He called a lot of things "disasters" during the campaign and was seldom called upon to say why he thought so. He's probably just now learning what the TPP is beyond the most superficial level.
He's probably just now learning that the TPP was initially a way to counter Chinese economic hegemony. I'd imagine it went down like this... Kudlow: "Made in China 2025 is a declaration of economic hegemony. We need to leverage their trading partners to constrain them." Trump: "How do we do that?" Kudlow: "That what the TPP was intended to do." Trump: "Really?" Kudlow: "Yep." Trump: "Any other options?" Kudlow: "The TPP was in negotiations for 8-10 years." Trump: "...."
Or maybe he wasn't interested in it as long as he thought we'd get screwed but would be happy to join it if we can modify it so we weren't. Kudlow might have given him a few ideas on how to do that.
If Trump was in power during the 90's we wouldn't have this pos NAFTA screwing us over right now. All of the so-called smart people were for it. LOL!
Of course he did. He surely must have reasoned that the best way to negotiate a modification was to drop out of the agreement, wait for the other 11 parties to sign it then jump back in and ask them to renegotiate. He's the deal-maker afterall.
No, he's not jumping right back in. Did you even read your own article? He's having a study done and to see what we should do. Jumping right in like what Obama wanted us to do and get us stuck in another NAFTA situation is the way to go I guess according to you.
The TPP started in 2008 and finished in 2015. 19 formal rounds of negotiations. This is "jumping right in"? What's clear is that Trump now sees potential value of the deal after bitching about it. He bitched about it for political reasons. I stated that he asked Kudlow to take another look at the deal. If he chooses to re-engage in the TPP my stance is that he was an idiot for his knee-jerk reaction to walk away while simultaneously planning (assuming he plans) a trade war with China.
That's your stance. He was against it because he and almost all other fair traders saw it for what it was. Your view is due to your own bias. You still buy into the MSM view that Trump is somehow an idiot despite all of his own personal successes. Obama was reckless joining that garbage. Perhaps Trump and Kudlow can get TPP more fair for the United States.
Here's Trump's tweet on the TPP: "Would only join TPP if the deal were substantially better than the deal offered to Pres. Obama. We already have BILATERAL deals with six of the eleven nations in TPP, and are working to make a deal with the biggest of those nations, Japan, who has hit us hard on trade for years!"
Sounds like Trump is finally going to pardon Scooter Libby Long overdue. It was, of course, not Libby but Richard Armitage who "leaked" Plame’s name to Novak, and even that was by accident. More importantly, Patrick Fitzgerald knew this from day one of his appointment. Not only that but Fitzgerald knew there was no crime, whether intentional or not. Why? Because Plame was just an analyst, not a covert operative. And, so, even with his confession, Armitrage was never charged with anything. The much better question has always been why did Fitzgerald continue with the case knowing all of this in advance? The best answer if that because liberals hated Dick Cheney (just like they do Trump today) with a passion and desperately wanted to see him do the perp walk. So, Fitzgerald, even after hearing directly from Armitrage and therefore knowing there was no crime, went to work anyway trying to set up a perjury trap for Cheney (sound familiar?). But Fitzgerald failed to get Cheney, trapping only poor Scooter Libby instead. This despite the fact that Libby leaked nothing about Plame to anyone. The whole thing was a bad joke exploited by a cynical media, all of which allowed Plame and her husband to waste a lot of Govt time and money, during wartime.
US Manufacturing hiring rises to highest level since before the recession Manufacturing hires rose to 380,000 in the month, the most of any month since November of 2007 ... Manufacturers have added more than 200,000 jobs in the past year as the sector has recovered from the effects of a rising dollar between 2015 and 2016 that made their products more expensive to overseas buyers.
More on Scooter Libby -- In 2015, one of the key witnesses against Mr. Libby recanted her testimony, stating publicly that she believes the prosecutor withheld relevant information from her during interviews that would have altered significantly what she said. Fitzgerald's bad behavior lead directly to Libby eventually getting his law license back. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals also unanimously reinstated Libby, noting that he -- had presented “credible evidence” in support of his innocence, including evidence that a key prosecution witness had “changed her recollection of the events in question.” Patrick Fitzgerald is a good example of what Special Prosecutors do, how they operate. The story from the witness, if interested https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a...story_setting_the_record_straight_126181.html
Special prosecutors are good in theory but bad in practice cause bad people (overly aggressive prosecutors) are appointed. If you could mitigate the latter, it possibly could work. Remember that Durham DA and the Duke Lacrosse fake rape story? There needs to be oversight on these sensationalist investigations.
The reason Fitzgerald pursued Libby is that he wanted to flip Libby to go after Cheney. There is no doubt this was his goal. These people had visceral hate for Cheney at the time. They were foaming at the mouth. But his plan to turn Libby into state's evidence failed for the simple reason that Libby had nothing to trade on Cheney. The eventual "lying" charge against Libby was a face-saving move by Fitzgerald since his actual assignment was a big nothing. Further, to get this bare minimum charge that he got, Fitzgerald had to mislead the key witness in the case. When she learned the truth about how Fitzgerald misled her, she very publicly recanted that testimony. Fitzgerald also withheld this evidence from the defense. The DC Court of Appeals, in reinstating Libby's license there, mentioned this as part of their grounds. We see some of the same type of behavior out of Mueller now.
