Y'know what? I've suddenly realised that Mark and PB might have been right all along about the Rusian interference in the US election and our own Brexit. You see, I was once all for remaining in the EU, after spending hours deliberating upon my decision I was utterly convinced we should remain and thought nothing could ever change my mind, when suddenly, something happened and I've only just realised that it did alter my thinking after all, it did alter my vote! I was sat in my Italian chair, eating a Bratwurst and Camembert sandwich and thinking about holidaying with our glorious partners in Spain, when suddenly there was a knock at the door. I opened it to be confronted by a man wearing a fur cap and carrying a hammer and syckle. I mean, I thought nothing of it at the time, why would I? "Comrade," he said to me, in a thick Oldham accent, which I've only just realised might have been a Russian one, as they're so alike, "you mustski vota da Brexitski," he implored me, and with that logical arguement, he turned and left. Well I did vote Brexit, so he must have subliminally planted the idea in my head following his compelling case in favour. I tell ya, you've got to hand it to those Ruskies and now there's no going back....my god, what have I done! But it wasn't my fault, it was those devious Russians interfering with the vote.

my god, what have I done! But it wasn't my fault, it was those devious Russians interfering with the vote. Glad you had that flash back Major. You can see now how easily it can happen to anyone. The rest of us won't hold it against you. With your Russian language skills what they are now, maybe M-16 should hire you do go on Russian web sites and start doing the same back to them. At least it reminds you to stop buying their dam wood harested by North Korean slave labour.

I see CNN's greatest news expose story of the Russian meeting in Trump Tower has been proved to be a pile of shit. Pete will fill us in on the details.

Haven't heard nothing like that, where did you hear it from Prince Guliani or Fox news? IF it was false, CNN would be the first to tell you so. So unless you can show us I have to consider it more false news being put out by Trump.

When Trump reimposed sanctions on Iran, the ones that had been rescinded by the appeaser in chief, Obarmy. Europe chose to ignore them and carry on as usual. Why did Trump reimpose them? Well first of all he said he would and the whole political world is still trying to come to terms with the fact that he does exactly what he says he's going to do. I mean, it's so confusing for them, as they've never encountered such an alien political concept as that. Trump recognised that Iran was running a con-job, or taquiyya as it's known in the muslim world, which is an Islamic ploy, sanctioned by the koran, whereby muslims can openly lie to the gullible kaffir and be forgiven, as long as it's done in the name and advantage of Islam. Europe decided that short term finacial expediency was preferable to long term nuclear security, but Trump understood only too well the danger in this econmomic appeasement and stepped in to put things right. However, Europe is now having its arse kicked by the US and their major compnies in Iran are pulling out as a result of Trump's actions. He knows how business works and he had a secondary sanctions provision stitched into his deal, which prevented any dollar transactions there and any country which tried to do that, would be stopped from dealing with the US. What idiot would risk that? Now, all major western companies are pulling out of Iran, which has two effects, one it screws the Iranians and secondly, it soundly demonstartes to the liberal Europeans that the there's still life in the old US dog still and they'd better watch out the rabid dog Trump doesn't turn around and bite them too. The EU even went as far as to gurantee compensation to any comapny losing money whilst still trading with Iran but those company's know more about economics than the socialists in Brussels and they know you don't screw with the US under Trump. They've been taught a lesson in economics and the Iranians have been taught that there are no new nukes at the end of the rainbow.

Trump touts Puerto Rico response as 'fantastic' despite nearly 3,000 dead

President Donald Trump, facing a drastically revised death toll in Puerto Rico a year after dual hurricanes devastated the island, offered a still-rosy outlook of his administration's handling of the disaster on Wednesday.

"I think we did a fantastic job in Puerto Rico," Trump told CNN's Jim Acosta during an exchange with reporters at the White House. "We're still helping Puerto Rico."

It was an optimistic accounting of his administration's handling of the natural disaster, which left much of the US territory without power for weeks and resulted in thousands of deaths.

The island's governor formally raised the death toll from 64 to 2,975 on Tuesday following a study conducted by researchers at George Washington University.

The study accounted for Puerto Ricans who succumbed to the stifling heat and other after-effects of the storm and were not previously counted in official figures.

Trump has trumpeted his handling of the storm's aftermath, including saying in the days afterward the storm had resulted in a relatively small number of deaths compared to a "real catastrophe like Katrina." Hurricane Katrina, which devastated parts of Louisiana in 2005, killed roughly 1,200.

He also awarded himself a "10 out of 10" on disaster recovery efforts during an Oval Office meeting last year with Puerto Rico's governor.

"Did we do a great job?" he asked his guest.

