Japanese Emperor Naruhito formally proclaimed his ascendancy to the throne on Tuesday in a centuries-old ceremony attended by dignitaries from more than 180 countries, pledging to fulfill his duty as a symbol of the state.

Naruhito became emperor in May in a brief, tradition-filled ceremony but Tuesday’s “Sokui no Rei” was a more elaborate ritual at the royal palace in which he officially announced his change in status to the world.

“I swear that I will act according to the constitution and fulfill my responsibility as the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people,” the 59-year-old declared, his voice slightly hoarse, in front of about 2,000 participants, including Britain’s Prince Charles.

“I sincerely hope that Japan will develop further and contribute to the friendship and peace of the international community, and to the welfare and prosperity of human beings through the people’s wisdom and ceaseless efforts.”

The first Japanese emperor born after World War Two, Naruhito acceded to the throne when his father, Akihito, became the first Japanese monarch to abdicate in two centuries after worrying that advancing age might make it hard to perform official duties.

“As he is young and energetic with outstanding leadership, I hope he’ll support the people of Japan, which has faced continuous disasters and typhoons,” said Tomoko Shirakawa, 51, who was among small groups of umbrella-clutching supporters outside the palace.

The long-planned celebrations were tempered by Typhoon Hagibis, which killed at least 80 people when it tore through Japan 10 days ago, and pouring rain on Tuesday.

A public parade was postponed until next month to allow the government to devote its attention to the typhoon clean-up, while Tuesday’s inclement weather forced the palace to scale back the number of courtiers in ancient robes taking part in the courtyard ceremony although the skies cleared as it began.

Naruhito began the day’s ceremonies by reporting his enthronement to his imperial ancestors at one of three shrines on the palace grounds, dressed in a black headdress and pure white robes with a long train borne by an attendant.

He was followed later by Empress Masako, 55, his Harvard-educated wife, dressed in 12-layered white robes and attended by two women in violet robes to arrange her train.

Tradition-bound ceremony

For the main ceremony in the Matsu-no-Ma, or Hall of Pine, the most prestigious room in the palace, Naruhito wore a traditional burnt-orange robe and headdress, as his father did nearly three decades ago.

He declared his enthronement from the “Takamikura” – a 6.5-metre (21 feet) high pavilion that weighs about 8 tones – with an ancient sword and a jewel, two of the so-called Three Sacred Treasures, placed beside him.

Together with a mirror called Yata-no-Kagami, which is kept at the Ise Grand Shrine, the holiest site in Japan’s Shinto religion, the three treasures comprise the regalia that symbolize the legitimacy of the emperor.

Masako, wearing 12-layered robes and an elaborate, upswept hairstyle, also took part, her throne smaller.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe delivered a congratulatory speech before guests including Prince Charles, who with then-wife Princess Diana attended Akihito’s enthronement, as well as US Transport Secretary Elaine Chao and Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Abe then led the assembled dignitaries in giving three “banzai” cheers for the Emperor.

Imperial family future

A court banquet is due to be held on Tuesday evening, before Naruhito and Masako host a tea party for foreign royalty on Wednesday afternoon.

While the public parade was postponed until Nov. 10, the NHK national broadcaster said there were 26,000 police providing security on Tuesday.

Naruhito is unusual among recent Japanese emperors since his only child, 17-year-old Aiko, is female and as such cannot inherit the throne. The future of the imperial family for coming generations rests instead on the shoulders of his nephew, 13-year-old Hisahito, who is second in line for the throne after his father, Prince Akishino.

Naruhito’s grandfather, Hirohito, in whose name Japanese troops fought World War Two, was treated as a god but renounced his divine status after Japan’s defeat in 1945. Emperors now have no political authority.

Though many Japanese welcomed the enthronement ceremony, some shrugged it off as a nuisance.

“There is no need for such an elaborate ceremony. Traffic has been restricted and it is causing inconvenience for ordinary people,” said Yoshikazu Arai, 74, a retired surgeon.

“The emperor is necessary now as a symbol of the people, but at some point, the emperor will no longer be necessary. Things will be just fine without an emperor.”

(Source: Reuters)

Canadians are electing a new Parliament on Monday after a tight election campaign that has raised the threat of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau being knocked from power after just one term.

The 47-year-old Trudeau channelled the star power of his father, the liberal icon and late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, when he won in 2015 but a combination of scandal and high expectations have damaged his prospects.

The Liberals and Tories went into the home stretch in a dead heat, each with about 31-32 percent support after 40 days of mudslinging.

