Rand Paul defends Trump plan on Syria, backs similar pullout in Afghanistan; others in GOP remain skeptical

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul reiterated his support for President Trump's decision last week to remove 2,000 American troops from Syria, appearing on Sunday talk shows to assert that the president had made the right move and was doing "exactly what he promised" voters when he campaigned in 2016.
Paul also urged a similar U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, a nearly two-decade undertaking that Paul compared to the ill-fated Vietnam War.
“We’ve been there 17 years. We think now we’re going to take one more village and we’ll get a better-negotiated deal?” Paul said during an appearance in CBS's "Face the Nation." "The North Vietnamese and Vietcong "waited us out and the Taliban are going to wait us out. They know we will eventually leave and leave we must.”
He added: “The president’s right and I think the people agree with him. Let’s rebuild America. Let’s spend that money here at home.”
Trump acknowledged Rand's support for an Afghanistan withdrawal in a Twitter message late Sunday night, in which the president simply quoted Rand's comments.
The president did the same earlier Sunday with a quote from Rand's appearance on CNN's "State of the Union," adding a simple "Thanks @RandPaul."
"This is exactly what he promised," Rand had said of the president's Syria announcement, "and I think the people agree with him. We’ve been at war too long and in too many places ... spent several trillion dollars on these wars everywhere. He’s different ... that’s why he got elected."
But other Republicans have been critical of Trump's decision, which reportedly prompted last week's sudden resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis -- and Trump's countermove this weekend of forcing Mattis to leave by year's end -- two months early -- and installing former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan as acting defense secretary.
Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., cautioned that Trump’s base may not support his decision to withdraw troops from Syria “without a plan.”
“There are very few Rand Pauls in the United States Senate, there are very few Rand Pauls in the House,” Santorum said on CNN. “There are very few Rand Pauls in the Republicans Party. There are very few Rand Pauls in the base of Donald Trump’s voters.”
Santorum acknowledged the president’s campaign pledge to “get out of Syria,” but added, “I don’t know of too many Republicans, I don’t know of too many base voters, who believe that the president in response to a call from the Turkish president should be capitulating in front of the Turks and allowing our allies to be slaughtered by the Turks.”
Former Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey also expressed doubts about Trump's Syria withdrawal.
“There are good weeks and bad weeks when you’re an executive in government," Christie said on ABC’s "This Week." "And this wasn’t one of the best weeks that he’s had."
On Wednesday, Trump had declared victory over the Islamic State group (ISIS) and announced plans to withdraw some 2,000 American troops from Syria.
The U.S. began airstrikes in Syria in 2014, and ground troops moved in the following year to battle ISIS and train Syrian rebels in a country torn apart by civil war. Trump declared their mission accomplished in a tweet.
Trump later acknowledged that he had spoken with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and said the Turkish leader had affirmed his country’s ability to maintain order in the region.
ISIS is significantly diminished but remains a deadly force, military advisers say. U.S. partners warn that a premature American withdrawal will allow them to storm back.
ISIS militants still hold a string of villages and towns along the Euphrates River in eastern Syria, where they have resisted weeks of attacks by the U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces to drive them out.
The pocket is home to about 15,000 people, among them 2,000 ISIS fighters, according to U.S. military estimates.

Treasury chief Mnuchin talks to bank CEOs amid Wall Street jitters

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. (AP)

WASHINGTON – U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called the CEOs of six major banks Sunday in an apparent attempt to reassure jittery financial markets coming off a turbulent week in the stock market that is now bracing for potential repercussions from a partial shutdown of the U.S. government.
In an unusual move, Mnuchin disclosed the calls with the heads of Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo in a tweet about the private conversations.
Mnuchin said the CEOs all assured him they have ample money to finance all their normal operations, even though there haven't been any serious liquidity concerns rattling the market.
Worries about slowing economic growth and rising interest rates saddled the U.S. market with its worst week in more than seven years. Barring a turnaround, stocks are now headed for their single worst month since October 2008, when the market was being battered by the global financial crisis. That crisis was triggered by a reckless lending spree that prompted a taxpayer-backed bailout of several U.S. banks.
But the circumstances are dramatically different now that the U.S. economy has been growing steadily since 2009. Most experts believe the growth will continue in the U.S., but there are signs things are slowing down in Europe and China.
Dysfunction in Washington isn't helping the situation, with a budget impasse between President Donald Trump and Congress triggering a partial U.S. government shutdown that could last into the new year.