Through it all, Trump has maintained that Puerto Rico's languishing infrastructure and geography hampered efforts. He said on Wednesday an outdated electric grid and the territory's status as an island continued to the difficulty.

"Puerto Rico was actually more difficult because of the fact it was an island," he said. "It's much harder to get things on the island."

Trump has come under stiff criticism for his handling of the disaster, principally from Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of Puerto Rico's capital city San Juan.

"The administration killed the Puerto Ricans with neglect. The Trump administration led us to believe they were helping when they weren't up to par, and they didn't allow other countries to help us," Yulín Cruz said on CNN Wednesday, later adding, "Shame on President Trump. Shame on President Trump for not even once, not even yesterday, just saying, 'Look, I grieve with the people of Puerto Rico.'"

Trump did not respond directly to his critics Wednesday, instead saying he hoped the island doesn't suffer a similar fate this year.

"I only hope they don't get hit again because they were hit by two in a row," Trump said.

Trump's comments were reminiscent of former President George W. Bush's comments days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, when Bush praised his FEMA director Michael Brown during his first visit to the region affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," Bush said then.

Trump's comments on Wednesday were not the first time he has praised the federal response in Puerto Rico. And while the death toll was not known when he voiced some of his earlier praise, they did come as disaster relief experts and local officials sounded the alarm about the slow pace of the federal response.

"Every death is a horror -- but if you look at a real catastrophe, like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here with, really, a storm that was just totally overpowering -- nobody has ever seen anything like this," Trump said in Puerto Rico less than two weeks after Maria struck. "Everybody around this table and everybody watching can really be very proud of what's taken place in Puerto Rico."

Trump not only repeatedly praised the federal response, but he also struck out at the news media and critics who highlighted the slow pace of some of the recovery efforts and the dire conditions that much of the island continued to face for weeks and months after the hurricane made landfall.

Ten days after the hurricane made landfall, Trump lambasted news reports about the troubled situation in Puerto Rico in a series of tweets.

"Despite the Fake News Media in conjunction with the Dems, an amazing job is being done in Puerto Rico," Trump tweeted. "The Fake News Networks are working overtime in Puerto Rico doing their best to take the spirit away from our soldiers and first R's. Shame!"

In another tweet, he lashed out at San Juan's mayor, who had taken to the airwaves to raise alarm about the slow pace of recovery efforts.

"Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help," he tweeted.

The people who are doing the checking on their nuke program said that Iran is still in complete compliance , Major.

Trump said that NBC fudged the video of him saying that he fired Comey over the Russia investigation just like he said that wasn't his voice he didn't think on the bus where he said he grabbed women by the crotch.

Those Mexicans that he is giving a hard time to about renewing their passports are American citizens and have been since birth. We also find out that most of them are Demo's living in predominately Demo areas. I think it's just part of his plan to keep anyone who won't be supporting him in the fall elections out of the elections.

A man was picked up after threating to kill all News people saying that Trump said they were all enemies of the country and that's why he was going to do it.

Trumps playing the people of America for fools. Thank goodness the rest of the world can see it even if Americans can't.

What you're giving us PB is from CNN. When they tell me it's Sunday, I get the callender out and check, as you never know with them.

Which is why their audience has plummetted and the gardening channel gets more viewers. Their flagship story about the Russian meeting in Trump Tower has gone up in flames and they're haemouraging viewers by the day. FAKE NEWS

No, the facts proved they lied about Trump Tower and they've been caught out. Now we find out that Mueller's second in command in his witch hunt was being informed by Bruce Ohr on the phoney dosier, paid for by Clinton. In other words, his second in command knew the dosier was phoney and here he is on an investigation to find Russian meddling in the Trump campaign using a phoney dosier he knew was bought by Clinton and the DNC. Fusion GPS, who paid Steele for the dosier has Bruce Ohr's wife working for them and she was part of the team doing the paying.

Bombshell leak to Toronto Star upends NAFTA talks: In secret ‘so insulting’ remarks, Trump says he isn’t compromising at all with Canada

WASHINGTON – High-stakes trade negotiations between Canada and the U.S. were dramatically upended on Friday morning by inflammatory secret remarks from President Donald Trump, after the remarks were obtained by the Toronto Star.

In remarks Trump wanted to be “off the record,” Trump told Bloomberg News reporters on Thursday, according to a source, that he is not making any compromises at all in the talks with Canada — but that he cannot say this publicly because “it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal.”

“Here’s the problem. If I say no — the answer’s no. If I say no, then you’re going to put that, and it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal...I can’t kill these people,” he said of the Canadian government.

In another remark he did not want published, Trump said, according to the source, that the possible deal with Canada would be “totally on our terms.” He suggested he was scaring the Canadians into submission by repeatedly threatening to impose tariffs.

