Bannon film outline warned U.S. could turn into ‘Islamic States of America’

The Washington Post reports: The flag fluttering above the U.S. Capitol is emblazoned with a crescent and star. Chants of “Allahu Akbar” rise from inside the building.

That’s the provocative opening scene of a documentary-style movie outlined 10 years ago by Stephen K. Bannon that envisioned radical Muslims taking over the country and remaking it into the “Islamic States of America,” according to a document describing the project obtained by The Washington Post.

The outline shows how Bannon, years before he became a strategist for President Trump and helped draft last week’s order restricting travel from seven mostly Muslim countries, sought to issue a warning about the threat posed by radical Muslims as well as their “enablers among us.” Although driven by the “best intentions,” the outline says, institutions such as the media, the Jewish community and government agencies were appeasing jihadists aiming to create an Islamic republic.

The eight-page draft, written in 2007 during Bannon’s stint as a Hollywood filmmaker, proposed a three-part movie that would trace “the culture of intolerance” behind sharia law, examine the “Fifth Column” made up of “Islamic front groups” and identify the American enablers paving “the road to this unique hell on earth.”

The outline, titled, “Destroying the Great Satan: The Rise of Islamic Facism [sic] in America,” lists Bannon as the movie’s director, as well as its co-writer with his longtime writing partner Julia Jones. The title page includes the line “A Film By Stephen K. Bannon” in capital letters.

Jones, reached by The Post, declined to discuss the contents of the document in detail but confirmed its authenticity. She added that it was essentially Bannon’s product. [Continue reading…]

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New CIA deputy director, Gina Haspel, had leading role in torture

The New York Times reports: As a clandestine officer at the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002, Gina Haspel oversaw the torture of two terrorism suspects and later took part in an order to destroy videotapes documenting their brutal interrogations at a secret prison in Thailand.

On Thursday, Ms. Haspel was named the deputy director of the C.I.A.

The elevation of Ms. Haspel, a veteran widely respected among her colleagues, to the No. 2 job at the C.I.A. was a rare public signal of how, under the Trump administration, the agency is being led by officials who appear to take a far kinder view of one of its darker chapters than their immediate predecessors.

Over the past eight years, C.I.A. leaders defended dozens of agency personnel who had taken part in the now-banned torture program, even as they vowed never to resume the same harsh interrogation methods. But President Trump has said repeatedly that he thinks torture works. And the new C.I.A. chief, Mike Pompeo, has said that waterboarding and other techniques do not even constitute torture, and praised as “patriots” those who used such methods in the early days of the fight against Al Qaeda.

Ms. Haspel, who has spent most of her career undercover, would certainly fall within Mr. Pompeo’s description. She played a direct role in the C.I.A.’s “extraordinary rendition program,” under which captured militants were handed to foreign governments and held at secret facilities, where they were tortured by agency personnel.

The C.I.A.’s first overseas detention site was in Thailand. It was run by Ms. Haspel, who oversaw the brutal interrogations of two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. [Continue reading…]

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Eric Trump’s private business trip to Uruguay cost taxpayers $97,830 in hotel bills

The Washington Post reports: When the president-elect’s son, Eric Trump, jetted to Uruguay in early January for a Trump Organization promotional trip, U.S. taxpayers were left footing a bill of nearly $100,000 in hotel rooms for Secret Service and embassy staff.

It was a high-profile jaunt out of the country for Eric, the fresh-faced executive of the Trump Organization who, like his father, pledged to keep the company separate from the presidency. Eric mingled with real estate brokers, dined at an open-air beachfront eatery and spoke to hundreds at an “ultra exclusive” Trump Tower Punta del Este evening party celebrating his visit.

The Uruguayan trip shows how the government is unavoidably entangled with the Trump company as a result of the president’s refusal to divest his ownership stake. In this case, government agencies are forced to pay to support business operations that ultimately help to enrich the president himself. Though the Trumps have pledged a division of business and government, they will nevertheless depend on the publicly funded protection granted to the first family as they travel the globe promoting their brand. [Continue reading…]

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Trump has awakened the slumbering beast that felled presidents before him: the federal bureaucracy

Politico reports: How on earth is all this stuff getting in the newspapers? Bob Haldeman told Richard Nixon that he had uncovered the culprit: Mark Felt, a top official at the FBI.

“Now why the hell would he do that?” asked Nixon, who was secretly recording the exchange.

