IGX

Wild Bill wrote:Trump ordered to bomb Syria to prove he is not Russian spy.

Herv100 wrote:-Trump dines with Xi
-they discuss security and trade
-Trump: "hey Xi, check this out"
-Daddy Trump disciplines Assad with his belt
-World watches as Trump shows he's the boss now
-Trump: "what were we talking about again? How's your steak?"

After a series of high-level White House leaks portraying Steve Bannon as fed up with his job and ready to quit, Trump's chief strategist has told associates the stories are "100 percent nonsense" and he's playing for keeps.

Even for this leaky, rivalrous White House, the Bannon broadside was brutal. Numerous officials torched the senior adviser in media stories, did nothing to soften the Bannon-loses-power narrative and watched gleefully as Drudge and others trumpeted his fall. Truth is, the hatred between the two wings is intense and irreconcilable.

The two sides: The Bannonites believe the liberals staged a coup and will turn Trump into a conventional squish who betrays the very voters who brought him to power. The Jared wing thinks the Bannonites are clinically nuts.

Killing Bannon won't be easy: His staunchest ally is one of Trump's closest confidants — Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Kellyanne Conway will go to the mat for him, as will policy advisor Stephen Miller. He's also built strong relationships with other cabinet secretaries including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. In the end, though, family matters most and all but dad are done with Bannon and his politics.

Bannon's allies on the outside include, as Trump might say, some "bad hombres."

"Steve has developed strong and important relationships with some of the most powerful right-leaning business leaders," said a close Bannon ally outside of the White House. "I see some bad press in [Jared's] future."

Most noteworthy were the herculean efforts of blogger Mike Cernovich, who took to the livestreaming application Periscope to rally opposition to the strike in a marathon session that went on for several hours.

Just days after Donald Trump Jr. suggested he be given a Pulitzer Prize, Cernovich tweeted, “Sources telling me U.S. attack in Syria planned for tonight, we must stop! #NoMoreWar,” at 7:40 pm Eastern time, an hour and a half before NBC News broke the news of the airstrike.

During the course of the livestream Cernovich — at times holding his infant daughter Cyra in his arms — blamed a variety of actors for fomenting the conflict. “They want war. Deep state, all these people want it, man,” he said. Of the media, he said, “They’re trying to con Trump into believing the people want war.”

Cernovich also expressed his belief that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad had been framed for the chemical attack, though he had not decided by whom. “It was probably ISIS did it to themselves,” he said on the livestream, while also tweeting, “Did McCain give ‘moderate rebels’ (ISIS) in Syria poison gas and Hollywood style film equipment?”

Turdacious wrote:

After a series of high-level White House leaks portraying Steve Bannon as fed up with his job and ready to quit, Trump's chief strategist has told associates the stories are "100 percent nonsense" and he's playing for keeps.

Even for this leaky, rivalrous White House, the Bannon broadside was brutal. Numerous officials torched the senior adviser in media stories, did nothing to soften the Bannon-loses-power narrative and watched gleefully as Drudge and others trumpeted his fall. Truth is, the hatred between the two wings is intense and irreconcilable.

The two sides: The Bannonites believe the liberals staged a coup and will turn Trump into a conventional squish who betrays the very voters who brought him to power. The Jared wing thinks the Bannonites are clinically nuts.

Killing Bannon won't be easy: His staunchest ally is one of Trump's closest confidants — Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Kellyanne Conway will go to the mat for him, as will policy advisor Stephen Miller. He's also built strong relationships with other cabinet secretaries including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. In the end, though, family matters most and all but dad are done with Bannon and his politics.

Bannon's allies on the outside include, as Trump might say, some "bad hombres."

"Steve has developed strong and important relationships with some of the most powerful right-leaning business leaders," said a close Bannon ally outside of the White House. "I see some bad press in [Jared's] future."

https://www.axios.com/steve-bannon-to-a ... 92148.html

It sounds like the plot of an episode of Dallas.

Washington’s rumor mill is working overtime on the fate of aide Steve Bannon, who is said to be at the center of the rampant White House in-fighting. When I asked the President Tuesday afternoon if he still has confidence in Bannon, who took over the campaign in mid-August, I did not get a definitive yes.

“I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump said. “I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.”

He ended by saying, “Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will.”

The North Korea Reframe
Posted April 12th, 2017 @ 11:59am in #North Korea #China #Trump #potus

Prior U.S. presidents framed the North Korean nuclear program as a problem between the United States and North Korea, with China as an unhelpful third party with its own interests. That framing was weak and useless. North Korea did whatever it wanted to do.

