Liberals Are Losing Their Minds Because Trump Is Showing How Weak Obama Was.
President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday that the five most wanted members of the Islamic State terror group have been captured.
“Five most wanted leaders of ISIS just captured,” POTUS stated.
According to Fox News, the ISIS leaders were captured in a joint-sting operation conducted by American, Iraqi and Turkish forces.
Trump’s comments came just hours after he celebrated the release of three American hostages — formerly held by North Korea — upon their arrival at Andrews Air Force Base.
The three Americans formerly held hostage in North Korea gesture next to U.S.President Donald Trump, upon their arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., May 10, 2018. REUTERS/Jim Bourg – RC1FDB2A7BD0
Some in the media, including CNN’s Chris Cuomo, called the moment the highlight of Trump’s presidency, a sharp break from their usual White House coverage.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration — less than a year and a half into its tenure — has helped secure the release of at least 14 Americans, including three children born in captivity to an American woman and her Canadian husband held by the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network.
Marking the latest in a series of victories by the Trump administration in winning the release of Americans held abroad are the three U.S. citizens liberated this week by the murderous and oppressive North Korean regime.
Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump
I am pleased to inform you that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the air and on his way back from North Korea with the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting. They seem to be in good health. Also, good meeting with Kim Jong Un. Date & Place set.
Not known for paying praise to President Trump, the liberal Vox news outlet acknowledges:
The Trump administration seems to have made freeing US hostages held abroad more of a priority, and it has unquestionably had more success than the Obamaadministration.
Ranging from college students caught shoplifting to a couple — an American woman and a Canadian man — who had three children while in captivity, below are an account of some of the U.S. hostages liberated under the Trump administration:
Kim Dong Chul, Kim Hak Song, and Tony Kim: All three Korean-Americans, accused by the Kim Jong-un regime of anti-state activities. The North Korean regime imprisoned them for terms ranging between one and two years. The three young men are expected to reach U.S. soil in the early hours of Thursday.
Aya Hijazi: The Trump administration negotiated the April 2018 release of aid worker Aya Hijazi, imprisoned in Egypt for three years. She was liberated soon after a meeting between President Trump and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to secure Hijazi’s release. Ultimately, the Egyptian judicial system acquitted her of charges of child abuse that human rights groups and U.S. officials deemed baseless.
Sabrina De Sousa: The Trump administration won the release in March 2018 of the former CIA agent who was scheduled to be extradited from Portugal to Italy over the kidnapping of radical Egyptian Muslim cleric Osama Mustapha Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. Referring to her release, Former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), a spokesman for De Sousa, told Fox News, “I can confirm that this wouldn’t have happened without extraordinary help from the Trump administration.”
UCLA Basketball Players LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley, and Jalen Hill: In November 2017, President Trump personally took credit for asking his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to release the three players held in the communist country for shoplifting. Chinese authorities accused them of stealing designer sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store. President Trump wrote on Twitter after the players returned home, “You’re welcome, go out and give a big Thank You to President Xi Jinping of China who made your release possible.”
American Caitlan Coleman, her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle, and their three children: The Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorist group the Haqqani Network, deemed by the Pentagon as the top threat facing U.S. troops in Afghanistan, kidnapped the couple in October 2012. Haqqani terrorists held them for five years until their release in October 2017. The couple had three children while they were held captive.
Otto Warmbier: The Trump administration negotiated the release of the 21-year-old American student in June 2017 after he was detained by the Kim regime for 17 months for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster in his hotel. He died shortly after he was returned to the United States in a coma.
Sandy Phan-Gillis: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) credited President Trump for providing “leadership” in communist China’s decision to “deport” the Houston businesswoman in April 2017. The Chinese judicial system had sentenced her to three and a half years in prison on espionage charges.
As of October 2017, there reportedly were about 20 Americans held captive by militant groups around the world or foreign governments. The Trump administration has liberated about eight since.
President Donald Trump welcomed Americans Kim Hak Song, Kim Dong Cul, and Kim Sang-Duk home to the United States at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland early Thursday after they were released by their North Korean captors.
The President and First Lady descended the steps of a medical aircraft with the three Americans at approximately 3 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time as a small crowd applauded.
The three were released by North Korea on Wednesday as a gesture of goodwill ahead of an upcoming summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, now planned for the island nation of Singapore.
“They are really three incredible people,” Trump told assembled reporters, describing the release as part of a diplomatic process leading up to the summit.
“Frankly, we didn’t think this was going to happen,” he said, adding that he wanted to pay his “warmest respects to the parents of Otto Warmbier,” an American prisoner who died shortly after being returned home last year due to injuries sustained in North Korean custody.
They were released during meetings between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his North Korean counterparts. Fox News reported that the U.S. did not know with certainty that they were going to be released until they were physically aboard Pompeo’s plane.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Secretary Pompeo and his “guests” will be landing at Andrews Air Force Base at 2:00 A.M. in the morning. I will be there to greet them. Very exciting!
The release of the prisoners in advance of formal talks between the U.S. and North Korea is a contrast to the approach used by the Obama administration in negotiating for the release of four American prisoners from Iran. That release came after the Iran nuclear deal was signed in 2015, and was accompanied by the secret transport of billions of dollars in cash from the U.S. to Iran.
Upon their release, the three freed Americans issued a statement:
We would like to express our deep appreciation to the United States government, President Trump, Secretary Pompeo, and the people of the United States for bringing us home. We thank God, and all our families and friends who prayed for us and for our return. God Bless America, the greatest nation in the world.
Warmbier’s family had earlier expressed their well wishes to the families of the freed Americans.
