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TubbersUK

TubbersUK's Journal
TubbersUK's Journal
April 2, 2018

With the West Wing finally calm, Trump is contemplating a multi-front campaign against Jeff Bezos.

Now, according to four sources close to the White House, Trump is discussing ways to escalate his Twitter attacks on Amazon to further damage the company. “He’s off the hook on this. It’s war,” one source told me. “He gets obsessed with something, and now he’s obsessed with Bezos,” said another source. “Trump is like, how can I fuck with him?”

According to sources, Trump wants the Post Office to increase Amazon’s shipping costs. When Trump previously discussed the idea inside the White Hose, Gary Cohn had explained that Amazon is a benefit to the Postal Service, which has seen mail volume plummet in the age of e-mail. “Trump doesn’t have Gary Cohn breathing down his neck saying you can’t do the Post Office shit,” a Republican close to the White House said. “He really wants the Post Office deal renegotiated. He thinks Amazon’s getting a huge fucking deal on shipping.”


Advisers are also encouraging Trump to cancel Amazon’s multi-billion contract with the Pentagon to provide cloud computing services, sources say. Another line of attack would be to encourage attorneys general in red states to open investigations into Amazon’s business practices. Sources say Trump is open to the ideas. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

Even Trump’s allies acknowledge that much of what’s fueling Trump’s rage toward Amazon is that Amazon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, sources said. “Trump doesn’t like The New York Times, but he reveres it because it’s his hometown paper. The Washington Post, he has zero respect for,” the Republican close to the White House said. While the Post says that Bezos has no involvement in newsroom decisions, Trump has told advisers he believes Bezos uses the paper as a political weapon. One former White House official said Trump looks at the Post the same way he looks at the National Enquirer. “When Bezos says he has no involvement, Trump doesn’t believe him. His experience is with the David Peckers of the world. Whether it’s right or wrong, he knows it can be done.”



😯😯😯

Gobsmacking stuff!

ETA:

https://twitter.com/rolandscahill/status/980953879985651712

Roland Scahill

Verified account

@rolandscahill
9m9 minutes ago
More
If he could, Donald Trump would jail Jeff Bezos and take his assets...





https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/trump-war-with-amazon-and-the-washington-post-is-personal
March 30, 2018

FBI questions Ted Malloch, Trump campaign figure and Farage ally

American once touted as possible ambassador to EU tells of being detained at Boston airport and subpoenaed by Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia inquiry

A controversial London-based academic with close ties to Nigel Farage has been detained by the FBI upon arrival in the US and issued a subpoena to testify before Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Ted Malloch, an American touted last year as a possible candidate to serve as US ambassador to the EU, said he was interrogated by the FBI at Boston’s Logan airport on Wednesday following a flight from London and questioned about his involvement in the Trump campaign.

In a statement sent to the Guardian, Malloch, who described himself as a policy wonk and defender of Trump, said the FBI also asked him about his relationship with Roger Stone, the Republican strategist, and whether he had ever visited the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has resided for nearly six years.


Malloch’s campaign for the diplomatic post came to an end after a report in the Financial Times detailed several apparently misleading claims made in Malloch’s autobiography, including that he was a fellow at Wolfson and Pembroke colleges at Oxford, that he had once been called a “genius” by Margaret Thatcher, and that he was the “first” to coin the phrase “thought leadership”.







https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/30/fbi-questions-ted-malloch-trump-campaign-figure-and-farage-ally

March 26, 2018

Facebook's Simon Milner is having a bad day at a Singapore hearing

A few weeks ago Facebook told British MPs that Cambridge Analytica did not have Facebook data - here is Milner being questioned about that lie in a Singapore hearing.

He makes a major error in telling the committee how to run its business:


https://twitter.com/podehaye/status/978261051149111296

Paul-Olivier Dehaye


@podehaye
Follow Follow @podehaye
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Facebook's Simon Milner is having a bad day at a Singapore hearing

2:23 PM - 26 Mar 2018

March 23, 2018

John Bolton on Iraq WMDs in Nov. 2002

NOVEMBER 1, 2002 | CLIP OF GLOBAL CONFERENCE ON TERRORISM, DAY 2

John Bolton, then an Assistant Secretary Of State, discusses Iraq's alleged chemical and nuclear weapons programs, months before the U.S. invasion.


https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4720216/john-bolton-iraq-wmds-nov-2002


Someone has kindly uploaded a video of Bolton pushing his Iraq WMD lie as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

It's a timely reminder and a useful reference.








