Trump’s Foreign Policy Philosophy Hard to Pin Down
Masood Farivar, Voice of America
Is President-elect Donald Trump a foreign policy realist or idealist? Is he bringing Richard Nixon’s hard-edged realpolitik to his foreign policy or following in the footsteps of the more idealistic Ronald Reagan?
The question has become a parlor game among Washington's policy pundits.
Trump’s frequent invocation of Reagan’s “peace through strength” mantra and campaign pledge to rebuild America’s “depleted” military has invited comparisons to the Republican icon credited with winning the Cold War.
His advocacy of a foreign policy based on America’s national interests has led some to liken it to Nixonian realism, while his aversion to foreign interventions has won him the label of a non-interventionist and even isolationist.
Don’t Fence Trump In
Trump has professed no great power doctrine and his advisers discourage applying labels to his vision of the world.
“I’m not going to be put into the little academic, graduate school box because I think it doesn’t suit, and it doesn’t apply in a rapidly changing world,” said K.T. McFarland, Trump’s incoming deputy national security adviser, when asked to describe the Trump doctrine.
While Trump’s call for “peace through strength” reflects Reagan’s view of deterrence, “there are parts of Nixon and (Henry) Kissinger that Donald Trump has also advocated,” McFarland said at the U.S. Institute of Peace, alluding to Trump’s interest-based approach to world affairs.
Trump’s Speeches
A foreign policy neophyte, Trump has shied away from declaring any grand foreign strategy during the campaign, though he did give two major speeches devoted to foreign policy and national security.
In the first speech, delivered at the realist-leaning Center for the National Interest in Washington in April, Trump outlined what he called a “coherent foreign policy based on American interests” and called for “getting out of nation building,” creating stability and quashing “radical Islam.”
“Containing the spread of radical Islam must be a major foreign policy goal of the United States and indeed the world,” Trump said. “Events may require the use of military force, but it’s also a philosophical struggle, like our long struggle in the Cold War.”
In the second speech, at Youngstown University in Ohio in August, Trump ratcheted up his rhetoric about terror, warning countries around the world that they’d be judged based on their commitment to the U.S. goal of fighting terrorism.
“All actions should be oriented around this goal, and any country which shares this goal will be our ally,” Trump told a rally of supporters.
‘Strategic Surprise’
It was a theme that Trump would repeat, in one iteration or another, throughout the campaign, but his advisers say Trump’s pre- and post-election pronouncements on foreign policy, often delivered off the cuff, should not be read as policy prescriptions.
“Actually, he didn’t say a lot about foreign policy and national security on the campaign trail, and what he did say really doesn’t add up to a policy,” said James Carafano, director of foreign policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation who advises the Trump transition team on foreign affairs. “That’s very frustrating because the people want to know what’s this guy going to do.”
With the new administration yet to take office, McFarland, too, cautioned that Trump’s foreign policy is in an early stage of development.
“That’s what a new administration does: It takes time to rethink things and to come up with policies,” she said.
If history is any guide, Trump could quickly find himself facing a set of foreign policy crises different from the issues he campaigned on. Political scientists have a term for an unexpected world event that drives a new president into uncharted territory: “strategic surprise.”
For former President George W. Bush, who campaigned on pursuing a “humble foreign policy,” the strategic surprise came September 11, 2001.
For President Barack Obama, who vowed to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the “Arab Spring” protests in North Africa and the Middle East marked a strategic surprise, leaving his administration more deeply mired in the region than he’d hoped.
What international crisis might alter the trajectory of the Trump administration’s foreign policy agenda has become a guessing game, with the number of scenarios exceeded only by the variety of foreign policy labels attributed to Trump.
A game-changing terrorist attack on American interests is one possible candidate. Another contender: an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launch by North Korea.
“I think the world is not necessarily going to allow President Trump to do everything he’s planned on,” said Blaise Misztal, director of the national security program at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. “I think you’re going to see a triangulation between what he’s said, what he’s advised to do, and what is actually feasible on the world stage.”
