Tag Archives: 2016 election

International news, national news, political news

‘Everybody knows’ Russia meddled in election

Has the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations gone rogue? Is Nikki Haley speaking out of turn when she seems to dispute the president’s view of who hacked into our nation’s election in 2016?

Haley has said that “everybody knows that Russia meddled in our election.” She made the remarks in TV interviews to be broadcast Sunday.

Actually, Mme. Ambassador, while everybody may know that to be true, not quite everybody is willing to say so out loud, on the record, in public.

One of the more prominent officials who remains publicly unconvinced happens to be Donald J. Trump. Intelligence agencies have concluded the Russians meddled; politicians from both political parties have said the same thing.

The president? He keeps giving the Russians political cover by saying that “other countries” might have interfered, too. He met Russian President Vladimir Putin this week in Hamburg, Germany, and supposed “pressed” Putin on what the Russians did. Putin denied doing anything, as if he expects the rest of us to believe the word of a former communist KGB spy.

Haley has broken with Trump already on Russia. She has been harsh in her critique of Putin’s government, while the president continues to pull his punches.

Now she has said what just about the entire civilized world has come to accept: that the Russians sought to undermine our electoral process, that they in effect declared war on our system of government.

If only the president would concur.

International news

Putting ‘America first’? Pffftt!

Donald J. Trump was elected president while vowing that he would always “put America first.”

Today the president sat in a room with Russian President Vladimir Putin and, if we are to believe some analyses of that meeting, agreed with Putin that it was time to “move forward” and stop obsessing over reports that Russia violated U.S. electoral sovereignty during the 2016 election.

Is that how you “put America first,” Mr. President?

Trump brought up the Russian hacking matter with Putin. He said he was speaking on behalf of Americans who are concerned about it. He didn’t seem to take any personal offense at what is widely accepted as fact, that the Russians sought to meddle in our electoral process.

Once again, has the president decided that putting America first is limited to, oh, certain economic matters? Doesn’t it include national sovereignty? Or the integrity of our electoral system? Is the president going to continue to dismiss the American intelligence community’s assessment of the Russian hacking matter while accepting Putin’s denial?

Mr. President, do you really intend to “put America first,” or was that just another empty campaign platitude?

International news

Hold Putin ‘accountable’ for hacking

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul wants Donald J. Trump to hold the president of Russia “accountable” for the Russian meddling in our electoral process.

It seems to be apparent that the U.S. president didn’t do as the Texas Republican lawmaker do what he wants.

The two leaders met today in Hamburg, Germany, exchanged some good tidings, and then the president reportedly pressed Putin on the Russia meddling matter.

Did he demand answers? Did the president tell Putin he’d better knock it off or else? Apparently not.

McCaul told The Texas Tribune: “It’s the elephant in the room, and it’s an important issue to the American people, and it’s important for the American president to raise it with him to let him know that we know it happened, and we’re not going to stand for that, and there will be consequences.”

Punishment on tap for Russians?

McCaul speaks clearly about the need for the United States to make it abundantly clear to Russia and its president. Yes, we “know it happened.” It appears that the only people on Earth who won’t accept what intelligence officials have concluded about Russian meddling are Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin.

International news

‘On behalf of the American people … ‘

The parsing has begun.

Donald J. Trump sat down with Vladimir Putin today and said, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, that he wanted to raise an issue of “concern to the American people.”

The issue is Russian hacking and alleged interference in our 2016 presidential election. The president apparently didn’t raise any personal concerns with Putin about what intelligence agencies have determined, that Russia sought to influence the election outcome.

He was speaking “on behalf of Americans” who are concerned.

It’s fair, in my view, to wonder whether Trump’s equivocation somehow weakens his standing with regard to Putin even more.

Tillerson insisted that Trump “pressed” Putin on the election hacking matter. He raised the issue with him more than once during their longer-than-scheduled meeting, according to Tillerson.

Fine. I get it. Good for the president for “pressing” Putin, if that’s what he really did.

If the secretary of state is correct, that the president was demanding answers to questions on the minds of the Americans back home, then I have to wonder whether Donald Trump expressed any personal dismay/anger/outrage over what occurred during this past year’s election.

International news

Putin denies meddling … what now?

Donald J. Trump shook hands with Vladimir Putin today and then got right to the heart of the matter.

Did you meddle in our 2016 presidential election? Did your government try to influence the outcome to ensure that I would get elected? So it was that the president possibly asked his Russian colleague.

Putin’s response? I deny any involvement. My government did not meddle in your election.

OK, then. That settles it, yes? Hardly.

Obviously, I wasn’t in the room. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was there, though, and he said that Trump “pressed” Putin on the election meddling matter. I guess we might need to ask the secretary of state what “press” means to him, if not to the president.

