Archive for the ‘Donald Trump’ Category

Donald Trump’s strategy on Mitch McConnell is totally pointless – CNN

The latest victim of Trump's sharp teeth is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who Trump suggested on Thursday might consider stepping down from his post if he can't get health care reform, tax reform and infrastructure spending through Congress.

"You can ask the question" of McConnell stepping down, Trump told the pool reporters gathered at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey during his 17-day long working vacation.

It's Trump's latest -- and most aggressive -- attempt to troll McConnell over the last 24 hours.

It's easy -- amid Trump's continued incendiary comments about North Korea and his broader penchant for just, well, saying things -- to gloss over this. We shouldn't.

Consider this: Trump is leaving open the possibility that the Senate majority leader -- of his own party! -- should step down if he can't get done what Trump wants done. That is not normal politics. If anything close to this happened with President Barack Obama and then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, it would have been the lead story of every newscast in the country. It would have launched a thousand articles delving into the collapse of their relationship -- and what it all meant for the party and its chances of getting something done.

What's more: The strategy behind this latest series of attacks is difficult (impossible?) to ascertain.

Sure, Trump's base will like it -- McConnell is the face of a party establishment they loathe and think is deeply ineffective. But Trump's base is going to be with him no matter what he does or who he attacks. It's not as though they are going to be more for him because he is attacking McConnell.

Given that, there's no obvious upside for Trump. And there's a very clear downside: That he loses the trust, respect and collegiality of everyone from McConnell to the rank-and-file Senate Republicans who owe their elections (or reelections) to McConnell.

This looks like a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face by Trump. To get anything -- literally, anything -- done in the coming months or years, he needs McConnell. And, McConnell a) isn't going anywhere and b) has no serious threat to his leadership position.

What Trump is doing is akin to visiting a friend's house, saying it's a dump and then asking if you can stay there for a few weeks while your own house is being renovated.

If McConnelll ever had an inclination to help Trump for the good of the party, it's hard to see how the past 24 hours don't wipe that away entirely.

The way the Senate -- and every other legislative body -- works is trust and goodwill. The attacks on McConnell -- coming after Trump's repeated attacks on Sen. John McCain, his calling out of Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski on health care, his threat to Nevada Sen. Dean Heller on his vote and his repeated attacks on former senator and now Attorney General Jeff Sessions -- effectively zero out Trump's already dwindling supply of either trust or goodwill among the 52 Republican senators.

Trump may not care -- which is his right. But this is a fight he can't win -- and shouldn't keep stoking. Which, of course, means he almost certainly will.

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Donald Trump's strategy on Mitch McConnell is totally pointless - CNN

‘Donald Trump, here is my hand’: Venezuela’s Maduro calls for talks with Trump – CNBC

Miraflores Palace via Reuters

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a meeting with members of the Constituent Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela August 2, 2017.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has called on President Donald Trump to engage in a "personal conversation" just days after being hit with new sanctions by the U.S.

The U.S. Treasury Department brandished the socialist leader a "dictator" last week and issued a string of new sanctions against him and a number of Venezuelan officials after the government staged what many observers said was a fraudulent vote to create an all-powerful legislative body.

However, Maduro, himself a tough critic of Trump, reached out to Trump Thursday during his first address to the new constituent assembly, and asked to meet with the president next month, when they are both due to attend that UN General Assembly in New York.

"If he (Trump) is so interested in Venezuela, here I am," he said in his three-hour address to the 545 member assembly.

"Mr Donald Trump, here is my hand."

The legislative body was voted into power in an election at the end of July and allows the government to rewrite legislation, though critics argue the result was illegitimate and an attempt by Maduro to cling onto power.

The vote has also prompted a number of corporations to take action against the country. On Thursday, Credit Suisse barred transactions involving certain Venezuelan bonds and business with Venezuela's government and related agencies has to undergo reputation risk reviews. This comes after Goldman Sachs faced scrutiny for buying $2.8 billion in bonds issues by state oil company PDVSA.

"In light of the political climate and recent events in Venezuela ... we want to ensure that Credit Suisse does not provide the means for anyone to violate the human rights of the Venezuelan people," Reuters said, citing a Credit Suisse memo.