Flip Flopping on Issues
While Trump has flip flopped on some issues, NATO and torturing terrorists, for example, he’s held steady on others. Among them: terrorism, trade, China and Russia.
In the weeks since his election, he’s reiterated his pledge to make terrorism a focus of his foreign policy, talked tough on trade, challenged the “One China” policy, and iterated again a desire to reset relations with Russia even as he embraced intelligence findings that Moscow interfered in last year’s presidential election.
Brian Katulis of Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank, said the “most radical shift” Trump will likely undertake will be “engagement and involvement” with Russia, something Obama unsuccessfully attempted during his first term in office.
But former CIA director Michael Hayden said Trump is likely to reconsider his approach to Russia once he learns from intelligence agencies and allies that Russia and Syria are not committed to fighting IS.
“I’m personally very, very skeptical of any convergence between American and Russian interests in this part of the world,” Hayden said. “In fact, I’d offer the view that American and Russian interests are actually heading in different directions.”
Another major change: downplaying a postwar American foreign policy tradition of promoting democracy and freedom around the world.
“Trump has signaled as a candidate and in the transition a proclivity to appreciate authoritarian and repressive leaders around the world,” Katulis said. “And this may be the biggest departure that is historic, that there really won’t be as much of a values-based approach that focuses on human rights democracy and freedom in other countries. And that I think puts the United States itself on shaky territory.”
But McFarland played down those concerns, saying “the three bedrocks of (postwar) American foreign policy” — American leadership, American values and international alliances — will remain under the Trump administration.
Unpredictability
There is usually some continuity between administrations on foreign policy, but “that rule actually may not apply under Trump,” Katulis said.
“We’re dealing with something here that is just fundamentally different and off the charts,” Katulis explained.
That 'something' is Trump’s well-known unpredictability. Trump has criticized President Obama for telegraphing his policy moves and has vowed to remain unpredictable. But experts say unpredictability can be dangerous in the international arena where both allies and adversaries expect a certain degree of predictability from the United States.
"Predictability is the cornerstone of deterrence," said Clarke. "You need to be predictable if you’re the United states, both in what your allies know you’ll do and in what your adversaries know you’ll do and how you’ll respond."
Comments
Let's see...since say about 1964 we have had terrorism much of it jihadist..Taliban still working hard in AFG...IS as well...AQ is still active around the world as is IS....IS still fighting hard in Iraq and never really going away there as well as they are doing well in Syria...and IS has gone global in their attacks....as is AQ.....
So Trump is going to do what exactly what ....eradicate an entire religion.
AFP news agency
✔
@AFP
#BREAKING Trump says "radical Islamic terrorism" will be eradicated
Anti-politics, anti-free trade, anti-internationalism. In it's place isolationism, fetishisation of military and rhetoric of the demagogue
ACTUALLY in typical Trump fashion...this is a recycled stump speech from this summer.....
Instead of being the so called uniter he claimed he wanted to be...it will just get worse....
European comments below on Trump speech today....
Trump: We're transferring power from Washington DC to you the people. Washington flourished but people didn't.
TRUMP: from this day forward it is going to be only America first, America first
Trump: We've made other countries wealthy at expense of Americans. US wealth ripped from us & redistributed across the world.
Trump's opening remarks descend into isolationism now. "Defended other nation's border while refusing to defend our own."
'America First'. 'Protectionism'. 'Borders'. The day internationalism died. Europe be warned - the 1930's are back.
"America First, America First.' - channelling Lindbergh now. So we have 1. Elites vs people. 2. Isolation. 3. Nationalism.
If anyone doubted that nationalism has arrived in America, this speech should clarify things.
Classic populist demagoguery
They commonly call this "fascism"....
AND we debate here where Trump is headed with his FP.....?
TRUMP: "we will reinforce old alliances and make new ones."
The Caspian Times
@thecaspiantimes
More
"Trump will relinquish Balkans to Putin" - German analyst http://www.thecaspiantimes.com/trump-will-relinquish-balkans-putin-germ… …
Russia and the US Can Never Be Long-Term Partners, Russian Historian Says
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/01/russia-and-us-can-never-be…
Head of Austrian party founded by Nazi SS met w/Mike Flynn at Trump Tower last month (& signed pact w/Putin's party)
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/world/europe/austrias-far-right-sign…
WHAT is a US natsec advisor doing meeting with a Austrian Far Right Party...here is meant Nazi Party...?????
