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Donald Trump backtracks on Russia joint cybersecurity unit BBC News Donald Trump has backtracked on a proposal to work with Russia to create an "impenetrable" cybersecurity unit to prevent election hacking. Hours after promoting the idea on Sunday, the US president said that he did not think it could actually happen. Trump on his 'impenetrable' cybersecurity unit with Putin: I didn't mean itCNBC Trump now says Russia-US Cyber Security unit can't happenABC News Donald Trump puts US in a club of oneCNN Washington Times -Gizmodo all 4,874 news articles »

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Donald Trump backtracks on Russia joint cybersecurity unit - BBC News

President Trump drew condemnation for tweeting a violent, doctored video of him punching CNN on July 2, but the real punches were thrown back in 2007, at a scripted WWE match. Here's a look at how the fight came to be. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

If we could rip Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr.out of all political context and speak of them simply as two men with smartphones,their story might be one ofa father and son learning to memetogether.

Witness their accomplishments in the past week.

Step 1. The fatheradvancesan idea:

Step 2. The son follows up:

Of course, thats simplistic; theTrumps memescantbe separated from politics any more than the men.

When Trumptweeted a clip of himself pummeling a CNN avatar a week ago, he did so as president of the United States one who frequently attacksthe press asanenemy.

WhenTrump Jr. spent the following days advancingvariations of his fathers meme culminating in Trump as Tom Cruise chasing CNN in Top Gun he did so as the son of an embattled politician, and one of the presidentsfiercest defenders.

[The Reddit user behind Trumps CNN meme apologized. But #CNNBlackmail is the story taking hold.]

Father and sonhave long beenprolific online. And their week-long WrestleMania-to-Top Gun assault on CNN is not the first time they ganged up ona rival.

You might rememberthe final weeks of the 2016 election, when Trump jumped on his Democratic opponentfor calling his supporters a basket of deplorables.

Wow. Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard working people, Trump wrote on Twitter, which he had been using for years, favoring thewritten word over GIFs.

I think it will cost her at the Polls! Trump concluded in his tweet in September.

Clintons deplorables labeldid, in fact, turn into a symbolof pride for many Trump fans. Its evolution into a full-blown meme gota strong assist from Trump Jr. a few days after his father tweeted.

That was nearlya year ago, and Trump Jr. claimed ignorance of the imagehed promoted.

Ive never even heard of Pepe the Frog, he told an ABC host who called the cartoon a white supremacist symbol. I thought it was a frog in a wig. I thought it was funny.

But if Trump Jr. was ameme novice then, he would learn much.

So would his father.

[A Reddit user who wrote about stabbing Muslims is claiming credit for Trumps CNN video]

Toward the end of 2016, many reporters began to write about a phenomenon theycalled fake news. As outlets such asPoliticoand NPR reported, thesewere manufactured news articles, originating onshady websites, designed to trick people into sharing fictions as facton social media.

Trump, at least as much as anyone, helped invert the terms meaning at first simply typing FAKE NEWS in all caps when someoneran a story he didnt like, buteventually applying it to virtuallyevery major news outlet in the United States.

And Trump Jr. followed up by extending fake news tohashtag form.

Trump supporters picked up on the trend, too, and inevitably, fake news became one of the political rightsfavorite memes.

Which bring us up to the present day, and the Trumps cooperativememe war onCNN.

No one is quite sure how a clipof Trumppummeling an anthropomorphized news networkat WrestleManiatraveled from Reddit to the presidents Twitter feed last weekend, where Trump adorned it with the hashtag: #FraudNewsCNN.

But travel itdid, and becameone of the presidentsmost popular tweets ever.

It also providedhis son with memetic inspirationfora full week.

A day after Trump tweeted the CNN-Wrestlemania clip, Trump Jr. retweeted one of countless variations that sprang up: CNN as Charlie Brown failingto kick a football held by Trump as Lucy.

Trump Jr. also went back tothe ancient hold-my-beer meme, retweeting an updated version that mocked CNN.

And he repeatedly tweeted the #CNNBlackmail hashtag accusingthe network of coercing an apology out of the Reddit user who created the WrestleMania meme.

A meme about a meme, yes.Trump Jr. had learned much sincehis first forayinto the world of Pepe the Frog.

Then, on Saturday, he shared one of the best Ive seen.

Best memes, that is. It was his fathers face pasted over Tom Cruises fighter pilotin the climactic scene of Top GunTrump chasing a CNN logopasted onwhat in the movie was aRussian-made MiG jet.

There may have been some unintended irony in Trump Jr.s selection. The same day, theNew York Times reportedthat he had met with a lawyer tied to the Kremlin during his fathers campaign.

But never mind. Trump and Trump Jr.have both downplayed investigations into the campaigns possible collusion withRussian hackers as fake news.

In thelatest iteration of the intergenerationalcycle ofmemes, the fatherblasts CNN out of the sky, and the sonshares it with the world.

More reading:

A Reddit user who wrote about stabbing Muslims is claiming credit for Trumps CNN video

We are not fake news: At a Trump-free correspondents dinner, White House press has its say.

