2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumTrump the Traitor working to put America first… under the boot of Putin.
Trump the Traitor working to put America first
under the boot of Putin. http://goo.gl/s2mp9b
"Trumps statement on NATO has hurt American National Security more than any single act by any President in US History, and Trump managed to do that without ever being elected to any political office."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The thing that concerns me about what is happening with Trump and Putin is that so many ridiculous and scurrilous things get said during an election that many folks will not give this the attention that it deserves.
There are too many things that now show that there is a connection between Trump and Putin and that Putin is willing to pull out all the stops to try to throw the election to Trump. As bad as that is, what is worse is that Trump is willing to hurt American national security to foster his relationship with Putin and Russia. We dont yet know all the specifics of the relationship between Trump and Putin but here is what we do know so far:
1. Trump has expressed admiration for Putin on multiple occasions. This is strange behavior for a nominee for President from one of the major parties to express admiration for a foreign leader who has had an adversarial relationship with the United States for the past 12 years versus Presidents of both US parties.
2. Trump has had relationships with Billionaire oligarch friends of Putin going back a number of years. Trumps obsequiousness toward and attempt to attract the attention of Russian leaders goes back to Soviet times. He so badly wanted to meet Gorbachev that he was tricked into meeting with a Gorbachev impersonator and this was caught on camera. See here for more information about Trumps Russian connections throughout the years http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/07/vladimir_putin_has_a_plan_for_destroying_the_west_and_it_looks_a_lot_like.html also here http://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trumps-russia-connections-foreign-policy-presidential-campaign/ and see here https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/from-russia-with-love for video of Trumps embarrassing meeting with a Gorbachev impersonator.
3. One of Trumps top campaign personnel, Paul Manafort, has worked with Russian backed candidates in Ukraine including being on the payroll of Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president and a Putin ally. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/opinion/donald-trump-the-siberian-candidate.html?_r=1
4. It has now been confirmed that Russian intelligence services were behind the hack of the Democratic Party email system and the Russians released that information just before the Democratic National Convention when it would be sure to cause problems for the Democratic nominees efforts to build cohesion versus Trump. Its impossible that this was done without approval from Putin. To put it succinctly, Russian intelligence, at the behest of Putin, is trying to help Trump win the election via nefarious means. See the below posted ABC News video.
5. The Trump campaign refused a plank in the GOP platform, pushed by all other factions of the Republican Party, that would guarantee weapons to Ukraine if Russia attacked them. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-campaign-guts-gops-anti-russia-stance-on-ukraine/2016/07/18/98adb3b0-4cf3-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html
6. Most concerning is that Trump has broken with over 60 years of NATO policy in suggesting that if he were President, the US might not come to the aid of a fellow NATO member if attacked by Russia. http://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/07/trump-nato/492341/ This is a huge blow to the members of NATO, particularly in Eastern Europe, who live with an ever increasing aggressiveness from Russia and depend on their membership in NATO to stay free from Russian domination. Newsweek published an article earlier this year titled Counting Down to a Russian invasion of the Baltics, http://www.newsweek.com/counting-down-russian-invasion-baltics-414877 , which outlined how aggressive Putin has been in putting political, economic and business pressure on the Baltics in what can only be assumed to be a prelude to attempting to take control over those countries in one form or another. Trumps comments must seem particularly terrifying to the people and leaders of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. It could drive countries like these or others who share borders with Russia to decide it would be easier and safer to capitulate to Putins demands to return to the Russian sphere of influence, and turn away from NATO and the EU. You can see the argument being made, better to do that now with some bargaining chips to be played than be overrun and have no say in how its done. I promise all of you reading this that those kinds of discussions are being had in countries that border Russia after Trumps comments. I am not saying those proposing such things will win those arguments, but they are being said and are being taken seriously. I am not exaggerating the effect of Trumps comments on NATO. As reported by Esme Crib in Talking Points Memo, condemnation on that front was swift by a diverse group of people on both sides of the political aisle, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, criticized Trump's stance as "an open invitation to Vladimir Putin" and said that he hoped that "whoever advised Mr. Trump on this rethinks it." See this video of Bolton, who is a Trump Supporter, discussing this:
The Clinton campaign was also quick to respond to Trump's suggestions.
