Midnight Of The Day!

by Noah

Leave it to Traitor Don to turn 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into East Berlin. With his love of all things Russia, it fits. What's next? Guard towers, barbed wire, and landmines? Maybe a giant, 200 foot statue of Dear Leader designed to loom over the White House and everything it once stood for? These things are all part of the authoritarian dictatorship dreams indulged in (and very rapidly becoming horrific reality) by the people who currently infest the White House. Unlike the Saddam Hussein imitator that lives in that house, the picture doesn't lie. This is a monument to the Republican Party 2020.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Remember going to the movies? Saturday at the movies? That's sooo pre-COVID-19! Yeah, I know there's some Drive-In places but going out to see a new movie is pretty risky now, even if you can find one. Fear not, though. The movie depicted in tonight's meme is playing on your TV, 24 hours a day! Complete with corporate sponsors!

Traitor In The White House? Or Just A Doofus?

A new Ipsos poll released by Reuters shows Trump losing badly, with just 38% of registered voters saying they intend to back him in November. Not exactly newsworthy. But what is is how undecideds and third-party backers split.

Reuters/Ipsos polling in 2016 found that support was evenly split that summer between Trump and then Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton among registered voters who had not backed a major party candidate. On Election Day, Trump won a majority of voters who said they decided in the final week.

This year, the poll found that 61% of undecided or third-party registered voters said they would support Biden if they had to choose, while 39% would vote for Trump.

Seventy percent of undecided or third-party registered voters say they disapprove of Trump’s performance in office and the same number said they think the country is headed on the wrong track. And 62% said they thought the U.S. economy was headed in the wrong direction.

Trump's response has been desperate, all about deceitful fear-mongering-- and dangerous for national unity, willing to rip apart the fabric of the country to try to persuade a few voters that Biden is an anarchist-backing socialist.




Yesterday, on Joe Madison's Sirius XM morning show, Bobby Rush (D-IL) responded to a question about Department iff Homeland Security thugs occupying Portland by telling Madison he believes Trump's reelection gameplay is "to instigate a race war. He wants to have black folks fighting white folks. So he can rise up and say, 'I'm the real Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan and I'm the President. Re-elect me. That's what he's trying to do. He's trying to play to the fears, to the racial animus that exists among certain white people, and he will do everything and anything to do that, because he wants to be re-elected at all costs."

A day earlier Peter Wehner penned an essay for The Atlantic, Donald Trump is a Broken Man that everyone should read, especially people who missed the disastrous Fox News interview Trump did with Chris Wallace last Sunday. "At the conclusion of the interview," Wehner wrote, "Wallace asked Trump how he will regard his years as president. 'I think I was very unfairly treated,' Trump responded. 'From before I even won, I was under investigation by a bunch of thieves, crooks. It was an illegal investigation.' When Wallace interrupted, trying to get Trump to focus on the positive achievements of his presidency-- 'What about the good parts, sir?'-- Trump brushed the question aside, responding, 'Russia, Russia, Russia.' The president then complained about the Flynn investigation, the 'Russia hoax,' the 'Mueller scam' and the recusal by his then–attorney general, Jeff Sessions. ('Now I feel good because he lost overwhelmingly in the great state of Alabama,' Trump said about the first senator to endorse him in the 2016 Republican primary.)" What a small, sick, ugly man!

Trump is a psychologically broken, embittered, and deeply unhappy man. He is so gripped by his grievances, such a prisoner of his resentments, that even the most benevolent question from an interviewer-- what good parts of your presidency would you like to be remembered for?-- triggered a gusher of discontent.

But the president still wasn’t done. “Here’s the bottom line,” he said. “I’ve been very unfairly treated, and I don’t say that as paranoid. I’ve been very-- everybody says it. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. But there was tremendous evidence right now as to how unfairly treated I was. President Obama and Biden spied on my campaign. It’s never happened in history. If it were the other way around, the people would be in jail for 50 years right now.”

Just in case his bitterness wasn’t coming through clearly enough, the president added this: “That would be Comey, that would be Brennan, that would be all of this-- the two lovers, Strzok and Page, they would be in jail now for many, many years. They would be in jail; it would’ve started two years ago, and they’d be there for 50 years. The fact is, they illegally spied on my campaign. Let’s see what happens. Despite that, I did more than any president in history in the first three and a half years.”

With that, the interview ended.

...The fact that he is devoid of any moral sensibilities or admirable human qualities-- self-discipline, compassion, empathy, responsibility, courage, honesty, loyalty, prudence, temperance, a desire for justice-- means he has no internal moral check; the question Is this the right thing to do? never enters his mind. As a result, he not only nurses his grievances; he acts on them. He lives to exact revenge, to watch his opponents suffer, to inflict pain against those who don’t bend before him. Even former war heroes who have died can’t escape his wrath.

So Donald Trump is a vindictive man who also happens to be commander in chief and head of the executive branch, which includes the Justice Department, and there is no one around the president who will stand up to him. He has surrounded himself with lapdogs.

But the problem doesn’t end there. In a single term, Trump has reshaped the Republican Party through and through, and his dispositional imprint on the GOP is as great as any in modern history, including Ronald Reagan’s.

...There were certainly ugly elements on the American right during the Reagan presidency, and Reagan himself was not without flaws. But as president, he set the tone, and the tone was optimism, courtliness and elegance, joie de vivre.

He has since been replaced by the crudest and cruelest man ever to be president. But not just that. One senses in Donald Trump no joy, no delight, no laughter. All the emotions that drive him are negative. There is something repugnant about Trump, yes, but there is also something quite sad about the man. He is a damaged soul.

In another time, in a different circumstance, there would perhaps be room to pity such a person. But for now, it is best for the pity to wait. There are other things to which to attend. The American public faces one great and morally urgent task above all others between now and November: to do everything in its power to remove from the presidency a self-pitying man who is shattering the nation and doesn’t even care.

