Recent Presidential Elections -- 2016 Election -- Why Trump Won -- Anti-Hillary Sentiment

 

You have the rich braggart with an inferiority complex so large it dwarfs Saturn using racism, sexism, nationalism and a generalized fear of The Other to elbow his way toward the nomination. You have the rich political aristocrat who votes for war, total surveillance and thinks fracking is the greatest thing since glazed donuts trying to pass herself off as some sort of transformative populist while cashing Wall Street checks by the fistful.

It is madness, but it is madness by design. The Republican Party and its media allies have spent several decades fomenting a sense of terror within their voting ranks -- fear of the immigrant, fear of the Black man, fear of a woman's power to choose, fear of the terrorist hiding under the bed. They have diligently trashed the basic functions of government so they can go on the Sunday talk shows and blather about how government doesn't work. The Democrats, for their part, have been in full moral retreat over those same decades, fleeing the legacy of FDR and their own alleged principles to such a vast degree that a candidate who voted like a conservative every time the chips were down is about to grab the brass ring.

This is the best we can do, really? This is what we have become. The only reason people will vote for Trump in the general election is because they have been trained to be afraid. The only reason people will vote for Clinton in the general election is to thwart Comb-Over Mussolini and his dreams of glory; once again, people will be voting against instead of voting for, because "she can win," allegedly (Pitt 1-2).

A party beholden to corporate power cannot simultaneously be the party of ordinary working people, and thus we can see the Democrats' dilemma. Though the party distinguishes itself from the GOP in some ways - Democrats are more liberal on social issues, for example, and more inclined to defend programs like Medicare and Social Security - there can be no question that corporate money has undue influence on both major parties, not just the GOP. When Hillary Clinton was seen as the inevitable 2016 Democratic nominee, there was no reason to believe this status quo would be challenged. But the rise of Bernie Sanders changes everything.

The genius of the corporate coup that has overtaken US democracy is not that it dominates the GOP - the party that has long favored corporate power anyway - but that it has maneuvered even the opposition party into submission as well. …

Clinton, who once served on the board of Walmart, the gold standard of predatory corporatism, is so tight with corporate power that she's now making efforts to downplay her relationships. CNBC reports that she is postponing fundraisers with Wall Street executives, no doubt concerned that voters are awakening to the toxic influence of corporations on politics and government. Already in the awkward position of explaining six-figure checks from Wall Street firms for speaking engagements and large charitable donations from major banks, Clinton realizes that she must try to distance herself from her corporate benefactors.

And the fat cats fully understand. "Don't expect folks on Wall Street to be offended that Clinton is distancing herself from them," CNBC reports. "In fact, they see it as smart politics and they understand that Wall Street banks are deeply unpopular."

Indeed, everyone knows the game, and few are worried that Clinton - whose son-in-law is a former Goldman Sachs executive who now runs a hedge fund - is any kind of threat to the power structure. This explains why a leading banking executive called Clinton's tough talk about Wall Street "theatrics" made necessary in response to the Sanders campaign, adding that he predicts she'll be known as “Mrs. Wall Street” if elected.

These realities show that the "rigged system" concerns of ordinary voters are not overblown. In a stroke of strategic brilliance, corporate power has created a playing field where even its perceived opponents are advancing its agenda. And the fiction is propagated with impressive expertise, as moderate, corporate-friendly Democrats are portrayed in the mainstream media as "flaming liberals." Even though Barack Obama, for example, filled his administration with Wall Street veterans and stalwarts after his election in 2008 - including Tim Geithner, Michael Froman, Larry Summers and a host of others - he is frequently described as a liberal not just by those on the right, but even in mainstream media.

… If she wins, conservative commentators will react with alarm and relentlessly lash out at her as a "dangerous liberal," but corporate overlords will sleep well at night knowing everything is fine.

This is what has happened during the centrist Obama administration, which bailed out Wall Street without prosecuting even one executive responsible for bringing about the 2008 economic collapse. It also happened in the centrist administration of Bill Clinton, who was attacked by conservatives as an "extreme liberal" while doing little to earn the designation. The Clinton administration, with vocal support from the first lady, deregulated telecommunications and the financial sector, pushed hard for passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement - a tremendous gift to corporate interests and a major blow to the working class - and passed legislation on crime and welfare that was anything but liberal.

Such is the role that corporate America wants Hillary Clinton to play today. Defined as a liberal, she is in fact a consummate establishment Democrat: a hawkish corporate apologist who happens to be pro-choice. Yes, she is to the left of the GOP candidates - she doesn't deny climate change, wants to preserve Obamacare and won't entertain outlandish ideas like privatizing Social Security - but she's still well within the bounds of acceptability to the US corporate oligarchy that does not want fundamental, systemic change. Rest assured, under her watch the system will stay rigged (Niose 1-3).

