Monday, April 8, 2019

The Daily 202: Trump keeps pushing legal boundaries — and 10 other takeaways from Kirstjen Nielsen’s ouster

President Trump announced on April 7 that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen would be leaving her position. (Video: Patrick Martin, Joyce Koh/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
With Joanie Greve and Mariana Alfaro

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump often demands legally dubious solutions to complex problems. When he’s denied, he blames others — including his own staff. That’s really the nub of why he’s pushing out Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

By James Hohmann-April 8 at 9:36 AM

The 30-minute sit-down in the White House residence at 5 p.m. on Sunday wasn’t like the end of an episode of “The Apprentice.” It wasn’t televised in prime time, for one, and he didn’t dramatically say “You’re fired” at the end.

But it had the same effect. Just like the partial government shutdown he forced earlier this year in a futile effort to get money for a wall, Trump telegraphed to his base that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to secure the southern border and conveyed that he intends to make this issue a centerpiece of his reelection campaign.

“Two senior administration officials said that Nielsen had no intention of quitting when she went to the meeting Sunday with the president and that she was forced to step down,” Nick Miroff, Josh Dawsey, Seung Min Kim and Maria Sacchetti report. “Trump told aides last fall that he wanted to fire Nielsen … She appeared to regain her footing after U.S. Border Patrol agents used tear gas to repel a large crowd attempting to break through a border fence — the kind of ‘tough’ action Trump said he wanted … The president grew frustrated with Nielsen again early this year as the number of migrants rose and as she raised legal concerns about some of Trump’s more severe impulses, particularly when his demands clashed with U.S. immigration laws and federal court orders.”

This is a central theme in all the news accounts of why Trump turned on her.

“The president called Ms. Nielsen at home early in the mornings to demand that she take action to stop migrants from entering the country, including doing things that were clearly illegal, such as blocking all migrants from seeking asylum,” the New York Times reports. “She repeatedly noted the limitations imposed on her department by federal laws, court settlements and international obligations. Those responses only infuriated Mr. Trump further.”

It’s part of a pattern. Trump has repeatedly shown disdain for the rule of law. The president declared a national emergency on Feb. 15 so he could divert money from the military to build his wall, even though his own lawyers at the White House and Justice Department advised him against doing so.

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Here are 10 other takeaways from the news:
1) Trump alone cannot fix it, but he’s still learning the limits of the presidency and the added constraints that come with divided government.

The law needs to change to accomplish most of what Trump wants at the southern border, and this is very unlikely to happen now that Democrats control the House. The president ran promising that he alone can fix it, and he appears to still be learning that this is not how republican government works.

Nielsen “believed the situation was becoming untenable” because Trump was “becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and even impossible requests,” a senior administration official told CNN.

The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board describes her termination as “a ritual sacrifice”: “Ms. Nielsen wasn’t responsible for the surge of Central American migrants arriving at the border to claim political asylum, but Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress both needed a fall guy.”

2) Trump prefers to surround himself with yes men.

This is a major reason that the administration has experienced historically high turnover.
“Nielsen's ouster fits with a pattern of Trump forcing out officials who have pushed back against his more radical instincts or been unable to carry them out, or who have earned his ire for being unwilling to match his defiance for governing practice and convention,” CNN’s Stephen Collinson notes. “They include former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and former chief of staff John Kelly.”
3) The proliferation of “acting” secretaries continues.

Trump announced that Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, will take over as acting DHS secretary. Normally, the deputy secretary would take over on an acting basis, but the president hasn’t nominated a No. 2 despite all his talk of there being a national emergency. Nielsen tweeted that she’ll stay on through Wednesday — the day after tomorrow — “to assist with an orderly transition.”

This means that there will be interim leaders, who have not been confirmed by the Senate for the jobs they hold, atop the departments of Defense, Interior and Homeland Security. There is also not a permanent director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Mick Mulvaney remains the acting White House chief of staff.

Trump has said that he prefers it this way, and he’s “in no hurry” to name permanent replacements who can hold the jobs indefinitely. He wants his people at places like the Pentagon to feel like they’re on a tight leash. It means they’re constantly trying to curry favor.

4) Only three women will remain in Trump’s Cabinet after this week. There are 15 men.
An acting administrator will also take over the Small Business Administration when Linda McMahon steps down on Friday.

As a point of comparison, there are two Alexanders and two Roberts.

The female survivors in Trump’s Cabinet are CIA Director Gina Haspel, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Trump recently blamed DeVos for his administration’s failed efforts to defund the Special Olympics.

5) McAleenan does not appear to fully share Trump’s vision for restricting immigration.

“A longtime CBP official who received the nation’s highest civil service award from President Obama in 2015, McAleenan has praised the effectiveness of U.S. aid to Central America — immediately putting him at odds with the president, who has cut aid to those countries,” Miroff writes in a sidebar. “And McAleenan refers to the migrants arriving at the border not as scammers looking to cheat their way into the country but as ‘vulnerable families’ who need more humanitarian treatment, urging a fast and responsible screening process that will let true asylum seekers start their new lives in the United States once a court rules on their claims. And he is well-regarded by Democrats, in part because he speaks of border and immigration issues as a neutral, nonpolitical law enforcement professional, not a partisan firebrand.”

