President Donald Trump unloaded on Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau Saturday for remarks the G7 summit host made on trade, announcing the U.S. will not endorse the communique signed by the seven largest advanced economies in the world.
“Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!” Trump tweeted.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!
“PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, “US Tariffs were kind of insulting” and he “will not be pushed around,” the President added. “Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!”
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, “US Tariffs were kind of insulting” and he “will not be pushed around.” Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!
President Trump was responding to Trudeau’s remarks on trade between the U.S. and Canada, in which the prime minister warned his government would take retaliatory measures if new tariffs were introduced.
I Said HELL NO and I Mean It .
“I highlighted directly to the president that Canadians did not take it lightly, the United States’ move forward with significant tariffs on our steel and aluminum industry,” began Trudeau. “[I] particularly did not take lightly the fact that it’s based on national security reason that for Canadians who either themselves or whose parents or community members have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with American soldiers in far off lands, in conflicts from the First World War onwards, that it’s kind of insulting.”
“And I highlighted it was not helping in our renegotiation of NAFTA and that it would be with regret but it would be with absolute certainty and firmness that we move forward with retaliatory measures on 1 July – applying equivalent tariffs to the ones that the Americans have unjustly applied to us,” Trudeau continued.
Trudeau finished with a warning to Trump, saying “Canadians are polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.”
CNN Politics
✔@CNNPolitics
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he will with “absolute certainty” impose retaliatory measures on July 1 to answer US President Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum: “We will not be pushed around” https://cnn.it/2Jm3In4
Congress’s watchdog arm this week raised questions on how effectively the Pentagon and U.S. State Department are overseeing projects linked to multi-billion dollar Global Train and Equip program primarily intended to improve counterterrorism capabilities for U.S. partner nations like Jordan, Niger, and Afghanistan.
In an audit released on Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that only eight (about 40 percent) of 21 Global Train and Equip projects undertaken in 2016 and 2017 at the cost of nearly $2 billion resulted in improved capabilities for aid recipient forces.
The GAO cited proposal design shortfalls, equipment suitability and procurement problems, partner nation failings, and staffing shortages as the reason for the project failures.
GAO reports:
DOD assessment reports for 2016 and 2017, which included baseline and post-implementation assessments of recipient units’ capabilities for 21 Global Train and Equip projects, indicated some progress in building partner capacity. For 8 of the 21 projects, the recipient units’ capability levels were assessed as having increased by at least one rating level after the project’s implementation.
Although the recipient units for the remaining 13 projects were assessed as showing no change in capability levels, the assessment reports for some of these projects described some positive project outcomes.
The 2006 bill first authorized the Global Train and Equip program. Since then, it has supplied, at the expense of the American taxpayer, training, weapons, and other supplies for local forces through hundreds of initiatives across the globe, the watchdog notes.
GAO’s recent audit covers the status of funding the Pentagon allocated for Global Train and Equip projects in fiscal years 2009 through 2017, estimated at $4.1 billion.
The watchdog determined that the Pentagon’s track record in assessing the effectiveness of Global Train and Equip is lackluster.
Of 262 Global Train and Equip projects carried out by the Pentagon between 2206 and 2015, the U.S. military only assessed a third for success, the GAO revealed, noting:
In 2012 through 2017, the Department of Defense (DOD) prepared assessment reports for 31 percent of the projects (82 of 262 projects) it had implemented in 2006 through 2015.1 These 82 projects account for 28 percent of the nearly $3 billion DOD allocated for the program in those fiscal years.
In 2017, an audit by the Pentagon’s inspector general also found problems with the Global Train and Equip program.
Former Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney lashed out at the decision to have a controversial evangelical leader give a blessing at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem Monday, calling him a “religious bigot.”
The Senate candidate from Utah criticized the inclusion of the Rev. Robert Jeffress — the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas who is also an an adviser to President Donald Trump. The president recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last year.
Mitt Does Not Change His Underwear So He Caught Blue-Balls From Dirty Draws. So He Only Has 1 Ball So We Call Him, 1-Nut Mitt.
