What President Trump’s Foreign Policy Will Look Like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2ilpUJjPH0 

Pressed on #Russia/#Ukraine, #Trump surrogate McFarland rips #Obama,pivots to #ISIS(‘common goal’),even to #Chechnya

Not sure what to say about this budding romance of the right........

Le Pen says 'world peace' would gain from a Trump-Putin-Le Pen trio
http://reut.rs/2fYXPuF
 
BUT WAIT....the nuclear race is now on......

Japan...S Korea.....Trumps own suggestions......

German Lawmaker: Europe Must Consider Own #Nuclear Deterrence Capability. By @andrea_shalal
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/german-lawmaker-europe-… 

WHAT Trump needs urgently to understand about a very complex world right now.....there are people fighting and dying against Russia as they either fight Assad for their vision of a new country under the rule of law and good government and or Ukrainians fighting and dying daily to defend their country from a Russian invasion.........

THIS is the respect the Ukrainian people show to their war dead even after two years of war .......that we often miss seeing in the US MSM.......

There are heroes
who sacrifice themselves
and fight for everything we hold dear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LzX3bYqG98&feature=youtu.be

Are we when we discuss Trump's potential FP.....ARE we going to get a FP driven by the strategic interests of the US or driven by the Trump business interests and his profit margin ie bottom line...very valid question right now.....

QUOTE:
Foreign affairs: Trump has significant business interests in at least a dozen countries, though the full extent of his operations is unknown, in part because he has refused to release his tax returns.

The Republican either owns or has leased his name to hotels, golf courses and other properties in countries ranging from Azerbaijan to South Korea.

The Trump Organization’s website also lists at least a dozen real estate holdings abroad, though it appears some, such as a golf club in Dubai, are still in the works. Trump also has a line of commercial goods, from clothing to furniture, largely manufactured overseas.

How Trump will approach the countries in which he is invested is unclear. He’s talked of banning Muslims from entering the United States, but he does business in Muslim countries. He appears willing to launch a trade war with China by imposing large tariffs and labeling the Chinese currency manipulators, but some of his goods are made there.

Trump also has spoken kindly of Russia (he talked by phone with President Vladimir Putin on Monday, the Kremlin announced), while claiming he has no businesses there. But there are reports that many of Trump’s businesses in other parts of the world are affiliated with Russian financiers, and his son Donald Jr., was quoted by the trade publication eTurboNews telling a real estate conference this in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. … We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

So long as the Trump business empire remains intact, said Norman Eisen, President Barack Obama’s former White House ethics lawyer, the Republican and his appointees — from secretary of state to all of his U.S. ambassadors — will be shadowed by the conflict-of-interest cloud for pretty much every foreign policy move they make.

“All of us are going to have the question when he’s making decisions about the countries in which he has businesses, or assets or liabilities: Is he making those decisions in order to advance the public interest or his own private financial interests?” Eisen said. “As long as he has this web of international financial ties, we’re always going to have the question.”

Richard Painter, the former top ethics lawyer in George W. Bush’s White House, predicted Trump’s foreign business dealings could also lead to his political undoing. Because a piece of Trump’s real estate holdings — the Avenue of the Americas office building in Manhattan — involves a loan from the Bank of China, the new president could be vulnerable to charges of violating the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bans U.S. government employees from accepting payment by foreign countries or the companies they own.

“All that needs to be unwound between now and Jan. 20 or he’s going to be accused of taking payments from foreign governments, and I can guarantee you the Democrats will use that as an excuse to impeach him when they get control of the House,” said Painter, who added that the prospects of a Democratic takeover are well within recent historic norms for a first-term president in a midterm election.
UNQUOTE

Anyone notice that Trump comments on the Putin letter to him...and yet we have a long Russia/Trump call that there is no readout of AND at the same time a large number of European and NATO traditional long term US allies somehow cannot get their calls accepted inside the Trump organization.....

Putin immediately...the rest of the US allies...seemingly ignored protocol wise...

Trump had no State Department briefing materials for his first calls with world leaders. He was just talking.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/us/politics/trump-transition.html?… 

Evidently Trump did not fully understand all foreign callers and the DoS/WH record all phone calls and then provide readouts of those calls...

Putin wants Trump to press NATO to withdraw its thousands of soldiers from its borders which are guarded by Russia`s tens of thousands..

Trump's spokesperson is assuming Trump will agree to this Putin demand during their first meeting...WHY does Putin fully believe that Trump will cave to this demand????

Must be that new Trump Tower construction plan for Moscow.....????

In order to understand the coming Trump FP we urgently need to understand the Bannon effect on the Trump FP inner voice....and Bannon's "world views"...

Steve Bannon's admiration of France's National Front exceeds even that of UKIP:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-…

QUOTE
Donald Trump’s newly named chief strategist and senior counselor, Steve Bannon, laid out his global nationalist vision in unusually in-depth remarks delivered by Skype to a conference held inside the Vatican in the summer of 2014.
Well before victories for Brexit and Trump seemed possible, Bannon declared there was a “global tea party movement” and praised European far-right parties like Great Britain’s UKIP and France’s National Front. Bannon also suggested that a racist element in far-right parties “all gets kind of washed out,” that the West was facing a “crisis of capitalism” after losing its “Judeo-Christian foundation,” and he blasted “crony capitalists” in Washington for failing to prosecute bank executives over the financial crisis.
The remarks — beamed into a small conference room in a 15th-century marble palace in a secluded corner of the Vatican — were part of a 50-minute Q&A during a conference focused on poverty hosted by the Human Dignity Institute, which BuzzFeed News attended as part of its coverage of the rise of Europe’s religious right. The group was founded by Benjamin Harnwell, a longtime aide to Conservative member of the European Parliament Nirj Deva to promote a “Christian voice” in European politics. The group has ties to some of the most conservative factions inside the Catholic Church; Cardinal Raymond Burke, one of the most vocal critics of Pope Francis who was ousted from a senior Vatican position in 2014, is chair of the group’s advisory board.
The transcript begins 90 seconds into the then-Breitbart News chairman’s remarks because microphone placement made the opening mostly unintelligible, but you can hear the whole recording at the bottom of the post.

Continued......

NOW one can understand the Bannon interest in ultra national parties in Europe....
Kremlin's web of political influence in UK, France and Germany. Must-read report from Atlantic Council.
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/image..._web_1116.pdf#
…

3 days after being invited into the Trump team by right-wing Stephen Bannon, Marion Le Pen pledged French allegiance to Russia in Moscow...during a public press conference

And before you ask: She means the West's "intervention in Syria" of course.
Not the Russian one ...

SERIOUSLY REMEBER I posted the Trump "alt right advisor" Bannon's own tweet from his personal account that he was immediately going to expand his private business into France and Germany to help build a QUOTE "White National Party UNQUOTE

AND I posted the Le Pen response to his offer to work with LePen's right wing nationalist party taken from her twitter account.

THEN when social media picked it up and then US MSM started asking the Trump campaign about the Bannon exchange with LePen.....WE HEARD the standard Trump response..."it ain't us and we have had no contacts with her"..JUST as he stated when challenged about his Russian contacts....

Anyone notice a trend developing...contacts with ultra nationalist parties/Moscow...then discovered....then asked about it..then denial....

Open challenge to anyone who voted for Trump and who follows SWJ on a regular basis...CARE to comment????

Bolton: Britain leaving the EU will strengthen Nato because together US and UK will "sort the Europeans out."

Not exactly sure I follow his thinking here...BUT he is pushing for DoS...

If this is any indication of the coming Trump FP...WE are all in trouble....

Worth reading and then comparing to the Trump statements that he could see recognizing Russian control of Crimea as the referendum was legal.....

Kremlin-led militant is sure Russia will save separatists once more if #Ukraine will try to restore its sovereignty
http://uatoday.tv/politics/suddenly-militant-s-minsk-envoy-openly-admit… 
…

DOES PUTIN FULLY BELIEVE HE IS BEING BACKED UP BY TRUMP'S PREVIOUS COMMENTS ON A JOINT OPERATION WITH THE US....????

