I can no longer justify calling myself a Trump supporter

[MASTERBAKER]

I can no longer justify calling myself a Trump supporter


By Andrea Peyser
August 7, 2016 | 9:32pm


That’s all, folks! I’m out.

Embracing the presidential aspirations of Donald Trump was, from the start, an exercise in magical thinking. In my heart, I wanted the smack-talking, hair-challenged, self-absorbed New York City billionaire Republican to nail down this baby.

But in my head? Not so much.

I’ve hung out with Trump, 70, many times over the years, professionally, socially and in wacky combinations of the two. I interviewed him inside a stretch limo in New Hampshire in 2011 about his White House ambitions. But the chat devolved into a madcap dash through Podunk streets too small for his ride — or his ego. Trump soon got palpably bored with the Granite State and the presidency, and started motor-mouthing about “Celebrity Apprentice’’ and his suspicion, which was proven wrong, that President Obama was born in Kenya. He asked the driver to drop him off at his private chopper emblazoned with the name “TRUMP’’ for the trip home.

”Want a ride in my helicopter?’’ he asked me. Not wanting to find myself airborne over the Throgs Neck Bridge with no exit strategy, I begged off.

Here is a guy with the common touch, but the attention span of a flea. He’s someone voters would enjoy having a beer with, even though he doesn’t drink alcohol. Can you imagine the torture of sharing a Bud Light with Democrat Hillary Clinton?

But some of us smitten with his shoot-from-the-lip style have reached our limits.

I think Trump secretly doesn’t want the prize. Why would he crave spending endless hours in policy meetings, cavorting with miserable domestic and world leaders and abandoning his collection of obscenely opulent abodes to live in public housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, DC?

His penthouse, which sprawls over the 66th, 67th and 68th floors of Trump Tower, looks like the palace of Louis XIV — if the French king mated with Liberace, with 24-karat-gold accents adorning everything from the lamps to the china, marble bathtubs and a vaulted living room ceiling painted with a fresco of scantily clad babes.

When I visited about two months after his lovely wife, Melania, now 46, gave birth to the couple’s son, Barron, now 10, the infamous germophobe boasted that after fathering five children, he’d never changed a diaper.

I enthused that Melania, who stood quietly nearby aboard 5-inch stilettos, had lost all her baby weight. Trump corrected me: “She’s almost lost all the baby weight.’’

I was embarrassed for the mother of his youngest kid, who ignored the dig. Trump staffers asked a photographer and me to put sterile cotton booties over our shoes so as not to sully the carpet. It was time to get the hell out of the loony bin.

My all-time favorite Hollywood GOP curmudgeon, Clint Eastwood, 86, told Esquire magazine in the September issue that we’re living in a “p—y generation’’ beholden to political correctness. Trump, he said, is “onto something.’’ But he stopped short of endorsing him.

Trump picked a stupid fight with the Muslim Gold Star parents of 27-year-old Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004. Sure, dad Khizr Khan put the candidate on the spot while at the Democratic National Convention. Holding up a copy of the US Constitution, he needled Trump — “Have you even read the Constitution?’’


Trump could have said he’s sorry for the Khans’ loss, and left it at that.

Instead, he said the dad had “no right’’ to “viciously’’ criticize him, and accused the slain soldier’s mom, Ghazala Khan, of standing by silently as her husband spoke because she is Muslim. (She later said she was too distraught to speak.)

And Trump won’t back down from his lunacy and bigotry.

I can no longer justify calling myself a Trumpkin. I’m done with The Donald. Let’s grab a beer — or I will — and call it quits.

Addicted to coddling criminals
President Obama released from federal prison or slashed the sentences of 214 inmates last week, the largest one-day springing since at least 1900 — many of them minorities he termed nonviolent drug offenders. But his clemency spree helped criminals who not just used but sold garbage, and more than 50 who brandished firearms while engaging in “nonviolent’’ trafficking.

Independently, the affluenza-afflicted Cameron Douglas, 37-year-old scion of Hollywood royalty — son of Michael Douglas, 71, grandson of Kirk Douglas, 99, stepson of Catherine Zeta-Jones, 46 — was released from a federal lockup to a halfway house after serving nearly seven years for drug dealing and possession. He landed a glamorous job at a film production company in New York City. A source told The Post’s Page Six he plans to write a tell-all book about his “struggle” growing up among icons.

