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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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Although Trump’s war against the deal is largely a product of domestic political rivalries — particularly Trump’s desire to undo the accomplishments of his predecessor, Barack Obama — a coterie of neoconservatives and hawks have also latched themselves to the effort.
These operators are seeking to capsize a deal they’ve always loathed. But the growing effort to undo the nuclear agreement has potential implications well beyond the Middle East: It could undermine U.S. influence and credibility in international affairs.
While raising questions about American institutional capacity to abide by diplomatic agreements, destroying the Iran deal would also strike another hammer blow to the critical relationship between America and its European allies. The U.S.-Europe relationship is built on ties and alliances that are vital to American national security and political influence that have already been seriously shaken over the past two years.
In recent months, the Trump administration has infuriated its European counterparts by pulling out of the Paris climate accord and calling into question U.S. security guarantees to Europe under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But pulling out of the nuclear deal — an agreement laboriously negotiated with European support over two years, which international monitors say has succeeded in placing Iran’s nuclear program under strict control — might be a bridge too far for the European Union.
The core of the Trump administration’s efforts to kill the deal center on a purported push to make retroactive changes to the agreement. The administration has repeatedly vowed to terminate the nuclear deal unless such unilateral modifications are made, a demand that many experts say seems specifically calculated to cause the agreement to collapse.
Faced with a U.S. administration recklessly undoing vital international agreements for reasons that make little sense outside of U.S. domestic politics, experts say that once-stalwart U.S. allies may soon begin seeking ways to maneuver around a government increasingly viewed as a destabilizing force.
“Any U.S. attempt to unilaterally extend or expand the scope of the deal would be extremely likely to violate the agreement and would also be seen as a slap in the face of Washington’s negotiating partners,” said Kelsey Davenport, director for Nonproliferation Policy at the D.C.-based Arms Control Association.
“Trump is already damaging the deal by creating an environment of uncertainty around its future that increases the risk for businesses seeking to go back into Iran to invest.”
Just before the stroke of midnight on September 20, 2016, at the height of last year’s presidential election, the Wikileaks Twitter account sent a private direct message to Donald Trump Jr., the Republican nominee’s oldest son and campaign surrogate. “A PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” Wikileaks wrote. “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who is behind it. Any comments?” (The site, which has since become a joint project with Mother Jones, was founded by Rob Glaser, a tech entrepreneur, and was funded by Progress for USA Political Action Committee.)
The next morning, about 12 hours later, Trump Jr. responded to Wikileaks. “Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around,” he wrote on September 21, 2016. “Thanks.”
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Though Trump Jr. mostly ignored the frequent messages from Wikileaks, he at times appears to have acted on its requests. When Wikileaks first reached out to Trump Jr. about putintrump.org, for instance, Trump Jr. followed up on his promise to “ask around.” According to a source familiar with the congressional investigations into Russian interference with the 2016 campaign, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, on the same day that Trump Jr. received the first message from Wikileaks, he emailed other senior officials with the Trump campaign, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, telling them Wikileaks had made contact. Kushner then forwarded the email to campaign communications staffer Hope Hicks. At no point during the 10-month correspondence does Trump, Jr. rebuff Wikileaks, which had published stolen documents and was already observed to be releasing information that benefited Russian interests.
On October 3, 2016, Wikileaks wrote again. “Hiya, it’d be great if you guys could comment on/push this story,” Wikileaks suggested, attaching a quote from then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton about wanting to “just drone” Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange.
The Gadsden Mall opened in 1974. It has two department stores, Belk and Sears, one on each end. Between them, on Sunday night, I walked past Books-A-Million, Cellular Solutions, a Japanese steak house, Great American Cookies, Blacklight Mini-Golf, KnockerBall Gadsden, an eyebrow-styling kiosk, and a clothing store for young girls, called Justice. A diverse assortment of families wandered around the place, which felt trapped in time. Two young security guards made their rounds. “It gets rough in here on Saturday nights,” one of them told me, mentioning fighting, stealing, and gun-toting. “We still have an active ban list,” the other said, referencing a list of chronic rule-breakers not allowed on mall property. “But it doesn’t go back that far.”