Pollsters are predicting a minority government will result from Monday’s vote – led either by the Liberals or the Conservatives – as the smaller New Democratic Party (NDP), Green Party and Bloc Québécois have continued to chip away at the frontrunners’ leads.

Not in 84 years has a first-term Canadian prime minister with a parliamentary majority lost a bid for re-election.ADVERTISING

Trudeau reasserted liberalism in 2015 after almost 10 years of Conservative Party government in Canada, but he is one of the few remaining progressive leaders in the world. He has been viewed as a beacon for liberals south of the border in the Donald Trump era, even appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine under the headline “Why Can’t He Be Our President?”

Barack Obama✔@BarackObama

I was proud to work with Justin Trudeau as President. He’s a hard-working, effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change. The world needs his progressive leadership now, and I hope our neighbors to the north support him for another term.

Perhaps sensing Trudeau is in trouble, Barack Obama last week made an unprecedented endorsement by a former US president in urging Canadians to re-elect Trudeau, calling him an “effective leader who takes on big issues like climate change”.

“The world needs his progressive leadership now,” Obama tweeted Wednesday.

Lapses

Plagued by a blackface scandal and accused of ethics lapses in the handling of the bribery prosecution of an engineering giant, Trudeau has seen his star dim, his judgment questioned and his personal popularity slip over the past year.

He was hurt by the scandal that erupted earlier this year when his former attorney general said he pressured her to halt the prosecution of a Quebec company. Trudeau has said he was standing up for jobs, but the damage gave a boost to the Conservative Party led by Andrew Scheer.

Justin Trudeau✔@JustinTrudeau

A little rain can’t stop us! Port Moody’s ready to #ChooseForward.

No party is expected to get a majority of Parliament’s 338 seats, so a shaky alliance may be needed to pass legislation.

If it is the Conservatives who win the most seats – but not a majority – they will probably try to form a government with the backing of Quebec’s separatist Bloc Québécois. In contrast, Trudeau’s Liberals would likely rely on the NDP to stay in power.

Attack machine

Scheer, meanwhile, has struggled to convince voters to look past his dull, minivan-driving dad persona and the party’s minimalist platform to give the rookie leader a chance to govern.

Throughout the campaign, the devout Catholic father-of-five faced criticism for padding his resume and over his personal opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

A career politician who served as Canada’s youngest Speaker of the House of Commons, Scheer is described by those in his own party as bland, a possible antidote for those tired of Trudeau’s flash. The 40-year-old fiscal and moral conservative calls Trudeau a phony who can’t even recall how many times he has worn blackface.

Andrew Scheer✔@AndrewScheer

Justin Trudeau will pay any price to stay in power and he will use your money to do it.

A Trudeau-NDP coalition is a coalition you can’t afford.

I’ve spent the last 39 days talking about my plan to help you get ahead, and a Conservative government will do just that.

Conservative Jason Kenney, Alberta’s premier and a close friend of Scheer, calls the party leader “an extremely normal Canadian” who is so nice he “can’t fake being mean”.

Scheer, however, has so relentlessly attacked Trudeau that Nik Nanos, a Canadian pollster, said he hasn’t been himself.

“Scheer has been hostage to the message,” Nanos said. “His campaign has made him into an attack machine.”

Conservative supporters chanted “Lock him up! Lock him up!” at a rally Saturday after Scheer said he would investigate Trudeau’s attorney general scandal – mirroring the Hillary Clinton “Lock her up!” chant popular at Trump rallies. Scheer moved to calm the crowd and changed the chant to “Vote him out”.

Hugging refugees

Trudeau embraced immigration at a time when the US and other countries were closing their doors, even personally welcoming Syrian refugees to Canada with a hug and a gift of a parka. More than 45,000 Syrians were resettled in the country during his first term in office.

Under Trudeau’s leadership, Canada became only the second nation to legalise cannabis, held a public inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women, and passed legislation permitting medically assisted suicide.

His also negotiated a new free trade deal for Canada with the US and Mexico amid threats by President Donald Trump to scrap it.

But Trudeau’s efforts to strike a balance on the environment and the economy have been criticised by both the right and left. He brought in a carbon tax to fight climate change but rescued a stalled pipeline expansion project to get Alberta’s oil to international markets.

Scheer, for his part, is promising to end the carbon tax and cut government spending, including foreign aid, by 25 percent.

“That money belongs to you, not to them,” Scheer said.

