Tag Archives: 2016 election

International news

Is the Trump-Putin bromance over … finally?

Donald John Trump Sr. and Vladimir Putin once were thought to be made for each other.

One of them is a tough guy; the other seems enamored of tough guys. Putin is the former; Trump would be the latter.

Now, though, their relationship has taken a turn for the worst. Congress enacted a tough new sanctions protocol against Russia — as well as against North Korea — that prohibits the president from scrapping them without congressional approval.

Trump says he’ll sign the sanctions bill.

Putin responded this weekend by ordering the removal of 755 American diplomats from Russia, dramatically reducing the U.S. presence in that country. The Russian president seems to think his response is equivalent to the U.S. expelling of 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the Russians’ meddling in our 2016 presidential election.

It’s not at all proportional.

The question remains: Will the U.S. president stand firm or will he roll over?

Trump has been maddeningly reluctant to call the Russians out for their interference in our election. He keeps equivocating by suggesting that “it could be anyone” other than the Russians. He dismisses U.S. intelligence agencies’ assessment that the Russians acted alone.

Will see how this plays out. My hope is that Trump awakens from his infatuation with Putin and concludes that the Russians aren’t our friends — and that the two leaders have wildly differing views on their personal relationship.

national news, political news

POTUS turns AG into sympathetic character

Donald John Trump has done the seemingly impossible: He has managed to turn U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions into a sympathetic character.

The president has launched into another disgraceful Twitter tirade against the AG, chastising him for refusing to prosecute Hillary Rodham Clinton and for recusing himself from “the Russia thing” that hangs like a summer storm cloud over the Trump administration.

Trump continues to bash Sessions, apparently seeking his resignation so he can appoint someone to his bidding, which apparently includes sweeping the Russia probe away and prosecuting the candidate he defeated in the 2016 presidential election.

Sessions couldn’t possibly lead an unbiased investigation into the Russia matter, which involves questions into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian government goons in seeking to meddle in our electoral process. Sessions — Trump’s first declared supporter in the U.S. Senate — was a key player in the president’s campaign and his transition. Moreover, there remain questions about Sessions’s own Russia involvement.

Sessions is — or was — too close to the president.

As for prosecuting Hillary Clinton, the FBI found nothing on which to mount a “credible” prosecution; nor did congressional investigative committees; and nor did the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and former campaign chief Paul Manafort on the promise she had dirt on Hillary.

We are left now with the spectacle of the president of the United States shaming his AG and seeking to punish his former political opponent.

Which president has done such a thing? I can think of one: the current occupant of the nation’s highest office … the guy who continues to disgrace that office every single day.

International news, national news, political news

Trump going to war with his ‘friends’

Donald J. Trump’s latest Twitter tirade takes aim at a most fascinating target: his fellow Republicans.

The president is now threatening reprisals against GOP members of Congress who fail to rise to his defense against growing questions about whether he broke the law while winning the presidency.

I guess I’m slow on the uptake. I am having difficulty imagining what in the world Trump hopes to accomplish by issuing these threats.

Some of his fellow Republicans are questioning the circumstances surrounding the president’s relationships with Russians who — according to U.S. intelligence experts — sought to meddle in our 2016 election.

“It’s very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The president is going to need these folks. All of them, it seems. Yet he keeps pounding away at those upon he must depend.

Congressional Democrats are long gone. They aren’t going to stand up for a single Trump initiative, nor will they give him a break on the Russia investigation taking shape within the special counsel’s office and on congressional committees.

Trump also wrote: “As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians!”

This message has a ring of truth to it. Yes, Democrats are laughing as Trump and the Republicans keep tripping over themselves and each other while trying to fend off the criticism.

And what about the Russians? You’re damn right they’re laughing. They have accomplished their prime objectives, according to U.S. intelligence analysts: Their preferred candidate won the 2016 election and they also have managed to cast serious doubt on the integrity of the U.S. electoral system.

business news, International news, national news, political news

Tax returns might reveal the whole truth

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Here they come again.

Those still-missing Donald J. Trump tax returns have returned to front row of discussion topics relating to the Russian probe into the president’s 2016 campaign.

Trump hasn’t released them. He has broken a 40-year streak of disclosures from presidential candidates. He keeps saying he’s “under audit” by the Internal Revenue Service.

But wait! Special counsel Robert Mueller is now thought to be examining the Trump business empire’s dealings that might have something to do with the Russian government, which has been linked to allegations that it sought to influence the 2016 presidential election outcome.

