President Donald Trump

[nots]

Welp, I guess that insulting one of your closest allies SEEMED like a good idea at the time.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/no-gday-mate-on-call-with-australian-pm-trump-badgers-and-brags/2017/02/01/88a3bfb0-e8bf-11e6-80c2-30e57e57e05d_story.html?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.2861a899d1a2

He also told the Mexican President in last Friday's call:



So he's now threatening our border neighbor with invasion...I think I'll stay out of Mexico for a while.

The fact that this kind of stuff is leaking out of the White House sounds like a cry for help from hostages in there....

My question would be:why exactly isn't Australia taking in these 1250 refugees? They attempted to land there and were diverted to a couple of Paupa New Guinea islands where conditions were so bad, the UN had to intervene. Australia was unmoved by those conditions or the refugees sad stories. They were seeking asylum in Australia, but the Obama Admin offered half them (I believe your article is mistaken when it says all of them) a place here. Can anyone explain why? Australia has room, has great social services and it's where the people actually sought to go and yet the AU government rejected them. Why, from half a world away, are we inviting them in? Not looking for snarky answers--I am asking an honest question here.

[Hornsby]

My question would be:why exactly isn't Australia taking in these 1250 refugees? They attempted to land there and were diverted to a couple of Paupa New Guinea islands where conditions were so bad, the UN had to intervene. Australia was unmoved by those conditions or the refugees sad stories. They were seeking asylum in Australia, but the Obama Admin offered half them (I believe your article is mistaken when it says all of them) a place here. Can anyone explain why? Australia has room, has great social services and it's where the people actually sought to go and yet the AU government rejected them. Why, from half a world away, are we inviting them in? Not looking for snarky answers--I am asking an honest question here.

Best I can find...it seems to be an essentially humanitarian gesture to resettle people who've been in camps for years. Mostly Iranian refugees....Australia apparently doesn't take any boat people.

Who are those caught up in the deal?

The deal relates to 1,250 refugees held in Australia’s offshore detention camps on Nauru and Manus Island, including many from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Iraq. The refugees, some of whom are stateless, have spent years languishing in the offshore detention camps, which the United Nations has repeatedly criticised as cruel and illegal. The refugees are unable to go home, but cannot come to Australia – even when their right to protection as refugees is confirmed – because they travelled to Australia by boat. The vast majority of those in Australia’s offshore detention regime have been confirmed to have a valid claim to refugee status, meaning they are legally owed Australia’s protection. On Nauru, 983 of the 1,200 refugee status determinations were positive, while 217 were negative. On Manus Island, 78% of 859 the people finally assessed were found to be refugees, while 190 have been found not to have a claim for protection. The deal was also to include hundreds of refugees previously held on Manus or Nauru, who were in Australia receiving medical care, provided they had been found to be refugees.

What was the deal? And why was it so crucial for the Australian government?

In November the US agreed to take an undisclosed number of refugees from Australia’s offshore detention regime. The resettlement option was only to be available for detainees who had been found to be refugees (under the refugee convention). Others who were assessed and found not to be entitled to protection would not be deemed eligible. Applicants were to be interviewed twice by US officials before being resettled, in a process that was to take between six and 12 months. If a refugee missed out on US resettlement, the existing options of Papua New Guinea and Cambodia were still available.

The deal was seen as a significant win for the Turnbull government. Australia has searched in vain for a sustainable plan for refugees. For more than three years Australia has consistently maintained it will never settle asylum seekers on the Australian mainland that arrive by boat, a position that has been popular with voters and is still supported by both main parties. But the policy has led to regular reports of human rights abuses, many of them documented in the Guardian’s publication of the Nauru files, and is bitterly condemned by refugees advocates inside and outside Australia.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/02/qa-what-is-the-australian-refugee-deal-and-why-has-it-angered-trump

[Bernie Brewer]

Here is a link to a Daily Beast article that just got posted that is making the same argument I am. BB, it references the December 2015 comment from Trump about killing the families of terrorist ..."The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families"

As I said, I tried to answer your question, because you said no one would. I didn't say I agreed with any of Trump's campaign rhetoric. But, the fact is this was not the case of Targetting Families, it was a an in the heat of battle moment. Yes, I understand it feeds the narrative, but sadly, this is about to get off the rails uglier if a foreign born terrorist do, in fact, strike the US. Trump is a counter punching. He always needs the last word and I not sure if he understands there is no last word with extremists.