With all of this in the background how is Trump even to get to FP.....
Don't be fooled by any sunshine in DC today -- the gathering spy clouds over Trump are dark, real....and Russian.
Those dark Russian espionage clouds are loaded with incriminating SIGINT, folks... get ready for YUGE drama in DC.
Manafort is openly GRU, Page is on the Gazprom payroll, and Stone boasts of ties to Wikileaks, an RIS front.
This is not a tough case here.
Bannon and Kushner, who've emerged as key nat sec players, had to reassure worried Cabinet picks about Mike Flynn.
Manafort has been in bed with GRU for years, as I told you months ago. We have reams of intel on him+his "friends."
If you're surprised we have SIGINT implicating Manafort, Page & Stone in dirty ties to Moscow, you've been paying no attention for months.
If brand-new-POTUS Trump tries to shut down IC investigation into his Kremlin ties, the loaded phrase "Russian coup" then becomes operative.
FROM Russian TV today.....
Zhirinovsky on Russian TV says Trump and Russia can solve all problems in the world together.
State tv showing Russian Trump Zhirinovsky: we should all be in a good mood. Expect 'neutral' position on Ukraine, no NATO, no EU.
Zhirinovsky on RussianTV says Trump can deal with China and all Russia needs is to deal with borders of former USSR.
NOTICE the not so subtle threat to Baltics and Ukraine.....
AND the Trump Russian FP we already have seen in his tweets and public comments....
Trump is now causing NATO members to cross over their own political shadows in their common defense....
This is a direct response to Merkel's recent comments on where Europe should be going...without a Trump......
Slovenia offers to deploy troops in Latvia to boost NATO presence
http://www.unian.info/world/1733976-slovenia-offers-to-deploy-troops-in…
Second direct change based on the US Russian influence operations that Trump still basically believes did not occur......
Good move @BBC ! Debunking fake news should be done journalists & media and not by the Governments &their agencies
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/12/bbc-sets-up-team-to-debun…
This will be a counter to fake news/disinformation by EU/Bannon populists and Russia...
While Trump thinks he is the greatest "reality show games man"...this is a game he has absolutely no understanding of.....
Incidentally, the Assad regime is hardly shy about having de-prioritized IS
http://henryjacksonsociety.org/2017/...slamic-state/#
Assad + #IS will fight full-force once binary
Meanwhile, some heaviest fighting actually in areas of closest co-op
http://bit.ly/1IuiXPr
"you fight and kill...to influence the deal..BUT the deal does not end".......
Assad's ultimate goal is reconquering the country; building IS up short-term helps that, though he has to fight them in some areas.
Not difficult, but every scuffle (Palmyra, Kuweris, Deir Ezzor) is taken as "proof" they're full-bore enemies *now*.
WONDER if Trump and his will to work with Assad/Putin/Iran understands this Assad/IS game and in the end he is actually then supporting IS....
BTW...this does not even take in the role Putin/Russia has played in building up IS...working with IS and now in Syria now even fighting IS....
WHY is that ...BUT WAIT...Trump thinks Putin is his greatest buddy....maybe not????
I am not the only one saying Trump has no "believe system" other than for himself...AND without a true personal and deep "believe system" no one can drive a coherent FP for even mice....certainly not a coherent one for 300M Americans....
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/20/america-s-trial-by-fir…
QUOTE
BY THE WAY check the last sentence from a well known conservative writer...
In the meantime, there will be the daily, weekly, monthly slog of feeling the man drag us all down, as he already has. How much worse are we as a people than we were 17 months ago? It’s impossible to measure precisely.
But we know that we’ve gone from being shocked at the idea of having a presidential candidate shout about building a wall to debating whether Congress would appropriate the funds for it; from being scandalized at the very idea of a Muslim registry to wondering how such a thing could be implemented; from being aghast that a sexual predator could sit in the Oval Office to not even mentioning it anymore. All that happened without him even being president. To what will we be sensitized with him holding the office?