Battleground push

Their voices hoarse, the frontrunning rivals made last, desperate pitches to undecided voters over the weekend in the key battleground provinces of British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec.

“We need a strong, progressive government that will unite Canadians and fight climate change, not a progressive opposition,” Trudeau told a rally in a suburb of Vancouver after whistle-stops in Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta.

“We need to unite as citizens. We need to unite as a planet,” the Liberal leader said.

Scheer, also crisscrossing the country over the weekend, accused the Liberals of being spendthrift, saying on Sunday in Vancouver: “The choice tomorrow is between a Liberal-NDP coalition that will run massive deficits and leave less money in your pocket or a Conservative government that will get back to balanced budgets and make life more affordable.”

“Trudeau would pay any price to stay in power and he’d use your money to do it,” he continued. “We want Canadians to send Conservative MPs to Ottawa to undo the damage that Justin Trudeau has caused.”

(FRANCE 24 with AP and AFP)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, facing the loss of his Parliamentary majority in an election next week, traded attacks with his main rival on Saturday as a bad-tempered campaign entered the last few days.

Trudeau came to power in 2015 promising “sunny ways” and a new way of doing politics but saw his popularity drop earlier this year amid an ethics scandal. Images of him in blackface emerged last month, further hurting his Liberal Party ahead of the Oct. 21 election.

The 47-year-old prime minister, his voice increasingly hoarse, said Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer would slash spending and rip up Liberal plans to fight climate change.

Polls show the Liberals and the Conservatives in a dead heat, with neither able to capture a majority of the 338 seats in the House of Commons. This would leave the winner in a vulnerable position, seeking to govern with smaller parties.

“I am very excited and confident about the choice Canadians are making,” Trudeau answered when asked if he was worried about losing. “And the question they’re facing is with that vote do we stop conservative cuts? Do we invest in our families and in our future and make life more affordable for them?” Trudeau said after a rally in a fire station in the Ontario city of Hamilton, to the west of Toronto.

In the absence of an overriding narrative, dirty tactics and awkward moments have characterized the campaign.

A Nanos Research poll for the Globe and Mail and CTV released on Saturday put the Liberals at 32.6% public support and the main official Conservatives at 30.3%. The left-leaning New Democrats, who compete for the same voters as the Liberals, were at 18.4%.

Trudeau sidestepped questions about his plans if he did not win a majority. Minority governments in Canada rarely last more than two and a half years.

Scheer, speaking at a campaign event on Saturday, said Trudeau would spend his first 100 days negotiating a coalition with the New Democrats that would impose tax hikes.

“It’s quite clear that under Justin Trudeau region has been pit against region. Justin Trudeau has divided Canadians. He’s divided provinces. He’s failed to stand up for the types of big ideas, the big projects that can bring this country together,” he said during a pit stop in North York, Ontario.

Trudeau and Scheer made multiple trips to Ontario, which accounts for 108 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons. The Liberals hold 76 of those seats.

Trudeau was scheduled to make four stops in Ontario before flying later on Saturday to the western provinces of Manitoba and Alberta, where anger against the Liberals is rising over government environmental measures that critics complain will hobble the energy industry.

(Source: Reuters)

U.S. presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders returned to the campaign trail in New York City on Saturday, three weeks after suffering a heart attack, and pledged to resume at full throttle his battle against the business and political establishment, including members of his own Democratic Party.

“I am more than ready to assume the office of President of the United States. I am more than ready to take on the greed and corruption of the corporate elite and their apologists,” Sanders told a gathering of thousands of people holding aloft placards at the Queensbridge Park.

“To put it bluntly, I am back.”

Sanders, one of 19 Democrats fighting to take on Republican President Donald Trump at the polls in November 2020 was introduced by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the leaders of the party’s progressives and a frequent target of Trump’s attacks.

The congresswoman announced her support to Sanders’ campaign as his campaign battled to overcome the health scare and a surge in support for Elizabeth Warren, a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.

Sanders, 78, the oldest candidate in the crowded Democratic field, has bounced back rapidly since the Oct. 1 heart attack that threatened to derail his campaign.

But Sanders, a U.S Senator from Vermont, was already running third behind Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden in most national polls, although Sanders raised more money for his campaign in the last quarter than any other Democrat.

The rally was Sanders’ largest of his 2020 campaign so far, with 25,872 people attending, his campaign said, citing a count by an outside company that managed the event, which Reuters was unable to independently verify.

The number would make the rally larger than one held in the city by Warren last month, Warren’s largest of the campaign.