The U.S., which relies on Venezuela for oil imports, is yet to place sanctions on the oil industry. Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves but its economy has been badly hurt by a fall in oil prices over recent years.

Maduro, during the same speech Thursday, also hit out at "imperialists", who he accused of undermining his leadership, saying "we will never cede to foreign powers."

He added that Venezuela would challenge the sanctions in a U.S. court.

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'Donald Trump, here is my hand': Venezuela's Maduro calls for talks with Trump - CNBC

Hey, guess what? Donald Trump has a good foreign policy idea – USA TODAY

James Bovard, Opinon columnist Published 2:23 p.m. ET Aug. 10, 2017 | Updated 4:48 p.m. ET Aug. 10, 2017

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson downplayed President Trumps warning to North Korea over its nuclear intentions. Buzz60

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson(Photo: Pool photo by Mohd Rasfan)

The Trump administrations foreign policy often resembles a Mad Hatters Tea Party or a loose cannon on a ship deck. But every now and then, a good idea emerges from the fracas.Such is the case with a reform that could sharply reduce Americas piety exports.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is revising the State Department mission statement to focus on promoting the security, prosperity and interests of the American people globally.Washington pundits are aghast that democracy promotion is no longer trumpeted as a top U.S. foreign policy goal.Elliott Abrams, George W. Bushs democracy czar, complained, We used to want a just and democratic world, and now apparently we dont ... the message being sent will be a great comfort to every dictator in the world.

But this is like presuming that any preacher who fails to promise to eradicate sin is a tool of the devil.Instead, it is time to recognize the carnage the U.S. has sown abroad in the name of democracy.

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The U.S. has periodically pledged to spread democracy ever since President Woodrow Wilson announced in 1913: I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!Democracy is so important that the U.S. government refuses to stand idly by when foreign voters go astray. Since 1946, the U.S. has intervened usually covertly inmore than 80 foreign elections to assist its preferred candidate or party.

In his 2005 inaugural address, President George W. Bush proclaimed that the U.S. would seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. While Bushs invocation thrilled Washington, the rest of the world paid more attention to his support for any tyrant who joined his War on Terror.

President Barack Obama was supposed to redeem the honor of U.S. foreign policy.In 2011,Obama portrayed the U.S. bombing of Libya as a triumph of democratic values. After Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi was killed, Obama speedily announced that Libyans now have the opportunity to determine their own destiny in a new and democratic Libya. Butviolence spiraled out of control andclaimed thousands of victims (including four Americans killed in Benghazi in 2012).Similarly, Obama administration officials invoked democracy to justify arming quasi-terrorist groups in Syrias civil war, worsening a conflict that killed hundreds of thousands and created millions of refuges.

But the Obama team, like prior administrations, did not permit its democratic pretensions to impede business as usual. After Egyptian protestors toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak, Obama pledged to assist that nation pursue a credible transition to a democracy.But the U.S. government disapproved of that nations first elected leader, Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi.After the Egyptian military deposed Morsi in 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry bizarrely praised Egypts generals for restoring democracy.Similarly, many Ethiopians were horrified when Obama visited their country in 2015 and praised its regime as democratically elected despite a sham election and its brutal suppression of journalists, bloggersand other critics.

Democracy promotion gives U.S. policymakers a license to meddle almost anywhere on Earth.The National Endowment for Democracy, created in 1983, has been caught interfering in elections in France, Panama, Costa Rica, Ukraine, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Haitiand many other nations.The State Department has a long list of similar pratfalls, including pouring vast amounts of money in vain efforts to beget democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Democracy at its best isa wonderful form of government but many so-called democracies nowadays are simply elective despotisms. Elections abroad are often herd counts to determine who gets to fleece the herd. Many democracies have become kleptocracies where governing is indistinguishable from looting.

