TRUMP plays trump card (2): terrible LEADER

coVID-16 (corrupted VERY IMPORTANT DONALD trump- 2016) antedated covid-19

September 11, 2001: corrupted VISION of the Duress (coVID-01)

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Top Global Political Risks of 2020

The year 2020 is marked by a series of geopolitical risks affecting Europe, various regions in Asia and the United States, according to a recent report by GeoQuant, a political risk intelligence platform that uses artificial intelligence to measure and forecast political risks around the world.

According to GeoQuant's report entitled, "The Year Ahead," global political risk is forecast to decline in the first half of the year and accelerate in the second half, but overall remain under the levels reported by the same group in 2016. Analysts looked at 20 distinct fundamental political risk factors in 51 countries, measured daily, and noticed three main trends:

A scarcity in elections in key emerging and frontier markets will ensure less volatility in the global political environment.
Global trade risks and policy risks will decrease.
The world will see a "soft Brexit" and less uncertainty about political risks in the United States, despite the approaching 2020 general elections.

Overall, political risks will increase in developed markets and see a slight decrease in emerging markets, eventually accelerating. Here are the top global political risks in the year ahead, as seen by GeoQuant.

No. 1: Donald Trump Re-Election

Survei: Angela Merkel Paling Dipercaya Dunia, Trump Paling Buntut

‘Vote him out’: Trump heckled at Ruth Bader Ginsburg memorial

Trump refuses to discuss returns after report he paid only $750 in income taxes in 2016 and 2017

Presiden Trump Jalani Perawatan Covid di Rumah Sakit Militer

I’ve always been a Republican. I voted for Donald Trump, but I can’t see myself voting for him a second time

Trump’s doctor’s comments on symptoms, care spark confusion

What Bolsonaro’s COVID-19 Case Tells Us About Trump’s

Video Trump Sapa Pendukungnya di Luar RS, Dokter Mengecam Keras

Panggung Dunia Bakal Berbeda Tanpa Donald Trump

Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Says Trump Has Been an 'Economic Disaster'

According to GeoQuant, current U.S. President Donald Trump getting re-elected in 2020 constitutes one of the main global political risks of the year, a finding that follows a similar forecast released earlier this year. This is a very likely scenario, say analysts from the New York-based firm, although GeoQuant couldn’t yet factor in the potential impact of a Democratic candidate, as his or her name is not yet known.

GeoQuant also measured government instability in the U.S., which is projected to decline in 2020: “Although U.S. Government Instability Risk hit a historic peak around Trump’s impeachment by the Democratic-led House of Representatives in Dec. 2019, by (Nov. 3 of) 2020 the indicator is currently projected to retreat below levels surrounding the 2016 presidential election -- when incumbent Democrats lost the presidency to the GOP/Trump -- as well as the 2018 midterms, when Trump’s GOP lost control of the House but held the Senate,” the analysis firm says in the report. The current administration is unlikely to lose the 2020 presidential elections, according to GeoQuant analysts.

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marketwatch: The historian who is known affectionately as the granddaddy of presidential prediction models says that Democratic presumptive nominee Joe Biden is a shoo-in to win the 2020 presidential race.

The American University historian Allan Lichtman’s predictions are something worth paying attention to because he has forecast accurately every election since 1984, including President Donald Trump’s stunning victory in 2016 over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

In an op-ed video with the New York Times published on Wednesday, Lichtman’s model, as per usual, outlines his 13 keys to the White House that now lead him to believe that Biden is on track to secure a victory at the Nov. 3 election.

This time around, Lichtman’s prognostications should come as no surprise given national polls indicate that Biden command’s a substantial lead over the incumbent president.

Biden at 49.4% holds a 7 percentage point lead over Trump at 42.4%, according to a national poll average by Real Clear Politics.

Lichtman says Biden leads Trump on seven of the 13 true-or-false criteria he looks at to assess the ultimate winner of the race to the White House, which includes factors such as the economy, foreign policy, scandals, social unrest and even the charisma of the candidate and the health of the economy.

To be sure, the model is not scientific but Lichtman’s results deserve attention if only for the novelty of seeing how his forecast plays out.

Recently, Trump via Twitter has been pushing his economic and market prowess as factors that he hopes can lead him to a victory in November. On Monday, he claimed that a record high for the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.52%, achieved in the wake of the carnage wrought by the pandemic, would all “come crashing down” if Biden wins the election.

The Nasdaq has soared nearly 60% since hitting a March 23 low and has booked 30 record highs so far in 2020, while the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.64% has climbed 48% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.39%, has climbed by about 46% over the same period.

Still, the success of the stock market isn’t likely to be enough to secure a win for Trump. Strategists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. have made the case that a win for the former vice president would be a “neutral to slight positive” for stocks.

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(CNN)The commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration on Sunday declined to defend President Donald Trump's unfounded claim that 99% of coronavirus cases are "totally harmless" and repeatedly refused to say whether Trump's remark is true or false.

"I'm not going to get into who is right and who is wrong," Dr. Stephen Hahn, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union."

During his remarks Saturday at the White House Independence Day event, Trump claimed without evidence that 99% of coronavirus cases "are totally harmless."

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 35% of cases are asymptomatic, but even people with mild or no symptoms can spread the virus to others.

While the World Health Organization has said the global fatality rate is likely less than 1%, the WHO also said about 20% of all people who are diagnosed with coronavirus are sick enough to need oxygen or hospital care.

"I totally support the CDC and the information that they're putting out with respect to this pandemic," Hahn said Sunday.

Hahn said the coronavirus pandemic is "a rapidly evolving situation" but stressed that the US "absolutely must take this seriously."

Pressed by Bash on the program whether the President's comment is true or false, Hahn again did not defend the President's claim.

"What I'll say is that we have data in the White House task force. Those data show us that this is a serious problem. People need to take it seriously," Hahn said.

There have been more than 2.8 million cases of coronavirus in the United States and at least 129,000 people in the US have died, according to Johns Hopkins University's latest tally.

Trump celebrated the Fourth of July at Mount Rushmore on Friday and at the White House's "Salute to America" on Saturday, where many attendees were seen neither socially distancing nor wearing masks at both events.

"if you don't follow local and state guidelines about what to do, if you're not following the CDC and White House task force guidelines, you are putting yourselves and you're putting your loved ones at risk," Hahn said.

Asked if he was uncomfortable by the President holding those events that put Americans at risk, Hahn said the circumstances are different.

"I think in terms of that specific instance at the White House, it's important for everyone to remember that it's a different set of circumstances. People are tested regularly. The President is tested regularly," Hahn said.

Hahn was also questioned about the President's recent doubling down in a Fox Business interview of his belief that coronavirus will "sort of just disappear."

"No, we're seeing the surge in cases, particularly across the Sun Belt. And so this virus is still with us," the FDA commissioner told CNN.

'Too early to tell' if Florida is safe for GOP convention

Hahn said it is "too early to tell" whether Florida will be a safe place for the Republican National Convention next month amid a surge of Covid-19 cases there.

"We'll have to see how this unfolds in Florida and around the country," Hahn said.

Florida set an all-time record of the most coronavirus cases in the US in a single day on Saturday, with a total of 11,458 cases, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Republican National Committee spokesman Mike Reed told CNN the party is committed to holding the convention in Florida but will be conducting temperature checks and have testing available to attendees.

"The RNC is committed to holding a safe convention that fully complies with local health regulations in place at the time. The event is still almost two months away, and we are planning to offer health precautions including but not limited to temperature checks, available (personal protective equipment), aggressive sanitizing protocols, and available COVID-19 testing," Reed said in a statement.

Reed added that the RNC will continue to coordinate with local leadership in Jacksonville and state of Florida.

"We will continue to work with state and local officials to ensure the safety of all attendees. The President is looking forward to a great celebration," Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said in a statement provided to CNN.

The convention is slated for August 24-27 in Jacksonville, Florida, and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Trump will accept the nomination this year in Jacksonville, which implemented mandatory face mask requirements last week due to the spike in infections, but the Republican National Committee is contractually obligated to hold a portion of its convention in Charlotte.

The President's reelection team selected the Sunshine State as the new location for much of the convention after sparring with officials in North Carolina over convention size and social distancing requirements.

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Bisnis.com, JAKARTA – Pergerakan tiga indeks saham utama di bursa Wall Street Amerika Serikat serempak anjlok pada awal perdagangan hari ini, Kamis (11/6/2020), di tengah kekhawatiran soal prospek ekonomi.

Berdasarkan data Bloomberg, indeks saham acuan S&P 500 turun tajam 2,53 persen atau 80,76 poin ke level 3.109,38 pada pukul 09.11 pagi waktu New York.

Sementara itu indeks Dow Jones Industrial Average tersungkur 3,33 persen atau 898,41 poin ke posisi 26.091,58 dan indeks Nasdaq Composite merosot 1,78 persen atau 178,13 poin ke level 9.842,22.

Indeks S&P 500 bergerak menuju koreksi hari ketiga, dengan 480 sahamnya terbenam di zona merah. Saham maskapai penerbangan, operator kapal pesiar, dan perusahaan perjalanan yang melonjak dalam beberapa pekan terakhir kini tertekan.

Sementara itu, saham perusahaan energi, keuangan, dan industri mendorong penurunan pada awal perdagangan hari ini.

Meski aksi jual saham sedikit banyak disebabkan profit taking pascapenguatan baru-baru ini, sentimen pasar memburuk dengan meningkatnya tanda-tanda gelombang kedua virus corona (Covid-19) yang bisa terjadi di beberapa negara bagian.

Baca Juga : Dolar AS Melemah Tunggu Putusan The Fed, Dow Jones Koreksi

Di sisi lain, klaim pengangguran AS tetap tinggi sehingga menggarisbawahi tantangan jangka panjang yang disebabkan oleh pandemi virus mematikan tersebut.

Menurut data Departemen Tenaga Kerja AS, klaim pengangguran awal mencapai 1,54 juta orang untuk pekan yang berakhir pada 6 Juni, lebih rendah dari 1,9 juta pada pekan sebelumnya.

Permohonan untuk jaminan pengangguran telah turun secara konsisten setiap pekan sejak memuncak pada akhir Maret. Namun, volume pengajuan secara mingguan masih lebih dari dua kali lipat raihan pada pekan terburuk selama periode Great Recession.

Baca Juga : Indeks Harga Konsumen AS Turun 0,1 Persen pada Mei

Laporan itu dirilis sehari setelah bank sentral Federal Reserve menyampaikan pandangan yang suram bagi perekonomian. Gubernur The Fed Jerome Powell mengatakan pemulihan ekonomi akibat pandemi Covid-19 akan berlangsung lama.

Dalam pertemuan kebijakan yang berakhir Rabu (10/6) waktu setempat, The Fed memutuskan mempertahankan kisaran target bunga acuan 0 - 0,25 persen dan berkomitmen menggunakan seluruh instrumen untuk memulihkan perekonomian dari pandemi itu.

“Ada ketidakpastian yang sangat besar. Pasar melihat The Fed mengatakan tentang kekhawatiran. Pesan itu masih merupakan pesan yang cukup suram bagi investor,” tutur Ahli Strategi Portofolio Multi-Aset di New York Life Investments, Lauren Goodwin, dikutip dari Bloomberg, Kamis (11/6/2020).

Sejalan dengan Wall Street, indeks Stoxx Europe 600 terjungkal 2,9 persen dan indeks MSCI Asia Pacific anjlok 2,1 persen. Harga minyak mentah West Texas Intermediate pun terjerembap 7,4 persen menjadi US$36,65 per barel.

Sebaliknya, aset safe haven yen Jepang terapresiasi 0,2 persen ke posisi 106,94 per dolar AS dan Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index melompat 0,6 persen.

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Bisnis.com, JAKARTA — Aksi protes akibat pembunuhan warga kulit hitam George Floyd dan perjuangan yang berkelanjutan melawan pandemi Covid-19 telah membuat popularitas Presiden Donald Trump di 270 basis suara pemilih yang dia butuhkan untuk memenangkan masa jabatan kedua anjlok.

Serangkaian jajak pendapat di negara bagian yang dirilis Rabu (3/6/2020) membuat kenyataan tersebut kian jelas. Padahal, pemilihan presiden masih 152 hari lagi, yakni pada 3 November 2020.

"Hasil jajak pendapat Fox News di Arizona menunjukkan Joe Biden memimpin Trump 46% melawan 42%. Sementara itu, jajak pendapat Fox News di Ohio menempatkan Biden pada posisi 45% dan 43% untuk Trump," seperti dikutip CNN.com, Jumat (5/6/2020).

Baca Juga : Kasus Floyd: Mantan Menhan Ajak Warga AS Bersatu Tanpa Trump

Jajak pendapat Fox News di Wisconsin 49% untuk Biden dan Trump di 40%. Sementara itu, hasil jajak pendapat Universitas Quinnipiac di Texas memenangkan Trump 44% dan Biden 43%.

Partai Demokrat terakhir yang memenangkan Arizona di tingkat presiden adalah Bill Clinton pada 1996. Di Texas, Demokrat kalah sejak Jimmy Carter memenangkannya pada Pilpres 1976.

Di sisi lain, negara bagian Ohio adalah salah satu negara paling sulit ditentukan (swing voter) dalam pemilihan presiden pada awal abad ini, tetapi bergerak ke arah Trump pada 2016 dan meraih kemenangan 8 poin.

Sementara itu, Wisconsin secara luas dipandang sebagai negara yang paling mungkin Trump membalikkan kondisi 2016 untuk kembali mendukungnya.

Polling di Pennsylvania dan Michigan, dua negara bagian yang dikuasai Demokrat lainnya dan dimenangkan Trump pada 2016, menunjukkan popularitasnya berada di belakang Biden saat ini.

Menurut tabulasi yang dibuat oleh CNN, kampanye Trump telah menghabiskan lebih dari US$1 juta untuk iklan di Ohio, Wisconsin, dan Arizona sejak awal tahun. Artinya, bahkan dengan iklan Trump yang dipancarkan ke layar TV mereka, pemilih di negara-negara tersebut tidak akan terpengaruh.

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TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Mantan Menhan Amerika, Jim Mattis, menyampaikan banyak hal terkait penanganan unjuk rasa kematian George Floyd oleh Presiden Donald Trump . Salah satunya, Ia menyebut pelibatan militer di unjuk rasa itu mengingatkan dia soal perbedaan Nazi dan Amerika pada Perang Dunia II.

"Slogan Nazi untuk mengalahkan kita adalah 'Pecah Belah dan Taklukkan', sementara Amerika memiliki slogan 'Di Balik Persatuan ada Kekuatan'," ujar Mattis sebagaimana dikutip dari kantor berita Reuters, Kamis, 4 Juni 2020.

Mattis menjelaskan, maksud dari ucapan dia adalah jangan sampai penanganan unjuk rasa George Floyd malah memecah belah warga dan militer. Menurutnya, keduanya adalah satu kesatuan, sama-sama bagian dari Amerika.

Melibatkan militer untuk meredam unjuk rasa George Floyd, kata Mattis, berpotensi menimbulkan perpecahan yang tidak perlu tersebut. Dia menyayangkan sikap Presiden Donald Trump yang menganggap keterlibatan militer sebagai solusi atas unjuk rasa yang terjadi.

"Kita harus membuang pemikiran apapun yang menganggap kota di Amerika adalah medan perang," ujar Mattis. Sebelumnya, penerus Mattis di Kementerian Pertahanan, Mark Esper, menggunakan kata 'Battlespace' (medan perang) untuk menyinggung situasi di Amerika.

Sebagaimana diberitakan sebelumnya, aksi unjuk rasa yang banyak terjadi di Amerika saat ini adalah imbas dari kematian George Floyd. Floyd adalah warga kulit hitam di Minneapolis, Minnesota yang meninggal setelah kepolisian setempat menindih lehernya dengan lutut pekan lalu.

Hingga berita ini ditulis, unjuk rasa sudah berlangsung lebih dari sepekan. Beberapa di antaranya berujung kerusuhan dan penjarahan di mana warga bertarung dengan aparat keamanan. Merespon hal tersebut, Trump berkeinginan untuk melibatkan personil militer yang ditentang berbagai gubernur negara bagian.

Di Washington DC, Trump telah menerjunkan 1600 personil militer. Walau mereka hanya berjaga-jaga, berbagai pihak khawatir Trump pada akhirnya akan menggunakan kekuatan militer tersebut untuk meredam unjuk rasa.

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washington post (05/04/2020): Trump’s claim that no president has been treated worse than he came in response to a question from a supporter named Carolyn Perkins, a retired nurse and elementary school guidance counselor.

“The question I have is about your manner of presentation,” Perkins said. “Why do you use descriptive words that could be classified as bullying? And why do you not directly answer the questions asked by the press but instead speak of past successes and generally ramble? The U.S.A. needs you. Please let go of those behaviors that are turning people away from you. Please hold on to your wonderful attributes that make you our great leader and let go of other characteristics that do not serve you.”

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. health official Anthony Fauci will not testify next week to a congressional committee examining the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, the White House said on Friday, calling it “counterproductive” to have individuals involved in the response testify.

The White House issued an emailed statement after a spokesman for the House of Representatives committee holding the hearing said the panel had been informed by Trump administration officials that Fauci had been blocked from testifying.

“While the Trump administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counter-productive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at congressional hearings,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement. “We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time.”

Fauci’s testimony was being sought for a May 6 hearing by a House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health programs, said spokesman Evan Hollander. The Washington Post first reported that Fauci would not testify.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been one of the leading medical experts helping to guide the U.S. response to the highly contagious virus that has swept across the United States.

Trump has repeatedly clashed with the Democratic-controlled House over its moves to investigate his actions or those of his administration.

In recent days, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer have urged wide-ranging investigations into Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed tens of thousands of Americans.

Democrats have criticized Trump, saying he has failed to develop a comprehensive and effective plan for testing Americans for the coronavirus and tracing contacts of those who are infected by the virus that causes the sometimes fatal COVID-19 respiratory disease.

Fauci, 79, has had a respectful but sometimes complicated relationship with Trump.

The well-regarded doctor has at times corrected or contradicted the president at White House briefings or in press interviews on issues such as the time required to develop a vaccine and the likelihood that the coronavirus will return in the fall.

Trump has occasionally shown exasperation with Fauci but ultimately has followed, largely, the advice that he and Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus task force coordinator, have provided on responding to the pandemic.

Last month, the White House said Trump was not firing Fauci despite his retweet of a supporter’s #FireFauci message.

At the time, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said: “Dr. Fauci has been and remains a trusted adviser to President Trump.”

Aides to Fauci were not immediately available to comment on the House committee’s desire to have him testify.

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KONTAN.CO.ID - WASHINGTON. Presiden Donald Trump mengatakan, ia menghadapi keputusan terbesar sehubungan dengan kapan akan membuka kembali ekonomi Amerika Serikat (AS) dari penutupan akibat pandemi virus corona baru.

Berbicara dalam briefing tentang perkembangan wabah virus corona di Gedung Putih, Trump mengatakan, dia akan mengangkat sekelompok penasihat baru pekan depan depan yang akan fokus pada proses pembukaan ekonomi AS.

Trump, yang menghadapi kritik karena mengecilkan ancaman virus corona pada tahap awal, telah luluh akibat dampak ekonomi yang menghancurkan dari langkah-langkah jarak sosial ketat yang pemerintahannya rekomendasikan.

Baca Juga: Kasus kematian corona mencapai 100.000 melampaui wabah besar London tahun 1660-an

Pedoman jarak sosial tersebut akan tetap berlaku sampai akhir April. Trump harus memutuskan, apakah akan memperpanjang orang-orang tetap di rumah atau mulai mendorong untuk kembali bekerja dan hidup yang lebih normal.

"Saya harus membuat keputusan, dan saya berharap kepada Tuhan bahwa itu adalah keputusan yang tepat," kata Trump, Jumat (10/4), seperti dikutip Reuters. "Itu keputusan terbesar yang pernah saya buat".

Trump menyebutkan, fakta akan menentukan langkah selanjutnya, meskipun ia menegaskan kembali keinginannya untuk membuka kembali perekonomian. Metrik apa yang akan dia gunakan untuk membuat penilaian? Iia menunjuk ke dahinya: "Metrik di sini, itu metrik saya."

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The White House held dozens of meetings about coronavirus response that excluded government experts because the discussions were unnecessarily classified over the objections of HHS Secretary Alex Azar, reports Reuters. Experts were not just barred from speaking openly about what we knew about the emerging pandemic. Apparently, they weren’t even allowed in the room.

“It is not normal to classify discussions about a response to a public health crisis,” an unnamed official from the Republican George W. Bush administration told the wire service. Yet this is President Trump’s approach to nearly every public health and environmental threat: find some way to exclude the experts, stop them from speaking publicly, and make decisions in a vacuum. The deliberate sidelining of public health experts and science leads to bad policy, and ultimately, to more sickness and death.

Instead of prioritizing transparency and facts, the White House is choosing secrecy and confusing contradictions. This has likely allowed the coronavirus to spread more quickly and widely in the United States, with massive consequences for the entire US population and especially for those who contract the disease, plus all of the collateral damage that comes with this kind of large-scale disruption.

People are desperate for accurate and up-to-date information about this pandemic, and CDC experts are doing their best. But their work is in spite of the administration, not in concert with it.

Every day without full transparency means we are less prepared and more vulnerable. Scientists must be at the table to help slow the spread of coronavirus, and they should be able to share what they know without being subject to political control.

I urge all scientists to add their signature to this letter urging the White House to let us hear directly from the experts.

Michael Halpern is the program manager of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

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KONTAN.CO.ID - NEW YORK. Situasi wabah virus corona di Amerika Serikat akan menjadi lebih buruk. Hal itu diungkapkan oleh Dr Anthony Fauci, direktur Institut Nasional Alergi dan Penyakit Menular. Dia menjelaskan, virus ini membunuh orang pada tingkat yang lebih tinggi dari itu flu.

"Ini 10 kali lebih mematikan daripada flu musiman," kata Fauci kepada Komite Pengawasan dan Reformasi DPR di Washington DC seperti yang dikutip Al Jazeera.

Menurutnya, tingkat kematian untuk flu musiman sekitar 0,1%. Ketika semua kasus yang mungkin dipertimbangkan, virus corona memiliki tingkat kematian sekitar 1%.

Baca Juga: Pidato Donald Trump: AS dalam waktu cepat akan mengalahkan virus corona

Menurut laporan yang diterima Al Jazeera, virus corona telah menginfeksi lebih dari 1.000 orang dan sudah ditemukan di sekitar 40 negara bagian AS. Setidaknya 31 orang telah meninggal karena penyakit ini di Amerika.

Ketika ditanya oleh anggota komite apakah virus itu diharapkan menyebar lebih jauh, Fauci menjawab: "Ya, benar."

Pihak berwenang di tingkat negara bagian dan lokal telah mengambil langkah untuk menghentikan penyebaran virus, termasuk pembatalan pertemuan besar. Calon-calon presiden dari Partai Demokrat, mantan Wakil Presiden Joe Biden dan Senator Bernie Sanders keduanya membatalkan rapat umum di Cleveland.

Baca Juga: AS salahkan China soal wabah corona, tuding China tutupi dan dunia telat merespons

Sementara itu, Gubernur Washington Jay Inslee pada hari Rabu melarang pertemuan lebih dari 250 orang dan mengatakan ia mungkin akan segera menutup sekolah untuk memperlambat penyebaran virus corona.

Namun Fauci mengingatkan, penyebaran virus oleh komunitas telah melampaui upaya yang dilakukan pemerintah AS.

"Seberapa buruk nantinya akan sangat tergantung pada kemampuan kita untuk melakukan dua hal: menahan masuknya orang-orang terinfeksi yang datang dari luar, dan kemampuan untuk menahan dan mengurangi di dalam negara kita sendiri," katanya.

Tantangan lainnya adalah AS menghadapi kekurangan alat uji untuk virus. Direktur Pusat Pengendalian dan Pencegahan Penyakit Dr Robert Redfield mengatakan selama dengar pendapat bahwa sistem kesehatan masyarakat AS dapat menguji sekitar 75.000 orang.

Tanggapan pemerintah

Presiden Donald Trump telah menghadapi kritik atas upaya pemerintahannya terhadap penanganan virus tersebut. Menyusul penurunan bersejarah di bursa AS pada hari Senin, Trump mengumumkan serangkaian langkah dan proposal untuk memerangi dampak ekonomi dari virus tersebut.

Baca Juga: Tangkal corona, Presiden Trump batasi warga eropa yang akan ke AS mulai Jumat besok

Pasar global terus naik, untuk kemudian turun secara dramatis di hari-hari berikutnya.

Trump mengatakan pada konferensi pers pada Senin malam bahwa turbulensi pasar saham adalah "sangat, sangat dramatis dan AS memiliki ekonomi yang hebat. "Kita memiliki ekonomi yang kuat, tetapi ini mengaburkan dunia dan saya pikir kami telah menanganinya dengan sangat, sangat baik," ujarnya.

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KONTAN.CO.ID - NEW YORK. Indeks bursa Wall Street kembali tersungkur. Bahkan, perdagangan di tiga indeks utama Wall Street dihentikan beberapa saat setelah bel pembukaan pada Kamis (12/3).

Reuters melaporkan, perdagangan dihentikan beberapa saat setelah indeks S&P 500 tergelincir 7%, memicu penghentian otomatis selama 15 menit, untuk kedua kalinya di minggu ini.

Baca Juga: Pidato Donald Trump: AS dalam waktu cepat akan mengalahkan virus corona

Indeks Dow Jones Industrial Average turun 1.696,31 poin atau 7,20% ke 21.856,91 pada pembukaan Kamis (12/3). Indeks S&P 500 anjlok 192,33 poin atau 7,02% menjadi 2.549,05, indeks Nasdaq Composite turun 558,80 poin atau 7,03% ke 7,393.25.

Wabah corona yang meluas di Amerika Serikat (AS) menjadi sentimen utama yang menekan pasar saham. Ditambah lagi, Organisasi Kesehatan Dunia (WHO) menaikkan status wabah corona menjadi pandemi karena bisa menyerang siapa saja dan negara mana saja di dunia.

Saat ini wabah corona telah menyebar dan menjangkiti setidaknya 114 negara.

Baca Juga: Donald Trump: Yang terjadi sekarang bukan krisis keuangan!

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday sentenced President Donald Trump’s long-time adviser Roger Stone to three years and four months in prison and said his lies to lawmakers investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election posed a threat to American democracy.

After U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced the veteran Republican operative in Washington, Trump indicated he has no immediate plans to pardon Stone and would let the legal process play out, while adding that “at some point I’ll make a determination.”

“I personally think he was treated very unfairly,” Trump said in Las Vegas.

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warta ekonomi: Proses pemakzulan Presiden Amerika Serikat (AS) Donald Trump telah memasuki babak baru. Sebuah persidangan akan digelar di Senat guna menentukan apakah Trump patut dilengserkan dari jabatannya atau tidak. Ketua Mahkamah Agung AS John Roberts akan menjadi tokoh sentral dalam proses tersebut.

Roberts dipastikan memimpin persidangan pemakzulan Trump di Senat AS. Dia akan memiliki peran simbolis dari pejabat ketua. Sementara para senator memberikan suaranya dalam voting.

Senat AS beranggotakan 100 orang. Trump dapat dimakzulkan jika 67 persen anggota Senat mendukung tindakan tersebut. Banyak pihak telah berspekulasi bahwa Trump dapat lolos dari dakwaan penyalahgunaan kekuasaan seperti yang dilayangkan House of Representative AS. Sebab Senat dikuasai Partai Republik.

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Terlepas dari hal itu, Roberts selaku tokoh yang akan memimpin persidangan, memiliki hubungan yang kurang harmonis dengan Trump. Dalam pesan akhir tahun 2018, dia mengisyaratkan perselisihannya dengan Trump di masa lalu.

Dia mengatakan peradilan independen adalah sumber utama persatuan dan stabilitas nasional. Roberts meminta rekan-rekannya sesama hakim untuk mempromosikan kepercayaan publik dan mengadili tanpa rasa takut atau bermurah hati.

Pada November 2018, Roberts sempat menentang pernyataan dan kritik Trump terhadap pengadilan federal AS. Trump diketahui berulang kali mengkritik para hakim yang memutuskan menolak serta memblokir kebijakan pemerintahannya. Dalam hal tersebut, Roberts membela pengadilan serta para hakim.

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Dia pun sempat mencemaskan tentang politik hiper-partisan di bawah pemerintahan Trump. "Ketika Anda tinggal di lingkungan politik yang terpolarisasi, orang cenderung melihat segala sesuatu dalam istilah itu. Bukan itu fungsi kami di pengadilan," ujarnya.

Mereka yang mengenal Roberts, termasuk mantan panitera, mengatakan bahwa dia akan mengambil perannya sebagai pemimpin sidang di Senat dengan sungguh-sungguh. Sebagai ahli sejarah, Roberts kemungkinan membaca persidangan pemakzulan sebelumnya dari mantan presiden AS Andrew Johnson dan Bill Clinton.

