President Donald Trump met Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday in Helsinki, Finland, as tensions between the U.S. and Russia rise.

The important meeting between the two world leaders comes amid new indictments of Russian officials in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and worsening ties between Washington and Moscow. The initial meeting was cordial but tense.

“We have a lot of good things to talk about and things to talk about. We have discussions on everything from trade to military to missiles to nuclear,” Trump said during a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart shortly after their initial greeting.

“I think we have great opportunities together as two countries that frankly, we have not been getting along very well for the last number of years,” he added. “I’ve been here not too long, but it’s getting close to two years, but I think we will end up having an extraordinary relationship.”

WATCH:

The president, as his critics were quick to note, did not mention election meddling in his list of topics for discussion, but this issue may be brought up at a later point in the summit, as Trump has said as much. He stressed during the press conference the need for improved relations with Russia. “Getting along with Russia is a good thing,” he explained.

His comments follow a historically inaccurate tweet that suggests that deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations are tied to the ongoing Russia investigation, what the president calls a “witch hunt.” The investigation has yet to produce any solid evidence that Russia influenced the outcome of the presidential election or that the president colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.

Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2018

Speaking at the brief press conference, Putin said that rising global tensions made talks between himself and Trump a necessity. “The time has come to talk thoroughly about our bilateral relations, as well as various hotspots in the world,” the Russian president explained with the assistance of a translator. “There are enough of them for us to start paying attention.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will sit down with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov while Trump and Putin meet in private and expanded sessions with advisers.

The president said in an interview over the weekend that he is going into the summit with “low expectations.” Trump said in a series of tweets that he will be criticized regardless of what he accomplishes. (RELATED: Trump On Putin Meeting: Nothing Will Be ‘Good Enough’ For Dems, Establishment Media)

“Heading to Helsinki, Finland — looking forward to meeting with President Putin tomorrow,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “Unfortunately, no matter how well I do at the Summit, if I was given the great city of Moscow as retribution for all of the sins and evils committed by Russia over the years, I would return to criticism that it wasn’t good enough – that I should have gotten Saint Petersburg in addition!”

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Source: The Daily Caller

President Donald Trump scored a diplomatic win on Monday at his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.

The media, the Democrats, and the Never Trump contingent declared immediately that Trump had failed. But they were bitterly prejudiced against the meeting from the start, to the point where many insisted that Trump cancel it.

To them, looking at the summit through the lens of “collusion,” the summit could only be the ultimate payoff for Putin’s election meddling in 2016.

But viewed through the lens of diplomacy, the summit was a milestone in U.S.-Russia relations.

Judging from their remarks at the press conference that followed, the two leaders touched on every major important area of foreign policy: Syria, where the U.S. wants Russia to keep Iran at bay; North Korea, where the U.S. wants Russia to help it pressure the Kim regime to denuclearize; Iran, where the U.S. is attempting to re-organize international pressure; and Ukraine, where the U.S. wants Russia to de-escalate.

President Trump, as promised, challenged Putin on the subject of Russian interference in U.S. elections. It was Putin, not Trump, who pointed that out — adding: “I had to reiterate things I said several times, including during our personal contacts, that the Russian state has never interfered and is not going to interfere into internal American affairs, including election process.”

Putin also volunteered the information that Trump had insisted the Russian annexation of Crimea was “illegal.” So much for appeasement.

Trump was also aggressive on the topic of Europe. Having just come from the NATO summit, where he berated Germany over buying gas from Russia while relying on America’s protection, Trump announced that the U.S. would compete with Russia to sell gas to Europe.

That is a major challenge of geopolitical significance, a sign the U.S. is going to use its technological edge in oil and gas production to boost Europe’s economic independence from Russia. All Russia has, Trump noted, is the advantage of location.

At the press conference, the Russian journalists — who do not enjoy press freedom — asked questions relevant to foreign policy. The American policy, who are theoretically free to think freely, devoted nearly every single question to allegations relating to phony charges of Russian “collusion” with the Trump campaign, including the latest developments in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Their concerns had little to do with U.S.-Russia relations and everything to do with domestic U.S. politics.

Trump’s critics are seizing on a single phrase: “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

He never “attacked” U.S. intelligence agencies, nor did he explicitly take one side over the other. He said that he trusted Putin — as he should have done, if his goal was to improve relations. He added that “I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia who carried out the hacking, nudging Russia toward a less adversarial posture.

Trump-haters are also pretending that Trump somehow elevated Putin by granting him a one-on-one meeting. Putin does not need the U.S. to make him more important. He has a massive nuclear arsenal. He just handed out the trophies at the FIFA World Cup. He has military bases in strategic points in key conflict zones.

The question is not whether Trump should have met Putin but rather why they had not met sooner, given the fact that certain U.S. interests in 2018 cannot be achieved without cooperating with Russia.

It is worth noting that in meeting with Putin, Trump was honoring an explicit campaign promise. At a Republican primary debate in 2015, Trump said of Putin: “I would talk to him. I would get along with him. I believe–and I may be wrong, in which case I’d probably have to take a different path, but I would get along with a lot of the world leaders that this country is not getting along with.” Whatever the merits of that approach, the fact that Trump kept his word increases his credibility, at home and abroad.

Conservative critics — including myself — suggested at the time that Trump’s approach would fail, for the same reasons Obama’s “reset” had failed: namely, that the two countries have several divergent interests and values that transcend any particular pair of leaders.

But Trump has built an advantage that Obama never enjoyed by showing Putin that he is prepared to use the U.S. military to back American interests. That caught Putin’s attention and showed him he has at least some interest in cooperating, for now.

The meeting was also noteworthy for what was not said. Putin complained about the U.S. pulling out of the Iran deal, but he was quiet about reports that the U.S. had killed hundreds of Russian military contractors in Syria (without losing a single American). Putin also said nothing about U.S. airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

He dared not complain. That is because, far from being weak, Trump has been tougher than his predecessors toward Russia, letting his actions speak louder than his words.

The ultimate test of the Helsinki summit lies in the future. The Soviet Union was thought to have “won” the historic conference in Helsinki in 1975, until the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Accords helped bring down communism.

What is clear already is that Trump advocated for American interests without conceding anything to Putin other than his dignity. Trump’s critics, who are reduced to worrying that a soccer ball could be used to spy on the U.S., are hysterical precisely because they know he succeeded.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Source: Breitbart

Disgraceful. Embarrassing. A complete lack of grasp of the situation.

Such were the observations about President Trump’s performance at the joint press conference with Vladimir Putin. Everyone is free to like or dislike the way Trump navigates the world, but I would suggest those descriptions are more suited to the swarm of wild overreaction.

It has become a familiar rhythm for the President to do or say something, only to be attacked reflexively by his harshest opponents. But the Monday festival of totally wrongheaded analysis ensnared even the occasionally sympathetic.

One could expect the bug-eyed calls for impeachment, and the media chorus that Trump had somehow committed some grave offense against American honor. But the triangulation necessary to understand this episode was apparently too much heavy lifting for even some occasional supporters.

So, I’ll make it easy. If you were expecting Donald Trump to wag a finger at Putin at that lectern in Helsinki, throwing down an ultimatum to never, ever mess with our elections again, that was enormously foolish.

Not because it would be undeserved. Because it would have sprouted more negatives than positives.

Imagine for a moment that the President had told Putin where to stuff that souvenir World Cup soccer ball. The media would have briefly approved, critics might have issued momentary grudging appreciation, and John Brennan might have put down the voodoo doll. Meanwhile, the layer of ice that would have encased the relationship would shut the door on things Trump actually wants to achieve, goals a little more lasting than kicking Putin in the shins in public.

He would like to cooperate with Russia in fighting ISIS. He would like to loosen the buddy relationship with Assad in Syria. He might even seek to wheedle a Russian exit from Crimea. And being Donald Trump, he would surely like to see if there are trade deals to be gleaned from improved relations.

One might suggest that those are noble, but wouldn’t he also like to dissuade Russia from launching cyberattacks into our political process? I’m sure he would. He may well have made that clear behind closed doors over Finnish cuisine. But let’s spend a moment examining the source of all of this sudden hand-wringing.

How many people condemning Trump for coddling Putin raised the slightest eyebrow at the Barack Obama open mic wink to the Russians that he would have “more flexibility” after the 2012 election?

And how many of these sudden warriors for election purity are on the record fighting for voter ID and other laws which protect us from the real-life threat of illegal voting?

From the shrill retorts Monday afternoon, you would think Trump had delivered our nuclear codes to the GRU. The main thrust of the vilifications was: 1) We should be really tough on bad countries, and 2) Russia is a really bad country.

Fair points, but please. We are downright chummy with China, the largest, most evil remaining Communist dictatorship on the planet. And it’s not as though Obama laid down an eight-year legacy of toughness versus Russia, or anyone else. The opportunistic gasps at Trump’s comments are born of a different passion: profound distaste for him.

That distaste ranged from the predictable howls of the haters to the more nuanced (but still sharp) revulsion of establishment elitists, haughty status-quo devotees and the usual suspects for whom Trump has always been too brash, too unmannerly, too, well, Trumplike.

