* Al-Qaradawi: “I do not consider suicide attacks permitted today. I permitted them due to a certain necessity. I permitted these operations because of this necessity, and now the necessity is over. That’s it. The Palestinians no longer do this. Those who carry out such operations are non-Palestinians. Today, they have other capabilities instead of the fidayi operations.”

 

SHEIKH QARADAWI RETRACTS FATWA ENCOURAGING PALESTINIAN SUICIDE ATTACKS

[Note by Tom Gross]

Below is the text (in English translation) of an interview given in Arabic on Hiwar TV on November 18, 2016.

In what could be very significant remarks, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, whose previous remarks calling for Palestinian suicide attacks against Israeli civilians have been used as a major justification for such attacks, has retracted his remarks.

This could be another sign of the growing reconciliation between the leadership of the Sunni Arab world and Israel, which I have detailed a number of times on this list over the last two years, and is primarily a result of the Iranian nuclear thereat and growing Iranian (Shia) occupation of parts of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

However, Qaradawi does talk about “other capabilities,” by which he presumably means rocket and other forms of attack.

I have written on this list many times before about al-Qaradawi, who was embraced by the former left-wing mayor of London Ken Livingstone, after Qaradawi spoke in favor of wife-beating, female genital mutilation, the hanging of gay people, and said that Hitler “put the Jews in their place”. Qaradawi has claimed that the Holocaust was exaggerated while at the same time calling it divine punishment.

-- Tom Gross

 

Qaradawi is interviewed by Saudi Sheikh Salman Al-Ouda.

Interviewer: “Some of the Zionist circles and the lobbies seem to be focusing on specific issues. An issue that has aroused controversy more than once is (your) fatwa regarding fidayi operations, or as they call them, ‘suicide operations.’ As you know, there has been debate over this issue. Has there been a reexamination of this matter, in light of the circumstances today?”

Al-Qaradawi: “That fatwa referred to a specific Palestinian case. The Palestinians were under siege and had no other (means at their disposal), so I issued a fatwa for them, permitting (such operations) under these circumstances. Afterwards, I said that the Palestinians are not allowed to do so, because they have acquired other capabilities. I have mentioned this in my book The Fiqh of Jihad, as well as in other books and on several occasions.”

Interviewer: “But since your comments were made on tape and have circulated, perhaps the original fatwa has been more widespread than the retraction. As you know, today, the operations that we all call ‘terror operations’ generally consist of booby-trapping one’s body or wearing an explosives belt, and of blowing oneself up in a mosque, for example, or a café...”

Al-Qaradawi: “The Palestinians no longer do this. Those who carry out such operations are non-Palestinians. The Palestinian (scholars) have prohibited this. Today, they have other capabilities instead of the fidayi operations.”

Interviewer: “Honorable sheikh, what do you think about such operations today?”

Al-Qaradawi: “I do not consider them permitted today. I permitted them due to a certain necessity. The principle is that ‘necessity renders the forbidden permissible.’ I permitted them because the Palestinians had a need to defend themselves, so that the Israelis and their supporters would not kill them. I permitted these operations because of this necessity, and now the necessity is over. That’s it.”

(Translation courtesy of Memri.)

 

* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia

X

[Note by Tom Gross]

While the remarks by Sheikh Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, retracting his longstanding fatwa supporting Palestinian suicide bombings, are encouraging (please see the other dispatch today for details), less encouraging is the fact that Arab social media are full of posts celebrating the wildfires spreading across Israel today.

Many of the fires have reportedly been started deliberately by nationalistic Arabs. Tens of thousands of Israelis have been evacuated from homes and offices in Haifa and other cities as fires spread out of control. Some train services have been suspended and Israel has announced it will evacuate prisons in some areas.

 

“I WANT TO INHALE THE SMELL OF BARBECUE FROM THE JEWS”

Dubai’s security chief, Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, tweeted “Israel banned the muezzin and caught on fire, Blessed be Allah,” while Kuwaiti imam Mishary Rashid Alafasy wished “Best of luck to the fires :)”.

“They tried to ban the muezzin’s call, and Allah rained fire on them,” Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq tweeted. (For the record, Israel has not banned the Muslim call to prayer, despite media misreporting.)

Other Arab social media users this morning shared Facebook posts hoping that the fires would reach strategic facilities in Israel, including the Haifa Chemicals plant and gas storage facilities. Another wrote: “I want to inhale the smell of barbecue from the Jews.”

 

SEVERAL COUNTRIES COME TO ISRAEL’S AID

Firefighting planes sent by the Greek and Cypriot governments landed in Israel this morning to help Israeli planes that can’t cope with the overload. Turkey and Russia have announced they would also send aircraft to aid Israel later today. Israel has previously helped all four countries when they experienced natural or humanitarian disasters.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin who has agreed to Netanyahu’s request to send two giant Beriev be-200 firefighting aircraft.

Netanyahu also spoke with the Croatian Prime Minister who has also promised to send planes.

 

* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia

[Note by Tom Gross]

In an interview on Al-Jazeera television, Hamas senior leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar says:

“The President before [Trump] was an African settler… Trump loves the Jews, and not only because he likes the Jewish religion. I do not rule out the possibility that he is a Jew. He loves the Jewish religion and the most important thing in the Jewish religion is Jewish money… the Jewish religion, the Jewish dollar, is the real decisive factor [ruining the world].”

I have written about Al-Zahar in past dispatches and criticized the BBC and other prominent western media for allowing Zahar free rein to tell unchallenged lies about Israel in softball interviews.

Al-Jazeera Arabic is much more widely watched and considerably more anti-Western than its English language version. It is funded by the government of Qatar.

When WikiLeaks revealed that the Clinton Foundation also accepted seven figure sums from the government of Qatar while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state, and shortly before Qatari money helped to fund the creation of the Islamic State, and suppress women and gays, it further diminished trust in Hillary Clinton in the eyes of a number of American voters leading to the (in many ways) unfortunate election of Donald Trump.

***

In contrasting news headlines subscribers to these dispatches have sent me today:

Is Trump the first Jewish president?

Trump’s Election Triggers Old Nightmares for Holocaust Survivors in America

 

* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia

[Note by Tom Gross]

This is another in an occasional series of dispatches about the American elections. I have split this into two emails for space reasons. (The other one is here.)

I attach a number of articles below. I don’t agree with all points in them. Specifically, while Aaron Sorkin’s writing for the West Wing is wonderful, and so are many of the Coen brothers films, I find their political commentaries attached below, to be exaggerated, and Sorkin’s use of the F word and World War Two comparisons, unhelpful.

 

CONTENTS

1. “The Democrats Screwed Up” (By Frank Bruni, NY Times, Nov. 11, 2016)
2. “Don’t expect the supreme court to change much” (By Cass R. Sunstein, Bloomberg, Nov. 9, 2016)
3. “What will Millennials take away from 2016 results?” (By Dan Schnur, Wall St Journal, Nov. 14, 2016)
4. “Aaron Sorkin: Letter to my daughter” (Vanity Fair, Nov. 9, 2016)
5. “2016 election Thank You notes” (By Ethan Coen, NY Times, Nov. 13, 2016)
6. “Michael Moore: They voted for a guy named ‘Hussein’ twice, Trump voters are not racist” (By Rachel Stoltzfoos, Daily Caller, Nov. 11, 2016)
7. “Bizarre birther theory: Pakistani news report suggested Trump was born as Dawood Ibrahim Khan” (By Emily Chan, Daily Mail, Nov.14, 2016)

 

NEW YORK TIMES: THE DEMOCRATS SCREWED UP

The Democrats Screwed Up
By Frank Bruni, Op-Ed columnist
New York Times
November 11, 2016

We geniuses in the news media spent only the last month telling you how Donald Trump was losing this election. We spent the last year telling you how the Republican Party was unraveling.

