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Did Trump's campaign chair receive illegal payments in Ukraine?
Did Trump's campaign chair receive illegal payments in Ukraine?
The Daily 202: Can Trump chairman Paul Manafort survive new Ukraine revelations?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/08/15/daily-202-can-trump-chairman-paul-manafort-survive-new-ukraine-revelations/57b0ec7ccd249a2fe363ba20/?tid=sm_tw (The Daily 202: Can Trump chairman Paul Manafort survive new Ukraine revelations?)
Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html
KIEV, Ukraine — On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.
And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Manafort’s involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign — from Mr. Trump’s favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails — an examination of Mr. Manafort’s activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev.
Anti-corruption officials there say the payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort, previously unreported, are a focus of their investigation, though they have yet to determine if he actually received the cash. While Mr. Manafort is not a target in the separate inquiry of offshore activities, prosecutors say he must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.
“He understood what was happening in Ukraine,” said Vitaliy Kasko, a former senior official with the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev. “It would have to be clear to any reasonable person that the Yanukovych clan, when it came to power, was engaged in corruption.”
Mr. Kasko added, “It’s impossible to imagine a person would look at this and think, ‘Everything is all right.’”
Mr. Manafort did not respond to interview requests or written questions from The New York Times. But his lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Mr. Manafort had not received “any such cash payments” described by the anti-corruption officials.
Mr. Hibey also disputed Mr. Kasko’s suggestion that Mr. Manafort might have countenanced corruption or been involved with people who took part in illegal activities.
“These are suspicions, and probably heavily politically tinged ones,” said Mr. Hibey, a member of the Washington law firm Miller & Chevalier. “It is difficult to respect any kind of allegation of the sort being made here to smear someone when there is no proof and we deny there ever could be such proof.”
Mysterious Payments
The developments in Ukraine underscore the risky nature of the international consulting that has been a staple of Mr. Manafort’s business since the 1980s, when he went to work for the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign this spring, Mr. Manafort’s most prominent recent client was Mr. Yanukovych, who — like Mr. Marcos — was deposed in a popular uprising.
Before he fled to Russia two years ago, Mr. Yanukovych and his Party of Regions relied heavily on the advice of Mr. Manafort and his firm, who helped them win several elections. During that period, Mr. Manafort never registered as a foreign agent with the United States Justice Department — as required of those seeking to influence American policy on behalf of foreign clients — although one of his subcontractors did.
It is unclear if Mr. Manafort’s activities necessitated registering. If they were limited to advising the Party of Regions in Ukraine, he probably would not have had to. But he also worked to burnish his client’s image in the West and helped Mr. Yanukovych’s administration draft a report defending its prosecution of his chief rival, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, in 2012.
Whatever the case, absent a registration — which requires disclosure of how much the registrant is being paid and by whom — Mr. Manafort’s compensation has remained a mystery. However, a cache of documents discovered after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych’s government may provide some answers.
The papers, known in Ukraine as the “black ledger,” are a chicken-scratch of Cyrillic covering about 400 pages taken from books once kept in a third-floor room in the former Party of Regions headquarters on Lipskaya Street in Kiev. The room held two safes stuffed with $100 bills, said Taras V. Chornovil, a former party leader who was also a recipient of the money at times. He said in an interview that he had once received $10,000 in a “wad of cash” for a trip to Europe.
“This was our cash,” he said, adding that he had left the party in part over concerns about off-the-books activity. “They had it on the table, stacks of money, and they had lists of who to pay.”
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which obtained the ledger, said in a statement that Mr. Manafort’s name appeared 22 times in the documents over five years, with payments totaling $12.7 million. The purpose of the payments is not clear. Nor is the outcome, since the handwritten entries cannot be cross-referenced against banking records, and the signatures for receipt have not yet been verified.
“Paul Manafort is among those names on the list of so-called ‘black accounts of the Party of Regions,’ which the detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine are investigating,” the statement said. “We emphasize that the presence of P. Manafort’s name in the list does not mean that he actually got the money, because the signatures that appear in the column of recipients could belong to other people.”
The accounting records surfaced this year, when Serhiy A. Leshchenko, a member of Parliament who said he had received a partial copy from a source he did not identify, published line items covering six months of outlays in 2012 totaling $66 million. In an interview, Mr. Leshchenko said another source had provided the entire multiyear ledger to Viktor M. Trepak, a former deputy director of the domestic intelligence agency of Ukraine, the S.B.U., who passed it to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
The bureau, whose government funding is mandated under American and European Union aid programs and which has an evidence-sharing agreement with the F.B.I., has investigatory powers but cannot indict suspects. Only if it passes its findings to prosecutors — which has not happened with Mr. Manafort — does a subject of its inquiry become part of a criminal case.
Individual disbursements reflected in the ledgers ranged from a few hundred dollars to millions of dollars. Of the records released from 2012, one shows a payment of $67,000 for a watch and another of $8.4 million to the owner of an advertising agency for campaign work for the party before elections that year.
“It’s a very vivid example of how political parties are financed in Ukraine,” said Daria N. Kaleniuk, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kiev. “It represents the very dirty cash economy in Ukraine.”
Offshore Companies
While working in Ukraine, Mr. Manafort had also positioned himself to profit from business deals that benefited from connections he had gained through his political consulting. One of them, according to court filings, involved a network of offshore companies that government investigators and independent journalists in Ukraine have said was used to launder public money and assets purportedly stolen by cronies of the government.
The network comprised shell companies whose ultimate owners were shielded by the secrecy laws of the offshore jurisdictions where they were registered, including the British Virgin Islands, Belize and the Seychelles.
In a recent interview, Serhiy V. Gorbatyuk, Ukraine’s special prosecutor for high-level corruption cases, pointed to an open file on his desk containing paperwork for one of the shell companies, Milltown Corporate Services Ltd., which played a central role in the state’s purchase of two oil derricks for $785 million, or about double what they were said to be worth.
“This,” he said, “was an offshore used often by Mr. Yanukovych’s entourage.”
The role of the offshore companies in business dealings involving Mr. Manafort came to light because of court filings in the Cayman Islands and in a federal court in Virginia related to an investment fund, Pericles Emerging Markets. Mr. Manafort and several partners started the fund in 2007, and its major backer was Mr. Deripaska, the Russian mogul, to whom the State Department has refused to issue a visa, apparently because of allegations linking him to Russian organized crime, a charge he has denied.
Mr. Deripaska agreed to commit as much as $100 million to Pericles so it could buy assets in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, including a regional cable television and communications company called Black Sea Cable. But corporate records and court filings show that it was hardly a straightforward transaction.
The Black Sea Cable assets were controlled by a rotating cast of offshore companies that led back to the Yanukovych network, including, at various times, Milltown Corporate Services and two other companies well known to law enforcement officials, Monohold A.G. and Intrahold A.G. Those two companies won inflated contracts with a state-run agricultural company, and also acquired a business center in Kiev with a helicopter pad on the roof that would ease Mr. Yanukovych’s commute from his country estate to the presidential offices.
A Disputed Investment
Mr. Deripaska would later say he invested $18.9 million in Pericles in 2008 to complete the acquisition of Black Sea Cable. But the planned purchase — including the question of who ended up with the Black Sea assets — has since become the subject of a dispute between Mr. Deripaska and Mr. Manafort.
In 2014, Mr. Deripaska filed a legal action in a Cayman Islands court seeking to recover his investment in Pericles, which is now defunct. He also said he had paid about $7.3 million in management fees to the fund over two years. Mr. Deripaska did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Manafort’s lawyer, Mr. Hibey, disputed the account of the Black Sea Cable deal contained in Mr. Deripaska’s Cayman filings, and said the Russian oligarch had overseen details of the final transaction involving the acquisition. He denied that Mr. Manafort had received management fees from Pericles during its operation, but said that one of Mr. Manafort’s partners, Rick Gates, who is also working on the Trump campaign, had received a “nominal” sum.
Court papers indicate that Pericles’ only deal involved Black Sea Cable.
Mr. Manafort continued working in Ukraine after the demise of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, helping allies of the ousted president and others form a political bloc that opposed the new pro-Western administration. Some of his aides were in Ukraine as recently as this year, and Ukrainian company records give no indication that Mr. Manafort has formally dissolved the local branch of his company, Davis Manafort International, directed by a longtime assistant, Konstantin V. Kilimnik.
At Mr. Manafort’s old office on Sofiivska Street, new tenants said they had discovered several curiosities apparently left behind, including a knee X-ray signed by Mr. Yanukovych, possibly referring to tennis matches played between Mr. Manafort and Mr. Yanukovych, who had spoken publicly of a knee ailment affecting his game.
There was another item with Mr. Yanukovych’s autograph: a piece of white paper bearing a rough sketch of Independence Square, the site of the 2014 uprising that drove him from power.
Did Trump's campaign chair receive illegal payments in Ukraine?
The Daily 202: Can Trump chairman Paul Manafort survive new Ukraine revelations?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/08/15/daily-202-can-trump-chairman-paul-manafort-survive-new-ukraine-revelations/57b0ec7ccd249a2fe363ba20/?tid=sm_tw (The Daily 202: Can Trump chairman Paul Manafort survive new Ukraine revelations?)
Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/us/politics/paul-manafort-ukraine-donald-trump.html
KIEV, Ukraine — On a leafy side street off Independence Square in Kiev is an office used for years by Donald J. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, when he consulted for Ukraine’s ruling political party. His furniture and personal items were still there as recently as May.
And Mr. Manafort’s presence remains elsewhere here in the capital, where government investigators examining secret records have found his name, as well as companies he sought business with, as they try to untangle a corrupt network they say was used to loot Ukrainian assets and influence elections during the administration of Mr. Manafort’s main client, former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.
Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort from Mr. Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012, according to Ukraine’s newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Investigators assert that the disbursements were part of an illegal off-the-books system whose recipients also included election officials.
In addition, criminal prosecutors are investigating a group of offshore shell companies that helped members of Mr. Yanukovych’s inner circle finance their lavish lifestyles, including a palatial presidential residence with a private zoo, golf course and tennis court. Among the hundreds of murky transactions these companies engaged in was an $18 million deal to sell Ukrainian cable television assets to a partnership put together by Mr. Manafort and a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Manafort’s involvement with moneyed interests in Russia and Ukraine had previously come to light. But as American relationships there become a rising issue in the presidential campaign — from Mr. Trump’s favorable statements about Mr. Putin and his annexation of Crimea to the suspected Russian hacking of Democrats’ emails — an examination of Mr. Manafort’s activities offers new details of how he mixed politics and business out of public view and benefited from powerful interests now under scrutiny by the new government in Kiev.
Anti-corruption officials there say the payments earmarked for Mr. Manafort, previously unreported, are a focus of their investigation, though they have yet to determine if he actually received the cash. While Mr. Manafort is not a target in the separate inquiry of offshore activities, prosecutors say he must have realized the implications of his financial dealings.
“He understood what was happening in Ukraine,” said Vitaliy Kasko, a former senior official with the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev. “It would have to be clear to any reasonable person that the Yanukovych clan, when it came to power, was engaged in corruption.”
Mr. Kasko added, “It’s impossible to imagine a person would look at this and think, ‘Everything is all right.’”
Mr. Manafort did not respond to interview requests or written questions from The New York Times. But his lawyer, Richard A. Hibey, said Mr. Manafort had not received “any such cash payments” described by the anti-corruption officials.
Mr. Hibey also disputed Mr. Kasko’s suggestion that Mr. Manafort might have countenanced corruption or been involved with people who took part in illegal activities.
“These are suspicions, and probably heavily politically tinged ones,” said Mr. Hibey, a member of the Washington law firm Miller & Chevalier. “It is difficult to respect any kind of allegation of the sort being made here to smear someone when there is no proof and we deny there ever could be such proof.”
Mysterious Payments
The developments in Ukraine underscore the risky nature of the international consulting that has been a staple of Mr. Manafort’s business since the 1980s, when he went to work for the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign this spring, Mr. Manafort’s most prominent recent client was Mr. Yanukovych, who — like Mr. Marcos — was deposed in a popular uprising.
Before he fled to Russia two years ago, Mr. Yanukovych and his Party of Regions relied heavily on the advice of Mr. Manafort and his firm, who helped them win several elections. During that period, Mr. Manafort never registered as a foreign agent with the United States Justice Department — as required of those seeking to influence American policy on behalf of foreign clients — although one of his subcontractors did.
It is unclear if Mr. Manafort’s activities necessitated registering. If they were limited to advising the Party of Regions in Ukraine, he probably would not have had to. But he also worked to burnish his client’s image in the West and helped Mr. Yanukovych’s administration draft a report defending its prosecution of his chief rival, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, in 2012.
Whatever the case, absent a registration — which requires disclosure of how much the registrant is being paid and by whom — Mr. Manafort’s compensation has remained a mystery. However, a cache of documents discovered after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych’s government may provide some answers.
The papers, known in Ukraine as the “black ledger,” are a chicken-scratch of Cyrillic covering about 400 pages taken from books once kept in a third-floor room in the former Party of Regions headquarters on Lipskaya Street in Kiev. The room held two safes stuffed with $100 bills, said Taras V. Chornovil, a former party leader who was also a recipient of the money at times. He said in an interview that he had once received $10,000 in a “wad of cash” for a trip to Europe.
“This was our cash,” he said, adding that he had left the party in part over concerns about off-the-books activity. “They had it on the table, stacks of money, and they had lists of who to pay.”
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, which obtained the ledger, said in a statement that Mr. Manafort’s name appeared 22 times in the documents over five years, with payments totaling $12.7 million. The purpose of the payments is not clear. Nor is the outcome, since the handwritten entries cannot be cross-referenced against banking records, and the signatures for receipt have not yet been verified.
“Paul Manafort is among those names on the list of so-called ‘black accounts of the Party of Regions,’ which the detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine are investigating,” the statement said. “We emphasize that the presence of P. Manafort’s name in the list does not mean that he actually got the money, because the signatures that appear in the column of recipients could belong to other people.”
