Terror at the Olympics in Brazil?

Posted on July 21, 2016July 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

Brazil police arrest 10 men pleading ISIS allegiance, search for two more

WashingtonTimes: RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)— Federal police in Brazil have ordered the detention of 12 people who allegedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group via social media.

Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes told journalists in Brasilia on Thursday that 10 had been arrested and two more were being sought.

Moraes says police acted because the group had been discussing the use of weapons and guerrilla tactics to potentially launch an attack during the Olympics, which begin Aug. 5.

The arrests were made in the southern states of Sao Paulo and Parana. Moraes says there were no specific targets for attack.

Last week, Brazil’s interim government’s top military aide said the concerns with terrorism had “reached a higher level” after the attacks of six days ago in Nice, France.

Previously, this website predicted these conditions at the Olympics.

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In part from the NYT’s: The Federal Police said in a statement that the suspects belonged to a group called the Defenders of Sharia. Agents from an antiterrorism unit are investigating the group’s activities in the several states, including Rio de Janeiro, where the Games will take place.

In part from the NewYorkDailyNews: The arrests were made in 10 different states, including Sao Paulo and Parana in the southern part of the country, and it was not clear whether the suspects knew each other beyond their online contacts. Moraes said there were no specific targets for an attack.

Moraes said they had all been “baptized” as Islamic State sympathizers online and that none had actually traveled to Syria or Iraq, the group’s stronghold, or received any training. Several were allegedly trying to secure financing from the group, known by the acronym ISIS.

The justice minister added that one of the suspects communicated with a Brazilian store in an alleged attempt to by an AK-47 assault rifle, apparently the most concrete action taken toward a possible attack.

Last week, Brazil’s interim government’s top military aide said the concerns with terrorism had “reached a higher level” after the attacks of six days ago in Nice, France.

Ted Cruz and the Party Platform AND a Foreign Policy Interview

Posted on July 21, 2016July 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

R E P U B L I C A N P L A T F O R M 2 0 1 6 •

Preamble

With this platform, we the Republican Party reaffirm the principles that unite

We believe in American exceptionalism.

We believe the United States of America is unlike any other nation on earth.

We believe America is exceptional because of our historic role — first as refuge, then as defender, and now as exemplar of liberty for the world to see.

We affirm — as did the Declaration of Independence: that all are created equal, endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We believe in the Constitution as our founding document.

We believe the Constitution was written not as a flexible document, but as our enduring covenant.

We believe our constitutional system — limited government, separation of powers, federalism, and the rights of the people — must be preserved uncompromised for future generations.

We believe political freedom and economic freedom are indivisible.

When political freedom and economic freedom are separated — both are in peril; when united, they are invincible.

We believe that people are the ultimate resource — and that the people, not the government, are the best stewards of our country’s God-given natural resources.

As Americans and as Republicans we wish for peace — so we insist on strength. We will make America safe. We seek friendship with all peoples and all nations, but we recognize and are prepared to deal with evil in the world.

Based on these principles, this platform is an invitation and a roadmap. It invites every American to join us and shows the path to a stronger, safer, and more prosperous America.

This platform is optimistic because the American people are optimistic.

This platform lays out — in clear language — the path to making America great and united again.

For the past 8 years America has been led in the wrong direction.

Our economy has become unnecessarily weak with stagnant wages. People living paycheck to paycheck are struggling, sacrificing, and suffering.

Americans have earned and deserve a strong and healthy economy.

Our standing in world affairs has declined significantly — our enemies no longer fear us and our friends no long trust us.

People want and expect an America that is the most powerful and respected country on the face of the earth.

The men and women of our military remain the world’s best. The have been shortchanged in numbers, equipment, and benefits by a Commander in Chief who treats the Armed Forces and our veterans as a necessary inconvenience.

The President and the Democratic party have dismantled Americans’ system of healthcare. They have replaced it with a costly and complicated scheme that limits choices and takes away our freedom.

