The Trump Card...

ATeam

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Retired Expediter
The Swamp Dwellers in the government are no different than what you find in any large organization or company. A certain segment will think the CEO is crazy, out of touch, or wrong, they they know what's best for the company and they will do whatever they can to fight it.

Agreed. The dynamic you describe exists in all large organizations. Note also that whistleblower laws and training of people to refuse illegal orders, and the ability of one branch of government to investigate and/or provide oversight of the other exist to keep the powerful people honest and accountable.
 

Ragman

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Turtle

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On a side note, Trump is celebrating Thanksgiving in Afghanistan with the troops. o_O
Pretty epic that he was able to sneak out Mar-a-Lago Wednesday night at 7:30 and the Press down there covering him didn't even know he was gone until he stepped up to the microphone at Bagram Air Base to address the troops. :cool:
 
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Ragman

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Retired Expediter
On a side note, Trump is celebrating Thanksgiving in Afghanistan with the troops. o_O
Pretty epic that he was able to sneak out Mar-a-Lago Wednesday night at 7:30 and the Press down there covering him didn't even know he was gone until he stepped up to the microphone at Bagram Air Base to address the troops. :cool:
Wow! He really is the Greatest of all Time. No other president has done something like this.
Oop's i spoke too soon.
 

Turtle

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Wow! He really is the Greatest of all Time. No other president has done something like this.
Oop's i spoke too soon.
Not really sure why you linked an article for troops on the other end not knowing about the visit, when my comment was solely about time press pool who are covering him domestically, but Okayeee.
 
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Ragman

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Not really sure why you linked an article for troops on the other end not knowing about the visit, when my comment was solely about time press pool who are covering him domestically, but Okayeee.
The fact that Blotus was able to sneak out without the press knowing. Why the fawning all over him. He has done nothing special that other Presidents haven't done.
 

Turtle

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You're not even making sense now. My comment was about Trump managing to get out of Mar-a-Lago without the press at Mar-a-Lago knowing about it. That never happened with Bush, as he took the press pool with him. The fact that the troops on the other end not knowing about it isn't unusual at all.

The press pool at Mar-a-Lago was so completely unaware the President wasn't in the building that they were doing live reports talking about how they were hoping the President to make a appearance to take some questions. In one case, Kevin Corke of Fox News was saying that very thing when he was interrupted by the Breaking News of Trump stepping up to the mic to address the troops in Bagram.

And... fawning? Over Trump? Really? A comment about the press, who's sole job is to cover the President, including his movements, didn't even know he wasn't there, is fawning over Trump? Uhm, no. If anything, I'm fawning over the epic cluelessness of the press, and of the impressive security skills of the Secret Service and the military who made it happen. There's no reason to downplay or dismiss that just because it involves the Orange Man Bad Guy.
 

coalminer

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
Pretty epic that he was able to sneak out Mar-a-Lago Wednesday night at 7:30 and the Press down there covering him didn't even know he was gone until he stepped up to the microphone at Bagram Air Base to address the troops. :cool:


Sounds like the secret service did their job well.
 
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FlyingVan

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Well done.

It's amazing what goes behind the scenes in something like this. I watched a documentary about this same thing when president Bush showed up in Iraq.

Both VC-25 were in the air making their way towards Iraq just in case there would be an issue with the one the president was on, the other one would need to be nearby to go in and get the president out. Both were identifying themselves as Gulfstream private jets talking with the air traffic control.

When they were flying over Europe somewhere, an airline pilot came over the radio and asked if that was Air Force One up there, when they saw one of the VC-25. At that point they were ready to scrap the plan and return to the US. But the air traffic controller responded that the pilot must be mistaken, it is a private jet, not Air Force One. The airline pilot acknowledged and nobody else said anything about it any more. They decided to continue.

Another interesting issue was when the second VC-25 went to land in a neighboring country. All on the plane were risking arrest. They expected to see a Gulfstream and all of a sudden a Boeing 747 shows up. But they managed to convince the locals to service the plane, fuel it up and get it ready at a moment's notice to go to Iraq to rescue the president. Thankfully the second plane wasn't needed. The one that took the president in took him out without issue. When leaving Iraq, nobody on the plane relaxed until they were out of range.

Interesting stuff. I recommend watching the documentary if it still can be found on YouTube.

Sent from my moto g(7) using Tapatalk
 

Turtle

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Inside President Trump's secret trip to Afghanistan https://www.foxnews.com/politics/inside-president-trumps-secret-trip-to-afghanistan
Here's the personal, first-hand account of Kristen Fisher, the only reporter who flew down to Florida in the undisclosed plane that picked up the President, and then flew back to Andrews for the trip.

On a side note, which I think is very kewl both of Kristen's parents were astronauts. When Kristin was just 14 months old her mother, Dr. Anna Lee Fisher, became the first mother in space when she spent eight days aboard the Space Shuttle on STS-51-A in November, 1984. Her father, Dr. William Frederick Fisher, flew aboard STS-51-I in August, 1985.
 