And here we are, with the Democrats in tatters. You might want to think twice about our Oscar and Super Bowl predictions.

Despite all the discussion of demographic forces that doomed the G.O.P., it will soon control the presidency as well as both chambers of Congress and two of every three governor’s offices. And that’s not just a function of James Comey, Julian Assange and misogyny. Democrats who believe so are dangerously mistaken.

Other factors conspired in the party’s debacle. One in particular haunts me. From the presidential race on down, Democrats adopted a strategy of inclusiveness that excluded a hefty share of Americans and consigned many to a “basket of deplorables” who aren’t all deplorable. Some are hurt. Some are confused.

Liberals miss this by being illiberal. They shame not just the racists and sexists who deserve it but all who disagree. A 64-year-old Southern woman not onboard with marriage equality finds herself characterized as a hateful boob. Never mind that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton weren’t themselves onboard just five short years ago.

Political correctness has morphed into a moral purity that may feel exhilarating but isn’t remotely tactical. It’s a handmaiden to smugness and sanctimony, undermining its own goals.

I worry about my and my colleagues’ culpability along these lines. I plan to use greater care in how I talk to and about Americans more culturally conservative than I am. That’s not a surrender of principle or passion. It’s a grown-up acknowledgment that we’re a messy, imperfect species.

Donald Trump’s victory and some of the, yes, deplorable chants that accompanied it do not mean that a majority of Americans are irredeemable bigots (though too many indeed are). Plenty of Trump voters chose him, reluctantly, to be an agent of disruption, which they craved keenly enough to overlook the rest of him.

Democrats need to understand that, and they need to move past a complacency for which the Clintons bear considerable blame.

It’s hard to overestimate the couple’s stranglehold on the party – its think tanks, its operatives, its donors – for the last two decades. Most top Democrats had vested interests in the Clintons, and energy that went into supporting and defending them didn’t go into fresh ideas and fresh faces, who were shut out as the party cleared the decks anew for Hillary in 2016.

In thrall to the Clintons, Democrats ignored the copious, glaring signs of an electorate hankering for something new and different and instead took a next-in-line approach that stopped working awhile back. Just ask Mitt Romney and John McCain and John Kerry and Al Gore and Bob Dole. They’re the five major-party nominees before her who lost, and each was someone who, like her, was more due than dazzling.

After Election Day, one Clinton-weary Democratic insider told me: “I’m obviously not happy and I hate to admit this, but a part of me feels liberated. If she’d won, we’d already be talking about Chelsea’s first campaign. Now we can do what we really need to and start over.”

Obama, too, contributed to the party’s marginalization. While he threw himself into Hillary Clinton’s campaign, he was, for much of his presidency, politically selfish, devoting less thought and time to the cultivation of the party than he could – and should – have. By design, his brand was not its. Small wonder, then, that its fate diverged from his.

He anointed Clinton over Joe Biden, though Biden had more charisma and a better connection with the white voters who ultimately supported Trump. Had Biden been the nominee, he probably would have won the Electoral College as well as the popular vote (which Clinton indeed got).

And had Bernie Sanders been? Michael Bloomberg would almost certainly have jumped into the fray, sensing unoccupied territory in the political center, and an infinitely saner and more capable billionaire might well be our president-elect.

Democrats bungled a terrific opportunity to retake the Senate majority by ignoring the national mood as they picked their candidates. A party that prides itself on looking out for the little guy went with the biggest names it could find.

That happened in Wisconsin with Russ Feingold, in Indiana with Evan Bayh and in Ohio with Ted Strickland, all of whom were defeated by Republicans who couldn’t be tarred as insiders or as emblems of the status quo because the Democrats had just as much mileage on them.

Senator Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican, campaigned as the outsider and the underdog, and he ended up beating Strickland, the state’s former governor, by more than 20 points. Like Feingold and Bayh, Strickland could hardly claim the mantle of revolution.

In contrast, Democrats had success in a House district in Central Florida that didn’t initially appear to be promising turf by running Stephanie Murphy, a 37-year-old first-timer, against John Mica, 73, who had been in Congress for nearly a quarter-century. “Change” was Murphy’s mantra, and, like Trump, she used it to turn inexperience into an asset.

A party that keeps the White House for eight years customarily suffers losses elsewhere, as if the electorate insists on some kind of equilibrium. That happened under Bill Clinton and again under George W. Bush – but not to the extent that it has happened under Obama.

His presidency will end with Democrats in possession of 11 fewer Senate seats (depending on how you count), more than 60 fewer House seats, at least 14 fewer governorships and more than 900 fewer seats in state legislatures than when it began. That’s a staggering toll.

While the 2016 race for governor in North Carolina remains undecided, the settled contests guarantee the G.O.P. the governor’s office in 33 states: its most bountiful harvest since 1922.

If Democrats don’t quickly figure out how to sturdy themselves – a process larger than the selection of the right new party chairman – they could wind up in even worse shape. They’re defending more than twice the number of Senate seats in 2018 that Republicans are, a situation that gives the G.O.P. a shot at a filibuster-proof majority.

Meantime, the perpetuation of Republican dominance at the state level through 2020 would grant the G.O.P. the upper hand in redrawing congressional districts after the next census.

But new presidents typically get an electoral whupping after their first two years, and there’s every reason to believe that Trump will govern – or fail to – in a fashion that prompts one. Will Democrats respond in a way that puts them in the best possible position to deliver it?

That hinges on whether they can look as hard at the errors in their party as at the ugliness in America.

 

DON’T EXPECT THE SUPREME COURT TO CHANGE MUCH

Don’t Expect the Supreme Court to Change Much
By Cass R. Sunstein
Bloomberg
November 9, 2016

The Donald Trump presidency, coupled with the new Congress, is likely to produce major changes in federal law. But for the Supreme Court, expect a surprising amount of continuity – far more than conservatives hope and progressives fear.

If, as expected, Trump is able to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, the court will look a lot like it did until Scalia died in February: four relative liberals (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor); two moderate conservatives (John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy); and three relative conservatives (Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the new justice).

That means it would reflect the same ideological makeup as the court that upheld Obamacare and required states to recognize same-sex marriages. It would contain the same five justices – a majority – who recently voted to uphold affirmative action programs and to invalidate restrictions on the abortion right.

A court like that won’t license a Republican-led executive branch to do whatever it wants. It will assert the rule of law. It will rarely veer off in novel directions.

To be sure, things will be different if Trump is able to replace one of the liberal justices. Neither Ginsburg (who is 83) nor Breyer (78) is a spring chicken. But they both appear to be in good health; don’t be surprised if they continue to serve for the next four years.

Suppose, though, that one of them does resign. At that point, significant changes would be possible. But probably not many.

One reason involves the idea of respect for precedent. The justices are usually reluctant to disturb the court’s previous rulings, even if they disagree strongly with them. In this light, would a new majority really want to announce in, say, 2018, that states can ban same-sex marriage, after years of saying otherwise? That’s unlikely: Such an abrupt reversal of course, defeating widespread expectations, would make the law seem both unstable and awkwardly political.

