In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
But don't worry, Republicans are only outraged by Democratic collusion with the press...
President Donald Trump’s former campaign staffers claim they cracked the code for tamping down his most inflammatory tweets, and they say the current West Wing staff would do well to take note.
The key to keeping Trump’s Twitter habit under control, according to six former campaign officials, is to ensure that his personal media consumption includes a steady stream of praise. And when no such praise was to be found, staff would turn to friendly outlets to drum some up — and make sure it made its way to Trump’s desk.
President Donald Trump’s former campaign staffers claim they cracked the code for tamping down his most inflammatory tweets, and they say the current West Wing staff would do well to take note.
The key to keeping Trump’s Twitter habit under control, according to six former campaign officials, is to ensure that his personal media consumption includes a steady stream of praise. And when no such praise was to be found, staff would turn to friendly outlets to drum some up — and make sure it made its way to Trump’s desk.
The Trump administration in its first month has largely benched the State Department from its long-standing role as the preeminent voice of U.S. foreign policy, curtailing public engagement and official travel and relegating Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to a mostly offstage role.
Decisions on hiring, policy and scheduling are being driven by a White House often wary of the foreign policy establishment and struggling to set priorities and write policy on the fly.
The most visible change at the State Department is the month-long lack of daily press briefings, a fixture since John Foster Dulles was secretary of state in the 1950s. The televised question-and-answer session is watched closely around the world, and past administrations have pointed proudly to the accountability of having a government spokesman available to domestic and foreign press almost every day without fail.
...
But the biggest factor is the confusing lines of communication and authority to the White House, and Trump’s inclination to farm out elements of foreign policy to a kitchen Cabinet of close advisers.
Chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon attends national security meetings and recently spoke with the German ambassador, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been given a major role in getting Israeli-Palestinian talks on track, a job usually the preserve of the State Department. When asked about foreign policy developments, State Department officials often have referred reporters to the White House.
“Tillerson isn’t being purposefully sidelined; he’s just caught up in an administration with too many competing power centers and a president who’s unwilling or unable to decide who he wants to play the lead role in implementing his foreign policy,” said Aaron David Miller, a former diplomat who advised Republican and Democratic presidents about the Middle East. “The problem is letting a thousand flowers and tweets bloom isn’t the best way to run the foreign policy of the world’s most consequential power.”
A purported cyber hack of the daughter of political consultant Paul Manafort suggests that he was the victim of a blackmail attempt while he was serving as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman last summer.
The undated communications, which are allegedly from the iPhone of Manafort’s daughter, include a text that appears to come from a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, seeking to reach her father, in which he claims to have politically damaging information about both Manafort and Trump.
Attached to the text is a note to Paul Manafort referring to “bulletproof” evidence related to Manafort’s financial arrangement with Ukraine’s former president, the pro-Russian strongman Viktor Yanukovych, as well as an alleged 2012 meeting between Trump and a close Yanukovych associate named Serhiy Tulub.
“Considering all the facts and evidence that are in my possession, and before possible decision whether to pass this to [the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine] or FBI I would like to get your opinion on this and maybe your way to work things out that will persuade me to do otherwise,” reads the note. It is signed “Sergii” — an alternative transliteration of Leshchenko’s given name — and it urges Manafort to respond to an email address that reporters have used to reach Leshchenko.
In the text to Manafort’s daughter to which the note was attached, the sender writes from a different address, “I need to get in touch with Paul i need to share some important information with him regarding ukraine investigation.” The sender adds “as soon as he comes back to me i will pass you documents,” but also warns: “if I don’t get any reply from you iam gonaa pass it on to the fbi and ukrainian authorities inducing media.”
Leshchenko disavowed the texts in question, telling POLITICO on Tuesday “I've never written any emails or messages to … Manafort or his family. I don't know their contact details.” He added he said “I have nothing to do with” the email address from which the texts were sent.
And in a Facebook post, he wrote that the “correspondence with Manafort's daughter is obviously fake.”
A purported cyber hack of the daughter of political consultant Paul Manafort suggests that he was the victim of a blackmail attempt while he was serving as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman last summer.
The undated communications, which are allegedly from the iPhone of Manafort’s daughter, include a text that appears to come from a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, seeking to reach her father, in which he claims to have politically damaging information about both Manafort and Trump.