Roberts dikenal karena pendekatannya yang hati-hati dan teliti dalam kasus-kasus besar. Saat persidangan di Senat berlangsung, tugas utama Roberts adalah menjaga semua proses tetap pada jalurnya.

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Namun, dia dapat diminta untuk memutuskan apakah saksi tertentu harus dihadirkan dalam persidangan. Jika mayoritas Senat tak sepakat dengan keputusan Roberts, mereka dapat memilih membatalkan keputusannya.

Profesor dari Washington University School of Law di St Louis Neil Richards yakin Roberts akan mengemban tugasnya dengan baik.

"Cara dia mendekati karier peradilannya hingga saat ini: melakukan yang terbaik untuk bersikap tak memihak, melakukan yang terbaik untuk menjaga martabat kantor peradilannya," ujarnya.

House of Representative AS yang dikuasai Demokrat telah mengadopsi dua pasal pemakzulan terhadap Trump pada 18 Desember lalu. Pasal pertama tentang penyalahgunaan kekuasaan yang disetujui 230 anggota dan ditolak 197 lainnya.

Kemudian pasal kedua adalah tentang upaya Trump menghalangi penyelidikan yang dilakukan Kongres. Sebanyak 229 anggota mendukung pasal tersebut, sementara 198 lainnya memutuskan sebaliknya.

Soal penyalahgunaan kekuasaan, Trump dituding menekan Presiden Ukraina Volodymyr Zelensky untuk menyelidiki kandidat calon presiden AS dari Partai Demokrat Joe Biden dan anaknya Hunter Biden. Mereka diduga melakukan praktik bisnis korup saat bekerja di perusahaan gas Ukraina, Burisma.

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Trump disebut ingin menyisihkan Biden sebagai rivalnya dalam Pilpres AS tahun ini. Dengan demikian peluangnya untuk terpilih kembali sebagai presiden terbuka lebar.

Guna memuluskan rencananya, Tump menekan Zelensky dengan mengancam akan membekukan dana bantuan militer sebesar 400 juta dolar AS untuk Ukraina. Trump telah berulang kali membantah tuduhan terkait hal tersebut.

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Jakarta, CNN Indonesia -- Anggota Senat Amerika Serikat mengangkat sumpah untuk menjadi juri dalam proses sidang pemakzulan Presiden Donald Trump yang akan dimulai pekan depan.

Hakim Agung AS, John Roberts, memimpin upacara pengangkatan sumpah para senator tersebut pada Kamis (16/1) waktu setempat.

"Apakah kalian bersumpah atas segala yang berkaitan dengan sidang pemakzulan Donald John Trump, Presiden Amerika Serikat, yang sekarang tertunda, kalian akan menerapkan keadilan imparsial berdasarkan Konstitusi dan hukum, dengan pertolongan Tuhan?" kata Robert.

Para senator menjawab, "Ya."

Lihat juga:

DPR AS Akhirnya Kirim Berkas Pemakzulan Trump ke Senat

Mereka lantas membubuhkan tanda tangan di atas buku yang memastikan kembali sumpah mereka.

Ketua Senat, Mitch McConnell, kemudian menunda sidang hingga Selasa (21/1) pukul 13.00 waktu setempat.

Sebelum pengangkatan sumpah ini, Ketua Komite Intelijen Dewan Perwakilan AS, Adam Schiff, membacakan dua dakwaan terpisah atas Trump, yaitu dugaan penyalahgunaan kekuasaan dan upaya menghalangi Kongres.

Lihat juga:

Sidang Pemakzulan Trump Digelar Selasa Pekan Depan

Trump diduga sengaja menahan bantuan pertahanan untuk Ukraina sebesar US$391 juta antara Juli sampai September 2019.

Ia melakukan hal itu diduga untuk menekan Presiden Ukraina, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, agar mengabulkan permintaan Trump untuk mengusut dugaan korupsi mantan anggota dewan komisaris perusahaan energi Burisma, Hunter Biden.

Hunter adalah anak bakal calon presiden Partai Demokrat, Joe Biden. Trump diduga ingin menjegal langkah Biden yang merupakan salah satu pesaingnya dalam pemilihan presiden 2020.

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Bisnis.com, JAKARTA - Pasal pemakzulan yang menuduh Presiden Donald Trump melakukan penyalahgunaan kekuasaan dan menghalangi penyelidikan oleh DPR dikirim ke Senat kemarin waktu setempat, sehingga memungkinkan pengadilan bersejarah mengancam pemimpin AS dari kursi kekuasaannya.

Ketua Senat asal Partai Republik, Mitch McConnell mengumumkan bahwa pasal-pasal itu dibacakan di depan majelis pada Kamis siang (17:00 GMT), setelah ketua Mahkamah Agung John Roberts dilantik untuk memimpin persidangan.

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Lupakan Sejenak Perang Dagang, Pemakzulan Trump Membara di AS

Alasan utama DPR AS, yang dipimpin Pelosi, melakukan penyelidikan pemakzulan pada Trump adalah panggilan telepon yang dilakukan Trump dengan Presiden Ukraina Volodymyr Zelensky pada 25 Juli lalu.

Dalam kesempatan itu Trump meminta Zelensky melakukan penyelidikan yang menargetkan Joe Biden putranya Hunter Biden.

Joe Biden merupakan mantan presiden di era Barack Obama. Perwakilan utama dari Demokrat itu berniat melenggang ke pemilu presiden 2020 melawan Trump.

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Sabar ya, 'Perang' AS-China Makin Kabur Endingnya

Banyak pihak percaya alasan Trump melakukan ini adalah untuk memastikan kemenangannya di pemilu tahun depan.

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Bisnis.com, JAKARTA - Tindakan Presiden Amerika Serikat (AS) Donald Trump mendorong Ukraina melakukan penyelidikan demi keuntungan politik merupakan pelanggaran yang tidak dapat ditolerir, menurut para ahli hukum konstitusional yang menjadi saksi ahli di depan Kongres AS kemarin.

Kesaksian itu merupakan dasar pertimbangan untuk tuduhan formal terhadap Trump.

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Tiga profesor hukum yang dipilih oleh Partai Demokrat termasuk Jonathan Turley dari George Washington University menegaskan bahwa mereka percaya tindakan Trump merupakan pelanggaran yang tidak dapat ditolerir.

Kesalahan itu termasuk penyalahgunaan kekuasaan, penyuapan, menghalangi kerja Kongres dan penegakan keadilan.

Kesaksian para saksi kunci merupakan inti dari upaya Partai Demokrat untuk memakzulkan Trump. Akan tetapi, seorang profesor hukum yang dipilih oleh Partai Republik tidak setuju.

Dia mengatakan penyelidikan pemakzulan yang dipimpin Partai Demokrat adalah "omong kosong" dan "terburu-buru" selain tidak memiliki kesaksian dari orang-orang dengan pengetahuan langsung tentang peristiwa yang relevan.

Dia menambahkan bahwa bukti tidak menunjukkan Trump melakukan "tindak pidana.

Ketika Trump menuju kemungkinan pemakzulan di DPR yang dikontrol oleh Partai Demokrat, sejumlah anggota parlemen Republik berulang kali mencoba untuk mengganggu persidangan dengan mengajukan keberatan.

Penyelidikan pemakzulan diluncurkan pada September lalu dengan fokus pada permintaan Trump di Ukraina untuk melakukan investigasi yang dapat membahayakan saingan politiknya Joe Biden dari Partai Demokrat.

Pendukung Trump mengatakan upaya pemakzulan dimotivasi oleh perasaan Partai Demokrat yang membenci Trump sejak dia memenangkan pemilu 2016.

Sidang tersebut bertujuan memeriksa apakah tindakan Trump memenuhi syarat sebagai kejahatan berat yang dapat dihukum dengan pemakzulan berdasarkan Konstitusi AS.

Sebuah panel kemudian akan membuat rancangan pasal pemakzulan dakwaan formal terhadap Trump. Jika DPR menyetujui dakwaan itu, maka Senat kemudian akan mengadakan pengadilan tentang apakah akan memakzukal Trump.

Sementara itu, Trump membantah melakukan kesalahan ketika berada di London untuk pertemuan NATO seperti dikutip Reuters, Kamis (5/12/2019), Trump menyebut pemakzulan sebagai "lelucon" dan mempertanyakan patriotisme Partai Demokrat.

Dia malah bertanya apakah mereka sebenarnya mencintai negaranya.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s actions to prod Ukraine to pursue investigations that could benefit him politically represent impeachable offenses, constitutional law experts called by Democrats testified to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday as lawmakers laid the groundwork for formal charges against Trump.

At a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing featuring political theatrics, three law professors chosen by the Democrats made clear that they believed Trump’s actions constituted impeachable offenses including abuse of power, bribery, obstruction of Congress and obstruction of justice.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, often spoke to Representative Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, as Giuliani peddled unproven allegations at the heart of the Trump impeachment inquiry, a congressional report said on Tuesday.

A call log between U.S. President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani and the House Intelligence Committee's top Republican, Devin Nunes, is seen in a 300-page report by the Democratic-led House of Representatives Intelligence Committee published in Washington, U.S. December 3, 2019. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee/Handout via REUTERS.

Previously undisclosed telephone records appended to a 300-page report by the Democratic-led committee showed that Nunes also contacted Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-American businessman who was helping Giuliani and has been indicted on charges of violating campaign finance law. Parnas has pleaded not guilty. (See report here)

Others with whom Giuliani had phone calls included current and former Nunes staffers, the White House budget office, and a journalist who promoted conspiracy theories involving Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden and the 2016 U.S. election.

Giuliani’s numerous calls with Nunes and aides are significant because, as the top Republican on the committee, the California lawmaker cited those same theories as he led the fight against impeaching Trump.

Bennett Gershman, a Pace Law School professor who specializes in government ethics, said the disclosures raised “ethics questions with respect to Nunes.”

“Just on the face of it, I would say Nunes has a lot of explaining to do,” Gershman said. “At the very least he should have recused himself and being as aggressive as he was with this lurking in the background, I would say it’s pretty shocking.”

Nunes’ office did not respond to a request for comment on the phone records.

Neither Giuliani nor his attorney, Robert Costello, responded to a request for comment on the report and on Nunes in particular.

The intelligence panel report, which will form the basis of any impeachment charges, accused Trump of using his power to push Ukraine to investigate Biden in return for a White House meeting for its newly elected president and $391 million in withheld security aid approved by Congress for Ukraine’s defense against Russia-backed separatists.

Representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the committee, declined to comment specifically on Nunes.

But, he said that it was “deeply concerning that at a time when the president of the United States was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival, that there may be evidence that there were members of Congress complicit in that activity.”

The phone records were obtained from AT&T, the report said. The company acknowledged it complied with a request.

Biden is a leading contender for the Democratic nomination to run against Republican Trump in the November 2020 election.

Parnas’ lawyer Joseph Bondy said his client was prepared to testify to Congress about the substance of the phone calls.

In an Oct. 5 interview with Reuters, Giuliani said he had been in contact with Nunes about Ukraine, but “not a lot” and that the lawmaker and his staff obtained information on their own.

“We’ve talked about some of it, yes,” Giuliani said. “But we haven’t investigated it together.”

The call records showed that Giuliani maintained more frequent contacts with Washington officials than were disclosed in some two months of private and public testimony by current and former U.S. officials to House committees conducting the impeachment review.

In the hearings, Nunes cited the same unproven allegations supported by Giuliani that Biden tried to curb an investigation into a Ukrainian energy firm on whose board his son was a member. He and other Republicans also referred to the debunked conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine – not Russia – that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.

The call records showed that over the course of four days in April, Giuliani had calls with Nunes, John Solomon, a conservative columnist whose articles for the Hill newspaper promoted the allegations, and Parnas.

On April 12, the records showed that Parnas called Nunes in the late afternoon. The call lasted for one minute. Less than an hour later, Nunes placed two calls to Parnas that appear to have gone unanswered. Parnas later called Nunes and the two spoke for more than eight minutes, according to the records.

During that same period, Giuliani received three calls from someone at the White House budget office, which in July held up the security aid to Ukraine.

On May 8, Giuliani spoke with Derek Harvey, a member of Nunes’ staff and a former White House official, and on May 10 with Kashyap Patel, a former Nunes staff member who is now a senior counterterrorism official at the White House’s National Security Council.

(The story corrects paragraph 20 to show there was also a one-minute call from Parnas to Nunes)

Reporting by Jonathan Landay; additional reporting by Karen Freifeld, Aram Roston and Kenneth Li; Editing by Heather Timmons, Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool

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KONTAN.CO.ID - PARIS/LONDON. Prancis dan Uni Eropa mengatakan pada hari Selasa (3/12), bahwa mereka siap untuk membalas jika Presiden AS Donald Trump benar-benar melaksanakan ancamannya untuk mengenakan bea hingga 100% pada impor sampanye, tas tangan dan produk Prancis lainnya senilai US$ 2,4 miliar.

Melansir Reuters, ancaman berupa hukuman tarif ini dilakukan setelah penyelidikan pemerintah AS menemukan pajak layanan digital baru di Prancis dinilai membahayakan perusahaan teknologi AS. Hal ini akan memanaskan sengketa perdagangan yang membara antara Eropa dan Amerika Serikat.

Saat menghadiri KTT NATO di London, Trump dan Presiden Prancis Emmanuel Macron berjabatan tangan dengan erat sebelum keduanya mengatakan mereka berharap bisa memperlancar perbedaan mereka atas pajak layanan digital.

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"Mereka adalah perusahaan Amerika. Mereka adalah perusahaan teknologi. Mereka bukan orang favorit saya, tapi tidak apa-apa, saya tidak peduli, mereka perusahaan Amerika. Dan kami ingin mengenakan pajak pada perusahaan Amerika. Tapi bukan orang lain yang memajaki mereka," kata Trump.

Dia menambahkan, "Jadi itu akan berhasil, atau kita akan menetapkan pajak yang saling menguntungkan," katanya, merujuk pada ancaman retribusi seperti yang dilansir Reuters. "Dan pajaknya akan sangat besar. Saya tidak yakin itu akan menjadi seperti itu, tapi hal itu mungkin."

Adanya perselisihan ini menandai rendahnya hubungan antara Trump dan Macron, yang telah berselisih atas pendekatan unilateralis Amerika untuk perdagangan, perubahan iklim dan Iran.

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Pada hari Selasa, Sekretaris Perdagangan AS Wilbur Ross mengatakan pajak Prancis adalah gagasan yang sangat radikal, meletakkan pajak atas pendapatan sebagai lawan pajak atas penghasilan dan bertujuan untuk meningkatkan pendapatan Prancis untuk membantu defisit anggarannya.

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WASHINGTON investor.id – Para anggota parlemen terus mendorong percepatan penyelidikan untuk pemakzulan (impeachment) Presiden Amerika Serikat (AS) Donald Trump, dengan menghadirkan pejabat intelijen penting Michael Atkinson pada Jumat (4/10) waktu setempat. Langkah tersebut diambil menyusul perolehan bukti baru yang menunjukkan bagaimana presiden menekan Ukraina untuk membantunya menang kembali dalam pemilihan presiden (pilpres) AS 2020. Menurut laporan, Trump dituduh mendesak Presiden Ukraina Volodymyr Zelensky untuk menyelidiki rivalnya, Joe Biden yang dicalonkan Partai Demokrat dalam pilpres AS dengan imbalan US$ 400 juta berupa bantuan militer. Skandal itu pun menyebar luas hingga ke Gedung Putih, Departemen Luar Negeri (Deplu) dan Departemen Kehakiman (Depkeh) AS. Menurut agenda, Kongres akan mendengar kesaksian dari Inspektur Jenderal komunitas intelijen Michael Atkinson. Sedangkan Gedung Putih dibuat terkejut dengan rilisnya pesan tertulis yang menggambarkan kekhawatiran para pejabat AS tentang upaya pemerintah untuk mendorong Ukraina menyelidiki Biden. Di antara kumpulan naskah tertulis yang dirilis oleh komite intelijen Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR) pada Kamis (3/10) malam waktu setempat, terdapat satu pesan dari utusan khusus AS untuk Ukraina Kurt Volker kepada pembantu Zelensky, yang mengatakan bahwa presiden Ukraina harus membuka penyelidikan dengan imbalan kunjungan ke Gedung Putih. “Sekarang kami punya banyak bukti tentang persyaratan bahwa Presiden Zelensky harus menyelidiki pemilu 2016 dan Bidens, jika ia ingin melakukan pertemuan,” kata Eric Swalwell dari Demokrat, setelah Volker bersaksi selama delapan jam. Merupakan tindakan ilegal bagi warga negara AS untuk meminta bantuan asing dalam pemilu, terlepas bujukan semacam apa yang ditawarkan. Di sisi lain, tingkat frustrasi dan kemarahan Trump atas skandal itu semakin meningkat. Hal itu terlihat dalam serangkaian penampilannya di depan umum yang menunjukkan sikap tidak menentu dan aneh, serta cuitan-cuitan di Twitter di mana ia tampaknya berada antara sikap pembangkangan dan paranoia konspirasi. “Sebagai Presiden saya memiliki kewajiban untuk mengakhiri korupsi, bahkan jika itu berarti meminta bantuan dari negara atau negara asing. Itu dilakukan setiap saat. Ini tidak ada hubungannya dengan politik atau kampanye politik melawan Biden. Ini karena memang ada hubungannya dengan korupsi mereka!” demikian cuitan Trump pada Jumat. Upaya pemakzulan tersebut berawal dari laporan seseorang yang menyampaikan keluhan pada Agustus, yang menuding bahwa Trump telah menekan presiden Ukraina untuk mencari tahu informasi negatif tentang Biden. Atkinson pun menganggap laporan itu sebagai masalah “mengkhawatirkan yang mendesak” dan meneruskannya ke Depkeh AS. Libatkan Tiongkok dan Ukraina Presiden Trump sendiri secara terang-terangan meminta Tiongkok dan Ukraina untuk menyelidiki potensi dari rivalnya Joe Biden. Pernyataan tersebut merupakan bentuk cemooh terhadap Demokrat yang sedang menjalani proses penyelidikan untuk pemakzulannya, karena telah mengundang campur tangan asing dalam pemilu. Saat berbicara di Florida, AS pada Kamis, Trump mengecam para penuduhnya sebagai “maniak” yang sedang memburu omong kosong pemakzulan, di saat dia berusaha mengubah penyelidikan yang membuatnya terancam sebagai presiden AS ketiga yang pernah dimakzulkan oleh DPR, dan menghadapi persidangan di Senat. Sementara itu, saat mantan diplomat Departemen Luar Negeri memberikan pertanyaan tertutup di Kongres tentang perannya dalam skandal Ukraina, Trump membalas dua kali lipat dengan meminta Presiden Zelensky dan Presiden Tiongkok Xi Jinping untuk menyelidiki Biden. (afp/pya) Sumber : Investor Daily

Artikel ini telah tayang di Investor.id dengan judul "Hasil Kesaksian Pejabat Intelijen Semakin Menekan Trump"
Penulis: Happy Amanda Amalia
Read more at: https://investor.id/international/hasil-kesaksian-pejabat-intelijen-semakin-menekan-trump

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WASHINGTON/DECATUR, Ill. (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Wednesday made official its extra 5% tariff on $300 billion in Chinese imports and set collection dates of Sept. 1 and Dec. 15, prompting hundreds of U.S. retail, footwear, toy and technology companies to warn of price hikes.

The U.S. Trade Representative's office said in an official notice here that collections of a 15% tariff will begin at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT) Sunday on a portion of the list covering over $125 billion of targeted goods from China.

This initial tranche includes smartwatches, Bluetooth headphones, flat panel televisions and many types of footwear.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection will also start collecting a 15% tariff on Dec. 15 on the remainder of the $300 billion list, including cellphones, laptop computers, toys and clothing, USTR said in the Federal Register filing.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced the increase to 15% from 10% last Friday on Twitter, escalating the bitter U.S. China trade war after Beijing hit back with retaliatory tariffs on $75 billion worth of U.S. goods, including crude oil.

A USTR spokesman said on Wednesday that the agency would issue a separate Federal Register notice with details of Trump’s planned tariff increase to 30% on $250 billion in goods that have already been hit with a 25% tariff, including procedures for collecting public comments on the move.

While Trump in recent days has reversed his aggressive China trade rhetoric, that has not translated to a retreat from the planned tariff hikes. It remains unclear whether U.S. and Chinese negotiators will resume in-person talks in September as previously suggested by U.S. officials.

RELATED COVERAGE
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U.S business groups urge Trump to postpone further China tariff hike
Trump, speaking by phone to a farm trade show audience in Decatur, Illinois, said that he could do a “quick deal” with China to boost his 2020 re-election prospects.

But he said, “That will be the wrong deal,” adding that he preferred to “do it in a right way.” He said the latter approach requires a tougher stance and longer negotiations.

Trump added that federal aid to farmers was being funded by tariff collections on Chinese goods.

DIRECT HIT ON CONSUMERS
Hundreds of retailers, footwear companies and business groups urged Trump to scrap the proposed tariffs, warning they would jack up consumer prices and trigger job losses.

More than 200 U.S. footwear companies on Wednesday said the added 15% duties on shoes would come on top of tariffs that already average 11% and reach 67% on some shoes, boosting costs for consumers by $4 billion every year.

“Imposing tariffs in September on the majority of all footwear products from China - including nearly every type of leather shoe - will make it impossible for hardworking American individuals and families to escape the harm that comes from these tax increases,” the companies wrote in a letter to Trump.

Over 160 other business groups, including the National Retail Federation, Retail Industry Leaders Association and Association of Equipment Manufacturers, also urged Trump to postpone the tariffs, warning they would hit Americans in the middle of the busy holiday shopping season.

Global markets remain on edge after the latest flurry of tit-for-tat tariffs, and the lack of firm details on the next round of U.S.-China trade talks.

U.S. stocks took some solace in the relative calm on the trade front to close modestly higher on thin trading volume. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI closed up 1% helped by financial stocks and the energy sector after industry data showed a fall in U.S. crude oil stockpiles.

INCREASING HARM
The Trump administration has, for two years, been pushing China to eliminate unfair trade practices and make sweeping changes to its policies on intellectual property protection, forced transfers of technology to Chinese firms, industrial subsidies and market access for U.S. companies.

The trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies boiled over in July 2018 into tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of each other’s goods and now threatens to engulf all U.S.-China trade, putting global growth at risk.

“China’s most recent response of announcing a new tariff increase on U.S. goods has shown that the current action being taken is no longer appropriate,” USTR said in its notice announcing the higher tariff rates.

USTR accuses China of “unfair acts, policies and practices,” including its retaliatory tariffs and “concrete steps to devalue its currency,” allegations denied by Beijing.

The U.S. Treasury earlier this month declared China a currency manipulator.

“In short, instead of addressing the underlying problems, China has increased tariffs and adopted or threatened additional retaliation to further protect the unreasonable acts, policies, and practices identified in the investigation, resulting in increased harm to the U.S. economy,” USTR said in the notice.

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KONTAN.CO.ID - NEW YORK. Indeks bursa Wall Street anjlok pada Senin (5/8) gara-gara perang dagang dan perang mata uang. Rontoknya bursa Wall Street membuat harta kekayaan miliarder top dunia amblas hingga US$ 117 miliar dalam sehari.

Nilai kekayaan yang hangus itu setara Rp 1.638 triliun dengan kurs 1US$=Rp 14.000.

Baca Juga: Bill Gates: Kunci sukses Warren Buffett itu sederhana, semua orang bisa melakukan

Bloomberg melaporkan, 500 orang terkaya di Bumi kehilangan 2,1% dari kekayaan bersih kolektif mereka pada Senin (5/8) karena indeks bursa saham AS jatuh dan menjadi penurunan terbesar tahun ini.

Sebanyak 21 miliarder anggota Bloomberg Billionaires Index diantaranya, masing-masing kehilangan lebih dari US$ 1 miliar dalam sehari karena investor bereaksi terhadap meningkatnya ketegangan antara Amerika Serikat (AS) dan China.

Baca Juga: Jeff Bezos melego saham Amazon senilai US$ 1,8 miliar dalam tiga hari

Pendiri Amazon.com Inc Jeff Bezos, semisal, kekayaannya merosot US$ 3,4 miliar setelah saham Amazon jatuh. Tapi dia tetap menjadi orang terkaya di planet ini dengan harta US$ 110 miliar.

Kendati merosot, total kekayaan 500 miliarder anggota Bloomberg Billionaires Index, kalau dihitung dari awal tahun masih naik 11%. Catatan saja, total harta 500 miliarder itu mencapai US$ 5,4 triliun.

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Jakarta detik- Rencana Presiden Amerika Serikat (AS) Donald Trump yang kembali mengenakan tarif pada ekspor China pada 1 September memberi dampak pada bursa global. Pernyataan Trump bikin bursa global rontok.

Mengutip CNN, Jumat (2/8/2019), pernyataan Trump membuat Dow Jones terjun bebas 600 poin pada perdagangan Kamis kemarin. Bursa AS masih melemah pada pembukaan Jumat.

Bursa global lain juga marak aksi jual. Indeks Nikkei turun 2,1%, Shanghai 1,4%, dan Hang Seng Hongkong 2,4%.

Perusahaan teknologi asal China, Huawei terjebak dalam perang dagang ini. Perusahaan mengalami tekanan yang cukup keras. Kemudian, sejumlah pemasok yang tercatat di Hong Kong susut 8%.

Pasar saham Eropa juga kena getahnya. Indeks Dax Jerman dan CAC Perancis turun 2,2%, lalu FTSE 100 London turun 1,5%.

Sementara, aset aman atau safe haven franc Swiss menguat 0,4% terhadap dolar AS. Harga minyak juga mengalami peningkatan di mana Brent naik 2,5%.

Trump kembali mengenakan berencana tarif atas produk China ke AS senilai US$ 300 miliar. Padahal, perwakilan perdagangan AS baru kembali dari Shanghai untuk negosiasi.

Kedua pihak menyatakan pembicaraan konstruktif. Tapì, tidak ada kemajuan nyata. Hal itu membuat investor global ketakutan.

"Belum ada banyak data untuk mengalihkan perhatian dari perang perdagangan semalam," tulis seorang ahli dari Societe Generale, Kit Juckes dalam sebuah catatan.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday told a group of mostly American-born Democratic congresswomen to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” a comment that was condemned by Democrats as racist.

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe... viciously telling the people of the United States... how our government is to be run,” Trump said in a series of three comments on Twitter.

While he did not mention names, Trump appeared to be referring to first-year Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan - a group known as “the squad” that has been very critical of Trump and also of the current Democratic leadership of the House.

Only Omar, whose family left Somalia as refugees and arrived in Minneapolis in 1997, was born outside the United States.

“Mr. President, the country I ‘come from,’ and the country we all swear to, is the United States,” Ocasio-Cortez, like Trump a native of New York City, responded on Twitter. “You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, has feuded with the group in an increasingly bitter intra-party fight, but came to their defense Sunday along with other Democratic colleagues. She called Trump’s comments “xenophobic".

“When @realDonaldTrump tells four American Congresswomen to go back to their countries, he reaffirms his plan to ‘Make America Great Again’ has always been about making America white again,” she said on Twitter.

“Do I fit into the President’s category?” U.S. Senator Dick Durbin on Illinois, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” mentioning his family’s Lithuanian heritage.

“Thanks goodness,” he said of Omar’s journey from refugee to one of only two Muslim women elected to Congress, along with Tlaib, a native of Detroit. “That is what America holds as a dream. The president should not diminish it.”

Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Mary Milliken, Rosalba O'Brien and Daniel Wallis

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WASHINGTON okezone - Ketua Federal Reserve Amerika Serikat, Jerome Powell mengatakan pada Rabu (10/7/2019) bahwa ketegangan perdagangan dan kekhawatiran tentang pertumbuhan global telah membebani aktivitas ekonomi AS dan prospeknya.

Mengutip laman antaranews, Jakarta, Kamis (11/7/2019), dalam pidatonya yang dipersiapkan kepada anggota parlemen di Komite Jasa-jasa Keuangan, di mana ia bersaksi tentang Laporan Semester Kebijakan Moneter, Powell mengatakan banyak peserta Komite Pasar Terbuka Federal (FOMC) Fed "melihat bahwa kasus untuk kebijakan moneter yang lebih akomodatif telah menguat."

Powell mengatakan para pejabat Fed memperhatikan arus lintas yang sedang berlangsung dari pertumbuhan global dan perdagangan pada pertemuan FOMC Mei, menambahkan bahwa sejak itu "arus lintas telah muncul kembali, menciptakan ketidakpastian yang lebih besar."