This is how he got confirmed to run CBP on a 77-to-19 vote just over a year ago.

He’s also reportedly married to an immigrant from El Salvador.

Two days after President Trump said, "Our country is full," Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and others spoke out about border security and immigration. (The Washington Post)

6) It’s not clear that someone who will be “tough” enough for Trump can get confirmed to lead ICE or DHS.

Trump said Friday that he wants someone “tougher” to lead ICE after he unceremoniously dumped Ron Vitiello, a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Border Patrol, just weeks before he was poised to win confirmation. No one from the White House bothered to tell Vitiello he was being dumped. He found out the nomination had been formally rescinded in the press. His staff initially thought it was a clerical error. The challenge is finding someone who will be as “tough” as Trump wants without turning off moderate Senate Republicans.

Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli is under consideration to replace Nielsen and has been at the White House recently, according to my colleagues on the White House beat. But he could run into trouble over his efforts to block Trump from winning the Republican nomination in 2016.

One name getting a lot of attention is Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state who lost the governor’s race in November. He’s a hard-liner who co-chaired Trump’s ill-fated commission to explore voter fraud. For several reasons, a Kobach nomination would put a bunch of Republican senators in a tough spot. The likeliest role for him would be a post that doesn’t require Senate approval.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry is seen inside the White House as the most confirmable of the names being floated, per Bob Costa.

Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter, who has publicly soured on Trump over his failure to deliver the wall, celebrated Nielsen’s departure but worried on Twitter that her replacement won’t be any better.

Ann Coulter

✔@AnnCoulter

You lose again, 3-D Trumpsters!  @realDonaldTrump considering Rick Perry and Ken Cuccinelli, total 100% open borders Republicans.  Not a lying conman at all.

Robert Costa

✔@costareports

Per two Republicans involved in discussions, Sec. Rick Perry is being eyed for DHS. Ken Cuccinelli also on WH radar for DHS, has boosters on right in Congress. Kobach and Bondi have had their names mentioned, but seen as unlikely.

832

7:24 PM - Apr 7, 2019

7) Stephen Miller is ascendant.

The White House policy adviser has recently gotten more control over this issue internally. Trump said in a recent Oval Office meeting that Miller is now in charge of all immigration initiatives. He’s encouraged Trump’s nativist tendencies and criticized both Vitiello and Nielsen to the president.

“Miller has pushed for someone to take over the ICE role who would be more receptive to his policy ideas,” per Nick, Seung Min and Josh. “He also is ‘particularly adept,’ one administration official said, at placing blame on others in the White House when ideas he promotes do not work. ‘Ron Vitiello has spent as much time defending our nation’s borders as Stephen Miller has been alive,’ one official said of Miller, who is 33. One senior official said: ‘This is part of an increasingly desperate effort by Stephen to throw people under the bus when the policies he has advocated are not effective.

Once it becomes clear that Stephen’s policies aren’t working, he tells the president, “They’re not the right people.”’”

“Miller has also recently been telephoning mid-level officials at several federal departments and agencies to angrily demand that they do more to stem the flow of immigrants into the country,” Politico reports. “The officials at the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State, who each handle different parts of the immigration process, were initially surprised that a high-ranking White House official like Miller would call them directly, rather than contact their bosses.

‘It’s intimidation,’ one of the people who was briefed on the calls [said]. ‘Anytime you get a call like this from the White House it’s intimidation ... Under normal circumstances, if you were a deputy in one of these agencies, it would be very unusual.’”

The story quotes “a person close to Nielsen” saying: “They failed with the courts and with Congress and now they’re eating their own.”

8) Nielsen’s departure is also a win for John Bolton, who has consolidated power since John Kelly left as chief of staff.

The national security adviser has repeatedly told the president that Nielsen isn’t the right fit for her job, a senior administration official told The Post.

Nielsen, 46, was Kelly’s chief of staff when he was the secretary of homeland security and replaced him when he became White House chief of staff. With her protector gone, and her enemies in such close proximity to the president, Nielsen struggled to survive.

9) Democrats feel no sympathy for Nielsen, and they’re determined not to let her rebrand herself.

Jim Mattis she is not.

“When even the most radical voices in the administration aren’t radical enough for President Trump,” you know he’s completely lost touch with the American people,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.

House Homeland Securi

ty Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) called her “a disaster from the start.”
The Democratic presidential candidates wished Nielsen good riddance, as well.

Elizabeth Warren

✔@SenWarren

.@SecNielsen separated mamas from their babies and locked little children in cages.

I’m not sorry to see her go. I only wish she’d been fired long ago, before she ever had a chance to resign.

60.2K

8:14 PM - Apr 7, 2019

10) The problems at the border remain.

Unauthorized immigration is now at the highest levels in a decade. About 100,000 arrests were made at the southern border in March, compared with 58,000 in January.

The end of the family separation policy, because of political blowback, has now created an unintended incentive for Central American families to try crossing the border together in search of asylum.