We survived the crooks and liars and incompetents and alcoholics. I think we’ll survive Trump too. But it will require people on the left and the right to guard our institutions, and to say to him no, you just can’t do that.
I was struck Thursday by words written by Eliot A. Cohen, a conservative, writing in The American Interest: “nothing will teach him gravitas, magnanimity, or wisdom.”
REMEMBER a total of 78,000 votes in three key States gave the Electoral College to Trump who actually lost the overall general vote by roughly 3M votes...WHICH does not give him the "mandate" to speak for 48% of those that voted......
Those votes came after the impact of the Russia influence operations...and Trump cannot wipe that away with any amount of tweets....
Yesterday I attended a Berlin art school for those getting career recertified into new art professions and the audience was say in their 20s-60s and I was constantly asked about Trump....I have seen the days of when Reagan was elected or Bush Jr/Iraq/Gitmo/torture and heard the comments then..but to a person Trump is now seriously impacting the image of the US and I can say their arguments have a certain validity to them....out of their perspective which Trump has failed to understand in his extremely loosy goosey interviews/tweets.
Kind of sums up their general tenor....this will damage the view of the US overall for the next four years and Trump in his interviews has shown them his disdain for EU and NATO and that he is basically a fool....and uneducated in IR.
Tomorrow a fascist will get a nuclear code & start governing the most powerful country on Earth.
I'll never forgive you, America
This German generation does not use the word fascist lightly but when they do use it... they thoroughly understand it's definition....DO we in the US understand that simple fact?
I have never seen this great of a disconnect between the US and Germany...never....
HERE is the difference....yes Germans had their problems with Obama but his final foreign telephone call was to Merkel and that earned him great respect in their eyes....
NOW reread the Merkel comments made after Trump won....she is willing to break from the US and lead Europe..not so sure that is what America as a whole really wants...regardless of what the Germans have often said about US FP they have supported the US to the bitter end when crunch time came....
In some ways it is now surprising that Germany is telling the US under now Trump exactly how democracy is to function and what the democratic values of the West really are..
NOTE: We get a printed readout of every single call Obama has made with foreign leaders AND from the Trump side.....nothing...nada...nichts....
Before we address what Trump might do and or might not do on FP...WHY not ask him if as the US President he is going to actively push back on Russian influence operations/hacking still being directed at the US and NATO...
Kind of reminds of the following...."I will not connect the dots...I will not connect the dots....I will not connect the dots....I will just ignore the dots....BUT WAIT they are still there......."
Disinformation at work. Germany dispatches 500 soldiers to Lithuania. Russian Headline: "German forces to amass near Russian border". Appeared on Russia Today Germany
In the post-truth era Sweden's far right fake fact checker was inevitable
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/19/in-the-post-truth-era-swe…
With no FP plan......with no experienced FP personnel..with no ideology...with no FP philosophy...BUT with a strong handful of "right wing white supremacist ideologues" what can you expect for a FP?????
Can someone point me to the true adults in the room on Trump FP...this cannot be actually stated.....think about it and mull over what it means....
Incoming WH Chief of Staff @Reince "We are going to make the US great again first, and then we are going to go out there and help Greece"
@Reince:We want to put the Patriarch of Constantinople & the recognition of the struggle of Orthodox Church in the center of White House
SO is now Reince NOW actively supporting the Russian Orthodox Church as well?????
I have often used the term "altered state of reality" when posting about Russian Ukrainian statements and actions...
Now it perfectly fits Trump and his so called team.....
EXAMPLE..there was a leaked story via a proRussian funded site that the ODNI was to be abolished and taken under control of Flynn.....Flynn has been dying to destroy the very ISC system that fired him "for cause" for failing at being even the Director of DIA....by of all people Clapper..
NOT TRIVIAL: @GenFlynn tweets story about HIS SECRET PLANS published by a Kremlin-employed, Damascus-based, 9/11 denier.
"according to our sources", and story tweeted by none other than Flynn's son. I wonder who those sources might be.
