Dear MAGA: Open Topic 20181212

Full conversation between PDJT, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on the Wall:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-senate-minority-leader-chuck-schumer-house-speaker-designate-nancy-pelosi/
A must-read. You could not make this dialogue up.
Schumer says (paraphrased), ‘Let’s talk about it’.
Trump says, ‘We’re having this conversation.’
Much later, at the end:
‘THE PRESIDENT: I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it. The last time you shut it down, it didn’t work. I will take the mantle of shutting down.
‘HOUSE SPEAKER-DESIGNATE PELOSI: That is (inaudible).
‘THE PRESIDENT: And I’m going to shut it down for border security.
‘SENATE MINORITY LEADER SCHUMER: But we believe you shouldn’t shut it down.
‘THE PRESIDENT: Okay. Thank you very much everybody. Thank you.
‘HOUSE SPEAKER-DESIGNATE PELOSI: (Inaudible) shut down the government.’

Interesting mix of demands — right and left:

Beware of gilets jaunes imitations —
1/ US:

2/ Ireland:

Must read — D10 group out to stop Trump. From August 2, 2018 (excerpts follow, emphases mine):
https://www.economist.com/international/2018/08/02/countries-team-up-to-save-the-liberal-order-from-donald-trump
‘FOR the past four years senior officials from a group of leading democracies, calling themselves the “D10”, have quietly been meeting once or twice a year to discuss how to co-ordinate strategies to advance the liberal world order. Foreign ministry policy-planners and a few think-tank types would discuss responses to Russia, China, North Korea, Iran—but largely below the radar, so as not to be seen as a cabal of the “old West”. The idea has been to enhance co-operation among “a small number of strategically like-minded and highly capable states”, as Ash Jain, a former member of the State Department’s policy-planning staff, put it in a working paper in 2013.
‘But, at their next meeting, in Seoul in September, the D10 (America, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, Australia and South Korea, plus the European Union) will have a new agenda item: America’s global role. Whereas the main threat to the rules-based order used to come from outside the leading democracies, some now fear it comes from within.
‘President Donald Trump’s hostilities on trade, his attacks on the policies of NATO allies and ditching of international agreements, such as the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal, have led even some of America’s closest partners to conclude that he wants to wreck the American-led world order forged after the second world war …
‘The D10 framework “takes on even greater meaning at this time of uncertainty surrounding America’s global role,” believes Mr Jain, who runs the D10 initiative at the Atlantic Council, an American think-tank, in partnership with a Canadian counterpart, the Centre for International Governance Innovation. The liberal order it stands for has always been an amorphous concept. Now that it is at risk, huddling together both to define and defend it becomes more urgent. The D10 group is part of a broader trend of intensifying efforts to rally the “like-minded” to that end. Mr Trump’s America First approach is prompting policymakers from Canberra to Ottawa to cast around for coalitions to limit the damage of his onslaughts and, eventually perhaps, fill gaps left by an American retreat from its global role …
‘Canada has been the most energetic in pursuing this strategy …
‘ … a second approach to convening the like-minded—with a broader, international focus—is also being tried. Like a Davos for the once-powerful, this mission is attracting gaggles of global grandees, as ex-presidents, former prime ministers and retired diplomats lend their weight to the effort to save the world they used to run.
‘The D10 process has spawned a new, wider enterprise, called the Democratic Order Initiative, that seeks to engage the public behind support for the international rules-based system. Launched on June 23rd in Berlin by the Atlantic Council, with backing from Madeleine Albright (a former secretary of state), Stephen Hadley (a former American national-security adviser), Carl Bildt (a former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden) and Yoriko Kawaguchi (a former Japanese foreign minister), it aims to articulate core principles of the rules-based order and mobilise public and official backing for them.
‘In the same vein, the Alliance of Democracies Foundation was set up last year to “strengthen the spines” of the world’s democracies. A brainchild of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister and NATO secretary-general, it held an inaugural “Democracy Summit” in June and envisages annual winter gatherings in Colorado, as well as summer ones in Copenhagen. In the absence of clear ideological leadership from the White House, says Mr Rasmussen, the rest of the free world needs to advance and defend democracy.
‘The first initiative of the foundation’s global “campaign for democracy” is a Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity, to bolster defences against outside interference. It is co-chaired by Mr Rasmussen and Michael Chertoff, a former secretary of homeland security in America; Joe Biden, America’s former vice-president, is among the other 13 commissioners. They have urgent work to do. Mr Rasmussen points out that 20 elections will be held across EU and NATO countries between now and the next American presidential contest in November 2020.
‘Characteristically, it is France’s “Jupiterian” president, Emmanuel Macron, who has the most ambitious project. His Paris Peace Forum, to be held on November 11th-13th, is envisaged as an annual event bringing together governments and civic groups to discuss the world’s problems. The idea is to show that “there is still a constituency for collective action, among states and civil society…beyond populism and interstate tensions.” …’
More at the above link.

DOJ files 35-page sentencing memo re James Wolfe (the Ali Watkins guy), recommending two-year prison sentence — above the usual guidelines:

Not surprisingly, some of the usual suspects support Wolfe: Mark Warner, Dianne Feinstein and Richard Burr. James Clapper wrote a handwritten letter requesting leniency for him.

Flynn news — sentencing memo released on December 11 (excerpt follows, emphases mine):
https://twitter.com/jasoncantrall/status/1072723880182276096
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/memo-fbi-recommended-michael-flynn-not-have-lawyer-present-during-interview-did-not-warn-of-false-statement-consequences
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who arranged the bureau’s interview with then-national security adviser Michael Flynn at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017 — the interview that ultimately led to Flynn’s guilty plea on one count of making false statements — suggested Flynn not have a lawyer present at the session, according to newly-filed court documents. In addition, FBI officials, along with the two agents who interviewed Flynn, decided specifically not to warn him that there would be penalties for making false statements because the agents wanted to ensure that Flynn was “relaxed” during the session.
The new information, drawn from McCabe’s account of events plus the FBI agents’ writeup of the interview — the so-called 302 report — is contained in a sentencing memo filed Tuesday by Flynn’s defense team.
Citing McCabe’s account, the sentencing memo says that shortly after noon on Jan. 24 — the fourth day of the new Trump administration — McCabe called Flynn on a secure phone in Flynn’s West Wing office. The two men discussed business briefly and then McCabe said that he “felt that we needed to have two of our agents sit down” with Flynn to discuss Flynn’s talks with Russian officials during the presidential transition.
McCabe, by his own account, urged Flynn to talk to the agents alone, without a lawyer present. “I explained that I thought the quickest way to get this done was to have a conversation between [Flynn] and the agents only,” McCabe wrote. “I further stated that if LTG Flynn wished to include anyone else in the meeting, like the White House counsel for instance, that I would need to involve the Department of Justice. [Flynn] stated that this would not be necessary and agreed to meet with the agents without any additional participants.”
Within two hours, the agents were in Flynn’s office. According to the 302 report quoted in the Flynn sentencing document, the agents said Flynn was “relaxed and jocular” and offered the agents “a little tour” of his part of the White House.
“The agents did not provide Gen. Flynn with a warning of the penalties for making a false statement under 18 U.S.C. 1001 before, during, or after the interview,” the Flynn memo says. According to the 302, before the interview, McCabe and other FBI officials “decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted Flynn to be relaxed, and they were concerned that giving the warnings might adversely affect the rapport.”

Trump praises McConnell: