Reuters reports: Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Thursday likened refugees fleeing violence in Syria to “rabid dogs,” and said that allowing them into the United States would put Americans at risk.
“If there is a rabid dog running around your neighborhood, you’re probably not going to assume something good about that dog,” Carson, a front-runner in some opinion polls, said Thursday at a campaign event in Mobile, Alabama.
“By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly,” the retired neurosurgeon said, criticizing President Barack Obama’s plan to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees within a year. [Continue reading…]
Dean Obeidallah writes: “We have no earthly way to know who they are,” exclaimed Republican Congressman Michael Burgess while speaking about the Syrian refugees on MSNBC Monday night. “The FBI doesn’t even have a database.”
But there’s one man who can sort it all out. A special dude from Texas, by way of Canada, who has the ability to decide which refugees are good and which are bad. And that person is Ted Cruz: The Muslim Hunter.
With that aside, Cruz’s plan raises a few questions. For example, how do you accurately determine a refugee’s religion? I would imagine many would be willing to claim they are Christian in order to save their families and start a new life in America.
Have no fear because The Muslim Hunter undoubtedly will come up with some tests to sniff out those stealth Muslims. Maybe the refugees will be required to eat a bacon cheeseburger while drinking Jagermeister. Or perhaps each refugee will be shown a photo of Bill Maher—if they reflexively recoil, it’s no USA for them. Possibly Cruz will employ a subtler test like asking them which way is Mecca? If the refugee quickly points in the right direction, he’s got ’em! [Continue reading…]
Yahoo News reports: After Paris, Trump said “security is going to rule” in the United States, in order to take on what he calls “radical Islamic terrorism.” America has currently agreed to take in 10,000 refugees from the ISIS stronghold in Syria. However, if he is elected, Trump said he would deport any Syrian refugees allowed to enter this country under President Obama.
“They’re going to be gone. They will go back. … I’ve said it before, in fact, and everyone hears what I say, including them, believe it or not,” Trump said of the refugees. “But if they’re here, they have to go back, because we cannot take a chance. You look at the migration, it’s young, strong men. We cannot take a chance that the people coming over here are going to be ISIS-affiliated.”
Yahoo News has reported that about half of the approximately 2,000 refugees from Syria who have come to the U.S. so far have been children. Another quarter are more than 60 years old. The Obama administration has maintained that the extensive screening process for these refugees makes the program safe to maintain — not to mention a reflection of America’s core values.
But Trump doesn’t buy it. He also has concerns about the larger Muslim community here in the U.S., he said.
Yahoo News asked Trump whether his push for increased surveillance of American Muslims could include warrantless searches. He suggested he would consider a series of drastic measures.
“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said. “And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.
“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.” [Continue reading…]
There is a vile current of hostility that has existed in America throughout its history. It resulted in the extermination and internment of the indigenous population of this continent. It cradled the capture, enslavement, and oppression of many generations of Africans and their descendants.
Festering American fear and hatred has caught in its gaze, Irish, German, Chinese, and Latino immigrants, Catholics, Jews, Japanese Americans, homosexuals, Communists, and all people of color.
Nowadays it lingers in the last domain where animosity towards others can freely be expressed with relatively little risk of public censure: by voicing fear of Islam and Muslims.
Well-tutored by the codes of political correctness, the haters understand that their enmity must be delivered through ostensibly impersonal vehicles. Their critique is of the doctrine, not its adherents. A nod of respect is made towards America’s tradition of religious tolerance, but simultaneously dismissed by claiming that Islam is not a religion.
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No one is a bigot in their own eyes and no ones bigotry gets dislodged simply by pointing out its offensiveness.
Hatred is born out of fear rooted in ignorance.
Let’s, for a moment, indulge the fears of those Americans who currently want to exclude Syrian refugees from entering this country and acknowledge that it is possible that in spite of the careful vetting process which all refugees must pass through, a few individuals with ties to ISIS could use this as a route for entering the U.S. and once here launch a terrorist attack. Even if candidates were further limited by only allowing Christians, it’s conceivable that a member of ISIS could claim to be a Christian. There is as far as I know, no blood test or scanning device that is able to differentiate between Christians and non-Christians.