The President and the Democratic party have abandoned their promise of being accountable to the American people.

They have nearly doubled the size of the national debt.

They refuse to control our borders but try to control our schools, farms, businesses, and even our religious institutions. They have directly attacked the production of American energy and the industry-related jobs that have sustained families and communities.

The President has been regulating to death a free market economy that he does not like and does not understand. He defies the laws of the United States by refusing to enforce those with which he does not agree. And he appoints judges who legislate from the bench rather than apply the law.

We, as Republicans and Americans, cannot allow this to continue. That is why the many sections of this platform affirm our trust in the people, our faith in their judgment, and our determination to help them take back their country.

This means removing the power from unelected, unaccountable government.

This means relieving the burden and expense of punishing government regulations.

And this means returning to the people and the states the control that belongs to them. It is the control and the power to make their own decisions about what’s best for themselves and their families and communities.

This platform is many things: A handbook for returning decision-making to the people. A guide to the constitutional rights of every American. And a manual for the kind of sustained growth that will bring opportunity to all those on the sidelines of our society.

Every time we sing, “God Bless America,” we are asking for help. We ask for divine help that our country can fulfill its promise. We earn that help by recommitting ourselves to the ideas and ideals that are the true greatness of America.

Restoring the American Dream

A Rebirth of Constitutional Government

America’s Natural Resources: Agriculture, Energy, and the Environment

Government Reform

Great American Families, Education,Healthcare, and Criminal Justice

America Resurgent

Read the full Republican National Convention Platform here.

Seems, Senator Ted Cruz delivered a speech at the convention that was exacting to that of the Party and to the oath the Senator took upon his duty as a public servant, which is the same that all those in Congress are required to take. Too bad the electorate has not done their work on the undisputed facts.

**** Furthermore:

Donald Trump gave an interview to the New York Times on foreign policy. It was released late on Wednesday night just after Mike Pence spoke the words affirming the RNC platform as it related to foreign policy. Did Pence know that Trump’s position was completely the opposite? No.

Here is the text of the interview so you can judge for yourself.

NYT’s/ CLEVELAND — Donald J. Trump, on the eve of accepting the Republican nomination for president, said Wednesday that if he were elected, he would not pressure Turkey or other authoritarian allies about conducting purges of their political adversaries or cracking down on civil liberties. The United States, he said, has to “fix our own mess” before trying to alter the behavior of other nations.

“I don’t think we have a right to lecture,” Mr. Trump said in a wide-ranging interview in his suite in a downtown hotel here while keeping an eye on television broadcasts from the Republican National Convention. “Look at what is happening in our country,” he said. “How are we going to lecture when people are shooting policemen in cold blood?”

During a 45-minute conversation, he explicitly raised new questions about his commitment to automatically defend NATO allies if they are attacked, saying he would first look at their contributions to the alliance. Mr. Trump re-emphasized the hard-line nationalist approach that has marked his improbable candidacy, describing how he would force allies to shoulder defense costs that the United States has borne for decades, cancel longstanding treaties he views as unfavorable, and redefine what it means to be a partner of the United States.

He said the rest of the world would learn to adjust to his approach. “I would prefer to be able to continue” existing agreements, he said, but only if allies stopped taking advantage of what he called an era of American largess that was no longer affordable.
Giving a preview of his address to the convention on Thursday night, he said that he would press the theme of “America First,” his rallying cry for the past four months, and that he was prepared to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada if he could not negotiate radically better terms.

He even called into question whether, as president, he would automatically extend the security guarantees that give the 28 members of NATO the assurance that the full force of the United States military has their back.

For example, asked about Russia’s threatening activities that have unnerved the small Baltic States that are the most recent entrants into NATO, Mr. Trump said that if Russia attacked them, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing whether those nations “have fulfilled their obligations to us.”

He added, “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes.”

