Updated 10/22/2018 2:42 PM PDT
1/ Saudi Arabia's foreign minister denied that Mohammed bin Salman ordered Jamal Khashoggi's killing, calling it a "rogue operation" by individuals who "made a mistake." Adel al-Jubeir denied that the crown prince had any prior knowledge of the operation and said that the agents involved "weren't people closely tied" to him. (Washington Post)
@johnjharwood. (Cnbc)
public service from Shep Smith of Fox News:
“President Trump is calling caravan a national emergency, claiming criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. important note: Fox News knows of no evidence to suggest he’s accurate, and POTUS has offered no evidence” 1/2
more Shep Smith:
“Women/children/men from Central America have been walking for days. They say they’re escaping violence/poverty in home countries. Some expected to seek asylum in US as prescribed by law; others trying to attract attention to plight of home country residents” 2/2
John Bolton’s non-statement to Russians when discussing their meddling in our elections. Hard to believe…that he would state boldly there was no influence on elections.
The U.S. Department of Justice and Congress are investigating the interference and any possible collusion by Trump’s campaign. Trump has repeatedly denied there was any collusion.
“The point I made to Russian colleagues today was that I didn’t think, whatever they had done in terms of meddling in the 2016 election, that they had any effect on it, but what they have had an effect in the United States is to sow enormous distrust of Russia,” Bolton told radio station Ekho Moskvy during his visit to Moscow, according to a transcript provided by the White House.
T’s unloading lots of lies along the campaign trail…and fear mongering. It stokes the base of course. Demogoguery at it’s finest and a new low for our country.
President Trump has settled on a strategy of fear — laced with falsehoods and racially tinged rhetoric — to help lift his party to victory in the coming midterms, part of a broader effort to energize Republican voters with two weeks left until the Nov. 6 elections.
Trump’s messaging — on display in his regular campaign rallies, tweets and press statements — largely avoids much talk of his achievements and instead offers an apocalyptic vision of the country, which he warns will only get worse if Democrats retake control of Congress.
The president has been especially focused in recent days on a caravan of about 5,000 migrants traveling north to cross the U.S. border, a group he has darkly characterized as gang members, violent criminals and “unknown Middle Easterners” — a claim for which his administration has so far provided no concrete evidence.
…
“It’s a standard tactic to use fear as a motivating choice at the end of a campaign and the fact is the fork in the road is pretty stark,” said Scott Reed, senior political strategist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, noting the possibility of investigations or impeachment proceedings in a Democratic House.
…
Many of the president’s assertions are false or clear distortions of the facts. Trump is incorrect, for example, in his claim that Democrats will “destroy” both Medicare and Social Security, while he has made both programs “stronger.” There is also no evidence that Democrats are paying for the migrant caravan snaking its way north toward the southern border, while voter fraud remains exceedingly rare.
Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign adviser, described the caravan as “a political gift.”
“I wish they were carrying heroin. I wish we had thought of it. It speaks to the dearth of our creativity, unfortunately,” Bennett said. “There are 7,000 people marching toward the U.S. border. One party wants to let them in. The other party wants to keep them out.”
…
Trump’s claim — again, without providing evidence — that Middle Easterners are “mixed in” with the caravan is an example of how some leaders blend a mix of fact and fiction to instill fear in their electorate, said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University professor who studies authoritarian rulers.
“This is the way propaganda works,” Ben-Ghiat said. “You put different enemies together that really have nothing to do with one another. He’s trying to create this image of a wave of people of color, or threats, who are coming to invade the border.”
I doubt anyone in the Trump administration will imply or state that the Russian interference in the election had any impact. What I’ve yet to see is someone from the Trump administration being irate over a foreign country meddling in our election process, i.e. fake news or otherwise.
Obama on the stump in Las Vegas. I didn’t realize how much I missed complete sentences.
How true! And actual civilized behavior. It seems like eons ago . . . 
Just saw Pete Souza, the WH photographer for Obama this weekend at a lecture and he just loves OBAMA…It felt very nostalgic to see decency and compassion for others, and real humanity emanating from our former President. Here’s a shot of Mueller w/ Obama…and feels a bit ironic. Souza wrote a book called SHADE where he includes tweets from T and photos depicting the opposite from Obama. One of the funniest was seeing T tweet about Stormy Daniels and seeing Souza’s shot of storm clouds over the WH. No scandals for Obama, ever.
Souza refers to T as 46 minus 1. LOL
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You are correct @SEPTGUY
They just deny, deny, deny…makes it easier to call the whole thing a witch hunt, fake news.
Blanket denials…that is their credo. Something that Roy Cohn taught T to do…
