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Javier E

Gripped by disease, unemployment and outrage at the police, America plunges into crisis... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...a-81bb-c2f70f01034b_story.html

crisis culture politics 2020 unemployment disease police racism

shared by Javier E on 30 May 20 - No Cached
  • “The threads of our civic life could start unraveling, because everybody’s living in a tinderbox,” said historian and Rice University professor Douglas Brinkley.
  • the toll of the coronavirus outbreak made long-standing racial inequities newly stark. Then, images of police violence made those same disparities visceral.
  • “There are major turning points and ruptures in history. . . . This is one of these moments, but we’ve not seen how it will fully play out.”
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  • Eric Foner, a historian at Columbia University, said the past is filled with events whose outcomes have not been as sweeping as they seemed to portend. He pointed to examples as disparate as the European revolutions of 1848 — famously said to be the “turning point at which modern history failed to turn” — and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which exposed lethal failures but did not cause political transformation.
  • “There seems to be a very powerful inertia pushing us back to normal,” Foner said. “I’m skeptical of those who think this coronavirus is going to change everything.”
  • “Is this going to be the summer of covid-19? Or is this going to be the summer of urban unrest?” Brinkley said. “And Trump does not want it to be the summer of covid-19.”
  • “I was amazed watching people who were out,” said Raoul Cunningham, head of the NAACP branch in Louisville. “To me, it made clear that we’re at a period of time like we’ve never faced before.”
  • Brinkley, the Rice University historian, said the moment seemed akin to Richard Nixon’s presidency, when the country was divided politically over the Vietnam War and the president was attacking the press over the Pentagon Papers.
  • Trump, he said, seems to see the unrest as a potentially helpful “political issue,” if he can position himself as a law-and-order candidate cracking down on anarchy and possibly distract from the pandemic. A Washington Post national average of polls in May shows Trump trailing Biden by seven points, 42 percent to 49 percent.
  • A president’s impeachment, demonstrations over police killings and even global pandemics all have precedents. But their confluence in such a short span of time — under this president, who consistently pushes the boundaries of historic norms associated with his office — has exacerbated the nation’s sense of unease.
  • Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said Trump seemed to be exacerbating the crisis.
  • Norms that we took for granted have been eroded. And at a time when what is most needed is thoughtful, calm, deliberate leadership, we have the opposite.”
katherineharron

Why Trump is taking his Fauci complaints public - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

crisis

shared by katherineharron on 14 May 20 - No Cached
  • One, it's becoming clearer and clearer that reopening the country is Trump's only plan for reviving the economy. The new stimulus package is, as Trump accurately declared, dead on arrival. The Federal Reserve is low on options.
  • Two, Fauci's critics on Fox and in Congress are adjusting their complaints about him to reflect the type of criticism they know appeals to Trump. By casting him as an unelected bureaucrat who is attempting to undermine Trump, they're harkening back to the "deep state" conspiracies that have fueled Trump countless times before, most recently during impeachment and even concurrently with the events surrounding the Michael Flynn case.
  • Fauci and Trump have not seen each other in person this week and their contact has become less frequent with coronavirus task force meetings occurring more sporadically.
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  • What's more likely, officials say, is a continuation of what has already been happening for the last two weeks: a gradual sidelining of Fauci from public appearances at the White House and a continued disregard for the advice he offers the President.
kaylynfreeman

Trump's Campaign Saw an Opportunity. He Undermined It. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-virus-campaign.html

politics pandemic Trump us crisis

shared by kaylynfreeman on 06 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • If Mr. Trump recovered quickly from his bout with the coronavirus and then appeared sympathetic to the public in how he talked about his own experience and that of millions of other Americans, he could have something of a political reset.
  • While that was the hope, it was severely undermined over the last few days by the president’s own behavior — no more so than Monday when he tweeted to the nation “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life!” without acknowledging that, as president, he gets far better care than the average citizen. His comments signaled a far likelier reality: that the erratic handling of his illness by Mr. Trump and his aides will remind voters of his administration’s failures and efforts to play down the deadly pandemic for six months.
  • almost immediately ripped off his mask for the cameras once there. He then filmed a campaign-style video from the balcony, saying that he was “better” and that “maybe I’m immune, I don’t know” to the ravages of the virus.
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  • Mr. Buck said the president’s approach was not necessarily helpful to him politically because it “didn’t pass the laugh test for a super serious situation that has ruined millions of people’s lives.” But he said it was still concerning because “half the country takes their cues from him.”
  • the hope was that discussing his own experience would help him manage the pandemic going forward, and could have political benefits.
  • It is hardly the first time Mr. Trump has undermined the desires of his aides. He has contradicted them on issues ranging from China policy to preparation for the debate last week.
  • And the president could use that to show from now until the second presidential debate, scheduled for Oct. 15, that the disease is serious but can be combated, and that he was ready to re-enter the campaign.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 06 Oct 20
       
      He wants to downplay the virus instead of actually taking it seriously. I thought he would take this opportunity to treat the virus seriously, but he is sending mixed signals about his conditions instead.
  • While that was the hope, it was severely undermined over the last few days by the president’s own behavior — no more so than Monday when he tweeted to the nation “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life!” without acknowledging that, as president, he gets far better care than the average citizen. His comments signaled a far likelier reality: that the erratic handling of his illness by Mr. Trump and his aides will remind voters of his administration’s failures and efforts to play down the deadly pandemic for six months.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 06 Oct 20
       
      He should say that to the thousands of families who have had a loved one die from Covid-19. The hospital has not treated his case as a normal case because he is the president so he is better-taken care of.
  • he hadn’t yet reached the critical seven- to 10-day window that doctors watch for with the coronavirus to see whether patients take a turn for the worse.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 06 Oct 20
       
      So he might get worse
  • the president did not mention the hardship the virus had caused to others or that anyone had suffered greatly from it. Nor did he mention the White House staff members who had fallen sick.
  • almost immediately ripped off his mask for the cameras once there. He then filmed a campaign-style video from the balcony, saying that he was “better” and that “maybe I’m immune, I don’t know” to the ravages of the virus.
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 06 Oct 20
       
      He ripped off his masks while he has the virus to show his supporters that the virus does not control him. And he's not special or immune to the "ravages" of the virus if he could barely breathe in the hospital.
  • “I feel better than I did 20 years ago,” framed the virus as something akin to a weekend at a spa
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 06 Oct 20
       
      lie
  • “You would hope someone who has been in serious health crisis would have a bit of an awakening, find a little religion on this, but he seems incapable of doing that.”
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 06 Oct 20
       
      he's a narcissist
  • “He has experience now fighting the coronavirus as an individual,” said Erin Perrine, a campaign spokeswoman. “Joe Biden doesn’t have that.”
    • kaylynfreeman
      kaylynfreeman on 06 Oct 20
       
      How are you supposed to practice having the virus. We have data from doctors that tell us the virus is bad. The whole point of this is to wear a mask that stops you from getting it.
  • Mr. Trump’s advisers are also trying to paint the virus as one in a long string of fights he has overcome, in line with the investigation into whether his campaign had ties with Russia or the impeachment inquiry.
lmunch

Fact-Checking the Vice-Presidential Debate - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...fact-check-harris-pence-debate

politics us pandemic debate economics trump policy

shared by lmunch on 08 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Mr. Pence deployed a number of misleading or inaccurate arguments. He mischaracterized the White House event at which many officials appear to have been infected with the virus, overstated the likelihood that a vaccine will be in widespread distribution by the end of the year and exaggerated the impact of the limited travel ban imposed on China.
  • Ms. Harris overstated some of her arguments. She said the manufacturing sector is in a recession when it is not. She suggested that if elected, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. would repeal Mr. Trump’s tax cuts on Day One, a step that would actually require a time-consuming effort to pass new tax legislation in Congress — and in any case Mr. Biden has only proposed rolling back portions of the Trump tax cuts.
  • “The president said it was a hoax.”— Ms. HarrisThis is misleading. Ms. Harris is taking Mr. Trump’s comments out of context. He was speaking about the Democrats’ criticism of his administration’s response to the pandemic and comparing it to the “impeachment hoax,” not the virus itself.“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue,” Mr. Trump said at a February rally in South Carolina. “They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax,” he continued.
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  • “The United States has reduced CO2 more than the countries that are still in the Paris climate accord. But we’ve done it through innovation, and we’ve done it through natural gas and fracking.”— Mr. PenceFalse.
  • “The care the president received at Walter Reed Hospital by the White House doctors was exceptional. And the transparency that they’ve practiced all along the way will continue.”— Mr. PenceFalse
  • “Because of a so-called trade war with China, America lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. Farmers have experienced bankruptcy because of it. We are in a manufacturing recession because of it.”— Ms. HarrisThis is exaggerated.
  • “On Day 1, Joe Biden will repeal that tax bill.” — Ms. HarrisThis is false
yehbru

