At the conclusion of the U.S-Japan trade signing ceremony at the White House, President Trump took questions from the media. Below is the segment from the press Q&A.

[Transcript of Presser] – Q Do you have any predictions about China? Do you expect a whole new offer or any optimism?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, they want to make a deal. They’re down three and a half million jobs since we started doing what we do. And their supply chain is really cracked and broken. And they want to make a deal.
Now, they’re coming to see us on Thursday and Friday. We think there is a chance that we could do something very substantial. Bob, I think you think that. We’ll see what happens. But, in the meantime, we’re taking in billions and billions of dollars of tariffs every month and we’ve never had this. We never took in 10 cents from China and we’re taking in billions of dollars and tens of billions a year.
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Things are about to get very interesting and very uncomfortable for NATO.  President Trump has announced that Turkey is about to launch a unilateral invasion into Northern Syria… There is going to be a scramble amid many geopolitical interests.

First, the announcement:

[White House]  –  Today, President Donald J. Trump spoke with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey by telephone. Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria.
The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial “Caliphate,” will no longer be in the immediate area.

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To honor the memory of those lost on September 11th/12th 2012:

The Benghazi Brief

The “Benghazi Brief” remains the most controversial research report we have ever produced. The brief contains over two years of research and hundreds of very specific factual citations supporting it. Five years after it was originally written, and not a single aspect outlined within the brief has ever been identified as inaccurate.
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is conducting a regional visit to multiple allies and partners in the anti-ISIS campaign.  Today, Secretary Pompeo is in Jordan for discussions as the U.S. anticipates withdrawing troops from Syria.

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Meanwhile, National Security Adviser John Bolton is in Turkey after announcing from Israel the U.S. will not withdraw from Syria until Turkey (NATO ally) agrees not to kill the Kurdish fighters. Turkish President Recep Erdogan said emphatically there would never be such assurances, therefore U.S. troops will never leave Syria.
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Hopefully President Trump can withstand the severe UniParty manipulation and actually get the troops out within the four month time-frame. However, with John Bolton as National Security Adviser, consider me slightly skeptical.  Bolton loves war…

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South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham holds a press conference following lunch with President Donald Trump.  Beyond the border security shutdown issues, notably Senator Graham shares:

…” We had a great lunch.  We talked about Syria; and he told me some things I didn’t know that make me feel a lot better about where we’re headed in Syria”.. [@03:35]

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Several people have requested specificity as to why President Obama and candidate Hillary Clinton viewed Lieutenant General Michael Flynn as a risk worthy of primary confrontation/removal after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election.
The most obvious answer is not too complex; predates the election; and is connected directly to three core components of the Libya crisis: (1) White House; (2) State Department; (3) Hillary Clinton.
Drawing from years of exhaustive research within the Benghazi Brief; along with breakout information as to how the FBI and DOJ are directly connected to the issues therein; there is a clear and concise reason why Flynn was viewed as a risk to the interests of President Obama, Hillary Clinton and State Department Officials.
Lieutenant General Flynn was appointed to head the Defense Intelligence Agency on July 24th, 2012, approximately two months before the attack on the State/CIA compound in Benghazi Libya.
The Benghazi compound itself was controversial as it was part of a joint State Department and CIA mission to try and stop the spread of weapons to radical Islamic elements in the region.  After the fall of Muammar Gaddafi the Libyan weapons depots -as well as U.S. weapons shipped into Libya to assist the “rebels” in Gaddaffi’s ouster- were the immediate problem.
Weapons in 2012 were being redirected to Syria.  An operation to secure those weapons was ongoing in Benghazi (Eastern Libya).
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The announcement of The United States drawing down troop deployment from Northern Syria – with the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia sending in replacements to bolster the region, highlights a much larger backstory.

President Obama’s February ’09 Cairo speech began a sequence of events that led to what was called the “Arab Spring“; factually an extremist uprising.  Bolstered by the resulting chaos the Muslim Brotherhood rose to power in Egypt behind Mohammed Morsi.
However, a majority of the Egyptian people rejected President Morsi’s sharia governance, and asked a well respected General Fattah al-Sisi to step in.  Accepting the request of a desperate people Sisi removed Morsi, disbanded the Muslim Brotherhood and went on to win a landslide election in 2014.   The leadership of the Brotherhood fled to Qatar.
President Obama and his policy team was not happy with this outcome.  Obama supported Morsi, not al-Sisi.  Another person who was not happy, was Turkish President Recep Erdogan, who also supported Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Undeterred, and understanding the need for urgency, Egyptian President al-Sisi then began a long process of confronting extremism.  Sisi destroyed the Hamas terror tunnels on the border between Egypt and Israel; and, despite the anxiety expressed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Sisi brokered an interim peace agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israelis.
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President Trump delivers a deliberate message announcing the full U.S. military withdrawal from Syria.

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Thank You, and Merry Christmas.

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Without cameras in the courtroom we are constrained to understand the Flynn sentencing hearing today through the perspectives of others. The Daily Caller has an article [See Here] and a thread on the events [is Here] and a great video recap of the events by Will Chamberlain [is HERE].
That said, there is much speculation and punditry delivered opinion on what took place; and how the hearing ended with Judge Emmet Sullivan delaying the sentencing of Michael Flynn for 90-days. While we await the transcript from the court, here’s my view.

Last night, while contemplating the possible outcomes of the hearing, there was a strong likelihood of exactly what happened today…. but only if Judge Sullivan was aware of the conflicted position of Michael Flynn, and approached the hearing from that perspective.
Flynn took the guilty plea of lying to investigators to avoid Mueller charging him over the Turkish lobbying issues (FARA).
Happily, it appears Judge Sullivan is well aware of this very specific dynamic and the issues therein. Special Counsel Robert Mueller used the unregistered foreign lobbying charges, and -more importantly- the devastating narrative that can be drawn from those FARA violations, as leverage over Flynn. Based on the comments from Judge Sullivan, it is clear he is aware of this dynamic.
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