Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

Russia story may never go away

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CIA officials keep putting the heat on Donald J. Trump and his friends in Russia.

They now are asserting that Russian computer hackers actually did try to get Trump elected president of the United States.

What I am not yet clear about, though, is what precisely did the Russians do. How precisely did they seek to do what CIA spooks are alleging?

I happen to believe the broad outlines of what the CIA is asserting. I believe the reports that Russia tried to get their hands into our electoral process. It’s not a figment of Democrats’ imagination, as Trump says in response. It’s not the media, either, that are fomenting a lie, as Trump and his team also seem to imply.

This story is growing more legs than a centipede.

Furthermore, I am having even more trouble with Trump’s continual rebuff of what the career spooks at the CIA are saying. He’ll need these individuals, these intelligence teams, once he becomes president. They will be providing him mountains of intelligence daily — or however often Trump chooses to receive it.

When trouble erupts around the world — and it will, no doubt — the president needs the analysis.

It’s fair to wonder how this relationship between the White House and the intelligence network is going to work if the president keeps denigrating the work of the pros who toil day and night compiling information about our international adversaries.

I continue to believe the president-elect needs to get on board with the concerns being expressed and stop saying up front these concerns lack veracity.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/us-officials-putin-personally-involved-in-us-election-hack/ar-AAlzZQI?li=BBnb7Kz

The CIA says Russian President Vladimir Putin himself got involved. This happens to be someone who has praised Trump and who has received reciprocal praise from the president-elect. Putin also ran the KGB during the Soviet era; if you haven’t heard, the KGB was a ruthless spy organization.

Thus, this story continues to spread. It’s making me quite nervous.

Secretary of State Tillerson? We’ll see about that one

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Rex Tillerson will get the nod from the president-elect as the next secretary of state.

Let’s hand it to Donald J. Trump: He appears unafraid to pick a major fight with the U.S. senators who will be asked to confirm his appointment.

Tillerson’s pending nomination troubles a lot of senators, Republicans and Democrats alike.

He has zero diplomatic experience. Tillerson is a 40-year employee of ExxonMobil, the oil giant he now runs as CEO. He is friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he has worked in cutting big deals on behalf of his company. Oh, and Putin’s government now has been fingered by the CIA as seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor.

Gosh, do you think Tillerson brings some serious baggage to this job at Foggy Bottom?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-trump-administration/2016/12/trump-to-name-secretary-of-state-pick-tuesday-232544

Donald Trump has selected a number of unconventional nominees for various Cabinet posts. The Tillerson pick likely takes the cake.

His friendship with Putin is going to drive Senate Republicans nuts. One of them, John McCain, is emerging as the top GOP lawmaker who is set to become the inquisitor in chief of this selection.

McCain calls Putin a “thug” and a “butcher.” He is in no mood to reset our nation’s relationship with the former head of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s dreaded spy agency.

Then we have this ongoing discussion about what role Russia played in seeking to undermine the U.S. presidential election. The CIA says the Russians interfered with the electoral process. Trump’s reaction? He said the intelligence pros at the CIA are wrong, that they don’t know what they’re talking about. He said he doesn’t believe the CIA’s analysis.

So, we have a Putin pal getting the call from the president-elect to serve as secretary of state and the CIA saying that Russia — which Putin rules — has sought to interfere with our election.

I believe Tillerson and his political benefactor — Donald Trump — are going to get roughed up big time by the U.S. Senate.

Bipartisanship emerges … in opposition to Trump picks

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What do you know about that?

Donald J. Trump might be learning that he doesn’t have as many friends on Capitol Hill as he thought he did.

It appears that some of the president-elect’s Cabinet picks aren’t going down well … with some Republican lawmakers. Never mind the Democrats. You know they’ll detest almost any pick the GOP president-elect is going to make.

I was struck this morning when I heard Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky declare himself to be almost an automatic “no” vote against probable secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson. Why the intense opposition? That would be the selection of John Bolton to be Tillerson’s deputy secretary, according to Paul. Bolton believes in “regime change” and has all but advocated going to war with Iran, both views that Paul opposes strongly.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gop-opposition-to-potential-trump-cabinet-nominees-grows/ar-AAlqKVs?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

Others among Trump’s Republican base of support are bristling at some of the picks. Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s pick to be treasury secretary, represents the “status quo,” according to Erick Erickson, the longtime TEA party activist. Labor Department nominee Andrew Puzder is said to be in favor of “open borders.”