Turkish Bank Case Showed Erdogan's Influence With Trump - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-erdogan-halkbank.html

politics US trump election turkey Erdogan

shared by yehbru on 30 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • a criminal investigation into Halkbank, a state-owned Turkish bank suspected of violating U.S. sanctions law by funneling billions of dollars of gold and cash to Iran
  • For months, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey had been pressing President Trump to quash the investigation, which threatened not only the bank but potentially members of Mr. Erdogan’s family and political party.
  • Mr. Barr pressed Mr. Berman to allow the bank to avoid an indictment by paying a fine and acknowledging some wrongdoing. In addition, the Justice Department would agree to end investigations and criminal cases involving Turkish and bank officials who were allied with Mr. Erdogan and suspected of participating in the sanctions-busting scheme.
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  • “You don’t grant immunity to individuals unless you are getting something from them — and we wouldn’t be here.”
  • Six months earlier, Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general who ran the department from November 2018 until Mr. Barr arrived in February 2019, rejected a request from Mr. Berman for permission to file criminal charges against the bank, two lawyers involved in the investigation said. Mr. Whitaker blocked the move shortly after Mr. Erdogan repeatedly pressed Mr. Trump in a series of conversations in November and December 2018 to resolve the Halkbank matter.
  • Mr. Erdogan had a big political stake in the outcome, because the case had become a major embarrassment for him in Turkey.
  • And Mr. Trump’s sympathetic response to Mr. Erdogan was especially jarring because it involved accusations that the bank had undercut Mr. Trump’s policy of economically isolating Iran, a centerpiece of his Middle East plan.
  • Former White House officials said they came to fear that the president was open to swaying the criminal justice system to advance a transactional and ill-defined agenda of his own.
  • the administration’s bitterness over Mr. Berman’s unwillingness to go along with Mr. Barr’s proposal would linger, and ultimately contribute to Mr. Berman’s dismissal.
  • It predated Mr. Trump’s election but came to encompass a broad cast of players, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor; Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser; and Brian D. Ballard, a lobbyist and fund-raiser for the president.
  • he investigation of Halkbank, Mr. Erdogan claimed, was a “big conspiracy” instigated by his rival Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Muslim cleric. Mr. Gulen left Turkey in the late 1990s and moved to Pennsylvania, where, in Mr. Erdogan’s telling, he plotted an unsuccessful coup attempt just a month earlier, according to a summary of the conversation provided to The Times by the Biden aide.
  • Mr. Erdogan asked Mr. Biden to remove Preet Bharara, then the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. That office was in the early stages of an investigation into Halkbank and had already indicted a Turkish-Iranian gold trader, Reza Zarrab, for helping to orchestrate the sanctions-evasion scheme.
  • Mr. Erdogan also wanted the Obama administration to remove the judge overseeing Mr. Zarrab’s case in Manhattan, the Biden aide said. And he wanted Mr. Zarrab released and allowed to return to Turkey.
  • “If the president were to take this into his own hands, what would happen would be he would be impeached for violating the separation of powers,” Mr. Biden said
  • “Top leadership in Turkey felt that Trump would be a tough-minded businessman, but a businessman they could work with,” Robert Amsterdam, a lobbyist for Turkey, recalled.
  • The National Security Council asked the Education Department about a network of charter schools, partly funded with federal money, that were said to be linked to Mr. Gulen, the Erdogan rival who was living in Pennsylvania. The agency was then asked if the money could be blocked, one official involved in the conversations said. But Education Department officials resisted, saying they did not have the legal authority to stop the funding.
  • But the investigation by the federal prosecutors in Manhattan ground ahead. By early 2018, it had led to the indictments of nine defendants, including Turkey’s former economy minister and three Halkbank officials, on charges such as bank fraud and money laundering related to the sanctions-evasion scheme.
  • ut Mr. Mnuchin raised concerns about how large a fine might be imposed on Halkbank. The French banking giant Société Générale agreed that same year to pay U.S. authorities more than $2 billion to resolve charges that it had violated U.S. sanctions against Cuba and bribed officials in Libya, among other accusations
  • A fine on that scale would threaten the future of Halkbank, lobbyists and lawyers for the bank argued, as did top Turkish officials in conversations with members of the Trump administration
  • Mr. Erdogan made clear that he was frustrated with the continued pestering by Southern District prosecutors concerning Halkbank, and he wanted Mr. Trump to intervene to help wrap up the investigation, Mr. Bolton said in the interview
  • Mr. Trump also told Mr. Erdogan that he wanted to replace the prosecutors in Mr. Berman’s office in Manhattan, whom Mr. Trump considered to be holdovers from the Obama era.
  • Mr. Rosenstein was convinced that the evidence was compelling, perhaps even more so than in other sanctions-evasion cases in which the United States had charged banks, lawyers familiar with the investigation said. The memo from the prosecutors also noted that the actions Halkbank was accused of taking were helping to support Iran’s economy, which was antithetical to Mr. Trump’s foreign policy goal of tightening economic pressure on the country.
  • Mr. Rosenstein urged Mr. Berman to come to Washington to present the Southern District’s argument to Mr. Whitaker. The goal was not to file charges immediately against the bank. Instead, the plan was to give the Southern District more leverage to squeeze Halkbank to accept a deferred prosecution agreement that included an admission of wrongdoing.
  • Discussions between Halkbank and the Southern District continued, according to lawyers involved in the case. But the bank maintained its refusal to admit to wrongdoing and insisted on a deal that would end investigations and drop existing charges.
  • At times, the prosecutors were left with the impression that bank officials felt they had all the leverage because of the relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdogan.
  • The suggestion that the Justice Department would offer Turkish officials protection from criminal charges, even without their agreement to assist in the investigation, was unacceptable and unethical, Mr. Berman argued, according to lawyers close to the investigation.
  • Mr. Barr sought to persuade Mr. Berman that the so-called global settlement would enforce U.S. sanctions law and avert a rift with an ally in a volatile part of the world.
  • “That is the biggest prize that Erdogan could ever receive,” Mr. Erdemir said. “Erdogan was not trying to save the bank. He was trying to save his ministers and save himself.”
  • ust how idiosyncratic became more apparent last October, when Mr. Erdogan sent troops into Syria. Mr. Trump, who had initially given Mr. Erdogan the green light to do so, then faced an intense bipartisan backlash, leading him within days to take a tougher line with Turkey, threatening economic reprisals.
  • On Oct. 15, the Justice Department gave the prosecutors in Manhattan approval to file charges against Halkbank, a direct slap at Mr. Erdogan.The prosecutors rushed to present evidence before a grand jury and secured a six-count indictment that same day charging Halkbank with money laundering, bank fraud and conspiracy to violate the Iran sanctions. So far, no additional individuals have been charged.
clairemann

Opinion | What Will Trump Do After Election Day? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-election-officials.html

