Trust between Russia and the US has degraded under the Trump administration, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated. During his presidential election campaign, Trump said he would like the US to have better relations with Russia.

In an interview on Wednesday, Putin said that if Donald Trump had intended to bring about a thaw in US relations with Russia, he has failed to see this intention through.

“I would say the level of trust [between Russia and the US] is at a workable level, especially in the military dimension, but it hasn’t improved. On the contrary, it has degraded,” the Russian president told Mir broadcaster.

Trump’s repeated claims that he could mend relations between Washington and Moscow has fueled accusations that he secretly colluded with Russia to win the US presidential election last year. His administration is currently under a congressional investigation over alleged ties with Russia.

Moscow has distanced itself from domestic US tensions, neither supporting nor criticizing Trump officially. It denied preferring Trump to his Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton, during the election campaign and said it would judge his administration by its actions rather than its words.

Trump’s latest decision to attack Russian ally Syria over an alleged chemical weapons attack drew sharp criticism from the Kremlin. Moscow considers the decision rushed, illegal and playing into the hands of terrorist groups.

Putin and Trump are yet to meet face to face to discuss the tensions between Russia and the US. A meeting of the two leaders has not been scheduled so far, even though Moscow has indicated it is willing.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/384449-trust-us-russia-degrading/

“Are we going to get involved in Syria? No,” Trump told TV host Maria Bartiromo during an interview on FOX Business. 

“But if I see them using gas…. when you drop gas or bombs or barrel bombs — massive barrels with dynamite — and drop it right in the middle of a group of people ... you see kids with no arms, no legs, no face. This [Syrian President Bashar Assad] is an animal,” he added.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/384455-trump-assad-animal-syria/

Of course, the USA NEVER EVER killed any children and women while using drones or bombs under any presidents since the constitution -- and if they did, they would only be stray dogs, not animals... And the US of course has never sold any barrel bombs nor cluster bombs to anyone.

It’s just so hard to be in the public eye these days. You make the tiniest mistake, just a little slip really, and people jump all over you.

United Airlines has security officers drag just one passenger off a plane, injuring him and leaving him dazed and confused, and suddenly everyone is upset.

Susan Rice, former national security adviser for President Obama, announces that Syria gave up all its chemical weapons a few months before Bashar al-Assad’s regime kills scores of men, women and children with sarin gas, and people start questioning her veracity.

Wells Fargo commits an enormous fraud, creating as many as two million unwanted accounts, and people want more of the company’s executives to be disciplined. Wasn’t it enough that Wells Fargo fired more than 5,000 of the low-level people who had been pushed to commit fraud by the company’s culture of pressure and ethical laxness?

And poor Sean Spicer. O.K., so he denied a minor historical detail like the gassing of millions of Jews by the Nazis. It’s not like anyone else in the Trump administration has ever seemed oblivious to history, lied, insulted religious, ethnic or racial minorities or ignored the Holocaust before.

Actually, all of these cases are part of a pattern.

United, like the other increasingly monopolistic airlines, routinely overbooks flights, treats its passengers with contempt and inconveniences them unnecessarily. Wells Fargo is just another huge bank that has ripped off its ordinary customers and skirted or broken the law for decades, largely with impunity. Rice has a habit of repeating spin that turns out to be wrong (as on Benghazi) and Americans have heard false accounts about weapons of mass destruction before (although in President George W. Bush’s case, the weapons didn’t exist).

Spicer twists the truth as frequently as regular people change their socks; he began his first full day as White House press secretary by lying about the size of the crowd at President Trump’s inauguration.

On Tuesday, Spicer compared Hitler, favorably, to Syria’s dictator — saying that whatever other naughty things the Nazi leader may have done, he didn’t “sink to using chemical weapons.” When journalists pointed out that Hitler had ordered millions of Jews gassed to death, Spicer said that at least he moved them to “Holocaust centers.”