Wealthy druggies have it over ordinary, coddled junkies and pushers. They get bigger breaks.

Face it, Renée – looks matter
You signed up for this life, Renée. Renée Zellweger, 47, went nuclear over two years of rampant media reports speculating that she had undergone plastic surgery.

“Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I did not make a decision to alter my face and have surgery on my eyes,” she wrote in the Huffington Post, slamming the claim as “sexist.”

With her new film “Bridget Jones’s Baby’’ set to open next month, she went on the tear after a piece was published in Variety in June by the mag’s chief film critic, Owen Gleiberman, headlined, “Renée Zellweger: If She No Longer Looks Like Herself, Has She Become a Different Actress?”

I don’t think someone who makes her living off her appearance should express anger when people notice she’s changed.

Panic in Needle Park — Part Two
A flashback to the bad old days of the 1980s and early ’90s, when junkies ran decent folks out of Tompkins Square Park in the now-gentrified East Village.

Now filth has a new, better ZIP code. Hookers, crack smokers — a man was seen injecting drugs into his neck — do their business freely, even in front of cops, in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, The Post reported.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and new top cop James O’Neill — help!

 

[QueEx]

 

[QueEx]

50 GOP national security experts oppose Trump






CNN
By Eric Bradner, E
lise Labott and
Dana Bash, CNN


Washington (CNN)Fifty prominent Republican foreign policy and national security experts -- many veterans of George W. Bush's administration -- have signed a letter denouncing Donald Trump's presidential candidacy and pledging not to vote for him.

The letter, first reported by The New York Times Monday, warns: "We are convinced that in the Oval Office, he would be the most reckless President in American history."

Its signatories include former CIA and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden, former Director of National Intelligence and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte and Eric Edelman, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's national security adviser and has worked closely with Michele Flournoy -- a candidate for secretary of defense in a prospective Clinton administration -- to forge a centrist group of defense experts on key military issues.

It also includes two Homeland Security secretaries under Bush, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, and Robert Zoellick, a former World Bank president, U.S. trade representative and deputy secretary of state.

Trump's campaign responded with a statement from Trump denouncing the signatories as people who deserve the "blame for making the world such a dangerous place."


Many of the same leaders wrote an open letter in March during the Republican primaries condemning Trump and pledging to oppose his candidacy, at a time when other GOP candidates remained in the race.

The letter acknowledges that many Americans "have doubts about Hillary Clinton, as do many of us."

"But Donald Trump is not the answer to America's daunting challenges and to this crucial election," it says.

In the new letter, the group warns Trump "lacks the temperament to be President."

"He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate personal criticism. He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior," the letter claims. "All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be President and Commander-in-Chief, with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal."

The idea of writing such a letter had been discussed by GOP national security officials for a while, but gained momentum when Trump called on Russia to share Clinton emails it potentially hacked and when he took a position many saw as legitimizing Russia's claim to Ukraine's Crimea region.

"We thought it was important to make the point that even for longtime Clinton critics, Trump poses too big a risk to short- and long-term national security," one person involved with the letter said.

It was drafted by John Bellinger, a former State Department legal adviser to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, with edits from Bob Blackwill, a former George H.W. Bush White House adviser, and Eliot Cohen, also a former adviser to Rice.

Bellinger told CNN the letter was circulated five days ago with very few changes.

"People were in different places about whether they want to endorse Clinton and their doubts about her, but we settled on a statement that recognizes many people have concerns about Clinton," he said. "Some people will clearly endorse her, others will never endorse her, but everyone was united in their belief that Donald Trump is not qualified."

Bellinger said he wanted to focus on gathering signatures from very high-level people -- several cabinet secretaries, numerous deputies and many dozen assistant secretaries and White House staff that worked directly with the president.

"We wanted to get the most senior people we could: household names, of people who have worked in the Situation Room and know what is required of the president," he said. "I wanted almost every name to be familiar to those who follow the issues and who could speak with first-hand knowledge of what requires to be president. "
Another official who signed the letter told CNN that most signatories travel abroad and interact with current and former world leaders. Many were alarmed at how many world leaders said they were concerned that Trump's "recklessness" would invite America's enemies to be even more reckless.

