John McCain sees Russia hacking as threat, at odds with Donald Trump
President-elect Donald Trump is the business titan who has spoken appreciatively of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Republican Sen. John McCain is the tough-talking national security hawk who warns that Russian interference in the U.S. election threatens to “destroy democracy.” McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, on Sunday joined Democrats in calling for a special select committee to investigate foreign cyberattacks, putting him at odds not only with the incoming GOP president but with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who favors allowing the Intelligence committee to take the lead on the inquiry. “We need a select committee. We need to get to the bottom of this. We need to find out exactly what was done and what the implications of the attacks were, especially if they had an effect on our election,” McCain said. “There’s no doubt they were interfering and no doubt that it was cyberattacks. The question now is how much and what damage and what should the United States of America do? And so far, we have been totally paralyzed.” Trump calls reports of Russian hacking “ridiculous” and his transition team dismissed the CIA assessment, saying it was the work of the same people who claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. CIA Director John Brennan has said the intelligence community is in agreement that Russia tried to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, though there’s no evidence Moscow succeeded in helping Trump win. But the charge, along with Trump’s selection of a potential secretary of state with business ties to Russia, has divided a GOP riven by a fierce presidential primary and Trump’s refusal to single out Moscow for criticism. The fractures within the Republican Party will test longstanding GOP orthodoxy that saw Russia as a threat and responded to Putin’s annexation of Crimea with tough sanctions. “I think reality is going to intercede at one point or another,” McCain said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” on the eve of the Electoral College vote expected to formalize Trump’s victory. Trump, McCain suggested, “will very quickly understand what the Russians are all about.” The Twitter-loving Trump did not immediately respond to McCain’s remarks. But the president-elect’s incoming chief of staff refused Sunday to say that the president-elect trusts the CIA’s conclusion that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee in a bid to help the real estate mogul defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. “They haven’t been totally up front and transparent in their opinion as to who, what, where and how this all happened,” Reince Priebus said of the intelligence community on “Fox News Sunday.” Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina said Friday that his Intelligence panel “will follow the intelligence wherever it leads.” McCain at Armed Services and Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of Foreign Relations, also plan inquiries. McCain joined Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Jack Reed in pressing for a select committee in a letter released Sunday. An aide to McConnell said he would review the letter. McCain and Trump have clashed throughout the campaign. Trump bashed McCain as a “loser” and “not a war hero” because he was shot down and captured during the Vietnam War. McCain criticized Trump for making disparaging remarks about NATO, immigrants, Muslims and a “Gold Star” family that lost a son in Iraq – and for refusing to say he’d accept the presidential election results unless he won. McCain dropped his tepid support for his party’s nominee in October over the release of a recording in which Trump boasts about assaulting women. President Barack Obama has ordered a full review of any Russian involvement before he leaves office next month. While Trump’s choice of Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state has drawn concern among some Republicans, he is expected to win confirmation despite ties to Russia. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
House chairman: Donald Trump favors privatizing air traffic control
A House committee chairman says President-elect Donald Trump likes the idea of spinning off air traffic control operations from the government and placing them under the control of a private, non-profit corporation chartered by Congress. Rep. Bill Shuster, head of the House transportation committee, told The Associated Press that he spoke to Trump about the idea several times both before and during the presidential election. He said he believes the president-elect would be supportive, although details would have to be worked out. “I have spoken to him on a number of occasions and he generally likes the idea,” Shuster said. “We do need to sit down and put meat on the bones … I think in general he sees it as something that’s positive and we need to work on it.” The Republican lawmaker endorsed Trump early on and campaigned twice with him in his Pennsylvania congressional district. He also campaigned twice with Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Since the election, Shuster has met with Shirley Ybarra, a former Virginia transportation secretary who is working with the Trump transition team on transportation matters. Ybarra and the Trump transition team didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Shuster and most of the airline industry have been pressing for air traffic control privatization. They say the Federal Aviation Administration is moving too slowly to adopt new technology and that airlines haven’t seen the benefits they expected from the agency’s air traffic control modernization program, which has been in the works for more than a decade. Earlier this year, Shuster included a plan to privatize air traffic control in a bill to extend the FAA’s operating authority. The bill was approved by the transportation committee, but Shuster was unable to get it to the House floor after several influential lawmakers, including the Ways and Means Committee chairman and the House and Senate Appropriations Committee chairmen, raised objections. Democrats, some segments of the aviation industry and some FAA unions also oppose the plan, although the National Air Traffic Controllers Association endorsed the bill. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee chairman and Shuster’s Senate counterpart, hasn’t taken a position on the issue. He said Friday that the FAA hasn’t been successful in bringing fundamental change to how air traffic is managed despite spending billions of dollars. “Congress has different options, and we will continue to explore them, but the case for changing the FAA’s approach to air traffic control modernization has become stronger,” Thune told the AP. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., the senior Democrat on the House transportation committee, cautioned earlier this week that any proposal to overhaul the existing air traffic system “must be thoroughly vetted, not rushed through Congress just because the political landscape makes it easier.” Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., raised objections Friday to what he described as an attempt by House proponents of air traffic control privatization to include language in a defense policy bill that would effectively squelch military objections to the plan. Nelson described his concerns in a letter Friday to Senate Armed Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the committee’s senior Democrat. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Martin Dyckman: Supreme Court vacancy makes GOP Senate just as bad as Donald Trump
It’s in our genes here in America that the losers of an election congratulate the winners and we all move on. That’s more than good manners. It’s the survival instinct of any democracy. Donald Trump‘s contempt for that disgusts Republicans as well as Democrats and independents. But look closer. There are 54 members of his party who are already denying the outcome of an election — the last one. And, like Trump, they’re threatening to defy the results of the next one. I’m talking about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the 53 sheep in his fold, Although President Obama was re-elected for a four-year term, the Party of No declared it over three years, one month and 25 days after his inauguration. That’s when Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, and the Republicans refused even to give him a hearing. The Republicans, frustrated and embarrassed by the failure of McConnell’s pledge to make Obama a one-term president, now hold that Supreme Court vacancies during a president’s last year are for the next president to fill. That is unfounded anywhere in the Constitution or Senate rules, and it’s in direct conflict with the most recent precedent. Justice Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in February 1988, the last year of Ronald Reagan‘s term, by a unanimous vote. Now, the Republican senators are making a threat scarcely less irresponsible than Trump’s. They’re saying they won’t confirm any Hillary Clinton nominee to the Supreme Court. This is how John McCain put it in an unguarded moment during a talk show interview on behalf of Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who’s in well-deserved danger of losing his seat. “I promise,” McCain said, “that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up. I promise you. This is where we need the majority, and Pat Toomey is probably as articulate and effective on the floor of the Senate as anyone I have encountered. “This is the strongest argument I can make to return Pat Toomey, so we can make sure there are not three places on the United States Supreme Court that will change this country for decades.” To put it the other way, it’s the strongest argument for subtracting Marco Rubio in Florida, Richard Burr in North Carolina, Toomey in Pennsylvania and every other Republican incumbent — including, sad to say, McCain himself — from any future Senate majority. I have always respected McCain for his service and suffering as a prisoner of war, as a senator who often sought bipartisan compromise on campaign reform and other issues, and — until his inexplicable choice of a running mate — as a candidate for president. But this is too much. He’s saying that even if a majority of the American people elects Hillary Clinton, the Senate owes those voters no respect. That’s power politics at its worst. It didn’t take McCain, and others, very long to see that they needed to pull the foot from his mouth. He’s now promising to consider any nominee she sends up fairly. But not necessarily to vote for him or her, no matter the qualifications. What they’re really saying is that if she doesn’t send them more Antonin Scalias, they’ll let the court stay short-handed. “There is talk,” writes Joe Klein in TIME, “of blocking all Supreme Court nominees until the court withers down to a seven-person bench with a conservative majority.” The Republicans have controlled the Supreme Court since Ronald Reagan, and the country is worse off in many ways for it. This election is indeed a referendum on the court. Since the Republicans are preparing to ignore it, they deserve to forfeit the Senate as well as the presidency. The Democrats will pick up Senate seats, perhaps enough for a majority, but not enough for the 60 to break a filibuster. So there’s talk of using the so-called nuclear option, a loophole in Senate rules, to eliminate filibusters against Supreme Court nominees. This has already been done with respect to lower-ranking judicial vacancies, although senators can still single-handedly block nominees from their states. To do that for the Supreme Court will require a Democratic majority or at least 50 seats with Tim Kaine casting the vice president’s tiebreaker. Since both parties have used — and abused — the filibuster, neither is comfortable about trashing it. But a less drastic remedy is possible. At the outset of the next term, when a simple majority can change Senate rules, the Democrats could — and should — provide that the Senate would be deemed to have consented to a nomination once 60 or 90 days have passed without an up-or-down vote. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” wrote the former British Parliamentarian Lord Acton in 1887. American conservatives are particularly fond of that familiar phrase, but those in the U.S. Senate don’t seem to think that it applies to them. It’s time for the voters to remind them that it does. ___ Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the newspaper formerly known as the Tampa Bay Times. He lives in suburban Asheville, North Carolina.
