How Donald Trump destroyed the GOP

October 14, 2016

Posts - 10.14.16 News Reviews and Opinions: Politics Review

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Clinton’s national security allies rip Trump for not condemning Russia’s alleged role in email hacking
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 12:49 PM

A visual history of how presidential elections affect US financial markets — Quartz
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 11:59 AM

Stress over the this year’s election has reached the level of an unhappy fever dream. An editorial in the Los Angeles Times warned that a Trump victory could prompt a coup. A New York Times bestseller compared Trump’s battle against Clinton to Armageddon. If there is one thing we know about panicky people, it’s that they generally don’t make great choices with their money. Observers such as Bill Maher and Mark Cuban have speculated that a Trump victory could spark a stock market crash. Cut to an image of millions of people stuffing cash into their mattresses.

History suggests such a dramatic outcome is unlikely. In fact, there is little evidence that the markets react much at all to elections in the short-term. In the charts below we’ve plotted how major US markets, ranging from treasuries to gold, have been affected by the last six presidential elections.

The results are, for the most part, underwhelming. There is no obvious trend, nor are there are any clear outliers except for 2008, when the election took place in the middle of an ongoing economic meltdown.

It’s human nature to spot trends, especially in things as omnipresent as politics and financial markets. For example, some pundits made a big deal of a sharp market decline after President Obama was re-elected in 2012. However, such affects are usually transient. The market recovered from that downturn within 30 trading days.

Of course, none of these charts say that the election of a new president won’t affect markets at all. Over the long term, policy choices made by a new president will have a major impact on US businesses. Heavily regulated industries are the most likely to be affected. Clinton’s negative statements about drug pricing have already caused tumult in biotech stocks, a sector that is sensitive to changes in federal policy.

It’s crucial to remember that markets are fundamentally unpredictable. Panics and manias happen from time to time. Donald Trump is a new kind of candidate. It is not a cliche to report that anything is possible. However, that doesn’t mean that we should expect financial fireworks on election day. The data show that markets are more resistant than we tend to give them credit for.

How Donald Trump destroyed the GOP
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 11:50 AM

The Week

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America has never seen a stranger presidential debate than the town hall that took place in St. Louis Sunday night.

Don't buy the spin (or the expressions of jittery relief from Republicans) for a second: Trump didn't "win." He didn't transform himself into a new, improved, and appealing candidate. On that stage, Trump was very much himself: a know-nothing demagogue who does one thing very well, which is channel and amplify the ill-informed, maniacal rage of one faction of his party.

When a party is functioning well, the passions of individual factions get subsumed into and sublimated by the institution as a whole. But in order to function, the party's leadership and its factions need to speak the same language and understand themselves to agree on certain core ideals, strategies, and tactics.

None of this is true about the GOP today. No, the GOP is burning to the ground, and Donald Trump is fanning the flames.

From the moment he launched his campaign for president, Donald Trump demonstrated that he did unmodulated, contemptuous fury better than any of his 16 opponents. Our immigration policy was adisaster, he said. As was ObamaCare. And the Iran deal. And the Iraq War. And the economy. And our conduct of the war on terror. Complete disasters, all of them. Pathetic.

To those members of the party whose view of the world has been shaped for more than 20 years by rabblerousers on talk radio and cable news, Trump sounded like a long-awaited savior. Finally someone to tear it all down — the Democrats, yes, but also the Republicans who run the party.

Back in 1968, George Wallace ran a populist kamikaze campaign not entirely dissimilar to Trump's. He championed the grievances of members of the Democratic Party who dissented from its social liberalism and embrace of the civil rights movement. But he did this as a third-party candidate. Trump is doing something similar — channeling the rage of voters who feel disrespected and ignored by the Republican leadership — from within the Republican Party itself. This is a problem.

Trump is destroying the GOP in order to rebuild it in his own image and the image of the angry faction he now leads — and there's nothing the party's leadership can do about it. They endorse him and he humiliates them. They denounce him and he doubles down. They beg, implore, plead with him: Please stop insulting people. Please apologize and show contrition for bragging about sexual assault in the most vulgar terms possible. Please don't go after your opponent by humiliating her for her husband's behavior.

Please stop behaving like a tabloid sleaze-monger and start acting like a president.