"Kemajuan nyata dalam perdagangan berubah menjadi ketidakpastian yang lebih besar, dan kontak kami dalam laporan bisnis dan pertanian meningkatkan kekhawatiran atas perkembangan perdagangan," katanya. "Indikator pertumbuhan dari seluruh dunia telah mengecewakan, meningkatkan kekhawatiran bahwa pelemahan dalam ekonomi global akan terus mempengaruhi ekonomi AS."

Kekhawatiran di atas, kata ketua, "mungkin telah berkontribusi pada penurunan kepercayaan bisnis dalam beberapa survei baru-baru ini dan mungkin sudah mulai ditunjukkan data-data yang masuk."

Powell mengatakan pertumbuhan dalam investasi bisnis telah melambat dan "pertumbuhan keseluruhan pada kuartal kedua tampaknya telah moderat."

Memperhatikan bahwa inflasi berada di bawah sasaran 2,00 persen FOMC, Powell mengatakan, "Ada risiko inflasi yang lemah akan lebih persisten daripada yang kita perkirakan saat ini". Hal ini mengisyaratkan kemungkinan penurunan suku bunga.

Powell mengulangi pernyataan yang dia buat setelah pertemuan FOMC pada Juni bahwa Fed akan bertindak sewajarnya untuk mempertahankan ekspansi ekonomi saat ini.

"Sejak itu, berdasarkan data yang masuk dan perkembangan lainnya, tampak bahwa ketidakpastian seputar ketegangan perdagangan dan kekhawatiran tentang kekuatan ekonomi global terus membebani prospek ekonomi AS. Tekanan inflasi tetap tidak berubah," tambahnya.

Powell kemudian ditanya oleh Carolyn Maloney, perwakilan Demokrat dari negara bagian New York, apakah The Fed mempertimbangkan penurunan setengah persentase poin dari suku bunga acuan selama pertemuan FOMC 30-31 Juli.

Powell menjawab dengan mengatakan "kita akan melihat berbagai data," tanpa menawarkan petunjuk lain.

Presiden dan pendiri MacroPolicy Perspectives, Julia Coronado, yang adalah mantan ekonom The Fed, mencuit ketika sidang masih berlangsung tentang kesaksian lisan Powell itu bahwa penurunan suku bunga 25 basis poin "akan datang pada bulan Juli."

Kepala bank sentral dalam kesaksiannya juga memperingatkan tantangan jangka panjang yang Amerika Serikat terus hadapi.

Tantangan-tantangan itu, kata Powell, termasuk partisipasi angkatan kerja yang lebih rendah oleh orang-orang usia kerja di Amerika Serikat daripada kebanyakan negara lain dengan ekonomi yang sebanding, perbedaan pasar tenaga kerja di antara kelompok-kelompok demografis dan berbagai bagian negara, stagnasi relatif dari pendapatan menengah dan rendah, serta rendahnya tingkat mobilitas kenaikan untuk keluarga berpenghasilan rendah, prioritas tinggi untuk mendorong pertumbuhan produktivitas, serta efek jangka panjang dari utang federal yang tinggi dan naik.

"Vitalitas jangka panjang ekonomi AS akan mendapat manfaat dari upaya-upaya untuk mengatasi masalah ini," kata Powell.

(rzy)

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OSAKA (Reuters) - World leaders are descending on Osaka, west Japan, for a summit on Friday and Saturday of the Group of 20 (G20) big economies.

U.S. President Donald Trump arrives aboard Air Force One at Osaka International Airport in Toyonaka, Osaka prefecture, Japan June 27, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Here are five issues likely to dominate the meeting, hosted by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

TRUMP-XI TRUCE?

Overshadowing the G20 meeting, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet on Saturday amid hopes for a breakthrough in the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies, which has already dented global growth.

The United States and China agreed to a tentative truce in the nearly year-old dispute ahead of the Osaka meeting, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported on Thursday, citing sources.

Before leaving the United States on Wednesday, Trump said a deal was possible this weekend but he was prepared to impose tariffs on virtually all Chinese imports not already subject to U.S. levies, if the two countries continue to disagree.

GLOBAL ECONOMY
Policymakers are in a bind as global growth slows because of trade tensions, with the U.S. Federal Reserve signaling it will cut interest rates.

That is weakening the dollar and putting pressure on the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan to come up with ways to keep their currencies from spiking, which would undermine their export-reliant economies.

Abe hopes to get free-trade language in the meeting’s closing communique but faces resistance from Trump, who last year forced the G20 to drop its longstanding pledge to avoid protectionism.

CLIMATE CHANGE
A tussle over global warming continues, with U.S. negotiators opposing a European-led push for a strong commitment to fighting climate change.

The latest draft of the G20 language on climate change, seen by Reuters, revives support for the 2015 Paris Agreement, calling it “irreversible”. An earlier draft had avoided that commitment at the insistence of the United States, two sources told Reuters.

President Emmanuel Macron said France would not accept a G20 communique that does not mention the Paris accord. Trump, who has called global warming a “hoax”, pulled the United States out of the pact in 2017.

IRAN AND OIL
While Iran is not a G20 member, it will very much be there in spirit as the threat of war with the United States looms after a series of incidents in the Gulf and escalating rhetoric.

Trump at the last minute halted an air strike on Iran last week in retaliation for its downing of a U.S. drone. Since then, he has strengthened sanctions on Iran and threatened it with “obliteration”. Iran said his sanctions were “mentally retarded”.

As well as the Gulf tensions, oil markets are on edge about a looming deadline for OPEC to decide whether to extend production cuts. That could be the focus of Osaka meetings between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

One G20 agenda item on which Abe may make progress is reducing the glut of plastic waste in the oceans - although specific targets and firm commitments to action are unlikely.

The G20 will adopt a new implementation framework for steps to reduce marine plastic waste, though on a voluntary basis, the Japanese government said after environment ministers met two weeks ago.

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WASHINGTON NYT— Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, has agreed to testify before Congress on July 17, two House committees announced Tuesday night after issuing subpoenas to compel his appearance.

The subpoenas from the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees set up a must-see hearing that could reshape the political landscape around Donald J. Trump’s presidency and possible impeachment.

The chairmen of the committees, Representatives Jerrold Nadler of New York and Adam B. Schiff of California, said they understood Mr. Mueller had reservations about appearing on Capitol Hill, but they were insistent he do so, anyway.

“The American public deserves to hear directly from you about your investigation and conclusions,” the chairmen wrote. “We will work with you to address legitimate concerns about preserving the integrity of your work, but we expect that you will appear before our committees as scheduled.”

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Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Presiden Amerika Serikat (AS) Donald Trump pada Sabtu memperingatkan (tanpa bukti) kehancuran pasar besar-besaran jika dia tidak terpilih kembali pada 2020.

"Ekonomi Trump sedang membuat rekor, dan masih memiliki jalan panjang untuk melanjutkan," katanya.

"Namun, jika ada orang selain saya yang mengambil alih pada 2020 (saya tahu kompetisinya dengan sangat baik), akan ada Kehancuran Pasar yang belum pernah terlihat sebelumnya! KEEP AMERICA GREAT," ungkapan Trump dilansir dari Twitternya, Minggu (16/06/2019).

Business Insider menulis pasar saham, yang dekat tapi jauh dari ukuran sempurna untuk beberapa aspek kesehatan ekonomi, memang naik sekitar 27% sejak pelantikan Trump pada 20 Januari 2017, tetapi keuntungan itu telah terperosok oleh aksi jual besar-besaran yang dipicu oleh kekhawatiran perang dagang di tengah pertengkaran tarif dengan China, Meksiko, dan negara-negara lain.

Sementara itu, para ekonom terkemuka memperingatkan lebih banyak perselisihan perdagangan yang dapat mengurai keuntungan ekonomi bahkan sebelum pemilihan Trump. Bahkan para profesional berjuang untuk memperkirakan kapan - dan mengapa - resesi ekonomi terjadi.

"Perang perdagangan sejauh ini mengimbangi semua manfaat dari stimulus fiskal, dan jika terus berlanjut, dapat menyebabkan resesi global," kata Marko Kolanovic, kepala global strategi kuantitatif dan derivatif JPMorgan.

"Jika resesi ini tercipta, para sejarawan mungkin menyebutnya 'resesi Trump' mengingat bahwa itu sebagian besar disebabkan oleh inisiatif perang perdagangan."

Di luar Wall Street, bisnis juga khawatir. Pada Kamis, 600 perusahaan mengirim 'joint letter' kepada Trump yang mengatakan bahwa tarif yang lebih luas pada China akan merugikan pekerja dan konsumen.

Konsumen juga berbagi ketakutan mereka.

Indeks sentimen konsumen yang diawasi ketat turun menjadi 97,9 pada awal bulan, dari 100 pada Mei, survei konsumen Universitas Michigan mengindikasikan, dibandingkan dengan ekspektasi untuk pembacaan dari 99.

"Konsumen merespons dengan menurunkan prospek pertumbuhan ekonomi nasional, dan sebagai konsekuensinya, mengurangi keuntungan yang diprediksikan dalam pekerjaan," Richard Curtin, kepala ekonom Survey.

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marketwatch: Every time I hear President Donald Trump articulate — maybe “ramble on about” would be a more apt description — his theory of trade, I want to scream.

Why? Because it makes absolutely no sense. He insists that China pays the tariffs on its exports to the U.S. when it’s U.S. businesses and consumers (mostly) who bear the cost.

For some reason, reporters refuse to follow up on Trump’s outlandish assertions in interviews or at impromptu press gaggles. So I have taken it upon myself to play that role and ask Trump the tough questions about trade, the one subject on which he has been curiously consistent for over 30 years.

CB: Mr. President, you said in a tweet on Sunday that “For 10 months, China has been paying Tariffs to the USA;” that “we have billions of dollars coming into our Treasury — billions — from China” as a result of the tariffs on Chinese imports. Can you explain how that works exactly?

DJT: “The U.S. has been losing $800 billion — not million, billion — a year on trade. We’ve been paying China $500 billion a year for many, many years. It’s a disgrace. Previous administrations let China rip us off. That stopped with Donald Trump.”

CB: Why is buying something you want from someone else at a mutually agreed-upon price “losing?” No one is challenging the notion that China engages in unfair trade practices, but neither is anyone putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to buy stuff from China.

DJT: “We’re charging China tariffs. We’ve never taken in 10 cents from China. Not 10 cents. And now we’re taking in billions and billions of dollars.”

CB: Not exactly. Your tariffs, which as of Friday amount to 25% on $250 billion of Chinese goods and a proposed 25% levy on an additional $300 billion, did increase customs duties flowing into the Treasury. But the U.S. was collecting custom duties on Chinese and other imports before you came along: about $12.3 billion a year, on average, from 2007 to 2016.

In the first six months of fiscal 2019 — from October 2018 through March 2019 — customs duties totaled $34.7 billion compared with $18.4 billion in the year-earlier period. The Treasury expects to receive $69.5 billion in customs duties for the full fiscal year 2019. So yes, customs duties have increased. But you still haven’t explained how China is paying the tariffs.

DJT: “NO COLLUSION! NO OBSTRUCTION!”

CB: Can we please stick to trade? Even your top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, conceded on Fox News Sunday that China doesn’t pay the tariffs. Is Larry going to be targeted for export?

DJT: “The tariff payments go directly to the U.S. Treasury.”

CB: But they don’t come from China! That’s the point.

Let’s try this again. China receives money — dollars — for the goods it sells to the U.S. It isn’t paying anybody anything.

When goods enter the U.S. from China, the importer — usually a middleman — has to fork over the tariffs, or customs duties, to the Treasury within a matter of days. From there, the importer has some options. He can pass along the full amount of the tariff to his customers. He can eat some of the increased cost, lowering his profit margin. He can try to negotiate a better price with the exporter. Or he can find alternate sources — i.e. other countries — for the goods. In the last two instances, China may suffer, as Kudlow suggested. Only in the third one does China bear the cost of the tariff.

DJT: “Tariffs can be completely avoided if you buy from a non-Tariffed country, or you buy the product inside the USA (best idea). Americans can produce incredible goods for American consumers and the rest of the world. U.S. consumers don’t pay more if we don’t buy from China.”

CB: But we do buy from China! There is a demand for Chinese goods at the prices they charge. I guess you could always slap 100% tariffs on China’s imports and make the bilateral trade deficit disappear. But China isn’t sitting still. China announced Monday that it plans to raise tariffs on $60 billion of American imports starting June 1.

DJT: “Look at all the manufacturing jobs that have been pouring back into this country since I became president! There is absolutely no rush to make a trade deal with China. We’ll see what happens. President Xi Jinping and I have a special relationship. He wrote me a very beautiful letter, which I’m framing and mounting in the Oval Office next to the very beautiful letter I received from North Korean President Kim Jong Un.”

CB: And what about “my farmers,” as you affectionately refer to them? China has already retaliated by placing tariffs on almost all U.S. agricultural and food imports from the U.S. China went from the No. 1 export market for U.S. agricultural products in fiscal 2017 to third in fiscal 2018 to an expected fifth in fiscal 2019. Have you talked with soybean farmers recently? Soybean prices just hit a 10-year low.

DJT: “My farmers love me. I’m taking care of my Great Patriot Farmers with $12 billion in direct aid. And we’re going to use all of the revenue pouring into the Treasury to buy more of their crops than China ever did.”

CB: I presume you’ve heard of “mercantilism,” the idea that nations can export their way to prosperity? It has never made any sense to me. Why use a nation’s scarce resources to produce goods for other countries? It sure doesn’t sound like “America First.”

DJT: “The GDP rose 3.2% in the first quarter. The unemployment rate is at a 50-year low. We have the best economy in history. Tariffs are a great way to make countries stop taking advantage of us. China will be hurt very badly if it doesn’t make a deal because companies will be forced to leave China for other countries.”

CB: So if I understand you correctly, your theory of trade goes something like this: Trade wars are good — and easy to win — because they hurt U.S. farmers (lost exports), U.S. businesses (higher prices for imports of raw and intermediate materials), U.S. consumers (higher finished goods prices), and the U.S. government (support payments for farmers).

No wonder the stock market is giving the latest escalation in the trade war the thumbs down. Good luck at the G-20 summit next month, Mr. President. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The number of Americans who said President Donald Trump should be impeached rose 5 percentage points to 45 percent since mid-April, while more than half said multiple congressional probes of Trump interfered with important government business, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday.

The opinion poll, conducted on Monday, did not make clear whether investigation-fatigued Americans wanted House of Representatives Democrats to pull back on their probes or press forward aggressively and just get impeachment over with.

The question is an urgent one for senior Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives, who are wrestling with whether to launch impeachment proceedings, despite likely insurmountable opposition to it in the Republican-controlled Senate.

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi re-emphasized that the leaders of the investigative committees in the Democratic-controlled House were taking a step-by-step approach.

“This is very methodical, it’s very Constitution-based,” Pelosi said. “We won’t go any faster than the facts take us, or any slower than the facts take us.”

In addition to the 45 percent pro-impeachment figure, the Monday poll found that 42 percent of Americans said Trump should not be impeached. The rest said they had no opinion.

Polling on the president

In comparison, an April 18-19 survey found that 40 percent of all Americans wanted to impeach Trump.

The latest poll showed stronger support for impeachment among Democrats and independents.

It also showed that 57 percent of adults agreed that continued investigations into Trump would interfere with important government business. That included about half of all Democrats and three-quarters of all Republicans.

After a nearly two-year investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, House Democrats are pursuing multiple inquiries into Trump’s presidency, his family and his business interests.

Trump is stonewalling at least a half-dozen such inquiries, refusing to disclose his tax returns, invoking executive privilege to keep the unredacted Mueller report under wraps and filing unprecedented lawsuits to block House investigators.

“It’s becoming a circus over there” in Washington, said Fatima Alsrogy, 36, a T-shirt designer from Dallas who took the poll. “There are so many more important things the country needs to pay attention to right now.”

Alsrogy, an independent, thinks Trump should be impeached. Yet she also wishes lawmakers would do more to improve the healthcare system for self-employed people like her.

“I bought my own (health) insurance on an Obamacare exchange,” she said. “It’s a huge expense, and I don’t know if Obamacare is going to be amended or taken away. It’s stressful.”

The poll also found that 32 percent agreed that Congress treated the Mueller report fairly, while 47 percent disagreed.

Trump’s popularity was unchanged from a similar poll that ran last week - 39 percent of adults said they approved of Trump, while 55 percent said they disapproved.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,006 adults and had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4 percentage points.

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Bisnis.com, JAKARTA -- Tingkat popularitas Presiden AS Donald Trump turun 3 persen dalam approval rating terbaru menyusul diterbitkannya laporan investigasi intervensi Rusia pada Pemilihan Presiden (Pilpres) 2016.

Dalam jajak pendapat yang dilakukan Reuters dan Ipsos, sebanyak 37 persen orang dewasa di AS menyukai kinerja pemerintah Trump. Angka ini turun dari 40 persen dalam survei serupa yang dilaksanakan pada Senin (15/4/2019).

Dilansir dari Reuters, Sabtu (20/4), setelah laporan investigasi terperinci yang disusun Penyelidik Khusus Robert Mueller terkait keterlibatan Rusia dalam Pilpres AS pada 2016, tingkat kepercayaan masyarakat terhadap Trump terus turun. Dalam laporan itu, Mueller menyebutkan adanya upaya Trump untuk campur tangan dan menghalangi proses penyelidikan tersebut.

Dalam laporan setebal 448 halaman itu, disampaikan bahwa investigasi ini tidak menemukan cukup bukti campur tangan Rusia dalam Pilpres 2016. Namun, para penyidik menemukan beberapa tindakan oleh Trump yang bertujuan mempengaruhi proses penegakkan hukum.

Meskipun pada akhirnya Mueller memutuskan untuk tidak menuntut Trump atas tindak kriminal, tapi penyelidikan ini juga tidak membebaskan sang presiden dari tuduhan apapun.

Jajak pendapat Reuters/Ipsos yang dilakukan secara daring di seluruh AS itu mengumpulkan 1.005 tanggapan masyarakat usia dewasa, termasuk 924 orang yang familiar dengan isi laporan Mueller. Dengan interval kredibilitas 4%, jajak pendapat ini menemukan bahwa 50 persen rakyat AS setuju bahwa Trump bekerja sama dengan Rusia dalam Pilpres 2016.

Kemudian, sebanyak 58 persen responden setuju bahwa Trump berusaha menghentikan penyelidikan terkait pengaruh Rusia pada pemerintahannya. Sebanyak 40 persen responden juga berpendapat bahwa Trump harus dilengserkan dari jabatannya, sedangkan 42 persen lainnya tidak setuju dengan rencana pemakzulan.

Respons jajak pendapat terpecah secara tajam antara kedua partai, di mana Demokrat jauh lebih kritis terhadap Trump daripada rekan-rekannya di Partai Republik.

Investigasi Mueller sebelumnya mendakwa 34 orang dan 3 entitas Rusia, memicu hukuman atau permohonan pengampunan dari beberapa rekan Trump termasuk mantan ketua kampanye Paul Manafort, penasihat keamanan nasional Gedung Putih Michael Flynn, dan pengacara pribadi Trump terdahulu yakni Michael Cohen.

Sejauh ini, laporan tersebut tampaknya tidak cukup meyakinkan bagi banyak orang untuk mengubah pendapat mereka tentang perilaku presiden pada pelaksanaan kampanye Pilpres yang lalu. Beberapa juga masih meragukan apakah lingkup pemerintahan Trump terlibat secara tidak patut dengan agen Rusia, atau terkait dugaan percobaan mengganggu proses penyelidikan federal.

Di antara responden yang mengatakan bahwa mereka familiar dengan laporan Mueller, sebanyak 70 persen mengaku laporan itu tidak mengubah pandangan mereka tentang Trump atau keterlibatan Rusia dalam Pilpres AS. Hanya 15 persen responden yang menyatakan mereka telah mempelajari sesuatu yang mengubah pandangan mereka tentang Trump atau penyelidikan Rusia.

Mayoritas responden menuturkan mereka sekarang lebih cenderung percaya bahwa Trump, atau seseorang yang dekat dengannya, melanggar hukum.

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marketwatch: Sen. Mitt Romney is not in the camp of those who think the Mueller Report was a vindication of the president.

In a statement released Friday, the Utah Republican who’s butted heads with President Donald Trump said he was “sickened” by the dishonesty and misdirection of both the president and his aides that was written about in the report by the special counsel. Romney blasted the Trump campaign for warmly accepting Russia’s help during the 2016 election and not telling U.S. law enforcement.

The comments will complicate the White House messaging after the Mueller report’s release, particularly coming ahead of the Sunday television shows that feature senior policymakers.

All that said, Romney did not call for impeachment of Trump or action of any kind. He said the finding that the Trump campaign did not “conspire” with a foreign adversary meant the business of government can move on.

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WASHINGTON marketwatch— The Justice Department declared Sunday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s long investigation did not find evidence that President Donald Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, setting off celebrations of vindication by Trump and his supporters. Mueller also investigated whether Trump obstructed justice but did not come to a definitive answer.

In a four-page letter to Congress, Attorney General William Barr quoted Mueller’s report as stating it “does not exonerate” the president on obstruction. Instead, Barr said, it “sets out evidence on both sides of the question.”

Trump, in Florida, said the report proved “there was no collusion” as he has contended for many months. He also claimed it showed there was no obstruction and said it was a shame that he and the nation had to suffer through “an illegal takedown that failed.”

Read: Here’s William Barr’s summary letter of Robert Mueller’s investigation

Barr released his summary of Mueller’s report Sunday afternoon. Mueller wrapped up his investigation on Friday with no new indictments, bringing to a close a probe that has shadowed Trump for nearly two years.

But the broader fight is not over.

Congress’ top Democrats, Chuck Schumer of New York in the Senate and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, put out a statement saying Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers, including about his own decision not to prosecute on possible obstruction.

“Given Mr. Barr’s public record of bias against the special counsel’s inquiry, he is not a neutral observer and is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report,” they said. Trump’s claim of complete exoneration “directly contradicts the words of Mrs. Mueller and is not to be taken with any degree of credibility,” they added.

The Justice Department summary sets up a battle between Barr and Democrats, who called for Mueller’s full report to be released and vowed to press on with their own investigation.

For Trump, Barr’s report was a victory on a key question that has hung over his presidency from the start: Did his campaign work with Russia to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton?

See: Opinion: The Mueller report shows that Trump has outmaneuvered Washington, again

Still, Mueller’s investigation left open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey and drafting an incomplete explanation about his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign. That left it to the attorney general to decide. After consulting with other department officials, Barr said he and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, determined the evidence “is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense.”

Barr, nominated to his job by Trump last fall, said their decision was based on the evidence uncovered by Mueller and not based on whether a sitting president can be indicted.

Trump was at his Florida estate when lawmakers received the report. Barr’s chief of staff called Emmet Flood, the lead White House lawyer on the investigation, to brief him on the findings shortly before he sent it to Congress.

Mueller’s investigation ensnared nearly three dozen people, senior Trump campaign operatives among them. The probe illuminated Russia’s assault on the American political system, painted the Trump campaign as eager to exploit the release of hacked Democratic emails to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton and exposed lies by Trump aides aimed at covering up their Russia-related contacts.

Mueller submitted his report to Barr instead of directly to Congress and the public because, unlike independent counsels such as Ken Starr in the case of President Bill Clinton, his investigation operated under the close supervision of the Justice Department, which appointed him.

The House Judiciary Committee chairman said Congress needs to hear from Barr about his decision and see “all the underlying evidence.”

Mueller “clearly and explicitly is not exonerating the president, said Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. in a series of tweets, but Barr is telling “the American people that while the president is not exonerated, there will be no action by DOJ.”

“There must be full transparency in what Special Counsel Mueller uncovered to not exonerate the President from wrongdoing. DOJ owes the public more than just a brief synopsis and decision not to go any further in their work,” Nadler tweeted

Barr said that Mueller “thoroughly” investigated the question of whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia’s election interference, issuing more than 2,800 subpoenas, obtaining nearly 500 search warrants and interviewing 500 witnesses.

However, Mueller was not able to interview Trump in person.

Barr said Mueller also catalogued the president’s actions including “many” that took place in “public view,” a possible nod to Trump’s public attacks on investigators and witnesses.

In the letter, Barr said he concluded that none of Trump’s actions constituted a federal crime that prosecutors could prove in court.

Democrats are reminding that the House voted nearly unanimously, 420-0, to release the full Mueller report, which they say is more important not than ever. “This is about transparency and truth — and a 4 page summary from Trump’s AG doesn’t cut it,” tweeted Rep. Mark Takano, D-Ca., the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee. “The American people deserve to see the whole thing.”

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reuters: While Mueller has yet to submit to U.S. Attorney General William Barr a final report on his investigation into Russia’s role in the election, the former FBI director already has provided a sweeping account in a pair of indictments that charged 25 Russian individuals and three Russian companies.

Key questions still to be answered are whether Mueller will conclude that Trump’s campaign conspired with Moscow and whether Trump unlawfully sought to obstruct the probe. Trump has denied collusion and obstruction. Russia has denied election interference.

Here is an explanation of Mueller’s findings about Russian activities and U.S. intelligence assessments of the ongoing threat.

WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT RUSSIAN “TROLL FARMS”?
On Feb. 16, 2018, Mueller charged 13 Russian individuals and three Russian entities with conspiracy to defraud the United States, wire and bank fraud and identity theft. It said the Internet Research Agency, a Russian-backed propaganda arm known for trolling on social media, flooded American social media sites Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram to promote Trump and spread disparaging information about his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. The indictment said the Russian efforts dated to 2014, before Trump’s candidacy, and were intended to sow discord in the United States.

The St. Petersburg-based so-called troll farm employed hundreds of people for its online operations and had a multimillion-dollar budget, according to the indictment. It had a management group and departments including graphics, data analysis and search-engine optimization. Employees worked day and night shifts corresponding to U.S. time zones.

Its funding was provided by Evgeny Prigozhin, a businessman who U.S. officials have said has extensive ties to Russia’s military and political establishment, and companies he controlled including Concord Management and Consulting and Concord Catering. Prigozhin has been described by Russian media as being close to President Vladimir Putin. He has been dubbed “Putin’s cook” because his catering business has organized banquets for Russia’s president.

The Russians targeted Americans with information warfare, adopting false online personas and creating hundreds of social media accounts to push divisive messages and spread distrust of candidates and America’s political system in general, the indictment said. They aimed to denigrate Clinton and support the candidacies of Trump, who won the Republican presidential nomination, and Bernie Sanders, her rival for the Democratic nomination.

HOW WERE AMERICANS UNWITTINGLY RECRUITED?
In Florida, a pivotal state in U.S. presidential elections, the Russians steered unwitting Americans to pro-Trump rallies they conceived and organized. The indictment said the Russians paid “a real U.S. person to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally” and another “to build a cage large enough to hold an actress depicting Clinton in a prison uniform.”

The accused Russians used false Facebook persona “Matt Skier” to contact a real American to recruit for a “March for Trump” rally, offering “money to print posters and get a megaphone,” the indictment said. They created an Instagram account “Woke Blacks” to encourage African-Americans not to vote for “Killary,” saying, “We’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.” Fake social media accounts were used to post messages saying American Muslims should refuse to vote for Clinton “because she wants to continue the war on Muslims in the Middle East.” Alternatively, they took out Facebook ads promoting a June 2016 rally in Washington, “Support Hillary. Save American Muslims” rally. They recruited an American to hold up a sign with a quote falsely attributed to Clinton that embraced Islamic sharia law, the indictment said.

Some of the accused Russians traveled around the United States to gather intelligence, the indictment said, visiting at least 10 states: California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Texas.

On July 13, 2018, Mueller charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers with hacking Democratic Party computer networks in 2016 to steal large amounts of data and then time their release to damage Clinton. The Russian hackers broke into the computer networks of the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, covertly monitoring employee computers and planting malicious code, as well as stealing emails and other documents, according to the indictment.

Using fictitious online personas such as DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, the hackers released tens of thousands of stolen emails and documents. The Guccifer 2.0 persona communicated with Americans, including an unidentified person who was in regular contact with senior members of the Trump campaign, the indictment said. Guccifer 2.0 cooperated extensively with “Organization 1” - the WikiLeaks website - to discuss the timing of the release of stolen documents to “heighten their impact” on the election.

On or about July 27, 2016, the Russians tried to break into email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office and her campaign, the indictment said. The same day, candidate Trump told reporters: “Russia, if you are listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” referring to emails from a private server Clinton had used when she was secretary of state.

To hide their identity, the Russians laundered money and financed their operation through cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, Mueller’s team said.

IS THE THREAT OVER?
The U.S. intelligence community’s 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment report cited Russia’s continuing efforts to interfere in the American political system. It stated, “Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities, and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians. Moscow may employ additional influence toolkits - such as spreading disinformation, conducting hack-and-leak operations or manipulating data - in a more targeted fashion to influence U.S. policy, actions and elections.”