Day after debate, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton square off again at roast
Bitter presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have one more face-to-face showdown before Election Day. And they’re supposed to make it funny. The venue just 24 hours after their third and final debate is the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York, a white-tie gala that every four years becomes a showcase for presidential politics. Tradition dictates that the candidates deliver humorous remarks poking fun at each other and themselves, a jovial custom that seems hard to envision amid such an ugly campaign. Trump regularly calls Clinton, “Crooked Hillary,” mocks her stamina and says he’d put her in jail if he wins the presidency. Clinton says he lives in his own reality, is running a “hateful, divisive campaign” and lacks the temperament to be president. They will sit just one seat apart for the evening, with New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan acting as the only buffer. “I certainly expect that the dinner will be what it’s always been: an opportunity for two candidates to put aside partisan politics for the evening,” said Joseph Zwilling, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, which hosts the dinner. “I anticipate that we will have good humor and civility that this dinner has been always been known for.” The unprecedentedly bitter campaign between Clinton and Trump could threaten the ecumenical goodwill that has defined previous roasts. Since 1960, at least one of the major party nominees has appeared at nearly every election year dinner, which is traditionally the last time the nominees share a stage before voters go to the polls. Four years ago, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney set aside their differences to trade (mostly) warm jokes. Romney, scanning the well-heeled crowd in the gilded Waldorf-Astoria ballroom, joked that the event’s white-tie attire finally gave him a chance to publicly don what “Ann and I wear around the house.” Obama, meanwhile, used his speech that year to look ahead to an upcoming debate on foreign policy, previewing his argument by saying “Spoiler alert: we got Bin Laden.” Trump will speak first Thursday night, then Clinton. Neither campaign opted to preview their candidate’s remarks and aides for both declined comment on the evening other than to confirm that each nominee will be there. The evening might feel familiar to Trump, who infamously glowered through Obama’s jokes at his expense during the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner and is not known for being self-deprecating. Last weekend, he tweeted that he did not appreciate Saturday Night Live’s portrayal of him in a sendup of the candidates’ performances in the second presidential debate. This is the first time that both party’s nominees hail from New York State as a crowd of about 1,500 gathers for the distinctly Gotham event, held each October. Attendees pay between $3,000 and $15,000 to attend the dinner, which raises about $5 million to provide services for impoverished children, Zwilling said. The dinner is named after the former New York governor, who was the first Catholic to receive a major party nomination for president when he unsuccessfully ran in 1928. And fittingly for an event named after a man nicknamed “The Happy Warrior,” the occasion has produced dozens of memorable presidential jokes. In 2000, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush gazed upon the glitzy gathering and declared: “This is an impressive crowd, the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.” That same year, Vice President Al Gore touted his campaign trail ability to weave in stories “of real people in the audience and their everyday challenges.” “Like the woman here tonight whose husband is about to lose his job,” Gore continued. “She’s struggling to get out of public housing and get a job of her own. Hillary Clinton, I want to fight for you.” And in 2008, John McCain joked about the exalted manner in which the media venerated Obama, noting that “‘Maverick’ I can do, but ‘Messiah’ is above my pay grade.” But he wound down his remarks with a note of grace that, to this point, has been largely absent from the 2016 campaign. “I can’t wish my opponent luck,” McCain said, turning toward Obama, “but I do wish him well.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
For Hillary Clinton, election likely to be won or lost in October
Each night, Hillary Clinton‘s data experts head to a conference room on the 11th floor of her Brooklyn headquarters, to start counting votes. The sessions in the “early voter boiler room,” as it’s been dubbed by campaign aides, stretch into the early hours of the morning. The team pores over turnout patterns in states where advance voting is already underway, projects how many votes Clinton and Republican Donald Trump have already received, and updates crucial targeting lists of the voters she still needs. For Clinton, October is when she’s likely to win or lose the election, not Nov. 8. By the third week of this month, Clinton’s campaign hopes to have a solid enough sample of the early vote to know whether the Democrat is on track to win the White House. “Many battleground states are already voting so every day is Election Day,” said Matt Dover, Clinton’s voter analytics director. In several competitive states, including North Carolina, Iowa, Colorado, Florida and Nevada, at least 45 percent of the total vote is expected to come in early. Initial metrics show good news for Clinton in North Carolina, a must-win state for Trump. There are modestly positive signs for the Republican in Iowa, but that’s a state the Democrat can likely afford to lose. The Republican National Committee, which oversees early voting and turnout operations for Trump, is also encouraging supporters to take advantage of opportunities to cast ballots before Nov. 8. The party has significantly stepped up its analytics and voter-targeting operations since being outmatched by Democrats