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After Donald Trump’s startlingly and abrupt withdrawal from Syria––and then partly from Afghanistan––despite warnings from his advisors, U.S. allies are angry and beginning to question the benefits of a US alliance. 

The U.S. withdrawal from Syria has been seen as a betrayal to their Kurdish allies. One Syrian man told reporters: “If they will leave, we will curse them as traitors. The Kurds helped them to destroy ISIS. … I have seven people from my family who were fighting ISIS and who were killed. And they were very young, not even in their 20s.”

Wesley Clark, former commander of NATO, retired Army general, and former Democratic presidential candidate, says that allies believe Trump was blackmailed: “People around the world are asking this and some of our friends and allies in the Middle East are asking, did Erdogan blackmail the president? Was there a payoff or something? Why would a guy make a decision like this? Because all the recommendations were against it. And it looked like all the facts were against it, too.”

Meanwhile, Trump believes––or, more accurately, wants others to believe––that the United States is once again respected. Unfortunately, he is dead wrong.

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Kevin Spacey is to be charged with felony assault, and he is to be arraigned January 7, 2020. From NPR: “Clerk Magistrate Brian Kearney issued the complaint for “indecent assault and battery,” a felony offense, following a public show cause hearing on Thursday. The criminal charges stem from former Boston news anchor Heather Unruh’s accusation last year that Spacey had assaulted her son.”

As this news broke, Kevin Spacey released a mysterious video called “Let Me Be Frank:” 

The Daily Beast did not love the video, to say the least.

This important culinary primer aside, the video is not just a fail, it is also a menacing, self-aggrandizing, beyond tone-deaf, ego-maniacal fail, which shows exactly how little Spacey has cared to learn about himself, or the gravity of what he has been accused of, and the devastating effects of his alleged actions as so eloquently expressed by his accusers, like Anthony Rapp, who claimed Spacey had assaulted him when he was 14.

The video is confusing. What does Spacey mean? Does he want to return to playing Frank Underwood? Or does he want to speak “frankly”, using the classic Underwood direct-to-camera aside? And who is he talking to? The House of Cards audience? The American public at large? Or his accuser? 

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The Christmas markets closed with the sharpest drop since 2008, and China bought zero soy beans from the U.S. in November.

Following a brief upswing, the Dow plummeted 653 points after Trump criticized the Fed. Democrats have had harsh words for the President: 

It’s Christmas Eve and President Trump is plunging the country into chaos,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement. “The stock market is tanking and the president is waging a personal war on the Federal Reserve — after he just fired the Secretary of Defense.

Trump’s tweet criticizing the Fed led investors to fear that he would fire the Fed chair, CNN speculates.

In addition, China bought zero soy beans from the U.S. in November, an escalation in the trade war with the U.S.

But since it is Christmas, we don’t want to ruin the spirit, so let’s close the news with a little Christmas poem:

‘Twas the day before Christmas, when all through the land

The traders were freaking, sell tickets in hand. 

The farmers were stuck with soy fields all dying,

In hopes that China would resume past levels of buying.

But the president took to twitter from his bed, 

Instead of offering help, he just blamed the fed. 

When Jim Mattis resigned as Donald Trump’s Defense Secretary, he offered to stay in his position until the end of February in order to give Trump time to find and onboard a replacement. Trump, however, has forced Mattis out early. Mattis is now to retire on January 1, 2020 and will be replaced by Patrick Shanahan.

Mattis’s resignation letter, linked above, is allegedly the cause of the early ouster. According to a source, Trump hated the letter. The letter was of course a strong rebuke of Trump, and Trump did not take it well. According to the New York Times, the letter changed everything. While he initially was kind to Mattis, 

As became apparent to the president only after days of news coverage, a senior administration official said, Mr. Mattis had issued a stinging rebuke of Mr. Trump over his neglect of allies and tolerance of authoritarians. The president grew increasingly angry as he watched a parade of defense analysts go on television to extol Mr. Mattis’s bravery, another aide said, until he decided on Sunday that he had had enough.

