Feinstein stuns San Francisco crowd: Trump 'can be a good president'

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., stunned a San Francisco audience Tuesday when she said that if President Trump "can learn and change," he could “be a good president.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Feinstein made the comments during a sold-out Herbst Theater interview. She was onstage with Ellen Tauscher, a former Bay Area congresswoman.

The paper described the event as a “political lovefest” — pointing out that Feinstein is wildly popular in San Francisco, where she served as mayor for a decade. She was first elected to the Senate in 1992, after a failed bid for governor of California.
Toward the end of the evening, Feinstein reportedly shocked the crowd when she declined to say that Trump should be impeached and then told the audience that they should be prepared to see Trump complete his four-year term.
Feinstein serves on both the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, both of which are investigating Russia’s alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“The question is whether he can learn and change. If so, I believe he can be a good president,” she said.

"The question is whether he can learn and change. If so, I believe he can be a good president.”

The report said, “the crowd reacted with stunned silence, broken only with scattered “No’s and a few hisses and some nervous laughter.” The article said that kind of talk is “never heard in Democratic circles.”
Feinstein has been a tough critic of Trump. She recently slammed his decision to pardon Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona, saying Trump's action shows a “flagrant disregard for the rule of law in this country.”
She asserted that the pardon sent a message to police departments across the United States “that racial profiling is OK.”
On the topic of a border wall with Mexico, Feinstein said she believes Americans would rather send aid to Texas flood victims than pay for a border wall.
She has also criticized Trump’s transgender military ban and called the nature of Trump’s immigration policies “cruel and arbitrary.”
The conversation touched on many subjects, but the 84-year-old did not say whether she’ll seek re-election next year.
Still, Feinstein stood by her comments about Trump, saying, “We have to see if he can forget himself enough and have the type of empathy and direction the country needs.”
She said if he doesn't, "there are things that can be done."
The Associated Press contributed to this report
Edmund DeMarche is a news editor for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @EDeMarche.

Illinois Gov. Under Fire For Signing Bill Protecting Illegal Immigrants

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner greets supporters before he takes the stage at a Republican Day rally at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, Ill. Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2017. (Rich Saal/The State Journal-Register via AP)

The governor of Illinois is under fire after signing a bill to protect illegal immigrants.
Governor Bruce Rauner passed the “Trust Act” Monday, which prohibits authorities from arresting or detaining a person based solely on their immigration status.
He claims this will help law enforcement keep the state safer, but many see this as an attempt to defy the president’s tough stance against illegal immigration.
Some are accusing Rauner of making Illinois a sanctuary state.
Others believe the move is an attempt by the governor to strengthen his base in order to win reelection in 2018.

Pres. Trump Says ‘All Options Are On The Table’ After N. Korea Missile Launch

South Korean army soldiers aim their machine guns during the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise in Yongin, South Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017. In a first, North Korea on Tuesday fired a midrange ballistic missile designed to carry a nuclear payload that flew over Japan and splashed into the northern Pacific Ocean, officials said.  (Hong Gi-won/Yonhap via AP)

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President Trump doubles down on his warning to North Korea saying, “all options are on the table.”
In a White House statement Tuesday, the president said threatening and destabilizing actions only increase North Korea’s isolation from all nations.
This comes after the rogue nation fired an intermediate range ballistic missile over Japan that landed in the Pacific Ocean.
Earlier this month, the president warned Pyongyang the U.S. military will unleash “fire and fury” if an attack is launched.
The U.S., Japan, and South Korea requested an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting.
Meanwhile, South Korea sent a powerful response to North Korea’s missile launch.
The country’s Air Force conducted a live fire drill involving powerful bombs Tuesday morning.
President Moon Jae-in ordered the strike as a display of the country’s ability to punish Pyongyang if it were to attack.
The country also threatened to exterminate North Korea’s leadership as annual joint-drills between South Korea and the U.S. continue.
Following the launch, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and South Korea’s foreign minister agreed to consider tougher sanctions against Pyongyang.

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Arpaio opens door to return to public office, after Trump pardon

Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who received the first presidential pardon of the Trump administration last week, is considering getting back into the “political field,” he told Fox News on Monday.

“When I left office, I said I’m probably going to be done with politics, but I’m back in the political field again—whatever that means, I don’t know,” Arpaio, 85, told Fox News. 

Early Monday, the Washington Examiner reported that Arpaio may challenge Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who has been in a public feud with Trump for weeks.
But Arpaio clarified to Fox News that he's not sure what office he might seek or if he'll even run again, claiming he didn’t specifically mention Flake by name.
“I don’t know what office I would run for if I even decided to run for office—I’m undecided on the issue,” he said.
Flake was unsupportive of President Trump’s Arpaio pardon, tweeting late Friday: “Regarding the Arpaio pardon, I would have preferred that the President honor the judicial process and let it take its course.”
Arpaio, the former Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff, had been found guilty of criminal contempt for defying a judge’s order to stop traffic patrols that allegedly targeted immigrants.
The White House announced Trump’s pardon late Friday, saying that “after more than 50 years of admirable service to our nation, he is a worthy candidate for a Presidential pardon.”
Trump went on to post his announcement on Twitter.
“I am pleased to inform you that I have just granted a full Pardon to 85 year old American patriot Sheriff Joe Arpaio,” Trump tweeted Friday night. “He kept Arizona safe!”
SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO WINS PARDON FROM TRUMP
Arpaio thanked the president, while saying in an earlier tweet that his conviction was the result of a “political witch hunt by holdovers in the Obama justice department.”
Brooke Singman is a Politics Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter at @brookefoxnews.