US politics election trump gop pandemic policy

shared by clairemann on 30 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • and it could be one of tumult, banners colliding, incidents at the polls and attempted hacks galore. More likely than not, it will end without a winner named or at least generally accepted.
  • America will probably awaken on Nov. 4 into uncertainty. Whatever else happens, there is no doubt that President Trump is ready for it.
  • They are worried that the president could use the power of the government — the one they all serve or served within — to keep himself in office or to create favorable terms for negotiating his exit from the White House.
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  • “at how profoundly divided we’ve become. Donald Trump capitalized on that — he didn’t invent it — but someday soon we’re going to have figure out how to bring our country together, because right now we’re on a dangerous path, so very dangerous, and so vulnerable to bad actors.”
  • I can’t know all their motives for wanting to speak to me, but one thing many of them share is a desire to make clear that the alarm bells heard across the country are ringing loudly inside the administration too, where there are public servants looking to avert conflict, at all costs.
  • History may note that the most important thing that happened that day had little to do with the religious leader and his large life, save a single thread of his legacy.
  • You don’t know Donald Trump like we do. Even though they can’t predict exactly what will happen, their concerns range from the president welcoming, then leveraging, foreign interference in the election, to encouraging havoc that grows into conflagrations that would merit his calling upon U.S. forces.
  • “That’s really him. Not the myth that’s been created. That’s Trump.”
  • He’d switch subjects, go on crazy tangents, abuse and humiliate people, cut them off midsentence. Officials I interviewed described this scenario again and again.
  • Even if it takes weeks or months before the result is known and fully certified, it could be a peaceful process, where all votes are reasonably counted, allowing those precious electors to be distributed based on a fair fight. The anxiety we’re feeling now could turn out to be a lot of fretting followed by nothing much, a political version of Y2K.Or not.
  • For Mr. Trump, the meeting was a face-to-face lifeline call. When he returned to Washington, he couldn’t stop talking about troop withdrawals, starting with Afghanistan. During his campaign, he had frequently mentioned his desire to bring home troops from these “endless wars.”
  • “were it Obama or Bush, or whatever, they’d meet Billy Graham’s grandson and they’d be like ‘Oh that’s interesting,’ and take it to heart, but then they’d go and they’d at least try to validate it with the policymakers, or their military experts. But no, with him, it’s like improv. So, he gets this stray electron and he goes, ‘OK, this is the ground truth.’ ”
  • Senior leadership of the U.S. government went into a panic. Capitol Hill, too. John Bolton, who was still the national security adviser then, and Virginia Boney, then the legislative affairs director of the National Security Council, hit the phones, calling more than a dozen senators from both parties.
  • “Is there any way we can reverse this?” he pleaded. “What can we do?”
  • Mr. Kelly was almost done cleaning out his office. He, too, had had enough. He and Mr. Trump had been at each other every day for months. Later, he told The Washington Examiner, “I said, whatever you do — and we were still in the process of trying to find someone to take my place — I said whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man,’ someone who won’t tell you the truth — don’t do that.”
  • “I think the biggest shock he had — ’cause his assumption was the generals, ‘my generals,’ as he used to say and it used to make us cringe — was this issue of, I think, he just assumed that generals would be completely loyal to the kaiser,”
  • In February 2019, William Barr arrived as attorney general, having auditioned for the job with a 19-page memo arguing in various and creative ways that the president’s powers should be exercised nearly without limits and his actions stand virtually beyond review.
  • “President Trump serves the American people by keeping his promises and taking action where the typical politician would provide hollow words,” she said. “The president wants capable public servants in his administration who will enact his America First agenda and are faithful to the Constitution — these principles are not mutually exclusive. President Trump is delivering on his promise to make Washington accountable again to the citizens it’s meant to serve and will always fight for what is best for the American people.”
  • To replace Mr. Coats, Trump selected Representative John Ratcliffe of Texas, a small-town mayor-turned-congressman with no meaningful experience in intelligence — who quickly withdrew from consideration after news reports questioned his qualifications; he lacked support among key Republican senators as well.
  • There are many scenarios that might unfold from here, nearly all of them entailing weeks or even months of conflict, and giving an advantage to the person who already runs the U.S. government.
  • “sends letters constantly now, berating, asking for the sun, moon, stars, the entire Russia investigation, and then either going on the morning talk shows or calling the attorney general whenever he doesn’t get precisely what he wants.” The urgency, two F.B.I. officials said, ratcheted up after Mr. Trump was told three weeks ago that he wouldn’t get the “deliverables” he wanted before the election of incriminating evidence about those who investigated and prosecuted his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
  • The speculation is that they could both be fired immediately after the election, when Mr. Trump will want to show the cost paid for insufficient loyalty and to demonstrate that he remains in charge.
  • Nov. 4 will be a day, said one of the former senior intelligence officials, “when he’ll want to match word with deed.” Key officials in several parts of the government told me how they thought the progression from the 3rd to the 4th might go down.
  • A group could just directly attack a polling place, injuring poll workers of both parties, and creating a powerful visual — an American polling place in flames, like the ballot box in Massachusetts that was burned earlier this week — that would immediately circle the globe.
  • Would that mean that Mr. Trump caused any such planned activities or improvisations? No, not directly. He’s in an ongoing conversation — one to many, in a twisted e pluribus unum — with a vast population, which is in turn in conversations — many to many — among themselves.
  • “stand back and stand by” instructions? Is Mr. Trump telling his most fervent supporters specifically what to do? No. But security officials are terrified by the dynamics of this volatile conversation.
  • Conservative media could then say the election was being stolen, summoning others to activate, maybe violently. This is the place where cybersecurity experts are on the lookout for foreign actors to amplify polling location incidents many times over, with bots and algorithms and stories written overseas that slip into the U.S. digital diet.
  • Those groups are less structured, more like an “ideology or movement,” as Mr. Wray described them in his September testimony. But, as a senior official told me, the numbers on the left are vast.
  • That army Trump can direct in the difficult days ahead and take with him, wherever he goes. He may activate it. He may bargain with it, depending on how the electoral chips fall. It’s his insurance policy.
  • Inside the Biden campaign they are calling this “too big to rig.”
  • Races tend to tighten at the end, but the question is not so much the difference between the candidates’ vote totals, or projections of them, as it is what Mr. Trump can get his supporters to believe. Mr. Trump might fairly state, at this point, that he can get a significant slice of his base to believe anything.
  • There were enormous efforts to do so, largely but not exclusively by the Russians, in 2016, when election systems in every state were targeted.
  • The lie easily outruns truth — and the best “disinformation,” goes a longtime C.I.A. rule, “is actually truthful.” It all blends together. “Then the president then substantiates it, gives it credence, gives it authority from the highest office,” says the senior government official.
  • Mr. Trump will claim some kind of victory on Nov. 4, even if it’s a victory he claims was hijacked by fraud — just as he falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton’s three million-vote lead in the popular vote was the result of millions of votes from unauthorized immigrants.
  • In the final few weeks of the campaign, and during Mr. Trump’s illness, he’s done two things that seem contradictory: seeking votes from anyone who might still be swayed and consolidating and activating his army of most ardent followers.
  • The F.B.I. has been under siege since this past summer, according to a senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The White House is using friendly members of Congress to try to get at certain information under the guise of quote-unquote, oversight, but really to get politically helpful information before the election,”
  • “They’re the reason he took off the damned mask when he got to the White House” from Walter Reed, the official said. “Those people eat that up, where any reasonable, rational person would be horrified.
  • You ask it to be refilmed, and you take off your mask, which, in my mind, has become a signal to his core base of supporters that are willing to put themselves at risk and danger to show loyalty to him.”
martinelligi

Facing Grim Polls, Trump Leans Into Playing the Victim - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-polls-victim.html

polls trump politics Election

shared by martinelligi on 02 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • On Thursday afternoon, President Trump claimed that he had won this week’s debate against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
  • The one constant has been the president portraying himself as a victim at every turn
  • Be it congressional Democrats or Republican foes like the late Senator John McCain, the news media or the standards enforcers at Twitter, the impeachment inquiry or, now, the debate commission, Mr. Trump has repeatedly blamed others for problems and self-inflicted wounds, something he hopes will appeal to a shared sense of grievance among his supporters.
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  • Mr. Trump has taken to describing shadows on almost every wall: false claims that the election is “rigged” against him, complaints that the coronavirus pandemic was “unfair” to his record on the economy, insistence that people who disagree with him within his own government about policy matters are part of a concerted effort to undermine him.
  • Claiming to be the victim of the political establishment has been key to Mr. Trump’s political persona since he entered the 2016 presidential race
  • But in a pandemic, when more than 200,000 people have died and millions have lost their jobs, Mr. Trump’s complaints about the system being unfair to him are discordant at best.
  • His angry performance in the debate on Tuesday did little to quiet the concerns of such voters. A CNN snap poll conducted that night among registered voters found that by more than two-to-one, debate viewers thought Mr. Biden had been the winner.And in a reminder of how unpopular his pugilistic, taunting style remains with most voters, respondents said by an equally wide margin — 67 to 32 percent — that the president’s attacks on Mr. Biden that night had been unfair.
katherineharron