in the past two presidential elections, but the 2016 race is the first test of its strength in a national election. Despite improvements, the RNC system was always intended to be a complement to whatever operations the eventual GOP nominee brought to the table. Trump arrived in the general election with intense enthusiasm among his core supporters but few ways to harness it into trackable voter data. Unlike Clinton, whose travel schedule is being built around voter registration deadlines and the start of early voting in key states, Trump’s battleground stops haven’t been pegged to those benchmarks. However, there is a noticeably more robust registration effort at Trump rallies and the candidate himself is making explicit early voting appeals to supporters. “Get those ballots in because the only way this is going to be taken away (is) if we’re foolish or if we let people take it away from us,” Trump said Monday during a rally in Colorado. “I hate to interrupt my speech with these minor details but they’re very important, right?” Republicans traditionally do well initially with mail-in absentee balloting before Democrats surpass them during in-person early voting. That makes the start of in-person voting a key indicator as to whether core Democratic constituencies, such as young people and non-whites, show up. “For me, voting early is a matter of convenience, and if I don’t do it I’m unlikely to vote at all,” said Joseph Wozniak, 23, of Macon, Georgia. A recent college graduate who declined to say who he is supporting in the election, Wozniak is working on early vote efforts for the non-partisan organization Democracy Works. Thirty-seven states allow voting with little restriction before Election Day, either in person or via mail. By the third week in October, 34 of those states will be voting. Iowa was the first of the battlegrounds to start in-person voting last Thursday. Of the 39,435 people who have cast ballots, 58 percent were Democrats and 25 percent were Republicans — but that was much closer than in 2012. In North Carolina, buoyed by strong voter interest, Clinton appears to hold an edge with Democratic ballots submitted so far currently leading Republican ones, 40 to 35 percent. At this point in 2012, Republicans had opened a wide lead over Democrats in ballots, due in part to strong support among older whites. For 2016, Clinton officials pointed in particular to a 13 percent increase in African-American and a 40 percent jump in Latino mail-in ballot requests. To them, it’s a hopeful sign that non-whites and young people will be engaged this election, part of a shift in campaign strategy to more strongly mobilize less reliable, sporadic voters first. Still, the campaign said it will have a much clearer picture once in-person voting begins in the state on Oct. 20. Similarly in Florida, absentee balloting began only Tuesday, but already more than 2.5 million people — nearly one-third of the total number of votes cast in 2012 — have requested ballots. In-person voting doesn’t begin until Oct. 24, so state Democrats are now strongly urging voters to vote by mail — including in a letter from President Barack Obama paid for by the party. “In Florida, voting is easier than ever because now you can vote by mail,” he writes. “It’s the fastest and most convenient way to make your voice heard.” In Obama’s historic 2008 race, he ran up such big early voting advantages in four battlegrounds — Colorado, Florida, Iowa and North Carolina — that his rival, John McCain, couldn’t catch up, despite winning the Election Day vote in those states, according to AP data. If all goes according to the Clinton campaign’s plan, early ballots soon enough will start to unequivocally point in the same direction. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Pentagon officials draw sharp questions from GOP on Syria
The nation’s top military officials faced sharp questions on Thursday from Republicans angry that the Obama administration is not taking more aggressive steps to end the 5-year-old-civil war in Syria. A senior GOP senator dismissed Secretary of State John Kerry as “intrepid but delusional” for trying to work with Russia. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the GOP-led Senate Armed Services Committee after the latest attempt to secure a cease-fire in Syria all but collapsed. Republicans are skeptical, even hostile, to the idea that Russia is a willing partner for peace and would work with the United States to combat Islamic State militants and al-Qaida. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the committee’s chairman, opened the hearing by saying that the administration “still has no plausible vision of an end-state for Syria.” Instead, McCain said that while Russian and Syrian aircraft “bombed hospitals, markets, aid warehouses, and other civilian targets, President Obama sent his intrepid but delusional secretary of state to tilt yet again at the windmill of cooperating with” Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a defense hawk and one of President Barack Obama‘s most vocal critics, said he anticipated the hearing will be contentious because of mounting frustration among lawmakers over a lack of a coherent strategy for ending the conflict. “I expect this to be confrontational,” Graham said. “At the end of the day, I think Congress needs to challenge what’s going on in Syria.” The failure to establish a no-fly zone in the country’s north to protect Syrians from the bombing has been a mistake, according to Graham, and he also criticized the reliance on Kurdish fighters the U.S. has been supporting in the fight against the Islamic State. Although the battle-hardened Kurds have proven to be effective, their success has alarmed Turkey, which is grappling with a Kurdish insurgency in its southeast. Although Turkey has repeatedly called for a no-fly zone, the Obama administration has resisted, unwilling to wade too deeply into an intractable conflict. Tensions between Russia and the United States have only heightened in recent days after authorities in Washington determined with a very high degree of confidence that an attack on a humanitarian aid convoy in Syria earlier this week was carried out by a Russian-piloted aircraft. The assessment laid more deliberate blame on Moscow for the strike on the Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy, which killed 20 civilians. Washington had said Tuesday that Russia was to blame, but that the strike delivered by a Russian-made Su-24 could have been carried out by Russia or Syria. Both militaries use Su-24 fighter jets. But officials said Wednesday the U.S. has gathered enough intelligence to say that it was Russia, not Syria, that launched the airstrike. Kerry called for all warplanes to halt flights over aid routes and at a U.N. Security Council session he raised “profound doubt” about the willingness of Russia and Syria to abide by the cease-fire. The Sept. 9 truce envisioned a U.S.