2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHow entangled with Russia is Trump? By George F. Will
This Russian connection between Trump and Putin has yet to play itself out.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-entangled-with-russia-is-trump/2016/07/29/d5255d10-54e7-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.html?postshare=4881469878853075&tid=ss_tw
Opinions
How entangled with Russia is Trump?
By George F. Will Opinion writer July 29 at 8:51 PM
To gauge the opportunism and hypocrisy that define Donald Trumps Republican Party, consider this: Imagine the scalding rhetoric that would have boiled from the likes of Newt Gingrich, that Metternich of many green rooms, if Hillary Clinton had offhandedly undermined the collective security architecture of U.S. foreign policy since NATO was created in 1949.
Vladimir Putins regime is saturating Europe with anti-Americanism, buying print and broadcast media, pliable journalists and other opinion leaders, and funding fringe political parties, think tanks and cultural institutions. (Putin is again following Hitlers playbook; read Alan Fursts historical novel Mission to Paris, set in prewar France.) Putin is etching with acid a picture of America as ignorant, narcissistic and, especially, unreliable. Trump validates every component of this indictment, even saying that the U.S. commitment to NATOs foundational principle an attack on one member is an attack on all is not categorical.
Gingrich, who is among the supposed savants who will steer Trump toward adulthood, flippantly dismisses Estonia, a NATO member contiguous to Putins Russia and enduring its pressure, as some place which is in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. Gingrich thereby echoes Neville Chamberlains description, three days before Munich, of Hitlers pressure on Czechoslovakia as a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.
It would be fanciful to suggest that Trump read a book, but others should read Svetlana Alexievichs Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, an oral history of post-Soviet Russia, 1991 to 2012. A recurring theme is Russian nostalgia for the Soviet era: We had a great empire stretching from sea to sea, from beyond the Arctic to the subtropics. Where is it now? It was defeated without a bomb. ....................................
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A protester at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg)
Chemisse
(30,813 posts)I like this remark:
"It would be fanciful to suggest that Trump read a book, but others should read . . . "
Cha
(297,275 posts)And yes, I'm grateful too for these repubs who speak out against trump.
The more the better.
Thank you, rivers.
thucythucy
(8,067 posts)he's clearly seen the light here, and is doing some hard lifting trying to bring some measure of sanity to the GOP.
I wonder if there isn't a part of him that regrets his full-throated support of G.W. Bush, since he's smart enough to realize in retrospect what a catastrophe his administration was on nearly every level. Having made the mistake of putting party loyalty over what his mind and gut knew in 2000, I wonder if he isn't now determined not to make that mistake again.
Whatever the case, I certainly welcome his support now.
yellerpup
(12,253 posts)Exemplar of an American. The ugliest one, at that.
lillypaddle
(9,580 posts)We have to nip it in the bud.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)and I'm hoping we learn a lot more about the people around Trump who are seemingly so astonishingly well connected in Russia, not just his and their connections with so many mobster oligarchs.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/30/donald-trump-paul-manafort-ukraine-russia-putin-ties
Manaforts relationship with Deripaska has recently suffered. The mogul is suing Manafort in the Cayman Islands for allegedly disappearing with $19m of his money. Manafort also worked for Yanukovych and helped guide the pro-Russia candidate to victory in the 2010 Ukranian election. Yanukovych was overthrown in 2014 and is now exiled in Russia.
Another of Trumps foreign policy advisers, Carter Page, is an investment banker with close links to Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled gas company, and has long been an outspoken supporter of Putin. He has gone so far as to compare US foreign policy towards Russia under the Obama administration to slavery in the antebellum south.
Trump adviser Michael Flynn, a former US military intelligence chief, sat two places away from Putin at the state-funded TV network Russia Todays 10th anniversary party last year. ...
Agalarov is just one of several Russian billionaires tied to Trump. Discussing a possible Moscow hotel project with real estate website therealdeal.com in 2013, Trump boasted: The Russian market is attracted to me. I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room.
George Eliot
(701 posts)We trust too much in pundits with agendas. Hillary can win without all the predictions and propaganda. Putin's a problem. Not saying he isn't. But the world is full of problems as it always has been and always will be. Nothing's changed about Will. He's for war, international intrigue, and an elitist. That's all I need to know.
Ilsa
(61,695 posts)Limit to WaPo.