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/opinion/sean-spicers-teeny-little-slip-up.html

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Though Mr Andrew Rosenthal is trying to be flippant and funny on many fronts, he is discreetly sliding under your door, like an advertising leaflet for the best laxative in town, the concept that "Assad gassed his people" as recently as a week ago. It does not occur to him that the upright righteous rebels sponsored by the US could actually have developed gas (possibly Sarin) to use in their battles and in the process tarnish Assad in the eyes of a public that wants war war WAR WAR!... As if Trump and his predecessors never ever killed little babies with bombs... 

This of course would not fit the general rubbish developed by the Pentagon and the CIA, which is they never tell a lie... except when George W Bush was president, when Clinton was president, when Obama was president, when Carter was president, when Johnson was president, when Reagan was president, when George Bush Senior was president, when... You know the rest. Since their inception, the CIA and the Pentagon have had two roles: first to lie to provide righteous moralistic motive for second: go to war. 

If you have not worked this one out, you are more stupid than you look.

Anecdotal stories about disillusioned supporters of Donald Trump are overdone. The fact is that, on a broad scale, Trump supporters say they aren't disappointed. In fact, a poll showed they were more pleased than disappointed, by about 5 to 1:

"...The Pew Research Center released a poll showing very little buyer's remorse among Trump voters. The poll showed just 7% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say Trump has performed worse than they expected him to. Fully 38% - five times as many - say he has performed better."

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll confirms this - in spades. And, in fact, it shows more buyer's remorse for Trump's opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton. And were the 2016 election held again today, it shows Trump would avenge his popular-vote loss.

While just 4% of Trump's supporters say they would back someone else if there was a redo of the election, fully 15% of Clinton supporters say they would ditch her. Trump leads in a re-do of the 2016 election 43% to 40% after losing the popular vote 46-44.

That 15% is split between those who say they would vote for Trump (2%), Gary Johnson (4%), Jill Stein (2%), and either other candidates or not vote (7%).

It's not hugely surprising that the losing candidate in an election would see this kind of drop-off. People don't like voting for losers, and if you look closely at polls after an election, some voters won't even admit to having cast their ballots for the losing candidate. The winning margin for the victor is generally exaggerated.

read more:

http://www.torontosun.com/2017/04/23/trump-supporters-dont-have-buyers-r...

See toon at top... Meanwhile the world is getting dumber and dumber and dumber and dumber...

WASHINGTON — Unable to get a single dollar to build the “great wall” he promised on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump has settled on a new strategy: repairing and upgrading the existing fence and calling that his “wall.”

Trump has claimed repeatedly over the past nine months that he has already started construction. “And we have a lot of it built and it’s going up,” he said at a rally in Mississippi late last month after attendees began a favorite chant: “Build that wall!”

In reality, not a single mile of new barrier has yet been built along the Mexican border. There were 654 miles of physical barrier on the day Trump was inaugurated president, and there are 654 miles today. Money for 33 miles of new fencing was included in the spending bill Trump signed this spring, but those projects have not started yet.

The Department of Homeland Security, which under Trump started using the word “wall” on its website for the barrier it had for more than a decade described as a fence, disputed that it had not constructed any new barrier along the Mexican border.

“We are committed to building wall and building wall quickly. We are not replacing short, outdated and ineffective wall with similar wall,” said department spokeswoman Katie Waldman. “Instead, under this president we are building a wall that is 30-feet high.”

That barrier, consisting of steel poles spaced a short distance apart, had been called a “bollard fence” under previous presidents, but is now called “bollard wall” under Trump.

In any case, with the House about to switch to Democratic control, Trump’s strategy of taking credit for a non-accomplishment may be the only option available to him for the foreseeable future.

“I don’t think Trump gets what he wants,” said Stan Collender, a longtime former budget committee staffer on Capitol Hill. “I don’t think he ever gets money for his wall.” 