What is troubling about Clinton's record is that she has left behind a trail strewn with failures and even catastrophes. Indeed, her highest profile undertakings almost universally ended in disaster -- and a person's record should matter when voters are deciding whether to entrust him or her with the most powerful office on earth.

In other words, it's not just a question of her holding one prestigious job or another; it's also how well she did in those jobs. …

…

... is Hillary Clinton really a can-do leader? Since she burst onto the national scene with her husband's presidential election in 1992, she has certainly traveled a lot, given many speeches and met many national and foreign leaders -- which surely has some value -- but it's hard to identify much in the way of her meaningful accomplishments.

Clinton's most notable undertaking as First Lady was her disastrous health insurance plan that was concocted with her characteristic secrecy and then was unveiled to decidedly mixed reviews. Much of the scheme was mind-numbing in its complexity and -- because of the secrecy -- it lacked sufficient input from Congress where it found few enthusiastic supporters.

Not only did the plan collapse under its own weight, but it helped take many Democratic members of Congress with it, as the Republicans reversed a long era of Democratic control of the House of Representatives in 1994. Because of Hillary Clinton's health-care disaster, a chastened Democratic Party largely took the idea of providing near-universal health-insurance coverage to Americans off the table for the next 15 years.

In Clinton's next career as a senator from New York, her most notable action was to enthusiastically support President George W. Bush's Iraq War. Clinton did not just vote to authorize the war in 2002, she remained a war supporter until 2006 when it became politically untenable to do so, that is, if she had any hope of winning the Democratic presidential nomination against anti-war Sen. Barack Obama.

Both in her support for the war in the early years and her politically expedient switch -- along with a grudging apology for her "mistake" -- Clinton showed very little courage.

When she was supporting the war, the post-9/11 wind was at Bush's back. So Clinton joined him in riding the jingoistic wave. By 2006, the American people had turned against the war and the Republican Party was punished at the polls for it, losing control of Congress. So it was no profile-in-courage for Clinton to distance herself from Bush then.

…

… the Iraq War "surge" ... dispatched 30,000 more US troops to Iraq in 2007. The "surge" saw casualty figures spike. Nearly 1,000 additional American died along with an untold number of Iraqis. And despite another conventional wisdom about the "successful surge" it failed to achieve its central goal of getting the Iraqis to achieve compromises on their sectarian divisions.

Yet, the mainstream press didn't get any closer to the mark in 2008 when it began cheering the Iraq "surge" as a great success, getting spun by the neocons who noted a gradual drop in the casualty levels. The media honchos, many of whom supported the invasion in 2003, ignored that Bush had laid out specific policy goals for the "surge," none of which were achieved.

…

… the goals were never achieved, either during the "surge" or since then. To this day, Iraq remains a society bitterly divided along sectarian lines with the out-of-power Sunnis again sidling up to Al Qaeda-connected extremists and even the Islamic State.

But Clinton didn't have the courage or common sense to recognize that the Iraq War "surge" had failed. After Obama appointed her as Secretary of State -- as part of a naïve gesture of outreach to a "team of rivals" -- Clinton fell back in line behind Official Washington's new favorite conventional wisdom, the "successful surge."

In the end, all the Iraq War "surge" did was buy President Bush and his neocon advisers time to get out of office before the failure of the Iraq War became obvious to the American public. Its other primary consequence was to encourage Defense Secretary Gates, who was kept on by President Obama as a gesture of bipartisanship, to conjure up another "surge" for Afghanistan.

…

Clinton's enthusiasm for "surges" also influenced her to side with Gates and General David Petraeus, a neocon favorite, to pressure Obama into a "surge" for Afghanistan, sending in an additional 30,000 troops on a bloody, ill-fated "counterinsurgency" mission. Again, the cost in American lives was about 1,000 soldiers but their sacrifice did little to shift the war's outcome.

Virtually all the major columnists and big-name pundits praised Clinton's hawkish tendencies as Secretary of State, from her escalating tensions with Iran to tipping the balance of the Obama administration's debate in favor of a "regime change" mission in Libya to urging direct US military intervention in Syria in pursuit of another "regime change" there.

On the campaign trail, Clinton seeks to spin all these militaristic recommendations as somehow beneficial to the United States. But the reality is quite different.