AND HOW DOES PUTIN FEEL FULLY ASSURED TRUMP IS ONBOARD WITH HIS ATTACKS ACROSS SYRIA NOT AIMED AT ISLAMIC STATE BUT AIMED AT CIVILIANS AND THE FREE SYRIAN ARMY....????

A very interesting question especially if one notices Trumps comments on Syria can in fact be laid over the exact wordage Putin uses.....WHY is that?

Major #Russia escalation underway today, as cruise missile & airstrikes target opposition in #Aleppo & #Idlib.
High use of cluster bombs.

Hard to ignore the timing of #Russia’s offensive being 12hrs after #Putin’s call with #Trump.
Russia now has 2 free hands in #Syria.

Russia’s #Aleppo offensive has been expected for weeks, with leaflets yesterday indicating a 24hr warning.
Expect heavy casualties.

BreakingNews
#Putin orders start of large-scale offensives in northern #Syria.
https://youtu.be/7Y_keuDKroM

Over the western #Aleppo suburbs right now.
Clearly visible: CIVILIANS are the targets of the air strikes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJioG_c1UFE …

Panic in #Ariha (#Idlib province) now.
#Russian air strikes on the center of the city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it2dZ0tOtZ0 …

Footage
First video from air strikes, hitting besieged eastern #Aleppo city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6MdPJxtCI8 …

Cruise missile strikes from #Russia's Admiral Grigorovich frigate, which recently arrived to the Mediterranean

First pictures from rural western #Aleppo, where more than 20 air strikes hit towns over the last hours.
https://twitter.com/SputnikInt/status/798491992745353217/photo/1pic.twi…

BREAKINGNEWS
#Russia:#Kuznetsov carrier group starts combat operations
#Aleppo:First air strikes since 3 weeks
#Idlib:Intense overflights

Targeted #Russian air strikes destroyed the hospital of Awayjil, 13 km west of #Aleppo, last night.

From "ISIS" to "Незаконные вооружённые формирования" (illegal armed formations) in one hour ...
russian MoD Your lies rock! ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S6UuH9OnDg&feature=share …
#PutinAtWar

AND this is the Trump future partner in Syria placing air strikes on civilians everywhere BUT NOT on IS.....

Let me help you with the exact geolocation @mod_russia.
Let the world know, YOU LIE and do NOT FIGHT #ISIS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNgPIxqEzA8#…

BUT WAIT Trump and his FP goals wants to work with Assad and Putin to attack IS....SO if Russia has barely attacked IS in over ONE FULL YEAR MAYBE someone needs to inform the super brilliant businessman of this simple fact...

Geo location map work is posted on the Syrian thread.....

IF in the face of the simple fact Putin has not really attacked IS in over ONE FULL year and yet Trump insists he wants to fight with Putin and Assad to attack IS WHILE both Assad and Putin attack 98% of the time the Free Syrian rebels THEN we urgently need to fully understand this bromance and the underlining WHY????

Breaking: Putin + Trump have spoken by phone, plan to meet (when not clear), agree to work to improve relations - Kremlin, via Interfax.

Kremlin says Trump & Putin hold telephone conversation, pledge to "unite efforts to fight no.1 enemy: international terrorism & extremism"

HERE Comes the3 Joint US Russian Syrian engagement.....DoD should love is move as it will drive 100,000 Syrian experienced fighters straight into the arms of JFS.....

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-defence-idUSKBN1391HH?utm_campaign…

The European Union on Monday agreed a defense plan that could see it sending rapid response forces abroad for the first time, as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's criticism of allies appeared to galvanize Europe into revamping its strategy.

The plan set out by EU defense and foreign ministers could allow the bloc to send forces to stabilize a crisis before U.N. peace keepers can take over, and more broadly cement a willingness to act without the United States.

"Europe needs to be able to act for its own security," French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters.

"This will allow Europe to take a step towards its strategic autonomy," said Le Drian, who has led the EU efforts along with Germany and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, using EU code language for greater independence of Washington.

The 16-page plan lists tasks and aims, many of which risk remaining abstract without an increase in funding.

But it nonetheless takes on special relevance after Trump's comments during his campaign for the U.S. presidency in which he sniped at low levels of defense spending by some of NATO's European members.

Mogherini said there was support from governments on using so-called EU battle groups of 1,500 personnel, which have been operational since 2007 but never used.

EU leaders must still sign off on the plan in December, while divisive aspects over money were left for officials to work out next year. Proposals for a European military headquarters were scaled back to focus on civilian missions.

Figures on the table for funding the EU plan pale in comparison to the $18 billion that the United States aims to spend over the next five years on new technologies.

During the U.S. election campaign Trump threatened to abandon U.S. allies in Europe if they did not spend enough on defense, appearing to question almost 70 years of U.S. military support that has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy.

"Clearly it is a message for all of to see how we can increase and improve our coordination," Sweden's Foreign minister Margot Wallstrom said of Trump's campaign comments, even though her country is not itself a member of the U.S.-led NATO alliance.

The election of a Russia-friendly political novice as president in Bulgaria - a member of both the EU and NATO - has given further impetus to French and German efforts to improve common defense operations.

The EU has 17 military and civilian missions underway - many of them out of the classic European theater, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Mediterranean where it is seeking to stem migrant flows from Libya and uphold a U.N. arms embargo.

But European planners were at pains to stress the plan would not rival the work of NATO which Britain, one of two nuclear-armed European members together with France, is setting as a priority since it voted to pull out of the European Union.

NO 'EU ARMY'

British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, who supported Britain remaining in the EU, said Europe had to increase defense spending that has sunk to historic lows in some parts of western Europe since the end of the Cold War.

Only five EU countries, including Britain, meet a NATO target of spending 2 percent of economic output on defense, while another 10 have set firm plans to reach that level. That meant only half the EU's members were putting up enough funds for the training and equipment that Europe needs, Fallon said.

"Rather than dreaming of a European army, the best approach to the Trump presidency is for European countries to step up their own defense spending," Fallon told reporters in the margins of the meeting.

The EU's Mogherini, who chaired the gathering, went out of her way to say there were no plans to form a European army and countries would retain control over their militaries.

France has also pushed defense cooperation along with Germany after Britons voted to leave the EU in a June referendum.

Some eastern and Baltic EU nations worry stronger European defense coordination could duplicate or undermine NATO, while Ireland, Sweden and Austria are more generally cautious.

Though the new steps proposed are generally seen as modest, one diplomat said the proposed plan broke taboos that have held back European defense cooperation since the French parliament rejected a first attempt in the 1950s.

Future Trump FP being driven by cash.......??

Trump’s Top Military Adviser Is Lobbying For Obscure Company With Ties To Turkish Government

Flynn wrote an op-ed on Tues. calling for extradition of Fethullah Gulen. It was a curious piece and unusual for a former DIA Director..........

http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/11/trumps-top-military-adviser-is-lobbyi…

An intelligence consulting firm founded by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s top military adviser, was recently hired as a lobbyist by an obscure Dutch company with ties to Turkey’s government and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The revelation of that new lobbying contract, which has not been previously reported, raises several questions given that Trump is said to be considering Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), to take over as either Secretary of Defense or National Security Advisor.

It also raises questions about disclosure.

Flynn wrote an op-ed for The Hill on Tuesday, just before Trump’s stunning upset of Hillary Clinton, in which he heaped praise on Erdogan and called on the next president, whoever that would be, to accede his request to extradite the U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen back to Turkey

"Mogherini: EU Policy Toward Russia Will Not Change Regardless Of U.S." http://www.rferl.org/a/mogherini-eu-foreign-policy-russia-will-not-chan… …

Middle East
Donald Trump Likely to End Aid for Rebels Fighting Syrian Government
By DAVID E. SANGERNOV. 11, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/world/middleeast/donald-trump-syria.h…

Military aid to rebels financed & delivered by regional sunni powers, what happens next is a test for GCC-Turk ties.