So, would blocking the entry of all Syrian refugees significantly guard against this risk posed by ISIS?
No. Why?
Several reasons:
Although ISIS, with ridiculous ease, was able to dupe many in the West into imagining that the Paris attacks were tied to Syrian refugees — seriously, folks, consider for a few seconds what would motivate someone to take their passport on a suicide mission — we need to remember that ISIS is rooted in the Sunni provinces of Iraq.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria was previously the Islamic State of Iraq and before that it was al-Qaeda in Iraq.
So, if the U.S. wants to implement a discriminatory refugee policy and pander to fears surrounding the risk of an ISIS attack, then blocking the entry of 10,000 Syrians would definitely be too little, too late.
In the three years prior to 2015, the U.S. has accepted 51,107 Iraqi refugees.
If the U.S. wants to be systematic and comprehensive in formulating its anti-ISIS refugee policy, it will also need to prevent refugees entering this country from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
But that won’t be enough. In ISIS’s ranks there are passport holders from Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine whose citizens can enter this country with a visa.
And then there are ISIS passport holders from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, all of whom can come here without a visa as tourists.
It looks like fortress America doesn’t just need a wall — it can’t even afford the risk of having any entry points.
Would that make America safe?
Not if the Paris attacks serve as a model for an ISIS attack in the U.S.
In such an event we will not be attacked by Frenchmen. Instead, ISIS will reveal its American face.
Does that mean we should now be afraid of an enemy within?
Robert F. Dees, a retired Army officer who describes himself as “an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ,” and who serves as a foreign policy adviser to GOP presidential hopeful, Ben Carson, says “we’ve been infiltrated.” He sees all Muslims inside and outside America — almost a quarter of the world’s population — as potential terrorists.
This is McCarthyism on steroids.
Those who foment these fears are not simply promoting irrational thinking but they are also playing a fundamentally divisive role in American society.
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National traumas have healing power when they open opportunities for people to stand together and set aside their differences.
This doesn’t mean finding camaraderie through a shared hatred.
It means having the courage to show that love is more powerful than hate.
When English and French football supporters all sang La Marseillaise in Wembley stadium in London last night, this was more than an act of defiance — a refusal to give in to terrorism.
It was an opportunity for ordinary people to show they care about each other and know that life as precious.
CNN reports: Two of the country’s largest and most influential religious groups, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals, are urging the United States not to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees after the deadly terrorist attack in Paris last Friday.
“Of course we want to keep terrorists out of our country, but let’s not punish the victims of ISIS for the sins of ISIS,” Leith Anderson, NAE president, said on Tuesday.
Jamelle Bouie writes: On Monday, at the same time that Republican lawmakers and leaders urged the country to close its doors to Syrian refugees, President Obama called for compassion. People, he said during a press conference in Turkey after the G20 summit, should “remember that many of these refugees are the victims of terrorism themselves.”
“That’s what they’re fleeing,” he continued. “Slamming the door in their faces would be a betrayal of our values. Our nations can welcome refugees who are desperately seeking safety and ensure our own security. We can and must do both.”
Obama’s remarks on the refugees are in stark contrast to what’s driving the national conversation. “Refugees from Syria are now pouring into our great country. Who knows who they are—some could be ISIS. Is our president insane?” asked real estate mogul Donald Trump, who leads the Republican race for president. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said basically the same, using more colorful phrasing. “If you bought a 5-pound bag of peanuts and you knew that in the 5-pound bag of peanuts there were about 10 peanuts that were deadly poisonous, would you feed them to your kids? The answer is no.”
For many liberals at least, it’s tempting to embrace the former as “American values” and dismiss the latter as all-too-typical pandering to our fears and public opinion. When 52 percent of Americans believe Syrian refugees will make the country less safe, it’s easy to demagogue against their entry. But this is self-deception, albeit a well-meaning one. If our history shows anything, it’s this: The United States is a nation that fears immigrants and refugees as much as it’s a nation of immigrants and refugees. [Continue reading…]
Al Jazeera reports: Several mosques have been vandalised and a number of suspected hate crimes targeting Muslims carried out after dozens of United States governors announced they would not accept Syrian refugees in their states.
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil rights organisation, said on Monday that it has documented recent “vandalism, threats and hate [incidents]” in Massachusetts, Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Virginia, Nebraska, Tennessee, Ohio and New York, among other states.
The wave of incidents follows declarations by at least 27 state governors – 26 from the right-wing Republican party and a Democrat – saying they will block Syrian refugees, citing last Friday’s deadly attacks in Paris, claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. [Continue reading…]
The Daily Beast reports: One of the Paris attackers was supposedly found with a Syrian passport—leading Republican governors here in America to vow to block Syrian refugees from entering their states.
But that passport was a fake, French officials toldThe Wall Street Journal, which means the governors’ freakout over refugees was likely based on a lie.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, a former member of ISIS emphasized that Syrian passports, like the one found on that Paris terrorist, can be bought from the Syrian regime.
“There are people who go back and forth to Aleppo or Hama or Latakia or Tartus—you give them $1,000 and a nice photograph, and they’ll print you a good passport,” Abu Khaled, a former member the Islamic State’s internal security service, Amn al-Dawleh, said Monday.
“The guys with the regime are corrupt; they’ll give you whatever you want for money,” he added.
That’s not the only way, though. A reporter for the London Daily Mailpurchased an identical passport online for $2,000. German customs agents in September seized a shipment of fake Syrian passports being sold to asylum seekers from countries like Iraq, Libya, and Egypt. (Syrians get automatic refugee status in the European Union.) Many of the forgeries are suspected to come from Turkey.
French officials told the Journal that Ahmad al-Mohammed, who blew himself up outside the Stade de France, was carrying a counterfeit Syrian passport made for him. Al-Mohammed’s fingerprints matched those on the passport found near his body, the French added.
Greek officials said the information on Al-Mohammed’s passport was run against police databases after he landed in Leros on Oct. 3 and nothing was found. Another man carrying a passport with identical information, but a different photograph, was being used by a man in Serbia who was arrested on Monday.
James Bamford writes: When it comes to foreign policy, it’s tempting to grade Carson on a curve. A retired neurosurgeon with no political experience, Carson has promised that, as president, he would be as ready “as anybody else when foreign-policy questions come up” by surrounding himself with experts who would help him craft and, eventually implement, foreign policy.
But Carson’s foreign-policy experts are likely part of his problem. The candidate’s most outrageous statements on national security — including his shocking declaration in September that he believes Muslims are unfit to serve as president — aren’t merely a collection of ill-informed gaffes. They are a reflection of the troubling worldview of the people he has turned to for advice. Chief among them is Robert F. Dees, a retired Army officer who has indulged in anti-Muslim bigotry and advocated for a national security strategy centered on Christian evangelism.
Carson is said to have first met Dees at church last February. A four-hour dinner, and regular “study sessions,” followed that initial encounter. Carson has since called Dees “one of my most regular people” when it comes to foreign-policy briefings, and his campaign manager, Barry Bennett, has said that Carson’s national security team is headed by Dees. Dees, for his part, describes his current job title on LinkedIn as defense and national security advisor for Carson America.
It’s impossible to know the precise content of Dees’s advice to Carson. But Dees’s professional background doesn’t provide much reassurance. In 2013, he told a gathering at Wildfire Weekend, an all-male religious retreat, “My greatest pleasure has been being a private in the Lord’s army.” He also recounted being introduced to Jesus Christ by a math instructor at West Point not long after he enrolled there as a student in 1968. “Then I went off in the military,” he said, “as an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ.” Dees spent most of his career in the infantry and in staff positions in the United States, Germany, and Korea, eventually becoming deputy commander of the V Corps in Europe. His resume does not appear to list any combat assignments.
Dees has cited the 9/11 attacks as a personal and professional turning point. Speaking at Wildfire Weekend, Dees described visiting an intelligence center in Virginia sometime after the attacks. “I looked up on the wall … and there were cell-phone calls coming from certain places, and you could see where they would go into other places, and all of a sudden I saw Kandahar, Afghanistan, to Nashville, Tennessee; Dearborn, Michigan; Greensboro, South Carolina,” Dees told the gathering, describing the links between people in Afghanistan, where America was about to go to war, and residents of the United States.
Dees claimed to have an epiphany: When it comes to terrorism, all Muslims — some 23.4 percent of the world’s population — are equally worthy of suspicion. “It’s not about these guys who came from way out, knocked down some buildings, and then have left,” Dees explained at Wildfire Weekend. “We have a serious internal issue. We’ve been infiltrated.” [Continue reading…]
Gideon Levy writes: Hillary Clinton’s election as U.S. president would ensure Israel’s continued decline and degeneration. And so she is not a friend, but an enemy. She must not be allowed to deceive and present herself as a friend of Israel, as she tried so ingratiatingly to do in an article published in The Forward (“How I would reaffirm unbreakable bond with Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu”) last week. The tear ducts were targeted as she wrote of how she assisted Magen David Adom in being accepted to the International Red Cross. But she and those like her – false friends of Israel – have been one of the curses on this country for years. Because of them, Israel can continue to act as wildly as it likes, thumbing its nose at the world and paying no price. Because of them, it can destroy itself unhindered.
Whether Clinton believes what she wrote or simply wanted once again to sell her soul for a fistful of dollars from Haim Saban and other Jewish donors, the result is extremely embarrassing. A love letter to Israel, the likes of which no U.S. statesman would ever write to another country. Americans believe “Israel is more than a country – it’s a dream,” she states. Most of the world calls it a nightmare, yet Clinton says a dream. What dream exactly? The dream of tyrannical control over another people? Racism? Nationalism? The killing of women and children in Gaza?
What happened to the Hillary Rodham Clinton who in her youth fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War, and as a lawyer specialized in children’s rights? Did she not hear what her dream state is doing to Palestinian children? What happened to the glorious career woman who was considered liberal and justice-seeking on her way up? Did she forget it all? Does money buy everything? Or, when it comes to Israel, do all principles suddenly change?
Did the former secretary of state not hear about the Israeli occupation? After all, she didn’t mention it once in her article. This is not the time or place to anger Saban. To Clinton, Israel is a “thriving democracy” and to hell with the violent and totalitarian regime in its backyard. And so Clinton is also an enemy of peace and justice. She doesn’t believe there has been the slightest damage to Palestinian rights. Israelis being stabbed in Jerusalem “appalls” Clinton. Palestinians being unjustifiably shot to death, meanwhile, fails to register with her. They will love her for that on Fifth Avenue. Religious figures who encourage killing are, of course, only Muslim; only Israeli security must be vouchsafed. The synagogues of Manhattan will love that, too. [Continue reading…]
Hillary Clinton writes: I will do everything I can to enhance our strategic partnership and strengthen America’s security commitment to Israel, ensuring that it always has the qualitative military edge to defend itself. That includes immediately dispatching a delegation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to meet with senior Israeli commanders. I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office.
The dangers facing both our nations in the Middle East require bold and united responses. We must remain committed to preventing Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon, and to vigorously enforcing the new nuclear agreement. I would move to step up our partnership to confront Iran and its proxies across the region, and make sure dangerous Russian and Iranian weapons don’t end up in Hezbollah’s hands or threaten Israel. I also will combat growing efforts to isolate Israel internationally and to undermine its future as a Jewish state, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. I’ve spoken out against BDS in the United States and at the U.N., and will continue to do so.
For me, fighting for Israel isn’t just about policy — it’s a personal commitment to the friendship between our peoples and our vision for peace and security. [Continue reading…]
Pankaj Mishra writes: In the guise of hyper-patriotism, trash talk has gone mainstream in the world’s two biggest democracies. Donald Trump, the leading candidate in Republican primaries, set a new low in public discourse by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists.” The Hindu nationalist chief minister of one of India’s richest states recently underscored the deterioration in India’s political culture by declaring Muslims could only live in the country if they stopped eating beef.
