McGahn testified to Mueller that Trump instructed him multiple times to have the acting attorney general remove the special counsel because of perceived conflicts of interest.
Last month, McGahn announced he would follow the White House’s urging and defy a subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee to testify publicly about that conversation with Trump.
Later in the interview, Stephanopoulos asked Trump why McGahn would lie under oath.
“Because he wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer,” Trump responded. “Or he believed it because I would constantly tell anybody that would listen, including you, including the media, that Robert Mueller was conflicted. Robert Mueller had a total conflict of interest.”
“And has to go?” Stephanopoulos followed up.
“I didn’t say that,” Trump said.
Mueller found that he could not establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. He did not make a determination on obstruction of justice instead leaving it up to Congress to further investigate the matter while citing 10 instances of potential obstruction.
The attorney general and deputy attorney general determined there was not sufficient evidence to charge Trump with obstruction.
ISTANBUL — President Trump rejected Iran’s denials Friday that it attacked two tankers in the Gulf of Oman, insisting in a television interview that “Iran did do it” and pointing to a video released by the U.S. Central Command purporting to show Iranian vessels retrieving an unexploded mine from one of the damaged ships.
Iran called the U.S. allegations against it “alarming.”
In an interview on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” program, Trump said, referring to the Central Command video: “Well, Iran did do it, and you know they did do it because you saw the boat.” He added, “They didn’t want the evidence left behind. . . . It was them that did it.”
Trump denounced Iran’s leadership while also expressing interest in negotiations. “They’re a nation of terror, and they’ve changed a lot since I’ve been president,” he said. “They’re in deep, deep trouble.” He later added: “They’ve been told in very strong terms . . . we want to get them back to the table if they want to get back. I’m in no rush.”
Earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the United States had “immediately jumped to make allegations against Iran — [without] a shred of factual or circumstantial evidence,” and he accused the Trump White House of “economic terrorism” and “sabotage diplomacy.”
The U.S. Central Command late Thursday made public a dark, grainy video and corresponding timeline suggesting that U.S. military assets in the region observed the Iranian vessels approaching the tanker and removing the device.
“At 4:10 p.m. local time an IRGC Gashti Class patrol boat approached the M/T Kokuka Courageous and was observed and recorded removing the unexploded limpet mine” from the Courageous, said Capt. Bill Urban, a Central Command spokesman.
Senior U.S. officials showed photographs to reporters of the damaged tanker Kokuka Courageous with what the Navy identified as a suspected magnetic mine attached to its hull.
The unexploded weapon was probably applied by hand from an Iranian fast boat, one official said. It is thought to be the same kind of weapon used to blow a hole elsewhere in the same tanker and to do more-serious damage to the other ship that was targeted, the Front Altair, two officials said.
The officials, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity because many elements of the investigation remain secret, said the type and timing of the attacks bear Iranian hallmarks. But U.S. officials could not yet say with certainty where the mines were manufactured or exactly how they were laid.
A picture obtained from Iranian news agency Tasnim on June 13, 2019, reportedly shows an Iranian navy boat trying to control a fire on the Norwegian-owned Front Altair tanker said to have been attacked in the waters of the Gulf of Oman. (Photo by TASNIM NEWS / AFP/Getty Images)
“There’s not too many ways in which this can be done,” one official said. “Very few that don’t involve an individual physically placing it on the ship.”
Germany’s government Friday called for an investigation into the “extraordinarily worrying” incident and said it had no information on who carried out the attacks, the Associated Press reported.
A “spiral of escalation” must be avoided, a spokeswoman for Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters Friday in Berlin, the AP said.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang urged restraint and said China hopes that “all sides can jointly safeguard navigational safety in the relevant waters,” news agencies reported.
“Nobody wants to see war in the gulf,” he said. “That is not in anyone’s interest.”
The two tankers, which carried petrochemicals from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Gulf of Oman, were targeted early Thursday in what observers said marked a serious escalation in the strategic waterway, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes. It connects energy supplies from Arab nations in the gulf, as well as Iran, to consumers around the globe.
A picture obtained from the Iranian news agency Tasnim on June 14, 2019, shows what it says are some of the crew from a tanker targeted in suspected attacks in the Gulf of Oman, after they were reportedly rescued by the Iranian navy on June 13, 2019. (Photo by STR / TASNIM NEWS AGENCY / AFP/Getty Images)
The Courageous is a Japanese-owned vessel and was targeted as Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, met with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran.
A U.S. defense official said the USS Bainbridge, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer that was in the area, took on board 21 crew members from the ship. Iran’s navy also rescued crew members from the Front Altair, a Norwegian-owned ship.
“The responsibility for the security of the Strait of Hormuz lies with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and we showed that we were able to rescue the sailors of the ship as soon as possible,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi said, Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
The accusation against Iran, he said, is “not only not funny . . . but alarming and worrisome.”
U.S. officials said several nations are consulting about how to respond. One option may be to provide military escorts for commercial tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz, one official said, although no decision has been made.
A frame grab from a handout video made available by the U.S. Central Command shows a smaller boat near what appears to be the vessel Kokuka Courageous, in the Gulf of Oman, June 13, 2019 (issued 14 June 2019). According to the Navy, the video shows an Iranian Gashti Class patrol boat’s crew “removing an unexploded limpet mine” from the tanker. (Photo by U.S. NAVY/U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/REX)
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran Thursday for the “blatant assault” on the vessels and said the United States would defend itself and its allies against Iranian aggression in the region. But he provided no evidence that the explosions were the work of Iranian forces.
Pompeo said the U.S. assessment of Iranian involvement is based on intelligence, the type of weapons used and the level of expertise needed, and that no Iranian-backed militia in the region has the resources or proficiency to pull off such a sophisticated operation.
“As the threat evolves, it’s incumbent on us to reevaluate our presence,” said one senior U.S. official.
The U.S. military has dispatched a P-8 Poseidon, an anti-ship, anti-submarine and surveillance aircraft, to the area in response to the incident, a defense official said.
The incidents were similar to suspected acts of sabotage carried out against tankers near the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah last month and looked to be the latest salvo in the mounting confrontation between the United States and Iran. As the Trump administration has tightened economic sanctions on Iran after withdrawing last year from the historic nuclear deal, Iran and its allies have responded with calibrated attacks in the Persian Gulf area, Iraq and Saudi Arabia aimed at underscoring the potential cost to U.S. interests, including the international oil trade, experts say.
