45th President of the United States, Donald Trump. (Vol 6)

[Gameface]

Donald Trump claims the Queen said she'd 'had the most fun in 25 years' during his recent state visit to the UK and they shared 'automatic chemistry'.

Yeah peas in a pod, them two...

[Tallow]

Gameface said:

Donald Trump claims the Queen said she'd 'had the most fun in 25 years' during his recent state visit to the UK and they shared 'automatic chemistry'.

Yeah peas in a pod, them two...

Sounds exactly like the kind of the the Queen would say

[Eric Mc]

Was she laughing "with him" or "at him"?

[glazbagun]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

They're going to love His Dark Materials.

[Byker28i]

Roger stones in trouble again for violating his gag order

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/20/politics/roger-...

[_dobbo_]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Well not least because it was made by and shown on Amazon but they sent the petition to Netflix!

Oh and Byker I've never felt the need to correct you before but Good Omens is by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett!

[Halb]

FRances McDoramand was miscast as god.

---

ANyhoo, Trump on the 'mistake' by an Iranian general...what is that about? Is Trump scared by his own hawks?

[Ructions]

Halb said:

ANyhoo, Trump on the 'mistake' by an Iranian general...what is that about? Is Trump scared by his own hawks?

Just following orders from Vladimir.

[Tartan Pixie]

Halb said:

FRances McDoramand was miscast as god.

---

ANyhoo, Trump on the 'mistake' by an Iranian general...what is that about? Is Trump scared by his own hawks?

Trump has never wanted war with Iran, he wanted a better deal than Obama could get.

It also appears to be sinking in to the GCC's thick skulls that any blowback from actions against Iran is going to land on their heads, or at least their oil refineries, pipelines, tankers and desalination plants. UAE in particular would have their economy flattened within days of a full kinetic war against Iran and Saudi probably wouldn't fair much better. Suddenly the GCC are all 'we don't want war with Iran' and Trump is probably happy with that however it doesn't leave him with much in the way of reliable allies.

I suspect that Trump is finding out how few cards he actually has to play against Iran. If he conducts a limited strike then Iran will send oil prices through the roof. A full invasion is almost completely off the cards, in part because he's already blown his economic firepower on tax cuts so there's not much left for invading Iran, especially as there's no treasure to plunder there so there's no transactional gain for him. Most of the world would be set against such an action especially Russia whose volatile Chechens are a few hundred miles from Iran's northern tip, China who want Iran as a major hub in their belt and road initiative and Turkey who really don't want another refugee crisis in a neighboring country.

Spiking oil prices which will not go any good for the global economy while getting to another expensive war is not good for Trump's electoral chances.

Iran know all this so they've got quite a lot of headroom to cause trouble, however there's a fine line to tread because they need America to be the bad guy, after all the objective is to get in to a position where they can trade again. This is why we're seeing the low intensity attacks on oil and water infrastructure with zero casualties and plausible deniability, it sends a message about Iran's capabilities and forces the world to acknowledge the large number of proxies Iran has got, thus creating leverage in negotiations both with America and with countries like China who could help break American sanctions.

All this comes with a dose of IMO because if there's one thing I've learned about middle east conflicts it's that if you think you know what's going on then you've not grasped the complexity of the situation. The tanker attacks are a classic example, it's exactly the sort of thing the IRGC would get up to precisely because we can't rule out the CIA, Mossad or Saudis, great way to remind everyone how untrustworthy America is. In this instance my money's on it being Iran who attacked those ships just as Iran are probably lying about the drone they shot down today being in their airspace.

As a tactic you could say Iran are punching out at what they can and muddying the waters behind themselves to leave confusion and make it difficult to apportion blame, you'd think trump would be more capable of dealing with such a scenario.

[Byker28i]

_dobbo_ said:

Oh and Byker I've never felt the need to correct you before but Good Omens is by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett!

Feel free, always willing to be corrected
I've never read Pratchett, feel like thats something I need to do then.