From old photo to right-wing meme to Trumps twitter: The journey of one Schumer/Putin pic

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Donald Trump Jr. loyally prosecutes his father's meme war on CNN - Washington Post

An Australian journalist found his news report go viral thanks to his no-hold-barred assessment of Donald Trumps time at the G20 summit.

ABC Political Editor Chris Uhlmanns report described Trump at the summit as isolated and friendless and said he demonstrated no desire and no capacity to lead the world.

Uhlmanns report has been widely shared on social media, with the footage also having been liked more than 36,000 times on Twitter.

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He was an uneasy, lonely, awkward figure at this gathering and you got the strong sense that some of the leaders are trying to find the best way to work around him, Uhlmann said in his cutting report.

He said: We learned that Donald Trump has pressed fast-forward on the decline of the United States as a global leader. He managed to isolate his nation, to confuse and alienate his allies and to diminish America."

The journalist added Trump was a man who barks out bile in 140 characters, who wastes his precious days as president at war with the wests institutions like the judiciary, independent government agencies and the free press.

During his visit to Europe, Trump met with Russian president Vladimir Putin, reportedly accepting the latters denial of alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. election.

The summit also underlined Trumps previous refusal to sign the Paris Climate Change deal, where he was the only leader who had not done so, with all other 19 nations represented signing an agreement that stated the accord was irreversible.

And despite Trump praising the west, and posing questions as to its future, Uhlmann described the president as the biggest threat to the values of the west.

He added: Where was the G20 statement condemning North Korea which would have put pressure on China and Russia? Other leaders expected it, they were prepared to back it, but it never came.

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Australian Journalist's G20 Summit Report Goes Viral After Calling Donald Trump the 'Biggest Threat to the West' - Newsweek

Trump spoke in Warsaw but could not make time to visit the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Photo: Celestino Arce/NurPhoto via Getty Images

President Donald Trumps visit to Warsaw prior to the G20 summit in Hamburg was a whirlwind affair, tightly scheduled and lasting less than a day. It was so tight, in fact, that he was unable to squeeze in a stop at the monument to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, sending his daughter Ivanka to lay flowers there instead.

With that decision, Trump became the first U.S. president in nearly 30 years not to pay his respects at the monument on his first state visit to Poland. Leaders of the Jewish community there expressed disappointment in his decision to skip it.

Coming just days after the president retweeted a video of himself beating up CNN from an account that turns out to have also trafficked in vicious anti-Semitism (once again), the omission was bound to draw notice and criticism from Jews in Poland as well as the U.S. It was also suspiciously convenient to the political agenda of Polands ruling party, Politicos Annie Karni notes, as the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice Party has worked to refocus Polands historical memory of the Holocaust on its Polish victims and heroes (of which there were indeed very many) and away from the virtual eradication of the countrys millennium-old Jewish community much less any Polish complicity in that atrocity, the mere mention of which the ruling party has sought to criminalize.

This is not to suggest that Trumps travel itineraries reveal anti-Semitic intentions. But its part of a pattern of participating in situations and categories of political rhetoric with anti-Jewish undercurrents.

In his Warsaw speech, Trump referred frequently to the West and to our civilization, going so far as to state grandiosely: The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. This claim, Peter Beinart observes at The Atlantic, only makes sense as a statement of racial and religious paranoia:

The south and east only threaten the Wests survival if you see non-white, non-Christian immigrants as invaders. They only threaten the Wests survival if by West you mean white, Christian hegemony. [ ] So when Trump says being Western is the essence of Americas identity, hes in part defining America in opposition to some of its own people. Hes not speaking as the president of the entire United States. Hes speaking as the head of a tribe.

What makes this language particularly notable in this context is that the crowd Polands government bussed in to cheer Trump on may have an even more circumscribed view of who does and does not belong in the West. While the Law and Justice Party is not overtly anti-Semitic, the same cannot be said for all of its supporters, and its perspective on history betrays a certain resentment of the prominence given to the Jewish experience in the Holocaust. Bolstered by the governments right-wing populism and xenophobia, anti-Semitism has come into vogue again in the home of Auschwitz and Sobibor in recent years, just as it has in other European countries.

Hungarys right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orban, for instance, may insist that his latest campaign of posters depicting George Soros as a sinister caricature of the laughing Jew is just about Soros, the individual but its not convincing. Not incidentally, the Orban and Trump administrations are disturbingly friendly. Orban welcomed Trumps inauguration as the end of multilateralism and has praised Trumps heavy-handed approach to controlling immigration; Trumps Islamophobic counterterrorism advisor Sebastian Gorka was also once an advisor to Orban.

Trump may be drawn to European nationalists like Orban by nothing more than their shared suspicion of Islam, but he is apparently blind to the anti-Semitism that tends to co-exist with that variety of Islamophobia.