Pompeo said the impetus behind the attacks was the administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” of sanctions that U.S. officials say are designed to get Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program and its support of militias in various neighboring countries.
“Our policy remains an economic and diplomatic effort to bring Iran back to the negotiating table at the right time and encourage a comprehensive deal that addresses the broad range of threats,” Pompeo said. “Iran should meet diplomacy with diplomacy, not with terror, bloodshed and extortion.”
But some experts say the recent tensions have underscored the limits of that policy.
In a climate of hostility, the tanker incidents could bring the parties closer to the brink of violent confrontation.
“This is a way station to a wider conflict breaking out between Iran and the United States,” said Ali Vaez, senior Iran analyst and Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. “If Iran was behind it, it is very clear the maximum pressure policy of the Trump administration is rendering Iran more aggressive, not less.”
The blasts could also reflect a widening split between pro-diplomacy officials in Iran and hard-liners opposed to further negotiations, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. The branch of the Iranian military, which boasts land, air and sea forces, answers only to Khamenei and is responsible for Iran’s external military operations.
Iran’s security services, including the IRGC, “have a decades-long history of conducting attacks and other operations aimed precisely at undermining the diplomatic objectives of a country’s elected representatives,” the political risk firm Eurasia Group said in a briefing note Thursday.
“The attacks could have been designed to put an exclamation point on Iran’s warnings to Abe about the risks of instability in the region,” the note said. About 80 percent of Japan’s oil imports come from the Middle East and pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
The blasts occurred 24 nautical miles from the nearest IRGC naval base, one U.S. official said. IRGC ships are frequently present in that area but had not until recently begun to harass or impede shipping, the official said.
“It’s clear that there is a pattern of Iranian naval activity in and around commercial shipping lanes that is inconsistent with their prior behavior,” the official said.
The attacks are part of Iran’s response to tightening U.S. sanctions, one official said. He described the Iranian view this way: “If we can’t ship oil, no one can.”
William Branigin, Anne Gearan and Carol Morello in Washington and Simon Denyer and Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo contributed to this report.
President Trump disputed in an interview the account by former White House counsel Don McGahn to Robert Mueller that the president instructed him to remove the special counsel.
McGahn “may have been confused” when he told Mueller during the probe into possible obstruction of justice that Trump ordered him multiple times to have the acting attorney general remove the special counsel due to perceived conflicts of interest, the president told ABC News.
“The story on that very simply, No. 1, I was never going to fire Mueller. I never suggested firing Mueller,” Trump told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“I don’t care what (McGahn) says – it doesn’t matter,” Tump said when Stephanopoulos referred to McGahn’s testimony.
“Why would [McGahn] lie under oath?” Stephanopoulos asked later.
“Because he wanted to make himself look like a good lawyer,” the president replied. “Or he believed it because I would constantly tell anybody that would listen — including you, including the media — that Robert Mueller was conflicted. Robert Mueller had a total conflict of interest.”
It wants to question McGahn after he figured prominently in Mueller’s report about the Russia probe and whether Trump committed obstruction of justice.
White House Counsel Pat Cipollone has told the committee in a letter that McGahn should not appear due to both “constitutional immunity” and “in order to protect the prerogatives of the Office of the Presidency.”
Don McGahnGetty Images
In his report, Mueller cited McGahn as saying that the president called him multiple times in June 2017 to tell him to direct the Justice Department to remove Mueller because of conflicts of interest.
McGahn later told Mueller’s investigators that the president tried to get him to dispute the accuracy of the news reports about the matter, but he refused.
In his interview, Trump also defended his decision not to sit for a face-to-face interview with Mueller’s investigators – despite earlier saying he would do so – by expressing concern that investigators wanted to set up a perjury trap.
He eventually provided written responses to questions from the investigators.
“If you answer these questions to me now, why not answer them to Robert Mueller under oath?” Stephanopoulos asked Trump.
“Because they were looking to get us for lies or slight misstatements,” Trump said. “I looked at what happened to people, and it was very unfair. Very, very unfair. Very unfair.”
Stephanopoulos then pointed out that Trump did not provide written answers to address questions of possible obstruction of justice.
“Wait a minute,” Trump said. “Wait a minute. I did answer questions. I answered them in writing.”
“Not on obstruction,” Stephanopoulos interjected.
“George, you’re being a little wise guy, OK — which is, you know, typical for you,” Trump fired back.
“Just so you understand. Very simple. It’s very simple. There was no crime. There was no collusion. The big thing’s collusion. Now, there’s no collusion. That means they set — it was a setup, in my opinion, and I think it’s going to come out,” Trump said.
Mueller said in his report that he could not clear the president of obstruction and cited 10 examples of Trump’s behavior that he found troubling. He Mueller noted that Justice Department policy precluded him from charging a sitting president with a crime.
The White House is lining up candidates to replace press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, CBS News has learned from two sources familiar with the process. The White House reached out to some of them Thursday, soon after the announcement that Sanders would be leaving and could begin interviews as soon as next week, the sources said.
Several sources put Melania Trump’s deputy chief of staff and communications director high on the list of potential candidates, deeming her a strong contender. Stephanie Grisham is well-respected by the first couple and has impressed the president, according to the sources. Grisham was among the staff who worked on the president’s 2016 campaign.
“The president likes her,” a former White House official told CBS News.
Grisham started as a press aide for the campaign and rose to White House deputy press secretary. She is a trusted adviser to the first lady.
Another potential candidate is Tony Sayegh, the departing assistant secretary for public affairs at the Treasury Department who is leaving his post as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s chief spokesman. He is a former Fox News and Fox Business contributor and was credited with helping the administration’s media rollout of the president’s tax cut plan.
Sayegh was feted at a farewell party Thursday night in Washington D.C. attended by White House and other administration officials including Sanders and her husband. He was seen by partygoers speaking with Sanders.
Steve Cortes, who is on the president’s Hispanic Advisory Council and is a CNN contributor, is also expected to be vetted — again — for press secretary. He has been considered for this job and other White House communications posts in the past.
While Sanders’s principal deputy press secretary, Hogan Gidley, will also be considered, some White House officials tell CBS News they believe the next press secretary likely will not be a candidate from the president’s immediate press office. Gidley may, however, be named interim press secretary.
