New York Times | Obama's Dilemma on Troop Surge in Afghanistan Now Vexes Trump New York Times Marines raising a flag to signal the return of American troops to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in April. Credit Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse Getty ... |
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Obama's Dilemma on Troop Surge in Afghanistan Now Vexes Trump - New York Times
During her Wednesday interview at ReCodes Code Conference 2017, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton blamedher loss at least partly on misogyny, while claiming that PresidentObama was able to overcome racial barriers due to his appearance.
So I never said I was a perfect candidate, and I certainly have never said I ran perfect campaigns, but I dont know who is or did, she told interviewer Kara Swisher. And at some point it sort of bleeds into misogyny. And lets just be honest, you know, people who have a set of expectations about who should be president and what a president looks like, you know, theyre going to be much more skeptical and critical of somebody who doesnt look like and talk like and sound like everybody else whos been president.
She then attempted to explain Barack Obamas success and her failure by complimentinghis looks.
And you know, President Obama broke that racial barrier, but you know, hes a very attractive, good-looking man with lots of
Well, hes likable enough, Swisher quipped, a reference to a remark Obama made in a debate during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries.
Hes likable enough, absolutely! Clinton responded.
Clintons remarks are reminiscent of then-Senator Joe Biden, a Democrat from Delaware,describing Obama in 2007as a candidate who isthe first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. Bidenlater apologized.
Top photo: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during the Women in the World Summit at Lincoln Center in New York on April 6, 2017.
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Clinton Says Obama Broke Through The Racial Barrier Because He's An Attractive, Good-Looking Man - The Intercept
Sen. Tim KaineTim KaineKaine: Trump is jealous of Obama Tim Kaine's son charged with misdemeanor after Trump rally incident Senators move to rein in Trump with new ISIS war bill MORE (D-Va.) says that President Trump is jealous of former President Barack ObamaBarack ObamaBloomberg pledges M to UN to cover US climate share DeVos: Certainly, the climate changes Jenna and Barbara Bush 'tried to veto' dad's presidency MOREs achievements.
Why did Trump really walk away from #ParisAgreement? Kaine tweeted Friday. Hes surrounded by science deniers and fossil fuel junkies.
POTUS jealous of Obama accomplishments, he added in another tweet. But in the end, American innovative spirit is stronger than his insecurities.
Why did Trump really walk away from #ParisAgreement? He's surrounded by science deniers and fossil fuel junkies
POTUS jealous of Obama accomplishments. But in the end, American innovative spirit is stronger than his insecurities
U.S. private sector, researchers, cities, towns and states will lead clean energy revolution despite lack of leadership from WH & President, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee tweeted.
U.S. private sector, researchers, cities, towns and states will lead clean energy revolution despite lack of leadership from WH & President
Trump's decision to withdraw from the agreement makes the U.S. one of only three countries in the world that have not committed to the agreement.
We dont want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they wont be, he said at the White House Rose Garden. I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.
Trumps move fulfilled a pledge from his 2016 campaign.
Obama said Thursday that Trumps decision places the U.S. among a small handful of nations that reject the future.
The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created, he said in a statement.
Obama was instrumental in negating the 2015 accord, which consisted of nonbinding individual greenhouse gas limits each signatory nation determined for itself.
Under Obama, the U.S. pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025.
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Kaine: Trump is 'jealous of Obama' - The Hill
Former President Barack Obama said on Thursday that the cities and businesses of the United States should step up to reduce greenhouse gases after President Donald Trump announced that America would withdraw from the Paris climate change accord.
The mayor of Pittsburgh, pushing back on Trump's statement that he was elected to represent the citizens of that former steel-making giant rather than those of Paris, condemned the withdrawal.
Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk immediately announced he will quit presidential advisory councils. Disney CEO Bob Iger said he was out, too. General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said "Climate change is real. Industry must now lead and not depend on government."
"The United States joins Syria, Nicaragua & Russia in deciding not to participate with world's Paris Agreement. It's now up to cities to lead," Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, a Democrat, said on Twitter.
Trump said at an announcement at the Rose Garden on Thursday that the United States would withdraw from the international agreement negotiated under Obama, citing a desire to protect American jobs and fuel what he has claimed would be three percent economic growth.
