AARON MATÉ: It's The Real News. I'm Aaron Maté. At a meeting with President Trump in Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the main topic was, "Iran, Iran, Iran." But at home in Israel, Netanyahu was being discussed much differently. As he met with Trump, a third close confidant turned against Netanyahu in a widening corruption probe. Nir Hefetz, known at Netanyahu's spin doctor, agreed to hand over recordings of Netanyahu and his wife, Sarah, as part of the at least three criminal cases against him.

Well, before this news broke, I sat down with the veteran Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, a columnist for Haaretz. We spoke in Washington ahead of the annual APEC Summit, which Netanyahu attended before going on to the White House and meeting President Trump. Now, Levy was in town to give the keynote address at a counter-APEC Summit. And I began by asking him about Netanyahu's domestic troubles.

Many of Netanyahu's opponents think that this will lead to his downfall. Do you think that they have reason to be optimistic?

GIDEON LEVY: They have reason to be optimistic if you really think that after Netanyahu, Israel will go to a new way with a new horizon and a new policy. I'm not one of them. I think that Benjamin Netanyahu has to resign, I think it will apparently happen. It's a question of time and it might take more time because this man is not going to resign by himself. But by the end of the day, one should ask himself, what's next? And unfortunately, the candidates who are going to replace him are not very promising either.

President Donald Trump's promise to "drain the swamp" in Washington may be getting mired in the same muck his predecessors struggled with, as lobbyists keep getting government jobs and officials leave to make fortunes elsewhere.

Trump's chief economic adviser Gary Cohn resigned on Wednesday, after disagreeing with the president on the issue of steel and aluminum tariffs. At a Thursday cabinet meeting, Trump chided Cohn for being a "globalist" but wished the former Goldman Sachs executive well in his future endeavors.

"He's gonna go out and make another couple hundred million, then he's going to maybe come back" in some other capacity, Trump said.

Rupert Murdoch's news outlets were involved in more criminality than the Leveson Inquiry uncovered, it has been claimed. The Tories want to "close the story down," however, according to Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson.

Whistleblower and ex-private investigator John Ford has claimed he was used by the Sunday Times to illegally to spy on politicians - including former prime minister Tony Blair - while they were in power. Ford said his spying methods included blagging, a term for tricking sources into revealing information by pretending to be a legitimate authority.

Ford claims he was contracted between 1995 and 2010, and targeted both the Labour government and members of the public. The former PI said he would go on "fishing expeditions often" and there were "hundreds of telephone interceptions, hundreds of bank interceptions. I've stolen rubbish. I'm afraid the list is endless," he added.

Just hours after a former Obama administration official tweeted a news story blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for swaying Italy's weekend parliamentary election in favor of Euroskeptic parties (of course the strong gains made by the Five Star Movement had nothing to do with Italy's massive debt load or its 38% youth unemployment rate), UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson told MPs in the House of Commons that Russia is a "malign and destructive" force and promised it would be "brought to heel" following the suspected poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal.

The elder Skripal, 66, and his daughter, who is in her 30s, were found collapsed on a bench at a shopping center in Salisbury, South England, on Sunday. Both are in critical condition and are being treated at Salisbury Hospitals. They were discovered by a 33-year-old woman who was known to the both of them.

Per Reuters, Britain will respond robustly if proof of Russia's involvement is discovered.

"There is much speculation about the disturbing incident in Salisbury, where a 66-year-old man, Sergei Skripal, and his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia, were found unconscious," Johnson told parliament.

"While it would be wrong to pre-judge the investigation, I can reassure the House that should evidence emerge that implies state responsibility, then her majesty's government will respond appropriately and robustly."

UK police are still working to try and pinpoint what "unknown substance" harmed the Skripals. Officers discovered the pair, who had no physical injuries, at the Maltings shopping center in Salisbury, per the BBC.

President Trump has threatened to "totally destroy North Korea," respond with "fire and fury" to its nuclear weapons, and said "they're going to be in trouble like few nations ever have been in trouble in this world." His remarks have caused commentators, including at The Atlantic, to worry that Trump could essentially taunt Kim Jong Un into a war. And then, suddenly, South Korea said Tuesday that the North was open to talks with the U.S., including on renouncing its nuclear weapons program - something Kim Jong Un had never put on the table before. Could that mean that Trump's blustery rhetoric ... worked?

Not all the words from Washington have been bellicose, of course. Sometimes the administration has managed to seem both threatening and conciliatory on the same day. Trump has warned Kim about the size of his nuclear button. Rex Tillerson, the U.S. secretary of state, has said the U.S. is ready for talks with no conditions. James Mattis, the U.S. defense secretary, has said all options are on the table, which presumably includes war as well as talking. Sometimes the administration has appeared to reverse itself within hours - as when Tillerson said last October that the United States has "three channels open to Pyongyang." Not long after, Trump tweeted: "I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man. Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!"

