Obama defends controversial comments about UK vote on EU exit

President Obama, speaking to reporters in London Friday, defended his prior comments urging British voters to remain in the European Union, following scathing criticism that he was meddling in the U.S. ally's affairs.
“I don’t believe the E.U. moderates British influence in the world, it magnifies it,” Obama said at a press conference at 10 Downing Street, alongside British Prime Minister David Cameron.
In recent days Obama has provoked ire from some British lawmakers for getting involved in the “Brexit” debate – earning him the title of “most anti-British American president there has ever been.”

“I don’t believe the E.U. moderates British influence in the world, it magnifies it.”
- President Obama

“Brexit” refers to Britain’s possible exit from the European Union. Britain is set to have a referendum this summer on whether to remain in the 28-member bloc. If a majority votes to leave it, Britain will exit.
“The E.U. has helped to spread British values and practices across the continent,” Obama said, adding that “the single market brings extraordinary economic benefits to the United Kingdom.”
He cast a grim picture of the economic stakes, saying flatly that the U.S. would not rush to write a free trade deal with a newly independent Great Britain.
"Let me be clear, ultimately this is something that the British voters have to decide for themselves but ... part of being friends is to be honest and to let you know what I think," he said. "It affects our prospect as well. The United States wants a strong United Kingdom as a partner."
Obama spoke on the first day of a three-day visit to London, likely the last of this presidency. The visit comes two months before a June referendum on leaving the union.

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Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, blasted Obama for weighing in on "Brexit." (Reuters)

Polls suggest it will be a close-fought race, with most phone surveys indicating a lead for the Remain campaign while some online polls put the Leave camp ahead.
Obama described the votes as potentially damaging to the British economy. He said the U.S. is focused on writing a massive trade agreement with the European Union and would not prioritize a bilateral agreement with the UK. Britain would have to get "in the back of the queue," he said.
As he landed Thursday night, the president laid out his arguments in an op-ed in a London newspaper, harkening back to the "special relationship" forged by wartime allies President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. With that special status comes with leeway to interfere, Obama argued, writing that he was offering his thoughts with the "candor of a friend."
Obama's candor wasn't universally appreciated. In increasingly heated language, critics accused Obama of meddling in British business. London Mayor Boris Johnson, head of the Leave campaign, called Obama's advice "paradoxical, inconsistent, incoherent" and suggested Obama's background played a role.
Writing in The Sun newspaper, Johnson recounted a claim that a bust of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was removed from the Oval Office after Obama was elected and returned to the British Embassy. The White House has said that a different Churchill bust is still in a prominent place in the presidential residence.
Johnson wrote that some said removing one of the busts "was a symbol of the part-Kenyan president's ancestral dislike of the British Empire, of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender."
Obama's late father was from Kenya, a former British colony that gained independence in the 1960s.
Obama has remained a broadly popular figure in Britain. In June 2015, three-quarters of Britons told pollsters they had confidence in his judgment on world affairs, according to a Pew Research survey.
That goodwill hasn't kept Britons in breaking from U.S. at key moments. In 2013, as Obama leaned on Cameron to join in threatened airstrikes in Syria, the House of Commons rejected the idea.
There have been other recent signs of stress on the relationship. British officials bristle over Obama's recent comments in the Atlantic magazine, in which he said he regretted trusting Europeans to stabilize Libya after the 2011 death of strongman Muammar Qaddafi. He specifically said Cameron had become "distracted by a range of other things" while Libya devolved into chaos.

Report: Clinton campaign cautiously begins considering running mates

Pretty damn arrogant isn't she.

 

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s advisers and allies have begun extensive discussions about who should be her running mate, seeking to compile a list of 15 to 20 potential picks for her team to start vetting by late spring, according to The New York Times.
Clinton’s team will grapple with complicated questions like whether the United States is ready for an all-female ticket, and whether her choice for vice president would be able to handle working in a White House in which former President Bill Clinton wielded significant influence on policy.
Campaign advisers and more than a dozen Democrats close to the campaign or the Clintons say the candidate does not have a front-runner in mind.
Among the names under discussion: Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, former governors from the key state of Virginia; Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who represents both a more liberal wing of the party and a swing state; former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a prominent African-American Democrat; and Thomas E. Perez, President Obama’s Labor secretary and a Hispanic civil rights lawyer.
But Mrs. Clinton is also open to a woman, campaign advisers said. One obvious possibility is Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, hugely popular among progressive Democrats, though she has not been helpful to Clinton’s campaign, declining to endorse the former secretary of state.