This official said he was stunned by how "enthusiastic" everyone was to sign.

Trump has met with other GOP foreign policy bigwigs, including former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and James Baker. Neither signed the letter.
"The names on this letter are the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place. They are nothing more than the failed Washington elite looking to hold onto their power, and it's time they are held accountable for their actions," Trump said in a statement.

"These insiders -- along with Hillary Clinton -- are the owners of the disastrous decisions to invade Iraq, allow Americans to die at Benghazi, and they are the ones who allowed the rise of ISIS. Yet despite these failures, they think they are entitled to use their favor trading to land taxpayer-funded government contracts and speaking fees."
A senior Trump adviser sought to tie the letter's signatories to Clinton, saying: "Crooked Hillary and the rest of the Washington insiders are going to try to stop this grassroots effort at every turn."

"They're on the wrong side of history," the adviser said. "They're the ones launching a political attack ... and they have to own up to their role in putting the world in the place that it's in right now."


SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/08/polit...l-security-letter-donald-trump-election-2016/

 

[QueEx]

The Daily 202: Why some Republican ​

politicians are really coming out against Trump


THE BIG IDEA:

-- The most important storyline of August is how many Republicans come out against their party’s nominee. If the base fractures, Donald Trump is doomed. So far, while a string of elites and vulnerable incumbents in blue states have defected, the grass roots has mostly — if reluctantly — coalesced.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine announces in a new op-ed for The Post that she will not vote for Trump. The centrist cites his mocking of a disabled reporter, his attacks on a federal judge over his Mexican heritage and his feud with the Muslim American parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq. (Read her full piece here.)

Fifty former national security officials who served in Republican administrations signed an open letter, released yesterday, saying they will not support Trump because “he would be the most reckless President in American history.”


MORE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...g-out-against-trump/57a94085cd249a7e29d0cf87/

 

[QueEx]

The Scariest Nominee of Our Time​

Donald Trump is disruptive, self-destructive, and careless.


Imagine if Donald Trump’s foreign policy ideas were uttered in a saner tone by someone who seemed to have a little bit of knowledge about global politics. Would his ideas sound quite so dangerous? Maybe not, but they’d still be dangerous enough. In fact, they’d qualify as the most dangerous, disruptive, self-destructive ideas that any major party’s nominee has peddled in any living American’s memory.

These are the hardest times since the end of World War II for an American president to set and manage foreign policy.

From 1945–91, the rules of the game were fairly clear: It was the U.S. versus the USSR, and power was measured by the relative stockpiles of weapons they would need in a conflict. Most of the wars fought by smaller nations were viewed (sometimes misleadingly) in terms of their impact on the East–West balance.

When the Cold War imploded, so did the entire system of international relations it had spawned. Power blocs dissolved; the subjects and allies in each now-shattered sphere of influence were free to pursue their own interests without regard to the former superpowers’ wishes. In the Middle East, Cold War politics had propped up artificial borders and oppressive regimes that otherwise would have collapsed a decade or so after World War II, along with the whole string of French and British colonies. When the Cold War ended, this collapse resumed—triggering the chaos in the region today.

In one of those ironies common to history, America won the Cold War but emerged from it weaker, not stronger. President George W. Bush’s strategic error lay in failing to grasp this fact. He, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld thought they’d entered a “uni-polar” era with the United States reigning as “the sole superpower,” able to impose its will with little effort or the need for pesky allies. They didn’t realize that the old tokens of power (tanks, missiles, atom bombs) and the old devices of leverage (Do what we ask or succumb to the Soviet bear) had lost much of their former potency and that, as a result, allies—and compromising with them on strategic goals—were now not just useful but necessary.

Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, understood this even at the dawn of the new era. Hence his fervent campaign to preserve the vast alliance against Saddam Hussein during the 1990–91 Gulf War and his call for a cease-fire when the mission binding the alliance—ousting Iraq’s invasion forces from Kuwait—was complete. This awareness also informed the elder Bush’s decision not to rub America’s Cold War victory in Russia’s face.

