Donald Trump has refused to condemn Russia’s military takeover of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, saying if elected he would consider recognizing it as Russian territory, in the latest of a series of statements that have raised eyebrows about the Republican candidate’s intentions toward the Kremlin.
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He has also surrounded himself with people whose deep links to the corrupt world of Russian business would normally disqualify them from USA politics.
However, Kaine said he’s not laughing, and that he believes Trump’s comments were “temperamentally a disqualification for the office” of the presidency.
So, if Trump was not calling on Russian Federation to hack and leak, what was he doing? “That’s not law and order”.
The developing US strategy, unofficially dubbed “name and shame”, is meant to raise diplomatic consequences for foreign governments involved in state-sponsored hacking.
Roberts asked Republican strategist and Trump campaign surrogate Boris Epshteyn to explain Trump’s comments.
It’s been claimed (and disputed) that Franklin Delano Roosevelt once met with a group of activists who sought his support for bold legislation, listened to their arguments for some time, and then said, “All right, you’ve convinced me”. However, the New York Times reported the hack began when Trump announced his candidacy, when he was considered a longshot. Why would he play so close to such a hot issue when he has been accused by the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and the mainstream media of benefiting from the actions of “state-sponsored Russian hackers”?
News of the cyberattack first broke in June, when Democratic National Committee officials said hackers acting on behalf of Russia’s government had infiltrated their network and stolen documents, including opposition research on Trump. Mark Galeotti, senior research fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague, said he believed another motive for the hack if Russia was behind it would be to portray U.S. democracy as venal and chaotic and so take the sting out of Western accusations that Russian elections are corrupt.
“You have to be very careful with your words”, said Lance deHaven-Smith, an emeritus public policy professor at Florida State University. Trump also said he won’t critique Russian revanchism and interventionism, as the US also intervenes overseas.
On top of Putin’s clear misunderstanding of LGBT equality, he signed a 2013 bill that banned “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships” to minors.
President Vladimir Putin said he had seen specific intelligence suggesting Russia’s foreign enemies (code for Washington) were preparing to meddle in Russian parliamentary elections later this year.
“His comments weren’t a slip of the tongue but they’re of a piece with his obsequiousness” to Putin and Russia, Inboden said. He likes and has praised Putin’s autocratic style.
The irony is President Barack Obama’s worst critics on the right argued he was too deferential toward foes, didn’t know friends from foes and “bowed” to authoritarians.
Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has worked for a Kremlin-backed Ukrainian president unseated in 2014.
“I’m proud to stand by our allies in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation against any threat they face, including from Russia”, Clinton said Thursday night during her convention acceptance speech.
The flap over Clinton’s emails came after Obama identified Russian Federation as nearly certainly responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee in a different case. Nothing else explains the sheer absurdity of his campaign. “D’s trying to change subject”, Trump spokesman Jason Miller posted on Twitter. “I’m a Hillary supporter, and still it’s an outrage that the DNC didn’t retain neutrality”, he said.
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“Ukraine states that the above motioned decree is null and void”, the diplomat said.