The accounting records surfaced this year, when Serhiy A. Leshchenko, a member of Parliament who said he had received a partial copy from a source he did not identify, published line items covering six months of outlays in 2012 totaling $66 million. In an interview, Mr. Leshchenko said another source had provided the entire multiyear ledger to Viktor M. Trepak, a former deputy director of the domestic intelligence agency of Ukraine, the S.B.U., who passed it to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
The bureau, whose government funding is mandated under American and European Union aid programs and which has an evidence-sharing agreement with the F.B.I., has investigatory powers but cannot indict suspects. Only if it passes its findings to prosecutors — which has not happened with Mr. Manafort — does a subject of its inquiry become part of a criminal case.
Individual disbursements reflected in the ledgers ranged from a few hundred dollars to millions of dollars. Of the records released from 2012, one shows a payment of $67,000 for a watch and another of $8.4 million to the owner of an advertising agency for campaign work for the party before elections that year.
“It’s a very vivid example of how political parties are financed in Ukraine,” said Daria N. Kaleniuk, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kiev. “It represents the very dirty cash economy in Ukraine.”
Offshore Companies
While working in Ukraine, Mr. Manafort had also positioned himself to profit from business deals that benefited from connections he had gained through his political consulting. One of them, according to court filings, involved a network of offshore companies that government investigators and independent journalists in Ukraine have said was used to launder public money and assets purportedly stolen by cronies of the government.
The network comprised shell companies whose ultimate owners were shielded by the secrecy laws of the offshore jurisdictions where they were registered, including the British Virgin Islands, Belize and the Seychelles.
In a recent interview, Serhiy V. Gorbatyuk, Ukraine’s special prosecutor for high-level corruption cases, pointed to an open file on his desk containing paperwork for one of the shell companies, Milltown Corporate Services Ltd., which played a central role in the state’s purchase of two oil derricks for $785 million, or about double what they were said to be worth.
“This,” he said, “was an offshore used often by Mr. Yanukovych’s entourage.”
The role of the offshore companies in business dealings involving Mr. Manafort came to light because of court filings in the Cayman Islands and in a federal court in Virginia related to an investment fund, Pericles Emerging Markets. Mr. Manafort and several partners started the fund in 2007, and its major backer was Mr. Deripaska, the Russian mogul, to whom the State Department has refused to issue a visa, apparently because of allegations linking him to Russian organized crime, a charge he has denied.
Mr. Deripaska agreed to commit as much as $100 million to Pericles so it could buy assets in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, including a regional cable television and communications company called Black Sea Cable. But corporate records and court filings show that it was hardly a straightforward transaction.
The Black Sea Cable assets were controlled by a rotating cast of offshore companies that led back to the Yanukovych network, including, at various times, Milltown Corporate Services and two other companies well known to law enforcement officials, Monohold A.G. and Intrahold A.G. Those two companies won inflated contracts with a state-run agricultural company, and also acquired a business center in Kiev with a helicopter pad on the roof that would ease Mr. Yanukovych’s commute from his country estate to the presidential offices.
A Disputed Investment
Mr. Deripaska would later say he invested $18.9 million in Pericles in 2008 to complete the acquisition of Black Sea Cable. But the planned purchase — including the question of who ended up with the Black Sea assets — has since become the subject of a dispute between Mr. Deripaska and Mr. Manafort.
In 2014, Mr. Deripaska filed a legal action in a Cayman Islands court seeking to recover his investment in Pericles, which is now defunct. He also said he had paid about $7.3 million in management fees to the fund over two years. Mr. Deripaska did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Manafort’s lawyer, Mr. Hibey, disputed the account of the Black Sea Cable deal contained in Mr. Deripaska’s Cayman filings, and said the Russian oligarch had overseen details of the final transaction involving the acquisition. He denied that Mr. Manafort had received management fees from Pericles during its operation, but said that one of Mr. Manafort’s partners, Rick Gates, who is also working on the Trump campaign, had received a “nominal” sum.
Court papers indicate that Pericles’ only deal involved Black Sea Cable.
Mr. Manafort continued working in Ukraine after the demise of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, helping allies of the ousted president and others form a political bloc that opposed the new pro-Western administration. Some of his aides were in Ukraine as recently as this year, and Ukrainian company records give no indication that Mr. Manafort has formally dissolved the local branch of his company, Davis Manafort International, directed by a longtime assistant, Konstantin V. Kilimnik.
At Mr. Manafort’s old office on Sofiivska Street, new tenants said they had discovered several curiosities apparently left behind, including a knee X-ray signed by Mr. Yanukovych, possibly referring to tennis matches played between Mr. Manafort and Mr. Yanukovych, who had spoken publicly of a knee ailment affecting his game.
There was another item with Mr. Yanukovych’s autograph: a piece of white paper bearing a rough sketch of Independence Square, the site of the 2014 uprising that drove him from power.
Trump supporters say climate change plans aren't worth much time in presidential debates.
In debates, voters want to hear most about terrorism and the economy
In debates, voters want to hear most about terrorism and the economy
Trump’s Self-Reckoning
The GOP nominee and his supporters face a moment of truth.
Trump’s Self-Reckoning
Donald Trump lashed out at the media on Sunday after more stories describing dysfunction inside his presidential campaign. “If the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn’t put false meaning into the words I say, I would be beating Hillary by 20%,” Mr. Trump averred on Twitter.
Mr. Trump is right that most of the media want him to lose, but then that was also true of George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. It’s true of every Republican presidential nominee. The difference is that Mr. Trump has made it so easy for the media and his opponents.
The latest stories comport with what we also hear from sources close to the Trump campaign. Mr. Trump’s advisers and his family want the candidate to deliver a consistent message making the case for change. They’d like him to be disciplined. They want him to focus on growing the economy and raising incomes and fighting terrorism.
They think he should make the election a referendum on Hillary Clinton, not on himself. And they’d like him to spend a little time each day—a half hour even—studying the issues he’ll need to understand if he becomes President.
Is that so hard? Apparently so. Mr. Trump prefers to watch the cable shows rather than read a briefing paper. He thinks the same shoot-from-the-lip style that won over a plurality of GOP primary voters can persuade other Republicans and independents who worry if he has the temperament to be Commander in Chief.
He also thinks the crowds at his campaign rallies are a substitute for the lack of a field organization and digital turnout strategy. And he thinks that Twitter and social media can make up for being outspent $100 million to zero in battleground states.
By now it should be obvious that none of this is working. It’s obvious to many of his advisers, who are the sources for the news stories about dysfunction. They may be covering for themselves, but this is what happens in failing campaigns. The difference is that the recriminations typically start in October, not mid-August.
These stories are appearing now because the polls show that Mr. Trump is on the path to losing a winnable race. He is now losing in every key battleground state, some like New Hampshire by double digits. The Midwest industrial states he claimed he would put into play—Wisconsin, Pennsylvania—have turned sharply toward Mrs. Clinton.
More ominously, states won by John McCain and Mitt Romney are much closer than they should be. If Mr. Trump is fighting to hold Georgia, Arizona and even Utah by September, a landslide defeat becomes all too possible.
The tragedy is that this is happening in a year when Republicans should win. The political scientist Alan Abramowitz has spent years developing his “time for a change” forecasting model. The model looks at the rate of GDP growth in the second quarter of an election year (1.2% this year), the incumbent President’s approval rating, and the electorate’s desire for change after one party has held the White House for eight years.