Coyotes are even selling their services south of the border by telling people that they should try to cross before the wall goes up.

In a Friday news dump, the Trump administration told a federal judge that it will take at least one year and potentially two years to identify all the immigrant children who were taken from their parents.

Factbox: Five things to look for in Mueller's Trump-Russia report

FILE PHOTO: Robert Mueller, as FBI director, listens during a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing about the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 19, 2013. REUTERS/Larry Downing/File Photo

Nathan Layne-APRIL 8, 2019

(Reuters) - Attorney General William Barr has provided only a glimpse of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the inquiry into Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election, with many details expected to emerge when the document is finally released.

Barr on March 24 sent a four-page letter to lawmakers detailing Mueller’s “principal conclusions” including that the 22-month probe did not establish that President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team conspired with Russia. Barr said he found insufficient evidence in Mueller’s report to conclude that Trump committed obstruction of justice, though the special counsel did not make a formal finding one way or the other on that.

The attorney general has pledged to release the nearly 400-page report by mid-April, but has said portions will be blacked out to protect certain types of sensitive information.
Here are five things to look for when the report is issued.

OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE: WHY NO EXONERATION?

Perhaps the biggest political risk for Trump is the special counsel’s supporting evidence behind Mueller’s assertion that while the report does not conclude the Republican president committed the crime of obstruction of justice it “also does not exonerate him” on that point.

According to Barr’s March 24 letter, Mueller has presented evidence on both sides of the question without concluding whether to prosecute. Barr filled that void by asserting there was no prosecutable case. But Barr’s statement in the letter that “most” of Trump’s actions that had raised questions about obstruction were “the subject of public reporting” suggested that some actions were not publicly known.

Democrats in Congress do not believe Barr, a Trump appointee, should have the final say on the matter. While the prospect that the Democratic-led House of Representatives would begin the impeachment process to try to remove Trump from office appears to have receded, the House Judiciary Committee will be looking for any evidence relevant to ongoing probes into obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power by the president or others in the administration.

Barr’s comment that most of what Mueller probed on obstruction has been publicly reported indicates that events like Trump’s firing of James Comey as FBI director in May 2017 when the agency was heading the Russia inquiry are likely to be the focus of this section of the report.

RUSSIAN ‘INFORMATION WARFARE’ AND CAMPAIGN CONTACTS

The report will detail indictments by Mueller of two Kremlin-backed operations to influence the 2016 election: one against a St. Petersburg-based troll farm called the Internet Research Agency accused of waging “information warfare” over social media; and the other charging Russian intelligence officers with hacking into Democratic Party servers and pilfering emails leaked to hurt Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

With those two indictments already public and bearing no apparent link to the president, the focus may be on what Mueller concluded, if anything, about other incidents that involved contacts between Russians and people in Trump’s orbit. That could include the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York in which a Russian lawyer promised “dirt” on Clinton to senior campaign officials, as well as a secret January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles investigated as a possible attempt to set up a back channel between the incoming Trump administration and the Kremlin while Democrat Barack Obama was still president.

Any analysis of such contacts could shed light on why Mueller, according to Barr’s summary, “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

MANAFORT, UKRAINE POLICY AND POLLING DATA

In the weeks before Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced in March to 7-1/2 years in prison mostly for financial crimes related to millions of dollars he was paid by pro-Russia Ukrainian politicians, Mueller’s team provided hints about what their pursuit of him was really about.

Prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told a judge in February that an Aug. 2, 2016 meeting between Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, a consultant Mueller has said has ties to Russian intelligence, “went to the heart of” the special counsel’s investigation.

The meeting included a discussion about a proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine in terms favorable to the Kremlin, an issue that has damaged Russia’s relations with the West. Prosecutors also said Manafort shared Trump campaign polling data with Kilimnik, although the significance of that act remains unclear.

One focus will be on what Mueller ultimately concluded about Manafort’s interactions with Kilimnik and whether a failed attempt to secure cooperation from Manafort, who was found by a judge to have lied to prosecutors in breach of a plea agreement, significantly impeded the special counsel’s work.

NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS

While Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy with Russia, according to Barr, there is a chance the report will detail behavior and financial entanglements that give fodder to critics who have said Trump has shown a pattern of deference to the Kremlin.

One example of such an entanglement was the proposal to build a Trump tower in Moscow, a deal potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars that never materialized. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, admitted to lying to Congress about the project to provide cover because Trump on the campaign trail had denied any dealings with Russia.

In the absence of criminal charges arising from Mueller’s inquiry, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff has shifted his focus to whether Trump is “compromised” by such entanglements, influencing his policy decisions and posing a risk to national security.

Some legal experts have said the counterintelligence probe Mueller inherited from Comey may prove more significant than his criminal inquiry, though it is not clear to what degree counterintelligence findings will be included in the report. Barr also has said he planned to redact material related to intelligence-gathering sources and methods.

MIDDLE EAST INFLUENCE AND OTHER PROBES

Another focus is whether Mueller will disclose anything from his inquiries into Middle Eastern efforts to influence Trump.