This could also force all factions including JFS and FSA to unite and fully merge when the moderate-radical limitations becomes irrelevant

THIS means 100,000 rebel fighters merging into JFS.....

Bulgarian President-elect Radev calls for warmer relations with Russia, cites President-elect Trump
http://buff.ly/2fRnlEa

One-Hundred Years of Fear: America Has Abdicated Its Leadership of the West

http://spon.de/aeRLF via @SPIEGELONLINE

Even history sometimes leans toward pathos. In January 2017, when Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, the American Age will celebrate its 100th birthday -- and its funeral.

The West was constituted in its modern form in January 1917. World War I was raging in Europe at the time and in Washington, D.C., President Woodrow Wilson told his country that it was time for Americans to take responsibility for "peace and justice." In April he said: "The world must be made safe for democracy." He declared war on Germany and sent soldiers to Europe to secure victory for the Western democracies -- and the United States assumed the leadership of the Western world. It was an early phase of political globalization.

One hundred years later: Trump.

Trump, who wants nothing to do with globalization; Trump, who preaches American nationalism, isolation, partial withdrawal from world trade and zero responsibility for a global problem like climate change. And all of this after a perverse election campaign marked by resentment, racism and incitement.

Human dignity is the centerpiece of the Western project. Following the revolutions in France and the United States in the late 18th century, states began guaranteeing human rights for the first time. Human rights have a normative character, as Heinrich August Winkler argued in his monumental work "History of the West." And a racist cannot embody this normative project. Trump has no sense of dignity -- neither for himself nor others. He does not qualify as the leader of the Western world, because he is both unwilling and incapable of assuming that role.

We now face emptiness -- the fear of the void. What will happen to the West, to Europe, to Germany without the United States as its leading power? Germany is a child of the West, particularly of the United States, brought to life with American generosity, long spoon-fed and now in a deep state of shock. The American president was always simultaneously our president, at least a little, and Barack Obama was a worthy president of the West. Now, though, we must come to terms with a lack of Western leadership.

What were those 100 years like? The history of the modern West can be told in many ways: as a heroic tale, as a story of greed, as a mission or as a tale of fear. This article is about 100 years of fear, in particular the fear for our freedom, a quintessentially American paranoia that spread to the rest of the West. The word is not being used negatively here; we are talking about fear as a bulwark protecting us against danger. There are good fears and bad fears.

The Glue that Held Societies Together

Under American leadership, the united democracies were quite successful in dispensing with competing systems. They defeated the conservative German Empire and Austria-Hungary in World War I. In World War II, they eradicated the fascist regimes in the German Reich and Italy. In the Cold War, they pressed the air out of the communist Soviet Union and its minions until they collapsed.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the winner of history was clear: The West.

What made it so strong? On the one hand, it was freedom itself. The market economy was clearly superior to economic forms that were more directly controlled by the state. In the free play of forces, the West developed better products and greater affluence, along with the strength to win wars and arms races.

And the fear of losing freedom was a strong glue that held societies together. Of course there were debates, demonstrations and sulking, and there were some who preferred to be red than dead, but it was always possible to establish a majority for the fundamental Western consensus: We will preserve our freedoms at home and abroad, and we may even expand them. This idea also held the countries together. Under American leadership, and under the American nuclear shield, they were strong and relatively united as "the West."

The 1990s were the happiest time for the West. The democratic world had grown, and the fear for our freedom seemed to have been dispelled once and for all. There was no longer a major power challenging freedom.

Until Sept. 11, 2001, that is, when it all started again. Belligerent Islamists attacked the capital of freedom, New York, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The terror has continued unabated since then.

Fear now reigns more than ever, but it is not just the fear of terror. And it is also not as much the fear of losing freedom, as it was in the past, but the fear of freedom itself. This is the paradigm shift that paved Donald Trump's way to the White House. The two fears always exist simultaneously in Western societies. Freedom is enjoyed and feared, freedom is defended and fought, and freedom is expanded and limited. It is merely a question of which fear dominates in a society, and of which current is in power.

Alone with Their Fears

The fear of freedom can take many shapes. There is also a fear of one's own freedom, but it is usually a fear of the freedom of others. French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre said: Hell is other people. If they are free, one might add.

If they are free enough to cross borders and look for new places to settle. If they are free enough to export their goods and therefore compete with goods from other countries. If they are free enough to fight for their equal rights, as women, as homosexuals, as non-whites. White men, especially older white men, are viewed as Trump's kingmakers. His support among this group was especially high in the election.

It was undoubtedly a mistake to leave these men, and the women who think like them, alone with their fears -- to not take them seriously enough. Long-smoldering fears generate rage, especially against those who are accused of doing nothing to allay those fears, in other words, the establishment, both in politics and the media. For the first time, the Internet has provided this rage with an echo chamber, allowing it to reach a broader public and to magnify the voices of the fearful and the angry. When Donald Trump placed himself at the head of this movement of fury, he found the support he needed to become president. He is now expected to limit freedoms, including free trade and immigration. Many Americans, especially members of minorities, once again fear for their freedom, but this time the threat comes from within. They fear that they will face greater discrimination against their cultures and ways of life under a Trump presidency.

The entire drama can be encapsulated in this sentence: That which is unique about the West -- freedom -- is perceived as a threat. A crisis couldn't be more fundamental than that. It has also reached European democracies, where fear and rage are spreading, and for the same reasons as in the United States: immigration, globalization and free trade, in particular. But when it comes to the trans-Atlantic free-trade agreement TTIP, Americans, who the Europeans fear, are apparently even more fearful than the Europeans. But neither Europeans nor Americans need to worry anymore: Trump will likely put an end to TTIP.

In Western Europe, the fearful and the angry haven't yet managed to push one of their representatives into the office of prime minister or president, although that could happen in Austria's presidential election in early December.

America was long the benchmark for the West. But if Trump governs as he promised he would during the campaign, the land of the free will abdicate its role as leader of the free world. Then, it will be Europe's turn. The continent must resist populism, with a smart mixture of taking fears seriously and confronting the rage, but without curbing freedoms.

Drifting Apart

And it is high time Europe places a stronger emphasis on the European Union. This has been said and written thousands of times already, but perhaps the Trump shock will help to ensure that it finally happens.

Unfortunately, Europe is in the worst shape in decades. The British are leaving the European Union, partly out of fear of the freedom of others, the freedom to settle in Great Britain. Many governments are stressing divisive rather than unifying issues. European countries are drifting apart.

In a certain sense, they could long afford to do so. In the 100 years during which the United States was the protective and leading power of the West, its allies have led a relatively comfortable existence. They had the luxury of only half-heartedly pursuing the European idea, because the Americans were there. Each country maintained its own special relationship with the United States, and everyone depended on its weapons and resolve in the event of an emergency. Now, Europe will likely have to provide for its own security -- and this in times of a Vladimir Putin, a Recep Tayyip Erdogan and an Islamic State that exists in Europe's neighborhood.

The leaders of the West, minus America, face monumental tasks ahead. They are tasks for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She represents a strong country and she has a strong moral foundation, as she demonstrated in the refugee crisis. She doesn't have to be a Woodrow Wilson, but she should become a decisive leader of Europe. If she doesn't, it will mean that she has not recognized the signs of the times.

Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
I know Slapout and 60M others that voted for Trumpkin might not like the following but if we take the SWC posted comments of Winston Churchill to heart....HERE goes a rant that will definitely not be liked by many who voted for Trumpkin.....

IF we look at just how populism has unfolded over the last say SIX years across the globe and especially in the US....we need urgently to honesty be willing to admit that those that voted for Trumpkin have no earthly idea what ethno nationalism is...no earthly idea what fascism is...no earthly idea that the US still is entrenched in racism directed at blacks and minorities and no earthly idea many do not support women's rights and her reproductive rights...AND those civil liberties and human rights..WELL not for non Whites is the answer....

AND for the US those that voted for Trumpkin failed to distance themselves from the KKK with their media outlet The Klansman and the US Neo Nazi Party and their media outlet The Stormer and the countless media outlets on the neo right and extreme right ie radio stations that drove home the messaging/narrative of the reemerging "alt Right"..."and white supremacy"....