No model is perfect, but Mr. Abramowitz’s has predicted the winner of the major-party popular vote in every presidential election since 1988. His model predicts that Mr. Trump should win a narrow victory with 51.4%. A mainstream GOP candidate who runs a reasonably competent campaign would have about a 66% chance of victory.
Mr. Trump has alienated his party and he isn’t running a competent campaign. Mrs. Clinton is the second most unpopular presidential nominee in history—after Mr. Trump. But rather than reassure voters and try to repair his image, the New Yorker has spent the last three weeks giving his critics more ammunition.
Even with more than 80 days left, Mr. Trump’s window for a turnaround is closing. The “Trump pivot” always seemed implausible given his lifelong instincts and habits, but Mr. Trump promised Republicans. “At some point I’ll be so presidential that you people will be so bored, and I’ll come back as a presidential person, and instead of 10,000 people I’ll have about 150 people and they’ll say, boy, he really looks presidential,” he said in April.
Those who sold Mr. Trump to GOP voters as the man who could defeat Hillary Clinton now face a moment of truth. Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Paul Manafort and the talk-radio right told Republicans their man could rise to the occasion.
If they can’t get Mr. Trump to change his act by Labor Day, the GOP will have no choice but to write off the nominee as hopeless and focus on salvaging the Senate and House and other down-ballot races. As for Mr. Trump, he needs to stop blaming everyone else and decide if he wants to behave like someone who wants to be President—or turn the nomination over to Mike Pence.
The GOP nominee and his supporters face a moment of truth.
Trump’s Self-Reckoning
Donald Trump lashed out at the media on Sunday after more stories describing dysfunction inside his presidential campaign. “If the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn’t put false meaning into the words I say, I would be beating Hillary by 20%,” Mr. Trump averred on Twitter.
Mr. Trump is right that most of the media want him to lose, but then that was also true of George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. It’s true of every Republican presidential nominee. The difference is that Mr. Trump has made it so easy for the media and his opponents.
The latest stories comport with what we also hear from sources close to the Trump campaign. Mr. Trump’s advisers and his family want the candidate to deliver a consistent message making the case for change. They’d like him to be disciplined. They want him to focus on growing the economy and raising incomes and fighting terrorism.
They think he should make the election a referendum on Hillary Clinton, not on himself. And they’d like him to spend a little time each day—a half hour even—studying the issues he’ll need to understand if he becomes President.
Is that so hard? Apparently so. Mr. Trump prefers to watch the cable shows rather than read a briefing paper. He thinks the same shoot-from-the-lip style that won over a plurality of GOP primary voters can persuade other Republicans and independents who worry if he has the temperament to be Commander in Chief.
He also thinks the crowds at his campaign rallies are a substitute for the lack of a field organization and digital turnout strategy. And he thinks that Twitter and social media can make up for being outspent $100 million to zero in battleground states.
By now it should be obvious that none of this is working. It’s obvious to many of his advisers, who are the sources for the news stories about dysfunction. They may be covering for themselves, but this is what happens in failing campaigns. The difference is that the recriminations typically start in October, not mid-August.
These stories are appearing now because the polls show that Mr. Trump is on the path to losing a winnable race. He is now losing in every key battleground state, some like New Hampshire by double digits. The Midwest industrial states he claimed he would put into play—Wisconsin, Pennsylvania—have turned sharply toward Mrs. Clinton.
More ominously, states won by John McCain and Mitt Romney are much closer than they should be. If Mr. Trump is fighting to hold Georgia, Arizona and even Utah by September, a landslide defeat becomes all too possible.
The tragedy is that this is happening in a year when Republicans should win. The political scientist Alan Abramowitz has spent years developing his “time for a change” forecasting model. The model looks at the rate of GDP growth in the second quarter of an election year (1.2% this year), the incumbent President’s approval rating, and the electorate’s desire for change after one party has held the White House for eight years.
No model is perfect, but Mr. Abramowitz’s has predicted the winner of the major-party popular vote in every presidential election since 1988. His model predicts that Mr. Trump should win a narrow victory with 51.4%. A mainstream GOP candidate who runs a reasonably competent campaign would have about a 66% chance of victory.
Mr. Trump has alienated his party and he isn’t running a competent campaign. Mrs. Clinton is the second most unpopular presidential nominee in history—after Mr. Trump. But rather than reassure voters and try to repair his image, the New Yorker has spent the last three weeks giving his critics more ammunition.
Even with more than 80 days left, Mr. Trump’s window for a turnaround is closing. The “Trump pivot” always seemed implausible given his lifelong instincts and habits, but Mr. Trump promised Republicans. “At some point I’ll be so presidential that you people will be so bored, and I’ll come back as a presidential person, and instead of 10,000 people I’ll have about 150 people and they’ll say, boy, he really looks presidential,” he said in April.
Those who sold Mr. Trump to GOP voters as the man who could defeat Hillary Clinton now face a moment of truth. Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Paul Manafort and the talk-radio right told Republicans their man could rise to the occasion.
If they can’t get Mr. Trump to change his act by Labor Day, the GOP will have no choice but to write off the nominee as hopeless and focus on salvaging the Senate and House and other down-ballot races. As for Mr. Trump, he needs to stop blaming everyone else and decide if he wants to behave like someone who wants to be President—or turn the nomination over to Mike Pence.
CdnGuy
New Member
Guess that's one pussy that doesn't care he's got money and fame lol
Donald Trump’s crazy ideas about immigration just got even crazier
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/08/15/donald-trumps-crazy-ideas-about-immigration-just-got-even-crazier/ (Donald Trump’s crazy ideas about immigration just got even crazier)
As Jeffrey Goldberg reported recently, virtually all senior-level national security professionals agree that the sort of clash-of-civilizations rhetoric that Trump employs risks “making Islam itself the enemy,” which actually runs counter to our interests. Yet Trump is going to double down on that framework today — his adviser says he will explicitly describe the battle against “radical Islamic terrorism” in the same Manichean terms as the Cold War — even as he amplifies the call for moderate Muslims to help in that battle.
It’s pretty obvious what this “new” plan is really about. Trump wants to basically repackage his proposed Muslim ban — which has been widely denounced as fundamentally at odds with American values — by somehow making it seem in sync with American values such as pluralism and tolerance. He will do this by changing the test for entry from a religious one to a values-based one. (Never mind the practical, moral, and legal questions raised by the imposition of such a test.) Yet, by placing this values-based test in the broader context of a global clash of civilizations — what Goldberg calls a tacit effort to “make Islam itself the enemy” — Trump hopes to keep the proposal’s original appeal to his base (who https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/08/07/even-after-khan-battle-trump-voters-overwhelmingly-support-ban-on-muslims/?utm_term=.6fd3c1e9c7bb (continue to agree) with the Muslim ban) intact. Ingenious!
Trump proposes ideological test for Muslim immigrants and visitors to the U.S.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-to-propose-ideological-test-for-muslim-immigrants-and-visitors-to-the-us/2016/08/15/3192fdba-62fc-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html (Trump proposes ideological test for Muslim immigrants and visitors to the U.S.)