In some nations, election victories legitimize destroying voters en masse.This is exemplified by the Philippines, where the government has killed 7,000 suspected drug users and dealers, including several mayors.After President Rodrigo Duterte publicly declared that he would be happy to slaughter three million drug users, Trump phoned him and, according to a leaked transcript, said, I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job [youre doing] on the drug problem. Similarly, Trump congratulated Turkish president Recep Erdogan after he won a referendum that awarded him quasi-dictatorial powers.

It is time to admit that America lacks a Midas touch for spreading democracy. Freedom House reported that, even prior to Trumps election, more than 100 nations have seen declines in democracy since 2005.

Rather than abandoning all moral goals in foreign policy, Washington could instead embrace a strict policy ofhonesty in democracy promotion.Under this standard, the U.S. government would cease trying to covertly influence foreign elections, cease glorifying tinhorn dictators who rigged elections to capture power, and cease bankrolling authoritarian regimes that blight democratic reforms in the bud.But the odds of Washington policymakers abiding by those restraints is akin to the chances that all of Trumps tweets will henceforth be edifying.

Rather than delivering political salvation, U.S. interventions abroad more often produce no-fault carnage (no one in Washington is ever held liable).At a minimum, we should get our own constitutional house in order before seeking to rescue benighted foreigners. Ironically, many of the same people who equate Trump with Hitler still insist that the U.S. government should continue its political missionary work during his reign.

James Bovard,author ofPublic Policy Hooligan,isa member of USA TODAYsBoard of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter@JimBovard

You can read diverse opinions from ourBoard of Contributorsand other writers on theOpinion front page, on Twitter@USATOpinionand in our dailyOpinion newsletter. To submit a letter, comment or column, check oursubmission guidelines.

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Hey, guess what? Donald Trump has a good foreign policy idea - USA TODAY

Donald Trump Is the Godfather of a Democratic Renaissance – New York Times

In 2009, Democrats controlled both the state senate and house in 27 states, the Republicans 14. After the 2016 elections, Republicans controlled both branches of the legislatures in 32 states to 14 for the Democrats.

The importance of these trends cannot be overstated. State legislatures not only control redistricting in most states a key to determining which party will control the House after the 2020 census but also serve as a training ground where politicians learn the ropes of winning elections and governing. In this respect, state legislatures are a key source of new talent.

Emerge America, an organization that recruits Democratic women to run for office, is stressing the need for candidates to file for state legislative seats. In the first six months of 2016, the group raised $500,219; during the first half of this year, it raised $2.03 million.

Andrea Dew Steele, the organizations president and founder, describes Emerge as the beginning of the food chain, performing basic training for women, many of them seeking office for the first time.

In 2017, Emerge expanded operations from 17 to 22 states, including such deep red states as Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana. Unlike Emilys List, a more established group that supports Democratic women, Emerge pointedly does not have a litmus test requiring its candidates to back abortion rights.

One of the biggest successes so far this year is the organization called Indivisible, founded in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election by Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, a married couple who both worked as aides to Democratic congressmen. Indivisible now claims 5,983 local chapters, with at least two in every congressional district.

Indivisible has played a leading role in turning out voters at congressional town halls to voice their opposition to Trumps plan to repeal Obamacare a tactic explicitly copied from the Tea Partys organizing drive in 2009-2010.

While support for these relatively new groups on the left is growing, the track record of some of the more established organizations is mixed.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has traditionally been the single most important group devoted to winning state senate and state house seats. In terms of financial support, it has seen a modest increase. In the first six months of 2016, the D.L.C.C. raised $4.03 million compared to $4.36 million during the first six months of 2017.

Organizing for Action, an offshoot of Obamas presidential campaigns, has experienced a steady drop in revenues: from $26 million in 2013 to $14.4 million in 2014 to $9 million in 2015 to $6 million in 2016. O.F.A. raised $3.4 million during the first half of 2017, according to Jesse Lehrich, the organizations communications director.

Money is not the only factor in politics if it were, the efforts of these progressive groups would be doomed.

Republicans and conservative organizations have had the financial advantage in the fight for state legislatures, and they will continue to have it during the 2018 election cycle.

Take the Republican State Leadership Committee. It has raised $6.53 million so far this year, $2.17 million more than the amount raised by its Democratic counterpart.

