North Korea has increased nuclear production at secret sites, say officials

NBC News    COURTNEY KUBE AND KEN DILANIAN AND CAROL E. LEE        June  29th 2018 
WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has increased its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months — and that Kim Jong Un may try to hide those facilities as he seeks more concessions in nuclear talks with the Trump administration, U.S. officials told NBC News.

The intelligence assessment, which has not previously been reported, seems to counter the sentiments expressed by President Donald Trump, who tweeted after his historic June 12 summit with Kim that "there was no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea."

Analysts at the CIA and other intelligence agencies don't see it that way, according to more than a dozen American officials who are familiar with their assessments and spoke on the condition of anonymity. They see a regime positioning itself to extract every concession it can from the Trump administration — while clinging to nuclear weapons it believes are essential to survival.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Donald J. Trump

    @realDonaldTrump
 Just landed - a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!

In recent months, even as the two sides engaged in diplomacy, North Korea was stepping up its production of enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, five U.S. officials say, citing the latest intelligence assessment. North Korea and the U.S. agreed at the summit to "work toward" denuclearization, but there is no specific deal. On Trump's order, the U.S. military canceled training exercises on the Korean peninsula, a major concession to Kim.

While the North Koreans have stopped missile and nuclear tests, "there's no evidence that they are decreasing stockpiles, or that they have stopped their production," said one U.S. official briefed on the latest intelligence. "There is absolutely unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the U.S." Four other officials familiar with the intelligence assessment also said North Korea intended to deceive the U.S.

U.S. intelligence agencies have stepped up their collection against North Korea in recent years, and it appears to be paying off with greater insights into a country that has long been the world's hardest spying target, officials say. NBC News agreed to withhold some details of the latest intelligence assessment that officials said could put sources at risk.

"There are lots of things that we know that North Korea has tried to hide from us for a long time," a U.S. intelligence official said.

It's long been understood that North Korea had at least one undeclared facility to enrich nuclear fuel, aside from Yongbyon, its main nuclear site.

"When North Korea constructed the enrichment facility at Yongbyon in 2009, the North Koreans did so at a pace that suggested this was not their first rodeo, i.e. not the first time they had assembled large cascades of centrifuges," said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Joel Wit, who negotiated a 1994 nuclear agreement with North Korea, said the U.S. always believed North Korea had two facilities to enrich nuclear material: Yongbyon and a second site the U.S. is aware of but whose name has not been disclosed.

"People have been open to the possibility there might be more," he said.

The latest U.S. intelligence assessment concludes that there is more than one secret site, officials tell NBC News. The question is whether Kim will be willing to admit it.

"This is why people want North Korea to declare all its facilities up front," said Wit, a former Clinton administration official and senior fellow at the Stimson Center who founded a web site devoted to North Korea, 38north.com.

The intelligence assessment comes on the heels of a report by 38north.com showing that North Korea was continuing to make improvements at its major disclosed nuclear facility at Yongbyon.

"The observed activity appears inconsistent with a North Korean intent to abandon its nuclear weapons programs," said Bruce Klingner, a former CIA analyst and North Korea expert at the Heritage Foundation. "There seems little reason to continue expansion plans if the regime intended to dismantle them as would be required under a denuclearization agreement."

One senior U.S. intelligence official offered a different view, noting that the decision by Kim to suspend nuclear and missile tests was unexpected, and the fact that the two sides are talking is a positive step.

But that official also acknowledged that intelligence analysts expect the Kim regime to try to deceive the United States.

"Work is ongoing to deceive us on the number of facilities, the number of weapons, the number of missiles," he said. "We are watching closely."

Witchy  sez :
Craftier dudes are out foxing  tRUMP  at every turn (even the toddlers at the border).  The "Great negotiator" is being rolled and he doesn't even seem to know it or doesn't care.  If Congress doesn't do something to fix this problem, We The People will have to make things right at the polls or suffer the consequences for years to come.  This dysfunctional  administration must go and soon. The majority of  tRUMP  supporters will suffer the most. Sad !