Donald Trump’s foreign policy: From incoherence to more incoherence
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/08/15/donald-trumps-foreign-policy-from-incoherence-to-more-incoherence/ (Donald Trump’s foreign policy: From incoherence to more incoherence)
Mr. Trump’s Foreign Policy Confusions
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/opinion/mr-trumps-foreign-policy-confusions.html
Donald Trump’s speech on Monday was advertised as an attempt to redirect his campaign from a series of blunders to a more serious discussion of foreign policy, starting with combating global terrorism. As such, it marked another test of his readiness to lead. It did not go well.
Far from coherent analysis of the threat of Islamic extremism and a plausible blueprint for action, the speech was a collection of confused and random thoughts that showed little understanding of the rise of the Islamic State and often conflicted with the historical record.
Meanwhile, with terrorism as his central focus, Mr. Trump doubled down on the anti-refugee themes that have dominated his campaign, dressing them up as a national security issue. He proposed a new “extreme vetting” approach to immigration that would impose an ideological test on newcomers and undermine the very American values of tolerance and equal treatment that he said he wanted to encourage. He also called for the creation of a commission that would “expose the networks in our society that support radicalization,” which struck many listeners as an uncomfortable echo of McCarthyism.
There are, of course, reasons to criticize President Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee and Mr. Obama’s former secretary of state, for their handling of the Middle East. They dropped the ball in Libya after Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was ousted, and their ill-defined strategy in Syria has generated many legitimate questions.
But Mr. Trump’s attempt to blame them for unleashing the Islamic State and destabilizing the Middle East shows either misunderstanding or ignorance. America can no longer just dictate international events, no matter who is president. The people and leaders of the Middle East are the ones who brought about the Arab Spring and its aftermath, first raising hopes for more democratic societies and then leaving the region in turmoil.
Mr. Trump further mischaracterized Iran, suggesting that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton had helped make it the region’s dominant power. It is not. Israel remains a formidable military and economic rival, as do the Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia that regard Iran as an adversary.
Iran is indeed a threat in the region, given its support for Hezbollah, Hamas, President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and its involvement in Yemen. But lumping Iran, which is a Shiite nation, with the Sunni militants of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda makes no sense. In fact, Iran and the Sunni groups are enemies.
Mr. Trump seems also to be suffering from amnesia, as if all recent history began with Mr. Obama and conveniently avoiding the fact that many of the policies he denounced derive from George W. Bush. Among these policies were regime change and nation-building, which Mr. Bush pursued in Afghanistan and Iraq, and which Mr. Obama has largely abandoned.
Having listened to Mr. Trump’s complaints about overreach, it was startling to hear him argue that the United States should have seized Iraq’s oil assets after the 2003 invasion and deployed American troops, presumably indefinitely, to protect them. It is hard to imagine that Iraq would be more stable today, or the United States would be any more welcome, if Washington had seized what Mr. Trump called the “spoils” of war for itself.
After previously drawing sharp criticism for denigrating NATO, Mr. Trump reversed course and said he would work closely with the alliance on counterterrorism. He also pledged to form a new partnership against terrorism with Israel, Egypt and Jordan. He expressed confidence he could work with Russia as well, a reminder of his questionable affinity for President Vladimir Putin and his campaign manager’s close ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.
He ended with an upbeat flourish. “We want to build bridges and erase divisions,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “We will reject bigotry and hatred and oppression in all of its many ugly forms.” Nice words, but nothing about Mr. Trump’s campaign is likely to persuade people that that is what he really believes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/08/15/donald-trumps-crazy-ideas-about-immigration-just-got-even-crazier/ (Donald Trump’s crazy ideas about immigration just got even crazier)
As Jeffrey Goldberg reported recently, virtually all senior-level national security professionals agree that the sort of clash-of-civilizations rhetoric that Trump employs risks “making Islam itself the enemy,” which actually runs counter to our interests. Yet Trump is going to double down on that framework today — his adviser says he will explicitly describe the battle against “radical Islamic terrorism” in the same Manichean terms as the Cold War — even as he amplifies the call for moderate Muslims to help in that battle.
It’s pretty obvious what this “new” plan is really about. Trump wants to basically repackage his proposed Muslim ban — which has been widely denounced as fundamentally at odds with American values — by somehow making it seem in sync with American values such as pluralism and tolerance. He will do this by changing the test for entry from a religious one to a values-based one. (Never mind the practical, moral, and legal questions raised by the imposition of such a test.) Yet, by placing this values-based test in the broader context of a global clash of civilizations — what Goldberg calls a tacit effort to “make Islam itself the enemy” — Trump hopes to keep the proposal’s original appeal to his base (who https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/08/07/even-after-khan-battle-trump-voters-overwhelmingly-support-ban-on-muslims/?utm_term=.6fd3c1e9c7bb (continue to agree) with the Muslim ban) intact. Ingenious!
Trump proposes ideological test for Muslim immigrants and visitors to the U.S.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-to-propose-ideological-test-for-muslim-immigrants-and-visitors-to-the-us/2016/08/15/3192fdba-62fc-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html (Trump proposes ideological test for Muslim immigrants and visitors to the U.S.)
Donald Trump’s foreign policy: From incoherence to more incoherence
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/08/15/donald-trumps-foreign-policy-from-incoherence-to-more-incoherence/ (Donald Trump’s foreign policy: From incoherence to more incoherence)
Mr. Trump’s Foreign Policy Confusions
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/opinion/mr-trumps-foreign-policy-confusions.html
Donald Trump’s speech on Monday was advertised as an attempt to redirect his campaign from a series of blunders to a more serious discussion of foreign policy, starting with combating global terrorism. As such, it marked another test of his readiness to lead. It did not go well.
Far from coherent analysis of the threat of Islamic extremism and a plausible blueprint for action, the speech was a collection of confused and random thoughts that showed little understanding of the rise of the Islamic State and often conflicted with the historical record.
Meanwhile, with terrorism as his central focus, Mr. Trump doubled down on the anti-refugee themes that have dominated his campaign, dressing them up as a national security issue. He proposed a new “extreme vetting” approach to immigration that would impose an ideological test on newcomers and undermine the very American values of tolerance and equal treatment that he said he wanted to encourage. He also called for the creation of a commission that would “expose the networks in our society that support radicalization,” which struck many listeners as an uncomfortable echo of McCarthyism.
There are, of course, reasons to criticize President Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee and Mr. Obama’s former secretary of state, for their handling of the Middle East. They dropped the ball in Libya after Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was ousted, and their ill-defined strategy in Syria has generated many legitimate questions.
But Mr. Trump’s attempt to blame them for unleashing the Islamic State and destabilizing the Middle East shows either misunderstanding or ignorance. America can no longer just dictate international events, no matter who is president. The people and leaders of the Middle East are the ones who brought about the Arab Spring and its aftermath, first raising hopes for more democratic societies and then leaving the region in turmoil.
Mr. Trump further mischaracterized Iran, suggesting that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton had helped make it the region’s dominant power. It is not. Israel remains a formidable military and economic rival, as do the Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia that regard Iran as an adversary.
Iran is indeed a threat in the region, given its support for Hezbollah, Hamas, President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and its involvement in Yemen. But lumping Iran, which is a Shiite nation, with the Sunni militants of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda makes no sense. In fact, Iran and the Sunni groups are enemies.