-Russian military partnership against the Islamic State and al-Qaida if violence was reduced and aid delivered over the course of seven continuous days. The Pentagon, however, voiced reservations about coordinating air strikes and sharing intelligence with Russia. McCain assailed the potential partnership, saying it would “mean that the U.S. military would effectively own future Russian airstrikes in the eyes of the world.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Martin Dyckman: Supreme Court nominees no reason to elect Donald Trump
Some Republicans to whom Donald Trump is the skunk at their garden party would have you elect him president nevertheless. Mark Sanford is one. When last heard of, he was the governor of South Carolina, canoodling with a mistress in Argentina while his office pretended that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Now he’s a congressman, and he had an op-ed in The New York Times last week (Aug. 14) strongly criticizing Trump for refusing to release his tax returns. Trump’s obstinacy “will have consequences,” Sanford said. It “would hurt transparency in our democratic process, and particularly in how voters evaluate the men and women vying to be our leaders. “Whether he wins or loses, that is something our country cannot afford.” Hear, hear. But Sanford also hedged his bets. “I am a conservative Republican who, though I have no stomach for his personal style and his penchant for regularly demeaning others, intends to support my party’s nominee because of the importance of filling the existing vacancy on the Supreme Court, and others that might open in the next four years,” he wrote. There you have it. To Sanford, keeping Hillary Clinton from appointing new justices is worth letting everything else go to hell. The government, the country, maybe the world and certainly the court. Trump might even nominate his conspicuous Florida cheerleader Pam Bondi. Sanford isn’t the only Republican who has sold out for fear of a liberalized Supreme Court. That’s probably a factor with Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and John McCain too. Independents and die-hard Hillary-hating Democrats need to pay attention. If they don’t vote for her, they could have themselves to blame for making the Supreme Court a right-wing rat hole for another generation. Republicans want a court that would uphold their state-by-state voter suppression schemes, shut its eyes to maliciously partisan gerrymandering, and make it impossible rather than merely difficult to sue people like Trump for consumer fraud, environmental pollution and other white collar crimes. The Citizens United atrocity would continue to leave Congress in the grip of the Koch brothers and their allied oligarchs. Clinton vows to appoint justices who would repeal that monumentally bad Supreme Court decision. Trump doesn’t make that promise. He does, however, assure the religious right that his justices would repeal Roe v. Wade. Exacting such commitments from future judges is another of those developments the Founders didn’t anticipate. They had the idealistic, if naive, view that integrity and competence would govern who got appointed. But we have to take the world as it is, and there’s no shortage of capable lawyers who have declared that Citizens United was wrongly decided. Four of the justices at the time said so too. The court has a history of renouncing prior decisions as wrongly decided or simply no longer applicable. It trashed two precedents in Citizens United. Although Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion more or less rationalized that full disclosure would restrain corporate election spending, that hasn’t happened. Dark money by the billions is sinking the ship of state. And in South Dakota, the Kochtopus is fiercely fighting a ballot initiative that would require public disclosure of donors to advocacy campaigns, create a state ethics commission and provide public financing of political campaigns. Fortunately, there are Republicans who disagree that the court is reason enough to sacrifice everything else. John Yoo and Jeremy Rabkin, law professors in California, are two of them. Writing in the Los Angeles Times Aug. 14, they described the dangerous world we live in and warned that a Trump presidency “invites a cascade of global crises.” Moreover, they argued, conservatives should not take Trump’s word that he would appoint suitable justices or that the Senate would confirm them. “Even if Trump were to win in November, it is in the legislative and executive branches that conservatives will have to win their most important battles,” they wrote. “Does Trump look like the man to lead them?” Yoo’s opposition is really noteworthy. He was the deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration who wrote the notorious memos condoning extreme methods of interrogating terrorism suspects, including waterboarding. That’s a form of torture that Trump is salivating to resume. If even Yoo can’t stomach Trump, what does that tell us? ___ Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the newspaper now known as the Tampa Bay Times. He lives in suburban Asheville, North Carolina.
