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‘National Security Nightmare’: Experts Concerned Melania Trump Was in Situation Room During ‘Major Military Operation’

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National security and legal experts are expressing concern over a report revealing that then-First Lady Melania Trump had been present in the White House Situation Room during a “major military operation,” according to a new book by former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

Melania Trump in October 2019, “sat in and watched the U.S. raid that led to the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a compound in Syria,” The Hill reports Miller’s book reveals. At the time, Miller was special assistant to the president for counterterrorism and transnational threats.

In addition to the First Lady, present in the Situation Room were President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley.

READ MORE: Right-Wing Outraged Over Falsely Thinking White House Press Secretary Said National Security Council Is Using ‘TikTok’

“Her presence was unexpected, to say the least,” Miller wrote. “I wondered how it would play in the press if word got out that the first lady had popped in to watch a major military operation.”

It was the First Lady who suggested the administration promote the “hero dog” involved in the raid. That became a fiasco when it appeared later that President Trump, trying to play up the pup, either got the dog’s gender wrong, or had the wrong dog in the Oval Office.

That debacle led The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen to pen a piece on “Conan, the Gender-Fluid Hero Dog.”

“Kellyanne Conway, a counsellor to the President, refused to commit to a gender for Conan,” Gessen wrote. “Pressed by reporters on Tuesday, she said, ‘I won’t do that, because then you’ll say that I was talking about somebody’s sex or gender, so I’m not doing that.'”

READ MORE: House Ethics Committee Begins Questioning Santos Staffers

Larry Pfeiffer, who served as President Barack Obama’s director of the White House Situation Room and previously as Chief of Staff of the Central Intelligence Agency, expressed outrage at the First Lady having been in the Situation Room during a critical mission.

“Hmmm…what would I have done if President Obama had brought Michelle into a sensitive meeting there? Don’t know. Never had to think about it cuz it NEVER would have happened,” he said via Twitter.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, now a professor of law, MSNBC legal contributor and a podcaster, responded saying: “Melania in the situation room, top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago that Trump knew were there & refused to return. Private meetings with Putin where Trump insisted translator’s notes be destroyed. The Trump administration was a national security nightmare.”

At Vanity Fair, politics correspondent Bess Levin asked, “What other overseas military operations did the former first lady play a role in?”

Levin also notes Trump’s strong “disdain” for dogs, which made the Conan catastrophe such a farce.

READ MORE: Melania Trump: I Was ‘Unaware’ of Jan. 6 Violence Because I Was ‘Fulfilling My Duties as First Lady’ for ‘Our Nation’

She writes, “according to Miller, it was Melania who came up with the idea about how to tell the American people about the mission. ‘You should talk about the dog,’ Miller said she told the president. ‘Everyone loves dogs.'”

“Everyone, of course, except Donald Trump,” Levin notes, “who has a well-established disdain for animals in general and dogs in particular. (The only president in more than a century to live in the White House without a pet, Trump’s ex-wife Ivana wrote in her 2017 memoir that ‘Donald was not a dog fan,’ and that her poodle, Chappy, would ‘bark at him territorially’ whenever he got near her closet. Trump also has a long history of denigrating ex-employees and other perceived enemies by comparing them to dogs, tweeting that his enemies have ‘choked like a dog,’ been ‘dumped like a dog,’ been ‘fired like a dog,’ and, our personal favorite, been ‘kicked out of the ABC News debate like a dog.’)”

Another fiasco for the Trump White House that day was the photo (above) which was taken during or after the operation that led to al-Baghdadi’s death. Some at the time noted it appeared staged, and an attempt to replicate the famous photo of President Barack Obama actually taken during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

 

Image: Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead

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Watch: House Dem Mocks Republicans by Thanking Them for Taking Time Away From ‘Trump’s Memorial Service to David Koresh’

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March 29, 2023

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U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) mocked the entire GOP Wednesday afternoon by sardonically thanking his Republican colleagues for taking time away from Donald Trump’s “memorial service to David Koresh,” referring to the ex-president’s rally Saturday in Waco, Texas during the 30th anniversary of that deadly siege.

“I want to thank the majority for finding the time to fit this hearing in between attending former President Trump’s memorial service to David Koresh, just last week, who was a real advocate for young girls in this country.”

