Archive for the ‘Donald Trump’ Category

Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos, Standing Rock: Your Wednesday Briefing – New York Times


New York Times
Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos, Standing Rock: Your Wednesday Briefing
New York Times
A fuller picture of President Trump's immigration plan is emerging after documents released on Tuesday showed a more aggressive approach to enforcing immigration laws. The policies will make it easier and quicker to deport those in the country ...

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Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos, Standing Rock: Your Wednesday Briefing - New York Times

Donald Trump’s Jewish Problem – Slate Magazine

President Donald Trump with his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who is Jewish, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., Jan. 31.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

When do we get to say out loud that the Trump Administration has a very serious problem with Jews, Judaism, and all things Jewish and that it has now risen to the level that even saying the word Jew has become problematic?

Dahlia Lithwick writes about the courts and the law for Slate, and hosts the podcast Amicus.

The White Houses statement on the JCC threats read in full:

Its worth noting that terrorism and vandalism have absolutely nothing to do with individual freedom and that threatening to kill small babies and elderly people is an affront to human safety and dignity, not just freedom. The White House statement, you also might have noticed, did not contain the words Jewish, Jewish Community Center, or terrorism or anti-Semitism. This has become something of a tradition for the Trump administration, which failed to mention the existence of Jewish victims in a message issued on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Last week, Trump fielded a question about the rise in anti-Semitic incidents during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by making another rambling reference to his Electoral College victory and his Jewish daughter and by dismissing the question as unfair. And on Thursday, in the strangest performance to date, Trump told a Jewish reporter to sit down and accused him of lying when he was asked a softball question about the rise of anti-Jewish hate.

On Tuesday morning, responding to increasing pressure to say the words aloud, Trump called anti-Semitism horrible and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil. In a Facebook post, the executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect called this a pathetic asterisk of condescension after weeks in which he and his staff have committed grotesque acts and omissions reflecting anti-Semitism, yet day after day have refused to apologize and correct the record.

Indeed, to be grateful that Trump finally said the bare minimum at the latest possible moment he could say it is to miss what was most horrifying about his assorted romps with anti-Semitism. You may have missed it amid the distraction of Trumps insult to a Jewish reporter, but in the same press conference, SiriusXMs Jared Rizzi circled back to the hate crimes question. Ill follow up on my colleagues question about anti-Semitism, Rizzi said. Its not about your personality or your beliefs. Were talking about a rise in anti-Semitism around the country. Some of it by supporters in your name. What can you do to deter that?

Trumps reply: Some of it is written by our opponents. You do know that? Do you understand that? You dont think anybody would do a thing like that? In case he wasnt being sufficiently clear, he added, Some of the signs youll see are not put up by the people that love or live Donald Trump. Theyre put up by the other side, and you think its like playing it straight? No. But you have some of those signs, and some of that anger is caused by the other side. Theyll do signs, and theyll do drawings that are inappropriate. It wont be my people. It will be the people on the other side to anger people like you.

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Bannon believes that secular Jews or Jewish secularists have for many years undermined Christian White Man's America in the name of egalitarianism and anti-racism. More...

Allison Kaplan Sommer, commenting at Haaretz, explained over the weekend that thisand not the insults directed to a Jewish reporterwas the real story about Trump and anti-Jewish hate speech: Trumps words echoed the theory that the threats to Jewish community centers and other anti-Semitic incidents have been contrived to support the premise that Trumps presidency is ushering in greater racism. These false flag claims are rampant among anti-Semites and have been pushed by David Duke himself. I wonder who could be placing all those calls? Duke tweeted recently, referencing the threats to Jewish community centers. Seems theyd be able to track that down rather easily ... such a dramatic photo.

So please dont be too grateful that President Trump has finally said that anti-Semitism is horrible. Its more notable and more telling that he has also given voice and cover to the vile argument that these attacks and threats are not really happening to Jews or, worse, that Jews are doing this to their own communities in an effort to delegitimize Trump. The real question we should be asking Donald Trump today isnt whether he deplores episodes of racial hatred. It should be whether he even believes they are happening or whether he truly thinks they are staged by his enemies to malign him.