“Off the record, Canada’s working their ass off. And every time we have a problem with a point, I just put up a picture of a Chevrolet Impala,” Trump said, according to the source. The Impala is produced at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ontario.

Trump made the remarks in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg. He deemed them off the record, and Bloomberg accepted his request not to reveal them.

Read more:

Opinion | Trump, Trudeau and NAFTA: what could possibly go wrong?

Canada, U.S. scramble to meet U.S.-imposed deadline of Friday for NAFTA deal

Huge auto tariffs a major threat to Canadian economy

But the Star is not bound by any promises Bloomberg made to Trump. And the remarks immediately became a factor in the negotiations: Trudeau’s officials, who saw them as evidence for their previous suspicions that Trump’s team had not been bargaining in good faith, raised them at the beginning of a meeting with their U.S. counterparts on Friday morning.

The Star was not able to independently confirm the remarks with 100 per cent certainty, but the Canadian government is confident they are accurate. Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, who was one of the journalists in the room, did not dispute their authenticity.

White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said, “If this was said, it was said in an off the record capacity. I understand you guys have obtained it; I’m not sure where you’ve obtained it from.” She said she was looking into “the authenticity of what was said,” but she added that there are “sensitivities” to off-record comments.

The unusual series of events began on Friday morning, when the Star asked Trudeau’s team, which was heading into a critical top-level 9 a.m. meeting with Trump’s team, for comment on the remarks.

Trudeau’s team believed the remarks to be accurate, and it saw them as confirmation of its suspicions that Trump’s team has not been truly planning to compromise. Earlier on Friday morning, before becoming aware of the remarks, a Canadian official told the Star the U.S. side was not offering “any movement” on the issues most important to Canada.

So at the outset of the Friday meeting — which was expected to involve Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and senior Trudeau adviser Gerald Butts among others on the Canadian side and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and senior Trump aide Jared Kushner among others on the U.S. side — Trudeau’s officials unveiled the quotes to their U.S. counterparts.

The Canadian government declined to comment on what transpired in the meeting.

On the record, Trump told Bloomberg that a deal was “close,” that it could happen by Friday but might take longer, and that Canada ultimately has “no choice” but to make a deal. Bloomberg quoted these remarks.

But then he said, “Off the record: totally on our terms. Totally.”

“Again off the record, they came knocking on our doors last night. ‘Let’s make a deal. Please,’” he said.

Bloomberg’s Micklethwait declined to comment.

“‘Off the record’ means ‘off the record’ — and we should respect that,” Micklethwait said in an email.

Trump’s remarks came at a particularly delicate time in the negotiations. Negotiators have been trying for three days to meet a Trump-imposed Friday deadline for making a deal.

The deadline is not firm. Even if the U.S. formally notifies Congress on Friday that it has made a preliminary deal with Mexico alone, as Trump officials have threatened to do, Canada can almost certainly be added to the arrangement at any time in the next month.

Trump, of course, is known for both dishonesty and for bragging about his own greatness, and he regularly makes dubious claims about how he is supposedly dominating the begging people on the other side of the bargaining table from him. When he claimed to have made no compromises, it is distinctly possible he was making a false claim to impress the Bloomberg journalists.

Regardless of their truthfulness, the president’s comments are significant for more than one reason.

As Trump said, his claim that he has not compromised at all could make it harder for Trudeau to sell the deal to Canadians as a win for both countries. But the disclosure of the claim could also make it harder for Trump to convince Americans that Canada is at fault for any impasse.

It is noteworthy that Trump, who has claimed to be indifferent about whether Canada signs a deal, is interested enough in securing Canada’s participation that he went off the record to avoid an optics problem for Trudeau.

And the comments are a rare example of Trump self-censoring his public remarks out of concern for diplomatic sensitivities. The president is proud of his fondness for insults — Trudeau has been one of his favourite recent foreign targets — and of his disregard for conventions of politeness.

The public will not know precisely what concessions were made by each side until experts are able to read a text of the deal. Any agreement would cover hundreds of products and numerous complicated subject areas.

Trump’s team, meanwhile, publicly blamed Canada for the deadlock on Friday morning.

“There have been no concessions by Canada on agriculture,” a spokesperson for the Lighthizer told the Washington Post.

There is a precedent for Trump’s off the record remarks to one media outlet being revealed to another. In 2017, after the Wall Street Journal declined to release a full transcript of its own interview with Trump, Politico published the full text.