Would a Trump court want to overrule Roe v. Wade, which has been the law since 1973, and thus allow states to ban abortion? Considering the intensity of conservative opposition to abortion, that is somewhat more probable. But judges are not politicians, and again to avoid the appearance of destabilizing constitutional law, any majority would hesitate before doing something so dramatic.

Would a court composed of Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, and one or two Trump appointees be willing to grant broad new powers to the president? No chance. The current conservatives have expressed a great deal of skepticism about executive authority. They aren’t going to turn on a dime merely because the president is a Republican.

There is a more general point. Many judges (and Roberts in particular) are drawn to “judicial minimalism”; they prefer to focus on the facts of particular cases. Quite apart from respecting prior rulings, they like small steps and abhor bold movements or big theories.

An instructive example: In the 1970s, many progressives were terrified when President Richard Nixon found himself a position to transform a left-of-center court, led by Earl Warren, and to appoint no fewer than four “strict constructionists.” And to be sure, the Nixon court, as it was sometimes called, repeatedly disappointed the left. It halted the movement toward recognition of welfare rights, declined to expand the rights of criminal defendants and refused to recognize a constitutional right to education.

But the whole period is aptly described as “the counter-revolution that wasn’t.” The Nixon court maintained a lot of continuity with its predecessor. Believing that the commitment to the rule of law entails humility and respect for the past, it preserved most of its precedents, even as it refused to build on them.

It’s true that with further changes in the court’s membership, we should expect to see some incremental movements in the law, including expansions in gun rights, increased protection of commercial advertising and new constraints on the power of regulatory agencies. But there’s an excellent chance that in four years, constitutional law will look pretty much the same as it does now.

(This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.)

 

WHAT WILL MILLENNIALS TAKE AWAY FROM 2016 RESULTS?

Beyond the Trump Protests: What Will Millennials Take Away From 2016 Results?
By Dan Schnur
Wall Street Journal (blogs)
November 14, 2016

Before last Tuesday, no American under age 30 had voted in an election in which a Republican was elected president. Those youths leading protests against Donald Trump the past several days have never lost a presidential election before. They may have come to believe that they never would, which could explain not only the anger but also the shock that propelled them into the streets.

Those demonstrating against Mr. Trump’s election appear to have derived much of their energy and inspiration from Mr. Trump’s bellicose public statements and personal behavior. But just as unsettling to the president-elect’s opponents were the policy pronouncements he has made on issues important to them, on topics as varied as climate change, immigration, and abortion rights.

We will all see if Mr. Trump acts to reassure Americans that he understands that his language and conduct must change. But for those protesting his election on policy–rather than personal–grounds, there is a difficult lesson as well. Neither side wins all the time.

Many of today’s millennials were not old enough to vote when George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004, when the shift of a small number of votes in Ohio would have given Mr. Kerry an electoral majority and Mr. Bush the larger number of popular votes. In retrospect, two consecutive victories for Barack Obama may have lulled many young progressives into a false sense of complacency. The election of another Republican–whether Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or John Kasich–who does not share their ideological grounding would have been somewhat jarring. The disbelief they are exhibiting is partly a result of misleading public polls, but it’s also the shattering of an unconscious assumption that the other party could not elect a president.

I teach young people every day at the University of Southern California and at UC-Berkeley, and I see their genuine commitment to making positive change in their communities. But millennials vote in smaller numbers than any other U.S. generation today, and even the prospect of a president they considered both ideologically unacceptable and morally repugnant did not motivate them to the polls. Their lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton is an unpersuasive defense. The U.S. Constitution requires only that we hold a presidential election every four years, not that we be presented with inspiring candidates on the same schedule.

Many of us have become apologists for the lack of traditional political participation among young people, pointing to the extremely high levels at which many volunteer in their communities as evidence of civic engagement. Maybe they have now learned that this is not an either-or proposition; that volunteering is noble but that voting is necessary.

If this election does serve as a generational wake-up call, then many millennials will still be making transformational change long after Donald Trump has left office. If not, then they’ll eventually learn that protesting after a defeat might be cathartic – but not much else.

 

AARON SORKIN: LETTER TO MY DAUGHTER

Letter to my daughter Roxy, 15, and her mother Julia Sorkin
By Aaron Sorkin
Vanity Fair
November 9, 2016

Sorkin Girls,

Well the world changed late last night in a way I couldn’t protect us from. That’s a terrible feeling for a father. I won’t sugarcoat it—this is truly horrible. It’s hardly the first time my candidate didn’t win (in fact it’s the sixth time) but it is the first time that a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn has.

And it wasn’t just Donald Trump who won last night—it was his supporters too. The Klan won last night. White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons. Angry young white men who think rap music and Cinco de Mayo are a threat to their way of life (or are the reason for their way of life) have been given cause to celebrate. Men who have no right to call themselves that and who think that women who aspire to more than looking hot are shrill, ugly, and otherwise worthy of our scorn rather than our admiration struck a blow for misogynistic shitheads everywhere. Hate was given hope. Abject dumbness was glamorized as being “the fresh voice of an outsider” who’s going to “shake things up.” (Did anyone bother to ask how? Is he going to re-arrange the chairs in the Roosevelt Room?) For the next four years, the President of the United States, the same office held by Washington and Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, F.D.R., J.F.K. and Barack Obama, will be held by a man-boy who’ll spend his hours exacting Twitter vengeance against all who criticize him (and those numbers will be legion). We’ve embarrassed ourselves in front of our children and the world.

And the world took no time to react. The Dow futures dropped 700 points overnight. Economists are predicting a deep and prolonged recession. Our NATO allies are in a state of legitimate fear. And speaking of fear, Muslim-Americans, Mexican-Americans and African-Americans are shaking in their shoes. And we’d be right to note that many of Donald Trump’s fans are not fans of Jews. On the other hand, there is a party going on at ISIS headquarters. What wouldn’t we give to trade this small fraction of a man for Richard Nixon right now?

So what do we do?

First of all, we remember that we’re not alone. A hundred million people in America and a billion more around the world feel exactly the same way we do.

Second, we get out of bed. The Trumpsters want to see people like us (Jewish, “coastal elites,” educated, socially progressive, Hollywood…) sobbing and wailing and talking about moving to Canada. I won’t give them that and neither will you. Here’s what we’ll do…

…we’ll fucking fight. (Roxy, there’s a time for this kind of language and it’s now.) We’re not powerless and we’re not voiceless. We don’t have majorities in the House or Senate but we do have representatives there. It’s also good to remember that most members of Trump’s own party feel exactly the same way about him that we do. We make sure that the people we sent to Washington—including Kamala Harris—take our strength with them and never take a day off.

We get involved. We do what we can to fight injustice anywhere we see it—whether it’s writing a check or rolling up our sleeves. Our family is fairly insulated from the effects of a Trump presidency so we fight for the families that aren’t. We fight for a woman to keep her right to choose. We fight for the First Amendment and we fight mostly for equality—not for a guarantee of equal outcomes but for equal opportunities. We stand up.

America didn’t stop being America last night and we didn’t stop being Americans and here’s the thing about Americans: Our darkest days have always — always — been followed by our finest hours.