Hardball by Nancy Ohanian

Another new poll just released, this one of likely Georgia voters, shows both Trump and enabler David Perdue both losing to utterly worthless Democratic candidates. Another one, by Quinnipiac of Texas voters, shows Trump losing there too! And, again, Trump's response: hideous and profoundly unpatriotic divisiveness. Ron Brownstein: "On one front, Trump is taking his confrontational approach toward big cities to an ominous new level by deploying federal law-enforcement officials to Portland and potentially other locales over the objection of local officials… On the other, Republican governors, especially but not exclusively across the Sun Belt, have repeatedly blocked mostly Democratic local leaders from locking down their communities, despite exploding caseloads in cities from Atlanta to Phoenix. The common thread in these twin confrontations is that they pit Republican officials who rely on support primarily from exurban, small-town, and rural voters against major metropolitan areas that favor Democrats. In the process, these Republicans-- Trump in particular-- may be hoping to rally their non-urban voter base by defining themselves explicitly in opposition to the cities." Trump is trying to split America while painting himself as a hero combating violent crime in fetid American cities filled with disloyal, threatening minorities.





In his new book, Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump, set for publication in late October, days before the election, historian David Rothkopf wrote how "Trump is unfit in almost every respect for the high office he holds. But what distinguishes him from every other bad leader the U.S. has had is that he has repeatedly, egregiously, betrayed his country. Regardless of how Senate Republicans have let him off the hook, the facts available to the public show that Trump has met every necessary standard to define his behavior as traitorous. He has clearly broken faith with the people of the country he was chosen to lead, starting long before he took office, then throughout his time in the White House. And we may not yet have seen the last of his crimes. But the story we know so far is so outrageous and disturbing that it raises a question that has never before been presented in American history: is the president of the United States the greatest threat this country faces in the world?"

Rothkopf concludes that Trump and his many abettors have committed the highest-level, greatest, most damaging betrayal in the history of the country-- worse than Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr and leaders of the Confederacy!

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

That's one small mask for a man. One smaller man who's trying to kill us all.

Once we found out that Trump's Moscow-based handler was paying bounties to the Taliban for the corpses of U.S. soldiers, and, it became obvious Trump didn't want to piss off his buddy Vlad, and that the whole thing didn't bother Trump or his party one bit, I guess it was inevitable that his fellow White House traitors would orchestrate a cynical photo op so their boss could pretend to give a damn about some military people. The White House aides even went for a 2-fer and convinced COVID-19's number one supporter that he should put on a mask for the cameras; 2 photo ops in one! Hence, a quickly arranged trip to nearby Walter Reed to visit some of our wounded vets. I imagine Trump's reaction upon arrival and putting on a mask for the cameras was this:

It's a tremendous thing to wear a mask. I've always said. I wore masks before anyone, that I can tell you. No one wears masks better than I wear masks. Lots of people say. Lindsey likes it. Believe me

That's great Mr. President. Now how about today you be the first to try a plastic bag.

Trump's Original Suggestions For His Garden Of American Heroes

-by Noah

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the oval office! Fortunately, we at DWT have use of alien tech which enables us to eavesdrop. Imagine our surprise when we went over our recordings and found this oval office dialog. We're proud to publish it as an exclusive. We've identified all of the participants by matching voice prints with known, public statements. Here's a portion. Enjoy!

Kellyanne Conway: Stephen Miller's on the phone for you Mr. President! (Grunt heard) Shall I take that burger tray away?

Traitor Don: Stephen! How was that late night rally you organized in Alabama this weekend? How'd it go?

Stephen Miller: Great attendance, Mr. President. Big numbers and none of that social distancing crap. Although, ha ha, everyone wore a mask, er, hood!

Traitor Don: Heh. Heh. Now that's great to hear. I've got some names for that Garden of American Heroes thing. Tell me what you think. Here goes. Me first. Biggest statue. Lots of hair. Then, I've got George Wallace, Limbaugh, Carlson, James Earl Ray... Vlad wants to be included so he's on. He's almost an American anyway and he's my hero! He has a nice idea for a monument to our partnership. He suggested the Rosenbergs so I've got them too. Not sure who they are but friends of Vlad are friends of mine! I've got Robert E. Lee, and Bull Connor, all four of those Minneapolis cops, real heroes those guys... We should invite them to the convention. They could do reenactments! Wow, wouldn't that be a great idea for a statue? And I see a statue of Wallace standing in a doorway. Conner has a firehose on full! It could be a fountain! With orangey lights! James Earl Ray taking aim! Maybe we could have a kind of booth at my garden where my fans get to shoot at a stand up of MLK on a balcony. My voters would love it. We could even sell red rifles and red bullets with MAGA on them! I've, this'll make you happy too, Stephen, Nathan Bedford Forest. My father told me all about him. He was dad's idol. Maybe we should put my dad on the list. There's no me without him! Lindsey Graham wants to be on the list but I don't know. You know...

Stephen Miller: Yeah, we'll never get the LGBTQ community vote anyway. Who else?

Traitor Don: J. Edgar!

Stephen Miller: No. Uh, a, same as...

Traitor Don: (Sputters) Really? You mean?

Kellyanne Conway: (Laughs) No way!

Traitor Don: But the FBI building is named after him! Damn, maybe that's why... Hey, how 'bout Timothy McVeigh? Now there's a great man who knew how to make a statement. Great ratings!

Stephen Miller: Could be. Something wrong about that place. Is Joe McCarthy on the list?

Traitor Don: Good one, Stephen. That's why I keep you around.

Stephen Miller: Strom Thurmond?

Traitor Don: Wasn't he a Democrat? No Democrats! None!

Stephen Miller: He was but he switched to our side when the Dems went soft on racism in the 60s. Don't worry he was always one of us. You need to add Hiram Wesley Evans, special favorite of mine! We could sell copies of The Rising Storm at the gift shop. And don't forget Q.