Cracking down on Felt directly was out of the question, the two men agreed. “If we move on him, then he’ll go out and unload everything,” Haldeman said, of the man later revealed as Deep Throat. “He knows everything that’s to be known in the FBI.”

Donald Trump, a self-professed Nixon admirer, is learning this history lesson about the presidency in real time: His most dangerous enemies are people who ostensibly work for him.

Modern presidents always feel hectored by the news media and harried by opposition legislators. But mortal threats to their power typically come from hostile forces inside the executive branch.

The phenomenon has rarely been on more vivid display, with Trump buffeted by an unprecedented barrage of leaks about his decision-making and direct challenges to the decisions themselves — a new example coming almost daily — from within the permanent bureaucracy of government.

On Trump’s first full day in office, he called National Park Service director Michael T. Reynolds and ordered him to produce photos that would buttress Trump’s claims that reporters had falsely described the magnitude of his inaugural crowds. Trump’s intervention quickly found its way into the media.

A draft executive order directing the CIA to consider reviving interrogation techniques widely regarded as torture was quickly publicized without White House approval—as was the news that Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA director Mike Pompeo were allegedly “blindsided” by the proposal.

More than 1,000 State Department officials signed and submitted a “Dissent Channel” memo criticizing Trump’s executive order halting refugees from several predominately Muslim countries from entering the country. A memo from Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to Justice Department officials telling them not to defend the order was quickly publicized, leading to Yates’s firing by Trump a few hours later.

Extensive details of Trump’s combative phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia — calls that ordinarily are private or are described in anodyne terms — were leaked shortly after the calls were over, from sources that likely included U.S. officials concerned by Trump’s unconventional brand of diplomacy.

Reconstructions of a botched commando raid on al Qaeda in Yemen — Trump’s first use of military force — noted that the decision-making meeting was attended by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and counselor Steve Bannon, an involvement by primarily political aides that offends many career national security officials.

The examples are notable both for the speed in which they are coming and the obvious skepticism they convey from within the executive branch both about the merits of Trump’s agenda or the methods by which he is trying to impose it. [Continue reading…]

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Kellyanne Conway made up a fake terrorist attack to justify Trump’s Muslim ban

Vox reports: In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that aired on Thursday night, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway managed to get two huge things wrong in a short, 19-second answer. First, she said that the Obama administration banned Iraqi refugees from entering in the United States for six months in 2011 — which is flatly untrue.

Second, and more significantly, she made up a terrorist attack committed by Iraqi refugees that never happened — the “Bowling Green Massacre”:


Joe Sonka is, to be clear, 100 percent correct about this. There has never been a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Kentucky, committed by Iraqi refugees.

Conway claims that “most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.” Most people don’t know about it because it didn’t happen. [Continue reading…]

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Former Norway PM held at Washington airport over 2014 visit to Iran

The Guardian reports: A former prime minister of Norway has spoken of his shock after he was held and questioned at Washington Dulles airport because of a visit to Iran three years ago.

Kjell Magne Bondevik, who served as prime minister of Norway from 1997-2000 and 2001-05, flew into the US from Europe on Tuesday afternoon to attend this week’s National Prayer Breakfast.

He was held for an hour after customs agents saw in his diplomatic passport that he had been to Iran in 2014. Bondevik said his passport also clearly indicated that he was the former PM of Norway.

“Of course I fully understand the fear of letting terrorists come into this country,” he told ABC7. “It should be enough when they found that I have a diplomatic passport, [that I’m a] former prime minister.

“That should be enough for them to understand that I don’t represent any problem or threat to this country and [to] let me go immediately, but they didn’t.”

Bondevik, who is the president the Oslo Centre, a human rights organisation, said he was placed in a room with travellers from the Middle East and Africa who were also facing extra scrutiny.

He said he was ordered to wait for 40 minutes, before being questioned for another 20 minutes about his trip to Iran, which he had taken to speak at a human rights conference.

“I was surprised, and I was provoked,” he said. “What will the reputation of the US be if this happens not only to me, but also to other international leaders?” [Continue reading…]

Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, U.S. border agents at a land crossing in Quebec were asking Canadians, ‘Are you anti- or pro-Trump?‘ Those saying they planned to attend the Women’s March were denied entry. If Alexandre Bissonnette, a vocal Trump supporter, had tried to visit the U.S., presumably he would have had no trouble crossing the border. In that event, he might well have carried out an attack on a mosque in the U.S. instead of going on the rampage in Quebec City.