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Donald Trump's Jewish Problem - Slate Magazine

This 22-Year-Old Has Been Trolling Donald Trump All Week via Sweden’s Official Twitter Account – PRNewser

Since 2012, Sweden has been letting ordinary citizens take overthe official @sweden Twitter account, one week at a time, with next to no oversight. Its been risky move intended to help the countrypromote itself, unfiltered, as a travel destination, with each citizen serving as a kind of de facto tourism ambassador.

There have been some verynotable tweetersalong the waythe latest being 22-year-oldMax Karlsson, whos been usingthe account this week to critiquePresident Trump for his comments about Sweden over the weekend.

In case you missed it, Trump, at a rally in Florida on Saturday, said, You look at whats happening last night in Sweden. They took in large numbers. Theyre having problems like they never thought possible.Confusion followed as #lastnightinsweden began trending, with many noting that no specific newsworthy event had occurred in the Scandinavian nation on Friday night.

"As I've said before, we do face challengesbut not the ones Donald Trump believes in."

-Max Karlsson

Trump later saidhe was referring to a segment on Tucker Carlsons Fox News show in which filmmaker and anti-immigration activistAmi Horowitz made allegations about rising crime tied to Swedens refugee settlement policies and referenced alleged no go zones in areas with larger Muslim populations. Research by theSwedish National Council for Crime Prevention shows that violent crime hasbeen in general decline since the 90s, and two of the police officers interviewed by Horowitz for footage thataired during theFox segment later said hemischaracterized their statements, calling him a madman.

Hundreds of social media users began to mockTrump and his supporters with tags like #JeSuisIKEA. And @Sweden joined in, withKarlsson, a 22-year-oldSwedish Union of Tenants negotiation officer, spending much of his week on the account bashing Trump.

AdFreak spoke with Karlsson about the events of the past few days.

AdFreak: How does the @sweden accountwork, exactly? Max Karlsson: You nominate a Swedish Twitter user to Curators of Sweden.Then, if youre chosen by the Swedish Institute, you get a week to tweet freely about any subject, as long as youre within the law and not promoting a product or your business.

Wheredid you hear about Trumps claims, and how did you react? I got ahold of the account Monday morning, but Ive been preparing for about two weeks now. All of the preparation was scrapped, or at least put on hold, when Trump made his remarks, and I started drafting a strategy to be informative but still relevant.I heard about Trumps claims right after he made them, from Swedish journalists on Twitter. The collective response was a huge, Wait what did he just say?

Youve written a lot of tweets debunking Trumps broader allegations. Could you give some context to help Americans understand the arguments about immigration and crime? Were currently having a heated debate about fake news, combined with an increased threat from the Swedish extreme right. The larger political parties are all closing in on more populist policy decisions, and its been quite the ride following the progression from just a few years back. Weve grown much harder in our immigration policies, but a lot of Swedes still maintain a pretty high self-regard based on how it used to be. My week running @sweden is not only targeted toward reaching American Trump votersI want to converse with theSwedes, too.

You mentioned some specific right-wing politicalgroups. Could you elaborate?The Swedish far right has moved several positions forward, with normalization in a lot of the press and amongvoters. These figures, like Fjordman or Ingrid Carlqvist, are relatively invisible in an international context but well-known and generally despised over here. Some publications are maintaining a Snopes-like attitude and keeping their arguments fact-based. I think thats really valuable.

Various outlets are reporting thatriots did occur inthe predominately immigrant neighborhood of Rinkeby on Monday, and some Trump supportershave argued thatthis incident validates his claims. How would you respond?The thing is, it doesnt prove Trump right unless you argue on the premise that these 30 young menin one isolated area with apopulation of 12,000are rioting based on the color of their skin, and that alone. Lets assume they all have citizenship, because most of the youth in that area are born in Sweden to immigrant parents. What makes them immigrant rioters and not Swedish? Does anybody really want a debate about whether or not violence is more inherent in immigrants? Is it passed on through DNA? Thats just how close we are to arguing like its the happy 30s again.