“His supporters are so much more passionate” than other Democratic candidates, said Christina Martin, 29, from Manhattan, who came to the rally with her mother, also a Sanders supporter and a breast cancer survivor.

Both said Sanders’ proposal for government-run health care was his main draw, and credited him with focusing the Democratic Party on the issue.

“He moved the party so much in the past four years,” said Martin. “We wouldn’t be where we are without him. We wouldn’t be talking about Medicare for All.”

Endorsement

The backing of Ocasio-Cortez is expected to boost Sanders in his efforts to fight off Warren. The filmmaker Michael Moore also spoke to endorse Sanders’ campaign.

Ocasio-Cortez, better known by her initials AOC, was welcomed with chants of “Green New Deal”, a reference to her proposal for a transition to renewable energy sources that has been taken up by Sanders as part of his policy platform.

The New York native went from working as a poorly paid waitress as recently as last year to sitting in Congress, she said, crediting Sanders for her own political awakening and shaking up U.S. politics with his primary challenge of eventual nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“It wasn’t until I heard of a man by the name of Bernie Sanders that I began to question and assert and recognize my inherent value as a human being that deserves healthcare, housing, education and a living wage,” she told the rally.

Ocasio-Cortez volunteered as an organizer for Sanders’ 2016 campaign before winning her own election to the House of Representatives last year representing a district close to the site of the rally.

Progressive platform

Sanders, after taking the stage to AC/DC’s “Back in Black” song, launched into a wide ranging critique of an unequal U.S. society beset by what he described as the corrupting influence of corporate power.

He noted the park he was speaking in sat beside the country’s largest public housing project, Queensbridge Houses, which he said was in urgent need of repair, while just across the East River lay the shining skyscrapers of Manhattan, where banks and multinational corporations are headquartered.

Sanders said he would invest in public housing and education and write off medical debts, but warned that elites in politics, business and the media were working against his plans to address inequality.

“They want us to believe that the only reality that we can live under is the status quo, that real change is impossible,” said Sanders, also slamming moderate Democrats who questioned the affordability of his proposals during a debate in Ohio on Tuesday night.

He would raise taxes on the rich to pay for his plans, Sanders said, including through a wealth tax on those with a net worth of more than $32 million.

David Cobb, 61, said that, like many at the rally, he was drawn to Sanders’ by his plans for healthcare reform.

Cobb had one arm in a sling from recent shoulder surgery and clutched a “Bernie” placard under the other arm. He was accumulating thousands of dollars of medical debt, he said, despite having some coverage through the existing Medicare plan for older Americans and a health maintenance organization.

“It’s corrupt,” said Cobb. “We’re the only industrialized country in the world that’s like this.”

(REUTERS)

Former Vice President Joe Biden expanded his lead over more than a dozen other candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination this month as US House Democrats looked into allegations that President Donald Trump tried to pressure a foreign leader to investigate him, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday.

The Oct. 17-18 opinion poll found that 21% of Democrats and independents said they would vote for Biden in statewide nominating contests that begin next year, up 3 percentage points from a similar poll that was conducted at the end of September.

Democrats in the House of Representatives are holding hearings to investigate whether Trump improperly pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

The House could vote to impeach Trump later this year, which would trigger a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate where a conviction and ouster seem unlikely.

Trump denies he did anything wrong.

So far, the inquiry does not appear to have shaken up public support for Biden or the other candidates for the Democratic nomination.

According to the poll, 16% of Democrats and independents said they would support US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and 15% said they would back US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, received about 5% support in the poll, and US Senator Kamala Harris and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke both received 3%.

With less than four months to go before Iowa holds the first nomination contest, the race for the Democratic nomination remains wide open. About 1 in 5 said they remain undecided, and nearly two-thirds of Democrats and independents said they could still change their minds.

Many of the candidates, including Buttigieg, O’Rourke and Harris, are still relatively unknown to a majority of Americans, and only about 1 in 10 said they watched this week’s Democratic debate in Ohio.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the United States. It gathered responses from 1,116 adults in all, including 703 Democrats and independents. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4 percentage points.

(Source: Reuters)

US President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders cut short a meeting over Turkey’s war after the commander in chief experiences a “meltdown.”

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters Wednesday that Trump called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “third-rate politician” and as the result, the meeting in the White House deteriorated into a “diatribe.”

“What we witnessed on the part of the president was a meltdown. Sad to say,” said Pelosi, who has launched an impeachment inquiry over the Ukraine scandal.