Traitor Don: Oh, OK. What about Wernher Von Braun. He was one of Adolf's boys... Space Force! Space Force! Space Force! Yay, Space Force! (Door heard opening and closing) Mikey! Just in time. Space Force! I'm on the phone here with Stephen. We're putting a list of great names for my American Heroes garden. Wernher Von Braun is on it.

Mike Pence: Who?

Traitor Don: Wernher Von Braun. The rocket guy!

Mike Pence: Oooh, I love rocket guys!

Stephen Miller: Get that idiot queer out of your office. He gives me the creeps.

Kellyanne Conway: We could have a Tomb Of The Unknown Anti-Semite.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The president does read and he also consumes intelligence verbally. This president, I'll tell you, is the most informed person on planet Earth.

- White House Press Secretary Kayleigh "Baghdad Barbie" McEnany

Imagine if JFK had told Nikita Khrushchev that he was fine, very fine, with the Russian missiles being installed in Cuba back in '62. Suppose JFK had a cozy relationship with Khrushchev at the same time. Imagine if JFK had done nothing. You might not be reading this. I might not be writing this. You might not have even been born.

Here we are, 4th of July weekend 58 years later, and this time we have a traitor for a president, not that it's any surprise. Anyone with eyes, ears, and a functioning brain could see that back in 2016; Russia if you're listening and all that. Who's your daddy, Donnie? Who's your Daddy? 62,000,000 people who call themselves Americans had no problem with any of it, just like they had no problem with so much else. Don't expect people like that to change come November.

The waves of denials and made up stories from the West Wing of The Kremlin at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue just keep on coming and each one, in turn, gets destroyed and buried by the subsequent disclosures from reporters, investigators, and, most important of all, true patriots working in our government who know a clear and present danger when they see it. Bounty stories? What bounty stories? First Traitor Don said "no one told me." He didn't know just like he didn't know he was tweeting a White Power video to the world on the same weekend.

Then it was revealed that the White House knew 3 months ago. And then it was 1 whole year before that! Then we heard that National Security Advisor John Bolton didn't tell Traitor Don and next we heard that several of those near Bolton say Bolton did tell him of the threat; the threat Secretary of State Mike Pompeo now claims is "nothing new" to anyone. Nothing new? How about that we have a president that does whatever the head of our nation's adversary tells him to do? How about the fact that our Secretary of State is an apologist for this traitor as much as any bot or GRU troll? This "nothing new" was reportedly even removed from Bolton's book under the guise of "being classified" by the Kremlin White House; nothing new, common knowledge, classified Top Secret common knowledge, all of the above! Only guilt would motivate the removal of the bounty threat story from the book. It's removal connotes guilt. They didn't want the sick farcical handling of this getting out. They knew how bad it made them look, especially Traitor Don. The multiple stories and versions connote both coverup and guilt. Nothing says you're guilty quite like a tidal wave of implausible rotating explanations.

In summary, the bounty threat to our soldiers that was either deemed "nothing new" and therefore unimportant by Kremlin West, or deemed all but non-existent, was classified as a secret. The classified secret story that was unimportant was then removed from the book that does exist despite the massive efforts of Trump to edit and even prevent its publication. What else didn't make the final manuscript?

The threat of bounties against our soldiers was real. Then it wasn't real, or at least "not verified" (as if not being verified was reason enough to not let the president know). Then it was verified and in the president's daily brief. The president doesn't read but he does. The story never got to him but he's "the most informed person on planet Earth." The president wasn't briefed (why not?) and then he was. Once he was briefed, he never acted on it, never even called for sanctions on his friend in Moscow, no response of any kind at all. He then called the whole thing a hoax. Then, Putin's bank transfers to the Taliban were verified. Some hoax, eh? A hoax with a paper trail. The Kremlin White House forgot to mention that in either of the two meetings they held for selected members of Congress; one for Republicans and one for Democrats; obviously a case of two different meetings equalling two different explanations. Traitor Don still calls the whole thing a hoax even though we now know that the bounty paid by his pal Putin is $100,000 per U.S. corpse.

Yeah, yeah, I've got it Mr. President. Yeah, it's all a bigly hoax, just like Obama's birth certificate, climate change, "Russia Russia," the coronavirus, the examples of your multiple bankruptcies, your virulent racism and everything else that gets in your way. They're all bigly bigly hoaxes, tremendous hoaxes, democrat hoaxes, conspiracies against you, all pulled off by thousands if not millions of people, every one of whom can keep the secret that it's all just a bigly made up hoax.

We have a man who is the Commander-in-Chief of our soldiers who acts like this bounty story is of no importance, so he does nothing. Same with his entire administration. But, it does matter to us and it certainly matters to the families of our soldiers, living and recently killed. They want to know the truth from a Kremlin affiliate in Washington that can't even keep its stories straight from hour to hour let alone from day to day. Our Kremlin White House is a 10-year-old boy who did something very bad and can't keep his story straight.

The traitors at Kremlin West say their Dear Leader didn't know, yet the brief was widely disseminated in addition to being given to him. Showing their utter contempt for us all, they'd have us think that of all of the other traitors under Traitor Don, all of those who got the briefing, from Vice President Pence on down, of all of them, not a single one did the job they swore to do and ever told their boss. A few of them would have us believe that they all knew but all of them, every single one, was afraid to tell Trump what was on the page of paper that sat before him on his desk because they would be fired. That's a lot more than mere "dereliction of duty' as some would have us believe. They knew too much. They'd rather keep their jobs working in a den of filth than protect a country that they obviously do not see as deserving of their allegiance. Who among them deserves to not be tried for being an accomplice to treason, convicted and taken out, put against a wall (how ironic), and shot?

