New Zealand’s progressive new Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern strongly rejected President Donald Trump’s assessment of her recent rise to power, according to her account of their first in-person meeting at the East Asia Summit last week.
After Trump said Ardern’s win had “upset” many New Zealanders, the Labor Party leader remarked that “nobody marched” in response to her victory, as millions did all over the globe when Trump was inaugurated in January.
Ardern offered a full account of her meeting with Trump to New Zealand’s Newsroom:
At 37, Ardern became New Zealand’s second-youngest and third female prime minister in October, just three months after becoming the leader of the center-left party, when the head of the New Zealand First party announced he would support Ardern in a coalition government.
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A month earlier, New Zealand’s election had resulted in a hung parliament, with the left-leaning contingent winning 54 seats and the center-right National Party gaining 56—falling short of the 61 needed for a parliamentary majority.
Many were surprised when the anti-immigration New Zealand First party, which won nine seats, threw its support behind Ardern’s leadership, giving her enough seats to become prime minister.
During her election campaign earlier this year, Ardern focused largely on childhood poverty, environmental protection, and affordable housing.
Ardern has advocated for a drop in immigration to New Zealand by 20,000 to 30,000 per year, citing insufficient infrastructure and housing for a large influx of new arrivals. Currently, the country accepts about 70,000 annually. However, Adern also plans to double the country’s refugee quotas and offered to resettle 150 refugees currently in detention centers on Australia’s Manus Island, on humanitarian grounds.
The new prime minister was one of thousands of New Zealanders who participated in the Women’s March the day after Trump’s inauguration.
Raising concerns about possible ethics violations and corruption, the Paradise Papers revealed two top members of the Trump administration, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have ties to tax havens, and that during Ross’s confirmation hearing, he failed to disclose business dealings with Russians who are directly connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Paradise Papers are a trove of more than 13 million leaked documents, published Sunday, detailing tax avoidance and shady deals among some of the world’s richest individuals and multinational companies. The documents include decades of corporate records from the offshore law firm Appleby. They were obtained by a German newspaper and shared with journalists associated with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other media organizations.
The files show that while Tillerson, the former CEO of fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil, directed a Bermuda-based joint venture that conducted gas and oil operations in Yemen, Ross still holds stake in a shipping company that is partially owned by Putin’s son-in-law and “a Russian tycoon sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as a member of Putin’s inner circle.”
The revelations have raised concerns among lawmakers and ethics experts.
The watchdog group Common Cause has called on the Commerce Department’s inspector general to launch a full investigation into Ross’s offshore investments. The group’s president Karen Hobert Flynn said Monday, “These latest revelations are part of a disturbing pattern of Trump administration officials seeking to hide their links to Russian business interests and members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.”
The records and related reports come less than a week after it was revealed that the first federal charges were filed in the ongoing investigation into whether the Trump administration colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Richard Painter, who served as the ethics chief under former President George W. Bush and is currently vice chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said, “It’s a very, very troubling situation.”
In an episode of the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal podcast published Sunday, Painter explained, “If United States government officials have offshore entities, it may be very difficult to detect payments from foreign governments or sovereign wealth funds, and profits from dealings with those entities that are a violation of the Constitution.”
“We want good relations with China and Russia,” Painter added, “but we don’t want our senior government officials dealing with large companies in those other countries at the same time as they’re holding positions of trust in the United States government.”
Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State
In the late 1990s, before rising to the position of CEO, Tillerson served as president of Exxon Yemen as well as director of Marib Upstream Services Company, which was incorporated in Bermuda in 1997. Marib Upstream Services’ partners included the state-owned Yemen Gas Company and a company owned by ExxonMobil and the Texas-based Hunt Oil, which was run by Tillerson’s close friend Ray Hunt.
The Guardian, which received access to the records, reports ExxonMobil and Hunt Oil “ran a $5bn venture to export 61m barrels of natural gas a year from fields in Marib, western Yemen. Hunt had discovered the fields in the mid-1980s and brought in ExxonMobil to help develop them.”
