Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse



The current standoff is a dramatic illustration of the grave international concerns over Trump.

On one level, the officials said, he is something of a laughing stock among Europeans at international gatherings. One revealed that a small group of diplomats play a version of word bingo whenever the president speaks because they consider his vocabulary to be so limited. “Everything is ‘great’, ‘very, very great’, ‘amazing’,” the diplomat said.

But behind the mocking, there is growing fear among international governments that Trump is a serious threat to international peace and stability.

“He has no historical view. He is only dealing with these issues now, and seems to think the world started when he took office,” a diplomat told BuzzFeed News, pointing to Trump’s remarks and tweets about defence spending. “He thinks that NATO existed only to keep the communists out of Europe.

He has a similar attitude in Asia-Pacific with Japan, ignoring that the US basically wrote their constitution.” During his presidential campaign, Trump called out Japan to http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201701190040.html US provides, including for hosting the US troops in the country. Japan’s constitution restricts its military options.

They also believe Trump’s foreign policy is chiefly driven by an obsession with unravelling Barack Obama’s policies. “It’s his only real position,” one European diplomat said. “He will ask: ‘Did Obama approve this?’ And if the answer is affirmative, he will say: ‘We don’t.’ He won’t even want to listen to the arguments or have a debate. He is obsessed with Obama.”
 




But critics charge that Gorka's hyperbole and his hands-off relationship with the truth have lately sent his stock skyrocketing with the president. Renowned for his disdain for the media and his blithe readiness to defend Trump to the last tweet, Gorka – who apparently tools around Washington in a Mustang with a license plate that reads ART [OF] WAR – has become a nearly ubiquitous presence on television and radio as a spokesman for the White House. "Did you see Gorka?" Trump reportedly said after Gorka took part in figurative fisticuffs on CNN. "So great. I mean, really, truly great!"

Gorka views himself as a "utility infielder, especially in the field of counterterrorism," and claims to provide behind-the-scenes advice to Trump on how to fight terrorism, while serving under the wing of Steve Bannon, his former boss at Breitbart. "It's surreal and quite horrifying that someone who's such an amateur has reached such heights," says David Ucko, associate professor in the Department of War and Conflict Studies at National Defense University. Adds Michael S. Smith II, a veteran terrorism analyst who's had unpleasant run-ins with Gorka, "This is not somebody who should be working anywhere near the White House." Even more bluntly, a colleague of Smith's, Cindy Storer, an ex-CIA terrorism analyst, said, "He's nuts."
 
Trumparanoia ...



A secretive cabal of globalist bureaucrats is sabotaging Donald Trump’s presidency, determined to thwart his efforts to make America great again.

At least that is the view of the more alarmist members of Mr Trump’s base who say that a permanent governing class or “deep state” is leaking administration secrets, perpetuating a phoney Russia scandal and even plotting violence against the president.

“All of this is happening because of the deep state,” commentator Sean Hannity fumed on Fox News last week. “It's now the deep state gone rogue. The deep state against the American people. The deep state against the outcome of an election — a free and fair election in this country. And the deep state that is now actively seeking to take out your president.”

Mr Hannity, who recently dined with Mr Trump at the White House, is not alone. Deep state believers include InfoWars’ Alex Jones, who says that its henchmen plan to assassinate Mr Trump, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who says that special counsel Robert Mueller represents the “deep state at its very worst”.

The notion of a hidden system holding societal power is a staple of countries such as Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan, nominal democracies where the military has had a tradition of setting boundaries for civilian leaders. In the Trump administration, the term helps explain the president’s early stumbles and delegitimises potential opponents in future policy fights.
“The ‘deep state’ is a pejorative term,” says Michael Morell, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. “The implication is that it is working together for some nefarious purpose, and thus criticising it is has political benefits . . . It is much easier to blame someone else for your problems than it is to look in the mirror and ask ‘what can I do better?’”
 


Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is changing his attorneys as a federal investigation heats up into his financial transactions, according to people familiar with the matter.

Manafort's case will now be handled by Miller and Chevalier, a boutique firm in Washington that specializes in complicated financial crimes among other issues, these people said.
 
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