During their “very friendly conversation,” the administration said in a late-night statement, Mr. Trump invited Mr. Duterte, an authoritarian leader accused of ordering extrajudicial killings of drug suspects in the Philippines, to visit him at the White House.

Now, administration officials are bracing for an avalanche of criticism from human rights groups. Two officials said they expected the State Department and the National Security Council, both of which were caught off guard by the invitation, to raise objections internally.

The White House disclosed the news on a day when Mr. Trump whipped up ardent backers at a campaign-style rally in Harrisburg, Pa. The timing of the announcement — after a speech that was an angry, grievance-filled jeremiad — encapsulated this president after 100 days in office: still ready to say and do things that leave people, even on his staff, slack-jawed.

“By essentially endorsing Duterte’s murderous war on drugs, Trump is now morally complicit in future killings,” said John Sifton, the Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “Although the traits of his personality likely make it impossible, Trump should be ashamed of himself.”

“Preexisting [conditions] is going to be [in the Obamacare replacement bill and we’re also going to create [high risk] pools and pools are going to take care of the preexisting [conditions].”

As Dickerson pressed for details, Trump began to get annoyed.
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“Look, if you hurt your knee, honestly, I’d rather have the federal government focus on North Korea, focus on other things than your knee or than your back, as important as your back is,” Trump declared. “I would much rather see the federal government focused on other things.”

Jonathan Tamari
✔
@JonathanTamari

Trump says "we have a lot of ppl standing outside" and he "broke the all time record" in this arena. There are rows of empty seats here

Advice for life in 2017: How to survive a nuclear blast

So this is where we are now, apparently. NBC News has dedicated more than 1,500 words to the subject of how to survive a North Korean nuclear attack. If you’re thinking “How to survive a nuclear attack?” and laughing bitterly, you’re not alone, but NBC’s James Rainey has assembled a parade of experts here to tell you to stay inside—preferably way inside—and not to try to escape.

“Stay inside for at least 24 hours after a nuclear bomb goes off” does not seem like advice anyone should need to be given, and yet you know that there would be at least a few people going “Well, it’s been an entire 18 hours so we should probably head outside to check things out.”

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/4/26/1656410/-Advice-for-life-in-2017-How-to-survive-a-nuclear-blast

Claude Taylor? @TrueFactsStated 12h12 hours ago
Report: grand juries underway on multiple Trump-Russia conspirators, indictments expected

This just in from a source with knowledge of Comey's investigation. "two grand juries have convened and I know that one is almost complete."

The revelation comes from Washington insider Claude Taylor, who served in the the Bill Clinton administration. He says that according to his inside source, two grand juries are in progress in the Trump-Russia scandal, with one of them “almost complete” (link). So what now? It’s not clear who has initially been targeted, though they’re likely to be proverbial smaller sized fish who can be persuaded to provide damning evidence and testimony against a bigger fish in return for leniency. The end goal of the investigation is ostensibly to get to Donald Trump himself, being the biggest fish in the scandal.

Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn failed to register as a foreign agent at the time he was taking payments from intermediaries of the governments of Russia and Turkey. Trump’s former campaign manager is Paul Manafort is accused of having taken tens of millions of dollars from a pro-Kremlin benefactor in similar fashion. Trump’s former campaign adviser Roger Stone has admitted to contact with the Russian hacker who stole emails from Trump’s election opposition. Carter Page is alleged in a number of Russia-related incidents.
So take your pick as to whom the targets of these two initial Trump-Russia grand juries might be. But with one of them near completion, and indictments more or less automatic, we should begin finding out soon. Will the FBI have the two indicted individuals arrested in a public spectacle in order to pressure them to flip more quickly?


https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/indictments-grand-juries-trump-russia/2498/

Louise Mensch?Verified account @LouiseMensch

EXCLUSIVE: Boris Epshteyn Paid Russian Hackers For Both Team Trump and FSB

SEOUL, South Korea — President Trump’s comment that he wants South Korea to pay for a missile defense system being set up in the country jolted its presidential race on Friday and surprised the government, leaving it scrambling to figure out the intentions of a close ally.

In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Mr. Trump said that he wanted South Korea to pay for the system, known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, whose cost he estimated at $1 billion.

He also said that he wanted to renegotiate or terminate what he called a “horrible” trade agreement with South Korea because of a deep trade deficit. “Very soon,” he said when asked when he would announce his intention to renegotiate the pact. “I’m announcing it now.”

In South Korea, Mr. Trump’s comments shook the race to choose a successor to Park Geun-hye, the former president who was formally ousted last month after being impeached by Parliament in December. The election is on May 9.

The former head of intelligence law at the National Security Agency (NSA), April Doss, has been hired to work on the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election, her law firm confirmed in a press release on Wednesday.

Doss, who spent over a decade at the NSA and now chairs the Cybersecurity and Privacy practice at Saul Ewing, LLP, will serve as the committee's special counsel as it examines " allegations that Russia participated in a disinformation campaign intended to benefit President Donald Trump, and claims of potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," the firm said.

Doss will join the committee on May 1.

The former NSA attorney testified before the House Judiciary Committee on March 1, 2017 in a public hearing over the reauthorization of Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, according to her firm, which hired her one year ago.

Full disclosure: I’m not a medical professional. But at this point it doesn’t take a doctor to see the rather obvious pattern in front of us. Donald Trump’s mental lapses are growing more frequent, more alarming, cutting closer to home, and are now occurring multiple times per day. In fact if one were to judge Trump based on his past two days alone, one might conclude his mental capacity is all but fully vacated. Take a look at these several recent examples.

Beginning on Monday morning, Donald Trump was involved in a bizarre incident in which he took a hat from a kid, autographed it, and flung it into the crowd instead of handing it back to him (video link here). The kids yelled out to try to correct his strange behavior, but instead he responded by doing the same thing to another kid’s hat. This was in the same timeframe in which he couldn’t remember to put his hand over his heart during the National Anthem and had to be visibly nudged by his wife. But these minor incidents were merely warning shots.

By Monday evening, Trump had unwittingly revealed during a Fox News interview that he didn’t know the name of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, the one he’s been threatening to blow up for the past week. He also revealed that he believes thirty-two year old Kim Jong-Un is the same guy who’s been in power since the nineties. Trump doesn’t know that Kim and his late father Kim-Jong Il are two different people (Talking Points Memo). Worse, as recently as a few months ago, Trump’s words during the campaign made clear that he did know that these were two different leaders. In other words, he’s completely forgotten the key things that he previously knew about North Korea. And even if his advisers have tried to remind him, it appears he’s now incapable of hanging on to that information.

But perhaps Monday was just a singularly bad day for Donald Trump? As it turns out, he traveled to a political rally today in Wisconsin, the home state of Speaker Paul Ryan. The two Republicans don’t always get along, but they know each other quite well. And yet Trump kept referring to Paul Ryan as “Ron” during his speech today (Bipartisan Report). On their own, any one of these incidents could be seen as a mere gaffe, an absent moment. But strung together, they paint a picture of a man who’s become mentally vacant.

Claude Taylor? @TrueFactsStated

It's a one-two punch that will put Trump down. One is Russia-Putin. Two is his declining mental health. cc @LouiseMensch @docrocktex26