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Trump embraces pillars of Obama’s foreign policy

The New York Times reports: President Trump, after promising a radical break with the foreign policy of Barack Obama, is embracing some key pillars of the former administration’s strategy, including warning Israel to curb settlement construction, demanding that Russia withdraw from Crimea and threatening Iran with sanctions for ballistic missile tests.

In the most startling shift, the White House issued an unexpected statement appealing to the Israeli government not to expand the construction of Jewish settlements beyond their current borders in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Such expansion, it said, “may not be helpful in achieving” the goal of peace.

At the United Nations, Ambassador Nikki R. Haley declared that the United States would not lift sanctions against Russia until it stopped destabilizing Ukraine and pulled troops out of Crimea.

On Iran, the administration is preparing economic sanctions similar to those the Obama administration imposed just over a year ago. The White House has also shown no indication that it plans to rip up Mr. Obama’s landmark nuclear deal, despite Mr. Trump’s withering criticism of it during the presidential campaign.

New administrations often fail to change the foreign policies of their predecessors as radically as they promised, in large part because statecraft is so different from campaigning. And of course, today’s positions could shift over time. There is no doubt the Trump administration has staked out new ground on trade and immigration, upending relations with Mexico and large parts of the Muslim world in the process.

But the administration’s reversals were particularly stark because they came after days of tempestuous phone calls between Mr. Trump and foreign leaders, in which he gleefully challenged diplomatic orthodoxy and appeared to jeopardize one relationship after another. [Continue reading…]

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William Hartung: Investing in the military (and little else)

Last Friday, Donald Trump made his first visit to the Pentagon where he spoke of signing an order to begin “a great rebuilding of the armed services of the United States,” something he’s been advocating for quite a while. As TomDispatch regular Bill Hartung indicates today, this will mean a massive surge in federal dollars pouring into the abyss of the Pentagon, which has shown itself quite capable of absorbing such moneys in the past and seems to lack the slightest ability to account for what’s done with them. (The Pentagon has never even managed to pass an audit.) We already know that this will mean more troops, more ships, more planes, and as a draft executive order for the new president put it, “a desire to invest in a host of military capabilities, including Special Operations forces and nuclear weapons.”

These are two areas in which “build up” is already the operative phrase. At approximately 70,000 personnel, the elite Special Operations forces are now an enormous, secretive military — larger than the armies of some sizable countries — cocooned inside the regular armed forces. Special ops types are now dispatched annually to about 70% of the nations on the planet. As for those nuclear forces, under President Obama who won a Nobel Peace Prize in part for his abolitionist sentiments, they were already launched on a trillion dollar, three-decade “modernization” program, involving the creation of new delivery systems and “smart nukes” as well. If each of these forces is now to be expanded even more rapidly and expensively, that’s a genuine upping of the military ante on the planet.

As former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who, with President Ronald Reagan, came remarkably close to negotiating nuclear weapons out of existence, pointed out recently in Time magazine, “it looks as if the world is preparing for war… Today,… the nuclear threat once again seems real. Relations between the great powers have been going from bad to worse for several years now. The advocates for arms build-up and the military-industrial complex are rubbing their hands.”

Indeed, at the dawn of the Trump era, it’s worth remembering that, despite the obvious power of the United States, this is no longer a one-way planet. Take the new “nationalism” of the president (and his close adviser Steve Bannon). As the guiding principle of American foreign policy, nationalism will prove a distinctly two-way street, as is already the case in Mexico where Trump’s wall, his immigration policies, and his tax threats against Mexican products may only stoke Mexican nationalism, uniting an otherwise riven country in a fierce spirit of anti-Americanism.

And don’t expect a staggering American military build-up to be a one-way phenomenon either, especially on the nuclear front.  Before he’s done, Donald Trump, who has a yearning for the 1950s, could well put the planet on the kind of military footing that hasn’t been seen since at least the height of the Cold War. He could well spark a potentially out of control three-way arms race that would include China and Russia, while heightening increasingly pugnacious nationalist feelings across the planet. Worse yet, as Hartung points out today, if your money is going to head massively into the military (while civilian spending is slashed), when problems or crises arrive, as they will on such a planet, it’s obvious where you’re most likely to turn. At this point, only two weeks into his presidency, the Earth looks like a distinctly more dangerous place. No wonder the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has just moved its Doomsday Clock 30 seconds “closer to catastrophe” at 2½ minutes to midnight. Tom Engelhardt

What happens when all we have left is the Pentagon?
Trump’s vision of a militarized America
By William D. Hartung

At over $600 billion a year and counting, the Pentagon already receives significantly more than its fair share of federal funds.  If President Donald Trump has his way, though, that will prove a sum for pikers and misers.  He and his team are now promising that spending on defense and homeland security will increase dramatically in the years to come, even as domestic programs are slashed and entire civilian agencies shuttered.