Their hyperventilations will do little to gin up the backlash they seek. The online taunts were immediate, along the lines of “Hey, MAGA people, where’s that Trump strength you people love so much?”

The answer is simple. The strength his base expects every day is not some empty political theater designed to win praise from CNN. There is only one battle that matters in the short term, and that is the attack on his presidency from the Mueller probe and the weaponized subsets of the FBI and Department of Justice.

The slightest hint of a Trump denunciation of Russian meddling would have been instantly, virally blasted around the universe as a confession that his election was indeed illegitimate. The hounds baying for his demise gleefully conflate Russians hacking Democrat emails with the Trump campaign conspiring to deny Hillary Clinton her rightful victory. They know that an underinformed public will lap up that narrative if they can hammer it forcefully enough.

We will never know the exact language Trump may use to address past meddling or discourage it in the future. But anyone who was expecting some high-drama public showdown in Helsinki is ignorant of what Trump seeks to do long-term with Russia, and is oblivious to the baseball bat he would have handed his enemies to beat his brains in.

That is excusable among the general public. But for those who pay attention to these matters for a living, the blindness is willful.

Source: Townhall

President Donald Trump proved to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday that he is nobody’s puppet — not Putin’s, not the Deep State’s, and not the establishment media’s. Like the moral strength he showed in Charlottesville, VA, last year, Helsinki should be remembered as one of Trump’s finest moments.

Last August, some truly evil people showed up in Charlottesville. On one side, you had white supremacists, and on the other, you had the left-wing terrorist group Antifa. A riot broke out, one person was murdered, and another 30-plus others were injured.

Almost immediately, the media crafted a narrative around Charlottesville that determined what Trump was supposed to do, which was to make a statement condemning racism and racists. Which he did, more than once. But he also did something he was not supposed to do and that was to, at long last, make an issue of Antifa, who had been running around for the better part of a year acting as the organized left’s Brownshirts.

Antifa had not just been targeting the alt-right. Antifa had been targeting mainstream, everyday conservatives and Trump supporters. And because the establishment media also advocates in favor of violence against the right, Antifa was able to terrorize us with impunity thanks to a media that deliberately ignored, downplayed, justified, glorified, or romanticized their reign of terror.

By having the moral courage to go off-script, Trump used Charlottesville to finally drag these terrorists into the national spotlight, and he did so by telling the truth, by accurately pointing out that “both sides” were responsible for that national disgrace. Trump also had the moral courage to point out there were “good people” on both sides; those who are not racists, who are not left-wing terrorists, who had arrived in good faith to protest against the tearing down of a statue and against racism. The New York Times, of all places, eventually proved Trump correct on this point.

But Trump was supposed to only condemn the white supremacists. He was not supposed to pour sunlight on the media’s shock troops in Antifa, which would limit their effectiveness in the future (and has). He was not supposed to point out that people of good faith can oppose purifying our history with the tearing down of statues. And this is why the media lost its mind for a week.

You see, the establishment media are left-wing activists only interested in one thing, and it has nothing to do with informing the public. Like all leftists, what these awful people most care about is control. The power to control people and events is what defines who they are, and when they sense they are losing that power, when someone dares defy them, like all spoiled children who do not get what they want, they do the only thing left to hold on to their sense of control — they stage a public tantrum.

The media’s post-Charlottesville tantrum was a wonder to behold, and it continues to this day, primarily through lies. Still bitter over Trump’s defiance, the media have fabricated the myth that Trump did not condemn racists (he did, more than once), that he said there are good Nazis (he didn’t), that he created a moral equivalence between racists and anti-racist protesters (he didn’t — what he did was accurately equate Antifa and white supremacists).

Almost a year later, Trump is still walking around with the flaming arrows in his back over Charlottesville, simply because he told the truth about Charlottesville. Which brings me to what happened Monday in Helsinki.

Once again, and this time with the help of that dirty cop, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the establishment media and the Deep State believed they had rigged events to a point where Trump was cornered, where he would have no choice but to publicly berate Putin on the national stage for the sin of “interfering in our elections.”

What the media wanted was to emotionally blackmail Trump into creating an international scene, a YouTube moment with Putin, where the president would violate every diplomatic norm to publicly shame and berate the Russian president.

Why do you think Dirty Cop Mueller dropped his kangaroo indictment (more on this below) just a few days before the Putin summit? It was all coordinated and staged, it was the behavior of spoiled children desperate to get their way.

Wisely, for the good of his country and out respect for the truth, Trump refused to jump in the trap. And now the spoiled children who once again did not get what they want, are having a national tantrum. And moral cowards, like House Speaker Paul Ryan  (God bless Rand Paul), are terrified of these spoiled media babies and are seeking only to appease them.

Nevertheless, what really happened is this: Trump showed the gangster Putin that he is his own man, that he cannot be bullied by America’s corrupt political and media establishment into behaving in a certain way, that he is willing to take those flaming arrows to do what he thinks is right, which, in this case, is to never forget the lessons of Iraq.

Keep in mind that what Trump was supposed to do Monday was to drink the Kool-Aid, was to believe our Intelligence Community (IC) got it 100 percent right about Russian meddling, was to throw diplomacy out the window and publicly embarrass Putin.

Thankfully, Trump refused to do that, and now the spoiled children, just as they did after Charlottesville, are again lying and claiming Trump “sided with Putin,” when the only thing Trump’s guilty of is remaining diplomatic, which is the whole point of a summit expressly arranged to facilitate peace.

What is so incredible is that, in this the year 2018, after the intelligence catastrophe that was Iraq, after learning the IC was actively meddling in the 2016 election using Kremlin-fed propaganda in the form of a dossier, only a crazy man would swallow whole what the IC is telling him, and only a dangerously weak man would risk damaging relations with Russia further in order to symbolically appease the IC.

The truth is this, and we all know it, especially those currently in the middle of their tantrum:

1. Personally, I am not convinced Russia meddled in our election, and I find Dirty Cop Mueller’s kangaroo indictments of people he will never have to prove a case against (because he knows they will not be extradited) to be nothing less than the actions of a flailing prosecutor who’s got less than nothing. Mueller indicting non-American citizens working on behalf of a hostile government is the dumbest thing I have ever seen in my life. It would be like Reagan’s Justice Department indicting the KGB.
2. Because the documents that convinced Republican investigators Russia meddled in our election came from our IC, I find those conclusions just as suspect.
3. Even if the Russians did meddle in our elections, it appears to have been nothing more than drop-in-the-bucket Facebook and Twitter expenditures that ended up being less than meaningless. Moreover, most of this Russian monkey business occurred after the election and was targeted against Trump.The worst case scenario is Russia figured out John Podesta’s email password was “password” and disseminated his emails. But where is the proof?Regardless, is it not interesting that Dirty Cop Mueller’s kangaroo indictment left out one pertinent fact, the fact that — if you believe any of this — the Russians also tried to hack the GOP, and failed?
4. We meddle in other country’s elections, other countries meddle in our elections, and suddenly I am supposed to give a damn? Russia has been meddling in American politics going back decades and all of a sudden this fact of life demands Trump stage an international incident? Are these people out of their minds? We all know what is going on here — the only reason we are required to suddenly care about decades-old espionage-as-usual is because the media and the political establishment cannot accept losing the 2016 presidential election.
5. Once burnt, twice shy.To my eternal shame, I swallowed the case for WMDs in Iraq hook, line, and sinker. Why, back in ’02, the very idea the patriots within the IC could get such an important matter wrong — to even suggest such a thing, was unpatriotic.And now I am watching this dangerous horseshit play out all over again, where it is un-American to question the IC, where we have “super patriots” running around defining patriotism as drinking the FBI/CIA/IC Kool-Aid, where the jingoistic media is trying to out-jingoize each other by screaming about “acts of war,” where the pursuit of peace is treason, and those who pursue peace are traitors…Where, for some obscene reason, we are supposed to always believe the IC, which means we must condemn the peacemakers like Trump who dare remain skeptical.

   Most of all, we are required to forget that this is the same IC that missed the fall of the Soviet Union, missed 9/11; that led us into a harrowing and pointless war in Iraq; that used a dossier filled with Kremlin-fed propaganda to frame Trump; that lionizes proven liars like James Clapper, Dirty Cop James Comey, and John Brennan; that hands ego-maniacal monsters like Peter Strzok extraordinary power (and still has him on the payroll); that uses a kangaroo indictment that says the Russians hacked the DNC, even though no one in law enforcement has inspected the DNC server.

   Sorry, but when the American IC is not incompetent, it is corrupt in ways that would not be believed in fiction.

6. Trump’s actions speak for themselves. His actions, not his words when engaged in direct diplomacy, which of course require a certain amount of finesse and BS, are what matter.It is simply a fact that Trump has been tougher on Russia than both his predecessors combined. He has increased Russian sanctions, directed many of those sanctions directly at Putin’s inner circle, has drawn a real red line in Putin’s client state of Syria, twice bombed Putin’s client Assad, is openly admonishing Germany for being Putin’s energy client, overturned Obama’s appeasement of Putin by giving Poland anti-missile defense, ordered Russian diplomatic properties closed in D.C., Manhattan, Seattle, and San Francisco; Trump has armed Ukraine and is aggressively pushing our NATO partners to invest even more into an organization built specifically to defy Russia.Which means that what Putin saw in Helsinki is a firm American president who cannot be bullied, berated, blackmailed, or cajoled, even with the threat of a week-long tantrum performed by spoiled babies back in his own country.This is a good thing.