Trump's response? He holds a press conference with Bill Clinton's accusers before the start of the debate, seats them in the hall with his own family, and injects them into the debate itself. He declares that if he wins the election, he would throw his opponent in jail. He praises Vladimir Putin right after he's asked a question about credible evidence that the Russian government hacked the servers of the Democratic National Committee in an effort to interfere with the presidential election. He stands by Syria's Bashar al-Assad right after he's asked a question about the ongoing bloodbath in Aleppo. He asserts, apropos of nothing in particular, that Hillary Clinton "has tremendous hate in her heart." He throws his own running mate under the bus for daring to speak critically of Putin.

And of course, he spoke of disasters, disasters everywhere: the economy, ObamaCare, Syria, ISIS, Libya, NAFTA. He spewed lies and blatantly misleading exaggerations. The performance was at once sordid and cartoonish in its extremism. The Trump faction of the GOP must have been thrilled.

But a faction is not a party, and a faction isn't capable of winning a national election.

Donald Trump has destroyed the GOP. It will be up to those who come after his ill-fated reign of devastation to figure out how to put it back together again.

Read the whole story

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‘This Doesn’t Throw Me’: Trump Backers Unfazed by Claims of Bad Behavior
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 11:49 AM

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Some supporters of Donald J. Trump saw media collusion. Others said accusations had been embellished. And a few said that no matter how Mr. Trump had behaved, he should get a pass because of all he represents.

In a dozen interviews with Mr. Trump’s supporters before his rally here Thursday, nearly every one dismissed a series of reports about his misbehavior toward women, questioning the motives of the accusers and the timing of the revelations so close to Election Day.

Judy Weimer, 75, of Port St. Lucie, was one of those crying foul. She said that the disclosures were an effort by the Democratic Party to derail Mr. Trump’s candidacy, and that the accusations “don’t worry me a bit.” She said she also believed that Mr. Trump had acted as all rich men did decades ago.

“Something may have happened,” she said of the accusations reported by The New York Times that Mr. Trump had grabbed a woman’s breast and put his hand up her skirt while seated next to her on an airplane. “But when I look at it, I see this woman 30 years ago, I see a tall, nice-looking rich man that’ll go with, you know, they get the women, you know they do,” she said. “The movie stars, the basketball stars, they get them.”

“And in a way, he’s absolutely right that they can do just about anything they want to with them people,” she continued, alluding to a 2005 recording of Mr. Trump boasting about how he had forced himself on women. “I don’t think it’s right, but they can do it. It’s the women. I don’t think groping anybody is right. But they do get away with it.”

Maureen Owens, 64, of West Palm Beach shared a similar skepticism about the origin of the accusations, particularly the episode on the airplane, which the accuser, Jessica Leeds, said happened in the early 1980s.

“I’m skeptical of all media reports,” Ms. Owens said. “Things happened so long ago. He’s a 70-year-old man putting us on the right track. I’m totally, 100 percent behind him.”

She added: “I worked as a flight attendant for 34 years on flights with professional athletes, politicians, movie stars — I’ve seen bad behavior all my life. This doesn’t throw me.”

Dianne DeWolfe, 73, of Palm Beach Gardens said she thought the accusers were “embellishing what might have happened,” and she questioned the timing of the revelations.

“It’s baloney to come out now,” she said. “They’re opportunists. Listen, no man attacks a woman unless she’s looking like she’s asking for it.”

Others felt the accusations merely highlighted flaws that they already knew Mr. Trump had, but ones that they had come to accept, given how he could lead the country.

“When you look at Saul back in the Bible, he was able to redeem himself and become the Apostle Paul,” said Kathy Reece, 50, who lives in nearby Royal Palm Beach. “God uses people, some of the people in the worst circumstances, to do his work for him.

“A lot of what we’re seeing is you have somebody like Trump, and he’s a pig, I mean, I know that,” she continued. “But he’s going to do what’s best for the country, and I think through that, he’s going to redeem himself and he’s going to redeem the country.”

Paul Rogers, 48, of Wellington, said the accusers should be believed but supporters were right to question the timing of the revelations, coming little more than three weeks before the election, and how they all landed at seemingly the same time.

“Everyone should believe all woman by default, period,” Mr. Rogers said. “That said, every single woman’s story comes forward in the same afternoon, after a year and a half of 30 billion of free media?”

There was, however, one Trump supporter who suggested that if “definitive proof” came out, he would be willing to change his mind.

“I’m pretty open-minded, so as long as there’s proof of something like that, things happen and minds are changed,” said Austin Murray, 19, of West Palm Beach. “But until I see solid proof that that actually happened, then my decision is made.”