North Korea's launch of ballistic missile over Japan sends clear message to US, allies

North Korea on Tuesday-- in an act of defiance-- fired a midrange ballistic missile designed to carry a nuclear payload over Japan for the first time, sending a clear message to Washington and Seoul.

The distance and type of missile test seemed designed to show that North Korea can back up a threat to target the U.S. territory of Guam, if it chooses to do so, while also establishing a potentially dangerous precedent that could see future missiles flying over Japan.

Any new test worries Washington and its allies because it presumably puts the North a step closer toward its goal of an arsenal of nuclear missiles that can reliably target the United States. Tuesday's test, however, looks especially aggressive to Washington, Seoul and Tokyo.
North Korea will no doubt be watching the world's reaction to see if it can use Tuesday's flight over Japan as a precedent for future launches. Japanese officials made the usual strongly worded condemnations of the launch. There were no immediate tweets from Trump.
"We will do our utmost to protect people's lives," Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said. "This reckless act of launching a missile that flies over our country is an unprecedented, serious and important threat."
A U.S. congressman visiting Seoul said Washington is now pressuring North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions by shutting down the impoverished country's access to hard currency, the lifeblood of its expensive weapons program.
The Pentagon told reporters that it was investigating the launch over Japan, adding: "North American Aerospace Defense Command determined the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America." The U.S. Missile Defense Agency said the Japanese military did not attempt to intercept the missile.
South Korea's air force effectively fired back at North Korea's missile launch over Japan by conducting a live-fire drill involving powerful bombs, officials said early Tuesday.
Four F-15 fighters dropped eight MK-84 bombs that accurately hit targets at a military field near South Korea's eastern coast, Seoul's presidential spokesman Park Su-hyun said. Each bomb has an explosive yield of a ton, according to the country's air force.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile traveled around 1,677 miles and reached a maximum height of 341 miles as it traveled over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
The North has conducted launches at an unusually fast pace this year -- 13 times, Seoul says -- and some analysts believe Pyongyang could have viable long-range nuclear missiles before the end of Trump's first term in early 2021.
Seoul says that while the North has twice before fired rockets it said were carrying satellites over Japan -- in 1998 and 2009 -- it has never before used a ballistic missile, which is unambiguously designed for military strikes.
Tuesday's missile landed nowhere near Guam, but firing a Hwasong-12 (Hwasong is Korean for Mars, or Fire Star) so soon after the Guam threat may be a way for the North to show it could follow through if it chose to do so. Guam is 2,200 miles away from North Korea, but South Korea's military said the North may have fired the most recent missile at a shorter range.
Another interesting aspect of this launch is that it was the first-ever reported from Sunan, which is home to Pyongyang's international airport. Some outside observers wondered if North Korea had launched a road-mobile missile from an airport runway -- something South Korea's military couldn't immediately determine.
Tuesday's launch comes days after the North fired what was assessed as three short-range ballistic missiles into the sea and a month after its second test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, which analysts say could reach deep into the U.S. mainland when perfected.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last week, said he welcomed the restraint Pyongyang showed by not firing any missiles in July.
“(North Korea) think that by exhibiting their capability, the path to dialogue will open,” Masao Okonogi, professor emeritus at Japan’s Keio University, told Reuters. “That logic, however, is not understood by the rest of the world, so it’s not easy,” he said.

Israel PM Accuses Iran of Building Missile Bases in Syria

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attend a press conference at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, Monday , Aug.28, 2017. ( Heidi Levine, Pool via AP)

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses Iran of building missile sites in Syria and Lebanon during a meeting with the U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu provided no evidence of his claims, but said Iran’ is turning Syria and Lebanon into military bases for its declared goal of eradicating Israel.
Iran has been one of Syria’s biggest supporters during the country’s six year civil war.
Israel fears after an Assad victory Iran will have a permanent military base in Syria, creating a threat to Israel’s safety.
During the meeting Guterres vowed to do everything he could to maintain peace in the region.

Gynecology Pioneer Statue Defaced in New York’s Central Park

Protesters in New York participated in graphic demonstrations in order to rally for the removal of a controversial monument to a doctor who experimented on enslaved women. (Bringing Down America)

Vandals defaced a statue in New York’s Central Park dedicated to Doctor Jay Marion Sims by spray-painting it with the word “racist.”
According to police, the vandals damaged the back of the statue, and covered its neck, mouth and eyes with red paint.
Doctor Sims is known as the “father of modern Gynecology.”
The academic community says he operated on women in catastrophic conditions that he was trying to fix.
However, Sims is said to have performed experimental surgeries on three enslaved women without the use of anesthesia.
Earlier this week, members of the Black Youth Project and Planned Parenthood staged protests demanding that statue be taken down.
The Democrat Mayor of New York Bill De Blasio said a possible removal of the statue is under consideration.