Now we have Tillerson at State. U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, said he has “concerns” about Tillerson’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Tillerson is CEO of ExxonMobil, which is exploring for oil throughout Russia; Tillerson has brokered numerous business deals involving Russian government officials, including Putin.

Where do we go from here?

Trump will need a lot of friends on Capitol Hill to rally to his side as he sends his Cabinet picks to the Senate for confirmation.

Here’s the deal, though: He ran against many of them within his own Republican Party on his highly improbable victorious campaign for the presidency.

Good luck, Mr. President-elect.

From major threat to potential ally?

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It seems like yesterday. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president of the United States, said Russia had emerged as the most dangerous “global geopolitical threat” to the United States.

Many of us scoffed at that notion. It seemed so, oh, Cold War-ish. I mean, c’mon, Mitt! We won the Cold War. The Soviet Union vanished in 1991. Democracy was returning, albeit in dribs and drabs, to a new Russia. Isn’t that what many of us said and/or thought?

Well, it turns out Mitt was right. His critics were wrong. Russia has sought to do a lot of harm to the world and, quite possibly, to the U.S. electoral process.

But wait! This new Republican Party is being led by someone with an entirely different view of the Big Bear. Donald J. Trump is about to become president. He is forming his government. He is building his Cabinet.

Who is the new president apparently about to select as the nation’s secretary of state, its top diplomat, its foreign policy vicar? It appears to be a fellow named Rex Tillerson, head of Exxon Mobil — and a close ally of the nation Mitt ID’d as America’s top threat.

Exxon Mobil has extensive business ties in Russia. Tillerson is said to be friends with Putin.

For that matter, let’s recall that Trump has said some flattering things about the man who once ran the Soviet Union’s spy agency, the hated KGB. He called him a “strong leader”; he accepted Putin’s praise with gratitude; he invited Russia to find some missing e-mails that Hillary Clinton had deleted from her personal server while she was working as secretary of state; he suggested that Russian forces should enter Syria and take on the Islamic State; he said “wouldn’t it be great?” if we got along better with Russia.

You’ve heard the term “identity politics,” yes? It’s meant to pigeonhole certain groups and political affiliations into categories. Democrats once were identified as the party that was “soft on communism” and, thus, soft on the Soviet Union. Republicans were identified as the opposite of that squishy label.

Communism officially has died in Russia. What has emerged in its place, though, appears to be its oppressive equal.

Democrats now are alarmed at the budding U.S.-Russia coziness. Republicans — with a few notable exceptions — seem somewhat OK with it.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee and one-time Vietnam War prisoner, has expressed “concern” about Tillerson’s relationship with Putin. You would expect McCain to raise those questions; he dislikes the president-elect and he damn sure detests the Russians, given what their former agents — the North Vietnamese — did to him for more than five years in that POW cell in Hanoi.

Frankly, I am beginning to long for the good old days that, in the grand scheme, were just a little while ago.

I also am thinking the reason Mitt likely won’t get the State job has less to do with what he said about Trump — the “fraud” and “phony” stuff — and more to do with what he said about the Russians.

Rex Tillerson? Huh? Where did he come from?

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Eyes had turned to Mitt Romney, then to David Petraeus, then to Rudy Giuliani, then back to Mitt.

Then the president-elect shakes it all up and appears now set to name Rex Tillerson as the next secretary of state.

Rex the Texan. He’s the man Donald J. Trump is about to pick as the nation’s top diplomat.

Wow! Who knew?

Tillerson is president and CEO of Exxon Mobil. He’s another gazillionaire headed for Trump’s Cabinet.

You may ask: What does this fellow bring to the world of international statecraft? Man, I am officially baffled in the extreme.

https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12/10/trump-taps-texan-and-exxon-mobil-ceo-rex-tillerson/

But here’s what many folks do know about Tillerson: His oil interests reach into Russia, where he reportedly has a good relationship with the Russian strongman, President Vladimir Putin. Oh, boy. Here come the questions.

