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With recounts looming, Donald Trump adds new administration picks

[email protected] (Agencies)
November 26, 2016

Madison, Nov 26: President-elect Donald Trump pressed forward Friday with two more administration picks, as failed Green Party candidate Jill Stein took new steps to force recounts across key Midwestern battlegrounds that could complicate Trump's push for national unity.

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Stein, who earned little more than 1 percent of the national vote, formally requested a Wisconsin recount Friday afternoon, vowing to do the same in the coming days in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Wisconsin officials confirmed Friday evening they would move forward with the first presidential recount in state history. There is no evidence of election tampering in the states where Trump scored razor-thin victories, but Green Party spokesman George Martin insisted “the American public needs to have it investigated to make sure our votes count.”

“We're doing this to ensure the integrity of our system,” he said.

Trump's team ignored questions about the looming recounts. Set to assume the presidency in 55 days, he was focused instead on the daunting task of building an administration from scratch.

Gathered with family at his Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach estate for the holiday weekend, the incoming president made two senior-level staff appointments and scheduled meetings with several more prospective administration officials.

He tapped Fox News analyst Kathleen Troia “KT” McFarland to serve as deputy national security adviser and campaign attorney Donald McGahn as White House counsel. In a statement, Trump cited McFarland's “tremendous experience and innate talent” and said McGahn “has a brilliant legal mind, excellent character and a deep understanding of constitutional law.”

Having faced criticism about the inexperience of his initial picks, Trump finds in McFarland someone who previously worked under three presidents, although none since Ronald Reagan.McGahn, a veteran Republican election lawyer, served as Trump's attorney during the campaign.

Neither position requires Senate confirmation.

Trump transition spokesman Sean Spicer said the president-elect scheduled Monday meetings with eight more prospective administration hires, a group that includes several business leaders, Pennsylvania Rep. Lou Barletta, and David Clarke, the Wisconsin sheriff who is an aggressive opponent of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Facing external pressure from Stein, there were also signs of internal discord within the president-elect's small inner circle as Trump weighed his choices for secretary of state.

The options for the nation's chief diplomat include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who lacks foreign policy experience but was intensely loyal to Trump, and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who aggressively opposed Trump's candidacy but is largely regarded as more qualified.

Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway took the unusual step of shining light on the controversy over the Thanksgiving holiday, tweeting that she had been “receiving a deluge of social media & private concerns re: Romney Some Trump loyalists warn against Romney as sec of state.”

Meanwhile, Stein announced on her website she has raised enough money to fund recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and was pursuing additional funding to do the same in Michigan.

Trump's Nov. 8 victory was unexpected and historic, by some measures.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to 2 million votes. Trump scored narrow victories in key battleground states, however, giving him the necessary 270 electoral votes to assume the presidency.

He won in Pennsylvania. He won in Wisconsin, breaking a Democratic winning streak dating back 32 years. He holds a slim lead in Michigan, where a Republican presidential candidate hadn't won since 1988; The Associated Press still hasn't officially called that race.

Wisconsin, where Trump leads by little more than 22,000 votes, has never before conducted a presidential recount. It will this year, state administrator Michael Haas announced Friday, citing recount requests by Stein and independent candidate Rocky De La Fuente.

“The Commission is preparing to move forward with a statewide recount of votes for President of the United States, as requested by these candidates,” Haas said, noting that the recount is expected to be completed by the Dec. 13 federal deadline.

In Michigan, Trump's 10,704-vote lead is expected to be certified by the state elections board Monday. The deadline to ask for a recount is Wednesday.

A statewide recount would cost Stein roughly $790,000, said Fred Woodhams, a spokesman for the Michigan secretary of state. An opposing candidate would have seven days to file objections to the recount petition, after which the board would schedule a public hearing and later issue a ruling on the objections.

Trump's transition team indicated he was focused on the challenges of governing.

Since arriving at his Palm Beach estate Wednesday, they said, the president-elect has spoken to the prime ministers of Greece, Hungary and Sweden, along with the presidents of Panama and Slovenia.

He is expected to return to his New York City home on Sunday.

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News Network
July 9,2020

Washington, Jul 9: The United States recorded 55,000 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours on Wednesday (Thursday in Malaysia), a tally by Johns Hopkins University showed, bringing its total to 3,046,351 recorded infections since the pandemic began.

The country, the hardest-hit in the world, had earlier on Wednesday passed the grim milestone of three million infections. The actual number is likely far higher due to issues over getting tested in March and April.

The US also added an additional 833 virus deaths, bringing the death toll to 132,195, the Baltimore-based institution showed at 8.30pm (0030 GMT Thursday).

US President Donald Trump regularly downplays the numbers, attributing them to an increase in testing capacity during the month of June.

Coronavirus cases are surging in several southern hotspots including Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Arizona, but the pandemic has almost entirely receded from its former epicentre in New York and the north-east.

Several states have been forced to suspend their reopening processes or even reverse course, with some ordering bars to close again.

On Wednesday morning, Trump called on schools throughout the country to reopen in the fall, lashing out at his own top health agency to ease health and safety requirements aimed at slowing the spread of the virus, such as social distancing.

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News Network
July 27,2020

Tokyo, Jul 27: Gold hit an all-time high on Monday as tit-for-tat consulate closures in China and the United States rattled investors, boosting the allure of safe-haven assets, although sentiment was mixed with tech gains supporting some Asian stocks.