Drew Hammill✔@Drew_Hammill

Thanks for the new cover photo @realDonaldTrump!

Hoyer blasted the president’s treatment of Pelosi, suggesting that his behavior was unprecedented.

“I’ve been in many, many, many meetings like this,” he said. “Never have I seen a president treat so disrespectfully a co-equal branch of the government of the United States.”

Trump’s spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham rejected the Democrats’ allegations.

US acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan is resigning and a new acting chief of the agency would be named next week, President Donald Trump says.

McAleenan, the fourth person to serve in the post since the Trump presidency began, submitted his resignation to the White House on Friday, the president announced on Twitter.

Trump said McAleenan, 48, who has served since April, “wants to spend more time with his family and go to the private sector.”

Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump

Kevin McAleenan has done an outstanding job as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security. We have worked well together with Border Crossings being way down. Kevin now, after many years in Government, wants to spend more time with his family and go to the private sector..

McAleenan also on Twitter addressed his departure in a statement, saying “we have made tremendous progress mitigating the border security.”

Acting Sec. Kevin McAleenan✔@DHSMcAleenan

I want to thank the President for the opportunity to serve alongside the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security. With his support, over the last 6 months, we have made tremendous progress mitigating the border security and humanitarian crisis we faced this year…

This comes a few days after McAleenan was forced to abandon a debate stage in the US capital after protesters drowned him out, condemning the crackdown on migrants and asylum seekers.

On Monday, just as McAleenan wanted to begin speaking at the event at Georgetown University in Washington, several demonstrators were standing and holding banners that read, “Stand with Immigrants.”

“When our immigrants are under attack what do we do? Stand up fight back,” the protesters chanted for several minutes.

Caravans of migrants from Central American countries have been traveling for months through various routes ending up in Mexico to reach the country’s border with the US, where they seek to apply for asylum and settle down.

However, the Trump administration has been blocking them at the border with Mexico. The Trump administration has even separated migrant children from their parents or deported those who have successfully crossed back to their home countries, where they face violence or economic difficulties

Source: Presstv

Russian and the United States have used their veto power at the United Nations Security Council to vote down a European statement against Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria.

The council held a closed meeting on Thursday to discuss Ankara’s military incursion, which began on Wednesday despite widespread warnings by world leaders.

Moscow and Washington had their own reasons to veto the statement by five European members — France, Germany, Belgium, Britain and Poland — who had called the meeting to end the bilateral military action.

In a joint statement after the discussions, the European called on Ankara “to cease the unilateral military action,” warning that the offensive threatens progress.

Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said his country would only support UNSC motions that address broader issues, including the presence of foreign forces in Syria.

US Ambassador Kelly Craft, on the other hand, told reporters that as US President Donald Trump “has made it clear” Washington does not “in any way” endorse Turkey’s actions.

Later in the day, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar spoke with his French counterpart Florence Parly, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace over phone to fill them in on the latest developments.

The UNSC meeting came a day after Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring, its third in a series of cross-border operations in northern Syria.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims that the offensive only targeted militants affiliated with Daesh as well as the Kurdish militia called People’s Protection Units (YPG) in order to establish a Turkish safe-region there.

Ankara says the YPG is effectively the military of wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The YPG also forms the backbone of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which has much of northern Syria under control.

Turkey, according of Erdogan, is trying to establish a safe zone in order to resettle millions of refugees in there.  

More civilians fall victim, Kurds push back

Meanwhile, human rights groups have been warning that a war of this scale would be deadly for civilians living in crowded cities on both sides of the border. There are also no exact data available on the real extent of the casualties.

Syrian sources reported late Thursday that at least four more Syrians were killed and four more were injured due to Turkish shelling in the border town of Ras al-Ayn.

Earlier, the SDF announced that nine more civilians had been killed in Turkish airstrikes.

Erdogan said Thursday that his country’s forces had already killed, injured or captured a total of 109 Kurdish forces. However, the SDF said the number was exaggerated.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which is based in London, said at least 16 SDF militants had been killed and dozens more injured.

The SDF announced on one of its Twitter accounts that the group had deterred Turkish forces east of the Jalab river, destroying three military vehicles and killing 22 soldiers.

In retaliation for the Turkish attacks against civilian targets, Kurdish militants fired at least three rounds into the Turkish city of Akcakale, killing two civilians.

The International Rescue Committee aid organization said at least 64,000 people had reportedly fled their homes and the number could surpass 300,000 if the offensive continued.

