Archive for the ‘Donald Trump’ Category

The Anti-Semitism Around Donald Trump – New York Magazine

Trump spoke in Warsaw but could not make time to visit the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Photo: Celestino Arce/NurPhoto via Getty Images

President Donald Trumps visit to Warsaw prior to the G20 summit in Hamburg was a whirlwind affair, tightly scheduled and lasting less than a day. It was so tight, in fact, that he was unable to squeeze in a stop at the monument to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, sending his daughter Ivanka to lay flowers there instead.

With that decision, Trump became the first U.S. president in nearly 30 years not to pay his respects at the monument on his first state visit to Poland. Leaders of the Jewish community there expressed disappointment in his decision to skip it.

Coming just days after the president retweeted a video of himself beating up CNN from an account that turns out to have also trafficked in vicious anti-Semitism (once again), the omission was bound to draw notice and criticism from Jews in Poland as well as the U.S. It was also suspiciously convenient to the political agenda of Polands ruling party, Politicos Annie Karni notes, as the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice Party has worked to refocus Polands historical memory of the Holocaust on its Polish victims and heroes (of which there were indeed very many) and away from the virtual eradication of the countrys millennium-old Jewish community much less any Polish complicity in that atrocity, the mere mention of which the ruling party has sought to criminalize.

This is not to suggest that Trumps travel itineraries reveal anti-Semitic intentions. But its part of a pattern of participating in situations and categories of political rhetoric with anti-Jewish undercurrents.

In his Warsaw speech, Trump referred frequently to the West and to our civilization, going so far as to state grandiosely: The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. This claim, Peter Beinart observes at The Atlantic, only makes sense as a statement of racial and religious paranoia:

The south and east only threaten the Wests survival if you see non-white, non-Christian immigrants as invaders. They only threaten the Wests survival if by West you mean white, Christian hegemony. [ ] So when Trump says being Western is the essence of Americas identity, hes in part defining America in opposition to some of its own people. Hes not speaking as the president of the entire United States. Hes speaking as the head of a tribe.

What makes this language particularly notable in this context is that the crowd Polands government bussed in to cheer Trump on may have an even more circumscribed view of who does and does not belong in the West. While the Law and Justice Party is not overtly anti-Semitic, the same cannot be said for all of its supporters, and its perspective on history betrays a certain resentment of the prominence given to the Jewish experience in the Holocaust. Bolstered by the governments right-wing populism and xenophobia, anti-Semitism has come into vogue again in the home of Auschwitz and Sobibor in recent years, just as it has in other European countries.

Hungarys right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orban, for instance, may insist that his latest campaign of posters depicting George Soros as a sinister caricature of the laughing Jew is just about Soros, the individual but its not convincing. Not incidentally, the Orban and Trump administrations are disturbingly friendly. Orban welcomed Trumps inauguration as the end of multilateralism and has praised Trumps heavy-handed approach to controlling immigration; Trumps Islamophobic counterterrorism advisor Sebastian Gorka was also once an advisor to Orban.

Trump may be drawn to European nationalists like Orban by nothing more than their shared suspicion of Islam, but he is apparently blind to the anti-Semitism that tends to co-exist with that variety of Islamophobia.

In the same vein, he either doesnt understand or doesnt care that his diatribes against liberal internationalism and his attacks on the press have origins in old school anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and serve as dog whistles to Jew-haters, even as his supporters repurpose the Nazi slur lugenpresse and alt-righters gleefully tweet about an impending journocaust. To be sure, the new anti-Semitism is by no means exclusive to the right just ask those G20 protesters in Hamburg what they think of Jews. But its no accident that anti-Semitic incidents spiked 86 percent in the first few months of the Trump administration, as the alt-right celebrated what they saw as their victory.

Yet whether out of ego, ignorance, or cognitive dissonance, Trump is unwilling or unable to grapple with the possibility that he might be enabling that spike. Indeed, he seems not to even understand the connection. That makes him no less unsettling.

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The Anti-Semitism Around Donald Trump - New York Magazine

Old Man Makes Entire World Watch Vacation Slideshow – Slate Magazine (blog)

President Donald J. Trump astounded the world again on Sunday, revealing that, in addition to mastering trade policy, real estate, and golf, he is also a visionary filmmaker. Eschewing Hollyweird traditions of trailers and trailers for trailers, the auteur-in-chief released his masterpiece directly to the people, 100 percent free. So crank the volume, because this film should be played LOUD:

Wow. While Trump has always worn his influences on his sleeveD. W. Griffith, Leni Riefenstahl, Veit Harlan, the list pretty much ends therehis latest work exceeds them all from frame one. Has any single image captured the modern condition of despair better than Trumps opening shot?