One hopes that a dignified retort of the kind that defused the menace of McCarthyism — “Have you no decency, sir?” — terminates this season of demagogues. But public support for them suggests that a disturbingly broad assault is underway on democratic values — indeed, on civility itself.
People foaming at the mouth with hate and malice have become a common sight on both traditional and social media. Mobs in India and mass shooters in America have thrived in this climate of irrationalism. Many people, it seems, can think only in the categories of friends and foes, group loyalty or treason; their preference for abuse kills all possibilities of reasoned debate. [Continue reading…]
Politico reports: Sheldon Adelson, one of the Republican Party’s most sought-after contributors, is leaning increasingly toward supporting Marco Rubio — and the Florida senator is racing to win the backing of other uncommitted megadonors who have the potential to direct tens of millions of dollars his way and alter the contours of the Republican primary fight.
Last week, during a campaign swing through Las Vegas, Rubio held a meeting in Adelson’s offices at the Venetian Las Vegas, one of a number of five-star luxury casinos the billionaire mogul owns around the world. Adelson, seated at the head of his conference table, heaped praise on Rubio’s performance while he discussed the dynamics of the 2016 race. Those briefed on the meeting described it as short but said it had an air of importance, with the two joined by Rubio’s campaign manager, Terry Sullivan, and a pair of senior Adelson advisers, Rob Goldstein and Patrick Dumont.
Those close to Adelson — who spent more than $100 million on Republican candidates and causes during the 2012 campaign and has been aggressively courted by most would-be Republican nominees — stressed that the 82-year-old gambling magnate had made no final decision on whom he’d support but said that momentum had strongly shifted to the Florida senator. A formal endorsement, they said, could come as soon as the end of the month — and with it, the potential for a multimillion dollar contribution. With a net worth of $25.7 billion, according to Forbes, Adelson can afford to spend freely. [Continue reading…]
“When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that’s made brothers and sisters out of every race — out of every race. America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect.”
These are eloquent words. Words of justice and understanding. Words of reconciliation. They are the words of President George W. Bush – spoken at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. on September 17, 2001 – a mere 6 days after the Al Qaeda attacks that killed almost 3,000 in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. They are also the words of a President who said that Jesus Christ was the political philosopher who had influenced him the most. And, they are the words of a President who, using falsehoods on Iraqi WMD and links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda as moral and legal justifications, would green light a military invasion and occupation of Iraq that would leave hundreds of thousands of civilians dead and an entire region destabilized.
Fast-forward 14 years to the candidacies of Donald Trump and Ben Carson. Would either man utter the words uttered by Bush, let alone only days after the 9/11 attacks?
NBC News reports: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, when asked if he believes the Middle East would be better today if Moammar Gadhafi of Libya and Saddam Hussein of Iraq were still in power, responded, “It’s not even a contest.”
He related the situations in both of those countries with what is currently happening in Syria and seemed to endorse a stronger President Bashar Assad, even while admitting that he is “probably a bad guy.”
“You can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there — it’s a mess — if you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there — it’s a mess — it’s [Syria] going to be same thing,” the real estate mogul said. [Continue reading…]
This is a point of view that appeals to a lot of liberals and peace activists these days, but it begs at least two questions:
How sustainable is stability when it derives from political oppression?
And what is the long-term price of torture?
Without exception, authoritarian regimes across the Middle East have relied on the same techniques for suppressing political opposition: torture.
Torture has the virtue of silencing critics without turning them into martyrs.
The streets can remain quiet when the screams of those having their fingernails ripped out are muffled by heavy prison doors.
But torture doesn’t just scar bodies — it scars minds, feeding a desire for vengeance that has inspired many a terrorist.
Is this what peace and stability really looks like?
Maybe the real lesson of the last decade has not been that regime change is itself such a terrible idea, but rather that the methods employed to achieve that goal have been worse than useless.
The issue is not one of intervention vs non-intervention but rather a question of what might actually lead to the desired goal.
The insular perspective of those who posture as realist defenders of national interest, suggests that it’s none of our business what happens within the borders of other states, but the reality is that sooner or later the misery of every dysfunctional state will spill out across its borders.
