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It was a superlative performance, and history will look upon NATO well. Why fiddle with resounding success? Trump's slams against NATO merely prove how much of a Russian stooge he is.

Obama’s Legacy: First Drag Queen Performance at White House

A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion.

we don't

another puerile second=grade trick.

More recently, as Trump has slipped the fetters that shackled him in his first year in office, his growing confidence and independence have been expressed in a series of notably Russophilic moves. He has defied efforts by the leaders of Germany, France, Britain, and Canada to placate him, opening a deep rift with American allies. He announced that Russia should be allowed back into the G7, from which it had been expelled after invading Ukraine and seizing Crimea. Trump later explained that Russia had been expelled because “President Obama didn’t like [Putin]” and also because “President Obama lost Crimea, just so you understand. It’s his fault — yeah, it’s his fault.”

During the conference, Trump told Western leaders that Crimea rightfully belongs to Russia because most of its people speak Russian. In private remarks, he implored French president Emmanuel Macron to leave the European Union, promising a better deal. Trump also told fellow leaders “NATO is as bad as NAFTA” — reserving what for Trump counts as the most severe kind of insult to describe America’s closest military alliance. At a rally in North Dakota last month, he echoed this language: “Sometimes our worst enemies are our so-called friends or allies, right?”

Not only has Germany not met the 2.0% commitment

@EdKrassen

BREAKING: Robert Mueller has just requested an additional 50 sets (100 total) of blank subpoenas to issue for more witness testimony and documents.

Seems like the narrative that Mueller "has nothing" is as dead as PizzaGate!

Thought and Prayers, Donald Trump!

Media elite deems Italians “racist” for border security clampdown

Trump Evangelical Adviser: Unlike Illegal Immigrants, Jesus Didn’t Break Laws!

Foreign direct investment in the United States dropped 32 percent, or $120 billion, in 2017 as compared to the year before, according to new figures.

After a two-year spike in foreign investment, the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that the rate last year dropped to levels similar to 2014 and the years before the financial crisis.

The largest investments in the U.S. came from a handful of countries, with its northern neighbor Canada topping the list at $66.2 billion of investment, followed by the United Kingdom, Japan and France.

The increased trade barriers could affect investment decisions, as foreign companies decide whether or not they want to invest in U.S. operations given the new tariffs.

As in previous year, the vast majority of foreign investment came from the acquisition of U.S. businesses, which accounted for 97.5 percent of all new foreign investment in 2017.

This untutored idiot is chair of Trump's evangelical advisory board.

Trump Is Training His Base

President Trump tweeted today that America’s NATO allies have been “delinquent for many years in payments” and should “reimburse the U.S.” That is not how NATO works. It is not a protection scheme where the allies pay the United States. It is a collective defense organization in which members agree that an attack on one is an attack on all. NATO members have agreed to increase their defense spending levels, but the target date is 2024 — which is to say, they are not “delinquent” on anything.


One cannot rule out the possibility that Trump lacks the mental capacity to understand the basic form of America’s most important alliance. But it is at least as likely that Trump is choosing not to understand this, so that he can precipitate a fissure within the alliance.

Last week, Trump’s national security advisers, who have traditional Republican views toward NATO (good) and Russia (bad), and the allies both expressed their hope that Trump would use the NATO summit to declare victory. Trump has been calling for the allies to increase their defense spending, and indeed they have. The increase has been ongoing since 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea, but the allies signaled they would be happy to let Trump claim credit. “The European officials we’ve spoken to would love nothing more than for Trump to take a victory lap and claim credit for them boosting their defense spending,” reported Jonathan Swan last week.

The emergency is real, all right. The ground is indeed shuddering beneath our feet. It’s not about whether NATO summits come off well though, as it is about the steady degradation of the principle that U.S. international relations have long been built around. I’m referring here to mutual commitments and shared interests and values — above all, the rule of law — that transcend the challenges of the moment. Trump seeks to destabilize not just the NATO we have right now — already deeply challenged by Russia and by illiberalism across Europe — but the very idea that anything bigger or more lasting than his own interests defines American interests.