Daniel Dale is the Star’s Washington bureau chief. He covers U.S. politics and current affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @ddale8

Related gallery: Renegotiating the NAFTA deal [Provided by The Canadian Press]

We can always count on you, PBA, to bring us the real fake news. The only ones who think it is fake news is those ones with their heads buried in the sand and are living in denile. These are also the same people who who are putting their own failing party ahead on their Nations interests. You call yourself a member of an environmetalist group? I find that very hard to believe from a Virginian coal lover who supports her present EPA representitives who don't believe in clean air or water.

Brilliant, Trump has dropped aid to Pakistan, $300 millions worth and about time somebody did. Pakistan has been playing a duplicitous role between its financial sugar daddy, the USA and its fellow muslims in the Taliban and ISIS. It's deliberately kept sanctuary havens for them, where they have been free from Paki interference, whilst they got on with the job of murdering NATO soldiers and flooding the west with opium. As with all none oil muslim states, Pakistan is backward and perpetually broke, having been bailed out around ten times by the IMF, but not at US taxpayers expense any more. I think we give them a shed load too for some unknown reason but then again, we've just announced a 100 million aid package to India, who happen to have their own nuclear arsenal and space industry but 300 million of them are still shitting in the open air. This is where PB jumps in and warns me that China will fill the vacuum. Not that he really gives two shits about Pakistan, but as it is Trump who has cut their funding, he's suddenly developed a soft spot for them. China has already spent billions on them and as Pakistan are equal opportunity extortionists, they will screw China too. China can have them with pleasure.

Pete, these cartoons are like something from the old Soviet era, classless, very simple and right up your street.

Pete, these cartoons are like something from the old Soviet era, classless, very simple and right up your street.   And very truthful you forgot to add. They mimic Trump to a Tee don't they. Yes Major you are right for once and China will try filling the gap. Actually if you look they are filling gaps all over the world right now. Africa is a prime example of where they are spending money. They don't care about the politics of the area and are only interesting most times of exploting the country and any resources they may have. You will hear about Pakistan buying up long range missiles next. Don't be surprised if Russia doesn't push for closer links to Pakistan also. It seems like anywhere there is a break down in a democrocy no matter how little, the Russian and Chinese come calling.

right up your street. You are suppose to say, right up your alley, not Street -  An alley is a narrow passageway between or behind building and if you are trying to chuke rocks then using the word Street or Aveue is being too kind. Best to use Alley which means I live in a narrow passageway with no address. Got to tell you currie eaters everything.

Brilliant, Trump has dropped aid to Pakistan That's nothing, he has also dropped aid to his own people. He gave it all to big business so that they could buy back shares in their own companies and they in turn forgot to let it dribble down to their workers in raises.

Hasn't he already been disgraced for political corruption in the past?

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

______

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.

Not just that, but I was told by a man, who knew a man who knew another man who worked in the White House. He told me that his uncle, who worked in the White House. knew a man in the White House, who was actually higher up in the White House than the other man, who told him, confidentially of course, that Trump was a naughty boy at times and actually swore. 'onest, a man in the pub told me. Oh dear, whatever would we do without our old friend 'anonymous sources?' Or more to the point, what would the rabid, anti Trump press do without it? It's their lifeblood and in its absence, they would either die or be forced into that old fashioned and increasingly rare concept of investigative journalism. TDS used to be a disease of the mind but now it's morphed further and become an addictive drug. Lefty's need their daily anti Trump fix and if they don't get something negative by teatime, they develop the shakes. This is where the press jumps in to save them, by inventing stories, a form of TDS methadone if you will. Now, if there is actually a subversive traitor in the White House and that's exactly what he is, a man guilty of a betrayal of trust, in this case his country, then he had better get out of there quick, as Trump won't forgive him and neither will half of the nation. If he exists, he will be found because in the final analasys, he couldn't keep his mouth shut and neither will those who he has put his trust in. This goes beyond politics, this is sedition, collusion against an elected President. If he doesn't like what he sees, there is an answer to it in the west, try standing for election. Another thing, how do the papers know it's true? Are they paying him? If they are, then he is not doing anything for moral purposes, but financial ones. He says Trump is acting against the Republic, well only in his mind and the left wing media of course, they believe this single man (forget the we shit) as some kind of messiah. He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy (couldn't resist that one) Y'know, all this isn't about policies, no matter how much you click your heels and say..... there's no man like Trump, there's no man like Trump, he's not off to Kansas soon, it's about him and him alone. He has some wonderful achievements in such a short time and it wouldn't matter what great achievemnts he might do, none of that matters. He cannot do anything, ever, that would draw a single positive sentence from you and why? Because you hate him, that's why and nothin will ever overcome that blind hatred. There is a saying..... it's about the economy stupid, well there's another.....it's just about Trump stupid. You two hated him before he arrived and nothing is ever going to change that. Fact is, the western world has become addicted to political banality, which is why we have Trudope and May.