What Matters: Here's what connects Covid denial and election denial - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

trump

shared by katherineharron on 10 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • There are two core strains of denialism apparent in mainstream America today: that the election was a fraud and that Covid doesn't exist.
  • What ties these lies together:President Donald Trump won't admit defeat in the election or missteps on Covid, creating a bedrock of inaccuracyThe democratization of information on the internet enables everyone to publish their thoughts, even if they're totally made upAs the country gets more tribal in its politics, people find satisfaction in blaming villains, regardless of facts.
  • Either Trump is spinning an alternate reality for followers who agree with him or he is just channeling and amplifying what he hears from them. Regardless, in his four years in office, he has totally normalized bad information.
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  • Climate change, the Russia investigation, his own impeachment, the election he won four years ago, President Barack Obama's birth certificate -- Trump's said so many things are hoaxes or fakes that he may personally not know what is real and what is imagined anymore.
  • Certainly the news Wednesday that President-elect Joe Biden's son Hunter is under investigation by US attorneys in Delaware over his business dealings with Chinese nationals will fuel renewed efforts to smear the President-elect through his son. Misinformation needs a kernel of truth to flourish. Here's what we actually know about the investigation into Hunter Biden.
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci complained Tuesday about trying to reach people in communities where hospitals are nearly overrun, but denialists stubbornly reject masks and social distancing.
  • The Supreme Court, which is controlled by conservatives, shut the door on Trump's election fraud fantasy and his efforts to get state legislators to bypass the voters have so far failed.
  • "The fact that the justices issued a one-sentence order with no separate opinions is a powerful sign that the court intends to stay out of election-related disputes, and that it's going to leave things to the electoral process going forward," CNN legal analyst Steve Vladeck said after the ruling.
  • The Texas lawsuit is concerned only with the ones in key states where Biden won, which has been described as hypocrisy, but that seems like not strong enough a word here.
  • If the Supreme Court's Pennsylvania ruling is any indication, this Texas suit is just the latest in a series of increasingly desperate last gasps as Trump hops from one dead-end lawsuit to the next.
  • The cliché descriptor for the internet is that the world's information is at our fingertips. Which is true. But it also means the world's misinformation is at our fingertips. If you want to make a lie seem legit, it's easy to find a handful of pieces of misinformation or out-of-context articles and videos to bolster pretty much any false narrative.
  • People have all different motivations for peddling misinformation. Sometimes it's political, sometimes financial, sometimes a mix of both -- and of course some people just share it and want to believe it because it confirms their biases. With Trump, for instance, his reasons for pushing misinformation are both political and financial -- he doesn't want to admit he lost and he is fundraising off the back of the lies.
  • a lot of Americans are dreaming of the post-Trump era where he fizzles out of their daily lives. I don't think that is going to happen on social media. Trump has too big a footprint.
  • He drives so much of the right-wing ecosystem and I still think he and his proxies, like his sons, are going to hold a lot of influence.
  • The covert nature of these operations means it's always hard to tell, but certainly the experts we have spoken to this year believe Russian trolls and their ilk have been amplifying existing divisive narratives in the US rather than creating their own
  • I think the problem is going to get worse before it gets better. It's depressing, but I think a lot of people do not want facts
saberal

Hunter Biden Discloses He Is Focus of Federal Tax Inquiry - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...r-biden-tax-investigation.html

politics US Trump

shared by saberal on 10 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • The Justice Department is investigating the tax affairs of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter, he disclosed in a statement on Wednesday.
  • The investigation is being led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware. It was opened in late 2018 and has included inquiries into potential criminal violations of tax and money laundering laws, according to people familiar with the inquiry.
  • The inquiry was focused on Hunter Biden and some of his associates, not the president-elect or other family members, two people familiar with it said.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • It also means that Mr. Biden will most likely come into office as the Justice Department is actively investigating his son,
  • The tax issues came to the attention of F.B.I. agents after they opened the money laundering investigation into Hunter Biden’s financial affairs in late 2018, under the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, according to several people familiar with the inquiry.
  • “We’ve got to get the attorney general to act,” Mr. Trump said
  • By early 2017, Mr. Biden and his first wife, Kathleen, who were then estranged, owed $313,970 in taxes, and had “maxed-out credit-card debt” and “double mortgages on both real properties they own,” according to a filing she submitted in their divorce.
  • Mr. Trump’s impeachment centered on allegations that he abused his powers over American foreign policy in part to damage the Biden campaign by pressuring the government of Ukraine to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden’s dealings there.
  • Efforts by Mr. Trump and his supporters to damage Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign took on new urgency in October after The New York Post published reports based on files from a laptop that appeared to have belonged to Hunter Biden.
  • The next year, the I.R.S. issued a lien against the pair, who were by then divorced, for $112,805 in unpaid taxes from 2015. Those taxes appear to have been paid off by March of this year, when the lien was released.
  • The Biden team has rejected some of the claims made in the Post articles, but has not disputed the authenticity of the files upon which they were based.
  • Mr. Trump and his allies openly pressed the Justice Department to disclose negative information about Mr. Biden ahead of the election, but investigators did not make overt moves that would have exposed the investigation before the ballots were cast.
Javier E

Opinion | What Really Saved the Republic From Trump? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-constitution-norms.html

trust virtue civic virtue Trump crisis politics

shared by Javier E on 13 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • our system of checks and balances, in which the three branches of government are empowered to control or influence the actions of the others, played a disappointingly small role in stopping Mr. Trump from assuming the unlimited powers he seemed to want.
  • What really saved the Republic from Mr. Trump was a different set of limits on the executive: an informal and unofficial set of institutional norms upheld by federal prosecutors, military officers and state elections officials.
  • You might call these values our “unwritten constitution.” Whatever you call them, they were the decisive factor.
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • in other cases, such as his anti-Muslim travel ban, the courts have been too unwilling to look beyond form to ferret out unconstitutional motive. More generally, Mr. Trump has tended to move fast, while the courts are slow, and to operate by threat, which the courts cannot adjudicate.
  • The bigger and more important failure was Congress. Madison intended Congress to be the primary check on the president. Unfortunately, that design has a key flaw (as Madison himself realized). The flaw is vulnerability to party politics.
  • It turns out that if a majority of members of at least one body of Congress exhibits a higher loyalty to its party than to Congress, Congress will not function as a reliable check on a president of that same party. This was what happened with Mr. Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate.
  • The problem is chronic, but over the last four years it became virulent. Confronted with a president who was heedless of rules, Senate Republicans, in ways large and small, let him do what he wanted.
  • They allowed acting appointees to run the federal government. They allowed him to claim a right to attack Iran without congressional approval. The impeachment process was reduced to nothing but a party-line vote. The Senate became a rubber stamp for executive overreach.
  • Instead, the president’s worst impulses were neutralized by three pillars of the unwritten constitution
  • The first is the customary separation between the president and federal criminal prosecution (even though the Department of Justice is part of the executive branch).
  • The second is the traditional political neutrality of the military (even though the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces).
  • The third is the personal integrity of state elections officials.
  • an unwritten norm has long held that the president should not dictate law enforcement decisions in general, and criminal prosecutions in particular.
  • That is why, throughout this fall, even as Mr. Trump urged his appointees in the Justice Department to openly announce a criminal investigation into the Biden family, they did not comply. None of Mr. Trump’s appointees was willing to openly investigate Joe Biden or his family members, let alone issue an indictment or civil complaint.
  • Prosecutorial independence was not limited to refusing to indict Mr. Trump’s political adversaries; it also extended to indicting his allies. Over the past four years, six of Mr. Trump’s close associates have been convicted and seven were indicted, including his adviser Stephen Bannon, his campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his lawyer Michael Cohen. Such prosecutions would be unimaginable in a dictatorship.
  • On June 1, as protests and counterprotests occasioned by the killing of George Floyd became violent and destructive, Mr. Trump appeared in the Rose Garden of the White House and denounced what he called “acts of domestic terror.” He said he would “deploy the United States military” if necessary to “defend the life and property” of U.S. citizens.
  • The Constitution makes the president the commander in chief of the armed forces and the Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the president to use the military or National Guard to suppress civil disorder, providing a broad exception to the general rule barring domestic use of the military.
  • Mr. Trump’s plans ran afoul not of the law, but of an unwritten rule. In a few days, the active duty troops gathered around Washington were sent home. Though briefly tested, the norm had held.
  • Despite the pressure, Mr. Raffensperger and the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, held steady, along with an overwhelming majority of state elections officials around the country. They have refused to “discover” voting fraud without good evidence of it. Party loyalty — at this point — seems not to have fatally corrupted the vote-counting process.
  • Might this welcome result be credited to constitutional design? Not really. The states are an important part of the constitutional design, and the document does give them a central role to play in federal elections. But what seems to have mattered most, in terms of ensuring the integrity of the voting process, was less the constitutional structure and more the personal integrity of the state elections officials. Their professional commitment to a fair vote may have spared the Republic an existential crisis.
  • Madison famously wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Cynical minds have read this line to mean that we should never trust people and should rely only on structural controls on government power.
  • The last four years suggest something different: Structural checks can be overrated. The survival of our Republic depends as much, if not more, on the virtue of those in government, particularly the upholding of norms by civil servants, prosecutors and military officials.
  • as every major moral tradition teaches, no external constraint can fully substitute for the personal compulsion to do what is right.
  • Madison, too, saw the need for this trust. “There is a degree of depravity in mankind,” he wrote, but also “qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence.” A working republican government, he argued, “presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.”
  • It is called civic virtue, and at the end of the day, there is no real alternative.
woodlu