The new administration is reportedly considering a plan — modeled on proposals from the military-industrial-complex-backed Heritage Foundation — that would cut a staggering $10.5 trillion in federal spending over the next decade. The Departments of Energy, Commerce, Transportation, and State might see their budgets slashed to the bone; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized; and (though the money involved would amount to chicken feed) the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities would be eliminated altogether.  In the meantime, the ranks of the Army and Marines would be expanded, a huge naval buildup would be launched, and a new Star Wars-style missile defense system would be developed — all at a combined cost of up to $1 trillion beyond the already munificent current Pentagon plans for that same decade.

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Donald Trump declares a vision of religious nationalism

The Atlantic reports: When Donald Trump looks out on the world, he sees a landscape of potential threats to the United States and its values. “Freedom of religion is a sacred right, but also a right under threat all around us,” the president said at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday. “The world is under serious, serious threat in so many different ways,” he went on, “but we’re going to straighten it out. That’s what I do. I fix things.”

He laid out a vision of what it means to end these threats to United States: Stop terrorism. End the persecution of Middle Eastern Christians. Defend the country’s borders from those who “would exploit that generosity to undermine the values we hold so dear.” Religious Americans also feel threatened within the U.S., he said: “That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment,” a provision of the tax code that prohibits religious leaders and institutions endorsing or opposing political candidates, “and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution.” Repealing the Johnson Amendment would theoretically allow houses of worship and religious leaders to openly advocate for political candidates while retaining their tax-exempt status, while also allowing them to funnel religious donations into explicitly political efforts.

Trump is championing an agenda of religious nationalism. Along with key White House staffers like Stephen Bannon, he believes America represents a set of values, rooted in the country’s religious identity. While there’s little evidence that Trump himself is religiously devout, he has benefited from affiliations with largely white evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell Jr. [Continue reading…]

In the Steven Spielberg film, Bridge of Spies, Tom Hanks plays the part of James B. Donovan who in 1957 defended the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. In the following scene Donovan explains to a CIA agent why he insists on following the law and what it means to be an American:

 

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Trump’s power grabbing handshake yank

What defines Donald Trump?

If you were to ask Mike Pence or Neil Gorsuch I suspect that each would remember a defining moment in their relationships with Trump — the moment when a handshake veered towards a shoulder dislocation.

 

When I first saw this I wondered whether Trump had some kind of involuntary muscular spasm as he yanked on Gorsuch’s arm. But then I saw this:

 

On both occasions, it’s as though Trump thought he was leash-training his new puppy with a yank to show who’s the boss.

Yet to be on the receiving end of that yank must have been at least unnerving and perhaps even haunting.

A mafia boss knows that loyalty can only be sustained with fear — that the possibility of disobedience needs to be seen as posing an existential threat to anyone who steps out line.

I assume Trump’s never threatened to kill anyone, but if he has, that would hardly seem surprising.

And even if no one in Trump’s orbit fears getting their feet set in concrete and then getting thrown into the Potomac, Trump seems to go out of his way to make himself appear menacing in a variety of ways.

Trump’s handshake/yank could signify many things — “I’ve got you now,” “don’t stray from me,” “I’m in control.”

What it certainly fails to convey is a shred of respect for the person on the receiving end.

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How ISIS benefits from Trump’s ban on Syrians

Yassin al-Haj Saleh writes: Some American friends wanted me to visit in the summer to speak about a book of my essays on Syria and the Syrian revolution that is about to be published. The prospect of traveling to the United States made me uneasy. I had heard stories of Syrians being singled out for interrogation at American airports. And I wasn’t certain I would be able to get travel documents and an American visa anyway: Because of my political activities, I am a man without a passport. But then, after President Trump signed an executive order barring even Syrians with valid passports and visas from the United States, I knew I wouldn’t be able to visit my American friends any time soon.