Mr. Trump said he was pleased that the controversy over similarities between passages in a speech by his wife, Melania, to the convention on Monday night and one that Michelle Obama gave eight years ago appeared to be subsiding. “In retrospect,” he said, it would have been better to explain what had happened — that an aide had incorporated the comments — a day earlier.

When asked what he hoped people would take away from the convention, Mr. Trump said, “The fact that I’m very well liked.”

Mr. Trump conceded that his approach to dealing with the United States’ allies and adversaries was radically different from the traditions of the Republican Party — whose candidates, since the end of World War II, have almost all pressed for an internationalist approach in which the United States is the keeper of the peace, the “indispensable nation.”
“This is not 40 years ago,” Mr. Trump said, rejecting comparisons of his approaches to law-and-order issues and global affairs to Richard Nixon’s. Reiterating his threat to pull back United States troops deployed around the world, he said, “We are spending a fortune on military in order to lose $800 billion,” citing what he called America’s trade losses. “That doesn’t sound very smart to me.”

Mr. Trump repeatedly defined American global interests almost purely in economic terms. Its roles as a peacekeeper, as a provider of a nuclear deterrent against adversaries like North Korea, as an advocate of human rights and as a guarantor of allies’ borders were each quickly reduced to questions of economic benefit to the United States.

No presidential candidate in modern times has ordered American priorities that way, and even here, several speakers have called for a far more interventionist policy, more reminiscent of George W. Bush’s party than of Mr. Trump’s.

But Mr. Trump gave no ground, whether the subject was countering North Korea’s missile and nuclear threats or dealing with China in the South China Sea. The forward deployment of American troops abroad, he said, while preferable, was not necessary.

“If we decide we have to defend the United States, we can always deploy” from American soil, Mr. Trump said, “and it will be a lot less expensive.”

Many military experts dispute that view, saying the best place to keep missile defenses against North Korea is in Japan and the Korean Peninsula. Maintaining such bases only in the United States can be more expensive because of the financial support provided by Asian nations.
Mr. Trump’s discussion of the crisis in Turkey was telling, because it unfolded at a moment in which he could plainly imagine himself in the White House, handling an uprising that could threaten a crucial ally in the Middle East. The United States has a major air base at Incirlik in Turkey, where it carries out attacks on the Islamic State and keeps a force of drones and about 50 nuclear weapons.

Mr. Trump had nothing but praise for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s increasingly authoritarian but democratically elected leader. “I give great credit to him for being able to turn that around,” Mr. Trump said of the coup attempt on Friday night. “Some people say that it was staged, you know that,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

Asked if Mr. Erdogan was exploiting the coup attempt to purge his political enemies, Mr. Trump did not call for the Turkish leader to observe the rule of law, or Western standards of justice. “When the world sees how bad the United States is and we start talking about civil liberties, I don’t think we are a very good messenger,” he said.

The Obama administration has refrained from any concrete measures to pressure Turkey, fearing for the stability of a crucial ally in a volatile region. But Secretary of State John F. Kerry has issued several statements urging Mr. Erdogan to follow the rule of law.

Mr. Trump offered no such caution for restraint to Turkey and nations like it. However, his argument about America’s moral authority is not a new one: Russia, China, North Korea and other autocratic nations frequently cite violence and disorder on American streets to justify their own practices, and to make the case that the United States has no standing to criticize them.
Mr. Trump said he was convinced that he could persuade Mr. Erdogan to put more effort into fighting the Islamic State. But the Obama administration has run up, daily, against the reality that the Kurds — among the most effective forces the United States is supporting against the Islamic State — are being attacked by Turkey, which fears they will create a breakaway nation.

Asked how he would solve that problem, Mr. Trump paused, then said: “Meetings.”

Ousting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, he said, was a far lower priority than fighting the Islamic State — a conclusion the White House has also reached, but has not voiced publicly.

“Assad is a bad man,” Mr. Trump said. “He has done horrible things.” But the Islamic State, he said, poses a far greater threat to the United States.