The question in November: 'What kind of country do we want to be?'

BY JESSE JACKSON           June 25, 2018
For President Trump, the campaign never ends.
He is on the stump, in full campaign mode now.  He is intent on nationalizing this fall’s congressional elections.  As Steve Bannon put it, “Donald Trump will be on every ballot.” The choice will be for Trump or against.

Trump is even prepared to scar thousands of toddlers and infants — many of them permanently — by separating them from their parents at the border in order to frame that choice. The question this fall won’t be simply about who controls the House or the Senate or the statehouses. It will be a choice of what kind of country, what kind of people we are.

Trump has and will put the question directly, brutally and inescapably. He isn’t really interested in policy. His lack of knowledge and attention is infamous, even among his own aides. He isn’t really interested forging a majority in Congress and actually passing reforms.

After creating the human horror at our border, he said only Congress could change it. When it became apparent that Americans couldn’t abide torturing children, he changed it overnight, and told Congress they were wasting their time trying to deal with immigration policy before the next election. He wants immigration to be a threat, an issue, a club for the election, not something addressed by a bipartisan compromise.

Immigration flows into this country are down. The record long economic recovery that began under President Barack Obama has driven down unemployment.  It is hard to argue that immigration is still about the threat of those people taking our jobs.

Trump uses immigration to rouse racial fear; immigrants “infest” our country, he charges. They are criminals, rapists, murderers and gang members. Democrats, he slanders, want open borders. Nancy Pelosi wants to open the country to MS-15 gang members.

That these are lies and libels is irrelevant. Trump is using the same scurrilous tactics made famous in the Jim Crow South — paint “those people,” the other, as a fearsome threat to rouse fears and gain support. It was ugly then and it is grotesque now.

It was effective in the old South; it remains to be seen if it will work again in today’s America. But that’s the gamble that Trump is making, and he will stick to it. Trump will ensure that this will be one of the most vile and poisonous election campaigns in memory.

Trump is on a rampage on immigration and posturing on trade to reinforce his biggest con, that he somehow is a populist champion for working people. The reality, of course, is much different. He’s provided the bumptious cover for the traditional Republican agenda for corporations and the rich. His administration’s major accomplishment — the tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich and the corporations — is already unpopular.

Dismay will spread as Republicans use the deficits the tax cut exploded to justify cuts in basic security programs — Medicare and Medicaid, health care, food stamps, investments in schools, and more. Meanwhile, the administration’s claim to be cleaning out the swamp turns out to mean allowing lobbyists to savage protections for workers, consumers and the environment. This isn’t a “populist agenda.” It is a plutocrat’s agenda, with a populist sales pitch and Trump as the lead huckster.

Most of this is about turnout in what are traditionally low-turnout, off-year elections. Trump wants to rouse his base. He believes that the politics of fear, featuring poisonous, racially charged libels and slanders directed at immigrants will turn more supporters out than off. The tax cuts consolidate support among the affluent that tend to vote; the venom rouses and distracts those whose interests are being trampled.

Trump does make the stakes this fall clear. If Republicans — almost universally cowed into echoing the president — sustain their majorities, we’ll get more of the same: action that serves the rich; rhetoric that divides the rest. If instead Trump’s foul politics rouse more opposition than support, the rebuke will attest to what kind of country we are.

All of us are complex. We have our better angels, our ideals and aspirations; we harbor fears and anxieties. Good leaders can appeal to our better angels, bring the country together and unleash energy. Dark leaders can evoke horrors, drive the country apart and unleash hatred.

Trump has chosen the latter, over and over, in greater and greater extremes. In the fall, citizens will have to choose: Is that the kind of leader we want? Is that the kind of nation we are?

Donald Trump may find out that we are a better people than he assumes. 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's toilet car goes wherever he goes

 Rolling restroom isn't just a convenience
GREG RASA                June 7th 2018 
We've been worried about North Korea's Kim Jong Un dropping the bomb. Turns out that, metaphorically, his security services worry about that too. In the run-up to this week's historic meeting between the Great Leader and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, we learned from The Washington Post that the protection of Kim extends right down to his excrement.

