Trump to deliver foreign policy speech, focusing on fighting ISIS

JERSEY CITY, N.J. –  Donald Trump will declare an end to nation building if elected president, replacing it with what aides described as "foreign policy realism" focused on destroying the Islamic State group and other extremist organizations.
In a speech the Republican presidential nominee will deliver on Monday in Ohio, Trump will argue that the country needs to work with anyone that shares that mission, regardless of other ideological and strategic disagreements. Any country that wants to work with the U.S. to defeat "radical Islamic terrorism" will be a U.S. ally, he is expected to say.
"Mr. Trump's speech will explain that while we can't choose our friends, we must always recognize our enemies," Trump senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said Sunday.
On the eve of the speech, the Clinton campaign slammed Trump's campaign manager for ties to Russia and pro-Kremlin interests, an apparent reference to a New York Times story published Sunday night. The story alleges Paul Manafort received $12.7 million from Ukraine's former pro-Russia president and his political party for consultant work over a five-year period. The newspaper says Manafort's lawyer denied his client received any such payments.
Trump on Monday is also expected to outline a new immigration policy proposal under which the U.S. would stop issuing visas in any case where it cannot perform adequate screenings.
It will be the latest version of a policy that began with Trump's unprecedented call to temporarily bar foreign Muslims from entering the country — a religious test that was criticized across party lines as un-American. Following a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in June, Trump introduced a new standard.

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"As he laid out in his Orlando remarks, Mr. Trump will describe the need to temporarily suspend visa issuances to geographic regions with a history of exporting terrorism and where adequate checks and background vetting cannot occur," Miller said.
Trump is also expected to propose creating a new, ideological test for admission to the country that would assess a candidate's stances on issues like religious freedom, gender equality and gay rights. Through questionnaires, searching social media, interviewing friends and family or other means, applicants would be vetted to see whether they support American values like tolerance and pluralism.
The candidate is also expected to call in the speech for declaring in explicit terms that, like during the Cold War, the nation is in an ideological conflict with radical Islam.
Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and top U.S. government officials have warned of the dangers of using that kind of language to describe the conflict, arguing that it plays into militants' hands.
While Trump has been criticized in the past for failing to lay out specific policy solutions, aides say that Monday's speech will again focus on his broader vision. Additional speeches with more details are expected in the weeks ahead, they said.
Trump is also expected to spend significant time going after President Barack Obama and Clinton, the former secretary of state, blaming them for enacting policies he argues allowed the Islamic State group to spread. Obama has made ending nation building a central part of his foreign policy argument for years.
"Mr. Trump will outline his vision for defeating radical Islamic terrorism, and explain how the policies of Obama-Clinton are responsible for the rise of ISIS and the spread of barbarism that has taken the lives of so many," Miller said Sunday in an email, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State group.
The speech comes as Trump has struggled to stay on message. Last week, an economic policy speech he delivered calling for lower corporate taxes and rolling back federal regulations was overshadowed by a series of provocative statements, including falsely declaring that Obama was the "founder" of the Islamic State group.
Trump's allies said Sunday they're confident that this time, the billionaire developer will stay on track.
"Stay tuned, it's very early in this campaign. This coming Monday, you're going to see a vision for confronting radical Islamic terrorism," his vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, said on Fox News Sunday.
Trump and his top advisers, meanwhile, have blamed the media for failing to focus on his proposals.
"If the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn't put false meaning into the words I say, I would be beating Hillary by 20 percent," he tweeted Sunday.

Congress could get record of FBI's Clinton interview over emails by this week

Some of the FBI files on the agency’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server exclusively for government business while serving as secretary of state could be given to a House oversight committee as early as this week, a congressional source confirmed with Fox News on Sunday.
The matter has been progressing since early July, when a formal request was made by Congress for the file, the remaining block appears to rest within the Justice Department.
The FBI, after interviewing Clinton last month, concluded its investigation of Clinton's use of a private server, confirming publicly that 113 classified emails were sent and received by Clinton, as well as 2,000 that were classified after the fact.
FBI Director James Comey said investigators found at least three emails that contained classified markings, adding that the Democratic presidential nominee was "extremely careless." However, he did not recommend criminal charges, and the Justice Department closed the case.
While Clinton has insisted nothing was marked classified at the time, the investigation found otherwise, with the emails containing a portion marking (C for confidential, the lowest level of classification). Fox News first reported that some of the emails were marked classified in June.