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We have covered, again and again, how bad things have been for Facebook in the past year. That’s just us, though, shouting into the night. But we are no longer alone. David Carroll, associate professor at Parsons School of Design in New York, believes that Facebook might have been dealt its death blow this week. 

Professor Carroll is an outspoken critic of the company and its handling of user data. The recent revelations about Facebook’s sharing of user data with other companies was beyond what even Carroll anticipated. “Even as someone who is deeply skeptical of Facebook, I was surprised by the latest revelations,” he said, “I didn’t know it could be that bad in terms of scope and scale. But it all seems to fit with Zuckerberg’s master plan for global domination.”

He’s not the only one suing the company––United States regulators are also suing Facebook:

The lawsuit from Karl Racine on Wednesday targeted Facebook mainly for its entanglement with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy that harvested names, “likes” and other data from the social site without users’ permission. The incident, which affected more than 87 million users beginning in 2014, came to light this March, sparking investigations around the world.

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Last week was the rotten cherry on top of a very bad year for President Donald Trump:

January: Government shutdown and Trump utters the famous “shithole countries” line.

February: The Stormy Daniels saga begins when Michael Cohen says he paid her hush money out of his own pocket. 

March: Rex Tillerson is fired and Trump starts a trade war.

April: Trump denies porn star payoff and FBI raids Cohen’s office and hotel. 

May: Trump pulls out of Iran deal.

June: Trump reverses family separation at border. 

July: Trump publicly denies that Russia interfered with 2016 elections. (Holy moly.)

August: Cohen flips on Trump, Manafort convicted. 

September: A Trump insider turns on the administration in a NYT opinion piece.

October: Not a bad month for Trump!

November: Cohen pleads guilty, Jeff Sessions ousted. 

Now that Jim Mattis has left, the cracks in the GOP-Presidential alliance’s facade are beginning to show. Two years in, it seems that Trump is increasingly isolated and at war with his own government: 

For two years, Mr. Trump has waged war against his own government, convinced that people around him are fools. Angry that they resist his wishes, uninterested in the details of their briefings, he becomes especially agitated when they tell him he does not have the power to do what he wants, which makes him suspicious that they are secretly undermining him.

The Atlantic suggests that serving in the government is an either-or proposition: you’re either for Trump or for America, but not both.

A tsunami in Indonesia has killed at least 43 people and injured nearly 600 people. The cause is unknown, but the New York Times reports:

Scientists from Indonesia’s Meteorology and Geophysics agency said it could have been caused by undersea landslides from the eruption of Anak Krakatau, a volcanic island formed over years from the nearby Krakatau volcano. They also cited tidal waves caused by the full moon.

Oystein Lund Andersen, Norwegian volcano photographer, reports that there were two waves:”And suddenly I saw this wave coming, and I had to run. There were two waves. The first wave wasn’t that strong – I could run from it…and I heard a bigger wave coming. I looked out of the window when the second wave hit. It was much bigger.”

Over four-hundred homes, nine hotels, and ten vessels were heavily damaged in the disaster. 

Another 832 people died earlier this year, in September, in an earthquake an tsunami that hit the city of Palu. 

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Officials say that the United States is to pull half of its 14,000 troops out of Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press:

President Donald Trump has long pushed to pull troops out of Afghanistan, considering the war a lost cause. But earlier this year, he was persuaded by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and others military leaders to keep troops on the ground to pressure the Taliban and battle a stubborn Islamic State insurgency. Officials said the latest White House push for withdrawal was another key factor in Mattis’ decision to resign Thursday.

The move has led to a sense of betrayal in Afghanistan. 

Most officials and diplomats said they would only speak on condition of anonymity because they were still assessing the situation. But many were less concerned about the reduction in troop numbers — though struggling Afghan forces still need hands-on help — than by the way news of it emerged, which they said appeared to undermine not only the Afghan government, but also some of the most senior American officials working for a peace deal.

This pullout comes after Trump withdrew troops from Syria despite his top aides’ advice. Observers are worried that these moves signal a larger change in U.S. international policies: 

“Who will persuade Trump not to withdraw from NATO?” Daniel B. Shapiro, the former American ambassador to Israel, asked in a tweet on Friday as the implications of the Mattis resignation sunk in. “Really scary possibility, no longer theoretical.”