Regarding Iran, in 2010, Secretary Clinton personally killed a promising initiative sponsored by Brazil and Turkey (at President Obama's request) to get Iran to swap much of its low-enriched uranium for radiological medical tests. Instead, Clinton followed the path laid out by Israel and the neocons, ratchet up pressure on Iran and keep open the "bomb-bomb-bomb Iran" option.

It is noteworthy that the diplomatic agreement with Iran to restrain its nuclear program and to give up much of its low-enriched uranium required Clinton's departure from the State Department in 2013. I'm told that Obama understood that he needed to get her out of the way for the diplomacy to work.

But Clinton's signature project as Secretary of State was another war of choice, this time the "regime change" in Libya resulting in the grisly murder of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and the descent of Libya into a failed state beset with terrorism, including the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other US diplomatic personnel in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, and more recently the emergence of the Islamic State.

…

Over the next five years, Libya -- a once prosperous North African country --descended into anarchy with dozens of armed militias and now three competing governments jockeying for power. Meanwhile, the Islamic State expanded its territory around the city of Sirte and engaged in its signature practice of beheading "infidels," including a group of Coptic Christians slaughtered on a beach.

Yet, on the campaign trail, Clinton continues to defend her instigation of the Libyan war, disputing any comparisons between it and the Iraq War by rejecting any “conflating” of the two. Yet, the two disasters -- while obviously having some differences -- do deserve to be conflated because they have many similarities. Both were wars of choice justified by false and misleading claims and having terrible outcomes.

…

So, is Hillary Clinton "qualified" to be President of the United States? While her glittering résumé may say one thing, her record -- a litany of misjudgments, miscalculations and catastrophes -- may say something else (Parry 1-4).

… It would be wrong to deny that she made certain mistakes which crippled her bid, particularly in the period between when she left the State Department and when she announced her candidacy, for example in taking large sums of money from financial institutions for paid speeches—which was legal, but she seemed oblivious to how it looked. These seem like misdemeanors compared with what Trump has been up to, but they did matter to voters, and Clinton ought to have recognized that. Instead, she lived her life as if she were going to be running against Jeb Bush, a candidate as burdened by charges of dynasticism and political profiteering as she was. When she protested that everything she did was done according to “the rules,” what voters appear to have heard was an admission that the entire system was built in a way they didn’t like (Sorkin 2).

Liberals like me (Harold Titus) recognized readily Hillary’s flaws and resented being forced to choose between her and Trump. Some of us refused to make that choice, electing instead not to vote or to vote for a third party candidate. I did vote for her because supporting Trump was so abhorrent. I believe that the letter I wrote (see below) to my hometown newspaper in April 2016 was reflective of what most liberals felt.

One of Hillary’s major weaknesses is the perception shared by many that she is shifty, that like her husband she places expediency above integrity. Bill, a leader of the Democratic Leadership Council of the 1990s, a “new Democratic,” was a friend of large corporations. He vigorously promoted NAFTA. He signed into law the GOP legislative repeal of Glass-Steagall, which separated commercial banks from investment banks. Because a majority of Americans now recognize the great injury done to them by large corporations and because Bernie Sanders is her primary-season challenger, Hillary has become suddenly a critic of the TPP trade agreement, the Keystone XL pipeline project, big banks, the fossil fuel industry, and Big Pharma. It was expedient for her both to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and to declare in 2007 that that decision had been a mistake. It is expedient for her now to campaign as a progressive Democrat and to wrap herself around President Obama to curtail Bernie’s criticism of certain policies that she asserts she and the president share.

Needing also to separate herself from Bernie, she portrays herself as a pragmatic doer. She agrees with Bernie’s diagnoses (because she has to), but “his numbers don’t add up.” He makes promises; she delivers! … Her preference of a $12 an hour minimum wage and her declaration that natural gas -- its quantity the result of fracking -- is the bridge to clean energy are examples of Democratic Party incrementalism, a cutting around the edges of a serious problem, for corporations a protective backfire to arrest a raging forest fire. By donating campaign funds and paying speaking fees to Democratic Party enablers, corporations are able to hedge their bets.

Bernie declared that we should be thinking big, not small. His reference to European countries that provide their citizens the health care, work benefits, and education that we do not is a telling indictment of the virulent economic system that controls the levers of American political power. To the argument that Congress would never enact Bernie’s policies, I answer, “They didn’t Obama’s. Why would they Hillary’s?” If we ever break the exploitative stranglehold locked upon us, it will be due to a movement started by a straight-arrow champion of regular people, not by an individual who will do whatever it takes – pander, employ three-quarter falsehood attacks, change policy positions – to win a presidential election (Titus 1).