I did not vote for Donald Trump because I wanted to risk another Cold War as a means to make the IC feel better about itself. I did not vote for Donald Trump because I wanted the status quo respected, which means more foreign adventures and the appeasement of an increasingly unbalanced national media.

I voted for Donald Trump because I want to keep my guns, I do not want to bake gay wedding cakes, I do not want my vote canceled out by illegal aliens, and most of all, after eight years of George W. Bush’s stupid wars and eight years of Barack Obama’s leading from behind while strangling our economy, my country deserves an era of Peace and Prosperity.

And Monday, in Helsinki, while knowing full well the hell that would be unleashed on the other side, President Trump did the right thing in pursuit of Peace. This is not me arguing he was perfect, that he could not have been more articulate, but that he did the right thing is beyond dispute.

For two years the media and Never Trump assured and reassured me that Trump was a shallow and feckless man interested only in one thing: adulation and praise. But on Monday in Helsinki, just as he did in Charlottesville, I saw Trump choose, at great personal cost, to do the moral and patriotic thing over what would have earned him that adulation and praise.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

Source: Breitbart

President Donald Trump’s meeting with the new Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Tuesday represents more than backslapping, especially to a Europe searching for American support against liberalism gone wild.

Across Hungary, the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, and Brexit Britain, the populist-nationalist movement is searching for air support from someone they regard as the greatest negotiator on the planet: President Trump.

That’s why so many pro-Brexit Britons, nearly 50 percent of those polled, think Trump would be a better Brexit negotiator than Prime Minister Theresa May or her team, and why so many of them reacted with glee when the U.S. president savaged her tactics on the front page of the Sun newspaper while he was in Europe earlier in July.

The same message reaches me from all corners of the continent: “You know Mr. Trump, right?” they ask, wide-eyed and recalling the time I spent an hour with the President-elect in Trump Tower on November 10, 2016.

“Uh, sure, we’ve met,” I usually, cautiously respond, keen not to break their illusion that we’re obviously besties.

“Can you tell him we need his support? Tell him we are his friends, no matter what our press says?”

It’s the same story around the world, not least in Italy where I spent over a week as the new populist government was put together in rejection of Mr. Scissors from the International Monetary Fund, and in support of the left-right alliance that has come together as a result of the Five Star Movement and the Lega parties.

Such an historic event required an historic reaction from the U.S. government. President Trump has given them this reaction today in the shape of his words and actions as far as Italy is concerned.

“Today Prime Minister Conte and I are pleased to announce a new strategic dialogue between Italy and the United States that will enhance co-operation on a range of issues. This includes joint security efforts in the Mediterranean, where we recognize Italy’s leadership role in the stabilization of Libya and North Africa… they’ve been terrific”.

Terrific is quite the endorsement considering the collective liberal freak out over Interior Minister and Lega leader Matteo Salvini’s policy of stopping boats of illegal migrants landing in Italy.

President Trump went further: “Both the Prime Minister and I are focused on the urgent need to protect our nations from terrorism and uncontrolled migration. Our countries have learned through hard experience that border security is national security. They are one and the same”.

But wait, there’s more.

In the Oval Office during the two leaders’ photo-op, the president opined: “Frankly you’re doing the right thing, in my opinion, and a lot of other countries in Europe should be doing it also. Some had taken that stance a long time ago and they’re doing a lot better.”

This was no doubt an allusion to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, alongside others. Another bane of the liberal left, and recently the primary prosecutor in Europe against the vast network and influence of pro-migration organizations such as the Open Society Foundation. It was also a broadside against Germany’s Angela Merkel, who hit rock bottom in the opinion polls in her country this weekend, and perhaps less so but still against President Emmanuel Macron of France, mired in his own scandal about one of his bodyguards.

Prime Minister Conte was similarly flattering in response, having the president’s back when he was quizzed about his performance at the recent G7 summit, as well as on the president’s reactions to trade and Iran questions.

The meeting was also important because Trump is looking for an answer to Kissinger’s question the European Union had claimed to answer back in 2009: “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?”

Until now, President Trump has found few allies on the continent, relying on a personal relationship with an otherwise MAGA-antagonistic Macron. He famously has a poor opinion of Britain’s Prime Minister also, though that puts him squarely in the majority amongst British people, too.

If Conte and Trump can keep their warm relationship, it benefits them both as leaders alongside both of their nations, but also Europe as a whole.

As Spain’s new opposition leader Pablo Casado shifts to the right on immigration, abandoning his party’s historically liberal platform on the matter, we begin to see the framework of a new trans-Atlantic movement against centralization, against illegal migration, and in favor of sovereignty and the ordinary citizen.

Not satisfied with MAGA alone, it look like President Trump is moving onto MEGA — Making Europe Great Again, too.

Raheem Kassam is a fellow at the Middle East Forum, the Gatestone Institute, and a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. He is also the author of the bestselling books No Go Zones and Enoch Was Right.

Source: The Daily Caller

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley directs comments to the Russian delegation at the conclusion of a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss the recent ballistic missile launch by North Korea at U.N. headquarters in New York on July 5, 2017. (Reuters/Mike Segar)

The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations criticized Moscow on Aug. 3, for allowing thousands of fresh North Korean laborers into Russia in violation of sanctions against Pyongyang.

Ambassador Nikki Haley issued the criticism one day after the Wall Street Journal reported that Moscow granted thousands of new work permits to North Korean laborers in violations of United Nations sanctions.

“Credible reports of Russia violating UN Security Council resolutions on North Korean laborers working abroad are deeply troubling,” Haley said in a statement. “These reports are especially concerning as they come just one month after Russia refused to acknowledge North Korea’s violations of the UN oil cap and blocked a United States request to enforce sanctions and put a stop to it.”

Haley’s remarks became public hours after the Treasury Department sanctioned a Russian bank for violating sanctions against North Korea. The bank had knowingly authorized a significant payment on behalf of a North Korean living in Moscow who was sanctioned by the U.S. last year.

The day prior to Haley’s remarks, U.S. intelligence officials told reporters at the White House that the threat of Russian interference in the 2018 midterm election was real. American’s intel agencies are addressing the threat comprehensively, the officials said.

President Donald Trump spearheaded an international effort to impose stringent sanctions on North Korea in an effort to force the communist regime in Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program. Though significant progress toward denuclearization has been made, the White House has been firm that the sanctions will remain until North Korea completely, verifiably, and irreversibly gives up its nuclear program.

“Until we see the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea there can be no easing of sanctions,” Haley said. “Talk is cheap–Russia cannot support sanctions with their words in the Security Council only to violate them with their actions.”

Moscow’s Denial

Russia denied the Journal report asserting that the work permits were issued before the sanctions to North Koreans already in the country.

Alexander Matsegora, Russia’s ambassador to North Korea, said the laborers were allowed to work in Russia until Nov. 29, 2019, as their work contracts had been signed before sanctions came into force, Interfax reported.

He said 3,500 new work permits had been issued to workers who had signed contracts in Russia before Nov. 29, 2017, Interfax news agency reported.

Labour Ministry records obtained by the Journal showed that a minimum of 700 new work permits had been issued to North Koreans in Russia this year, the paper said.

U.N. officials are probing potential violations of the sanctions, which contain narrow exceptions, WSJ reported citing sources.

“It’s absolutely clear that Russia needs to do more. Russia says it wants better relations with the United States, so Moscow should prove that by cooperating with us, not working against us, on this urgent threat to all nations,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told Reuters.

“It is estimated that North Korean laborers in Russia send between $150-$300 million annually to Pyongyang. Now is the time for Russia to take action: Moscow should immediately and fully implement all the U.N. sanctions that it has signed on to.”

The labor prohibition is a part of a broader array of sanctions that are aimed at eliminating an important revenue stream for Kim Jong Un’s North Korea. Most of the money North Koreans earn abroad ends up in government coffers as workers toil in grueling conditions, the Journal reported.

Russian Oil

In a report released on Thursday by the non-profit research organization C4ADS, it said initial restrictions in China and Russia—where around 80 percent of North Korean laborers are believed to work—appear to have loosened.

“For a time, both Russia and China appeared to be expelling North Korean workers well before U.N. deadlines, but more recent reporting suggests that North Korea may have again begun to dispatch labor to both countries,” the report concluded.

A separate report released this week by the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies said between 2015 and 2017 the Moscow-based Independent Petroleum Company (IPC) sold far more oil to North Korea than what was officially reported.

“The amount of oil IPC sold to North Korea between 2015 and 2017 could be worth as much USD 238 million,” the report estimated. “This far exceeds Russia’s official report on its oil exports to North Korea during the same period, which amounted to USD 25 million.”

Russia’s ambassador to North Korea on Friday also denied Moscow was flouting UN restrictions on oil supplies to North Korea, Interfax reported.