Kim doesn't do air travel. His recent trip to Beijing was his first foray out of the country since he assumed power, and he traveled there by private train. But in the annals of strange stories about the Kim regime, this is one of the strangest: Wherever Kim travels by car throughout the Hermit Kingdom, such as the trip to Panmunjom this week, a special car follows — containing toilet facilities.

(As for what he drives, the Kim regime has been partial to Mercedes, though Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, rode to his reward, or whatever it is he deserved, in a Lincoln. We have no insight as to whether the toilet car is a Mercedes, though that's all we see in the photo above.)

"Rather than using a public restroom, the leader of North Korea has a personal toilet that follows him around when he travels," defector Lee Yun-keol told The Post. Lee worked in the North Korean Guard Command before defecting to South Korea in 2005, where he runs a think tank, the North Korea Strategic Information Service Center.

The West first became privy to the potty car when word of it leaked from defectors and from sources within North Korea, in a Seoul publication called the Daily NK. It's not just that this man of the proletariat won't stop at a villager's house. It's a matter of security — his security, by way of his excrement.

According to the Daily NK, a vehicle in his convoy is a rolling restroom that only he may use. Obviously, because he's a dictator. But also because samples are regularly collected to monitor his health. And the flip side of that: It prevents foreign spies from collecting samples for that same kind of intelligence.

"The leader's excretions contain information about his health status, so they can't be left behind," Lee said.

The Daily NK report came out in 2015. The next year, Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, joked that those suggesting a pre-emptive strike on a nuclear North Korea should target Kim's all-important automotive outhouse.

"We know intelligence agencies around the world are monitoring the health of foreign leaders," he wrote in Foreign Policy magazine. "But we should have realistic expectations for what we might learn."

Trump now says North Korea is still an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’

Geobeats          Jun 23rd 2018 
After his June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore, President Trump claimed in a tweet that the rogue regime was “no longer a nuclear threat.”

However, in a letter to Congress on Friday, Trump said North Korea continues to pose an “extraordinary threat.”

“The existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula and the actions and policies of the Government of North Korea continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” Trump stated while extending a national emergency relating to North Korea that has been in place for years.

According to Newsweek, the measure was “first declared by former President George W. Bush’s signing of an executive order on June 26, 2008,” then “expanded four times under former President Barack Obama and once before in September by Trump.”

The national emergency will continue for at least one year beyond June 26, 2018.

Trump had faced criticism for downplaying the North Korea threat in the days following his summit with Kim.

“Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” Trump tweeted on June 13.

“Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem,” Trump wrote in another tweet. “No longer – sleep well tonight!”
. . .
Witchy is back  :
Hold on a minute, I thought  tROMP already saved us from the North Korean Threat   Hmmmm....No Nobel then??
I  mean the one he had manufactured for his followers to purchase? Along with the Trumpy Bear , MAGA hat, and  tRUMP  bobblehead? All available for purchase online. Just $19.99. But wait- there's more! If you act now, you can get TWO medals for  $19.99. Just pay processing fee!
When is the GOP going to admit, this man has 'NO' idea what he is doing!!! President Flip-Flop...
Once again Dustbin Donald is making flippy floppy. If anyone is a threat to the world it is the very unstable so-called president of the US.
Trump flip flops like a fish out of water on so many topics.  When Are we Gettin Rid Of This Orange Poop!
CONS........ let me educate YOU to the REAL DEAL! YOU were LIED TO by the REPUBLICAN/tRUMP CULT! Those Manufacturing JOBS they said they would bring back, were NEVER coming back! When these companies can Pay 2 dollars an hour to manufacture their products abroad, they are NOT going to PAY 15 dollars an hour to make them HERE! That was a FARCE! Plus there is no Illegal Immigration CRISIS, Illegal Immigration has been DROPPING for the last 11 YEARS! Plus with Health Care........ what did they actually present as a viable alternative to the ACA that they have been sabotaging? Here are 3 HUGE ISSUES the campaigned on that were TOTAL LIES and DECEPTIONS! tRUMP  was outsmarted by "KIM" so tRUMP turned his attention to the two year olds at the border. Looks like they have outsmarted tRUMP  also. It's about time you tRrump trolls start thinking for yourself if you have part of brain left from all the lies . Nuff sez