A large US flag is set up ahead of the arrival of US detainees Kim Hak-song, Tony Kim and Kim Dong-chul after they were freed by North Korea, at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on May 10, 2018. – US President Donald Trump was expected to greet the three US citizens released by North Korea at the air base near Washington early on May 10, underscoring a much needed diplomatic win and a stepping stone to a historic summit with Kim Jong Un. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
The three were flown from North Korea to Japan, where they boarded a medical plane. After landing to refuel in Anchorage, Alaska, the plane continued onwards to Andrews.
President Trump arrived with the First Lady, Vice President Mike Pence, and Second Lady Karen Pence.
Zeke Miller
✔@ZekeJMiller
JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. (AP) — Military plane carrying 3 Americans freed from North Korea arrives at base outside Washington, Trump on hand to greet.
John Kasich & Jeff Flake Are 2 Of The Biggest Frauds Ever. They Pretend To Have Precipices But Will Sell Their Children For Money And Power.
Remember how during the 2016 presidential primary those oh-so principled Never Trumpers kept warning us that Donald Trump was a con man, a faux conservative, a secret Democrat making promises (including about exiting the Iran deal) he had no intention of keeping? Remember how those oh-so principled Never Trumpers told us that anyone who believed Trump’s promises was a bumpkin, a hillbilly, a yokel, a jake, a hick, a clodhopper, a Grade A hayseed?
Well, here we sit 15 months into Trump’s presidency, a presidency where he has proved to be the most promising-keeping-sumbitch-of-a-president in my lifetime. And here is Never Trump once again proving themselves to be the true soy boy swindlers.
Yes, while Trump kept his promise to exit the disastrous Iran deal, a promise he made countless times on the campaign trail, look who was actually lying to us — no less than oh-so principled Never Trump Resistance Leaders Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Gov. John Kasich (R-OH), who were both against the Iran deal before they were for it.
With an 18 percent approval rating in his home state, and to avoid a humiliating primary loss, Flake has wisely chosen not to run for re-election. But when he still thought he would have to face voters, Flake strongly and publicly opposed the Iran deal.
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“While Congress has received assurances from the administration that it does not forfeit its ability to impose sanctions on Iran for behavior on the non-nuclear side, these assurances do not square with the text of the [agreement],” Flake said (quite correctly) at the time.
But now, we know that this Never Trumper was hustling us because now, Flake is magically in favor of the Iran deal and is even slamming Trump (on far-left CNN, naturally) for keeping his promise to withdraw:
Ryan Saavedra ✔@RealSaavedra
Jeff Flake in 2015: I strongly oppose Obama’s Iran deal.
Jeff Flake in 2018: We should have stayed in the Iran deal.
Kasich is even worse. If you recall (and it is certainly understandable if you don’t), Kasich ran for president in 2016, and while running for president, Kasich told us over and over again that he was so gosh-darned opposed to the Iran deal, he wanted the Senate to go “nuclear” to stop it.
Per NBC News, the “Ohio governor regularly slams the Iran deal on the campaign trail, and he told the crowd on Tuesday ‘it’s a bad agreement. There are so many very poor parts of this thing.’”
Opposing the Iran deal was a major talking point for this son-of-a-mailman during his humiliating presidential run.
Kasich did say he would not tear the deal up on day one, that he would only withdraw if Iran violated the agreement. But today, and even though Iran has repeatedly violated the agreement, oh-so principled Kasich is all but admitting his prior opposition to the deal was a shell game.
“President Trump’s decision to withdraw … was a mistake. It has gotten us nothing other than to remove constraints on Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons,” Kasich now says:
So it was not Trump who was swindling us with red meat on the campaign trail. It was not Trump who was conning us with rhetoric about being opposed to the deal. It was oh-soprincipled Never Trump.
In other words, voting for an establishment hack like Kasich would have been the true sucker move.
President Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday that the U.S. is leaving the Iran deal marks the end of what his predecessor, Barack Obama, considered his main foreign policy legacy.
Trump will earn credit from his supporters for keeping his promise. But in truth, the Iran deal was undone by its own terms. It did not stop Iran from enriching uranium; it did not stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon, eventually; and it did not stop Iran’s global aggression.
In fact, the Iran deal was not even a deal at all.
It was never signed by any of the parties (the U.S., Iran, France, the UK, Germany, China, and Russia). It was unclear about crucial subjects like ballistic missiles, because the “deal” was described differently by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and by the UN Security Council Resolutions that were meant to implement it. And, crucially, it was never sent to the U.S. Senate for ratification.
Obama’s disregard for the Treaty Clause of the U.S. Constitution was of a piece with his general disregard for the constitutional constraints on the power of the federal government and the presidency. His refusal to submit the agreement to Senate scrutiny, and his party’s abuse of the filibuster to prevent even a weak Senate vote, deepened the damage that Obamacare — his other struggling “legacy,” in domestic policy — did to American civic culture.
More than Obama’s autocratic style, what Trump ended is Obama’s legacy of appeasement.
Barack Obama came to power convinced that the United States was at best a negative force in world affairs, and at worst the cause of the world’s problems. He believed that America could be a force for good, but only if it renounced its traditional allies, abandoned its principles of freedom, and gave up its national interests in favor of rising regional powers elsewhere.
In his first year in office, Obama backed away from agreements that his predecessor had made to provide missile defense in Europe. He also reached out to the Muslim world, beginning with obsequious speeches in Cairo and in Ankara, and deep genuflection to the Saudi king. When the Green Revolution took to the streets of Iran, Obama allowed the regime to consolidate power. He criticized Israel openly while cozying up to the Cuban dictatorship.
Trump has reversed most of that. He launched attacks on Syria for using chemical weapons — policing the “red line” Obama drew but would not enforce. He withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords and exposed it as a fraud. Later this week, he will move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
“The United States no longer issues empty threats. When I make promises, I keep them,” he said. Thus ended Obama’s experiment with appeasement and autocracy.