He meant back to the early eighties, when Roy Moore was, many people say, a regular visitor to the mall. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that, when Moore was a thirty-two-year-old assistant district attorney in Etowah County, he brought Leigh Corfman, who was fourteen years old at the time, to his home and https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/woman-says-roy-moore-initiated-sexual-encounter-when-she-was-14-he-was-32/2017/11/09/1f495878-c293-11e7-afe9-4f60b5a6c4a0_story.html?utm_term=.7c26d02b7099 (sexually molested her). Three additional women told the Post that Moore had pursued them when they were in their teens and he was in his early thirties. (On Monday, another woman, Beverly Young Nelson, said that Moore assaulted her when she was sixteen years old. At a press conference, she held up a high-school yearbook that she said Moore signed before the alleged assault.) Two of the women say that they first met Moore at the Gadsden Mall, and the Post reports that several other women who used to work there remembered Moore’s frequent presence—“usually alone” and “well-dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt.”
This past weekend, I spoke or messaged with more than a dozen people—including a major political figure in the state—who told me that they had heard, over the years, that Moore had been banned from the mall because he repeatedly badgered teen-age girls. Some say that they heard this at the time, others in the years since. These people include five members of the local legal community, two cops who worked in the town, several people who hung out at the mall in the early eighties, and a number of former mall employees. (A request for comment from the Moore campaign was not answered.) Several of them asked that I leave their names out of this piece. The stories that they say they’ve heard for years have been swirling online in the days since the Post published its report.
“Sources tell me Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall and the YMCA for his inappropriate behavior of soliciting sex from young girls,” the independent Alabama journalist Glynn Wilson wrote on his Web site on Sunday. (Wilson declined to divulge his sources.) Teresa Jones, a deputy district attorney for Etowah County in the early eighties, told CNN last week that “it was common knowledge that Roy dated high-school girls.” Jones told me that she couldn’t confirm the alleged mall banning, but said, “It’s a rumor I’ve heard for years.”
Greg Legat, who is now fifty-nine and living in East Gadsden, was, from 1981 to 1985, an employee at the Record Bar, a store that was in the Gadsden Mall. By the early eighties, Legat told me, the mall was “the place to be. There were no empty stores. And lots of kids came around. Lots of teen-agers. You went there to see and be seen.” Legat met his wife, Jo Anne, there. She worked at a restaurant called Orange Bowl. Legat remembers that parents dropped their kids off at the mall, typically unchaperoned. Teens filled the place.
Legat says that he saw Moore there a few times, even though his understanding then was that he had already been banned. “It started around 1979, I think,” Legat said. “I know the ban was still in place when I got there.” Legat recalled a Gadsden police officer named J. D. Thomas, now retired, who worked security at the mall. “J. D. was a fixture there, when I was working at the store,” Legat said. “He really looked after the kids there. He was a good guy. J. D. told me, ‘If you see Roy, let me know. He’s banned from the mall.’ ” Legat recalled Thomas telling him, “If you see Moore here, tell me. I’ll take care of him.’ ” Legat said that his boss, Eddie Hill, also told him to look for Moore. A phone call to Hill’s number was not returned.
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Gadsden’s current law-enforcement community could not confirm the existence of a mall ban on Moore. But two officers I spoke to this weekend, both of whom asked to remain unnamed, told me that they have long heard stories about Moore and the mall. “The general knowledge at the time when I moved here was that this guy is a lawyer cruising the mall for high-school dates,” one of the officers said. The legal age of consent in Alabama is sixteen, so it would not be illegal there for a man in his early thirties to date a girl who was, say, a senior in high school.
But these officers, along with the other people I spoke to, said that Moore’s presence at the mall was regarded as a problem. “I was told by a girl who worked at the mall that he’d been run off from there, from a number of stores. Maybe not legally banned, but run off,” one officer told me. He also said, “I heard from one girl who had to tell the manager of a store at the mall to get Moore to leave her alone.”
The second officer went further. “A friend of mine told me he was banned from there,” he said. He added, “I actually voted for Moore. I liked him at one time. But I’m basically disgusted now, to be honest with you. Some of the things he’s said recently, I’ve changed my tune completely about this guy.” He went on, explaining why Moore no longer appeals to him.
“When I heard what he said on ‘Hannity’ the other night,” he said, referring to an appearance Moore made on Sean Hannity’s radio show last Friday, “I almost stood straight up. The thing about how he’s never dated anybody without their mother’s permission, that appalled me. That made me want to throw up. Why would you need someone’s permission to date somebody? I’m probably gonna write in Luther Strange.”
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OldmanRob
Well-known Member
Lol, she's still not the president