President Trump recently changed the frame. Now it’s not so much a problem between the United States and North Korea as it is a branding battle between China and the U.S., with North Korea being the less-important part of the equation. President Trump has said clearly and repeatedly that if China doesn’t fix the problem in its own backyard, the USA will step in to do what China couldn’t get done.

See the power in that framing? China doesn’t want a weak “brand.”

With the new framing, we already see China talking tougher about North Korea. They stopped buying North Korean coal, which is something they said they would do before Inauguration Day. But by then, Trump had already reframed the situation the way I described. And he was weeks from being Commander-in-Chief when he did it.

The only thing lacking in Trump’s reframing was a credible threat that he would launch a decapitation strike against North Korea. That problem was solved over chocolate cake at Mar Lago when the visiting President of China, Xi, observed Trump give the order to send 59 Tomahawk missiles into a sovereign country that had pissed him off just a few days earlier.

Then Trump ordered an “armada” of American warships to the vicinity of North Korea just to remind Xi that we have options.

Trump also suggested that our trade negotiations with China will go a lot better if North Korea is no longer a problem. Trump didn’t go so far as to suggest adding a “North Korea tax” to Chinese imports, to pay for our military presence in South Korea, but I like to think it is an option.

This is the sort of thing I was hoping to see when the Master Persuader took office. His reframing on North Korea is pitch-perfect. We’ve never seen anything like this.

Some of you will be tempted to argue that nothing has really changed. But I think the face-to-face meeting between Xi and Trump, and the movement of North Korea to a branding competition between superpowers is a big, big deal. It would be hard, if not politically impossible, for Xi to go easy on North Korea from this point on.

—

In related news…

This has been a good week for President Trump. So far, we have seen:

1. Sean Spicer (accidentally?) caused the opposition media to argue that Hitler analogies are ridiculous.

2. The Syrian attack established Trump as a measured and decisive leader. His popularity will rise. Even many of his critics supported the attack.

3. Trump solved for the “puppet of Putin” allegation by attacking its client state, Syria.

4. Trump’s Supreme Court nominee succeeded, albeit the hard way.

5. The healthcare issue is moving forward after the initial trial-balloon that was more of a negotiating step than a real proposal.

6. Tax reform is now on hold for healthcare reform, but no one thinks that is a bad way to go. The savings on healthcare are part of any budget and tax plan.

7. Relations with China look good. Trump and Xi had good chemistry.

8. China is putting the pressure on North Korea like never before.

9. The economy is good, and optimism is high, in part thanks to Trump. (Mostly the optimism part.)

10. Iran is probably a bit more flexible this week after watching the Syrian attack.

11. News coverage had already mostly evolved from “Trump is Hitler” to “Trump is incompetent.” The Syrian attack and the North Korean situation moved Trump to “Effective, but some of us don’t like what he is doing” I wasn’t expecting that to happen before the end of the year.

You can tell me other presidents have had better starts. But I doubt that is the case. Keep in mind that Trump started in the deepest hole of any president, ever. He’s already halfway out of the hole and establishing himself as a strong leader on international issues.

Turdacious wrote:Or he's angling for Conway's job.

Trump's women hit so many requirements to become gay icons and/or Real Housewives that Esquire felt the need to beg gay men not to make First Lady Melania Trump a gay icon. Now, drag queens are imitating Melania, Conway, and Secretary of Education/Amway heiress Betsy DeVos at protests and across Instagram and YouTube

Grandpa's Spells wrote:Scott Adams is proving himself dumber and dumber. The weird sugar baby thing he has going on is creepy as well.

According to a database compiled by the Partnership for Public Service and the Washington Post, out of 553 important positions that require Senate confirmation -- and that is by no means all the political appointments Trump has to make-- only 22 Trump nominees have been confirmed, while another 53 have either been formally nominated or are awaiting formal announcement of their nominations. That leaves 478 jobs with no nominee at all.

President Trump insisted on Tuesday that he remained committed to his hotly disputed plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, despite backing off a demand that the project be funded in a short-term spending measure that must be passed by Friday to avoid a government shutdown.

By easing off the proposal for a down payment on wall construction, Mr. Trump may have cleared one of the biggest obstacles to passage of the spending bill before financing for most government operations expires at the end of the week.

Herv100 wrote:

TerryB wrote:Serious question: Why were democrats in favor of immigration control and border enforcement during the Bill Clinton presidency, and in favor of a 700-mile border fence in 2006, but now opposed to a border wall?