Will the business interests get in the way of hard-nosed diplomacy? Does Tillerson’s friendship with Putin spell curtains for NATO, the Ukraine, Georgia and other nations affected by Russia’s sword-rattling? Does the apparent nominee’s lack of diplomatic experience hinder his knowledge of world affairs and the nuance required to deal effectively with foreign governments?

The Trumpkins aren’t yet confirming anything. Tillerson, though, appears headed for the State Department. For now. Unless the president-elect changes his mind. Again.

‘Tough guy’ bristles at this? C’mon, man!

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Donald J. Trump is showing himself to be the master of mixed messages.

Consider some of the proclamations that have come from the president-elect’s mouth.

He vowed during the campaign to “bomb the s*** out of ISIS” while saying out loud that he knows “more about ISIS than the generals, believe me”; he said he’d look Vladmir Putin in the eye and tell him to behave himself in Eastern Europe; he promised to negotiate the greatest trade deals in the nation’s history; he said that “I, alone” can fix all the terrible things he contended are afflicting the nation.

Tough talk, right? Sure.

Then the president-elect gets his skivvies in a knot over media coverage here at home. He invites TV news anchors to his office and blisters them with a scathing critique of the way they cover him.

There’s more.

He blasts out Twitter messages demanding that the cast of a Broadway play “Hamilton” apologize to the vice president-elect over boos that came from the audience.

He tweets out another message criticizing “Saturday Night Live” for its portrayal of Trump by actor/comedian Alec Baldwin; this guy Trump can dish out the insults, but he cannot take ’em in any form. Has this clown never seen the “SNL” parodies of, oh, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Michael Dukakis, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter?

Oh, and then he canceled a meeting he had planned with the New York Times, citing its “nasty tone” in covering his transition.

Which of these men is going to take the presidential oath of office on Jan. 20?

Will it be the tough guy who’ll assert American resolve across the world stage? Or will it be the petulant punk who cannot stand up under the criticism that has been leveled at every person who’s preceded him in the nation’s highest office?

Listen to this guy, Mr. President-elect

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One might not expect Donald J. Trump to take much of what Sen. John McCain has to say all that seriously … even about things with which he is intimately familiar.

After all, Trump said McCain wasn’t “really a war hero” during the Vietnam War, adding that “I like people who weren’t captured, OK?”

McCain, though, offers a serious word of advice to the president-elect: Do not make nice with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/john-mccain-trump-no-putin-231423

According to Politico: “Vladimir Putin has rejoined Bashar Assad in his barbaric war against the Syrian people with the resumption of large-scale Russian air and missile strikes in Idlib and Homs,” the Arizona senator who was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, said in a statement. “Another brutal assault on the city of Aleppo could soon follow.”

“With the U.S. presidential transition underway, Vladimir Putin has said in recent days that he wants to improve relations with the United States,” McCain added. “We should place as much faith in such statements as any other made by a former KGB agent who has plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened America’s allies and attempted to undermine America’s elections.”

And Trump wants to try to get Putin on our side? He wants to link arms with the Russians in a fight to the death against the Islamic State?

McCain is correct to underscore Putin’s one-time role as the head of the Soviet spy agency, the KGB.

I’m no fan of McCain, although I certainly honor his service during the Vietnam War. He’s a war hero, no matter what Trump has said about him. McCain also understands the world stage in a way that Trump hasn’t even begun to grasp.

I almost can hear Trump now: “Who is this guy McCain telling me how to conduct foreign policy. I mean, I won a presidential election. He’s a loser.”

Sure, McCain lost the 2008 election. He knows his way around the world stage. The new president would do well to heed this man’s advice.

Here come those ‘damn e-mails’ again

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I have been trying for weeks to grasp the significance of the e-mail controversy that keeps swirling around Hillary Rodham Clinton’s quest for the presidency.

Her one-time Democratic presidential primary opponent Bernie Sanders said he was tired of “hearing about your damn e-mails.” Me, too, senator.