BY not distancing themselves from this element within the Trumpkin voting mass...they actually inadvertently support ethno nationalism BUT what might be far more crazy is DO they in the end "identify" with those messages from the extreme right????

A history lesson for those that did not have much to do with Europe theses days.....

Hungary under Orban started out as a relatively strong supporter of a pro EU Party and who ever so gently moved that pro EU party to the far right ie "populist party" WHERE now he is formally known for his tight Putin connections and his "populist party" is now currently more and more anti EU....ALL the while still taking EU financial handouts to the tune of millions of Euros....WE are seeing the same exact maneuvering in France with Le Pen and in Poland..while at least Poland remains tightly committed to the EU and NATO

JUMP forward to the US...it is the general consensus that no independent can win in US elections...Trump was a and is still a closeted racist hidden in the garments of a "populist".....knowing he could not get elected as "independent populist" he needed a "populist party"...EXACTLY as Oran needed one before he shifted.....

SO Trumpkin started running in the RP primaries and if one really followed him he countless times stated he was not really a "true Republican..he was an outsider whatever that means" and played then the media and his constant racist..sexist and bigoted statements to a vaster audience than he has ever had....AND the messaging resonated....

THEN after winning the primaries he stood "legally alone" as the winner of the RP and then became the RP candidate for President WITHIN the RP.....

NOW kicks in the current Hungarian Orban model....Trumpkin never changed his rhetoric of racism...sexism. and bigotry......

NOW suddenly the old line political RP is now the new populist party led by a populist still using the same racist...sexist and bigoted messaging that he started with....

BUT now the so called old line RP is really no longer the true RP BUT the WHITE NATIONALIST PARTY.....

BTW..posted here was a Bannon tweet indicating he was moving his operations from Breitbart to Germany and France....THEN he was pushed back and told to shut up....in that SWJ posted tweet EVEN Bannon wrote the words...to create a WHITE NATIONAL PARTY....UNQUOTE...think that term through very carefully ...

Savor the words "white supremacist"

With the addition to the Trumpkin staff of Bannon who is a declared ultra nationalist...basically a "white supremacist" AND anti Semitic all strategic Trumpkin messaging ie propaganda will be coming through him and directed by him....for the next FOUR years...

AND those that do not believe it possible to have fascism with a friendly smile get ready for some changes you never expected to see in the US...

Just some highlights from the the last 18 months to refresh one's mind about Trumpkin....and company....

1. REMEMBER when David Duke KKK leader endorsed Trumpkin..his response...WHO is David Duke...once it was explained to him...DID he push back on The Klansman editor supporting his election..NO he did not.

2. REMEMBER when he released one of his first anti Semitic ads with the Star of David and he took flak for it...EXPLAINING he though the Star of David was a sheriffs badge....come one guys....

3. REMEMBER when Trumpkin repeatedly six months ago retweeted anti Semitic tweets from the Klan and the "alt Right" ..his statement..he did not know they wer anti Semitic....come on guys

4. REMEMBER his last campaign ad...truly anti Semitic and he did not even comment when called out on it...

5. REMEMBER when his son Eric retweeted countless "alt Right" Tweets and he did not repute them when he was called out....

6. REMEMBER all is his rally statements that where blatantly sexist....racist and bigoted....NONE of them ever called back....

LASTLY an all important point...JUST how long did Trumpkin drive the "birther issue" and led that movement in a direct fashion...STARTING WHEN?????

THEN his speech where he stated he was going to be the President of all of us and the great uniter...BUT it took him until yesterday to call out the violence of his supporters against minorities and women....being reported literally from all over the US....AND some of it was posted here and some felt it was the work of a "Clinton organized opposition"....

AND most of ALL did he call out the Neo Nazi media outlet "The Stormer" that listed the names of 50 Clinton supporters..mostly women and stated send emails..tweets...calls to these listed individuals and drive them to suicide....

NOTICE he did not repudiate "The Stomer" did he?

With the naming of Bannon...and believe me many Europeans fully understand US politics far better than most Americans...the morning headlines in some of the most influential German newspapers and yes Germans read a lot of newspapers...."Bannon the ultra nationalist" named to Trumpkin's Staff".....

"Ultra nationalist" is buzz speak for Nazi....

The debate over what the Trumpkin FP will and or could be has run it's course we now know with Bannon and the neocons that have drifted back towards the WH ..it will be aggressive to anything other than American..it will be Protectionist and it will be Ethno Nationalist in ideology..
BESIDES his bromance with Putin and his 300% alignment with Putin's FP tells us were we are going with Russia....

ASK anyone who voted for Trumpkin just what is information warfare inside the Russian non linear warfare and you will get a totally blank stare coming back to you......and then ..what do you mean comes next?

Information warfare is the attempt to change an entire societies way of thinking and to accept your narrative as the "truth" and to distrust actual truth/facts....IT is all about Russian propaganda driving on the 6Ds....dismay...dismiss/deflect...distort....distract ALL designed to create doubt and distrust....

Editorial Opinion: "Lies in the Guise of News in the #Trump Era," via Nicholas Kristof in the @nytimes
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/op...-iphone-share#

MANY Trumpkin voters would point to the sheer volume on Twitter as "proof" of the Trumpkin popularity and even Trumpkin mentioned the sheer number of followers on Twitter as proof of his message being correct...

BUT did they and Trumpkin ever comment on the proven information coming out of Europe that over 1/3rd of all proTrumpkin tweets were being generated by a Russian company paying young Macedonians to tweet proTrumpkin comments...THAT means on any given day 33% of Trumpkin social media supporters were Russian paid info warriors....

THINK about it?????

OMG...change 15000 for Trump's FP before he is President ...he has stated he wants to attack IS with his bromance Putin buddy and Putin's buddy Assad.....

BUT WAIT IS is already working with Assad and Putin ...SO is Trump now actively supporting IS???????

@IFFConsulting Islamic State has regular contact with Syrian government, files show
https://intelnews.org/2016/05/04/01-1895/#

WHAT is he going to do about Iranian troops and her Shia terrorist militias inside Syria....

BECAUSE he wants to cancel the Iran Deal....

4 US-designated terror groups openly operate in Syria.
By fighting 2 and ignoring 2, extremism gets boosted on all sides.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/op...=tw-share&_r=1

SundayReview | Editorial
The Danger of Going Soft on Russia
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDNOV. 12, 2016

Quote:
Among the first world leaders to congratulate President-elect Donald Trump was Vladimir Putin. And why shouldn’t he?

Just when relations between Russia and the West are at their most precarious point since the Cold War, Mr. Trump has been Russia’s defender and the beneficiary of Moscow’s efforts to influence the presidential campaign.

At times he has seemed almost intoxicated by the Russian president, praising Mr. Putin’s firmness and insisting that the two could resolve any differences if they met. Meanwhile, he has shown little concern that Russia poses a major strategic challenge.

Few experts believe that Russia wants war with the West, but many worry that Mr. Putin’s aggressive behavior as he tries to revive Russian greatness (thus masking problems at home) could result in the kind of dangerous miscalculations that often lead to armed conflict.

Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to interfere in the election was brazen. Even worse were actions that threatened human life and global stability, like Mr. Putin’s airstrikes against civilians in Syria, his positioning of nuclear-capable weaponry near Poland and the Baltic States, his annexation of Crimea and the war he waged in eastern Ukraine.

He violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty by producing a ground-launched cruise missile and canceled a 16-year-old accord on reducing stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium.

Despite this behavior, despite the obvious need for the next president to be alert to Mr. Putin’s mischief and to be willing to resist it, Mr. Trump has so far been Mr. Putin’s apologist.

Mr. Trump has dismissed the intelligence community’s finding that Russia was behind the hacking, displaying a disrespect for the facts and for the security institutions that compile them. On Thursday, a senior Russian official admitted that the Kremlin had been in contact with Trump allies during the campaign. While it’s not unusual for presidential campaigns to be in touch with foreign leaders, the situation raises heightened concerns given the hacking and the connections between a former senior Trump campaign official and the pro-Russia former president of Ukraine.