Mr. Trump’s decision pronouncing Syrians dangerous and undesirable seemed quite similar to the way our own dictator, President Bashar al-Assad, has treated me and my countrymen. I have never had a passport. I was explicitly denied one by Mr. Assad’s regime because I am a writer who opposed his father and opposes him. In 1980, I was a 19-year-old student of medicine at the University of Aleppo when I joined the protests against the Hafez al-Assad regime. I was jailed along with hundreds of fellow left-wing students and activists. I spent 16 years in prison.

After my release in 1996, I returned to Aleppo and my medical studies. After graduating in 2000, I decided not to practice medicine, moved to Damascus and worked as a writer. In March 2011, Syrians rose up against the Bashar al-Assad regime. I decided to write without any self-censorship in support of the revolution. The cost of writing with freedom was that I had to leave my home in Damascus, hide in myriad places across the country, and eventually seek refuge in Turkey. To live in exile without a passport or travel documents is to live with the knowledge of limited mobility in a world of militarized bureaucracy.

The international disdain for Syrian refugees comes close to Mr. Assad’s approach to his ill-fated subjects. Most Syrians were never issued passports. For the Assad regime, passports are political and disciplinary tools.

For Syrians, Mr. Trump is merely pushing to extremes a process that has been going on for years. The situation of the refugees, and the underprivileged in general, has been worsening everywhere for a generation. Syria exemplifies a greater global failure. [Continue reading…]

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An apology to Muslims for President Trump

Nicholas Kristof writes: Whenever an extremist in the Muslim world does something crazy, people demand that moderate Muslims step forward to condemn the extremism. So let’s take our own advice: We Americans should now condemn our own extremist.

In that spirit, I hereby apologize to Muslims. The mindlessness and heartlessness of the travel ban should humiliate us, not you. Understand this: President Trump is not America!

I apologize to Nadia Murad, the brave young Yazidi woman from Iraq who was made a sex slave — but since escaping, has campaigned around the world against ISIS and sexual slavery. She has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, yet is now barred from the United States.

I apologize to Edna Adan, a heroic Somali woman who has battled for decades for women’s health and led the fight against female genital mutilation. Edna speaks at American universities, champions girls’ education and defies extremists — and she’s one of those inspiring me to do the same. [Continue reading…]

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Here’s the hell Trump’s executive order created for refugees overseas

Mother Jones reports: People have been left without housing or their possessions. “These are individuals who, in many cases, have already sold their belongings in order to have some money upon entering to the United States,” [Sarah] Krause [senior director of immigration and refugee programs for Church World Service,] says. “Many of them knew their final destination — the cities to which they would be resettled. In Kenya, refugees coming from the Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps are brought into Nairobi prior to their departure for the United States. There they stay at the [International Organization for Migration] transfer center, where they receive predeparture medical screenings as well as cultural orientation, where they learn about life in the United States. Currently, there are over 120 refugees in the IOM transfer center who were expecting to board flights this week and who are now being told they will be sent back to the camp. For those refugees, they have already given up their shelters to new refugee arrivals, and sold their belongings. Their future is very uncertain.”

Refugees already approved for US entry may need to restart parts of the resettlement process — a delay of months or years. “Their cases remain in processing,” she says. “Some of their clearances will expire during this 120-day period and will need to be re-requested. There are checks that are requested by the resettlement support centers: [security opinions], interagency checks, as well as fingerprints. It is a challenge to line all those clearances up, which means the window for departure is very small. Once that window closes, it’s difficult to open again.” [Continue reading…]

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Ukraine: Major fighting around an industrial city in Donetsk raises questions about Putin’s intentions

The Daily Beast reports: Why is the war in Ukraine suddenly going from frozen conflict to scorcher? Is this Vladimir Putin’s way of testing Donald Trump, not two full weeks into his job as U.S. president, or is it just another provocation designed to keep Kiev weak and insecure after three years of invasion, annexation and occupation?

True, fighting has continued more or less constantly in east Ukraine, the industrial heartland known as the Donbass, ever since the fighting was meant to have stopped as a result of not one but two cease-fire agreements. But this week it escalated in a dramatic fashion, and with clear signs of Kremlin support. Into the fray on the pro-Russian separatists’ side have come heavy-duty armaments such as Grad rockets and the Buk missile system which shot down MH17. (And there’s only one place where the separatists can get this stuff). Also, Ukrainian soldiers are receiving ominous text messages on their cell phones, redolent of the kind of cyber-ops used against them before in the war, the technology and operators of which have been linked to Russian military intelligence hacking of the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s emails.