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“Yemen later moved to nationalize the gas-drilling operation, banishing the ExxonMobil-Hunt firm when its 20-year exploration contract expired in 2005,” the Guardian notes. “The Texans claimed they were entitled to an extension and sued Yemen for $1.6bn. The case was arbitrated at the International Chamber of Commerce, where Yemen prevailed.”
The records reveal the details of just one instance of ExxonMobil operating subsidiaries in tax havens. Last year, Citizens for Tax Justice released a report (pdf) that found while Tillerson served as ExxonMobil’s CEO, the company’s 35 tax haven subsidiaries held an estimated $51 billion offshore.
This case is similar to one detailed in documents leaked late last year—shortly before Tillerson became the United States’ top diplomat. Those records divulged that in 1998, Tillerson directed ExxonMobil’s Russian subsidary, which was based in the Bahamas, a well known tax haven. The revelation elevated concerns about Tillerson’s commitment to U.S. interests and his ties to the Russian government and Putin, who bestowed upon him an Order of Friendship in 2013.
Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce
Ross helps to guide U.S. trade and manufacturing policies—including sanctions—as head of the Department of Commerce. When he was nominated, the billionaire investor vowed in an ethics filing that he would divest from 80 companies and partnerships, while keeping his stake in nine others that held assets in “real estate financing and mortgage lending” and “transoceanic shipping.”
Though the assests were not specified at the time, the leaked records reportedly reveal that Ross retained his stake in the shipping company Navigator Holdings, which is incorporated in the Marshall Islands and counts among its biggest customers Sibur, a Russian gas and petrochemical company.
Using information from the files, the BBC mapped Ross’s relationship to Navigator and Sibur, the company shareholders’ ties to Putin.
Ross told the BBC that he’s never met the Sibur shareholders and that because the U.S. has not sanctioned Sibur, “there’s nothing whatsoever improper about Navigator having a relationship with Sibur.” A Commerce Department spokesperson told ICIJ reporters that Ross “recuses himself from any matters focused on transoceanic shipping vessels, but has been generally supportive of the administration’s sanctions.”
Other Trump Ties
Ross and Tillerson were among several of U.S. President Donald Trump’s advisers, cabinet members, and donors who, according to the leaked records, used offshore tax havens to conduct business. While the Guardian published a report describing how several wealthy individuals with connections to the U.S. president have utilized tax havens, ICIJ illustrated 13 influencers’ ties to Trump with an interactive:
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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the opening arguments on Monday in a case that workers and labor leaders fear could deliver a serious blow to public sector unions.
In Janus vs. AFSCME, the court will reconsider its 1977 decision stating that public employees who choose not to join unions can still be required to pay partial union dues, to help fund unions’ collective bargaining negotiations, which hold benefits for all workers.
While AFSCME is the union that represents state and municipal workers, supporters fear that a decision in favor of Mark Janus—the individual plaintiff backed by a network of billionaires, corporate interests and right-wing ideologues determined to undermine organized workers—would threaten labor in all sectors across the country. As Andrew Hanna and Caitlin Emma wrote at Politico on Sunday:
Wealthy conservative donors including the Bradley Foundation and the Koch brothers have contributed to the “right to work” cause represented by Janus for decades. The National Right to Work Foundation and the Illinois Policy Institute, which represent the plaintiff, have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the groups.
Public sector unions and labor advocates including the National Education Association (NEA), Jobs with Justice, and AFSCME rallied in front of the Supreme Court on Monday, keeping up the momentum started by protests in cities across the country on Saturday’s Working People’s Day of Action.
Using the rallying call, “Unrig the system,” leaders including Sarita Gupta of Jobs with Justice spoke out at the Supreme Court against the corporate power behind efforts to weaken unions.
“This case is a culmination of years of attacks on working people,” Gupta told the crowd. “It’s an assault by wealthy elites on our freedom to create better lives and sustainable futures for our families. Greedy billionaires, divisive extremists, and the corrupt politicians who do their bidding are rigging the rules in their favor in an attempt to gain more power. And we’re not going to let that happen.”