The report said Russia and “unidentified actors” as recently as 2018 conducted cyber activity targeting U.S. election infrastructure, though there is no evidence showing “any compromise of our nation’s election infrastructure that would have prevented voting, changed vote counts or disrupted the ability to tally votes.”

(The story fixes typo, “has” in third paragraph)

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Bisnis.com, JAKARTA – Mantan Gubernur Federal Reserve Janet Yellen mengutarakan keraguannya atas pemahaman Presiden Donald Trump mengenai tujuan bank sentral Amerika Serikat (AS) tersebut.

“Saya ragu dia [Trump] bahkan dapat mengatakan bahwa tujuan The Fed adalah lapangan kerja yang maksimum dan stabilitas harga. Ini merupakan tujuan yang telah ditetapkan Kongres kepada The Fed,” ungkap Yellen dalam sebuah wawancara dengan American Public Media, seperti dilansir Bloomberg.

“Dia [Trump] membuat komentar tentang The Fed yang memiliki tujuan nilai tukar untuk mendukung rencana perdagangannya, atau mungkin menargetkan neraca perdagangan AS,” lanjut Yellen.

Menurut Yellen, komentar seperti itu menunjukkan kurangnya pemahaman tentang dampak The Fed terhadap perekonomian, dan tujuan kebijakan yang tepat.

Yellen, wanita pertama yang pernah memimpin The Fed, mengundurkan diri pada Februari 2018 setelah Trump memilih menggantinya dengan Jerome Powell.

Menariknya, kenyataan menjadi orang pilihan Trump tidak serta merta membuat Powell aman dari segala kritikan yang dilancarkan secara terbuka oleh Trump soal kenaikan suku bunga Fed. Yellen mengatakan serangan seperti itu bisa menimbulkan kerugian nyata.

“Jika menjadi terpadu, saya pikir hal itu memiliki dampak, terutama jika kondisi di AS untuk alasan apa pun memburuk, itu dapat merusak kepercayaan pada The Fed,” terang Yellen.

Tokoh ekonomi yang kini berkontribusi di Brookings Institution, Washington, tersebut juga mengutarakan keyakinannya pada Powell.

“Saya sangat yakin pada penerus saya, arah kebijakan [The Fed] secara umum akan serupa jika saya tetap menjabat. Sementara itu, perekonomian berjalan dengan baik,” tambahnya.

The Fed telah menaikkan suku bunga acuannya sebanyak empat kali sepanjang 2018, meskipun kemudian menahan kebijakan moneternya bulan lalu.

Dalam sebuah konferensi pers pada 30 Januari, Powell menjelaskan bahwa sejumlah tekanan termasuk pertumbuhan yang lebih lambat di luar negeri, kondisi keuangan yang lebih ketat, dan dampak kumulatif dari pengetatan kebijakan masa lalu mendorong otoritas moneter AS itu untuk bersikap sabar soal pergerakan suku bunga berikutnya.

“Ada banyak ketidakpastian yang membayangi prospek, dan memang layak untuk berhenti dan melihat bagaimana segala hal berkembang,” tandas Yellen sependapat.

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POLITICO:

With a light hand, barely pressing his pencil on paper, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III began sketching his case for Trump campaign collusion with the Russians in a Friday court filing related to Roger Stone’s prosecution for lying to Congress.

Until Friday, Mueller’s team had been coy about directly connecting any Trump campaign associate to a 12-member Russian GRU military intelligence team it indicted in July 2018 for hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. It had secured guilty pleas from such scandal participants as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump campaign executive Rick Gates, campaign backbencher George Papadopoulos, and others, and convicted campaign director Paul Manafort on an array of financial fraud charges connected to his politicking and lobbying for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.

But the two seemingly parallel investigations never really intersected. Self-described dirty trickster Stone, who worked on the early Trump campaign and remained close to Trump and his aides after departing, wanted the court to say the investigations were separate. He requested a new judge, saying the charges against him had nothing to do with the Russian hackers case, also being prosecuted before Judge Amy Berman Jackson. But the judge tossed Stone’s request, accepting Mueller’s line of argument that Stone directly interacted with the Russians and Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, the middleman for the hacked emails.

Now that the two investigations are one, what remains to be gleaned is how wide and deep the Trump campaign’s connections to the Russians and WikiLeaks were.

Previous Mueller filings had noted Stone’s attempts to contact Assange through intermediaries, hoping to learn what sort of politically potent documents he might have. But Stone had steadfastly denied any contact with Russia or WikiLeaks. That’s a lie, Mueller’s new filing says. Citing evidence obtained in “dozens of search warrants on various accounts used to facilitate the transfer of stolen documents for release,” it claims Stone communicated with WikiLeaks — referred to as “Organization 1” in the filing — and Guccifer 2.0, a Russian intelligence alias used to spread the data stolen in the hacks.

Who else did Stone talk to about the WikiLeaks dump? Last month’s Stone indictment had him informing “senior Trump campaign officials” between June and July 2016 that WikiLeaks possessed stolen emails that could damage the Clinton candidacy. Then came WikiLeaks’ first release of Democratic emails on July 22, 2016, followed by the Trump campaign’s request for more.

This artfully constructed sentence in the Stone indictment has birthed a million speculations that Donald Trump was among the requesters: “A senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton campaign,” the indictment reads. Would anybody be in a position to direct a senior Trump campaign official but Trump himself? Lightly traced but still visible, Mueller has drawn a possible line from Trump to a campaign aide to Stone to WikiLeaks and to the Russians. Inside the White House, Trump must be screaming for an eraser.

In the Manafort case, Mueller roughed up the convict with explicit language in a sentencing memorandum filed Friday. “Manafort acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law, and deprived the federal government and various financial institutions of millions of dollars,” Mueller wrote. “Given the breadth of Manafort’s criminal activity, the government has not located a comparable case with the unique array of crimes and aggravating factors.” Under federal sentencing guidelines, Manafort could get 19 to 24½ years in prison—essentially a life sentence for the 69-year-old.

Mueller looked like a merciful, New Testament-toting Christian in comparison to Judge Jackson in the Manafort matter. Her Feb. 13 hearing, in which she examined the special counsel’s charge that Manafort had lied after promising cooperation, was released in redacted form Friday. The judge rejected Manafort’s attorneys’ assertion that confusion and not lies were behind the stream of bogus information Manafort had fed Mueller. “My concern isn’t with nonanswers or simply denials, but the times he affirmatively advanced a detailed alternative story that was inconsistent with the facts.” The lies followed a pattern, too, the judge said. “Concessions comes [sic] in dribs and drabs, only after it’s clear that the office of the special counsel already knew the answer. Again, it’s part of a pattern of requiring the office of the special counsel to pull teeth; withholding facts if he can get away with it.”

The judge singled out the way Manafort had lied about his interactions with Konstantin V. Kilimnik, Manafort’s former employee and believed by Mueller to be a Russian intelligence asset, calling it a “problematic attempt to shield his Russian conspirator from liability and it gives rise to legitimate questions about where his loyalties lie.”

Manafort originally claimed to have spoken only once with Kilimnik about the Ukrainian “peace plan”—at the Grand Havana Room cigar joint in New York on Aug. 2, 2016, just before he was fired from the Trump campaign. But Manafort eventually conceded that he discussed the “peace plan” three additional times after prosecutors showed him evidence of the other meetings. Why these lies? What was he hiding?

The Kilimnik question engaged and enraged Jackson. “We’ve now spent considerable time talking about multiple clusters of false or misleading or incomplete or needed-to-be-prodded-by-counsel statements, all of which center around the defendant’s relationship or communications with Mr. Kilimnik,” she said. “This topic is at the undisputed core of the office of special counsel’s investigation.”

With Democrats now calling the investigative shots in the House of Representatives, House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings made news on Friday by sending a letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone claiming evidence that two Trump attorneys had lied to government ethics officials about Cohen’s hush-money payments to women alleging affairs with Trump before the 2016 election.

“This raises significant questions about why some of the president’s closest advisers made these false claims and the extent to which they too were acting at the direction of, or in coordination with, the president,” Cummings wrote. Trump’s attorneys had denied that Trump owed money to Cohen in 2016 and 2017, but the story evolved after Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said in a TV interview that Trump had paid Cohen as part of a “retainer.”

After we sort out the whole Russian mess, the task will be assigned to someone to tally up the saga’s greatest lies. One contender for the crown might be White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who told CNN on Friday that she was interviewed by Mueller’s team late last year. Because Sanders has been loquacious on the investigation topic since taking the press secretary job in July 2017, Mueller would want to know what sort of input Trump provided. Did he feed her the sort of lies that could be read as obstruction to justice?

I hope for Sanders’ sake she told the truth. Jackson and Mueller don’t cotton to liars.

WASHINGTON — Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said in an interview that aired Sunday that a “crime may have been committed” when President Donald Trump fired the head of the FBI and tried to publicly undermine an investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.

McCabe also said in the interview with “60 Minutes” that the FBI had good reason to open a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump was in league with Russia, and therefore a possible national security threat, following the May 2017 firing of then-FBI Director James Comey.

“And the idea is, if the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the of the FBI to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of Russia’s malign activity and possibly in support of his campaign, as a counterintelligence investigator you have to ask yourself, “Why would a president of the United States do that?” McCabe said.

He added: “So all those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder is there an inappropriate relationship, a connection between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia?”

Asked whether Rosenstein was onboard with the obstruction and counterintelligence investigations, McCabe replied, “Absolutely.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment Sunday night.

McCabe also revealed that when Trump told Rosenstein to put in writing his concerns with Comey — a document the White House initially cited as justification for his firing — the president explicitly asked the Justice Department official to reference Russia in the memo. Rosenstein did not want to, McCabe said, and the memo that was made public upon Comey’s dismissal did not mention Russia and focused instead on Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email server investigation.

“He explained to the president that he did not need Russia in his memo. And the president responded, “I understand that, I am asking you to put Russia in the memo anyway.”

Trump said in a TV interview days after Comey’s firing that he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he fired Comey.

Those actions, including a separate request by the president that the FBI end an investigation into his first national adviser, Michael Flynn, made the FBI concerned that Trump was illegally trying to obstruct the investigation.

“Put together, these circumstances were articulable facts that indicated that a crime may have been committed,” McCabe said. “The president may have been engaged in obstruction of justice in the firing of Jim Comey.”

McCabe was fired from the Justice Department last year after being accused of misleading investigators during an internal probe into a news media disclosure. The allegation was referred to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington for possible prosecution, but no charges have been brought. McCabe has denied having intentionally lied and said Sunday that he believes his firing was politically motivated.

“I believe I was fired because I opened a case against the president of the United States,” he said.

In the interview Sunday, McCabe also said Rosenstein in the days after Comey’s firing had proposed wearing a wire to secretly record the president. McCabe said he took the remark seriously, though the Justice Department last Septemeber — responding last September to a New York Times report that first revealed the conversation — issued a statement from an official who was in the room and interpreted the remark as sarcastic.

McCabe said the remark was made during a conversation about why Trump had fired Comey.”

“And in the context of that conversation, the deputy attorney general offered to wear a wire into the White House. He said, “I never get searched when I go into the White House. I could easily wear a recording device. They wouldn’t know it was there,” McCabe said,

In excerpts released last week by CBS News, McCabe also described a conversation in which Rosenstein had raised the idea invoking the Constitution to remove Trump from office. The Justice Department says Rosenstein does not see cause to seek the removal of the president.

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KONTAN.CO.ID - WASHINGTON. Jadwal sehari-hari Presiden Amerika Serikat Donald Trump bocor. Rupanya, mayoritas waktu Trump dihabiskan untuk urusan pribadi yang dirahasiakan.

Seperti dikutip CNN dari Axios, sejak pemilu paruh waktu pada tahun lalu, Trump telah menghabiskan sekitar 60% jam kerjanya untuk 'waktu eksekutif' yang tidak terstruktur. Axios mengutip 51 jadwal pribadi dari sumber Gedung Putih yang tidak disebutkan namanya.

Soothing Markets

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross argued that China’s response won’t disrupt the U.S. economy, and other administration officials said the world’s two biggest economic powers still have time to back away from a trade war. That helped markets reverse early losses Wednesday as investors speculated the back-and-forth may not do much damage to global growth.

But many Republicans still were left with some dread of a potentially perilous road ahead.
“The problem is the potential for larger retaliation from China, and perhaps other countries, if it spills over. That’s a huge fear,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist with the American Action Forum, a research and advocacy group with close ties to the House GOP leadership.

Researchers at the Dallas Fed said in an analysis published Wednesday that the steel and aluminum tariffs that Trump previously announced, if fully implemented, would probably reduce U.S. gross domestic product by a quarter-percentage point over the long run. If the situation escalates to a trade war involving the U.S., China and the European Union, the disruptions could reduce GDP by 3.5 percent, according to the analysis.

‘Sensitive Electorates’

Holtz-Eakin said some of the responses from other countries to Trump’s trade pronouncement put a target on “sensitive electorates.”

After Trump announced plans for tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, the European Union threatened to impose new duties on bourbon from Kentucky, the home state of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and motorcycles made by Harley Davidson, which has its headquarters in Wisconsin, the home state of House Speaker Paul Ryan. Trump gave the EU a temporary exclusion from the tariffs. China’s proposed retaliatory steps would hit hardest in farm states where Republicans dominate.

"That’s all about making the Republicans hurt," Holtz-Eakin said.

Headwinds

If China follows through on it retaliatory tariffs, they’d be hitting just as campaigns are gearing up for the midterm elections that will decide control of Congress. Republicans already are confronting signs that Democrats have a solid chance to seize control of the majority in the House of Representatives, with Democratic voter disdain for Trump driving up turnout. At the same time, three of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats represent states that would be among the most affected by soybean tariffs -- Missouri, Indiana and North Dakota

In an interview with Kentucky Today published on Wednesday, McConnell warned that 2018 will be a “challenging election year” for the GOP. “We know the wind is going to be in our face. We don’t know whether it’s going to be a Category 3, 4 or 5.”

Some Republicans are pleading with the president to ease off.

“It’s my hope that the Trump administration will reconsider these tariffs and pursue policies that enhance our competitiveness, rather than reduce our access to foreign markets,” Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst said in a statement.

Iowa’s other Republican senator, Chuck Grassley, said in a statement Wednesday that he warned Trump in February that tariffs on Chinese goods would cause China to retaliate against U.S. agriculture and “that’s exactly what happened.”

Economic Issues

“The best thing the Trump administration has going for it is a strong economy,” said Doug Heye, a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee and House leadership who has been critical of Trump. “Talk of tariffs and trade wars may play well with part of Trump’s base, but economic growth — job and wage growth — may ultimately be the only thing that can help stem a potentially disastrous midterm.”

The president tweeted Wednesday that a trade conflict with China has little downside for the U.S. given the current trade imbalance between the two countries. "When you’re already $500 Billion DOWN, you can’t lose!" he wrote on Twitter.

The defiant tone echoes his campaign-trail rhetoric that won him decisive votes in Midwestern states that are home to domestic industries that have been hammered amid increasing globalization and free trade policies. His success in the election revealed a substantial base of political support for an anti-trade platform. But many of those states also have substantial agricultural interests, which largely have benefited from trade.

The White House said Wednesday the president is playing a long game.

“We may have a little bit of short-term pain but we will have long-term success,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Wednesday.

Trump’s advisers sought to deliver reassurance despite his strong rhetoric. Ross, in an interview with CNBC said the U.S. isn’t entering “World War III” and left the door open for a negotiated solution.

“Even shooting wars end with negotiations,” Ross said.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow emphasized the prospective nature of the president’s trade moves.

“None of the tariffs have been put in place yet, these are all proposals,” he said in an interview Wednesday with Bloomberg News. “We’re putting it out for comment. There’s at least two months before any actions are taken.”

— With assistance by Jennifer Jacobs, and Alan Bjerga

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - As far as the stock market is concerned, U.S. President Donald Trump is, right now, his own worst enemy.

The president - who frequently touted Wall Street’s rally following his 2016 election victory - was partly blamed for a sharp stock selloff on Monday that investors believe is likely to continue, deepening cracks in a nine-year-old bull run.

The selling was sparked by escalating fears of a trade war as China slapped tariffs on a host of U.S. goods as Trump prepares to impose tariffs of more than $50 billion on Chinese imports, and by Trump’s renewed criticism of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O).

“The president’s behavior is now beginning to impact the capital markets - both the averages and individual equities,” said Doug Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners Management in Palm Beach, Florida.

Particularly worrisome to investors on Monday: more weakness in the tech sector, which led the market up in recent months, and a breach below a major S&P 500 technical level.

In a Twitter post, Trump attacked Amazon for a second time in three days over the pricing of its deliveries through the United States Postal Service and promised unspecified changes.

Amazon’s stock slumped 5.2 percent and led the S&P 500 and Nasdaq down, pressuring other high-growth, technology-related stocks, including Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Facebook Inc (FB.O). Outcry in recent weeks over Facebook’s handling of data about its users has shaken the tech sector with fears of greater governmental oversight.

People walk by a Wall Street sign close to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
“(One) big factor is Trump further going after the tech sector, namely Amazon,” said Tom di Galoma, managing director at Seaport Global Holdings in New York. “It casts a shadow effectively around all of the tech sector.”

TECH SECTOR PAIN = MARKET PAIN
The selloff in technology-related stocks was seen as a particularly worrisome sign for investors who have banked on that sector continuing to drive the broader market.

“It’s very significant,” said Michael Purves, chief global strategist at Weeden & Co in New York. “Selling tech is not a sector rotation story, its a sell-the-market story.”

Technology stocks have been widely viewed in recent months as a “crowded trade” - with most investors having the same opinion, increasing the potential for a volatile selloff if sentiment changes.

“What we’ve learned over the past two weeks is just how overweight investors were in technology,” said Nicholas Colas, co-founder of Datatrek Research, New York.

Investors saw more selling pressure ahead, particularly after the S&P 500 .SPX dipped below a major technical level, the 200-day moving average, for the first time since Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016. The index closed at 2,582, for a year-to-date decline of 3.4 percent.

“We have been pounding on the 200-day for the last six sessions and now we’ve broken through,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas. There may be support around the 2,537 level, he said, “but then below that we may be looking at 2,500 or so again, which is pretty scary.”

In Trump’s first year as president, the S&P 500 surged 24 percent on bets he would boost the economy with fiscal spending, deregulation and deep tax cuts. Trump tweeted frequently about the stock market as it rallied through 2017. But since a selloff in February, he has been noticeably silent.

But this bull market has frequently staged swift recoveries, and some were poised for opportunity.

“I’m taking advantage of these markets and am heavily overweighted financials and banks,” said David Kotok, chairman and chief investment officer Of Cumberland Advisors in Sarasota, Florida. “I didn’t buy today, we’re in freefall, but I might tomorrow.”

Reporting by Noel Randewich; additional reporting by Kate Duguid, Karen Brettell, Jennifer Ablan and Megan Davies in New York; editing by Megan Davies and Leslie Adler

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican senators warned President Donald Trump on Sunday not to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and said the president must let federal investigators looking into Russian meddling in the U.S. election do their jobs.

The Republican president has renewed his Twitter attacks on both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Mueller’s probe since the firing on Friday of the bureau’s former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, two days before he was eligible to retire with a full pension.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake, who has criticized Trump harshly, said the president’s latest comments appeared to be aimed at the firing of Mueller. Senator Lindsey Graham, another Republican, said if Trump were to dismiss Mueller it would mark “the beginning of the end of his presidency.”

AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, said: “As the speaker has always said, Mr. Mueller and his team should be able to do their job.”

The comments underscored the risks for Trump if he goes too far to thwart the federal probe.

“I don’t know what the designs are on Mueller, but it seems to be building toward that (firing him), and I just hope it doesn’t go there, because it can’t. We can’t in Congress accept that,” Flake told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“So I would expect to see considerable pushback in the next couple of days urging the president not to go there.”

In a series of tweets over the weekend, Trump accused the FBI leadership of lies, corruption and leaking information. He called the Russia probe a politically motivated witch hunt.

“The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime,” Trump said on Saturday. On Sunday, he attacked former FBI Director James Comey and McCabe, top officials who were involved in the Russia probe and subsequently fired.

The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Moscow conducted an influence campaign aimed at swaying the 2016 presidential election to Trump over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Mueller is investigating the Russian meddling and any possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

On Saturday, Trump’s personal lawyer John Dowd urged the Justice Department official overseeing Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, to “bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey.”
Republican U.S. Representative Trey Gowdy criticized Dowd in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.”

“I think the president’s attorney, frankly, does him a disservice when he says that and when he frames the investigation that way,” Gowdy said. “If you have an innocent client, Mr. Dowd, act like it.”

TRUMP FRUSTRATED
White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said the Trump team was fully cooperating in the Mueller investigation and that the president was expressing his growing frustration with how long the probe has lasted.

Graham, a co-author of legislation that would make it harder for a president to fire a special counsel, said it was very important that Mueller be allowed to proceed without interference and that many Republicans share this view.

“The only reason Mr. Mueller could ever be dismissed is for cause. I see no cause when it comes to Mr. Mueller,” Graham said on CNN.

Another Republican, Senator James Lankford, said he does not believe Trump would fire Mueller.

Trump also drew criticism from fellow Republicans on Sunday over the firing of McCabe, who said he believed he was targeted because he corroborated Comey’s claims that Trump tried to pressure Comey into killing the Russia probe.

“I don’t like the way it happened. He should’ve been allowed to finish through the weekend,” Senator Marco Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Rubio, who supports the special counsel probe, said the decision to fire McCabe was made before the release of the Justice Department inspector general’s report that Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited in his dismissal. Sessions said the report concluded McCabe leaked information to reporters and misled investigators about his actions.

On Twitter, Michael Bromwich, McCabe’s lawyer, hit back at Trump’s tweets about his client, calling the president’s comments “childish, defamatory, disgusting & false.”

“The whole truth will come out in due course,” Bromwich wrote. “But the tweets confirm that he has corrupted the entire process that led to Mr. McCabe’s termination and has rendered it illegitimate.”

Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Caren Bohan and Andrea Ricci

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philly.com: Imagine if the Kremlin had authorized a murder of a prominent Russian exile in Boston — using a rare nerve gas manufactured by its military to attack NATO troops.

Presumably, our country would be in an uproar. Yet President Trump’s response to such a murder in Britain last week – for which our NATO ally blames Russia – has been woefully wimpy.

While the U.S. joined Britain, France, and Germany in a statement denouncing Russia, nothing was said about collective action. And while the administration announced new Russia sanctions this week – the first under this president – they were more symbolic than strong.

Even when Trump finally commented on the attack, his critique of Russia was limp and halfhearted. “A very sad situation,” the president said. “It certainly looks like the Russians were behind it.”

Hardly a ringing call to action.

Trump never mentioned the words Putin, or sanctions, or election interference. Never mind that British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Friday that it’s “overwhelmingly likely” that Putin himself ordered the attack.

Trump’s refusal to criticize Putin – or to respond to malevolent Kremlin actions – has moved from the bizarre to the dangerous. Perhaps Robert Mueller will discover Trump’s reasons – the special prosecutor subpoenaed files from the Trump Organization this week including some relating to Russia.

But unless Trump pushes back against Putin, the Russian leader will continue to smell weakness. U.S. intelligence chiefs have warned that Russian hackers will meddle in 2018 elections. More serious is the news, released Thursday, that Russian cyberattacks have targeted U.S. and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems and have the power to sabotage or shut them.

U.S. intelligence agencies have known about these hacking of utilities for months.

So what is Trump’s problem? Does he still nurture dreams of building a Trump Tower in Moscow? Is he beholden to Russian financiers?

Or is Trump smitten with a case of autocrat envy – wishing he could operate like Putin, who will win reelection Sunday in a vote where real opponents were banned from running?

Whatever the reason, this country cannot afford to wait for the end of Mueller’s investigation to learn why the president refuses to stand up to a Russian leader who only recognizes strength.

The newly announced sanctions were against Russia’s two main intelligence agencies and a group of individuals who worked for the Russian “troll farm” that hacked the election. But they will have no impact on Putin. Most of the targets have already been sanctioned, and/or indicted by Mueller. Those indicted from the troll farm were mainly salaried employees.

“Nobody [in the Kremlin] takes [these sanctions] seriously,” I was told by Yevgenia Albats, editor of the independent New Times magazine in Moscow. “Nobody cares. Why should they?” Albats says that, except for Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Putin confidant who ran the troll factory, every individual on the new sanctions list “is a nobody.”

Last summer, a massive bipartisan vote in Congress passed harsher sanctions on Russia that were supposed to target a group of oligarchs close to Putin, affecting their overseas assets. But Trump has refused to implement those sanctions; the list has been kept secret.

If the administration had gone after those oligarchs close to Putin, “the Kremlin would have taken it seriously,” says Albats. Didn’t happen. Question is, why?

An even bigger question is why Trump hasn’t called for a broad, governmentwide strategy to counter Russian cyber malfeasance.

When Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the nominee to run the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, was asked at Senate confirmation hearings last month about U.S. strategy to counter Russian hacking, his answer was shocking. “I would say right now they do not think much will happen to them,” he responded. “They don’t fear us.”

The departing chief of U.S. Cyber command, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, was equally blunt in Senate testimony in February. He said U.S. efforts to counter Russian cyber attacks were insufficient. Putin “has clearly come to the conclusion that ‘there’s little price to pay here and therefore I can continue this activity,’ ” Rogers stated.

When frustrated Democratic senators pressed Rogers about whether he had been authorized by Trump to do more to thwart Russian cyber operations where they originate, he responded: “No, I have not.

“I haven’t been granted any additional authorities, capacity and capability.”

Of course, Rogers, and now Nakasone, can work within the limited authority they are granted. But that authority is inadequate, as even some GOP senators admit.

At the Nakasone hearing, Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse said bluntly, “We are not responding in any way that’s adequate to the challenges we face.”

In other words, the president is not responding.

At a time when Putin is bragging about new “invincible” missiles aimed at America (and Trump is rushing to increase America’s nuclear arsenal), the president could take steps to show Putin that he isn’t a patsy. Like sanctioning oligarchs. Like authorizing a new cyber-strategy.

But Trump (so far) refuses to take them. And we are left asking: Why?

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philly.com
Could political rhetoric be hazardous to public health? Quite possibly, according to a new University of Pennsylvania analysis of the last presidential campaign.

During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, rally host cities experienced 2.3 more assaults than average on days that now-President Donald Trump held his campaign events, found the Penn study, which was published Friday in the journal Epidemiology.

The researchers noted that news media reports cited violent incidents at some of Trump’s campaign rallies, along with language that could be described as colorful. Some of the rally comments attributed to Trump in the study include anti-protestor utterances like “I’ll beat the crap out of you,” “I’d like to punch him in the face,” and “Maybe he should have been roughed up.”

By comparison, democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s rallies were not found to be linked to any increase in assaults. In the months preceding the Nov. 8, 2016 presidential election, media accounts of Clinton’s campaign on numerous occasions included the word “boring,” an adjective that for better or worse was not known to be applied to her opponent.

The researchers believe that the difference in language choices between the candidates may have had an affect on public behavior.

“The language of our leaders matters,” said lead study author Christopher Morrison, a postdoctoral fellow in Penn’s Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. “We have an association between a candidate who was openly promoting violence at events and increases of violence on days of the events. It’s a very clear indication that the language our leaders use can affect the mood of the nation and affect people’s behavior.”

Epidemiologists explore the causes of health problems, including threats to public safety, injury and disease. The Penn researchers said they believe their study – an effort to understand some of the causes and motivations of violent behavior — to be the first of its kind: “We know of no other empirical studies that investigated violence at a population level associated with previous U.S. presidential rallies,” the study article states.

The researchers focused on cities with more than 200,000 people where criminal incident data was available online. Through online searches, they identified data for 31 Trump rallies in 22 cities and 38 Clinton rallies in 21 cities. They counted the incidents for those days, as well as other days for the cities in question. Since weather can be a factor in crime rates, the researchers considered temperature and precipitation in preparing the study.

In the case of Trump rallies, the additional assaults may have occurred at or around the candidate’s campaign events or they may have happened elsewhere in the rally cities but, the study authors said, they were likely the result of “emotional states” transmitted through new reports or social media.

No additional assaults were associated with the days and locations of Clinton campaign events that were part of the study. That included some rallies in Philadelphia.

The impact of political speech on a populace is worthy of additional study, the authors said.

“Given the ongoing reports of violence at political gatherings in the U.S. (e.g. March 4, 2017 in Berkeley, California, where pro- and anti-Trump protestors clashed),” they wrote, “whether and how political rhetoric that normalizes or promotes violence affects violence at the population level appears to be an important area for further research.”

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KONTAN.CO.ID - WASHINGTON. Asosiasi dagang di Amerika Serikat (AS) membentuk aliansi untuk memprotes kebijakan tarif yang dikeluarkan oleh Presiden AS Donald Trump.

