Two gunmen opened fire on Coptic Christians Friday at church south of Cairo.  Coptic Christian holy celebrations begin next week.  Egyptian security forces killed one of the terrorists and captured the second outside the church of Mar Mina in Helwan district according to state TV and state news agency MENA said.

President Donald Trump called Egyptian President Fattah Abdel al-Sisi to offer support and condolences:

WHITE HOUSE – President Donald J. Trump spoke today with President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi of Egypt to offer condolences to the people of Egypt after the attack on worshippers and security forces in the city of Helwan, which is located south of Cairo. President Trump condemned the attack and reiterated that the United States will continue to stand with Egypt in the face of terrorism. President Trump emphasized his commitment to strengthening efforts to defeat terrorism and extremism in all their forms. (link)

Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (Saudi), and Egyptian President al-Sisi are the fulcrum of stability for the current reform movement in the mid-east.  Both are working to eliminate Islamic Extremism. Both are targets for Islamic terrorists who thrive amid chaos.
 

Yesterday, as a measure of appreciation and thanks, President Donald Trump invited U.S. Coast Guard members from Lake Worth Inlet station to play golf at Trump International West Palm Beach.  Seventy-five members from the Coast Guard took the opportunity to play.
President Trump organized a luncheon in their honor and closed the course so the USCG could hold an impromptu tournament.  POTUS knows how to host; top shelf, always.  Even CNN had a hard time trying to angle this jovial story into a hit piece – but they tried:

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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Sarah H Sanders Twitter @SHSanders45

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

House Intelligence Committee Chairman, and Gang of Eight member, Devin Nunes, has delivered an ultimatum to Asst. AG Rod Rosenstein; demanding the DOJ deliver the documents and evidence surrounding the Steele Dossier to the committee by January 3rd.

There’s an unspoken coordination here which needs to be highlighted. Intelligence Chairman Nunes appears focused specifically on the Dossier, which is to say the DOJ side of the collusion.  Judicial Chairman Goodlatte is focused the FBI side.
Nunes demand comes as DAG Rosenstein has already committed to deliver 1.2 million pages of evidence from the year-long DOJ Inspector General investigation to the House Judiciary Chairman, Bob Goodlatte, on/around January 15th.   More than likely the FBI/DOJ requested information is also contained within the upcoming OIG material.

WASHINGTON DC – House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes is blasting the Department of Justice and the FBI for its “failure to fully produce” documents related to an anti-Trump dossier, saying “at this point it seems the DOJ and FBI need to be investigating themselves.”

In a Thursday letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein obtained by Fox News, Nunes expressed frustration that information and witnesses subpoenaed by the committee in August related to the so-called Steele dossier had not yet been turned over. The salacious dossier includes unverified allegations about President Trump’s connections with Russia that he has denied.

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Too funny.  Grandmaster level trolling.
Only POTUS Trump can pull this off.  They hate him. He doesn’t care.
The ‘triggering‘ is, simply, a joy to behold:

(LINK)

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Because President Donald Trump is entirely deliberate most of the time; and because POTUS Trump very rarely uses a passive aggressive voice; the tweet response from President Trump, regarding China violating oil sanctions, is perfect -and serious- but also funny as hell when you understand the big panda picture.

President Trump knows the panda mask hides the red dragon. Those who have watched the past year engagement between President Trump and Chairman Xi Jinping can clearly see how Trump strokes the panda fur but well understands that Xi holds a zero-sum outlook.
China will never take action that is not in their specific best interests. Period. It’s the way Chinese negotiate. They hold a zero-sum world-view; if China doesn’t win, the action simply is not taken.  Only action that benefits Chinese interests is taken. Period.
Heck, the eyes-wide-open specific understanding of the Chinese view is the entire reason for Trump executing a years-long economic leverage approach toward China’s acquiescence over U.S. demands on the DPRK nuclear ambitions.
President Trump has been positioning a better economic benefit for China as the necessary leverage.  Simultaneously and intensely strategically, POTUS Trump has been publicly creating “magnanimous panda”, with elevated praise beyond words spoken of any other engagement.  Strategic Trump even deploys his granddaughter Arabella as part of the strategy of elevating over-the-top praise upon Chairman Xi, and by extension to “incredible people of China”.
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Rasmussen’s last Daily Presidential Tracking survey of the year for presidential approval ratings finds President Trump holding a 46% approval rating (53% disapproval) which is  identical to the same survey conducted at the end of President Obama’s first year in office.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 46% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.
The latest figures include 29% who Strongly Approve of the way the president is performing and 44% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -15. (link)

As People’s Pundit points out: “Worth noting, the intensity index known as the Presidential Approval Index, which is the disparity between voters who “strongly” approve or disapprove, is actually more favorable to President Trump than it was for Mr. Obama.”
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The leadership of the DOJ and the FBI are intertwined in the 2016 election operation to support candidate Hillary Clinton and defeat candidate Donald Trump. However, most of the investigative discussions center around the FBI side of the equation. There’s a good reason for that.
The FBI side of the conspiracy is pretty straight forward. FBI Director James Comey, FBI Asst. Director Andrew McCabe, FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker, FBI Counterintelligence Head Bill Priestap, and FBI Counterintelligence Agent Peter Strzok all played a participatory role in the Trump Operation.
The 2016 FBI counterintelligence operation was surveillance on the Trump Campaign and was thinly disguised under the fraudulent auspices of a FISA warrant, sold as a defense of U.S. democracy from Russia, which permitted the wiretaps and surveillance etc.
Two DOJ people (central to the FBI) relayed and acted as facilitators between the FBI side and the DOJ side: DOJ Deputy Bruce Ohr and FBI/DOJ lawyer Lisa Page. Outlines of their collaborative efforts, and the trails they left behind, have filled the headlines recently.

On the Department of Justice side of the operation, specifically the DOJ leadership involvement, things are less clearly outlined. Again, there’s a reason for that.
The DOJ involvement surrounds legal arguments, processing of FISA applications, and use of the legal system to support the FBI with actionable legal framing (against Trump) mostly after their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was defeated.
In essence, in a bastardized manipulation of Law and Order, the FBI created disorder and the DOJ weaponized that manufactured disorder to launch a legal attack against their ideological political opposition, President-elect Donald Trump. Unlawfulness and Disorder.
However, to best understand the DOJ side, it’s helpful to look at a specific time, September and October 2016. That’s when the second FISA application was presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), using the information from the FBI counterintelligence operation (Steele Dossier etc.) as the basis for that application.
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What kind of sorcery is this?

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Not to worry, still fake news.  At the end Ms. Harlow says Paul Callan has an Op-Ed at the CNN Website. I looked, it’s not there.
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