Continue reading the main story

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· · ·

Donald Trump Declares Himself Freed From Republican Party 'Shackles' - Wall Street Journal
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 11:47 AM

Trump And Republican Party - Google News

Wall Street Journal

Donald Trump Declares Himself Freed From Republican Party 'Shackles'
Wall Street Journal
Donald Trump declared on Tuesday morning that he had been freed from “the shackles” of theRepublican Party and would now campaign as he saw fit, furthering his split from the party he deemed disloyal to him. In a series of messages on Twitter, the GOP ...
Donald Trump is blowing up the Republican PartyWashington Post
Donald Trump launches war on Paul Ryan, slams Republican PartyCNBC
Donald Trump splits the Republican PartyAljazeera.com (blog)
New York Times -MSNBC -Columbia Missourian -Washington Post
all 6,712 news articles »

Lou Dobbs is what's wrong with Trump's Republican Party - Business Insider
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 11:46 AM

Trump And Republican Party - Google News

Business Insider

Lou Dobbs is what's wrong with Trump's Republican Party
Business Insider
Dobbs is symptomatic of the broad problems in the Republican Party that led to Donald Trump: These people will believe any lie, no matter how obvious, if it flatters their political preconceptions. Fox Business, theoretically, has a standards-and ...
Lou Dobbs tweets Trump accuser's address and phone numberPolitico
Fox Business' Lou Dobbs appears to dox Trump accuser on Twitter - Business InsiderBusiness Insider
Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them InappropriatelyNew York Times

all 28 news articles »

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Page 2

Mike Pence Just Opened The Door To Republican Destruction While Defending Trump - PoliticusUSA
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 11:46 AM

Trump And Republican Party - Google News

PoliticusUSA

Mike Pence Just Opened The Door To Republican Destruction While Defending Trump
PoliticusUSA
Pence was the chosen candidate of the Republican establishment. If Pence goes down withTrump, the Republican Party goes down with Trump. Pence is viewed as the bridge betweenTrump and the GOP, and the bridge has now expanded the allegations ...
How Donald Trump destroyed the GOPThe Week Magazine
A generation of GOP stars stands diminished: 'Everything Trump touches dies'Washington Post
List: Which Republicans are abandoning Trump and which are sticking by him?CNN
Roll Call -BBC News -Slate Magazine -Washington Post
all 2,134 news articles »

US mulling military options in Syria – Middle East Monitor
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 9:42 AM

Middle East Monitor - Latest Comments

US President Barack Obama and his top foreign policy advisers are expected to meet today to consider their military and other options in Syria, as Syrian and Russian aircraft continue to pummel Aleppo and other targets, US officials said.

Some top officials argue the United States must act more forcefully in Syria or risk losing what influence it still has over moderate rebels and its Arab, Kurdish and Turkish allies in the fight against Daesh, the officials told Reuters.

One set of options includes direct US military action such as airstrikes on Syrian military bases, munitions depots or radar and anti-aircraft bases, said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

This official said one danger of such action is that Russian and Syrian forces are often co-mingled, raising the possibility of a direct confrontation with Russia that Obama has been at pains to avoid.

US officials said they consider it unlikely that Obama will order US airstrikes on Syrian government targets, and they stressed that he may not make any decisions at today’s National Security Council meeting.

One alternative, US officials said, is allowing allies to provide US-vetted rebels with more sophisticated weapons, although not shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, which Washington fears could be used against Western airliners.

Today’s planned meeting is the latest in a long series of internal debates about what, if anything, to do to end a civil war that is now in reaching its sixth year, has killed 400,000 people according to the UN and displaced half the country’s population.

The ultimate aim of any new action could be to bolster the battered moderate rebels so they can weather what is now widely seen as the inevitable fall of rebel-held eastern Aleppo to the forces of Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

It also might temper a sense of betrayal among moderate rebels who feel Obama encouraged their uprising by calling for Assad to go but then abandoned them, failing even to enforce his own “red line” against Assad’s use of chemical weapons.

US policy is instead focused on targeting Daesh and Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham (JFS), formerly the Al-Nusra Front, a decision that has opened it to charges that it is doing nothing to prevent the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria and particularly in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

Anthony Cordesman of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank toldReuters that the United States’ failure to act earlier in Syria, and in Aleppo in particular, had narrowed Obama’s options.

“There is only so long you can ignore your options before you don’t have any,” Cordesman said.

