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Post by Admin on Feb 23, 2020 18:38:05 GMT
Donald Trump’s national security adviser has said he has not “seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything” to get the president re-elected, but also seemed to accept reports that Russia is backing Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.
In response, one senior Democrat slammed the “politicisation of intelligence” by the Trump administration and said Robert O’Brien should “stay out of politics”.
O’Brien’s claim, in an interview with ABC’s This Week, came at the end of a week in which it was reported that US officials briefed the House intelligence committee that Russia was again trying to help get Trump elected.
Reports of Trump’s furious reaction were followed by the departure of Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, and his replacement by Richard Grenell, formerly ambassador to Germany and a Trump loyalist. The president has tweeted extensively on the subject, blaming Democrats and the media for “disinformation hoax number 7”.
It was also reported this week that Trump, congressional leaders and Sanders himself were briefed that Moscow was repeating another tactic from 2016 and backing the Vermont senator.
Sanders told Russia to stay out of US elections, then won convincingly in Nevada.
O’Brien said Russian backing for Sanders would be “no surprise. He honeymooned in Moscow.”
Sanders has described a 10-day visit to the then Soviet capital in 1988 as “a very strange honeymoon”. O’Brien was repeating a line used by Trump at campaign events.
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Post by Admin on Mar 22, 2020 18:49:57 GMT
Donald Trump’s MAGA followers finally agree: the coronavirus threat is real. But there’s now a growing chorus worried the president might overdo the response.
The fear is that the media and mass hysteria has cowed Trump into fully tanking the economy in response to what they believe is a dangerous, but not apocalyptic, disease. Despite warnings from Trump’s own health officials that millions could die unless drastic action is taken, some of the president’s supporters worry that the dangers of overreacting could also be severe.
“More than a month of people actually quarantined will break down civil society. Nobody is used to this, and when the money runs out for people they will get desperate — and there’s not enough money the government can dole out that’ll be enough,” said David Reaboi, vice president for strategic operations at Security Studies Group who writes for The Federalist.
“People will start to panic, then [begin] killing and looting. And we’ll face a society-wide crisis that’s more than simply economic. Absorbing the death of a certain number of people is preferable to that, if those are the options. Amazing and horrible to even think like that, but here we are.”
A variation of the debate has also started to infiltrate more mainstream circles, with a much-read Wall Street Journal editorial recently weighing how much financial devastation is worth the health benefits a prolonged economic stoppage will bring.
Public health officials insist such measures are necessary for now, noting the coronavirus is far worse than the flu — it is at least 10 times as lethal and about three times as contagious, according to officials. And recent data has also shown that the disease may pose greater risks to younger generations than previously thought — nearly 40 percent of coronavirus hospitalizations were people aged 20 to 54, according to a government report.
“People will start to panic, then [begin] killing and looting. And we’ll face a society-wide crisis that’s more than simply economic."
David Reaboi
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Post by Admin on Apr 14, 2020 20:56:54 GMT
The IRS announced in a tweet over the weekend that those stimulus checks have already started arriving in the accounts of eligible Americans around the country. That means, as part of the government’s $2.2 trillion stimulus package, individuals with adjusted gross income below $75,000 are set to receive $1,200. Married couples filing taxes jointly who earn under $150,000 will get $2,400. Each qualifying child is worth $500. The amount of the payouts decline above the $75,000/$150,000 level and end altogether at $99,000 in earnings for individuals and $198,000 for married couples. Dispatches from a pandemic: Letter from New York: ‘When I hear an ambulance, I wonder if there’s a coronavirus patient inside. Are there more 911 calls, or do I notice every distant siren?’ With more than 16 million people losing their jobs amid the economic shutdown across the country, these checks couldn’t come soon enough. In anticipation of the cash infusion, excitement was bubbling up across Twitter TWTR, +2.68% , where #stimulusdeposit was the top trending topic.
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Post by Admin on Apr 20, 2020 7:06:23 GMT
North Korea on Sunday dismissed as “ungrounded” President Donald Trump’s comment that he recently received “a nice note” from the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un. Trump said during a press briefing on the coronavirus pandemic Saturday that “I received a nice note from him recently. It was a nice note. I think we’re doing fine.” Trump also defended now-stalled nuclear diplomacy with Kim, saying the U.S. would have been at war with North Korea if he had not been elected. North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that there was no letter addressed to Trump recently by “the supreme leadership,” a reference to Kim. It said it would examine why the U.S. leadership released “the ungrounded story” to the media. “The relations between the top leaders of [North Korea] and the U.S. are not an issue to be taken up just for diversion nor it should be misused for meeting selfish purposes,” the statement said. Kim and Trump have met three times and exchanged letters and envoys on many occasions since 2018, when they began talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. The two leaders have built some personal relationships, and Trump once said that he and Kim “fell in love.” The nuclear diplomacy has made little headway since the breakdown of their second summit in Vietnam in early 2019, when Trump rebuffed Kim’s calls for sweeping sanctions relief in return for a partial denuclearization step. In March, North Korea said Trump sent a personal letter to Kim, seeking to maintain good relations and offer cooperation in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
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Post by Admin on May 3, 2020 19:12:11 GMT
President Trump on Sunday took aim at George W. Bush after the former Republican president issued a call to push partisanship aside amid the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
In a three-minute video shared on Twitter on Saturday, Bush urged Americans to remember "how small our differences are in the face of this shared threat."
"In the final analysis, we are not partisan combatants. We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God," Bush said. "We rise or fall together, and we are determined to rise."
In an early morning tweet on Sunday, Trump called out Bush for his failure to support him as he faced an impeachment trial earlier this year over his alleged dealings with Ukraine. He cited apparent comments from Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth, who asked why Bush didn't push for "putting partisanship aside" amid the trial.
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