Barack Obama, from early on in his presidency, understood very clearly these limits of power, the need for alliances, and the distinctions between interests and vital interests (and the levels of commitment that they justified) in this new multi-polar (or, in some ways, nonpolar) era.

Hillary Clinton understands these things as well, though she might be less resistant than Obama to using military force; some who have worked with her say she hasn’t internalized the lessons of Vietnam, Iraq, and Libya to the same degree. But her experiences have taught her that, in this new era, nations with common interests in one realm often have opposing interests in other realms, and the job of a top diplomat or president is to navigate these shoals without surrender or collision. (In some ways, this is nothing new: The United States and the Soviet Union practiced diplomacy and signed treaties, without ever dropping guard on the East-West German border, through all but the tensest years of the Cold War.)​

Donald Trump, on the other hand, grasps none of these things—not the history, not the concepts, not the tools or limits or creative possibilities of power.

He is not so much an isolationist as a unilateralist. It’s easy to envision him barging into a foreign war, driven as much by avenging some personal slight as pursuing a national interest—and, in the process, waving off help from others, believing that he can win alone (or that he alone can win) with the right combination of firepower and rhetoric.​

Even if he didn’t start a war, or escalate one with no notion of how to end it, he is likely—judging from what he says—to wreck the few remnants of the post–World War II order that sustain America’s influence and its broad network of (mostly) democratic allies.​

When the Cold War’s demise gave smaller powers the license to go their own way and follow their own interests, several of them eventually decided to remain in the American camp. This was particularly true in East Asia, after China started flexing its naval muscle, and in Europe (especially among the more recent NATO members of Eastern and central Europe), after Vladimir Putin started living his dream of restoring the old empire out loud (or at least trying).​

Trump says he wants to blow up the whole edifice. He mistakes the mutual benefits of NATO for a strictly monetary transaction, telling allies that he’d pull out America’s troops—and cancel the country’s obligation to come to their defense in the event of armed aggression—unless they paid up their fair share, as he defined it. He issued this threat in response to a question about whether he’d defend the tiny Baltic states—which Putin could invade with little trouble if physical force were all that mattered and he had no worries of a Western response. In a later interview, Trump went further and said he might bring the American troops home as a first step, predicting that the Europeans would beg him to send them back, promising to pay the U.S. as much as he wants them to pay. “You always have to be prepared to walk away,” he explained, as if he were discussing a contract dispute or a real-estate deal (which is how he seems to view all relationships), not a trusted alliance based on a 67-year-old treaty that recent events have made newly relevant.​

He has issued similar warnings about what he sees as meager payments from Japan and South Korea. When CNN’s Jake Tapper suggested that a U.S. withdrawal might compel those countries to build their own nuclear weapons, as the only way to deter North Korean aggression, Trump shrugged and said “maybe we would be better off” if all three of those countries had nukes.

Trump doesn’t understand the consequences of even talking like this; he doesn’t understand the messages he’s sending to all sides. He doesn’t understand that Putin in particular must be agog at his potential good fortune. A man who might be the next president of the United States—quite aside from the fact that some of his aides have ties to Russia—has all but invited Putin to invade Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania. This impression must have been confirmed when Trump said he accepted Russia’s annexation of Crimea as a done deal and possibly a desirable one, as he’s been told that many of the island’s residents consider themselves Russian, not Ukrainian.*​

No American president would, or should, go to war with Russia over the Crimea or even Ukraine. George W. Bush recognized this when he ruled against offering Ukraine NATO membership. And many people in Crimea do regard themselves as Russian. (It was part of Russia until Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine in 1954 at a time when both republics were part of the Soviet Union, and the distinction was thus fairly meaningless.) But it’s one thing to acknowledge these facts and quite another to accept with indifference a violent breach of long-standing borders. Acceding to a forcible annexation without objections, or a negotiated settlement, or even a trade of some sort (a deal), is to invite other violent breaches—and to announce to friend and foe that all borders, treaties, obligations, and alliances are moot.​

Here are a few of the things that would likely happen within days if Trump were elected.​

South Korea and Japan, as he concedes with a shrug, would start work at once on an atomic bomb (they certainly have the technology and resources), setting off a nuclear arms race and the possibility of catastrophic crises in northeast Asia.

