But when a president vetoes a bill that’s put in front of him on a spending package, sometimes that has the effect of shutting the government down. We don’t go into this trying to shut the government down.”
Asked later on CBS’s “Face the Nation” whether the president was willing to shut the government down again, Mulvaney said “Yeah, I think he actually is.”
Many people say, ‘good.’ Giving in to democrats only emboldens them to take away more safety and rights.
Southern border, Oval Office, Senate floor considered possible venues.
Former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka engaged in a loud verbal altercation with CNN‘s Jim Acosta Thursday, according to the Daily Caller‘s Virginia Kruta.
According to multiple witnesses, Acosta made a flippant remark to Gorka – who just launched his SALEM Radio Network show “America First,” telling him that media-related meetings with the president were for “real journalists” only.
Acosta walked in then, according to Gorka, touched his arm and said “Why are you here? This place is for journalists only,” then walked away. He also noted that the incident occurred in front of fellow SALEM host Mike Gallagher and Sirius Patriot XM host David Webb — and explained that, although they had been in the same building on several occasions, he and Acosta had never officially met prior to this incident.
“Abilio ‘Jim’ Acosta, you are a dickhead,” Gorka fired back at Acosta. –Daily Caller
“For the next 40 minutes, he hid in the back and didn’t come out as I was right by the exit, until I went to the Oval Office,” Gorka told the Caller, adding “Jim Acosta is actually worse than anyone imagined. He’s definitely not a journalist, and he is clearly a cowering coward. I just feel sorry for anyone who is in the White House pool with him and know he is hated by all the actual journalists in the White House.”
Wow! Unbelievably NASTY decorum in White House Press Briefing room! @Acosta walks by new radio show host @SebGorka and says to him: “Why are you here? This place is for journalists only.” Really Jim? And #FakeNewsers too? Welcome to the press room, Seb!
— John Fredericks (@jfradioshow) January 17, 2019
Vince Coglianese of the Daily Caller was there for the exchange, and said “The whole room went silent as Gorka chewed [Acosta] out.”
Sirius Patriot XM host David Webb confirmed the incident, saying “I was right next to Sebastian and he reported accurately what Acosta said. Acosta was serious and condescending.”
Yes @Acosta we do belong in the Press Room. @SebGorka @radiotalkermike @SiriusXMPatriot @WilkowMajority pic.twitter.com/zYthOOEA8b
— David Webb (@davidwebbshow) January 18, 2019
Alas, no audio of the incident has emerged, but you can listen to Gorka’s account below:
January 16, 2019
By Susan Cornwell and James Oliphant
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – With the partial U.S. government shutdown now in its 26th day, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday urged President Donald Trump to reschedule his State of the Union address – a move that could deny him the opportunity to use the pageantry of the speech to attack Democrats in their own chamber over the impasse.
With Trump’s address set for Jan. 29, Pelosi wrote him a letter citing security concerns because the Secret Service, which is required to provide security for the address, has not received funding during the dispute.
The standoff was triggered by Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion to fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, which Democrats oppose.
Presidents traditionally deliver the address, which lays out the administration’s goals for the upcoming year, in the House of Representatives chamber before a joint session of Congress and the majority of the Cabinet.
Democrats took control of the House after last November’s congressional elections. During the shutdown, Trump has routinely blamed them for the stalemate, although he had earlier said he would take responsibility.
Pelosi, speaking to reporters, suggested that if Trump would not agree to reschedule the speech until the government reopens, he could deliver it from the Oval Office instead, a setting that would lack the grandeur of a congressional address.
The White House had no immediate comment on Pelosi’s request, and her letter appeared to have taken aides by surprise. It pointed out that she had invited Trump to make the State of the Union address at the Capitol but said the shutdown complicated the situation.
“Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress,” Pelosi wrote.
U.S. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told reporters later: “I think it’s a good idea to delay (the speech) until the government is open.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Twitter her department and the Secret Service were prepared to handle a presidential speech at the Capitol.
Representative Jim Jordan of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative Republicans allied to Trump, said Pelosi’s move showed Democrats were “more focused on stopping the president than they are on serving the country.”
DEMOCRATIC SENATORS RALLY
Both sides sought to ratchet up the pressure over the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
Democratic senators huddled on the outdoor steps leading to the Senate in 39-degree (3.9-C) weather, holding large photographs of constituents furloughed by the shutdown or otherwise hurt by it, with Schumer saying Trump “is using these men and women as pawns.”
At the same time, the president hosted a bipartisan group of House members to discuss finding a solution to the impasse. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the meeting was constructive.
Democratic lawmakers who met with Trump said they told him to end the shutdown first and then talk about the issues dividing them.
“Our singular message was we’ve got to reopen the government and then in good faith we can have negotiations,” Representative Dean Phillips told reporters.
At mid-afternoon, a group of freshman House Democrats crossed the Capitol to deliver a letter to Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office, “asking him to exercise his power and bring our bills to a vote” to fund the government and reopen it, said Representative Susie Lee of Nevada.
A handful of Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham and Lisa Murkowski, were circulating a bipartisan draft letter to Trump asking him to support a measure that would reopen the government for three weeks while they work on funding legislation that would address his concerns about border security.
A Democrat who signed the letter, Chris Coons, said it would not be sent unless a substantial number of Republicans signed it.
Trump on Wednesday signed legislation that would ensure 800,000 federal employees will receive back pay when the government reopens.
But the White House threatened to veto a House bill that would provide $12.1 billion in supplemental funding for national disasters if lawmakers combined it with a separate measure to temporarily reopen shuttered agencies without funding for a border wall, saying such a move would be “unacceptable.”