Read the whole story

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Russian Patriarch’s visit to queen stirs some complaintsby Sophie Berman | AP
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 9:37 AM

World

The head of Russia’s Orthodox Church begins a four-day visit to Britain Saturday that includes an audience with Queen Elizabeth II, but his visit has stirred some resistance because of his strong support of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Helsinki Versus Yalta: A Conversation About Russia with NATO’s Vershbow - Real Time Brussels
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 9:27 AM

ENLARGE

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, right, congratulates outgoing Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow at his last meeting of alliance ambassadors. Photo: NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Alexander Vershbow steps down Monday as deputy secretary-general, capping a career that spans nearly four decades that has helped shape the approach of the United States and the Western allies to the Soviet Union and Russia. He sat down with The Wall Street Journal this week to discuss relations with Russia. Edited excerpts follow.

Q. You have been dealing with Russia for the bulk of your career. Talk about the arc of the relationship as you have seen it. Where do we stand now?

“I became a student of Russia when I was still in high school when I had the chance to study the language and visited the Soviet Union in 1969. Ten years later, I was a young diplomat in the embassy in Moscow. It was a bleak period. It was a global superpower competition. But there was, by that time, a certain element of predictability to the relationship, at least in the birthplace of the Cold War, Europe…”

“The main competition was on the global arena, Afghanistan … Ethiopia, Angola and Nicaragua. The competition was outside of Europe but inside Europe we were achieving a certain element of stability.

“Fast forward to my first tour at NATO in 1991 when, thanks to the Gorbachev phenomenon, the Cold War came to an end, mostly peacefully. We were able to make enormous strides to healing the divisions of Europe… Despite differences over [NATO] enlargement, we were able to work with the Russians. We even had Russian peacekeepers shoulder to shoulder with NATO soldiers in Bosnia and later in Kosovo.

“The possibility of a partnership was still there when I arrived as deputy secretary-general in 2012. … But the world changed in 2014. In some ways it was back to the rivalry of the Cold War but it is also very different. Because when I served in Brezhnev’s Russia and worked at the State Department desk in ’80s and headed the desk in the late ’80s, Russia was interested in strengthening the rules-based system. Russia was trying to create a stable status quo… We were able to cooperate in Europe and achieve a basic stability. We don’t have that any more. Putin is a revisionist leader who wants to, I think, roll back the post-Cold War settlement…

“We have a situation where Russia does not accept the rules in Europe and so therefore Europe is the most unstable peace. That is different than the Cold War. They are not a status-quo power. They want to reestablish spheres of influence. Our model is Helsinki. Their model is Yalta.”

Q: What are the implications of that, what are the prospects for dialogue?

“We have to be realistic about how much we can achieve with Russia. We can’t be fatalistic. We have to try to convince them to lower the risks in the relationship, restore transparency and predictability so that inadvertent incidents don’t spin out of control. But going back to the more creative achievements of the détente period, much less the post-Cold War period, the prospects are pretty dim.

“Reaching agreements on anything will be more difficult. but it is in our own vital interests, and we have to persuade the Russians that it is in their own vital interests, to manage what is going to be a competitive relationship overall. But at least to restore some of the predictability and stability we used to have in the détente period.

“But that requires a political decision in Moscow that they want to be transparent… We have taken the moral and justifiable stance when it comes to going back practical cooperation, to business as usual, it is simply impossible as long as they remain entrenched in Ukraine. It would be a betrayal of the Ukrainians and our principles to basically let bygones be bygones. We made that mistake—to some degree—after the Georgia war.”

Q: What are the prospects that sanctions against Russia for their actions in Ukraine will be extended?

“There are political leaders in and out of government who complain about the economic burden and some who are prepared to reach an accommodation with Russia… Overall Europe has been steadfast and shown they are much more willing to stay the course than Putin may have calculated.”

Q. Will we see a NATO-Russia Council meeting in October?

“It is not clear when it will take place but I think it will happen in the coming weeks. We gave our reaction to the various proposals they presented at the July 13 NRC… We saw the Russians trying to get around our decisions to suspend practical cooperation. But on some issues, like aviation safety, we are ready to continue the discussion.”

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· · · ·

US sees more signs Russia feeding emails to WikiLeaks
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 9:11 AM

As WikiLeaks continues to publish emails belonging to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, US officials told CNN that there is growing evidence that Russia is using the organization as a delivery vehicle for the messages and other stolen information.