Attached to the text is a note to Paul Manafort referring to “bulletproof” evidence related to Manafort’s financial arrangement with Ukraine’s former president, the pro-Russian strongman Viktor Yanukovych, as well as an alleged 2012 meeting between Trump and a close Yanukovych associate named Serhiy Tulub.
“Considering all the facts and evidence that are in my possession, and before possible decision whether to pass this to [the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine] or FBI I would like to get your opinion on this and maybe your way to work things out that will persuade me to do otherwise,” reads the note. It is signed “Sergii” — an alternative transliteration of Leshchenko’s given name — and it urges Manafort to respond to an email address that reporters have used to reach Leshchenko.
In the text to Manafort’s daughter to which the note was attached, the sender writes from a different address, “I need to get in touch with Paul i need to share some important information with him regarding ukraine investigation.” The sender adds “as soon as he comes back to me i will pass you documents,” but also warns: “if I don’t get any reply from you iam gonaa pass it on to the fbi and ukrainian authorities inducing media.”
Leshchenko disavowed the texts in question, telling POLITICO on Tuesday “I've never written any emails or messages to … Manafort or his family. I don't know their contact details.” He added he said “I have nothing to do with” the email address from which the texts were sent.
And in a Facebook post, he wrote that the “correspondence with Manafort's daughter is obviously fake.”
The White House did not respond to a question about whether Trump had met with Tulub, a hunting buddy of Yanukovych’s who had served as part of government when Yanukovych was prime minister. But a White House official questioned the chronology supporting the claim, explaining that Trump had not worked with Manafort before the 2016 campaign.
In a Tuesday interview, Manafort denied brokering a 2012 meeting between Trump and Tulub, also pointing out that he wasn’t working for Trump at the time.
However, Manafort did confirm the authenticity of the texts hacked from his daughter’s phone. And he added that, before the texts were sent to his daughter, he had received similar texts to his own phone number from the same address appearing to be affiliated with Leshchenko.
He said he did not respond directly to any of the texts, and instead passed them along to his lawyer. He declined to provide the texts to POLITICO.
Purported cyber attacks on Manafort's family now. I want incredible Russia-connection stories made great again damnit ... golden showers to spite Obama were far more glorious. Right now it's just like a bad movie script that never got made into a film. Maybe drunk Putin texts Ivanka some salacious goodies; I'm sure that can be arranged (and everybody deny it afterwards just like now).
Bannon bypassing the State Department and just conducting policy discussions with zero congressional input. I’m sure this will be sustainable long term.
What the hell was that question? Could he have softballed it any more? He telegraphed "here comes a softball.... wait for it, I need to pad it a bit more so that you know that it's a REALLY soft ball... yup, here it comes, now go!" and then she waffles for a minute.
A purported cyber hack of the daughter of political consultant Paul Manafort suggests that he was the victim of a blackmail attempt while he was serving as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman last summer.
The undated communications, which are allegedly from the iPhone of Manafort’s daughter, include a text that appears to come from a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, seeking to reach her father, in which he claims to have politically damaging information about both Manafort and Trump.
Attached to the text is a note to Paul Manafort referring to “bulletproof” evidence related to Manafort’s financial arrangement with Ukraine’s former president, the pro-Russian strongman Viktor Yanukovych, as well as an alleged 2012 meeting between Trump and a close Yanukovych associate named Serhiy Tulub.
“Considering all the facts and evidence that are in my possession, and before possible decision whether to pass this to [the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine] or FBI I would like to get your opinion on this and maybe your way to work things out that will persuade me to do otherwise,” reads the note. It is signed “Sergii” — an alternative transliteration of Leshchenko’s given name — and it urges Manafort to respond to an email address that reporters have used to reach Leshchenko.
In the text to Manafort’s daughter to which the note was attached, the sender writes from a different address, “I need to get in touch with Paul i need to share some important information with him regarding ukraine investigation.” The sender adds “as soon as he comes back to me i will pass you documents,” but also warns: “if I don’t get any reply from you iam gonaa pass it on to the fbi and ukrainian authorities inducing media.”
Leshchenko disavowed the texts in question, telling POLITICO on Tuesday “I've never written any emails or messages to … Manafort or his family. I don't know their contact details.” He added he said “I have nothing to do with” the email address from which the texts were sent.