IPC was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in June 2017 over its trade with North Korea, and in December 2017 the U.N. imposed its strictest limits on North Korean imports to date.

In September last year, Reuters found that at least eight North Korean ships that left Russia with a cargo of fuel headed for their homeland despite declaring other destinations, a ploy that U.S. officials say is often used to undermine sanctions.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Source: The Epoch Times

China took a shot at the United States on Friday, announcing retaliatory tariffs of $60 billion on U.S. imports to the nation.

China’s commerce ministry affirmed that the decision came in response to the U.S. move this week to increase proposed tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods from a 10 percent rate to 25 percent, the Financial Times reported. The retaliation is in line with threats that the country had made to issue tariffs on U.S. goods essentially matching the amounts of new U.S. tariffs imposed on China.

President Donald Trump has called out China for unfair trading practices, theft of U.S. intellectual property, and a massive U.S. trade deficit with China.

It was not clear from the China commerce ministry announcement which U.S. goods would be levied with the new tariffs.

On Wednesday news broke of the U.S. decision to raise the proposed 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods to 25 percent. These tariffs have not yet been imposed.

The U.S. has slapped China with new tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese goods with another $16 billion more soon to be imposed. Trump has warned that the U.S. is considering up to $500 billion in additional tariffs on Chinese goods.

China’s prior retaliatory tariffs have been focused on goods that hit farmers and industries that some have identified as typically supportive of President Trump. The U.S. has issued temporary emergency financial aid of $12 billion to American farmers as the trade fight plays out.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in June rebuked China, the European Union, and other countries for slapping retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. using “groundless legal theory” under the WTO.

Not a month after Lighthizer’s rebuke, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker met with President Trump at the White House where the two then held a joint press conference announcing the E.U. and U.S. would work toward and operate in the spirit of a “zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods” trade deal.

Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook

Source: Breitbart

President Trump’s national security adviser says the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran is an indication of how strongly the Trump administration feels that the regime’s ‘belligerent activity’ must end.

John Bolton: We want to put ‘unprecedented pressure’ on Iran

President Trump on Monday renewed sanctions on Iran as he followed through on vows to unravel the Obama-era nuclear deal with Tehran.

“Our policy is based on a clear-eyed assessment of the Iranian dictatorship, its sponsorship of terrorism, and its continuing aggression in the Middle East and all around the world,” Trump said in a statement.

The move comes three months after Trump pulled out of the deal and is part of an effort to apply “maximum economic pressure” on the regime, according to the administration.

The order drew a swift rebuke from European allies, though, whose foreign ministers said they “deeply regret” the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran. The European Union issued a “blocking statute” Monday to protect European businesses from the sanctions.

A senior administration official told the Associated Press the United States is “not particularly concerned” by such EU efforts to protect European firms.

In a statement Monday, Trump restated his opinion that the 2015 international accord to freeze Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting sanctions was a “horrible, one-sided deal.” He said it left the Iranian government flush with cash to use to fuel conflict in the Middle East.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said renewed U.S. sanctions on Iran will be rigorously enforced and remain in place until the Iranian government radically changes course.

Speaking to reporters en route from a three-nation trip to Southeast Asia, Pompeo said Monday’s re-imposition of some sanctions is an important pillar in U.S. policy toward Iran. He said the Trump administration is open to looking beyond sanctions but that would “require enormous change” from Tehran.

“We’re hopeful that we can find a way to move forward but it’s going to require enormous change on the part of the Iranian regime,” he said Sunday. “They’ve got to behave like a normal country. That’s the ask. It’s pretty simple.”

The first set of U.S. sanctions coming back on Monday target Iran’s automotive sector as well as gold and other metals.

A second batch of U.S sanctions targeting Iran’s oil sector and central bank will be re-imposed in early November.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump warned foreign countries on Tuesday not to do business with Iran–or lose business with the United States.

“Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!”

The Iran sanctions have officially been cast. These are the most biting sanctions ever imposed, and in November they ratchet up to yet another level. Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States. I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2018

Trump commented on the issue after signing an executive order restoring the sanctions loosened by former President Barack Obama as a result of the Iran deal.

“The Iran sanctions have officially been cast,” Trump wrote. “These are the most biting sanctions ever imposed, and in November they ratchet up to yet another level.”

The reimposed sanctions target Iran’s gold and precious metals industries and its automotive industry. The measures will take effect on August 7, 2018. Other sanctions on the country’s oil industry are expected to resume on November 5, 2018.

The European Union and the United Kingdom, however, agreed to continue doing business with Iran, lamenting Trump’s decision to reimpose sanctions and pulling out of the Iran deal.

“We deeply regret the re-imposition of sanctions by the US, due to the latter’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” the statement said.

Source: Breitbart

The Trump administration is preparing new sanctions against Russia following its use of a nerve agent in the U.K. in “violation of international law.”

Heather Nauert, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of State, said Wednesday it notified the Kremlin about the impending sanctions, which will likely be imposed on Aug. 22 after the required 15-day congressional notification period. They represent the latest response from Washington to the chemical weapons attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter in the U.K. in March, reported Reuters.

A senior State Department official said the sanctions will apply to “all national security sensitive goods or technologies that are controlled by the Department of Commerce.” He noted there will be exemptions, including for issues concerning space flight and aviation safety. (RELATED: Trump Smacks 38 Russian ‘Entities And Companies’ With Sanctions)

“It is possible that this trade – the trade it affected could reach potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, but it also depends upon what Russia – Russian entities in fact apply to purchase,” the official said during a special briefing Wednesday. “So really, it’s up to Russia how dramatic the impact is.”

The sanctions are designed to force Russian leaders to provide “reliable assurances” they will stop using nerve agents in violation of international law and to submit to on-site inspections by the United Nations. If Russia fails to respond to the newest round of sanctions within 90 days, State Department officials have another set of “more draconian” sanctions they will impose.

Members of Congress critical of the Trump administration’s initial response to the nerve attack in the U.K. expressed support for the action.

“The administration is rightly acting to uphold international bans on the use of chemical weapons,” Republican Rep. Ed Royce of California, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, told The Associated Press. “The mandatory sanctions that follow this determination are key to increasing pressure on Russia. Vladimir Putin must know that we will not tolerate his deadly acts, or his ongoing attacks on our democratic process.”

The Kremlin continues to deny any role in the March attack on Skripal.

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Source: The Daily Caller

Former Michigan state representative Rashida Tlaib, a progressive Democrat, won her state’s primary in its 13th Congressional District Tuesday, leading her to likely become the first Muslim woman — and the first Palestinian-American — to hold national office.

Tlaib ran for a House seat formerly held by Representative John Conyers, who resigned in December in the wake of several sexual harassment allegations (and subsequent settlements). She beat five other Democrats for the seat, and since no Republicans or third-party candidates ran, she’s basically guaranteed to take office after the November election. Tlaib ran a grassroots campaign, yet raised the most money of her opponents, topping $1 million.

Thank you so much for making this unbelievable moment possible. I am at a loss for words. I cannot wait to serve you in Congress.

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) August 8, 2018

On Tuesday evening, as polls were about to close, Tlaib told the Detroit Newsher day was filled with “happy chaos.”

“Especially meeting voters and talking to them, they are inspired. One resident said she’s happy for me and it’s already written. It’s been amazing to interact with families at polling locations. I feel very much supported.”

“Let us welcome the United Sanctions of America!”

All that “collusion” really hasn’t paid off for Russia, which has once again been slapped with more sanctions by the Trump administration, this time for trying to poison a former spy and his daughter. If Russia doesn’t satisfy certain demands over the next few months, even more crippling sanctions will go into effect.

The Trump administration has imposed the sanctions in response to the March 2018 poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in the U.K. that the administration blames on the Russian government. On Wednesday, the State Department told Congress that an initial tranche of sanctions will be imposed under a 1991 chemical and biological weapons act.

“Following the use of a ‘Novichok’ nerve agent in an attempt to assassinate UK citizen Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal, the United States, on August 6, 2018, determined under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991 (CBW Act) that the Government of the Russian Federation has used chemical or biological weapons in violation of international law or has used lethal chemical or biological weapons against its own nationals,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday. “Following a 15-day Congressional notification period, these sanctions will take effect upon publication of a notice in the Federal Register, expected on or around August 22, 2018.”

A second, even more financially damaging round of sanctions will be imposed in 90 days if Russia fails to take certain steps. CNN reports (formatting adjusted):

The first set of sanctions targets certain items the US exports to Russia that could have military uses — so-called dual use technologies. These are sensitive goods that normally would go through a case-by-case review before they are exported. With these sanctions, the exports will be presumptively denied. A senior State Department official said there would be carve-outs however.

The US would then require Russia to assure over the next 90 days that it is no longer using chemical or biological weapons and will not do so in the future. Additionally, the criteria in the law call for Russia to allow on-site inspectors to ensure compliance. The official said that if Russia did not meet the demands, the US “will have to consider whether to impose a second tranche of sanctions as specified by the statute.”

CNN cites a senior State Department official who said the initial sanctions could impact “potentially a very great sweep of the Russian economy,” noting that the Russian firms affected make up some 70% of the Russian economy and employ 40% of its workforce. The second round of sanctions could impact flights by Aeroflot and downgrade diplomatic relations, a former Defense Department official explained.