NOTE: WHY is the Trump campaign and Trump himself so adamant there was never any contact..COULD that lone server in Trump Tower and in the Russian Alpha Bank in Moscow be far more important that many think....it certainly was a connection between two people used for potentially intelligence reasons...WHO used it is the next question.....

WHEN MSM should have been chasing the Russian connections before the election which they somehow strangely did not BUT social media kept the story alive .....NOW it is a true US Intelligence Community CI issue....

Since Mr. Trump has refused to criticize the Kremlin, it’s important that Mr. Obama figure out, before he leaves office, how to punish Russia for the hacking in a way that demonstrates Washington’s determination to resist cyberattacks without further escalating the conflict. Getting the balance right will not be easy. Mr. Obama should also keep talking with Russia on mutually acceptable cyber-deterrence guidelines that set rules for regulating, defending against and deterring malicious intrusions in cyberspace.

The deteriorating relationship between Moscow and Washington is a long way from what was envisioned when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and there were high hopes that Russia would become a democracy integrated with the West. In 2009, Mr. Obama authorized Hillary Clinton, his first secretary of state, to “reset” relations, aiming to foster cooperation.

The two sides worked together on an arms control treaty and the Iran nuclear deal, but on the whole the reset failed, largely because of Mr. Putin. Restoring Russia to power and to a central role in world affairs turned out to be more important to Mr. Putin, and the Russians, than peaceful or profitable ties with the West. His foreign policy is a fairly consistent continuation of Soviet policy — preventing Western encirclement by moving into Ukraine; fighting proxy battles to support Russian interests, as in Syria; and challenging American power wherever possible.

Continued....

"Putin aide: Trump could build confidence with NATO pullback"
http://bigstory.ap.org/295849a11d584a71bc512bba26c551ea 

NOW an interesting question....based on the denied but proven lie that the Trump campaign had no ties to Russian officials....

IF Trump does in fact accept this Russian proposal would you say Trump is a "Russian agent of influence" as some in the national IC community claimed before the election...especially those on the CI side of the house?????

I would....especially since Putin is in full and complete violation of the INF and has never fulfilled a single point of the 11 points contained in Minsk 2....and Putin annexed militarily Crimea.....

WHICH BTW...Trump made statements to the effect that he could recognize the illegal Russian Crimea referendum.....as "it is Russian"....

AND Trump is not a white supremacist and racist?...THIS man ran his campaign......[/B]

[B][I]Ben Judah @b_judah
Monsieur Banon has spoken of how he sees the Trump movement as part of a global white nationalist revival.[/I][/B]
[url]https://twitter.com/marion_m_le_pen/status/797492289648152576#[/url]

Trump's grey cardinal plans @BreitbartNews expansion to France and Germany. Will they overhaul lacking FN slogans? Trump's possible chef of staff courting the Le Pen family. Worrying sign for France and for Europe
https://twitter.com/jderbyshire/status/797077993982218242 

EVERYONE see now where Trump is headed in his FP....???

Ah......the bromance between the Russian SVR compromised Trump and Putin steadily grows....

NOW we see his FP taking shape rather quickly when it comes to Russia..his support for a genocidal dictator and Iran in Syria .....

Trump to call Putin after his ‘beautiful letter'

NORICE something totally unusual in FP.....normally it would be Putin calling Trump....WHY vice versa????

Quote:
President-elect Donald Trump in exclusive interview to The Wall Street Journal revealed his first foreign policy steps to take.

Donald Trump said he has already heard from most leaders, though he hadn't yet spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He said he got a "beautiful" letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin, adding that a phone call between them is scheduled shortly.

Also Trump suggested a shift away from what he said was the current Obama administration policy of attempting to find moderate Syrian opposition groups to support in the civil war there.

"I've had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria," he said.
Read also#Russia expects no sanctions relief under Trump - Medvedev

He suggested a sharper focus on fighting Islamic State, or ISIS, in Syria, rather than on ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"My attitude was you're fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria. …

Now we're backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are," U.S. President-elect assures.

If the U.S. attacks Assad forces, "we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria," Trump said.

No word on Ukraine, Crimea and Donbas war was asked or said.

SO Trump is in love with the idea that he is supporting his bromance pal Putin and the second bromance dictator Assad.....SO is now Trump stating for the record a US sitting President supports the use of CWs against unarmed civilians???????

Kremlin "regrets" & is "disturbed" by official recognition by the OPCW#Assad under #Putin control used chemical WMD in #Syria
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sy...idUSKBN1361BE#

CONCUR with this as it is what I has both seen and heard in my line of work from others who also handle hacking events especially from the Russian state sponsored side and what I have heard as a serious possibility being voiced by European security specialists PRIOR to the US election... as it is a serious concern for their elections as well which are IT based...

AND if one is open minded AND understands the seriousness of the Russian state sponsored hacking attacks against the DNC and Clinton THEN that might if one took the time to analyze all election software line for command line...MIGHT explain why is it that in hardcore Democratic precincts there were larger than normal numbers of Trump votes which the Democratic Party still does not understand..

Russian hackers entered US voting systems in summer.US hackers believe they downloaded malware to influence count

BTW...these US hackers are the same professional IT hacking experts that first discovered and proved BEFORE the entire US IC that Russian state sponsored hackers were hard at work inside the DNC ....THAT "Trump argues was a 400lb person sitting on his bed"....

European officials scared they're next. Crowdstrike says DNC hackers attempted intrusions on 12 EU organizations, a few successful ones.

New York Times Ohio election results. Votes for Trump between these 2 counties...chart is posted on the Trump election thread...AND the reported umbers are ABSOLUTELY different from the Exit Polls by around 20,000 votes and that is nothing small....

The numbers for MO are off and I'm not alone in thinking so. Margins were the tell. Each state should be examined

What is it about the margin in MO that leads you to this? I see something weird 1 county in OH

The whole thing needs investigating including colluding w/foreign govt during campaign

BTW...when the US hacking specialist group Crowdstrike speaks about this THEN the entire federal security and IC community needs to stand up and show the public they are serious about defending the US from Russian cyber attacks........

I was watching Sky Europe at 0230 in the morning here in Berlin after the election and there was a US Political Science Professor and an voter analyst that at around 0430 stated that if the local voting counts came in as he was seeing them that in fact it might be possible that both Trump and Clinton tie at 269 to 269...

The Sky moderator waved off his comments in a hurry BUT he remained leery the entire evening about the incoming numbers as being accurate....

BUT two of the media outlets driving the early "wins for each state" were Fox and Sky...both owned by the same media owner and Conservative....

THERE are still a large number of votes that are coming in...and absentee ballots that have not be counted as well as a lot of local recounts and military votes that have not been counted and the popular vote numbers are actually increasing non the Clinton side not the Trump side and AP has YET to call who won four major US states....

THEN this today from AP...if actually when all the ballots are finally counted WHAT if it is actually a tie...THEN it goes to Congress which will then still vote for Trump...

BUT then what is his and the Republican "legitimacy" to claim then to the people they have a "mandate" to do as they please???? WHEN the electoral College was a tie BUT the popular vote went the opposite direction????

Updated | As of Thursday, three states remain electoral toss-ups, according to Associated Press projections: New Hampshire, Michigan and Arizona. If Hillary Clinton wins the combined 31 electoral votes from those states, she will still be short of Donald Trump’s 279 votes, more than the 270 needed to win the presidency.

However, AP analyst Michael McDonald, who teaches political science at the University of Florida and runs the United States Elections Project, an election statistics website, says he is skeptical that Trump won Wisconsin, as the AP projected. If that state flips for Clinton and she wins the other toss-up states, she and Trump could be in a tie at 269 votes each.

From both a foreign and domestic policy perspective, the election of Mrs. Clinton would have been a vote for the continuation -- both here at home and internationally -- of our, understandably unpopular, "everyone must sacrifice and change for the global economy" agenda and related policies.