Ukrainians are coping stoically with Russian aggression | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...21805700

politics economics

shared by woodlu on 18 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • He is the mayor of Pavlopil, a village in eastern Ukraine. When Vladimir Putin started grabbing Ukrainian territory in February 2014, Mr Shapkin knew his village was in danger.
  • On one side were pro-Russian separatists, armed by the Kremlin. On the other were loyalist forces. If they fought over Pavlopil, villagers would surely die.
  • He suggested that the separatists enter in the morning, unarmed and on foot, to buy food and cigarettes. The Ukrainian army could do the same each afternoon. That way, they would not bump into each other and start shooting.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • It worked—there was no fighting in Pavlopil
  • sporadic shooting continues in eastern Ukraine. Just on October 12th, the day of an EU-Ukraine summit in Kyiv, monitors counted nearly 300 ceasefire violations
  • Mr Putin wrote an essay in July expanding his argument that Russia and Ukraine are a single nation. Since he has already annexed Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula, and sponsored the takeover of a big chunk of eastern Ukraine by ethnic Russian separatists, Ukrainians take his threats seriously
  • Russia will turn off the gas again
  • In 2009 it shut off the flow of gas through Ukraine for two weeks. This cost Russia a fortune, since its gas needs to pass through Ukraine to reach customers in Europe
  • Once it opens—which could be soon, though it is subject to legal and diplomatic challenges—Mr Putin will be able to choke off supplies to Ukraine almost at will
  • Technically Ukraine does not buy gas directly from Russia, but from downstream countries such as Hungary
  • it takes Russian gas in the east and substitutes its own gas, which is produced in the west of Ukraine, for transmission onwards. So if the flow through Ukraine were to stop, the east of the country would be in trouble
  • President Volodymyr Zelensky seeks shelter for his country inside NATO and the EU. But this is a non-starter. NATO members do not want to extend their principle of “an attack on one is an attack on all” to a country that Russia has already attacked.
  • Mr Zelensky’s first taste of geopolitics was when President Donald Trump urged him to supply dirt on Joe Biden, with a veiled threat that American support for Ukraine’s security might depend on his co-operation.
  • To cement relations with Germany, he waived sanctions that might have blocked Nord Stream 2 in May.
  • Oligarchs dominate the economy, control two of the bigger political parties and put other lawmakers on retainer. The IMF hesitates to throw money at a state from which billions have been stolen with apparent impunity.
  • Before the war two-thirds of people in Mariupol supported a pro-Russia political party. That share has halved. Mr Putin’s aggression has alienated the very people he claims to defend
  • Yet Russia still has a hand on Mariupol’s throat. The amount of cargo processed in its port has halved since 2012, first because of the war, then because Mr Putin made it harder for big ships to reach it from the Black Sea.
  • critics wonder if it is healthy for a city to depend so much on one tycoon. Mr Akhmetov is thought to be Ukraine’s richest man.
  • Mr Zelensky, a former comedian, has vowed to cut Ukraine’s oligarchs down to size. He is expected to sign a new law soon, which would allow a panel he appoints to label as “oligarchs” anyone who is very rich, finances a political party and controls media assets. This would make it harder for anyone so labelled to raise capital.
  • They also worry that the law might give Mr Zelensky too much discretion to cow his enemies and force them to sell their television channels to his friends.
  • His firms have huge unpaid debts to Naftogaz, the state wholesale supplier. This is money that could have been invested to raise domestic gas production. Meanwhile, a new Naftogaz CEO appointed by Mr Zelensky agreed to pay the state a fat dividend out of the firm’s frosty-day fund. This will help Mr Zelensky build roads, which are popular.
Javier E

The 'Pentagon Papers' of the Afghanistan War - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...603316

afghanistan defeat

shared by Javier E on 10 Dec 19 - No Cached
  • The Pentagon Papers helped enshrine in the public lexicon the idea of a “credibility gap”: the difference between what government officials were telling Americans about how the Vietnam War was going and how they knew the war was actually going. At the time, the presence of that gap seemed untenable.
  • Today, however, the credibility gap regarding Afghanistan isn’t a bizarre and unstable temporary situation but the status quo. Everyone knows the U.S. is losing in Afghanistan. Almost everyone in the government has been lying about it for years. Yet the collective response to this contradiction is a resigned shrug.
  • Sometime soon, the Democratic-led House will vote to impeach Trump, but the president is expected to easily survive a Senate trial. As with so many of the troubling currents in contemporary American politics, Trump didn’t create the condition in which people shrug at their government when it brazenly and transparently lies to them. But he has benefited from and exacerbated it.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • In 1971, Americans could still be shocked by the fact that their leaders could be duplicitous. The Afghanistan debacle has conditioned us to expect this.
  • The Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock delivered a devastating suite of articles about Afghanistan.
  • Based on a tranche of thousands of documents obtained by the Post in litigation, as well as some previously released memos, the report shows that for nearly two decades, America’s leaders—Democrat and Republican; civilian and military; elected, appointed, and career civil servant—have lied to us about how the war in Afghanistan is going.
  • The Post, courting the comparison with the Pentagon Papers, is billing its stories as “a secret history of the war.”
  • In exhausting detail, Whitlock shows how Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, their Cabinet officials, and military commanders told Americans that the U.S. had a clear strategy and was effectively executing it—even though, in private, they said that the U.S. had no idea what it was doing, and no idea how to do it.
  • Most think that the war doesn’t have a clear objective. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these views are often even stronger among veterans—the people who have been sent to fight the war and have seen how little progress the American effort is making, and at what cost.
  • Polls have long shown majorities or pluralities of Americans saying that they don’t think the war in Afghanistan is worth fighting and that it is failing. Fewer than half now believe fighting the war was the right decision in the first place
Javier E

Vladimir Putin's 20-Year March to War in Ukraine-and How the West Mishandled It - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...west-mishandled-it-11648826461