He said he had consulted two former Republican secretaries of state, James A. Baker III and Henry Kissinger, saying he had gained “a lot of knowledge,” but did not describe any new ideas about national security that they had encouraged him to explore.

Mr. Trump emphatically underscored his willingness to drop out of Nafta unless Mexico and Canada agreed to negotiate new terms that would discourage American companies from moving manufacturing out of the United States. “I would pull out of Nafta in a split second,” he said.

He talked of funding a major military buildup, starting with a modernization of America’s nuclear arsenal. “We have a lot of obsolete weapons,” he said. “We have nuclear that we don’t even know if it works.”

The Obama administration has a major modernization program underway, focused on making the nuclear arsenal more reliable, though it has begun to confront the huge cost of upgrading bombers and submarines. That staggering bill, estimated at $500 billion or more, will land on the desk of the next president.
Mr. Trump used the “America First” slogan in an earlier interview with The New York Times, but on Wednesday he insisted he did not mean it in the way that Charles A. Lindbergh and other isolationists used it before World War II.

“To me, ‘America First’ is a brand-new, modern term,” he said. “I never related it to the past.”

He paused a moment when asked what it meant to him.

“We are going to take care of this country first,” he said, “before we worry about everyone else in the world.”

The Failed Coup in Turkey Still Matters

Posted on July 20, 2016July 20, 2016 by Denise Simon

Turkey has been an important member of NATO since 1952. The United States maintains an estimated 60 nuclear weapons there. The big question is whether relations between Turkey and Russia will be fully restored and there are facts telling us that per a weekend telephone call, both Russian and Turkey are blaming the United States for the coup with different motivations.

At the NATO summit just two weeks ago, President Obama and other NATO leaders reiterated that “deterrence and defense, based on an appropriate mix of nuclear, conventional, and missile defense capabilities, remains a core element of our overall strategy.”

Only U.S. nuclear forces are shared within the alliance, and they remain under U.S. control but are matched with allied air crews from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey. Weapons are stationed in those countries to maximize the demonstration of alliance solidarity. If the weapons are in the U.S. and we have to choose to send them, enemies might think they could give us second thoughts (like Obama had about the Syria red line). That’s destabilizing. Even the perception that the United States would not honor its NATO pledge would dangerously erode Europe’s security.

The most effective nonproliferation policy has actually been security guarantees by the United States to its allies. Several countries — including Germany, Japan and South Korea — have the ability to build nuclear weapons but have chosen not to because they trust in our commitment to defend them. If the U.S. were to withdraw weapons from Turkey, it would be a further signal to already worried allies that the United States can no longer be relied on as a security partner. And that could easily lead countries like Turkey to develop nuclear weapons of their own. More here from NYT’s.

The airbase named Incirlik in Turkey was built by the United States and it is a coalition airbase. So far as reported by the Department of Defense, Erdogan turned off the power source to Incirlik in defiance of the failed coup and closed the airspace stopping all sorties by coalition nations. John Kerry worked the phone diligently to restore airspace permission but Incirlik now is operating under generated power until Erdogan has completed his purge of the military and restores confidence in his loyal forces.

Meanwhile, there are some interesting facts still emerging regarding the coup. The government of Turkey provided electronically upon request by John Kerry the evidence that Fethullah Gulen was behind the coup.

MEE/ ISTANBUL, Turkey – A list reportedly found in the pocket of a colonel suggests highly detailed planning was involved in the failed coup attempt launched in Turkey on Friday night.

The lengthy list, seen by Middle East Eye, designates military officers who were set to take over the running of critical posts once the coup was successful.

Positions mentioned on the list include those of treasury undersecretary, Turkish Airlines general manager, managers for Istanbul’s two airports, managers for the state-run broadcaster TRT and news agency Anadolu, the Ankara mayor’s post, head of police and interior minister among many others.