A ruling in the Janus case is expected by June.
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An executive at Cambridge Analytica claims they ran all of President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE’s digital campaign, Britain’s Channel 4 News reported.
An executive at the company talked about how their work contributed to Trump’s win of “40,000 votes” in three states, Channel 4 News reported, according to an undercover investigation.
“We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting. We ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy,” said CEO Alexander Nix, regarding Cambridge Analytica’s work for Trump.
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Another executive, Mark Turnbull, managing director of the company’s political division, talked about how the firm could use “proxy organizations.”
“You feed them. They are civil society organizations,” he said.
“Charities or activist groups, and we use them — feed them the material and they do the work.”
“We just put information into the bloodstream, to the internet, and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again over time to watch it take shape. And so this stuff infiltrates the online community and expands but with no branding — so it’s unattributable, untrackable.”
Turnbull also discussed during a meeting creating the “Defeat Crooked Hillary” brand of attack ads, according to Channel 4. The ads were funded by Make America 1 super PAC, according to the publication.
According to Channel 4 News, Nix also talked about how the company did not leave any paper trail.
“No one knows we have it, and secondly we set our … emails with a self-destruct timer … So you send them and after they’ve been read, two hours later, they disappear. There’s no evidence, there’s no paper trail, there’s nothing,” he said, according to the publication.
Nix was suspended by the research firm’s board of directors after a video published by Channel 4 that showed him talking about the use of bribes and prostitutes to sway political elections.
The board said in a statement that Nix would be suspended pending a “full, independent investigation.”
“In the view of the Board, Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation,” the statement says.
A self-described whistleblower on Cambridge Analytica’s data harvesting practices is slated to give an interview to Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.
Facebook has been under fire since The New York Times and The Observer of London reported that Cambridge Analytica used personal data from roughly 50 million Facebook users for unauthorized political purposes. The firm reportedly received the data from a researcher.
Facebook’s stock price continued to fall Tuesday following the reports.
Shares of Facebook were down 5.7 percent by Tuesday afternoon, falling as low as $162, a nearly $10 drop. U.S. stocks on the whole gained throughout the day.
Rep. Todd RokitaTheodore (Todd) Edward RokitaBottom Line Lobbying world Female Dems see double standard in Klobuchar accusations MORE (R-Ind.), an Indiana GOP Senate candidate, called President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE in a 2016 interview “vulgar, if not profane.”
Rokita — who has worn a “Make America Great Again” hat in a TV ad and has brought a cardboard cutout of the president to campaign rallies — made the comments during a February 2016 interview with Indianapolis-based WXIN TV, according to The Associated Press.
He was talking during the interview about his support for Sen. Marco RubioMarco Antonio RubioHillicon Valley: Georgia officials launch investigation after election day chaos | Senate report finds Chinese telecom groups operated in US without proper oversight Republican Senators ask FCC to ‘clearly define’ when social media platforms should receive liability protections Trump’s tweet on protester sparks GOP backlash MORE (R-Fla.), who was a presidential candidate at the time.
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“When you see Marco contrasted with Donald Trump — I mean, someone who is vulgar, if not profane,” Rokita said in the 2016 interview.
“At some point you have to be presidential. People expect that and you see that in Marco Rubio.”
Spokesman Nathan Brand told the AP in a statement that Rokita was still “the only Republican who steadfastly supported Donald Trump against Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonWhite House accuses Biden of pushing ‘conspiracy theories’ with Trump election claim Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton qualifies to run for county commissioner in Florida MORE.”
“This is why the 2016 Trump-Pence Indiana team has expressed support for Todd,” Brand said.
Rokita donned a “Make America Great Again” hat in a recently released television ad for his Senate campaign in which he attacks his GOP primary rivals and pitches himself as a top ally to Trump.
The crowded primary between Rokita, Rep. Luke Messer (R-Ind.) and businessman Mike Braun has turned into a battle over who can show themselves as aligned the closest with Trump.