Related: What It Means That Trump Is Leaving the Paris Climate Agreement
Because Obama didn't ask the Senate for approval of the Paris accord, Trump can act unilaterally without the consent of Congress. Democrats, however, could slow down any action on the floor in retaliation of the decision and tie any pending nominations to the issue, actions that won't change the outcome but frustrate Republicans and the White House.
Obama said in a statement that a withdrawal means an abdication of American leadership.
"The nations that remain in the Paris Agreement will be the nations that reap the benefits in jobs and industries created. I believe the United States of America should be at the front of the pack," Obama said in the statement.
"But even in the absence of American leadership; even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future; I'm confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we've got," Obama said.
Related: California and Other States Step Into the Climate Policy Void
Reaction on Capitol Hill was mostly partisan, with Republicans standing by the president's decision, praising the U.S.'s withdrawal as good for the economy. "President Trump has once again put families and jobs ahead of left-wing ideology and should be commended for his action," Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.
But some Republicans in Congress opposed Trump's move. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said on Twitter: "Climate change requires a global approach. I'm disappointed in the President's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement."
Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, who is expected to have a tough re-election in his swing district in south Florida, lobbed a series of tweets in opposition.
Trump had pledged on the campaign trail to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate accord, which is a non-binding agreement that asks that all signing countries rich and poor take concrete steps to reduce their carbon emissions in the face of climate change.
The Obama administration pledged a 26 to 28 percent cut in U.S. emissions, which Republicans have criticized for potentially having a negative impact on the American economy and its energy sector.
Former Sectary of State John Kerry said on MSNBC that the move to withdraw from the Paris deal was "an extraordinary abdication of American leadership."
He noted that the program was voluntary, and the United States was not forced to do anything under the accord.
"It was a voluntary program. We designed the program," Kerry said. "The president was not truthful with the American people today, and the president who talked about putting 'America first' has now put America last."
Withdrawing from the climate deal could take three years, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said this week.
And French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni said in a joint statement Thursday that they take note "with regret" the U.S. decision to pull out of the 2015 agreement.
The three leaders say they regard the accord as "a cornerstone in the cooperation between our countries, for effectively and timely tackling climate change."
They added that the course charted by the accord is "irreversible and we firmly believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated."
Macron, Merkel and Gentiloni say they remain committed to the deal and will "step up efforts" to support the poorest and most threatened nations.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric called Trump's decision a "major disappointment for global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote global security."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday "We are deeply disappointed that the United States federal government has decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement" and said Canada is committed to fighting climate change.
Related: Fact Checking Trump's Paris Agreement Speech
Trump on Thursday left open the possibility of renegotiating what he called a better deal that would put American taxpayers first, and suggested the climate deal was a ruse that put the United States at a competitive disadvantage.
"The agreement is a massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries," Trump said.
Former President Bill Clinton said on Twitter: "Walking away from Paris treaty is a mistake. Climate change is real. We owe our children more. Protecting our future also creates more jobs."
And Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said in his first tweet from a verified account that "Today's decision is a setback for the environment and for the U.S.'s leadership position in the world," adding the hashtag #ParisAgreement.
The governors of New York, California, and Washington state said in a statement that they would form a "United States Climate Alliance" which they called "a coalition that will convene U.S. states committed to upholding the Paris Climate Agreement and taking aggressive action on climate change."
Related: Why Trump Is Seeing Red About the 'Green Climate Fund'
A speaker at a protest near the White House called the move "treason" and the crowd chanted "lock him up," a play off of Trump supporters' chants targeting Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign.
Trump's announced withdrawal from the climate deal was not unexpected. On Wednesday in a tweet in which Trump said he would announce his decision on Thursday, the president ended with his signature phrase: "Make America great again."
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Obama, Musk, Other World and Industry Leaders Call Paris Climate Deal Withdrawal a Mistake - NBCNews.com
One of the frequent gambits of the right whenever some Republican gets caught doing something that pushes the envelope of our norms and traditions is to hit the Googles and find one example of some Democrat doing something vaguely similar and then say See? Everybody does it.
The classic example here is the Robert Byrd parry. That is, some Republican says some crazy racist thing or is discovered to have spoken to one of those citizens council-type groups, something any politician should have stopped doing 50 years ago. People like me bang on about it. And conservatives invariably fire back with: Yeah, but Robert Byrd was in the KKK, libtard! It was 70 years ago, and Byrd renounced his membership and apologized for it a hundred times, and anyway hes been pushing up Mountain State daisies for seven years now. But theyll never stop with the Byrd thing. Its F4 on conservatives computers.
