From pandering to Putin to abusing allies and ignoring his own advisers, Trump's phone calls ...

Full headline:
From pandering to Putin to abusing allies and ignoring his own advisers, Trump's phone calls alarm US officials

(CNN)In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.

The calls caused former top Trump deputies -- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials -- to conclude that the President was often "delusional," as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.

These officials' concerns about the calls, and particularly Trump's deference to Putin, take on new resonance with reports the President may have learned in March that Russia had offered the Taliban bounties to kill US troops in Afghanistan -- and yet took no action. CNN's sources said there were calls between Putin and Trump about Trump's desire to end the American military presence in Afghanistan but they mentioned no discussion of the supposed Taliban bounties.

... https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/29/politics/trump-phone-calls-national-security-concerns/index.html​

I wonder if Putin went ahead with the bounties hoping that additional US casualties would spur Bone Spurs to withdraw our forces from Afghanistan. I expect he has been anxious to make that happen during Klump's first term, since it is all too likely to be his only term, thus Putin's window for getting everything he wants from a headless US administration is closing rapidly.

I also found out today that Trump ordered our forces to abandon our Kurdish allies in Syria at the request of Erdogan ("who sometimes phoned the White House at least twice a week and was put through directly to the President on standing orders from Trump"). The orange clown and malignant narcissist was pursuing Turkish interests over American interests, because he is a clueless, self-serving dirtbag.

 

So I'm supposed to believe phone calls over the Mueller Report? And at that, these same "sources close to the conversations". We know by now what that means, it means there are no said sources. That aside, of course we should remove forces from Afghanistan, Afghanistan is neither a State nor a protectorate of the USA.

It's a waste of blood, tears and bullets. Even if the Russians occupy Afghanistan, they wouldn't be able to violate the Monroe Doctrine. If one cites the war on terror, we must finally make a decision. Either we get serious about the war, and indiscriminately target enemy combatants with the purpose of destroying their organizations.

OR, we acknowledge that Islam, as a tenant is incompatible with the United States and should thus be banned from entering our shores, as the only way to truly guarantee peace for our country. "helping them get jobs" clearly hasn't worked.

 

"To protect the anonymity of those describing the calls for this report, CNN will not reveal their job titles nor quote them at length directly. More than a dozen officials either listened to the President's phone calls in real time or were provided detailed summaries and rough-text recording printouts of the calls soon after their completion, CNN's sources said. The sources were interviewed by CNN repeatedly over a four-month period extending into June."

 

Have we come full circle and now back to the Russians are coming?

 

Bolton wrote in his book that in December 2018, at Erdogan's urging, Trump offered to interfere in an investigation by then-US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman into the Turkish bank, which was accused of violating US sanctions on Iran.

"Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people," Bolton wrote. Berman's office eventually brought an indictment against the bank in October 2019 for fraud, money laundering and other offenses related to participation in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade the US sanctions on Iran. On June 20, Trump fired Berman -- whose office is also investigating Rudy Giuliani, the President's personal lawyer -- after the prosecutor refused to resign at Attorney General William Barr's direction.

Unlike Bolton, CNN's sources did not assert or suggest specifically that Trump's calls with Erdogan might have been grounds for impeachment because of possible evidence of unlawful conduct by the President. Rather, they characterized Trump's calls with heads of state in the aggregate as evidence of Trump's general "unfitness" for the presidency on grounds of temperament and incompetence, an assertion Bolton made as well in an interview to promote his book with ABC News last week: "I don't think he's fit for office. I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job," Bolton said.​

 

I think it can now be said with conviction that Trump is Putin's 'useful idiot'.

 

I call him a Moscow Asset Grifting America. His being a useful idiot makes him a great asset indeed.

 

Its getting quite ridiculous isnt it.

 

Uh, yes, but term is widely known among intel and the body politic that 'useful idiot' is a KGB term, i.e., someone who is a fool who unwittingly helps the KGB
But I do like your commandeering of the Trump slogan.

 

I'm familiar with the origins of the term, and I certainly agree that it fits the bill. Trump is easily manipulated into thinking, saying and even doing things that the Russians want him to. The recent reporting about his constantly trying to impress Putin is disturbing, although not too surprising at this point. It's as though he is constantly seeking Putin's approval and seeking to impress him. It's the strangest thing for any American, let alone the so-called president, to be doing. He certainly has an obvious and well-known affinity for authoritarian leaders, and a corresponding disdain for his fellow democratically elected leaders from Europe and the Commonwealth (especially the female ones).

The only thing more disturbing is his ongoing support among certain Americans who just seem to be in complete denial about it all. If there is anything we should all be able to agree on, it is that Trump gets along better with authoritarian dickheads than he does the democratically elected leaders of liberal democratic countries. It seems to be due in some part to a severe lack of civics education in this country. People just don't have a proper understanding and appreciation for how the government actually works and what our national strategic interests actually are. Our schools have been failing us in this and in other areas, especially science and the kind of critical thinking and analysis that is needed for both. Perhaps we can get the next administration and the next Congress to do something about this.

 

The new Democrat motto:

When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose.

Vote Democrat 2020

 

There are definitely useful idiots at work here...

 

Are we back to Russia again?

 

We passed ridiculous years ago.

 

all leaders from other countries have to do is praise Trump and they can easily manipulate him.... sad that it is that easy

they playing Trump like a fiddle

"Putin, Saudi Crown Prince high-five at G-20 summit"

 

Yep that’s dirty donny. A bully.
Try to intimidate those you perceive as weak (even if they are your friends), and be obsequious to those you perceive as strong (even if their interests are different from yours).

The report that trump behaves this way comes as no surprise. That his supporters dismiss the report, don’t care or even approve of this behaviour is also no surprise.

The only surprise is that people inside the administration were willing to talk. And also, if they genuinely feel his behaviour is a threat to national security, that they aren’t prepared to protect the country by speaking out openly.

 

Mate how many people speaking out does it take before you believe something is wrong?

 

More than the NYT, CNN, MSNBS, and/or disgruntled fired employees that are trying desperately to grasp their 15 minutes of fame.
Undisclosed sources, unnamed individuals, sources close to, a friend of a friend heard, etc.

 

~ Yesssireee ! Here we go again ...
( CNN is full of crap )

 

if it were only one or two - maybe but this is a whole choir!

The eperor has no clothes and it is time you all saw it

 

His true believers will never see it.

This story, together with the story about Russian bounty on American military (and no response by trump) could genuinely have brought down any other president. But he has normalised incompetence and corruption to such an extent that these truly scary stories get lost in the noise of his other pathetic performance.

 

~ Trump took the spotlight and turned it around on the "fake news" networks. Of course they do not like being exposed - but it's now too late. These stories are hyped and pushed on the public to the point of nausea , and most no longer pay much attention.

 

What is more likely

hundreds of news sources across the globe are “faking it” or Trump is a liar?

 

Not mutually exclusive.

All politicians lie, but the obsession with Trump is global.

It's hysterical, and not in a good way.

World War III anyone?

Vote Democrat 2020

 

~ May as well vote Putin for 2020 !