Again, the media and so many political hacks float the idea that it was just incompetence. It is simply not believable that every single one of those who knew the facts, verified or not, kept silent, especially in light of the fact that their boss, their boss that had the information in front of him on his desk and is in such a close relationship with Putin and flaunted it in Helsinki, that he was against sanctions of any kind against his friend, whenever he was briefed, that meets with him in secret without witnesses in, that he was trying to get him admitted to the next G7 meeting, the meeting he so wanted to hold at Mar-a-Lago so he could sponge up still more of our taxpayer dollars, that calls him on the phone to play kissy kissy who knows how many times a week. They all kept silent, everyone one of them? They did so even in light of the fact that their Dear Leader had personally invited his master, Vladimir Putin to come to Washington and walk right into the oval office. Traitor Don would still do nothing in response even if Putin brought the bodies with him and dumped them on the White House lawn. It was already bad enough that, in the first few days of his presidency, he had had a Russian spy chief into the oval office and handed him classified Israeli intelligence. Russia if you're listening? He knows they are because he's telling them and he's telling them whatever they want to know. Pick ten of our best Marines. Give him a blindfold and stuff a hamberder in his mouth.

Trump's Worst Scandal Yet-- And This Time Republicans DO Care, At Least Many Do

Bullets by Chip Proser

If, as is often said, Texas is the GOP's California, then TX-13 (Amarillo) is the Democrats' CA-12 (San Francisco). One has a PVI of R+33 and the other's is D+37. In 2016, Trump scored a nice solid 79.9% in TX-13-- but just 8.7% in CA-12. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi represents one and Mac Thornberry, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, represents the other. For that reason, it was no small matter, politically, to hear that Mac Thornberry told reporters on a Defense Writers Group conference call in a discussion of Russian bounties that "We need to get to the bottom of it and we need to do it now. Again, this week before Congress leaves on the Fourth of July."

In matters of partisan politics, Thornberry is a lockstep Republican hack. But he is serious about national security, serious about the U.S. military and his Democratic colleagues do not see him as some kind of terminally-impaired fringe nut like Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Gym Jordan (R-OH), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Jim Banks (R-IN) or Devin Nunes (R-CA). Thornberry's comments were reported Tuesday morning by Stars And Stripes in a piece by Caitin Kenney on how bipartisan and bicameral leaders of the Armed Services Committees want answers from the Pentagon and White House about reports that a Russian military intelligence group had paid bounties to kill American troops in Afghanistan. Trump is tap-dancing... desperately.

The House Armed Services Committee’s leadership has requested a briefing by the Pentagon for Monday or Tuesday on the intelligence to understand its credibility and how intelligence officials arrived at their conclusion, Thornberry said. The Pentagon had not responded to their request yet, he added.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, also said Monday that the House committee needs answers on the intelligence from the Pentagon and when it was known, in order to hold appropriate administration officials and the Russian government accountable.

“If the reports are true, that the administration knew about this Russian operation and did nothing, they have broken the trust of those who serve and the commitment to their families to ensure their loved one’s safety,” he said in a prepared statement.

A meeting about this intelligence occurred at the White House in March with President Donald Trump, according to news reports. On Sunday, Trump tweeted he and Vice President Mike Pence had not been briefed on the intelligence.

Trump later tweeted, “Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or [the vice president.] Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News.”

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday reiterated Trump’s stance that intelligence must be verified before it is brought to him.

“There are dissenting opinions within the intelligence community, and I can confirm with you right now that there is no consensus within the intelligence community on these allegations,” she told reporters during a news briefing.

McEnany also said eight members of Congress were being briefed Monday afternoon at the White House on the intelligence, but she did not say who was in attendance.

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) took to Twitter to write he had attended the White House briefing Monday and learned the New York Times “used unconfirmed [intelligence] in an ONGOING investigation into targeted killing of American soldiers.”

“Now it’s impossible to finish the investigation. All [because] the @nytimes will do anything to damage @realdonaldtrump, even if it means compromising [national] security,” he wrote.

Banks is a Navy Reserve officer who served in Afghanistan in 2014 and 2015, according to his official biography. He tweeted the alleged bounties were placed during the time he was serving in the country.

Mitchell Hailstone, Banks’ communications director, confirmed in an email that the other attendees were Republican Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Michael McCaul of Texas, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Elise Stefanik of New York, Chris Stewart of Utah, and Thornberry.

Thornberry said earlier Monday that he only knows about the intelligence from news reporting and Trump’s tweet that he was not briefed about the matter is “a very concerning statement.”

“But anything with any hint of credibility that would endanger our service members, much less put a bounty on their lives, to me should have been briefed immediately to the commander in chief and a plan to deal with that situation,” he said.

Thornberry also said he wants to know the timeline on “when we knew what” concerning the intelligence and in regard to the March briefing at the White House reported by news outlets.

“I don’t know how far this goes back, when we knew what. So, it is essential I think that Congress know it. And depending on those answers, it may be appropriate for people who should have briefed the president to be removed if they did not follow their responsibilities,” he said.

Claude Chafin, a House Armed Services Committee spokesman for Thornberry, said the congressman was briefed at the White House, though he still believes the full committee should also be briefed.

Ted Lieu (D-CA) is a senior member of both the House Judiciary Committee and the House Foreign Relations Committee-- and is a full colonel in the U.S. Air Forces Reserves. He has a way with words. Last night he told me that "Trump either knew about the Russian bounty and did nothing, or he didn't know and is criminally derelict in his duties as Commander in Chief. Either way he isn't fit for office." Right to the point-- Lieu can always be counted on the talk straight and not waffle and beat around the bush.

Mike Siegel is running for the central Texas congressional seat occupied by Trump enabler Michael McCaul. McCaul has been covering up for Trump and Siegel is talking with 10th district voters about it. "As usual," he said yesterday, "Michael McCaul is protecting Trump, issuing statements that confuse the issue and try to relieve the COMMANDER IN CHIEF from his responsibility for US troops abroad. There are only two options: Trump is terrified of Putin and took no action, or didn't read or listen to his daily briefings. Treason or incompetence. Could very well be both. Suffice to say, we need to remove Trump and his enablers as soon as humanly possible."