Happy Birthday Mama

"M" is  for the million things you gave to us ,
"O"  means only that you're growing old ,
"T" is for the tears you shed for us,
"H" is for your heart of purest gold ,
"E" is for your eyes , with love-light shining ,
"R"  mean right , and  right you will always be .
Put them all together , they spell "MOTHER"
A word that means the world to us .

For all the times that we forgot to "thank You,"
For all the special little things you do ,
For teaching us the meaning of compassion ,
And sharing in our trumps and our tears .

And, if at times  we may have been ungrateful,
We want to say , "We truly hope you see ,
That nothing you have done has been forgotten ,
And day by day you just mean more to us .

Happy Birthday Mama 

Jonny , Sha , Jenny  Man

Children write letters to Trump, begging him to be kind

  'Kids in my class are very scared. Please don't kick them out': Children across America write heartbreaking letters to Donald Trump expressing their fears and teaching him about kindness

It may be the anti-Trump protests that are grabbing headlines, but children across the country are hoping to get the attention in a different way. A good old-fashioned letter.
Kids throughout America are busting out their cursive and best illustrations in an effort to teach Trump a lesson about kindness.
Their work is being collected and displayed on the Facebook group 'Dear President Trump: Letters From Kids About Kindness.'

Kids throughout America are busting out their cursive and best pictures in an effort to teach Trump lessons about kindness using handwritten letters.

 

Their work is being collected and displayed on the Facebook group 'Dear President Trump: Letters From Kids About Kindness'

Seattle mother Molly Spence Sahebjami started the group the day after the election, inspired by her own five-year-old son's concerns over the new president-elect.
The kindergartner was worried because the family had relatives who were of Iranian descent. The child had heard Trump's comments about Muslims.
That's when Sahebjami suggested he write a letter to Trump, telling him: 'Why don't you talk to him about why it's important to be kind?'
So he did, asking Trump to 'please be a good president' and 'be kind to all people'.
'Some people in my family are a special religion and they are not bad guys,' the young boy added.
After reading her son's letter, Sahebjami realized the project could be both an outlet and a lesson for the many children who were suddenly worried about their families and friends.
'This is an opportunity to seize and teach our children how to be articulate and productive communicators,' Sahebjami told The Washington Post.

One little boy named Tomas asked that Trump be kind to gay people, like his two mothers
 

 A six-year-old named Szaba sweetly advised Trump that 'meditation, reading and resting' might help calm him down the way they help her

Nine-year-old Ada was worried about her African American friends, telling Trump she didn't want 'anything to happen to them'

 

But Sahebjami set some ground rules for the group. She wanted to children to tell their 'own story', focusing on how Trump's presidency 'affects them 'personally'.
'Please, keep it positive,' she added on the Facebook group. 'The letters should be kind in tone and non-partisan. Consider this your opportunity to persuade.'
'The power of this movement comes from the kindness and unity we can teach our children,' Sahebjami wrote.
'This isn’t about policies - it’s about high standards of basic human kindness that ALL parents can get behind.'

Some of the letters are endearingly polite, with one 13-year-old admitting to Trump that he was not her 'first pick'.
'I just wanted to tell you that I didn’t like the way you complained,' she continued. 'You made women (including myself) feel bad.'
'You discouraged people who weren’t like you. However, I am going to put those feelings aside. I hope that you will prove me wrong.'