And in a Facebook post, he wrote that the “correspondence with Manafort's daughter is obviously fake.”
A purported cyber hack of the daughter of political consultant Paul Manafort suggests that he was the victim of a blackmail attempt while he was serving as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman last summer.
The undated communications, which are allegedly from the iPhone of Manafort’s daughter, include a text that appears to come from a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, seeking to reach her father, in which he claims to have politically damaging information about both Manafort and Trump.
Attached to the text is a note to Paul Manafort referring to “bulletproof” evidence related to Manafort’s financial arrangement with Ukraine’s former president, the pro-Russian strongman Viktor Yanukovych, as well as an alleged 2012 meeting between Trump and a close Yanukovych associate named Serhiy Tulub.
“Considering all the facts and evidence that are in my possession, and before possible decision whether to pass this to [the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine] or FBI I would like to get your opinion on this and maybe your way to work things out that will persuade me to do otherwise,” reads the note. It is signed “Sergii” — an alternative transliteration of Leshchenko’s given name — and it urges Manafort to respond to an email address that reporters have used to reach Leshchenko.
In the text to Manafort’s daughter to which the note was attached, the sender writes from a different address, “I need to get in touch with Paul i need to share some important information with him regarding ukraine investigation.” The sender adds “as soon as he comes back to me i will pass you documents,” but also warns: “if I don’t get any reply from you iam gonaa pass it on to the fbi and ukrainian authorities inducing media.”
Leshchenko disavowed the texts in question, telling POLITICO on Tuesday “I've never written any emails or messages to … Manafort or his family. I don't know their contact details.” He added he said “I have nothing to do with” the email address from which the texts were sent.
And in a Facebook post, he wrote that the “correspondence with Manafort's daughter is obviously fake.”
The White House did not respond to a question about whether Trump had met with Tulub, a hunting buddy of Yanukovych’s who had served as part of government when Yanukovych was prime minister. But a White House official questioned the chronology supporting the claim, explaining that Trump had not worked with Manafort before the 2016 campaign.
In a Tuesday interview, Manafort denied brokering a 2012 meeting between Trump and Tulub, also pointing out that he wasn’t working for Trump at the time.
However, Manafort did confirm the authenticity of the texts hacked from his daughter’s phone. And he added that, before the texts were sent to his daughter, he had received similar texts to his own phone number from the same address appearing to be affiliated with Leshchenko.
He said he did not respond directly to any of the texts, and instead passed them along to his lawyer. He declined to provide the texts to POLITICO.
Purported cyber attacks on Manafort's family now. I want incredible Russia-connection stories made great again damnit ... golden showers to spite Obama were far more glorious. Right now it's just like a bad movie script that never got made into a film. Maybe drunk Putin texts Ivanka some salacious goodies; I'm sure that can be arranged (and everybody deny it afterwards just like now).
Manafort confirmed they were real? Maybe he could be lying, but that would be weird.
Yeah, the only person disputing the texts happened is Leshchenko. Though it's possible someone spoofed his number to fuck with Manafort.
Manafort confirmed it because he probably did actually hand them over to the FBI and lying about it would look awful for him. It would fit pretty well with his decision to leave the Trump campaign, too, since this is some weird crap to deal with.
The Trump administration in its first month has largely benched the State Department from its long-standing role as the preeminent voice of U.S. foreign policy, curtailing public engagement and official travel and relegating Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to a mostly offstage role.
Decisions on hiring, policy and scheduling are being driven by a White House often wary of the foreign policy establishment and struggling to set priorities and write policy on the fly.
The most visible change at the State Department is the month-long lack of daily press briefings, a fixture since John Foster Dulles was secretary of state in the 1950s. The televised question-and-answer session is watched closely around the world, and past administrations have pointed proudly to the accountability of having a government spokesman available to domestic and foreign press almost every day without fail.
...
But the biggest factor is the confusing lines of communication and authority to the White House, and Trump’s inclination to farm out elements of foreign policy to a kitchen Cabinet of close advisers.
Chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon attends national security meetings and recently spoke with the German ambassador, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been given a major role in getting Israeli-Palestinian talks on track, a job usually the preserve of the State Department. When asked about foreign policy developments, State Department officials often have referred reporters to the White House.