While the U.K. has cheered the Trump administration’s actions against Russia, Russia isn’t so enthused. In a tweet Wednesday, a Russian U.N. representative issued a snarky response to the Trump administration.

“The theater of absurd continues,” tweeted Dmitry Polyanskiy. “No proofs, no clues, no logic, no presumption of innocense, just highly-liklies. Only one rule: blame everything on Russia, no matter how absurd and fake it is. Let us welcome the United Sanctions of America!”​

Trump has repeatedly described his administration as being harder on Russia than any recent administrations, and the numbers are adding up. The new sanctions follow the Trump administration expelling over 60 Russian diplomats for the attack on the former Russian agent. Last August, Trump signed off, though with reluctance, on another round of significant sanctions which Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev described as a “fully-fledged trade war” against Russia, and slammed the Trump administration as having “demonstrated complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner, transferring executive powers to Congress.” Apparently “collusion” doesn’t pay.

Source: The Daily Wire

The Chinese are intent on rehabilitating their old empire.  Once Beijing has achieved this lofty goal (which it is closer to achieving than any care to admit), the Chinese hope to displace the United States as the world’s dominant power.  Many analysts – particularly Western ones – scoff at this notion.  Whatever China’s ultimate intentions are, it is clear that China intends to radically reshape the world order to benefit the Chinese.  This is the nature of international relations.

Looking at the growth of China from its beginning to the present time, one sees that China has ceaselessly expanded from beyond its cradle along the Yellow River to encompass a large chunk of territory in eastern Eurasia.  Initially, Chinese expansion emanated outward from the Yellow River area, moving north and west.  Slowly, Chinese expansion pivoted and began moving south, toward the ocean.  It now stretches from Afghanistan to North Korea.

Matching Capabilities to Intentions

The reason so many China-watchers have been skeptical about China’s intention to become a great power – a truly global empire – is that China’s capabilities have not been commensurate with such a goal.  For most of China’s history, the country has been a continental power.  China eschewed major military commitments at sea (with the notable exception of Zheng He’s Treasure Fleet in the 15th century).  The skeptics assume that this will always be the case in China.

In other words, China is a continental power, like Russia.  Therefore, China will remain dominant on land and weak at sea.  Yet, unlike Russia, China has a long coastline touching highly important waterways.  Its wealthiest provinces disproportionately benefit from maritime trade.  Besides, the notion that a continental power, like China, could never pivot and become a maritime force is absurd.  After all, the United States did just that!

As a settler nation, the United States began its existence as a predominantly continental force.  Sure, America had a navy and a long coastline touching the Atlantic Ocean (and it relied heavily on global trade to sustain the country economically).  However, from the time of the American War of Independence until the Spanish-American War, the United States was concentrated on expanding – and controlling – the entirety of the North American continent.  This was, by definition, a continental policy.  Inevitably, the country pivoted and became a naval force used to push out the Spanish Empire, which had long controlled the small island-nation of Cuba to the south of the United States.

What began as a somewhat unbelievable effort to warp the American military away from a continental force – focused on protecting settlers in the frontier – eventuated in the creation of a magnificent navy.  The U.S. navy was able to assist in the invasion of Cuba (and the toppling of the Spanish Empire’s position in the New World).  It also resulted in the United States taking over Spanish colonies in the Philippines – thereby making the United States a key player in the world from then on.

Necessity is the mother of all innovation.  The United States believed it had conquered the continent by the close of the 19th century.  Rather than simply demobilize its small military force, Washington repurposed it for maritime-heavy operations and began looking farther afield.

This is precisely what the Chinese are doing today.  Should Beijing dominate its near abroad, it will turn its gaze toward America’s sphere of influence.

Chinese Imperial Ambitions

Where China was once a continental power, Beijing is methodically enhancing the country’s naval capabilities.  Just like the United States before it, the Chinese naval expansion is meant to displace what Beijing perceives to be a hostile, foreign empire (the United States) supporting an island that has menaced China – since 1949 – from within China’s purported sphere of influence.  In this instance, Taiwan is to the budding Chinese empire what Cuba in 1898 was to the United States.

Observers are quick to point out that even at its height, the Chinese Empire was only ever a regional power.  What few understand is that globalization – and China’s sheer size – has led to China becoming a key player in the international system.  In fact, since the Sino-Soviet split in the 1970s and the subsequent entente between the United States and China, American money and knowledge has been used to effectively build up China into a major player today.

At one time, the Chinese-American relationship was dubbed “Chimerica.”  Ever since the 2008 Recession, however, it appears as though the two groups have suffered a divorce (or at least a separation).  As old rivalries are inflamed, many soothe themselves with notions that China can never be a threat to the pre-eminent United States.

It is true that China is staring down some major problems: demographic woes, slowing economic growth rates, fallout from an overly centralized government.  However, with the exception of demographic woes, China has long suffered through cycles of stagnating economic growth and political turbulence.

Somehow, China has persisted over the centuries.  China’s return to the world stage as not only a great power, but potentially the greatest power should rouse even the most apathetic American to the nature and extent of the threat.

Unfortunately, like the Spanish Empire in 1898, the United States is ignoring significant threats to itself.

Toward the Chinese Century?

One thing is clear: the Asia-Pacific is a key component of the world economy, and America must have a serious presence there.  For decades, China has indicated its intention to harm American interests while empowering itself.  That alone is reason to build up America’s presence in the Asia-Pacific and to align other states in the region against China.

We continue telling ourselves that China’s military threat will never materialize the way some (like myself) fear.  However, at each moment, the Chinese threat matures.  Westerners said we could impart our industrial capabilities onto Beijing because the West would spearhead the next “knowledge” economy.  Not only did the Chinese absorb our industry (that we willingly gave them in exchange for trinkets), but China also (in the last decade) began pivoting to dominate the knowledge sector as well – which it is doing.

My friends on Wall Street maintain that the Chinese economy will implode.  Maybe.  We’re all still waiting for this to happen.  Even if China’s economy did implode, that would not mitigate the threat.  It would merely change it.  After all, an unstable, decentralized China riven with nationalism is possibly even more dangerous than a united quasi-communist one.

For the first time in decades, the United States is competing against a rival whom, in many respects, it has fallen behind.  First, American leaders must fully acknowledge the threat.  Then the U.S. must move to do what the Spanish failed to do to the rising United States: challenge it early enough to head off any real threat.

Time is not on our side.

Brandon J. Weichert is a geopolitical analyst who manages The Weichert Report: World News Done Right and is a contributor at The American Spectator, as well as a contributing editor at American Greatness.  His writings on national security and Congress have appeared at Real Clear Politics, Space News, and HotAir.com.  He has been featured on CBS News.com, the BBC, and the Christian Science Monitor.  Brandon is a former congressional staffer who holds an M.A. in statecraft and national security affairs from the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. and is currently working on his doctorate in international relations.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is facing backlash from within the Communist Party over his hardline stance in the trade dispute with the United States, Reuters reported Thursday.

Reuters reports:

A growing trade war with the United States is causing rifts within China’s Communist Party, with some critics saying that an overly nationalistic Chinese stance may have hardened the U.S. position, according to four sources close to the government.

President Xi Jinping still has a firm grip on power, but an unusual surge of criticism about economic policy and how the government has handled the trade war has revealed rare cracks in the ruling Communist Party….

There is a growing feeling within the Chinese government that the outlook for China has “become grim”, according to a government policy advisor, following the deterioration in relations between China and the United States over trade. The advisor requested anonymity.
Those feelings are also shared by other influential voices.
“Many economists and intellectuals are upset about China’s trade war policies,” an academic at a Chinese policy think tank told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. “The overarching view is that China’s current stance has been too hard-line and the leadership has clearly misjudged the situation.”

This is a huge shift in sentiment among the Chinese elite. Through last year and at the start of this year, many of China’s top thinkers were convinced that China could prevail in a trade fight with the U.S.

The earlier Chinese view is still shared by many in the U.S. who take the extraordinary position that market economies and democratic governments are weaker than command economies led by authoritarian governments. Senator Brian Schatz last month claimed that China held an advantage over the U.S., prompting mockery from U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
“I’m saying we have to take a short-term view because we are responsible to our voters periodically,” Schatz said.

“So does that mean that democracies always lose to authoritarian governments?” Lighthizer shot back.

Views such as Schatz’s were common during the Cold War, when many prominent economists and political scientists argued that the Soviet Union’s totalitarian society could prevail over the U.S. Earlier in the last century, some had made similar arguments based on the perceived strength of Nazi Germany compared to the U.S.

The rise of a persistent “resistance” to Trump’s presidency also fed China’s miscalculation, according to Reuters. Many in China thought the U.S. was so divided politically, and opposition to Trump so adamant, that the U.S. would fold under trade pressure.

Chinese officials also misread their meetings with Trump administration officials this May.

“China thought it had reached a deal with Washington in May to avoid a trade war, but was shocked when the Trump administration, in Beijing’s eyes, went back on that agreement,” Reuters reports.