 

Five-year-old Thalia hilariously advised Trump that the presidency was not just about 'eating chocolate', warning him that he could get a tummy ache

+ 

Eight-year-old Audrey was concerned about her nanny's health insurance, even adding a little illustration of a bill along with an angry-looking Trump

 

 

. KELA, 7, TEACHES TRUMP 'HOW TO BE NICE' 

                             
To Mr Trump,
How to be nice!

1. Say kind things like well done
2. Don’t blame other people when it is you doing the bad thing
3. Don’t lie
4. Don’t scream at people
5. Behave
6. Don’t tell people what to do
7. Have nice manners like say thank you and no thank you
8. Listen to other people
9. Don’t talk meanly
10. Don’t hurt people
11. Help people
12. Being different is COOL!!!

More letters:
'I hope since may people dislike you, you can prove us wrong. I hope you can help every one of every race, not just white men with the same beliefs,' they continued.
'I hope that you will help maintain everyone’s rights, and give more rights equally. The country is counting on you.’
A six-year-old named Szaba sweetly advised Trump that 'meditation, reading and resting' might help calm him down the way they help her. 
'Good luck with your job!' she signs off before adding, 'let me know if I can help.' 
Some of the messages were simple, such as six-year-old Avery's note that simply asked Trump to 'please be kind and let the love shine through'. 
Others were a little more lengthy, includes seven-year-old Kela's 12-point checklist on 'How to be nice!' 
The list includes 'Don't lie', 'Behave', 'Don't tell people what to do', 'Don't talk meanly', and 'Being different is COOL!' 
Many children expressed concerns that Trump would send their Mexican friends away and begged him not to build a wall. 
'Kids in my class are very scared. Please don't kick them out,' wrote six-year-old Abby. 
'In my school we get sent to the wall when we're in trouble. My friends did not do anything wrong. Don't send them to the wall.' 
In another letter, a sixth grader asks Trump to ‘please show kindness to people no matter their race, religion, beliefs’, telling the president that he has close friends who are ‘gay, lesbian, black and Hispanic’.

 

Scarlet asked Trump to be nicer to Mexicans, even including a helpful illustration of him holding one of their hands

One mother shared a note written by her 13-year-old daughter, who said she would 'put her feelings aside' in the hopes that Trump will prove her wrong

Alex Vanek from Chicago simply asked Trump: 'Don't you trust in women?' while seven-year-old Kela wrote him a 12-point checklist on 'How to be nice!'

And one letter had a very important lesson hidden inside:
'Making mistakes is okay but please stop making so many mistakes,' five-year-old Thalia wrote. 'Really: It's not just about eating chocolate.' 'You'll get a tummy ache.'

The group began with 200 friends that Sahebjami had invited, but has since blown up to 10,000.
The mother is hoping the letters will actually be sent off to Trump, a father himself of 10-year-old Barron, and that they may actually inspire some change.

'If he got bags and bags of letters from kids, he would see that those are everyday Americans who want to hold him to high standards of basic human kindness,' she said.

'I would hope that he would be affected by that.' 

Fox & Friends' host calls North Korea summit a meeting of 'two dictators'

 HuffPost US          HAYLEY MILLER
“Fox & Friends” co-host Abby Huntsman seemed to slip up Sunday while discussing the upcoming summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, calling it a meeting of “two dictators.”

Huntsman and “Fox & Friends” guest Anthony Scaramucci, who was infamously fired as White House communications director after just 10 days in office, chatted about the highly anticipated summit during the show Sunday.

“This is history,” Huntsman said over video showing Trump arriving in Singapore ahead of Tuesday’s meeting with Kim.


“Regardless of what happens in that meeting between the two dictators, what we are seeing right now ― this is history,” she continued.
Red T Raccoon
 

   @RedTRaccoon
 Fox & Friends host slips: Trump's North Korea summit is a 'historic meeting between two dictators'.

The best part about it is the fact it happened as he was exiting Air Force One in Singapore.

Scaramucci brushed right past Huntsman’s apparent gaffe and instead offered praise for Trump’s foreign policy strategy.