One mystery is what, if anything, came of the special counsel’s questioning of George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman and consultant to the crown princes of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia who started cooperating with Mueller last year.

Nader attended the Seychelles meeting. He also was present at a Trump Tower meeting in August 2016, three months before the election, at which an Israeli social media specialist spoke with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., about how his firm Psy-Group, which employed several former Israeli intelligence officers, could help the Trump campaign, according to the New York Times. Mueller’s interest in Nader suggested the special counsel looked into whether additional countries sought to influence the election and whether they did so in concert with Russia.

A lawyer for Nader did not respond to a request for comment.

Barr has said he will redact from the Mueller report information on “other ongoing matters,” including inquiries referred to other offices in the Justice Department. That makes it unclear if any findings related to the Middle East will appear in the report.

Trump’s Big Victory In Muller Probe

By Kumar David –APRIL 7, 2019

Prof. Kumar David

A new left emerges as Democratic Party’s challenge to Trump fizzles out: Trump’s big victory in Muller probe

After a two year investigation, respected former FBI Director Robert Muller III’s report concluded that there was no conclusive proof of collusion between Trump and his election outfit with Russia. It is a big victory for Trump and a defeat for anti-Trump mainstream media. The vindication unleashed a Trumpian offensive against the Democratic Party and liberal media which are snivelling and licking their wounds. It opened the way to dismantling and dismembering Obamacare, building the “Wall” on the Mexican border and advancing anti-immigration legislation. Trump is crude, capricious and plays trumps to his Base but he keeps his promises to his Base, though it makes liberals, intellectuals and ‘respectable’ folk cringe. I do not question Muller’s integrity; what has so far been made public of the report is a thumbs up for America’s die-hards just when alt-right ideology was on the retreat globally.

As the post-Muller debate heated up Trump crowed: “This has been an incredible week for America. The economy is roaring, the ISIS caliphate is defeated 100 percent, and after three years of lies and smears and slander the Russia hoax is finally dead. The collusion delusion is over”. The Democrats hoping for juicy titbits to fight back with intend to obtain subpoenas for release of the full report without redactions, and the underlying evidence; but the game is lost and this cock won’t fight anymore.

Vedic seers in the two thousand year old Linga Purana predict “Thieves will become kings and kings will be thieves” – ah they took the words out of my mouth! Trump is manifestly unfit for high office and denigrates the presidency; he evokes outrage and scorn at home and abroad; a blighted nationalist described as racist and homophobic Trump is also a crude crotch-grabbing sexist and reveller in ‘pussy-talk’. Unsurprisingly an egregious by-product of his anti-Islamism is that he fuels what a friend in an e-mail described as: “A concerted campaign to discredit New Zealand’s PM Jacinda Arden because of her bold stand on Christchurch. There is also an insidious campaign to make out that the targeted mosque was a recruiting centre for Islamist terrorism in a despicable attempt to justify this act of terror”.

Nevertheless about a third of America – the white working class in manufacturing and mining, and marginalised rural white folk in the mid-west and south – a ‘solid minority’ of poorer voters give Trump wholehearted support. Supposedly respectable conservatives, market-blighted GOP leaders and big business which has profited from tax cuts and awaits the dismantling environmental protection (cheer leaders for more climate change), all cheer him on though they are sceptical of his agenda and recognise the irreparable damage he is doing to America’s overseas agenda.

The Muller Report has not been released and only a summary prepared (doctored?) by Attorney General – Minister of Justice – William (Bill) Barr (a Trump appointee) and his deputy Rod Rosenstein, despite clamouring by Congress and the public. However we can be certain that Muller has not explicitly found Trump guilty of collusion; a big propaganda victory for the President. The report will say: “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The backlash from the “no proof” verdict would have been insignificant if the Democrats and the media had had class politics on their plates.

I have clueless friends whose refrain is about American productivity, the quality of its universities, the worth of its democratic institutions and the merit of the capitalist market. But what can quickly turn the tables on Trump is if the economy turns sour; the Cassandras are many. True the US economy is ticking along but slowing down after just three good quarters; prognostications are that a recession is overdue. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in We are 15 Minutes from Midnight in The Telegraph of 29 March writes: “Citigroup has issued an explicit recession warning advising clients to wind down risky assets and prepare to ride out a storm. The bank’s investment team said the US Federal Reserve over-tightened monetary policy waiting too long to stop raising interest rates or slow the pace of quantitative tightening (reverse-QE). The economy is below the waterline and will most likely succumb”.

The ‘new-left’ in the Democratic Party

U.S. Military Wary of China’s Foothold in Venezuela

The head of U.S. Southern Command says Beijing is using disinformation and debt diplomacy to dig in as Maduro clings to power.

Commander of U.S. Southern Command Craig Faller, testifies during a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 7. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

BY LARA SELIGMAN

| APRIL 8, 2019, 5:29 PM

As U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security team mulls a militaryintervention to oust Venezuela’s strongman president, Nicolás Maduro, the Pentagon is watching China’s commercial and financial creep in the crisis-gripped nation with growing alarm.