Won’t those tax returns tell the public whether Trump’s businesses had any skin in the game? Won’t they reveal the truth? Couldn’t they possibly clear the air? Might they tell us that Trump has been truthful, that he has no business dealings with Russia?

Or, might they tell us something else?

I know I’m repeating myself. That’s too bad. Those tax returns need to go before the public.

legal news

Dear Mr. POTUS: Let Mueller do his job

Donald J. Trump requires a lesson in government. Yep, the president of the United States does not understand how many things work.

Take the special counsel hired by the U.S. Department of Justice to examine the president’s potential ties to the Russian government and whether there might be some collusion between that government and the president’s winning campaign in 2016.

He is rattling some sabers, threatening to fire special counsel Robert Mueller if he looks into the Trump family’s financial dealings.

Here’s where the lesson might kick in.

The special counsel has wide latitude to take the examination wherever it leads. Does the president recall what occurred when an earlier special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, began examining a real estate matter involving President and Mrs. Clinton? He sniffed around and then learned about a young White House intern. Starr then learned about a relationship she was having with the president. He decided to ask the president some questions about it. He summoned him to a federal grand jury; the president violated the oath he took to tell the truth; he then was impeached.

That’s what happens, Mr. President. Special counsels are within their legal authority to look where they can find to determine the truth. Indeed, an examination of family business dealings well might help the public learn the whole truth about the relationship between the Trump empire and the Russian government. If it finds nothing there, then Mueller’s office can clear the president.

Technically, the president cannot summarily fire the special counsel. He has to ask the Justice Department to do it. Indeed, a leading congressional Republican, Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, has warned the president about getting rid of Mueller. If he does it, the president faces a bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill.

Let the process continue, Mr. President. You don’t seem to know the trouble you would purchase if you act foolishly.

political news, State news

‘Lyin’ Ted’ makes a comeback

Flash back for a moment to the 2016 Republican Party primary campaign for president of the United States.

One of the candidates was tossing out insulting nicknames: Low Energy Jeb, Little Marco, Crooked Hillary … oh, and Lyin’ Ted.

All of those insults were disgraceful displays of petulance from the man who tossed them, Donald John Trump.

But now it seems that “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz is showing that he might have earned that moniker. He said that “No one in Texas cares about the Russia” story. Really, Sen. Cruz? No one in Texas? He says he has attended numerous town hall meetings and no one brings up the questions about the president’s relationship with the Russian government, or whether that government sought to tilt the 2016 election in his favor.

Excuse me, Sen. Cruz, while I say it out loud and for the record: That is a lie.

Social media erupted with comments from Texans who do care about the Russian investigation and what it might produce.

According to the Austin American-Statesman: “Washington is obsessed right now. It is the Democratic talking point du jour,” Cruz told reporters on Capitol Hill … “But when I go back to Texas, nobody asks about Russia. You know, I’ve held town halls all across the state of Texas, you know how many questions I’ve got on Russia? Zero.”

Read more from the American-Statesman here.

My trick knee is throbbing once again and it is telling me that Cruz has, indeed, received questions about Russia. I also am going to toss out the notion that this issue is far more than just a Washington, D.C., parlor game.

So, with that, allow me only to say, with extreme vigor and conviction: Stop your lyin’, Ted.

International news, national news, political news

Bush ethics lawyer: Why not give Putin clearance, too?

Richard Painter teaches law at the University of Minnesota.

He once served as ethics adviser to President George W. Bush, so his Republican credentials are well-known. However, he’s demonstrating that ethical conduct ought to ignore partisan consideration.

Professor Painter is furious, fuming, outraged over what he believes is a lack of ethical decorum permeating Donald J. Trump’s administration. Exhibit A: the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Painter believes Kushner should surrender his top-secret White House security clearance because of his numerous contacts with Russian government officials who might have been involved in that Russian hacking and their efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.

Painter said via Twitter that Kushner’s clearance needs to be revoked, but if the government is going to allow the young man to keep it, then it should just give one to Russian President Vladimir Putin, too.

Check out The Hill report.

Painter has been making the rounds for several months commenting on Donald J. Trump. He isn’t a fan. Perhaps he owes his antagonism to the president’s vocal criticism of President Bush’s handling of the Iraq War. It might have something to do with the insults that Trump hurled at the former president’s brother, Jeb, during the 2016 GOP presidential primary campaign.

Whatever. Professor Painter isn’t holding back.