The fact that the "America First" candidate, instead, won the election; this appears to indicate that the "everyone must sacrifice and change to accommodate the global economy" rationale and requirement will no longer be either the focus of -- nor will it be the basis for -- our domestic and foreign policies.

The potential problem of course being that, re: this rejection of the "creative destruction" principle of capitalist survival, we open ourselves up to being both overcome by -- and indeed defeated by -- those states, societies and/or civilizations who are more-willing, and/or more-able, to (a) make these such required changes/sacrifices and to, thus, (b) prevail over others (such as we ourselves?) who do not.

This such "iron law" helping us to understand why, re: both our domestic and indeed our foreign policies going forward, that president-elect Trump -- much like the American presidents that have preceded him for the past century -- will essentially have his hands tied.

Thus, and in reality, to understand why it is likely that there may be no significant domestic or foreign policy changes coming from our new president and/or his administration?

Why?

Because the "iron law" of "creative destruction" (a) ultimately rules and (b) he (Trump) -- and we --know this.

And, thus, we know that the necessary requirements of "change" ultimately cannot be either avoided and/or overcome.

This, by an initially uninformed -- or simply rejectionist -- electorate; whether this such electorate exists, for example, (a) in Russia, (b) in the Greater Middle East and/or (c) here at home.

(When the significant and adverse consequences of their actions become better understood and/or become manifest, an about-face by the electorate will -- hopefully and in time -- be realized; this, or an embrace of even greater competitive decline, and an embrace of even graver existential danger [such as we are witnessing today in the other "no change"/"status quo anti" areas of the world?]; all in the futile name of "no sacrifice," "no change" and/or a return to the -- no longer competitive/no longer viable/no longer intelligent/previous and now significantly outdated -- "old ways?")

KKK announces North Carolina ‘victory’ parade
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-b… 
…

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2016/11/10/Donal…

Trump and the Middle East: ‘Ignore the campaign rhetoric’
Thursday, 10 November 2016

Joyce Karam
Donald Trump’s earth-shattering victory as the 45th President of the United States has sent shockwaves across the Middle East. Questions about the real estate mogul’s outlandish campaign promises such as taking Iraq’s oil or restricting immigration from the “terrorist nations”, and whether those would be implemented into actual policies, are being debated in Arab

According to Arab diplomatic sources, who have communicated directly with high level officials in the Trump campaign, Trump the candidate might not be Trump the President. Unpredictability and lack of coherent foreign policy define his policies in the Middle East, clouded by differences with Vice President-elect, Mike Pence, on the major issues.

This could be a prelude to an internal debate within the Trump-Pence team

‘Ignore the campaign rhetoric’

Three months after Trump declared his infamous Muslim ban last December, his campaign according to Arab diplomatic sources, reached out to different Middle East embassies in Washington, DC. The message from the Trump campaign to key Arab diplomats last Spring was a plea to “ignore Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail.”

The outreach which was done by his staff mostly to key states in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), had Trump relay assurances to those governments and capitals where he has business partnerships, that “what is being said on the campaign trail is different from how he would govern”, and that he “looks forward to do business together and explore opportunities were he to win the Presidency.”

Such messaging from Trump reflects a more calculated approach in reaching different audiences and a readiness to abandon his campaign promises for doing real time politics and business with foreign governments. His scorched-earth tactics on the campaign were meant to rally anxious voters with anti-immigration and populist economic slogans, while behind closed doors he would focus on a more well-crafted message to use with foreign leaders.

This double-tongue narrative will likely continue in a Trump administration with him firing up his base publicly, while being engaged in outreach efforts -with the same people he is bashing- privately.

The message from the Trump campaign to key Arab diplomats last Spring was a plea to “ignore Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail”

"Quite a few" members of #Trump team were in contact with #Russian officials -- Moscow.
http://wpo.st/g6BD2

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/10/it-s-putin-s-world-now…

It’s Putin’s World Now
As the Kremlin worked hard to facilitate Trump’s rise, its maneuvering elsewhere in the world has been downright chilling.

Michael Weiss
11.10.16 7:00 AM ET
If, as the poet says, America is not the world, then the world is surely owed an apology for the lack of attention paid to what ought to have been, and are, a series of alarming developments throughout Europe and the Middle East. Perhaps appropriately, all have involved or implicated a revanchist authoritarian power for which the incoming commander in chief has repeatedly professed his admiration and which, after having done all it could to facilitate an upset American electoral outcome—“maybe we helped a bit with WikiLeaks,” as pro-Kremlin political analyst Sergei Markov put it Wednesday morning—offers its hearty congratulations on his victory. Meanwhile, Russia’s alleged “wet work” and maneuvering outside the United States in the last two weeks has been even more impressive.

Continued.....

HuffPo is removing the editors note at the bottom of all stories about Trump that explains his history of racism.

BUT WAIT........
It's terrifying how this is happening. Things which were true for candidate Trump are now controversial for president Trump

Do not think for a moment that foreign leaders that Trump has to deal with do not see and read this are well....AND by being President Trump just opened himself up to Clinton dreaded over the years in DC....the power of the FOIA.....and watch them now flood in and Trump cannot sidestep or avoid them....as that then would be a violation of federal law and goes straight into federal courts....

As voters across the country were voting Tuesday to elect billionaire Donald J. Trump the next President of the United States, lawyers and a judge dealt with new motions in a California court in what may be one of the most important of 75 or so still-open lawsuits involving Trump and his businesses.

In fact, the last seven days saw a flurry of motions, responses and rulings in one of the class-action lawsuits brought by former Trump University students, who say the Republican president-elect’s company ripped them off for tens of thousands of dollars in tuition for a sham real-estate course.

The Trump University cases – there are three of them still open – are among the most serious remaining lawsuits involving Trump and his companies as the businessman transitions from candidate to the White House because they involve allegations of fraud and racketeering.
Among the other cases are a $4 million lawsuit brought by a Republican political consultant who said Trump defamed her; a class-action claiming his presidential campaign broke consumer protection laws by sending unsolicited text messages to people’s cellphones; and a suit by a golf club employee who says she was fired after complaining to her bosses about sexual harassment.

But the most problematic for President-elect Trump will likely be the real-estate course racketeering and fraud cases – because of the seriousness of the allegations made. In any one of the cases, an official ruling by a court that Trump or his company were financially liable for fraud could provide Congress with grounds to consider impeachment proceedings. There’s a hearing Thursday in the California case to hash out motions that will set the tone for the trial, which is set for Nov. 28.

“If the fraud and racketeering allegations against President-elect Trump are true, he is legally impeachable for high crimes or misdemeanors,” said Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah who’s researched the Trump University cases, who acknowledged that while that’s technically the case, a Republican controlled Congress makes that very unlikely. “Whether he is politically impeachable is another matter.”
Nevertheless, Peterson said on Wednesday that a long, drawn-out public exposure of a sitting President of the United States to witness testimony, embarrassing documents or what would be a high-profile trial could be time consuming and distracting, and come with lingering political cost.
Trump’s attorneys often settle lawsuits, according to USA TODAY’s analysis of more than 4,000 court cases involving Trump and his companies over the decades, and Peterson said that may prove the wisest course in the remaining Trump University actions.

“If I were advising President-elect Trump,” he said, “I would encourage him to move heaven and earth to settle his pending Trump University lawsuits in order to spare the country the trauma and spectacle of his upcoming trial.”

Attorneys for Trump in two cases and plaintiffs in the Trump University case did not return messages for comment on Wednesday as to whether they renewed any settlement discussions. Trump has said he would hand his sprawling business empire over to his children in an arrangement he described as a “blind trust.”

“I will sever connections and I’ll have my children and my executives run the company, and I won’t discuss it with them,” Trump said on Fox News in September in response to questions about broader potential conflicts raised by his businesses. “It’s just so unimportant compared to what we’re doing about Making America Great Again.” His daughter, Ivanka, has said the company will avoid deals that could pose potential conflicts for her father.