Georgia progressive Democrat Lisa Ring is taking on Trumpist incumbent Buddy Carter, who is helping to cover up Trump's treason. Lisa wrote that "We have a president who has taken no action after learning the Russian government paid bounties to have American servicemembers killed in Afghanistan. And we have a congressman who represents a district with four military bases who says nothing about it. As a mother of a soldier, I am appalled at our political leadership and their failure to stand up to this atrocity. Our first action should be to create an independent commission to fully investigate these deaths in order to move forward swiftly and with international support."

CNN has reported that "numerous former senior intelligence officials are pushing back on the White House denials, saying it was 'absurd,' 'ridiculous,' and 'inconceivable' that the President would not have been briefed on such critical intelligence that potentially put US soldiers in harm's way. Trump's "response has incensed former members of the intelligence community. Not only should the President have been made aware of such intelligence, they say, but the notion that the President wasn't briefed because there was a difference of opinion among intelligence agencies is 'inconceivable,' said one former senior intelligence official, especially since it involved Russia. 'That's ridiculous,' the former official said about the White House's claim, adding that it is 'hard to believe' the intelligence community shared what it was hearing about Russia with allies like the British and not at least inform the President that it was a thread they were following. A second former intelligence official called the notion that the President is not informed unless there is unanimity and 100% certainty 'absurd. You would have trouble getting unanimity on tomorrow being Tuesday,' the source told CNN on Monday." Trump and Pence were both given written reports about the bounties.

Multiple former senior intelligence officials dismissed the White House's notion that intelligence would not reach the President simply because of dissent or because it hadn't been verified.

"You don't put things in the President's daily brief only when they are completely corroborated and verified because then it is not intelligence anymore; then it's fact," David Priess, a former CIA officer during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, told CNN in an interview on Monday.

Larry Pfeiffer, former CIA chief of staff who also served as senior director of the White House Situation Room, said intelligence rarely operates in the world of black and white. Instead, agents and officials often craft "assessments with assigned levels of confidence," which are "often presented with dissenting views," said Pfeiffer.

The 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden was based on intelligence that some characterized as 50-50, Pfeiffer added.

"Presidents are briefed on credible intelligence based on the best validation of the information we can provide, said one former senior intelligence official. "It's not a Court of law, it's an intelligence briefing."

Intelligence agents constantly make analytical judgments in the absence of absolute confirmation, the official said, adding that when the lives of US service men and women may be at stake, "we have an absolute duty to warn while we are attempting to validate the quality of the reporting."

Since the intelligence failures of the Iraq War, assessments now more explicitly lay out the level of confidence that various agencies have in the intelligence being reported, said another former senior official, adding that if the President was briefed only on things that were 100% certain, "his PDB would be very thin."

Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who oversaw operations in Europe and Russia before retiring last summer, said it appeared that the Trump administration was "playing verbal gymnastics with the bounty issue" from Trump's Sunday night tweet, to McEnany's comments to the statement from Ratcliffe on Monday night.

"They are peeling back the onion, from denial to acknowledgment," said Polymeropoulos. "There seems to be little question that multiple streams of the raw intelligence was credible, with only a question of a need for further corroboration."

...Intelligence of this nature would normally be shared with top lawmakers on Capitol Hill who make up the "Gang of Eight."

On Monday, eight GOP lawmakers were briefed on the matter at the White House. Among them was Rep. Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on House Armed Services Committee, who indicated that he agreed with the idea that Trump should have been briefed, even if the intelligence was not completely verified.

"What the President and the DNI have said is that the President was not briefed, which to me is a very concerning statement," Thornberry told reporters. "Anything with any hint of credibility that would endanger our service members, much less put a bounty on their lives, to me should have been briefed immediately to the commander in chief and a plan to deal with that situation."

The US official familiar with the latest information told CNN that intelligence of this nature, with risk to US troops, should be assumed to be true until it is otherwise disproven.

Multiple former senior intelligence officials also said they were stunned that this threat had not been mentioned in intelligence products at a lower level than the PDB, which are routinely shared with oversight committees on Capitol Hill, and, at very least, the Gang of Eight.

One of those former senior intelligence officials told CNN that in a normal administration, "someone would have been ordered to get on a plane and tell the Russians to cut it out."

"That doesn't seem to have happened here. Why not? And why wasn't Congress briefed?" the official said.

A select group of Democrats is scheduled to receive a briefing from the White House on Tuesday. In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speculated as to the reason the intelligence may have been kept from Trump.

"One key question is if intelligence officials did not tell Trump about the intel that Russians offered the Taliban bounties to kill US troops because they were concerned that he would tell Putin," Pelosi said.

A senior Republican official echoed that point, telling CNN: If he wasn't briefed, why wasn't he briefed. Did his staff know he didn't want to hear anything about Russia? Is this about making a deal with the Taliban? Why do all roads lead to Russia?"

How Trump's Own Top Aides Became Convinced Trump "Posed A Danger To The National Security Of The United States" [Also: Trump's Phone Sex With Angela Merkel, Teresa May And Vlad Putin]

New polling across Europe shows that more than 60% of respondents in Germany, France, Spain, Denmark and Portugal said they had lost trust in the United States as a global leader. Negative attitudes of the US were most marked in Denmark (71%) Portugal (70%), France (68%), Germany (65%) and Spain (64%). "Trust in the US is 'broken' as a result of its handling of the health crisis and that support for the transatlantic alliance has been 'hollowed out.' Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, warned in an interview with The Guardian on Friday that the world could no longer take it for granted that America still aspires to be a global leader. The survey suggests that public opinion is already conscious of the shift." Three years of Trump and 200 years of American foreign policy objectives have been flushed down the toilet. If Putin didn't pay Trump for this directly, he was brilliant to figure out what a small investment in his "election" would result in.