What we don’t know yet is whether the president stood up for the intelligence agencies that have concluded that Russia did interfere with our 2016 electoral process. Nor we do know what the president might have said to Putin about what the United States would do in response, given what he intelligence experts have said to this point.

This kind of summit diplomacy is brand new to Donald Trump. Putin’s got a lengthy record of face-to-face meetings/confrontations with U.S. presidents as well as with other world leaders. Time will tell us soon whether Putin pushed Trump around in that meeting room.

That all said, I am heartened that the world leaders struck a cease fire deal in part of Syria. Time will tell us — probably very soon — whether the cease fire will stick. A previous one lasted only hours before falling apart.

Are we to believe Putin — the former KGB spy chief — when he denies Russian government efforts to meddle in our election?

Umm. I don’t think so.

International news, national news, political news

No, Mr. President; Obama did react to Russian hacking

Donald J. Trump keeps harping on a canard, which is that Barack Obama “did nothing” when he learned in the summer of 2016 about Russian efforts to hack into our electoral process.

Wrong, Mr. President.

Trump keeps dodging the question about whether he believes the Russians sought to influence the 2016 presidential election. Today, he once again gave the Russians some political cover by saying that “other countries” are hacking us, too.

My point here, though, is that President Obama did react to reports of Russian hacking.

He imposed economic sanctions against individuals; he tossed Russian diplomats out of the United States; he closed two Russian diplomatic compounds — all of this in reaction to reports of Russian hacking.

Trump is having none of it. He wants to divert attention from the questions and suspicion that continues to swirl around him regarding the Russians and whatever — if any — relationship they had with the Trump presidential campaign.

I get that presidents have blamed their immediate predecessors for real and imagined problems. Obama laid a lot of blame at the feet of his predecessor, George W. Bush — although he did give the Bush administration plenty of credit for the work it had done in helping locate Osama bin Laden prior to the May 2011 commando raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader.

Is there ever going to be a moment when the current president would offer a good word to his immediate predecessor? Don’t hold your breath. I won’t.

As for Trump’s insistence that Obama did “nothing” to respond to Russian hackers, that’s just another lie.

national news, political news

Is the ‘Russia thing’ a scandal? Not just yet

Some of my lefty friends — OK, maybe more than some of them — are going to dislike this blog post.

Too bad.

I’m struggling with a word I keep seeing in print and hearing on TV and radio. It’s the word “scandal” being used to describe what I like to call “the Russia thing.”

My sense is that “Russia” hasn’t yet risen to the level of scandal. It fits a list of potentially pejorative descriptions: controversy, tempest, tumult. Scandal? I’m not yet ready to go there.

The “Russia thing” is what Donald J. Trump called it when he told NBC News anchor Lester Holt about his reasons for firing former FBI director James Comey. It was “the Russia thing” that caused the president to fire Comey.

We have a special counsel assembling a legal team to investigate whether the Trump 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russian hackers to disrupt and influence the election outcome. At least one former aide, Michael Flynn, has been linked tightly to the Russian government.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is looking, too, at the Russia matter. Not so with the House Intelligence Committee, whose new chairman — Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. — said his panel is keeping its hands off this investigation.

Yes, I’ve seen a whole lot of smoke. There’s even a boatload of circumstantial evidence that appears to be piling up.

Do we have a scandal on our hands? Is the president now been tied up in a “public disgrace,” as the dictionary defines the term “scandal”? Well, I can think of a lot of ways that Trump has disgraced his office; they generally involve his use of Twitter to blast out those idiotic and moronic statements.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, though, is likely going to be the determining factor in whether all this “Russia thing” stuff drags the president and his administration straight into scandal territory.

I’ve sought to avoid using the “s-word” on this blog. I’ll continue to do so — until we all hear from the myriad investigative teams seeking to determine what in the hell happened during the 2016 election.

International news, national news, political news

Trump and Putin: hoping for confrontation

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will be among the 20 world leaders gathering this week for an economic summit.

The two of them are going to meet for a full-blown bilateral summit in Hamburg, Germany. Do you know what that means? It means that the president of the United States will have a chance to confront the Russian president over the issue that has dominated the U.S. political discussion since the presidential inaugural.

No one has asked me for my opinion on this, but given that I write this blog and am entitled to offer it unsolicited, I’ll offer this bit of advice.

Mr. President, you need to cease this nicey-nicey talk about the Russians. They interfered in our 2016 electoral process and you need lay down the law much like your immediate predecessor did when he met with Putin in 2016.

I am not filled with supreme confidence that Trump will do that. He’s still a rookie on the world political stage. Sure, he’s been a “public figure” for decades, but this is quite unlike anything he’s ever experienced.