Multiple sources say the process is fluid and several other names are also being considered.
Placards against a controversial extradition law proposal pasted on a wall near the Legislative Council complex in Hong Kong on Friday.
Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images
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Placards against a controversial extradition law proposal pasted on a wall near the Legislative Council complex in Hong Kong on Friday.
Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images
A top Hong Kong adviser says he is recommending a reevaluation of the government’s fast-track approach to a controversial extradition bill that has sparked mass protests and the territory’s worst violence in years.
Meanwhile, authorities in the city prepared for more demonstrations planned over the weekend.
In a radio call-in program on RTHK on Friday, Executive Council convener Bernard Chan, who advises Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, acknowledged that he had underestimated opposition to the measure, particularly from the business community.
“I think it is impossible to discuss [the bill] under such confrontation. It would be very difficult,” Chan said, according to The South China Morning Post.
He said he had urged the territory’s government to reevaluate the situation.
“What happened on Wednesday is saddening and is not something that we would want to see,” he said, referring to clashes between riot police and protesters who tried to storm the city’s Legislative Council to prevent further debate on the bill. More than 80 people were injured in the ensuing violence.
Executive Council convener Bernard Chan, pictured on an RTHK program in 2017, says he has urged the territory’s government to reevaluate the situation.
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Executive Council convener Bernard Chan, pictured on an RTHK program in 2017, says he has urged the territory’s government to reevaluate the situation.
Sam Tsang/South China Morning Post via Getty Images
“We indeed need to review what to do,” he said. “Our first task right now is on how to mollify the public to avoid more clashes in future.”
Earlier, Beijing-appointed Chief Executive Lam had condemned the protesters, referring to their actions as “an organized riot.”
Chan’s remarks follow a similar appeal for calm from the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, whose CEO, Shirley Yuen, issued a statement saying the local business community was “concerned about the way things are developing.”
“We call for restraint from all parties to ensure that this issue will not undermine business confidence in Hong Kong and our international reputation,” Yuen said.
By Friday afternoon, some 30,000 people had signed a petition protesting the police use of tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets to quell the protests, according to The Associated Press.
The demonstrations, which initially drew hundreds of thousands of people, are reminiscent of similar protests in Hong Kong in 2014 led by students angered over Beijing’s failure to honor a promise for a popularly elected local legislature.
The current fight over the extradition bill that would allow Hong Kong residents to be sent to mainland China to stand trial for “serious crimes” stems from fears that the law could eventually be used against Beijing’s political opponents in Hong Kong.
On Friday, the Central district around Admiralty, where the protests had been concentrated, was mostly calm, but a demonstration by mothers angry over police use of force was expected and other protests were planned for Sunday and Monday, the AP reports.
Boris Johnson is the front-runner to be the next Conservative Party leader and prime minister. The former foreign secretary is a hard-line supporter of Brexit.
Read more: https://nyti.ms/2F86bgG Subscribe: http://bit.ly/U8Ys7n More from The New York Times Video: http://nytimes.com/video ———- Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, New York Times video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world. It’s all the news that’s fit to watch.
The head of the Federal Election Commission released a statement on Thursday evening reiterating, emphatically, that foreign assistance is illegal in U.S. elections.
“Let me make something 100% clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election,“ wrote Ellen Weintraub, chairwoman of the FEC. “This is not a novel concept.“
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She also sent the statement via Twitter with the introductory line: “I would not have thought that I needed to say this.“
Weintraub‘s statement comes after President Donald Trump told ABC News that he would probably hear out opposition information offered by a foreign national if given the chance in 2020. He also said he might not tell the FBI about it, even though bureau Director Christopher Wray said such assistance would need to be reported.
Trump‘s comments garnered fierce backlash from Republicans, Democrats and former law enforcement officials, who disputed the president’s assertion that accepting opposition research from foreign sources is a common practice among members of Congress. Trump made the comments while responding to attention over his son Donald Trump Jr., who met in Trump Tower with Russian nationals offering dirt on then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
Trump told ABC News‘ George Stephanopoulos that hearing out foreign election information was not election interference, but rather “oppo research.“
Weintraub was clear in rebutting that characterization.
“Anyone who solicits or accepts foreign assistance risks being on the wrong end of a federal investigation,” she said in her statement. “Any political campaign that receives an offer of a prohibited donation from a foreign source should report that offer to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
OAKLAND, Calif. — In his office overlooking downtown Toronto in January 2015, Masai Ujiri, then the general manager of a surprising 24-9 Toronto Raptors team, looked back on an unlikely 13-month rise that began with the trade of Rudy Gay to the Sacramento Kings in late December 2013 — when the Raptors were just 7-12.
“We made the Rudy trade to see where we would be,” Ujiri said then. “Are we gonna break it all down? That’s where luck comes in. We all walk around thinking we’re geniuses, but in this business, you need that Lady Luck.”
It was a somewhat unexpected admission, even if Ujiri was only admitting the obvious: The Raptors traded Gay (and five months earlier, former No. 1 pick Andrea Bargnani) to open a path toward a total rebuild. It helped that Andrew Wiggins, then considered the greatest Canadian prospect ever, loomed as the prize atop the 2014 draft.
Kyle Lowry would go next — probably to the always-thirsty New York Knicks. The deal died just before the finish line. Meanwhile, the Raptors discovered the Gay trade had supplied them with a viable bench in Greivis Vasquez, Patrick Patterson, John Salmons and Chuck Hayes.
They started winning. They kept winning.
“You can sink and drown, or you can float,” DeMar DeRozan told ESPN three weeks after the Gay deal. “And we out here like Michael Phelps.”
Most championship teams have clear through lines that trace their journey to the top: They draft a foundational player that defines everything that comes next, or acquire one who agrees before stepping in the door to stay for a long time.
The Raptors have neither. There is no apparent modern precedent for a team trading for its only top-five player in a walk year — without free agency matching rights, without signing said player to an extension as part of the trade — and having that player lead the team to a title that same year. Toronto may be the most unconventionally constructed championship team in basketball history, and its six-game win over Golden State has insiders across the league asking: Is there anything we can learn? Can we replicate what Toronto just did?