The majority of the names chosen for appointments are drawn from the country’s air force and the gendarmerie. Factions from within these two forces were the ones most heavily involved in the coup attempt.

The list also included changes to positions within the military establishment.

Government officials say that followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric living in self-imposed exile in the United States, are behind this attempted coup.

Gulen, a former ally turned foe of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), became the government’s public enemy number one they tried to implicate Erdogan and his close circle in corruption allegations.

One of the names on the list, Mikail Gullu, a military attache at the Turkish embassy in Kuwait, was arrested at Damman airport in Saudi Arabia on Sunday following a request from Ankara and is expected to be deported shortly.

Gullu appears on the list as the designated general manager of the state-owned armament development and production factory.

Among other high-profile names on the list is Sercan Gurcan, and colonel and commander of the gendarmerie in Istanbul province. More here from MiddleEastEye.

More details on how the Turkish military operated and the planned actions during the coup.

The Coup: An Air Force Led Assault with a Limited Ground Component

(Inpart): The planning for the coup appears to have begun months ago, but was implemented hastily, after MIT learned of the plot at 4:00 PM on Friday. Despite this, the putschists were able to marshal air and armor units to carry out a near synchronized attack on pre-designated points in Istanbul, Ankara, and the Mediterranean resort of Marmaris, where Erdogan was on holiday. The leader, according to Sabah, was Muharrem Kose, a retired colonel. General Mehmet Disli, a retired two star general in the land forces and the brother of an AKP member of parliament reportedly ordered the start of the military operation, setting in motion a complicated operation that involved air and ground units and a number of current and retired senior officers. To date, 103 admirals and generals have been arrested (out of a total of 358), which corresponds to 28 percent of the total in the Turkish Armed Forces.

The military aspect of the coup began around 10:00 PM, first with the closing of the two Istanbul bridges connecting the European continent with Asia. Simultaneously, up to six F-16s from Akinci, an airbase some 12 miles north of Ankara, began a series of supersonic passes over Turkey’s capital city, refueling from four tankers flown from Incirlik Air Base, near the city of Adana. There are reports that F-16s from Diyarbakir air base also joined, perhaps providing two of the six F-16s. Incirlik has been a home to U.S. Air Force units since the 1950s. Lately, it has served as the hub for the U.S.-led air war against the ISIL. The base, since 1980, is under the command of a Turkish officer.

The F16s were soon joined by at least two Cobra attack helicopters and an additional Sikorsky SU-70 tasked — it appears — with strafing TURKSAT, Turkey’s main satellite television provider, as well as Golbasi, the headquarters for Turkey’s elite, special police forces. The putschists also sent eight cargo aircraft from Kayseri to Malatya airbase with weapons for the plotters, according to the military blog, The Aviationist — a detail since confirmed in Murat Yetkin’s column in Hurriyet Daily News.

The F-16s also attacked the Turkish parliament and Erdogan’s palace while ground forces advanced on the prime minister’s residence. All three buildings sustained some damage, but the Parliament building was the most heavily damaged. Meanwhile, in Istanbul, land forces, most probably based somewhere nearby, did fire on protesters on one of the two bridges spanning the Bosphorus in the opening hours of the coup. Some of those who had come out to demonstrate against the unfolding operation were killed.

These events moved in parallel to three commando teams in three additional helicopters, based at Cigli air base near Izmir, flying to the hotel where Erdogan was presumed to be staying. The soldiers in one helicopter either fast roped into the building or landed nearby (depending on the source), but Erdogan’s security team had moved him to hotel nearby, missing the assault teams, according to Karim Shaheen, by some 25 minutes to an hour. Many more details here from WotR.

Soros and Black Lives Matters

Posted on July 20, 2016July 20, 2016 by Denise Simon

Soros is a dual citizen of Hungary and the United States and the term sedition comes to mind. But then too there is Barack and Hillary as a protector.

Related reading: Soros, Gore among W.H. visitors

“George Soros going to bat for Hillary Clinton”.

