Saturday Noon ~ thefrontpagecover

TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~  
Tariffs Won't Solve Our Border Crisis. But Democrats Denied Trump the Tools He Needs
Marc A. Thiessen
  

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US makes deal with Mexico on tariffs, 
immigration, Trump announces
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by Vandana Rambaran  
foxnews.com } ~ The U.S. has reached an agreement with Mexico that heads off the start of tariffs on Monday... The deal, announced by President Trump via tweet on Friday night, is said to include plans to return migrants seeking asylum to Mexico, where they will remain until their claims can be processed. "I am pleased to inform you that The United States of America has reached a signed agreement with Mexico. The Tariffs scheduled to be implemented by the U.S. on Monday, against Mexico, are hereby indefinitely suspended," he said. "Mexico, in turn, has agreed to take strong measures to....stem the tide of Migration through Mexico, and to our Southern Border. This is being done to greatly reduce, or eliminate, Illegal Immigration coming from Mexico and into the United States. Details of the agreement will be released shortly by the State Department. Thank you!" Trump had taken a tough position toward Mexico earlier in the day, tweeting, "If we are unable to make the deal, Mexico will begin paying Tariffs at the 5% level on Monday!" Mexico was able to avoid these tariffs on farm and agricultural products, according to Trump's announcement. Mexico promises to deploy its National Guard throughout Mexico, particularly at the border, increase actions to dismantle human trafficking operations to smuggle individuals across the border, and take extra steps to coordinate with the American government to share information and "better protect and secure our common border," according to a statement from the State Department. Even members within Trump's party had, in the days leading up to Friday's announcement, advised against imposing tariffs on Mexico, warning of the calamity it could cause for both nation's economies. Also of concern: the possibility of hindering a trade deal with Mexico and Canada. Trump was proposing a 5 percent tariff on Mexcian goods, which would increase up to 25 percent every month, potentially harming American consumers and manufacturers who purchased $378 billion worth of Mexican imports in 2018... Don't blame Trump, blame the dems who won''t change the immigration laws and fund the wall. 
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US Attorney Investigating Origins of Russia 
Probe Asking “All the Right Questions”
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by Catherine Herridge, Gregg Re and Cyd Upson  
foxnews.com } ~ John Durham, the U.S. attorney appointed by Attorney General William Barr to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe is reportedly “asking all the right questions”... and is “very dialed in,” according to Fox News. Justice Department sources are also telling Fox that Durham has met with Barr “on multiple occasions in recent weeks.”Fox News has learned that Durham has been getting briefed on the “four corners” of the investigations into the FBI’s use of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants, among other issues….News of Durham’s high level of engagement in the probe comes days after Barr said he has not received answers from the intelligence community that were “at all satisfactory” in the early stages of his review into the origins of the Russia  investigation. Barr appointed Durham last month to “examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine if intelligence collection involving the Trump campaign was ‘lawful and appropriate.’” Durham has previously investigated corruption in law enforcement and the destruction of CIA videos...  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/durham-russia-barr-sources
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Bombshell Report Broadsides Mueller
Investigation over Remarkably
Dishonest Omission
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by Shaun Hair
{westernjournal.com} ~ In a huge revelation, John Solomon of The Hill just exposed a massive omission from Mueller report... First let me give you a little context. The Mueller report attempts casts a shady light on Ukranian businessman named Konstatin Kilimnik who worked from time to time for one-time Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The Mueller report made Kilimnik look as suspicious as possible by identifying him as a person having connections to “Russian intelligence.”Here’s the kicker, though. Since 2018, Mueller’s team had in its possession hundreds of pages evidence that reveal Kilimnik is a “sensitive” intelligence source for the U. S. State Department. As a source, Kilimnik reportedly gave intel on Ukrainian and Russian matters going back to as early as 2013. So why would Mueller attempt to arouse suspicion about Kilimnik by preventing the whole truth from being mentioned? Why would Mueller omit such a significant fact about Kilimnik even though he had the information to include it? In a column published Thursday, Solomon points out that as far as intelligence assets go, “Kilimnik was not just any run-of-the-mill source.” Kilimnik often met several times a week with the chief political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev as well as passed on messages to Ukraine’s leaders. He also “delivered written reports to U.S. officials via emails that stretched on for thousands of words.” And, as Solomon revealed, members of the Mueller team knew all of this well before they released their final report...