Mr. Trump seems also to be suffering from amnesia, as if all recent history began with Mr. Obama and conveniently avoiding the fact that many of the policies he denounced derive from George W. Bush. Among these policies were regime change and nation-building, which Mr. Bush pursued in Afghanistan and Iraq, and which Mr. Obama has largely abandoned.
Having listened to Mr. Trump’s complaints about overreach, it was startling to hear him argue that the United States should have seized Iraq’s oil assets after the 2003 invasion and deployed American troops, presumably indefinitely, to protect them. It is hard to imagine that Iraq would be more stable today, or the United States would be any more welcome, if Washington had seized what Mr. Trump called the “spoils” of war for itself.
After previously drawing sharp criticism for denigrating NATO, Mr. Trump reversed course and said he would work closely with the alliance on counterterrorism. He also pledged to form a new partnership against terrorism with Israel, Egypt and Jordan. He expressed confidence he could work with Russia as well, a reminder of his questionable affinity for President Vladimir Putin and his campaign manager’s close ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.
He ended with an upbeat flourish. “We want to build bridges and erase divisions,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “We will reject bigotry and hatred and oppression in all of its many ugly forms.” Nice words, but nothing about Mr. Trump’s campaign is likely to persuade people that that is what he really believes.
[Roger Ailes, forced out from Fox because of a massive sexual hararssment scandal, will advise Trump ahead of debates.]
Rogers Ailes to Advise Donald Trump Ahead of Presidential Debates
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/us/politics/donald-trump-roger-ailes.html
Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chairman ousted last month over charges of sexual harassment, is advising Donald J. Trump as he begins to prepare for the all-important presidential debates this fall.
Mr. Ailes is aiding Mr. Trump’s team as it turns its attention to the first debate with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, on Sept. 26 on Long Island, according to three people briefed on the move, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
Two of them said that Mr. Ailes’s role could extend beyond the debates, which Mr. Trump’s advisers see as crucial to vaulting him back into strong contention for the presidency after a series of self-inflicted wounds that have eroded his standing in public opinion polls.
It was not clear when Mr. Ailes began helping the campaign. He resigned his post at Fox News on July 21 amid an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by former female employees that occurred after a lawsuit by the former anchor Gretchen Carlson.
It was also not immediately known whether Mr. Ailes, who received $40 million in an exit agreement with Fox News, will be paid for his work on the campaign, or how much time he will be devoting to it. Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is also not being paid.
Susan Estrich, a lawyer who is representing Mr. Ailes, did not immediately respond to an email inquiry and phone message on Tuesday.
Before he founded Fox News in 1996, Mr. Ailes spent years as a respected political strategist with a pit bull style. He was a top adviser to Richard M. Nixon’s presidential campaign in 1968, softening his hard-edge, unapproachable image.
He was also a sought-after debate coach, working with Ronald Reagan in 1984 and readying Vice President George Bush for debates with the Democratic candidate, Gov. Michael Dukakis, in 1988.
According to Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, in an anecdote on his website, Mr. Ailes played a crucial role before Mr. Reagan’s debates with Vice President Walter F. Mondale in 1984, by asking Mr. Reagan during a prep session how he would handle questions about his age.
The question came quickly, and Mr. Reagan’s answer went down in the annals of witty debate one-liners: “I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
Mr. Ailes also worked on lower-level political races including the unsuccessful New York City mayoral campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani in 1989. Mr. Giuliani has emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s most devoted surrogates in the presidential campaign.
Mr. Ailes and Mr. Trump themselves have a long relationship, although it became fraught at points during the GOP primaries.
Still, Mr. Ailes’ involvement is certain to stoke controversy, both for the ongoing sexual harassment cases and for the role that Fox News played in covering Mr. Trump’s candidacy — and elevating him as a potential presidential candidate beginning in 2011.
One of Mr. Trump’s longest-lived and highest-profile campaign controversies was a dispute with the Fox News host Megyn Kelly, with whom he clashed angrily beginning with the first Republican primary debate a year ago. Afterward, Mr. Trump implied that she had been agitated during the first Republican debate because she was menstruating.
Mr. Trump insisted that Ms. Kelly had treated him unfairly and berated the network for suggesting that she moderate at a later debate. The dispute led Mr. Trump to skip the final debate before the Iowa caucuses, which Ms. Kelly moderated on Fox News.
Notably, when Mr. Ailes left the network in July, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, denied suggestions that Mr. Ailes would be joining the Trump campaign — but the candidate left the door open.
Asked point-blank by Chuck Todd of NBC News on July 24 if Mr. Ailes was going to advise the campaign, Mr. Trump replied, “I don’t want to comment. But he’s been a friend of mine for a long time.” He called Mr. Ailes a “very, very good person” and said, “A lot of people are thinking he’s going to run my campaign.”
Mr. Ailes brings enormous experience in preparing for presidential debates, but his addition to Mr. Trump’s team also raises intriguing questions.
Mr. Trump’s support among women voters has eroded during the course of his campaign, after a number of incendiary statements.
Mr. Trump’s challenge during the crowded Republican primary debates was far less pronounced than it will be in what could be a head-to-head against Mrs. Clinton over 90 minutes. He was one of ten candidates onstage and could often filibuster his way through questions or avoid them entirely as his rivals consumed airtime — an approach that would be untenable in a one-on-one or even a three-way matchup including the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson.
What is more, some of Mr. Trump’s worst moments in the primary debates involved Ms. Kelly and Carly Fiorina, the only woman vying in the Republican nomination contest. Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly swatted away accusations of sexism during the campaign, will likely require coaching on how to handle the potential first female president in a debate.
Whether Mr. Ailes can best address that concern is unclear. He is deeply familiar with Republican lines of attack against Mrs. Clinton, and with the controversies that have surrounded her and her husband going back to their days in the White House. But even before the sexual harassment allegations against Mr. Ailes, there were questions about whether he had adequately defended Ms. Kelly in her fight against Mr. Trump in 2015.
Rogers Ailes to Advise Donald Trump Ahead of Presidential Debates
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/us/politics/donald-trump-roger-ailes.html
Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chairman ousted last month over charges of sexual harassment, is advising Donald J. Trump as he begins to prepare for the all-important presidential debates this fall.
Mr. Ailes is aiding Mr. Trump’s team as it turns its attention to the first debate with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, on Sept. 26 on Long Island, according to three people briefed on the move, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
Two of them said that Mr. Ailes’s role could extend beyond the debates, which Mr. Trump’s advisers see as crucial to vaulting him back into strong contention for the presidency after a series of self-inflicted wounds that have eroded his standing in public opinion polls.
It was not clear when Mr. Ailes began helping the campaign. He resigned his post at Fox News on July 21 amid an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by former female employees that occurred after a lawsuit by the former anchor Gretchen Carlson.
It was also not immediately known whether Mr. Ailes, who received $40 million in an exit agreement with Fox News, will be paid for his work on the campaign, or how much time he will be devoting to it. Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is also not being paid.
Susan Estrich, a lawyer who is representing Mr. Ailes, did not immediately respond to an email inquiry and phone message on Tuesday.
Before he founded Fox News in 1996, Mr. Ailes spent years as a respected political strategist with a pit bull style. He was a top adviser to Richard M. Nixon’s presidential campaign in 1968, softening his hard-edge, unapproachable image.