Trump can’t completely sever the connections because nothing in the law protects a sitting president from having to testify or being forced to release private business and financial records. That could take up his time or the time of his aides and attorneys.

This summer, while the nation was dealing with the mass shooting at the Pulse night club in Orlando, Trump was giving a deposition in one of the lawsuits involving the chefs and his Washington hotel.

On the campaign trail, in recent months, Trump threatened additional lawsuits against journalists and several women who publicly accused Trump of unwanted sexual advances. Trump eased up on those threats in the waning days of the campaign.

Some of the open lawsuits create potential conflict of interest for the President-Elect, according to legal experts, presidential historians and others interviewed by USA TODAY during a months-long investigation that tracked more than 4,000 lawsuits involving Trump and his companies.
For example, could his appointments to the federal judiciary be influenced by his own court cases, current and past? In the Trump University case in California, Trump publicly lashed out at District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, saying he was biased against Trump because he is of Mexican descent and

Trump has proposed building a “great wall” along the Mexican border.
Also, could judges, attorneys or parties in litigation involving Trump and companies alter decisions or outcomes of cases as a way of gaining favor with the President of the United States, even if those companies have been handed over to Trump’s children to run?

As the “boss” of tens of thousands of government employees and the chooser of key leadership positions in dozens of federal agencies, Trump would also face potential questions about how he’d untangle his business interests and government interest in some cases. For instance, he’s involved in two lawsuits with chefs who walked away from deals to open restaurants in the Trump Organization’s new hotel at the Old Post Office building in Washington. Trump’s landlord: the federal government.

Trump’s attorneys have argued that only a couple dozen of the active cases are significant and they’ll deal with those as any large company with massive holdings deals with them.

“The results shouldn’t be different in the eyes of the law,” said Alan Garten, general counsel for Trump and his business interests, in the final weeks before Election Day.

Some of the cases against Trump are of the frivolous nature filed all the time by conspiracy theorists, prisoners and others against government officials and celebrities.

His attorneys have continued to work in the months leading up the election to both close active cases involving Trump and the companies, and to fight against efforts by the news media – and other groups – to unseal records in other cases, such as his divorce from Ivana Trump and the Trump University suits.

Shifting from candidate to president only boosts Trump’s profile and potential requests to unlock records in other Trump cases, both as part of legitimate fact-seeking by news media organizations and politically-motivated pursuits by interest groups.

What is amazing about this article is the simple fact that ALL the leaders of the various countries that he will have to rip up trade treaties with and or get them to agree with him ie China...NATO and the EU....have had 18 very long months at getting to know Trump and all of his problems....not paying large numbers of contractors..his bankruptcies....his checkered financial past and present...his ego driven wealth that he claims is over 1B but he never reveals his actual "net worth"....his tax avoidance schemes...his treatment of women and minorities especially Muslims...his aggressive use of Twitter...his drive to get even with those that he feels have slighted him for whatever reason...his constant drive to sue everyone he disagrees with....

AND then Trump thinks this gives him a position of power during negotiations?????

AND remember that WALL Trump kept saying the Mexican government was going to pay for.....really...???

AND all of the above is just open source information NOT information being provided to them by their security services who have done their own research on Trump....

HERE is the Trump problem...all countries that have to deal with him now fully understand they can delay...delay...even delay more...anything in order to force Trump compromises AS it is Trump that must show his followers just how successful he was and or is....NOT the countries he will be dealing with as they do not care about internal US politics....as they answer to their own civil societies first...especially when it comes to economic issues that relate to jobs...

THAT is the inherent Trump single point of failure and it is a very big one...he might be able to lie and bluff his way into the WH he cannot lie or bluff with foreign leaders who answer to their own electorates...AND are not on the Trump Properties Board who he can fire at will.

Can anyone really imagine how these international meetings will go....take Germany...usually it is Merkel... her FM and her second in command who is also the Chief of German Economic Development sitting with a Trump and an entourage of his advisors because he himself knows absolutely nothing about which he talking to the Germans about.....who then has to stop every five minutes and ask his advisors about what was just discussed.

QUOTE:
A Trump foreign policy, based on his statements, will bring an intense “realist” focus on U.S. national interests and a rejection of costly
U.S. engagements abroad. It will likely bring these changes:

1. A move to improve relations with a combative, assertive Russia…

2. A joint military effort with Russia and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to defeat the Islamic State…

3. A new push for European allies to pay more for their own defense…

4. An attempt to alter the terms of trade in Asia by renegotiating trade pacts and forcing China to revalue its currency…

1. Trump claims he can handle his friend Putin...BUT do we honestly fully understand the prior Trump relationship to Russian black investment money into Trump properties and potential compromising materials the Russian SVR has on Trump...

2. a joint military effort with Putin and Assad will drive the future of AQ/IS into the stratosphere and that is what they want....and will drive thousands of Syrians currently fighting Assad and IS into the arms of JFS and solidify the jihadi war games with the US for the next four decades...

3. unbeknown apparently to Trump and company is that since the Russian military annexation of Crimea and their military invasion of eastern Ukraine European NATO members have massively increased both their defense spending and have begun a major increase in their standing military forces....the Baltics and Poland alone have more than doubled their military budgets just in one year...followed by Germany and France...even UK has finally jumped onto the reinvestment in their military.

WHAT is rather embarassing is the US...having pulled literally all combat power out of Europe and planning to pull the reminder out ie the 12th Combat/Support Aviation Bde....the 2nd ACR and potentially the 173rd Airborne Bde NOW the US is shipping back a complete heavy armor bde on a rotating schedule to confront the Russian aggressive moves....ANd are leaving those combat units in place instead of pulling them out of Europe..

AND now with the full and complete Russian violations of INF just what is Trump going to do...try to charm his way to a full and complete withdrawal from Europe to save money????

BUT WAIT while Trump complains he wants more money from NATO because he is tired of defending Europe on our dime....MAYBE he should research just how many US multinational companies with huge investments in Europe are just some of those being "protected"....

WHAT is interesting is that Trump has never once stated just how much of the current US military costs inside NATO are in fact countered by financial offset agreements within the NATO countries where Us forces are base...meaning in many cases the US pays nothing for the troop infrastructure....fuel...food and more importantly for the salaries of foreign nationals working on those bases....a little know fact....

Re doing trade agreements....are not in fact done over night...in fact the Us is in the middle of 6 current trade agreement negotiations ALL of which are now over 96 months in progress and still no end in sight...

And trying to get China to revalue their currency....will never happen as the current Chinese market is soft and that would even more slow down their economy which in many cases is a locomotive for global trade....WHICH AGAIN means US jobs tied to Chinese exports would be lost....

So for all the Trump campaign rhetoric...in the end he will fail but blame it on others as his image of himself is one that has never failed.....

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/world-is-about-to-find-out-what-…

WASHINGTON — In Donald J. Trump’s private conversations and public commentary, one guiding principle shines through: The world is a zero-sum place, and nations, like real estate developers, are either on the winning side of a deal or the losing side.

Yet he also is the ultimate pragmatist, perfectly willing to dispense with seemingly core beliefs in return for negotiating advantage. That is why many of his closest supporters have long cautioned that the most headline-grabbing proposals of his run for the presidency should not be taken literally — they are guideposts, the supporters suggest, not plans. Even Mr. Trump once described his proposed ban on Muslim immigrants as a mere “suggestion.”

As he enters the Oval Office that Ronald Reagan — another populist pragmatist, but one who had served in public office before the White House — left nearly 28 years ago, the world is about to find out what Donald Trump really believes. Or at least what he is going to try to do, in partnership with Republicans who on Tuesday retained control of both houses of Congress.

It was in Mr. Reagan’s last months in office that Mr. Trump took out a full-page ad in several newspapers complaining that “for decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States.” Flirting with a presidential run himself — he was 41 — and seeking the publicity that would become addictive, he called for the United States to pull out of the Middle East, which he called “of only marginal significance to the United States for its oil supplies,” and asked, “Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing protect their interests?”

