Trump news: President abruptly drops sanctions on Turkey, as Republicans storm impeachment hearings
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump continues to froth over the impeachment inquiry on Twitter as Laura Cooper, deputy assistant US secretary of defence for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, becomes the latest senior official to appear before the House panel on Capitol Hill to testify about the conduct of diplomatic relations with Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Bill Taylor, acting US ambassador to Ukraine, told the inquiry he was informed military aid to the country was “dependent” on president Volodymyr Zelensky agreeing to publicly announce a corruption probe into Donald Trump’s 2020 rival Joe Biden, confirming the existence of the suspected quid pro quo at the heart of the Democratic-led investigation.
Mr Biden’s polling lead in the Democratic 2020 primary race is meanwhile at its widest margin since April. The former vice president has won the support of 34 per cent of voters registered with the party, according to a new CNN survey.
There as quite a scuffle in Washington on Wednesday, however, after Republicans staged a sit in during a secured briefing as a part of the impeachment inquiry.
During that time, the Republicans reportedly ordered pizza and joked about as they successfully pulled off their publicity stunt.
Mr Trump also announced that he would be pulling back on Turkish sanctions, claiming that the cease fire his administration claims existed between Kurds and the Turkish military had succeeded.
He later claimed that the US was building a wall in Colorado, during a speech in Pittsburgh, even though the state is landlocked.
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This is what Grandma Winnie - and Ice T - think of Trump.
Here's some background from Narjas Zatat for Indy100.
In the last hour, Trump has been busy doing free publicity for conservative youth movement Turning Point USA, misspelling "students" in the course of it and inadvertently making the case for his re-enrollment in Trump University in the process.
He's also been hailing the crisis in Syria as a "Big success" without irony and attempted to turn the impeachment spotlight back towards the CIA whistleblower, whose identity is being kept secret in the interests of their safety.
Joe Biden’s polling lead in the Democratic 2020 primary race is at its widest margin since April, the former vice president having won the support of 34 per cent of voters registered with the party, according to a new CNN survey conducted by SSRS.
Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are on 19 per cent and 16 per cent respectively, while Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris have six per cent each and Amy Klobuchar and Beto O'Rourke are both on three per cent.
Trump and Giuliani's dogged and repeated atttempts to smear Biden appear to be only cementing his support among the opposition.
Alex Woodward has this.
Trump has retweeted his former acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker twice today...
... the same man who was arguing on Fox News last night that "abuse of power is not a crime".
It is of course. Impeachment was outlined in the US Constituion by the Founding Fathers specifically as a remedy to address abuses of the powers of office and violations of the public trust.
Here's how Trump has coursened the language of political debate in America in recent months, from complaining about Biden "kissing Obama's ass" to comparing his imminent impeachment to "a lynching".
A prayer gathering for the Kurdish people of Syria due to be staged at the Trump International Hotel Washington in DC has been suddenly cancelled, according to The Washington Post.
The event, "A Night of Prayer for the Kurds", was being put on by Frontier Alliance International, an evangelical Christian organisation, who were told by hotel staff that "security concerns" meant it could not go ahead.
(Zach Gibson/Getty)
“They said they’ve gotten a lot of security concerns and they couldn’t accommodate enough security,” administrator Charles Struebing told The Post. “I think it’s more related to people protesting our event than it was anything we were doing.”
Washington's police force, however, says it has not "received any information regarding potential security threats or concerns with this event" suggeting the decision must have come from management, no doubt afraid of embarrassing the president.
Trump is due to speak at a police chiefs conference in Chicago next despite repeatedly deriding the city over its record on tackling crime.
In 2017, the president tweeted a threat to "send in the Feds... [if] Chicago doesn't fix the horrible 'carnage' going on" and asked at a Florida rally: "What the hell is going on in Chicago? There are those who say that Afghanistan is safer than Chicago, OK?... You know what's wrong with Chicago? Weak, ineffective politicians."
Even before that, he drew the ire of Windy City officials when he attached 20-foot tall letters spelling "TRUMP" on the side of his Trump International Hotel and Tower, taking great pleasure when then-mayor Rahm Emanuel concluded there was nothing he could do about the letters, no matter how "architecturally tasteless" they were.
With that background in mind, the city's police superintendent Eddie Johnson has said he will snub the president's speech.
"The values of the people of Chicago are more important to him than anything that could be discussed at that speech," Johnson's spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, said of the decision.
Trump has a habit of getting on badly with Democratic local officials - think of Dayton mayor Nan Whaley or Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey - and the governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, is also pushing back against the president, telling him that her's is a "sanctuary state" and will continue to accept refugees and asylum seekers as a matter of principle, rejecting an executive order the administration issued on 26 September.
“No one chooses to be a refugee. Refugees are just like us. They have jobs and families: they are parents, brothers, sisters, best friends. They are teachers and doctors, farmers and fishers. The list goes on,” Brown said in a video response to Trump this week.
“It’s a sad day for a nation that once welcomed poor, tired and huddle masses,” she says, pointedly.
This was the seen as Laura Cooper arrived to take questions from the House impeachment team.
Trump himself is off to Pittsburgh while the Cooper deposition takes place.
Florida man Matt Gaetz and his Republican friends are at it again - "storming" the impeachment inquiry for their latest obnoxious publicity stunt.
Here's your next meme, ladies and gentlemen.
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