Trump has exhibited for months a maddening and outrageous reluctance to condemn the Russians for doing what U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded: that the Russians hacked into our electoral system and sought to influence the 2016 election; they intended to help Trump defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton. I get that the success of that effort remains under intense debate. What’s not in question is that the Russians did something.

Trump’s reaction has been to give the Russians cover by suggesting that other nations could have meddled as well in our election. He even mentioned some “400-pound guy” lying on his bed … good grief!

This will be the first Trump-Putin meeting ever. These men have never been in the same room together — even though Trump once suggested he had met Putin once. Oh well, what’s another lie?

The planned sit-down meeting between these men also means it will get the worldwide attention it deserves. It will be “on the record.” It won’t be just one of those handshake pass-by events. These men will have an agenda from which to build their discussion.

My strong hope is that the Trump team will make damn sure the president brings up the Russian involvement in the 2016 election. If it remains an unmentionable, my strong hunch is that the president’s many critics here at home are going to reach some scathing conclusions about where this story goes from here.

national news, political news, State news

Texas playing ball with vote fraud panel … sort of

I was hoping the Texas secretary of state would follow the lead of his fellow Republican colleague in Mississippi and tell the feds to go “jump in the Gulf of Mexico.”

He didn’t. Instead, the state is going to hand over some voter records to that idiotic voter fraud commission named by Donald J. Trump to root out the hordes of illegal votes — he says — that were cast in the 2016 presidential election.

Good luck with that.

The panel led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is called the Election Integrity Commission. The president has asserted — with zero evidence at hand — that “millions of illegal immigrants” voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, giving her the popular vote margin over Trump.

So he cobbled together this group to find a problem in search of a solution.

The Texas secretary of state is the state’s top elections officer. According to the Texas Tribune: “Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos said he plans to respond to the request, but it’s not entirely clear how much data he’ll be handing over. Pablos said his agency would treat Kobach’s letter like any other public information request, and would only hand over information that’s considered public under Texas law.

“’The Secretary of State’s office will provide the Election Integrity Commission with public information and will protect the private information of Texas citizens while working to maintain the security and integrity of our state’s elections system,’ Pablos said in a statement. ‘As always, my office will continue to exercise the utmost care whenever sensitive voter information is required to be released by state or federal law.’”

Social Security numbers are private and as I understand it, that’s about the extentof the information Pablos’s office will withhold from this commission.

Check out the Texas Tribune explanation here.

The voter fraud panel’s request has been met with considerable resistance around the country. Officials in states that voted for Trump have said “no” to requests, as have those in states that voted for Clinton.

Honestly, this semi-acquiescence from Rolando Pablos makes me a bit nervous … and I’m a U.S. citizen.

I also wonder about something. Why is the president so damn intent on looking for widespread voter fraud that few local officials believe exist while he continues to ignore the assertion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in our electoral process?

International news, national news, political news

POTUS and Putin: time for ‘frank’ talk

In short order, the president of the United States is going to shake hands with the president of Russia. They’ll sit down in a room and start talking about, oh, this and/or that.

Here will be the perfect opportunity for Donald J. Trump to look straight into Vladimir Putin’s steely eyes and give him holy hell for what numerous U.S. intelligence agencies have said: that Russian computer hackers sought to meddle in the U.S. presidential election this past year — and that they did so on orders from Putin himself.

Is this going to occur? Will the U.S. president have the moxie, the savvy, the guts to face down this other head of state?

And to think that such a discussion would just be a starting point in these two men’s relationship.

Of course, I am not privy to what the president will say to Putin. I am entitled, though, to offer an opinion or two on what he should say. My gut — along with my proverbial trick knee — tell me he needs to get directly to that point immediately.

History tells us that U.S.-Russian summit meetings are fraught with peril. In 1961, another rookie U.S. president traveled to Vienna to meet with the head of what then was known as the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev thought he had taken the full measure of John F. Kennedy; he pushed the young president around, bullied him, threatened him.

It was reported at the time that President Kennedy made too many rookie mistakes in his first face-to-face meeting with the cantankerous Soviet leader. It turned out that the world’s leading communist made the rookie error.

Khrushchev miscalculated badly Kennedy’s resolve. The Soviets started building those missile bases the following year in Cuba. The president got word of it, huddled with his national security team, made a decision and then told the world of our reaction and what the cost would be to the Soviets if they were to launch an attack against any nation in the Western Hemisphere.

The cost? Annihilation. 

Check out JFK’s speech here:

Donald Trump isn’t prone to study history, so it’s not likely he’ll be interested in understanding that dangerous chapter.

The Russian meddling in our election, though, is on the minds of a lot of smart folks. It’s in all the papers, you know?

My hope would be for the president to talk directly and — in diplomatic parlance — “frankly” to his Russian colleague directly about what has consumed this nation since the election.

My fear is that Donald Trump will choke.

Prove me wrong, Mr. President.