Toronto traded a protected first-round pick for Lowry — believed to be the first reverse-protected pick in NBA history — after missing out on Steve Nash in July 2012. Toronto’s analytics group told higher-ups their numbers indicated Lowry was a top-10 point guard hiding in plain sight. He became much more. He also spent part of his first season in Toronto backing up Jose Calderon — a development that caused minor tension between Dwane Casey, then the team’s coach, and Bryan Colangelo, Ujiri’s predecessor.
Six years later, Lowry is an unlikely tentpole of an unlikely champion. The Raptors look like proof of the value in staying good — proof that tearing down isn’t the only way to go from 50-win playoff also-ran to champion. Most contenders who fall short year after year eventually peter out and break up; the Indiana Pacers and LA Clippers of this decade stand as perhaps the best recent examples, but they have antecedents across the NBA landscape.
There are rare teams that remain competitive, tinker around their best player, and finally break through. The 2011 Dallas Mavericks come to mind, but they are more conventional than these Raptors in that they got their keystone — Dirk Nowitzki — in the draft and simply kept him. Dallas also de-emphasized the draft in favor of chasing aging stars and splashy veterans. Toronto mined the draft and the fringes of the NBA to fatten its asset base so that when a superstar became available, they could strike. They are not so different from the Houston Rockets — their partners in that Lowry trade.
Houston avoided a teardown after the Tracy McGrady/Yao Ming foundation ran its course. The Rockets dealt Lowry because they felt another first-round pick would be a more valuable trade chip in pursuit of a star; they included that pick in the deal that got them James Harden. They just haven’t busted through yet. (Harden was in the final year of his contract at the time, but he was set to be a restricted free agent — meaning the Rockets would hold matching rights in the event Harden hit the market. He never did.)
Much has been made of Toronto having zero lottery picks left on its roster, but they used their lottery picks in that asset-accumulation mode. Bargnani became Jakob Poeltl (thanks, Knicks!), who became an important piece in the Kawhi Leonard trade, along with DeRozan, a former No. 9 pick. Jonas Valanciunas, the No. 5 pick in 2011, became the centerpiece of the Marc Gasol deal — Toronto’s version of the 2004 Detroit Pistons’ (perhaps the Raptors’ closest analog as a convention-busting champion) Rasheed Wallace acquisition.
(Lowry in this analogy is Chauncey Billups — the late-blooming star point guard. The Pistons even moved on from an accomplished coach in Rick Carlisle the year before their title run, and hired Larry Brown — just as Toronto fired Casey and replaced him with Nick Nurse.)
Delon Wright, the 20th pick in 2015, was a key part of the Gasol trade, too. Terrence Ross, the No. 8 pick in 2012, turned into Serge Ibaka. Toronto had to include another first-round pick in that deal, but those are the minor risks you can take with picks when you’ve already piled up extra ones.
Ujiri somehow hoodwinked the Bucks into sending out the pick and pick rights that became OG Anunoby and Norman Powell (very good picks at Nos. 23 and 46, respectively) for one year of Vasquez. Nabbing someone as good as Pascal Siakam at No. 27 is a once-a-decade-level masterstroke. An undrafted player, Fred VanVleet, now stands as one of the league’s best reserves.
The Raptors weren’t perfect. Bruno Caboclo proved a reach. DeMarre Carroll, one of the biggest free-agent signings in franchise history, ended up costing a first-round pick to dump. Still: The bigger pre-Leonard picture of careful management over an extended timeline should be an achievable ambition.
But the Raptors feel different than most of those good-but-not-good-enough predecessors. They were never as good as the best Frank Vogel-era Pacers, late-2000s Mavericks, or the Chris Paul/Blake Griffin/DeAndre Jordan Clippers. The Pacers pushed LeBron to the brink; LeBron openly mocked the Raptors, and made a habit of sweeping them. The Clippers were a borderline championship-level team stuck in a hellish conference as an unexpected dynasty rose 400 miles north.
The Raptors made the Eastern Conference finals in the junior varsity side once before this run, in perhaps the least inspiring fashion ever in 2016: a seven-game squeaker over the seventh-seeded Pacers that Indiana should have won, and another seven-game war of attrition against the Miami Heat in which both teams suffered major injuries. DeRozan regularly shrunk in the playoffs; Casey benched him in what ended up the final non-garbage-time fourth quarter in Toronto for both.
The Raptors were good. The culture they built during Casey’s tenure helped prepare them for this. But they were never serious good. They knew it. Ujiri spent much of the past half-decade simultaneously hunting for a starry upgrade and positioning the team to bottom out. Toronto chased Paul Millsap to close the long-term hole at power forward before settling on Ibaka when Atlanta demanded what the Raptors considered too much, sources say. They had preliminary talks about a package for Paul George that looked in broad strokes like what they ended up trading for Leonard, league sources say.
The 2017 offseason, coming after a Cavs sweep in the second round, represented a pivot point. Lowry and Ibaka were free agents. Ujiri could let them walk, trade DeRozan, and bottom out ahead of the loaded 2018 draft. But Ujiri has rarely lost players for nothing. He created a template for a new kind of sign-and-trade as GM of the Denver Nuggets when he re-signed Nene Hilario to a five-year, $67 million deal in 2011 only to trade him for a younger player at the same position (JaVale McGee) three months later.
Toronto re-signed Ibaka and Lowry to three-year deals, timing them to expire together with Valanciunas’ contract. The core had three years before detonation by default. In engineering that timeline, Ujiri delayed a rebuild so that the start of it would coincide with the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers — then considered heirs to the East — reaching their peaks; Toronto would rise again as those rivals fell. In the meantime, the Raptors could enjoy winning seasons and investigate what their players might fetch in trades.
They could never have envisioned Leonard’s relationship with the San Antonio Spurs fracturing, and an MVP candidate becoming available for a modest price. That was by far the most important step in Toronto’s journey, and the hardest for any team looking to the Raptors for guidance to replicate.
But if there is a lesson to take from Toronto’s ascendancy, it might be that the league was too risk-averse chasing Leonard. He should not have been available for DeRozan, a solid rotation big and potential low-end starter in Poeltl, and what would inevitably be a pick toward the bottom of the first round.
It’s much easier today, with Toronto atop the league, to declare other Leonard suitors — Boston, Philadelphia, and the Lakers especially — acted too cautiously. But if Leonard bolts in three weeks, everything looks different. Yes, the Raptors won with Leonard. Going all-in worked for them. That doesn’t mean it would have worked for another team.