Here's an insane quote by Thierry Meyssan, referenced by the son of National Security Advisor Flynn:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article184874.html …
Meyssan has been tied to Assad regime for years.
Here with French far-right extremists, Beirut 2006
https://contresubversion.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/les-liens-entre-lextr… …
So the guy who wrote some of the most disturbing truthist books about 9/11 was/is paid (in)directly by the RU state. I rest my case.
And here's where it gets weird. Thierry Maysson is paid by Russian magazine "Odnako". Guess who funneled 170 mln into "Odnako"? Rossneft.
Video footage exists on this...
Interestingly well put.....
Let's be clear: Trump's legitimacy is badly tarnished not by some shrewd Russian conspiracy—but by PEOTUS's stunningly inept crisis response
When we talk about Russia as a superpower ...a true superpower...has values..has an ideology and or philosophy lending it political power....is an ECONOMIC power and has military power and Russia is not yet a true ECONOMIC power ......
Friendly reminder that Russia's economy is
~1/14th the size of the EU
~1/3rd the size of Germany
~half of California (!)
~behind Canada
New York City has a larger economy, at $1.56 trillion, than the entire economy of Russia, at $1.27 trillion.
IF you exclude oil and gas revenues it would be a disaster.....
TAKEN from the just recently released CIA documents...
"The idea that the US and the USSR are both 'superpowers' [is] a primary goal of Soviet propaganda"
We see the same exact Putin drive in trying to get the US to "recognize" Russia as a superpower....
AND Trump plays straight into that drive...so who needs FP if it is driven by an underlying need to have people "like you" which we have seen a number of times in the Trump tweets....
As Trump's main advisors are in under investigation by FIVE US Agencies for their Russian ties and black money....this arrest goes largely unnoticed in US MSM....but some of us in the IT world have known about him for awhile...
BTW...every major Russian hacker residing outside of Russia is actively known to the Russian FSB/GRU/SVR...simple statement of fact...is part and parcel of Russian government "denialability" of "it ain't us involved"....
This arrested Russian hacker has been hitting the US since 2014 and it is rumored he was also behind or participated in the DNC hacking...he was pulled off of a flight as he was boarding...apparently not even aware he was being thoroughly tracked headed to Moscow.....He had no earthly idea he was being tracked....well done arrest operation...across multiple countries and using Interpol/Europol.
QUOTE
Press here claimed witch hunt vs Rsns. Spain says Lisov one of USA's 'most wanted' alleged hackers, investigated since 2014
Spain police: #Russian arrested in Barcelona - #Lisov - accused of developing NeverQuest malware, hacking banks, transferring up to $5mln
UNQUOTE
THIS is the second important Russian hacker arrested in the last two months with potential close ties to the DNC hacking....the first one was arrested in Prague.....and the Russians are fighting extremely hard to not have him extradited to the US....
Elijah Cummings: ‘If the public knew what Congress knows’ they would boycott the inauguration too
http://ow.ly/wrOh3089JOT
Here is the problem and I am surprised that the article sidesteps it....we simply already know what Trump will do and yet we look and look and look for some kind of "sign from heaven" he will not do it and or will do it......
Trump made a lot of promises about what he will do as president. We’ve documented 663 of them.
https://thinkprogress.org/trump-made-a-l
ot-of-promises-about-what-he-will-do-as-president-weve-documented-663-of-them-3d28f0131e7f#.2i38p335n
Here in Germany on German TV station this morning their carried interviews with Trump voters....
1. well yes he has a "steep learning curve" but he is a highly successful great businessman and will make it....forgetting along the way his SEVEN bankruptcies
German response...this job is not where you "learn on it "...
2. second comment...you have to let Trump ease into it and he needs to calm down
It seems that all who voted for him apparently did realize that Trump had major baggage but they assumed that his claims of being this great businessman evidently outweighed their basic instincts that something was wrong....
Think about it.....663 confirmed and recorded promises....and he is a sane FP thinker with a plan and an ideology and or philosophy ????
How do you know when your supposed FP is a "farce"??????
