Somehow amid all today's insane stories I missed that the Mexican Foreign Minister helped write Trump's wall speech: https://t.co/9m5Nan4jkS
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) February 10, 2017
From the CBS article:
… When Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray came to the White House in January, on the same day that Mr. Trump was to sign the Executive Order, Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser and the president’s son-in-law, showed him the speech Mr. Trump was going to deliver that day at the Homeland Security Department. Videgaray was horrified, according to the Mexican officials, and deemed the speech a non-starter.
If the remarks were not changed, they would likely drive the two countries, whose relationship Videgaray was there to try and redress, even further apart. Such a speech would also do little to help President Pena’s approval ratings in his own country. Kushner suggested they re-write the speech together to make it less damaging…
Kushner and Videgaray changed what they could, casting a more positive light on the future of the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Then the two of them then went into the Oval Office so Kushner could brief Mr. Trump on the changes. The president angrily threw up his hands, wondering why he should read the new version. With Videgaray standing by, Mr. Trump was ultimately convinced to make the changes.
However, a White House official disputed the Mexican officials’ version of events, telling CBS News, “This is not an accurate account of their meeting and they did not ‘rewrite’ portions of the speech.”…
According to Mexican officials, Kushner is now handling everything between the two countries, and personally trying to keep the relationship from disintegrating further…
Anybody doesn’t think the source of this juicy tidbit was someone whose name rhymes with ‘Kared Jushner’, please email me your banking details so that I can connect you with a Nigerian prince. Remember when America was a country where we could joke about national leaders being led by the nose by their unelected, unqualified kinfolk?
In other foreign news, seems like President Xi just reminded old man Trump how much of his IOUs they’re holding…
BREAKING: Trump speaks with President Xi of China for first time, says he will respect the longstanding 'One China' policy – Financial Times
— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) February 10, 2017
White House issues a readout of President's call with Xi Jinping pic.twitter.com/WS7vbKdQRa
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 10, 2017
… unless you wanna argue that by ‘One China’, Trump thinks this trendy pattern-mixing at formal events is just another fad meant to sell more dinnerware. Which is possible! Sad!
rikyrah
I want to know how Kushner got a security clearance.
rikyrah
hope that you are riding out the storm, AL
amk
LOL. the morons can’t even lie properly.
Yarrow
He respects the One China policy? Bob Dole has a sad!
Feebog
This administration is a complete clusterfuck. They really are trying to wear us out by the sheer incompetence.
hovercraft
China and Russia I’m sure cannot believe their luck, all those decades and trillions of dollars spent fighting the cold war, and in the end America elected a moron who is just willing to roll over and give them the keys for the low price of a few billion in loans to an incompetent imbecile. SAD !
Also too, for a man who values loyalty above all else, he is proving to be as inept in hiring loyal people as he is in all other aspects of his life. We went from 8 years of no drama Obama, and his close mouthed WH, to this gang who can’t keep their mouths shut about fucking anything.
efgoldman
@rikyrah:
I’m probably misremembering, but….
When we were hashing thru all this stuff in the aftermath of the election, I think I remember Adam saying something about, since Kushner has no formal position and isn’t actually being paid by the gummint, he doesn’t need a clearance.
It’s entirely possible that I have it completely wrong, and Adam will come to my house and demonstrate his latest Tai Kwon Do moves on me.
? Martin
There’s no fucking way that Trump understands what the One China policy means.
Wag
Trumps idea of a one China policy has Taiwan taking over mainland china, then selling it to trump.
Morzer
An unknown source who goes by the code name JarJar …
amk
@hovercraft: Yup. All they had to do was to bet on murkkkan stupidity. #maga. what a fucking joke.
bluehill
Outsourcing speech writing to Mexico. Sad!
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: Newsweek’s national security reporter has FOIAed this:
But the simple answer is if the President wants someone to have a clearance, they get a clearance.
Morzer
@bluehill:
How many American speechwriters lost their jobs in the latest round of Trumpsourcing?
efgoldman
@? Martin:
China’s probably one of the three or four non-US places he can find on a map. It’s kinda’ yoooge.
amk
@bluehill: to be schooled on public speaking by your sworn enemy. #maga
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: That was when we thought he wasn’t getting a paid position. And it was that unless he had a formal position, he shouldn’t be able to get a clearance. However, he’s been appointed to a formal position, so he gets a clearance. And the short answer as to how: the requesting authority in this case is the President. If the President wants someone to have a clearance, they get a clearance.
