As Turkey bombs the Kurds after US troops withdrawal, remember—

The Annual Conference on U.S.-Turkey Relations took place at—

the Trump Hotel DC.

@realDonaldTrump profited from people paying to mingle with Turkish politicians.

Via @1100Penn

https://twitter.com/Z_Everson/status/1181936090346934272

Turkish–U.S. officials gathered at Trump Hotel D.C.

The 37th Annual Conference on U.S.-Turkey Relations took place April 14–16 at the Trump Hotel D.C. The American-Turkish Council, a business organization, hosted the event.

While the 2017 conference also was held at the U.S. president’s Pennsylvania Avenue hotel, last year the event was canceled because U.S. officials didn’t want to attend given the tensions between the Turkish and U.S. governments.

There was less reluctance this year. According to the event’s program and social-media sightings, U.S. participants at an event in the president’s hotel held by a group advocating for improved relations with a foreign country included

chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford

deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette

the Secretary of State’s special representative for Syria engagement and special envoy to the global coalition to defeat ISIS, James Jeffrey

former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke (flashback: security detail for Zinke and his wife’s 2017 vacation in Turkey cost U.S. taxpayers $25,000)

(While Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross and senior advisor to the president Jared Kushner spoke during the conference, it appears their remarks were made at a different venue.)

...

Meanwhile, at least three ministers in Turkey’s government and a senior advisor to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan headlined an event that President Trump’s hotel ostensibly profited from. In addition to being a featured speaker at the Trump Hotel D.C., Turkey’s finance minister, Berat Albayrak met with President Trump at the White House last week.


https://1100pennsylvania.substack.com/p/turkishus-officials-gather-at-trump

In an interview with Axios on Tuesday night, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) condemned President Trump in his harshest language yet for deciding to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, suggesting Trump is violating his oath of office by allowing Turkey to move in and attack the Kurds.

Driving the news: Graham said Trump is making the biggest mistake of his presidency, against the advice of his national security team, and putting his presidency in peril. "I think he's putting the nation at risk, and I think he's putting his presidency at risk," Graham said. "And I hope he will adjust his policies like he did before. That would actually be a sign of real leadership."

Details: Graham told me in a phone interview:

"This is worse than when Obama left Iraq, because you've got so much information as to what happens. This would be a game changer to our national security. This would pave the way to the re-emergence of ISIS."

"If I hear the president say one more time, 'I made a campaign promise to get out of Syria,' I'm going to throw up."

"He took an oath of office to protect the nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. There's no bigger enemy to our nation than ISIS. And there's no way we can protect the country from radical Islam without partners like the Kurds."

"His duty as commander-in-chief, I believe, compels him to act honorably by the Kurds, and it is impossible for Turkey to go into Syria and not create a devastating ripple effect, no matter what the president says to [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan."

"Nobody besides Trump believes the president's claim that the U.S. is not abandoning the Kurds."

https://www.axios.com/lindsey-graham-donald-trump-syria-withdrawal-e103594e-2417-4355-a5af-46a0f197e838.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

Ronan Farrow’s new book Catch and Kill, which chronicles the reporter’s investigation into Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, also includes new details, including allegations of rape against former NBC host Matt Lauer, according to Variety, which got a sneak peak the forthcoming book. Farrow’s account includes a new interview with former NBC News employee Brooke Nevils, who alleges Lauer anally raped her in his hotel room while in Russia to cover the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

It was Nevils’ complaint that led to Lauer’s 2017 firing from the Today show, but her identity—and some of the details of the allegation—were not previously known to the public. Farrow outlines Nevils’ account of the night in Sochi where she was assigned to work with former Today co-anchor Meredith Vieira. After a night of drinking at the hotel bar, Nevils says she went to Lauer’s hotel room to pick up her press credential, and then returned when Lauer invited her back shortly after. Nevils told Farrow she “had no reason to suspect Lauer would be anything but friendly based on prior experience.”

From Variety:

Once she was in his hotel room, Nevils alleges, Lauer — who was wearing a T-shirt and boxers — pushed her against the door and kissed her. He then pushed her onto the bed, “flipping her over, asking if she liked anal sex,” Farrow writes. “She said that she declined several times.”

According to Nevils, she “was in the midst of telling him she wasn’t interested again when he ‘just did it,’” Farrow writes. “Lauer, she said, didn’t use lubricant. The encounter was excruciatingly painful. ‘It hurt so bad. I remember thinking, Is this normal?’ She told me she stopped saying no, but wept silently into a pillow.” Lauer then asked her if she liked it. She tells him yes. She claims that “she bled for days,” Farrow writes.

Nevils tells Farrow: “It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent,” she says. “It was nonconsensual in that I said, multiple times, that I didn’t want to have anal sex.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/ronan-farrow-book-rape-allegation-nbc-sochi-hotel-russia.html?via=rss_socialflow_twitter

Increasingly paranoid about leaks, the president has repeatedly mused about administering lie detector tests to White House officials.



President Donald Trump has compared White House leakers with spies and mused obliquely to other officials about executing them. He’s attacked reporters by name. He rails frequently against media accounts of his administration, dismissing them as “fake news.”

But privately, the president is so obsessed with the leaks about him that he has frequently discussed whether to order polygraphs of White House staffers after major disclosures, according to four former White House officials — in what would be a stark and politically risky departure from past practice.

Trump “constantly” talks about ordering polygraphs during major leaks, according to a former White House official. “He talked about it a lot,” the former official said. After reading and watching reports about his presidency, “He’d be angry and ask, ‘Why can’t we stop these things?’”

“He wanted to polygraph every employee in the building to unearth who it was who spoke to the press,” said another former official, who noted that the president tends to be especially irate when he knows specific news accounts are true. Some White House staffers have even volunteered to take a polygraph, also called a lie-detector test, to prove their innocence after they were suspected of leaking, according to the former official.

The new details of Trump’s repeated interest in polygraphing provide important context on the president’s state of mind as Democrats demand answers about the White House’s handling of records of his interactions with foreign leaders. A whistleblower has accused White House officials of improperly storing transcripts of the president’s phone calls in a system meant for highly classified intelligence secrets, including a conversation with the president of Ukraine that has set off a spiraling impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/08/trump-obsession-polygraphs-leaks-038431