Trump administration officials, such as Larry Kudlow, describe the meetings very differently. They say that China refused to agree to any concrete changes to its objectionable policies, which the U.S. says facilitate the theft of U.S. technology.

The anti-Semite is a crank and a bore.  However, the anti-Semite has an important psychological and even spiritual advantage over certain other kinds of cranks: he knows that to other people, he is a crackpot.  This leaves the door slightly ajar for him to discover that he is one.

Anti-Americanism is anti-Semitism’s first cousin, but with an important difference.  A person afflicted with this terrible condition is also a crank and a bore, but because anti-Americanism is so widespread both in America and abroad, it is all too easy for the sufferers never to realize they are cranks.

After all, anti-Americanism is the norm among the globalist elites.  In his book Anti-Americanism, Jean-François Revel writes that he had “formed [his] opinion about the United States through the filter of the European press, which means my judgment was unfavorable.”   But Revel wants us to understand that he has learned that anti-Americanism is more than simply a widespread climate of opinion.  Instead, he labels it a “psychopathology” and an “obsession.”

For Revel, the source of this malady is obvious.  America has supplanted Europe, and the elites of Europe resent it.  Europe once dominated the world.  It no longer does, and the European elites blame America instead of themselves.

Revel believes that the Europeans:

… should force themselves to examine how they have contributed to that [America’s] preponderance.  It was they, after all, who made the twentieth century the darkest in history; it was they who brought about the two unprecedented cataclysms of the World Wars; and it was they who invented and put into place the two most criminal regimes ever inflicted on the human race – pinnacles of evil and imbecility achieved in a space of less than thirty years.

Revel is saying that obsessing over what’s wrong with America helps Europeans ward off such thoughts.  Warding off unwelcome thoughts is, after all, the psychological mechanism of blame.  The greater the need for denial, the greater the intensity of the obsession.

Anti-Americanism has the same psychological dynamic as anti-Semitism.  When the anti-Semite launches into his harangue, we instinctively recoil.  We recognize that he is a troubled soul.  We understand that he is obsessively tracing the inner contours of a mental cage that exists beyond the reach of rationality.

The mechanism of blame also explains the endemic anti-Americanism in Latin America.  Revel turns to Carlos Rangel of Venezuela for an explanation of that variant of the malady:

For Latin Americans, it is an unbearable thought that a handful of Anglo-Saxons, arriving much later than the Spanish and in such a harsh climate that they barely survived the first few winters, would become the foremost power in the world.  It would require an inconceivable effort of collective self-analysis for Latin Americans to face up to the fundamental causes of this disparity.

Once again, at the root of the condition is “an unbearable thought” – a thought so unbearable that the necessary “self-analysis” would require “an inconceivable effort.”

The insights of Revel and Rangel suggest that the Americans who suffer from anti-Americanism must also be afflicted by an unbearable thought.

What unbearable thought?  The answer is ready at hand.  The Progressive project has gone from strength to strength politically in America – and everywhere it has brought ruin in its wake.  Detroit was once an economic powerhouse, and San Francisco was once America’s most beautiful city.  Decades of one-party rule according to the Progressive project have wrecked Detroit, and San Francisco is becoming something truly strange, a modern city overwhelmed by human excrement in public places.

Just as the Europeans brought ruin on Europe and the South Americans keep on failing, keep on doing what has not worked and never will, the Progressives persist despite failing again and again the simple tests of common sense.

The Progressives’ failure is not a failure to enact their agenda.  They have dominated America politically for the past century.  FDR gave us really big government, and the federal government has become a scandal of fraud, waste, and abuse – a scandal that even the Big Government Press cannot keep hidden from us.  LBJ declared War on Poverty – and that war was lost.  Instead of eliminating poverty, the War on Poverty has made poverty more pathological, creating an underclass, often now described as “permanent,” living on government handouts.  Even the Progressives’ anti-Americanism was given free rein with the election of Barack Obama, who shared their obsession with “fundamentally transforming” America.  Yet wave after wave of electoral victory has not made American Progressives happy.

Whenever the voters put the Progressives in charge, the result is governmental metastasis and social catastrophe – by necessity.  The left is simply wrong about how things work.  It is easy to come up with programs that defy common sense.  It is also possible to use governmental power to impose those programs on society.  But the power of government can’t make them work.

Instead of learning from experience, the Progressives keep ramping up their anti-Americanism in order to keep deflecting their unbearable thought that Progressivism does not work.  Today, the American left’s anti-Americanism has become completely undisguised.  Leftists now want to do away with America’s borders.  What would that mean?  It would mean that the American experiment in liberty had failed; it would mean the end of America.

Destructive elements of European culture and politics brought Europe to ruin in the twentieth century, and destructive elements in South American culture and politics have kept South America down.  The ascendance of Progressivism in American culture and politics threatens to do the same to America.

Robert Curry serves on the Board of Directors of the Claremont Institute and is the author of Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea from Encounter Books.  You can preview the book here.

U.S. airpower killed more than 220 Taliban over the past four days, as its fighters tried to overrun the southeastern Afghanistan city of Ghazni last week, according to a spokesman for the U.S.-led NATO mission in Afghanistan.

“From a U.S. Forces-Afghanistan perspective, U.S. airpower has killed more than 220 Taliban since August 10,” said Resolute Support spokesman Army Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell.

He said the U.S. conducted an initial strike on Friday, and conducted five strikes on Saturday, 16 strikes on Sunday, and ten on Monday.

He said U.S. Army Apache helicopters from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) Combat Aviation Brigade provided close-air support on Friday, Sunday, and Monday.

The use of U.S. airpower in the fight for one city shows how serious the Taliban assault on Ghazni was. A New York Times report on Sunday said the Taliban launched four separate attacks across Afghanistan in recent days, with Ghazni the worst hit.

According to the report, more than 100 Afghan police officers and soldiers were killed in Ghazni by Sunday. About 100 more were killed in different areas.

Former Pentagon official Oubai Shahbandar, who also served as a civilian in Afghanistan, compared the attack to the Tet Offensive:

There’s a mini-Tet offensive still ongoing in #Afghanistan but let’s return to our scheduled programming on all things #Omarosa https://t.co/JJ9qlzIiei

— Oubai Shahbandar (@OS26) August 12, 2018

O’Donnell said U.S. forces were also assisting Afghan forces on the ground. He described an effort that involved three separate U.S. military outfits.

“In terms of Resolute Support assistance to the Afghan-led clearance operation, Task Force-Southeast, U.S. Special Forces and 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade advisors are providing advice on things such as clearance operations and combined-arms integration,” he said.

He said Ghazni remains under Afghan government control, though there are still Taliban “remnants” in the city.

“These insurgent forces do not pose a threat to the city’s collapse. However, the Taliban who have hidden themselves amongst the Afghan populace do pose a threat to the civilian population, who were terrorized and harassed,” he said.

“The Taliban, who falsely and repeatedly claim that they do not target civilians, have executed innocents, destroyed homes, burned a market, and created the conditions for a potential humanitarian crisis with this attack.

“Clearly the Taliban have paid no heed to the calls of the Afghan people for them to reconcile and join the peace process,” he said.

Source: Breitbart

WASHINGTON. – The Trump administration is close to striking a deal with Mexico on a revamped North American Free Trade Agreement, analysts said, but thorny issues are yet to be resolved with Canada, the third party in the trilateral pact.

Reaching an agreement with Mexico would mark a breakthrough for the administration after a year of roller-coaster talks and tension with its longtime North American trading partners. President Trump has frequently threatened to withdraw from NAFTA, linked the renegotiations to his call for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and slapped tariffs on Mexican and Canadian steel to apply pressure to make concessions.

But both Mexico and the U.S. have strong incentives to push through a deal quickly. Mexico wants to lock in an agreement before its new leftist president takes office, and the White House is keen on achieving a win on trade ahead of the midterm elections.

Canada, meanwhile, has shown less urgency to complete a revision of the 24-year-old pact, but is expected to return to the bargaining table once the U.S. and Mexico settle their differences.

And then the question will be “whether Canada is finally willing to reengage in the process, sign off on what has been agreed and quickly resolve any key outstanding issues of concern to Canada,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

Trump’s trade negotiators this week have been meeting with senior Mexican officials in Washington, and sources familiar with the discussions say the two sides have largely agreed to new rules on auto trade — a top priority for the White House — that could boost investment in the U.S. and curb a flight of domestic production and jobs to Mexico.

In exchange, the United States trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, appears to be showing flexibility on an earlier demand for an automatic five-year termination of NAFTA and a proposal to make it easier for the U.S. to press anti-dumping claims against seasonal produce like tomatoes from Mexico.

Multilateral trade negotiations typically include bilateral talks between nations, but the administration’s strategy to close a deal first with Mexico — without parallel discussions with Canadian officials — is unusual and could backfire.

“I think the Trump administration is playing a risky game if you have a final deal with Mexico and you present it (to Canada) as a fait accompli,” said Daniel Ujczo, an international trade lawyer who specializes in Canada-U.S. affairs at the law firm Dickinson Wright.

It’s all the more risky because of the short time frame in which Mexico and the U.S. are looking to seal a trilateral agreement.