Roxy, I know my predictions have let you down in the past, but personally, I don’t think this guy can make it a year without committing an impeachable crime. If he does manage to be a douche nozzle without breaking the law for four years, we’ll make it through those four years. And three years from now we’ll fight like hell for our candidate and we’ll win and they’ll lose and this time they’ll lose for good. Honey, it’ll be your first vote.

The battle isn’t over, it’s just begun. Grandpa fought in World War II and when he came home this country handed him an opportunity to make a great life for his family. I will not hand his granddaughter a country shaped by hateful and stupid men. Your tears last night woke me up, and I’ll never go to sleep on you again.

Love,

Dad

 

2016 ELECTION THANK YOU NOTES

2016 Election Thank You Notes
By Ethan Coen
New York Times
November 13, 2016

Such a surprise! So many people to thank!

1. Jill Stein voters: You helped elect a man who pledges that he will, in his first hundred days, cancel contributions to United Nations programs to fight climate change. If your vote for Ms. Stein did not end up advancing your green agenda, it did allow you to feel morally superior to all the compromising schmoes who voted for Hillary Clinton. And your feelings about your vote are more important than the consequences of your vote. So – thank you!

2. Gary Johnson voters: Thank you, for similar reasons. You, too, may now reward yourselves with feelings of warm self-approval, and your libertarian agenda will now be advanced (or not) by someone who admires the governance of Vladimir Putin. And to Mr. Johnson himself: Not only can no one blame you for this outcome – we’re all free agents, man! – but you can stop looking for Aleppo.

3. James Comey: Your publicity coup may have affected the outcome of the election. Or it may not have. But it will certainly breed speculation that it did. Such discussion will in some way serve the reputation of the F.B.I. Or not. You had to bravely contravene bureau protocols to make your contribution, so to you we owe a special thanks!

4. Anthony Weiner: You also found a surprising way to contribute! Thank you, sir – your act never gets old!

5. Jimmy Fallon: How did you manage to shine a nonthreatening light on someone who alarms so many women, frightens so many undocumented families and slurs so many minorities? Can’t have been easy! Thanks! Maybe now you could have the Grand Wizard on your show: He leans his head to you, you slip his hood off and ruffle his hair. Could be a cute bit!

6. All our media friends. Thank you for preserving reportorial balance. You balanced Donald Trump’s proposal that the military execute the innocent families of terrorists, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced pot-stirring racist lies about President Obama’s birth, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced a religious test at our borders, torture by our military, jokes about assassination, unfounded claims of a rigged election, boasts about groping and paradoxical threats to sue anyone who confirmed the boasts, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced endorsement of nuclear proliferation, against Hillary’s emails. You balanced tirelessly, indefatigably; you balanced, you balanced, and then you balanced some more. And for that – we thank you. And thank you all for following Les Moonves’s principled lead when he said Donald Trump “may not be good for America, but he’s damn good for CBS.”

7. The Electoral College. Thank you, for being you.

I cannot thank: Hillary Clinton. She is not a morally perfect person – her fault! She was not the perfect candidate – her fault! Misogyny may have magnified her failings so as to show them balancing the outsized failings of her opponent – and that might not be her fault. But she fought to the very limits of her ability to deny us Tuesday night’s surprise, so I do not thank her. Pooh on you, Hillary Clinton!

I do thank, lastly:

8. The American electorate. Because in the end, we all did it together. We did it! We really did it!

 

MICHAEL MOORE: THEY VOTED FOR A GUY NAMED ‘HUSSEIN’ TWICE, TRUMP VOTERS ARE NOT RACIST

Michael Moore: They Voted For A Guy Named ‘Hussein’ Twice, Trump Voters Are Not Racist
By Rachel Stoltzfoos
The Daily Caller
November 11, 2016

Michael Moore disputed the notion that all the people who voted for President-elect Donald Trump are racist Friday, reiterating the fact that millions of them voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

“They’re not racist,” Moore said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “They twice voted for a man whose middle name is Hussein. That’s the America you live in.”

Moore was pushing back against another panelist who said “deep racial animus” at the heart of the country was behind Trump’s win. “What I’m trying to get at, is at the heart of this country is some deep racial animus that animates the very communities we’re trying to lift up,” Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of the African American department at Princeton University told the panel.

“Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough replied: “I have to repeat it again because it’s maddening. People who live by data should die by data, and the data according to Nate Cohn of the New York Times says this, and let those who have ears to hear, hear: The very people who helped elect Barack Obama president of the United States twice just elected in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Donald J. Trump. It’s the data.”

Moore took it from there. “You have to accept that millions of people who voted for Barack Obama, some of them once, some of them twice, changed their minds this time. They’re not racist. They twice voted for a man whose middle name is Hussein. That’s the America you live in.”

Rammesh Ponnuru echoed Moore and Scarborough’s sentiment in a Bloomberg piece, taking issue with the notion that Trump won because White Americans are racist.

“Against that theory, I’d note, first, that Trump won several states that voted twice for our first black president,” he wrote. “The early exit polls suggest Trump won a tenth of voters who approved of President Barack Obama’s job performance. If that’s close to true, it means he wouldn’t have won without those voters.”

He continued: “And as I’ve noted in this space before, claims that bigotry are a major motivation for Trump voters have a thin evidentiary basis: They classify conservative views that aren’t necessarily rooted in racial hostility as ‘racial resentment,’ they ignore the decline in bigotry over time, and they overgeneralize about a very large and in some ways diverse group of people.”

 

BIZARRE BIRTHER THEORY: PAKISTANI NEWS REPORT SUGGESTED TRUMP WAS BORN AS DAWOOD IBRAHIM KHAN

Bizarre birther theory: Pakistani news report suggested Trump was born as Dawood Ibrahim Khan
By Emily Chan
Daily Mail (London)
November 14, 2016

A bizarre claim that Donald Trump was born in Pakistan before being adopted and taken to America has emerged online.

Pakistani news channel Neo News ran an extraordinary report suggesting that the President-elect was born as Dawood Ibrahim Khan in Waziristan in 1946.

Viewers immediately ridiculed the story, which was aired on Neo News last month before the election but has recently re-surfaced.

In the news report, the presenter claims: ‘Believe it or not, Presidential candidate Donald Trump was born in Pakistan and not in America.’

The news channel also showed a picture of a young blond boy, which they claimed was a young Trump in Pakistan.

The bizarre theory is that Trump was taken to London by a British-Indian army captain, after his birth parents died in a car accident, before being adopted and taken to America in 1955.

Social media users took to Twitter to mock the news report.

One person tweeted: ‘Seriously!????!!! . Pakistani news channel claims Trump was born in Pakistan !!! Seriously ????’

Another said ‘This is insane’, while one person simply added: ‘Lol... Pakistani media is reporting donald Trump was born in Pakistan!’

A series of unfounded tweets appear to be have been behind the report, with one person suggesting that Trump had been born into a Muslim family.

Hanna wrote: ‘Donald Trump born in #Muslimfamily in Shawal Valley North Waziristan June 14th 1946, name was Dawood Ibrahim Khan.’

Prior to standing for President, Trump himself had for months fueled conspiracy theories over whether Barack Obama was born in the US, and thus eligible to be president.

An exasperated Obama called this nonsense and held a press conference in 2011 to show off his birth certificate, which stated that he was born in Hawaii.

 

* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia

[Note by Tom Gross]

This is the second of two dispatches today about the American elections. I have split this into two emails for space reasons.