Martin Dyckman: Donald Trump’s America on trial in modern day ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’
Above all, there was fear: fear of today, fear of tomorrow … fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves … Only when you understand that, can you understand what Hitler meant to us: “Lift your heads. Be proud to be German. There are devils among us: Communists, liberals, Jews, Gypsies. Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.” Those words are from the 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg. They address an eternal question: Why do good people do terrible things? The speaker, Ernest Janning, played by Burt Lancaster, is a former German judge on trial before an Allied tribunal for crimes he committed in service to the Third Reich. He had been a decent man, widely respected for his legal acumen and his integrity. Now, over the objection of his defense attorney, he insists on testifying for the prosecution. He is explaining why he conducted a show trial of an elderly Jewish man falsely accused of sexual relations with a Gentile woman, and why he determined to convict him and sentence him to death even before hearing any testimony … It was because the future of Germany was at stake. And if a few minorities had to suffer, so be it. The screenplay was closely modeled on actual events, including a Nazi show trial, and on the excuses that “good” Germans gave for their participation. Turner Classic Movies showed the film the other night (Aug. 11). Whether the scheduling had to do with the current election campaign I don’t know. But the timing couldn’t have been better. Comparisons with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany should be made rarely lest they trivialize those monstrosities. But there is much — too much — about Donald Trump and his campaign that resembles them. Only the targets of Trump’s demagoguery are different. The methods are the same. He cannot tell a truth if there’s a lie to be told. He peddles fear and capitalizes on hate. He whips his crowds into froths of rage against Hillary Clinton and against reporters whose lives, too, he puts in danger by targeting them at his rallies. The Secret Service had to see to the safety of one of them. All across our country — in schools, on streets, at public meetings, and even from pulpits — Trump’s venom is being echoed in denunciations and harassment of Americans because of their religious faith. In New York City Saturday, an imam and his assistant were murdered execution-style on a city street. The motive remains unknown, but it would surprise no one if it turns out to be a hate crime. The message of Judgment at Nuremberg is not that such things happen. It is, rather, in the question that Ernest Janning asks during his confession: “What of those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies, and worse than lies. Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country … “And then, one day, we looked around … and found that we were in an even more terrible danger.” We should take that scene as a parable for what’s happening in the United States of America right now. We are in terrible danger — though it appears to be diminishing — of debasing our country and endangering the world with the most unprepared, unsuited and unworthy person who has ever sought the presidency. “I think he’s mentally unstable., I think he’s dangerously unqualified,” says former Sen. Gordon Humphrey of New Hampshire, the latest prominent Republican to put country above party. That’s what John McCain should be doing too. But McCain still pretends that Trump is fit for the presidency. If Trump’s death threat against Clinton didn’t shock McCain’s conscience, what could? Surely McCain knows better. Surely, so do Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and other Republicans who have mortgaged their reputations to the delusion that Trump would be better than Clinton. Or is it just because they crave to share in the power of a Trump presidency? Do they miscalculate, as so many Germans once did, that they could control the monster they are making? If the polls are correct, Trump will lose. But the dangerous hatreds he deliberately inflames will continue to fester. We will all be the losers for that. And those who know better but who continue to support him, with endorsements or money or even with just their silence, will have lost more than an election. They will have forfeited the respect of people who once admired them. ___ Martin Dyckman is a retired columnist and editorial writer for the newspaper now known as the Tampa Bay Times. He lives in suburban Asheville, North Carolina.