Turkey shells Daesh prison

Kurdish authorities have accused Turkey of attacking one of the several prisons Daesh militants are held in Qamishli in the east of the border region, in what they denounced as a “clear attempt” to help the terrorists escape.

More than 12,000 suspected Daesh militants, including many foreign nationals, are being kept in several SDF-run prisons across northern Syria. More than 58,000 of their family members live across SDF-controlled areas.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump has “betrayed” the nation and “should be impeached,” says the top Democratic hopeful for the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden, whose ties with Ukraine are at the heart of impeachment efforts in the House of Representatives.

“Donald Trump has violated his oath of office, betrayed this nation and committed impeachable acts,” Biden told a crowd of supporters in Rochester, New Hampshire, on Wednesday. “He should be impeached.”

He made the comments as the Trump administration was struggling with how to defend itself in the wake of the president’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he tied the US aid to an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter.

“The Do Nothing Democrats are Con Artists, only looking to hurt the Republican Party and President. Their total focus is 2020, nothing more, and nothing less. The good news is that WE WILL WIN,” Trump said on Twitter.

The House of Representatives has set off a spiraling impeachment inquiry in the wake of a whistleblower complaint into the phone call.

“The so-called Whistleblower, before knowing I was going to release the exact Transcript, stated that my call with the Ukrainian President was “crazy, frightening, and completely lacking in substance related to national security.” This is a very big Lie. Read the Transcript,” Trump alleged.

In an appearance on Fox News Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that he was going to ask other Senate Republicans to send a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying that they “do not believe the transcript of the phone call between the president and the Ukraine is an impeachable offense.”

“They’re about to destroy the nation for no good reason,” Graham said. “And I want Nancy Pelosi to know that Republican senators are not going to impeach this president based on this transcript, so she can stop now before she destroys the country.”

Trump himself stressed the transcript on Twitter, asserting that Democrats should apologize.

“No Pressure at all said Ukraine! Very congenial, a perfect call. The Whistleblower and others spoke BEFORE seeing the Transcript. Now they must apologize to me and stop this ridiculous impeachment,” said the president.

The White House has also announced that it would not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.

“Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the executive branch cannot be expected to participate in it,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in a letter to Pelosi (and the three House committee chairmen leading the impeachment inquiry.

Source: Presstv

American former General Colin Powell says the Republican Party “needs to get a grip on itself” amid the Ukraine scandal engulfing the administration of US President Donald Trump.

“The Republican party has got to get a grip on itself,” Powell told a crowd at The Jefferson Series, an event in New Albany, Ohio, on Monday. “Republican leaders and members of the Congress, both Senate and the House, are holding back because they’re terrified of what will happen to any one of them if they speak out.” 

The former secretary of state, who calls himself a “moderate Republican,” added that the US foreign policy is “in shambles right now.”

“I see things happening that are hard to understand,” he said.

Trump has apparently pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Jo Biden, his potential opponent for the 2020 presidential election, warning that he would not give Ukraine the promised military aid in case he refused.

Republicans have shown “blind partisan loyalty” to Trump, according to Democratic Senator Chris Murphy.

“This entire country should be scared that at a moment when we need patriots, what we are getting is blind partisan loyalty,” Murphy said in an interview on “Meet the Press.”

Democrats controlling the House have launched an impeachment inquiry based on whistleblower complaints that accuse Trump of “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election.”

“I feel like this is a moment where patriots need to step up and try to save this country,” Murphy said. “And I think there are a lot of regular citizens out there that are going to demand that their members of Congress look at the facts, make a decision on the facts, not make a decision based on their loyalty to the cult of Donald Trump.”

Trump has dismissed the impeachment probe as an attempted “coup” and a “witch hunt,” and has even asked China to investigate Biden as well.

“You really think he was serious about thinking that China’s going to investigate the Biden family?” Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said on ABC. “I think he’s getting the press all spun up about this. Remember, this is the president who’s been tougher on China than any other president… You would think after … a few years of following this president, you would understand sort of how this guy communicates. I think that is what he’s doing.”

Biden has accused Trump of asking Ukraine to “manufacture lies” about him.

“In my experience, asking a foreign government to manufacture lies about your domestic political opponent is not ‘done all the time,’” said the former vice president.

He was responding to a Trump tweet that alleged: “As President I have an obligation to end CORRUPTION, even if that means requesting the help of a foreign country or countries. It is done all the time. This has NOTHING to do with politics or a political campaign against the Bidens. This does have to do with their corruption!”

Source: Presstv