What if Leonard’s four-bounce shot rolls out, and the Raptors lose to Philadelphia in overtime of Game 7 and bow out in the second round? What if Milwaukee sneaks out Game 3 of the conference finals in double overtime? The margins are that thin.
Toronto’s prolonged pretty goodness worked to insulate them from the downside those other teams faced in trading for Leonard. They didn’t have a present or a future they feared trading from. They had very little they would regret having lost for nothing in the event Leonard walked away after one season. They had no prized top-five pick, and no mapped-out path toward true title contention with their pre-Leonard group. It’s hard to remember now, but a year ago, Anunoby probably had as much trade value as Siakam — and maybe more.
They also had no cap space to lure Leonard in free agency. The Lakers did. Los Angeles brass had to ask themselves whether it was worth trading young players for Leonard if they could sign him outright in a year.
Philadelphia had the assets to make a play, but the Spurs wanted one of Ben Simmons or Joel Embiid, sources have said. That was a nonstarter.
If there is a team feeling Leonard regret now, it is Boston. The Celtics had the coveted young players and draft picks to outbid Toronto. Boston larded up its offer with draft picks, but declined to include Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown without gaining more assurance than was possible about Leonard’s health and interest in re-signing, sources said at the time of the trade.
Boston’s fretful waffling was understandable in the moment. Brown appeared on track to be an All-Star. Maybe more important, Boston believed it had a championship team already. They had just taken LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers to Game 7 without Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. Was it worth trading a key piece of what appeared then to be both a championship present and future to rent Leonard and watch him leave?
(It is incredible how much has changed for Boston in the past calendar year — how many things went wrong, how many carefully laid plans appear in jeopardy.)
Acquiring Leonard also would have left Boston with four max-salary players in Irving, Hayward, Leonard and Al Horford — untenable for long. Boston was saving its chips for Anthony Davis. Everyone around the league — including the Raptors — wondered if Leonard’s health would ever allow him to be the player he was in 2017.
In retrospect, Boston was both too cautious and too optimistic about its existing core. (I was, too, by the way. Speaking of thin margins: A lot of us got so wrapped up in Boston pushing Cleveland to seven that we breezed past the fact that a middling Milwaukee team had done the same to the Celtics two rounds earlier.)
If you have a chance to win the title and a healthy culture, believe in that culture enough to take a risk that meaningfully boosts those title chances — even for just one season. Every chance is precious. Even teams that appear set up to contend for five or 10 years are delicate organisms. Lesson learned.
Toronto had no such concerns. Acquiring Leonard at this price was almost risk-free. In the afterglow of a title, including Anunoby — something Toronto refused, sources say — looks like a no-brainer too.
Including Siakam would have hurt more than almost anyone anticipated (even those of us who hopped on the Siakam bandwagon when it was still in the parking lot). “Obviously there were a lot of talks and a lot of names thrown out there,” Siakam said. “I definitely thought [being traded] was a possibility.”
The Raptors had the leverage to say no on both Anunoby and Siakam. That speaks to how little leverage San Antonio had — or created — in dealing Leonard. It really did take a perfect storm for Toronto to acquire Leonard at this price.
They deserve credit for pouncing. Not every team would have traded a beloved homegrown All-Star for a superstar who signaled no interest in joining — even if the cold analytical terms appeared a home run. Fewer still would have had the assets to dangle in deals for Ibaka, Leonard and Gasol.
Nabbing Leonard in this manner was the game-changing move that turned an artful holding pattern into a championship — and the hardest for would-be followers to duplicate. In its rarity, the trade marks a fitting endpoint for the most unlikely championship construction project in NBA history.
The US military said that the USS Bainbridge remains in contact with one of the vessels attacked this morning and “is the on-scene US command authority.”
“No interference with USS Bainbridge, or its mission, will be tolerated,” Lt. Col. Earl Brown, a spokesperson for US Central Command, said in a statement today.
A US official told CNN that multiple small Iranian boats have entered the area and the US is monitoring their activity.
The USS Mason is headed to the scene to provide additional assistance.
43 crew members were evacuated from Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous and Norwegian-owned Front Altair.
The attacks occurred in the Strait of Hormuz, a known chokepoint for the 40% of the global oil supply that travels through the strait.
Last month in the region, four oil tankers were attacked with what the U.S. alleges are Iranian mines, inflaming tensions between Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said Iran was “almost certainly” responsible for the May attacks.
Thursday’s attacks coincided with a visit to Tehran by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, a diplomatic effort to ease tensions between the U.S. and Iran, according to Bloomberg. Abe has left Tehran, according to the Associated Press.
The tankers’ cargoes are reportedly safe, with no leaks or spills into the gulf.
A torpedo is reportedly the cause of the attacks, but is currently unconfirmed.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
This photo is from Iran’s state-run IRIB News Agency.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Another image of the burning tanker, by Iran’s state-run IRIB News Agency.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Yutaka Katada, president of the Japanese shipping company (which was using the Kokuka Courageous) holds a press conference in Tokyo following Thursday’s attacks.
AFP/Getty Images
International Response: Iran foreign minister, Javad Zarif, tweeted that the incident was “suspicious,” while United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres condemned the attacks, adding “If there is something the world cannot afford, it is a major confrontation in the Gulf region.” France’s foreign affairs ministry also condemned the attacks, referring to them as a “disturbing incident” and calling on “all the actors concerned, with whom we are in constant contact, to show restraint and de-escalation.”
Key Background: Trump reimposed sanctions on Iran last year after retreating from a 2015 deal designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, with a goal of forcing Iran to scale back its military program and splinter militias. Trump tightened Iran’s oil sanctions last month, putting the Middle Eastern country on the brink of severe economic hardship. According to OPEC (of which Iran is a founding member), oil accounts for 48% of Iran’s exports and was worth over $57 billion in 2017.
In an unexpected tweet on Thursday afternoon, President Trump announced that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving her post at the end of June. Who should replace her?
Well, here are four Trump supporters who would bring very different styles to the Brady Room’s podium.
