U.S. President Donald Trump for months has aimed sharp political attacks at the eight Democrats and news network CNN who were mailed suspected explosives this week, all of whom have been among his fiercest critics.

Trump defeated former secretary of state Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. But as he campaigns for Republican candidates in next month’s nationwide congressional elections, he still demonizes her as corrupt.

“I mean, look at what she’s getting away with,” Trump told one rally. “But let’s see if she gets away with it. Let’s see.”

“Lock her up! Lock her up!” his supporters erupted in response, just as they did two years ago as Trump campaigned for the White House.

For her part, Clinton wrote recently, “Trump and his cronies do so many despicable things that it can be hard to keep track. There are no tanks in the streets. The administration’s malevolence may be constrained on some fronts — for now — by its incompetence. But our democratic institutions and traditions are under siege. We need to do everything we can to fight back. There’s not a moment to lose.”

The U.S. Secret Service said it intercepted possible explosive devices sent to Clinton, former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden, a possible 2020 opponent of Trump when he seeks another four-year term.

In addition, law enforcement authorities said a possible incendiary device was mailed to Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, at the New York office of CNN, the television cable news network where he has often lobbed acerbic attacks on Trump’s presidency.

Three months ago, Brennan said Trump’s performance at the Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin “was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”

Soon after, Trump revoked Brennan’s national security pass.

CNN anchors routinely say that Trump lies or exaggerates about his presidency. One, Don Lemon, called the president a racist.

Trump recently said on Twitter: “Facebook has just stated that they are setting up a system to ‘purge’ themselves of Fake News. Does that mean CNN will finally be put out of business?”

Obama, in the nearly two years since leaving the White House, has often shied from direct attacks on Trump. But recently, he assailed Trump as a “threat to our democracy” and said he was engaging in the “politics of fear and resentment.” Obama accused Trump of needlessly befriending Russia, turning a blind eye to provocations by white supremacists and dividing Americans.

Trump, who often attacks his predecessor, dismissed Obama’s critique, saying, “I’m sorry. I watched it, but I fell asleep. I found he’s very good, very good for sleeping.”

On Twitter, Trump describes his political opponents as a “Radical Democrat Mob” that is “too dangerous to govern.”

Biden and Trump, both in their 70s, have traded schoolyard taunts, with Biden saying he’d like to “beat the hell” out of Trump over his incendiary comments in years past about women. Trump said the former vice president would “go down fast and hard, crying all the way” if they fought fist to fist.

Other recipients of the suspected explosive devices have also traded barbs with the president.

Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California has repeatedly called for Trump’s impeachment. He calls her an “extraordinarily low IQ person.”

Actor Robert De Niro unleashed a barrage a profanities aimed at Trump at a Broadway awards show in June. Trump responded in kind, calling him “a very Low IQ individual,” who “has received to (sic) many shots to the head by real boxers in movies. I watched him last night and truly believe he may be ‘punch-drunk.'”

Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, said he will never call Trump president, referring instead to him as the “present occupant” of the White House. Trump has said that Holder’s performance as the country’s top law enforcement official was as bad as Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, whom he regularly assails as incompetent.

Billionaire political donor George Soros has contributed millions of dollars to Democratic candidates. Trump, without evidence, has accused him of paying for protesters against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his recent confirmation hearings, calling them “elevator screamers.”

During his campaign and 21-month presidency, Trump has applauded the behavior of Congressman Greg Gianforte, a Montana Republican convicted last year of body-slamming a reporter, condoned neo-Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulting in a woman’s death, and said he would pay the legal bills of a Trump supporter who attacked a protester at one of his rallies.

After news surfaced of the suspected explosive devices being sent to his political opponents, Trump said, “We have to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America.”

At a political rally in Wisconsin, Trump omitted his usual rhetorical blasts at Democrats, saying at one point he was “trying to be nice.”

On Thursday, he blamed one of his favorite targets, the mainstream news media, for the turmoil.

“A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!” 

 
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The Pentagon is considering sending hundreds of troops to the southern border after President Donald Trump reiterated Thursday the military would be used to prevent a caravan of Central American migrants from entering the United States.

A U.S. official confirmed to VOA the Pentagon has received a request from the Department of Homeland Security for troops to assist border patrol agents. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no troop numbers were included in the request because the number provided is determined by the Pentagon, based on how many people are needed to provide the desired capabilities.

More than 2,000 National Guard troops have already been deployed to the area.

President Trump has referred to the caravan of migrants, which is more than a 1,600 kilometers from the closest U.S. border, as a “national emergency.”

“I am bringing out the military for this National Emergency. They will be stopped!,” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter earlier Thursday. Trump also agreed with a border patrol labor union official that Democrats are to blame for migrants seeking refuge in the U.S.