U.S. congressional rules on trade require that there be a 90-day period between the administration’s notification of a deal and the actual signing of an agreement. Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, was elected in July and takes the oath of office Dec. 1. That means a NAFTA agreement would need to be announced by the end of August to allow for the 90 days to pass and for the current Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, to sign the pact before Lopez Obrador takes office.

But that leaves only about two weeks for Lighthizer and his team to reach an accord with their Canadian counterparts. And by most accounts, that will be tough to do.

Even if Canada signs on by month’s end and there’s a three-way preliminary agreement, in the U.S., that would only begin a lengthy process that includes a period of public review and economic assessment by the U.S. International Trade Commission. A revised NAFTA wouldn’t be voted on by lawmakers until next year at the earliest, when a new Congress is seated.

Canada isn’t likely to have a major issue on the new auto rules, but is expected to go to the mat on at least two U.S. demands. Trump administration officials want to pry open Canada’s restricted dairy market and do away with an existing NAFTA provision that allows Canada to challenge U.S. anti-dumping claims through an independent panel.

U.S.-Canada negotiations will have to overcome the recent deterioration in bilateral relations following Trump’s refusal to give Canada an exemption from steel and aluminum tariffs, and harsh criticisms directed at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by Trump and his trade advisor, Peter Navarro.

Trudeau faces considerable domestic political pressure to stand up to Trump — unpopular in Canada — and his strong-arm tactics to extract trade concessions. At the same time, Lighthizer and his negotiating team have shown they are not going to take a deal that maintains the status quo, said Stephen Orava, a trade lawyer at King & Spalding in Washington.

Regardless of whether one agrees with Trump’s negotiating tactics, Orava said, if the administration can land a good agreement on a new NAFTA, “it will validate their approach to U.S. trade policy is effective and generating results and worthwhile.”

Analysts who have been closely monitoring the talks say that U.S. and Mexican trade officials are working out details and that a deal still could unravel. No issue has occupied as much time as NAFTA’s auto rules. Cars account for the biggest trade among the three countries, and Trump and other critics blame NAFTA for the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and the loss of domestic manufacturing jobs.

NAFTA’s current rules specify that at least 62.5 percent of the content of cars come from North America to qualify for zero tariffs; anything lower than that threshold subjects a vehicle to a 2.5 percent duty for cars and 25 percent for trucks and sport utility vehicles.

The understanding with Mexico would raise the regional-content level to 70 percent or higher and set a similar rule of origin for steel and aluminum in vehicles. The new rules also would include language aimed at having more cars and parts produced by workers who make wages well above the average low rates in Mexico. The hope is that more jobs would stay in the U.S. and that European and Japanese automakers would source more parts in the U.S. to avoid the tariffs.

Lawyer Ujczo said those changes and a broader deal on NAFTA will play very well to Trump’s base. “It would be political gold going into the midterms,” he said.

Source: Los Angeles Times

“They” are preciously called “immigrants,” “refugees,” “migrants,” “undocumented Americans,” and other pathetic-sounding names tailored to wrench our hearts – we purportedly cruel, unsympathetic, inhuman Americans.

Luxuriating here, behind our walls of wealth, abundance, and security, we deny them our (stolen) largesse and close up our fat-wracked arms to these noble, sacred, starving, uneducated, illiterate, diseased, violent, and socialist masses from “third-world,” countries.

Who are these Mexicans, Africans, South Americans, Asians, and others whose feet Nancy Pelosi has washed and the pope kissed?  What is it these luminaries see that we do not?  We – reputedly the most selfish, evil, detestable creatures on Earth?

Breitbart:

About 58 percent, or nearly 6-in-10 refugees have “below basic” English skills after living in the U.S. for five years. These unassimilated refugees are sometimes described as “functionally illiterate[.]” …

Since 2008, as Breitbart News reported, the U.S. [with the “help” of “religious” and civilian “immigrant” organizations raking in billions of dollars] has permanently resettled more than 1.7 million foreign nationals and refugees through a variety of humanitarian programs like the Special Immigrant Juveniles, and the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act.

The majority, about 56 percent, of refugee households between 2011 and 2015 were on food stamps, a welfare service that is subsidized by the American taxpayer.

Nearly 30 percent of refugees received cash welfare of some sort between 2011 and 2015, while 34 percent of refugees 18-years-old or older said they had no health insurance.

Of the refugees who said they did have health insurance, about 50 percent said they were either on Medicaid or Refugee Medical Assistance, both of which are taxpayer-funded.

Based upon commonsense analysis of the presented facts, it seems some of these “folks” do not come here to actually be Americans.  It seems they do not want to be “assimilated” or to learn English.  Or work.  Or be responsible for their own finances, or for any employable future.

If you come to another country, but you have no dream to become one with it – and you express hatred and anger for your host while praising and promoting your own country and vengefully flying its flag, and you say out loud that you want to vanquish and control the host – then you are a foreign invader.  A conquering army.

When the Italians, Irish, Jews, and others came to America around the beginning of the 20th century – escaping the Old World, imbued with genuine desire to become 100% American – they had to stop at Ellis Island, the federal immigration station, isolated on 27.5 acres in the Upper New York Bay.

These people, including my own Jewish ancestors, came to America at the turn of the 20th century to escape actual ethnic cleansing of the Pogroms, or mass murders – poverty and suppression – and to fulfill a dream of becoming Americans.  They didn’t “protest,” march, or fly the flags of their home countries.  They learned English, entered or created American jobs, and became financially and societally successful.

There was no American welfare state.  There were no “freebie” benefits as there are now, a hundred years later.

These immigrants of the early 20th century came to America to be free, to stand individually, to provide for their families, to create, and to become 100% Americans.

There is precedent here.  There is ancestral experience and assimilation in America here. There are those who know what it means to be an immigrant and escape to a better world in America.

The American Dream has never been one of living on welfare or benefits while maintaining and promoting your own “culture,” language, religion, and laws.  It’s not about being a Mexican or an African or any other nationality.

America is about being American.

It’s the same in any country.  You don’t go to Mexico or Saudi Arabia or Zimbabwe, and fly the American flag and declare you’re there to take over.  You would probably be arrested or killed in those countries.

In America, you are protected by law.  You are an American.

If you are a real, legal immigrant, and not an invader – you came here for truth, justice, and the American way.

If you came here but don’t want to be an American, or you want to eradicate America and be in control through ethnicity, religion, or foreign law – go home.  Or go somewhere else.

Jeffrey A. Friedberg was a state-licensed east-coast private eye for 35 years.  He is an author, blogger, and internet columnist.  His website is www.ConservativeRightWingNews.com.

According to an Associated Press report issued in July this year, close to 100 Muslims filed to run for federal or state offices in the current election cycle, and nearly half made it through to the primaries.  Meanwhile, numerous other Muslim candidates are campaigning for seats on local planning commissions, school boards, library committees, and other positions of influence at the county and city levels.

The proliferation of Muslim candidates may appear to some as positive and benign participation in American democracy by an emerging minority, but it cannot be denied that a Muslim plan to usurp American democracy has existed for decades.  Careful scrutiny of this new wave of Muslim candidates yields a number with questionable backgrounds, motivations, and support groups, whose motives may be to implement the plan.

The plan to infiltrate and take over American democracy is explained in a 1987 strategic document, “An Explanatory Memorandum,” written and approved by the Muslim Brotherhood, a political organization with ties to the fundamentalist terrorist organization Hamas.  The Muslim Brotherhood has itself been designated a terrorist organization by seven nations, including Egypt, where the Brotherhood began in 1928.  The memorandum calls for the elimination of the U.S. Constitution and its replacement with an Islamic government under sharia law.  It spells out its “process of settlement” as a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” to eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within.  It calls for the establishment of political organizations designed to train and promote the Muslim Brotherhood goal of establishing the Quran as the sole authority for the Muslim family, individual, community, and state.

Several organizations – primed specifically to assist, support, and increase the number of U.S Muslim candidates for office – are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.  They include the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), Project Mobilize, Jetpac Inc., and Emgage.

The USCMO, a political party for Muslims and the first religion-based political party in U.S. history, formalized its commitment to Muslim candidates at its founding in 2014.  Conspicuously absent from the USCMO website are references to U.S. laws or a pledge to uphold the Constitution.  Instead, featured prominently is this statement: “The Council places premium importance on defining the common good based on the Quran and the model of the Prophet (P.B.U.H.), and coordinating a cooperative striving among Muslims and their institutions to implement that common good in American society.”

Further, the USCMO website explains that it will implement this mission by:

• “Promoting Islam’s core universal principles to benefit American society,”
• “Reviving Islamic scholarship that helps guide the American Muslim community through its tests and strivings[.]”
• “Harnessing the imaginative energy of Muslims and their organizations, reconnecting it with our heritage of inspired knowledge and putting this to work with the good will of the Muslim community for the betterment of both our community and American society.”

Project Mobilize, a USCMO precursor, stated on its website, “And finally, the political climate is ripe for an organization that will pave the way for concentrated advocacy efforts in the name of the Muslim American community.”  It is dedicated to the political advancement of the Muslim-American community at the local, state, and federal levels.