“Robert Jeffress says, ‘You can’t be saved by being a Jew,’ and ‘Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell,’” Romney wrote in a tweet Sunday night. “He’s said the same about Islam. Such a religious bigot should not be giving the prayer that opens the United States Embassy in Jerusalem.”
Jeffress denied he was a bigot, but added that he believed Mormonism was “wrong,” and said the Southern Baptist Convention had designated it a “cult.”
“Mormonism has never been considered a part of historic Christianity. People may disagree with that view, but it’s not a view unique to me,” he said in an interview with NBC News.
Jeffress bases his beliefs and his general opposition to a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians on his strict interpretation of the Bible.
“The Bible says this land belongs to the Jewish people — period,” he told NBC News in a separate interview in February. “God has pronounced judgment after judgment in the Old Testament to those who would ‘divide the land,’ end quote, and hand it over to non-Jews.”
“If you sincerely follow the tenets of Islam, then you will end up in hell when you die.”
“If you sincerely follow the tenets of Islam, then you will end up in hell when you die.”
While a staunch ally of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jeffress has been criticized for preaching that all non-Christians, including people who are Jewish, will not go to heaven.
“The truth everyone headed to hell has rejected is that Jesus Christ is the only means by which a person may be saved,” Jeffress said in a Feb. 6, 2017, video posted on his church’s website. “Jesus could not have been more clear [when] he said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.’”
Jeffress has also been open about his beliefs on Islam.
“Is Islam just another way to worship God? Let me say this without any hesitation: Islam is a false religion that is based on a false book that was written by a false prophet,” he said on Oct. 9, according to his church’s website. “If you sincerely follow the tenets of Islam, then you will end up in hell when you die.”
He has also espoused a conservative line on homosexuality, saying the “New Testament also prohibits homosexual marriage.”
Jeffress added, “By upholding God’s pattern for sexuality — a man and a woman in a marriage relationship — Jesus automatically condemned any deviation from that pattern.”
Jeffress isn’t the only conservative evangelical leader to be on hand for Monday’s embassy ceremony, which included around 800 guests. The Rev. John Hagee, the founder of influential evangelical Christians United for Israel and a pastor from San Antonio, delivered a closing blessing at the ceremony.
American evangelicals surged onto the political scene in 1980 by helping to elect President Ronald Reagan. In 2016, around 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. As evangelicals grew more prominent domestically, their ties to the Israeli political establishment strengthened.
Hagee has explicitly linked the establishment of the state of Israel to biblical prophecy and the second coming of Jesus.
“The rebirth of Israel as a nation was an unmistakable milestone on the prophetic timeline leading to the return of Christ,” he wrote in his book, “In Defense of Israel.”
Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have been embraced by Christian Zionists who believe the establishment of the state of Israel is proof of God keeping his promises and a step toward the second coming of Christ.
Many European nations who oppose Trump’s decision to move the embassy are expected to skip related events on Monday.
US President Donald Trump (2nd R) speaks to China’s President Xi Jinping (L), as US First Lady Melania Trump (2nd L) and Xi’s wife Peng Liyuan (R) look on, the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 9, 2017.
Chinese security officers attempted to stop the American military aide carrying the nuclear football from following President Trump into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in November.
Axios reported Sunday the decision set off a chain of events that led chief of staff John Kelly to intervene and get in a physical altercation with a Chinese security officer.
According to the report, Chinese officials blocked the military aide carrying the nuclear football from following Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping into the Great Hall. The aide is supposed to be near Trump at all times.
When made aware of the situation, Kelly intervened and told the aide to keep walking and entering the hall. One Chinese official grabbed Kelly and Kelly shoved the man’s hand back. A Secret Service agent then grabbed the Chinese official and tackled him to the ground.
The report indicates Trump’s team properly informed the Chinese about security procedures before the trip. The nuclear football, which contains the codes the president must give to order a nuclear strike, was never in Chinese possession.
The Chinese apologized to the Americans after the incident.
The Trump administration’s record numbers of airstrikes in Afghanistan have failed to expand the Afghan government’s control over its population and stop the Taliban from quickly replacing its opium and heroin processing labs pulverized by the U.S. military, a watchdog agency said in a report to Congress released Tuesday.