MSCI's ex-Japan Asia-Pacific index rose 1.3 percent as Taiwan's TSMC, Asia's third-largest company by market capitalisation, rose almost 10 percent.

The chipmaker's gains boosted other tech stocks in the region and came after rival Intel signalled it may give up manufacturing its own components due to delays in new 7-nanometer chip technology.

Also soothing sentiment, Chinese shares eked out gains after big falls late last week, with CSI300 index rising 0.5 percent.

S&P500 futures were last up 0.4 percent in choppy trade while Japan's Nikkei fell 0.5 percent, resuming trade after a long weekend and catching up with falls in global shares late last week.

Global shares had lost steam last week after Washington ordered China's consulate in Houston to close, prompting Beijing to react in kind by closing the US consulate in Chengdu.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took fresh aim at China last week, saying Washington and its allies must use "more creative and assertive ways" to press the Chinese Communist Party to change its ways.

"US President (Donald) Trump used to say China's President Xi Jinping is a great leader. But now Pompeo's wording is becoming so aggressive that markets are starting to worry about further escalation," said Norihiro Fujito, chief investment strategist at Mitsubishi Securities.

Gold rose 1.0 percent to a record high of $1,920.9 per ounce, surpassing a peak touched in September 2011, as Sino-US tensions boosted the allure of safe-haven assets, especially those not tied to any specific country.

The yellow metal is also helped by aggressive monetary easing adopted by many central banks around the world since the pandemic plunged the global economy into a recession.

Some investors fret such an unprecedented level of money-printing could eventually lead to inflation.

MORE STIMULUS

Hopes of a quick US economic recovery are fading as coronavirus infections showed few signs of slowing.

That means the economy could capitulate without fresh support from the government, with some of earlier steps such as enhanced jobless benefits due to expire this month.

Investors hope US Congress will agree on a deal before its summer recess but there are some sticking points including the size of the stimulus and enhanced unemployment benefits.

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the package will contain extended unemployment benefits with 70 percent "wage replacement".

Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, want enhanced benefits of $600 per week to be extended and look to much bigger stimulus compared with the Republicans' $1 trillion plan.

Investors are looking to corporate earnings from around the world for hints on the pace of recovery in the global economy.

"It looks like rising coronavirus cases are starting to slow down recovery in many countries," said Masahiro Ichikawa, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management.

Concerns about the US economic outlook started to weigh on the dollar, reversing its inverse correlation with the economic well-being over the past few months.

The dollar index dropped 0.3 percent to its lowest level in nearly two years.

The euro gained 0.3 percent to $1.1693, hitting a 22-month high of $1.16590 as sentiment on the common currency improved after European leaders reached a deal on a recovery fund in a major step towards more fiscal co-operation.

Against the yen, the dollar slipped 0.5 percent to 105.605 yen, a four-month low while the British pound hit a 4 1/2-month high of $1.2832.

Oil prices dipped on worries about the worsening Sino-US relations.

Brent futures fell 0.46 percent to $43.14 per barrel while US crude futures lost 0.44 percent to $41.11.

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Agencies
January 9,2020

Washington, Jan 9: The U.S. and Iran stepped back from the brink of possible war Wednesday as President Donald Trump signaled he would not retaliate militarily for Iran's missile strikes on Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops. No one was harmed in the strikes, but U.S. forces in the region remained on high alert.

Speaking from the White House, Trump seemed intent on deescalating the crisis, which spiralled after he authorized the assassination of Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani. Iran responded overnight by firing more than a dozen missiles at two installations in Iraq, its most direct assault on America since the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Trump's takeaway was that “Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world.”

The region remained on edge, however, and American troops including a quick-reaction force dispatched over the weekend were on high alert. Hours after Trump spoke, an ‘incoming’ siren went off in Baghdad's Green Zone after what seemed to be small rockets “impacted” the diplomatic area, a Western official said. There were no reports of casualties.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the overnight strike was not necessarily the totality of Iran's response. “Last night they received a slap,” Khamenei said. “These military actions are not sufficient (for revenge). What is important is that the corrupt presence of America in this region comes to an end.”

The strikes had pushed Tehran and Washington perilously close to all-out conflict and left the world waiting to see whether the American president would respond with more military force. Trump, in his nine-minute, televised address, spoke of a robust U.S. military with missiles that are “big, powerful, accurate, lethal and fast.'' But then he added: “We do not want to use it."

Iran for days had been promising to respond forcefully to Soleimani's killing, but its limited strike on two bases--one in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil and the other at Ain al-Asad in western Iraq--appeared to signal that it too was uninterested in a wider clash with the U.S. Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that the country had “concluded proportionate measures in self-defence.”

Trump said the U.S. was “ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.” That marked a sharp change in tone from his warning a day earlier that “if Iran does anything that they shouldn't be doing, they're going to be suffering the consequences, and very strongly.”

Trump opened his remarks at the White House by reiterating his promise that “Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” Iran had announced in the wake of Soleimani's killing that it would no longer comply with any of the limits on uranium enrichment in the 2015 nuclear deal crafted to keep it from building a nuclear device.

The president, who had earlier pulled the U.S. out of the deal, seized on the moment of calm to call for negotiations toward a new agreement that would do more to limit Iran's ballistic missile programmes and constrain regional proxy campaigns like those led by Soleimani.

Trump spoke of new sanctions on Iran, but it was not immediately clear what those would be.

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