On a larger scale, the immense network of organizations created by the Koch brothers and other conservative donors far outstrips the structures that Democrats and liberals are piecing together. USA Today reported in June that in 2017-18 the Koch machine plans to spend $300- $400 million on elections and lobbying at every level.

If we look at enthusiasm, however, Democrats have the clear advantage this year. Take special legislative elections.

In an analysis published by FiveThirtyEight, Nathaniel Rakich found that in the first 15 special elections to fill vacant state legislative seats in 2017, Democratic candidates outperformed past Democratic presidential candidates by an average of 14.4 percentage points. On Aug. 8, Phil Miller, a Democrat, won a special election to fill a vacant seat in the Iowa House by 10 points in a district that Trump carried by 22.

Another gauge of enthusiasm is the willingness of prospective candidates to enter contests in the first place. Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute and a professor of political science at the University at Albany, tracked the number of Democratic and Republican challengers (in other words, non-incumbents) who filed their candidacies with the Federal Election Commission and had raised $5,000 as of June 30.

Malbin compared the data to prior years and his findings are noteworthy: So far this year, there are already 209 Democratic challengers, more than in any of the previous seven election cycles and more than double the 78 Republican challengers in 2009, the year that led up to the Republican wave election of 2010.

Number of candidates running against House incumbents who raised at least $5,000 by June in each of these years.

While motivation is high on the left, there is no guarantee that it will be well directed. Many of the newly involved enthusiasts are political neophytes.

Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard, has been studying the rise of Indivisible in eight mid-western counties.

In a phone interview, Skocpol said the quality and effectiveness of Indivisible chapters ran the gamut in terms of efficacy, with only some developing structured organizations. There are groups, she said, that are equipped to mobilize members to act on specific issues and to get voters to the polls, while others are far less prepared to engage on either front.

Along similar lines, a Democratic operative with extensive experience in grass-roots organizing who asked not to be identified told me that

We are working with many of these new organizations in a variety of ways. As we have non-disclosure agreements with all of the organizations we work with, details have to come from them. The growth in activism that these groups have both spurred and harnessed outstrips anything I have seen in decades previously. That said, this activism is pushing against strong structural headwinds and entrenched power. Further, still unknown is whether the geographic distribution of this activism will be aligned with and find the political fulcrum points.

By geographic distribution, this operative means that the renewed vitality on the left is most heavily concentrated in New York, Massachusetts and California, which are already Democratic.

Resilience in the face of setbacks will be a key test of the long-range viability of activist liberal organizations across the country.

David Wasserman, an election specialist, describes the likelihood of Democratic frustration in 2018 in a detailed analysis published by FiveThirtyEight, The Congressional Map Has A Record-Setting Bias Against Democrats. As Wasserman writes,

Even if Democrats were to win every single 2018 House and Senate race for seats representing places that Hillary Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 3 percentage points a pretty good midterm by historical standards they could still fall short of the House majority and lose five Senate seats.

The combination of Republican gerrymandering and the clustering of Democratic voters in urban centers has moved the median House seat well to the right of the nation, Wasserman notes.

The result is what Wasserman calls a structural partisan bias favoring Republicans in Congressional elections:

Trump lost the national popular vote by 2.1 percentage points, but Republicans won the median House seat by 3.4 points and the median Senate seat by 3.6 points.

Which is to say that Democrats will have an uphill struggle in 2018 to wrest control of either the House or Senate. Of the 25 Senate seats held by Democrats that are up for election next year, 10 are in states that Trump carried.

In the past, Republican commitments to building strength at the local level have been sustained by trade associations and corporations with a financial stake in decisions made at the county and state level. There is every reason to believe these interests will continue to invest time and money to protect their profits.

From 2010 to 2016, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was the single largest contributor to the Republican State Leadership Committee, steadily increasing its support over this period to a total of $14.9 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Such companies as Walmart, Reynolds American, Eli Lilly and AT&T are also substantial R.S.L.C. backers.

The liberal donors and activists who have mobilized this year have a less materialistic stake in the outcome of local elections. If, as Wassermans data suggests, a major victory is beyond reach in November 2018, will these players regroup and fight on? Or will they retreat at the state and local level, as they have in the past, leaving this refractory terrain to their highly motivated Republican adversaries?