“Tillerson isn’t being purposefully sidelined; he’s just caught up in an administration with too many competing power centers and a president who’s unwilling or unable to decide who he wants to play the lead role in implementing his foreign policy,” said Aaron David Miller, a former diplomat who advised Republican and Democratic presidents about the Middle East. “The problem is letting a thousand flowers and tweets bloom isn’t the best way to run the foreign policy of the world’s most consequential power.”
I'm confused. Senate has to approve cabinet positions, but not advisor roles and certain other positions which are at the president's discretion. Yet he is free to assign any power he likes to these advisors rather than the cabinet member whose task it is to do that work. So Bannon is allowed to be de facto secretary of state, despite senate never approving him for that role, while Tillerson sits by and idly twiddles his thumbs? Aren't there some kind of controls on this? Because if not, what the hell is the point of Senate having to confirm cabinet positions in the first place?
A purported cyber hack of the daughter of political consultant Paul Manafort suggests that he was the victim of a blackmail attempt while he was serving as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman last summer.
The undated communications, which are allegedly from the iPhone of Manafort’s daughter, include a text that appears to come from a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, seeking to reach her father, in which he claims to have politically damaging information about both Manafort and Trump.
Attached to the text is a note to Paul Manafort referring to “bulletproof” evidence related to Manafort’s financial arrangement with Ukraine’s former president, the pro-Russian strongman Viktor Yanukovych, as well as an alleged 2012 meeting between Trump and a close Yanukovych associate named Serhiy Tulub.
“Considering all the facts and evidence that are in my possession, and before possible decision whether to pass this to [the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine] or FBI I would like to get your opinion on this and maybe your way to work things out that will persuade me to do otherwise,” reads the note. It is signed “Sergii” — an alternative transliteration of Leshchenko’s given name — and it urges Manafort to respond to an email address that reporters have used to reach Leshchenko.
In the text to Manafort’s daughter to which the note was attached, the sender writes from a different address, “I need to get in touch with Paul i need to share some important information with him regarding ukraine investigation.” The sender adds “as soon as he comes back to me i will pass you documents,” but also warns: “if I don’t get any reply from you iam gonaa pass it on to the fbi and ukrainian authorities inducing media.”
Leshchenko disavowed the texts in question, telling POLITICO on Tuesday “I've never written any emails or messages to … Manafort or his family. I don't know their contact details.” He added he said “I have nothing to do with” the email address from which the texts were sent.
And in a Facebook post, he wrote that the “correspondence with Manafort's daughter is obviously fake.”
A purported cyber hack of the daughter of political consultant Paul Manafort suggests that he was the victim of a blackmail attempt while he was serving as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman last summer.
The undated communications, which are allegedly from the iPhone of Manafort’s daughter, include a text that appears to come from a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, seeking to reach her father, in which he claims to have politically damaging information about both Manafort and Trump.
Attached to the text is a note to Paul Manafort referring to “bulletproof” evidence related to Manafort’s financial arrangement with Ukraine’s former president, the pro-Russian strongman Viktor Yanukovych, as well as an alleged 2012 meeting between Trump and a close Yanukovych associate named Serhiy Tulub.
“Considering all the facts and evidence that are in my possession, and before possible decision whether to pass this to [the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine] or FBI I would like to get your opinion on this and maybe your way to work things out that will persuade me to do otherwise,” reads the note. It is signed “Sergii” — an alternative transliteration of Leshchenko’s given name — and it urges Manafort to respond to an email address that reporters have used to reach Leshchenko.
In the text to Manafort’s daughter to which the note was attached, the sender writes from a different address, “I need to get in touch with Paul i need to share some important information with him regarding ukraine investigation.” The sender adds “as soon as he comes back to me i will pass you documents,” but also warns: “if I don’t get any reply from you iam gonaa pass it on to the fbi and ukrainian authorities inducing media.”
Leshchenko disavowed the texts in question, telling POLITICO on Tuesday “I've never written any emails or messages to … Manafort or his family. I don't know their contact details.” He added he said “I have nothing to do with” the email address from which the texts were sent.
And in a Facebook post, he wrote that the “correspondence with Manafort's daughter is obviously fake.”