I attach a number of articles. I don’t agree with all points in them.

Regarding the fifth article, only Turkey’s despotic President Erdogan would come up with something so uncalled for as issuing an official travel warning to the U.S. after the anti-Trump protests.

 

CONTENTS

1. “I’m a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant. I voted for Trump.” (By Asra Nomani, Washington Post, Nov. 10, 2016)
2. “The unbearable smugness of the press” (By Will Rahn, CBS News, Nov. 10, 2016)
3. “NY Times: We blew it on Trump” (By Michael Goodwin, NY Post, Nov. 11, 2016)
4. “NeverTrumpers should not shun Trump” (By Max Boot, USA Today, Nov. 13, 2016)
5. “Turkey issues warning over travel to U.S. after Trump protests” (Reuters, Nov. 12, 2016)
6. “Celebs who said they’d leave country if Trump won” (By Melanie Zanona, The Hill, Nov. 9, 2016)
7. “Ivana wants to be Trump’s ambassador to Czech Republic” (NY Post, Nov. 13, 2016)

 

I’M A MUSLIM, A WOMAN AND AN IMMIGRANT. I VOTED FOR TRUMP

I’m a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant. I voted for Trump.
By Asra Q. Nomani
Washington Post
November 10, 2016

(Also video here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2016/11/10/im-a-muslim-a-woman-and-an-immigrant-i-voted-for-trump/)

A lot is being said now about the “silent secret Trump supporters.”

This is my confession – and explanation: I – a 51-year-old, a Muslim, an immigrant woman “of color” – am one of those silent voters for Donald Trump. And I’m not a “bigot,” “racist,” “chauvinist” or “white supremacist,” as Trump voters are being called, nor part of some “whitelash.”

In the winter of 2008, as a lifelong liberal and proud daughter of West Virginia, a state born on the correct side of history on slavery, I moved to historically conservative Virginia only because the state had helped elect Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States.

But, then, for much of this past year, I have kept my electoral preference secret: I was leaning toward Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Tuesday evening, just minutes before the polls closed at Forestville Elementary School in mostly Democratic Fairfax County, I slipped between the cardboard partitions in the polling booth, a pen balanced carefully between my fingers, to mark my ballot for president, coloring in the circle beside the names of Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence.

After Hillary Clinton called Trump to concede, making him America’s president-elect, a friend on Twitter wrote a message of apology to the world, saying there are millions of Americans who don’t share Trump’s “hatred/division/ignorance.” She ended: “Ashamed of millions that do.”

That would presumably include me – but it doesn’t, and that is where the dismissal of voter concerns about Clinton led to her defeat. I most certainly reject the trifecta of “hatred/division/ignorance.” I support the Democratic Party’s position on abortion, same-sex marriage and climate change.

But I am a single mother who can’t afford health insurance under Obamacare. The president’s mortgage-loan modification program, “HOPE NOW,” didn’t help me. Tuesday, I drove into Virginia from my hometown of Morgantown, W.Va., where I see rural America and ordinary Americans, like me, still struggling to make ends meet, after eight years of the Obama administration.

Finally, as a liberal Muslim who has experienced, first-hand, Islamic extremism in this world, I have been opposed to the decision by President Obama and the Democratic Party to tap dance around the “Islam” in Islamic State. Of course, Trump’s rhetoric has been far more than indelicate and folks can have policy differences with his recommendations, but, to me, it has been exaggerated and demonized by the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, their media channels, such as Al Jazeera, and their proxies in the West, in a convenient distraction from the issue that most worries me as a human being on this earth: extremist Islam of the kind that has spilled blood from the hallways of the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai to the dance floor of the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

In mid-June, after the tragic shooting at Pulse, Trump tweeted out a message, delivered in his typical subtle style: “Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn’t he should immediately resign in disgrace!”

Around then, on CNN’s “New Day,” Democratic candidate Clinton seemed to do the Obama dance, saying, “From my perspective, it matters what we do more than what we say. And it mattered we got bin Laden, not what name we called him. I have clearly said we – whether you call it radical jihadism or radical Islamism, I’m happy to say either. I think they mean the same thing.”

By mid-October, it was one Aug. 17, 2014, email from the WikiLeaks treasure trove of Clinton emails that poisoned the well for me. In it, Clinton told aide John Podesta: “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL,” the politically correct name for the Islamic State, “and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

The revelations of multimillion-dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation from Qatar and Saudi Arabia killed my support for Clinton. Yes, I want equal pay. No, I reject Trump’s “locker room” banter, the idea of a “wall” between the United States and Mexico and a plan to “ban” Muslims. But I trust the United States and don’t buy the political hyperbole – agenda-driven identity politics of its own – that demonized Trump and his supporters.

I gently tried to express my thoughts on Twitter but the “Pantsuit revolution” was like a steamroller to any nuanced discourse. If you supported Trump, you had to be a redneck.

Days before the election, a journalist from India emailed me, asking: What are your thoughts being a Muslim in “Trump’s America”?

I wrote that as a child of India, arriving in the United States at the age of 4 in the summer of 1969, I have absolutely no fears about being a Muslim in a “Trump America.” The checks and balances in America and our rich history of social justice and civil rights will never allow the fear-mongering that has been attached to candidate Trump’s rhetoric to come to fruition.

What worried me the most were my concerns about the influence of theocratic Muslim dictatorships, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, in a Hillary Clinton America. These dictatorships are no shining examples of progressive society with their failure to offer fundamental human rights and pathways to citizenship to immigrants from India, refugees from Syria and the entire class of de facto slaves that live in those dictatorships.

We have to stand up with moral courage against not just hate against Muslims, but hate by Muslims, so that everyone can live with sukhun, or peace of mind, I finished in my reflections to the journalist in India.

He didn’t get the email. I didn’t resend it, afraid of the wrath I’d receive. But, then, I voted.

 

THE UNBEARABLE SMUGNESS OF THE PRESS

Commentary: The unbearable smugness of the press
By Will Rahn, CBS News political correspondent
CBS News
November 10, 2016

The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak, and deservedly so.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump’s victory. More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.

This is all symptomatic of modern journalism’s great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness. Had Hillary Clinton won, there’d be a winking “we did it” feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.

So much for that. The audience for our glib analysis and contempt for much of the electorate, it turned out, was rather limited. This was particularly true when it came to voters, the ones who turned out by the millions to deliver not only a rebuke to the political system but also the people who cover it. Trump knew what he was doing when he invited his crowds to jeer and hiss the reporters covering him. They hate us, and have for some time.

And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.

It’s a profound failure of empathy in the service of endless posturing. There’s been some sympathy from the press, sure: the dispatches from “heroin country” that read like reports from colonial administrators checking in on the natives. But much of that starts from the assumption that Trump voters are backward, and that it’s our duty to catalogue and ultimately reverse that backwardness. What can we do to get these people to stop worshiping their false god and accept our gospel?

We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists, at our worst, see ourselves as a priestly caste. We believe we not only have access to the indisputable facts, but also a greater truth, a system of beliefs divined from an advanced understanding of justice.

You’d think that Trump’s victory – the one we all discounted too far in advance – would lead to a certain newfound humility in the political press. But of course that’s not how it works. To us, speaking broadly, our diagnosis was still basically correct. The demons were just stronger than we realized.

