Trump Tweets: It’s Finally Friday! (Updated)

Trump Tweets Logo. Image by Lenny Ghoul.

It’s Friday, Finally.

Another week down, already June 7th, 2019.

The President has spent Friday morning tweeting 6 times, 4 of which are videos that feature himself and Fox News.

The first two tweets

John Solomon an opinion contributor for The Hill on Thursday evening posted an article in which he writes, “In a key finding of the Mueller report, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is tied to Russian intelligence.”

Solomon goes on to explain that based on “hundreds of pages of government documents,” which he states Special Counsel Robert Mueller had since 2018, Kilimnik is described as a “sensitive” intelligence source for the U.S. State Department, “who informed on Ukrainian and Russian matters.”

Solomon quotes a line from the Mueller Report, “The FBI assesses” Kilimnik “to have ties to Russian intelligence,” he says this paints Kilimnik in a “sinister light.”

But he continues that Mueller’s Report does not explain that Kilimnik is this sensitive source for the State Department going back to at least 2013.

Fox News and radio show host Sean Hannity called this opinion piece breaking news. The clip the President tweeted is 6 minutes long, I’ll go on the record now as stating, I did not listen intently to the whole 6 minutes, in which Hannity claims the Mueller Report is “pure political garbage”, in which he calls Mueller’s team “all democratic donors, all Trump haters,” and where he asserts that means they all lied in that report by leaving out that Kilimnik was a U.S. State Department asset.

To place in context the Solomon article, based on some tweets posted in the Night Owl, I discovered the existence of a transcript from a court hearing centered around Manafort and whether or not he breached the plea agreement he entered with Mueller’s team by lying to investigators.

First, the AP, published an article that was posted on February 14th in which they explain “A censored transcript of a Feb. 4 closed hearing shows Mueller top gun Andrew Weissmann is still pursuing Trump-Russia collusion.”

They go on to note “The redacted transcript of the hearing before Judge Jackson showed that Mr. Downing has pressed the Mueller team to turn over any evidence of Mr. Kilimnik working with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. He made the request under the so-called Brady rule, which resulted from a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision that requires prosecutors to provide the defense with evidence that is exculpatory for the defendant.”

According to the redacted publicly released court transcript Weissmann tells the court that they turned over the information requested by the defense under the Brady rule.

redacted publicly released court transcript 2/2019

The New York Times on February 10th reported that “Mr. Manafort’s allies argue that prosecutors have not proved that Mr. Kilimnik was linked to Russian intelligence, and have suggested that he interacted with the United States Embassy in Kiev. They noted that he traveled freely to the United States and had communications with the State Department.”

Kilimnik along with Manafort were charged with trying to obstruction justice, regarding Manafort’s work as a unregistered foreign agent, a crime he later pleaded guilty to. Kilimnik’s whereabouts are unknown.


As to the other tweets in April of 2019 the day after Mueller’s Report was released to the public.

As the News Blender reported on Thursday during the President’s interview with Fox News show host Laura Ingraham he explains that Mueller “made a fool out of himself,” when Mueller testified….which has not happened.

For What It’s Worth.

As I was unpacking the Solomon breaking news that turns out to not be so much breaking as only just having been discovered as another attempt to smear Mueller’s Report that totally clears the President while being a partisan attempted coup, I found a list of linked court documents regarding the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation posted by the Lawfare Blog.


Update.

Well, it appears the President is back on American Soil. Or maybe he’s just flying home aboard Air Force One, I don’t really know, but what I do know, is the tone of his tweets, are more American soil like.

He issued a tweet than deleted the tweet, but left the second part of the threaded tweet up, confused? Yeah, me too. Anyhoo.

The Balance.com explained in April of 2018, that a “subsidies” from the Government has a broader definition than you might think.

They go on to explain that “Most subsidies are cash grants or loans that the government gives to businesses. It encourages activities the government wishes to promote. The subsidy depends on the amount of the goods or services provided.”

They add, that the World Trade Organization (WTO) says, “a subsidy is any financial benefit provided by a government which gives an unfair advantage to a specific industry, business, or even individual.”

It notes that between the years 1995 to 2010, farm subsidies totaled $52 billion a year on average.

for oil the article explains in 2011, oil industry subsidies totaled $161 million in those not related to tax breaks and credits.

Of note from the article.

The WTO bans export subsidies. But it allows two U.S. federal government export subsidy programs. They help U.S. farmers compete with other countries’ subsidized exports. The U.S. Department of Agriculture promotes:

  1. The Export Credit Guarantee Program, which finances U.S. farm exports. The USDA guarantees the buyers’ credit when they can’t get credit approval locally.
  2. The Dairy Export Incentive Program, which pays cash subsidies to dairy exporters. It helps them meet the subsidized prices of foreign dairy producers.

A screen grab of the deleted tweet.

As the News Blender reported on May 22nd, the President held a surprise press conference from the Rose Garden. In the press conference the President told the Democrats and the American people that they, the Democrats needed to stop investigating President Trump and his administration in order to make a $2 trillion dollar infrastructure deal a reality.

According to the Office of U.S. Trade Representative government website, Mexico is our 3rd largest “largest goods trading partner with $611.5 billion in total (two way) goods trade during 2018. Goods exports totaled $265.0 billion; goods imports totaled $346.5 billion. The U.S. goods trade deficit with Mexico was $81.5 billion in 2018.”

According to fact sheet, Mexico accounted for 15.9 percent of overall U.S. exports.

The U.S. imported from Mexico was the “United States’ 2nd largest supplier of goods imports in 2018.”

  • U.S. goods imports from Mexico totaled $346.5 billion in 2018, up 10.3% ($32.3 billion) from 2017, and up 60.5% from 2008. U.S. imports from Mexico are up 768% from 1993 (pre-NAFTA). U.S. imports from Mexico account for 13.6% of overall U.S. imports in 2018.
  • U.S. total imports of agricultural products from Mexico totaled $26 billion in 2018, our largest supplier of agricultural imports. Leading categories include: fresh vegetables ($5.9 billion), other fresh fruit ($5.8 billion), wine and beer ($3.6 billion), snack foods ($2.2 billion), and processed fruit & vegetables ($1.7 billion).
     

Tariff =’s tax on consumers.

*Psst* neither are Republicans.

“Including Mars (of which the Moon is a part)” Ha Ha Ha *gasp* Ha Ha Ha….

*looks at paragraph under update* Thanks for telling us, we had no idea…


This post will be updated within reason.

This is an Open Thread.

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About Tiff 2521 Articles
Member of the Free Press who is politically homeless and a political junkie.