monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Looks like someone is trying to get rid of people opposing the Trump agenda in the State Dept. It is about time to clear out bureaucrats that slow or disrupt what the Trump Administration is trying to accomplish.

I suppose the terms separation of powers and three branches of government mean nothing to you people, not to mention checks and balances. What a laugh that one is.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The leaders of Mexico and Canada gleefully cheered winning the right to host the 2026 World Cup jointly with the United States on Wednesday, emphasizing unity at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump has frayed relations with the two neighbors during his 18 months in office.

Trump, who as part of a tougher U.S. immigration policy has called for a wall to be built on the country’s southern border and paid for by Mexico, just days ago personally insulted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over a trade dispute.

U.S. Soccer Federation President Carlos Cordeiro suggested to reporters on a conference call that bringing the three countries together was more of a challenge than any Trump effect.

“If you stop and appreciate for a second just the vast number of assurances, guarantees that we had to get from all three governments working together, that is a massive undertaking for one nation, let alone three nations,” Cordeiro said after the vote by the Congress of world soccer’s governing body FIFA in Moscow, where the 2018 World Cup kicks off on Thursday.

“So if there were any complexity here it was three nations working together which just raised the difficulty of getting stuff done,” Cordeiro said.

Just over half of all Americans say they approve of how President Donald Trump has handled North Korea, but only a quarter think that his summit this week with Kim Jong Un will lead to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Wednesday.

In a joint declaration following their meeting in Singapore on Tuesday, the North Korean leader pledged to move toward complete denuclearization of the peninsula and Trump vowed to guarantee the security of the United States’ old foe. Forty percent of those polled said they did not believe the countries would stick to their commitments.

Another 26 percent said they believed the United States and North Korea would meet their commitments, while 34 percent said they did not know whether they would follow through.

Thirty-nine percent believe the summit has lowered the threat of nuclear war between the United States and nuclear-armed North Korea, slightly more than the 37 percent who said they did not believe it changed anything.
[...]
The Reuters/Ipsos poll suggests the Republican president has broad support for one of his biggest foreign policy efforts, despite criticism from non-proliferation experts that Trump had exacted few concrete commitments from Kim on Tuesday on dismantling his nuclear arsenal.

Republicans appear much more enthusiastic than Democrats about the potential benefits of the summit. The poll found that Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to say that the meeting lowered the threat of nuclear war, and they were three times as likely to say that both sides would follow through on their commitments.
[...]
In the poll, Trump received a 51 percent approval rating for his handling of North Korea and also led the list of leaders who should take the most credit for the summit and the joint pledge. Forty percent say the former real estate developer should take the most credit, followed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in with 11 percent. Kim was third with 7 percent.
... ... ...

It is not reaching for straws to point out a few of the many differences in context between now and then, that make Trump's performance on NK difficult if not impossible to compare with his predecessors'.

This being said, I concede that Trump's bullying approach may work where Obama's softer approach failed. The jury is still out, but it could work. It's something different in any case, so let's see.

Sorry, I just couldn't keep it in any longer. I'm alright now.

In the meantime, the Saudi/Iran war games renew with no one paying attention.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-44463749

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) is letting loose this week, expressing anger and frustration with his party after Republican leaders blocked his trade proposal from the Senate floor.

“We are in a strange place. I mean, it’s almost, it’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it?” he said to reporters Wednesday. “And it’s not a good place for any party to end up with a cult-like situation as it relates to a President that happens to be of, purportedly, of the same party.”

During the interview, Fox News’ Sandra Smith took her cue from Trump and pressed Rubio to “clarify” why he’s tweeting mean things about Kim.

“You’ve been tweeting a lot over the past 24 hours, and some have looked at your tweets as not only a criticism of Kim Jong Un, but some have seen them as a criticism as the president,” host Sandra Smith said. “As you just did now, you called Kim Jong Un a ‘weirdo,’ you said, ‘he’s a total weird who would be elected assistant dog catcher in any democracy.’ The president, he sits down with Sean Hannity, he’s talking about Kim Jong Un as someone who appeared to be funny, he’s smart, the president has said of him. So, could you clarify?”

Fox host suggests that criticism of Kim Jong Un is now axiomatically criticism of Trump.