Congressman Moskowitz was referring to the Branch Davidian religious cult leader who allegedly was a polygamist and child sex abuser. In 1993, the ATF’s attempt to serve a warrant on Koresh for “unlawful possession of fully automatic machine guns and destructive devices” turned into a 51-day siege of his Waco compound, which ended with the deaths of 86 people. Experts point to that event as fueling the rise of right-wing domestic terrorism, including by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

READ MORE: Here’s How Five Republicans in Congress Are Responding to the Mass Shooting of 3 Children and 3 Adults in Nashville (Video)

Wednesday’s hearing of a House Oversight Committee subcommittee focused on Washington, D.C. also offered Rep. Moskowitz the opportunity to pose this question related to Monday’s Nashville school mass shooting: “Do you think parents, putting their young kids into pajamas at night, and tucking them into bed, do you think they’re worried about public urination in Washington, D.C. or do you think they’re worried about sending their kid to school and their kid not coming home?”

Moskowitz wasn’t done blasting Republicans for refusing to do anything to address mass shootings after Monday’s school massacre in Nashville.

“You know, speaking of crime, Republican on Republican crime, former President Donald Trump held a rally in Waco, Texas with his ‘Rasputin’ Ted Nugent. He said the number one national security threat to this great nation isn’t Russia or China or DC crime. But is an 81-year old slip and fall survivor in Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. I’m just wondering if we’re gonna find time in between, you know, some folks here attending the next rally to celebrating Timothy McVeigh, if we’re gonna find time to hold a hearing on mass murder in schools? When are we holding that hearing?”

Watch there videos above or at this link.

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No Indictment in the Trump Hush Money Payoff Case for at Least Another Month

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March 29, 2023

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Despite his false claim he would be indicted last week, Donald Trump isn’t going to see any indictment any time soon – at least not by New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s grand jury investigating his role in the hush money payoff to Stormy Daniels.

The grand jury will be on hiatus from the Trump case for the next month, according to Politico, which says the break was previously planned.

Jurors are not expected to hear any evidence in the case this week or next week, and will break for the Passover holiday next Thursday. They will be off for the following two weeks, Politico’s source says, citing a schedule drawn up in January.

“There is no official deadline for bringing an indictment against Trump, although there were indications in recent weeks that the grand jury’s activity was nearing a vote, particularly when prosecutors offered Trump the chance to testify before the panel. That is typically one of the final steps of a criminal investigation,” Politico notes.

READ MORE: Here’s How Five Republicans in Congress Are Responding to the Mass Shooting of 3 Children and 3 Adults in Nashville (Video)

There is one caveat to the “no official deadline” claim. Journalist Marcy Wheeler notes, if the grand jury “were to charge witness tampering in conjunction with the Costello [communications] to [Michael] Cohen, they would create a hard deadline before the end of April.”

Costello is Robert Costello, who Trump asked the grand jury to interview, hoping he would refute his longtime former attorney’s testimony.

Of course, anything is possible and DA Bragg could call the grand jury into session at any time.

There is also the unlikely possibility that he will not ask them to vote on an indictment in the case. They could also vote against indicting Trump.

 

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‘Can You Imagine if the Left Did This?’: Morning Joe Profanely Condemns Trump’s Celebration of J6 ‘Rioters and Convicts’

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March 29, 2023

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MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough profanely bashed Donald Trump and his Republican defenders for celebrating Jan. 6 insurrectionists as heroes.

The former president showed a video of jailed rioters singing a song, “Justice for All,” and the national anthem during a campaign rally in Waco, Texas, and Trump defended them and raged against “thug” prosecutors — and the “Morning Joe” host tried to imagine if anyone else had done something similar.

“Can you imagine if the left did this?” Scarborough said. “They have the leading candidate for president, for the nomination for the presidency praising — they have put together a choir of convicts who beat the sh*t out of cops with an American flag. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, would you like me to say it in a nicer way? They beat the crap out of cops with an American flag, and four died, and their families directly blame the assault [on] the rioters. They defecated in the Capitol.”

“Can you imagine if left-wingers did all of that, and then Bernie Sanders says, ‘I have a good idea, let’s make a choir, we can celebrate the fact that they defecated on the cops, we can do that — why, that will help us?'” Scarborough continued. “I mean, think about that, what would Newsmax say, what would Fox say, what would all of these right wing — they are openly praising rioters and convicts.”

READ MORE: GOP probes ‘seem to be flopping’ as voters see them as ‘revenge’: analysis

“This is the hero of the Republican Party, these are the heroes of Donald Trump, these are the heroes of [Marjorie Taylor Greene],” he added. “This is who they love.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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