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Iran Might Not Be Able to Wait Trump Out
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fdd.org } ~ I don’t see much mystery in the recent ratcheting up of tensions between the United States and Iran. U.S. sanctions are crushing the Iranian economy... The ever-tightening vice has proved increasingly threatening to Iran’s leaders. In response, they have been scrambling for ways to push back and force the United States to relent without triggering a potentially suicidal conflict with the U.S. military. The U.S. intelligence community detected the spike in Iranian preparations to target American interests, resulting in the decision to augment U.S. forces in the region as well as a flurry of public warnings meant to deter any challenge. Iran’s decision to escalate was no surprise. I wrote about it for Foreign Policy seven months ago—just before President Donald Trump reimposed U.S. sanctions against Iran’s oil exports. At the time, I said that in the coming months the Iranian regime was likely to come under greater stress than at any time since the 1979 revolution, and that as the United States cranked up its campaign of economic warfare and the walls gradually closed in on Iran, the Trump administration should be ready for Tehran to lash out—not via a conventional confrontation with the U.S. military but through hard-to-attribute, asymmetric attacks, most likely using proxies and targeting Washington’s weaker regional allies as much as U.S. personnel and assets. For example: the sabotage Saudi Arabia accused Iran of perpetrating against commercial oil tankers just outside the Strait of Hormuz earlier this month, the drone attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels against critical Saudi oil infrastructure, and the rocket launched near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, presumably by a pro-Iranian militia. With Tehran facing the prospect of a catastrophic collapse in oil exports, the regime’s economic lifeline, it’s obvious that the United States and Iran have entered a new, more perilous phase in their four-decade-old struggle. It’s rapidly dawning on Iran’s leaders that Plan A, their preferred strategy of waiting out the Trump administration, may not be viable. The risks of simply sitting back and absorbing ever more powerful blows from a relentless U.S. sanctions machine for another 18 to 20 months, or even longer should Trump be reelected, have grown unacceptably high. I’ll admit that it took a bit longer than I expected for the Iranian regime to start unleashing Qassem Suleimani—the head of the paramilitary branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Quds Force. Even after the oil sanctions came back into full force last November and Iran’s exports were rapidly cut in half, the regime largely sat on its hands for six months. It appeared to have initially calculated that wiser move was to be patient, hunkering down and riding out the sanctions until after the 2020 election, when Trump might be replaced by a more accommodating U.S. president—if not impeached and removed from office sooner. Until then, Iran’s leaders seemed to bet that a combination of factors would allow them to continue scraping by economically. Two were paramount. First, that the Europeans, desperate to salvage the Iran nuclear deal, would come up with a credible payment mechanism for financing continued trade with Iran. Second, and even more important, that the United States would keep issuing periodic waivers as it did last November to a handful of countries most importantly China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Turkey allowing them to continue buying significant quantities of Iranian oil. Alas, both those bets have failed. As much as the Europeans have bemoaned Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal and reimposition of sanctions, they’ve been powerless to do much of anything about it. No matter how good the mechanism that European bureaucrats may have built on paper for circumventing sanctions, major European companies, banks, and business leaders are having none of it, refusing to take the risk of being caught on the wrong side of a U.S. Treasury designation...  https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2019/05/31/iran-might-not-be-able-to-wait-trump-out/  
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Key Points of Mueller's Final Statement
What is Robert Mueller really doing with his comments to the press? Ben Shapiro believes Mueller tried to make the case for setting up an impeachment inquiry, and he explains why.  