This is all a “whitelash,” you see. Trump voters are racist and sexist, so there must be more racists and sexists than we realized. Tuesday night’s outcome was not a logic-driven rejection of a deeply flawed candidate named Clinton; no, it was a primal scream against fairness, equality, and progress. Let the new tantrums commence!

That’s the fantasy, the idea that if we mock them enough, call them racist enough, they’ll eventually shut up and get in line. It’s similar to how media Twitter works, a system where people who dissent from the proper framing of a story are attacked by mobs of smugly incredulous pundits. Journalists exist primarily in a world where people can get shouted down and disappear, which informs our attitudes toward all disagreement.

Journalists increasingly don’t even believe in the possibility of reasoned disagreement, and as such ascribe cynical motives to those who think about things a different way. We see this in the ongoing veneration of “facts,” the ones peddled by explainer websites and data journalists who believe themselves to be curiously post-ideological.

That the explainers and data journalists so frequently get things hilariously wrong never invites the soul-searching you’d think it would. Instead, it all just somehow leads us to more smugness, more meanness, more certainty from the reporters and pundits. Faced with defeat, we retreat further into our bubble, assumptions left unchecked. No, it’s the voters who are wrong.

As a direct result, we get it wrong with greater frequency. Out on the road, we forget to ask the right questions. We can’t even imagine the right question. We go into assignments too certain that what we find will serve to justify our biases. The public’s estimation of the press declines even further -- fewer than one-in-three Americans trust the press, per Gallup -- which starts the cycle anew.

There’s a place for opinionated journalism; in fact, it’s vital. But our causal, profession-wide smugness and protestations of superiority are making us unable to do it well.

Our theme now should be humility. We must become more impartial, not less so. We have to abandon our easy culture of tantrums and recrimination. We have to stop writing these know-it-all, 140-character sermons on social media and admit that, as a class, journalists have a shamefully limited understanding of the country we cover.

What’s worse, we don’t make much of an effort to really understand, and with too few exceptions, treat the economic grievances of Middle America like they’re some sort of punchline. Sometimes quite literally so, such as when reporters tweet out a photo of racist-looking Trump supporters and jokingly suggest that they must be upset about free trade or low wages.

We have to fix this, and the broken reasoning behind it. There’s a fleeting fun to gang-ups and groupthink. But it’s not worth what we are losing in the process.

 

NEW YORK TIMES: WE BLEW IT ON TRUMP

New York Times: We blew it on Trump
By Michael Goodwin
New York Post
November 11, 2016

The Gray Lady feels the agony of political defeat – in her reputation and in her wallet.

After taking a beating almost as brutal as Hillary Clinton’s, the New York Times on Friday made an extraordinary appeal to its readers to stand by her. The publisher’s letter to subscribers was part apology and part defense of its campaign coverage, but the key takeaway was a pledge to do better.

Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. admitted the paper failed to appreciate Donald Trump’s appeal.

“After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?”

While insisting his staff had “reported on both candidates fairly,” he also vowed that the paper would “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor.”

Ah, there’s the rub. Had the paper actually been fair to both candidates, it wouldn’t need to rededicate itself to honest reporting. And it wouldn’t have been totally blindsided by Trump’s victory.

Instead, because it demonized Trump from start to finish, it failed to realize he was onto something. And because the paper decided that Trump’s supporters were a rabble of racist rednecks and homophobes, it didn’t have a clue about what was happening in the lives of the Americans who elected the new president.

Sulzberger’s letter alludes to this, promising that the paper will “striv[e] always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you.”

But bad or sloppy journalism doesn’t fully capture the Times sins. Not after it announced that it was breaking its rules of coverage because Trump didn’t deserve fairness.

As media columnist Jim Rutenberg put it in August, most Times reporters saw Trump “as an abnormal and potentially dangerous candidate” and thus couldn’t be even-handed.

That wasn’t one reporter talking – it was policy. The standards, developed over decades to force reporters and editors to be fair and to build public trust, were effectively eliminated as too restrictive for the Trump phenomenon.

The man responsible for that rash decision, top editor Dean Baquet, later said the Rutenberg piece “nailed” his thinking, and went on to insist that Trump “challenged our language” and that, “He will have changed journalism.”

Baquet also said of the struggle for fairness, “I think that Trump has ended that struggle,” adding: “we now say stuff. We fact-check him. We write it more powerfully that it’s false.”

Baquet was wrong. Trump indeed was challenging, but it was Baquet who changed journalism. He’s the one who decided that the standards of fairness and nonpartisanship could be broken without consequence.

After that, the floodgates opened, and virtually every so-called news article reflected a clear bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton. Stories, photos, headlines, placement in the paper – all the tools were used to pick a president, the facts be damned.

Now the bill is coming due. Shocked by Trump’s victory and mocked even by liberals for its bias, the paper is also apparently bleeding readers – and money.

I’ve gotten letters from people who say they cancelled their Times subscriptions and, to judge from a cryptic line in a Thursday article, the problem is more than anecdotal.

Citing reader anger over election coverage, Rutenberg wrote that, “Most ominously, it came in the form of canceled subscriptions.”

Having grown up at The Times, I am pained by its decline. More troubling, as the flagship of American journalism, it is giving all reporters a black eye. Its standards were the source of its credibility, and eliminating them has made it less than ordinary.

It is because of those concerns that I repeat a suggestion about how to fix the mess. Because he now concedes a problem, perhaps Sulzberger will consider taking action.

Using an outside law firm or even in-house reporters, he must assess how and why Baquet made the decision to sever the paper from its roots. He must assess the impact on reporters and editors, and whether they felt pressure to conform their stories to Baquet’s political bias.

Whatever the findings, the publisher must insist that the standards of fairness again become a fundamental tenet in the news room. As an added guarantee, he must insist that the paper enlarge its thinking about diversity to include journalists who disagree with the Times embedded liberal slant. There has to be a difference of perspective to judge where fairness lies.

Readers, and former readers, should be part of the process. Many already know that the paper must get its head out of parochial New York and into the hearts and minds of Americans everywhere.

This is about survival. If it doesn’t change now, the Gray Lady’s days surely are numbered.

To our readers,

When the biggest political story of the year reached a dramatic and unexpected climax late Tuesday night, our newsroom turned on a dime and did what it has done for nearly two years – cover the 2016 election with agility and creativity.

After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters? What forces and strains in America drove this divisive election and outcome? Most important, how will a president who remains a largely enigmatic figure actually govern when he takes office?

As we reflect on this week’s momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you. It is also to hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly. We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign. You can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team.

We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers. We want to take this opportunity, on behalf of all Times journalists, to thank you for that loyalty.

Sincerely,

Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
Publisher
Dean Baquet
Executive Editor
New York Times

 

NEVERTRUMPERS (LIKE MAX BOOT) SHOULD NOT SHUN TRUMP

NeverTrumpers should not shun Trump
Checks and balances on a president’s national security powers have never been more important.
By Max Boot
USA Today
November 13, 2016

The president of the United States has vast power – nearly unlimited in the realm of foreign affairs. He can order U.S. troops into combat. He can bomb any country he wants. He can round up illegal immigrants. He can spy on millions of people. Soon all that power will be in the hands of Donald J. Trump, hardly the most sober and restrained individual ever to occupy the Oval Office.