According to Ukrainian official reports, at least 12 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 57 wounded since Sunday, along with civilian killed and five wounded. The Russia-backed separatists in Donetsk report at least nine of their fighters and five civilians dead, though it must always be cautioned that the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic has form for exaggerating or even outright fabricating reports of civilian casualties. Nevertheless the fighting is the worst seen in an urban area in well over a year. [Continue reading…]

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Trump warns Israel: stop announcing new settlements

The Jerusalem Post reports: The White House warned Israel on Thursday – in a surprising statement – to cease settlement announcements that are “unilateral” and “undermining” of President Donald Trump’s effort to forge Middle East peace, a senior administration official told The Jerusalem Post.

For the first time, the administration confirmed that Trump is committed to a comprehensive two-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict negotiated between the parties.

The official told the Post that the White House was not consulted on Israel’s unprecedented announcement of 5,500 new settlement housing units over the course of his first two weeks in office. [Continue reading…]

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European parliament leaders call on EU to reject Trump’s likely ambassador pick

The Guardian reports: The European parliament’s main political parties are making an unprecedented attempt to block Donald Trump’s likely choice as ambassador to the European Union from EU buildings, describing him as hostile and malevolent.

In a startling move that threatens a major diplomatic row, the leaders of the conservative, socialist and liberal groups in Brussels have written to the European commission and the European council, whose members represent the 28 EU states, to reject the appointment of Ted Malloch.

Malloch, a businessman who stridently supported Brexit ahead of the vote in June, is said to have been interviewed for the post by Trump.

When recently asked by the BBC why he was interested in moving to Brussels, Malloch replied: “I had in a previous career a diplomatic post where I helped bring down the Soviet Union. So maybe there’s another union that needs a little taming.”

He also said that Trump was not a fan of the EU, described it as “supranational and unelected” and attacked the European commission’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker. “Mr Juncker was a very adequate mayor I think of some city in Luxembourg, and maybe he should go back and do that again,” he said. [Continue reading…]

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Despite Trump’s hissy fit during conversation with Australian PM, U.S. will still honor refugee agreement

The Washington Post reports: It should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new commander in chief — a conversation with the leader of Australia, one of America’s staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week.

Instead, President Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refu­gee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it.

At one point, Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day — including Russian President Vladi­mir Putin — and that “this was the worst call by far.”

Trump’s behavior suggests that he is capable of subjecting world leaders, including close allies, to a version of the vitriol he frequently employs against political adversaries and news organizations in speeches and on Twitter.

“This is the worst deal ever,” Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center.

Trump, who one day earlier had signed an executive order temporarily barring the admission of refugees, complained that he was “going to get killed” politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers.” [Continue reading…]

In an interview on Australia’s ABC 7.30, former foreign minister Bob Carr said that none of America’s allies should remain under any illusions about having a “special relationship” with the U.S. while it is led by a president whose only interest is to put “America first.”

 

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‘I don’t need the Mexicans. I don’t need Mexico,’ Trump told Mexican president while threatening to send in U.S. troops

The Associated Press reports: A White House official is confirming that President Donald Trump told Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto that he might send U.S. troops to deal with “bad hombres down there” if the Mexican military doesn’t.

The official says the remark was meant to be “lighthearted” and was a reference to cooperation between the countries in fighting drug cartels. [Continue reading…]

Business Insider reports: During a phone call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Friday, US President Donald Trump disparaged Mexico and threatened to use military force against the drug trade, according to Dolia Estevez, a journalist based in Washington, DC.

In an interview with the Mexican news outlet Aristegui Noticias, Estevez, who cited sources on both sides of the call, said, “It was a very offensive conversation where Trump humiliated Peña Nieto.”

Estevez said that while both the White House and the Mexican president have released information about the call, both sides characterized it as a “friendly” conversation and neither disclosed what was said.

Estevez said she “obtained confidential information” corroborating the content of the discussion.

“I don’t need the Mexicans. I don’t need Mexico,” Trump reportedly told the Mexican president. “We are going to build the wall and you all are going to pay for it, like it or not.” [Continue reading…]

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