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Monday, Mar. 12, 2018
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CIA boss says Trump will solve a problem with Kim face-to-face, won't make concessions before talks
RICIA boss says Trump will solve a problem with Kim face-to-face, won't make concessions before talks
Search is on for the best summit site for Trump, Kim
LAURIE KELLMAN Associated Press
In this Sept. 30, 2013, file photo, South Korean soldiers look toward the North Korean side as a North Korean solder approaches the UN truce village building that sits on the border of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the military border separating the two Koreas in Panmunjom, South Korea. The search is on for a venue to host a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. There are lots of caveats. Trump is being urged not to legitimize Kim by agreeing to talks in North Korea. And it’s risky for Kim to travel to the U.S. So the leaders are more likely to meet in a neutral place, such as the demilitarized zone between the Koreas. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev chose Reykjavik, Iceland. Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin huddled at Yalta. Dwight Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev will always have Paris.
So where should President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un meet up for the first face-to-face talks between a U.S. and North Korean president?
The Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is one possibility. Sweden has offered to help. And there's always neutral Geneva, Switzerland.
Someplace in Asia perhaps — such as Beijing — hasn't been ruled out. Nor, for that matter, has a ship in international waters.
The question crackled through diplomatic and government circles Friday, one day after a South Korean official announced in the dark on a White House driveway that the two heads of state who had threatened mutual obliteration for months would take a meeting.
It's not clear what location is suitable for leaders who have sniped at each other — "Little Rocket Man" vs. "senile dotard" — in nerve-rattling Twitter exchanges about nuclear war.
"It's all about optics, from their first handshake," said Lisa Collins, a Korea scholar and fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There are 70 years of historical baggage between the two countries ... so to have the meeting in a place that's a safe location and one that doesn't overly highlight the differences between the two countries would probably be the best."
The White House wasn't offering suggestions in the hours after the announcement.
Trump, a former reality TV star, understands well the value of "optics." But symbolism, security and practicality also come into play. Holding talks in either the U.S. or North Korea seem unlikely. Traveling to North Korea risks conferring legitimacy on Kim and his country.
As for Kim: Except for schooling in Switzerland and perhaps some vacations during that time, it's not clear that Kim has left North Korea. So Mar-a-Lago, the president's Florida estate that was good enough for Chinese President Xi Jinping last April, probably won't do this time.
More likely is the no-man's-land of Peace Village in the DMZ's Panmunjom. There is a building there with a line through the middle that marks the border — and was the site of the 1953 armistice. Theoretically, Kim could shake Trump's hand by reaching over the line without ever setting foot outside North Korea. And Trump's been wanting to visit the DMZ, anyway. A shrouded-in-secrecy stop there during Trump's tour of Asia last year was scrubbed due to bad weather.
In April, the leaders of North and South Korea are to meet there for their own historic bilateral talks.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, meanwhile, has offered to help, given that his nation has an embassy in Pyongyang. "We are a non-aligning country," Lofven pointed out during a press conference with Trump this week. "If the president decides, the key actors decide if they want us to help out, we'll be there."
History offers some lessons in bilateral summitry.
Sometimes, talks fail. In diplomatic circles, Reykjavik, Iceland's frosty capital, refers President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's hastily arranged arms reduction talks in 1986. They failed to produce a deal, but did result in iconic photos of the two leaders smiling together in the final years of the Cold War.
Other times, they blow up. "Peaceful coexistence" was the goal, but not the immediate result, of a summit in Paris between Khruschev and Eisenhower. The talks were tense over the Soviet downing of a U-2 plane in 1960 that Eisenhower was forced to admit had been spying on Russia. The Russian leader stalked out of the meeting, cooling any thoughts of a lasting peace for awhile.
It's good to have a backup venue: What were to be talks in 1989 between President George H.W. Bush and Gorbachev aboard a ship near Malta turned into the "seasick summit" when seven-foot waves forced the leaders to cancel some meetings.
Talks and the most powerful images sometimes go only so far. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat stunned the world when he set foot in Israel in 1977 and addressed the Israeli parliament. The visit set the tone for the Camp David peace summit and treaty in 1979. The Egyptian-Israeli agreement has remained intact and laid the groundwork for other Mideast summits. But the peace process has stalled in recent years.
Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington and researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
So where should President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un meet up for the first face-to-face talks between a U.S. and North Korean president?
The Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is one possibility. Sweden has offered to help. And there's always neutral Geneva, Switzerland.
Someplace in Asia perhaps — such as Beijing — hasn't been ruled out. Nor, for that matter, has a ship in international waters.
The question crackled through diplomatic and government circles Friday, one day after a South Korean official announced in the dark on a White House driveway that the two heads of state who had threatened mutual obliteration for months would take a meeting.
It's not clear what location is suitable for leaders who have sniped at each other — "Little Rocket Man" vs. "senile dotard" — in nerve-rattling Twitter exchanges about nuclear war.
"It's all about optics, from their first handshake," said Lisa Collins, a Korea scholar and fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There are 70 years of historical baggage between the two countries ... so to have the meeting in a place that's a safe location and one that doesn't overly highlight the differences between the two countries would probably be the best."
The White House wasn't offering suggestions in the hours after the announcement.
Trump, a former reality TV star, understands well the value of "optics." But symbolism, security and practicality also come into play. Holding talks in either the U.S. or North Korea seem unlikely. Traveling to North Korea risks conferring legitimacy on Kim and his country.
As for Kim: Except for schooling in Switzerland and perhaps some vacations during that time, it's not clear that Kim has left North Korea. So Mar-a-Lago, the president's Florida estate that was good enough for Chinese President Xi Jinping last April, probably won't do this time.
More likely is the no-man's-land of Peace Village in the DMZ's Panmunjom. There is a building there with a line through the middle that marks the border — and was the site of the 1953 armistice. Theoretically, Kim could shake Trump's hand by reaching over the line without ever setting foot outside North Korea. And Trump's been wanting to visit the DMZ, anyway. A shrouded-in-secrecy stop there during Trump's tour of Asia last year was scrubbed due to bad weather.
In April, the leaders of North and South Korea are to meet there for their own historic bilateral talks.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, meanwhile, has offered to help, given that his nation has an embassy in Pyongyang. "We are a non-aligning country," Lofven pointed out during a press conference with Trump this week. "If the president decides, the key actors decide if they want us to help out, we'll be there."
History offers some lessons in bilateral summitry.
Sometimes, talks fail. In diplomatic circles, Reykjavik, Iceland's frosty capital, refers President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's hastily arranged arms reduction talks in 1986. They failed to produce a deal, but did result in iconic photos of the two leaders smiling together in the final years of the Cold War.
Other times, they blow up. "Peaceful coexistence" was the goal, but not the immediate result, of a summit in Paris between Khruschev and Eisenhower. The talks were tense over the Soviet downing of a U-2 plane in 1960 that Eisenhower was forced to admit had been spying on Russia. The Russian leader stalked out of the meeting, cooling any thoughts of a lasting peace for awhile.
It's good to have a backup venue: What were to be talks in 1989 between President George H.W. Bush and Gorbachev aboard a ship near Malta turned into the "seasick summit" when seven-foot waves forced the leaders to cancel some meetings.
Talks and the most powerful images sometimes go only so far. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat stunned the world when he set foot in Israel in 1977 and addressed the Israeli parliament. The visit set the tone for the Camp David peace summit and treaty in 1979. The Egyptian-Israeli agreement has remained intact and laid the groundwork for other Mideast summits. But the peace process has stalled in recent years.
Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington and researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
Republican Stacey Dash Gets a Boost in Congressional Race (Do any Democrats compare to her?)
by ADELLE NAZARIAN
Theo Wargo/Getty Images
Conservative actress Stacey Dash, who announced last month that she is running for Congress in California’s 44th district as a Republican, appears to have received an inadvertent boost from the Democratic Mayor of Compton, Aja Brown.
Mayor Brown reportedly filed federal paperwork to raise money for the race in the district, which is currently represented by Democratic Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-CA), on Tuesday. She made her candidacy official on Thursday.
Brown’s entrance into the race could increase the chances for Miss Dash, a Republican, to qualify for the general election by splitting the vote between her and fellow Democrat, and incumbent, Aja Barragán, who won the Democratic Party’s endorsement less than two weeks ago.
California’s top-two or “jungle primary” system allows the two highest vote-getters to proceed to the general election, regardless of political party.
According to the Los Angeles Times, “61% of voters identify as Democrats while just 10% register as Republicans and 83% of district voters went for Hillary Clinton.”