So you think supporters are making a disingenuousargument. A sane discussion on crime is absolutely fitting. Butto be able to further that discussion into policy or action, it has to involve all relevant elements like socioeconomic factors, setting, history and the incident itselfabout which we still know very little. As Ive said before, we do face challengesbut not the ones Donald Trump believes in. Also, they are saying [the rioters were] Muslim, but they mean different race, totally ignoring whether theyre practicing or secular. There are no facts or science supporting this claim, and I hate seeing it in the frontlines of arguments they frequently bring up.

Now that youve had this experience in public, do you plan to become more politically active? This might just be a brief moment for me to express myself on a larger platform, but I havent thought about what to do after this week. Im taking it one day at a time!

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This 22-Year-Old Has Been Trolling Donald Trump All Week via Sweden's Official Twitter Account - PRNewser

Kevin O’Leary: Canada’s Donald Trump? – BBC News


BBC News
Kevin O'Leary: Canada's Donald Trump?
BBC News
An outspoken businessman who found fame on American reality TV is betting the wave of populist sentiment will help him upend Canada's political establishment. Kevin O'Leary is one of 14 candidates vying for the leadership of Canada's Conservative Party ...

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Kevin O'Leary: Canada's Donald Trump? - BBC News

Why Populist American Leaders Love Russia – TIME

Soviet Premier Josef Stalin and US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appear on the porch of the Russian embassy in Tehran, Iran in 1943.Newscom

Imagine this scenario: In a period of protracted economic crisis, the American people elect to the presidency a scion of a wealthy New York family who appeals to the working class and connects with voters through a new form of popular media . Once elected, he cultivates a close relationship with Russia and its strongman leader , belittling long-standing intelligence on a country commonly perceived to be a threat to American democracy. As president, he purges the State Department of trusted advisors and installs as ambassador a Russia apologist who publicly praises the countrys dictator and looks the other way at Russias human rights abuses. Finally, the President turns his back on old European alliances, tacitly supporting Russias military expansion into Eastern Europe and Asia, bringing about a new geopolitical order.

If you think Im talking about Donald Trump , youre off by about 80 years. What Im describing is not the much-discussed bromance between Putin and Trump, but the uncritical friendship that lasted (to the confusion of many Russia experts) throughout the 1930s and early 40s between that great villain of the twentieth century and the man now considered one of its great heroes: Joseph Stalin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Im a novelist, not an historian. But for the last eight years, in doing research for my new novel, The Patriots , set mostly during the Cold War, I have immersed myself in history: reading historical accounts, biographies, and even spending considerable time in the KGBs archives. One of the books I found most helpful was Dennis J. Dunns Caught Between Roosevelt and Stalin, a comprehensive study of the five ambassadors to Moscow appointed by FDR. In reading Dunns descriptions of Roosevelts foreign diplomacy, I couldnt help but be struck by the resonance of that period with our own. And while during a time of great anxiety about Americas shifting alliances it may seem provocative to compare the president who assured Americans that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself with the president who has stoked fear with tweets, the ideological and temperamental differences between Roosevelt and Trump should not blind us to the fact that both entered office under similar conditions and both took similarly favorable stances toward Russia. What can we learn from these similarities? And what can they tell us about what lies ahead for the Russia-America relationship?

Roosevelt, like Trump, came to power on a largely domestic agenda. Americans were far less concerned with the future of Europe than with finding work and putting food on the table. Unlike his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, FDR was attuned to this popular sentiment. Some of his closest advisors, like W. Averell Harriman, were shocked at how little Roosevelt seemed to care about the international situation. Writing in his journal, Harriman noted that the President consistently shows very little interest in Eastern European matters except as they affect sentiment in America.