White House poised to release secret pages from 9/11 inquiry

Oct. 12, 2012: Bob Graham speaks in Gainesville, Fla. The Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11. (AP) (The Associated Press)

WASHINGTON –  The Obama administration will likely soon release at least part of a 28-page secret chapter from a congressional inquiry into 9/11 that may shed light on possible Saudi connections to the attackers.
Those pages — now kept in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol — address specific sources of foreign support for some of the hijackers while they were in the United States.
Bob Graham, who was co-chairman of the bipartisan panel, and others say the documents point suspicion at the Saudis. They've denied allegations that they assisted in the attacks.
The former Democratic senator from Florida says an administration official told him that intelligence officials will decide in the next several weeks whether to release at least parts of the documents.

In front, Trump shows no signs of 'toning it down' on campaign trail

Donald Trump showed no signs Saturday of “toning it down” on the campaign trail, attacking the Republican establishment and presidential rivals -- after attempts to be “more presidential” and assurance from a top adviser a day earlier that the GOP front-runner would show more restraint.
Trump said at a rally in Bridgeport, Conn., that “being presidential is easy” but boring.
“I have to keep you people entertained and awake,” Trump told the crowd of about 1,000. “Have you seen Hillary Clinton using a teleprompter … . People starting yawning. It’s a disaster.”
He also returned to calling Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, “Crooked Hillary” and the argument that the Washington Republicans’ system of awarding delegates for primary and caucus wins is “rigged.”
Trump appeared unwilling to spare anybody on Saturday, suggesting GOP rival Ohio Gov. John Kasich change the spelling of his last name so that it could be more easily pronounced. And he returned to calling his closest primary rival, Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, “Lyin’ Ted,” after referring to him as “Senator Cruz” after Trump’s commanding victory Tuesday in the New York primary.
“I sorta don’t like toning it down,” Trump said Saturday.

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Democrats and Republicans this coming Tuesday will hold primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
On Saturday, Democratic candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was in Baltimore, where he continued to criticize Clinton for being supported by Wall Street and million-dollar PACs, or political action committees.
He was scheduled to make a stop in Wilmington, Del., late Saturday, while Clinton visited the Orangeside diner in New Haven, Conn., where she largely focused on such economic issues as family leave, equal pay for women and increasing the minimum wage to $15 hourly.
“We need paid family leave because it's the most important part of anyone's life,” she said. "Equal pay? We shouldn't be talking about it in 2016. It's almost embarrassing.”
Kasich was in Rhode Island, while Cruz, the most conservative in the GOP field, was in Indiana, ahead of that state’s May 3 primary.
Cruz finished third in the New York primary and is not projected to do well Tuesday, according to most polls.
Those polls show Trump with double-digit leads in Tuesday’s races.
Clinton also leads in all five states but by single-digit margins in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, according to several polls.
Trump will look to increase his delegate count toward getting 1,237 of them to secure the GOP nomination before the party’s convention in July. He now has 845 pledged delegates, followed by Cruz with 559 and Kasich with 148.
Clinton has 1,428 pledged delegates, compared to 1,153 for Sanders, toward securing their party’s presidential nomination with 2,383 delegates.
Earlier Saturday, at a rally in Waterford, Conn., Trump made similar, sarcastic remarks about appearing more presidential, a move his campaign and wife Melania apparently have urged him to make.
Trump’s new senior adviser, Paul Manafort, privately assured Republican National Committee officials at their spring meeting in Florida this week that the candidate knows he needs to tone down the vitriol and that Trump is merely “projecting an image.”
“The part that he’s been playing is now evolving,” Manafort said. “The negatives will come down. The image is going to change.”

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Trump surrogates say GOP front-runner 'projecting an image' during primaries

 

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's top lieutenants told skeptical GOP leaders Thursday that their candidate has been "projecting an image" so far in the 2016 primary season and "the part that he's been playing is now evolving" in a way that will improve his standing among general election voters.
In a recording of the closed-door meeting obtained by the Associated Press, Trump's newly hired senior aide, Paul Manafort, made the case to Republican National Committee members that Trump has two personalities: one in private and one onstage.
"When he's out on the stage, when he's talking about the kinds of things he's talking about on the stump, he's projecting an image that's for that purpose," Manafort said, adding "You'll start to see more depth of the person, the real person. You'll see a real different guy."
Manafort said Trump had acknowledged the need to moderate his personality ahead of a possible general election campaign.
"The part that he's been playing is evolving into the part that now you've been expecting, but he wasn't ready for, because he had first to complete the first phase" he claimed. "The negatives will come down. The image is going to change."
The message was welcomed by some party officials but criticized by others who suggested it raised doubts about his authenticity.