Media Editors:   ~The Patriot Post
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Gillette Does It Again
Media Editors:   ~The Patriot Post
Mueller's DOJ Press Conference

Two years ago, the Acting Attorney General asked me to serve as Special Counsel, and he created the Special Counsel’s Office.

The appointment order directed the office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign...
Media Editors:   ~The Patriot Post  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZocSUaUHnBA  

Gowdy on Legal Implications of Mueller Remarks
Former South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy breaks down Robert Mueller's statement.  
Media Editors:  
~The Patriot Post  
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Tariffs Won't Solve Our Border Crisis. But Democrats
Denied Trump the Tools He Needs

Marc A. Thiessen
 

President Trump is understandably frustrated by the crisis at the border. Anyone who watched the video of more than 1,000 illegal migrants sneaking through a hole in a fence near El Paso, Texas — the largest single breach of our border ever recorded — and still says we don’t need a border wall is in denial.

There were more than 109,000 apprehensions at or near the southern border in April — the highest level since 2007. But unlike past border surges, when most of the illegal migrants were single men, the vast majority today are either families with children (58,474 in April) or unaccompanied minors (8,897). Our Border Patrol is not equipped to handle it.

Tariffs are the wrong tool to address this crisis. But Congress has denied Trump the right tools. On May 1, the president asked Congress for $4.5 billion in emergency border security funding — a request that included $3.3 billion for humanitarian assistance at the border but no money for a border wall. It’s been more than a month now, and what has Congress done? Absolutely nothing.

Perhaps his threats will work. A high-level delegation of Mexican officials is in Washington to defuse the crisis. The Mexican economy shrank by 0.2% in the first quarter of 2019 and showed almost no growth in the fourth quarter of 2018. Mexico cannot afford a trade war with the United States. But if a deal is not reached and Trump goes ahead with tariffs on Mexico, it could also have disastrous, unintended consequences for this country.

First, this showdown with Mexico comes just as we engaged China in a trade war. Unlike his threats against Mexico, which are opposed by many in his own party, Trump’s decision to confront Beijing on its theft of intellectual property, forced technology transfers and barriers for U.S. businesses to compete in sectors of China’s economy has strong bipartisan support. But a trade war with Mexico would undermine the trade war with China.

Imposing tariffs on Mexico would help China maximize pain for U.S. businesses and consumers. Why? China and Mexico provide us with many of the same kinds of products. Right now, many American families and businesses that buy those products can avoid the 25% tax on Chinese products by buying the same kinds of items from Mexico. But, as my American Enterprise Institute colleague Derek Scissors points out, if Trump opens a second front in his trade war, they will now get hit by the same tax on Mexican products. And there are no alternatives because our other major trading partners — Canada, Japan, Germany and Britain — do not make the same products China and Mexico do.

Indeed, Mexican tariffs could be even more devastating for Americans than those imposed on China. Deutsche Bank estimates the tariffs could raise the average price of automobiles sold in the United States by $1,300. Indeed, U.S. and Mexican auto-supply chains are so deeply integrated that many parts cross the border multiple times before they end up in a finished vehicle — which means they would be hit by tariffs multiple times, compounding costs. Ten million U.S. workers’ jobs depend on this supply chain; tariffs would put those jobs at risk, including those of the “forgotten Americans” in the industrial Midwest whose jobs Trump vowed to protect.

And that’s just one industry. Mexico is the United States’ third-largest trading partner, sending us $346.5 billion in goods in 2018. Escalating tariffs over the coming year amount to a massive tax increase on American businesses and consumers. After all the effort Trump expended to pass his tax cuts, why would he turn around and unilaterally raise taxes, putting the economic success he has had at risk?

Finally, a trade war gives House Speaker Nancy Pulosi, D-Calif., an excuse not to move on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Pulosi does not want to give Trump a victory by passing his trade agreement. Now she can blame any delay on Trump.

Are there other tools Trump might use besides tariffs? Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, suggested “imposing a fee on the billions of dollars of remittances that annually leave the United States to Mexico, which only encourage illegal immigration and don’t help the U.S. economy.” Let’s hope it does not come to that and that Trump cuts a deal and the whole crisis blows over. Because a two-front trade war would be devastating to the U.S. economy. China is our real adversary. Mexico is not.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/63427?mailing_id=4315&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4315&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

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