President announces new Turkey sanctions, amid fury over fake video of him killing journalists shown at Mar-a-Lago
Move comes amid outcry over ‘abandoning’ of Kurdish forces
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Donald Trump has announced new sanctions on Turkey, amid a mounting outcry over its assault upon Kurdish fighters as it invaded northern Syria, and the escape from prisons of Isis fighters.
The president last week gave a green light for Ankara to launch its long-planned military operation into northeast Syria after he pulled out a small number of US special forces who had been working with the Kurds, whose soldiers had spearheaded the operation to destroy Isis.
On Monday, the president signed executive orders to sanction Turkey and suspend negotiations on a $100 billion trade deal. He said he will also boost tariffs on Turkish steel to 50 per cent.
In a statement in which he vowed to swiftly destroy the Turkish economy if it continued down “this dangerous and destructive path”, Mr Trump said US troops coming out of Syria will redeploy and remain in the region to monitor the situation.
Later in the day, the White House announced the president was sending Mike Pence to the Middle East, as tensions rose.
Mr Pence said Mr Trump spoke directly to Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“President Trump communicated to him very clearly that the United States of America wants Turkey to stop the invasion, implement an immediate ceasefire and to begin to negotiate with Kurdish forces in Syria to bring an end to the violence,” he said.
Mr Trump’s decision to abandon the Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Force was criticised at home and abroad as opening the door to a resurgence of Isis, and for betraying a group that had previously worked with the US against Isis.
As Turkish forces and their Syrian Arab proxies advanced, forcing the Kurds to reduce the number of fighters guarding several prisons containing Isis prisoners, a number of detainees are able to flee.
The Kurds also announce they had deceived to strike a deal with the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Meanwhile, the president’s have been condemned for screening a meme of the president killing journalists in a church and pistol-whipping the late senator John McCain at the American Priority Conference, hosted at his own Trump National Doral Miami golf resort in Florida.
The president has reportedly called the CEO of Fox News, Suzanne Scott, to complain over the “unfair” coverage his administration has received regarding the House impeachment inquiry. He recently complained the network is “much different than it used to be in the good old days”.
On the Sunday morning talk show circuit, US defence secretary Mark Esper admitted that Turkey “appears to be” committing war crimes against America’s Kurdish allies in the Syrian Democratic Forces, as a retired Marine general says Mr Trump has “blood on his hands” over the crisis unfolding on the northern Syria border.
To see how this story played out please read below
Cindy McCain, wife of the late Arizona senator and war hero, has expressed her digust at the Trump church shooting meme in which he makes an involuntary cameo.
California senator and 2020 candidate Kamala Harris has also condemned it.
On Twitter, many are pointing out Trump's hypocrisy after he called out comedian Kathy Griffin two years ago when she posed for a picture holding a replica of his severed head - not least Griffin herself, who appears in the new meme.
Trump is now up to an average of 13.5 false claims per day, according to The Washington Post.
This morning's inflammatory tweet about the Kurds was only the latest example.
Here's Trump's press secretary Stephanie Grisham on the "Church of Fake News" mass killing video - she says he hasn't seen it (despite the fact he's been on Twitter all morning and it's absolutely everywhere) but "strongly condemns" its contents.
Trump's appeal to American war vets on Facebook uses stock images rather than actual soldiers and it has been noticed.
There are, inevitably, many more videos from the same team on YouTube inserting Trump into violent scenes from pop culture to kill off the mainstream media, including this take on Childish Gambino's "This is America".
(YouTube)
Others riff on John Wick, The Terminator, Avengers: Infinity War and, most ludicrously, Kung Fury, featuring Hillary Clinton leading a Third Reich rally, a robot Alex Jones and Jim Mattis as a tyrannosaurus rex.
Q: "Where's Hunter?"
A: On ABC News tomorrow morning with an exclusive interview.
Your move Don.
The parents of Harry Dunn, the 19-year-old killed in a crash caused by the wife of a US intelligence official in Britain, have called on Trump to intervene in their quest for justice, appealing to the president as a father.
Clark Mindock has this report.
Florida congressman and Trump loyalist Matt Gaetz has just been unceremoniously booted out of a closed-door desposition with Trump's former top adviser on Russia, Fiona Hill, because he is not a member of any of the three House committees conducting the hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry.
“Mr Schiff told me I had to leave,” he said, like a scolded school boy.
Hill is the first White House official to appear as part of the inquiry, her appearance happening despite the administration vowing to halt any and all co-operation with what it termed the "illegitimate" impeachment probe.
Republicans have called on Schiff to release transcripts of the depositions to the public. The California Democrat said Sunday that having witnesses appear behind closed doors would prevent them from knowing what other witnesses said.
Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, said he only learned on Monday morning that Schiff had subpoenaed Hill. "She was going to come, she'd agreed to come, she was going to come voluntarily but he's going to subpoena her, I believe, so he could ask certain questions and again keep those secret except for the certain things he wants to leak," Jordan said. "The tragedy here and the crime here is that the American people don't get to see what's going on in these sessions."
On Thursday, US ambassador Gordon Sondland, Trump's hand-picked ambassador to the European Union, is expected to appear for a deposition against the wishes of the White House, after being subpoenaed. He's expected to tell Congress that his text message reassuring another envoy that there was no quid pro quo in their interactions with Ukraine was based solely on what Trump told him.
Biden has told Radio Iowa he would not follow the example of Gerald Ford and pardon Trump in the event that the latter was impeached and he ultimately became president.
It wouldn’t unite the country. 'You’d say: ‘Wait a minute. I get a parking ticket and I’ve got to pay it. This happens to me and I’ve got to go to jail. This guy does all these things that put us jeopardy and he gets off?' I think this is of a different nature.
I think President Ford, God love him he’s a good guy, I knew him pretty well, I think if he had to do it over again he wouldn’t have done it... because he didn’t get re-elected.
Trump said earlier this afternoon he'll "be looking into" the case of a US financial adviser charged with killing a hotel worker while on a family vacation in Anguilla after the man's wife appeared on Fox & Friends and urged the president to intervene.
Scott Hapgood and his family were on vacation when they say a hotel worker showed up at their room unannounced and demanded money before attacking them on 13 April.
An autopsy report shows the victim, 27-year-old Kenny Mitchel of Dominica, died of positional asphyxia and received blunt force injuries to his torso and other areas.
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