The methods of the disclosures "suggest Moscow is at least providing the information or is possibly directly responsible for the leaks," one US official said.

US intelligence officials are still investigating the degree of connection between Russia and WikiLeaks but they remain confident that Russia is behind the leaks themselves.

CNN attempted to reach WikiLeaks for comment but received no response. WikiLeaks's founder, Julian Assange, has previously denied any connection to or cooperation with Russia.

Russia's highest officials are dismissing accusations that Moscow is trying to sway the US presidential election with cyber attacks, speaking out before the latest accusation concerning WikiLeaks was shared with CNN on Thursday.

President Vladimir Putin ridiculed such talk Wednesday as "hysteria."

"If they decided to do something, let them do it," Lavrov told Amanpour. "But to say that Russia is interfering in the United States domestic matters is ridiculous."

The Director of National Intelligence -- representing 19 US intelligence agencies -- and the Department of Homeland Security leveled unambiguous charges against Russia on Friday. And the comments from Moscow did little to quell the growing criticism of Russia Wednesday from the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"The kinds of disclosures that we've seen, including at WikiLeaks, of stolen e-mails from people who play an important role in our political process is consistent with Russian- directed efforts," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday.

Podesta, whose emails are being published by WikiLeaks, also pointed the finger at Russia.

'Work of the Russian government'

"It is now clear that the illegal hack of my personal email account was -- just like the other recent, election-related hacks -- the work of the Russian government," Podesta said in a statement. "This level of meddling by a foreign power can only be aimed at boosting Donald Trump and should send chills down the spine of all Americans, regardless of political party."

Podesta earlier accused Roger Stone, a long-time adviser to Republican nominee Donald Trump, of having advance knowledge of the recent hack and publication of his emails on the website WikiLeaks, founded by Julian Assange. Stone had penned a tweet in August saying, "Trust me, it will soon (be) the Podesta's time in the barrel.

CNN/ORC poll, September 28 – October 2, 2016, sampling error: +/- 3 percentage points, sample: 1,213 likely voters

"I think it's a reasonable assumption to -- or at least a reasonable conclusion -- that Mr. Stone had advanced warning and the Trump campaign had advanced warning about what Assange was going to do," Podesta told reporters Tuesday.

But Stone rejected Podesta's assertion, telling CNN he "had no foreknowledge" of the WikiLeaks publication of Podesta's emails.

The accusations and denials are just the latest and perhaps most extraordinary way that Russia has become a factor in the wildly unpredictable 2016 presidential campaign. Ongoing questions about Trump's ties to Russia are now interspersed with Democratic accusations that Russia is actively trying to help the New York real-estate mogul reach the White House.

"We have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election," Clinton said at the second presidential debate on Sunday. "And believe me, they're not doing it to get me elected. They're doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump."

Trump batted back the accusations at a rally in Ocala, Florida, Wednesday.

"Anything that goes wrong they blame Russia," Trump told the crowd. "We are being hacked because we have people who don't know what they are doing. They always blame Russia."

"They say Donald Trump is friends with Putin. I don't know Putin, folks," Trump added. "What the hell do I have to do with Putin?"

Trump and Putin

At a time when US-Russia relations are the worst they've been in decades, that question -- what does Trump have to do with Putin? -- still lingers.

Trump has called on Moscow to hack into Clinton's computers, downplayed criticism of Putin's authoritarian tendencies, tried to suggest that Russia hasn't hacked US systems and promoted foreign policy positions that jibe more closely with Moscow's than Washington's. He's relied on aides with ties to Russia and most recently, quoted an incorrect Russian news report to raise questions about Clinton.

For its part, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations formally complained last month about a top UN official's criticism of Trump and right-wing European politicians.

Trump actively called on Russia to help him against Clinton in July, when he called on Moscow to find missing Clinton emails from her tenure as secretary of state.

"Russia, are you listening?" Trump said from the stage of a rally, calling for a foreign country to interfere in an election, an unprecedented moment in presidential politics.

And yet at Sunday's debate, the Republican candidate floated the possibility that Russia isn't behind the hacking at all, saying that Clinton "doesn't know if it's the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking."

In an interview Wednesday with CNN's Brianna Keilar, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said the campaign has no knowledge about the hack. But she said Trump is "of course" concerned about the potential of meddling in US politics.

"Are we going to put this back on Donald Trump?" Conway said. "Is he the hacker?"

