As everyone knows Trump is a master negotiator and to be a master negotiator you have to outwit your opponent like in a game of chess. Trump did just that with the media. Before Christmas Trump announced he wasn’t flying to Mar-a-Lago for Christmas to be with his family and was staying at the white house to hear from senators if they changed their mind about funding the wall. He even put out tweets saying “poor me.I’m here alone at the white house over Christmas”
The media all chided him for staying away from his home for Christmas and blamed the failing stock market on him. Little did they know Trump had other plans in store for them and the joke would soon be on them.
On Christmas night Trump showed up in Iraq with Melania and they addressed and posed with the troops. Sarah Sanders and John Bolton accompanied him there. Much to the media’s chagrin and surprise they did not find out about it until after Trump had been there for three hours. They noticed his twitter account had gone down and the regular guard outside the white house when he is there was not on duty and there were reports Air Force One was over foreign airspace.
This is not something that was a spur of the moment thing and had to be planned well in advance to get everyone together. The media had once again been had and outwitted by Trump. The reception by the troops was a tremendous and joyous success and they all took selfies with him and Melania.
On top of that the stock market rallied to its’ highest sales in history proving once again Trump knows what he is doing contrary to what the destroy Trump media says about him.
White House said in a statement that the Trumps secretly traveled to Iraq yesterday evening, on Christmas, to wish service men and women a happy holiday
- Trump was in the country for roughly three hours before the White House confirmed his whereabouts
- Had been suspected that he was not at the White House after his Twitter went dark and the marine that stands guard outside the West Wing when he’s in the Oval Office wasn’t on guard
- Visited Al Asad Airbase in western Iraq, roughly 185 kilometers outside of Syria on Dec. 26 with Melania
- It was their first visit to a war zone since the sitting president took office nearly two years ago
- Trump announced last week that he’s pulling American troops out of neighboring Syria, because the U.S. had ‘defeated ISIS’ in the nation that’s also mired in a civil war
- He said in Iraq that the terror group had been ‘very nearly defeated’ altogether and Turkey and other regional powers will finish the job. ‘We’ve knocked them out. We’ve knocked them silly,’ he asserted
- Said he will keep forces in Iraq: ‘If we see something happening with ISIS that we don’t like, we can hit them so fast and so hard they really won’t know what the hell happened’
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump appeared in Iraq on Wednesday for a surprise visit with troops and senior military leadership at Al Asad Air Base
We’re no longer the suckers, folks,” Trump told service members at the base, which is situated in western Iraq. “We’re respected again as a nation.”
During his first visit to the troubled region, Trump also said he has “no plans at all” to remove any of the 5,000 U.S. troops from that country.
Trump’s visit — which is also his first to a combat zone as commander in chief — comes on the heels of his announcement about pulling troops out of Syria, and the rumored removal of thousands of troops in Afghanistan.
Trump said the U.S. mission in Syria was to strip the Islamic State (ISIS) of its military strongholds — not to be a nation builder. He said that’s a job that should be shouldered by other rich nations — reiterating his America First policies and an ideology that challenges America’s roles as global cop.
“I made it clear from the beginning that our mission in Syria was to strip ISIS of its military strongholds,” Trump told troop Al Asad Air Base. west of Baghdad.
The president said the U.S. presence in Syria was never to be “open-ended,” and that Turkey has agreed to eliminate ISIS remnants.
Meanwhile back home U.S. stocks staged one of the biggest rallies of the 9 1/2 year bull market after coming within points of seeing it end, with major indexes surging at least 4.9 percent. Crude jumped almost 10 percent.
Consumer shares paced the rally, with Amazon jumping 9.5 percent after reporting record holiday sales. All 30 Dow members gained, with Nike and Apple rising more than 7 percent.
You can blame a lot of this activity on Trump lowering taxes so people have more money in their paychecks and drilling in areas such as Anwar and other areas helped bring the price of oil and gas down so we are not dependent on foreign oil for once.
Stocks posted their best day in nearly a decade on Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average notching its largest one-day point gain in history. Rallies in retail and energy shares led the gains, as Wall Street recovered the steep losses suffered in the previous session.
Wednesday also marked the biggest post-Christmas rally for U.S. stocks ever.
Retailers were among the best performers on Wednesday. Data released by Mastercard SpendingPulse showed retailers were having their best holiday season in six years. Amazon’s stock also jumped 9.45 percent, snapping a four-day losing streak, after the company said it sold a record number of items this holiday season.
Energy stocks also jumped as U.S. crude oil prices catapulted more than 8 percent. Shares of Marathon Oil and Hess were the best performers within the energy sector, jumping 11.9 percent and 11 percent, respectively.
The plunge in stocks on Monday came after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held calls with CEOs of major U.S. banks last weekend and issued a statement saying, “The banks all confirmed ample liquidity is available for lending to consumer and business markets.”
Monday’s move lower also came after President Donald Trump commented on the Federal Reserve once more, calling it “the only problem our economy has” in a tweet. Trump also said Tuesday the Fed was “raising interest rates too fast because they think the economy is so good.” Trump has been critical of the Fed’s decisions regarding monetary policy this year. The central bank has hiked overnight rates four times this year.
Meanwhile GDP continues to rise above 4% after Obama said 2% would be the new norm, unemployment continues to drop and holiday retail sales are the best in years. This is all taking place amid an ongoing government shutdown that started last week which goes to show you what can happen when government gets out of the people’s way.