I cannot blame him for demanding that Donald Trump seek to develop some understanding that “government ethics” need not be an oxymoron.

national news, political news

Is there a Howard Baker out there?

The great Howard Baker asked a question for the ages in 1974.

“What did the president know,” the late Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee asked, “and when did he know it?”

Baker was serving as vice chairman — and ranking Republican — of the U.S. Senate select committee that was investigating the Watergate scandal that eventually forced President Nixon to resign and sent several of his top aides to prison.

The question came during one of the many hearings the committee was conducting to ferret out the truth of what was blown off initially as a “third-rate burglary” of the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.

I know that pundits have posed the question. I also have heard some pols ask it in the context of conversation.

But now we are being faced with the same scenario that confronted President Nixon and his top campaign and White House aides. It involves a meeting involving Donald J. Trump Jr., Jared Kushner (son-in-law of the president), and Paul Manafort, head of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign. They met with a Russian lawyer who sent them all an email advising them that the Russian government had some dirt on Hillary Rodham Clinton it wanted to pass on to the Trump campaign.

The revelation of the email now focuses investigators more sharply on whether the Trump campaign cooperated with Russian officials who were hacking into our electoral system, seeking to undermine Clinton’s effort to defeat Trump.

Did the three men — two of whom are members of the Republican presidential candidate’s family — advise the Big Man of the meeting in advance?

What did the president know during the campaign and when did he know it?

I am awaiting that question to come in some formal venue — say, at a congressional hearing. I also am awaiting the president’s answer.

Is there another Howard Baker out there among congressional Republicans who would dare ask that question?

International news

Mitt was ahead of his time

It’s time for a serious mea culpa.

Mitt Romney once declared during the 2012 presidential campaign that Russia presented the “greatest geopolitical threat” to the United States of America.

I was one of millions of Americans who laughed at the Republican presidential nominee.

Five years later, I regret laughing. I regret dismissing Mitt’s assessment. I regret writing some negative blog posts about what the nominee said.

We are learning today — and in the course of the Donald J. Trump campaign and his presidential administration — that the previous GOP nominee was ahead of his time.

It can be argued, I suppose, that international terrorists presented a greater geopolitical threat than Russia in 2012. Our special forces had just killed Osama bin Laden, but al-Qaeda was still going strong. The Islamic State had emerged as a monstrous threat as well.

The Russians, to my mind, seemed at the time to have been relegated to a back bench.

Silly me. Mitt Romney seems to have been spot on.

The Russians are undermining NATO; they invaded Ukraine; they are propping up a murderous regime in Syria. They also sought to affect the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The startling revelation today from Donald J. Trump Jr. that he accepted a meeting invitation anticipating dirt on Hillary Rodham Clinton from the Russian government suggests an existential threat to this nation’s sovereignty.

There’s still a lot of ground to cover before we determine any criminality on the part of the Trump presidential campaign. However, I do believe it is becoming quite clear that the Russians remain a force with which we must reckon.

Gov. Romney, I hereby apologize for doubting you.

International news, legal news, national news

What do we fear from a deep probe into Russian meddling?

Timothy Snyder is a brilliant young historian who has consented to an interview on a podcast to which I’ve been listening.

He is an admitted anti-Trumpkin. He thinks badly of the president of the United States, as does the interviewer, Sam Harris.

Snyder has written a book, “The Road to Tyranny,” which is the subject of the podcast interview.

His interview is quite lengthy. If you have a good bit of time, I encourage you to listen to it here. I doubt those of you who support the president would want to hear what this fellow has to say. Still, take a listen anyway.

He offers up a lot of theories about current trends and how they relate to where we’ve gone as a nation and what has happened in other places around the world. And, yes, there are plenty of Hitler references.

For this blog post, I want to focus on a tiny snippet of what Snyder said about the investigation into “the Russia thing” by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is examining whether the Trump presidential campaign “colluded” with Russian government spooks seeking to undermine the 2016 election.

Professor Snyder doesn’t quite get why the pro-Trump crowd opposes the probe Mueller is leading. Indeed, why do they? As Snyder points out, if Mueller’s investigation reveals nothing illegal occurred, if it produces a clean bill of political health for Donald Trump, then all that’s left is that “we have an intelligence problem.” The Russians hacked into our democratic process and our intelligence community was unable to detect it and prevent it.

The flip side, of course, is that Mueller’s legal team might uncover something else.

Wherever it goes, the special counsel’s investigation should proceed. We are bound to learn something from it.