The web of sanctions against Russia, which Obama has woven with Western European leaders in response to the Crimean grab, would collapse.

Ukraine’s political leaders, who still aspire to an affiliation with the European Union, would likely cut the best deal they can get from Moscow—as would the smaller NATO nations (including the Baltics) once they realize that the other large Western European powers can do little to ensure their security without American leadership.​

This is another irony of history:

In his articulation of American power’s limits, Obama has highlighted those as vital interests that warrant an unbridled commitment of the nation’s power. His erasure of the “red line” in Syria did have an impact on U.S. credibility in the Middle East—but little effect on U.S. standing in Europe or East Asia.

Trump often lambasts President Obama for signaling weakness in the red-line episode; but Trump is now proclaiming that, in his presidency, there would be no red line in Europe or East Asia, short of one purchased with cold cash—a transaction subject to continual review and revision, like the terms of an adjustable-rate mortgage. And yet, Trump somehow thinks his words beam a signal of awesome strength.​

In the Middle East, where the Cold War’s demise has wreaked the most calamitous damage,

Hillary Clinton has few compelling ideas beyond doing what Obama has done, just a little fiercer and faster.

But Trump has no ideas at all. He says he will get rid of ISIS “fast.” How? Not a clue.

He has also said he would form an anti-ISIS coalition of the region’s nations, a tough task given that they fear and loathe one another more than they fear and loathe ISIS. How would he do this? By holding “meetings,” he told the New York Times, as if diplomats—American, Russian, European, and Arab—haven’t held hundreds of meetings already.

Trump doesn’t seem to recognize that some of the world’s problems are simply hard, maybe intractable. He seems to think that the world’s a mess because American leaders are “very, very stupid” and that the globe’s bad guys will snap to order with a tough guy like him in the White House.​

Trump may have an idea, after all, of how to crush ISIS “fast,” and if my suspicions are right, it’s his most dangerous idea of all:

I suspect he thinks he can make the jihadi commanders cower by threatening to incinerate them with nuclear bombs. Richard Nixon tried this with North Vietnam, telling his aides to put out the word that he was a “madman” who could do anything, even go nuclear, to avoid losing. At least Nixon, it turned out, was bluffing.

Would Trump be?

Would he feel compelled to follow through on his threat if they scoffed?

He has revealed himself, on several occasions, to have a cavalier, even clueless attitude toward the bomb.​

And it’s worth noting (as the New York Times reminded its readers, who probably haven’t had cause to ponder these matters for a quarter-century or so, on Wednesday) that, when it comes to using nuclear weapons, the president decides and acts alone; the system is set up that way because, in the event of a surprise attack, there would be no time to consult with the National Security Council, much less with Congress.

Electing a president bestows upon a single man or woman the power to blow up the world.​

*** Former diplomat Richard Burt told an enlightening story to Politico about Trump’s notion of a tough negotiator. Around 1990, when Burt was U.S. ambassador to the Soviet-American nuclear arms talks, he ran into Trump at a reception in New York:

According to Burt, Trump expressed envy of Burt’s position and proceeded to offer advice on how best to cut a “terrific” deal with the Soviets. Trump told Burt to arrive late to the next negotiating session, walk into the room where his fuming counterpart sits waiting impatiently, remain standing and looking down at him, stick his finger into his chest and say, “Fuck you!”

Needless to say, that is not how Burt maneuvered the talks so that presidents George H.W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin came to sign the START II arms-reduction treaty in 1991.

One wonders if Trump thinks it might have been how it happened and if he thinks that’s how to handle adversaries today. Trump has said “I know more about ISIS than the generals” and, just in August, “I know far more about foreign policy” than Obama.​

My guess is he really believes these things.​

Most of Trump’s dangerous qualities boil down to these two fundamental dangers.

(1) He knows very little, but thinks he knows a lot.

(2) And most of the things he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know they’re worth knowing.​

SOURCE: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/08/a_trump_win_would_lead_to_a_nuclear_arms_race_and_a_collapse_of_sanctions.html




.