In its latest quarterly audit to lawmakers, the U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) noted:
The expanded authorities provided [by President Trump] to U.S. forces in Afghanistan have resulted in a significant uptick in U.S. air strikes and special operations against the insurgency, with the U.S. dropping 653 munitions in October 2017, a record high since 2012 and a more than three-fold increase from October 2016.
These actions have yet to increase the Afghan government’s control over its population … The goal of the Afghan government is to control 80% of its population within the next two years.
While the U.S. military is targeting the Taliban’s opium business, dealing a blow worth millions of dollars to the group, it is barely making a dent on the illicit trafficking of the lucrative poppy plant, noted SIGAR, explaining:
U.S. and Afghan air strikes this quarter have targeted the Taliban’s opium-production industry, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates has as many as 400–500 active facilities at any given time.
According to [U.S.] General [John] Nicholson, [the top commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan], U.S. and Afghan forces recently began targeting them, destroying 10 on November 19 alone.
Gen. Nicholson vowed to continue the pressure on the Taliban’s economic engine — opium and heroin — while remaining careful to avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties, which have increased by more than ten percent to 4,474 between June 1 and the end of November 2017 when compared to the same period the previous year.
Why let the Taliban have the fields.
Afghan security forces, supported by U.S. Air Force B-52s, F/A-18s, and other aircraft, including the F-22 Raptor, are carrying out the operations against opium and heroin, which generate up to 60 percent of the Taliban’s funding.
“Brigadier General Bunch announced that 25 narcotics labs had been destroyed since the beginning of the campaign in November, which he said was the equivalent of nearly $80 million eliminated from the drug-trafficking organizations while denying over $16 million in direct revenue to the Taliban,” reports SIGAR.
The inspector general suggested the cost of carrying out the airstrikes on the heroin labs may outweigh the outcome, noting:
According to the latest DOD [U.S. Department of Defense] financial- management report, an F-22 costs between $35,294 and $36,799 per hour to operate; a B-52 between $32,569 and $34,341 per hour; and an F/A-18 between $9,798 and $16,173 per hour, depending on the model.
By contrast, the labs being destroyed are cheap and easy to replace. Afghans told Reuters it would takes three or four days to replace a lab in Afghanistan. According to UNODC [United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime], the morphine/heroin labs need only simple equipment such as a stove, iron barrel, and locally made pressing machines. According to DOD, the value of seizures and destroyed equipment is based on DEA baselines.
In the report, SIGAR revealed that for the first time, the Pentagon prohibited the watchdog agency from publicizing the full district and land-area under the control of the Afghan government and terrorist groups.
The Pentagon also banned SIGAR from reporting on the strength and capabilities of the struggling Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), who, along with Afghan civilians, have borne the brunt of casualties primarily at the hands of the Taliban in recent years.
“Afghan government control or influence has declined and insurgent control or influence has increased overall since SIGAR began reporting control data in January 2016,” noted the auditor.
U.S. military combat deaths have also increased in recent months.
“From January 1 through November 26, 2017, 11 U.S. military personnel were killed in Afghanistan, and 99 were wounded. This is double the personnel killed in action compared to the same periods in 2015 and 2016,” noted SIGAR in a press release announcing its report to Congress.
Gen. Nicholson did say in November, “About 64 percent of the population is controlled by the government, about 24 percent live in contested areas, and the Taliban control the remaining 12 percent,” without mentioning anything about who controls the territory.
Based on the top commander’s assessment, Afghan terrorist groups, primarily the Taliban, control or contest 36 percent of the population.
Some independent analysts, namely experts from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), have questioned the U.S military’s assessment placing the territory under terrorist control or influence at about 45 percent in late September.
In a significant departure from previous administrations, President Trump authorized the U.S military to strike opium and its heroin derivative in Afghanistan, the world’s top producer of the poppy plant.
Despite investing $8.7 billion in American taxpayer funds on counternarcotics efforts since the Afghan war began in October 2001, Afghanistan is producing more opium and heroin than ever before, doubling production last year to 9,000 tons from 2016, revealed the United Nations.