Twitter User @realDonaldTrump

A still photo of the president of the United States angrily explaining something to his wife, who is not paying attention, badly compressed so that it looks pixelated beyond belief, with audio that has been carefully miscued to allow a full second of sheet-music rustle before the brass comes in: David Lynch couldnt fit that much unease on screen if you gave him two TV shows and a feature film. Our authority figures are crumbling as digital technology scrambles and distorts our feeble attempts to connect with each other, Trump seems to be saying, and for the rest of his film, he pokes and prods at the disconnect between the countrys traditional conceptions of leadership, heroism, and happiness and the all-consuming black hole occupying the White House.

It becomes clear almost immediately that the cleverly disquieting use of miscued audio at the beginning wasnt an anomaly: Like Martin Scorsese or Mikheil Chiaureli before him, Trump considers the soundtrack to be a crucial part of his project. In this case, hes selected the First Baptist Dallas choir and orchestras legendary Kennedy Center performanceof their original song, Make America Great Again. Thats Robert Jeffress congregationyou may remember him from his beliefs that Catholicism, Mormonism, and Islam are Satanic cultsand its clear that Jeffress outspoken support of Trump has put the filmmaker-president in a biblical mood. (Specifically, an ostensibly Christian denomination embracing fascist kitsch in order to suck up to a morally depraved leader suggests Matthew 7:15, just for starters.)

As Trump pulls us deeper into his personal cinematic nightmaretheres a chilling montage of bad photos of him smiling unconvincingly at other world leadersthe ever-widening disconnect between sound and image brilliantly echoes the disconnect between Americas self-image and our actions on the global stage. Step into the future, the choir sings, as Trump reminds us that this was apparently one of the best photos taken at the G-20 Summit:

Twitter User @realDonaldTrump

Step into the future, indeed! And thats before the montage of pictures of unelected adviser Ivanka Trump hanging out with world leaders, or the bizarre shot of a videoconferencing monitor with an even-more-blurry-than-usual image of Trump on it. It all builds to an astonishing climax: Trump pairs the songs highest, loudest notea great so high-pitched that the choir cant quite sing itwith this image of Putin staring at him with equal parts contempt and disbelief:

Twitter User @realDonaldTrump

Another masterpiece from our philosopher-king!

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Old Man Makes Entire World Watch Vacation Slideshow - Slate Magazine (blog)

Donald Trump appeared in music video from Russian pop singer connected to Trump Jr. meeting – Consequence of Sound (blog)

The New York Times reported Sunday that Donald Trump Jr. and several other members of Donald Trumps presidential campaign staff met with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The meeting, which took place in June 2016, was set up by an associate of Trump Jr, identified by the Washington Post as a music publicist named Rob Goldstone.

In the late 1980s, Goldstone worked in Australia representing international artist touring the country, including Michael Jackson, Tracy Chapman, BB King, and James Taylor. He also worked with corporate clients such as The Hard Rock Cafe, Richard Bransons Virgin Megastores, and HMV Music Stores. More recently, Goldstone served as the manager for a Russian pop singer named Emin Agalarov.

Both Agalarov and his Russian billionaire father,Aras Agalarov, have close ties to the Trump family.Aras Agalarov sponsoredthe Miss Universe Pageant when it was held near Moscow in 2013. The father and son also had committed to building Trump Tower in Russia prior to his run for president, which contradicts previous statements by Trump that he has no ties or business interests in Russia.

And somewhat randomly, Trump appeared in a music video forEminAgalarov (via Think Progress). The 2013 video for Another Life depicts Trump in a board rooming firingAgalarov. Watch it below.

According to the Washington Post,Goldstone set up the meeting with Trump Jr. at the request of an undisclosed Russian client, who is believed to beAras Agalarov. The lawyer,Natalia Veselnitskaya, has close ties with individuals and companies close to the Kremlin.

So to recap, Donald Trump starred in the music video from a Russian oligarchs pop singer son who is represented by a music publicist namedRob Goldstone. Goldstone recently set up a meeting with Trumps son during which a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin offered damaging info on Hillary Clinton. And thats what we know so far.

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Donald Trump appeared in music video from Russian pop singer connected to Trump Jr. meeting - Consequence of Sound (blog)

Why Does Donald Trump Keep Dissing Jews? – The New York Times – New York Times

Then there was an initial, strange silence from Trump and his aides about a rash of anti-Semitic vandalism and bomb threats around the country in January and February.

In May, in Israel, Trump insisted on a much shorter stop at Yad Vashem, an important Holocaust memorial and museum, than either Barack Obama or George W. Bush had made, and he stuck to that plan even as many Israelis and American Jews cried foul. The tone-deaf breeziness of his approach was accentuated by the message he left in the visitors book: It is a great honor to be here with all of my friends so amazing & will never forget! As Yair Rosenberg of the Jewish magazine Tablet tweeted, it was basically just what teenagers write in each others high school yearbooks.

