Category Archives: Donald Trump

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice ….

by Robert Huntington | Leave a comment

From Axios: “Iranian officials have told the countries trying to mediate peace talks with the U.S. that they have now been tricked twice by President Trump and “we don’t want to be fooled again,” according to a source with direct knowledge of those discussions. …

“Iranian officials have told the mediators — Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey — that U.S. military movements and Trump’s decision to deploy major troop reinforcements have increased their suspicion that his proposal for peace talks is just a ruse.”

Assuming that talks are taking place (or will shortly), which is more likely, that Tehran will give in to Trump’s demands for stopping the attacks or that Trump will give in to Tehran’s demands for reopening the Strait of Hormuz?

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Is Congress actually legislating? And defying Trump?

by Robert Huntington | Leave a comment

According to the NYT: “The latest rejection of his [Trump’s] budget blueprint came on Wednesday, after the House voted 341 to 79 to pass a pair of bills to fund the State and Treasury Departments, as well as other foreign aid programs, providing money for agencies that Mr. Trump had proposed eliminating entirely. …

“Lawmakers are now in the process of negotiating and approving a series of spending bills before a Jan. 30 shutdown deadline. Appropriators in both the House and the Senate have come to bipartisan agreements on eight of the 12 bills that fund the government. The Senate was racing to clear three measures that passed the House last week with money for the Commerce and Justice Departments, as well as for environmental programs.

“Even some programs that have long been despised by conservatives are instead set to sustain only modest cuts, including Voice of America, the National Endowment for Democracy and the National Endowment for the Arts.”

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“Who’s interfering? We’re taking over.”

by Robert Huntington | Leave a comment

The New York Times on DJT’s plans for Venezuela.

“On Sunday morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to recast Mr. Trump’s assertion a day earlier that the United States would “run” Venezuela, saying instead that the administration would keep a military “quarantine” in place on the country’s oil exports to exert leverage on the new leadership there.

“When asked how the United States planned to govern Venezuela, Mr. Rubio did not lay out a plan for a U.S. occupation authority, like the one that the George W. Bush administration put in place in Baghdad during the Iraq War, but spoke of leverage over a Venezuelan government run by allies of Mr. Maduro, now jailed in Brooklyn, to force policy changes.

“U.S. forces will continue to prevent oil tankers on a U.S. sanctions list from entering and leaving the country until the government opens up the state-controlled oil industry to foreign investment — presumably giving priority to American companies — and makes other changes, he said on “Face the Nation” on CBS News.”

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This has never happened before in U.S. History

by Robert Huntington | 1 Comment

Tom Friedman in the NYT: “If you listen to Trump, everything we have done for Ukraine is pure altruism. We have no actual interests at stake ourselves in its fate or the triumph of liberty there. We have no actual interest in the fact that Ukraine is protecting the European Union — a giant, pro-American alliance of free markets and free people. It doesn’t matter a whit to Trump what happens to the E.U. or Ukraine. All that matters is that Zelensky says “thank you” louder for our altruism and that, in the middle of his war of survival, sign over a generation of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to us.”

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