This brings us to the matter at hand, which is the explosive story The Washington Post posted last Friday about Jared Kushner proposing to Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that they set up a communications back-channel using Russian communications equipment. Of all the Russia-related scoops of the young Trump era, this one may well have been the biggest.
Its out of bounds for an incoming administration to seek to have secret negotiations with any other country. But to want to have them with an adversary that our intelligence agencies had concluded meddled in our electionwhich was public knowledge well before the time of Kushners chat with Kislyakis way out of bounds. And to propose that the discussion be held through the adversarys channels is more than way out of bounds.
The Times ran one of those historical-context pieces Thursday that discussed other similar episodes in American historywhen presidents-elect or their minions did such a thing before Inauguration Day. The paper came up with only two examples of pre-inaugural meddling (the dates important because it makes all the difference; once youre president you can set up all the back channels you want). Bobby Kennedy took a phone call from a Soviet actor in late 1960. This was initiated by the Russian party, and the Kennedys made no effort to conceal it. So this was fine.
The other of course was Richard Nixons subverting of the Paris Peace talks on Vietnam in 1968. This is well-known, and I dont need to go into it here. It was disgraceful. It may have prolonged the war and cost American lives. LBJ called it treason.
OK. Theres your context. Now lets return to this everybody does it idea. It was imperative in this case to cleanse Kushner, and the way to cleanse him was of course to soil Obama.
And so, not long after the Post story broke, Breitbart.coms Aaron Klein, author of such books as The Manchurian President and The Real Benghazi Story, posted a piece saying that in 2008, the Obama campaign opened a back channel to Iran. Take note: the campaign! Before he was even elected. So not only did Obama also do it but, of course, it was worse!
Kleins story was based on something written previously by Michael Ledeen, that old neocon and occasional enthusiast of Italian fascism. Ledeen wrote a piece for PJ Media in 2014 charging that the Obama campaign sent a diplomat named William Miller to assure the mullahs that [Obama] was a friend of the Islamic Republic, as Ledeen put it. Thats what Breitbart.com used as pushback. Then The Wall Street Journals Kim Strassel said it on Meet the Press last Sunday. Since then its been all over the right-wing media, a huge meme.
But according to Miller and former Obama aide Ben Rhodes, who worked on the 2008 campaign and in the Obama White House, its flat-out false.
Miller, responding to my question about Ledeens charge via email, said: It is false. The Obama campaign did not send me to Iran to establish a back channel before he was elected.
Rhodes, also via email, wrote: It is absurd and not true that the Obama campaign or transition team opened up a back channel to Iran with anyone, including Bill Miller. I have no idea where that rumor came from, but I was surprised to hear itgiven that our Iran diplomacy has been scrutinized more than just about anything else we did over the last 10 years, youd think that something like that would have come up already. What a coincidence that this false rumor emerges now! Anyway, by the time we did establish a secret channel, one of the main participants was the Deputy Secretary of State (Bill Burns), and the relevant agencies were included.
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Miller, Im advised, is a respected diplomat who did so-called Track II diplomacy to Iran for many years. Track II means nongovernmental, informal, and unofficial contacts with foreign officials. So Miller could easily have been meeting with Iranian officials in 2008, though not necessarily at the behest of the Obama campaign.
Now read closely the way Ledeen phrased matters in that 2014 column: Ambassador Miller has confirmed to me his conversations with Iranian leaders during the 2008 campaign. He confirmed conversations. No mention, however, of Miller confirming that the conversations were at the Obama teams behest. Wouldnt Ledeen have written that if hed had specific confirmation? Pretty big story!
The actual back channel to Iran was established, according to this David Ignatius column, in May 2009. Ignatius was actually citing a book, Alter Egos, by The New York Times Mark Landler. Ignatius knows the intel world very well, and Landler is a meticulous reporter.
I have no expectation that Millers and Rhodes disavowals will change anything on the right, any more than Robert Byrds death did. But those of you in the reality-based community should take note. When you hear someone repeat this allegation on televisionthe principals involved say its a lie.
So no, everybody doesnt do it. Only Jared Kushner (and Mike Flynn) did it. And Richard Nixon. Funny how his name keeps coming up these days. Or maybe something other than funny.
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The Right's Big Reveal About Obama's Iran Back-Channel Is Fake News - Daily Beast