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Donald Trump Is the Godfather of a Democratic Renaissance - New York Times

Surprised? Donald Trump has always talked like this about North Korea’s nuclear threat – CNN

But a look back at Trump's past statements on Pyongyang's nuclear program and the Hermit Kingdom's young dictator, Kim Jong Un, shows the President to have been consistently aggressive on the issue, as it relates to US security, over the course of nearly two decades.

Simply put, while the heated language in Trump's remarks to reporters in New Jersey on Tuesday might have been jarring in the moment, no one should have been surprised by the tone.

"North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States," he said. "They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. (Kim) has been very threatening beyond a normal state. And as I said, they will be met with fire, fury, and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before."

Like that turn of phrase, Trump's posturing on North Korea has a familiar ring.

During a November 1999 interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, the future president warned that, without a diplomatic solution, the US would need to consider military measures.

"You go and you start negotiating," Trump said, "and if you don't stop them ... you will have to take rather drastic actions because if you don't take them now, you're going to be in awfully big trouble in five years from now when they have more missiles than we do.

Asked if that meant he was advocating for a unilateral strike, Trump said, "You can never rule it out."

"That's what they're afraid of," he added. "That's what they're concerned with. You'll most likely with that attitude be able to make a deal. But if you can't, you have to react."

Trump struck a similar note when discussing the issue on NBC's "Meet the Press" that fall. When host Tim Russert asked about the suggestion Trump would, if president, "launch a preemptive strike against North Korea's nuclear capability," Trump first said, "I would negotiate like crazy. And I'd make sure that we tried to get the best deal possible."

Failing that, he ventured, the US should consider preemptive action. (North Korea did not, at that time, have a confirmed nuclear arsenal.)

"You want to do it in five years when they have warheads all over the place, every one of them pointing to New York City, to Washington and every one of our -- is that when you want to do it?," Trump said. "Or do you want to do something now?"

After years of back-and-forth over sanctions, and a broken pledge to give up its program, North Korea in October 2006 claims to have successfully tested its first nuclear weapon. Over the next decade, Pyongyang reported a series of additional detonations, while ramping up its ability to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile -- a development that, in theory, could put the distant US and European cities in its nuclear crosshairs.

By 2013, Kim Jong Un had been in power for more than a year. His father, Kim Jong Il, died of a heart attack in December 2011. Trump has spoken with a mix of qualified admiration, opprobrium and mockery when addressing the young strongman.

"(President Obama) must be very careful with the 28 year old wack job in North Korea," Trump tweeted in April 2013, adding, in a preview of Tuesday's rhetoric, "At some point we may have to get very tough - blatant threats."

"You have, probably, North Korea has them. I mean, they don't have delivery yet, but you know, probably, I mean to me, that's a big problem," he said. "And, would I rather have North Korea have them with Japan sitting there having them also? You may very well be better off if that's the case."

Japan, however, has forsworn nuclear weapons and since a little after the end of World War II has been governed under a so-called "pacifist constitution."

Since taking office, though, Trump has focused more on China when discussing avenues for curtailing North Korea's ambitions. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has enjoyed a relatively warm relationship with Trump, including a round of gold course diplomacy during a February visit with Trump in Florida.

Co-moderator Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio host, pressed Trump, asking, "Of the three legs of the triad, though, do you have a priority?"

"I think," the candidate responded, "I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me."

Since February of this year, North Korea has launched 18 missiles over the course of 12 tests. The two fired in July, both KN-14, or liquid fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles, have upped the ante -- and tension around the world. On Saturday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution imposing new sanctions on the regime in response.

But even as Trump touted that significant diplomatic coup, a new report, with the potential to completely upend the status quo, was coming down the pike.

"(The nuclear arsenal) is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before," he added, in a return to the previous day's saber-rattling. "Hopefully we will never have to use this power, but there will never be a time that we are not the most powerful nation in the world!"

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Surprised? Donald Trump has always talked like this about North Korea's nuclear threat - CNN