The House Oversight Committee questioned Comey for over five hours in July after he said no reasonable prosecutor would pursue criminal charges.

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The Oversight Committee has formally asked if Clinton committed perjury during her Benghazi testimony in October 2015, because her statements to Congress appear to conflict with the FBI's findings. Clinton has maintained she was truthful in her FBI interview.
Fox News is told that the FBI and Justice Department have confirmed the receipt of the committee’s request.
Congressional investigators -- led by House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah -- have been aggressively seeking the entire file, including a summary of Clinton’s interview, known as a "302."
However, the document is considered highly classified, because Clinton's FBI session included questions on the 22 top secret emails that are too damaging to national security to make public.
Note that, it is standard for FBI interviews not to be recorded, so there is no transcript, but agents take extensive notes and they form the basis for the written report known as the "302."
The possible release of the file to congressional investigators was first reported by CNN.

Wasserman Schultz, challenger Canova in debate trade jabs over Israel, Iran deal

Embattled Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Sunday faced off with primary challenger Tim Canova in a debate in which the candidates slung names like “mealy-mouthed” and challenged each other’s competence on issues ranging from protecting Israel to support for retiree voters.
Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., was expected early this year to cruise to a seventh term, until Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders accused her, as leader of the Democratic National Committee, of rigging the presidential primary season for front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Sanders then endorsed Canova in May. And leaked emails last month suggested Wasserman Schultz and some DNC staffers were indeed trying to tip the scales for Clinton, which forced Wasserman Schultz to resign from the committee.
“Nobody is more committed to the safety of Israel,” on Sunday said Wasserman Schultz, whose 23 Congressional District, west of Fort Lauderdale, has a large Jewish population.
She also said the DNC under her leadership had the “strongest pro-Israel plank” that the group has had in years.
And she accused Canova, a law professor, of being inconsistent in his position on Israel.
"My opponent has been mealy-mouthed and waffling in his position on Israel from Day One," she said in the roughly 60-minute debate on CBS’s WFOR-TV in Miami. “He's taken three different positions in the last eight months."
Wasserman Schultz -- backed by President Obama and Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee -- also disagreed with Canova’s suggestion that she did not have the support of black voters in the district.
Wasserman cited in part the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Canova proposed a second and third debate, which Wasserman Schultz seemed to decline, citing their primary being just two weeks away, on August 30.
Canova has tried to capitalize on the leaked DNC emails, pointing to ones that suggest Wasserman Schultz and others in the group used resources to monitor his campaign. And he vowed last week to file a federal complaint on the issue.
He has also raised $28 million for the race, in large part because of the national attention it has received.
Still, the most recent polling shows Wasserman Schultz with a strong lead in the race.
The candidates also battled Sunday over the support of the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, which lifts economic sanctions in exchange for Tehran curtailing efforts to make a nuclear weapon -- a deal considered a threat to Israel.
Canova had said he supports the 2015 deal, but now says he doesn’t know how he would have voted had he been in Congress.
“I went over that deal backwards and forwards,” said Wasserman Schultz, who voted for the multi-nation agreement amid criticism about Israel’s future safety and guidelines for inspecting nuclear sites.
On other local issues, Wasserman Shultz knew the name of a mayor in the district, when asked, but Canova did not.
Canova tried to suggest that Wasserman Schultz did not support increasing Social Security benefits, in a district with a large retiree population.
"I stood in the breach over and over with my vote and my voice” to increase benefits, Wassserman Schultz replied.

Pelosi cell phone Cartoons

OMG Someone Finally Called Me :-)

The words of Trump, new to the rhetoric of politics, elicit widespread emotions

“Words, words, words,” declared Hamlet to Polonius.
Painters have a brush and easel.  A stonemason deploys a trowel. And politicians wield words.
Words are a politician’s tool. They live by them and die by them. For without words, there are no ideas. No motivation. No proposals. No calls to action. No persuasion.
All are essential in politics.
Of course, an agenda is the main force behind words. Elect this person so they implement a set of policies or adopt legislation. But even if it’s just all talk and no action, the words remain.
This is why politicians aim to use words so carefully. Certainly they sweat over the right turn of phrase in a speech or press release. Astute politicians read a room or an audience. Some even time their delivery like a comedian delivering a punch line to score howls of laughter or applause.