Works cited:

Niose, David, “Hillary Clinton, Corporate America and the Democrats' Dilemma.” Truthout, February 21, 2016. Web. https://truthout.org/articles/with-hillary-clinton-corporate-america-defines-the-limits-of-acceptable-opinion/

Parry, Robert, “Is Hillary Clinton "Qualified?" Consortium News, April 11, 2016. Web. https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/08/is-hillary-clinton-qualified/

Pitt, William Rivers, “Tuesday Night Massacre: The Looming Trump v. Clinton Debacle.” Truthout, April 27, 2016. Web. https://truthout.org/articles/tuesday-night-massacre-the-looming-trump-v-clinton-debacle/

Sorkin, Amy Davidson, “Donald Trump’s Stunning Win.” The New Yorker, November 9, 2016. Web. https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/trumps-stunning-win?intcid=mod-latest

Titus, Harold. Letter to the Editor of the Siuslaw News, April 23, 2016. Print.

Recent Presidential Elections -- 2016 Election -- Why Trump Won: Russian Interference

 

In January 2017, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report concluding that the Russians interfered with the election to "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electibility and potential presidency.”

After Trump fired Comey for “this Russia thing,” former FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel to investigate possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign. After a 2-year investigation, Mueller submitted his findings to the Justice Department in March 2019. His team found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, but concluded Russian interference occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion." Thirty-four individuals and three companies were indicted in the investigation, several of whom were Trump associates or campaign officials (editors 4).

When Russia set out to interfere with the 2016 election, it went all out.

Over the course of the election, a wide-ranging group of Russians probed state voter databases for insecurities; hacked the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee; tried to hack the campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio and the Republican National Committee; released politically damaging information on the internet; spread propaganda on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram; staged rallies in Florida and Pennsylvania; set up meetings with members of the Trump campaign and its associates; and floated a business proposition for a skyscraper in Moscow to the Trump Organization.

The goal, as determined by the U.S. intelligence community and backed up by evidence gathered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller: To damage the Clinton campaign, boost Trump’s chances and sow distrust in American democracy overall.

The details of these efforts have come out in drips and drabs since the 2016 election ended, with information revealed by a memo from intelligence agencies, court documents filed by Mueller, testimony from Trump associates in court and before Congress and investigative news reports.

Here’s what we know about how Russia worked to manipulate the 2016 election.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia did not alter actual votes during the 2016 election. But Russians did target voter registration systems or state websites in at least 21 states before Election Day, fully accessed some states’ systems and stole hundreds of thousands of voters’ personal information.

The FBI alerted states to the threat about two months before the 2016 election when hackers accessed voter registration databases in Illinois and Arizona. Then in January 2017, the government issued its first report on election interference and blamed Russia for the hacks. However, DHS did not tell top state officials that their systems were scanned by hackers until nearly a year after the election.

In July of 2018, Mueller indicted 12 Russian nationals for their part in allegedly hacking into U.S. election systems. The prosecutors offered up more details, including saying that hackers stole information on 500,000 voters from an unnamed state’s website, including names, addresses, partial Social Security numbers, dates of birth and driver’s license numbers. Russians then visited the websites of counties in Georgia, Iowa and Florida, according to the indictment. The hackers also penetrated a voter registration software vendor, according to the indictment, and posed as the company sending malicious emails to several Florida election administrators.

In addition to all this, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report said that in a small number of states, Russians “were able to gain access to restricted elements of election infrastructure” and “were in a position to, at a minimum, alter or delete voter registration data.”

One of the most striking elements of Russia’s plan to influence the U.S. election did not involve votes at all, but rather agents with Russian military intelligence, known as GRU, hacking into the emails of staff working for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. These efforts, as laid out by Mueller in the key July 2018 indictment, began in earnest in March of 2016.

During that month, the agents sent emails that looked like Google security notifications to many Clinton campaign staffers and volunteers. But rather than helping them lock down their accounts, these emails instructed recipients to click a link to change their password, and when the user did so, this gave the Russian agents access to their accounts. Using this method, the GRU agents stole tens of thousands of emails from Clinton campaign staffers, including campaign chairman John Podesta.

The GRU agents then created a fake online group called Guccifer 2.0 and used that persona to share these emails with WikiLeaks. That group in turn released the stolen emails in the run up to the November election, creating frequent negative news cycles for Clinton and distracting from the message she hoped to send voters in the final days of the campaign.