In the same vein, he either doesnt understand or doesnt care that his diatribes against liberal internationalism and his attacks on the press have origins in old school anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and serve as dog whistles to Jew-haters, even as his supporters repurpose the Nazi slur lugenpresse and alt-righters gleefully tweet about an impending journocaust. To be sure, the new anti-Semitism is by no means exclusive to the right just ask those G20 protesters in Hamburg what they think of Jews. But its no accident that anti-Semitic incidents spiked 86 percent in the first few months of the Trump administration, as the alt-right celebrated what they saw as their victory.

Yet whether out of ego, ignorance, or cognitive dissonance, Trump is unwilling or unable to grapple with the possibility that he might be enabling that spike. Indeed, he seems not to even understand the connection. That makes him no less unsettling.

Hes been holding dinners for donors and other influential GOP figures at his home on the grounds of the Naval Observatory.

The president reversed himself after the idea was panned by both Democrats and Republicans.

The presidents son says he was lured into the June 2016 meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer under false pretenses.

Plague, famine, heat no human can survive. This is not science fiction but what scientists, when theyre not being cautious, fear could be our future.

Why does the president double-down every time it seems like he should retreat? Because Bannon is still his chief tactician.

There is no sign that the power-plant control systems were affected by the breaches.

It seems more than likely that Trump has just shrugged off Russias attack on last years presidential election, including to Putin himself.

Donald Trump Jr. arranged the previously undisclosed June 2016 meeting, which President Trumps lawyers are now suggesting was a setup.

If she werent my daughter it would be so much easier for her, the president also explained on Saturday.

A dirty little secret of GOP health policy is conservatives desire for a 1950s-style system with high out-of-pocket costs and limited insurance.

The nine nations that possess nuclear weapons did not participate in the treaty negotiations.

Congressman Mike Conaways family bought stock in UnitedHealth the same day that a bill repealing Obamacares taxes on insurers advanced in committee.

A viral moment from the G20 summit.

An op-ed co-authored by Clinton strategist Mark Penn tells Democrats to emulate a 1996 strategy the actual candidates did not pursue.

The First Lady was sent in to interrupt them during the G20 summit.

One Democrat in Trenton wants to make sure Beachgate stays in the news.

Rioters mixed with peaceful protesters as world leaders gathered in the German city.

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The Anti-Semitism Around Donald Trump - New York Magazine

President Donald J. Trump astounded the world again on Sunday, revealing that, in addition to mastering trade policy, real estate, and golf, he is also a visionary filmmaker. Eschewing Hollyweird traditions of trailers and trailers for trailers, the auteur-in-chief released his masterpiece directly to the people, 100 percent free. So crank the volume, because this film should be played LOUD:

Wow. While Trump has always worn his influences on his sleeveD. W. Griffith, Leni Riefenstahl, Veit Harlan, the list pretty much ends therehis latest work exceeds them all from frame one. Has any single image captured the modern condition of despair better than Trumps opening shot?

Twitter User @realDonaldTrump

A still photo of the president of the United States angrily explaining something to his wife, who is not paying attention, badly compressed so that it looks pixelated beyond belief, with audio that has been carefully miscued to allow a full second of sheet-music rustle before the brass comes in: David Lynch couldnt fit that much unease on screen if you gave him two TV shows and a feature film. Our authority figures are crumbling as digital technology scrambles and distorts our feeble attempts to connect with each other, Trump seems to be saying, and for the rest of his film, he pokes and prods at the disconnect between the countrys traditional conceptions of leadership, heroism, and happiness and the all-consuming black hole occupying the White House.

It becomes clear almost immediately that the cleverly disquieting use of miscued audio at the beginning wasnt an anomaly: Like Martin Scorsese or Mikheil Chiaureli before him, Trump considers the soundtrack to be a crucial part of his project. In this case, hes selected the First Baptist Dallas choir and orchestras legendary Kennedy Center performanceof their original song, Make America Great Again. Thats Robert Jeffress congregationyou may remember him from his beliefs that Catholicism, Mormonism, and Islam are Satanic cultsand its clear that Jeffress outspoken support of Trump has put the filmmaker-president in a biblical mood. (Specifically, an ostensibly Christian denomination embracing fascist kitsch in order to suck up to a morally depraved leader suggests Matthew 7:15, just for starters.)

As Trump pulls us deeper into his personal cinematic nightmaretheres a chilling montage of bad photos of him smiling unconvincingly at other world leadersthe ever-widening disconnect between sound and image brilliantly echoes the disconnect between Americas self-image and our actions on the global stage. Step into the future, the choir sings, as Trump reminds us that this was apparently one of the best photos taken at the G-20 Summit:

Twitter User @realDonaldTrump

Step into the future, indeed! And thats before the montage of pictures of unelected adviser Ivanka Trump hanging out with world leaders, or the bizarre shot of a videoconferencing monitor with an even-more-blurry-than-usual image of Trump on it. It all builds to an astonishing climax: Trump pairs the songs highest, loudest notea great so high-pitched that the choir cant quite sing itwith this image of Putin staring at him with equal parts contempt and disbelief:

Twitter User @realDonaldTrump

Another masterpiece from our philosopher-king!

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Old Man Makes Entire World Watch Vacation Slideshow - Slate Magazine (blog)