But … here they come again, courtesy of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and — more than likely — the former head of the Soviet KGB spy agency and current president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

They’re leaking these e-mails near the end of a bitter and ugly presidential campaign between Clinton and Republican nominee Donald J. Trump.

Their intent clearly and without equivocation is to embarrass and undermine Clinton’s bid to become president of the United States. They contain communication on a whole array of issues, from her speeches to well-heeled groups and backers, the LGBT response to Clinton’s reaction to the death of former first lady Nancy Reagan and her thoughts on how U.S. policy should deal with the crisis in Syria.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/emails-show-clintons-response-to-lgbt-backlash/ar-AAj2xdX?li=BBnb7Kz

I get the intent, which is my clearest takeaway from it all. Indeed, Clinton hasn’t been very forthcoming on explaining many of these issues raised by the e-mails.

She and Trump are squaring off this week for the third and final (thank God in heaven) joint appearance. I’d bet real American money that moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News is going to ask her some tough questions about the e-mail dump and what it all means about the way she would govern as president.

I’m also willing to bet some serious greenbacks she’ll be ready to respond. Trump? Well, time tell us very soon how he intends to respond to her response.

Perhaps a follow-up question for Trump from Wallace might go something like this: Mr. Trump? You all but invited the Russian government to deliver us the content of those “missing” e-mails. Is this what you had in mind?

Oh, and another one could go this way: You’ve been critical of our intelligence operation and our military. Intelligence officials now seem to believe that President Putin — about whom you’ve spoken quite highly and who has returned the compliment — is responsible for the e-mail dump in these waning days of the campaign. Are they wrong, sir?

Pence is right about Russia; Trump … is wrong!

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Mike Pence demonstrated quite nicely just how badly the Republican Party has messed up its campaign for the presidency.

It has put the wrong guy at the top of the ticket.

My belief is based on Pence’s assessment of Russian dictator/strongman/tyrant Vlad Putin. He called him a “small bully” at the vice-presidential debate Tuesday night who must be met with stern resolve and military might.

Trump’s view of Putin? He believes the United States and Russia can become allies in the fight against the Islamic State. “Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with Russia?” Trump has asked. He has expressed admiration for Putin.

Pence doesn’t seem to think U.S.-Russian relations can improve as long as Putin is kicking backsides in the Kremlin.

This is the kind of thing that might have Republicans gnashing their teeth over what their party has done. It has nominated a presidential candidate who is spectacularly clueless on the geopolitical relationships that complicate U.S. foreign policy. Meanwhile, it has a vice-presidential nominee who sees the world through a more realistic prism.

The worst news, for Republicans of course, is that Americans are going to vote next month for the candidates at the top of their respective tickets.

Trump’s cuddling with Kremlin gets more curious

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Suffice to say now that Donald J. Trump has become the Kremlin’s candidate for president of the United States of America.

The Republican presidential nominee thinks Russian strongman Vladimir Putin is a more effective leader than President Obama. He relishes the high praise Putin has heaped on him. Trump says what the heck, let the Russians re-annex Ukraine. He says that NATO allies will need to demonstrate their financial commitment to the defense of western Europe in the event of a Russian attack on, say, the Baltic States.

Now the candidate has ventured onto Russian-sponsored television to criticize the American president and, oh yeah, the U.S. political press.

There was a time when such conduct would be seen as a virtual disqualifier for a presidential candidate. No longer … I guess.

The network on which Trump appeared with that highly esteemed American “journalist” Larry King proclaims itself to be independent. It’s not. It is financed by the Kremlin and has faced repeated criticism of being in the Kremlin’s hip pocket.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-attacks-us-foreign-policy-political-press-corps-on-state-owned-russian-television-network/ar-AAiFCfQ?li=BBmkt5R&pfr=1

Does this man Trump have any clue about the boundaries one must not cross? Ever?

He’s just crossed another one.

Sure, one-time candidate Barack Obama was criticized harshly for speaking ill of American policy while standing on foreign soil. It once was thought that partisan divides ended “at the water’s edge.”

Trump has just picked that old adage out of the trash bin, crumpled it up once again, and then tossed it back.

But … it won’t matter to those who cling to this idiotic notion that Trump merely is railing against “political correctness.”

Shameful, indeed.