[Byker28i]

73 house representatives now support impeachment, thats almost doubled ina week
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/ful...

[Byker28i]

Tartan Pixie said:

Trump has never wanted war with Iran, he wanted a better deal than Obama could get.

It also appears to be sinking in to the GCC's thick skulls that any blowback from actions against Iran is going to land on their heads, or at least their oil refineries, pipelines, tankers and desalination plants. UAE in particular would have their economy flattened within days of a full kinetic war against Iran and Saudi probably wouldn't fair much better. Suddenly the GCC are all 'we don't want war with Iran' and Trump is probably happy with that however it doesn't leave him with much in the way of reliable allies.

Trumps doing this at the bidding of Saudi, another country that has compromised him, through their money to him, their election assistance and of course everything with Kushner. Hence the do nothing about Khashogi, trying to sell them more arms without going through congress, giving them secret information etc.

You've also got people like Bolton, who think the US should be flexing it's military might, you've got people like Marco Rubio saying "President doesn’t need congressional authorization to defend our nation against attacks".


But then Iran are responding to trump trying to punish them with stricter economic sanctions on Iran, trying to cut off its limited access to international trade and oil sales, after pulling out of the deal hats more of less kept peace in the region for the last few years. Europe, russia and china all told him he was stupid for doing that but of course trump knew better. It was something Obama negotiated so must be bad.

Trump approved military strikes against Iran in retaliation for downing an American surveillance drone, hence the threatening tweet. Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but it was called off before anything was fired.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/world/middleeas...


Of course, it's a handy distraction from appalling polling numbers, calls for impeachment etc and as always there are previous trump tweets...

[Byker28i]

[Byker28i]

Also when trump says about the $400m given to Iran, it was their money that the US tied up, that actually cost them a further $1.3bn in interest.

https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2016...

[Byker28i]

The House Judiciary Committee has just released the transcript of their interview with Hope Hicks.
The word "objection" occurs 196 times in this transcript.
The word "object" or "objection" is used 265 times in the course of Hope Hicks' testimony.

Hicks was accompanied by 6 lawyers to her House Judiciary Committee testimony: 2 private attorneys, 3 White House lawyers, and 1 from DOJ.

https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrats.judici...



Remember that Susan McDougal was put in jail for 18 months for civil contempt by the GOP when she refused to testify against Bill Clinton

Edited by Byker28i on Friday 21st June 07:03

[Byker28i]

Oh and how much is trump compromised by the UAE/Saudi, Israel?

How about the UAE Emiratis convincing trump him to fire Tillerson because that's what his Saudi and Emirati allies wanted.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-4328151...

Dealing with Iran was something team trump discussed with foreign nations aiding the Trump campaign in 2016 and has continued with via Kushner etc. Netanyahu has been pushing for it, told trump that if he played the hard man they would capitulate.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-if-ir...
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-wants-war-iran-net...

It's another reason why Flynn is important, he knew about these negotiations for crippling economic sanctions and cyber attacks to try to bring Iran down that would make Saudi the dominant power in the area, whilst also pleasing the others who helped his election. It could be why we're seeing maneuvers to keep Flynn quiet now as it all starts to kick off.

[Byker28i]

Apart from all that, there's also reports of how much money trump is getting for using his business locations
trumps trips have brought his private businesses at least $1.6 million in revenue, from federal officials and GOP campaigns who pay to go where he goes

He's also suggested holding the next G7 meeting at one of his clubs...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/when-trump...

[_dobbo_]

Byker28i said:

Feel free, always willing to be corrected
I've never read Pratchett, feel like thats something I need to do then.

Start with his Nights Watch series you won't regret it, really well crafted thrillers and genuinely amusing as well.

[Centurion07]

Tartan Pixie said:

...you'd think trump would be more capable of dealing with such a scenario.

I doubt he can dress himself without help.

[vonuber]

_dobbo_ said:

Start with his Nights Watch series you won't regret it, really well crafted thrillers and genuinely amusing as well.

Yup, definitely his best stuff.