“He’s a disruptive risk taker,” Scaramucci said. “He’s willing to break what would be the usual bonds of not going to a meeting like this.”

But Twitter users were hung up on Huntsman’s choice of words, referring to them as some of Fox News’ most honest reporting about Trump.
 Adam Best
   

   @adamcbest
 Fox & Friends accidentally said this about the Singapore summit: "regardless of what happens in that meeting between the two dictators." 

This gaffe is probably the most honest thing ever said in the program's history.
Andy Ostroy

                            ✔
@AndyOstroy
 This...is...awesome. @FoxNews host @HuntsmanAbby refers to @POTUS & #KimJongUn as "two dictators." Finally #FoxNews gets something right... #Trump #SingaporeSummit 

Holly Figueroa O'Reilly 🌊 BWCS
   

                        ✔
@AynRandPaulRyan
 Holy shit, Fox News accidentally told the truth. 
"regardless of what happens in that meeting between the two dictators." 
🤣🤣🤣
OMG, we're all gonna die.         Jesus, take the wheel. 

Witchy says she needs a drink  :
Fox & Friends...the National Enquirer of TV "news".  Trump's "bible".  Trump gets his 
"daily security briefings"from watching Hannity every morning. Fox finally spoke the truth. Do you think this Abby woman will still have a job after trump finds out about this?
Two corrupt individuals meeting to solve the world's problems. Kim is a merciless murderer, but  tRUMP  admires him. How sick!!!! Trump supporters...you voted for a traitor, criminal, dictator wannabe...and loves Russians, hates the Constitution and America Law, hates democracy and you voted for him....that defines you too.
Let me make this perfectly clear  .It wasn't a mistake.  No-one ever slipped up and called President Obama, President Clinton, President Bush, etc .. dictators because they don't act like it. FOX got it right. President Trump continuously proves that he is a racist and fascist tyrant who wants to rule America as a fascist dictator instead of serve as a democratic American President and he's the worst.
tRUMP's version of nazi America is coming to a town near you. It's already starting. Taking kids away from detainees. Half of Americans already thinks nazi's are very fine people. Half of Americans believe that immigrants are responsible for the downfall of us. They believe that certain groups of people spread disease. tRUMP  hands out maga hats instead of the pamphlets  Hilter used to drop by plane. We should all be very very afraid.
Stay tune to 'As the Stomach Turns'

Dennis Rodman will be in town when Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un meet: report

Veuer        AARON DICKENS         June 5th 2018 
The highly anticipated meeting between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is just a week away and there could be another familiar face in town -- former NBA star Dennis Rodman.

According to the New York Post he will be in Singapore when the meeting is expected to take place. Rodman is reportedly close with Kim. He’s visited North Korea several times. The post reports Rodman could even taken part in negotiations. 

In April Rodman told TMZ he didn’t take all the credit for Trump and Kim moving toward a meeting, but he did say he gave the North Korean dictator Trump’s book.

Witchy  sez someone wake her up from this nightmare :
Just think two fat momma's boys dictators and a retired  NBA player negotiating nuclear disarmament.  America has gone full trailer park republic
Now there's a team that will make America Great Again!  Daffy, Porky & Goofy wow can't wait for this one.
With Rodman’s help, Las Vegas odd makers are predicting that Trump will come out of the NK negotiations deal with at least 1 golf course and 3 hotel deals.
My take on this insanity, tRUMP  is going down and like a revengeful loser, is taking the USA with him. It's part of Russia's plan to discredit the USA. It will take years to recover from this fiasco and the GOP just sits there like lumps on a log...
 In all  fairness......it shows your smarts..Rodman will be the sanest   one at the table..
You just can't make this stuff up!   I am on the floor laughing, and laughing and laughing.  OMG.
HeHe

Donald Trump Jr. is an idiot

HUSKY :         By Post Editorial Board July 11, 2017 

We see one truly solid takeaway from the story of the day: Donald Trump Jr. is an idiot.