First off, in the MAGA devotee category: Sebastian Gorka. With a penchant for rather hyperbolic support of the president, and rather hyperbolic disdain for Trump’s opponents, Gorka would obviously bring a smile to the president’s face. It is far less certain whether Gorka would bother engaging with White House reporters on matters of state. Instead, the former White House adviser would likely unleash the kraken (see bottom of page) or Napoleon against Trump’s inquisitors.
From the intellectual category? How about Newt Gingrich? The charismatic former House speaker is an ardent defender of the president, a silver-tongued orator, and an intellectual powerhouse. Whatever you think of Gingrich’s record or his support for Trump, you have to respect his brains. Just imagine Jim Acosta trying to get the better of Gingrich, rhetorically, poetically, or historically.
The safe bet category? It’s got to be Mick Mulvaney. The congressman turned director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau turned director of the Office of Management and Budget turned White House chief of staff would surely jump at the chance to take on yet another job. When he’s appeared at the podium in the briefing room defending White House budgets, Mulvaney has outshone the professional spokesmen next to him. The press would probably respect him.
Finally, in the practical corner: Nobody. That’s right. This White House has largely scrapped the press briefing, and Trump likes communicating directly through his tweets, so why waste taxpayer dollars on a no-show job?
Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke have all made the cut to appear in the first Democratic primary debate.
Scott Eisen; Mark Makela; Ethan Miller; Kimberly White; Kimberly White/Getty Images
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Scott Eisen; Mark Makela; Ethan Miller; Kimberly White; Kimberly White/Getty Images
Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke have all made the cut to appear in the first Democratic primary debate.
Scott Eisen; Mark Makela; Ethan Miller; Kimberly White; Kimberly White/Getty Images
The Democratic National Committee announced Thursday the list of presidential candidates who will take the stage at the first primary debates, on June 26 and 27.
To accommodate the massive field of candidates, the debates will be spread over two nights, with 10 candidates taking the stage for each two-hour debate.
Here are the candidates who the DNC said have made the cut, in alphabetical order:
Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet
Former Vice President Joe Biden*
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker*
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg*
Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro*
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
Former Maryland Rep. John Delaney
Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard*
New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand*
California Sen. Kamala Harris*
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee*
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar*
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke*
Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders*
California Rep. Eric Swalwell
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren*
Writer and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson*
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang*
In order to qualify, all candidates had to hit either a fundraising or a polling threshold. For fundraising, candidates had to have at least 65,000 donors and at least 200 donors in each of 20 states. For polling, candidates had to garner at least 1% support in at least three national or early-state polls.
Candidates marked with an asterisk (*) above met both thresholds according to the DNC.
On Friday, the DNC is set to announce which 10 candidates will take the stage on each night of the debates on June 26 and 27.
Of the 23 major candidates in the race, three did not make the first debate: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock; Miramar, Fla., Mayor Wayne Messam; and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton.
Not all of the candidates agree with the DNC’s assessment. On Thursday morning, Bullock’s campaign sent a letter to the DNC making the case that he should be in the debate.
At issue is one ABC News/Washington Post poll from February, which had Bullock registering 1% support. Bullock’s camp lists this among his qualifying poll results. And indeed, in its initial qualifying criteria, the DNC listed both ABC and Washington Post polls as qualifying polls.
The DNC recently told Politico that it would not count that poll because it asked voters whom they would support in the primary in an open-ended fashion, rather than having them pick from a list.
Bullock waited to enter the race until the Montana legislature was out of session, which also gave him less time to try to amass 65,000 donors.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Walmart Inc, Target Corp and more than 600 other companies urged U.S. President Donald Trump in a letter on Thursday to resolve the trade dispute with China, saying tariffs hurt American businesses and consumers.
This letter is the latest of many sent to the Trump administration by Tariffs Hurt the Heartland, the national campaign against tariffs supported by more than 150 trade groups representing agriculture, manufacturing, retail and tech industries.
But it is significant as U.S.-China trade tensions escalate and comes before a possible meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the June 28-29 G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Trump has said he wants to meet Xi there and will decide on whether to extend tariffs to almost all Chinese imports after that.
With less than three weeks to go before talks between Chinese and U.S. leaders, expectations for progress toward ending the trade war are low. Sources have told Reuters there has been little preparation for a meeting even as the health of the world economy is at stake.
“We remain concerned about the escalation of tit-for-tat tariffs,” the new letter sent on Thursday said. “Broadly applied tariffs are not an effective tool to change China’s unfair trade practices. Tariffs are taxes paid directly by U.S. companies … not China.”
With less than three weeks to go before proposed talks between the Chinese and U.S. leaders, expectations for progress toward ending the trade war are low. Sources have told Reuters there has been little preparation for a meeting even as the health of the world economy is at stake.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Walmart, the largest U.S. private sector employer and the world’s largest retailer, has said tariffs will increase prices for U.S. consumers.
“Trade overall has been good for Americans, good for consumers … and I realize it gets criticized at times,” Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon said last week. He urged the Trump administration focus on how trade helps a broad number of people in the country and “not just those it harms.”
Additional 25% tariffs on $300 billion in imports, on top of those already levied, would wipe out more than 2 million U.S. jobs, the letter said, citing estimates from international consultancy the Trade Partnership.
They would also add more than $2,000 in costs for the average American family of four and reduce the value of U.S. Gross Domestic Product by 1%, it said.
“An escalated trade war is not in the country’s best interest, and both sides will lose,” the letter said.
Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Richard Chang
With his declared willingness to accept help from a foreign government in an election, President Trump upended long-held views that such outside assistance is anathema in American campaigns, both because of laws prohibiting foreign contributions and widely embraced norms of fair play.
Trump blew through those notions this week, telling ABC News that if a foreign government offered him information on a political opponent, “I think I’d want to hear it.”
“It’s not an interference; they have information — I think I’d take it,” he continued. “If I thought there was something wrong, I’d go maybe to the FBI, if I thought there was something wrong.”
He added that his own FBI director, Christopher A. Wray, was “wrong” when he said during congressional testimony that campaign aides should always report offers of assistance from foreign entities to the bureau.
Trump’s comments came less than two weeks after his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said he wasn’t sure if he would report a future offer of foreign assistance to the FBI, calling questions regarding it “hypotheticals.” And Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, has been openly gathering information in recent weeks from Ukrainian officials that he says he hopes could be used in a 2020 race against former vice president Joe Biden, whose son Hunter sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
“There’s nothing illegal about it,” said Giuliani, who canceled an information-gathering trip to Kiev after public criticism. “Somebody could say it’s improper.”