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Moot

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Inside President Trump's secret trip to Afghanistan https://www.foxnews.com/politics/inside-president-trumps-secret-trip-to-afghanistan
Here's the personal, first-hand account of Kristen Fisher, the only reporter who flew down to Florida in tune undisclosed plane that picked up the President, and then flew back to Andrews for the trip.

On a side note, which I think is very keelx both of Kristen's parents were astronauts. When Kristin was just 14 months old her mother, Dr. Anna Lee Fisher, became the first mother in space when she spent eight days aboard the Space Shuttle on STS-51-A in November, 1984. Her father, Dr. William Frederick Fisher, flew aboard STS-51-I in August, 1985.
Turtle, the link you posted didn't work. I checked on Fox which had a video of sorts and lots of ads. I did find her written account of her trip. Great story!

Meet on top of a parking garage. Pack warm. Pack light.Those were my only instructions as I headed out on a top-secret Thanksgiving trip with the president of the United States.
“Are you Kristin?” said a man on top of the parking garage who looked like he was in the Secret Service, but wouldn’t confirm it. Once we were rolling to Joint Base Andrews, he hit me with the bomb that I knew was coming. “In a few minutes, I’m going to need to take all of your cell phones, iWatch, iPad, MiFi -- anything that can transmit a signal.”
I had prepared for this moment. I’d written down about a dozen phone numbers in a notebook that I never use. I scribbled out the names of people and places I might encounter without access to Google for a spell check. I printed out pages and pages of articles that might be relevant for wherever we were going. And yet, I still felt like I was giving away bodily organs as I said goodbye to my three cell phones. “Maybe a digital detox will be good for me!” I quipped, but didn’t mean it. I was really thinking about all the content-that-could-have-been for my Instagram feed.

I was still compulsively checking my pockets for my ghost phones by the time I boarded an aircraft that I can’t disclose and shook hands with people that I cannot name (not because I don’t want to name them, but because most of them wouldn’t tell me their names). Someone asked me if I’d brought food. No. Someone else asked if I brought ear protection. Definitely no. Someone else told me that if I need to use the restroom, use the aircraft’s built-in restroom and not the moderately fancy port-a-potty that had been brought in for the VIPs we were picking up. Noted.

After a two-hour flight to an undisclosed airport in Florida, I was instructed to move up to the cockpit. “The boss is coming.” The move was meant to give the president and the handful of senior advisers traveling with him some privacy from the only member of the press on the plane. But shortly after boarding, President Trump climbed into the cockpit and said, “Where’s the press?” We shook hands and he asked if I was going “all the way.” Yes but, all the way ... where?
Suddenly, there was a pesky dividing wall between us. The president was taking a seat behind the pilot, while I was getting strapped into a seat facing the opposite direction with no way to see or hear the commander-in-chief. I strained my neck as far as the restraints would let me, to the point one crew member told me, “Don’t worry, we’ll let you look out the window after takeoff when the president leaves.” Wait, he’s staying in the cockpit for takeoff? The crew member nodded like he too couldn’t believe it.
I later learned that the crew had no idea who they would be transporting that day until mere hours before the flight. Imagine being that pilot. You wake up one morning having no idea that a few hours later the president of the United States will be sitting behind you, watching your every move as you help him secretly escape from Mar-a-Lago?
When we landed back at Joint Base Andrews, I learned I wasn’t the only one going through communication withdrawals. The highly wired West Wing staffers were too.
Dan Scavino, the White House director of social media, seemed particularly jittery. As for the tweeter-in-chief, the White House scheduled pre-planned tweets to be sent from the president’s Twitter account during the many hours that he was in the dark.

I scoured the tarmac for the bright lights that usually shine on Air Force One before departure, but didn’t see any. After a short drive, we pulled up to a large hangar with Air Force One hidden inside. I’d never been on the plane before and I was trying to savor the moment, but the rest of the White House press corps was already on board and they were peppering me with questions about the secret flight from Florida before I even found my seat. They’re a feisty bunch and one of the best parts of every trip is getting to know the other journalists that cover this beat.

We all had fears that the embargo would be broken before we were allowed to report on the trip. We all wanted to know when we were going to get our cell phones back. And most of all, we all wanted to know where we were going.

A few hours after the plane took off in total darkness with windows drawn and lights off, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham came to the back of the plane to brief us. “We’re going to Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan.” This would be President Trump’s second trip to a conflict zone, his first to Afghanistan. The highly clandestine nature of this trip underscored just how dangerous the country remains, 18 years after the U.S. war in Afghanistan began.
After a 13-hour flight, we descended in total darkness – lights off, windows drawn – and touched down on a pitch-black tarmac. As I stepped off the plane, I tried to take a second to soak it in. This is a country I’ve always wanted to come to. When I first met my future mother-in-law 10 years ago, I told her, much to my future husband’s horror, that my dream was to be a war correspondent in Afghanistan. Dreams change, but the desire to visit this country has not. I’d only be getting about three hours on the ground at night due to security concerns, but I was thrilled to be here. I spotted two surveillance blimps in the sky above Air Force One. I smelled the wood (and garbage) that often burns on base. And then, we were off.