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The U.S. House of Representatives adjourned Friday night without approving government funding. As a result, the government will shut down. The House will return on Saturday afternoon.

The New York Times reports that there has been a series of behind-the-scenes attempts to avoid the shutdown, carried out by everyone but Trump.

While the president has been unwilling to consider dropping his demand to fund his signature campaign promise, Mr. Pence and other White House officials were discussing a number of potential compromises that would force him to do just that, omitting spending on a wall and instead adding money for other security measures at the border, according to several officials with knowledge of the talks.

The editorial board of the New York Times calls this a breakdown rather than a shutdown: 

This is what happens when the nation’s chief executive holds a leadership philosophy akin to that of the Petyr Baelish character on “Game of Thrones” — namely, that “chaos is a ladder.” For most people, uncertainty and disorder are scary, unsettling forces to be avoided. But for Mr. Trump, they are cherished friends and strategic assets, in part specifically because other people are so anxious to avoid them. The president clearly believes that throwing everyone else off balance gives him an edge — that is, if he can make the turmoil fierce enough, those around him will give up and give in.

The Washington Post highlights the chaos Trump has inspired in the last week, culminating in the shutdown. 

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Donald Trump has had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. The Washington Post describes it as a tailspin:

President Trump began Thursday under siege, listening to howls of indignation from conservatives over his border wall and thrusting the government toward a shutdown. He ended it by announcing the exit of the man U.S. allies see as the last guardrail against the president’s erratic behavior: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, whose resignation letter was a scathing rebuke of Trump’s worldview.

While it’s too soon to tell if it’s a tailspin––because that implies a crash––this week has definitely been rough. 

The economy is tanking thanks to Trump’s promise to shut down the government over border wall funding. 
Trump supporters have started a GoFundMe to pay for the wall––the wall that Trump swore up and down that Mexico would pay for. It’s impressive that 160,000+ people have paid about ten million dollars for this, but it’s really, really bad optics for the rest of the nation.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned, likely due to a disagreement over Trump’s insistence on withdrawing troops from Syria.
That resignation exposed major issues between the GOP and Trump, the ostensible leader of the party. 
Fortunately for Trump, the week is nearly over. 

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Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned from Donald Trump’s administration after Trump announced that he would withdraw troops from Syria, ignoring the advice of top officials. The Washington Post reports that the resignation was came surprise:

The retired Marine Corps general’s surprise resignation came a day after Trump overruled his advisers, including Mattis, and shocked American allies by announcing the withdrawal. In the process, Trump declared victory over the Islamic State, even though the Pentagon and State Department for months have been saying the fight against the group in Syria isn’t over.  

The Atlantic reproduced Mattis’s resignation letter: 

I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours. It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model—gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions—to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies.

Multiple news outlets, including the New York Times, have pointed out that Mattis was the last of the officials to try to reign in Trump: “His departure leaves the Trump administration without one of the few officials viewed as standing between a mercurial president and global tumult.”

In an op-ed, the NYT editorial board writes that Trump’s decision benefits Russia, damages the GOP, and appears to have been made entirely without consulting his team.

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Facebook admitted Wednesday that they gave other big tech companies access to users’ private messages. Those companies include Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, and Spotify. Signing into Spotify, for example, through Facebook gave Spotify access to user messages. 

Facebook’s admission was not voluntary. The New York Times released an investigative piece revealing that, for “years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews.”

Facebook’s loophole benefitted more than 150 companies, allowing them access to user data. In turn, the companies brought more users to Facebook. 

This news comes at the same time that an US Senate Intelligence Committee report reveals that subversive Russian agents attempted to suppress African-American voters. As a result of the report, the NAACP has called for a boycott of Facebook: “Over the last year, NAACP has expressed concerns about the numerous data breaches and privacy mishaps in which Facebook has been implicated. And since the onset of the Silicon Valley boom, the organisation has been openly critical about the lack of employee diversity among the top technology firms in the country.”

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