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"He's trying to moderate. He's getting better," said former presidential candidate Ben Carson, a Trump ally who was part of the GOP's front-runner's RNC outreach team.
While Trump's top advisers were promising Republican leaders that the GOP front-runner would moderate his message, the candidate was telling voters he wasn't ready to act presidential.
"I just don't know if I want to do it yet," Trump said during a raucous rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Thursday that was frequently interrupted by protesters.
"At some point, I'm going to be so presidential that you people will be so bored," he said, predicting that the size of his crowds would dwindle if he dialed back his rhetoric.
As Trump continues to rail against "a rigged" nomination process, he sent Manafort and his newly hired political director, Rick Wiley, to help improve relationships with party officials at the RNC's spring meeting in Hollywood, Fla.
"He might not win some of these blue states, but you can make the Democrats spend money and time," Wiley said.
Trump's team also signaled to RNC members a fresh willingness to dip into the New York real estate mogul's personal fortune to fund his presidential bid, in addition to helping the national committee raise money, a promise that comes just as Trump launches his first big television advertising campaign in a month.
His campaign reserved about $2 million worth of air time in soon-to-vote Pennsylvania and Indiana, advertising tracker Kantar Media's CMAG shows.
"He's willing to spend what is necessary to finish this out. That's a big statement from him," Manafort said in the briefing.
Trump is increasingly optimistic about his chances in five states holding primary contests Tuesday: Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. He is now the only Republican candidate who can possibly collect the 1,237-delegate majority needed to claim the nomination before the party's July convention.
Chief rival Ted Cruz hopes Trump will fall short of a nomination-clinching delegate majority so that he can turn enough delegates to his side at the convention to give him the prize.
The political posturing came as Trump sparked new criticism by addressing the debate over which bathrooms transgender people should use.
Speaking at a town-hall event on NBC's "Today" show Thursday, Trump said North Carolina's bathroom law has caused unnecessary strife and transgender people should be able to choose which bathroom to use.
"There have been very few complaints the way it is," Trump said. "People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate."
Cruz lashed out at Trump's "support of grown men using women's restrooms." The Texas senator called Trump's position "a reckless policy that will endanger our loved ones."
Trump also said the plan to swap Jackson for Tubman on the $20 bill is an act of "pure political correctness." He and Carson have both suggested putting Tubman on the $2 bill instead.
 

Trump 'chalking' prompts hand-wringing at Wisconsin campus

The Donald Trump campus chalking conspiracy continues.
The University of Wisconsin Lacrosse is the latest campus where messages touting the polarizing developer's presidential bid were taken as "micro-aggressions" by college students apparently seeking shelter from disparate political beliefs.
"All Lives Matter," "Build the wall" and "Stop Illegal Immigration" were among the messages inscribed in chalk around the grounds earlier this month, prompting the school to send its "Hate Response Team" to investigate, according to EAGnews.org.
The investigative group even posted a message on its Facebook page to quell the worries of the student body.
"While we respect peoples’ right to express their opinions, we also recognize that some communities on campus experience these messages as discriminatory or hostile,” read the message.
“All manifestations of prejudice and intolerance are contradictory to our mission as a university. If you experience any bigotry on or off campus, please turn to trusted friends and/or campus resources for support. Again, please remember that members of our Hate Response Team are here to support the individual and collective impacted by hate/bias and to stand up against all forms of oppression.”
The HRT has also encouraged the student body at UW-LaCrosse to file reports on any “micro-agressions” or hate crimes they encounter.
Pro-Trump chalk messages have appeared on college campuses at Emory University, in Atlanta, Depaul University in Chicago, University of California San Diego and other schools around the country.
"The episodes at Emory and other campuses illustrate the power of a humble stick of chalk, a utensil used by college students for decades," the New York Times reported in a story about the phenomenon that ran on April 1.