The president defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 by about 19 points in Indiana, where Vice President Pence served as governor before joining the presidential ticket.
Rokita has also highlighted critical comments Messer made of Trump during the 2016 election, a strategy Messer’s campaign has brushed aside by arguing that Messer backed the president in the primary and has always supported him.
This a breaking news development and will be updated…
“Shameful… Another stain added to our nation’s history.” —Faiza N. Ali, social justice activist
In 7-2 ruling handed down Monday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court will allow full enforcement of a ban on travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries by lifting injunctions imposed by lower courts.
As the Associated Press reports, “The ban applies to travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Lower courts had said people from those nations with a claim of a ‘bona fide’ relationship with someone in the United States could not be kept out of the country. Grandparents, cousins and other relatives were among those courts said could not be excluded.”
As the ALCU notes, the ruling does not mean the court has sided with the Trump administration on the merits of the “Muslim Ban” itself—a policy that sparked fierce protests when it was first announced earlier this year and which civil liberties advocates have widely condemned—but instead stayed orders from lower courts which said that enforcement of the ban should be on hold while the various challenges to the policy made their way through the system.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor were the two dissenting voices on the bench.
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Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, had this reaction:
Others critics of the ban were swift in expressing their disappointment, but also explained that the order does not contain anything about the court’s overall assessment of the case:
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So said Frank Clemente, executive director for Americans for Tax Fairness, in the wake of the release by the Republican conference committee of the party’s final tax plan on Friday and news that both Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Mark Rubio (R-Fl.) had ended their so-called “principled” opposition to the bill and would vote ‘Yes.’
“The myth of the deficit hawk is now dead. Next year when Republicans propose deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid under the guise of deficit reduction, we will all remember that they increased the deficit by $1.5 trillion in order to give tax cuts to millionaires and big corporations. If this bill becomes law, it will be a travesty for working families, and a slap in the face to principles.” Click Here: All Blacks Rugby Jersey—Frank Clemente, Americans for Tax FairnessAmong other details, the final bill will drop the nation’s corporate rate a full 14 percentage points, from it’s current 35% down to 21%, while also giving the nation’s richest a massive and permanent Christmas present by cutting the individual income rate from 39.6% down to 37%—a bigger giveaway, in fact, than earlier versions.
The final bill will also abolish individual mandate provision from the Affordable Care Act, which as New York Magazine‘s Eric Levitz notes, “will decrease participation in Obamacare — and thus, decrease the amount the government spends on health insurance subsidies by roughly $300 billion over the next decade. Republicans need that money to pass giant tax cuts for the rich without violating their budget resolution (which forbids them from adding more than $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years).”
Corker—the only GOP senator to vote against the Senate versions repeatedly said he would not support a bill if it would blow a gaping hole in the national deficit—as every credible analysis performed on the various versions showed.
But in the end, paving the way for a vote on the package early next week, he dropped his previous with little explanation.
“With Bob Corker’s reversal,” said Clemente, “the myth of the deficit hawk is now dead. Next year when Republicans propose deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid under the guise of deficit reduction, we will all remember that they increased the deficit by $1.5 trillion in order to give tax cuts to millionaires and big corporations. If this bill becomes law, it will be a travesty for working families, and a slap in the face to principles.”
On a conference call with Republican Party members on Friday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan indicated the votes are now there to pass the conference bill in both chambers. “This is happening,” Ryan said. “Tax reform under Republican control of Washington is happening. Most critics out there didn’t think it could happen…. Now we’re on the doorstep of something truly historic.”
But what Ryan describes as “historic,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called “a moral and economic obscenity.” The final plan, Sanders said late Friday night, “is a gift to wealthy Republican campaign contributors and an insult to the working families of our country. No member of Congress should vote for this disastrous legislation.”
In an interview with the Guardian published Saturday, Sanders explained that “what this is all about is nothing more than the Republican party very generously rewarding their wealthy campaign contributors.”
Alan Essig, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said, “This is not governing, it’s hijacking our tax code.” What is also clear now, he added, is that corporations and the rich will be served mightily if the final bill passes, but working people: “not so much.”