Trump has blasted Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala for not stopping their citizens from departing for the U.S. He said Monday he would begin cutting off or reducing foreign aid to those countries and threatened last week to use military troops to close the border.

After camping overnight in the southeastern Mexican town of Mapastepec, the caravan was set to resume its journey Thursday.

Illness, police harassment and fear are taking their toll on the migrants, which now number between 4,000 and 5,000, a sharp decrease from the estimated 7,000 from just days earlier.

Officials say nearly 1,700 migrants already have dropped out and applied for asylum in Mexico. A few hundred weary migrants have accepted Mexican government offers to transport them back to their home countries.

The Mexican government has declined to give the migrants food, water, or even access to bathroom facilities, leaving it to private citizens, church groups or sympathetic local officials to provide essential goods, according to Associated Press.

The Mexican government has, instead, reserved these basic items only for migrants who turn themselves in at immigration centers to apply for visas or to be deported.

Sometimes Mexico’s federal police have interfered with the caravan of migrants, who are mostly from Honduras, according to Associated Press.

Parents who have remained in the caravan say they are doing so for their children’s futures, and out of fear of the potential dangers that would await them upon return to gang-dominated Honduras.

Honduras’ homicide rate is about 43 per 100,000 inhabitants, among the world’s highest for a country not at war.

Such caravans have been routine over the years without much attention, but President Trump has used the caravan to rally his Republican base before the Nov. 6 midterm elections.

Trump fueled the controversy in a series of tweets Monday, saying without evidence that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” were among the caravan of Central American migrants bound for the U.S.

Many in the caravan may not qualify for asylum even if they reach the border, as the U.S. does not consider escapes from poverty and certain types of violence as qualifying factors.

International law requires that individuals fleeing violence and persecution must be allowed access to the country where they are seeking asylum and the right to apply for it.

Staff from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees arrived earlier this week in the Mexican town of Tapachulas, which is near the Guatemalan border, to help stabilize the migrant caravan’s chaotic situation and to register asylum seekers.

UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told VOA that its staffers also are safeguarding migrants’ rights.

“All countries have a right to be able to manage their own immigration and manage their own borders,” Edwards said. “What is important for us is that those borders are managed in an asylum-sensitive way, which means giving people access, assessing their claims and then dealing with them accordingly in line with international law.”
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The head of a U.N. fact-finding mission in Myanmar warned Wednesday that if atrocities committed against minority Muslim Rohingya in that country went unpunished, such crimes would be repeated in other countries on new victims.

“Impunity must not be excused and continue to embolden the Tatmadaw in its promotion of Bamar-Buddhist supremacy,” the head of the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission in Myanmar, Marzuki Darusman, told a meeting of the Security Council. The Myanmar military is known as the Tatmadaw.

“National sovereignty is not a license to commit crimes against humanity or genocide,” he added.

Darusman said for others considering stoking conflict and extremism, the events in Myanmar could serve “as a step-by-step manual.”

​Powerful, emotional presentation 

In a presentation that was at times powerful and emotional, Darusman laid out the Tatmadaw’s strategy in “clearance operations” of northern Rakhine state, home to the minority Rohingya population.

“Dehumanize a population, call them all terrorists, deprive them of all rights, segregate and attack them, rape and kill them, crowd them in IDP camps or drive them out, and protect the killers from justice,” Darusman said. “The international community must be gravely concerned.”

The fact-finding mission published a 444-page report on its findings in August. Over the course of a year, it interviewed survivors and witnesses to the scorched-earth campaign unleashed by the Myanmar military in response to August 2017 attacks by Rohingya militants that killed a dozen police officers.

Darusman condemned the militants’ attacks, saying they contributed to the escalation, but that the military response was “brutal and utterly disproportionate” and conducted “in total disregard for human life.”

​Flight to Bangladesh

More than 700,000 Rohingya rapidly fled to neighboring Bangladesh, where they gave accounts of massacres, rape, murder and villages burned to the ground. The U.N. has called the atrocities “a textbook case” of ethnic cleansing.

“Estimates of 10,000 Rohingya deaths are conservative,” Darusman said.

He said the mission found similar patterns of abuses against other ethnic groups by the military in Myanmar’s Kachin and Shan states.

He called for “decisive action” to stop the “destructive dynamics” and to prevent further problems.

“The Security Council holds the power to break this cycle,” he said. “The key is a strong focus on accountability.”

​Divided Security Council

But the 15-member council is divided on the Rohingya issue. China, Russia, Equatorial Guinea and Bolivia sought to block Darusman’s briefing, but failed to garner enough support in a procedural vote. They would also be highly unlikely to support a council referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court.