The hacking did not stop with Clinton’s team. GRU officers also used malicious emails to gain access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee computer network, according to the special counsel indictment. Once inside, the hackers installed malware that allowed them to access more computers and steal thousands of emails and documents related to the election. In April of 2016, for example, the indictment said the hackers searched a DCCC computer for terms including “hillary,” “cruz” and “trump,” and copied a folder titled “Benghazi Investigations.”

This access to the DCCC then allowed the hackers to penetrate the Democratic National Committee network. In early June of 2016, the Russian officers launched DCLeaks.com and posted thousands of stolen documents and emails there. Days later, the DNC announced it had been hacked, prompting the Russians to create the Guccifer 2.0 persona to shift attention away from them and cover who had done the hacking.

The Russian agents, posing as Guccifer 2.0, soon shared stolen documents with WikiLeaks, which promised it would ensure the material “will have a much higher impact than what you are doing,” according to Mueller’s indictment. On July 22, just days before the Democratic National Convention, WikiLeaks released more than 20,000 stolen emails.

This dump piqued the interest of the Trump campaign. According to an indictment against longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, a “senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information” WikiLeaks had about Clinton’s campaign. Stone had been bragging about connections to WikiLeaks, and as the election approached, prosecutors say he continued to update the Trump campaign about the group’s plans. In early October, Steve Bannon, then Trump’s campaign chairman, reached out to Stone to express concern after WikiLeaks delayed releasing emails. But Stone reassured him and when WikiLeaks released Podesta’s emails on Oct. 7, 2016, just after the Washington Post published audio from “Access Hollywood” of Trump bragging about assaulting women, Bannon sent Stone a message: “well done.”

…

… just after the 2016 election, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that his presidential campaign’s emails had been hacked … Sen. Marco Rubio … was also targeted by Russians after he dropped out of the [presidential nomination] race in 2016. … Russian hackers also probed some other Republicans, but their efforts were more limited and less successful than those aimed at Democrats.

…

Russia’s plans to affect the U.S. election began in April of 2014 with the development of a “troll farm” that could spread false and disparaging messages on social media … Mueller’s indictment in February of 2018 charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies — including the Internet Research Agency — with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and identity theft.

The Internet Research Agency and its employees, the indictment said, sought to conduct “information warfare against the United States of America” in order to spread distrust and support Trump’s election. In an operation that cost millions of dollars, the Russians studied U.S. political groups, traveled to gather intelligence in several states and developed a network of fake accounts that they used to infect the American electorate. Throughout 2016, they posted divisive content about topics such as Black Lives Matter, immigration and gun control; they bought political ads criticizing Clinton; and they pumped out hashtags like #Hillary4Prison and #TrumpTrain to their masses of followers.

All of this was incredibly successful, according to University of Pennsylvania professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Experts disagree about how to quantify the impact of Russia’s social media campaign, but Jamieson, who did a forensic analysis of online activity in 2016 for her book Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President—What We Don’t, Can’t, and Do Know argues that it’s very likely Russia did sway the outcome of the 2016 election.

…

Beyond getting voters in the U.S. to follow Facebook or Twitter accounts and read fake news websites, the Russians translated their social media influence into real-life events. Posing as American grassroots activists, the trolls set up and promoted rallies in swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania, as well as at Trump properties in New York, according to the indictment. In one of their most notable moves, the Russian trolls hired a real American to dress as Clinton in a prison uniform at a rally in West Palm Beach.

The Russian influence efforts also included meeting with members of the Trump campaign.

One of the earliest people targeted was George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the campaign. Papadopoulos met a professor named Joseph Mifsud who said he had Kremlin connections and a woman named Olga who claimed to be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s niece. When the pair told him they wanted to set up a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, Papadopoulos eagerly passed on this information to Trump and other campaign officials, including future Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Mifsud later told Papadopoulos about Clinton’s hacked emails, and though Papadopoulos continued to push for a meeting with Russian officials, the summit never happened during the campaign. Papadopoulos was the first Trump associate to plead guilty in the Mueller investigation and has since served time in prison for lying to FBI agents about his Russian contacts.

In April of 2016, Trump himself briefly met with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak before giving a foreign policy speech. Sessions and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner also met with Kislyak that day. While the White House later tried to downplay these meetings, the Washington Post reported that Sessions had “substantive” discussions about Russia-related policy.

As all of this was going on, Russians were also setting up a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. A publicist who emailed Trump Jr. promised a Russian lawyer would have documents that could “incriminate” Clinton, and this led to the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort joined Trump Jr. that day.