When the story is told about “the tax catastrophe of 2017” in the future, Essig said, “it will be the middle-class families with children who now pay higher taxes so that wealthy business owners can pay less. It will be the working people who pay more so that corporate shareholders, including foreign investors, can benefit from corporate tax cuts.”
Though Corker was only the last Republican to cave when it came to “standing on principles” about the deficit, his support for the bill opened the floodgates for critics pointing out the obvious and far-reaching hypocrisy of the entire GOP project when it comes to government and the economy.
“This tax bill is a moral and economic obscenity. It is a gift to wealthy Republican campaign contributors and an insult to the working families of our country. No member of Congress should vote for this disastrous legislation.” —Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
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“Don’t let your Uncle Bob be fooled,” wrote economist and former labor secretary Robert Reich on Saturday: “Republicans are voting for this because their wealthy patrons demand it. Their tax plan will weaken our economy for years – reducing demand, widening inequality, and increasing the national debt by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade.”
He added, “Shame on the greedy Republican backers who have engineered this. Shame on Trump and the Republicans who have lied to the pubic about its consequences.”
Melissa Boteach, vice president of the Poverty Program at the Center for American Progress, started a running list of things the GOP—now that that their anti-deficit canard is irrevocably out in the open—is “never allowed to complain about again.” Her list included:
The deficit: you can’t add $1.5T to deficit for tax cuts for millionaires & corporations then whip up deficit hysteria over Medicaid… Seriously, if GOP says “We need to cut [X program for working families] because of ‘the deficit’” & media doesn’t mention this tax bill…
“Decline of family values”: The leader of your party just endorsed an alleged pedophile to pass a tax cut. Some GOP leaders spoke out…
“Charities best equipped to help struggling families” um… your tax bill just hurt their bottom line
“We can’t afford to cut poverty” seriously after this tax bill, you NEVER get to say that again
Rubio, who did his best to garner admiration as a noble holdout, based his objections on the size of Child Tax Credit (CTC), but after he finally said he was a ‘Yes’ on Friday, tax analysts quickly showed that the apparent changes made to appease him were paltry at best.
“Republicans are voting for this because their wealthy patrons demand it. Their tax plan will weaken our economy for years – reducing demand, widening inequality, and increasing the national debt by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade.” —economist Robert ReichAccording to Chye-Ching Huang, deputy director for tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the final bill released Friday “does nothing, compared to the Senate bill, to improve the CTC for 10 million children in low-income working families—meaning that those children will get only a token increase of up to $75 per family or no increase at all.”
Overall, Huang explained, “the last-minute changes that Republican leaders made were modest and did almost nothing to change the bill’s fundamental nature. It still provides large tax cuts heavily tilted toward wealthy households and profitable corporations and adds at least $1.5 trillion to deficits over ten years while doing little if anything for millions of low- and modest-income households.”
Now, with Rubio and Corker now firmly in the ‘Yes’ column—after folding, as the Huffington Post noted, “for hardly any reason at all”—focus is now back on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), both of whom have not made a formal announcement about how they intend to vote. Two other GOP senators, John McCain of Arizona and Thad Cochran of Mississippi, are both in the hospital with health concerns but are expected to return to the Senate for a vote when the bill arrives.
Refusing to give up, national public interest and advocacy groups are targeted House members over the weekend and vowing to raise hell on Capitol Hill and in local districts nationwide next week:
Progressive opponents of the bill are also planning to join with Maine residents in the days ahead to increase the pressure on Collins. For Monday, national groups—including UltraViolet, Working Families Party, CREDO Action, and MoveOn.org—are planning a major protest outside her offices in Portland.
“Senator Collins needs to know that a vote for this tax bill is a vote against women,” said Nita Chaudhary, co-founder of UltraViolet, in a call to action. “While Collins is still undecided on the tax plan, if she votes ‘yes,’ it will give millionaires and billionaires huge tax breaks while raising taxes on everyone else and slashing programs that women rely on. Congress is headed for a final vote next week, and Senator Collins could make or break this disastrous tax plan, which is why it’s so important that we keep up the pressure until she decides her vote on the final bill.”