It was quite possibly the fastest three-and-a-half hours of my life. The 13 reporters and photographers on the trip were raced from place to place. First, to a dining facility decked out in Thanksgiving decorations to watch President Trump serve turkey to the troops; then, a hastily arranged bilateral meeting with the president of Afghanistan, who had been informed of this trip only a few hours earlier due to, once again, security concerns. At this point, the trip went from being mostly a holiday story about turkey and troops, to – in the words of another reporter - “We’re going to get some real news on this trip!”

With microphones on and shutters snapping, President Trump said, “The Taliban wants to make a deal and we are meeting with them, and we are saying there has to be a cease-fire.” It was another one of those hard-to-hear, did-he-just-say-that? moments. I followed up by asking him if this meant that the United States has officially restarted negotiations with the Taliban after he’d called the peace talks “dead” in September. The president nodded and said, “We are talking with the Taliban.”

We were still scrambling to jot down all of the newsiest bits as we were handed back our cell phones and rushed to our final stop: a massive hangar filled with hundreds of troops waiting to hear President Trump deliver a Thanksgiving address. This was also the stop where the embargo would be lifted and we would be filing our reports to let the world know what President Trump had really been up to. Everything I had been writing on my laptop, and all of the video we had been shooting, hinged on our ability to connect to whatever internet the White House advance team had set up for us. There have been problems on past trips, but this time the White House went all out to establish a full filing center. And yet … when the “Go! Go! The embargo’s been lifted” moment came, I couldn’t access my email to hit send. Gmail deemed me to be suspicious and locked me out of my account.
Time slowed. My pulse quickened. Every expletive in the world was begging to be shouted. My bosses back in D.C. and I had discussed at length this very moment. Our plan was to use my personal email because my work email required a cell phone to connect, and we weren’t supposed to get our cell phones back until after … Wait! My cell phones! After more than 24 hours without them, I’d almost forgotten that they were back in my pocket. The ghosts glowed to life and I hit send.

At the same time, my crew, Craig Savage and Ed Lewis, two of the most experienced photographers in the business, were beginning to feed their footage and all the cable networks were taking it live. We were supposed to have a full 30 minutes to feed, but we’d already been on the ground in Afghanistan longer than the Secret Service would like. “You’ve got seven minutes!” deputy White House press secretary Judd Deere shouted to the press.

Seven minutes?! This was my only window to shoot a standup, that, 'Hey-look-at-me-I’m-on-the-ground-in-Afghanistan' moment, but we still had over 30 minutes of video left to feed. The standup was dead.

Deere, who was spending his birthday dealing with our constant demands for more time, more access, more internet, had warned us that when he said go, we had to stop our fingers and feeds and move. Air Force One was not going to wait for us. I still begged for more time. “How much time do you need?” asked Deere. As much time as you can give me. “You’ve got two minutes.”

Two minutes?! We fed as much as we could, promised to feed more as soon as possible, grabbed our gear, and ran to the plane.
We were still trying to feed as Air Force One took off. I was standing in the middle of the aisle, shouting over the engines to my desk back in D.C., and marveling that no one had told me to buckle up. Sweating through my silk shirt and dusting sawdust from somewhere off my pants, I took a second to smile at the coolest Thanksgiving Day I’ll ever have.

Kristin Fisher currently serves as a Washington D.C based correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC). She joined the network in 2015.
 
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Turtle

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Turtle, the link you posted didn't work.
Sorry about that. Thanks for posting the article.

I posted the link using my phone, sourced from the Fox News app. The link doesn't even work for me now, either.
 
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davekc

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That's the whole point. It isn't whether someone else had done it, it is how it was reported. You know that because Newsweak has to fire their reporter that made a whole story about him golfing and eating turkey and he wasn't even in Florida. Smdh.
 
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davekc

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I don't know that translates into knowing someone? Kind of like meeting another expediter in a truck stop. You can meet and chat, but do you really know each other?
 
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Ragman

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
I don't know that translates into knowing someone? Kind of like meeting another expediter in a truck stop. You can meet and chat, but do you really know each other?
He said they never met.
Clearly, they met.
 

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
Another way to get the gist of the impeachment inquiry report is to read the section headings. They are:

I. The President's Misconduct: The President Conditioned a White House Meeting and Military Aid to Ukraine on a Public Announcement of Investigations Beneficial to his Reelection Campaign
II. The President's Obstruction of the House of Representatives' Impeachment Inquiry: The President Obstructed the Impeachment Inquiry by Instructing Witnesses and Agencies to Ignore Subpoenas for Documents and Testimony
 
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