Manafort himself, who had plenty of Russia connections from his days consulting politicians in Ukraine, has also come under scrutiny for his discussions with old friend Konstantin Kilimnik, who prosecutors believe has links to Russian intelligence. Court filings revealed that Manafort shared polling data with Kilimnik during the campaign and that the two talked about a potential peace plan for Ukraine.

While the special counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government, Mueller’s indictments have shown that people in Trump’s orbit were often happy to accept help from Russians when it was offered. And many of these actions are unprecedented in U.S. history, according to Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

…

Economic interests also played an important role in Russia’s relationship with Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Despite Trump’s frequent denials of any business in Russia on the campaign trail, his personal lawyer Michael Cohen spent much of 2016 working on a deal to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen’s efforts, which continued until June of 2016, included reaching out directly to the Kremlin for help, planning a trip to Russia and briefing Trump’s children Trump Jr. and Ivanka “approximately 10 times” about the plans. Cohen initially lied to Congress about the extent of the project, but in November of 2018 he pleaded guilty and then testified again in February, saying that Trump indirectly encouraged him to lie (Abrams 1-10).

Works cited:

Abrams, Abigail, “Here's What We Know So Far about Russia's 2016 Meddling.” Time, April 18, 2019. Web. https://time.com/5565991/russia-influence-2016-election/

Recent Presidential Elections -- 2016 Election -- The Debates

The first presidential debate in late September was a final chance for Trump to change the game, the first time he would appear next to Clinton and have an opportunity to prove arguments about his erratic behavior and angry persona false.

Clinton was once again in the midst of deepened scrutiny. She left a 9/11 memorial event after feeling faint, leading to a wild surge of internet rumors about her health. She hadn’t given a proper press conference in months, leading to a barrage of press criticism (which was never matched when Trump began avoiding the press in the final two months of the campaign). Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, had his e-mail inbox hacked, and his messages leaked by Wikileaks, revealing embarrassing internal deliberations and casting more light on Clinton’s connections to wealthy individuals and corporations.

Trump, sensing his improving position, declined to prepare for his debate, beyond holding bull sessions with a coterie of disgraced politicians, generals, and even media executives, once ousted Fox News chief Roger Ailes briefly found his way into the camp. On his third set of campaign leaders, Trump became ringmaster of his own destiny.

The most important moment came at the close, when Clinton mentioned Trump’s treatment of women, citing a former pageant star named Alicia Machado, who Trump had mocked as fat. Trump’s blustery response was hardly elegant, and he spent the next several days attacking Machado in late-night tweets and falsely saying she had appeared in a sex tape.

That would come back to haunt him days later, when a video tape of Trump on Access Hollywood was published by the Washington Post. The tape featured Trump talking about his treatment of women, how he kisses them without asking and boasting he could do anything, even “grab them by the pussy.” At the next debate, pressed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper on whether he had ever done those things, Trump said no. Soon, more than a dozen women would come forward to allege that Trump had sexually assaulted them by kissing or fondling them without permission. One woman is currently suing Trump in a civil case, alleging that he raped her when she was 13 years old.

Through it all, there was no sign that Trump would change his approach to the contests. Each time he would start with a subdued mien, speaking in husky undertones, before rising to issue a soundbite—”Nasty woman!“—that would echo for days on social media. He doubled down on the alt-right influences in the campaign, now managed by CEO of Breitbart Media, Stephen Bannon. He paraded a line of women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment at the second debate, and promised that he would put Hillary Clinton in jail if he were president. In the third debate, he refused to say he would accept the results of the election if he lost.

His sheer intransigence frustrated elites in both parties, and left many women baffled at his ascent. But another segment of voters appear to see him hectored by these women and, by extension, a victim of Clinton’s political attacks. Some clearly saw hypocrisy in Clinton’s criticism of Trump given her own husband’s past behavior. As Trump gave voice to resentment against new social codes that denigrate casual sexism, Trump won the overwhelming support of male voters in the 2016 election. Clinton’s name on the ballot was a red flag that attracted a bull (Fernholz 8-12).

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Hillary Clinton seemed to overpower Donald Trump in their first presidential debate Monday night as the Republican nominee stumbled over his words and found himself spending most of the night on his heels.

“I think Donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate,” Clinton said at one point. “And yes I did. And you know what else I prepared for is I prepared to be president.”

Moderator Lester Holt of NBC News led the candidates through many of the most explosive issues of this election and Trump found himself re-litigating many of his previous controversial comments. Here are six key moments:

1. Trump gets agitated out of the gate: Despite expectations that Trump would show a cooler, more presidential demeanor, he began repeatedly interrupting Clinton, raising his voice, and sniffing loudly during the very first section of the debate on jobs. It set the tone for the rest of the debate.