In 2016, Dash launched an initiative called Dash America with the intention of energizing and empowering conservatives to take back influence in progressive-dominated Hollywood.
“I believe that instead of allowing others to divide us and hold us down, we must empower one another to rise up and unite for the sake of our great nation and the values that have made us the strongest country in the world, a true beacon of freedom for all people and all nations under God for centuries,” Dash said at the time.
Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
'I Can Die Happy Now' with Trump Job Performance, Declares Mary Matalin
Political commentator Mary Matalin addresses the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans on April 8, 2010. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Political consultant Mary Matalin praised President Trump as “a great overall president,” calling his job performance “stunning” and adding that she can “die happy now.”
In 2016, Matalin left the Republican Party and registered as a Libertarian but the pundit told PJM she “can’t leave the party because it’s Hotel California.”
“I always thought, as Reagan did, that libertarianism was central to conservatism. I have the same philosophy and I support the same policies. I just thought, at the time, it had nothing to do with Trump, whom I think is doing a great job. It’s just that I didn't see those principles and policies being reflected in the majorities that we kept electing,” Matalin told PJM in an exclusive interview at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference.
“So I don't know why it made any difference to anybody, but I want to re-express to myself, to my kids and my community, to remind them of what Reagan said about the balance between liberty, that tension and that part of preserving our freedom has to do with conservative policies. I think libertarianism precedes conservatism or it's certainly iatrical to it. So I didn't think it was that big of a deal; I didn’t leave the party and I can’t leave the party because it’s Hotel California,” she added, referring to the Eagles song in which you can check out but never leave.
Matalin, a veteran Republican strategist, said she’s specifically pleased with Trump’s “fabulous” leadership on tax reform and his can-do attitude toward public policy.
“I think he's stunning; he's a paradigmatic shift because, for him, I think, it's an isolated paradigm shift. I don't think anybody else can do it because everybody else who thinks they know about politics impedes their own forward motion by saying it can't be done. He doesn’t have that gene --everything can be done,” she said.
“Everything is possible, and guess what? He has proved that it is. Do you know how many years, decades, I worked on tax reform? He did it like that, changing people's lives. Do you know how long we all ran against Obamacare? …The less reported is the most significant for the economy … regulatory relief,” she added.
Matalin said Trump’s regulatory relief agenda has given hope back to the business community, young families and those preparing for retirement.
“I say this from the perspective of being in a blue city in a red state for 10 years – New Orleans and Louisiana. He's given people back hope, I mean people really, small-business people or young families or retiring people, in our DNA is always the potential to be better, to strive for something,” she said.
“You couldn’t strive for anything. You're being bushwhacked at every corner. He has shifted the collective psyche from horribly cynical to helpfully skeptical. So I think he is doing great,” she added.
No Democrats voted for the tax reform package Trump signed into law last December. No Republicans voted for the Affordable Care Act in 2010. PJM asked Matalin if she thought the tax reform legislative process was too similar to the way Democrats handled Obamacare.
“There was no support for taking over one-sixth of the economy, there wasn't when he pushed it through, there wasn't in that first midterm, there hadn't been for all of the years that he was in office,” she replied. “Not only did the support never grow for it like it has with tax reform, the opposition to it intensified.”
“People out there, first of all, they dismiss all the – they don’t hate rich people, but this was not a person tax, it was an economic incentive tax and it's working. I think it was spectacular. And I like the way he does things without – to people out there he makes it look kind of a pain in the neck, but not that hard, OK,” she added.
Matalin doubted that repealing and replace Obamacare would be a possibility in the near future.
“He does make it look effortless and he gets up every morning and he does it and he keeps on fighting. That's hard – it’s a hard job,” she said. “I think that [Obamacare] ship has sailed, and I think he's so – he thinks outside the box, acts outside the box.”
She thinks Trump should tackle other issues such as education reform.
“We have to do real education reform. We’ve had 50 years of dismantling the humanities and education; that’s a little harder but he could, in the same way he did with EPA and such, he could give some of the power back and cut some of the strings,” she said.
“The other is unfunded mandate reform. We just have to do it and he could – I love the way he operates where he explains it to people the way they think about it, in a common-sense way, and I think he has the ability to bring in young voters,” she added.
Matalin also said Trump has two key qualities she has never seen in one president before.