Before Roosevelts election in 1934, the executive branch and Congress had snubbed Russia. Convinced that the new Bolshevik government was eager to undermine the American government through spying and meddling via the Communist International, or Comintern (think of todays hacking scandals), they refused to recognize the Soviet Union and send an ambassador there. This, by the way, did not stop American companies from selling to the Bolsheviks millions of dollars worth of steel and technology for its new factories, and doing so with the tacit approval of the same politicians who lambasted the Red Menace in the press. But it took Roosevelts intervention to turn Americas official policy around.

Russia was eager to encourage such a reversal. It felt isolated by the coalition of anti-Communist states in Europe, and its cash reserves were alarmingly low. To feed its workers, it was starving its peasants. The modern parallel to this is the American and European policy of sanctions, which has hurt Russias economy and caused it to deplete its foreign exchange reserves, which some experts believe might run out by the middle of 2017.

It is no surprise then that Stalin desired the United States as a partner. He cemented the alliance by convincing Roosevelt that Russia was turning Communism into a national project rather than fomenting an international class war. And Stalin pointed to the common enemy of Japan, which had invaded Manchuria on the Soviet border in 1931. (Its worth remembering that it was ultimately an attack by Japan that got America into WWII and on the side of the Russians).

But Russia needed America, with its shipments of steel and low-interest loans, far more than America needed Russia. Prior to Roosevelts presidency, officials in the State Department had insisted on a quid-pro-quo relationship. In return for recognizing the Soviet Union, they wanted Stalin to stop interfering in American affairs through its agents at Comintern, and take a softer stance to the Ukraine, where Stalin had orchestrated a famine. FDR could have easily demanded at least some of these concessions. Why didnt he?

As they say in Russia: Another mans soul is darkness. Its impossible to know exactly what motivated Roosevelt, but its clear that his affinity for Stalin was more than just strategic. It is known from Roosevelts statements that he believed that the Russians and the Americans were on a path to convergence. He believed that as the U.S. was moving away from unfettered capitalism toward state-managed socialism, the Soviet Union was moving from autocratic communism to socialist democracy. Though a member of the elite, FDR was at heart a populist, and he saw in Stalin, a man of the people, a reflection of his own mandate. He was intrigued by Stalins autocratic style and admired him as a man who, to lift up his nation, was not afraid to knock heads.

Russias blunt trajectory appealed to FDR more than the tired alliances of Europe. Just like Trump, Roosevelt had contempt for the old European order. He found the European leaders snooty, clubby, imperialist and entrenched in long-standing intrigues into which they were constantly trying to wrangle America and England. Rather than trusting in the efficacy of quid-pro-quo diplomacy (e.g. sanctions), FDR the populist believed in the power of personality to affect diplomacy. When Russia did not play by the rules (as it usually didnt), Roosevelt preferred not to issue reprimands but to have his ambassador arrange yet another face-to-face meeting between himself and Stalin, presumably so that, like George W. Bush, he could look into the mans eyes and see his soul.

This more than anything frustrated the traditionalists in Roosevelts government the experts, who, like today, demanded a reciprocal, tough and morally objective approach when it comes to Russia. After the war, Harriman, writing in his journal, confessed, I do not believe that I have convinced the president of the importance of a vigilant, firm policy in dealing with the political aspects in various European countries when the problems arise." He was disheartened to realize that Roosevelt didn't care whether the countries bordering Russia became communized.

Recently, Trump hinted that he wouldnt care if NATO fell apart. Roosevelt, the populist, intuitively understood that most Americans didnt care about Europes future. We were too busy worrying about our domestic problems to think about the complicated puzzle of Europe, or to see the big picture: that a unified Europe was a natural check against Russian expansion. Ultimately, it took the next president, Harry Truman, to try to reverse the damage Roosevelt had done. But by then it was too late. With our help, the Cold War had begun.

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Why Populist American Leaders Love Russia - TIME