Tensions were so high that when Clinton asked the audience to visit her website, Trump admonished her posting her plan to defeat ISIS online, saying Gen. Douglas MacArthur would not approve of Clinton posting. “You're telling the enemy everything you want to do,” Trump said.

2. “A long record of engaging in racist behavior:” After multiple clashes on race, Clinton accused Trump of having “a long record of engaging in racist behavior” going back to a 1973 Department of Justice lawsuit accusing him of discrimination for not renting apartments to black people.

Trump dismissed the issue by saying the suit included lots of companies, and that he settled without admitting guilt. He also praised himself for opening a club in Palm Beach, Florida, that did not discriminate against anyone.

And Trump forcefully defended stop-and-frisk, the controversial policing policy that a court ruled unconstitutional when used in New York City. Trump called it “tremendous beyond belief” and said other cities needed to adopt it in order to implement “law and order.”

3. “I say nothing:” After his five-year crusade to raise questions about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Trump expressed no contrition and gave no explanation for why he finally changed his mind last week when he admitted Obama was born in the United States.

Instead, Trump tried to blame Clinton for starting the rumor (fact checkers say that’s not true) and praised himself for forcing Obama to produce his birth certificate.

Pressed by Holt what he had to say to African-Americans who were offended by the claim, Trump responded, “I say nothing, because I was able to get it,” he said of the birth certificate. “I think I did a good job.”

4. Tax returns: Trump has refused to release his tax returns and didn’t budge when pressed during the debate, giving Clinton a wide opening. “You’ve got to ask yourself, why won’t he release tax returns?” she asked, speculating that he might not be as rich or charitable as he claims, or that he’s hiding business practices or debts.

Trump retorted by saying that tax returns don’t give the public much information, and that his financial disclosures tell you more, noting that his showed he made over $600 million last year. He also said he has relatively little debt.

Noting her father ran a drapery business, Clinton hit Trump for “stiffing” thousands of vendors, saying, “I’m relieved that my late father didn’t do business with you.”

Clinton also invoked an architect she brought to the debate whom she said Trump had failed to pay in full. “Maybe he didn’t do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work,” Trump replied.

5. “Presidential look:” Holt asked Trump to turn to Clinton and tell her what he meant when he said she doesn’t have a “presidential look.” Trump said Clinton lacked the “stamina” necessary to be commander in chief.

Then, accusing Clinton’s campaign ads of being “not nice,” Trump ominously said he was refraining from saying something worse. “I was going to say something extremely rough to Hillary and her family,” he said, before adding that he decided against it.

Clinton responded by invoking a litany of comments Trump has made about women, and his former ownership of the Miss Universe pageant. “He loves beauty contests, hanging around them,” she said.

6. Iraq: Trump got bogged down in a lengthy and unconvincing defense of his claim that he opposed the Iraq War from the start, which fact checkers have repeatedly noted is not supported by the public record.

Trump responded with hostility when Holt noted this fact. While he acknowledged that Howard Stern in 2002 that he was in favor of the war, he said he said so “lightly” and argued that his private conversations with Fox News Anchor Sean Hannity — where he allegedly expressed opposition to the war — should be given more weight. Trump lashed out at Holt, accusing him of repeating a “mainstream media thing,” started by Clinton.

Clinton, who has been forced to bear the burden of her vote for the war for years, seemed to delight in Trump’s re-litigation of the issue, before doing some of her own. At a different point in the debate, she delivered a prepared zinger: “Well, Donald, I know you live in your own reality, but that is not the facts,” she said (Seitz-Wald 1-4).

ST. LOUIS — A presidential debate whose tone was expected to be shaped by Donald Trump's lewd and demeaning comments a decade ago fulfilled that billing in a testy back-and-forth Sunday night.

Hillary Clinton and Trump established the tenor from the outset, walking onto the stage for their introductions and, seemingly by mutual agreement, passing on the traditional handshake. Throughout the 90-minute exchange, which included questions posed by audience members in the town hall setting, they exchanged insults, defended themselves and even ventured into actual policy positions. After the opening salvos, the specifics of the tape faded into the background.

Here are five quick takeaways from Sunday's [second] debate:

1). The Elephant In the Room Topped the Show

Donald Trump had the worst weekend of his campaign, and perhaps the worst weekend of any presidential campaign ever. A flood of Republican members of Congress broke from the nominee saying that he should drop out or that they wouldn’t vote for him after video surfaced from 2005 of Trump making obscene comments about how he treated women.