putin war ukraine west politics history crisis policy analysis

shared by Javier E on 01 Apr 22 - No Cached
  • For nearly two decades, the U.S. and the European Union vacillated over how to deal with the Russian leader as he resorted to increasingly aggressive steps to reassert Moscow’s dominion over Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.
  • A look back at the history of the Russian-Western tensions, based on interviews with more than 30 past and present policy makers in the U.S., EU, Ukraine and Russia, shows how Western security policies angered Moscow without deterring it.
  • t also shows how Mr. Putin consistently viewed Ukraine as existential for his project of restoring Russian greatness.
  • ...50 more annotations...
  • The biggest question thrown up by this history is why the West failed to see the danger earlier.
  • The North Atlantic Treaty Organization made a statement in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would one day join, and over nearly 14 years never followed through on membership. The EU drew up a trade deal with Ukraine without factoring in Russia’s strong-arm response. Western policies didn’t change decisively in reaction to limited Russian invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, encouraging Mr. Putin to believe that a full-blown campaign to conquer Ukraine wouldn’t meet with determined resistance—either internationally or in Ukraine, a country whose independence he said repeatedly was a regrettable accident of history.
  • The roots of the war lie in Russia’s deep ambivalence about its place in the world after the end of the Soviet Union
  • Viewed from elsewhere in Europe, NATO’s eastward enlargement didn’t threaten Russia’s security. NATO membership is at core a promise to collectively defend a member that comes under attack. The alliance agreed in 1997 not to permanently station substantial combat forces in its new eastern members that were capable of threatening Russian territory. Russia retained a massive nuclear arsenal and the biggest conventional forces in Europe.
  • Mr. Putin thought of Russian security interests more broadly, linking the preservation of Moscow’s influence in adjacent countries with his goals of reviving Russia’s global power and cementing his authoritarian rule at home.
  • U.S. intelligence learned in 2005 that Mr. Putin’s government had carried out a broad review of Russian policy in the “near abroad,” as the Kremlin termed former Soviet republics. From now on, Russia would take a more assertive approach and vigorously contest perceived U.S. influence.
  • Mr. Bush asked Mr. Putin why he thought the end of the Soviet Union had been the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. Surely the deaths of more than 20 million Soviet citizens in World War II was worse, Mr. Bush said. Mr. Putin replied that the USSR’s demise was worse because it had left 25 million Russians outside the Russian Federation, according to Ms. Rice, who was present.
  • Perceptions changed in January 2007, when Mr. Putin vented his growing frustrations about the West at the annual Munich Security Conference. In a long and icy speech, he denounced the U.S. for trying to rule a unipolar world by force, accused NATO of breaking promises by expanding into Europe’s east, and called the West hypocritical for lecturing Russia about democracy. A chill descended on the audience of Western diplomats and politicians at the luxury Hotel Bayerischer Hof, participants recalled.
  • “We didn’t take the speech as seriously as we should have,” said Mr. Ischinger. “It takes two to tango, and Mr. Putin didn’t want to tango any more.
  • “I need a MAP. We need to give the Ukrainian people a strategic focus on the way ahead. We really need this,” Mr. Yushchenko said, Ms. Rice recalled. Ms. Rice, who was initially uncertain about having Ukraine in NATO, gave a noncommittal answer. When the request was debated in the National Security Council, Mr. Bush said NATO should be open to all countries that qualify and want to join.
  • Try as it might, the White House couldn’t overcome German and French resistance to offering a MAP to Ukraine and Georgia.
  • Berlin and Paris pointed to unsolved territorial conflicts in Georgia, low public support for NATO in Ukraine, and the weakness of democracy and the rule of law in both.
  • Ms. Merkel, remembering Mr. Putin’s speech in Munich, believed he would see NATO invitations as a direct and deliberate threat to him, according to Christoph Heusgen, her chief diplomatic adviser at the time. She was also convinced Ukraine and Georgia would bring NATO no benefits as members, Mr. Heusgen said.
  • Ms. Rice, a Soviet and Russia expert, said Mr. Putin wanted to use Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia to rebuild Russia’s global power, and that extending the shield of NATO membership could be the last chance to stop him. German and French officials were skeptical, believing Russia’s economy was too weak and dependent on Western technology to become a serious threat again.
  • In the final session, Ms. Merkel debated in a corner of the room with leaders from Poland and other eastern members of NATO, who advocated strenuously on behalf of Ukraine and Georgia. Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus strongly criticized Ms. Merkel’s stance, warning that a failure to stop Russia’s resurgence would eventually threaten the eastern flank of the alliance.
  • “We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO,” it read. But it didn’t say when. And there was no MAP.
  • Many of Ukraine’s supporters were heartened. But some officials in Bucharest feared it was the worst of both worlds. NATO had just painted a target on the backs of Ukraine and Georgia without giving them any protection.
  • Mr. Putin joined the summit the next day. He spoke behind closed doors and made clear his disdain for NATO’s move, describing Ukraine as a “made-up” country.
  • “He then became a fervent nationalist,” said Mr. Heusgen. “His great anxiety was that Ukraine could become economically and politically successful and that the Russians would eventually ask themselves ‘Why are our brothers doing so well, while our situation remains dire?’ ”
  • Mr. Putin’s show of military force backfired politically. He had won control of Crimea and part of Donbas, but he was losing Ukraine.
  • divisions manifested themselves during Ukraine’s bitterly fought elections and during the Orange and Maidan revolutions. But they receded after 2014. Many Russophone Ukrainians fled from repression and economic collapse in separatist-run Donbas. Even eastern Ukraine came to fear Russian influence. Mr. Putin was doing what Ukrainian politicians had struggled with: uniting a nation.
  • Mr. Putin never tried to implement the Minsk accords, said Mr. Heusgen, the German chancellery aide, because their full implementation would have resolved the conflict and allowed Ukraine to move on.
  • At a conversation at the Hilton Hotel in Brisbane, Australia, during a G-20 summit in late 2014, Ms. Merkel realized that Mr. Putin had entered a state of mind that would never allow for reconciliation with the West, according to a former aide.
  • The conversation was about Ukraine, but Mr. Putin launched into a tirade against the decadence of democracies, whose decay of values, he said, was exemplified by the spread of “gay culture.”
  • The Russian warned Ms. Merkel earnestly that gay culture was corrupting Germany’s youth. Russia’s values were superior and diametrically opposed to Western decadence, he said
  • He expressed disdain for politicians beholden to public opinion. Western politicians were unable to be strong leaders because they were hobbled by electoral pressures and aggressive media, he told Ms. Merkel.
  • Ms. Merkel’s policy reflected a consensus in Berlin that mutually beneficial trade with the EU would tame Russian geopolitical ambitions.
  • The U.S. and some NATO allies, meanwhile, began a multiyear program to train and equip Ukraine’s armed forces, which had proved no match for Russia’s in Donbas.
  • The level of military support was limited because the Obama administration figured that Russia would retain a considerable military advantage over Ukraine and it didn’t want to provoke Moscow.
  • President Trump expanded the aid to include Javelin antitank missiles, but delayed it in 2019 while he pressed Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to look for information the White House hoped to use against Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden and Mr. Biden’s son, an act for which he was impeached.
  • in telephone conversations from 2020 onward, Mr. Macron noticed changes in Mr. Putin. The Russian leader was rigorously isolating himself during the Covid-19 pandemic, requiring even close aides to quarantine themselves before they could meet him.
  • The man on the phone with Mr. Macron was different from the one he had hosted in Paris and the Riviera. “He tended to talk in circles, rewriting history,” recalled an aide to Mr. Macron.
  • The U.S. no longer saw Europe as a primary focus. Mr. Biden wanted neither a “reset” of relations with Mr. Putin, like President Obama had declared in 2009, nor to roll back Russia’s power. The NSC cast the aim as a “stable, predictable relationship.” It was a modest goal that would soon be tested by Mr. Putin’s bid to rewrite the ending of the Cold War.
  • In early 2021, Mr. Biden became the latest U.S. president who wanted to focus his foreign policy on the strategic competition with China, only to become entangled in events elsewhere.
  • When Mr. Zelensky met with Mr. Biden in Washington in September, the U.S. finally announced the $60 million in military support, which included Javelins, small arms and ammunition. The aid was in line with the modest assistance the Obama and Trump administrations had supplied over the years, which provided Ukraine with lethal weaponry but didn’t include air defense, antiship missiles, tanks, fighter aircraft or drones that could carry out attacks.
  • U.S. national security officials discussed the highly classified intelligence at a meeting in the White House on Oct. 27. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned that Russian forces could be ready to attack by the end of January 2022.
  • On Nov. 17, Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, urged the U.S. to send air defense systems and additional antitank weapons and ammunition during a meeting at the Pentagon, although he thought the initial Russian attacks might be limited.
  • Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Mr. Reznikov that Ukraine could be facing a massive invasion.
  • Work began that month on a new $200 million package in military assistance from U.S. stocks. The White House, however, initially held off authorizing it, angering some lawmakers. Administration officials calculated arms shipments wouldn’t be enough to deter Mr. Putin from invading if his mind was made up, and might even provoke him to attack.
  • The cautious White House approach was consistent with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s thinking. He favored a low-profile, gradual approach to assisting Ukraine’s forces and fortifying NATO’s defenses that would grow stronger in line with U.S. intelligence indications about Russia’s intent to attack.
  • A paramount goal was to avoid a direct clash between U.S. and Russian forces—what Mr. Austin called his “North Star.”
  • On Dec. 27, Mr. Biden gave the go-ahead to begin sending more military assistance for Ukraine, including Javelin antitank missiles, mortars, grenade launchers, small arms and ammunition.
  • Three days later, Mr. Biden spoke on the phone with Mr. Putin and said the U.S. had no plan to station offensive missiles in Ukraine and urged Russia to de-escalate. The two leaders were on different wavelengths. Mr. Biden was talking about confidence-building measures. Mr. Putin was talking about effectively rolling back the West.
  • Gen. Mingus had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, been wounded and earned a Purple Heart, and he spoke frankly about the challenges Russian forces would face. Invading a territory was one thing, but holding it was another, and the intervention could turn into a yearslong quagmire, he said. The Russians showed no reaction.
  • Mr. Macron found Mr. Putin even more difficult to talk to than previously, according to French officials. The six-hour conversation went round in circles as Mr. Putin gave long lectures about the historical unity of Russia and Ukraine and the West’s record of hypocrisy, while the French president tried to bring the conversation back to the present day and how to avoid a war.
  • Mr. Scholz argued that the international order rested on the recognition of existing borders, no matter how and when they had been created. The West would never accept unraveling established borders in Europe, he warned. Sanctions would be swift and harsh, and the close economic cooperation between Germany and Russia would end. Public pressure on European leaders to sever all links to Russia would be immense, he said.
  • Mr. Putin then repeated his disdain for weak Western leaders who were susceptible to public pressure.
  • Mr. Zelensky said Mr. Putin couldn’t be trusted to uphold such an agreement and that most Ukrainians wanted to join NATO. His answer left German officials worried that the chances of peace were fading. Aides to Mr. Scholz believed Mr. Putin would maintain his military pressure on Ukraine’s borders to strangle its economy and then eventually move to occupy the country.
  • Mr. Putin said he had decided to recognize the independence of separatist enclaves in eastern Ukraine. He said fascists had seized power in Kyiv, while NATO hadn’t responded to his security concerns and was planning to deploy nuclear missiles in Ukraine.
  • “We are not going to see each other for a while, but I really appreciate the frankness of our discussions,” Mr. Putin told Mr. Macron. “I hope we can talk again one day.”
woodlu