After Trump threatened at Sunday's debate to jail Clinton if he wins the White House, former chess world champion Garry Kasparov, a fierce Putin critic, took to Twitter to note that Trump seemed to be emulating Putin's style. Kasparov noted that crackdowns on media and political opponents are "also Putin's checklist."

Trump's foreign policy positions

Trump has taken foreign policy positions that analysts say would please Russia, declaring in March that he would consider pulling the US out of NATO because it's "obsolete" and "is costing us a fortune." The 28-member organization, founded in 1949 to defend against the Soviet Union, is the core US-Atlantic security mechanism.

In August, Trump said Russia wouldn't enter Ukraine, despite Moscow's annexation of Crimea in early 2014. He later clarified to say he meant that Russia wouldn't enter Ukraine if he were president.

At Sunday's debate, Trump insisted that Russia is targeting ISIS in Syria, despite repeated assessments by US security officials that Russian troops are spending more time focused on moderate opposition groups, including those backed by the US.

Trump campaign advisers have had ties to Russia. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort lobbied on behalf of Russian-backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich. Carter Page, described at one point by the campaign as an informal policy advisor, reportedly had investments in Russian gas company Gazprom and has publicly criticized the US in a speech in Moscow. Trump campaign manager

Conway told CNN's Jake Tapper in September that Page is no longer part of the campaign.

A Trump security adviser, Lt. General Mike Flynn, the retired head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, attended a December gala for the the state-backed Russia Today television network, placed two seats away from Putin, according to Politico.

Trump's refusal to release his tax returns makes it impossible to get a full sense of his investments and whether he has any in Russia, but he does have business ties to Russians.

Trump has also written about trying to build a Trump property in Moscow since 1987 in his book "The Art of the Deal," signing his most recent deal to build in Moscow in 2013, according to the Washington Post.

The Republican candidate worked with Russian oligarchs to stage the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013. And his son Trump Jr told a real estate investment conference in 2008 that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," adding that they "see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

More recently, the group Democratic Coalition Against Trump posted to YouTube a 2012 interview with Donald Trump Jr. that shows the candidate's son listing various Russian projects the family is interested in, including golf courses and hotels.

"I've been there many times, I've spent quite a bit of time in Moscow looking at deals," Trump Jr. said.

CNN's Stephen Collinson, Michelle Kosinksi, David Wright and Tom Kludt contributed to this report.

Read the whole story

· · · · · ·

Why the West needs to treat Russia like a pariah
Friday October 14th, 2016 at 8:30 AM

Eli Lake – New York Post

Russia’s ambassador to Washington is disappointed. Despite great potential for cooperation, Sergei Kislyak told an audience Tuesday at Johns Hopkins University that the two countries are locked in “unfriendly discussions.” Wouldn’t the world be safer and more stable if these two powers got along?

With apologies to Ambassador Kislyak, the answer to this question is no. Contrary to his protestations, Russia is not invested in protecting the world order. It is dedicated to undermining the organizations, agreements and laws that constitute it.

We all know the most egregious incidents. The Russian air force has bombed hospitals and humanitarian convoys in Syria. Its army has occupied Georgian territory for eight years. Its hackers have pilfered e-mails from leading Democrats. Its “little green men” have annexed Crimea. Just last month, a Dutch commission of inquiry concluded that the Russian government provided separatists the missiles that shot down a civilian airliner flying over Ukraine in 2014.

Russia also poisons the international system in small ways. In 2014, the former head of Australia’s anti-doping agency accused Russia of running a national program to give athletes performance-enhancing drugs. It continues to support Kirsan Ilyumzhinov as head of the International Chess Federation, despite his chummy visits to rogue states like North Korea and Iran.

His recent plan to hold the international chess championship in Iran has drawn protest from the US women’s chess champion, Nazi Paikidze-Barnes, because Iran requires women to cover their heads with a hijab.

Then there is Russia’s abuse of Interpol, the international agency for coordinating law enforcement between countries. Normal countries use Interpol to bring criminal fugitives to justice. Russia uses it to exact political retribution.

In 2013, Moscow began requesting a “red notice” to arrest William Browder, a hedge-fund manager who is seeking justice for the Russian state’s detention and murder of his former lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.

Russia has also tried to issue red notices for other foes of Putin, such as anti-corruption advocate Nikolay Koblyakov and Vladimir Ashurkov, a political reformer associated with opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

All of this recent history discredits a lot of recent US foreign policy. Since the end of the Cold War, American presidents have promoted Russia’s integration into the international system, from the creation of the NATO-Russia council in the 1990s to Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2012.