Politico. Jump up ^ “Priorities USA Action Contributors, 2016 cycle – OpenSecrets”.

Rush Limbaugh Exposes Who’s Funding Black Lives Matter Anti-Cop Protests

Who the heck is funding Black Lives Matter’s protests?

That’s a question many of us have often wondered. Who has time to protest for days on end in the streets, blocking off highways, among other activities? I’d resort to my default explanation, that they’re all unemployed with nothing better to do, but there are so many of them. Someone must be paying them to protest.

A caller into Rush Limbaugh’s show the other day posed that question, and he had an answer that probably won’t surprise you. To quote:

RUSH: The largest benefactor of Black Lives Matter is George Soros.

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: You know what that is?

CALLER: I do.

RUSH: Well, he’s a very extreme, angry and mean-spirited liberal who is doing his best to destroy capitalism wherever it is in the world. And, of course, since we are the greatest, largest capitalist outpost —

CALLER: He wants to collapse this country.

RUSH: Wants to collapse the country, exactly right. Don’t ask me why. My ability to understand these people in that sense, I’ve never understood why people want to tear down the greatest economic engine that has ever been, that enables everything they believe. It enables all their welfare benefits. It enables all of their whatever. I’ve never understood why they want to tear it down, but they do, and George Soros, the amount of money, I was stunned last week, I’ve learned George Soros has given these people $33 million in the last three or four years, $33 million.

CALLER: That’s a drop in the bucket to what’s coming in for Hillary’s campaign.

And he’s right. The Daily Mail reported back in 2015 on Soros’ $33 million in funding of BLM, noting that “Liberal billionaire George Soros donated $33 million to social justice organizations which helped turn events in Ferguson from a local protest into a national flashpoint. The handouts, revealed in tax filings from Soros’s private foundation, were given to dozens of different groups which weighed in on the crisis.”

Snopes rated the claim as “half-true,” acknowledging that Soros funded a network of groups, some of which engaged in Ferguson-related protest activities. They rated “false” the half of the statement about funds going exclusively to fund Ferguson-related protests, but that seems like a minor quibble.

…. And for some bonus entertainment, Donald Trump had a few brief comments about Soros funding BLM back in March.

Related reading: George Soros, Godfather of the Left Gives $550 Million to Liberal Causes

Trump’s 1st Day to Day 100 as President

Posted on July 20, 2016July 20, 2016 by Denise Simon

Some of this is impossible to disagree with considering there is so much to repair and restore. The question becomes just what are the priorities to this possible new administration and has the full mission been fully explained and published? There is argument that many Obama Executive Orders should in fact be terminated or amended immediately yet, there is no indication of this occurring as noted below.

So let’s begin with this former Goldman Sachs fella shall we?

A must read: Drudge and Breitbart Wont Tell You this on Trump

Report: Trump wants ex-Goldman Sachs partner to head Treasury

TheHill: Donald Trump is reportedly planning to nominate Steve Mnuchin, his campaign’s finance chairman, for Treasury secretary if he wins the White House in November. Anthony Scaramucci, a major fundraiser for the Trump campaign, told Fortune on Tuesday that the presumptive GOP nominee announced his intentions to a group of prospective donors. Trump tapped Mnuchin in early May to lead the campaign’s fundraising operation. The move raised eyebrows among Republican donors and fundraising operatives, many of whom had never heard of him.

Gingrich pushing Trump to issue hundreds of executive orders on first day

TheHill: CLEVELAND — Newt Gingrich, who is expected to serve as a senior policy adviser in Donald Trump’s administration if the GOP presidential nominee is elected, says he would urge a newly elected President Trump to sign as many as 300 executive orders on his first day in office.
Gingrich, who, while serving as Speaker of the House in the 1990s, struck deals with former President Bill Clinton to reform welfare and balance the budget, says Trump will have to build excitement in Congress to break the legislative gridlock that has defined most of President Obama’s administration.
“You’ve got an extraordinary opening day, where you sign [200] or 300 executive orders,” Gingrich told a gathering at The Union Club Tuesday evening.