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Weekly Standard founder and Iraq War booster Bill Kristol has emerged in recent days as a self-styled defender of the Iranian people as their country’s anti-regime protests continue to intensify. But during a panel discussion on MSNBC Tuesday, National Iranian American Council president Trita Parsi questioned how much Kristol really cares about Iranians, given his long record of calling for military actions that would potentially leave many thousands (or even millions) of them dead.
Reacting to Kristol’s call for the U.S. to “respect the Iranian people’s desire for freedom,” Parsi said: “With all due respect, Bill, you’ve been arguing to bomb Iran for so long that I don’t know if you’re really respecting the Iranian people. You’ve been advocating killing Iranians.”
MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle attempted to come to Kristol’s defense, insisting that he is “not advocating to kill anyone, let’s make that very clear.”
“No, on the contrary, there has been all of this argument for taking military action against Iran instead of actually having the nuclear deal that has been working,” Parsi responded.
Watch:
Stephen Miles, director of Win Without War, argued following the exchange that Kristol’s history is enough to show that he “is no more qualified to speak about freedom in Iran than an arsonist is to promote fire safety.”
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Kristol is just one of a number of American neoconservatives who have jumped at the opportunity to call for U.S. intervention in Iran in the midst of growing internal tensions.
“There’s a lot of interest in terms of agitating for instability in Iran from people who are pretending to care about the Iranian people, but who actually couldn’t care less about the Iranian people.” —Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
Often portrayed as an effort to “help” the Iranian people—just as the Iraq War was framed as a fight for “democracy”—critics have argued that hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton are simply looking to exploit Iran’s domestic turmoil for their own war aims.
“Going back to 2005, 2006, the neocon slogan, after they toppled Saddam Hussein, was ‘real men go to Tehran,'” noted The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald in an interview on Democracy Now! Tuesday. “They were really most eager to facilitate regime change in Iran.”
As Common Dreams reported on Monday, President Donald Trump appeared to echo Republican warmongers in a tweet on Monday, writing emphatically, “TIME FOR CHANGE!”
Like Parsi, Greenwald interpreted this feigned concern for the freedom of Iranians as a cover for steps toward military action.
“There’s a lot of interest in terms of agitating for instability in Iran from people who are pretending to care about the Iranian people, but who actually couldn’t care less about the Iranian people,” Greenwald concluded. “Lots of Western commentators who are posturing about being concerned about human rights in Iran are people in think tanks funded by other dictatorships and repressive tyrants in the same region. So I think we ought to be extremely skeptical when it comes to people like Donald Trump or people in Washington think tanks pretending that they’re wanting to intervene in Iran out of concern for human rights or for the welfare of the Iranian people.”
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Full-blown panic, chaos and rage are being reported after all Hawaiians received emergency alerts on their cell phones, televisions and radios Saturday morning warning that a ballistic missile attack was imminent.
Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard tweeted that it was a false alarm.
President Trump was golfing at his Trump National Golf Club in Florida near his Mar-a-Lago estate when the alert was sent.
Congresswoman Gabbard told MSNBC: “Our leaders have failed us. Donald Trump is taking too long. He’s not taking this threat seriously … This is literally life and death that is at stake.”
“The people of Hawaii just got a taste of the stark reality of what we face here of a potential nuclear strike on Hawaii,” Gabbard said during a phone interview on CNN minutes after the alert was broadcast across the islands. “This is a real threat facing Hawaii,” she said.
There was no follow-up text saying it was a false alarm until 38 minutes after the original alert.
Hawaiian Governor David Ige told CNN that someone had “pressed the wrong button” during a shift change at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.
Patrick Granfield, a former strategic communications director at the Pentagon under President Obama tweeted “thank God the President was playing golf.” Granfield posted the tweet after Hawaii officials declared the emergency alert was a false alarm.
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Tweets about hawaii trump
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