The theory was that if you treated Russia like a responsible member of the international community, it would start acting like one. This turned out to be wrong.

November marks the 10-year anniversary of Russia’s radiation poisoning of one of its former spies, Alexander Litvinenko. Since this murder in London, Putin’s Russia has evolved into a full-blown rogue state. Now some of the original proponents of the strategy to integrate Russia into the world order say the policy didn’t work.

Michael McFaul, who served as President Obama’s ambassador to Russia and was the architect of the first-term policy to “reset” relations with Russia, told me the United States had hoped to “moderate” Russia’s negative behavior “by making them stakeholders in these international institutions.”

McFaul said he believed that in the 1990s and 2000s this was the right policy. But he said it’s time for a new approach.

Washington and its allies need a new strategy. Call it inoculation. Instead of seeking Russia’s participation in international institutions, the United States should work with its allies to protect these institutions from Russia.

For McFaul, who is today a scholar at the Hoover Institution, this means giving up for now on letting Russia back into the Group of Eight industrialized nations, and setting clear benchmarks for restarting the NATO-Russia council.

Browder last month proposed a plan for Interpol to create a two-tiered system. At a human-rights commission in Congress, he said that transparent countries like the United States would have their red-notice requests processed immediately, whereas countries like Russia, known to abuse the system, would have their requests reviewed by a panel of objective and independent experts before being sent out to member states.

Pariahs are not asked to cooperate on challenges to the global commons. With Russia, it’s the very least the United States and its allies can do to save the international system from a country that seeks to destroy it.

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Clinton calls women's allegations that Trump groped them 'disturbing' - Washington Post
Thursday October 13th, 2016 at 7:33 PM

Israeli President Hosts Quiet Meeting of Muslim and Jewish Leaders by ISABEL KERSHNER
Thursday October 13th, 2016 at 7:33 PM

NYT > World

President Reuven Rivlin of Israel, left, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday at a memorial ceremony for soldiers killed during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Israeli leaders condemn U.N. resolution on Jerusalem holy siteby Ruth Eglash
Thursday October 13th, 2016 at 7:33 PM

World

UNESCO is set to approve a document that fails to mention the Temple Mount, which is holy to Jews.

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Montenegro PM accuses Russia of financing anti-NATO campaign
Thursday October 13th, 2016 at 7:32 PM

Reuters: World News

PODGORICA (Reuters) - Russia is pouring money into Montenegro's election campaign in an attempt to derail the country's progress towards joining NATO, the country's Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic said on Thursday, three days ahead of an election.

Gourmet ganja? Marijuana dining is growing up, slowlyby By KRISTEN WYATT
Thursday October 13th, 2016 at 7:31 PM

AP Top News At 12:37 P.M. EDT

LYONS, Colo. (AP) -- How to set a tone of woodsy chic at a four-course candlelight dinner served under the stars in the Colorado foothills:...

Donald Trump's moment of reckoning
Thursday October 13th, 2016 at 2:34 PM

Presidential campaigns always fear the October surprise. In Trump's case it was a pattern of demeaning behavior toward women that took on new significance after a weekend bracketed by two explosive reports.

CNN has not yet independently confirmed either The New York Times or People Magazine accounts. The Trump campaign described the entire Times article as a "fiction" that amounted to "character assassination." A Trump attorney also issued an open letter to The Times demanding an immediate retraction and apology. The Trump campaign told People magazine: "This never happened. There is no merit or veracity to this fabricated story."

Trump aggressively defended himself during a rally Thursday, saying they were "pure fiction," "outright lies" and promised to provide evidence to prove they were false.

"These claims are all fabricated. They're pure fiction and outright lies. These events never, ever happened," Trump said in West Palm Beach, Florida.

But at a time when voters are already casting their ballots and Trump's path to 270 electoral votes has dramatically narrowed, the campaign is engulfed in a swirl of allegations about Trump's conduct toward women that has crippled its ability to sway undecided voters.

Trump's assertion to CNN's Anderson Cooper in Sunday night's debate that his boasts on the "Access Hollywood" tape about grabbing women were "just words" -- seemed to inflame controversy.