I'll file Monday's blockbuster CNN report under the thick and growing file: Worst President In History. Celebrated author and America's most famous investigative journalist, Carl Bernstein, reported that Trump quickly lost the confidence of virtually every serious national security aide he hired-- from his chiefs of staff, secretaries of defense and state right on down the chain. This is how a country turns from a democratic republic to a kakastocracy. Patriots and competent serious advisors cannot last working for Trump... only caca can. One can't read Bernstein's report without coming away with the realization that Trump is entirely unfit to even be in a room where American national security was being discussed. Bernstein wrote that in hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, "Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials-- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff-- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States. The calls caused former top Trump deputies-- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials-- to conclude that the President was often 'delusional,' as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest."

Trump, he wrote "regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America's principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was 'stupid.' Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia's autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, 'great' accomplishments as President, and the 'idiocy' of his Oval Office predecessors. In his conversations with both Putin and Erdogan, Trump took special delight in trashing former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and suggested that dealing directly with him-- Trump-- would be far more fruitful than during previous administrations. 'They didn't know BS,' he said of Bush and Obama-- one of several derisive tropes the sources said he favored when discussing his predecessors with the Turkish and Russian leaders. [He] seemed to continually conflate his own personal interests-- especially for purposes of re-election and revenge against perceived critics and political enemies-- with the national interest... One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President."

The insidious effect of the conversations comes from Trump's tone, his raging outbursts at allies while fawning over authoritarian strongmen, his ignorance of history and lack of preparation as much as it does from the troubling substance, according to the sources. While in office, then- Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats expressed worry to subordinates that Trump's telephone discussions were undermining the coherent conduct of foreign relations and American objectives around the globe, one of CNN's sources said. And in recent weeks, former chief of staff Kelly has mentioned the damaging impact of the President's calls on US national security to several individuals in private.

Two sources compared many of the President's conversations with foreign leaders to Trump's recent press "briefings" on the coronavirus pandemic: free form, fact-deficient stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements based on his intuitions, guesswork, the opinions of Fox News TV hosts and social media misinformation.

In addition to Merkel and May, the sources said, Trump regularly bullied and disparaged other leaders of the western alliance during his phone conversations-- including French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison-- in the same hostile and aggressive way he discussed the coronavirus with some of America's governors.

...[H]is most vicious attacks, said the sources, were aimed at women heads of state. In conversations with both May and Merkel, the President demeaned and denigrated them in diatribes described as "near-sadistic" by one of the sources and confirmed by others. "Some of the things he said to Angela Merkel are just unbelievable: he called her 'stupid,' and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians ... He's toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with."

The calls with Putin and Erdogan were particularly egregious in terms of Trump almost never being prepared substantively and thus leaving him susceptible to being taken advantage of in various ways, according to the sources-- in part because those conversations (as with most heads of state), were almost certainly recorded by the security services and other agencies of their countries.

In his phone exchanges with Putin, the sources reported, the President talked mostly about himself, frequently in over-the-top, self-aggrandizing terms: touting his "unprecedented" success in building the US economy; asserting in derisive language how much smarter and "stronger" he is than "the imbeciles" and "weaklings" who came before him in the presidency (especially Obama); reveling in his experience running the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, and obsequiously courting Putin's admiration and approval. Putin "just outplays" him, said a high-level administration official-- comparing the Russian leader to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers. While Putin "destabilizes the West," said this source, the President of the United States "sits there and thinks he can build himself up enough as a businessman and tough guy that Putin will respect him." (At times, the Putin-Trump conversations sounded like "two guys in a steam bath," a source added.)

In numerous calls with Putin that were described to CNN, Trump left top national security aides and his chiefs of staff flabbergasted, less because of specific concessions he made than because of his manner-- inordinately solicitous of Putin's admiration and seemingly seeking his approval-- while usually ignoring substantive policy expertise and important matters on the standing bilateral agenda, including human rights; and an arms control agreement, which never got dealt with in a way that advanced shared Russian and American goals that both Putin and Trump professed to favor, CNN's sources said.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has touted the theme of "America First" as his north star in foreign policy, advancing the view that America's allies and adversaries have taken economic advantage of US goodwill in trade. And that America's closest allies need to increase their share of collective defense spending. He frequently justifies his seeming deference to Putin by arguing that Russia is a major world player and that it is in the United States' interest to have a constructive and friendly relationship-- requiring a reset with Moscow through his personal dialogue with Putin.





In separate interviews, two high-level administration officials familiar with most of the Trump-Putin calls said the President naively elevated Russia-- a second-rate totalitarian state with less than 4% of the world's GDP-- and its authoritarian leader almost to parity with the United States and its President by undermining the tougher, more realistic view of Russia expressed by the US Congress, American intelligence agencies and the long-standing post-war policy consensus of the US and its European allies. "He [Trump] gives away the advantage that was hard won in the Cold War," said one of the officials-- in part by "giving Putin and Russia a legitimacy they never had," the official said. "He's given Russia a lifeline-- because there is no doubt that they're a declining power ... He's playing with something he doesn't understand and he's giving them power that they would use [aggressively]."

Both officials cited Trump's decision to pull US troops out of Syria-- a move that benefited Turkey as well as Russia-- as perhaps the most grievous example. "He gave away the store," one of them said.

The frequency of the calls with Erdogan-- in which the Turkish president continually pressed Trump for policy concessions and other favors-- was especially worrisome to McMaster, Bolton and Kelly, the more so because of the ease with which Erdogan bypassed normal National Security Council protocols and procedures to reach the President, said two of the sources.

