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Donald Trump
Rage review: Will Bob Woodward’s tapes bring down Donald Trump?
The Watergate reporter offers a jaw-dropping portrait of a president he deems ‘the wrong man for the job’. But Trump’s electoral fate is far from clear
Woodward: allies tried to rein in ‘childish’ foreign policy
Opinion: Trump has spilled his biggest secret More
Arab country is latest to make agreement as part of US president’s diplomatic pushBahrain has agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and will join the United Arab Emirates in signing an agreement at the White House on Tuesday.“Even great warriors get tired of fighting, and they’re tired of fighting,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, portraying the deals as peace agreements, although neither Gulf monarchy has ever been at war with Israel, and both had already established extensive informal ties. Bahrain has long advocated Israel’s integration in the region. Continue reading… More
Four days before ordering a drone strike against the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, Donald Trump was debating the assassination on his own Florida golf course, according to Bob Woodward’s new book on the mercurial president.Trump’s golfing partner that day was Senator Lindsey Graham, who had emerged as one of his closest advisers, and who urged him not to take such a “giant step”, that could trigger “almost total war”.Graham warned Trump he would be raising the stakes from “playing $10 blackjack to $10,000-a-hand blackjack”.“This is over the top,” the senator said. “How about hitting someone a level below Suleimani, which would be much easier for everyone to absorb?”Trump’s chief of staff at the time, Mick Mulvaney, also begged Graham to help change Trump’s mind.Trump would not be persuaded, pointing to Iranian-orchestrated attacks on US soldiers in Iraq, which he said were masterminded by the Iranian general, the leader of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.Suleimani was killed in Baghdad on 3 January, triggering a retaliatory Iranian missile strike against a US base in Iraq, but so far not the large-scale conflict Graham and others warned the president about.The golf course exchange is described in a forthcoming book, Rage, a second volume on the Trump presidency by Woodward, a veteran investigative reporter famous for covering the Watergate affair and the consequent fall of an earlier scandal-ridden president, Richard Nixon. More
Trump administration
Brian Murphy says he was demoted for refusing to accept fabrication of intelligence to match Donald Trump’s rhetoric More
Donald Trump
Christian Tybring-Gjedde puts Trump forward for second time, over Israel-UAE detente More
The leaders of Kosovo and Serbia will meet at the White House on Thursday and Friday, in an encounter that some see as a push for a diplomatic win for Donald Trump to brandish during his re-election campaign.Kosovo’s prime minister, Avdullah Hoti, will meet with the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, in talks that Trump aides say will be primarily about economic issues between the two countries, but may pave the way to a broader deal.The goal of the talks is “to create economic development that will then somehow change the dynamic amongst the political class”, said a senior adviser to Trump in a call with reporters earlier in the week. The adviser said it was not yet clear whether Trump would take part in the meetings – suggesting he would only meet the two leaders if there is a deal to be signed.Kosovo broke from Serbia after a war and Nato bombing campaign, and declared independence in 2008, but the two sides have no relations.The White House diplomatic push, led by the Trump loyalist Richard Grenell, has irritated some European diplomats, who say the EU’s long-running mediation process should be given priority.It has also prompted fears that a land swap could be on the table as part of the deal, which many believe would have knock-on effects in other parts of the Balkans. Grenell has long denied that a land swap is under consideration.Grenell, who has courted controversy as Trump’s ambassador to Germany and then as acting director of national intelligence, has also attracted criticism for his negotiation tactics. In April, Kosovo’s ousted prime minister Albin Kurti accused Grenell of mounting a coup to overthrow him so he could present Trump with a diplomatic success in an election year. “My government was not overthrown for anything else but simply because Ambassador Grenell was in a hurry to sign an agreement with Serbia,” said Kurti.A meeting at the White House planned in late June fell apart at the last minute after prosecutors at a court in The Hague announced they had filed a draft indictment against Kosovo’s president, Hashim Thaçi. The statement was released as Thaçi was already en route to Washington.Now, two months before the US election, the meeting will finally take place, with the emphasis on economic progress.