DonViejo
DonViejo's JournalTrump's phone call with Macron described as 'terrible'
Source: CNN
By Michelle Kosinski and Maegan Vazquez, CNN
Updated 8:24 AM ET, Mon June 4, 2018
Washington (CNN) - A call about trade and migration between US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron soured last week after Macron candidly criticized Trump's policies, two sources familiar with the call told CNN.
"Just bad. It was terrible," one source told CNN. "Macron thought he would be able to speak his mind, based on the relationship. But Trump can't handle being criticized like that."
A short White House readout of last Thursday's call said the conversation was focused on trade and immigration.
"Both leaders discussed the migration problem in Libya, and timelines to solve it. President Trump underscored the need to rebalance trade with Europe," the readout states.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/04/politics/donald-trump-emmanuel-macron-call-terrible/index.html
What challenge? Feinstein romps ahead in California primary with turns to the left.
By David Weigel
June 3 at 6:32 PM
SACRAMENTO — It was supposed to be a defining battle for the Democratic Party’s future, California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein against her party’s fired-up activist left. Amid predictions of a Democratic civil war, one of the state’s largest labor unions endorsed her opponent and urged voters to reject “establishment politics.”
Yet days before Tuesday’s top-two primary, Feinstein is cruising toward what even her field of opponents acknowledge will be a giant victory. Her best-known opponent, state Sen. Kevin de León (D), who charged into the race last year on a message of generational change, has found himself challenged by a little-known Republican for the second spot in the November runoff, as lesser-known liberals fracture the anti-Feinstein vote.
Feinstein has bent the race her way by portraying herself as a reliable liberal in the Senate minority — and by moving further left and co-opting issues key to the state’s Democrats. And as she prepares to turn 85, she has allied herself with the party’s young activists.
In the campaign’s final stretch, Feinstein has run as an opponent of the death penalty and a defender of the state’s marijuana industry, new stances that have cut off lines of attack by de León, while drawing no perceptible backlash for their timing.
“I don’t want to not grow. I don’t want to not learn,” Feinstein told reporters last week at a roundtable on the Trump administration’s proposal to block federal funding of Planned Parenthood. “The world changes. We change. I think that’s what should make me an attractive senator, particularly to young people.”
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/what-challenge-feinstein-romps-ahead-in-california-primary-with-turns-to-the-left/2018/06/03/046323fc-65bf-11e8-99d2-0d678ec08c2f_story.html
'It was my job, & I didn't find him': Stoneman Douglas resource officer remains haunted by massacre
By Eli Saslow
June 4 at 6:00 AM
BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. — Scot Peterson had spent much of the past three months in hiding, but now somebody was walking onto his porch and toward the front door. A motion detector activated an alarm inside his duplex. Peterson, 55, ducked away from the windows and bent out of sight. His girlfriend, Lydia Rodriguez, walked to the entryway and began to pull down a corner of the white sheet that now covered most of their front door. “Oh please,” she said. “What now?”
It had been exactly 90 days since Peterson’s last shift as a school resource officer in Parkland, Fla., where he had been armed and on duty as 17 people were killed and 17 more were injured, and ever since then a procession had been making its way to his door to demand accountability for another American mass shooting. First came the Broward County Sheriff’s Office to repossess his police cruiser and his badge. Then came dozens of reporters and television trucks, jamming into the cul-de-sac of a retirement community to broadcast stories about the “Coward of Broward.” Then came a court officer serving Peterson with a lawsuit from a parent whose daughter had been fatally shot on the school’s third floor. “Scot Peterson is a coward,” it read. “Scot Peterson did nothing. Scot Peterson waited and listened to the din of screams of teachers and students, many of who were dead and dying. He let innocent people die.”
“I’m not here,” Peterson said now to Rodriguez as she looked out beyond the sheet and sunlight streamed into their living room. “It’s okay,” she said, waving at two octogenarians holding a bag of cookies on the porch. “It’s the neighbors. Jim and Kelly.”
Peterson invited them inside and offered them seats in the living room. Christian music played over the speakers and Fox News Channel was muted on television. “Thank God for you two,” Peterson told them. They were two of the only people who had come over after the shooting just to ask if he was okay. As the crowds grew outside his house, they had let him sneak out his back door and through their yard whenever he left to see his lawyer, visit a psychologist, or go for a drive when he couldn’t sleep.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/it-was-my-job-and-i-didnt-find-him-stoneman-douglas-resource-officer-remains-haunted-by-massacre/2018/06/04/796f1c16-679d-11e8-9e38-24e693b38637_story.html
ROUND THE BEND. Pro-Trump Author Says CIA Has Plan to Kill the President
Jerome Corsi, the old 2004 Swiftboater, is back with a new theory about how far the ‘deep state’ will go to destroy Donald Trump’s presidency. We bet you can guess what it is.
