President Donald Trump and Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan meet at the White House and deliver joint statements to the media:
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates appears on (de)face The Nation for an interview with John Dickerson.
Within the overall interview former Defense Secretary Robert Gates speaks direct confidence about President Trump’s intelligence and foreign policy appointments. Gates also uses common sense to shoot down the media’s narrative about Michael Flynn etc.
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Did Gates pop his head up to present himself as a potential FBI Director candidate?
President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump held an event yesterday to honor military moms at a White House celebration in honor of Mothers Day Weekend.
Both the President and First Lady thanked the military moms gathered in the audience. The words of honor and appreciation from Melania Trump were exceptionally personal and tenderly delivered. Top shelf.
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Melania Trump: I’m honored by your presence, especially as we celebrate National Military Appreciation Month and Mother’s Day on Sunday.
As everyone in this room knows, mother is a title that claims your heart and changes your life forever. In fact, it has been said that having a child means allowing your heart to walk around outside of your body. For the mothers of someone who has or is serving our country, this must be especially true. As you all know, I, too, am a mother.
Last month President Trump took a great deal of criticism for calling Turkish President Erdogan and congratulating him on the narrow referendum victory. Many critics of Trump said he was congratulating a dictator, without also recognizing Turkey is a NATO member.
As long as Turkey is allowed to remain in NATO the entire member nation alliance will always be compromised by the self-serving Islamic interests of Erdogan. The EU and the political left, demand President Trump recognize the value of NATO – and hypocritically denounce Trump for speaking to a NATO nation’s leader. This is the mindset of the idiots in the EU and their defenders amid the political left.
Today, the Trump administration announces they are arming the Kurdish fighting forces in Northern Syria. President Erdogan hates the Kurds and considers them as adversaries and political opposition to his control over Turkey.
Within the dynamic you can see a multidimensional problem. The Kurds are fighting short-term against ISIS and Bashir Assad in Syria; however, in the larger Kurdish goal they are also attempting to establish their own independent state, Kurdistan.
Erdogan opposes Assad, but Erdogan more strongly opposes the Kurds and any Kurdistan formation efforts because it would destroy his goal of establishing the new Ottoman empire he dreams of leading. (more…)
No doubt VA Secretary David Shulkin will utilize the newest legislation passed in March which makes it easier to fire VA employees found to be deficient in their responsibility to provide veterans healthcare. President Trump has also enhanced the accountability within the VA system with whistleblower protections and a specific office of accountability.
(Via Washington Free Beacon) More than 100 veterans died while waiting for care at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Los Angeles, Calif., over a nine-month span ending in August 2015, according to a new government report.
The VA Office of Inspector General found in a recent healthcare inspection that 225 veterans at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System facility died with open or pending consults between Oct. 1, 2015 and Aug. 9, 2015. Nearly half—117—of those patients died while experiencing delays in receiving care.
Earlier today President Donald Trump signed HR244 into law. The provisional spending bill that funds government through September 30th, the end of fiscal year 2017.
There has been a great deal of anxiety amid punditry about the spending outline itself, and the spending priorities as determined by both houses of congress. Some of the criticism is warranted, most is not.
The basic principle the entire professional political class seem to overlook is the reasoning for the CR itself. Congress has been unable to fulfill its budgetary obligation since 2007.
In fact, the last federal budget (fiscal year ’08) was signed into law in September of 2007. By the conclusion of this CR it will have been an entire decade without a federal budget.
Perspective: ♦ Over half of all elected federal politicians have never held elected office in any year with a federal budget in place. ♦ Almost two-thirds of Republicans in congress have never known a federal budget for a single day in office.
THAT FACT should be the target of the ire from all Americans, particularly conservatives. However, hypocritically, it is not.
For some reason ankle-biters, antagonists, and crony constitutional punditry amid the various CONservative outlets, choose instead to focus their criticism toward the first president in our lifetime to actually deliver on conservative policy, conservative values and expressed policy objectives/outcomes that benefit all common sense Americans.
During a ceremony today at the State Department, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered remarks of remembrance and honored fallen foreign service workers.
As an outcome of the systemic corruption and administrative malfeasance uncovered by whistleblowers in the Veterans Affairs healthcare system, on April 27th President Trump and Vice-President Pence participate in an Executive Order signing to enhance the accountability and whistleblower protections within federal government.
President Trump created the VA Accountability Office. This was a major campaign promise to veterans fulfilled. You could tell by the intensity of delivery this was a very important reform objective to President Trump personally. Now today…
(Via Fox News) The director of the beleaguered Shreveport VA hospital in Louisiana has been fired following a three-year tenure filled with scandal — including accusations of covering up a secret wait-list, creating severe staffing shortages and refusing to buy essentials like vital signs machines, linens or mattresses.
Toby Mathew, who became director of Overton Brooks VA Medical Center in June 2014, was fired on April 13 due to “charges related to general misconduct, and failure to follow policy and provide effective oversight of the Center’s credentialing and privileging program,” said an internal VA memo obtained by Fox News.
Earlier today President Trump celebrated with the U.S. Air Force Academy. Within the president’s remarks he also makes note of the current spending battle.
[Transcript] 11:52 A.M. EDT – THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, everybody. I appreciate it. That’s some big people behind me. Big, strong, brilliant people. Please sit down.
I want to thank everybody for being here on this very special occasion. It’s an honor every single day to serve as your Commander-in-Chief to the incredible men and women of the United States Air Force — very special, beautiful place. Very, very special. (Applause.)
I also want to welcome the acting Secretary of the Air Force, Lisa Disbrow, and Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein. Thank you. (Applause.)
The Cadets here represent not only the future of our Air Force, but also the future of our country. Their skill, dedication, loyalty, and patriotism represent the very best of America.
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster appears on Fox News Sunday for an interview with swamp guardian Chris Wallace.
Previously, some people, stimulated by the worries of annoying arbitrary gnat nonsense, expressed concern that McMaster might be inclined to lean the President Trump administration further toward an interventionist foreign policy.
If you listen to the numerous interviews McMaster has given since taking on the role of National Security Adviser you can clearly sense that President Trump has clear eyes and a firm grip on any McMaster lean.
Secretary T-Rex is the preferred policy point, and doing brilliantly. McMaster represents the AWACS covering Tillerson’s travel, and Mattis is the archangel on his shoulder.