But R.C. Hammond, who served as senior adviser to Tillerson for public affairs until last December, insists this did not indicate divisions within the administration on North Korea policy. The seeming contradictions in Washington's rhetoric in the summer and fall of 2017, he said, were an attempt to "tune the radio" with North Korea, sending different signals to see how the North Koreans would respond. (Pyongyang, for example, responded to Trump's threat of "fire and fury" by threatening Guam.)

In all, Pelosi stumbled 16 times over just 15 minutes.

At times, Pelosi stared vacantly into the distance as she gathered her thoughts.

"This week we had ... March 5th ... marked the 6th month -- the end of the ... time frame," Pelosi stumbled, attempting to explain the expiration of President Trump's deadline on reforming Deferred Action Against Childhood Arrivals, or DACA and the urgency of resolving the issue.

Addressing a question on the fracturing within the Democratic Party, Pelosi began, "The most exhilarating ..." but then struggled to find her next word. Finally she settled on "thrill," and went on to say that the various competing fractions within her party make it exciting.

A group of US lawmakers have called for strategic dialogue with Moscow. They feel that the matter is "more urgent" following Russian President Vladimir Putin's unveiling of a number of cutting-edge weapons systems."

A US-Russia Strategic Dialogue is more urgent following President Putin's public address on March 1st when he referred to several new nuclear weapons Russia is reportedly developing, including a cruise missile and a nuclear underwater drone," a letter signed by US Senators Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) reads.

The letter, addressed to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was published on Thursday. The senators stressed that while the countries have many "significant" disagreements, including alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections and the "annexation" of Crimea, Moscow and Washington need to come to the negotiation table.

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson said Thursday that Twitter is taking steps to guard against the kind of fake tweets that hit The Miami Herald last month, but that "a lot more has got to be done."

Nelson called for a technical summit, led perhaps the Federal Trade Commission, to "get all of the relevant companies in the same room and talk about this problem with a collective sense of urgency and come up with some solutions." Such a summit should include social media platforms, digital content companies, software developers, news organizations and government agencies, he said.

However, the Twitter executives who met with Nelson Thursday declined to identify those behind the hoax, which came shortly after the Feb. 14 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.

Former President Barack Obama is in advanced negotiations with Netflix to produce a series of high-profile shows that will provide him a global platform after his departure from the White House, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Under terms of a proposed deal, which is not yet final, Netflix would pay Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, for exclusive content that would be available only on the streaming service, which has nearly 118 million subscribers around the world. The number of episodes and the formats for the shows have not been decided.

Mr. Obama does not intend to use his Netflix shows to directly respond to President Trump or conservative critics, according to people familiar with discussions about the programming. They said the Obamas had talked about producing shows that highlight inspirational stories.

The still decidedly volatile situation in Ukraine - resulting from another in a long line of U.S.-inspired regime changes that have destabilized the geopolitical landscape over the past few decades - is worth revisiting for a number of reasons. With the fourth anniversary of the coup just passed, the sudden, shock passing of veteran investigative journalist Robert Parry and Consortium News founder/editor also affords even greater impetus for doing so. This is especially given his incisive body of reportage on the crisis since 2014; the larger issue of America's worsening relationship with Russia; and the geopolitical implications going forward of these developments. Australian blogger Greg Maybury reports.

A Shabby Deck of Political Cards

For those who haven't seen Ukraine on Fire (UOF), the Oliver Stone-produced documentary on the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, it is not overstating the case to say it's an essential historical document and one of the most important, insightful political documentaries of recent times. It may also be one of the most portentous.

Quite apart from the illuminating history lesson the film delivers as a backdrop to the current situation in one of Europe's most pivotal of battlegrounds, there are many takeaways from the film. To begin, it stands as a vital corrective of the disinformation, misinformation, evangelistic doublespeak, ersatz analysis, unadulterated agitprop, and plain old garden-variety groupthink that attended the public discourse on the events and developments in the country, and which ultimately framed most people's views of the situation. Needless to say, the messages and impressions conveyed by this ongoing, relentless 'psy-op' cum fake news onslaught still 'rules the roost' in most people's minds.

Further, the film's narrative is highly revealing in the manner in which the Western mainstream media (MSM) reported on the events surrounding the turmoil and conflict. In the process it showcases how much the perfidious thought contagion spread by the ever-nefarious neoconservatives and their fellow travelers the liberal interventionists infects U.S. foreign policy, along with the foreign policies of America's assorted vassal states.