The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) branch in Afghanistan is reportedly growing, claiming responsibility for an attack in Kabul this week and “the deadliest attack” covered by the SIGAR quarterly report “when an IS-K [Khorasan province] militant detonated a suicide bomb during a gathering of 150–200 people at a Shi’a cultural center in Kabul. The Afghan Ministry of Public Health said at least 41 people were killed and 84 wounded.”
Two new studies, one from The Sentencing Project and one from the libertarian Cato Institute, reported that the percentage of immigrants committing crimes is lower than that of United States citizens. However, the underlying methodology used in each was critically flawed.
It is possible that legal immigrants commit crimes at a rate lower than U.S. citizens and that they are incarcerated at a lower rate than U.S. citizens. After all, legal immigrants are well vetted, and if they have criminal records in their countries of origin they are generally ineligible for admission to American.
The same cannot be said for illegal aliens because virtually all adult, illegal aliens commit felonies in order to procure the documents they need to get jobs, to drive and to obtain other benefits that are restricted to U.S. citizens.
The vast majority of illegal aliens use fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers. They possess fake drivers’ licenses, phony “green cards,” fraudulent birth certificates and any other documents that U.S. citizens and legal residents have. In addition, they falsify I-9 forms under penalty of perjury. Thus, the average illegal alien routinely commits multiple felonies –forgery, Social Security fraud, identity theft, and perjury.
This criminal activity is routinely swept under the rug in order to protect the myth of the law abiding illegal alien. However, when pushed, even the strongest supporters of illegal aliens are forced to acknowledge that the vast majority of illegal aliens commit multiple felonies. In fact, the Social Security Administration and New York Times report that approximately 75 percent of illegal aliens have fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers which is a felony. The ACLU accepts this figure and uses it to show that illegal aliens pay payroll taxes.
Furthermore, the Los Angeles Times reports that up to 8 million of 11.1 million (72 percent) illegal aliens commit job-related felonies. La Raza says that illegal aliens contribute $15 billion annually in Social Security payments through payroll taxes [by using illegally obtained Social Security numbers – felony].
Mexican-born American journalist Jorge Ramos admits that many illegal aliens use “fake” documents (a felony).
Even the president of the California State Senate admitted this month that “half” of his family “would be eligible for deportation under [President Trump’s] executive order, because if they got a false Social Security card, if they got a false identification, if they got a false driver’s license prior to us passing AB60, if they got a false green card, and anyone who has family members, you know, who are undocumented knows that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification (felonies).”
Neither the study from Cato or The Sentencing Project acknowledged these realities. And as a result, they tremendously understated the incidence of illegal alien criminal activity. Even the strongest supporters of illegal aliens acknowledge that 75 percent of illegal aliens routinely commit felonies of the aforementioned variety.
The Cato Institute further limited its study to the incarceration rate for legal immigrants, illegal aliens and U.S. citizens. But it was forced to acknowledge that the numbers of incarcerated illegal aliens are not readily available because “local and state governments do not record whether the prisoner is an illegal immigrant.” Cato was therefore forced to “use common statistical methods to identify illegal immigrant prisoners by excluding incarcerated respondents who have characteristics that they are unlikely to have. In other words, we can identify likely illegal immigrants by looking at prisoners with individual characteristics that are highly correlated with being an illegal immigrant.”
The Cato study consequently excluded felonies routinely committed by the vast majority of adult, illegal aliens as long as they were not incarcerated, resulting in a significant understatement of the overall incidence of crimes committed by illegal aliens.
The study conducted by The Sentencing Project similarly focused on the incidence of crimes committed by foreign born individuals. According to the study, “Major national datasets lack information on respondents’ immigration legal status, and this information has not been systematically collected by law enforcement agencies or state departments of corrections.”
That study’s data was just as questionable as that used in the Cato study. And its conclusion, “A century of research has shown immigrants [including illegal aliens] do not threaten public safety and … are less likely to commit crime than native-born citizens,” was patently false.
Democrats often assert as fact that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than U.S. citizens. That argument is totally wrong, because the vast majority of adult illegal aliens are committing felonies by virtue of being active in America.
The myth of the law abiding illegal alien is just that: a myth.
Donald J. Trump
CNN Politics