In an interview with Foreign Policy, Adm. Craig Faller, the four-star military officer who heads U.S. Southern Command, pointed to a Chinese disinformation campaign designed to blame the United States for the blackouts that devastated Venezuela in recent weeks.

Maduro, whose government is backed by China, Russia, and Cuba, has himself publicly accused the U.S. Defense Department of causing the blackouts. Following the power failures, Beijing offered to help the Venezuelan government restore its grid.

“China came out publicly, a state spokesman, implying the blackouts were attributable to U.S. cyberattacks,” Faller said during a recent trip to Washington, D.C. “That is just such a blatant lie. The blackouts are attributed to Maduro’s inept leadership, corruption, inattention to his people, and lack of concern for any humanity.”

The Pentagon is worried about China in other arenas as well. In the Pacific, China isbuilding up its military capability, intimidating its smaller neighbors, and threateningTaiwan. In Africa, Beijing is using debt diplomacy to gain control of crucial ports and other infrastructure. And in Europe, the Trump administration is pushing NATO to address potential Chinese cyberthreats and commercial threats.

“I think the biggest threat to democracy and the way of life around the world is the trend that we see in China,” Faller said.

He said China was trying to assert economic control in Venezuela by investing in infrastructure and providing hefty loans that Caracas would have difficulty paying back. Much of Beijing’s financial interest in Venezuela is tied to loans-for-oil deals struck between the two countries in 2007. By 2014, the China Development Bank had provided Venezuela with more than $30 billion in loans tied to oil production.

These loans have served to prop up the Venezuelan government over the past two decades, “far beyond the point at which its bad policies would have historically caused a change,” said Evan Ellis, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“There is no other actor in Latin America, with the possible exception of the Cubans, who as much controls the fate of Nicolás Maduro and his henchman as China does,” Ellis said.

China also has a major information technology footprint in the country. The Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE is creating a new ID card that can be used to monitor citizens’ behavior, Faller said. Using information from these cards, the government can trace a person’s finances, medical history, and voting record, Reuters reported last fall.

Meanwhile, Beijing has sold more than $615 million in weapons to Venezuela over the last 10 years, according to information provided by U.S. Southern Command.

“China is hedging its bets and being unhelpful” in Venezuela, Faller said. “For a nation who wishes to stake their claim amongst the great nations, they are certainly not respecting human rights, sovereignty, democracy—any of the things that this neighborhood values.”

Last week, one news site reported that the Chinese army sent 120 troops to the country. But a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed it as inaccurate. U.S. Southern Command declined to comment.

Faller would not discuss specific U.S. plans for a military intervention to oust Maduro in favor of opposition leader Juan Guaidó. He said the military is “looking at a range” of options and “will be ready” for whatever decision the president makes.

“We are on the balls of our feet,” Faller said.

He compared Maduro to the authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

“The crisis in Venezuela could approach that degree by the end of this year if Maduro still remains in power. It’s that bad,” said Faller, who served previously as the director of operations at U.S. Central Command.

Southern Command identifies that 17 out of 31 Latin American nations have joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative; meanwhile, 23 host Chinese infrastructure projects, including 56 ports across the region. China has provided Latin American countries more than $150 billion in loans since 2005.

The Pentagon is also increasingly concerned about China’s new deep space ground station in Argentina, from which the Chinese military can monitor and potentially target U.S. and allied satellites.

“The degree to which China was investing across all the elements of power in the region is startling and concerning,” Faller said.

Some analysts counter that China’s role in Latin America has been positive. According to a recent paper by Ted Piccone, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the Chinese demand for the region’s commodities has helped drive an economic boom in the past decade that “doubled the size of Latin America’s middle class and dramatically reduced poverty.”

“For now … China’s rise has generally not unduly harmed core U.S. national security interests in the LAC region,” Piccone wrote. “The trends, however, require careful monitoring and ongoing dialogue to avoid a more hostile environment.”

In particular, Faller is apprehensive about China’s second Belt and Road forum, planned to take place at the end of April. During the forum, he expects Beijing will try to dismiss accusations of predatory loans and debt diplomacy.

“Fair, reciprocal, transparent—we are all in,” Faller said. “But that has not been the facts to date.”

Reconciliation: The Rwanda Prejudice

Who is Tutsi? Who is Hutu? Who knows? Who wants to know? And in any event, how can one know?

Imagine a British girl reading political science at Oxford who writes a rather mediocre thesis on a ‘Truth and reconciliation commission in Zimbabwe’.

by Gatete Nyiringabo Ruhumuliza-7 Apr 2019

Her thesis is marked with a ‘pass’, but upon graduation she walks into McKinsey Consult as a partner to manage a hefty World Bank contract to develop… the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Zimbabwe.

The good young lady applies her ready-made thesis. The results are disastrous for Zimbabwe while she goes on to lead a successful career as an expert on Africa.

There is something pernicious in being an Africa expert as a profession. Over time, many experts develop a ‘theory of change’ which they in turn sell to the World Bank, ‘donors’, universities and media.

As they frequently encounter an unconventional African country, they refuse to register, at times subliminally, realities that negates their selling pitch – their bread and butter. We Rwandans sadly aren’t spared. Yet, having understood this, it all generally amuses us until it is April, when we can’t take a joke - and the joker.