Ivanka Trump went to the Warsaw memorial in her fathers stead, though Trump softened that blow somewhat by mentioning, in his big Warsaw speech, that the Nazis systematically murdered millions of Polands Jewish citizens.

Ivanka converted to Judaism to marry Jared Kushner, and the couples key roles in the White House mean that Trump has observant Jews at the very core of his presidency and of his life.

But that didnt stop him from making remarks to Jewish Republican donors in December 2015 that seemed to play into an anti-Semitic stereotype. Im a negotiator like you folks, he said, later adding: Is there anybody that doesnt renegotiate deals in this room? Perhaps more than any room Ive ever spoken to.

During his presidential campaign, he embraced the favor of groups and people who trafficked in white supremacy. He re-tweeted material from proudly anti-Semitic Twitter feeds, and prompted a furor by promoting an image that placed Hillary Clintons face atop a pile of cash and beside a six-pointed star on which most corrupt candidate ever was written.

The website PolitiFact concluded that it was unlikely that the Trump campaign intended to put out a Star of David image. In fact, the campaign moved to replace the star with a circle when the image gained attention. Even so, PolitiFact noted, Trump had an unusual habit of using social media to broadcast material that comes from sources with a history of spreading racism, anti-Semitism or white supremacy.

Im not convinced that Trump is much of an anti-Semite, any more than Im convinced that hes much of a homophobe. (Racism and sexism are another matter.) But I think hes so thirsty for, and intoxicated by, whatever love comes his way that hes loath to rebuff the sources of it.

A prominent Jewish Republican put it well. I think Trump is such a pathological narcissist that the act of telling people who love you that you reject them he cant get around that, he told me, interpreting Trumps reasoning this way: What can be wrong with them? Theyre for me!

Trump is disinclined to denounce any constituency or tactics that elevate him to the throne, where hes sure that he belongs. The outcome validates even the ugliest and most divisive ascent.

I dont think hes goading these people or associating with them because he shares their views, the Republican added. I do think that hes so insensitive about the presidency about the responsibilities of the leader of the free world that he doesnt realize its not enough to say, once or twice, I dont agree with them. He doesnt realize that you have to be very clear. And he doesnt realize or care that hes validating and encouraging them.

He doesnt understand the message of zipping through Yad Vashem when predecessors lingered, because hes less concerned with the weight of his office than with the whims and convenience of Donald Trump. Its all about him, always and if hes sure in his own heart that hes good with Jews, then he shouldnt have to prove it.

Go back to his mini-tantrum during a White House news conference in February, when a reporter for a Jewish magazine tried to ask him whether he was paying proper heed to the anti-Semitic bomb threats. Trump interpreted the question as an indictment not of his behavior but of his being I am the least anti-Semitic person that youve ever seen in your entire life! he trumpeted and turned the discussion toward the big, bad media. Forget about any persecution of Jews. Lets talk about the persecution of Trump.

You can be only so considerate to others when you never stop considering yourself. And the flamboyantly nonconformist culture of Trumps presidency has downsides. This administration shrugs off and throws away some rituals and niceties that do matter to people, estranging them in the process.

Gay Pride Month came and went without even a banal word of recognition from the White House. So while Trump likes to crow, in a hallucinatory fashion, that gays love him, we made do in June with a tweet from his outsourced conscience, by which of course I mean Ivanka.

Some of this is Steve Bannon and his ilk. Their idea of nationalism is chilly to the recognition of subgroups, including Jewish Americans.

Some of it boils down to an absent professionalism. Trump isnt matching the respectful choreography of other presidents because theres no one in his inner circle familiar with the dance. Kushner, Bannon, Stephen Miller and Reince Priebus are all new to this kind and level of work. They lack institutional memory, along with any awareness of how easily those blind spots become insensitivity.

I cant know definitively how Trump feels about Jews or gays or a whole lot else. But I can see clearly his sloppiness and self-absorption, and theyre cause enough for alarm.

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Why Does Donald Trump Keep Dissing Jews? - The New York Times - New York Times

Ivanka Trump takes Donald Trump seat at G20 leaders’ table – BBC News


BBC News
Ivanka Trump takes Donald Trump seat at G20 leaders' table
BBC News
In an unusual move Ivanka Trump briefly took her father Donald's seat at a summit of world leaders on Saturday. The US president had stepped away for a meeting with the Indonesian leader during the G20 meeting. Ms Trump is an adviser to her father, but ...
Trump Says Ivanka's Life Would Be Easier if She Weren't His DaughterNBCNews.com
Donald Trump says he's made Ivanka's life harderNew York Post
Donald Trump's nepotism has reached new heights, and could have far-reaching consequencesThe Independent
CNBC -The Sydney Morning Herald -Bloomberg
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Ivanka Trump takes Donald Trump seat at G20 leaders' table - BBC News