Gingrich said one thing Trump might do right off the bat is move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something Trump pledged to do earlier this year. The move would please many pro-Israeli Jewish voters and Christians, who want Jerusalem to serve as the country’s undivided capital.

Gingrich also highlighted an executive order authorizing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline as another item on the first-day agenda.

“You have a whole bunch of stuff you can do on day one that gives you a sense of excitement,” he said at the event in downtown Cleveland hosted by the law firm Dentons.

Executive orders from Trump could do much to undo actions taken by President Obama, who has relied on executive orders extensively to move forward with his agenda.

Gingrich said Trump should start preparing for his first hundred days as soon as September by meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to pick five or six legislative items to pass in the first four months of 2017.
“In September, early October, you try to find with McConnell and Paul Ryan five or 10 big things,” he said.

Gingrich thinks Trump should unveil a list of policy proposals similar to the Contract with America, which Gingrich famously designed in 1994, to give voters a rationale for giving Republicans control of the House after 40 years of Democratic rule.

“Sometime in the next 60 days, they need to outline just a handful of big things, and they need to accomplish them by April 30th, which is the hundred days, and that will build a momentum of achievement,” he said.

But Gingrich acknowledged it will be important to bring Democrats on board. Otherwise, Trump’s legislative agenda is likely to get hung up by filibusters in the Senate and other obstructionist tactics.

“They ought to get as many Democrats as they can,” he said.

Gingrich and Trump sat down for a two-and-a-half-hour meeting recently in Indianapolis, where they discussed the possibility of Gingrich serving as Trump’s running mate.

When it became apparent that Gingrich would likely not get the nod, Trump asked him what role he would like to serve in the administration. Gingrich asked to be given a special position akin to a tsar in charge of reviewing the federal bureaucracy.

“He said, ‘Look, if you don’t get the vice presidency, what do you want?’ ” Gingrich recounted. “I said I want to be the senior planner for the entire federal government, and I want a letter from you that says Newt Gingrich is authorized to go to any program in any department, examine it and report directly to the president.”

He said he wanted to serve in the job without pay to have “absolute ability to say what I think.”

But Gingrich, who was one of the most divisive figure in politics when he served as Speaker — played a central role in the 1995-96 government shutdown and oversaw impeachment proceedings against Clinton — acknowledged that soliciting Democratic cooperation will be essential.

He said Trump is well suited to strike bipartisan deals because of his professional experience working with Democratic politicians in New York and other cities on major real estate projects.

Gingrich said that, if elected, Trump should use his deal-making skills to put together a massive infrastructure bill that would be paid for with royalties from opening federal lands to oil and gas drilling, mining, and other development.
He said giving energy and mining companies access to federal lands could generate up to $1 trillion for infrastructure projects.

Haley Barbour, a longtime party strategist who served as Republican National Committee chairman in 1994, when Republicans took over the House, said it would be a good idea for Trump to come up with something similar to the Contract with America.
“I think it is very helpful to Trump politically to talk about serious, substantive policy,” he said. “One of the issues is a lot of Republicans and independents are not sure what he’s really for. So lay it out.

“It would give a lot of Republicans who are not certain some comfort,” he added. “Talk about economics, budget, debt, crime.”

Barbour, who voted for Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the presidential primary, is attending his 11th Republican National Convention.

Going towards day 100:

IF DONALD TRUMP WAS PRESIDENT The world v the Donald

HIS presidency is only 100 days old, yet already some are wondering if Donald Trump will ever again match the approval ratings he enjoyed one week after inauguration day. His “Made in America” summit, held in a blizzard-lashed White House on January 27th, delighted the public, according to opinion polls, even as it reminded the president’s critics of an event more suited to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Mr Trump dressed down two dozen corporate chieftains on live television as “dishonest and greedy” and demanded that they promise, on the spot, to close or scrap named manufacturing plants in China within his first term and bring production back to America. The newspapers the next day carried images of Tim Cook, the head of Apple, and Dennis Muilenburg, the boss of Boeing, shivering in the North Portico as they waited, coatless, to be picked up by their drivers after declining to make such a promise, prompting their summary expulsion from the building.