So it is April again. And I would like to go through typical jokes – or rather insensitivities, which seem to sell as western expertise.

‘Rwanda is an enigma’

Very common among western journalists, the title which has featured in The Economist, Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, Aljazeera, etc., has 683,000 entries on google. This theory of a secretive society with a sinister bearing was developed by Belgian colonialists in the late fifties to define Tutsi: ‘not to be trusted’, ‘spies’, ‘snakes’, etc.,

Western experts use it today to shift the blame of their inability to understand Rwanda’s political system onto the fact that what is shown isn’t what there is. ‘In reality there is, hidden in a secret dark chamber, a plan to do evil.’

This theory was captured in Simon Bikindi’s song: ‘Nanga Abahutu’, and in Hassan Ngeze’s ‘Ten Commandments of the Hutu’ in which both men (convicted genocide perpetrators) call on Hutu who have no animosity towards their Tutsi neighbours to ‘wake up’, because Tutsis are out to do them harm and that they have in fact done harm, which has not been told:

Rwanda: The Untold/Unknown story, ‘Les Non-Dis’

The title of a documentary film a few years ago and the theme of a television series ‘Black Earth Rising’ currently airing – both produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), is also the title of a book: ‘In Praise of Blood’ by a Canadian journalist, Judy Rever.

The theory implies that Tutsi did - or are doing ‘unrevealed harm’ to Hutu, and therefore, as Helen C Epstein puts it in the Guardian; Hutus were ‘justified to revenge’.

The theory, which is nothing but ‘accusation in mirror’ was advanced by Gregoire Kayibanda in a long speech in front of the entire diplomatic corps on 11thApril 1964, in then Gitarama Stadium, after he had just massacred all the Tutsi from the Gikongoro region who made up between 40 and 50% of the population there.

Kayibanda essentially said that Hutus faced Genocide at the hand of Tutsi and therefore Hutus were justified to commit ‘preemptive genocide’ against the Tutsi.

Rwanda sells the genocide:

No country has ever been developed by aid. A country is developed by tourism, manufacturing, agriculture and usually funded by private sector and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

Rwanda’s FDI is attracted by a consistently high ranking on the ‘Ease of Doing Business’ by World Bank and ‘Transparency International’s Corruption Index’, testifying of a conducive business environment, and little or no corruption.

30 per cent of Rwanda’s GDP comes from tourism and conferences; illustrated by the two African Union Summits held in Kigali two years ago, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) to be held in Rwanda next year and the Africa CEO Forum – the most important business event on the continent which attracted over 1800 delegates just last month.

I am told the organizers envision bringing it back next year, given the standards at which Rwandans delivered. Now these things do not happen out of pity, nor does economic growth.

There are many countries that suffered tragedies which do not score 8% back to back annual growth for a solid ten years.

The theory that Rwanda sells the genocide, alongside the theory that Rwanda lives off the looting of minerals in DRC were advanced by NGOs.

Ironically, Rwanda is the country that has phased out the most NGOs both locally and especially in refugee camps in eastern DRC, where most of the above mentioned experts used to work and were put out of business...it must therefore be a case of sour grapes.

‘Rwanda is a Tutsi-led Government and RPF a Tutsi-led party’

Even in monarchical times, the king was asked to give up his Tutsi affiliation before acceding to the throne, as the oath went: ‘wari umututsi witwaga Rudahigwa, none ubaye umwami uzitwa Mutara.’ (You were a Tutsi and your name was Rudahigwa, now you are a King, you shall be known as Mutara).

Marriages across ethnic lines weren’t rare, even the king could offer his daughter or sister in marriage to other tribes, clans etc. President Kagame himself said that he took a DNA test which came out with a percentage of each of the three so-called tribes in Rwanda.

But history aside, there is no scientific evidence to support the assertion that the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF-Inkotanyi) is a Tutsi-led party or that Rwanda is a Tutsi-led government.

The RPF has had Rwandans of all ethnic backgrounds in its leadership and membership from the day of its founding, the movement was founded on values of national unity, captured in it’s initially eight – now nine ideological pillars.

Its official party anthem: ‘FPR Umuryango w’Abanyarwanda’ (RPF the Rwandan Family) and other songs of liberation, songs of morale in its then military wing the ‘Rwandan Patriotic Army’ (RPA) have all been explicitly unifying – much in contrast with the ‘anti-Tutsi anthems that characterized the genocidal regime.

For all practical purposes, the RPF is a movement of national unity, which is consistently referred to as an ethnic political party by western experts.

‘Tutsi are a 14% minority and Hutus are 85% majority in Rwanda’

As far as we are concerned, all Tutsi were killed in a genocide which was perpetrated with that intent. Those who came back to Rwanda in its aftermath never said they were Tutsi, Hutu or Twa; they said they were Rwandans.

If Tutsi were a 14% minority, how come after the genocide, Tutsi are still 14%? That figure, which is totally fantasist, has not been updated, perhaps downwards to mean there are now 0.1% following the genocide, or upwards to reflect mixed marriages or the new generation, etc.