...The common, overwhelming dynamic that characterizes Trump's conversations with both authoritarian dictators and leaders of the world's greatest democracies is his consistent assertion of himself as the defining subject and subtext of the calls-- almost never the United States and its historic place and leadership in the world, according to sources intimately familiar with the calls.

In numerous calls with the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Australia and Canada-- America's closest allies of the past 75 years, the whole postwar era-- Trump typically established a grievance almost as a default or leitmotif of the conversation, whatever the supposed agenda, according to those sources.

"Everything was always personalized, with everybody doing terrible things to rip us off-- which meant ripping 'me'-- Trump-- off. He couldn't-- or wouldn't-- see or focus on the larger picture," said one US official.

The source cited a conspicuously demonstrable instance in which Trump resisted asking Angela Merkel (at the UK's urging) to publicly hold Russia accountable for the so-called 'Salisbury' radioactive poisonings of a former Russian spy and his daughter, in which Putin had denied any Russian involvement despite voluminous evidence to the contrary. "It took a lot of effort" to get Trump to bring up the subject, said one source. Instead of addressing Russia's responsibility for the poisonings and holding it to international account, Trump made the focus of the call-- in personally demeaning terms-- Germany's and Merkel's supposedly deadbeat approach to allied burden-sharing. Eventually, said the sources, as urged by his NSC staff, Trump at last addressed the matter of the poisonings, almost grudgingly.

"With almost every problem, all it takes [in his phone calls] is someone asking him to do something as President on behalf of the United States and he doesn't see it that way; he goes to being ripped off; he's not interested in cooperative issues or working on them together; instead he's deflecting things or pushing real issues off into a corner," said a US official.

"There was no sense of 'Team America' in the conversations," or of the United States as an historic force with certain democratic principles and leadership of the free world, said the official. "The opposite. It was like the United States had disappeared. It was always 'Just me'."

Not a mention of any of the many Trump-Netanyahu discussions. Who's covering that up... and why?

Some Dare Call It Treason

Damage Control by Nancy Ohanian

Friday, as soon as I read the NY Times piece about how Trump failed to react when he was briefed on Russia paying bounties to Afghan rebels and criminals for the deaths of U.S. soldiers, I knew Señor T was cooked. Treason doesn't fly-- not even in Wyoming, the Trumpiest state in the Union. The Washington Post, CNN and even the Wall Street Journal have all confirmed that Trump was briefed on the story (it was in his briefing book), although-- caught like a rat, he's been denying it. Nervous congressional Republicans are either hiding under their beds or issuing tepid statements calling for all the facts. Besides Liz Cheney, peeping up cautiously were French Hill (R-AR), Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Vern Buchanan (R-FL), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Rodney Davis (R-IL), but Trump knows congressional Republicans are afraid if him and will toe the party line when push comes to shove.

European intelligence agencies have also confirmed that Russia's version of the CIA-- the GRU, which is tightly controlled by Putin-- has been paying rewards for dead American and British soldiers. At first the official stand by the Trumpets Regime was that neither Trump nor Pence were briefed and knew nothing about it. Both Trump, Kayleigh McEnany, the Russian embassy in DC, the Taliban and the joke Trump and McConnell installed Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, claimed the NY Times story had no merit. Yesterday Ellen Nakashima, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter covering intelligence and national security, and John Wagner reported that Trump, who has been waffling on his story, claimed on Sunday night that the CIA didn't find the bounty story credible so never bothered telling Trump about it-- a typically Trumpian bold faced lie.

Last night the Associated Press reported that "Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans [and that] the assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019." High-level sources at the Pentagon leaked the secret report to the press.

Russian bounties offered to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from U.S. military interrogations of captured militants in recent months.

The intelligence was passed up from the U.S. Special Operations forces based in Afghanistan and led to a restricted high-level White House meeting in late March, the people said.

Traitor by Chip Proser

Trump tried distracting Republicans with one of his childish bait-and-switch tweets Sunday at 4:30 AM: "Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than the Trump Administration. With Corrupt Joe Biden & Obama, Russia had a field day, taking over important parts of Ukraine - Where’s Hunter? Probably just another phony Times hit job, just like their failed Russia Hoax. Who is their 'source'?"

Biden didn't cut Trump any slack at his virtual town hall over the weekend. Trump's response was to call Biden names and claim he didn't write his remarks himself.





Monday, The Guardian ran a Lisa O'Kelly interview with Russian-American author and journalist, Masha Gessen. She asked him, "who's worse, Putin or Trump?" He responded that "In a way, I think Trump is worse. I never thought I would hear myself say that. They share a lot of characteristics although they are temperamentally extremely different men. They both have this contempt for excellence, they both have a hatred of government, and they both have this way of campaigning against government as such, even as presidents of their respective countries. I think in the end, Putin is somewhat less cynical. He has an idea-- it is self-aggrandising and absurd on the face of it--that if he stepped away Russia would fall apart and so he has to carry this burden. And for his labours he deserves to have the yachts and the palaces and all that. But he is doing it for his country. Trump doesn’t even have that delusion. It’s all power and money in their purest form. And you could dig as deep as you want, you would never find a shred of responsibility."

She also asked "What is the most important rule for surviving autocracy?"

For the state of one’s soul, for the state of one’s mind, I think it is absolutely essential to protest and show outrage. Does that have political consequences? Not immediately and not on its own. But I think what we’re seeing in America right now is several steps on from outrage. It’s outrage, plus organising, plus sustained political activity. The big question is how sustained will it be? If it is sustained in some manner, then I think we are in a revolutionary moment. In the book I talk about how in order to actually survive Trump’s attempt at autocracy we have to give up the idea of some imaginary pre-Trumpian normalcy and commit to reinvention. And that is really what these protests are about.