China’s ambassador said the fact-finding mission’s report was based on “lopsided and incomplete information” because it was denied entry into Myanmar. “Its conclusions are neither objective nor impartial, therefore, their conclusions are not credible,” Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu told the council.

“We will never accept any calls for a referral of Myanmar to the ICC,” Hau Do Suan, Myanmar’s envoy, said. “Putting accountability above all else without regard to other positive developments will only result in untoward consequences.”

He warned that any unilateral or external pressure would be “detrimental” to the existing goodwill and cooperation of his government with the international community.
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The leader of a Southern California white supremacist group and two other members were arrested on charges of inciting a deadly riot in Charlottesville, Va., last year, prosecutors said Wednesday. 

Other group members were indicted in Virginia on similar charges weeks ago. 

Rise Above Movement leader Robert Rundo was arrested Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport and was denied bail in Los Angeles federal court on Wednesday, U.S. attorney’s office spokesman Thom Mrozek said. 

Two others, Robert Boman and Tyler Laube, were arrested Wednesday morning and Aaron Eason remains at large, Mrozek said. All four were charged with traveling to incite or participate in riots. Attorney information for the defendants could not immediately be found.  

The men allegedly took actions with the “intent to incite, organize, promote, encourage, participate in or carry on riots” last year in Charlottesville and in the California cities of Huntington Beach, Berkeley and San Bernardino, according to a complaint from the U.S. attorney’s office.  

“RAM members violently attacked and assaulted counterprotesters at each of these events,” the complaint said.  

Prosecutors have described the Rise Above Movement as a militant white supremacist group that espouses anti-Semitic and other racist views and meets regularly to train in boxing and other fighting techniques.  

The latest arrests came weeks after the indictments of four other California members of RAM for allegedly inciting the Virginia riot.  

Torch-bearing protesters

In August 2017, they made their way to the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville with their hands taped, “ready to do street battle,” U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen said at a press conference announcing the charges earlier this month. 

Hundreds of white nationalists descended on Charlottesville in part to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.  

Clashes erupted Aug. 11 as a crowd of white nationalists marching through the University of Virginia campus carrying torches and chanting racist slogans encountered a small group of counterprotesters.  

The next day, more violence broke out between counterprotesters and attendees of the “Unite the Right” rally, which was believed to be the largest gathering of U.S. white nationalists in at least a decade. Street fighting exploded before the scheduled event could begin and went on for nearly an hour in view of police until authorities forced the crowd to disperse.  

After authorities forced the rally to disband Aug. 12, Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when a car plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters.  

The death toll rose to three when a state police helicopter that had been monitoring the event crashed, killing two troopers. 
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As Super Typhoon Yutu crossed over the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the walls shook in Glen Hunter’s concrete home, a tin roof over the garage blew away and howling winds terrified his cats.

“At its peak, it felt like many trains running constant,” Hunter, of Saipan, wrote in a Facebook message to The Associated Press. “As its peak, the wind was constant and the sound horrifying.”

Maximum sustained winds of 180 mph (290 kph) were recorded around the eye of the storm, which passed over Tinian and Saipan early Thursday local time, the National Weather Service said.

On Wednesday night, the weather service in Guam issued dire warnings of possible destruction of homes and other buildings. “Collapse of some residential structures will put lives at risk,” the update said. “Airborne debris will cause extensive damage.”

The update warned of falling glass from blown-out windows, electricity and water outages for days or weeks after the storm passes and fallen trees isolating residents.

“Gonna be quite a scene when the sun comes up,” Hunter wrote to the AP early Thursday.

Hunter, 45, has lived on Saipan since childhood and is accustomed to strong storms. “We are in typhoon alley,” he wrote, but added this is the worst he’s experienced.

Power went out the previous afternoon and Hunter was bracing for months without electricity or running water. All government offices and schools shut down two days ago. A few gas stations ran out of gas by Tuesday evening, he said.

“We knew it was going to be big,” he said, “but wow.”

Meteorologist Matthew Foster in Honolulu said Yutu is moving quickly enough that the main concern will be the strong winds, not huge amounts of rain that have been associated with other recent hurricanes.

“It’s a very powerful storm,” Foster said. “It’s going to be more of a wind damage threat versus rain.”

A super typhoon would be the equivalent of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane.

The Northern Marianas are about 3,800 miles (6,115 kilometers) west of Hawaii, and have a population of about 55,000 people.

Waves of 25 to 40 feet (6 to 12 meters) are expected around the eye of the storm and flooding is likely, forecasters said.

A typhoon warning was in effect for Saipan, Tinian and Rota and a tropical storm warning was in place for Guam and other southern islands.
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