Who is Tutsi? Who is Hutu? Who knows? Who wants to know? And in any event, how can one know? There is law prohibiting ethnic profiling and facial profiling is scientifically flawed, but foreign ‘experts’ still pretend to have a way of knowing.

There certainly are people today who would be qualified as such, but who wants to know and why? This is one preposterous debate.

‘Kagame is totalitarian’

Major national findings and decisions, arrived at through scientific or legal processes are allocated to the person of Kagame. It is as thought the twelve million Rwandans count for nothing.

A recent article in The Economist claimed that although the real number of victims of the Genocide is 800,000 people, ‘Kagame prefers a round figure of One Million’.

In reality, the Gacaca courts, which provided the most comprehensive and thorough census of who was killed, who killed them and in which circumstances they died, found that1,074,017 had been killed in the Genocide Perpetrated Against the Tutsi.

No individual expert, institution – or politician – could have had the means to make such findings. The Gacaca had the entire nation participating in information gathering and sharing for ten years.

To dismiss their findings and validate that of a few western experts is to say the least, racist.

The arrogant dismissal of indigenous realities is precisely how the genocide ideology was planted among Rwandans. Some western people came and found a millennial civilization of a united nation and arbitrarily allocated to them origins and ethnic affiliations based on dubious criteria. There is no difference between these experts and their ancestors; the colonialists.

Rwanda is not res nullius, nor is it a natural reserve where Tutsis and Hutus live in zones, separated on each side by a wall and insulated from interaction. It is a nation of human beings living together from time immemorial.

Most of these self-appointed experts are profoundly ignorant charlatans who make a name by usurping African peoples’ agency.

‘There is no media freedom in Rwanda’

By the end of the Genocide in 1994, there was one television and one radio station; both state-owned.

Twenty-five years later, reports haven’t factored in the advent of more than ten private television channels, more than 30 radio stations, an unknown number of websites, blogs, vlogs, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, etc.; platforms that Rwandans massively use to interact, send both friendly and unfriendly messages to government and indeed complain on anything and everything just like all users of the internet on the planet.

However, during the Genocide, media and political parties were used to call for mass killings of Tutsis.

In the famous ‘Hate Media Case’ (Prosecutor v. Nahimana, Barayagwiza, and Ngeze, Case no. ICTR-99-52-T http://www.jstor.org/stable/4093416)The U.N. Tribunal found that mass media hate speech constitutes Genocide, Incitement to Genocide, and Crimes against Humanity. And that indeed “media of hate’ played a pivotal role in the Genocide against Tutsis.

‘The Rwandan government does not allow political dissent and opposition politicians are arrested on trumped-up charges’.

Demagoguery as an efficient device for political fame is not strange to western societies, hence, there is no country in the world where everyone with a political opinion is accepted as a legitimate politician, and much less anyone who violates the laws of the land or promotes violence.

Foreign experts’ understanding of political pluralism in Rwanda isn’t the classical agitation between, say Democrats and Republicans in the US; Les Republicain and La Republique En Marche in France, because such debate exists in Rwanda between the RPF, the Social Democrats (PSD), the Liberals (PL) or even with the Green Party; people who agree in broad lines, on how the society should be governed peacefully in a Republic.

No, that is not what they mean; they would like the RPF to negotiate with FDLR, RNC or FDU, terrorist groups running military training camps in neighbouring countries, and with expressed agendas to use violence; groups that would like to turn up-side down our entire way of life, reintroduce ethnic politics, negate the Genocide or perpetrate a new one.

So when they call for political pluralism in Rwanda, they simply mean the US negotiating with ISIS and Al-Qaeda, all in the name of democracy.

Now, Rwandans take matters of divisionism seriously – for reasons that are rather obvious. It is not that they haven’t tried confrontational politics; it is that they are still paying the price of hate politics.

So they collectively decided, through a referendum, to ban ethnic nomenclature in politics and seek solutions through ‘dialogue and consensus’. Who, regardless of their degrees, expertise or skin colour is qualified to dismiss such sacrosanct national ethos? What gives them such right?

Kagame/the RPF liberated the country at gunpoint?

That too is a fallacy, and here is why: How about the RPF liberated the country with open arms?

With a rescue mission and humanitarian programmes? The RPF had a political wing and a military wing.

Unlike western experts, the museum of liberation, testimonies of Genocide survivors or reports of the Gacaca courts do not depict a ‘single story’. While they acknowledge the arms struggle, they recount the humanity of soldiers and humanitarian nature of the RPF’s campaign, which saved lives and pardoned most of the killers.

‘Kagame won the elections by over 90%, therefore they weren’t free and fair’

This assertion too is sophistry in the sense that it takes enthusiastic civic participation and political legitimacy as bad things rather than good ones. The question should be: how come western leaders are elected with 25% votes of 25% of the electorate, which represents only a quarter of the population?

What led to such massive disenfranchisement? Why do western citizens not trust politicians to a point where they stay at home on Election Day?

Is that something we Rwandans should aspire for? To have useless leaders who do not meet the aspirations of most of their citizens? Leaders who break records in disapproval ratings? How is that even democratic, since the majority of the population does not participate?