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We know politicians by name and deed. But we mostly remember them for words.
“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
“I’m not a crook.”
Politicians know they’ll step in it if they use words unartfully. Off-the-cuff remarks about race, someone with disabilities or the Holocaust are sure to land a politician in a world of hurt. And, when it comes time to mea culpa, politicians use words.
Words matter in politics. And this is what makes the 2016 campaign so different. The words of Donald Trump are more inflammatory and radioactive than what voters and media have grown accustomed.
This is part of Trump’s appeal. It’s also what turns off scores of people and ignites press coverage.
“Did you hear what Trump said?” is now a regular refrain.
This is why people freak out at the rhetoric of Trump. It’s now a struggle to differentiate between what is a joke and what he really believes. What’s sarcasm and what’s a charge. What’s fact and fiction.
Trump’s uttered a lot of controversial things during this campaign. But next to his proposed Muslim ban (which now isn’t a proposed ban, until Trump apparently extended it to persons of other faiths), nothing scored more attention than his comments about the Second Amendment and Hillary Clinton.
There is white-hot language. There is incendiary rhetoric. And then.
Trump and his defenders argued opponents and the press took the gun remark out of context.
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Tom Friedman of The New York Times asserts Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he discussed the Second Amendment as a potential backdoor to short-circuit a possible Clinton presidency.
“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated,” proclaimed in the lede of Friedman’s essay this week in response to Trump. “But there are always people down the line who don’t hear the caveats. They just hear the big message: The man is illegitimate, the man is a threat to the nation, the man is the equivalent of a Nazi war criminal. Well, you know what we do with people like that, don’t you? We kill them.”
The health care debate of 2009-2010 was the last time such combustible rhetoric blanketed the American political lexicon.
Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., snarled “You lie!” at President Obama during his presentation on health reform during a 2009 Joint Session of Congress. Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas,  yelled that the bill was a “baby killer” as the House moved through the final version of the legislation.
ObamaCare opponents flooded the Capitol switchboard, leaving threatening messages with congressional aides and on voicemail.
Then-Rep. Bart Stupak. D-Mich., crafted the pivotal “Stupak Amendment,” which proved crucial to passing the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. The amendment would erect an additional firewall into the health-care package to bar the use of federal dollars for abortion services.
“I hope you die,” said one caller to Stupak’s office.
Meantime, outside the Capitol, demonstrators hectored members of the Congressional Black Caucus like Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Andre Carson, D-Ind., with the “N” word. Lewis, a civil rights hero, said he hadn’t heard language like that “since the march to Selma.”
A profanity-laced message left for then-Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, expressed disappointment that she failed to break her back when hit by a car while jogging.
Someone spat on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo.,  as he walked to the Cannon House Office Building across the street from the Capitol. An ordained United Methodist minister, an incensed Cleaver confronted the spitter. U.S. Capitol Police briefly detained the man in question until Cleaver asked the cops to release the subject.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was speaker at the time and responsible for ushering ObamaCare to passage. She said she witnessed this sort of provocative talk “myself in the late ‘70s in San Francisco.” When asked about the tone, Pelosi said, “It created an environment in which violence took place.”
Pelosi said the tinderbox culminated in the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first, openly gay elected official in the U.S.
“Words have power. They weigh a ton,” Pelosi said. She noted that some words whip certain people into a frenzy “depending on their, shall we say, emotional state.”
There was no physical violence on Capitol Hill toward lawmakers once the House and Senate approved the final version of the ACA. But concern and fear permeated the Capitol. Members of the House Democratic Caucus convened a meeting with top U.S. Capitol Police officials to express safety concerns. Things were so tense that then-Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terry Gainer issued a memo to the Senate community, urging lawmakers and staffers to “remain vigilant.”
This is the responsibility which accompanies the words.
“Lock her up!” was the chant about Clinton at the Republican convention in Cleveland.
In one skillful pivot, Trump responded from the convention lectern to his partisans.
“Let’s defeat her in November,” Trump swiveled.
Some political observers would assert that’s the responsible way for a politician to slyly rotate the rhetoric. Use words to defect --  yet brilliantly refocus the debate at the core task at hand.
But in most cases, it’s Trump firing verbal Sidewinder missiles.
So this is about words. Words made Trump. Words may undo Trump.
For months, there was speculation that Trump would tone things down and appear more “presidential” once he entered the general election. Trump’s now signaled he is who he is and says what he says.
Words are the tool of a politician. Just like someone in an artisan trade, each uses their tools in their own way to hone their craft.
And so does Trump.