It is a line he often repeated in his unlikely candidacy. America’s Asian allies, South Korea included, are about to learn whether that is an opening negotiating position, or the condition for America’s continued military presence in the Pacific. Japan’s best hope arises from the fact that he is now focusing his attentions on the United States’ five-times-as-large trade deficit with China, which he described in May as engaged in “the greatest theft in the history of the world.”

At home, his instincts often mix elements of what he has heard or read from the left and the right. His economic policy might best be described as “Big Government Conservatism,” a mix of major tax cuts, mostly for businesses, and a massive infrastructure program to rebuild the dank airports and collapsing bridges that he used in the campaign as a symbol of America’s declining status. It is a subject he comes to easily as a developer who wanted to get customers to his properties.

So far, those proposals do not add up to a coherent strategy. The tax cuts come right out of the Republican playbook; the spending right out of the Democrats’ agenda of spurring the economy with government-led job creation. His commitment to preserve social programs is far more Obama than Reagan. His vow to rip apart the Affordable Care Act, the symbolic domestic achievement of the Obama presidency, adopts the favorite cause of the Republican leadership with whom he has often clashed.

Experts who have looked at his proposals — many so vague they cannot be “priced” — have concluded that federal deficits will soar. And that gets to Mr. Trump’s willingness to entertain two completely contradictory thoughts at once, because rarely did he finish an interview or a debate without reminding listeners that a federal debt heading toward $20 trillion was a “disaster” that only he could fix. In his first year, he will have to square those two promises — or not.

Indeed, his campaign talk has often contradicted his past proposals. In the early 1990s, for example, Mr. Trump lobbied Congress to raise income taxes on the wealthy to encourage investment in real estate, while advocating the restoration of tax breaks for real estate investments.
In 1999, Mr. Trump proposed a “net worth tax” on the wealthy to pay off the national debt. “Personally this plan would cost me hundreds of millions of dollars, but in all honesty, it’s worth it,” Mr. Trump said at the time. His motivation: He was considering a bid for the presidential nomination of Ross Perot’s Reform Party, which had made federal debt reduction one of its signature issues.

But it is in national security that he faces some of the biggest quandaries.

His zero-sum instincts kick in when the subject turned to immigration, which is essentially the importation of people. He has long argued that immigrants take jobs from Americans, diminishing prosperity by dividing the American pie into a larger number of smaller pieces. The idea that they can bolster the economy too — as some of the founders of Intel, Google and other Silicon Valley powerhouses did — never creeps into his speeches.

Mr. Trump’s views of the economy are also deeply rooted in his identity as a real estate developer. He regularly emphasizes the economic importance of making things, while rarely mentioning the service work that employs most Americans. He has repeatedly promised to revive the steel production, a line of work that now employs about as many people as a large medical center.

In fact, it is the era when America was making steel that Mr. Trump harks back to when he talks about the era when America was at the peak of its power. He noted in a March interview that in the late 1940s and early 1950s, “we were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody, we had just won a war.”

It is a view of American power that spills over into his approach to national security. He sees little long-term benefit from funding efforts to eliminate the root causes of terrorism. His mind goes to military solutions first. Few statements were more often repeated, or more heartfelt, than his vow to bomb the Islamic State, and “take the oil.”
Those lines always brought his crowds to their feet. Now comes the far more complex part: He is about to inherit the problem of how to hold and redevelop Mosul once the Islamic State forces are ousted — under a military plan that he has dismissed as ineffective — and how to “take the oil” of a sovereign state, Iraq. And he must do so without returning to an era of constant American combat presence that had made embers of his own war-weary party, and Hillary Clinton, blanch.

And no relationship will be under more scrutiny than how Mr. Trump handles President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom he has repeatedly praised in terms that shocked his own party, and his running mate.

The Cold War was the ultimate geopolitical zero-sum game. For most Repubicans, it still is: Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is a growing bipartisan consensus in the foreign policy and intelligence leadership that Russia must be both constrained and contained, its harassment of the new members of NATO halted, its cyberattacks deterred.

Mr. Trump is an outlier to that view, and never once backed the idea of “containment.” He repeatedly made the case that he, and he alone, could negotiate with authoritarians like Mr. Putin.

Would he lift the sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea — a move that Mr. Trump has seemed to suggest was justified — and its harassment of Ukraine? Would he back off from the Obama administration’s decision to bolster the American military presence off Russia’s borders?

“My administration,” he said recently, “will work with any country that is willing to partner with us to defeat ISIS, and halt radical Islamic terrorism. And that includes Russia.” On Wednesday, Mr. Putin seemed to return that sentiment, sensing his opportunity and saying he looked forward to restoring “fully fledged” relations with the United States.
“If they want to join us by knocking out ISIS, that is just fine as far as

I’m concerned,” Mr. Trump said recently, in a statement that oozed Kissingerian realpolitik. “It is a very imperfect world, and you can’t always choose your friends. But you can never fail to recognize your enemies.”

Such issues will stretch Mr. Trump in new directions. His experience in the business world did little to hone his thinking how to prioritize American national interests: When asked about it in March, he said “protection of our country” was No. 1, but he struggled to explain others, including when he thought American troops should be put at risk in defense of a humanitarian cause. With nearly 500,000 people dead in Syria, that issue will be on his desk on the afternoon of Jan. 20, along with many others.

"Undoing globalization isn’t possible." ... oh yeah of little faith ...

The task before all contemporary American/Western national leaders has been not whether, but rather how, to transform the states and societies of the world (marginally but not insignificantly to also include our/their own) so as to better provide for the wants, needs and desires of (a) the global economy and (b) those in-charge of same. This, without causing significant local -- and/or global -- revolt. (In this latter case, of course, we/they have now failed miserably -- as both a local and indeed a global revolt is now what is before us.)

BEGIN QUOTE

... This might be called the Davos culture. Each year about 1,000 businessmen, bankers, government officials, intellectuals and journalists meet in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Almost all the people hold university degrees, work with words and/or numbers and are reasonably fluent in English. They generally share beliefs in individualism, market economics and political democracy. Davos people control virtually all the international institutions, many of the world’s governments, and the bulk of the world’s economic and military capabilities. The elite Davos culture is thus very important. Worldwide, however, how many people share this culture? Outside the west it is probably less than 50m people or 1 per cent of the world’s population.

END QUOTE

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/thewestandtherest

Thus, it is in rejection not so much of globalization/the global economy itself but, rather, the significant political, economic, social and/or value sacrifices/changes required of the Davos crowd above -- which these entities require of ALL the states and societies of the world (to include our own) -- that we find the populations of the world, not only abroad but also here in the West, now saying "NO!"

It is in this "rejection" -- of certain current and future political, economic, social and/or value sacrifices/changes -- that we might understand AQ and ISIS, the Brexit, the recent actions/attitudes of Russia, China and Iran and, now, the election here at home of Mr. Donald J. Trump?

Based on the above, to thus question and disagree with Mr. Ignatius' closing thought, to wit: that "Undoing globalization isn’t possible. But undermining America’s leadership in that system would be all too easy."

Herein, the significant political, economic, social and/or values sacrifices/changes -- associated with placating/providing for insatiable globalization/the global economy -- have now been shown to be too great; this, (a) for the populations of the world to continue to bear/support and (b) for ANY potential new global economy leader (for example: China?) to overcome; this, with globalization in its current form?

Thus:

a. It is to be a "world leader" who can suggest a much more "societally/culturally sensitive" --and, thus, a much more "watered-down" version of globalization/the global economy -- that we might expect to see come forward and take control? This,

b. Or one suggesting/embracing more of a "regional" -- rather than global -- economic, political, etc., focus?

c. Or, as per S. P. Huntington above, one having more of a "civilizational" focus?

In this latter regard (see "a" - "c" immediately above), we might indeed see the leadership of an -- agreeably modified globalization/global economy scheme -- being up for grabs.

(Trump's foreign and domestic policy possibilities to be viewed, accordingly, through this exact "modified/watered-down/slowed-down globalization/global economy" theory and lens?)