Of course, the problem with not having special prosecutors is that if the Justice Department is less than completely ethical (which is most of the time), then high level executive branch officials will get away with everything. They might obligatorily launch investingations from time to time, but they'll half-*** them. That's how you get FBI directors holding press conferences making up statutory provisions that don't exist in order to justify not prosecuting somebody. The real problem is political. There's tremendous political pressure to "get somebody." After a reasonable time of zealous but not sensational investigation, Mueller should be able to announce his findings and recommendations, and if they don't include a prosecution, that should be acceptable. But we know it won't be. Political opponents of the people investigated would crap in their pants and start whining that he was corrupted, incompetent, etc.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...mp-and-that-loyalty-demand?platform=hootsuite So question: should a president question or demand loyalty from one of his employees if he believes that employee is leaking salacious information about him to the media? "The short version is this: In Trump's first meeting with the FBI director, on January 6, 2017, when Trump was president-elect, Comey asked to meet alone with Trump. When the two were by themselves, face-to-face, Comey told Trump about the "golden showers" episode in the Trump dossier. Comey didn't discuss any other parts of the dossier. He just outlined the dossier's tale of Trump involved in a kinky sex show in a Moscow hotel room in 2013. Not long after the Comey-Trump one-on-one meeting, news organizations reported that the intelligence community had briefed the president-elect on allegations of misconduct. Almost immediately after those reports, Buzzfeed published the entire dossier, "golden showers" and all. Comey's memo of the meeting -- released in the midst of Comey's publicity tour -- does not mention that Trump asked for loyalty. In fact, it notes that Trump said a number of complimentary things about Comey. "He said he thought very highly of me and looked forward to working with me," Comey wrote. But no talk of loyalty, at least as far as Comey noted. At Comey's next meeting with the president, however, on January 28, Trump brought up loyalty, according to the Comey memos. The two men were discussing leaks and how damaging they could be. Comey explained to the president that "the entire government leaks like crazy." Then Comey wrote that, "[Trump] replied that he needed loyalty and expected loyalty." The news of that exchange -- leaked by Comey after Trump fired him -- spurred widespread outrage over Trump's mention of loyalty. But the context of Trump's statement -- not known until now -- adds to our understanding of the president's talk. Why would Trump wonder about the FBI director's loyalty? Perhaps because in their first meeting, the FBI director dropped the Moscow sex allegation on Trump, followed immediately by its publication in the media. It seems entirely reasonable for a president to wonder what was going on and whether the FBI director was loyal, not to the president personally, but to the confidentiality that is required in his role as head of the nation's chief investigative agency. A few more things. We had known earlier that Comey briefed Trump about the dossier one-on-one on January 6, 2017. But it was not until an interviewThursday with CNN's Jake Tapper that Comey revealed the conversation was only about the Moscow sex allegation. The other parts of the dossier -- about Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, allegations of collusion -- Comey did not mention to the president-elect. No wonder Trump associated the dossier with the Moscow sex story. We also know, from the new book Russian Roulette, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, that immediately after the first Comey meeting, Trump thought the FBI was blackmailing him:"
House Intel determined that James Clapper was in contact with CNN around the dates of their initial report on the dossier. Clapper now works for CNN
If the fake dossier (Strzok/Page's “insurance policy”) is what caused the Special Counsel, then this is probably grounds to jettison Mueller.
The dossier had been floating around media, Congressional and DOJ circles for months. This was widely talked about at the time of Buzzfeed releasing it. Creating the narrative now that it was some big secret is self serving. The LyinComey campaign is in full effect. Shame on accomplished journalists for taking the bait.
This is so rich The DNC, which rigged its own primary, is now suing the Republicans saying they rigged the election You lost, get over it!
Except that apparently Obama had to be briefed on it and Trump had to briefed on it, and apparently neither of THEM knew what was in it. And it had not been reported on until CNN got a reason to report on it. Once they could report on a private meeting where the president was made aware that the Russians "might" have "salacious materials" about him, it became a matter of national security, and the media was "forced" to run with it. But you're just going to ignore all the other issues because they don't fit YOUR narrative: Comey gets directions to speak to Trump about the dossier, saying he "deserved to know" - and yet he doesn't "deserve to know" that these people in his campaign which you guys claim were so close to him and so integral to the campaign were under investigation for all kinds of stuff. No, he only brings up the pee tape part of it. Why? Because it's the part that makes it sound like the Russians have dirt on Trump - which is the story he leaked to the media immediately after meeting with Trump to talk about it. He acknowledges that he has no way of knowing if this is true, but speculates for everyone to hear that "the Russians may have the goods on Trump and could be blackmailing him" with absolutely nothing to back it up other than a discredited partisan document that has state department fingerprints all over it. And the media response is "it's shocking we could even be speculating on this!" Well, yes it is, because there's no evidence that it's true - the shocking thing is that we're actually willing to accuse a sitting president of taking orders from the Kremlin with ZERO evidence. I have tried to be objective about this and am trying to continue to let the facts play out, but more and more you just look ridiculous trying to ignore and deflect because you're determined to believe what you want to believe, and the narrative gets more and more ridiculous. Now the media is glorifying Comey as an untouchable and above-reproach figure, all the while multiple people IN YOUR OWN PARTY are claiming he's a liar, and he seems a lot more concerned with belittling Trump's hand size than he does actually producing one whit of evidence that shows anything beyond the fact that he hates Trump, he doesn't think he should have been elected, and he wants him defeated in the next election.