Beberapa kelompok perdagangan paling berpengaruh di negara tersebut, termasuk Kamar Dagang AS dengan cepat mengutuk tarif tersebut.

BACA JUGA
Pertemuan Donald Trump dan Kim Jong Un dijadwalkan Mei 2018

Donald Trump akhirnya setuju bertemu Kim Jong Un

Bursa Asia semringah karena Trump bersedia bertemu Kim Jong Un

Trump resmi berlakukan pajak impor baja dan aluminium
Empat puluh asosiasi perdagangan yang mewakili berbagai industri, termasuk otomotif, dirgantara, minyak serta makanan dan minuman, pekan ini membentuk sebuah organisasi payung, yang disebut Aliansi untuk Perdagangan Baja dan Aluminium untuk menentang tarif.

Sebelumnya, Trump berargumen bahwa impor baja dan aluminium mengancam keamanan nasional dengan memukul industri yang menjadi andalan militer.

Namun, Ketua Dewan Perdagangan Luar Negeri, Rufus Xersa, yang akhirnya membentuk aliansi antitarif, mengungkapkan, sejauh yang dilihat, ada banyak pembenaran yang digunakan oleh pemerintahan Trump untuk memuluskan jalan menuju kebijakan tarif.

Mengutip Wall Street Journal, beberapa aliansi yang terbentuk Jumat (9/3) ini sedang menimbang berbagai opsi terkait upaya menggugat dan membatalkan kebijakan tarif Trump.

Namun, beberapa opsi yang dipertimbangkan ini nampaknya tidak akan berhasil, mengingat Trump sudah mengamankan setidaknya satu "pintu", yakni kongres.

Meski, akhirnya kongres dan parlemen mengkritik keputusan Trump, tapi upaya tersebut tidak akan memberi dampak besar dan Trump tetap mengeksekusi kebijakan dengan penandatangan dekrit hari Jumat kemarin.

Ahli hukum Niaga dari Universitas Havard, Mark Wu mengungkapkan, meski jika aliansi-aliansi yang terbentuk untuk melawan Trump ini hendak menggugat sang Presiden di Mahkamah Agung atau Supreme Court, tetap upaya tersebut akan dimentahkan oleh supreme court.

Pasalnya, suppreme court cenderung setuju dengan presiden manapun yang menjabat di Gedung Putih, manakala kebijakan yang diambil memiliki dasar untuk mengamankan kepentingan nasional. Wu mengungkapkan pendapat ini berkaca dari kejadian Januari 2018 lalu, saat Supreme Court menyatakan bahwa keputusan Trump memberlakukan travel-ban untuk negara-negara dengan mayoritas penduduk Muslim adalah kebijakan legal.

Upaya lobi ke kongres pun juga sepertinya sia-sia, sebab kongres telah mendelegasikan kewenangannya terkait perdagangan luar negeri kepada Trump. Untuk soal ini, boleh dikata Trump memang lihai, sebab ia menggunakan Undang-Undang Perluasan Dagang No. 1962 saat berargumen dengan kongres. Alhasil, wewenang perdagangan sepenuhnya di tangan Presiden.

Dua opsi yang tersisa adalah, menggugat kebijakan tersebut di pengadilan perdagangan internasional yang berbasis di New York serta menggugat lewat organisasi perdagangan dunia atau World Trade Organization (WTO). Namun, lagi-lagi kepada Wall Street Journal, Wu mengatakan, dua opsi ini tetap sulit mewujudkan keinginan aliansi-aliansi penentang Trump.

Sebab, pengadilan perdagangan internasional sama seperti Suppreme Court yang condong menyetujui presiden apabila kebijakan yang diambil berlandaskan atas niat "melindungi kepentingan nasional".

Sementara, lewat jalur WTO memang paling memungkinkan, namun WTO biasanya memakan waktu yang lama untuk menyelesaikan gugatan seperti ini. Soal ini Wu berkaca dari kebijakan George W. Bush yang dimentahkan oleh WTO tahun 2003 silam. Kala itu, butuh setahun bagi WTO untuk menyatakan kebijakan tarif Bush merupakan kebijakan ilegal. Itu pun sudah dibarengi dengan perang dagang yang sempat terjadi antara AS dan negara-negara Eropa.

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business insider:

Chaos on the policy front

Trump has recently undertaken significant policy measures, like the planned tariffs announced this week on steel and aluminum, without consulting or reviewing them with his advisers.

A presidential ally who spoke with CNN said this week is “different” and that the president is spiraling.

“This has real economic impact,” the source said, referring to the market’s rejection of the tariffs. “Something is very wrong.”

In the words of one official, Trump became “unglued” on Wednesday night.

On Thursday, he invited business leaders to the White House without allowing the Secret Service to check their backgrounds and screen them for entry, NBC reports.

On Wednesday, Trump had chided Republicans in a meeting for being “afraid of the NRA,” and then invited members of the gun rights group to the White House the following night.

Trump also escalated his public feud with attorney general Jeff Sessions, attacking him on Twitter Wednesday. Then a photo leaked of Sessions dining with a top official and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation since Sessions recused himself.

The Post reported that Trump was “raging” about Sessions’ disloyalty to friends the following morning.

Former Rep. Timothy Roemer said in many ways, Trump’s dark demeanor of late is exactly what voters asked for.

“Many people voted for Trump in order to throw a hand grenade into national politics,” the Indiana Democrat told The New York Times. “It seems he has done the same thing to Capitol Hill, and no one knows from a tweet to an exchange in an Oval Office meeting what’s next.”

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TEMPO.CO, Texas - Sekitar dua pekan lalu, pemerintah Amerika Serikat lewat Kementerian Hukum, mengenakan dakwaan terhadap 13 orang asal Rusia dan sebuah perusahaan Internet Research Agency, yang juga berasal dari negara sama, terlibat melakukan intervensi atas pemilu Presiden AS 2016.

Dakwaan ini disusun oleh Robert Mueller, yang menjadi penasehat khusus Kementerian Hukum AS, untuk mengusut dugaan kolusi antara tim kampanye Trump dengan Rusia. Mueller adalah bekas kepala Biro Investigasi Federal (FBI), yang mengepalai lembaga itu saat terjadi serangan 11 September.

Baca: Rusia Kirim Jet Tempur Modern ke Suriah, Amerika Serikat Prihatin

Menurut laporan CNN, yang mendapat penjelasan dari dokumen dakwaan Kementerian Hukum, kelompok asal Rusia ini bekerja layaknya sebuah perusahaan iklan canggih.

Tim ini memiliki unit grafis, yang bertugas membuat berbagai macam jenis gambar. Lalu Ada team search engine optimization, yang bertugas memaksimalkan konten buatan mereka muncul di jajaran atas hasil pencarian. Lalu ada tim informasi dan telekomunikasi serta tim bujet, yang mengatur pengeluaran pendanaan.

Baca: Rombongan Drone Mini Serang Pangkalan Rusia di Suriah, oleh AS?

"Anggota tim juga melacak pergerakan unggahan konten yang mereka buat di sosial media untuk melihat dampaknya seperti: berapa banyak yang suka, komentar, dan penyebarannya," begitu dilansir CNN, Jumat, 16 Februari 2018. Mereka mengkaji ulang kerja mereka setiap saat sesuai target yang ditetapkan.

Menurut CNN, Internet Research Agency, yang berbasis di Rusia, merupakan entitas yang membuat berbagai macam akun palsu di Amerika dengan menyamar sebagai aktivis. Mereka mencuri identitas asli orang AS untuk mencoba mengacau sistem politiknya.

Berdasarkan dokumen dakwaan, CNN melaporkan upaya kelompok ini bisa menjangkau sekitar 126 juta orang AS dengan konten-konten yang mereka buat. Mereka memulainya sejak 2014 lalu mulai membuat berbagai macam akun palsu menyamar sebagai aktivis untuk menggiring opini publik.

Bujet kelompok ini mencapai sekitar US$1,25 juta atau sekitar Rp17 miliar. Mereka bergerak di sejumlah jejaring sosial media seperti Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube dan Tumblr. Mereka membuat akun Facebook seperti Secured Borders, Blacktivist, dan Army of Jesus.

Kelompok ini juga mengirim tim investigasi ke AS pada 2014 untuk mengumpulkan berbagai informasi dengan menyamarkan tujuan perjalanannya.

"Pada Februari 2016, para pegawai IRA diperintahkan untuk mengkritik Hillary Clinton dan semua kandidat kecuali Bernie Sanders dan Donald Trump," begitu bunyi dakwaan itu.

Dalam salah satu aksinya, kelompok IRA ini mengorganisasi dan mempromosikan dua acara berbeda di hari yang sama yaitu Houston, Texas, untuk menimbulkan percekcokan.

Pegawai IRA membuat laman "Heart of Texas", yang mendorong pemisahan Texas dengan slogan "Hentikan Islamisasi di Texas". Isinya memprotes pembangunan sebuah Islamic Center pada 21 Mei 2016.

Lalu IRA juga membuat laman berbeda yang berlawanan yaitu 'United Muslims of America", yang mempromosikan agenda "Selamatkan Ilmu Pengetahuan Islam". Kedua acara digelar bersamaan.

IRA juga membuat laman Instagram "Woke Blacks", yang bertujuan menekan munculnya pemilih Amerika Afrika dan Musim agar tidak memilih pada Pilpres karena diduga mendukung Hillary.

Setelah pemilihan Pilpres 2016 kelar, masih menurut dokumen Kementerian Hukum, IRA menggunakan laman IG itu untuk mempromosikan terpilihnya Donald Trump. Mereka melakukan berbagai operasi lainnya hingga memasuki 2017.

IRA asal Rusia juga diduga membuat kelompok "Black Fist", yang melatih bela diri bagi warga Afrika Amerika. CNN menemukan kelompok ini menyewa dua pelatih yang dibayar menggunakan PayPaldan Google Wallet senilai US$320 atau sekitar Rp4,5 juta per bulan dari Januari hingga Mei. Dua orang pelatih ini mengaku tidak tahu jika mereka sebenarnya dibayar kelompok asal Rusia itu.

Proses investigasi oleh Mueller ini masih terus berlangsung hingga saat ini. Setelah mengumumkan dakwaan terhadap 13 orang Rusia san satu entitas, Mueller dikabarkan akan memeriksa Presiden AS, Donald Trump, untuk dimintai keterangan soal adanya dugaan intervensi Rusia untuk memenangkan dirinya.

Trump, yang awalnya enggan untuk diperiksa Mueller, belakangan mengaku bersedia untuk bertemu dan dimintai keterangan. Sebagian kalangan mengatakan kecil kemungkinannya Trump bakal terkena delik pidana dalam kasus ini apalagi sampai dilengserkan.

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WASHINGTON, KOMPAS.com - Presiden AS Donald Trump menyatakan perang dagang adalah hal yang bagus dan mudah dimenangkan. Hal ini diungkapkan Trump setelah rencananya menerapkan tarif impor baja dan alumunium menimbulkan ancaman dari mitra-mitra dagangnya. Selain itu, indeks bursa saham pun anjlok. Uni Eropa menyatakan ada kemungkinan mengambil tindakan untuk melawan kebijakan tersebut. Perancis mengungkapkan, kebijakan tarif impor tersebut tidak dapat diterima dan China menghujat kebijakan Trump itu. Kanada, pemasok terbesar baja dan alumunium ke AS, menyatakan bakal melawan jika terdampak oleh kebijakan tarif tersebut. Pertengahan pekan ini, Trump menyatakan bahwa rencana tarif 25 persen untuk impor produk baja dan 10 persen untuk tarif impor produk alumunium akan secara resmi diumumkan pada pekan depan. "Ketika sebuah negara (AS) kehilangan miliaran dollar AS dalam perdagangan dengan semua negara yang berbisnis dengannya, maka perang dagang adalah bagus dan mudah dimenangkan," ujar Trump dalam akun Twitter pribadinya seperti dikutip dari Reuters, Sabtu (3/3/2018). Kemudian, Trump juga bercuit pada akun Twitter-nya bahwa tujuan yang ingin dicapainya adalah melindungi lapangan kerja di AS dari produk-produk murah dari luar negeri. Tema ini kerap digembar-gemborkan Trump pada masa kampanyenya tahun 2016 silam. "Kita harus melindungi negara dan pekerja kita. Industri baja kita dalam kondisi buruk. JIKA ANDA TIDAK PUNYA BAJA, ANDA TIDAK MEMILIKI NEGARA!" tulis Trump. Kebijakan tarif tersebut menimbulkan pro dan kontra di kalangan pemerintahan AS sendiri. Gubernur negara bagian Wisconsin, Scott Walker, meminta Trump memikirkan ulang tarif itu. "Jika presiden ingin melindungi pekerjaan yang digaji dengan baik dan mendukung keluarga Amerika, khususnya di Wisconsin ini, maka ia harus memikirkan ulang posisi pemerintah dalam tarif ini, khususnya terkait alumunium yang sangat tipis," ungkap Walker. Banyak ekonom berpendapat bahwa bukannya meningkatkan serapan tenaga kerja, kebijakan tarif impor tersebut malah akan meningkatkan harga konsumen atas produk baja dan alumunium. Industri seperti otomotif dan minyak akan menghancurkan lebih banyak tenaga kerja di AS ketimbang menciptakan.

Artikel ini telah tayang di Kompas.com dengan judul "Trump: Perang Dagang Bagus dan Mudah Dimenangkan", https://ekonomi.kompas.com/read/2018/03/03/130653426/trump-perang-dagang-bagus-dan-mudah-dimenangkan.
Penulis : Sakina Rakhma Diah Setiawan
Editor : Bambang Priyo Jatmiko

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msn:

A top Justice Department official alerted the White House two weeks ago that significant information requiring additional investigation would further delay the security clearance process of senior adviser Jared Kushner, according to three people familiar with the discussion.

The Feb. 9 phone call from Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to White House Counsel Donald McGahn came amid growing public scrutiny of a number of administration officials without final security clearances. Most prominent among them is Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, who has had access to some of the nation’s most sensitive material for the last year while waiting for his background investigation to be completed.

A week after the call from Rosenstein, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly announced that staffers whose clearances have not been finalized will no longer be able to view top-secret information — meaning that Kushner could stand to lose his status as early as Friday.

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As president, Trump can grant Kushner a high-level security clearance, even if his background investigation continues to drag on. But Trump said Friday that he would leave that decision to Kelly.

In his phone conversation with McGahn, Rosenstein intended to give an update on the status of Kushner’s background investigation. He did not specify the source of the information that officials were examining, the three people said.

Justice Department officials said Rosenstein did not provide any details to the White House about the matters that need to be investigated relating to Kushner.

“The Deputy Attorney General has not referenced to the White House any specific concerns relating to this individual’s security clearance process,” spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement.

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the status of Kushner’s clearance or on information relayed by Rosenstein to McGahn.

Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, declined to comment.

In a statement to The Washington Post last week, Lowell said he had been assured by officials that there was nothing unusual about the delay in Kushner’s security clearance.

“My inquiries to those involved again have confirmed that there are a dozen or more people at Mr. Kushner’s level whose process is delayed, that it is not uncommon for this process to take this long in a new administration, that the current backlogs are being addressed, and no concerns were raised about Mr. Kushner’s application,” Lowell said in a statement on Feb. 16.

Kushner’s interim clearance allows him to view both top-secret and sensitive compartmented information — classified intelligence related to sensitive sources. With that designation, he has been able to attend classified briefings, get access to the president’s daily intelligence report and issue requests for information to the intelligence community.

Security clearance experts said it is rare to have such a high level of interim clearance for such a long period of time. Typically, senior officials do not get interim access to top-secret and sensitive compartmented material for more than three months, experts said.

The day before Rosenstein’s call to McGahn, The Post reported that Kushner was among dozens of White House personnel who were relying on interim clearances while their FBI background investigations were pending.

White House officials have complained that they have had trouble getting information from the Justice Department and FBI about the status of delayed clearances, including Kushner’s. People familiar with the Feb. 9 call said Rosenstein was returning a White House phone call seeking guidance on the status of his background investigation, among those of others.

Rosenstein intended to speak to Kelly, but the chief of staff was not immediately available, so he ended up talking to McGahn instead, according to three people familiar with the call.

In the call, Rosenstein did not say whether the information that had come to the attention of the Justice Department was learned by the FBI in its standard background clearance investigation of White House staff. Rosenstein also oversees the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who has scrutinized Kushner’s contacts with foreign officials and business dealings as he examines Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

There are conflicting accounts about whether Rosenstein discussed with McGahn the significance of the information and its possible impact on Kushner’s clearance. Two people said the deputy attorney general told McGahn the Justice Department had obtained important new information, suggesting it could be an obstacle to his clearance process. One other said Rosenstein did not discuss the nature of the ongoing investigation.

Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel in the Obama administration, said administration officials should view Rosenstein’s alert as a strong reason to revoke Kushner’s interim top-secret access.

“It seems to me that he should have restricted access to highly classified material until the resolution of those issues,” Bauer said.

Kushner’s inability to obtain a final clearance has frustrated and vexed the White House for months. As someone who meets regularly with foreign officials and reads classified intelligence, he would typically have a fast-tracked background investigation, security clearance experts said.

During the last six months, McGahn privately discussed the slow pace of Kushner’s background investigation with other senior aides, including with Kelly in the fall, according to a top administration official. Kelly expressed frustration with Kushner’s access to classified material on an extended interim clearance, according to the official. But McGahn and Kelly decided to wait for the FBI to complete its background investigation and took no action at the time to change his access.

Their wait-and-see mode ended abruptly last week, when Kelly issued a new policy that would block staff with interim clearances from receiving top-secret information as of Friday.

The changes were prompted by intense scrutiny that has followed domestic-abuse allegations against Rob Porter, the president’s former staff secretary, who was also working under an interim top-secret clearance.

The move puts a “bull’s eye” on Kushner, a senior official told The Post last week.

Kelly has told associates that he is uncomfortable with Kushner’s uncertain security clearance status and his unique role as both a family member and staffer, according to people familiar with the conversations. He has said he would not be upset if the president’s son-in-law and his wife, Ivanka Trump, left their positions as full-time employees.

On Friday, Trump said he would defer the question of Kushner’s access to his chief of staff.

“I will let Gen. Kelly make that decision, and he’s going to do what’s right for the country,” the president said during a news conference. “And I have no doubt that he will make the right decision.”

In a statement about Kushner issued earlier this week, Kelly said he had “full confidence in his ability to continue performing his duties in his foreign policy portfolio including overseeing our Israeli-Palestinian peace effort and serving as an integral part of our relationship with Mexico.”

Inside the White House, officials have discussed concerns that the delay in Kushner’s clearance is due in part to repeated updates he made to a form detailing his contacts with foreign officials.

He filed three amendments last year to the questionnaire, after failing to fully disclose contacts reaching back several years. Kushner has said the omissions were inadvertent errors.

Investigators scrutinize those activities to determine whether a person could be subject to influence or blackmail by a foreign government and can be trusted to guard classified information.

Ordinarily, security clearance experts said, the failure to completely disclose all contacts would jeopardize an applicant’s chances of obtaining final clearance.

In addition, Kushner’s actions during the transition have been referenced in the guilty plea of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who admitted he lied to the FBI about contacts with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Prosecutors said Flynn was acting in consultation with a senior Trump transition official, whom people familiar with the matter have identified as Kushner.

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time.com: By LISA MARIE SEGARRA

February 19, 2018

President Donald Trump is not afraid to talk himself up – but presidential historians don’t think he’s so great.

Just in time for Presidents’ Day, a survey of 170 presidential historians puts Trump in dead last place – behind even James Buchanan, whom many historians blame for failing to stop the Civil War.

Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness survey, conducted by University of Houston professor Brandon Rottinghaus and Boise State University professor Justin S. Vaughn, polled current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association and asked them to grade each president.

Trump’s first time on the list knocked Buchanan out of last place. President Barack Obama jumped up ten places in rank since the last survey was conducted in 2014.

President Abraham Lincoln topped the list once again with George Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson rounding out the top five, similar to the 2014 survey. The findings were relatively consistent across political party affiliation and ideology, as well.

Trump, Buchanan and William Henry Harrison ranked the lowest.

The survey also found that Trump was considered the “most polarizing” president. He also he ranked in the bottom five among all categories of respondents including Republican, Democrats, independents, liberals, conservatives and moderates.

A sampling of the results below:

Greatest presidents

Abraham Lincoln
George Washington
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Thomas Jefferson

Least great presidents

Donald Trump
James Buchanan
William Henry Harrison
Franklin Pierce
Andrew Johnson

Ranking recent presidents

Donald Trump – 44th
Barack Obama – 8th
George W. Bush – 30th
Bill Clinton – 13th
George H.W. Bush – 17th
Ronald Reagan – 9th

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(Bloomberg) -- White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders acknowledged on Tuesday that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections but said the efforts didn’t play a role in President Donald Trump’s victory.

“It’s very clear that Russia meddled in the election. It’s also very clear Russia didn’t have an impact on the election,” Sanders said at a briefing today. "And it’s also very clear that the Trump campaign didn’t collude with the Russians in any way for this process to take place."

The president spent much of the holiday weekend tweeting about the Russia investigation after Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals on charges that they carried out a multimillion-dollar operation to depress support for Democrat Hillary Clinton and boost backing for Trump in the 2016 election.

Trump was criticized for not speaking out against Russia after the indictment. He instead focused on comments by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that the indictment didn’t contain evidence that Trump’s campaign willingly collaborated with Russian efforts. He also rebuked his national security adviser for not defending the legitimacy of his election.

Sanders said Tuesday that Trump has acknowledged several times that Russia attempted to interfere with the U.S. elections. She also echoed another tweet by Trump over the weekend, in which he claimed to have been “much tougher on Russia than Obama.”

Sanders hinted the administration would soon reveal action it had taken against Russia, saying “an incident” will be “reported in coming days, another way that the president was tough on Russia.”

During the weekend, Trump also promoted a Fox News report featuring a "great timeline of all of the failures the Obama administration had against Russia." He reiterated his complaints that Russian meddling was an "excuse" by Democrats for losing the presidential election and claimed he "never said Russia did not meddle in the election."

"The Russian ‘hoax’ was that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia - it never did!" the president wrote.

Trump’s previous statements contradict Mueller’s findings. In a 2016 interview with Time Magazine, Trump said he didn’t believe Russia interfered in the election; he also told Fox News that month he didn’t believe CIA conclusions that the Russians wanted to boost his chances.

In November, Trump said he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin when the Russian leader claimed he wasn’t responsible for meddling in the election, though at other points the president has said he believed Russia -- or other countries -- may be responsible for hacking activities related to the election.

The president also took aim at his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, who told an audience at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that Russia had engaged in a “sophisticated form of espionage” against the U.S.

“General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems,” Trump tweeted in reference to Hillary Clinton.

Sanders said Trump retained confidence in McMaster.

"He said that he liked the general’s answer, but just thought that little addendum would be helpful to add," Sanders said.

Trump also reprimanded the FBI, saying the bureau overlooked advance warnings about the suspect in the Feb. 14 Florida school massacre because it was too busy investigating him.

“Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign - there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud,” Trump tweeted.

Pressed about that comment, Sanders said the president didn’t intend to blame the FBI for the shooting.

"I think he’s making the point, we would like our FBI agencies to not be focused on something that is clearly a hoax in terms of investigating the trump campaign and its involvement," Sanders said.

A person with knowledge of Mueller’s probe said last week the special counsel hadn’t concluded his investigation into whether Trump or his associates helped Russian efforts to interfere in the election, despite the president’s aides stressing Friday’s indictment showed no willing collaboration.

(Updates beginning in the 13th paragraph.)

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msn :

WASHINGTON — If they squint hard enough, Republicans looking at President Trump can almost see George W. Bush.

Government spending and the debt are soaring, provoking grumblings about fiscal recklessness. Taxes were slashed at the expense of balanced budgets. Thousands of additional troops have been deployed into war zones half a world away. And with the exception of some highly specific tariffs, international trade remains free and unfettered.

For all the ways Mr. Trump has defied and flouted the norms of his office, many policies that he has approved are downright ordinary by the standards of modern Republican administrations. It is a far cry from the mold-shattering approach he talked about before he became president, insisting he would punish China for “ripping us off,” pull out of Afghanistan because “we waste billions there” and slash the debt because it was “bad for the country.”

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Many Republicans say that what has unfolded so far is not the Trump administration they were expecting.

“The biggest metaphor for this is that in Trump World, Steve Bannon is a smoldering ruin while the president has a good working relationship with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan,” said Rich Lowry, editor of National Review. “A year ago, I think very few people would have thought that.”

Mr. Trump’s Republican critics may be delighted that the status quo remains intact. But conservatives who believed his presidency would be more of a sharp break with the Bush years are starting to express alarm. And their concern could indicate trouble for Mr. Trump if his more conventional approach on some policy issues alienates his base and depresses Republican turnout in the midterm elections in November.

“Right at the point when everyone was thinking in my world that things were just going swimmingly, there are some good and important questions being raised,” said Matt Schlapp, president of the American Conservative Union, which this week will host Mr. Trump as a speaker at its annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

Others have been less generous. Mark Levin, the right-wing talk show host who is also set to speak at CPAC, recently asked his audience, “Is conservatism dead?” and accused lawmakers of “spending like drunken Marxists.”

Even some Trump allies who were initially slow to trust him — precisely because they worried about his fidelity to conservative principles — are voicing skepticism. “I hope this makes conservatives across the country realize that right now, they aren’t getting what they voted for in Washington,” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who clashed bitterly with Mr. Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries but is now one of the president’s confidants, wrote in an essay for Time.com.

The deficits that Mr. Trump and the Republican-led Congress just approved, added Mr. Paul, who was an early Tea Party star, ”would make President Obama cringe.”

Many Republicans do indeed prefer the more accommodating version of the president when it comes to most policies. And despite the extraordinary aspects of his presidency, Mr. Trump has approached governing in a way that bears strikingly similar parallels to Mr. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

One of Mr. Bush’s first official acts as president in January 2001 was to reinstate the Mexico City Policy, a global gag rule implemented under Mr. Reagan that withholds American aid from health organizations worldwide that provide or even discuss abortion in family planning. Just three days into his administration, Mr. Trump did the same thing. The White House has since sought to expand the order.

Mr. Trump’s orders that government departments must safeguard religious liberties have echoes of Mr. Bush’s efforts to promote “faith-based” initiatives through special administrative offices in 11 federal agencies.

Mr. Trump’s effort to comb law schools and courtrooms across the country for young, unfailingly conservative nominees to the federal bench resembles the campaign Mr. Reagan undertook to leave an enduring rightward imprint on the courts.

Mr. Trump has also shown a great degree of deference to the military he once vowed to pull back from foreign conflict. Last year, he signed off on a troop surge in Afghanistan and he permitted the Pentagon to loosen its rules of engagement that dictate how the armed forces can pursue targets in places like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Military officials had complained the Obama White House’s rules prevented them from moving quickly and effectively enough.

His approach to trade has been surprisingly muted compared with what he said when he was campaigning, earning him praise from unlikely corners of his party. “Trump has generally been free trade, despite some worrisome rhetoric,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, one of the free market-oriented groups funded by the brothers Charles and David Koch.

He has not yet labeled China a currency manipulator. One of his most dramatic announcements to date, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, had little practical effect because Congress never ratified it. And last week the Commerce Department said the nation’s trade deficit with China, the official measure of how many goods American businesses import compared with exports, was the highest on record.

On health care Mr. Trump has even proposed ways to lower prescription drug costs, reminiscent of Mr. Bush’s Medicare Part D.

In Mr. Trump’s more conventional policies, Republicans see something they do not usually find in this White House: reassurance.

“It’s one of the reasons someone like me — who was in the ‘Never Trump’ camp and who ultimately didn’t vote for Donald Trump — finds a lot in Donald Trump to like,” said Ari Fleischer, Mr. Bush’s former press secretary.

Many have come to accept Mr. Trump as someone who operates on two tracks, Mr. Fleischer added. “There’s the policy track,” he said. “And then there’s the personal behavior track, which sets him so far apart that it risks drowning the rest out.”

There are many ways, however, in which Mr. Trump has actually gone much further than his Republican predecessors in pursuing conservative policy goals — especially in the environmental and regulatory realm. Mr. Bush, for instance, appointed a moderate Republican governor from a heavily Democratic state to lead his Environmental Protection Agency, Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey. Mr. Trump named the attorney general of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt, who had sued the agency multiple times.

Mr. Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accord and announced his intention to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem — moves most Republicans say other conservative presidents would likely have found too unsettling.

But if once-skeptical Republicans can find reasons in Mr. Trump’s policies to look the other way on some of his personal shortcomings, there are also many who see little to like about his similarities with Mr. Bush, who turned budget surpluses into gaping deficits and helped spark the Republican backlash that became the Tea Party movement.