March 17, 2018

STATEMENT FROM FACEBOOK: Suspending Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group

We are suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), including their political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, from Facebook. Given the public prominence of this organization, we want to take a moment to explain how we came to this decision and why.

We Maintain Strict Standards and Policies

Protecting people’s information is at the heart of everything we do, and we require the same from people who operate apps on Facebook. In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform Policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica, a firm that does political, government and military work around the globe. He also passed that data to Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, Inc.


Although Kogan gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels that governed all developers on Facebook at that time, he did not subsequently abide by our rules. By passing information on to a third party, including SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, he violated our platform policies. When we learned of this violation in 2015, we removed his app from Facebook and demanded certifications from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed. Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie all certified to us that they destroyed the data.


Several days ago, we received reports that, contrary to the certifications we were given, not all data was deleted. We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims. If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made. We are suspending SCL/Cambridge Analytica, Wylie and Kogan from Facebook, pending further information.



https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/suspending-cambridge-analytica/
March 15, 2018

DONALD TRUMP, MASTER NEGOTIATOR, IS ASKING FOR A RE-DO ON HIS WALL DEAL

The president is crawling back to the negotiating table, but lawmakers are hesitant to play along.

In January, as a government shutdown loomed, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made a staggering concession: in exchange for permanent protections for DACA recipients, he offered Trump $25 billion to fund his “great, great” wall along the Mexican border. Trump rejected the offer, but now, with Congress preparing to pass its final major spending bill before 2018 midterms, he appears to be having second thoughts. According to The Washington Post, the White House is telling G.O.P. leaders that the president is open to a short-term deal that would extend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in exchange for wall funding, marking a significant shift away from Trump’s earlier proposals for legal-immigration curbs.


Per the Post:One idea under consideration is a three-year extension of the DACA program in exchange for three years of wall funding, a G.O.P. official said. This official said the talks, which are being led by senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and legislative affairs head Marc Short, were fluid.



Unfortunately for the dealmaker in chief, such a bill would need both Republican and Democratic support, and so far neither side seems particularly inclined to go along with it. As Democrats eye the possibility of retaking the House in November, they don’t see the point in a temporary reprieve; instead of giving into a short-term deal this year that would give DACA recipients protection, they’d likely prefer to wait until next year to try for complete reform, when they have more leverage and when Trump is less likely to be able to successfully demand wall funding. “I’m not thrilled about including anything for a temporary fix,” Democratic Senator Robert Menendez told the Post. Conservatives in Congress are equally displeased at the prospect. “It would jeopardize the stability of leadership,” Republican Rep. Steve King told Politico. “Forcing amnesty into a must-pass bill? That’s beyond the toleration level [of] conservatives in this conference.”




https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/donald-trump-master-negotiator-asking-for-daca-wall-deal-re-do?mbid=social_twitter


January 22, 2018

Kelly's on the way out according to Vanity Fair

With the president and his chief of staff arguing in public, Ivanka Trump takes charge of finding a replacement.

“I’VE GOT ANOTHER NUT JOB HERE WHO THINKS HE’S RUNNING THINGS”: ARE TRUMP AND KELLY HEADING FOR DIVORCE?


Donald Trump’s relationship with John Kelly, his chief of staff, fraught from the beginning, may finally have gone past the point of no return. Two prominent Republicans in frequent contact with the White House told me that Trump has discussed choosing Kelly’s successor in recent days, asking a close friend what he thought about David Urban, a veteran Washington lobbyist and political operative who helped engineer Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania. Ivanka is also playing a central role in the search, quietly field-testing ideas with people. “Ivanka is the most worried about it. She’s trying to figure who replaces Kelly,” a person who’s spoken with her said.


https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/01/are-trump-and-kelly-heading-for-divorce?mbid=social_twitter

https://twitter.com/VanityFair/status/955491968536203269

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Home country: UK
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