Defense Secretary James Mattis signs Syria withdrawal orders, official says

Outgoing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has signed orders to pull all American troops out of Syria in the coming weeks, a senior defense official told Fox News on Sunday.
Pentagon officials refused to discuss specifics including the timeline citing operational security for the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria.
Plans were set in motion hours after President Trump declared the Islamic State terror network “defeated” in Syria in a tweet Wednesday and ordered all American diplomats and soldiers out of the country.
Trump pledged in campaign rallies last spring U.S. troops would be leaving Syria “very soon.”
While the U.S. military is planning to leave Syria, it has no plans to withdraw the more than 5,000 American troops in neighboring Iraq. Some of those special operations forces could be used for raids against “high value targets” in Syria from bases in Iraq if necessary, officials said.
The last ISIS stronghold in eastern Syria is the city of Hajin located not far from the Iraqi border. U.S. and allied artillery continue to fire on ISIS positions from Iraq. U.S.-led coalition air strikes also continue against the terrorist army in Syria.
But questions remain about what will happen once all American forces are out of Syria. “Challenges are ahead,” one U.S. official said. Currently, no Kurdish or Arab fighters in the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have the ability to call in American airstrikes.
It’s not clear whether the SDF will continue to receive arms and funding from the United States to sustain the fight against ISIS.
Trump said in a tweet Sunday the U.S. withdrawal from Syria would be “slow & highly coordinated,” after speaking to his Turkish counterpart, his second call with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since Dec. 14. Fox News first reported it was Erdogan who convinced Trump to pull out of Syria.
Turkey’s president has called the Kurdish-dominated SDF a terrorist organization over its links to a Kurdish separatist group in Turkey which has killed thousands in recent decades.
In a separate tweet Sunday, President Trump said Mattis would be leaving by Jan. 1, forcing him out two months earlier than expected.
American military leaders have said the SDF is the best allied force on the ground in Syria to crush ISIS. Today, ISIS only controls one percent of the area it once held across Syria and Iraq — an area at its peak the size of Ohio — due in part to the U.S. military's alliance with the SDF in Syria.
Critics of the president’s decision to pull out of Syria said ISIS has not been defeated yet -- and lawmakers have urged Trump not to repeat the mistakes attributed to former President Obama when all U.S. troops were pulled out of Iraq in 2011, helping give rise to ISIS.
Some officials have said the hundreds of American special operations forces in Syria had run out of targets and could be put back in if necessary. Others have said it would be a betrayal to the Kurdish and Arab fighters loyal to the U.S. military to leave Syria now. Hundreds of Kurdish fighters of the SDF have been killed fighting ISIS in Syria.
U.S. airstrikes began in Syria against ISIS in 2014 a year before any U.S. troops were on the ground.
Trump's envoy to the ISIS coalition, Brett McGurk, resigned Friday just one day after Mattis announced his retirement.
French and British special operations forces will remain in Syria, according to both countries defense ministries.  Air strikes from those nations are set to continue.

Democrat Wall Cartoons

Senate floats restrictions on detentions of illegal aliens in government spending bill

OAN Newsroom
8:41 PM PT – Sat. Dec. 22, 2018

As lawmakers on Capitol hill are looking to come to a consensus on a government spending bill, the Senate has reportedly floated regulations limiting the number of illegal aliens ICE can detain.
The upper chambers is discussing limiting the amount of bed space operated by ICE to only illegal immigrants detained by U.S. border patrol, the Daily Caller reported on Saturday.
It is worth noting that CBP rarely arrests illegal aliens, meaning the move could significantly affect the number of criminal immigrants typically taken into custody by ICE.
While the move isn’t finalized, former acting ICE director Thomas Homan said the action would effectively turn every jail across the U.S. into a “santuary” jail.

Trump tweets reaction to McGurk, Mattis resignations

President Trump during a signing ceremony for criminal justice reform legislation in the Oval Office on Friday. (Associated Press)