He was also a sought-after debate coach, working with Ronald Reagan in 1984 and readying Vice President George Bush for debates with the Democratic candidate, Gov. Michael Dukakis, in 1988.
According to Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, in an anecdote on his website, Mr. Ailes played a crucial role before Mr. Reagan’s debates with Vice President Walter F. Mondale in 1984, by asking Mr. Reagan during a prep session how he would handle questions about his age.
The question came quickly, and Mr. Reagan’s answer went down in the annals of witty debate one-liners: “I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
Mr. Ailes also worked on lower-level political races including the unsuccessful New York City mayoral campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani in 1989. Mr. Giuliani has emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s most devoted surrogates in the presidential campaign.
Mr. Ailes and Mr. Trump themselves have a long relationship, although it became fraught at points during the GOP primaries.
Still, Mr. Ailes’ involvement is certain to stoke controversy, both for the ongoing sexual harassment cases and for the role that Fox News played in covering Mr. Trump’s candidacy — and elevating him as a potential presidential candidate beginning in 2011.
One of Mr. Trump’s longest-lived and highest-profile campaign controversies was a dispute with the Fox News host Megyn Kelly, with whom he clashed angrily beginning with the first Republican primary debate a year ago. Afterward, Mr. Trump implied that she had been agitated during the first Republican debate because she was menstruating.
Mr. Trump insisted that Ms. Kelly had treated him unfairly and berated the network for suggesting that she moderate at a later debate. The dispute led Mr. Trump to skip the final debate before the Iowa caucuses, which Ms. Kelly moderated on Fox News.
Notably, when Mr. Ailes left the network in July, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, denied suggestions that Mr. Ailes would be joining the Trump campaign — but the candidate left the door open.
Asked point-blank by Chuck Todd of NBC News on July 24 if Mr. Ailes was going to advise the campaign, Mr. Trump replied, “I don’t want to comment. But he’s been a friend of mine for a long time.” He called Mr. Ailes a “very, very good person” and said, “A lot of people are thinking he’s going to run my campaign.”
Mr. Ailes brings enormous experience in preparing for presidential debates, but his addition to Mr. Trump’s team also raises intriguing questions.
Mr. Trump’s support among women voters has eroded during the course of his campaign, after a number of incendiary statements.
Mr. Trump’s challenge during the crowded Republican primary debates was far less pronounced than it will be in what could be a head-to-head against Mrs. Clinton over 90 minutes. He was one of ten candidates onstage and could often filibuster his way through questions or avoid them entirely as his rivals consumed airtime — an approach that would be untenable in a one-on-one or even a three-way matchup including the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson.
What is more, some of Mr. Trump’s worst moments in the primary debates involved Ms. Kelly and Carly Fiorina, the only woman vying in the Republican nomination contest. Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly swatted away accusations of sexism during the campaign, will likely require coaching on how to handle the potential first female president in a debate.
Whether Mr. Ailes can best address that concern is unclear. He is deeply familiar with Republican lines of attack against Mrs. Clinton, and with the controversies that have surrounded her and her husband going back to their days in the White House. But even before the sexual harassment allegations against Mr. Ailes, there were questions about whether he had adequately defended Ms. Kelly in her fight against Mr. Trump in 2015.
McCarthyism redux: the long view of Trump's immigration plan
McCarthyism redux: the long view of Trump's immigration plan | James Nevius
Donald Trump may be only presidential candidate in history to think that the era of the cold war and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunts is something to emulate. On Monday, he expanded his anti-terror policy – which has included a “total and complete shutdown” of America’s borders to Muslims – by calling for a revival of McCarthyism. “In the cold war we had an ideological screening test ... The time is overdue for a new test. I call it extreme vetting” he said in his speech.
But it’s not just McCarthy that Trump is channeling. Sadly, America has a long history of reactionary anti-immigrant attitudes, and if Trump were to be successful, he would revive some of the worst policies in our country’s history.
McCarthyism redux: the long view of Trump's immigration plan | James Nevius
Donald Trump may be only presidential candidate in history to think that the era of the cold war and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunts is something to emulate. On Monday, he expanded his anti-terror policy – which has included a “total and complete shutdown” of America’s borders to Muslims – by calling for a revival of McCarthyism. “In the cold war we had an ideological screening test ... The time is overdue for a new test. I call it extreme vetting” he said in his speech.
But it’s not just McCarthy that Trump is channeling. Sadly, America has a long history of reactionary anti-immigrant attitudes, and if Trump were to be successful, he would revive some of the worst policies in our country’s history.
The GOP’s Chances Of Holding The Senate Are Following Trump Downhill
The GOP’s Chances Of Holding The Senate Are Following Trump Downhill
Donald Trump’s post-conventions polling slump seems to be having an effect on the Republican Party’s U.S. Senate candidates. We thought this might happen: There’s been an increasingly strong relationship between how a state votes for president and how it votes for Senate over the past few election cycles. And, indeed, Trump’s tumble has coincided with worsening GOP numbers in key states. It may cost the party the Senate.
The GOP’s Chances Of Holding The Senate Are Following Trump Downhill
Donald Trump’s post-conventions polling slump seems to be having an effect on the Republican Party’s U.S. Senate candidates. We thought this might happen: There’s been an increasingly strong relationship between how a state votes for president and how it votes for Senate over the past few election cycles. And, indeed, Trump’s tumble has coincided with worsening GOP numbers in key states. It may cost the party the Senate.
Donald Trump’s Lack of Respect for Science Is Alarming
The U.S. presidential election shows how far the political conversation has degenerated from the nation's founding principles of truth and evidence.
Donald Trump's Lack of Respect for Science Is Alarming
Scientific American is not in the business of endorsing political candidates. But we do take a stand for science—the most reliable path to objective knowledge the world has seen—and the Enlightenment values that gave rise to it. For more than 170 years we have documented, for better and for worse, the rise of science and technology and their impact on the nation and the world. We have strived to assert in our reporting, writing and editing the principle that decision making in the sphere of public policy should accept the conclusions that evidence, gathered in the spirit and with the methods of science, tells us to be true.
It won't come as a surprise to anyone who pays even superficial attention to politics that over the past few decades facts have become an undervalued commodity. Many politicians are hostile to science, on both sides of the political aisle. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has a routine practice of meddling in petty science-funding matters to score political points. Science has not played nearly as prominent a role as it should in informing debates over the labeling of genetically modified foods, end of life care and energy policy, among many issues.
The current presidential race, however, is something special. It takes antiscience to previously unexplored terrain. When the major Republican candidate for president has tweeted that global warming is a Chinese plot, threatens to dismantle a climate agreement 20 years in the making and to eliminate an agency that enforces clean air and water regulations, and speaks passionately about a link between vaccines and autism that was utterly discredited years ago, we can only hope that there is nowhere to go but up.
The U.S. presidential election shows how far the political conversation has degenerated from the nation's founding principles of truth and evidence.
Donald Trump's Lack of Respect for Science Is Alarming
Scientific American is not in the business of endorsing political candidates. But we do take a stand for science—the most reliable path to objective knowledge the world has seen—and the Enlightenment values that gave rise to it. For more than 170 years we have documented, for better and for worse, the rise of science and technology and their impact on the nation and the world. We have strived to assert in our reporting, writing and editing the principle that decision making in the sphere of public policy should accept the conclusions that evidence, gathered in the spirit and with the methods of science, tells us to be true.
