Showing posts with label allies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label allies. Show all posts

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Well, Donald Trump has pissed off Mexico again.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Tentative plans for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to make his first visit to the White House to meet with President Trump were scuttled this week after a testy call between the two leaders ended in an impasse over Trump’s promised border wall, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. 

Peña Nieto was eyeing an official trip to Washington this month or in March, but both countries agreed to call off the plan after Trump would not agree to publicly affirm Mexico’s position that it would not fund construction of a border wall that the Mexican people widely consider offensive, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential conversation. 

Speaking by phone on Tuesday, Peña Nieto and Trump devoted a considerable portion of their roughly 50 minute conversation to the wall, and neither man would compromise his position. 

One Mexican official said Trump “lost his temper.” But U.S. officials described him instead as being frustrated and exasperated, saying Trump believed it was unreasonable for Peña Nieto to expect him to back off his crowd-pleasing campaign promise of forcing Mexico to pay for the wall. 

Both accounts confirm it was Peña Nieto’s desire to avoid public embarrassment — and Trump’s unwillingness to provide that assurance — that proved to be the dealbreaker.

So the President of Mexico does not want to come here, the British do not want Donald Trump to go there, and the Germans are actively mocking Trump in their parades.

But hey, at least Trump is best buddies with Vladimir Putin, right?

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Intelligence agencies in THIS country are not the only ones monitoring communications between Trump advisers and the Russians.

Okay let me get this straight, EVERYBODY'S spying on me?
Courtesy of Newsweek: 

As part of intelligence operations being conducted against the United States for the last seven months, at least one Western European ally intercepted a series of communications before the inauguration between advisers associated with President Donald Trump and Russian government officials, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The sources said the interceptions include at least one contact between former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and a Russian official based in the United States. It could not be confirmed whether this involved the telephone call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that has led to Flynn’s resignation, or additional communications. The sources said the intercepted communications are not just limited to telephone calls: The foreign agency is also gathering electronic and human source information on Trump’s overseas business partners, at least some of whom the intelligence services now consider to be agents of their respective governments. These operations are being conducted out of concerns that Russia is seeking to manipulate its relationships with Trump administration officials as part of a long-term plan to destabilize the NATO alliance. 

Moreover, a Baltic nation is gathering intelligence on officials in the Trump White House and executives with the president’s company, the Trump Organization, out of concern that an American policy shift toward Russia could endanger its sovereignty, according to a third person with direct ties to that nation’s government.

This is what Trump and his supporters fail to understand.

What is happening here is terrifying, not just the liberals and anti-Trump folks, but the ENTIRE world.

So while Trump attacks the media and intelligence agency leakers in this country....


.....he seems unable to fathom that there is still more information coming from other countries who fear that his presidency puts THEM in jeopardy as well.

Here is what one CIA veteran told Vox about Donald Trump:  

We are facing the gravest threat to our institutions and our government since 1861, since the country broke in half. This is a graver crisis than Watergate, which was about corruption, not the usurpation of our laws and our checks and balances. It's graver than World War II, when Hitler never actually threatened our institutions or occupation of Washington. 

So this goes back to 1861. It's a huge societal and institutional crisis. We're dealing with a man in Trump who doesn't accept a fact-based reality, who only acts for his own self-aggrandizement, and who views any action that does not serve him as a threat that must be destroyed. And, on top of that, his team appears to have been colluding with Russian intelligence services. 

This is a massive crisis for our norms and our Constitution, and we have to say so.

Well I think that pretty much says it all.