President Trump on Saturday night reacted to the resignation of Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy for the global coalition to defeat the Islamic State group (ISIS), while also offering a new response to the departure of his defense secretary, James Mattis.
Trump took to social media to say he'd neither met nor appointed McGurk, while also suggesting that the official was a “grandstander.”
“Brett McGurk, who I do not know, was appointed by President Obama in 2015. Was supposed to leave in February but he just resigned prior to leaving. Grandstander?” Trump tweeted. “The Fake News is making such a big deal about this nothing event!”
McGurk tendered his resignation following Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, Fox News confirmed earlier Saturday.
U.S. officials said this week that the Trump administration was making plans to pull all 2,000 troops out of Syria.
In his resignation letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, McGurk said that ISIS was on the run but wasn’t yet defeated and that U.S. military’s work in Syria had not yet been completed, the Associated Press reported.
“If anybody but your favorite President, Donald J. Trump, announced that, after decimating ISIS in Syria, we were going to bring our troops back home (happy & healthy), that person would be the most popular hero in America,” Trump continued on Twitter Saturday. “With me, hit hard instead by the Fake News Media. Crazy!”
Fox News confirmed that McGurk submitted his resignation letter on Friday, just one day after Mattis.
Trump revealed Thursday that Mattis would “be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February” as head of the Defense Department. The president went on to praise the “tremendous progress” made during Mattis’ time in the role, adding that he’d been “a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations.”
However, on Saturday, Trump took a somewhat different tack, saying he'd given Mattis “a second chance” when offering him the position of defense secretary.
“When President Obama ingloriously fired Jim Mattis, I gave him a second chance,” Trump tweeted. “Some thought I shouldn’t, I thought I should. Interesting relationship-but I also gave all of the resources that he never really had. Allies are very important-but not when they take advantage of U.S.”
Trump may have been referring to a 2013 report by Foreign Policy that said Mattis wasn't informed of his ouster by the Obama administration as head of U.S. Central Command until an aide passed him a note saying the Pentagon had named his replacement. Mattis had succeeded David Petreaus in the role.
DEFENSE SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS TO RETIRE AT THE END OF FEBRUARY, TRUMP SAYS
In Mattis’ resignation letter to Trump, the former Marine Corps general acknowledged that a strong nation relies on a "comprehensive" network of alliances, and must be "resolute and unambiguous" in approaching countries with strategic differences, citing China and Russia.
"Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position," Mattis wrote.
Sources told Fox News this week that Mattis' resignation was "in protest" against the president's national security policies.