Donald Trump to try to steady campaign with economic speech
Donald Trump is trying to shift from a disastrous stretch of his presidential campaign to one focused on policy and party unity. But even as his allies speak of lessons the political newcomer has learned, two of his staunchest Republican critics warn that he could be heading for losses in a pair of battleground states. Trump is set to deliver an economic speech on Monday to the prestigious Detroit Economic Club in his effort to step past his spats over the past 10 days with the Muslim-American parents of a slain Army captain and the leaders of a Republican Party he has promised to unite. “Mr. Trump on Monday will lay out a vision that’s a growth economic plan” that will focus on cutting taxes, cutting regulation, energy development and boosting middle-class wages, campaign chairman Paul Manafort said in remarks broadcast Sunday on Fox Business. “When we do that, we’re comfortable that we can get the agenda and the narrative of the campaign back on where it belongs, which is comparing the tepid economy under Obama and Clinton, versus the kind of growth economy that Mr. Trump wants to build.” What came before Monday’s speech, Manafort suggested, doesn’t count in the race to Election Day on Nov. 8. “It’s a three-month campaign,” he said. Trump may have done irreversible damage in two critical states, Arizona and Ohio, with an approach to immigration reform that some say is divisive, two fellow Republicans say. Trump wants to build a wall between the United States and Mexico and now says he wants to suspend immigration from “terror countries” — though he has yet to say what those are. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who lost the Republican nomination to Trump, has not endorsed the billionaire and skipped the party’s convention in Cleveland, said Trump faces a difficult climb in a state that’s a must-win for Republican presidential candidates. “He’s going to win parts of Ohio, where people are really hurting. There will be sections he will win because people are angry, frustrated and haven’t heard any answers,” Kasich said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” ”But I still think it’s difficult if you are dividing, to be able to win in Ohio. I think it’s really, really difficult.” In an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said, “Yes, it is possible” that Democrat Hillary Clinton could beat Trump in his state, noting that Bill Clinton won Arizona in 1996 and that Hispanics represent about a third of the Arizona population. “You can’t just throw platitudes out there about a wall or about Mexico paying for it and then be taken seriously here,” Flake said. Clinton is expected to deliver her own economic plan to the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday. That’s who Republicans want to see Trump fighting — the former senator and secretary of state, not Republicans and others. It’s a message furious senior members of the party carried to Trump privately and publicly in the days after Trump last week refused in a Washington Post interview to endorse the re-election bids of House Speaker Paul Ryan, Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. The trio had strongly disapproved of Trump’s fight with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, Muslim-Americans whose son, Capt. Humayun Khan, was killed in Iraq in 2004. On Friday at a Wisconsin rally not attended by Ryan or Gov. Scott Walker, Trump reversed course and endorsed all three lawmakers, saying, “We have to unite.” “If you look at the last few days, I think he’s gotten the messages,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on “Fox News Sunday.” ”It’s very tricky if you’ve never run for public office, to jump from being a businessman to being one of the two leaders fighting for the presidency, and he’s made some mistakes.” Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on ABC’s “This Week” that Trump’s endorsements show he “has the ability and the understanding to realize that there are going to be disagreements and you’ve got to be able to reach out to the entire party.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Campaign chair plays down Donald Trump-Paul Ryan rift
The Latest on the U.S. presidential campaign (all times local): 7:55 a.m. Donald Trump‘s campaign chairman is playing down a rift between the Republican nominee and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Paul Manafort acknowledged “a conflict within the Trump campaign” after vice presidential candidate Mike Pence endorsed Ryan a day after Trump declined to do so. Manafort spoke on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Manafort the campaign has “sort of had a rule of not getting involved in primaries.” He said Ryan’s primary rival “is not going to win,” but noted he has supported Trump. “Of course, he’s going to work with Paul Ryan,” Manafort said Trump has “tried to bridge the party together” with Ryan. 3:20 a.m. Donald Trump’s running mate Mike Pence has tried to focus on winning over conservatives who are skeptical of the New York billionaire, but his new boss keeps getting in the way. The Indiana governor has been called on several times to do damage control this past week after the Republican presidential nominee made incendiary remarks. Trump feuded publicly with the family of deceased Army Capt. Humayun Khan after they criticized Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric. Trump also refused to endorse Arizona Sen. John McCain and Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan. Pence responded by saying Khan’s family should be cherished. He also had a meeting with McCain and publicly endorsed Ryan. There’s no indication Trump is unsatisfied with Pence’s approach. Some supporters hope Pence will counterbalance Trump’s more provocative remarks. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
In blow to GOP unity, Donald Trump refuses to back Paul Ryan, John McCain