Donald Trump Jr. stops to speak to reporters after meeting privately Wednesday with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
It is illegal to accept a campaign contribution from a foreign national, though there is debate over the extent to which information, rather than money, can be counted as such a contribution. It is also illegal to conspire with a foreign government to affect a U.S. election by breaking other laws, such as stealing documents or acting as an agent of a foreign government without registering with the U.S. government.
Legal experts said the attitude of Trump and his allies toward foreign election assistance could hurt national security by depriving law enforcement of tips about foreign interference in U.S. affairs — such as Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 campaign.
The president’s comments — an echo of his 2016 “Russia, are you listening?” request for help finding Hillary Clinton’s emails — could also serve as a message to foreign governments that their assistance would be welcomed, not punished, by the commander in chief, they said.
“It’s critical when any candidate receives offers of assistance from foreign powers, that they should report. If they don’t, our law enforcement and intelligence community is deprived of key leads that would help them address potential election interference,” said Jennifer Daskal, a former senior Justice Department official who now teaches law at American University.
President Trump participates in a working lunch with governors at the White House on Thursday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
On Capitol Hill, Trump’s comments drew outrage from Democrats, who called for the passage of legislation requiring candidates to report offers of foreign help in elections.
While some Republicans emphasized that they would notify the FBI if approached by foreign entities offering opposition research, they also sought to highlight the fact that Democrats financed the work of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who compiled a dossier about Trump and his alleged ties to Russia.
Candidates have historically shied away from foreign associations, governed in part by federal election law, which prohibits foreign nationals from contributing to U.S. campaigns or making election expenditures. Those restrictions are built on a long-standing principle, dating back to the country’s founding, that elections should be free from foreign influence, historians said.
George Washington, the nation’s first president, warned of the “insidious wiles of foreign influence” as he left office in 1796.
“The jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government,” he said.
Founder Alexander Hamilton was specifically worried about a foreign power’s effort to cultivate a president or other top official, warning in the Federalist Papers of “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”
While the Russian government interfered in the election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” including by breaking U.S. laws, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found, he could not establish that anyone associated with Trump criminally conspired in those efforts.
He also analyzed whether prosecutors could argue that Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer, who he was told had damaging information about Clinton, amounted to acceptance of an illegal in-kind campaign contribution.
Mueller found that a foreign entity that provided free opposition research to a campaign about an opponent could exert a “greater effect on an election, and a greater tendency to ingratiate the donor to the candidate.”
Still, Mueller wrote that no judicial decision had ever treated the “voluntary provision of uncompensated opposition research” as a thing of value akin to a campaign contribution. He said it was “uncertain” how a judge would view that contention and worried it could have free-speech implications, particularly if the information amounted to the recitation of accurate facts.
That view has been rejected by some campaign finance lawyers, who argued courts have ruled in other settings that a contribution can be a thing of intangible value rather than just money and who worried that Mueller’s analysis had opened the door to a new attitude that foreign assistance is acceptable.
“A contribution is anything of value. Opposition research is clearly something of value,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission. “If a campaign tells a foreign government it would accept opposition research they’ve gathered, it is soliciting a foreign contribution, which is illegal. If the campaign accepts the opposition research, it is accepting a prohibited foreign contribution.”
A criminal violation of the foreign contribution ban occurs when a person accepts the illegal donation “knowingly and willfully.” Mueller wrote that it would be difficult to prove that Trump Jr. took the meeting with the Russian lawyer knowing it was illegal.
Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who has advised Republican presidential campaigns, said Trump should understand that the Mueller investigation and the experience of the past two years would mean that prosecutors will assume he and his campaign aides now understand the law and would be more likely to assess that any violations of the foreign contribution ban in the future were made knowingly.
One close adviser to the White House said there were two key reasons for Trump’s comments: He would never concede that his campaign did anything wrong, and he did not want to implicitly criticize Trump Jr., who had testified on Capitol Hill that day.
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said he talked to Trump about his comments Thursday morning and told him he couldn’t take help from a foreign government. Graham said he advised Trump that he would likely get approached by other groups with information, calling it “routine.”
“We need to send clear signals here: If somebody is trying to provide you information from a foreign government, you don’t take it,” he said.
But Graham said he thought Trump had no intention of actually accepting foreign help and instead was trying to convey that he didn’t believe his son did anything wrong.
“He was trying to make a greater point inartfully,” Graham said.
Graham and other Republicans worked to pivot from Trump’s remarks to the dossier commissioned by Democrats from Steele.
“What’s most amazing about the pearl clutching over Trump’s ‘foreign oppo’ comment — we’ve got a complete paper trail of Hillary Clinton and the DNC *paying* for info from Russian agents in 2016,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) tweeted. “But that doesn’t matter, apparently. It’s only a problem when Trump is involved.”
However, it is not illegal for a campaign to pay foreigners market rate for campaign assistance, as in the Steele case. The Trump and Ted Cruz presidential campaigns had contracts with Cambridge Analytica, which has roots in the United Kingdom.
“The Trump campaign could have legally paid a foreign national to collect opposition research on Clinton. That’s why the comparison to the Clinton campaign paying Steele, a foreign national, for investigating Trump and producing the dossier fails,” Noble said.
Steele also repeatedly presented his information to the FBI, insisting that law enforcement needed to be made aware of his findings, a decision some Republicans view dubiously.
Lawrence Jacobs, an expert in presidential power at the University of Minnesota, said the idea that a presidential candidate might openly seek or accept foreign assistance “is absolutely unprecedented.”
“Usually there is a competition among presidential candidates to see who can be toughest on our adversaries,” Jacobs said. “Here, the president is openly welcoming the assistance of foreign powers.”
Still, Jacobs noted there were moments in history in which secret communications with foreign leaders may have provided a benefit to a campaign. For example, he said that there is continued suspicion that Reagan campaign officials communicated with Iranian authorities in 1980 signaling they could get a better deal if they delayed release of American hostages until Jimmy Carter left office.
Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican campaign strategist who advised five presidential campaigns, said he found Trump’s comments “mind-boggling.” In 2000, Stevens was helping run debate prep for then-candidate George W. Bush when a campaign aide for Bush’s opponent, Al Gore, anonymously received stolen internal documents from Bush’s campaign. The Gore aide immediately reported the episode to the FBI.