Trump Jr. reveals email exchange claiming Kremlin support for his dad

In the heat of your father’s presidential campaign, a bozo British publicist emails you to set up a sit-down with a “Russian government attorney” promising “documents and information” to “incriminate Hillary” courtesy of the “Crown prosecutor of Russia” as “part of” the Russian government’s “support” for Dad — and you eagerly take the meeting.
“If it’s what you say I love it,” wrote Junior. As if the government of former KGB spymaster Vladimir Putin would do anything so clumsy. (Our former colleague Kyle Smith put it nicely: “Don Jr. is why Nigerian email scammers keep trying their luck.”)

Worse, he dragged brother-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chief Paul Manafort into the meeting, which proved to be a bid by a Moscow fixer to undo a US law causing trouble for her clients. (Reportedly, Kushner walked out within 10 minutes while Manafort did work on his phone.)

Oh, and someone was so careless with the email trail that it all wound up being fed to the New York Times, for days of headlines that (at best) undermine President Trump’s agenda as both health and tax reform hang in the balance in Congress.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. As were Junior’s shifting, incomplete accounts of the meeting under days of Times questioning.

Democrats and the media are frothing to find something criminal in it all, with the most unhinged talking treason. What it clearly was was criminally stupid.

Canadian prime minister calls Trump's tariffs 'insulting and unacceptable'

New York Daily News     ERIN DURKIN        Jun 3rd 2018 
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called it “insulting and unacceptable” for President Trump to slap steel and aluminum tariffs on the United States’ neighbor to the north.

“The idea that we are somehow a national security threat to the United States is, quite frankly, insulting and unacceptable,” Trudeau said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Trump announced Thursday that the United States would impose tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum coming from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

The Canadian leader called the move, and particularly its justification on the grounds of national security, an affront to the historically close friendship between the two nations.

“Canada and the United States have perhaps the most successful economic partnership and alliance and friendship in the history of the modern world. There are no two countries that are as interconnected, interdependent,” he said.

“Our soldiers who had fought and died together on the beaches of World War II, and the mountains of Afghanistan and have stood shoulder-to-shoulder in some of the most difficult places in the world, that are always there for each other, somehow-- this is insulting to that. The idea that the Canadian steel that's in military, military vehicles in the United States, the Canadian aluminum that makes your, your fighter jets is somehow now a threat.”

Trump announced aluminum and steel tariffs in March, but initially exempted close allies in North America and Europe.

But last week, he declared that trade talks to avoid the fees had been unsuccessful.

Canada will retaliate with its own tariffs on American steel and aluminum, plus consumer goods that Canadians can find easy replacements for, Trudeau said - adding the tit for tat would hurt both countries.

“The fact that the president has moved forward with these tariffs is not just going to hurt Canadian jobs. It's going to hurt US jobs as well,” he said.

The prime minister said he has no idea what Trump is trying to achieve by imposing the tariffs on its close ally.

Trump is also pushing to renegotiate the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

But Trudeau said he would not accept a new clause in NAFTA that would cause it to expire in five years, which the United States wants to insert.

“You don’t sign a trade deal that automatically expires every five years,” he said. “That’s a non-starter...What company is going to want to invest in Canada if, give years later, there might not be a trade deal with the United States?”

Larry Kudlow, an economic adviser to Trump, said Sunday the backlash against the tariffs was overblown.

“I regard this as more of a family quarrel,” he said on Fox News Sunday. “It can be solved if people work together.”

Kudlow said it was unclear how long the tariffs would remain in place, depending on the outcome of trade negotiations.
“To say that this is an attack on Canada is not right,” he said, adding of Trudeau, “I think he’s overreacting.”