Jetpac, an organization “committed to empowering American Muslims in the democratic process,” laments the “lack of political representation,” “discriminatory policies,” “Islamophobic rhetoric,” and an alleged “600% increase in hate crimes against American Muslims since 2014.”  It provides a six-week political consultancy program on campaigning, mobilizing local support, countering Islamophobic attacks, and securing resources.

Emgage’s mission is to promote the political careers of “engaged Muslims.”  It was formerly known as Emerge USA, founded and led today by alumni from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has ties to Hamas.  Emgage got its start raising campaign funds for former Democratic representative Keith Ellison, who supported racist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, worked on behalf of Nation of Islam, and received political contributions by CAIR officials.  Emgage has held events at terror-linked mosques and seeks to “create an infrastructure of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Americans who are empowered and can directly impact public policy.”

These organizations are plainly dedicated not to American principles of democracy, but to Muslim ideals.  Meanwhile, some of the recent Muslim candidates also hold questionable allegiances and motivations, specifically a Florida attorney general candidate and congressional candidates for Michigan and Minnesota.

Amira Dajani, a GOP candidate running for Florida attorney general under the name “Amy Fox,” was recently discovered to be part of a family with deep ties to the PLO, a terrorist group pledged to destroy Israel and led from 1969 to 2004 by Yasser Arafat, the father of modern terrorism.  Dajani’s father wrote an anti-Israel, anti-Jewish book and dedicated it to his daughter.  He advocates Israel’s destruction and, contrary to reality, accuses the Jewish State of using Arabs as human shields.  The uncle of Dajani, AKA Fox, has served in high-level PLO leadership positions.  Thus far, the candidate has been mum about the activities of her father and uncle.

Dajani’s background was revealed this month by her opponent, Gulf War veteran Chris Crowley, who objected to the media’s failure to question Ms. Dajani about her family affiliations and her opinion of her father’s writings.  Crowley was subsequently arrested Aug. 6 and briefly incarcerated for an unwitting campaign violation – accepting $670 raised from a raffle, which is considered a lottery and is illegal.  He accused Dajani of instigating the arrest in reprisal for his raising serious concerns about her background.

In the Midwest, two Democratic congressional candidates have been endorsed by Emgage USA: Ilhan Omar, seeking Minnesota’s 5th District seat, and Rashid Tlaib, running for Michigan’s 13th District post.  The two women have also been endorsed by sharia advocate and anti-American, anti-Israel Muslim Brotherhood operative Linda Sarsour, who has spoken in support of al-Qaeda, been instrumental in curtailing critical NYPD counter-terrorism measures, and called for a jihad against President Trump.  Sarsour refers to Siraj Wahhaj, unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as a mentor.

Somali Muslim refugee Ilhan Omar, who verbally attacked America as a hateful, bigoted country, served in the Minnesota House of Representatives.  During her term of office, she voted against a state bill to terminate insurance payments for individuals who commit or aid terrorist attacks against Americans.  In addition, she opposed a state bill that would have made the Islamic practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) a felony and included provisions to penalize parents who perform the procedure on their children.  Omar is vehemently anti-Israel; supports the Hamas-inspired initiative to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) Israel; and has referred to the Jewish State as an “apartheid regime.”  She has been a featured speaker at CAIR events and received honorariums from several of their state chapters.  Although she has denied allegations that she committed bigamy and immigration fraud by marrying her brother, ample evidence exists that this is the case.  She may also have committed perjury by attesting in family court in 2017 that she had not seen her second husband for six years, a statement belied by a personal Instagram photo, since removed from her account when her marital history became an issue.

Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan congressional candidate, is the daughter of Arab-Palestinian immigrants.  She recently called for a one-state solution and subsequently lost the endorsement last week of J Street, a radical, George Soros-funded organization highly critical of Israel.  Tlaib supports the BDS movement and the cutting of U.S. military aid to Israel.  Although she derides Israel for promoting injustice, she has remained mute on the issue of continuing aid to Muslim-majority countries that discriminate against Christians and Jews.

In 2008, Tlaib was the first Muslim woman elected to the Michigan state legislature.  She criticized Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) for meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Tlaib accused of “racism.”  In addition, she supported convicted Arab-Palestinian terrorist Rasmeah Odeh in her bid to fight deportation after Odeh lied to U.S. immigration officials about her involvement with Hamas.  In 2014, Tlaib served on a panel, “The Outer Dimensions of Zakat,” at the 51st annual Islamic Society of North America conference and was as a keynote speaker for CAIR Los Angeles on the topic of “Islamophobia.”  She plans to propose civil rights legislation to file punitive lawsuits based on disparate impact, without requiring proof of racial bias or ill intent.

As can be seen by just this short review of only a handful of candidates, enough questions and doubts exist to compel close scrutiny of all Muslim candidates who are seeking to break through as American political “firsts.”  Without a close examination, our political process and systems could be infiltrated with increasing numbers of Muslim candidates of questionable background and motivation who will follow the insidious civilizational jihad according to plan and at a dizzying pace.

Even the most casual visitor to China cannot help but see a nation leaping into the future. Thousands of new buildings, roads and bridges; dozens of new airports; and several maglev high-speed trains – all of it reflects strategic infrastructure investment.

A few years ago, the nation produced copycat technology products, but now it’s producing unique, innovative products that its urban population purchases via smartphones

The Communist Party governing structure means that strategic decision-making can be followed by quick execution. The 26.4-mile Qingdao Haiwan Bridge – the longest in the world – was built in just four years.

President Xi has further strengthened the national government by consolidating power, reducing corruption and investing strategically in education, infrastructure and relationships with developing countries.

Chinese universities produce millions of STEM graduates and President Xi has targeted artificial intelligence and self-driving vehicles for major investment.

China protects and nurtures its home-grown companies and puts up roadblocks to foreign competitors such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter.

Now, JD.com is called the Amazon of China, with fleets of drones delivering products. Apple makes products in China, but is slowly being eclipsed by other brands like Huawei. WeChat – the Facebook and Twitter of China – is bolstered by the government, but also censored. Similarly, Baidu’s monopoly as the number-one Chinese search engine is due to the government.

No one debates whether China will surpass the U.S. to be the world’s largest economy; the only question is when it will happen.

China’s ascent is factual. The nation’s systems stem from its priorities, the biggest one being the harmony of the group rather than the rights of the individual.

We cherish our individual rights: our freedom of expression, our privacy and choice in voting, religion and spouse. We also, unlike China, value clean air and water. And while we claim to believe in free markets and entrepreneurship, China invests in and protects companies in strategic areas.

Our strategy worked in the 1900s, while China was a poor, isolationist, agrarian giant. But China has changed, becoming the world’s manufacturer over the course of the 20th century.

Currently, it’s making another shift to become a first-world, can-do innovation economy. It has moved from isolationism to expanding its global influence. And its defensive military is taking over and expanding man-made islands in the South China Sea to develop offensive capabilities.

We have changed as well. Instead of leading by principle and soft power, we’ve embraced isolationism. We have unilaterally imposed tariffs on our trading partners. We are booting out the immigrants who get our STEM degrees, while our defense industry starves for new hires to ensure our military technology lead. Our regulators increasingly question successful tech companies, and our presidents barely murmur a complaint when other nations create new taxes and absurd legal arguments to confiscate these companies’ earnings overseas.

Our politicians continue to put their parties’ interests above those of the nation. Senate Democrats have insisted on roll call votes to delay qualified administration nominees 119 times under President Trump, a procedure used by both parties a total of 140 times during the four prior presidents’ first terms.

Our Supreme Court nominees used to get near-unanimous votes based on legal competence, but now senators on both sides of the aisle withhold their approval out of partisan prejudice alone. Only one group, No Labels, stands out from the crowd in this respect: It has gathered bipartisan “problem solvers” interested in finding workable solutions to our nation’s biggest problems.

Our government stopped investing in infrastructure, but continue to promiscuously give students huge loans to study anything, whether it’s likely to boost their employment opportunities or not. And though our economy is surging, we’re also seeing widening deficits (with a projected $1 trillion deficit in 2019) – debts that the next generation of Americans will have to pay.

Our focus on Trump’s past mistakes and Russia has overwhelmed public discourse. We knew Trump had issues when he was campaigning, and he still won. Move on.

I give President Trump credit for trying to move the nation forward from the media frenzy about Russia to worry about the biggest issues – including the threat China poses to our global leadership. He’s wrong to use tariffs, as almost all economists recognize, but he’s right to focus on China. With Ivanka Trump’s help, he’s pushing every major company and industry to invest in training current and future workers with high-demand skills, promoting technical education with the reauthorization of the Perkins Act and advocating for a merit-based immigration approach that will help us attract and retain the best talent – something the media continues to ignore.

In short, we are chasing butterflies, while China is investing in its future. We have switched roles, accepting passivity and dysfunction, while China speeds to surpass us.

Our democracy has always been messy, but we have succeeded because we shared fundamental values of freedom, justice and equality. Yet our divisive paralysis is threatening our nation and our democracy.

The way we succeed is to put nation above party, values above vengeance and strive to live up to our ideals as a nation of liberty and opportunity for all. If we don’t shift gears and face the problems that lie ahead, I’m not sure our children will forgive us.