Mainstream media's history of attacking GOP figures Video

Clinton camp: Mills potential conflict of interest 'absurd'

The Untouchables.

Hillary Clinton's campaign is questioning a report about a top aide to Clinton when she was secretary of state also conducting interviews for the Clinton Foundation, saying implications about a potential conflict of interest are “absurd.”
Then-Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills took an Amtrak train from Washington to New York City in June 2012 to interview two executives to potentially become the foundation’s next leader, sources told CNN, which first reported the story.
Clinton purportedly accepted the secretary of state post in 2009 in part on the condition that any foundation activity would neither “create conflicts nor the appearance of conflicts” of interest for her.
The CNN report doesn’t state Mills broke any rules but suggested her interviewing trip has added to the “blurred lines” between Clinton’s government work and non-government activities, which have long created problems for her and husband President Bill Clinton.
Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server as secretary of state to send and receive official emails has also added to that perception.
The Clinton campaign said Friday that Mills “volunteered her personal time” and paid for her own travel to New York City.

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“And it was crystal clear to all involved that this had nothing to do with her official duties,” the campaign said. “The idea that this poses a conflict of interest is absurd."
Mills' attorney also purportedly said such work was voluntary.
The foundation did not immediately respond to a FoxNews.com request Saturday for comment.
The CNN report comes the same week as a new batch of Clinton emails seemed to show foundation donors got preferential treatment during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department.
Conservative watchdog Judicial Watch released the 44 new email exchanges, which the group says were not in the original 30,000 handed over to the State Department. Clinton has repeatedly claimed she turned over all work-related emails during the now-closed probe into her private server use.
The documents challenge Clinton's insistence that there was "no connection" between the foundation and her work at the State Department.
In one email exchange, Doug Band, an executive at the Clinton Foundation, tried to put billionaire donor Gilbert Chagoury -- a convicted money launderer -- in touch with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon because of the donor’s interests there.
And a report this week by The Daily Caller says that several investigations are  being launched, including one led by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of the Civil Frauds Unit that will focus on the foundation's dealings in New York. The agency has declined to comment.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has also tried to get answers about Mills' New York trip. Grassley sent Secretary of State John Kerry a letter in January about the issue.

Pelosi says already getting 'obscene and sick' messages after cell phone number, email address released

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Saturday that she has received “obscene and sick” calls, voicemails and text messages after a hacker posted the private cell phone numbers and email addresses of roughly 200 current and former congressional Democrats.
“Please be careful not to allow your children or family members to answer your phone or read incoming text messages,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues. “This morning, I am changing my phone number and I advise you to do so as well.”
The contact information was part of a large computer-content dump Friday and the most recent in a series of cyberattacks on Democratic Party organizations, including the Democratic National Committee, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Pelosi said she was flying from Florida to California on Friday when she heard that the information had been posted by the hacker or hackers known as "Guccifer 2.0."
She also confirmed that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has hired a cybersecurity firm to conduct an investigation of the breach, purportedly part of a Russian cyber-attack that Pelosi has termed “an electronic Watergate break-in.”
Pelosi added that the chief information security officer of the House, in coordination with Capitol Police, has sent communications to those people whose email addresses have been made public about how to address the problem. The chief administrative officer of the House has also sent an email stating that the House computer system has not been compromised, but urged members and staff to be vigilant about opening emails and websites.

The DCCC is also issuing similar guidance.
Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., was also holding a conference call with lawmakers on Saturday evening along with cybersecurity experts who have been investigating and responding to the breach.

"This is a sad course of events, not only for us, but more importantly for our country," Pelosi said in urging lawmakers to join the conference call with Lujan.