A presidential pardon catches South Korea by surprise | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...atches-south-korea-by-surprise

politics culture policy

shared by woodlu on 19 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • Ever since Park Geun-hye, a former president, was sent to prison for corruption and abuse of power in 2017 her supporters had been staging noisy protests in the middle of South Korea’s capital, calling for her release.
  • Even after mass rallies were banned in a bid to stem the spread of covid-19, lone protesters with megaphones or speakers mounted on vans continued to make the rounds of the square.
  • December 24th Moon Jae-in, Ms Park’s successor as president, announced he would pardon her and set her free on New Year’s Eve.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The protests, known as the candlelight movement, led to her being impeached as well as indicted for such offences as extorting bribes from conglomerates and pressing a university into admitting a close friend’s daughter.
  • he promised to honour the spirit of the movement and break with the old ways of the political establishment, including abandoning the custom of pardoning former presidents who had been convicted of corruption.
  • Ms Park’s deteriorating health and the approaching end of his term seem to have prompted Mr Moon to change his mind
  • His office said he hoped the decision would heal political divisions and help usher in an era of national unity, and asked those who opposed the pardon for their understanding, given Ms Park’s ailments.
  • Left-wing newspaper editorials and spokes people for organisations that led the protests against Ms Park accused him of betraying the candlelight movement.
  • His party, which was apparently not privy to the decision before it was announced, issued a terse statement noting that pardons were the president’s prerogative.
  • The conservative opposition welcomed the pardon. But it complained that Mr Moon had also released Lee Seok-ki, a pro-North Korean firebrand who was serving time for treason, and restored the civic rights of Han Myeong-sook, a former left-wing prime minister who served a two-year sentence for bribery from 2015 to 2017.
  • the political benefits for the outgoing president and his camp may well end up outweighing the costs of pardoning Ms Park.
  • Reports of the disgraced former president’s ill health are credible; she is likely to remain in hospital for several weeks before being sent home.
  • Had she died a prisoner on Mr Moon’s watch just a few weeks before the presidential election, the resulting outrage might well have tipped the scales against his party’s candidate.
  • South Korean presidents often find themselves being investigated for corruption after leaving office.
  • Lee Myung-bak, Ms Park’s predecessor, is in prison serving a long sentence for graft. Roh Moo-hyun, who preceded him, committed suicide shortly after leaving office, during a corruption probe into close aides and family members.
lilyrashkind

"I hope your family dies": Lawmakers worry for their safety as violent threats surge - ... - 0 views

www.cbsnews.com/...reats-january-6-capitol-police

threats us politics

shared by lilyrashkind on 14 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • The threats ramped up after then-President Donald Trump verbally attacked her and her late husband John at a campaign rally in December 2019, the Michigan Democrat said. 
  • "He made very public comments about John looking up from hell. And I was just stunned by it," Dingell said. It's not only verbal abuse.  "I had men in front of my house with assault weapons after [Fox News host] Tucker Carlson had done a rant on me," she said. In November, her Dearborn office was vandalized.
  • "Hey, Cynthia dumb a**," said a voicemail left for Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, after she voted against impeaching Trump. "You f***ing committed treason. You f***ing committed sedition. And I will f***ing kill you. I will. I will f***ing kill you." 
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The threats have had an impact on her and she worries that speaking out about it could make her more of a target. Other lawmakers declined to speak with CBS News because they didn't want to normalize the violent threats. "I'm trying not to let it get to me," Dingell said. "But it doesn't mean that some nights when you're home and alone and you don't have the husband you love anymore, you don't get scared."A year after the January 6 riot, the Capitol Police says the threats to lawmakers are at an all-time high. Roughly 9,600 threats were referred to the agency in 2021, about 100 more than in 2020. 
  • "We're being stretched. Let's be blunt. We're being stretched. We're keeping up, but this is not an ideal situation," he added. Capitol Police flagged about 460 threats against lawmakers' lives last year. 
  • Threats against lawmakers rise when members of Congress take rhetorical aim at colleagues, according to Scalora. After Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert likened Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar to a suicide bomber, both received threats.
  • The Capitol Police is now looking to investigate more of those threats itself and rely less on other agencies. Manger's intelligence unit has doubled the number of analysts available to monitor the threat landscape, especially online. The department is also looking to add 280 new officers this year and is opening field offices in California and Florida to investigate these threats more efficiently. 
Javier E

Trump Discovers That Some Things Are Actually Illegal - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...675031

trump norms laws criminal

shared by Javier E on 20 Aug 23 - No Cached
  • These claims of criminalizing politics are themselves nothing but spin. They imply that Trump and his associates took no action beyond typical political maneuvering.
  • there’s something telling about this phrasing. Politics, it suggests, is a dirty game, where the players jockey viciously for advantage—and if the game becomes rough, well, nothing can be done about that.
  • actually is not the case: Attempting to overturn an election and hold on to power despite the will of the voters is far from typical politics.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • somewhere a line does exist separating the ugly but acceptable from the potentially criminal. And prosecutors allege that Trump crossed it.
  • what makes a norm a norm is, at least in part, the fact that it’s not necessarily a legal obligation. When Trump bulldozed through these collective agreements about how politicians and particularly presidents should behave, in many cases there was no obvious means by which to punish him, legally speaking, or hold him back.
  • Trump’s actions raised this question so frequently that The Washington Post launched a podcast titled, simply, Can He Do That? Often, the Post’s reporters discovered, the answer was “yes.”
  • The power of the presidency is far-reaching, and Trump proved uniquely skilled at exploiting his authority in the areas where controls were weakest.
  • the reach of that power was precisely what had made normative constraints so crucial: For example, because the Constitution places few limits on presidential authority over the Justice Department, it’s all the more important that presidents restrain themselves from demanding that the attorney general investigate their enemies.
  • Sometimes, then, the answer to the question Can he do that? is actually “no,” at least not legally.
  • Instead of the threat of prosecution, the only real constraint on a president’s actions—other than impeachment, which Trump survived twice—is that of political norms. This taste of presidential power may have given Trump a sense of invincibility—perhaps a misguided one.
  • Among the many norms that have long held up American democracy is the shared belief that political candidates should accept the outcome of a free and fair election.
  • according to both Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Trump’s actions moved from destructively poor sportsmanship to outright illegality when he began actively scheming to hold on to power. “The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won,” the Smith indictment states. But Trump “also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”
  • the Justice Department’s internal guidance advises against indictment of a sitting president
  • Repeatedly throughout his presidency, Trump arguably violated his own oath of office and encouraged others to violate theirs. At the federal level, the oath isn’t judicially enforceable; the president’s adherence to it can’t be investigated by a prosecutor or charged by a grand jury. It is, once again, a reflection of a normative commitment to carrying out the duties of the office in the public interest
  • Georgia, though, criminalizes the violation of an oath by a “public officer” in the state. And the Fulton County indictment charges Trump with soliciting Georgia officials—whom he pressured to overturn the state’s election results—to violate their oaths.
  • the indictments are a signal that the foundation of American democracy rests on more than norms alone. These prosecutors aren’t criminalizing politics. They’re criminalizing, well, actual crimes—ones that Trump and his allies are alleged to have committed.
Javier E

What Comes After the Search Warrant? - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...671093

politics history crisis violence rule of law trump

shared by Javier E on 10 Aug 22 - No Cached
  • This sort of rhetoric cooled, for a time, after Trump’s victory. But then came Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference and possible collusion. And the subsequent arrests of some of the president’s closest confidants. Then came the first impeachment of Trump himself. By the time his reelection campaign got under way, Trump was fashioning himself a wartime president, portraying himself on the front lines of a pitched battle between decent, patriotic Americans and a “deep state” of government thugs who aim to enforce conformity and silence dissent.
  • Voter after voter told me there had been a plot to sabotage Trump’s presidency from the start, and now there was a secretive plot to stop him from winning a second term. Everyone in government—public-health officials, low-level bureaucrats, local election administrators—was in on it. The goal wasn’t to steal the election from Trump; it was to steal the election from them.
  • This kind of thinking explains why countless individuals would go on to donate their hard-earned money—more than $250 million in total—to an “Election Defense Fund” that didn’t exist. It explains why others swarmed vote-counting centers, intimidated poll workers, signed on to shoddy legal efforts, flocked to fringe voices advocating solutions such as martyrdom and secession from the union, threatened to kill elections officials, boarded buses to Washington, and ultimately stormed the United States Capitol.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • What made January 6 so predictable—the willingness of Republican leaders to prey on the insecurities and outright paranoia of these voters—is what makes August 8 so dangerous.
  • “If they can do it to a former President, imagine what they can do to you,” read a tweet from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. They followed up: “The IRS is coming for you. The DOJ is coming for you. The FBI is coming for you. No one is safe from political punishment in Joe Biden’s America.”
  • It won’t stop with Trump—that much is certain. The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, all but promised retaliation against the Justice Department should his party retake the majority this fall
  • We don’t know exactly what the FBI was looking for at Mar-a-Lago. We don’t know what was found. What we must acknowledge—even those of us who believe Trump has committed crimes, in some cases brazenly so, and deserves full prosecution under the law—is that bringing him to justice could have some awful consequences.
  • If Trump wins, he and his hard-line loyalists will set about purging the DOJ, the intelligence community, and other vital government departments of careerists deemed insufficiently loyal. There will be no political cost to him for doing so; a Trump victory will be read as a mandate to prosecute his opponents. Indeed, that seems to be exactly where we’re headed.
  • It feels lowest-common-denominator lazy, in such uncertain times, to default to speculation of 1860s-style secession and civil war. But it’s clearly on the minds of Americans. Last year, a poll from the University of Virginia showed that a majority of Trump voters (52 percent) and a strong minority of Biden voters (41 percent) strongly or somewhat agreed that America is so fractured, they would favor red and blue states seceding from the union to form their own countries.
  • Meanwhile, a poll from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland showed that one in three Americans believes violence against the government is justified, and a separate poll by NPR earlier this year showed that one in 10 Americans believes violence is justified “right now.”
  • Assuming that Trump runs in 2024, the stakes are even higher. If Biden—or another Democrat—defeats him, Republicans will have all the more reason to reject the results, given what they see as the Democrats’ politically motivated investigation of the likely Republican nominee.
  • Is that justice worth the associated risks? Yesterday, the nation’s top law-enforcement officers decided it was. We can only hope they were correct.
Javier E