“I think he is good at two things that I've never seen anybody be mutually good at in that office. One, he is a great inbox president, like you never know what's going to come across your desk, and he has not lost on one of those things. So, he knows how to jujitsu if it’s perceived to be lost in our measurement,” Matalin told PJM.
“And he’s a great overall president, like, he did what he said he was going to do and he is doing things he never imagined he would have to, so that’s really hard to do with a staff that was not quite seasoned – it’s just sheer force of will and force of personality. I think he’s doing great. He’s doing really great. I can die happy now. I was really worried about it,” she added.
PJM asked Matalin if she thought Trump would receive any blowback from conservatives for increasing federal spending.
“Deficit spending is not our problem. The substantive and ongoing unfunded structural debt is our problem. Our culture was founded on deficits,” she said. “Businesses are founded on deficits and people’s families are founded on deficits, OK? But structural debt is like kids graduating with $100,000 in debt, that’s like the individual equivalent, as opposed to deficit spending when you’re starting out in life, OK? We cannot survive with the structural debt.”
Trump Asks For Military Parade, Pentagon Says ‘No Tanks’
JOHN SEXTON
CNN got hold of a Pentagon planning memo for Trump’s military parade. It looks like this is going to happen later this year, but according to the document there will not be Abrams tanks rolling through Washington, DC. There will, however, be an air component to the parade.
The memo says the parade will integrate with the annual DC Veterans Day parade and focus on the contributions of US veterans from the Revolutionary War to today “with an emphasis on the price of freedom.”
The parade will “include wheeled vehicles only, no tanks,” the memo said, adding that “consideration must be given to minimize damage to local infrastructure.”
It will, however, involve “a heavy air component” with military aircraft flying overhead at the end of parade, including older aircraft “as available,” the memo said.
The parade will “include wheeled vehicles only, no tanks,” the memo said, adding that “consideration must be given to minimize damage to local infrastructure.”
It will, however, involve “a heavy air component” with military aircraft flying overhead at the end of parade, including older aircraft “as available,” the memo said.
The planned route stretches from the White House to the Capitol. Trump would be seated in a reviewing stand surrounded by veterans and Medal of Honor winners. The president proposed the idea after attending the Bastille Day parade in France. Here’s a clip of him saluting a contingent of U.S. troops in that parade:
One of the concerns raised about this idea, including inside the Pentagon, is the potential cost. From CNN:
There are also concerns over the cost of the event, and a second defense official tells CNN that the Pentagon is considering seeking out private donations to offset some of the non-military costs of the event. The donations could not cover military salaries or the cost of moving equipment but they could be used to pay for other aspects of the parade.
There are no firm cost estimates until President Trump orders the military to stage a specific event, but very preliminary estimates suggest the cost could run between $3 million and $50 million, the first official said, emphasizing that nothing is certain at this point. There is no money currently allocated for a parade in the defense budget. Budget director Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday that he has seen estimates that a military parade could cost $10 million to $30 million.
Hopefully, the fact that tanks and other heavy vehicles will not be involved will keep the cost toward the lower end of that range.
I confess to being initially lukewarm about this plan. Not because I have any disrespect for the military. On the contrary, my concern was mostly of the ‘we got it, we don’t need to flaunt it’ variety. But I have to admit I’m warming up to this a little. I suspect a lot of people will find the parade appealing and if the spectacle reminds them we’re very lucky to have the system we have and to have the people protecting us that we have, that all seems like it could be a good thing.
There are no firm cost estimates until President Trump orders the military to stage a specific event, but very preliminary estimates suggest the cost could run between $3 million and $50 million, the first official said, emphasizing that nothing is certain at this point. There is no money currently allocated for a parade in the defense budget. Budget director Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday that he has seen estimates that a military parade could cost $10 million to $30 million.
Hopefully, the fact that tanks and other heavy vehicles will not be involved will keep the cost toward the lower end of that range.
I confess to being initially lukewarm about this plan. Not because I have any disrespect for the military. On the contrary, my concern was mostly of the ‘we got it, we don’t need to flaunt it’ variety. But I have to admit I’m warming up to this a little. I suspect a lot of people will find the parade appealing and if the spectacle reminds them we’re very lucky to have the system we have and to have the people protecting us that we have, that all seems like it could be a good thing.
Give VA Secretary David Shulkin the boot
By Michelle Malkin
By Michelle Malkin
Will the VA scandal never end?