James Comey: FBI spent over $1 million to unlock San Bernardino attacker's iPhone

The FBI paid a non-governmental third party over $1 million for technology that allowed the agency to unlock an iPhone 5C that belonged to San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook, according to a remark made by FBI director James Comey at a moderated discussion in London on Thursday.
When asked exactly how much his agency shelled out for the technology, Comey told the audience at the Aspen Security Forum, “a lot.” He added the figure is “more than I will make in the remainder of this job – which is seven years and four months – for sure.”
According to federal statue, the FBI director “shall receive compensation at the rate prescribed for level II of the Federal Executive Salary Schedule." As of January 2015, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management lists level II pay at $183,300 annually. Taking into account Director Comey’s remaining time in office, he stands to earn roughly $1.34 million.
The FBI chief first acknowledged that the agency purchased the unlocking method during a speech at Kenyon College on April 6. FBI and the Justice Department have declined to elaborate on exact details of the method or identify whether the assisting third party is a domestic or foreign entity.
Citing intelligence sources, Fox News has reported the FBI purchased what amounts to a "zero day" from this third party. This type of cybersecurity flaw is a previously unknown vulnerability to a specific piece of computer software that cyber actors exploit to gain access to a system or override certain functionalities.
As cybersecurity experts explain, “zero days” serve as the preeminent method of entry for hackers, given that their targets can't protect against flaws they don't know exist.
Comey said on Thursday that he feels as though the unlocking tool – which only works on iPhone 5Cs running the iOS9 operating system, according to his own statements – was worth it.
The bureau’s top official added that the purchase of third party tools for the purpose of unlocking encrypted devices is not the preferred road the FBI would like to travel in investigating crimes and terrorism cases.
“I'm hoping that we can somehow get to a place where we have a sensible solution, or set of solutions, that doesn't involve hacking and doesn't involve spending tons of money in a way that's unscalable,” Comey said.
He echoed there being a need for a continued national conversation over the issues surrounding universal encryption and how that factors into the privacy versus security debate.
“This will be a feature of our work - there will be other litigation, I'm sure - but it will be a feature of our work, increasingly, over the months and years to come,” Comey explained.
Justice Department officials have said that it is still unknown whether the FBI will disclose the vulnerability used to unlock Syed Farook’s iPhone 5C to Apple.  

'Monstrous interference': UK pols furious at Obama's plan to intervene in EU debate

President Obama looks set to wade into the contentious debate in the United Kingdom over whether or not the nation should remain a member of the European Union – and some Brits are angry at the president’s intrusion into a delicate UK issue ahead of a major vote.
Obama will arrive in London late Thursday for a three-day trip. On Friday he will meet Prime Minister David Cameron -- who is reportedly keen to get Obama’s backing ahead of the June 23 referendum, in which Britons will choose to remain or leave the European Union.
Cameron is in a difficult position, backing the “Remain” campaign, while many within his own Conservative Party are campaigning for the “Leave” or “Brexit” (British-Exit) campaign. Polls have shows the race is tight, with the Remain campaign holding an edge as small as one percent.
The White House has said Obama is willing to offer his opinion and may announce that he favors Cameron's position – that Britain should remain in the European Union.
"If he's asked his view as a friend, he will offer it," U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said. "As the president has said, we support a strong United Kingdom in the European Union."
Those calling for Britain to leave the European Union are not happy at that news, with U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage saying Obama should stay home.
‘A monstrous interference,” Farage told Fox News Thursday. “I’d rather he stayed in Washington, frankly, if that’s what he’s going to do.”
“You wouldn’t expect the British Prime Minister to intervene in your presidential election, you wouldn’t expect the Prime Minister to endorse one candidate or another. Perhaps he’s another one of those people who doesn’t understand what [the EU] is,” Farage said.
In March, a letter sent from Conservative MP and former cabinet minister Liam Fox, and co-signed by over 100 MPs from four different political parties, asked the U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. to persuade Obama not to intervene, calling any such intervention “extremely controversial and potentially damaging.”
“It has long been the established practice not to interfere in the domestic political affairs of our allies and we hope that this will continue to be the case,” the letter to Ambassador Matthew Barzun read.
“While the current U.S. administration may have a view on the desirability or otherwise of Britain’s continued membership of the E.U., any explicit intervention in the debate is likely to be extremely controversial and potentially damaging,” the letter said.
London Mayor Boris Johnson -- who was born in New York and has expressed strong support for the UK-U.S. relationship -- accused Obama of hypocrisy.
"I just think it's paradoxical that the United States, which wouldn't dream of allowing the slightest infringement of its own sovereignty, should be lecturing other countries about the need to enmesh themselves ever deeper in a federal superstate," Johnson said Tuesday.
Cameron however, has said that the advice of allies was welcome, saying “listening to what our friends say in the world is not a bad idea.”
"I struggle to find the leader of any friendly country that thinks we should leave," he said Wednesday.

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