Schumer demands Trump 'abandon the wall' as DC faces shutdown stalemate

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called on President Trump to "abandon the wall" Saturday if he wants to reopen the government, saying Trump does not have the votes in the Senate to get it funded -- hours after the government shut down over an impasse over funding for Trump's signature 2016 campaign promise.
"It will never pass the Senate, not today, not next week, not next year. So President Trump, if you want to open the government, you must abandon the wall, plain and simple," Schumer said on the Senate floor.
The partial shutdown began at midnight Saturday, a few hours after the House and Senate adjourned without getting a funding agreement to the president's desk. The shutdown was expected to last at least a few days, with sources on both sides of the aisle telling Fox News that Washington could be in for a prolonged shutdown.
The Senate adjourned Saturday afternoon and was not due to meet for a scheduled session until Thursday. Early Saturday evening, the House also concluded for the day.
Vice President Mike Pence and Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney arrived at the Capitol Saturday afternoon to meet with Schumer to continue negotiations for an end to the stalemate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that "productive discussions are continuing."
"When those negotiations produce a solution that is acceptable to all parties -- which means 60 votes in the Senate, a majority in the House, and a presidential signature -- at that point, we will take it up here on the Senate floor," he said.
Late Saturday afternoon, a Schumer spokesman said that "the vice president came in for a discussion and made an offer. Unfortunately, we're still very far apart."
In a letter addressed to fellow Democratic colleagues on Saturday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote that "Last night, Republicans shut down the government." She added that barring any developments, making "progress to end the Trump Shutdown in the next several days" was not anticipated.
"Until President Trump can publicly commit to a bipartisan resolution, there will be no agreement before January when the new House Democratic Majority will swiftly pass legislation to re-open government," Pelosi wrote, before expressing her wishes for a happy holiday.
With the standoff grinding on, the White House revealed on Saturday that the president planned to stay in the nation's capital over the holiday.
“Due to the shutdown, President Trump will remain in Washington, D.C. and the First Lady will return from Florida so they can spend Christmas together,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.
The main sticking point for negotiations was funding for Trump's signature 2016 campaign promise of a wall on the southern border. Trump had demanded $5.7 billion for wall funding, and a bill with that funding attached passed the House on Friday. But efforts have derailed in the Senate, where 60 votes were required for passage, and therefore Democrat votes are needed in conjunction with support by the GOP.
Democrats have poured cold water on the idea that they would support anything close to that. Schumer, in his remarks Saturday, said that the wall was a "bone to the hard right" and that they had proposed $1.3 billion for "border security."
"I’ve heard the president and his allies in the media say that Democrats don’t support border security. Nothing could be further from the truth. Democrats have always been for smart and effective ways to secure our border," he said. "We are pushing for technology, like drones and sensors, and inspection equipment."
McConnell accused Democrats of backing away from past support for border security, and said they were rejecting a "reasonable request" for the $5 billion in funding.
"They’ve refused to meet President Trump halfway and provide even one-fifth of the resources for the border they were willing to provide just a few months ago," he said on the Senate floor.
Trump has been keen to blame Democrats for the impasse and on Friday urged McConnell to invoke the so-called “nuclear option” which would change Senate procedure to require only a simple majority to approve the bill -- therefore allowing Republicans to override Democratic objections.
“Mitch, use the Nuclear Option and get it done! Our Country is counting on you!” he tweeted on Friday.
IF TRUMP DOESN'T GET WALL FUNDING, IT COULD SPELL TROUBLE FOR HIS 'ELECTORAL FUTURE': MOLLIE HEMINGWAY
Late Friday he emphasized the need for a wall in a video he posted to Twitter, and he blamed the shutdown on the Democrats.
“We’re going to have a shutdown, there’s nothing we can do about that because we need the Democrats to give us their votes,” he said. “Call it a Democrat shutdown, call it whatever you want, but we need their help to get this approved.”
That contrasted with remarks he made last week during an explosive Oval Office face-off with Schumer and Pelosi, in which he said he was "proud" to shut down the government for border security.
"I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it,” he said.
On Saturday, Trump held a lunch at the White House to discuss border security with staff and top conservatives including Reps. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. The inclusion of some of the more hardline voices on immigration could likely serve to harden Trump's resolve against backing down on the wall.
The Senate appropriations bill passed on Wednesday is the base bill for funding, and that allocated $1.6 billion for border security. But it did not spend all money available under sequestration caps. There is an extra $900 million available, that could theoretically go toward funding the wall. If that was allocated, it could offer Trump a total wall/border package of about $2.5 billion.
While there appeared to be little movement on Saturday, Sunday was expected to be a key day for negotiations to end the shutdown. Lawmakers were aiming for a tentative agreement on all seven outstanding appropriation bills, to be funded until the end of September 2019. A senior source close to the negotiations told Fox News that they will aim to “see by Sunday morning if there is a center of gravity” for nailing down a deal.
Fox News is told Trump would accept the increase in wall funding, and that the administration believes it can find additional wall money across various federal programs that could be “reprogrammed” for the wall. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said on "America's Newsroom" this week that there were "other ways that we can get to that $5 billion."
Congress has a little bit of wiggle room for movement as it has a weekend, followed by Christmas Eve -- for which Trump has given federal workers a day off -- and then Christmas Day. So that means that the partial shutdown will not fully bite until Wednesday.
About one-quarter of the government will be affected in a shutdown. Nine of the 15 Cabinet-level departments are to shutter, along with dozens of agencies. Those departments are: Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, State, Transportation and Treasury.
Essential personnel would still be required to work but without pay. Nearly 90 percent of the Homeland Security staff is deemed essential.
Roughly 420,000 workers will be deemed essential and will work unpaid, while more than 380,000 people will be furloughed in the shutdown – meaning they will experience a temporary leave from their work
This will include most of NASA, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce and National Park Service workers. Additionally, about 52,000 IRS workers would be furloughed.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will remain open as usual during a partial government shutdown because it is “an independent entity that is funded through the sale of our products and services, and not by tax dollars,” a spokesman told Fox News.
TSA agents, air traffic controllers and border security agents also will be required to work through a shutdown – albeit they might not get a paycheck right away.
Amtrak, a government-owned corporation, also will continue with normal operations during a short-term shutdown, a spokeswoman confirmed to Fox News.
Members of Congress will continue to be paid, as legislative branch appropriations had already been approved back in September, and the 27th Amendment bars ““varying the compensation” for lawmakers until after each election.

Indonesia pop band Seventeen's members dead or missing after tsunami slams stage during performance

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Members of the Indonesian pop band Seventeen are seen in a publicity photo. (Instagram)

An Indonesian pop band lost its bass player and road manager after a tsunami struck the beach where the band was performing Saturday night, according to reports.
In a news release, the band named Seventeen confirmed the deaths of bassist  M. Awal Purbani, also known as Bani, and road manager Oki Wijaya, the Jakarta Post reported.
Four others associated with the band - guitarist Herman Sikumbang, drummer Andi Windu Darmawan, crew member Ujang, and Dylan Sahara, wife of vocalist Riefian Fajarsyah -- remained missing, according to the paper.
Seventeen was performing at an event held by state electric company PLN near the shore of  Tanjung Lesung beach when the tidal wave hit their stage around 9:30 p.m.
Social media footage of the disaster shows the stage lurching forward into the audience along with the band and its equipment.
Fajarsyah posted a video to his Instagram account, confirming that several band members and his wife, Dylan Sahara, had not been found, according to the Post.
The Indonesian government has said the tsunami, which struck without warning around Indonesia's Sunda Strait on Saturday night, has claimed dozens of lives, left hundreds injured and others unaccounted for.
Scientists from Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics agency said it could have been caused by undersea landslides from the eruption of Anak Krakatau, a volcanic island formed over years from the nearby Krakatau volcano.
Hundreds of homes and buildings, including hotels, were swept away.