When a local German radio station in Berlin/Brandenburg report during their hourly news....
1. there are still virtually a lot of important government positions not yet filled yet by Trump and he starts today..US government is now government of a single person doing everything
2. used as a joke the Trump statement that he has assembled one of the smartest/brightest Cabinet in the US history....if so then why so many
"forgotten financial disclosures" during their hearings???
FP is designed to keep both a nation and her citizens safe....secure...AND alive....not to create a "reality show for a single person"....
Trump's transition team inquired about tanks/missile launchers for inaugural parade, got 20-plane flyover
DOD denied request because (1) 100,000 pound tanks are not props and DC roads cannot structurally support and (2) "Optics."
Trump will never get into FP mode as long as he and his advisors are constantly dodging questions about Russia and their ties to Russian black money...Nixon in his last months found this to be total true.
EXCLUSIVE: Tomorrow, our 45th POTUS enters the Oval Office under multiple espionage investigations. What's next?
http://observer.com/2017/01/spy-clouds-hang-over-trumps-inauguration/
QUOTE
Tomorrow Donald J. Trump will become our 45th president, an event heralded by his supporters as a big step towards changing the course of our politics and, per their mantra, making America great again. While the festivities have produced giggles from the president-elect’s semi-comical inability to get top talent to play his inauguration, a considerably more serious problem for Trump has emerged on the espionage front.
He weathered last week’s spy-storm, generated by Buzzfeed’s leak of a 35-page dossier of allegations regarding his clandestine ties to the Kremlin, by mocking them in customary Trumpian fashion. In a series of angry tweets, the president-elect denounced the Intelligence Community as the source of that leak—even though it was not—while proclaiming the dossier to be “fake news.” Since he recently compared American spies to Nazis on Twitter, Trump seemingly wants a full-fledged war with the IC from his first day in the Oval Office.
If America’s 17-agency spy empire isn’t on Trump’s side, Vladimir Putin is. In defense of the president-elect, the Kremlin strongman proclaimed the dossier to be “rubbish” and “clearly false information,” mocking reports of Russian kompromat, colorfully adding that those who he claimed were smearing Trump were “worse than prostitutes.”
To be fair, the dossier, which was compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with extensive experience in Russian matters, does have dodgy aspects. As I explained last week, it’s raw, unfiltered human intelligence from multiple sources with varying levels of access and credibility. Some of the dossier’s claims are quite plausibly true, others are demonstrably false, while much of it is unverifiable and may be Kremlin disinformation. Given the long history of Russian provocation and deception against Western governments, a high degree of skepticism is in order here.
In particular, Steele’s most important accusation, that Trump’s lawyer met in Prague in late August to coordinate Russian hacking of the Democrats, has yet to be confirmed and in fact seems likely to be false—a case of mistaken identity. Steele presented his findings to the FBI months ago, but they were unable to verify the Prague meeting, leading the ex-spy to grow frustrated with what he considered to be Bureau foot-dragging as the election loomed.
Newsweek has reported that Estonian intelligence actually did have information that confirmed the meeting in Prague, which would be a game-changing fact if true. But the author of that piece, Kurt Eichenwald, has a history of making fanciful claims about Trump’s foreign ties based on unnamed intelligence sources. Moreover, it would be a very exceptional thing for Estonian intelligence to surveille a meeting in the capital of a fellow NATO and European Union country without conducting a joint operation—which would mean the Czechs and presumably the Americans know about it too. Most importantly, my friends in Eastern European intelligence think the Prague story is deeply flawed. One top security official in that neighborhood flatly told me, “If there’s intelligence confirming that meeting, I would have been briefed on it—and I wasn’t.”
It seems that the Prague story is based on a kernel of truth. However, the story which Steele reported seems to be disinformation, notwithstanding the fact that, as I reported when it happened, Czech security really did arrest a prominent Russian hacker in Prague, at the request of the FBI, just a couple weeks before our election. There appears to be a trail that might have led back to Trump in that case, but the Russians are playing their usual spy-games, exposing false trails of inquiry to muddy the waters and confuse investigators.