RONALD RADOSH
06.04.18 5:24 AM ET
It is not difficult to conclude that we now have a conspiracy theorist as president of the United States. During Barack Obama’s presidency Donald Trump promised to find proof that he was not born in the United States and claimed that he had sent people to Hawaii to find the evidence. If he really sent anyone, they never came back with the proof Trump expected. Then in March 2017, as president, he tweeted that Obama had ordered a wiretap on his phone at Trump Tower. That too was false.
Of late, Trump has engaged in several “tweet storms” claiming that a conspiracy by the “Deep State” exists and is doing all it can to delegitimize his presidency and get him removed from office. Trump believes the Deep State was instituted by John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director, and includes all of the intelligence agencies. His latest claim is that before leaving office the Obama team planted an FBI spy in his campaign, tweeting a phrase his supporters would soon repeat: “SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!”
Contrary to being SPYGATE, it is becoming apparent that the FBI source (since exposed as academic Stefan Halper) was not put into Trump’s campaign for political purposes but was part of a legitimate counterintelligence operation investigating Russia’s election interference in the U.S. elections and involved three of his campaign aides, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Sam Clovis, whom Halper interviewed. Trump evidently believes that Halper’s interviews were an attempt to entrap his advisers to plant evidence about Russian collusion.
All of this is to be expected, because this is Donald Trump’s modus vivendi. What is more troubling, however, is that many intellectual Trump supporters are echoing the president and are making the same arguments. Roger Kimball, head of Encounter Books and editor of The New Criterion (for which I have written), argues like Trump that it was Brennan who put together a “working group… to stymie Trump’s campaign.”
more
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pro-trump-author-says-cia-has-plan-to-kill-trump?ref=home
50 years after darkness of 1968, young people give us new hope
BY MIKE MCCURRY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 06/04/18 08:00 AM EDT 0 THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
We are remembering several 50 year anniversaries in 2018 but, for me, none is more poignant than June 4, the day five decades ago that Robert F. Kennedy won the California Democratic presidential primary and was shot and killed that night following his victory celebration.
I was an eighth grade student at John F. Kennedy Middle School on the San Francisco peninsula and had enjoyed my very first taste of presidential politics. I woke up early that day and went out in the dark to hang ballot reminders on doors in my precinct. My parents let me stay up late to watch RFK’s victory speech, which I cheered.
My classmates and I were divided and debated the merits of Bobby versus Gene McCarthy, but I was a Kennedy guy through and through. I went to bed a happy kid. The next morning, my parents, who had stayed up late, quietly came in and told me Senator Kennedy had been shot and was lingering near death. I believe that was my wake up call for the cost and joy of being committed to political activism.
It reminds me of what one of my future bosses, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, said to Washington columnist Mary McGrory upon news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, “Mary, to be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.” Yes, McGrory apparently said, “But we’ll never laugh again.” To which Moynihan said, “Oh Mary, we will laugh again. We’ll just never be young again.”
Admittedly, those are all paraphrases, but they capture something that I think about a lot these days. In 1968 and beyond, those of us who are now aging baby boomers entered politics and public service determined to make a difference and commit ourselves to working within our political system to achieve changes we believed would make America better, maybe even great, again.
more
http://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/390489-50-years-after-darkness-of-1968-young-people-give-us-new-hope
FBI Probes Hack of Elliott Broidy, the Republican Operative at the Center of Scandal After Scandal
Source: The Daily Beast
A Playmate payoff, facilitated by Trump fixer Michael Cohen. An unseemly battle between foreign powers to influence D.C. All of it appears tied to the hacking of Elliott Broidy.
BETSY WOODRUFF
06.04.18 5:05 AM ET
The FBI is investigating the hacking of scandal-dogged Republican operative Elliott Broidy, The Daily Beast has learned. Three sources familiar with the investigation said the FBI has questioned multiple witnesses about the hack, which stole thousands of emails and allegedly resulted in scores of stories that embarrassed Broidy and snarled his business dealings. The hack appears to have released a deluge of shocking stories about Broidy.
Broidy is a venture capitalist who has long been a key donor and financier of Republican candidates. During the 2016 election, he was vice chair of a the joint fundraising arm of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Trump campaign. He was also formerly a deputy finance chairman of the RNC.
And he isn’t new to scandal. In 2009, Broidy pleaded guilty to giving almost $1 million to New York state pension fund officials in exchange for his company receiving $250 million to manage, as Reuters detailed. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and did not serve any time in prison.
Years later, he found himself in the headlines again—this time as a result of email leak after email leak detailing his questionable behavior. One Wall Street Journal story—which Broidy’s people believe to be based on stolen emails—showed he agreed to pay $1.6 million in a non-disclosure agreement to Playboy Playmate Shera Bechard who became pregnant while having an affair with him. According to the Journal, the deal barred the Playboy Playmate from revealing she had ever been with Broidy. It was set for her to be paid in quarterly installments over two years.
Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-probes-hack-of-elliott-broidy-the-republican-operative-at-the-center-of-scandal-after-scandal?ref=home
Putin says 'fierce' U.S. politics hindering summit with Trump
Source: Reuters
JUNE 4, 2018 / 4:18 AM / UPDATED 4 HOURS AGO
Reuters Staff
VIENNA (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed political ructions in the United States for difficulties in arranging a summit with President Donald Trump, in remarks broadcast on Monday.
Trump said in March the two leaders would meet soon. But since then already fragile ties between Washington and Moscow have been strained further by the conflict in Syria and the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. Putin said last month the proposed summit was beset by problems and was not working out for now.
Asked by Austrian broadcaster ORF why it was taking so long to arrange, he said: “You have to ask our colleagues in the USA. In my view it is the consequence of the fierce domestic political contest in the United States.”
Putin, who gave ORF an interview ahead of a visit to Austria on Tuesday, did not elaborate.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-usa-summit/putin-says-fierce-u-s-politics-hindering-summit-with-trump-idUSKCN1J00V0
Mourning America: What my father, Ronald Reagan, would say today
By Patti Davis
June 3 at 7:11 PM
Patti Davis is an author and the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
My father used to talk about a recurring dream he had in which he was walking into a beautiful white building with grand columns, knowing that it was his new home. When he was elected president, he said the image finally made sense to him. Once in the White House, he never had the dream again.
He had a reverence and a love for America that burned in his eyes when he looked at the flag, that bled into his words when he spoke to the country. Selfishly, I used to feel slighted by that love. I referred sometimes to my “sibling rivalry” with America. My strident protests against some of my father’s policies definitely got his attention, which was what I intended — but they also wounded him, which was not my intention. In his last years of life, when Alzheimer’s disease had stolen many things but not love, I was able to sit with him and tell him my regrets. I miss my father in deeply personal ways. I also miss the dignity that he brought to the task of leading this country, the deep respect he had for our democracy, and now, after so much time has passed, I miss how much he loved America.
People often ask me what he would say if he were here now. Sometimes I’m a bit glib in response, pointing out that he’d be 107 years old. Other times, I simply say he’d be pretty horrified at where we’ve come to. But as the June 5 anniversary of his death has drawn near, I’ve let myself imagine what he would say to the country he loved so much.
I think he would remind us that America began as a dream in the minds of men who dared to envision a land that was free of tyranny, with a government designed and structured so that no one branch of government could dominate the others. It was a bold and brave dream. But, he would caution, no government is infallible. Our democracy, because it is founded on the authority of “We the people,” puts the burden of vigilance on all American citizens.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mourning-america-what-my-father-ronald-reagan-would-say-today/2018/06/03/a0fe1cfe-65be-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html
San Juan mayor: Trump administration 'completely looked away' over hurricane death toll
Source: The Hill
BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 06/04/18 07:29 AM EDT
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said that the Trump administration has “looked away” from Puerto Rico after a study found a significantly higher death toll from Hurricane Maria than was officially announced.
“What is staggering is that the Trump administration has completely looked away when this death toll is announced,” Cruz said on MSNBC’s “Kasie DC” on Sunday. The mayor said that while the total number of people who died as a result of last year’s storm may never be known, “hundreds or thousands died.”
A study released in the New England Journal of Medicine last month found that as many as 4,645 people died from the hurricane. The Puerto Rican government has listed the official death toll at 64, but has commissioned a study to determine a new count.
“The government of Puerto Rico remains silent and idle while the federal government under the Trump administration was looking and continued to look the other way and make things very difficult for the Puerto Rican people,” Cruz said.
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/390508-san-juan-mayor-trump-admin-completely-looked-away-over
Dem Senator Blocked From Entering Immigration Detention Center
Source: The Daily Beast
Sen. Jeff Merkley was barred from entering an immigration-detention facility Sunday in Texas. The Oregon Democrat attempted to gain access to the complex to confirm that hundreds of refugee children were being held there. In a video shared on his social-media pages, Merkley said: “I’m going to try to enter a facility in Brownsville, Texas, run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. I am told that this former Walmart may currently be housing hundreds of refugee children who have been separated from their parents.” Merkley was barred from entering the facility, tweeting: “I was barred entry. Asked repeatedly to speak to a supervisor—he finally came out and said he can’t tell us anything. Police were called on us. Children should never be ripped from their families & held in secretive detention centers.”
https://twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley/status/1003444959905746944
READ IT AT THE HILL
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Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/dem-senator-blocked-from-entering-immigration-detention-centre?ref=home
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Name: DonGender: Male
Hometown: Massachusetts
Home country: United States
Member since: Sat Sep 1, 2012, 03:28 PM
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