China and US Trade Cartoons

Republicans seize on State Department audit to challenge Clinton's repeated claims on emails

Republicans jumped on the report by the State Department watchdog accusing Hillary Clinton of flouting federal records rules and cybersecurity guidelines with her use of personal email while secretary of state, saying it showed she was in clear violation of the Federal Records Act and endangered national security.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement Wednesday that the “detailed inquiry by an Obama appointee makes clear Hillary Clinton hasn't been telling the truth since day one and her and her aides' refusal to cooperate with this probe only underscores that fact.”
The forthcoming inspector general audit, a copy of which was obtained Wednesday by FoxNews.com, faults Clinton and her predecessors for poorly managing email and other computer information.
The report says the department was "slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks associated with electronic data communications." It cites "longstanding, systemic weaknesses" related to communications that started before Clinton's tenure.

Trump, national political director Rick Wiley go separate ways

Donald Trump's presidential campaign announced Wednesday night that it had parted ways with its national political director Rick Wiley just a few months after he was hired.
Trump's campaign said in a statement that Wiley's position was not a permanent one, and thanked him for his service.
"Rick Wiley was hired on a short-term basis as a consultant until the campaign was running full steam. It is now doing better than ever, we are leading in the polls, and we have many exciting events ready to go, far ahead of schedule, while Hillary continues her long, boring quest against Bernie," the statement said. "We would like to thank Rick for helping us during this transition period."
The campaign did not indicate the terms of Wiley's departure, but sources told Politico that Wiley was not responsive to campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and clashed with other Trump campaign officials.
Wiley, who joined the Trump team after previously working for the Republican National Committee, previously told the Associated Press he was "working with the RNC, putting together a state-of-the-art program" with multiple data firms to maintain contact information collected when voters register for tickets to Trump's rallies.
Wiley predicted Trump's campaign would be able to match what "Obama was able to do in 2008."

Audio shows Katie Couric documentary deceptively edited interview with pro-gun activists

The makers of a new Katie Couric documentary on gun violence deceptively edited an interview between Couric and a group of gun rights activists in an apparent attempt to embarrass the activists, an audio recording of the full interview shows.
At the 21:48 mark of Under the Gun a scene of Katie Couric interviewing members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights organization, is shown.
Couric can be heard in the interview asking activists from the group, “If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?”
The documentary then shows the activists sitting silently for nine awkward seconds, unable to provide an answer. It then cuts to the next scene. The moment can be watched here:
However, raw audio of the interview between Katie Couric and the activists provided to the Washington Free Beacon shows the scene was deceptively edited. Instead of silence, Couric’s question is met immediately with answers from the activists. A back and forth between a number of the league’s members and Couric over the issue of background checks proceeds for more than four minutes after the original question is asked.
Under the Gun bills itself as a documentary that “examines the events and people who have kept the gun debate fierce and the progress slow, even as gun deaths and mass shootings continue to increase.”

Trump admits using aliases, denies posing as own spokesman

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump admitted Wednesday to using aliases during his business career, but denied posing as his own spokesman in a recently-released recording. 
"You know, over the years I've used aliases," Trump said on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live", an appearance that capped a day of campaigning in Southern California. When asked by Kimmel what aliases he'd used, Trump volunteered Barron, which is also the name of the real estate mogul's youngest son.
"I used an alias in terms of setting up a meeting with Mr. Donald Trump," he said. "And many people in the real estate business do that, you use [an] alias. And you have to, frankly, otherwise they find out it's you and they charge you more money - and nobody wants to pay more money."
Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Trump had repeatedly posed as his own PR man during the early 1990s, variously using the aliases "John Miller" and "John Barron". The primary basis for the report was a recorded 1991 phone conversation between a People magazine reporter and "Miller", who described Trump's romantic life in detail. Trump has repeatedly denied being the voice in the recording.
On Wednesday, Trump said he'd used the tactic "especially when I was out in Brooklyn with my father and I'd want to buy something."
"And honestly nobody knew who Trump was at that time, nobody knew me, so it wasn't so much so important," he said. "But I would never want to use my name because you had to pay money for the land. If you're trying to buy land, you use different names."

China reportedly will send nuclear-armed submarines to patrol Pacific

The Chinese military plan to send submarines armed with nuclear weapons to patrol the Pacific Ocean for the first time, according to a published report. 
The Guardian, citing Chinese military officials, reports that while the timing for a maiden patrol has not yet been determined, Beijing insists that such an action is inevitable.
The report comes days after U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he had lifted a decades-long arms embargo against Vietnam. Chinese officials publicly praised the move, but an opinion piece in a state-run newspaper warned that any attempt to enlist Vietnam in an effort to contain China "bodes ill for regional peace and stability, as it would further complicate the situation in the South China Sea, and risk turning the region into a tinderbox of conflicts."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry responded Monday by saying that it was China's actions in the South and East China Seas that could create a tinderbox.
"I would caution China to not unilaterally move to engage in reclamation activities and militarization of islands," he said.
The Pentagon says China has reclaimed more than 3,200 acres of land in the southeastern South China Sea and is developing and building military installations on the manmade islands.
As a consequence, the U.S. and Vietnam have steadily strengthened their relationship in recent years, in line with growing Vietnamese concern over Chinese moves to assert its maritime claims.
Despite China and Vietnam being Communist countries, clashes in 1988 over their conflicting claims in the South China Sea killed dozens of people. The tensions reared again in 2014, when China parked an oil rig off Vietnam's central coast, sparking confrontations at sea and deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam.
Last week, the Pentagon said two Chinese fighter jets flew within about 50 feet of a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane in what was termed an "unsafe intercept."
China responded by demanding that the U.S. end surveillance patrols around the South China Sea, with a foreign ministry spokesman claiming that such missions "seriously endanger Chinese maritime security."
Earlier this month, a U.S. Navy destroyer sailed within 12 miles of China’s Fiery Cross reef, an artificial island made after months of dredging operations. It was the third time the Navy sailed a warship close to a contested Chinese island in what the Pentagon calls “freedom of navigation” operations. Beijing responded by scrambling fighter jets to show its displeasure.