TV News LIES

President Donald Trump is deploying the full trappings of formal state entertaining for the first time on Monday in the hopes an elaborate display of diplomacy can lead to a deeper bond with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Flight records of Trump’s trip to Russia obtained by Bloomberg confirm Trump’s overnight stay at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow.

In the memos from Comey released last week, which the former FBI director kept during his time in office to document his interactions with the president, Comey writes that Trump twice told him that hadn't stayed the night in Russia during the trip.

The Treasury Department Monday eased sanctions on Russian aluminum producer Rusal and said it would consider lifting them altogether if the company severs ties with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin.

Rusal was sanctioned earlier this month by Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control because of Deripaska's stake in the company. The Russian billionaire is alleged to have conducted a range of illegal activities, including money laundering, extortion and ordering the murder of a businessman, according to Treasury.

National security adviser John Bolton has tapped a senior Commerce Department official as his deputy.

The White House announced on Friday that Mira Ricardel, the undersecretary of commerce for export administration, had been chosen to replace Nadia Schadlow, who resigned earlier this month days after Bolton took office.

Ricardel is one of Bolton's first senior-level hires since taking office. A slew of senior National Security Council staffers have stepped down since the ouster of H.R. McMaster, the previous national security adviser.

TVNL Comment: Oh, goodie....another war monger.

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Charles Thomas was a rising star at the state department in the early 1960s, a career diplomat who had served across Latin America and Africa. His colleagues were convinced he would earn the rank of ambassador. They agreed that the tall, jut-jawed, preppy, handsome Thomas – described by colleagues as “the diplomat from central casting” – adored his wife Cynthia and two young daughters.

But then something went horribly wrong. In 1971, at the age of 48, Thomas killed himself.

The death certificate showed that on Monday 12 April, at about 4pm and in the second-floor bathroom of his family’s rented home on the banks of the Potomac river in Washington, Thomas lifted a gun to his head. Cynthia, downstairs, thought the boiler had exploded.

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I grinned as the taxi raced through the busy streets of a bustling Middle Eastern city in the middle of the night with my 200-lb. electric wheelchair strapped to the back with bungee cords. There were moments like this throughout my 10-year career as a CIA officer that reminded me how incredible it was that I had made it to the agency as a woman with a disability.

I had always wanted to work for the CIA, having been long intrigued by its mission to accomplish what others cannot accomplish and to go where others cannot go. I learned quickly, however, that that creative, can-do spirit of the agency did not extend to employees with disabilities.