The White House did not respond to a question about whether Trump had met with Tulub, a hunting buddy of Yanukovych’s who had served as part of government when Yanukovych was prime minister. But a White House official questioned the chronology supporting the claim, explaining that Trump had not worked with Manafort before the 2016 campaign.
In a Tuesday interview, Manafort denied brokering a 2012 meeting between Trump and Tulub, also pointing out that he wasn’t working for Trump at the time.
However, Manafort did confirm the authenticity of the texts hacked from his daughter’s phone. And he added that, before the texts were sent to his daughter, he had received similar texts to his own phone number from the same address appearing to be affiliated with Leshchenko.
He said he did not respond directly to any of the texts, and instead passed them along to his lawyer. He declined to provide the texts to POLITICO.
Purported cyber attacks on Manafort's family now. I want incredible Russia-connection stories made great again damnit ... golden showers to spite Obama were far more glorious. Right now it's just like a bad movie script that never got made into a film. Maybe drunk Putin texts Ivanka some salacious goodies; I'm sure that can be arranged (and everybody deny it afterwards just like now).
Manafort confirmed they were real? Maybe he could be lying, but that would be weird.
I suspect Trump's Russia apologists will feel a little silly in due time.
The Trump administration in its first month has largely benched the State Department from its long-standing role as the preeminent voice of U.S. foreign policy, curtailing public engagement and official travel and relegating Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to a mostly offstage role.
Decisions on hiring, policy and scheduling are being driven by a White House often wary of the foreign policy establishment and struggling to set priorities and write policy on the fly.
The most visible change at the State Department is the month-long lack of daily press briefings, a fixture since John Foster Dulles was secretary of state in the 1950s. The televised question-and-answer session is watched closely around the world, and past administrations have pointed proudly to the accountability of having a government spokesman available to domestic and foreign press almost every day without fail.
...
But the biggest factor is the confusing lines of communication and authority to the White House, and Trump’s inclination to farm out elements of foreign policy to a kitchen Cabinet of close advisers.
Chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon attends national security meetings and recently spoke with the German ambassador, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has been given a major role in getting Israeli-Palestinian talks on track, a job usually the preserve of the State Department. When asked about foreign policy developments, State Department officials often have referred reporters to the White House.
“Tillerson isn’t being purposefully sidelined; he’s just caught up in an administration with too many competing power centers and a president who’s unwilling or unable to decide who he wants to play the lead role in implementing his foreign policy,” said Aaron David Miller, a former diplomat who advised Republican and Democratic presidents about the Middle East. “The problem is letting a thousand flowers and tweets bloom isn’t the best way to run the foreign policy of the world’s most consequential power.”
I'm confused. Senate has to approve cabinet positions, but not advisor roles and certain other positions which are at the president's discretion. Yet he is free to assign any power he likes to these advisors rather than the cabinet member whose task it is to do that work. So Bannon is allowed to be de facto secretary of state, despite senate never approving him for that role, while Tillerson sits by and idly twiddles his thumbs? Aren't there some kind of controls on this? Because if not, what the hell is the point of Senate having to confirm cabinet positions in the first place?
These are all valid questions and normally these rules would be obeyed. The senior staff would defer to the state department because that is their role.
Bannon and Trump's inner circle do not care about those standard practices and there are not a lot of rules to force them to care. This is the truth of goverment at this level, most of the systems work because people respect the system and the civil servants work in places like the state department, not due to some rule.
WASHINGTON ― As a team of elite U.S. commandos found themselves under unexpectedly heavy fire in a remote Yemeni village last month, eight time zones away, their commander in chief was not in the Situation Room.
It’s unclear what he, personally, was doing. But his Twitter account was busy promoting an upcoming appearance on the Christian Broadcasting Network.
“I will be interviewed by @TheBrodyFile on @CBNNews tonight at 11pm. Enjoy!” read a tweet from President Donald Trump’s personal account on Saturday, Jan. 28.
Whether it was Trump himself or an aide who sent out that tweet at 5:50 p.m. ― about half an hour into a firefight that cost a Navy SEAL his life ― cannot be determined from the actual tweets, and the White House isn’t saying. Likewise, it’s not clear who deleted the tweet some 20 minutes later, or why the new president, just a week on the job, chose not to directly monitor the first high-risk military operation on his watch.