“They handled it completely the way you should handle it,” he said.
Stevens said he worries that Republican candidates, forced to defend Trump, will now believe they too could accept foreign assistance or benefit from stolen material.
“It’s incredibly corrosive,” he said. “I mean, if the president can do it, why can’t everyone do it?”
The US military said that the USS Bainbridge remains in contact with one of the vessels attacked this morning and “is the on-scene US command authority.”
“No interference with USS Bainbridge, or its mission, will be tolerated,” Lt. Col. Earl Brown, a spokesperson for US Central Command, said in a statement today.
A US official told CNN that multiple small Iranian boats have entered the area and the US is monitoring their activity.
The USS Mason is headed to the scene to provide additional assistance.
43 crew members were evacuated from Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous and Norwegian-owned Front Altair.
The attacks occurred in the Strait of Hormuz, a known chokepoint for the 40% of the global oil supply that travels through the strait.
Last month in the region, four oil tankers were attacked with what the U.S. alleges are Iranian mines, inflaming tensions between Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said Iran was “almost certainly” responsible for the May attacks.
Thursday’s attacks coincided with a visit to Tehran by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, a diplomatic effort to ease tensions between the U.S. and Iran, according to Bloomberg. Abe has left Tehran, according to the Associated Press.
The tankers’ cargoes are reportedly safe, with no leaks or spills into the gulf.
A torpedo is reportedly the cause of the attacks, but is currently unconfirmed.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
This photo is from Iran’s state-run IRIB News Agency.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Another image of the burning tanker, by Iran’s state-run IRIB News Agency.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Yutaka Katada, president of the Japanese shipping company (which was using the Kokuka Courageous) holds a press conference in Tokyo following Thursday’s attacks.
AFP/Getty Images
International Response: Iran foreign minister, Javad Zarif, tweeted that the incident was “suspicious,” while United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres condemned the attacks, adding “If there is something the world cannot afford, it is a major confrontation in the Gulf region.” France’s foreign affairs ministry also condemned the attacks, referring to them as a “disturbing incident” and calling on “all the actors concerned, with whom we are in constant contact, to show restraint and de-escalation.”
Key Background: Trump reimposed sanctions on Iran last year after retreating from a 2015 deal designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, with a goal of forcing Iran to scale back its military program and splinter militias. Trump tightened Iran’s oil sanctions last month, putting the Middle Eastern country on the brink of severe economic hardship. According to OPEC (of which Iran is a founding member), oil accounts for 48% of Iran’s exports and was worth over $57 billion in 2017.
In an unexpected tweet on Thursday afternoon, President Trump announced that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be leaving her post at the end of June. Who should replace her?
Well, here are four Trump supporters who would bring very different styles to the Brady Room’s podium.
First off, in the MAGA devotee category: Sebastian Gorka. With a penchant for rather hyperbolic support of the president, and rather hyperbolic disdain for Trump’s opponents, Gorka would obviously bring a smile to the president’s face. It is far less certain whether Gorka would bother engaging with White House reporters on matters of state. Instead, the former White House adviser would likely unleash the kraken (see bottom of page) or Napoleon against Trump’s inquisitors.
From the intellectual category? How about Newt Gingrich? The charismatic former House speaker is an ardent defender of the president, a silver-tongued orator, and an intellectual powerhouse. Whatever you think of Gingrich’s record or his support for Trump, you have to respect his brains. Just imagine Jim Acosta trying to get the better of Gingrich, rhetorically, poetically, or historically.
The safe bet category? It’s got to be Mick Mulvaney. The congressman turned director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau turned director of the Office of Management and Budget turned White House chief of staff would surely jump at the chance to take on yet another job. When he’s appeared at the podium in the briefing room defending White House budgets, Mulvaney has outshone the professional spokesmen next to him. The press would probably respect him.
Finally, in the practical corner: Nobody. That’s right. This White House has largely scrapped the press briefing, and Trump likes communicating directly through his tweets, so why waste taxpayer dollars on a no-show job?
Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke have all made the cut to appear in the first Democratic primary debate.
Scott Eisen; Mark Makela; Ethan Miller; Kimberly White; Kimberly White/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Scott Eisen; Mark Makela; Ethan Miller; Kimberly White; Kimberly White/Getty Images
Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke have all made the cut to appear in the first Democratic primary debate.
Scott Eisen; Mark Makela; Ethan Miller; Kimberly White; Kimberly White/Getty Images
The Democratic National Committee announced Thursday the list of presidential candidates who will take the stage at the first primary debates, on June 26 and 27.
To accommodate the massive field of candidates, the debates will be spread over two nights, with 10 candidates taking the stage for each two-hour debate.
Here are the candidates who the DNC said have made the cut, in alphabetical order:
Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet
Former Vice President Joe Biden*
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker*
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg*
Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro*
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
Former Maryland Rep. John Delaney
Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard*
New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand*
California Sen. Kamala Harris*
Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee*
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar*
Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke*
Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders*
California Rep. Eric Swalwell
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren*
Writer and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson*
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang*
In order to qualify, all candidates had to hit either a fundraising or a polling threshold. For fundraising, candidates had to have at least 65,000 donors and at least 200 donors in each of 20 states. For polling, candidates had to garner at least 1% support in at least three national or early-state polls.
Candidates marked with an asterisk (*) above met both thresholds according to the DNC.
On Friday, the DNC is set to announce which 10 candidates will take the stage on each night of the debates on June 26 and 27.
Of the 23 major candidates in the race, three did not make the first debate: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock; Miramar, Fla., Mayor Wayne Messam; and Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton.
Not all of the candidates agree with the DNC’s assessment. On Thursday morning, Bullock’s campaign sent a letter to the DNC making the case that he should be in the debate.
At issue is one ABC News/Washington Post poll from February, which had Bullock registering 1% support. Bullock’s camp lists this among his qualifying poll results. And indeed, in its initial qualifying criteria, the DNC listed both ABC and Washington Post polls as qualifying polls.
The DNC recently told Politico that it would not count that poll because it asked voters whom they would support in the primary in an open-ended fashion, rather than having them pick from a list.
Bullock waited to enter the race until the Montana legislature was out of session, which also gave him less time to try to amass 65,000 donors.
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