“We can either sit around and continue talking about political issues that get us nowhere, or we can do something that President Trump thinks might work, and we’re going to test it to see if it works,” said the Trump adviser.The EU-brokered talks were on hold for two years after Kosovo imposed import tariffs on Serbian goods, but have recently resumed. Meetings in Brussels, including expert dialogue and top-level discussions, are planned for next week.The EU envoy for Kosovo-Serbia talks, Miroslav Lajčak, has said an EU-brokered deal to normalise relations between Belgrade and Pristina could be ready soon.“Let’s see how much time we need, but I am speaking about months, I am not speaking about years,” he said at a forum in Slovenia this week. “Both parties are committed, both parties are serious, respecting each other.” More
Donald Trump told Sarah Sanders she would have to “go to North Korea and take one for the team”, after Kim Jong-un winked at the then White House press secretary during a summit in Singapore in June 2018.“Kim Jong-un hit on you!” a delighted Trump joked, according to Sanders’ new memoir. “He did! He fucking hit on you!”Speaking for Myself will be released next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.Rather than a tell-all by a former staffer or a burn-all by a hostile family member, the book is a paean to the president by a loyal follower with the subtitle Faith, Freedom and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House.Sanders is from a notable Republican family – her father is Mike Huckabee, a candidate for the presidential nomination in 2008 and 2016 – and reportedly has her eye on a run for governor in Arkansas.However, somewhat in the manner of leaked sections that took aim at the former national security adviser John Bolton after he turned on Trump, Sanders does describe boorish or misogynistic behavior by the president and senior aides that may make campaign aides wince, particularly as Trump trails Joe Biden among women.Of the incident with Kim, whom Trump courted assiduously in the first two years of his presidency, Sanders describes a session at the Singapore talks in which the dictator “reluctantly” accepted a Tic Tac from Trump, who “dramatically blew into the air to reassure Kim it was just a breath mint” and not a capsule of poison.The two men also talked about sports, including women’s soccer. Then, Sanders writes, she looked up “to notice Kim staring at me. We made direct eye contact and Kim nodded and appeared to wink at me. I was stunned. I quickly looked down and continued taking notes.“… All I could think was, ‘What just happened? Surely Kim Jong-un did not just mark me!?’”Later, in the presidential “Beast” limousine on the way to the airport, Sanders relayed the incident to Trump and his then chief of staff, John Kelly.“Kim Jong-un hit on you!” Trump said. “He did! He fucking hit on you!”Sanders, a devout Christian who discusses her faith throughout her book, does not spell out the presidential expletive. But she does write that she told Trump that was not what she meant, and said: “Sir, please stop.”Kelly backed up the president and Trump joked: “Well, Sarah, that settles it. You’re going to North Korea and taking one for the team! Your husband and kids will miss you, but you’ll be a hero to your country!”Trump and Kelly, Sanders writes, “howled with laughter” as the car drove on.Trump has met Kim three times – in Singapore, in Hanoi and in the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea. He has not convinced Kim to give up his nuclear weapons, which Sanders says would take a “miracle”.In fact, observers say, Pyongyang has increased its arsenal significantly. Trump’s critics also say his mercurial approaches to Kim have damaged relations with key allies, including Seoul.In his own memoir of the Trump administration, Bolton does not mention the Singapore incident Sanders describes, though he does say Trump talked sports with Kim and “handed out mints”. Bolton also says aides did not want to leave Trump alone with Kim, lest he make damaging concessions.Sanders describes other aspects of Trump’s North Korea policy, including interactions with Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star who has established a unique relationship with Kim, and the release in May 2018 of three Americans formerly held by Pyongyang.She does not mention Otto Warmbier, a student from Ohio held in the North before being returned to the US in June 2017, in a coma and showing evidence of torture. The 22-year-old died soon after.Warmbier’s parents have said they hold “Kim and his evil regime … responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that.”Though Trump admitted in Hanoi that “some really bad things happened to Otto”, he also said: “Kim tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.” More
Mike Pompeo
Critics accuse secretary of state of abusing his position for party political purposes by recording address while visiting Israel More