The CBN interview did not actually air until the following night, Jan. 29, and Trump or an aide may have realized the error and deleted the tweet for that reason. Alternatively, Trump or an aide might have realized that the Yemen operation was going badly and deleted the tweet to avoid looking callous. The tweet appears to have been sent via an iPhone, not via Android. Tweets sent from an iPhone are generally from the president’s staff, often taking his dictation, while tweets sent by Android are usually composed by Trump himself.
The White House did not respond to The Huffington Post’s queries on the issue.
“He was obviously aware of the strike occurring,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the day after the raid. “He was kept in constant contact Saturday night of the status of the mission, both of the success that it had and the tragic loss of life that occurred to that member.”
Spicer, though, has not specifically said what Trump was doing between 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 28, other than to say he was in the White House residence ― not in the Situation Room. That’s the hour ― 1:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. local time ― when the firefight in Yemen resulted in the deaths of some 30 people, according to news reports. U.S. forces had called in air strikes because of the ferocity of the resistance they encountered. At least 10 of those killed were women or children.
The last event on the presidential schedule released to the media for that Saturday was a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at 5 p.m. According to the White House pool reporter that day, Trump was on the phone with Turnbull at 5:11 p.m. when reporters were taken to witness the call through the Oval Office windows.
“Obviously, if a raid is only 20 minutes in, you should wait to see how it turns out before tweeting,” said one former National Security Council participant under former President Barack Obama. The staffer added that while Obama did not monitor every operation from the Situation Room (as he did during the one that killed Osama bin Laden), it seemed odd that Trump did not monitor this operation. “It is your first one.”
The timing of the CBN tweet and its deletion is the latest detail in the story of a military special operation that went not at all as planned.
Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens was killed in the raid, and four U.S. service members were wounded. A $75 million Osprey aircraft was damaged and had to be destroyed to keep it from falling into enemy hands. Subsequent reports pointed out that Trump did not participate in a formal National Security Council review of the plan, but instead was briefed over a dinner meeting three nights before the raid.
Spicer on Feb. 2 said that Defense Secretary James Mattis, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, CIA director Mike Pompeo, then-national security adviser Mike Flynn, National Security Council chief of staff Keith Kellogg, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Stephen Bannon took part in that dinner, as did Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
“Doing it over dinner with Kushner and Bannon, without someone from the State Department present? I considered that a little odd,” said Luke Hartig, a former senior director for counterterrorism at the NSC under Obama. He added that more comprehensive planning might not have averted problems, but could have ensured that better contingency strategies were in place.
In any event, Spicer on Feb. 2 essentially described the raid as something planned and approved under Obama (a characterization that Obama aides dispute). That places it about midway along the evolution of the White’s House description of the operation ― from immediately afterward, when Spicer declared the raid a complete success, to the following week, when he accused anyone who questioned that assessment of dishonoring the fallen serviceman.
In the initial aftermath, Spicer said the raid had killed 14 fighters with the group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Within a few days, as reports spread of civilian deaths which the Defense Department acknowledged, Spicer said the whole point of the mission was “intelligence gathering,” in the form of laptops and cellphones that were taken.
By the following week, amid reports that Yemen had withdrawn permission for U.S. troops to conduct raids there and that the purported main target of the raid, AQAP leader Qassim al-Rimi, had escaped and was now taunting Trump, Spicer denounced criticism of the raid of any kind.
“The life of Chief Ryan Owens was done in service to this country and we owe him and his family a great debt for the information that we received during that raid,” Spicer said on Feb. 8. “I think any suggestion otherwise is a disservice to his courageous life and the actions that he took, full stop.”
Mind you, having shitty ties to the former leader of the Ukraine (not exactly pro-Russian, more like "money-grubbing opportunist who makes some deals with Russia and others with Europe") is much different than being directly tied to Russia.
Wouldn't mind some deep, compromising relationships with Russia though. It would make the next four years more spicy. Preferably it will come out a little later though so we can milk leaking for all it's worth.
On February 24 2017 02:34 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: <Snip for length>
For what its worth I don't think Trump has to be present for this. The guy is not a soldier and will not have anything to contribute, nor was it of the impact like for example to attack on Bin Laden.
Why would the President have to be watching on every single commando action?
EPT