While the Department of Veterans Affairs secretary lives high on the hog and his lying chief of staff resigns in disgrace while escaping any punishment, legions of vets every day in this country are denied the medical care they earned.
President Trump was supposed to drain the swamp. But at the historically fraud-ridden and profligate VA, the alligators continue feasting on the public dime.
Trump’s VA secretary, David Shulkin, is an Obama holdover. His main agenda is to block any real reforms for veterans, which includes expanding their ability to obtain care from private doctors and hospitals. His daughter, Jennifer, is a Harvard law student and loudmouth Huffington Post contributor who used her Twitter account recently to defend her dad against “right-winged, pro-privatization Trump appointees.”
Two weeks ago, Shulkin launched a purge of what he calls “subversive” employees that he accuses of trying to undermine him. It’s the same tactic Obama VA officials used to silence whistleblowers who exposed secret waiting lists to nowhere that cost untold thousands of patients across at least seven states their lives.
This latest witch hunt for dissenters comes in the wake of a scathing inspector general’s report last month on Shulkin’s 10-day junket to Europe last summer. The VA secretary spent a grand total of three and a half days on supposed business meetings in Copenhagen and London. For the rest of the time, Shulkin directed a VA underling to act as his personal travel agent — on your dime — to plan sightseeing for him and his wife, including:
—Touring Amalienborg Palace for the changing of the guard and visiting Christiansborg Palace, Rosenborg Castle and Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark.
—Boating and dining in Copenhagen and dining in Malmo, Sweden.
—Trekking to the Churchill War Rooms, Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, Westminster Abbey, Thames River, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Shakespeare’s Globe, the London Eye and Windsor Castle.
The inspector general discovered that Shulkin also improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets from a British socialite. To evade ethics guidelines, Shulkin claimed the socialite was his wife’s “friend,” but the socialite couldn’t even remember Shulkin’s wife’s name when questioned by investigators.
Nice family vacay if you can get it — and you can get it subsidized, if your underlings lie.
Shulkin’s chief of staff, Vivieca Wright Simpson, admitted doctoring an email in order to get Shulkin’s wife’s airfare paid for by the public. Wright Simpson misled an ethics officer into believing that Shulkin was receiving an award at a dinner and that his wife therefore qualified as an “invitational traveler.” It was a big fat fabrication. Shulkin received no award. His wife was not eligible for the travel reimbursements for her whopping $4,000 plane tickets.
Nevertheless, Wright Simpson — a career bureaucrat who started at the VA in 1998 and ascended during the Obama administration — was allowed to retire with full benefits. No punishment.
Shulkin remains unrepentant and baselessly blamed a computer “hack” for his top aide’s email shenanigans. The IG found no evidence of his backside-covering claim. The ghost of Anthony Weiner lives.
Shulkin remains unrepentant and baselessly blamed a computer “hack” for his top aide’s email shenanigans. The IG found no evidence of his backside-covering claim. The ghost of Anthony Weiner lives.
And just wait, another shoe of corruption is about to drop. According to The Daily Beast, another IG report involving Shulkin’s “use of his security detail to run personal errands” may be released in the next week. Shulkin’s response? Underlings are reporting that he is in the throes of “paranoia,” ordering an “armed guard” to stand watch outside his office and banning employees he suspects of “disloyalty.”
The VA’s culture of fear and reprisals against whistleblowers is endemic. Accountability is rarer than a Siamese unicorn. Fiscally responsible vets seeking coverage for emergency room bills are punished for not seeing VA doctors enough. The administrators responsible for blowing a billion-dollar hole in the budget of the Aurora, Colorado, VA boondoggle have escaped any consequences.
The last thing this corrupted bureaucracy needs is a Captain Queeg-meets-Leona Helmsley at the helm.
As Colorado GOP Rep. Mike Coffman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee wrote in a letter to the White House last week: “Mr. President, you promised the American people that you would end the culture of corruption and bureaucratic incompetence that for far too long has defined the leadership of the VA. Unfortunately, Secretary Shulkin, by his conduct, lacks the moral authority to achieve your goals of a transparent, accountable VA.”
President Trump, your corrupt VA secretary is hostile to you, to the truth and to the taxpayers. He needs to hear those famous words from you:
“You’re fired.”
G’ day…Ciao…Helen and Moe Lauzier
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