Several women said his denial of those kinds of actions infuriated them and prompted them to come forward. As the floodgates opened on the conduct of a powerful and litigious figure, several beauty pageant contestants said they felt emboldened to describe Trump's leering, lewd behavior when he owned the Miss USA pageant. Tasha Dixon, a 2001 contestant, told a Los Angeles TV station, Trump entered rooms where "some were topless ... some were naked" as he allegedly inspected and appraised as the owner of the pageant

Trump appears on the set of "The Celebrity Apprentice" with two of his children -- Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump -- in 2009.

Trump poses with Miss Universe contestants in 2011. Trump has been executive producer of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants since 1996.

In 2012, Trump announces his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Trump speaks in Sarasota, Florida, after accepting the Statesman of the Year Award at the Sarasota GOP dinner in August 2012, shortly before the Republican National Convention in nearby Tampa.

Trump appears on stage with Nick Jonas and Giuliana Rancic during the 2013 Miss USA pageant.

In June 2015, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/16/politics/donald-trump-2016-announcement-elections/" target="_blank">Trump announces that he is running for President</a> during a speech from Trump Tower in New York. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/28/politics/donald-trump-the-apprentice-presidential-campaign/" target="_blank">He said he will give up the show</a> "The Apprentice" to run.

Trump -- flanked by U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, left, and Ted Cruz -- speaks during a CNN debate in Miami on March 10. Trump dominated the GOP primaries and emerged as the presumptive nominee in May.

The Trump family poses for a photo in New York in April.

Trump speaks during a campaign event in Evansville, Indiana, on April 28. After Trump won the Indiana primary, his last two competitors dropped out of the GOP race.

Trump delivers a speech at the Republican National Convention in July, accepting the party's nomination for President. "I have had a truly great life in business," he said. "But now, my sole and exclusive mission is to go to work for our country -- to go to work for you. It's time to deliver a victory for the American people."

Trump faces Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/26/politics/gallery/first-presidential-debate/index.html" target="_blank">the first presidential debate, </a>which took place in Hempstead, New York, in September.

Trump apologizes in a video, posted to his Twitter account in October, for vulgar and sexually aggressive remarks he made a decade ago regarding women. "I said it, I was wrong and I apologize,"Trump said, referring to lewd comments he made during a previously unaired taping of "Access Hollywood." Multiple Republican leaders rescinded their endorsements of Trump after the footage was released.

Donald Trump, the Republican Party's presidential nominee, has been in the spotlight for years. From developing real estate to producing and starring in TV shows, see how he's shaped his empire.

Trump stands with Alfred Eisenpreis, New York's economic development administrator, in 1976 while they look at a sketch of a new 1,400-room renovation project of the Commodore Hotel. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, Trump worked with his father on developments in Queens and Brooklyn before purchasing or building multiple properties in New York and Atlantic City, New Jersey. Those properties included Trump Tower in New York and Trump Plaza and multiple casinos in Atlantic City.

Trump was married to Ivana Zelnicek Trump from 1977 to 1990, when they divorced. They had three children together.

Trump signs his second book, "Trump: Surviving at the Top," in 1990. Trump <a href="http://www.trump.com/publications/" target="_blank">has published</a> at least 16 other books, including "The Art of the Deal" and "The America We Deserve."

Trump signs his second book, "Trump: Surviving at the Top," in 1990. Trump has published at least 16 other books, including "The Art of the Deal" and "The America We Deserve."

Trump dips his second wife, Marla Maples, after the couple married in a private ceremony in New York in December 1993. The couple divorced in 1999.

An advertisement for the television show "The Apprentice" hangs at Trump Towers in New York in 2004. The show launched in January of that year. In January 2008, the show returned as "Celebrity Apprentice."

A 12-inch talking Trump doll is on display at a toy store in New York in September 2004.

Trump attends a news conference in 2005 that announced the establishment of Trump University. From 2005 until it closed in 2010, Trump University had about 10,000 people sign up for a program that promised success in real estate. Three separate lawsuits -- two class-action suits filed in California and one filed by New York's attorney general -- have argued that the program was mired in fraud and deception. Trump's camp has rejected the class-action suits' claims as "baseless." And Trump has charged that the New York case against him is politically motivated.

Trump attends the U.S. Open tennis tournament with his third wife, Melania Knauss-Trump, and their son, Barron William Trump, in 2006. Trump and Knauss married in 2005. Trump has five children from three marriages.

Trump wrestles with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin at WrestleMania in 2007. Trump has close ties with the WWE and its CEO, Vince McMahon.

For "The Apprentice," Trump was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in January 2007.