FACT-CHECK: Since the swearing-in of President Nicol s Maduro--whom much of the international community has called illegitimate --many conservative critics have blamed the country's "21st century socialism" for unrest. But it's a more complicated picture than just the s-word. The corruption of Venezuelan leaders and the country's near-complete dependence on oil are also important components of the country's downfall.
Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Ch vez, worked to use oil revenues from the then-booming industry to fund national programs. But when oil prices collapsed in 2014, shortly after Maduro took over, the country lacked funds for those programs. U.S. sanctions on the oil industry, a result of charges of corruption and human rights abuses by Venezuelan leaders, have been another blow to the economy.
Other countries with socialist-leaning governments--like Denmark or Sweden--have not experienced similar unrest.
We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom--and we condemn the brutality of the Maduro regime, whose socialist policies have turned that nation from being the wealthiest in South America into a state of abject poverty and despair.
World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015, and the U.S. accounted for 37% of the total. While no one would argue that our military budget is out of proportion with the resources by which we seek to prevent the need for military action. The budget of our Defense Department, for instance is $600 billion, 24 times more than the $26.5 billion allotted to the Department of State. In the Trump administration, as a matter of fact, we are dismantling many of the diplomatic functions of our State Department and replacing them with economic advocacy projects for U.S. corporations.
In truth, our military budget is more an expression of the financial appetites of our military-industrial complex than it is a truly wise response to admittedly very real threats.
A new chapter of American Greatness is now beginning. A new national pride is sweeping across our Nation. And a new surge of optimism is placing impossible dreams firmly within our grasp.
What we are witnessing today is the Renewal of the American Spirit. Our allies will find that America is once again ready to lead. All the nations of the world--friend or foe--will find that America is strong, America is proud, and America is free.
Since everything always changes, constantly reevaluate the big picture. Reexamine the landscape; see what's changed and what those differences could mean to you. Then figure out how you can keep up with and make the changes work for you.
Pat Buchanan was actually preaching the same policy of appeasement that had failed for Neville Chamberlain at Munich. If we used Buchanan’s theory on Hitler as a foreign policy strategy, we would have appeased every world dictator with a screw loose and we’d have a brainwashed population ready to go postal on command.
After I [wrote an article on this for] Face the Nation, Buchanan accused me of “ignorance.” Buchanan, who believes himself an expert, has also called Hitler “a political organizer of the first rank.” Buchanan is a fan.
In May 2018, Bolton writes that Turkish President Erdogan handed Trump a memo claiming that the state-owned bank Halkbank, which was under investigation by the Justice Department, was innocent. 'Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people,' Bolton writes.
Bolton writes that he scheduled a meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr in 2019 to discuss Trump's alleged enthusiasm for doing favors for autocrats, and that Barr agreed that he was worried about the appearances created by Trump's behavior.
That is why, tonight, I am asking the Congress to pass legislation to help ensure American foreign-assistance dollars always serve American interests, and only go to America's friends.
Hillary will tell you to go to her website and read all about how to defeat ISIS, which she could have defeated by never having it get going in the first place. It's getting tougher to defeat them, because they're in more and more places, more and more states, more and more nations.
I want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot be the policemen of the world. We cannot protect countries all over the world where they're not paying us what we need.
Trump made headlines in November 2018 when he released a bizarre statement defending the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. It included lines such as 'The world is a very dangerous place!' and 'maybe he did and maybe he didn't!'
According to Bolton's book, making headlines was the point. A story about his daughter Ivanka using her personal email for government business was also in the news at the time. After waging war on Hilary Clinton during the 2016 campaign for doing the same thing, Trump need a distraction. 'This will divert from Ivanka,' Trump reportedly said. 'If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing.'
Narrowly focused on criminalization, rather than broader LGBT issues like same-sex marriage, the campaign was conceived partly in response to the recent reported execution by hanging of a young gay man in Iran.
While the Trump administration has had some success in pressuring Iran through stepped-up U.S. penalties, efforts to bring the Europeans along have thus far largely fallen flat.
Reframing the conversation on Iran around a human rights issue that enjoys broad support in Europe could help the US and Europe reach a point of agreement on Iran.
Yet by using gay rights as a cudgel against Iran, the Trump administration risks exposing close US allies who are also vulnerable on the issue and creating a new tension point in the Arab world.
But remember the ransom payments. Remember, it was $400 million two weeks ago. But then they made a mistake. This is cash. They said they paid cash because they couldn't open a bank account. There was no way of sending it into a checking account.
The $400 million turned out to be $1.7 billion in cash--cash! They said, "oh, that money's going to be used for terror." I said they don't need it. This is going into their Swiss accounts. They have plenty of money for terror.
Think of it--$1.7 billion in cash--massive, big vats of cash. You saw them--cartons. I never saw anything like it. I've seen a lot of cash. Hey, never saw anything like this. They wouldn't give back the hostages, and Obama kept saying, "no, no, this has nothing to do [with ransom]"--even the hostages said they kept us waiting for a certain plane to come in.