Some government employees are being asked to return to work after being initially told to stay home during the shutdown, although they will not be paid on schedule.
Funding for the federal courts will run out next week because of the shutdown, Bob Carlson, president of the American Bar Association, which represents more than 400,000 lawyers, said on Wednesday, urging the administration and Congress to reach a compromise and restore funding to the federal judiciary.
“Immigration courts, which have no current funding and are already dealing with an 800,000-case backlog, have canceled more than 42,000 hearings, forcing people who have waited years for justice to wait even longer,” Carlson said in a statement.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and James Oliphant; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Ginger Gibson, Susan Heavey, Steve Holland and David Morgan; Writing by Makini Brice and James Oliphant; Editing by Bill Trott, Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)
A look into the moves POTUS needs to make this year to ensure he stays in the Oval Office through 2024.
Back in the Oval Office on Friday after his trip to the Southern border, President Trump was confronted by a number of reporters, one of whom just happened to be CNN’s Chief White House correspondent James Acosta, who inadvertently did Trump a favor when he also traveled to the border, posed next to the wall, and noted there “were no migrants trying to rush for this fence,” adding “matter of fact, it’s pretty tranquil down here.”
Trump trolled Acosta to his face, asserting, “Good job yesterday. I appreciate your salesmanship. I appreciate your salesmanship. … Some people are dumb.”
On Thursday, Acosta had posed at the wall from McAllen, Texas, reassuring Americans that there wasn’t “anything resembling a national emergency situation.”
Trump responded to Acosta’s tweet by trolling him on Twitter:
As The Daily Wire noted, in another video, Acosta showed what he said was an area of the border that shows fencing with barbed wire, writing: “All quiet on this stretch of the border ahead of Trump’s visit to McAllen TX area.”
A third video from Acosta showed him interviewing a local resident about the safety of the area. The woman confirmed to Acosta that the area, which has border barriers, was safe.
Acosta has done a fine job selling the efficacy of the wall so far. He seems to be personifying a quote from Trump’s “The Art of the Deal”: “The most important thing in life is to love what you’re doing, because that’s the only way you’ll ever be really good at it.”
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(Natural News) The Left-leaning “mainstream” media tried its best to take apart POTUS Donald Trump’s Oval Office speech earlier this week by “fact-checking” everything he said. Desperate for any ‘gotcha’ moment they can produce, editors at one news network, CBS, thought they had the president on something he said, so they quickly pounced. The network… |
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(Natural News) The day after POTUS Donald Trump’s Oval Office speech Tuesday night in which he laid out details of the ongoing “humanitarian crisis” along our southern border, many Americans were left hoping that he could strike a deal with recalcitrant Democrats in Congress to fund part of his border wall and get shuttered government… |
from InfoWars: “This barrier is absolutely critical to border security.” President Trump on Tuesday addressed the nation from the Oval Office on border security and the need to build a physical barrier on the southern U.S. border with Mexico. Read the full transcript below. My fellow Americans, Tonight, I am speaking to you because there […]
The post VIDEO: TRUMP THREATENS TO TAKE POWER FROM CONGRESS IF THEY DON’T ACT ON BORDER CRISIS appeared first on SGT Report.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump made a televised plea for border wall funding Tuesday night, seeking an edge in the shutdown battle with congressional Democrats as he declared there is “a humanitarian crisis, a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul.”
Addressing the nation from the Oval Office for the first time, Trump argued for funding on security and humanitarian grounds as he sought to put pressure on newly empowered Democrats amid an extended partial government shutdown.
Trump called on Democrats to return to the White House to meet with him, saying it was “immoral” for “politicians to do nothing.”
Trump, who has long railed against illegal immigration at the border, has recently seized on humanitarian concerns to argue there is a broader crisis that can only be solved with a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. But critics say the security risks are overblown and his administration is at least partly to blame for the humanitarian situation.
Trump has been discussing the idea of declaring a national emergency to allow him to circumvent Congress and move forward with the wall. But he made no mention of such a declaration Tuesday night.
Democrats have vowed to block funding for a wall, which they say would be immoral and ineffective, and have called on Trump to reopen shuttered portions of the government while border negotiations continue.
President could direct Army to build wall if crisis at the southern border declared ‘national emergency.’
Rapper Kanye West rang in 2019 on Monday by writing pro-Trump sentiments on Twitter which resulted in him being on the receiving end of vicious attacks, many of which used racial slurs.
“Trump all day,” West tweeted, adding: “Just so in 2019 you know where I stand.”
“One of my favorite of many things about what the Trump hat represents to me is that people can’t tell me what to do because I’m black,” West later tweeted.
Last time West publicly came out in support of the president he was viciously attacked by CNN. The far-left network suggested that he was mentally ill, used racial slurs to attack him, used his wife’s former lovers to attack him and used his deceased mother to attack him. The Daily Wire reported:
The attack started on Tuesday when CNN host Don Lemon led a panel that mocked West — while Lemon laughed.
“Kanye West is what happens when Negroes don’t read,” CNN’s Bakari Sellers said.
CNN’s Tara Setmayer declared West to be “the token Negro of the Trump administration,” adding that “no one should be taking Kanye West seriously” because “he clearly has issues, he’s already been hospitalized.”
Lemon went even lower the next day, calling West’s White House appearance a “Minstrel show,” and then used West’s deceased mother to attack him, saying he was an embarrassment to the black community and that his “mother is rolling over in her grave.”
CNN political analyst April Ryan attacked West using the man who made a sex tape with West’s wife, rapper Ray J.
“I talked to someone who is very familiar with the Kardashians, or used to be, text messaging with Ray J. You know who Ray J is, he was once close with Kim Kardashian,” Ryan said, adding that he was “a little concerned.”