I don’t think there is anyone who is involved who would say: “Oh, we just have to get rid of Trump.” These protests are about the fatal flaw at the root of this democracy and that’s a really upsetting idea for a lot of somewhat conservative commentators. But culturally and politically Americans have a story of being born of protest. These protests are calling for an American reinvention. They are protesting for a more perfect union.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Putin put contracts out on American soldiers. Once again, Trump has given Putin carte blanche. And once again, the bought and paid for (in Russian Mob/Oligarch Rubles) Republican $enators who voted not to impeach their fellow traitor have circled around Dear Leader Trump. They have embraced the stench of their fellow traitor. In fact, they obviously don't consider it a stench. To Republicans, Trump is the nicest, freshest spring day of the year and they inhale deeply. The White House staff now ludicrously claims that Trump didn't know. Really? You're on his staff and you didn't tell him about such a heinous move? Even when you knew for over 3 months? Yeah, right! Take everyone who works for Trump at the White House and put them all on trial for treason or just give them new offices at GITMO.

The Democrats? They offer some proper withering words and that is all. If Obama nodded and winked like Trump and let Putin do this, Republicans would have called a special session of Congress and Obama would have been impeached, removed from office, and executed for treason within 48 hours of the revelation. They would have dragged him down to Alabama and hung him from a tree regardless of their being on Putin's payroll. In fact, Putin would have loved it and arranged for some more cash for Moscow Mitch's coffers, with the understanding that the bounties would continue, of course.

Trump Has Covered Up Russians Paying Bounties For Dead American Soldiers

Trump has failed to protect Americans from the pandemic and yesterday it came out that he also failed to protect American soldiers stationed overseas from his Russian "allies." One would be crazy not to wonder if Trump was getting a percentage of the bounty Russia was paying the Taliban for each dead American soldier. Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt and Michael Schwitz's story in the NY Times today, Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says would be a blockbuster were it not for all the other Trump insanity clogging the news cycles.

I want you to keep in mind that at the very end of May, when he had already been briefed and when others in his Regime were proposing sanctions against Putin's government for paying for the assassinations of American soldiers, Trump was whining about wanting to invite the Russians to rejoin the G-7 (May 30).

The Times trio reported that months ago, U.S. intelligence has concluded that Russia has been offering bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan-- including targeting American troops-- amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there. The Russian GRU unit carrying out the policy-- which had to be approved by Putin personally-- " has been linked to assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe intended to destabilize the West or take revenge on turncoats."

Money has changed hands for at least of some of 20 dead Americans killed "in combat" in 2019.

The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options-- starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.

An operation to incentivize the killing of American and other NATO troops would be a significant and provocative escalation of what American and Afghan officials have said is Russian support for the Taliban, and it would be the first time the Russian spy unit was known to have orchestrated attacks on Western troops.

...While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, Mr. Trump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.

At a summit in 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Trump strongly suggested that he believed Mr. Putin’s denial that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite broad agreement within the American intelligence establishment that it did. Mr. Trump criticized a bill imposing sanctions on Russia when he signed it into law after Congress passed it by veto-proof majorities. And he has repeatedly made statements that undermined the NATO alliance as a bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe.

...[T]he intelligence had been treated as a closely held secret, but the administration expanded briefings about it this week-- including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces are among those said to have been targeted.

The intelligence assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals. The officials did not describe the mechanics of the Russian operation, such as how targets were picked or how money changed hands. It is also not clear whether Russian operatives had deployed inside Afghanistan or met with their Taliban counterparts elsewhere.

The revelations came into focus inside the Trump administration at a delicate and distracted time. Although officials collected the intelligence earlier in the year, the interagency meeting at the White House took place as the coronavirus pandemic was becoming a crisis and parts of the country were shutting down.

...Some officials have theorized that the Russians may be seeking revenge on NATO forces for a 2018 battle in Syria in which the American military killed several hundred pro-Syrian forces, including numerous Russian mercenaries, as they advanced on an American outpost. Officials have also suggested that the Russians may have been trying to derail peace talks to keep the United States bogged down in Afghanistan. But the motivation remains murky.

The officials briefed on the matter said the government had assessed the operation to be the handiwork of Unit 29155, an arm of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known widely as the G.R.U. The unit is linked to the March 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, England, of Sergei Skripal, a former G.R.U. officer who had worked for British intelligence and then defected, and his daughter.

Western intelligence officials say the unit, which has operated for more than a decade, has been charged by the Kremlin with carrying out a campaign to destabilize the West through subversion, sabotage and assassination. In addition to the 2018 poisoning, the unit was behind an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 and the poisoning of an arms manufacturer in Bulgaria a year earlier.

American intelligence officials say the G.R.U. was at the center of Moscow’s covert efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In the months before that election, American officials say, two G.R.U. cyberunits, known as 26165 and 74455, hacked into Democratic Party servers and then used WikiLeaks to publish embarrassing internal communications.

In part because those efforts were aimed at helping tilt the election in Mr. Trump’s favor, his handling of issues related to Russia and Mr. Putin has come under particular scrutiny. The special counsel investigation found that the Trump campaign welcomed Russia’s intervention and expected to benefit from it, but found insufficient evidence to establish that his associates had engaged in any criminal conspiracy with Moscow.

Operations involving Unit 29155 tend to be much more violent than those involving the cyberunits. Its officers are often decorated military veterans with years of service, in some cases dating to the Soviet Union’s failed war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Never before has the unit been accused of orchestrating attacks on Western soldiers, but officials briefed on its operations say it has been active in Afghanistan for many years.

Though Russia declared the Taliban a terrorist organization in 2003, relations between them have been warming in recent years. Taliban officials have traveled to Moscow for peace talks with other prominent Afghans, including the former president, Hamid Karzai. The talks have excluded representatives from the current Afghan government as well as anyone from the United States, and at times they have seemed to work at crosscurrents with American efforts to bring an end to the conflict.

The disclosure comes at a time when Mr. Trump has said he would invite Mr. Putin to an expanded meeting of the Group of 7 nations, but tensions between American and Russian militaries are running high.