Read more:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/trump-fence-wall_us_5c099defe4b0...

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Fence_Act_of_2006

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/03/trump-mexico-wall-milita...

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May be the "genius" should say that the USA needs to finish "OBAMA'S WALL"...

By Patrick J. Buchanan

If the pollsters at CNN and CBS are correct, Donald Trump may have found the formula for winning a second term in 2020.

His State of the Union address, say the two networks, was met with the approval of 76 percent of all viewers—97 percent of Republicans, 82 percent of independents, and 30 percent of Democrats. Seventy-two percent agreed with the president’s plans for securing the border with Mexico.

Trump was not only unapologetic in defense of his wall. He seemed to relish savaging the rising radicalism of Democrats on two critical issues many of them have seized upon since their 2018 triumph: abortion on demand, right up to the day of birth, and soak-the-rich socialism.

“Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” Trump thundered. “America was founded on liberty and independence—not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free.”

“America will never be a socialist country,” Trump roared, as the camera focused on the scowling face of Senator Bernie Sanders.

The GOP ovation was thunderous, the Democratic silence revealing. Understandable. For, as in the 1972 Nixon landslide, Democrats appear to be coming down with “McGovernism.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the rookie sensation in Nancy Pelosi’s House, has called for an income tax rate of 70 percent. As California and New York City have state and local tax rates of 12 percent that are no longer deductible on federal taxes, their most successful residents could be forced to fork over four fifths of their income every year in taxes.

Some Democrats have called for an 80 percent federal tax rate. New Yorkers who earn $1 million a year would be allowed to keep less than a dime of every added dollar they earn.

Sanders would impose a 45 percent tax on all estates over $3.5 million, rising to 77 percent on estates worth $1 billion.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed a tax to scoop off 2 percent of the wealth of folks whose net worth reaches $50 million, and 3 percent of all the wealth of every billionaire, every year.

To ex-mayor Mike Bloomberg, a potential rival in the presidential race, whose New York is witnessing an exodus of its wealthy to Sun Belt states, Warren’s ideas represent a gospel-of-greed stupidity.

Says Bloomberg: “If you want to look at a system that is not capitalistic, just take a look at what was perhaps the wealthiest country in the world and today people are starving to death. It’s called Venezuela.”

Democrats have also embraced the cause of Medicare-for-all.

Asked how private health companies that now insure 177 million people would fare under her health care system, Senator Kamala Harris was dismissive: “Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”

Trump also delivered in-your-face defiance to feminists who seek to guarantee unrestricted access to abortion on demand.

Recalling the celebration as Governor Andrew Cuomo’s guarantee of third-trimester abortion rights became law, Trump declared:

Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.

These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams with the world.

And then, we had the case of the governor of Virginia where he stated he would execute a baby after birth. To defend the dignity of every person, I am asking the Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb. Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life.

And let us reaffirm a fundamental truth: all children—born and unborn—are made in the holy image of God.

Has any president, in any State of the Union, made a stronger statement in defense of life?

Are Democrats losing their minds? Only 13 percent of Americans believe in letting babies be aborted up to and through the ninth month of pregnancy. In what states are infanticide and socialism winning issues?

In this writer’s home state, Virginia, the resignation of Democratic Governor Ralph Northam is being demanded by state and national Democrats, because he put on blackface for a Michael Jackson imitation at a dance 35 years ago.

Democratic Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, whose ancestors were slaves on the Revolutionary War plantation of Lord Fairfax, has been accused of raping a young woman at the Democratic convention in 2004.

The next in line to succeed the governor, the attorney general, also a Democrat, has just admitted to wearing blackface when he was in school.

And Senator Elizabeth Warren, says The Washington Post, listed “American Indian” as her race on a State Bar of Texas registration card in 1986.

Yet according to her DNA and the Cherokee chief, she ain’t one.

Somebody up there likes Donald Trump.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/trump-finds-the-formula...

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