The President is supposed to be the leader of the free world, senior policy advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement. Donald Trump apparently doesnt even believe in the free world. He went on to say that it was "fair to assume that Vladimir Putin is rooting for a Trump presidency."
Trumps response to criticism was to double down on his position regarding potentially not coming to the aid of fellow NATO countries.
Why is Trump clinging so hard to a bad policy denounced from all corners that hasnt been defended by any foreign policy expert at any position in the political spectrum? Why is hurting US National Security by weakening NATO so important to him?
The only person who benefits from Trumps proposed change in NATO policy is Putin.
My contention, and I will argue this point with anyone, is that Trumps statement on NATO has hurt American National Security more than any single act by any President in US History, and Trump managed to do that without ever being elected to any political office.
The Washington Posts Anne Applebaum put it this way:
For even if Trump never becomes president, his candidacy has already achieved two extremely important Russian foreign policy goals: to weaken the moral influence of the United States by undermining its reputation as a stable democracy, and to destroy its power by wrecking its relationships with its allies. Toward these ends, Trump has begun repeating arguments identical to those used on Russian state television. These range from doubts about the sovereignty of Ukraine earlier this week, Trumps campaign team helped alter the Republican party platform to remove support for Ukraine to doubts about U.S. leadership of the democratic world. The United States has its own mess to worry about, Trump told the New York Times on Wednesday: It shouldnt stand up for democracy abroad. In the same interview, he also cast doubt on the fundamental basis of transatlantic stability, NATOs Article 5 guarantee: If Russia invades, he said, hed have to think first before defending U.S. allies. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-a-trump-presidency-could-destabilize-europe/2016/07/21/9ec38a20-4f75-11e6-a422-83ab49ed5e6a_story.html
Ms Applebaum also alluded to Trump being an actual Manchurian candidate.
From the links on several of the points I noted above you can see that various major media organizations are starting to report on the kinds of things I have written about here. ABC News did an excellent piece on the hack and some of the other disturbing elements of seeming cooperation between Trump and Putin. See
Putin is a bully who has invaded and taken over pieces of half a dozen neighboring countries. The surest way to deter a bully is by a rock-solid alliance between countries so that the bully knows in no uncertain terms that if he attacks one of the alliance members, all will come to the aid of the country attacked with devastating consequences for the attacker. We saw what happened in the run-up to the Second World War when dictators exploited the reluctance of countries to support each other by swiftly taking over large portions of Europe and Asia. Trump is working to bring those same conditions about by eroding the support of NATO alliance countries for each other.
This is an enormous issue. Beyond all the other reasons why Trump would make a terrible President, this issue of Trump selling out American National Security to Russia stands above them all as a critical reason why Trump should not never be President.
For reference I included NATOs article 5 from http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm
Article 5
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security .
#TrumptheTraitor
#ManchurianCandidate
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)that his pal Putin would love to see.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)I wonder if President Obama can issue an order limiting those briefings.
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)is going places I hope
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)a link to this thread.
It felt good doing it, too.
Barack_America
(28,876 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Believe it or not, gossipy emails are not a crime.
Also, the DNC is not the enemy.
Also, the primary is over.
RonniePudding
(889 posts)Inform yourself.
ProudToBeBlueInRhody
(16,399 posts)Get informed
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)posing as bloggers to push Trump's candidacy -- for some time now. Although most of this particular action was aimed at the right, it seems likely the Kremlin hasn't completely neglected the left, especially the disaffected far left. In this election year, I think we should assume DU has been and is being trolled by Kremlin operatives or people recruited by them.
Russia's troll factories were, at one point, likely being paid by the Kremlin to spread pro-Trump propaganda on social media. That is what freelance journalist Adrian Chen, now a staff writer at The New Yorker, discovered as he was researching Russia's "army of well-paid trolls" for an explosive New York Times Magazine exposé published in June 2015.
"A very interesting thing happened," Chen told Longform's Max Linsky in a podcast in December. "I created this list of Russian trolls when I was researching. And I check on it once in a while, still. And a lot of them have turned into conservative accounts, like fake conservatives. I don't know what's going on, but they're all tweeting about Donald Trump and stuff," he said. ... "I feel like it's some kind of really opaque strategy of electing Donald Trump to undermine the US or something.
http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-internet-trolls-and-donald-trump-2016-7