Many activists have been ratcheting up the pressure. In response to Mr. Trump’s signing the budget agreement and his embrace of a pathway to citizenship for younger immigrants brought here illegally as children, the Tea Party Patriots, one of the president’s most reliable supporters, said conservative voters were not getting what they signed up for.

“There is a sense of frustration among a lot of people who supported President Trump from the very beginning of his campaign,” said Jenny Beth Martin, the group’s president. “They feel a bit betrayed and they don’t feel like President Trump is keeping his promise.”

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msn:

WASHINGTON – It turns out Donald Trump wasn’t the only candidate the Russians allegedly tried to help during the 2016 presidential campaign.

A 37-page indictment resulting from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation shows that Russian nationals and businesses also worked to boost the campaigns of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Green party nominee Jill Stein in an effort to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The Russians “engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump,” according to the indictment, which was issued Friday.

Definition of indictment (Merriam Webster; ONLINE)

1 a : the action or the legal process of indicting

b : the state of being indicted

2 : a formal written statement framed by a prosecuting authority and found by a jury (such as a grand jury) charging a person with an offense

3 : an expression of strong disapproval

an indictment of government policy on immigrants

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Warta Ekonomi.co.id, Washington -

Presiden Amerika Serikat Donald Trump berselingkuh dengan seorang model majalah dewasa Playboy pada saat ia sedang menjalin hubungan dengan seorang bintang porno, menurut laporan New Yorker, Jumat (16/2/2018).

Laporan itu juga menyebutkan bahwa tabloid National Enquirer membayar model tersebut sebesar 150.000 dolar AS (sekitar Rp2 miliar) untuk tidak menyebarkan ceritanya ke publik.

Cerita yang diungkapkan New Yorker soal hubungan itu didasarkan pada catatan-catatan tertulis sang model, yang bernama Karen McDougal, yang pada 1998 dinobatkan sebagai "Playmate of the Year" oleh Playboy.

Cerita tersebut memiliki kesamaan dengan rincian yang diberikan aktris film dewasa Stephanie Clifford, yang juga dikenal sebagai Stormy Daniels, serta beberapa perempuan lainnya soal hubungan seksual dengan Trump, termasuk makan malam secara pribadi dan tawaran untuk membelikan mereka properti.

Majalah itu melaporkan bahwa American Media Inc, sebagai penerbit National Enquirer, membayar Karen sebesar 150.000 dolar pada 2016, tak lama setelah Trump menjadi kandidat presiden dari Partai Republik, untuk mendapatkan hak eksklusif cerita Karen. Cerita itu tidak pernah diterbitkan.

Artikel itu menyebutkan pemimpin American Media, David Pecker, pernah menggambarkan Trump sebagai "teman pribadi." New Yorker melaporkan bahwa McDougal menolak membicarakan rincian hubungannya dengan Trump karena takut melanggar perjanjian dengan American Media.

American Media mengatakan, kepada Reuters dalam pernyataan, sangkaan bahwa pihaknya "melakukan tindakan yang bisa membuatnya menghalangi pengaruh atas Presiden Amerika Serikat, walaupun itu merupakan sanjungan, adalah hal yang patut ditertawakan." New Yorker melaporkan bahwa American Media mengatakan cerita Karen tidak diterbitkan karena pihaknya menganggap cerita itu tidak bisa dipercaya.

Kabar soal pembayaran kepada Karen oleh American Media berasal dari laporan Wall Street Journal pada 4 November 2016.

Trump diduga memulai perselingkuhannya dengan Karen dan Stephanie sekitar tiga bulan setelah istrinya, Melania Trump, melahirkan anak bungsu Trump, Barron.

New York melaporkan bahwa seorang juru bicara Gedung Putih mengatakan Trump membantah berselingkuh dengan Karen dan menyebut laporan itu sebagai "lebih banyak berita palsu." Trump telah mengeluarkan bantahan bahwa ia berselingkuh dengan Stephanie.

Pada awal pekan ini, pengacara pribadi Trump, Michael Cohen, mengatakan ia membayar Stephanie sebesar 130.000 dolar (sekitar Rp1,7 miliar) dari kantong pribadinya saat kampanye pemilihan presiden 2016. Ia juga mengatakan bahwa ia bertindak sendiri dan uang itu bukan merupakan biaya kampanye.

Beberapa perempuan lain telah menuduh Trump berupaya melakukan hubungan seksual yang tidak diinginkan dengan mereka beberapa tahun yang lalu. Trump membantah tuduhan itu.

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msn:

The Justice Department’s special counsel announced the indictment Friday of a notorious Russian troll farm — charging 13 individuals with an audacious scheme to criminally interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The Internet Research Agency, based in St. Petersburg, Russia, was named in the indictment as the hub of an ambitious effort to trick Americans into following Russian-fed propaganda that pushed U.S. voters toward then-Republican candidate Donald Trump and away from Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The indictment charges that some of the Russian suspects interacted with Americans associated with the Trump campaign, but those associates did not realize they were being manipulated.

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Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein called the charges “a reminder that people are not always who they appear on the Internet. The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote social discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy. We must not allow them to succeed.”

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III did not attend the press briefing, but the 37-page indictment provides the most detailed description from the U.S. government of Russian interference in the election.

RELATED: Read the indictment

Prosecutors said the Internet Research Agency kept a list of real Americans who its employees had contacted using false personas and had asked to assist the effort. The list, which numbered over 100 people by late August 2016, included the U.S. citizens’ contact information, a summary of each person's political views and the activities the Russians had asked them to undertake.

None of those charged are in custody, according to Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office. Russia does not typically allow any of its citizens to be extradited to the U.S. to face trial, so it’s unlikely that the individuals will be turned over, but it will likely prevent them from traveling outside Russia.

Some of the Russians posed as U.S. persons and, without revealing their Russian identities, “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities,” the indictment said.

By February 2016, the suspects had decided whom they were supporting in the 2016 race. According to the indictment, Internet Research Agency specialists were instructed to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except San

ders and Trump — we support them).”

Prosecutors say some Russian employees of the troll farm were chastised in September 2016 when they had a “low number of posts dedicated to criticizing Hillary Clinton” and were told it was “imperative to intensify criticizing” the Democratic nominee in future posts.

The charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft. One of those indicted is Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, who has long been identified in Russian media as the financial backer of the Internet Research Agency. He is a caterer who has been nicknamed “Putin’s chef” because of his close ties to the Russian president.

Concord Consulting and Concord Catering, two Russian businesses also charged by Mueller’s team on Friday, have previously been identified as Prigozhin vehicles. “The Americans are very impressionable people and they see what they want to see,” Prigozhin told Russia’s RIA Novosti state news agency in response to the indictment. “I respect them very much.”

Referring to the list of indicted individuals, he added: “I am not at all disappointed that I appear in this list. If they want to see the devil — let them.”

The Internet Research Agency was at the center of Silicon Valley’s investigation into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential election. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google all found evidence that the private firm used social media to divide American voters across a range of polarizing issues, including race, religion, gun rights and immigration.

Tweets and Facebook posts that have been made public as part of these investigations make clear that the Russian disinformation effort broadly sought to favor Trump and undermine the support for Clinton. This conclusion has been backed by the work of several independent researchers.

Typically called a “troll farm,” the Internet Research Agency is regarded as the most prominent part of the Russian disinformation campaign, though congressional investigators pushed for evidence of other operations, including from countries other than Russia, that shared the same purpose.

Overall, Facebook acknowledged to Congress that the Internet Research Agency had bought 3,000 ads on its platform that reached 11.4 million users. The agency’s employees also reportedly made many free posts that reached 126 million users.

In addition to polarizing online political conversation, Facebook reported that the Internet Research Agency used Facebook pages to organize 129 real-world events that drew the attention of nearly 340,000 Facebook users. One of these, organized by a group called Heart of Texas, took place on May 21, 2016, under the banner of “Stop Islamization of Texas.”

On that same day, another Russian-controlled Facebook group, called United Muslims of America, publicized a competing rally to “Save Islamic Knowledge” at the same place and time.

Twitter has acknowledged finding 3,814 accounts linked to the IRA, which together posted some 176,000 tweets in the 10 weeks preceding the election. The company also found 50,258 automated accounts it said were connected to the Russian government and tweeted more than a million times.

One particularly notorious account linked to the Russian firm claimed to speak for Tennessee Republicans. It persuaded a wide range of American politicians, celebrities and journalists to share tweets with their own massive lists of followers. The list of prominent people who tweeted out links from the account, @Ten_GOP, which Twitter shut down in August, included political figures such as Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, celebrities such as Nicki Minaj and James Woods, and media personalities such as Ann Coulter and Chris Hayes.

The IRA Twitter accounts frequently used links from prominent American news organizations, including The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, to push particular narratives related to the campaign, according to research from Columbia University social media researcher Jonathan Albright.

Twitter declined to comment Friday on the indictment.

Anton Troianovksi in Berlin and Rosalind S. Helderman and Spencer S. Hsu. contributed to this report.

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MSN: Wednesday’s school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was the 18th school shooting of 2018 — a year that’s not even two months old. While many of these incidents — including the most recent before Wednesday’s shooting, one on Feb. 8 at New York City’s Metropolitan High School — did not result in any fatalities or injuries, schools nationwide have been rocked by gun violence in recent days. There have been school shootings in 13 states so far this year, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit that advocates for gun control. Texas, California and Michigan have each seen at least two school shootings. On Jan. 23 in Kentucky, a 15-year-old student killed two of his peers and injured almost two dozen others. Just the day before, a 15-year-old girl was wounded in a shooting in Texas. At least 14 people were injured in the shooting at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday, according to the Broward County Sheriff’s office. Florida Sen. Bill Nelson told MSNBC he had gotten word of “a number of fatalities” from the school superintendent. A suspect in the Florida shooting has been identified as Nicolas Cruz, the Associated Press reports. A suspect, who is not a current student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, has been taken into custody, according to the sheriff’s office. President Donald Trump offered “prayers and condolences” in the wake of the Florida shooting, tweeting that “no child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.”
But how can that be when he just announced a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan? That’s easy: It’s not a plan, it’s a scam. The $1.5 trillion number is just made up; he’s only proposing federal spending of $200 billion, which is somehow supposed to magically induce a vastly bigger overall increase in infrastructure investment, mainly paid for either by state and local governments (which are not exactly rolling in cash, but whatever) or by the private sector.

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And even the $200 billion is essentially fraudulent: The budget proposal announced the same day doesn’t just impose savage cuts on the poor, it includes sharp cuts for the Department of Transportation, the Department of Energy and other agencies that would be crucially involved in any real infrastructure plan. Realistically, Trump’s offer on infrastructure is this: nothing.

That’s not to say that the plan is completely vacuous. One section says that it would “authorize federal divestiture of assets that would be better managed by state, local or private entities.” Translation: We’re going to privatize whatever we can. It’s conceivable that this would be done only in cases where the private sector really would do better, and contracts would be handed out fairly, without a hint of cronyism. And if you believe that, I have a degree from Trump University you might want to buy.

At one level, none of this should be a surprise. The current infrastructure nonplan looks a lot like the sketchy proposal the Trump campaign laid out in 2016, back when he was still pretending to be a different kind of Republican, less committed to the party’s economic orthodoxy. Even then he was claiming that he could do infrastructure on the cheap, that a relative pittance of federal money could somehow generate vast investment (although the mystery multiplier has gotten even bigger this time around).

By TESSA BERENSON

February 9, 2018

The number three official at the Justice Department is stepping down after less than a year on the job, the New York Times reports.

According to the Times‘ two anonymous sources, Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand is leaving to go back to the private sector.

Brand’s position at the Justice Department is important because she’s next in line behind Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel’s Russia investigation. If Rosenstein were to step down or be fired, a move that President Trump has refused to rule out, Brand would take over the top spot on the investigation.

Brand’s reported resignation comes as Trump has ramped up his attacks on the Justice Department and accused top officials of political bias. Just as he refused to rule out firing Rosenstein, he also ordered special counsel Robert Mueller fired last year, the New York Times reported, but later relented. Brand’s departure may shake an already uneasy relationship between the White House and the Justice Department.

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Washington DC detik - Memo rahasia Kongres Amerika Serikat (AS) yang kontroversial akhirnya dirilis ke publik oleh Presiden AS Donald Trump. Hal ini berpotensi memperburuk ketegangan Gedung Putih dan Biro Investigasi Federal (FBI) yang sedang menyelidiki dugaan kolusi tim kampanye Trump dengan Rusia.

Seperti dilansir AFP dan Reuters, Sabtu (3/2/2018), Trump mengabaikan peringatan keras dari Direktur FBI Christopher Wray dan Departemen Kehakiman AS yang menyebut perilisan memo rahasia itu berpotensi membahayakan informasi rahasia negara, yang tak seharusnya diketahui publik.

Memo rahasia itu resmi dirilis ke publik oleh Trump tanpa penyensoran. Isinya disebut sebagai informasi sangat rahasia dan sensitif. Memo rahasia setebal empat halaman itu disusun para anggota Kongres dari Partai Republik yang tergabung dalam Komisi Intelijen DPR atau House of Representatives (HOR) AS. Devin Nunes yang merupakan anggota parlemen Republikan bertanggung jawab penuh atas memo rahasia itu.

Isi memo rahasia itu secara garis besar mengungkapkan penyalahgunaan wewenang dan sikap tidak netral dari FBI yang merupakan lembaga penegak hukum top di AS. Dalam memo disebutkan bahwa Departemen Kehakiman AS dan FBI telah menyalahgunakan program pengintaian yang dikenal sebagai Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act selama kampanye pilpres 2016.

Penyalahgunaan wewenang yang dimaksud adalah saat FBI melakukan pengintaian terhadap seorang anggota tim kampanye Trump yang bernama Carter Page. Page menjadi fokus perhatian FBI sejak tahun 2013, saat dia bertemu dengan sejumlah warga Rusia yang bekerja untuk Dinas Intelijen Asing Rusia di New York.

Menurut memo itu, FBI memperoleh surat perintah pengadilan untuk memata-matai Page berdasarkan tuduhan yang tidak terbukti terhadap Trump yang dikenal sebagai 'berkas Rusia'. Berkas yang dimaksud merupakan berkas yang disusun mantan agen intelijen Inggris, Christopher Steele, dengan dana yang dibiayai sebagian dari dana kampanye Hillary Clinton, rival Trump saat pilpres lalu.

Hal ini dianggap mengungkapkan keterlibatan Partai Demokrat dalam pengintaian yang dilakukan FBI terhadap Page. Memo itu juga mengungkapkan nama-nama pejabat senior FBI dan Departemen Kehakiman AS, termasuk Wakil Jaksa Agung Rod Rosenstein, yang menyetujui pengintaian itu.

Kalangan Partai Demokrat dan beberapa politikus Republik terang-terangan menentang perilisan memo rahasia itu. Kubu Demokrat khawatir memo itu dijadikan upaya mendiskreditkan penyelidikan FBI soal dugaan kolusi tim kampanye Trump dengan Rusia.

Dalam voting pada Senin (29/1) pekan ini, Komisi Intelijen pada HOR menyetujui untuk merilis memo rahasia itu ke publik. Trump memiliki waktu sampai akhir pekan ini untuk memutuskan apakah akan merilisnya ke publik dan akhirnya dia melakukannya pada Jumat (2/2) waktu setempat.

"Dokumen ini memunculkan kekhawatiran serius soal integritas pengambilan keputusan pada level tertinggi di Departemen Kehakiman dan FBI," sebut Sekretaris Pers Gedung Putih, Sarah Sanders, dalam komentarnya.

(nvc/fjp)

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AMERIKA SERIKAT- Menjelang Pemilu Presiden Amerika Serikat tahun 2016, ternyata Presiden Amerika Serikat (AS) Donald Trump membayar mantan bintang film porno Sebanyak 130 ribu Dolar AS untuk bungkam dan tak membicarakan perselingkuhan singkat di antara keduanya pada tahun 2006.

Demikian menurut laporan Wall Street Journal yang dirilis Jumat (12/1/2018).

Dalam laporan tersebut, Michael Cohen, seorang pengacara Trump mengatur pembayaran kepada bintang porno tersebut sebagai bagian dari kesepakatan rahasia yang harus diselesaikan sebulan sebelum pemilu 2016.

Bintang porno tersebut diidentifikasi oleh Wall Street Journal sebagai Stephanie Clifford. Ia dilaporkan setuju untuk tetap diam dan tak menceritakan kepada publik tentang pertemuan-pertemuan seksnya dengan Trump. Clifford sendiri memiliki nama populer Stormy Daniels.

Seperti dilansir Haaretz, Sabtu, (13/1), Clifford pertama kali berkenalan dengan Trump pada turnamen golf selebriti Juli 2006 di tepi Danau Tahoe.

Clifford diduga mengeluh setelah kesepakatan tersebut diselesaikan. Sebab ia tidak menerima pembayaran secepat yang dia harapkan, bahkan ia sempat mengancam akan membatalkan kesepakatan dengan Trump.

Laporan menyebutkan, ia akhirnya mendapat pembayaran melalui pengacaranya Keith Davidson. Uang itu ditransfer ke rekening klien terpercaya di City National Bank di Los Angeles.

Sebelumnya ada laporan yang isinya mengklaim kalau mantan bintang porno 38 tahun tersebut menegosiasikan kemungkinan tampil sebagai tamu di ABC ‘Good Morning America’ dua tahun yang lalu untuk membicarakan Trump.

Saat ini Clifford menolak menanggapi permintaan untuk mendapatkan komentarnya. Sementara pengacara yang pernah disewanya juga tak mau memberikan keterangan karena menghormati kliennya.(Tri)

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Bisnis.com, WASHINGTON - Kepala badan sandi Amerika Serikat (CIA), Minggu, mengatakan bahwa Rusia dan pihak lain mencoba mengacaukan pemilihan umum di AS, yang selanjutnya akan dilaksanakan pada November dengan pemilihan anggota Kongres.

Badan intelijen AS itu menyimpulkan Rusia mencampuri pemilihan presiden 2016 untuk membantu pemenangan Presiden Donald Trump, yang sebagian dilakukan melalui peretasan, penyebaran surat elektronika, yang menjatuhkan calon presiden dari Demokrat, Hillary Clinton, serta menyebarkan propaganda di media gaul.

Direktur CIA Mike Pompeo mengatakan kepada CBS bahwa gangguan Rusia sudah berlangsung lama dan terus berlanjut. Saat ditanya pada acara "Face the Nation" tentang ulah Moskow saat ini, ia memastikan peran Rusia tersebut telah berlangsung puluhan tahun.

"Ya, saya masih khawatir tidak hanya tentang orang Rusia, tapi juga upaya pihak lain. Kami memiliki banyak musuh, yang ingin merusak demokrasi Barat," katanya.

Moskow menyangkal adanya campur tangan dalam pemilihan 2016 untuk membantu kemenangan Trump dari Partai Republik. Penasihat Khusus AS Robert Mueller sedang menyelidiki apakah ada kejahatan yang dilakukan. Dua rekan Trump, mantan penasihat keamanan nasional Michael Flynn dan ajudan kampanye George Papadopoulos telah mengaku bersalah berbohong kepada agen FBI dalam penyelidikan tersebut. Trump menyangkal adanya persekongkolan kampanye dengan Rusia.

Trump terkadang menyarankan agar ia menerima penilaian badan intelijen AS bahwa Rusia berusaha untuk ikut campur dalam pemilihan tersebut, namun di lain waktu telah mengatakan bahwa ia menerima penyangkalan Presiden Rusia Vladimir Putin yang dituduh bahwa Moskow ikut campur.

Trump kerap mengatakan keinginannya memperbaiki hubungan dengan Putin, meski Rusia telah membuat frustrasi AS di Suriah dan Ukraina dan sedikit berkontribusi dalam kebuntuan dengan Korea Utara.

Pompeo mengatakan kepada CBS bahwa CIA memiliki fungsi penting sebagai bagian dari tim keamanan nasional untuk menjaga pemilihan AS tetap aman dan demokratis.

"Kami bekerja keras untuk melakukan itu, jadi kita akan bekerja untuk melawan Rusia atau pihak lain yang mengancam hasil itu," katanya.

Pada Sabtu, Trump mengatakan merencanakan tahun aktif di jalur kampanye atas nama calon dari Partai Republik, yang mengikuti pemilihan umum sela, dengan semua anggota Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat dan sepertiga dari Senat akan dipilih. Partai Republik memegang mayoritas di keduanya.

BACA JUGA :

Sumber : ANTARA/REUTERS

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Montgomery, Alabama (CNN)Democrat Doug Jones has scored a stunning win against Republican Roy Moore to win the Senate seat in Alabama, CNN projects.

The dramatic win comes after allegations against Moore of sexually abusing teens and his history of controversial comments about women and minorities. It will be enough for a reliably red state to elect its first Democratic senator in a generation.

A Jones win will trim the Republican Senate majority to 51-49 and deals a major blow to President Donald Trump, who has backed Moore amid the national conversation over sexual misconduct.

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Kabar24.com, JAKARTA - Duta Besar Amerika Serikat (AS) untuk PBB, Nikki Haley, mengatakan bahwa status terakhir Yerusalem menjadi keputusan antara Palestina dan Israel.

Komentar Haley muncul setelah pernyataan Presiden AS Donald Trump menarik kecaman dari para pemimpin dunia, termasuk sekutu dekat AS, dengan mengakui kota yang disengketakan tersebut sebagai ibu kota Israel.

Dalam pidatonya di Gedung Putih pada Rabu (6/12) waktu setempat, Trump juga mengumumkan bahwa AS akan memindahkan kedutaan besarnya dari Tel Aviv ke Yerusalem.

“Jika Anda perhatikan, dalam pidatonya, Presiden [Trump] menegaskan untuk tidak membicarakan batas atau batasan. Tidak ada kelompok luar yang harus memutuskan seperti apa status terakhirnya,” kata Haley dalam wawancara dengan Fox News Sunday, seperti dikutip dari Bloomberg, Senin (11/12/2017).

Ketika ditanya apakah Yerusalem Timur bisa menjadi ibu kota negara Palestina, Haley mengatakan bahwa AS akan menghormati keputusan apapun yang dicapai kedua belah pihak.

Haley mengatakan bahwa keputusan Trump justru dapat mempercepat proses perdamaian. Komentarnya menegaskan pernyataan Penasihat Keamanan Nasional H. R. McMaster pada 3 Desember bahwa pemindahan kedutaan besar AS ke Yerusalem dapat memberi momentum untuk perundingan damai.

Masyarakat internasional menganggap sektor timur Yerusalem sebagai wilayah yang diduduki dan berpendapat bahwa status terakhir Yerusalem harus dinegosiasikan, tidak diumumkan secara sepihak.

Mengakui Yerusalem sebagai ibu kota Israel penuh dengan implikasi agama dan politik karena sektor timur kota tersebut, tempat beberapa situs kuno tersuci dalam agama Yahudi, Kristen, dan Islam, juga diklaim oleh warga Palestina sebagai ibu kota negara di masa depan.

Presiden Prancis Emmanuel Macron pada hari Minggu (10/12) kembali menegaskan penolakannya terhadap keputusan AS di Yerusalem. Macron, bersama sejumlah pemimpin dunia lainnya, mengecam langkah Trump yang dikawatirkan dapat memicu kekerasan baru sekaligus mengubur harapan penyelesaian konflik antara Israel dan Palestina.

Senator Ben Cardin dari Maryland, pemimpin Partai Demokrat dalam komite Hubungan Luar Negeri AS, mengatakan pada hari Minggu bahwa Yerusalem adalah ibu kota Israel namun Trump gagal melihat kebutuhan untuk melibatkan banyak pihak dalam proses perdamaian.

“Presiden [Trump] merusak keamanan nasional Amerika dan posisi kita di dunia karena ketidakmampuannya untuk menggunakan diplomasi dengan cara yang benar,” kata Cardin kepada ABC.

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London - Keputusan Presiden AS Donald Trump mengakui Yerusalem sebagai Ibu Kota Israel juga ditentang Inggris. Inggris menganggap keputusan Trump tak akan membantu upaya perdamaian antara Palestina dan Israel.

Hal tersebut disampaikan Perdana Menteri Inggris Theresa Mey melalui Juru Bicaranya, Rabu (6/12), seperti dikutip dari Reuters, Kamis (7/12/2017).

"Kami tidak setuju dengan keputusan AS untuk memindahkan kedutaannya ke Yerusalem dan mengakui Yerusalem sebagai ibu kota Israel sebelum kesepakatan terkait status terakhir," kata juru bicara tersebut.

"Kami percaya (keputusan AS) tidak membantu prospek perdamaian di wilayah ini," imbuhnya.

Negara Eropa lain, Prancis juga telah menyampaikan penolakannya. Presiden Prancis Emmanuel menilai status Yerusalem harus ditentukan oleh Israel dan Palestina sendiri.

"Status Yerusalem adalah masalah keamanan internasional yang menyangkut seluruh masyarakat internasional. Status Yerusalem harus ditentukan oleh bangsa Israel dan Palestina dalam sebuah negosiasi di bawah naungan PBB," kata Macron seperti dilansir dari Reuters, Kamis (7/12).

Macron yang punya hubungan kerja baik dengan Trump meminta semua pihak untuk tetap tenang atas keputusan Trump ini. Jangan sampai timbul perpecahan dan kekerasan sampai nanti ada upaya dialog antara kedua belah pihak.

"Untuk saat ini, saya mendesak setiap orang agar tenang dan bertanggung jawab. Kita harus menghindari segala upaya kekerasan dan mengedepankan dialog," tuturnya.
(rna/idh)

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Washington DC - Presiden Amerika Serikat (AS) Donald Trump telah memberikan pengakuan resmi bahwa Yerusalem adalah ibu kota Israel. Trump juga menjelaskan bahwa pemindahan Kedutaan Besar AS akan segera berproses.

Pidato bersejarah Trump ini disampaikan di Gedung Putih, Washington DC, pada Rabu (6/12) siang waktu AS, atau Kamis (7/12) dini hari waktu Indonesia. Trump didampingi Wakil Presiden AS Mike Pence saat menyampaikan pidato ini.

Seperti dilansir dari situs resmi Gedung Putih, whitehouse.gov, Kamis (7/12/2017), pidato Trump ini fokus membahas soal pengakuan resmi Yerusalem sebagai ibu kota Israel juga soal rencana pemindahan Kedubes AS dari Tel Aviv ke Yerusalem.

Pemindahan Kedubes AS, disebut Trump, sebagai penerapan Undang-Undang Kedutaan Yerusalem yang disepakati Kongres AS tahun 1995 lalu. Dia menyebut para Presiden AS sebelumnya gagal menerapkan Undang-Undang itu.

Trump juga menegaskan bahwa pengakuan Yerusalem ini tidak berarti menggugurkan komitmen AS terhadap upaya perdamaian bagi Israel dan Palestina. Dia menyatakan, AS tetap berkomitmen untuk mewujudkan solusi dua negara, asalkan disepakati oleh Israel juga Palestina.

Lebih lanjut, Trump menyebut pengakuan Yerusalem ini sebagai pendekatan baru dalam menghadapi konflik Israel-Palestina yang tidak berkesudahan.

Berikut pernyataan lengkap Trump soal pengakuan Yerusalem seperti dikutip dari situs resmi Gedung Putih:

Terima kasih. Ketika saya mulai menjabat, saya berjanji untuk melihat tantangan dunia dengan mata terbuka dan pemikiran sangat segar.Kita tidak bisa menyelesaikan persoalan-persoalan kita dengan membuat asumsi gagal yang sama dan mengulang strategi masa lalu yang sama yang telah gagal. Semua tantangan memerlukan pendekatan-pendekatan baru.

Pengumuman saya hari ini menandai awal pendekatan baru untuk konflik antara Israel dan Palestina.

Tahun 1995, Kongres mengadopsi Undang-undang Kedutaan Yerusalem yang mendorong pemerintah federal untuk merelokasi Kedutaan Besar Amerika ke Yerusalem untuk mengakui bahwa kota itu, dengan sangat penting, merupakan ibu kota Israel. Undang-undang ini diloloskan Kongres dengan suara bipartisan mayoritas sangat besar. Dan ditegaskan oleh suara bulat Senat hanya enam bulan lalu.

Namun, selama lebih dari 20 tahun, setiap Presiden Amerika sebelumnya telah memberlakukan hukum waiver, menolak untuk memindahkan Kedutaan Besar AS ke Yerusalem atau untuk mengakui Yerusalem sebagai ibu kota Israel.

Presiden-presiden menerbitkan waiver ini dengan keyakinan bahwa menunda pengakuan Yerusalem akan memajukan isu perdamaian. Beberapa pihak menyebut mereka kurang berani tapi mereka memberikan penilaian terbaik mereka berdasarkan fakta-fakta yang mereka pahami saat itu. Namun demikian, semuanya tercatat. Setelah lebih dari dua dekade menerbitkan waiver, kita tidak juga lebih dekat pada kesepakatan perdamaian abadi antara Israel dan Palestina. Akan menjadi kebodohan untuk beranggapan bahwa mengulang formula yang sama persis sekarang akan menghasilkan hasil yang berbeda atau lebih baik.