And then what he said about on "60 Minutes". Did you hear this? It was about Syria and ISIS, and it has to go down as the most ridiculous and dangerous idea of the entire campaign season. Let ISIS take out Assad, he said, and then we can pick up the remnants.
Now, think about that. Let the most dangerous terror organization the world has ever known take over an entire country? This recklessness is recklessness in the extreme. Now, Donald Trump tells us that he is very, very smart. I'm afraid that when it comes to foreign policy he is very, very not smart.
So what can be done about it? How do we start winning again? To start with, we need a government that is committed to winning and has experience in winning.
TRUMP: I love a safe zone for people. I do not like the migration. I do not like the people coming. What they should do is, the countries should all get together, including the Gulf states, who have nothing but money, they should all get together and they should take a big swath of land in Syria and they do a safe zone for people, where they could to live, and then ultimately go back to their country, go back to where they came from.
Q: Does the U.S. get involved in making that safe zone?
TRUMP: I would help them economically, even though we owe $19 trillion.
TRUMP: Where they're hitting people, we're talking about people that we don't even know. I was talking to a general two days ago. He said, "We have no idea who these people are. We're training people. We don't know who they are. We're giving them billions of dollars to fight Assad." And you know what? I'm not saying Assad's a good guy, because he's probably a bad guy. But I've watched him interviewed many times. And you can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there-- it's a mess-- if you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there-- it's a mess-- it's going be same thing.
The GOP vice presidential candidate's statement echoes his running mate, who tweeted two days ago : "@realDonaldTrump: The people of Cuba have struggled too long. Will reverse Obama's Executive Orders and concessions towards Cuba until freedoms are restored."
President Obama's executive actions, in part, have lifted a series of restrictions on Cuba, opened a U.S. embassy in the country and established travel and business between the two nations. He issued additional directives to further loosen restrictions aimed at increasing trade with the island nation.
Is that true? Yes, the quotation is accurate, but it's out of context. From "The Guardian" of 4/2/16:
Trump told a crowd he was sanguine about potential hostilities between North Korea and its neighbors. He said that if conflict between Japan and nuclear-armed North Korea were to break out, "it would be a terrible thing but if they do, they do". "Good luck," he added. "Enjoy yourself, folks." According to Trump: "The case could be made to let [Japan] protect themselves against North Korea, they'd probably wipe them out pretty quick." Trump previously suggested that South Korea and Japan should have their own nuclear weapons.
The MIT Atlas indicates that Trump is incorrect: "The top export destinations of North Korea are China ($2.67B), India ($71M), Pakistan ($40M), Nigeria ($20M) and Brazil ($19M). The top import origins are China ($3.49B), Thailand ($107M), Russia ($82M), India ($75M) and Singapore ($48M)." Iran is not in the top five trading partners of North Korea, whether counting exports or imports.
Maybe Trump meant that North Korea is on the top list of Iran's trading partners? The MIT Atlas indicates that Trump is also incorrect if that's what he meant "The top export destinations of Iran are China ($25B), India ($10B), Japan ($6B), South Korea ($4B) and Turkey ($1B). The top import origins are China ($24B), India ($4B), South Korea ($4B), Turkey ($4B) & Germany ($3B)."
We note that South Korea is on Iran's list of top trading partners--not North Korea!
And by the way, another one powerful is the worst deal I think I've ever seen negotiated that you started is the Iran deal. Iran is one of their biggest trading partners. Iran has power over North Korea.
And when they made that horrible deal with Iran, they should have included the fact that they do something with respect to North Korea. And they should have done something with respect to Yemen and all these other places.
DT: That's a very dangerous question. Every country in the world is in Cuba right now, except the United States. Castro is old and sick. I looked at him the other day on television. I said, "Man, that guy is tough. He doesn't die!" Cuba's going to be an amazing story in the coming years. I think it's about time we start thinking a little bit differently about Cuba, because certainly every other country in the world is.
After the US announced a first round of sanctions on Russia for poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK, Bolton said Trump wanted to rescind the penalties and thought they were being too tough on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
'Trump told Pompeo to call Lavrov and say 'some bureaucrat' had published the sanctions -- a call that may or may not have ever taken place,' Bolton wrote.
Bolton also claimed Trump stopped the issue of a statement criticizing Russia on the tenth anniversary of its invasion of Georgia. The former national security adviser writes that these actions were a reflection of Trump's 'difficulty in separating personal from official relations.'
Whatever problems [Trump] might have caused in the past had reliably been supplanted by new events, giving Nothing seemed to move on from those two events [referring to James Comey, the director of the FBI fired for allowing the Russia investigation; and Robert Mueller, Special Counsel investigating Russian collusion in the 2016 election].