[Redbirds Fan]

My question would be:why exactly isn't Australia taking in these 1250 refugees? They attempted to land there and were diverted to a couple of Paupa New Guinea islands where conditions were so bad, the UN had to intervene. Australia was unmoved by those conditions or the refugees sad stories. They were seeking asylum in Australia, but the Obama Admin offered half them (I believe your article is mistaken when it says all of them) a place here. Can anyone explain why? Australia has room, has great social services and it's where the people actually sought to go and yet the AU government rejected them. Why, from half a world away, are we inviting them in? Not looking for snarky answers--I am asking an honest question here.

I think the best answer is "It doesn't matter. It's a done deal."

When one sovereign nation reaches an agreement with another sovereign nation, that agreement survives a 'change in management'. We all know that Trump's tendency is to keep re-negotiating deals up to and through the time he is supposed to make his last payment, but he will find that practice doesn't work so well in international diplomacy. There aren't always another thousand contractors waiting to do business with him. We have a finite set of good allies, and if we burn through them we are screwed.

[Redbirds Fan]

Here is what I have read on the "raid". There were several ops in various stages of planning when Obama left office. This one had been planned for weeks, but was not greenlit because the intel did not seem right. It was left for the next administration to see if intel improved.

The Trump administration was content with the intel and okayed the op.

The Pentagon says the Trump administration is more open to approval of the currently planned ops than was the Obama administration.

I don't know what all of this means. Does the Trump admin trust the military more? Was Obama more risk averse? Do they simply weigh risk/benefit differently? Does Trump think he needs a few ops coming out of the gate to shore up his military cred? I don't know. But I think we will see more of these. And I think Trump will declare the missions to be successes while his spinners blame Obama for any collateral damage.

[nots]

I think the best answer is "It doesn't matter. It's a done deal."

When one sovereign nation reaches an agreement with another sovereign nation, that agreement survives a 'change in management'. We all know that Trump's tendency is to keep re-negotiating deals up to and through the time he is supposed to make his last payment, but he will find that practice doesn't work so well in international diplomacy. There aren't always another thousand contractors waiting to do business with him. We have a finite set of good allies, and if we burn through them we are screwed.

With all due repect, thats an incredibly short slighted answer and one im sure you wouldnt have wanted applied to the Obama Administration when they were in office. Yes, we are obligated to abide by the deal Obama made, but I think it's fair to question why was it made. It looks like we have been asked to clean up half of Australia's immigration mess. I think its fair to ask why we should or, even better, why they aren't cleaning it up themselves. I also would guess that if Trump made an agreement with say Russia that you felt was out of place or bad policy, you would be saying something other than 'it doesn't matter, it's a done deal'
And to be clear, at no time have i said i support Trumps behavior in this. His caustic way of dealing with friends does not serve us well at all. But that's not what I was commenting on.

[Redbirds Fan]

With all due repect, thats an incredibly short slighted answer and one im sure you wouldnt have wanted applied to the Obama Administration when they were in office. Yes, we are obligated to abide by the deal Obama made, but I think it's fair to question why was it made. It looks like we have been asked to clean up half of Australia's immigration mess. I think its fair to ask why we should or, even better, why they aren't cleaning it up themselves. I also would guess that if Trump made an agreement with say Russia that you felt was out of place or bad policy, you would be saying something other than 'it doesn't matter, it's a done deal'
And to be clear, at no time have i said i support Trumps behavior in this. His caustic way of dealing with friends does not serve us well at all. But that's not what I was commenting on.

I agree with you in principle. Had this been some sort of bi-lateral arms deal, or a lengthy trade agreement, I would think it deserved great scrutiny. What it is, however, was an agreement for us to take around 1250 refugees, mostly from Iran, with a priority on families and children. Last year, a UN committee report found multiple cases of "attempted suicide, self-immolation, acts of self-harm and depression" among children who had lived in prolonged "detention-like conditions." We don't just take them in, we get to vet them first. It will take months.

