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.
A new CNN poll reveals more Americans now think the country is doing well than at any point during President Barack Obama’s entire eight years in office.
The poll, conducted by SSRS, found that 57 percent of Americans believe that the country is doing well under President Donald Trump, which is higher than any point throughout Obama’s presidency.
The percentage who think things are going well is up from 49 percent in February and is higher than at any point since January of 2007, two years before Obama took office.
CNN mentioned that “almost 6 in 10 say things in the country are going well” in the opening paragraph of the poll writeup, but waited until the fourth paragraph to share that the number was higher than any of the times recorded during Obama’s tenure. Instead, CNN first noted that Trump’s approval rating is holding steady at 41 percent but that support for Trump on the issues is slowly climbing.
The vast improvement in the percentage of Americans who think the country is doing well is largely attributed to Democrats. Only 25 percent of Democrats said things were going well in February, while 40 percent said the same in March.
What In The Hello Has Condoleezza Rice Accomplished?
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday morning that President Donald Trump should not engage directly in the details of negotiation with North Korea.
“First of all, don’t try to negotiate the details with Kim Jong-un,” Rice told Fox & Friends. “Leave that for people who understand all the nuances of the situation.”
Condoleezza Rice Said her childhood experience with segregation in the South helped her understand the Palestinian experience. WTF?
Rice noted that she was the last American to negotiate with the North Korean regime, when she was dealing with Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il.
“You have to give the [Trump] administration a lot of credit,” she said, for pressuring China to rein in the Kim regime and for using the threat of military force to isolate North Korea.
However, she said, the president should leave the nuts-and-bolts of diplomacy to others, even though he would be meeting directly with Kim Jong-un at a summit in the coming weeks. And she warned that the Kim regime was still a murderous one with a track record of breaking its promises.
Rice said she supported the Trump administration’s move toward pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.
“I actually think if we pull out now, it is not going to be the disaster everybody is talking about,” she said. “I would not have signed this deal. I don’t think it was a very good deal. I think we were in a hurry to get a deal and we left a lot on the table. … If we get out of this deal, it is going to be just fine.”
Asked whether she wanted to leave the Iran deal, Rice said: “I would probably have stayed in for alliance management purposes but … if the president decides to pull out of the deal I have no argument with that.”
Where is the collusion investigation on Christopher Steele a spy from Britain?
The former British spy who wrote the infamous dossier has been ordered to appear for a deposition in a lawsuit over the salacious document filed in the U.S.
A British court ordered Christopher Steele to testify about his role in compiling the dossier, which alleges that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Steele’s report was funded by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. BuzzFeed News published the 35-page document in Jan. 2017.
Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian businessman named in the dossier, is suing BuzzFeed in Florida and Steele in London. The dossier claims that Gubarev was recruited as a Russian spy and that his web hosting companies were used to infiltrate the DNC’s computer systems.
Gubarev’s lawyers have tried for months to force the London-based Steele to provide a deposition for the lawsuit against BuzzFeed, which is being heard in federal court in Florida.
Steele has resisted the efforts to provide a deposition, arguing that Gubarev’s lawyers are attempting to use his deposition in the BuzzFeed case in order to collect information for use in the lawsuit pending against him in the U.K.
But a British judge sided against that argument.
A judge on the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court in London ruled, “it is obvious that the author of the paragraph complained of in the Florida proceedings would be a relevant witness in defamation proceedings which are entirely based on the allegations in that paragraph, in a jurisdiction where the plaintiffs have to prove that the allegations are false,” Fox News reported.
Evan Fray-Witzer, a lawyer for Gubarev, praised the decision.
“We’re thrilled that the English Court has ordered Mr. Steele to sit for his deposition,” Fray-Witzer said. “It was always amazing to us that he could talk as freely as he has to reporters around the world about the dossier, yet refuse to sit for a deposition about the same topics.”
Fray-Witzer told The Daily Caller News Foundation a date has not been set for the deposition, but will likely be held within the next 4-6 weeks.
Fray-Witzer says that his team recently narrowed the scope of the information it sought from Steele. The former MI6 officer has asserted that his deposition could put dossier sources in danger.
Fray-Witzer says that his team has agreed not to ask Steele about his sources. He also says that Steele has chosen not to appeal the decision. “Buzzfeed published information about Mr. Gubarev and his companies that was unverified and untrue and they seem to be hoping to scuttle the deposition of the person most positioned to testify to those facts,” he told TheDCNF.
During an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, former FBI Director James Comey’s wife, Patrice, confessed that she supported Hillary Clinton and was “devastated” when Donald Trump won.
“I wanted a woman president really badly, and I supported Hillary Clinton,” Patrice Failor Comey told Stephanopoulos. “A lot of my friends worked for her. And I was devastated when she lost.”
James Comey admitted that his wife and girls all took part in the Women’s March in response to Donald Trump’s election.
“My wife and girls marched in the Women’s March, the day after President Trump’s inauguration,” he said. “At least my four daughters — probably all five of my kids, wanted Hillary Clinton to be the first woman president. I know my amazing spouse did.”
In an interview that aired Sunday night, former FBI Director James Comey sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and offered an ominous assessment of the country under President Donald Trump’s leadership.
Stephanopoulos brought up Comey’s remarks that right now is a “dangerous” time in America.
“I think it is [dangerous],” Comey told Stephanopoulos. “And I chose those words carefully. I was worried when I chose the word “dangerous” first. I thought, is that an overstatement? And I don’t think it is.”
Indict That Bastard.
He expounded, “I worry that the norms at the center of this country — we can fight as Americans about guns, or taxes or immigration, and we always have, but what we have in common is a set of norms — most importantly, the truth. And if we lose that, if we lose tethering of our leaders to that truth, what are we?”