The checks and balances in our system will be more important in his administration than in any other. If Trump truly misbehaves, there is always the possibility he could be impeached. But let’s hope it never comes to that because it would be a terrible ordeal. The courts can also provide a check on some of his executive orders, but they seldom interfere in foreign affairs. Eventually, the voters will get another say. In the short term, however, the most important checks are political appointees, career professionals and legislators.

Trump’s appointees to high-level positions will be of immense importance especially in the realm of national security, where he knows little. The top three layers of jobs at the State Department, the Department of Defense and the National Security Council are the key ones: the secretaries of State and Defense, the deputy secretaries and the assistant secretaries, or at the NSC, the national security adviser, the deputy adviser and the senior directors.

By now, most presidential campaigns would have signed up multiple contenders for every position. That hasn’t been true with Trump, who confronts a schism the likes of which we have never seen before within the national security community.

I was one of 122 national security experts who signed a letter opposing Trump. The temptation now for me and my fellow #NeverTrumpers is to want nothing to do with a candidate we considered unfit for office. The temptation for Trump is to want nothing to do with people who considered him unfit. For the good of the country, I hope the two sides can come together.

Trump could learn something from Richard Nixon who, after winning the 1968 election, appointed as his national security adviser a Harvard professor named Henry Kissinger, whom he barely knew and who had spent the previous decade working for his opponent, Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon was famous for holding grudges, but even he realized the importance of reaching across the intra-Republican divide to get the best minds into his administration rather than simply rewarding his campaign loyalists. If Trump is half as smart as he thinks he is, he will emulate Nixon’s example, and he will not be threatened by the prospect that some of his nominees will disagree with him.

It is vitally important that a president get a full range of views, and that he appoint people who are willing to stand up to him when he’s wrong. Kissinger wrote that those close to Nixon “were expected, we believed, to delay implementing more exuberant directives, giving our president the opportunity to live out his fantasies and yet to act, through us, with the calculation that his other image of himself prescribed.” Trump’s appointees will need to perform a similar function – if he will let them.

That is true as well for the professional government employees who stay on regardless of administration. There are 2.6 million civilian employees of the executive branch and 1.5 million uniformed military personnel. Many of them, especially in agencies such as the State Department and the CIA, where the general political outlook is liberal, will be tempted to quit in disgust because they cannot fathom working for a man like Trump.

As a #NeverTrumper I sympathize with their concerns, but I hope that they will hold their noses and continue to do their jobs as long as they are not asked to do anything unethical or illegal. And if they are asked to take such steps – for instance if Trump carries out his threats to order torture “worse than waterboarding” or to kill relatives of terrorists – their refusal to act will safeguard the rule of law.

The third important check on Trump will be Congress and especially the Senate, which must confirm his top nominees. There are only 51 Republicans, 52 if they win a December runoff in Louisiana – not enough to stop a filibuster. And if even two or three of them defect, that should be enough to defeat any Trump initiative or nominee. That will place huge potential power in the hands of a small number of principled #NeverTrump Republicans such as Sens. Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse and Jeff Flake. They should not and will not act to block Trump indiscriminately, but they can and should try to stop him if he acts recklessly. They should begin to exercise their power now by quietly urging the president-elect to appoint people of unimpeachable judgment and integrity to top-level jobs.

Trump can be a successful president if he behaves less erratically than he did during the campaign. It will be up to those who work with him on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to save him from himself.

 

BERNIE SANDERS STATEMENT ON TRUMP

Senator Sanders Statement on Trump
Wednesday, November 9, 2016

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sanders-statement-on-trump

BURLINGTON, Vt., Nov. 9 – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement Wednesday after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States:

“Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media. People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids - all while the very rich become much richer.

“To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him.”

 

TURKEY ISSUES WARNING OVER TRAVEL TO U.S. AFTER TRUMP PROTESTS

Turkey issues warning over travel to U.S. after Trump protests
Reuters
November 12, 2016

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey warned its citizens about travel to the United States on Saturday in response to what the foreign ministry called increasingly violent protests against President-elect Donald Trump.

“Within the context of risks caused by the incidents and of social tension, our citizens who live in the U.S., or who are considering traveling there, should be cautious,” the ministry said in a statement.

Demonstrators planned to gather again on Saturday in U.S. cities nationwide to protest against Trump, whose election they say poses a threat to their civil and human rights, a day after a protester was shot in Portland, Oregon.

Last month, the U.S. State Department updated its travel warning on Turkey, ordering family members of consulate employees in Istanbul to leave the country, citing threats against U.S. citizens.

There has been growing tension between the two NATO allies after repeated calls from Turkey to extradite U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara blames for a failed coup in July.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Wednesday he hoped for an improvement in bilateral ties after Trump’s victory, and again called for Gulen’s extradition.

 

CELEBS WHO SAID THEY’D LEAVE COUNTRY IF TRUMP WON

Celebs who said they’d leave country if Trump won
By Melanie Zanona
The Hill
November 9, 2016

Dozens of celebrities vowed to leave the country if Donald Trump won the White House, saying they’d flee to everywhere from Canada to Jupiter.

The threat is a common one after any election outcome: Canada’s immigration website crashed from heavy traffic as it looked increasingly likely that Trump would win.

But after the real estate mogul clinched the presidency in a stunning victory early Wednesday morning, some of those stars will face questions about making good on their promise.

Here is a list of some of the celebs who claimed they would move out of the U.S. under a Trump administration.

ACTORS

Bryan Cranston said he hopes he doesn’t have to pack his bags, but would “definitely move” if Trump won. “Absolutely, I would definitely move,” the “Breaking Bad” star said on “The Bestseller Experiment” podcast. “It’s not real to me that that would happen. I hope to God it won’t.”

Samuel L. Jackson slammed Trump for running a “hate”-filled campaign and said he would move to South Africa if he wins. “If that motherf---er becomes president, I’m moving my black ass to South Africa,” the movie star quipped to Jimmy Kimmel.

Lena Dunham told Andy Cohen at the Matrix Awards that “I know a lot of people have been threatening to do this, but I really will. I know a lovely place in Vancouver.” The star and creator of HBO’s “Girls” has been a vocal advocate for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee.

Neve Campbell, an actress on the political drama “House of Cards,” vowed to move back home to Canada, while “Orange is the New Black” actress Natasha Lyonne said she would hightail it to a mental hospital.

SINGERS

Cher tweeted this summer that if Trump gets elected, “I’m moving to Jupiter.”

Miley Cyrus wrote in an emotional Instagram post in March that tears were running down her cheek and she was unbelievably scared and sad. “I am moving if he is president,” the young pop star said. “I don’t say things I don’t mean!”

Barbara Streisand, a vocal Clinton supporter, told “60 Minutes” that “I’m either coming to your country if you’ll let me in, or Canada.”

Ne-Yo told TMZ last month that he’d move to Canada and be neighbors with fellow R&B singer Drake if the country elected Trump.

COMEDIANS

Comedian Amy Schumer said in September that Spain would be her destination of choice.

“My act will change because I will need to learn to speak Spanish,” Schumer said in an appearance on the BBC’s “Newsnight.” “Because I will move to Spain or somewhere. It’s beyond my comprehension if Trump won. It’s just too crazy.”

Chelsea Handler said she already made contingency plans months ago.

“I did buy a house in another country just in case,” the comedian and talk show host said during an appearance on “Live with Kelly and Michael” in May. “So all these people that threaten to leave the country and then don’t – I actually will leave that country.”