Supporters also cheered Mr Trump’s appointment in his first week of Joe Arpaio, the hardline sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, to chair a presidential task force on building a fortified border with Mexico within three years, named “Make America Safe Again”. There was a more muted response to a third announcement: that the new president’s first overseas visit would be to Moscow, for a meeting with Mr Putin to explore common ground in the fight against Islamist terrorism.

True, Mr Trump promised he would strike “only the toughest deals, the smartest deals, or I walk from the table”. But his quick offer to meet the Russian president reminded many Americans, uncomfortably, of the murky espionage scandal that played so large a role in the defeat of Hillary Clinton. In October top-secret files had appeared on the internet, allegedly extracted by hackers from Mrs Clinton’s private e-mail server when she was secretary of state, identifying individuals as American intelligence assets in Russia and Ukraine; one, an Israeli-Russian businessman, was soon afterwards found dead at a Geneva hotel. Mrs Clinton continues to deny any knowledge of the leaked documents. Her husband, ex-President Bill Clinton, sparked fresh headlines with an intemperate interview in March in which he charged that “Kremlin dirty tricks” helped to swing the 2016 election.

One hundred days into the Trump era, that Moscow trip remains on hold. Like much else it has been delayed by diplomatic, military and commercial moves by China, Mexico and Russia that a dissident Republican, Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, has called a “pre-emptive strike by the rest of the world” against Mr Trump’s “America First” agenda.

No date has been set for Mr Trump’s emergency trip to Beijing, announced by him on Twitter several weeks ago but now deemed “just a suggestion” by the White House spokesman, Sean Hannity. There has been no suggestion of a summit with the leader who has most gleefully cast himself as the anti-Trump, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico.

Relations with Russia trouble the Washington national-security establishment the most. The president faces growing questions about the mysterious disappearance of a helicopter carrying Estonian troops over the Baltic Sea on March 1st, amid claims that the aircraft may have been shot down by a Russian warship. Mr Trump is being pressed over reports that he told the Estonian president in a telephone call that his small Baltic republic, a member of NATO, needs to “get smart and shut up”, because America’s national interest lies in co-operating with Russia in Syria, not with defending European allies. Declining to address those reports, Mr Trump used a rambling White House press conference to complain about the media, about official leaks and about disloyalty at the Pentagon, where, he said, “there are a lot of generals who need firing, believe me.”

On the economic front moves by Chinese authorities against American companies have panicked investors. The first firm to be hit was Boeing, days after a speech by Mr Trump calling it “just disgusting” that the aerospace giant is planning to open a new facility in China. Chinese state media gave prominent coverage to a speech by an aviation regulator warning that planned sales of hundreds of aircraft to Chinese airlines might need to be reviewed if “certain entities are not the reliable long-term suppliers that they claim to be.”

Soon afterwards the China headquarters of Apple, a computer firm, and Pfizer, a drugs company, were raided by antitrust investigators from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce; both firms say they are in full compliance with competition laws. In early March the Ministry of Environmental Protection announced that the most popular models sold by General Motors and Ford in China will face new tests of their exhaust emissions. Brushing aside assurances from American car executives that their emissions comply with all Chinese laws, the ministry added that Chinese consumers might care to wait for tests to be completed before choosing an American vehicle. More poetically, a recent editorial in the state-run Global Times talked of China being willing to take “resolute actions” against “an arrogant foreign leader who prattles like a monk about honesty while hiding a stolen goose in his sleeve”. Read more here as Mexico is next up as summarized by The Economist.