Trump said this would kill him politically. It didn't have to, but now he has made it an issue. He could have said this was a binding agreement made by the former administration. Now he has essentially said to his base "I can stop it if I want to." If he doesn't he looks bad to them. If he reneges on the deal, he looks bad to the rest of the world, especially to our allies. It was a stupid, short-sighted move.

So, yes, I would have wanted this exact analysis applied to the Obama administration. I would hope that if there were any similar obligations of the US in place when Obama took office that he discharged them in a professional manner, rather than crying about them. If they were major deals which deserved reconsideration, that is another matter. I would guess that research would show examples of each case for Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.

Here's a question. Why was Trump surprised to learn of this deal? Was he not briefed? How can you go into a call like this without knowing what deals we have outstanding with that country? This, to me, is another example of the amateur/arrogant approach Team Trump is taking to the White House.

[Hodor]

My question would be:why exactly isn't Australia taking in these 1250 refugees? They attempted to land there and were diverted to a couple of Paupa New Guinea islands where conditions were so bad, the UN had to intervene. Australia was unmoved by those conditions or the refugees sad stories. They were seeking asylum in Australia, but the Obama Admin offered half them (I believe your article is mistaken when it says all of them) a place here. Can anyone explain why? Australia has room, has great social services and it's where the people actually sought to go and yet the AU government rejected them. Why, from half a world away, are we inviting them in? Not looking for snarky answers--I am asking an honest question here.

To be honest, that's not even the issue at hand.

The issue is that what we're seeing is that this administration and Trump in particular belive that the rules don't apply to them.

He also lacks the tact and sophistication the office of President demands which will complicate that issue (even though it's an issue unto itself)

Pissing people off, tearing up treaties, ignoring Congress and council, thumbing your nose at the judicial system is only going to result in one thing.

He will not finish his term.

[Redbirds Fan]

So now we have the President of the United States, via Twitter, threatening the federal funding of one of the top public universities in the nation because a student protest kept the editor of Breitbart from speaking. For those of you not keeping up, the former editor of Breitbart is the President's chief advisor.

How long before this gets walked back? Will it be Spicer or Conway who explains that what he said is not really what he meant and that the media is either a) biased, b) blowing it out of proportion, c) using this to dampen the support for the President, or d) all of the above?

[Hornsby]

To me the Australia deal was nothing more than a humanitarian drop in the bucket by Obama. Many people, myself included, publicly wondered why we couldn't/didn't/wouldn't do more for the refugees pouring out of countries around the world. We are allegedly the richest country in the world, and yet we lagged behind other nations in extending a helping hand.

This is what the deal with Australia was all about, IMO, a show that we're really good guys after all, without really doing a whole lot about it. 1,250 thoroughly vetted refugees are a drop in the bucket, and Trump should realize that Obama handed him a public relations bonanza instead of a nightmare. He could have been Trump the compassionate conservative, and sold that to his base. Instead he once again screwed the pooch around the world.

[Fresno Bob]

So now we have the President of the United States, via Twitter, threatening the federal funding of one of the top public universities in the nation because a student protest kept the editor of Breitbart from speaking. For those of you not keeping up, the former editor of Breitbart is the President's chief advisor.

How long before this gets walked back? Will it be Spicer or Conway who explains that what he said is not really what he meant and that the media is either a) biased, b) blowing it out of proportion, c) using this to dampen the support for the President, or d) all of the above?

As a previous participant and observer of protests and riots at UC Berkeley, I can tell you that the percentage of UCB students rioting vs peacefully protesting is near zero. There is a group known as Black Bloc, or the Young Spartacus League that look for any excuse to riot and loot

[Bernie Brewer]

Here is what I have read on the "raid". There were several ops in various stages of planning when Obama left office. This one had been planned for weeks, but was not greenlit because the intel did not seem right. It was left for the next administration to see if intel improved.

The Trump administration was content with the intel and okayed the op.

The Pentagon says the Trump administration is more open to approval of the currently planned ops than was the Obama administration.

I don't know what all of this means. Does the Trump admin trust the military more? Was Obama more risk averse? Do they simply weigh risk/benefit differently? Does Trump think he needs a few ops coming out of the gate to shore up his military cred? I don't know. But I think we will see more of these. And I think Trump will declare the missions to be successes while his spinners blame Obama for any collateral damage.

From what I've read, I have not seen anything suggesting Obama has reservations. The CNN article I attempted to link said the reason the mission was delayed until after Obama left office, and ultimately was left for the new Commander and Chief to green lite, was the absolute need for a moonless night to provide as much cover of darkness as possible for the Seals.

[Redbirds Fan]

With all due repect, thats an incredibly short slighted answer and one im sure you wouldnt have wanted applied to the Obama Administration when they were in office. Yes, we are obligated to abide by the deal Obama made, but I think it's fair to question why was it made. It looks like we have been asked to clean up half of Australia's immigration mess. I think its fair to ask why we should or, even better, why they aren't cleaning it up themselves. I also would guess that if Trump made an agreement with say Russia that you felt was out of place or bad policy, you would be saying something other than 'it doesn't matter, it's a done deal'
And to be clear, at no time have i said i support Trumps behavior in this. His caustic way of dealing with friends does not serve us well at all. But that's not what I was commenting on.

Okay, I cannot tell you exactly what was going through the minds of the Obama administration when they made the deal, so far as all the factors they considered. But, if you really want to learn more about the facts on the ground, here is an article which sets forth what was going on at the time. Although it is from CNN, it doesn't appear to editorialize the issue, just a timeline, graphs, several quotes, minimal narrative. http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/politi...urnbull-trump/

[Redbirds Fan]

From what I've read, I have not seen anything suggesting Obama has reservations. The CNN article I attempted to link said the reason the mission was delayed until after Obama left office, and ultimately was left for the new Commander and Chief to green lite, was the absolute need for a moonless night to provide as much cover of darkness as possible for the Seals.

From the Washington Post:

Planning for the Yemen raid began in the final weeks of the Obama administration, and a former senior defense official said to expect more such raids in the future. "We really struggled with getting the White House comfortable with getting boots on the ground in Yemen,” the former official told The Washington Post. "Since the new administration has come in, the approvals [at the Pentagon] appear to have gone up." Trump called the raid a success, citing the slain militants and seized intelligence. —Peter Weber

From Reuters:

"U.S. military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations.

As a result, three officials said, the attacking SEAL team found itself dropping onto a reinforced al Qaeda base defended by landmines, snipers, and a larger than expected contingent of heavily armed Islamist extremists."

"The U.S. officials said the extremists’ base had been identified as a target before the Obama administration left office on Jan. 20, but then-President Barack Obama held off approving a raid ahead of his departure.
A (Trump) White House official said the operation was thoroughly vetted by the previous administration and that the previous defense secretary had signed off on it in January. The raid was delayed for operational reasons, the White House official said."

"One of the three U.S. officials said on-the-ground surveillance of the compound was “minimal, at best.”
“The decision was made (by the Obama administration)... to leave it to the incoming (Trump) administration, partly in the hope that more and better intelligence could be collected,” that official said.

[Sour Masher]

So now we have the President of the United States, via Twitter, threatening the federal funding of one of the top public universities in the nation because a student protest kept the editor of Breitbart from speaking. For those of you not keeping up, the former editor of Breitbart is the President's chief advisor.

How long before this gets walked back? Will it be Spicer or Conway who explains that what he said is not really what he meant and that the media is either a) biased, b) blowing it out of proportion, c) using this to dampen the support for the President, or d) all of the above?

Yet another example of how clueless Trump is, or how indifferent he is about the basic principles of our nation. He seems to be governing by throwing out ideas and seeing which ones get the most support or backlash on social media, indifferent to the rule of law. That is not how a leader governs, and it really seems out of whack for a self-professed Republican, as I've always understood Republicans to be in favor of the rule of law rather than the whims of the majority.