But there are other arguments: why is it that in 2002, Jacques Chirac won the presidential elections in France with 82%? Does it mean that he rigged them? Did he coerce the French electorate? Or was it because the race’s outcome was so critical to the nation’s survival that people turned out to vote en masse?

Western citizens do massively and frequently exercise their civic right: Only to protest against existing establishments. Judging by the impressive Gillets Jaunes protests in France or Brexit vote in the UK, etc., one might conclude that the percentage of Rwandans who appreciate Kagame is the same as that of the French who disapprove of Macron and Brits who disapprove of May…

But that makes sense: As Karl Marx once said: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.’

If you listen carefully; the Rwandan people, the French people, the British or American people have the same demands, the same need: they want security, they want decent livelihood, a roof over their heads, healthcare, they want to put food on the table, they want fairness and equity; they are just human beings.

The difference is, Kagame gives the people what they want, while most western politicians feed them empty rhetoric while exploiting them to enrich themselves and their cronies.

Finally, if President Kagame was such a bad leader, why was he chosen by his peers to lead reforms of the African Union – without ever campaigning for the role? And once there, why was he able to achieve such unprecedented results within such a short period of time at the continental body?

‘Mr Kagame now faces one test!’, ‘Two tests!’, ‘Three..’,experts frequently announce.

My question is, who is putting him to test? Who has that mandate? Is it the Rwandan people or is it western experts?

There seems to be a consistent failure among foreign experts to capture the Rwandan zeitgeist.

As far as we are concerned, Rwanda is stable, peaceful and secure nation. Our President faces a million challenges on a daily basis, but there is no situation of do-or-die here. We know how we got here; we know where we go from here. And as Rwandan history has shown, every twenty-five or so years, we are capable of producing a Paul Kagame.

Conclusion: It’s all déjà-vu.

This is Rwanda’s and Africa’s reality. Those less prejudiced who are alert to it are set to benefit from Africa’s upsurge. Those immodest soi-disant intellectuals, nostalgic of the colonial era, ‘dephasé’ (out-of-tune) and in love with their own grandiloquent treatises, will be obsolete.

Asia and the rest of the world is moving on while they remain trapped into an alternative reality, left to sing the same song over and over again like a broken cassette tape.

There is an entire western ‘bien pensance’ that’s infected by ‘intellectual schizophrenia’; in fact, they are paying the price in their own countries as we speak, where the ground has shifted from beneath their feet.

As for us, we have seen these experts before. We have heard their ‘expertise’ every day for the last twenty five years. Our parents remember them too, so do our grandparents. From their hiding, Genocide survivors also heard similarpropaganda to theirson RTLM, and read it in Kangura - the media of hate.

But let me end with a quick lesson on Rwanda’s governance: President Kagame is the head of the executive. In governing the country, he is assisted by a parliament and their decisions and that of the general public are subjected to the scrutiny of courts of law.

This arrangement is called rule of law and checks and balances and it is enshrined in the national constitution, massively promulgated in a referendum by the Rwandan people.

Presidential decrees do not regulate fundamental national matters, but only matters of the functioning of the executive.

In other words, it is not the President who decided that we seek national solutions through dialogue and consensus, that there be an annual National Dialogue, a forum where all political parties meet regularly to iron out issues, or that genocide ideology be punished by the law. All these decisions were made by the Rwandan people.

The President’s job is to oversee that the constitution is observed by the statutory institutions of the Republic.

I am saying this because I am a lawyer and because I have petitioned courts to challenge government decisions, my colleagues frequently do so too. That a foreign journalist dismisses our institutions as primitive and isolates the President from the people he leads stems from a neo-colonial mindset.

Indeed the Rwandan esoteric code has always existed and no one was above it_not even the King. It is recalled in Rwandan history, for instance, citizen-joe who once approached the Court of Cyilima to sue citizen-Rujugira [Cyilima II Rujugira, 1675-1708] _was the reigning king_and the submission was accepted.

Alas, that system was disrupted by colonialism and tore the Rwandan nation apart – which later led to the Genocide against the Tutsi. Foreign experts are free to devise their dubious prophesies, on their own platforms.

As we commemorate twenty-five years of the Genocide, we remain vigilant to these uninvited ‘experts’. Small stories thrown about here and there, which are taken in a broader context aim to saw hate among Rwandans, once again.

So I am not aiming at changing the experts, because theirs aren’t honest mistakes; they know exactly what they are doing.What matters, and the reason I am writing this article, is to ensure that no Rwandan citizen, especially the younger generation, is infected with their poison.

This piece is to the new children of Rwanda who will be celebrating their twenty-fifth birthday:

- You are the reason our elders took up arms to fight and die for this nation; the reason we all wake up every morning to strive for its peace and progress. Unto you I dedicate our blood, our sweat and our tears. May you thrive in a Rwanda free from hate, yesterday, today and forever…

Note: I have not done these subjects justice because I did not want to confuse the reader, but mainly because my seniors; and I have published extensively on them.

The views expressed in this article are of the author.