Former “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart said he would consider “getting in a rocket and going to another planet, because clearly this planet’s gone bonkers” if the real estate mogul wins.

Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of the “The View”, said on an episode of the talk show earlier this year that if the country elects Trump, “maybe it’s time for me to move, you know. I can afford to go.”

Keegan-Michael Key said he would flee north to Canada. “It’s like, 10 minutes from Detroit,” the comedian told TMZ in January. “That’s where I’m from; my mom lives there. It’d make her happy too.”

Hispanic comedian George Lopez said Trump “won’t have to worry about immigration” if he takes the White House because “we’ll all go back.”

POLITICAL FIGURES

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joked in an interview with The New York Times in July that it’d be time to move to New Zealand if Trump were to win.

“Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand,” she said quoting her husband who died in 2010. “I can’t imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president. For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be – I don’t even want to contemplate that.”

Ginsburg later apologized for her comments, calling them “ill-advised.”

Civil rights activist Al Sharpton told a reporter earlier this year that he’s “reserving my ticket out of here if [Trump] wins.”

 

See also:

New York Post: Ivana wants to be Trump’s ambassador to Czech Republic

 

* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you “like” this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia

Jared Kushner

 

David Friedman, an advisor to Donald Trump on Israel, with the president-elect

***

(See also below: Trump’s top initial 3 contenders for secretary of state are all firmly pro-Israel)

 

TRUMP’S ISRAEL ADVISORS LIKELY TO USHER IN ERA OF IMPROVED US-ISRAEL TIES

[Note by Tom Gross]

Yesterday, Donald Trump was elected U.S, president.

During the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, there have been complaints about a strain of anti-Semitism among some of Trump’s supporters and in some of the campaign advertising, as well as the hounding of certain Jewish journalists. That Trump has insufficiently condemned this is, of course, a matter of great concern.

This dispatch, however, only focuses on Trump’s likely Israel policy.

***

Israel is unlikely to feature prominently in Donald Trump’s presidency (compared to under other recent presidents). But to the extent that it does, it seems Trump will restore close ties between the US and Israel after some shaky relations during Barack Obama’s two terms in office over the Iran nuclear program and other issues.

Three main persons seem to have emerged as Donald Trump’s advisors on Israel.

JARED KUSHNER

Jared Kushner, the president elect’s son-in-law, could play a major role in the Trump administration. There are even rumors that he may be chief of staff.

As Trump met privately with President Obama at the White House this morning, Obama’s chief of staff Denis McDonough walked with Jared Kushner around the South Lawn.

Kushner served as Trump’s shadow campaign manager throughout the presidential race. Kushner kept a relatively low profile on the campaign trail, sometimes standing silently to the side of the stage, during big primary nights and at rallies.

Kushner is a pro-Israel orthodox Jew, married to Trump’s eldest daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism and is bringing up Trump’s grandchildren in a kosher home.

As I have reported previously in these dispatches, Kushner along with the editor of the New York Observer (which Kushner owns) co-wrote Trump’s keynote address to AIPAC earlier this year.

 

DAVID FRIEDMAN

David Friedman, 57, is Trump’s longtime lawyer and friend. There are rumors that Friedman may be appointed as the next U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Friedman works at the New York law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman LLP, where several subscribers to this email dispatch list also work, including former U.S. Vice-Presidential candidate, Senator Joe Lieberman.

Trump and Friedman are quite close and Trump paid a condolence call to the family Shiva at Friedman’s parents’ home in Long Island after his father died.

Unlike some of President Obama’s advisors, Friedman has said that it is unwise for the United States to try and impose any solutions on Israel and that it is up to Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate directly to reach an agreement.

Just as the present American ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, is a friend of Barack Obama, and is close to the Israeli opposition and to leftist American Jewish groups such as J-Street, so Friedman is closer to American pro-Israel conservative groups.

He grew up in Woodmere, in Long Island, New York. His father, the late Morris Friedman, was rabbi of a Conservative synagogue in North Woodmere, and president of the New York Board of Rabbis.

Friedman is a graduate of New York University Law School, and his family are longtime Republicans.

During the 1984 presidential race, Ronald Reagan became the first sitting American president to visit to a synagogue since George Washington in 1791, when he went to Friedman’s father synagogue and afterwards to the Friedman house for Shabbat lunch.

Friedman has, on various occasions, attacked the New York Times for its coverage of Trump. During the election campaign, he wrote in the Jerusalem Post that in some of its coverage of Trump, the New York Times “has the journalistic integrity of the worst gossip rag.”

“If only the Times had reported on the Nazi death camps with the same fervor as its failed last-minute attempt to conjure up alleged victims of Donald Trump, imagine how many lives could have been saved,” said Friedman

 

JASON GREENBLATT

The third main Trump advisor on Israel is Jason Greenblatt, who serves with Friedman as co-chairman of Trump’s Israel Advisory Committee.

Greenblatt, 49, is the chief legal officer and executive vice president of the Trump Organization.

Greenblatt, an observant, yarmulke-wearing real estate lawyer, was educated at Yeshiva University and New York University School of Law, and lives in Teaneck, New Jersey.

He is friends with several subscribers to this email list, who tell me he is “a mild-mannered, soft-spoken family man, more liberal than Trump”.

Greenblatt also runs a parenting blog with his wife, Naomi, a psychiatrist who focuses on women’s mental health issues. They often write about “teaching their six children ethics and integrity”.

During the presidential campaign, Trump came under fire for tweeting and then deleting an image that many found anti-Semitic (a six-pointed star next to a picture of Hillary Clinton, overlaying images of money). In response, Greenblatt wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post arguing that Trump has always been respectful of his many Jewish friends and employees, and had encouraged Greenblatt to take time off work to observe the Sabbath. He said that the star was a sheriff’s star, not a star of David.

Unlike Trump, who during the campaign took a very hard-line on immigrants and refugees, Greenblatt, the son of Jewish refugees from Europe, has written positively about his immigrant heritage, saying that America had given “refuge” to his family members, who “benefited tremendously by being able to raise the next generation in freedom.”

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Tom Gross adds:: I think Hillary Clinton, had she become president, would also, on the whole, have been pro-Israel, and more so than Barack Obama. But Israel was not (and nor should it have been) a major issue in this campaign.

 

TRUMP’S TOP 3 CONTENDERS **AS OF TODAY, THOUGH THIS MAY OF COURSE CHANGE) FOR SECRETARY OF STATE ARE ALL FIRMLY PRO-ISRAEL

It will likely be some time before Trump appoints members of his cabinet. But the three persons who are believed to be top of Trump’s short-list for secretary of state all have strong pro-Israel records.

They are: John Bolton, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005-2006 in the George W. Bush administration. As long ago as 1991, Bolton played a key role in the successful U.S. effort to revoke the notorious U.N.’s “Zionism is racism” resolution while assistant secretary for international organization affairs in the George H.W. Bush administration.

Another possibility for secretary of state is Newt Gingrich, who served as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999. Gingrich is a staunch supporter of Israel and has repeatedly criticized the Palestinian Authority for refusing to compromise and negotiate with Israel in recent years.

A third name in the running is Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Corker has said that the Obama administration “got fleeced” on the Iran deal. Corker criticized Obama for giving up on “anytime, anywhere” inspections of Iranian nuclear sites, and for effectively allowing Iran, “to move from having its nuclear program dismantled to having its nuclear proliferation managed.”

 

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