Opinion | Trump taking the Fifth should disqualify him from office - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...taking-fifth-disqualify-office

5th amendment duty officials

shared by Javier E on 18 Aug 22 - No Cached
  • taking the Fifth — especially concerning his alleged misconduct related to the attempted coup — should disqualify him from the presidency.
  • a president “has a constitutional as well as a moral duty to see to it that the laws are faithfully executed — not just a passive duty to avoid violating the law, a duty everyone of course shares, but an active duty to ensure that the law is fully enforced as well as complied with. That active duty arguably includes an obligation to avoid invoking various otherwise available privileges — including the privilege to withhold criminally incriminating information.”
  • “In that special sense, a president or a former president, more than any other public official or private citizen, arguably betrays his or her duty to the American people by taking the Fifth.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • “Fealty to the law meant nothing to him. The country’s interests meant nothing to him. The only oath he has taken is to his own greed and self-preservation.” But that does not mean voters can ignore the obvious conflict that occurs when someone simultaneously thwarts a government investigation and pledges to enforce the Constitution.
  • Tribe notes that Article VI of the Constitution specifies that public officials must take an oath “not just to obey the Constitution and laws of the United States but ‘to support this Constitution.’ ”
  • In other words, should members of Congress implicated in the plot to overturn the 2020 election choose to take the Fifth, they would be setting up a conflict between their self-interest and the interest in upholding and supporting the Constitution
  • True, the Constitution spells out no disqualifications for federal office, other than conviction through impeachment and Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars a person from office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
  • voters certainly should consider the underlying conflict when a candidate for office takes the Fifth, especially when the issue goes to the core of our democracy.
  • Defenders might insist that Trump has not been convicted of any crime. But voters are allowed to draw their own conclusions about not only his underlying conduct but also his refusal to testify.
  • there is a “bond” between an official and the people of the nation, which is “created by election or appointment and also cemented by the oath of office.” Just as a civil jury can draw an adverse conclusion from Trump’s refusal to answer questions, “it should be disqualifying for Trump if he seeks to run again.”
  • Taking the Fifth is their prerogative, but it is the prerogative of voters to hold it against them as evidence that they are putting themselves above the interests of the country.
Javier E

Barr Rebukes Trump as 'Off the Rails' in New Memoir - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...bill-barr-trump-january-6.html

memoir trump justice DOJ history politics crisis

shared by Javier E on 28 Feb 22 - No Cached
  • Former Attorney General William P. Barr writes in a new memoir that former President Donald J. Trump’s “self-indulgence and lack of self-control” cost him the 2020 election and says “the absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill.”
  • In the book, “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General,” Mr. Barr also urges his fellow Republicans to pick someone else as the party’s nominee for the 2024 election, calling the prospect of another presidential run by Mr. Trump “dismaying.”
  • “Donald Trump has shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed,”
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Mr. Trump “lost his grip” after the election, he writes.
  • “He stopped listening to his advisers, became manic and unreasonable, and was off the rails,” Mr. Barr writes. “He surrounded himself with sycophants, including many whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories.”
  • Mr. Barr also denounces the inquiry by the F.B.I. and then the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into links between Russia and Trump campaign aides in 2016. He writes that “the matter that really required investigation” was “how did the phony Russiagate scandal get going, and why did the F.B.I. leadership handle the matter in such an inexplicable and heavy-handed way?”
  • On the scandal that led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, in which Mr. Trump withheld aid to Ukraine as leverage to try to get Ukraine’s president to announce an investigation into Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Barr was scathing.
  • He calls it “another mess — this one self-inflicted and the result of abject stupidity,” a “harebrained gambit” and “idiotic beyond belief.” But while Mr. Barr describes the conversation Mr. Trump had with Ukraine’s president on the topic as “unseemly and injudicious,” he maintains that it did not rise to a “criminal offense.”
  • His book expands on that theme, going through specific “fact-free claims of fraud” that Mr. Trump has put forward and explaining why the Justice Department found them baseless. He lists several reasons, for example, that claims about purportedly hacked Dominion voting machines were “absolute nonsense” and “meaningless twaddle.”“The election was not ‘stolen,’” Mr. Barr writes. “Trump lost it.”
Javier E

Getting 'More Christians Into Politics' Is the Wrong Christian Goal - 0 views

frenchpress.thedispatch.com/...-more-christians-into-politics

politics christians christian influence partisan blindness

shared by Javier E on 27 Mar 22 - No Cached
  • If I could distill the anger about that essay down to a single sentence (besides simply, “Shut up!”) it would be this: “You talk about the problems in Christian conservatism too much. Talk about the Left more.” 
  • And I get it. I really do. In a deeply divided nation where millions of people have convinced themselves that the church is under unprecedented siege, you want Christians who possess a public platform to “defend the church.” There is a deep and profound human desire for advocacy.
  • Yet that’s not remotely the model of biblical discourse, especially of how believers talk to each other.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • As I wrote in my book, at my most partisan moment I once gave a speech in which I said words that shame me to this day. 
  • we forget a fundamental truth—our own maladies often make us unable to see the world clearly. Or, as Jesus said, “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” In so many ways, we’ve become the People of the Plank, blind to the pain we’ve inflicted on the public even as we try desperately to protect ourselves from them.
  • Early church fathers were far, far more concerned with the faith and virtue of the church than the maladies of the Romans. 
  • “I believe the two greatest threats to the United States are university leftists at home and jihadists abroad.”
  • In Iraq, the reality was so profoundly different that words can barely begin to describe all the distinctions
  • I didn’t exactly become post-partisan upon my return (that came later), but I gained the perspective that permitted me to start the process of pulling the plank from my own eye.
  • it’s opened my eyes to many truths that were new to me. Among them, the church should be focused much more on its own virtue than the virtue of the rest of the world.
  • In addition, if there were no grounds for Christians to live with a “spirit of fear” at the height of the Roman Empire, there are no grounds for us to live with a spirit of fear in our nation today. Yet fear seems to dominate Christian political activism—including fear of the left, of CRT, and sometimes even fear for the very existence of a free church in the United States of America.
  • sad experience with Christian leaders teaches us that their professed identity tells us little to nothing about their actual virtue, and virtue should be the guiding concern of Christians in politics, not identity. 
  • I now see that my young desire for “more Christians in politics” and “more respect for Christians in public life” was part of the plank in my eye. Indeed, it helped make me gullible and tribal.
  • I was often eager to critique secular cultures and slow to respond when my own narratives came under credible attack. 
  • While some of the most important fights for justice have been led by Christians—including the civil rights and pro-life movements—some of the most destructive political and cultural forces have been loudly and proudly led by Christians as well. 
  • In fact, two of the most destructive political and cultural movements of this new century—vaccine refusal that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and an effort to overturn an election that could have ruptured our republic—were disproportionately dominated by the most outspoken Christian voices.
  • Here’s what’s hard. Refusing to lie for a president. Refusing to yield to a mob. Resisting the fury of a furious time. And if Christians can’t succeed in that most basic, though often profoundly dangerous, task, then no, we don’t need more Christians in politics. We need more people who possess and demonstrate character and moral courage.
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