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is refusing to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. John McCain just two weeks after pledging to bring the fractured GOP together at the party’s nominating convention. He also ripped into New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte in the same interview with the Washington Post. All three have primary challengers, and all three disapproved of Trump’s criticism of the Muslim American parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq. Trump’s refutation of Ryan, the nation’s most senior elected Republican, carried particular derision. “I’m just not there yet,” Trump said in the interview. Those are very close to the words Ryan used in the long months before he endorsed Trump, telling CNN on May 6, “I’m not there right now.” Ryan never sought Trump’s endorsement, his spokesman said. “Neither Speaker Ryan nor anyone on his team has ever asked for Donald Trump’s endorsement,” said Zack Roday, Ryan’s campaign spokesman. “And we are confident in a victory next week regardless.” The billionaire celebrity famous for retaliating when he feels insulted also refused to endorse McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam who Trump previously derided for having been captured. “I’ve never been there with John McCain because I’ve always felt that he should have done a much better job for the vets,” Trump told the newspaper Tuesday. “So I’ve always had a difficult time with John for that reason, because our vets are not being treated properly. They’re not being treated fairly.” As for Ayotte, who is running for a second Senate term and skipped the Republican National Convention, Trump said: “You have a Kelly Ayotte who doesn’t want to talk about Trump, but I’m beating her in the polls by a lot.” “We need loyal people in this country,” Trump added in the interview. “We need fighters in this country. We don’t need weak people.” McCain is a locked in a three-way race ahead of an August 30 primary. The primary for Ryan’s House seat is next week and Ayotte’s primary is next month. All three have said they would support Trump as the GOP presidential nominee. All three chided Trump for engaging in a flap with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart after his death in 2004. From the podium of the Democratic National Convention, Khizr Khan criticized Trump’s position on Muslims and asked whether the real estate mogul had read the Constitution. Trump said the grieving father had “no right” to criticize him but later acknowledged their son is a hero. McCain’s response was a lengthy denunciation in which he said the GOP nomination does not confer on Trump “unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.” Ryan condemned any criticism of Muslim-Americans who serve their country. “Captain Khan was one such brave example. His sacrifice – and that of Khizr and Ghazala Khan – should always be honored. Period,” Ryan said. Ayotte declared she was “appalled” by Trump’s spat with the Khans. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Donald Trump’s trap: GOP nominee can’t let go of perceived slights
For Donald Trump, it’s become a familiar pattern. The Republican nominee can’t let go of a perceived slight, no matter the potential damage to his presidential campaign or political reputation. Trump spent the days after winning the Republican nomination criticizing a U.S. district court judge’s Mexican heritage. The morning after accepting the Republican nomination at the party’s convention, Trump re-litigated months-old grievances with primary rival Ted Cruz. Now, he’s sparring with an American Muslim family whose son was killed in Iraq. Republican leaders have urged Trump to drop his attacks on Khizr and Ghazala Khan, who appeared at last week’s Democratic convention and harshly criticized the GOP nominee. It’s not just the optics of picking a fight with a military family that has GOP officials eager for Trump to move on, but the timing of his attacks: Election Day is just three months away. Those who have worked with Trump say that in private meetings, he can often appear amenable to putting a controversy aside. But the businessman can quickly be drawn back in by an interview, especially if he believes he’s already answered the question, or if he grows irritated by commentary on cable television. “It’s just who he is,” said Stuart Jolly, a former campaign staffer and current political director for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. Others who have worked with Trump say the only way to ensure he moves on is to wait for him to tire of an issue or get drawn into another matter. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who has advised Trump, said the candidate’s inability to back away from a political land mine “makes him vulnerable.” “His whole experience up until running for office was in a very combative New York media market,” Gingrich said. “He’s been doing it now for over 30 years. It’s a very deeply held habit.” Khizr Kahn delivered an emotional address at last week’s Democratic convention, with his wife standing by his side. The Pakistan-born Khan told the story of his son, U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart after his death in 2004. Khan said that if Trump were president and enacted his proposed temporary ban on foreign Muslims coming to the U.S., a position Trump has backed away from in recent weeks, his son would have never been allowed into the country. He also questioned whether Trump had ever read the Constitution. Trump responded by implying Ghazala Khan’s religion preventing her from speaking at the convention, though she later said talking publicly about her late son was still too difficult. On Monday, Trump tweeted that he was being “viciously attacked” by Khizr Khan. Trump’s unwillingness to let the matter subside sparked outrage Monday from a chorus of Republicans. Arizona Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war, said Trump did not have “unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.” Rep. Mike Coffman, a vulnerable Republican in a competitive Colorado district, said he was “deeply offended when Donald Trump fails to honor the sacrifices of all of our brave soldiers who were lost in that war.” Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt said the Khans “deserve to be heard and respected.” “My advice to Donald Trump has been and will continue to be to focus on jobs and national security and stop responding to every criticism whether it’s from a grieving family or Hillary Clinton,” Blunt said in a statement. However, none of the Republican lawmakers pulled back their support of Trump’s White House campaign. In his first rally after a weekend of controversy, Trump spoke at length and took several questions at an event Monday in Columbus, Ohio — never once mentioning the Khans. But when asked about Khizr Khan on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Trump responded, “I guess it’s part of my life.” “His son died 12 years ago,” Trump added. “If I were president, his son wouldn’t have died, because I wouldn’t have been in the war, if I was president back then.” Trump backers attending the Ohio rally dismissed the issue, underscoring how the businessman was able to survive numerous such firestorms in the GOP primaries. “I think the Democrats laid a trap for him,” said Tom McClanahan, a 54-year-old from Johnston, Ohio. “I think they knew what they were doing when they asked that family to speak at the convention. They knew he’d respond.” Dale Brown, a maintenance supervisor from Grove City, Ohio, whose son is in the Navy, said Democrats were blowing Trump’s comments out of proportion and had “politicized this by asking that family to speak.” But the real test for Trump isn’t the opinion of the loyal supporters who attend his rallies. It’s the broader general election audience, a far more diverse group still weighing Trump’s readiness for the White House. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