Oleh karena itu, saya telah menentukan bahwa ini saatnya untuk mengakui secara resmi Yerusalem sebagai ibu kota Israel.

Sementara presiden-presiden sebelumnya telah menjadikan hal ini sebagai janji kampanye besar, mereka gagal mewujudkannya. Hari ini, saya mewujudkannya.

Saya telah menilai rangkaian tindakan ini berada di dalam kepentingan terbaik Amerika Serikat dan upaya perdamaian antara Israel dan Palestina. Ini merupakan langkah yang diharapkan sejak lama untuk memajukan proses perdamaian. Dan untuk mengupayakan kesepakatan abadi.

Israel adalah negara berdaulat dengan hak, sama seperti setiap negara berdaulat lainnya, untuk menentukan ibu kota sendiri. Mengakui hal ini sebagai sebuah fakta adalah syarat yang diperlukan untuk mencapai perdamaian.

Sekitar 70 tahun lalu, Amerika Serikat di bawah Presiden Truman mengakui negara Israel. Sejak saat itu, Israel telah menetapkan ibu kotanya di kota Yerusalem -- ibu kota yang didirikan rakyat Yahudi pada masa kuno. Hari ini, Yerusalem menjadi lokasi pemerintahan Israel modern. Kota ini menjadi rumah Parlemen Israel, Knesset, juga Mahkamah Agung Israel. Kota ini menjadi lokasi kediaman resmi perdana menteri dan presiden. Kota ini menjadi markas banyak kementerian pemerintah.

Selama beberapa dekade, Presiden-presiden Amerika, Menteri Luar Negeri dan para pemimpin militer yang berkunjung bertemu mitra-mitra Israel mereka di Yerusalem, sama seperti yang saya lakukan saat kunjungan saya ke Israel awal tahun ini.

Yerusalem bukan hanya pusat tiga agama besar, tapi sekarang juga menjadi pusat salah satu demokrasi paling sukses di dunia. Selama tujuh dekade terakhir, rakyat Israel telah membangun sebuah negara di mana umat Yahudi, Muslim dan Kristen dan orang-orang dari semua keyakinan bebas untuk menjalankan kehidupan dan beribadah menurut nurani mereka dan menurut kepercayaan mereka.

Yerusalem saat ini, dan harus tetap, menjadi tempat di mana umat Yahudi berdoa di Tembok Ratapan, di mana umat Kristen menapaki jalan salib, dan di mana umat Muslim beribadah di Masjid Al-Aqsa.

Namun, selama bertahun-tahun, presiden-presiden yang mewakili Amerika Serikat menolak untuk secara resmi mengakui Yerusalem sebagai ibu kota Israel. Faktanya, kita menolak untuk mengakui ibu kota Israel sama sekali.

Tapi hari ini, kita akhirnya mengakui hal yang jelas: bahwa Yerusalem adalah ibu kota Israel. Ini tidak lebih dan tidak kurang, adalah sebuah pengakuan realitas. Ini juga menjadi hal yang benar untuk dilakukan. Ini hal yang harus dilakukan.

Itulah mengapa, konsisten dengan Undang-undang Kedutaan Yerusalem, saya juga mengarahkan Departemen Luar Negeri untuk memulai persiapan memindahkan Kedutaan Besar Amerika dari Tel Aviv ke Yerusalem. Ini berarti segera memulai proses mempekerjakan arsitek, teknisi dan perencana agar kedutaan yang baru, ketika selesai dibangun, akan menjadi persembahan luar biasa untuk perdamaian.

Dalam pengumuman ini, saya juga ingin memperjelas satu poin: Keputusan ini tidak dimaksudkan, dalam cara apapun, untuk menunjukkan penarikan diri dari komitmen kuat kami untuk memfasilitasi kesepakatan perdamaian abadi. Kami menginginkan sebuah kesepakatan yang menjadi kesepakatan baik bagi Israel dan kesepakatan baik bagi Palestina. Kami tidak mengambil posisi untuk status akhir pada isu-isu termasuk perbatasan spesifik kedaulatan Israel di Yerusalem atau resolusi perbatasan yang diperdebatkan. Pertanyaan-pertanyaan itu menjadi urusan pihak-pihak yang terlibat.

Amerika Serikat tetap berkomitmen secara mendalam untuk membantu memfasilitasi kesepakatan damai yang diterima oleh kedua pihak. Saya berniat melakukan apapun dalam kemampuan saya untuk membantu menempa kesepakatan semacam itu. Tanpa perlu dipertanyakan, Yerusalem adalah salah satu isu paling sensitif dalam perundingan itu. Amerika Serikat akan mendukung solusi dua negara jika disepakati oleh kedua pihak.

Untuk saat ini, saya menyerukan kepada semua pihak untuk mempertahankan status quo di tempat-tempat suci Yerusalem, termasuk Temple Mount, yang juga dikenal sebagai Haram al-Sharif.

Di atas semua itu, harapan terbesar kami adalah perdamaian, keinginan universal dalam jiwa setiap manusia. Dengan keputusan hari ini, saya menegaskan kembali komitmen lama pemerintahan saya untuk perdamaian dan keamanan kawasan di masa depan.

Akan ada, tentu, ketidaksepakatan dan perbedaan pendapat terkait pengumuman ini. Tapi kami percaya bahwa pada utamanya, dengan kami menghadapi ketidaksepakatan ini, kami akan tiba pada perdamaian dan tempat yang jauh lebih baik dalam pemahaman dan kerja sama.

Kota sakral ini seharusnya mampu menunjukkan yang terbaik dalam kemanusiaan. Angkat pandangan kita pada apa yang mungkin, bukan menarik diri ke belakang dan ke bawah pada pertengkaran lama yang telah menjadi sungguh mudah ditebak. Perdamaian tidak pernah berada di luar genggaman orang-orang yang ingin mencapainya.

Jadi hari ini, kami menyerukan agar ketenangan, sikap menahan diri, suara-suara toleransi bisa menang atas penebar kebencian. Anak-anak kita seharusnya mewarisi cinta kita, bukan konflik kita.

Saya menegaskan pesan yang saya sampaikan saat pertemuan luar biasa dan bersejarah di Arab Saudi awal tahun ini: Timur Tengah adalah kawasan yang kaya akan budaya, semangat dan sejarah. Orang-orangnya cemerlang, penuh kebanggaan dan beragam, bersemangat dan kuat. Tapi masa depan luar biasa yang menunggu kawasan ini, tertahan oleh pertumpahan darah, ketidaktahuan dan teror.

Wakil Presiden Pence akan mengunjungi kawasan dalam beberapa hari ke depan untuk menegaskan kembali komitmen kami bekerja sana dengan mitra-mitra di seluruh Timur Tengah untuk mengalahkan radikalisme yang mengancam harapan dan mimpi generasi masa depan.

Inilah saatnya bagi banyak orang yang menginginkan perdamaian untuk mengusir ekstremis dari tengah-tengah mereka. Inilah saatnya bagi seluruh bangsa beradab, dan rakyatnya, untuk menanggapi ketidaksepakatan dengan perdebatan yang beralasan -- bukan kekerasan.

Dan inilah saatnya bagi kaum muda dan moderat untuk bersuara di seluruh Timur Tengah untuk mewujudkan sendiri masa depan cerah dan indah.

Jadi hari ini, mari kita mendedikasikan kembali diri kita menuju jalur saling memahami dan menghormati. Mari memikirkan ulang anggapan-anggapan lama dan membuka hati dan pikiran kita untuk hal yang mungkin dan setiap kemungkinan. Dan akhirnya, saya meminta para pemimpin kawasan -- politik dan keagamaan; rakyat Israel dan Palestina; umat Yahudi dan Kristen dan Muslim -- untuk bergabung bersama kami dalam pencarian mulia untuk perdamaian abadi.

Terima kasih. Tuhan memberkati Anda. Tuhan memberkati Israel. Tuhan memberkati Palestina. Dan Tuhan memberkati Amerika Serikat. Terima kasih banyak. Terima kasih.
(tfq/tfq)

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NEWSWEEK: The White House is trying to argue that the nickname "Pocahontas" is "not a racial slur" against Native Americans after President Donald Trump used it Monday as an insult during a ceremony honoring the Navajo code talkers.

Native Americans do not agree.

"Pocahontas is used a racial slur in the United States all the time," Andrew Curley, a postdoctoral fellow in geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a citizen of the Navajo Nation, told Newsweek.

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"I grew up with these kinds of remarks. It's not the name itself but the way it's used. Trump is using it to attack Senator [Elizabeth] Warren and belittle Native Americans at the same time. I take it as a personal insult."

The name refers to the nickname for the Native American teenager who associated with colonial settlers in Virginia in the early 1600s, and who inspired a popular 1995 Disney film. Curley, whose research focuses on indigenous sovereignty, believes that "Pocahontas" belongs in the same category as "Redskins," the disparaging name of Washington, D.C.'s professional football team.

He also argues that when it comes to Native Americans, Trump's actions speak louder than words. Notably, his approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline four days after taking office told Corey all he needed to know.

"If Trump really cared about Native Americans, he would've listened to the people at Standing Rock," he said, referring to the heated Native American protests against the project.

Other scholars say Pocahontas is more than just a racial slur—it’s a colonial tool of domination.

“Scholars have stated that the myth of Pocahontas helps to perpetuate white Eurocentric values because she leaves her tribe and becomes a Christian, and this insinuates that Christianity is better than traditional Indigenous religion. Thus, the myth of Pocahontas becomes a method of promoting Eurocentric values and norms and is a tool of colonialism,” Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, professor emeritus at California State University, East Bay, wrote in her 2016 book, “All the Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans

Dunbar-Ortiz also argues that the European imagination of Pocahontas “borders on child pornography, given that the historical Pocahontas was a child when she met John Smith.”

Dunbar-Ortiz told Newsweek that Trump's continued usage of the term is "sickening."

"He took the opportunity to belittle Indians and attack a Democrat at a ceremony. People tell him he needs to stop calling [Warren] Pocahontas and he just won't stop," she said.

Trump is holding this event honouring Native American code talkers, and insulting Warren as "Pocahontas," in front of a portrait of president Andrew Jackson, who signed the Indian Removal Act.

Trump also suggested he wasn't much aware of the code talkers and had to ask John Kelly. Quote: "And I have to say, I said to General Kelly, I said, general, how good - here he is, right there, the chief; he's the general and the chief - I said, how good were these code talkers?"

Trump has been using the slur since last year to discredit Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of his most outspoken critics in Congress. He claims Warren lied about Native American heritage to advance her career, something the senator has denied.

Trump tossed the jab into the White House ceremony honoring the Navajo code talkers, a group of Native American World War II heroes.

"You were here long before any of us were here," Trump told the code talkers.

"Although, we have a representative in Congress who has been here a long time, longer than you. They call her Pocahontas." His remark was met with silence.

Trump also seemed to admit that he wasn't even familiar with the heroes he was honoring. He said during the ceremony that he had asked his chief of staff John Kelly, "How good were these code talkers?"

Warren swiftly fired back at Trump after he threw off the event with his insult.

“This was supposed to be an event to honor heroes, people who put it all on the line for our country, and people who because of their incredible work saved the lives of countless Americans and our allies,” Warren said on MSNBC. “It is deeply unfortunate that the President of the United States cannot even make it through a ceremony honoring these heroes without having to throw out a racial slur.”

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Kabar24.com, JAKARTA -Komandan Angkatan Udara sekaligus jajaran elit komandan senjata nuklir Amerika Serikat John Hyten mengancam akan menjebloskan Presiden Donald Trump jika memerintahkan secara ilegal peluncuran senjata nuklir.

Hyten telah bersumpah untuk menghentikan langkah Presiden Trump jika memerintahkan secara ilegal peluncuran senjata nuklir.

Hyten, Komandan Komando Strategi Amerika Serikat atau STRATCOM, mengatakan dia telah diberi banyak wawasan untuk mengatakan sesuatu jika dia menerima perintah seperti itu.

Kapal perang Amerika Serikat USS John S. McCain meninggalkan pelabuhan di Busan, Korea Selatan (30/3). Korea Selatan menentang rencana Korea Utara untuk meluncurkan roket. Foto: AP/Yonhap, Jo Jung-ho

"Saya pikir beberapa orang mengira kami bodoh. Kami tidak bodoh. Kami memikirkan banyak hal tentang ini, Saat kamu memiliki tanggung jawab seperti ini, bagaimana kamu tidak memikirkannya?" kata Hyten berbicara di Forum Keamanan Internasional Halifax di Nova Scotia, seperti dikutip dari Mirror.co.uk, 18 November 2017.

"Sebagai kepala STRATCOM, saya memberikan saran kepada presiden, dia akan mengatakan apa yang saya akan lalukan," ujarnya lagi.

Jika menurutnya perintah itu ilegal, Hyten akan meminta presiden Trump untuk melakukannya secara legal dengan membahas sejumlah opsi menghadapi situasi ini dan memastikan opsi itu bekerja.

"Jika anda menjalankan perintah yang melanggar hukum, anda akan ke penjara. Anda bisa dipenjara sepanjang umur anda," tegas Hyten. Pentagon tidak memberikan tanggapan atas pernyataan keras Hyten.

Sumber : Tempo.co

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Liputan6.com, Canberra - Hillary Clinton mengatakan, 'seluruh dunia harus khawatir' terhadap kepemimpinan Presiden Amerika Serikat Donald Trump.
Mantan kandidat presiden dalam Pilpres AS 2016 itu juga sepakat bahwa Trump merupakan 'orang nomor 1' paling berbahaya sepanjang sejarah Negeri Paman Sam. Demikian seperti dikutip dari The Independent, Rabu (11/10/2017).
Pernyataan itu disampaikan Hillary dalam cuplikan wawancara program media Australia ABC, Four Corners yang akan tayang Senin pekan depan.
Komentar Hillary terhadap Trump itu mirip dengan apa yang ia sampaikan pada Pilpres AS 2016 lalu. Sebelumnya, istri Presiden Bill Clinton itu mengatakan bahwa Trump merupakan kandidat presiden paling berbahaya sepanjang sejarah Pilpres AS.
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Kali ini, pernyataan yang hampir serupa diutarakan oleh Hillary, ketika jurnalis ABC Sarah Ferguson bertanya, 'Apakah Trump presiden paling berbahaya dalam sepanjang AS?'.

Hillary menjawab, "Saya pikir iya. Karena ia impulsif, kurang kontrol diri, dan sangat dikuasai oleh ego serta cara bagaimana orang lain memandangnya. Ia juga pendendam."
Selain itu, Ferguson bertanya, 'Apakah Australia perlu khawatir dengan Presiden Trump?'.
Mantan Menteri Luar Negeri AS itu mengatakan, "Saya pikir, seluruh dunia seharusnya khawatir."
Dalam cuplikan wawancara itu, Hillary juga menyinggung dan mendukung wacana kebijakan pengetatan senjata api di AS dengan momentum penembakan massal Las Vegas pada 1 Oktober lalu.
"Duka saja tak cukup. Kita harus melawan NRA (National Rifle Association) dan bekerja sama untuk mencegah peristiwa serupa terjadi lagi."
Wawancara Four Corners yang lengkap akan disiarkan Senin depan oleh ABC, dan kutipan Clinton yang lebih 'berapi-api' mungkin akan terus berlanjut.

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the nation: President Obama used to use these occasions, which hit him all too frequently in his eight years, to search for ways to prevent future tragedies, usually ideas for gun-safety legislation and mental-health funding. In his brief remarks Monday, Trump did nothing of the kind. He seemed to warn against “searching for some kind of meaning; the answers do not come easy.” I preferred the response to the massacre that came from Senator Chris Murphy, who represents Newtown, Connecticut: “It’s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something.”

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Jakarta detik - Mahkamah Agung Amerika serikat memberi isyarat pihaknya dapat menghentikan larangan kontroversial terkait pembatasan Muslim ke AS seperti yang diperintahkan Presiden Donald Trump. Hal tersebut karena ada pembatalan pemberian argumen lisan oleh pengadilan tinggi AS.

Dilansir dari Reuters, Selasa (26/9/207), Pengadilan tinggi membatalkan argumen lisan yang dijadwalkan pada 10 Oktober mendatang. Argumen itu untuk memutuskan apakah argumen perintah eksekutif yang dikeluarkan pada 6 Maret itu bersifat diskriminatif.

Larangan tersebut diberhentikan sejak hari Minggu (24/9). Trump menggantinya dengan sebuah pengunguman yang membatasi perjalanan dari Iran, Libya, Suriah, Yaman, Somalia, Chad dan Korea Utara tanpa batasan waktu.

Selain itu, pejabat pemerintah tertentu seperti dari Venezuela juga akan dilarang. Larangan baru yang dikeluarkan Trump bisa mempengaruhi puluhan ribu imigran dan pengunjung potensial.

Sepanjang tahun ini, Trump telah berusaha untuk membuat larangan masuk ke AS dikabulkan oleh pengadilan. Pengumuman yang dilakukan pada Minggu kemarin, menurut Trump, diperlukan untuk menyaring ancaman teroris atau ancaman keamanan publik, dan berkurangnya kerentanan terhadap serangan hukum.

Menurut pandangan ahli, larangan tersebut dinilai sebagai upaya Trump untuk mewujudkan janji kampanyenya. Namun, pengadilan berpendapat lain dengan mempertimbangkan pertimbangan ahli dan semakin sedikitnya godaan.

"Hal tersebut terlihat seperti masalah prasangka atau keinginan untuk memenuhi janji kampanye," kata profesor di University of Virginia, Saikrishna Prakash.

Dalam waktu singkat, pengadilan tingggi meminta pemenuhan administrasi oleh Trump dan penantang larangan tersebut untuk melakukan pengarahan apakah kasus tersebut harus diberhentikan.

Sebelumnya larangan Trump pada 6 Maret lalu memicu kemarahan warga internasional dan dengan cepat diblokir oleh pengadilan federal karena dianggap diskriminasi. Pelarangan masuknya warga dari sejumlah negara juga dinilai inkonstitusional atau melanggar undang-undang imigrasi.

Pada Juni lalu, Mahkamah Agung AS mengizinkan sebuah versi terbatas dari larangan tersebut untuk terus berlanjut. Sementara para hakim bersiap untuk mendengar argumen mengenai legalitasnya pada tanggal 10 Oktober.

Pemerintah AS mengatakan presiden memiliki kewenangan yang luas dalam masalah imigrasi dan keamanan nasional. Namun pihak penantang larangan tersebut berpendapat bahwa hal itu bertentangan dengan undang-undang Konstitusi AS untuk mendukung satu agama daripada agama lain.

Mereka mengutip pernyataan yang dibuat Trump selama kampanye 2016 untuk menjadi presiden, termasuk seruannya terkait 'penghentian total dan menyeluruh terhadap Muslim yang memasuki Amerika Serikat'.

Dalam beberapa jam setelah pengumuman pada hari Minggu itu, perwakilan dari jaksa agung Hawaii, New York dan California mengatakan bahwa kantor mereka sedang mengkaji pembatasan baru tersebut. Sedangkan organisasi advokasi mencela hal itu karena hal yang sama.

Jika pengadilan menolak kasus ini, masih ada isu terpisah apakah hakim akan mengeluarkan keputusan pengadilan rendah yang menyimpang untuk membatalkan larangan tersebut. Pemerintah ingin menghapus preseden yang membatasi kewenangannya sementara para penantang ingin mempertahankannya karena alasan yang sama.

(yld/elz)

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Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading one of the investigations into Russia’s meddling in last year’s election and its alleged ties to President Donald Trump’s campaign, has been trying to “squeeze” former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort for information, Bloomberg reported Thursday evening.

The report, citing “people familiar with the matter,” indicates that Manafort has been cooperating with Mueller’s team and was the one who three months ago disclosed that the now infamous Donald Trump Jr. meeting had taken place. The June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York City was set up to gain potentially damaging political opposition research on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.

As Mueller’s team issues subpoenas for a grand jury in Washington, Manafort reportedly has been providing information. It’s possible another person in Trump’s inner circle could be called upon by congressional investigators: Trump’s longtime personal assistant, Rhona Graff.

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While working for the Trump campaign last year, Manafort, a 68-year-old longtime political consultant who’s faced scrutiny for his ties to oligarchs in Ukraine and Russia, was reportedly also responding to a congressional request for information about Russia. Manafort forked over more than “300 relevant documents to Congress,” according to Bloomberg.

Despite such disclosures, FBI agents under orders from Mueller’s team raided Manafort’s Virginia home early July 26, one day removed from his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Tax documents and banking records were reportedly removed from his home.

The probe by Mueller, who was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May, covers the Trump-Russia scandal and examines the president’s real estate dealings with Russians, the firing of former FBI Director James Comey and the dismissed National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s work in foreign countries.

In addition to Manafort discussing the Trump Jr. meeting months ago, the president's son himself early last month tweeted about it as a New York Times report on the matter was set to be published. Trump Jr. initially had stated that the meeting was solely about adoptions, but the Times report showed he “loved” the idea of obtaining potentially incriminating information on Clinton to aid his father's campaign.

The Times also reported that government officials had learned of the meeting from a revised disclosure form from White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, who had previously failed to disclose his meetings with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. and the head of a Russian bank during the presidential transition last year.

It’s possible that Rhona Graff, Trump's long-serving personal secretary, could also face questioning during the Russia investigations, according to ABC News. Graff has worked for the Trump Organization for almost 30 years and has become a senior vice president whom ABC described as a supposed “gatekeeper” to Trump. Graff was also mentioned in an email chain regarding the Trump Jr. meeting with the Russian lawyer.

An attorney working as outside counsel for the Trump Organization told ABC that Graff had not yet been contacted by congressional investigators, but Representative Peter King (R-N.Y.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, indicated Graff’s importance.

“Since her name is in the email, people will want her to answer questions,” King said. “If you go into Trump Tower, you’re going to mention her name.”

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New York - Presiden Amerika Serikat (AS), Donald Trump, kembali melontarkan komentar geger yang membuat bursa saham Wall Street jatuh saat dibuka malam ini.

Pernyataan geger itu adalah, dirinya tetap ngotot akan membangun tembok di perbatasan AS dan Meksiko, meski sampai harus membubarkan pemerintah.

Pernyataan Trump ini disampaikan kepada para pendukungnya, dalam sebuah mimbar akbar dengan tema yang diembannya sejak kampanye, "Menjadikan Amerika Kembali Hebat " di Phoenix, Arizona hari ini.

"Bila harus membubarkan pemerintahan, kita akan bangun tembok itu," kata Trump seperti dilansir dari CNBC, Rabu (23/8/2017).

Trump juga mengatakan, dia mungkin 'pada akhirnya akan menghentikan NAFTA,' kesepakatan perdagangan bebas dengan Meksiko dan Kanada.

Sikap Trump ini membuat bursa saham Wall Street jatuh. Pada pembukaan perdagangan Rabu pagi waktu setempat, indeks Dow Jones turun 74,12 poin (0,34%) ke 21.825,77. Sementara indeks S&P500 turun 10,87 poin (0,44%) ke 2.441,64. Kemudian indeks Nasdaq Composite turun 34,04 poin (0,54%) ke 6.263,44.

Tak hanya itu, nilai tukar peso Meksiko juga turun 0,8% terhadap dolar AS setelah pernyataan Trump tersebut. Harga kontrak berjangka emas naik 0,3% akibat komentar tersebut.

Kemudian, nilai tukar yen Jepang terhadap dolar AS naik. Yen merupakan investasi aman pengganti dolar AS, saat investor menilai ada sentimen negatif di AS, seperti komentar Trump.

Nilai tukar yen terhadap dolar AS naik ke 109,82 yen/dolar, dari sebelumnya 109 yen/dolar. (wdl/hns)

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der spiegel: Ninety years ago, in the New York borough of Queens, around 1,000 members of the Klu Klux Klan clashed with police. Fred Trump was among those arrested. His case never reached trial because times were different back then. But Fred Trump raised his son Donald to believe that he belonged to a white elite. When asked about the ugly KKK episode in 2015, the presidential candidate answered, "This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened. This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It's a completely false, ridiculous story." Does this mean that something can only be true if it winds up in court?

In 1973, Donald Trump was sued because he preferred renting his 14,000 New York apartments to white tenants rather than blacks. It was documented and proven. Applications were marked with a "C" for "colored" and sorted out. Black people were rejected and white people were given the apartments only minutes later. During the 1980s, casino operator Trump considered black employees to be lazier than whites. He said he feared blacks would steal from him. In April 1989, when white investment banker Trisha Meili was raped in Central Park and beaten until she fell into a coma, four blacks and a Latino were arrested. "Bring back the death penalty!" read the full-page newspaper ads Trump took out in response. A court convicted the men, who were innocent, and they were only released from prison years later.

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The Australian: As a key Republican questions the President’s capacity to govern, the ghostwriter who penned Donald Trump’s 1987 memoir The Art of the Deal thinks he will quit before the end of his term.

Writer Tony Schwartz tweeted that “Trump is going to resign” before investigators probing alleged ties between the Republican’s campaign team and Russia “leave him no choice”.

“The circle is closing at blinding speed,” the author tweeted. “Trump is going to resign and declare victory before Mueller and congress leave him no choice.”

Tony Schwartz.
Tony Schwartz.
“Trump’s presidency is effectively over,” he said in a follow-up tweet. “Would be amazed if he survives till end of the year. More likely resigns by fall, if not sooner.”

Meanwhile, Republican senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has questioned Trump’s capacity to govern.

“The President has not yet been able to demonstrate the ability or the competence that he needs to be successful,” said Corker, who Trump had considered for the job of secretary of state. Corker said Trump needed to make “radical changes.”

While writing Trump’s bestselling breakthrough memoir Schwartz spent 18 months with the billionaire tycoon.

He spoke out last year against the real estate mogul during the presidential campaign, telling The New Yorker magazine that he put “lipstick on a pig.” “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.”

AFP

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Washington (CNN)The ghostwriter of "The Art of the Deal" thinks President Donald Trump will eventually call it quits.

Tony Schwartz, the man behind Trump's 1987 memoir, took to Twitter on Wednesday to vocalize his forecast for Trump's political future.
"The circle is closing at blinding speed," Schwartz tweeted. "Trump is going to resign and declare victory before Mueller and congress leave him no choice."
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Tony Schwartz ✔ @tonyschwartz
The circle is closing at blinding speed. Trump is going to resign and declare victory before Mueller and congress leave him no choice.
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In a follow-up tweet, he added: "Trump's presidency is effectively over. Would be amazed if he survives till end of the year. More likely resigns by fall, if not sooner."
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Tony Schwartz ✔ @tonyschwartz
Trump's presidency is effectively over. Would be amazed if he survives till end of the year. More likely resigns by fall, if not sooner.
2:20 AM - Aug 17, 2017
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While working on the memoir in the 1980s, Schwartz spent 18 months with Trump. Over the past few years, he has been an outspoken critic of the former businessman, now President.
"I put lipstick on a pig," he told The New Yorker last year, adding that he feels "a deep sense of remorse" for "presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is."
This is not the first time Schwartz has made predictions about Trump's presidency. In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper in May, Schwartz also said he believed Trump will resign and then declare victory.
Ghostwriter: 'The inner Trump is the outer Trump'
Ghostwriter: 'The inner Trump is the outer Trump'
"I surely believe that at some point over the next period of time, he's going to have to figure out a way to resign," Schwartz said. "The reason he's going to do that, as opposed to go through what could be an impeachment process or a continuing humiliation, is that he wants to figure out a way, as he has done all his career, to turn a loss into a victory. So he will declare victory when he leaves."

KONTAN.CO.ID - Penulis bayangan (ghostwriter) yang menulis buku memoir Donald Trump 1987 berjudul "The Art of the deal" meramal presiden Amerika Serikat Donald Trump akan menyerah sebelum masa jabatannya berakhir.

Sang ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, menuliskan ramalannya lewat tweet di akun resminya. "Trump akan mengundurkan diri sebelum investigator menyelidiki adanya dugaan keterkaitan antara tim kampanye Republik dan Rusia sehingga dia tak memiliki pilihan lain," tulisnya.

Selain itu, dia juga menuliskan, "Trump akan mengundurkan diri dan mendeklarasikan kemenangan sebelum Mueller dan Kongres tak memberikannya banyak pilihan."

"Masa kepresidenan Trump secara efektif sudah berakhir. Akan sangat mengejutkan jika dia bisa selamat hingga akhir tahun. Sepertinya dia akan resign saat musim gugur, jika tidak lebih cepat," tweet Schwartz.

Saat menulis buku Trump yang menjadi bestseller tersebut, Schwartz menghabiskan waktu 18 bulan dengan sang miliarder.