Now the whole case has been blown wide open again with yesterday’s bombshell McClatchy report that the IC has been looking into possible ties of, as the McClatchy report put it, “a few Americans who were affiliated with Trump’s campaign or his business empire” to individuals “from Russia and other former Soviet nations.” This has supposedly happened at least since the spring, months before Steele shared his dossier with anyone in Washington. In particular, a specially created IC working group, comprised of representatives from the FBI, CIA, NSA, and the Departments of Justice and Treasury, looked into clandestine Russian money that may have been sent to finance the Trump campaign.
In other words, the Steele report is hardly more than a cover mechanism for the real IC investigation, which knew everything that was true in that dossier already – and presumably knows what’s not true as well. The IC working group found sufficient information on Trump’s secret ties to Putin to get a Federal court to issue warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which gives them access to phone calls, emails, and bank accounts which may be tainted by connections to foreign spies.
Team Trump refused comment on the McClatchy story. Since the Senate Intelligence Committee will be conducting an investigation into Trump’s Russian links, including subpoena powers and full access to what the IC knows, the president-elect may have a great deal to worry about. The clearest sign of Trump’s concern is that, almost 24 hours after the report appeared, he hasn’t taken to Twitter to denounce or mock it. His uncharacteristic silence indicates serious trouble in the Trump camp.
Neither are the Senate and the IC all that Trump has to worry about. Several European intelligence agencies have watched the new president’s clandestine ties to Putin with interest and alarm. For small countries close to Russia, the prospect of an American president colluding with the Kremlin is terrifying. What they know was hinted at in a tweet by Harri Ohra-aho, in response to an all-caps claim tweeted by Trump: “I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” Ohra-aho’s response, which translates as “Lord, give me patience, AND NOW!” is important mainly because the tweeter is a two-star general serving as the chief of Finnish military intelligence.
Plenty of intelligence services know parts of the truth about our 45th president’s potentially unsavory ties to Moscow. Starting tomorrow, Trump will try hard to shut down IC inquiries, but he cannot curtail the Senate investigation and doesn’t have any power to silence worried allies and partners who consider him a threat to their countries.
Confirms McClatchy report of joint task force&(probably) a FISA. Names Manafort, Page, Stone as targets
https://nyti.ms/2k6ispl
WHAT Trump does not fully understand yet is the Nixon removal started with his secondary team leading in the end straight to Nixon...
This is exactly what is playing out again....social media for literally months before the election kept raising red flags...and MSM ignored it..appears IC did not ignore them....
NOTICE that this article was released yesterday and it took a full day for at least one of the MSM to pick it up and confirm...
Still has not been picked up by the TV media...why is that?
Actually the Trump FP is really easy to fully understand now since we have a number of major indicators since his election......China.....Israel....Syria...EU/NATO.....Germany and ESPECIALLY Russia.....
If one takes his rally speeches...his interviews...his press conferences and especially his tweets...the man is literally stuck information wise on about 1973....this man is WYSIWYG.....and he is a driven authoritarian racist narcissist and it is a shame that many are unwilling to either recognize what that is or they do recognize it but for the hatred of Obama/Clinton and the Democratic Party and the deep desire to hold and take total power.....they look the other way ignoring the damage to both our democracy and the US in general...
Many of his FP ideas are from the alt Right blog world...much from Bannon who made Breitbart.com and who is engaging with his company in Europe on the populist support side ......
This is a man who will have a FP driven by the moment...literally which way the wind is blowing the flag....he has no ideology other than "winning and making money"...at the cost of others....
'Stay tuned': Trump spokesman on possibility of U.S. Embassy moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
http://reut.rs/2jCqY2y
QUOTE
President-elect Donald Trump's spokesman said on Thursday there will be an announcement on whether the United States will move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
"Stay tuned," incoming White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters, asked about the issue at a briefing the day before Trump takes office. "There'll be a further announcement on that."
While campaigning for the presidency, Trump pledged to switch the embassy from Tel Aviv, where it has been located for 68 years, to Jerusalem.
The proposal drew an outcry from Palestinians and others who said it would kill any prospect for peace.