American Detainees Freed from North Korea

President Donald J. Trump announced that “three Americans held in North Korean labor camps were free and on their way home Wednesday,” Alastair Jamieson reports for NBC News. “Pompeo was in Pyongyang to finalize a date and place for historic face-to-face talks between Trump and the North Korean leader.”

“[Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo and his ‘guests’ will be landing at Andrews Air Force Base at 2:00 A.M. in the morning. I will be there to greet them. Very exciting!” President Trump tweeted.

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The Washington Free Beacon reports that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked Gina Haspel, President Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA, during her Senate hearing that “if someone like you, with your history, with your record of service and sacrifice and excellence . . . cannot be confirmed to head this agency, then who can?" Sen. Rubio added that Haspel embodies everything he respects and admires about the CIA’s public servants.

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“Finally: A US president is pushing back on Iran’s dangerous and growing power,” writes the New York Post's Editorial Board. The editors explain that “President Trump’s decision Tuesday to withdraw from Team Obama’s badly flawed Iran deal and reimpose sanctions sends a clear message to the mullahs: The jig’s up.”

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The Cipher Brief reports that 72 former CIA officers have endorsed Gina Haspel to be the next Director of the Agency. “In her, we saw the image of what we want a peer and leader to be,” the officers said in a joint statement.

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“In his speech, one of the best made about and to Iran by an American president, Trump put the world on notice that the U.S. would no longer be hamstrung by a bad deal,” the Washington Examiner Editorial Board writes. “America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail,” President Trump declared.

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Lester Munson, senior fellow at the National Security Institute, writes in RealClearDefense that Gina Haspel understands the CIA “as well as anyone and is ready to execute the job of Director – her career and experience speak volumes. It would be a shame for the opposition party in the Senate to follow the same unfortunate strategy they did with Mike Pompeo and politicize a qualified nominee during the confirmation process.”