Also, I don’t do Tae Kwon Do. I do Ai Ki Do. Among other things.
Adam L Silverman
I’m to bed.
Yarrow
@efgoldman: Do you really think so? What if someone put a globe or map in front of him with just the continents and no outline of countries? Could he even point out the general area of the world that China is in?
bluehill
One thing Trump understands is debt and I think he just found out how much US debt China owns.
efgoldman
@Yarrow:
China, Russia, maybe Canadiana, because of their size. I bet he couldn’t find/identify half the US states, or any of the Middle East countries he’s considering bombing, though. Which becomes a problem when the fallout from Iraq, Iran, or Syria starts drifting over Israel or the occupied territories.
cain
Trump is having a bad week, he’s had his ass handed to him every which way. It must suck being Trump right now.
Anne Laurie
@? Martin:
He knows who’s holding his scrip, though — and they’re not afraid to remind him of the fact.
One reason even a good, experienced trainer will use a prong collar on a “high reactivity” dog is that it’s the dog who causes the ‘correction’ — when he impulsively leaps or lunges, he gets a mom-grip around his scruff, reminding him it’s bad manners. Many impulsive dogs, after some experience, know exactly what the prong collar means… if they start acting out again, their trainer just shows them the collar, and they self-regulate once more.
Way I see it, President Xi just showed Trump the prong collar. Now we know who’s in charge in that relationship.
efgoldman
@cain:
He lives in a bubble of denial, where he’s always winning bigly.
JosieJ (not Josie)
@cain:
The rest of us have agita, why shouldn’t he?
PK
What! Now the Chinese have Trump sex tapes as well?
Millard Filmore
@Anne Laurie:
So even with the fabulous grifting opportunities that the position of President of the USA presents, Trump is having a difficult time to exploit the situation.
TriassicSands
President Terrible! Sad!
TriassicSands
Hey, Donald, the whole world is laughing at you.
Anne Laurie
@Millard Filmore:
Far as I can make out, the ancient dishonorable practice of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” has been Trump’s one successful business tactic over the last 40 years. So he may just think of his White House tenure as the culmination of his career: robbing the U.S. to pay off Putin, the PRC, etc etc etc. And the viewership — fantastic! Literally the whole world is watching him now!
sukabi
@Yarrow: better question, is would he be able to identify the United States under those conditions…
rachel
@Anne Laurie: But doesn’t robbing Peter to pay Paul work better if no one’s watching?
sunny raines
the word “respect” does not belong anywhere near trump except to reiterate that trump has no idea what respect is, what it’s for, and why it’s important.
Sherparick
I see in this stream a common misapprehension about the U.S. debt and that China’s holding that debt somehow gives it leverage over the U.S. This is people analogizing their own personal experience with debt as a bank holding a mortgage on their house or a credit card company threatening to put a lien on their wages for unpaid debt e.g. that the creditor has a huge asymmetric power advantage over debtor. However, debt owed by sovereigns is a whole different matter (as many a medieval banker found out the hard way). Right now China is selling its U.S. debt not because it lacks confidence in the future of the U.S. under Trump or because Trump’s foreign policy (they have other ways of making us pay for those errors), but because it is trying to support its own currency in world markets and slow the capital flight from China that has happened the last 4 years. http://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/us-markets/2017020917023/foreigners-dump-debt-offering-up-a-test-for-rates-update.aspx and http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/19/china-is-working-hard-to-support-its-currency–it-sold-us-government-bonds-for-six-straight-months.html Again, this is an example of Trump’s world view being caught in time capsules. In Trump’s world it is always the summer of 1977 in New York, the Summer of Sam and the Blackout riots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Sam The same for trade and economic policy, it is always the first 5 years of the 21st Century, when China did fix its currency to the dollar at an artificially low rate and all the U.S. business consultants were telling their clients to move their production to China.
We are so fucked. Thank you Putin, Thank you Comey, Thank you NY Times and the great e-mail snipe hunt.
ET
Having Kushner as a go between is only going to work for so long. Mostly because his father-in-law can only control himself for so long before he blows and says something or a series of somethings (the man doesn’t know when to stop digging) and all of the background diplomatic soothing goes down the drain. That is not a long-term strategy but wishful thinking.
NW Phil
China has been busy selling U.S. Treasury securities and they’ll probably have to sell more to keep their currency from falling further.
China is no longer the biggest foreign holder of US debt