BBC News reports: Donald Trump has said he would send home all Syrian refugees the US accepts, if he becomes president.
The billionaire, who is the current frontrunner in the Republican race for the White House, told a New Hampshire rally: “If I win, they’re going back.”
It marks a reversal in policy – earlier this month he told Fox News the US should take in more refugees.
A migrant crisis has gripped parts of Europe and the US has pledged to take 10,000 refugees from Syria next year.
Half a million people have crossed the Mediterranean into Europe in 2015, with the largest number from Syria, where 250,000 people have been killed in a civil war.
On Wednesday night, Mr Trump told an audience at Keene High School: “I hear we want to take in 200,000 Syrians. And they could be – listen, they could be Isis [Islamic State].”
Describing them as a “200,000-man army”, he later added: “I’m putting the people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration, that if I win, if I win, they’re going back.” [Continue reading…]
Sometimes when I look at the increasingly bizarre, never-ending campaign for the White House and the staggering fundraising that goes with it, I think to myself: if we were in Kabul, Afghanistan, we would know what this was. We would recognize warlord politics. We would understand that (Bernie Sanders aside) politicians running for the presidency now need patrons — modern-day Medicis who can fund the super PACs that are increasingly the heart and soul of a process leading to the first $10 billion election. Those billionaire funders are, of course, America’s warlords. In his book No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes, reporter Anand Gopal offers a riveting up close and personal look at how the process works far from home. One of the Afghans he follows is a remarkable woman who, under the patronage of just such a warlord, finds herself a senator in the Afghan Parliament.
In our system, the candidates now first test their “electability” not with voters in primaries, but with a tiny coterie of the super-rich. In the case of the Koch brothers, for instance, they literally audition for support. In twenty-first-century America, these should undoubtedly be considered the real primaries and what happens starting in Iowa and New Hampshire early next year should be thought of as the secondaries. The increasingly fierce contests for money are America’s new electoral reality, the one the Supreme Court let loose on the land with its 2010 Citizens United decision that freed the voice of money to overwhelm the many voices of this country. The process of fundraising has only gained momentum since then and yet this new form of electoral politics is a system still in formation, like molten lava only now beginning to cool and settle into its future shape.
To give credit where it’s due, Donald Trump has kept that lava hot in ways that, under other circumstances, would be amusing indeed. After all, he’s the definition of an American warlord — and he’s also running for the presidency. It’s an unexpected wrinkle in the coalescence of a genuinely plutocratic electoral system. In other words, The Donald would like to send himself and, as TomDispatch regular Nomi Prins points out today, his money directly to the Oval Office in January 2017, while mocking those helpless peons of the political class who need to turn to people like him to be in the big time. Despite some public discussion of Trump’s many bankruptcies, Mr. Art of the Deal has had remarkably free sailing when it comes to what it might mean to put a billionaire in the White House. Conflicts of interest? Don’t even think about it! Prins, author of All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power, shifts the focus to where it should be — on The Donald’s finances and the conflicts that make the man and would be part and parcel of any Trump presidency. Tom Engelhardt
Trumpocrisy The Donald’s finances and the art of ignoring conflicts and contradictions By Nomi Prins
The 2016 election campaign is certainly a billionaire’s playground when it comes to “establishment candidates” like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush who cater to mega-donors and use their money to try to rally party bases. The only genuine exception to the rule this time around has been Bernie Sanders, who has built a solid grassroots following and funding machine, while shunning what he calls “the billionaire class” that fuels the super PACs.
Donald Trump, like Ross Perot back in the 1992 and 1996 elections, has played quite a different trick on the money-saturated American political system. He has removed the billionaire as middleman between citizen plebeians and political elites, and created a true .00001% candidate, because he’s… well, a financial elite unto himself, however conveniently posed as the country’s straight-talking “everyman.”
Despite his I-can-buy-but-can’t-be-bought swagger, Trump’s persona has been carefully constructed to deflect even the most obvious questions of conflict of interest that his wealth and deal-making history should bring up. He claims that he would govern (or dictate) as he is, no apologies or bullshit. But would he?