"Saya merasa sangat menyesal bahwa saya memberikan kontribusi dalam menampilkan Trump sedemikian rupa sehingga membuatnya mendapat perhatian luas dan lebih menarik dari kondisi yang sebenarnya," tulis Schwartz lagi.

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wapo: It’s a case of being careful what you wish for.

Critics left, right and center panned President Trump for his initial refusal to denounce the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, one of whom allegedly drove his car into counter-demonstrators, killing one and injuring 19. When Trump finally gave a canned and grudging disavowal of white supremacists, he was urged anew to say more, to be presidential, to bring the nation together.

Well, late Tuesday, Trump said more and told the nation what he really thought. It was downright ugly.

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There, from Trump Tower in New York, was the president of the United States declaring that those protesting against Nazis were . . . the same as Nazis. “You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that,” said Trump.

Nobody wants to say that because there is — and there can be — no moral equivalence between Nazis and those who oppose Nazis. But Trump saw them as equal. He said the anti-Nazi demonstrators didn’t have a permit and “were very, very violent.” Trump maintained that those marching with the white supremacists have been treated “absolutely unfairly” by the press, and there “were very fine people, on both sides.”

Play Video 2:36
Trump bashes 'alt-left,' again saying two sides to blame in Charlottesville

0:00

President Trump first asked reporters to define the "alt-right," before saying members of the "alt-left" were also to blame for violence in Charlottesville, while taking questions from reporters on Aug. 15 at Trump Tower in New York. (The Washington Post)
Trump was not done with his apology for white supremacists. He went on to endorse the cause that brought these racists, David Duke among them, to Charlottesville: the Confederacy. “I’ve condemned neo-Nazis. I’ve condemned many different groups,” the president said. “But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.”

Right. The man who led an army against the United States. “So this week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down,” Trump went on. “I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?”

Thus did Trump, after putting Nazis on the same moral plane as anti-Nazis, put the father of our country and the author of the Declaration of Independence on the same moral plane as two men who made war on America. Duke and white-nationalist leader Richard Spencer applauded Trump’s performance.

The nationalist-turned-presidential-adviser Stephen K. Bannon used to say that the publishing outfit he led, Breitbart, was a “platform for the alt-right,” a euphemism for white nationalists and related far-right extremists. But now there is a new platform for the alt-right in America: the White House.

It looks more and more like the White Nationalist House.

Trump, who this week retweeted an “alt-right” conspiracy theorist and ally of white supremacists, continues to employ in his White House not just Bannon and Stephen Miller, two darlings of the alt-right, but also Sebastian Gorka, who uses the platform to defend the embattled white man.

“ ‘It’s this constant, ‘Oh, it’s the white man. It’s the white supremacists. That’s the problem.’ No, it isn’t,” Gorka said in an interview with Breitbart days before the Charlottesville mayhem. “Go to the Middle East, and tell me what the real problem is today.” At an inaugural ball in January, Gorka wore a medal from the Hungarian nationalist organization Vitezi Rend, a longtime anti-Semitic group that claimed Gorka as one of its own. (He denies it.)

Play Video 2:00
Trump: 'George Washington was a slave owner'
President Trump asked if statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson should be removed since they owned slaves while speaking in New York on Aug. 15. With reporters about violence in Charlottesville, Va. (The Washington Post)
It’s more than words. The administration proposed eliminating the “Countering Violent Extremism” program; officials argued that the effort should target only Islamist radicalization, not right-wing extremism. In June, the Trump administration canceled a grant to a group called Life After Hate, which rehabilitates neo-Nazis. “At a time when this is the biggest threat in our country, to pull funding from the only organization in the United States helping people disengage from this is pretty suspect to me,” the group’s co-founder Christian Picciolini told me.

And now we have the spectacle of the president, in response to reporters’ questions, defending the character and motives of the neo-Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville.

Trump, who has issued scores of tweets without benefit of accurate information, explained his initial unwillingness to single out the white supremacist who drove into a crowd of demonstrators: “Before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.”

Trump, who has criticized others for failing to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” declined to call the incident terrorism, dismissing the question as “legal semantics.”

Asked about the culpability of the “alt-right” in the Charlottesville attack, Trump replied: “Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging them?”

Political violence, by anybody, is wrong. But to equate neo-Nazis with those who oppose them is, even for our alt-right president, a new low.marketwatch: That’s what former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci had to say about how President Trump handled his response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday.

“I think he needed to be much harsher as it related to the white supremacists and the nature of that,” Scaramucci added in his interview on ABC Sunday.

He’s referring to Trump’s comment following a brutal attack that left one dead and almost 20 injured at a white supremacist rally Saturday. Trump said he condemned “hatred, bigotry and violence — on many sides... on many sides.”

The “many sides” part is what drew a strong rebuke from those who believed the president needed to specifically lay blame at the feet of the “alt-right” gathering to protest the removal of a statute of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Scaramucci tried to explain Trump’s thinking.

“He likes doing the opposite of what the media thinks he’s going to do. I think he’s also of the impression that there is hatred on all sides,” he said. “Whether I was the White House communications director or not, I don’t think you’re going change the president. The president’s going to do what he wants to do, how he wants to do it.”

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate's healthcare overhaul appeared to be in serious trouble on Monday after two more Republicans said they opposed a revised version of the bill.

Senators Mike Lee and Jerry Moran each announced on Twitter on Monday night that they could not support the bill in its current form, bringing to four the number of Republican senators opposed and effectively killing the revised version of the bill.

The news came even as other Republicans senators were meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House, where the president, who made repealing and replacing Obamacare a major promise of his campaign, was lobbying for the bill's passage. It represents a significant setback for an administration fervently seeking a major legislative victory.

The White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell must now decide whether to chart a different path forward or abandon the effort altogether and turn their attention to other priorities such as tax reform.

"We should not put our stamp of approval on bad policy," Moran said in a statement on Twitter, slamming what he called a "closed-door" process that produced the bill.

Aides to McConnell were not immediately available for comment, but Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, a Democrat, said in a statement that a second failure of the bill "is proof positive the core of this bill is unworkable."

There was no immediate comment from the White House.

A combination photo shows U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) speaking in Washington March 21, 2017 and U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) speaking in Washington, January 8, 2015
Joshua Roberts (L) and Larry Downing/File Photo
Republican Senators Susan Collins and Rand Paul had already come out against the bill. With Republicans holding 52 seats in the 100-member Senate, McConnell could not afford another defection from his caucus.

Democrats are united in opposition to the measure to replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act, former Democratic President Barack Obama's signature healthcare legislation, popularly known as Obamacare.

Tensions Between Moderates, Conservatives

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) speaks with reporters about the Senate health care bill on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 13, 2017.
Aaron P. Bernstein
The bill was already teetering after an expected vote on going forward with debate on the bill was postponed by McConnell following Republican Senator John McCain's surgery to remove a blood clot from his head. Collins had estimated on Sunday that at least eight to 10 Republicans had serious doubts about the bill.

A similar version of the bill passed the House in May, but passage in the Senate was always expected to be more difficult, given the deep tensions between moderates who worried about cuts to the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor and disabled and conservatives who wanted those cuts as well as a more dramatic dismantling of Obamacare's framework.

The first version of the Senate bill failed to attract enough support, forcing McConnell's office to revise it in a bid to make it more palatable. That version was released last week.

McConnell could also choose to attempt to work with Senate Democrats on a bipartisan bill to reform Obamacare, an option he threatened to pursue earlier this month if Republicans did not line up in support of the revised bill.

Schumer held out that possibility in his statement, urging Republicans to "start from scratch and work with Democrats on a bill that lowers premiums, provides long term stability to the markets and improves our health care system.”

Writing by John Whitesides and James Oliphant; Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney

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Merdeka.com - Tagar #BringBackObama sedang ramai di Twitter. Banyak warga Amerika Serikat kembali mengunggah dan membagikan ingatan dan gambar presiden AS ke-44 Barack Hussein Obama.

Para penggemar Obama menginginkan mantan presiden itu kembali memimpin AS.

Pemicu #BringBackObama viral di media sosial karena berbagai skandal antara Donald Trump dengan Rusia. Trump sebagai pemimpin AS saat ini, dituding bersekongkol dengan Rusia agar bisa menang di pemilihan presiden November lalu.

"Pada suatu hari kami pernah memiliki presiden yang bersedia memberikan pidato di bawah guyuran hujan #LEGENDARY #bringbackobama #BringBackObama," cuit akun milik Edgar Romero, seperti dilansir dari Newsweek, Kamis (13/7).

Meski banyak yang mendukung, namun ada juga yang mengkritik Obama. Mereka menyerang catatan hitam Obama saat masih duduk di Ruang Oval.

"Obama menekan orang kulit hitam dengan seluruh (kebijakan) kepresidenannya," kritik akun @RealTimBlack.

Anak sulung Trump, Donald Trump Jr mengakui Juli tahun lalu menemui pengacara Rusia Natalia Veselnitskaya untuk membeberkan surat elektronik (surel) milik rival Trump di pilpres, Hillary Clinton. Meski demikian, Trump menuturkan tidak mengetahui perbuatan anak sulungnya tersebut.

“Saya tidak mengetahui mengenai adanya pertemuan tersebut sampai saya mendengar berita ini," kata Trump dalam sebuah wawancara dengan kantor berita Reuters.

Menurut surat elektronik yang dirilis Donald Trump Jr pada Selasa kemarin, ia setuju bertemu wanita tersebut.

Walau kabar mengenai surel ini sudah terungkap, Trump mengaku tidak menyalahkan anaknya atas pertemuan tersebut.

“Saya pikir orang-orang juga akan mengadakan pertemuan serupa (jika berada di posisi Donald Trump Jr),” ucap Trump. [pan]

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Merdeka.com - Meski Donald Trump baru enam bulan menjabat presiden Amerika Serikat namun sosoknya sudah memberikan dampak besar tentang bagaimana warga dunia memandang AS. Trump dan serangkaian kebijakannya banyak tidak disukai oleh warga dunia dan penilaian positif penduduk bumi terhadap Negeri Adidaya juga terus merosot.

Menurut survei teranyar lembaga Pew Research Center di 37 negara, hanya 22 persen warga dunia yang meyakini Trump sudah berbuat benar dalam kebijakan luar negerinya. Angka ini cukup kontras dibandingkan masa kepemimpinan Barack Hussein Obama di periode akhir kepresidenannya. Sebanyak 64 persen warga dunia meyakini Obama sudah berbuat benar dalam peran AS di dunia internasional, seperti dikutip dari laman Pew Global, akhir bulan lalu.

Persentase penurunan tajam tingkat kepercayaan warga dunia terhadap presiden AS terutama terjadi di sejumlah negara sekutu di Eropa dan Asia, juga di negara tetangga Meksiko dan Kanada. Dari 37 negara yang disurvei, Trump mendapat penilaian positif yang lebih tinggi ketimbang Obama hanya di dua negara: Israel dan Rusia.

Sejak 2002 ketika Pew Research memulai survei tentang bagaimana citra Amerika di luar negeri, angka tingkat kepercayaan atau keyakinan warga dunia terhadap Negeri Paman Sam sejalan dengan penilaian terhadap sosok presidennya. Pada waktu George W Bush diganti oleh Barack Obama, angka tingkat kepercayaan publik dunia meningkat cukup signifikan di Eropa dan belahan dunia lain sebagai mana pandangan mereka yang juga positif terhadap Obama.

Tingkat kepercayaan publik terhadap Trump juga dipengaruhi kebijakan dan karakternya. Rencana Trump membangun tembok di perbatasan AS-Meksiko misalnya, sebanyak 94 persen atau sembilan dari sepuluh orang responden menyatakan menolak pembangunan tembok pemisah itu.

Karakter Trump juga turut menjadi faktor bagaimana dia dipandang oleh warga dunia. Bagi banyak penduduk bumi, Trump adalah sosok yang arogan, intoleran, dan bahkan berbahaya. Meski begitu masih ada sisi positif dari sosok Trump. Dia dianggap sebagai pemimpin yang kuat. Sebagian menilai dia karismatik.

Survei Pew ini dilakukan terhadap 40.448 responden di 37 negara di luar AS dari 16 Februari hingga 8 Mei 2017. [pan]

👹

Billionaire Richard Branson is no fan of Brexit or President Donald Trump’s administration, and sharply criticized both Wednesday during a CNBC interview.

The Virgin Group founder said the rise of protectionism in the U.S. and U.K is “so unhealthy” for the global economy.

“What happened with Brexit is a terrible, terrible mistake. . . . It may take years for it to recover.”
Richard Branson
“What happened with Brexit is a terrible, terrible mistake, both for Europe and for Great Britain, and will set Great Britain back. It may take years for it to recover,” he said. “If we do see a hard Brexit, that will be catastrophic for Britain and damaging for Europe too.”

But Branson said he was encouraged by the losses Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative Party suffered in recent parliamentary elections, and that voters may be having second thoughts as to the wisdom of Britain leaving the European Union. “Some sense is finally beginning to prevail,” he said, adding that he thought “the possibility of a hard Brexit has now gone away.”

Read: The U.K. election result could mean a ‘softer’ Brexit

Also see: Brexit one year later: 5 ways the U.K. could now leave the EU

Branson said young people will suffer the most from Brexit, and remained optimistic that there will eventually be a second referendum to overturn the “leave” vote.

As for Trump, Branson called policies like the travel ban targeting six predominantly Muslim countries “dangerous.”

“What is happening in America at the moment is extremely unhealthy and dangerous,” he said. “I’m hopeful things will reverse in America and decency will come back.”

Branson, who owns 10% of Virgin Australia VAH, +3.03% , spoke while on the airline’s maiden flight between Melbourne and Hong Kong.

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JAKARTA kontan. Mantan Kepala Jaksa Amerika Serikat (AS) untuk wilayah Manhattan, New York Preet Bharara mengungkapkan, dia pernah ditelpon tiga kali oleh Donald Trump, sebelum akhirnya dipecat Maret lalu.

Pada program "This Week" di ABC News, Minggu (11/6), Bharara mengatakan, merasa tidak nyaman dengan telepon dari Trump. Dia yakin, Trump berupaya melanggar batas antara penyelenggara negara dengan penyidik kriminal.

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Widya Okta28 Agustus 2017 pukul 06.27
Saya adalah Widya Okta dari SURABAYA, saya ingin memberi kesaksian tentang karya bagus Tuhan dalam hidup saya kepada orang-orang saya yang mencari pinjaman di Asia dan sebagian lain dari kata tersebut, karena ekonomi yang buruk di beberapa negara.
Apakah mereka mencari pinjaman di antara kamu? Maka Anda harus sangat berhati-hati karena banyak perusahaan pinjaman yang curang di sini di internet, tapi mereka tetap asli sekali di perusahaan pinjaman palsu. Saya telah menjadi korban penipuan pemberi pinjaman 6-kredit, saya kehilangan banyak uang karena saya mencari pinjaman dari perusahaan mereka.

Saya hampir mati dalam proses karena saya ditangkap oleh orang-orang dari hutang saya sendiri, sebelum saya dibebaskan dari penjara dan teman saya yang saya jelaskan situasi saya, kemudian mengenalkan saya ke perusahaan pinjaman yang andal yaitu SANDRAOVIALOANFIRM. Saya mendapat pinjaman saya sebesar Rp900.000.000 dari SANDRAOVIALOANFIRM dengan tarif rendah 2% dalam 24 jam yang saya gunakan tanpa tekanan atau tekanan. Jika Anda membutuhkan pinjaman Anda dapat menghubungi dia melalui email: (sandraovialoanfirm@gmail.com)

Jika Anda memerlukan bantuan dalam melakukan proses pinjaman, Anda juga bisa menghubungi saya melalui email: (widyaokta750@gmail.com) dan beberapa orang lain yang juga mendapatkan pinjaman mereka Mrs. Jelli Mira, email: (jellimira750@gmail.com). Yang saya lakukan adalah memastikan saya tidak pernah terpenuhi dalam pembayaran cicilan bulanan sesuai kesepakatan dengan perusahaan pinjaman.

Jadi saya memutuskan untuk membagikan karya bagus Tuhan melalui SANDRAOVIALOANFIRM, karena dia mengubah hidup saya dan keluarga saya. Itulah alasan Tuhan Yang Mahakuasa akan selalu memberkatinya.
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Lady Jane 15 September 2017 pukul 22.18
Halo Semua, nama saya Jane alice seorang wanita dari Indonesia, dan saya bekerja dengan kompensasi Asia yang bersatu, dengan cepat saya ingin menggunakan media ini untuk mengingatkan semua orang Indonesia yang mencari pinjaman Internet agar berhati-hati agar tidak jatuh ke tangan penipu dan fraudstars banyak kreditur kredit palsu ada di sini di internet dan ada juga yang asli dan nyata,

Saya ingin membagikan testimonial tentang bagaimana Tuhan menuntun saya kepada pemberi pinjaman sebenarnya dan dana pinjaman Real telah mengubah hidup saya dari rumput menjadi Grace, setelah saya tertipu oleh beberapa kreditor kredit di internet, saya kehilangan banyak uang untuk membayar pendaftaran. biaya. . , Biaya garansi, dan setelah pembayaran saya masih belum mendapat pinjaman saya.

Setelah berbulan-bulan berusaha mendapatkan pinjaman di internet dan jumlah uang yang dihabiskan tanpa mendapat pinjaman dari perusahaan mereka, maka saya menjadi sangat putus asa untuk mendapatkan pinjaman dari kreditor kredit genue online yang tidak akan meningkatkan rasa sakit saya jadi saya memutuskan untuk Hubungi teman saya yang mendapatkan pinjaman onlinenya sendiri, kami mendiskusikan kesimpulan kami mengenai masalah ini dan dia bercerita tentang seorang pria bernama Mr. Dangote yang adalah CEO Dangote Loan Company.

Jadi saya mengajukan pinjaman sebesar (Rp800.000.000) dengan tingkat bunga 2% rendah, tidak peduli berapa usiaku, karena saya mengatakan kepadanya apa yang saya inginkan adalah membangun bisnis saya dan pinjaman saya mudah disetujui. Tidak ada tekanan dan semua persiapan yang dilakukan dengan transfer kredit dan dalam waktu kurang dari 24 jam setelah mendapatkan sertifikat yang diminta dikembalikan, maka uang pinjaman saya disimpan ke rekening bank saya dan mimpiku menjadi kenyataan. Jadi saya ingin saran semua orang segera melamar kepada Mr. Dangote Loan Company Via email (dangotegrouploandepartment@gmail.com) dan Anda juga bisa bertanya kepada Rhoda (ladyrhodaeny@gmail.com) dan Mr. jude (judeelnino@gmail.com) dan Juga Pak Nikky (nicksonchristian342@gmail.com) untuk pertanyaan lebih lanjut

Anda juga bisa menghubungi saya melalui email di ladyjanealice@gmail.com
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Susan bowman30 September 2017 pukul 13.45
KABAR BAIK! KABAR BAIK!

Untuk mengenalkan diri dengan benar,
Nama saya adalah ibu SUSAN dari [SUSAN BOWMAN LOAN COMPANY]

Saya adalah pemberi pinjaman swasta, perusahaan saya memberikan pinjaman segala jenis dengan suku bunga 2% saja. Ini adalah kesempatan finansial di depan pintu Anda, terapkan hari ini dan dapatkan pinjaman cepat Anda.

Ada banyak di luar sana yang mencari peluang atau bantuan keuangan di seluruh tempat dan tetap saja, tapi mereka tidak dapat mendapatkannya. Tapi ini adalah kesempatan finansial di depan pintu Anda dan dengan demikian Anda tidak bisa melewatkan kesempatan ini.
Layanan ini membuat individu, perusahaan, pelaku bisnis dan wanita.
Jumlah pinjaman yang tersedia berkisar dari jumlah pilihan Anda untuk informasi lebih lanjut hubungi kami melalui email:

Susanbowmanloancompany@gmail.com
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Angga Annisa4 Oktober 2017 pukul 05.32
Ini luar biasa saat saya mengira semua telah selesai dengan saya Ibu Iskandar datang untuk menyelamatkan saya. Saya sangat berhutang sejauh orang-orang yang saya pinjam uang dari geng melawan saya dan kemudian membuat saya ditangkap sebagai akibat dari hutang saya. ditahan selama berbulan-bulan maka masa rahmat diberikan kepada saya saat saya dipulangkan dan dibebaskan untuk pergi dan mencari uang untuk membayar semua hutang yang saya terima sehingga saya diberitahu bahwa ada beberapa kreditur sah online sehingga saya harus mencari Karena melalui blog saya berulang kali tertipu tapi ketika saya menemukan Ibu Iskandar CEO ISKANDAR LESTARI LOAN FIRM, Tuhan mengarahkan saya ke iklannya melalui blog karena daya tarik saya terhadapnya adalah benar-benar mukjizat mungkin karena Tuhan telah melihat bahwa saya memiliki banyak menderita karena itulah dia mengarahkan saya kepadanya. Jadi saya menerapkannya dengan antusias setelah beberapa jam pinjaman saya disetujui oleh Dewan dan dalam dua hari saya dikreditkan dengan jumlah pasti yang saya berikan untuk semua ini tanpa jaminan tambahan Kredit Tanpa Agunan (KTA) sama seperti saya berbicara dengan Anda sekarang saya telah dapat menghapus semua hutang saya dan sekarang saya memiliki supermarket sendiri, saya tidak memerlukan bantuan orang lain sebelum saya memberi makan atau mengambil keuangan apa pun keputusan saya tidak punya urusan dengan Polisi lagi saya sekarang adalah wanita merdeka. Anda ingin mengalami kemandirian finansial seperti saya silahkan hubungi Ibu melalui BBM-nya: {D8980E0B} atau melalui email perusahaan: (iskandalestari.kreditpersatuan@gmail.com) Anda tidak dapat memperdebatkan fakta bahwa di dunia kesulitan ini Anda memerlukan seseorang untuk membantu Anda mengatasi gejolak keuangan dalam hidup Anda dengan satu atau lain cara, jadi saya memberi Anda mandat untuk mencoba dan menghubungi Ibu Iskandar di alamat di atas sehingga bisa mengatasi kemerosotan keuangan dalam hidup Anda. Anda bisa menghubungi saya melalui email berikut: (anggaannisa1979@gmail.com)) selalu bersikap positif dengan Ibu Iskandar dia akan melihat Anda melalui semua tantangan finansial Anda dan kemudian memberi Anda sebuah tampilan baru finansial.
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Amisha17 Februari 2018 pukul 19.35
Jangan gunakan semua Pemberi Pinjaman Uang Pribadi ini. Mereka berada di, Brazil, Turki, Prancis dan Israel.

Nama saya adalah Mrs.Amisha, saya berasal dari Filipina. Apakah Anda mencari pinjaman?
Apakah Anda memerlukan pinjaman pribadi atau bisnis yang mendesak?

Hubungi Persetujuan Pinjaman Cepat yang Sahir dia membantu saya dengan pinjaman sebesar $75000 beberapa hari yang lalu setelah mendapat scammed $12000 dari seorang wanita yang mengaku sebagai pemberi pinjaman dari france tapi saya bersyukur kepada Tuhan hari ini bahwa saya mendapatkan pinjaman saya senilai $75000.Feel bebas untuk menghubungi perusahaan tersebut untuk mendapatkan uang asli. Email: (Suzaninvestment@gmail.com
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Amisha27 Februari 2018 pukul 04.03
BERITA BAIK UNTUK SEMUA ORANG

Nama saya Amisha dari bogor di Indonesia, saya adalah perancang busana dan saya ingin menggunakan media ini untuk memberi tahu setiap orang untuk berhati-hati dalam mendapatkan pinjaman di internet, begitu banyak kreditur pinjaman di sini adalah penipu dan mereka ada di sini. curang Anda dengan susah payah uang Anda, saya mengajukan pinjaman sekitar Rp500,000,000 wanita di Malaysia dan saya kehilangan sekitar 24 juta tanpa mengambil pinjaman, saya membayar hampir 24 juta masih saya tidak mendapatkan pinjaman dan bisnis saya adalah Tentang menabrak karena hutang.

Sebagai pencarian saya untuk perusahaan pinjaman pribadi yang andal, saya melihat iklan online lainnya dan nama perusahaannya adalah FANCY LOAN COMPANY. Saya kehilangan jumlah 15 juta dengan mereka dan sampai hari ini, saya tidak pernah menerima pinjaman yang saya usulkan.

Tuhan jadilah kemuliaan, teman-teman saya yang mengajukan pinjaman juga menerima pinjaman semacam itu, mengenalkan saya kepada perusahaan yang dapat dipercaya dimana Ibu Suzan bekerja sebagai manajer cabang, dan saya mengajukan pinjaman sebesar Rp700.000.000 dan mereka meminta surat kepercayaan saya, Dan setelah mereka selesai memverifikasi detail saya, pinjaman tersebut disetujui untuk saya dan saya pikir itu adalah sebuah lelucon, dan mungkin inilah salah satu tindakan curang yang membuat saya kehilangan uang, tapi saya tercengang. Ketika saya mendapat pinjaman saya dalam waktu kurang dari 6 jam dengan suku bunga rendah 2% tanpa agunan.

Saya sangat senang karena ALLAH menggunakan teman saya yang menghubungi mereka dan mengenalkan saya kepada mereka dan karena saya diselamatkan dari membuat bisnis saya melonjak ke udara dan dilikuidasi dan sekarang bisnis saya terbang tinggi dalam bahasa Indonesia dan tidak ada yang akan mengatakannya Dia tidak tahu tentang Anniesa Hasibuan perusahaan mode saya

Jadi saya saran setiap orang yang tinggal di Indonesia dan negara lain yang membutuhkan pinjaman untuk satu tujuan atau yang lain untuk silahkan kontak
Ibu Suzan email: (Suzaninvestment@gmail.com)

Anda juga dapat menghubungi saya di email saya: (Amisha1213@gmail.com), dan maria yang baru saja mendapat pinjaman dari suzan di: (maaria9925@gmail.com) dan Karina yang memperkenalkan dan bercerita tentang Ibu Suzan, dia juga mendapat pinjaman baru dari Ibu Suzan, Anda juga dapat menghubungi dia melalui email-nya:( Lukman.karina@yahoo.com).

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Unknown17 Desember 2020 pukul 01.32
As-salamu alaikum

Nama saya Kartika Fitri(kartikafitri74@gmail.com) dari Bogor (Indonesia), Saat Pandemi Covid19 ini usaha suami saya berhutang karena tidak bisa mengimbangi, jadi saya cari online bagaimana saya bisa mendapatkan pinjaman pribadi karena tidak punya agunan, saya menghubungi beberapa pinjaman perusahaan tetapi ternyata penipuan dan penipuan setelah mengirimi mereka uang, Anda tidak akan mendengar kabar dari mereka lagi

Jadi saya melihat posting dari Mahammad Ismali (Mahammadismali234@gmail.com) tentang pinjaman dari Perusahaan Pinjaman Dangote Via email: Dangotegrouploandepartment@gmail.com dengan bunga pinjaman 2%, jadi saya menghubungi mereka mengikuti prosedur mereka dan saya mendapatkan pinjaman saya Rp500,000,000.00 (500 juta) disetujui dan ditransfer ke kami

Saya ingin berterima kasih kepada Perusahaan Pinjaman Dangote dan juga Mahammad ismali dan saya ucapkan terima kasih selamanya, saran saya kepada siapa pun yang membaca ini jangan buang waktu Anda mencari pinjaman lagi dimana hubungi Perusahaan Pinjaman Dangote dan saya bersumpah dengan hidup saya bahwa mereka adalah nyata dan sah
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Teddy2 Februari 2022 pukul 02.15
Kabar baik!!!

Nama saya teddy dan saya dari Jawa Tengah Indonesia dan alamat saya KP. KADU RT 10 RW 04 KEL SUKAMULYA KEC CIKUPA KAB TANGERANG BANTEN, Saya baru saja menerima pinjaman Rp 3 Miliar (Small Business Admintration (SBA) dari Perusahaan Pinjaman Dangote setelah membaca artikel dari Lady Jane Alice (ladyjanealice@gmail.com) dan Mahammad Ismali (mahammadismali234@gmail.com) tentang cara mendapatkan
pinjaman dari Perusahaan Pinjaman Dangote dengan tingkat bunga 2% tanpa lisensi atau biaya gurantor, saya baru saja melamar melalui email dan ikhlas selama prosesnya, awalnya saya takut mengira itu seperti penipuan perusahaan peminjaman sebelumnya, tetapi yang mengejutkan saya ini nyata bahwa saya juga berjanji akan memberi tahu lebih banyak orang, percayalah itu nyata 100%, pelamar lain dari negara lain juga dapat bersaksi.

Email Perusahaan Pinjaman Dangote Melalui email: Dangotegrouploandepartment@gmail.com

Email saya: teddydouble334@yahoo.com
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