It won't come as a surprise to anyone who pays even superficial attention to politics that over the past few decades facts have become an undervalued commodity. Many politicians are hostile to science, on both sides of the political aisle. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has a routine practice of meddling in petty science-funding matters to score political points. Science has not played nearly as prominent a role as it should in informing debates over the labeling of genetically modified foods, end of life care and energy policy, among many issues.
The current presidential race, however, is something special. It takes antiscience to previously unexplored terrain. When the major Republican candidate for president has tweeted that global warming is a Chinese plot, threatens to dismantle a climate agreement 20 years in the making and to eliminate an agency that enforces clean air and water regulations, and speaks passionately about a link between vaccines and autism that was utterly discredited years ago, we can only hope that there is nowhere to go but up.
Trump campaign denies ousted Fox CEO Roger Ailes is advising the candidate
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/16/trump-campaign-denies-ousted-fox-ceo-roger-ailes-is-advising-the-candidate/ (Trump campaign denies ousted Fox CEO Roger Ailes is advising the candidate)
Donald Trump's presidential campaign on Tuesday denied reports that embattled former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes — who was ousted amid sexual harassment allegations — is advising the candidate.
“They are longtime friends, but he has no formal or informal role in the campaign,” Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks said in a statement to the Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/16/trump-campaign-denies-ousted-fox-ceo-roger-ailes-is-advising-the-candidate/ (Trump campaign denies ousted Fox CEO Roger Ailes is advising the candidate)
Donald Trump's presidential campaign on Tuesday denied reports that embattled former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes — who was ousted amid sexual harassment allegations — is advising the candidate.
“They are longtime friends, but he has no formal or informal role in the campaign,” Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks said in a statement to the Post.
Trump is right: The greatest U.S. threat is indeed from within. (It’s him)
Trump is right: The greatest U.S. threat is indeed from within. (It’s him)
Mr. Trump presents the U.S. as a nation under attack far more from within than from the outside. This is true, but not in the way he intended. A lying, bigoted zealot with executive power poses a far greater threat to U.S. stability than any Muslim who comes to the U.S. in search of a better life.
Trump has made it clear exactly who should be barred from the US: himself
Trump has made it clear exactly who should be barred from the US: himself | Moustafa Bayoumi
In his major policy speech on foreign policy delivered yesterday in the battleground state of Ohio, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump finally made it clear who exactly should be barred from the United States: himself.
The candidate plainly stated that “those who do not believe in our constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country”. Since Trump, who is known to have expressed bigoted and hateful opinions about Mexicans and Muslims, and who has repeatedly demonstrated a tenuous grasp of the constitution, already resides in the United States, I assume he will opt for Mitt Romney-style self-deportation.
Obviously, I’m being sarcastic. But not that sarcastic, to be honest with you.
Trump is right: The greatest U.S. threat is indeed from within. (It’s him)
Mr. Trump presents the U.S. as a nation under attack far more from within than from the outside. This is true, but not in the way he intended. A lying, bigoted zealot with executive power poses a far greater threat to U.S. stability than any Muslim who comes to the U.S. in search of a better life.
Trump has made it clear exactly who should be barred from the US: himself
Trump has made it clear exactly who should be barred from the US: himself | Moustafa Bayoumi
In his major policy speech on foreign policy delivered yesterday in the battleground state of Ohio, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump finally made it clear who exactly should be barred from the United States: himself.
The candidate plainly stated that “those who do not believe in our constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country”. Since Trump, who is known to have expressed bigoted and hateful opinions about Mexicans and Muslims, and who has repeatedly demonstrated a tenuous grasp of the constitution, already resides in the United States, I assume he will opt for Mitt Romney-style self-deportation.
Obviously, I’m being sarcastic. But not that sarcastic, to be honest with you.
Newt: Trump ISIS Speech ‘Historic’ — ‘Most Important Foreign Policy Speech Since Ronald Reagan’
“[Trump] did just a remarkable job, in my judgment, of identifying the enemy, describing accurately how big the problem is,” Gingrich said. “This is in some ways is the most important foreign policy speech since Ronald Reagan in that it really does set the stage for a debate about what’s threatening us and what we should do about it and I think the contrast between what he did — what Donald Trump did and what Hillary Clinton is couldn’t be clearer. This is a Grand Canyon-wide chasm of two different views.”
“[Trump] did just a remarkable job, in my judgment, of identifying the enemy, describing accurately how big the problem is,” Gingrich said. “This is in some ways is the most important foreign policy speech since Ronald Reagan in that it really does set the stage for a debate about what’s threatening us and what we should do about it and I think the contrast between what he did — what Donald Trump did and what Hillary Clinton is couldn’t be clearer. This is a Grand Canyon-wide chasm of two different views.”
Trump campaign denies ousted Fox CEO Roger Ailes is advising the candidate
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/16/trump-campaign-denies-ousted-fox-ceo-roger-ailes-is-advising-the-candidate/ (Trump campaign denies ousted Fox CEO Roger Ailes is advising the candidate)
Donald Trump's presidential campaign on Tuesday denied reports that embattled former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes — who was ousted amid sexual harassment allegations — is advising the candidate.
“They are longtime friends, but he has no formal or informal role in the campaign,” Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks said in a statement to the Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/08/16/trump-campaign-denies-ousted-fox-ceo-roger-ailes-is-advising-the-candidate/ (Trump campaign denies ousted Fox CEO Roger Ailes is advising the candidate)
Donald Trump's presidential campaign on Tuesday denied reports that embattled former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes — who was ousted amid sexual harassment allegations — is advising the candidate.
“They are longtime friends, but he has no formal or informal role in the campaign,” Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks said in a statement to the Post.
But, let me throw out another theory, one that assumes that Trump isn’t as dumb or crazy as he looks. Maybe the meltdown of the past three weeks was no accident. Maybe it’s all part of his new strategy to get the hell out of a race he never intended to see through to its end anyway.
Because, unless he is just “crazy,” the only explanation for the unusual ramping up, day after day, of one disgustingly reckless statement after another is that he’s doing it consciously (or subconsciously) so that he’ll have to bow out or blame “others” for forcing him out.
Many now are sensing the end game here because they know Trump seriously doesn’t want to do the actual job — and, most importantly, he cannot and WILL NOT suffer through being officially and legally declared a loser — LOSER! — on the night of November 8th.
Is Trump Sabotaging His Campaign Because He Never Really Wanted the Job in the First Place?
Because, unless he is just “crazy,” the only explanation for the unusual ramping up, day after day, of one disgustingly reckless statement after another is that he’s doing it consciously (or subconsciously) so that he’ll have to bow out or blame “others” for forcing him out.
Many now are sensing the end game here because they know Trump seriously doesn’t want to do the actual job — and, most importantly, he cannot and WILL NOT suffer through being officially and legally declared a loser — LOSER! — on the night of November 8th.
Is Trump Sabotaging His Campaign Because He Never Really Wanted the Job in the First Place?
LMAO
Eman
Master
You could tell he stumped her for a second... ever get a question so stupid you have to think for a second before you answer it?