A few words from Witchy :
  Nobody likes to be treated unfairly and without dignity and respect and for those who believe that their you know what doesn't smell, they are better than everyone else and enjoy giving whoever they want to the middle finger because they can... good luck with that.  Things always have a way of working themselves out.    tRUMP  is a petty, nasty, disgusting, ignorant, arrogant, racist and fascist tyrant with a paper thin skin, and short fuse and a big temper who enjoys stepping on whoever he feels like because he can.  Let's see how his pervasive course of action works out for him in the  long run. Very interesting indeed.The entire world is going to be p*ssed at us by the time  tRUMP  is done.
Just a thought :
If Trudeau would simply offer to build a half-billion dollar golf resort for Donald or give Ivanka exclusive patents in Canada, he wouldn't have these problems.
Canada is the United States' largest market, buying more US goods and services than any other nation, even China. This is one move that "The Orange Monkey" didn't research very well. Trudeau should announce that Canada intends to "build a wall" and that the US will pay for it.
Everything about Trump is insulting and unacceptable. Nuff sez ... HeHe

Ex-Trump aide says the president is like a gossipy female who can't keep a secret

                                     Donald Trump
By  John Haltiwang
Donald Trump. Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Donald Trump has a lot of trouble keeping certain secrets and is basically a "yenta," a Yiddish word for a female who is a gossip, according to one of his former 2016 campaign aides.
Trump was criticized on Friday after boasting about a jobs report in a tweet before its official release.
Trump's propensity for boasting has some worried he's not capable of protecting vital information in his role as president, including classified intelligence linked to national security.
President Donald Trump has a lot of trouble keeping certain secrets, according to one of his former 2016 campaign aides.

"He's good at keeping secrets that involve him," Sam Nunberg told Politico. "On the other hand, the guy's a f---ing yenta," which is the Yiddish word for a female who is a gossiper.

This comes after Trump was criticized on Friday for boasting about a jobs report in a tweet before its official release, breaking presidential protocol and possibly violating a federal directive.

The president has long been known for being decidedly braggadocious, often reminding people of his wealth or proudly stating things such as, "I have the best words." But Trump's loose lips have some worried he's not capable of protecting vital information in his role as president, including classified intelligence linked to national security.

Trump came under fire roughly a year ago when he reportedly offered classified Israeli intelligence about a counterterrorism operation in Syria to two Russian diplomats during an Oval Office meeting. More recently, when the president attended a private fundraiser, he allegedly bragged about a classified battle between US forces and Russian mercenaries in eastern Syria, even as the White House worked to keep details of the clash a secret.

Members of previous presidential administrations expressed concern to Politico about Trump's antics.

Ari Fleischer, who served as the White House press secretary under President George W. Bush and is a frequent Trump critic, told the outlet, "I'm very uncomfortable when the president wings it on matters that are sensitive or deal with intelligence."

Similarly, Ben LaBolt, a deputy spokesman from the Obama administration, said, "Trump's premature announcements may be his way of showing off, but if you're a service member in the middle of an operation, a shareholder that expects fair play in the market, or a diplomat trying to quietly close a deal, they're dangerous and destructive."

Bannon: Trump will 'shut down the government' if the wall doesn't get funded

 Geobeats           Jun 2nd 2018 
Steve Bannon has predicted that President Trump will shut down the government if he doesn’t get full funding for one of his signature projects—the border wall with Mexico. 

“The wall is central. The wall is not just totemic,” the former White House chief strategist said during an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “The wall is absolutely central to his program.” 

“I believe that what [Trump’s] going to do is, as we come up on September 30, if that appropriations bill does not include spending to fully build his wall — not some $1.6 billion for prototypes, I mean to build the southern wall — I believe he will shut down the government,” Bannon continued. “I believe the government will actually shut down in the run-up to the [midterm] election.” 

In fact, the president alluded to a similar outcome in Cleveland last month when he talked about the importance of the wall, saying, “We may have to close up our country to get this straight.” 

His comments reflect a renewed fight over funding for the project which he has failed to secure so far. 

Trump has since ratcheted up the rhetoric, telling an audience in Nashville on Tuesday, “In the end, Mexico is going to pay for the wall. They do absolutely nothing to stop people from going through Mexico, from Honduras and all these other countries…They do nothing to help us.” 

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto responded quickly with a refusal to fund the project.