Trump upped the tension just minutes prior to the debate by holding a brief press conference with several women who have in the past accused former President Bill Clinton of various forms of sexual assault — signaling his defense strategy.

And the tapes came up right out of the gate. Moderators Martha Raddatz of ABC News and Anderson Cooper of CNN asked Trump about the video and whether his words constituted sexual assault.

Trump first dismissed some of the video, saying he “didn’t say that all” and said he has “never done those things” and then went on to dismiss it as “locker room talk.”

Finally, he said, “I’m very embarrassed and I hate it,” and claimed "nobody has more respect for women than I do” — a claim he has repeated throughout his candidacy.

Then he turned toward the accusations against Clinton's husband.

“If you look at Bill Clinton. Mine were words and his were action,” Trump said. “There has never been anyone in the history of politics who has been so abusive to women.”

And he attempted to connect the former president’s faults to the current Democratic nominee, saying, “Hillary Clinton has attacked those same women and attacked them viciously.”

For her part, Clinton invoked First Lady Michelle Obama who has said more than once that when opponents go low, she and her husband go high.

And she said of Trump, "he never apologizes.”

2). Clinton Tries to Connect All the Dots

Clinton also used the leaked video as further proof that Trump will only divide the country and is not fit to be president.

“It’s not only women and it’s not only this video that raises questions about his fitness to be president,” Clinton said, listing a litany of instances that Trump has denigrated others.

Clinton pointed to Trump’s mocking of a disabled reporter, his attacks against a Gold Star family, his smear of a former Miss Universe, his comments about women, and questioning the motives of a federal judge and his labeling of Muslims.

“This is not who we are” as Americans, Clinton said.

Trump responded, “It’s just words, folks. It’s just words.” It’s a response that meant that Clinton is all talk and no action, a theme through out the 90-minute debate. But it also could have been a defense for the demeaning things that he’s said to and about others.

3). Trump Takes Email Scandal to Another Level

During the first debate, Trump got in no real effective attacks against Clinton. He learned his lesson.

Trump said he “probably shouldn’t say this,” but that if he were to win the presidency, he’s going to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her.

“There has never been anything like it,” he said, referring to the deletion of 33,000 emails on her private server when she was Secretary of State.

Clinton responded, saying, her email server was a “mistake and I take responsibility.”

“I’m not making any excuses,” she said while adding that there is “no evidence” that her email was hacked. But instead of dropping it after those concise points, she spent more time trying to litigate the subject, which often makes her look like she's not being truthful or unconcerned.

And when Clinton tried to defend an excerpt of a paid speech that was leaked Friday afternoon where she said she speaks differently about Wall Street in public than in private by saying she was telling a story about former President Abraham Lincoln, Trump interjected in an effective way that made her justification seem absurd.

"She got caught in a total lie. And she lied," Trump said. "Now she’s blaming the lie on the late great Abraham Lincoln."

4). Trump Admits to Not Paying Federal Taxes

Trump admitted that he took advantage of a loophole that allowed him not to pay federal income taxes.

When asked if he didn't pay federal income taxes, Trump said, “Of course.”

“A lot of my write off was depreciation,” Trump said, referring to a New York Times story indicated that Trump could have not paid taxes for up to 18 years since 1995 because of a $916 million loss.

“I absolutely used it,” Trump said.

5). Trump Breaks with His Own Running Mate on Syria

In last week’s vice presidential debate, Trump’s vice presidential candidate Mike Pence broke with Trump on his Syria policy, taking a hard line on Russia and threatening American force if Russia and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continues to bomb civilians.

But Sunday night, Trump said he doesn’t have the same position as his running mate.

“He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree,” Trump said, which leads to Trump’s ongoing defense of Russia.

6). Trump Continued to Defend Russia

Clinton said that Russia must be held accountable for atrocities in Syria and that she supports the investigation that Russia, along with Assad, are committing war crimes in Syria by the barrage of bombings in eastern Aleppo.

Trump, meanwhile, defended Russia, insisting that they are bombing ISIS, which the international community does not believe.

“I don’t like Assad at all but Assad is killing ISIS; Russia is killing ISIS,” Trump said.

Both candidates were asked their strategy for the war-torn nation. Clinton said she would continue what the U.S. is currently doing — special forces stationed on the ground, training rebels and counterintelligence missions — but would also enforce a no-fly zone.

Trump didn’t lay out a plan but after a rambling answer about Mosul, Iraq and several other tangents, he said the U.S. should implement a secret mission.

“Why can’t they do something secretly?” Trump asks (Caldwell “Second” 1-4).

LAS VEGAS — The days leading up to the third presidential debate were spent largely in the gutter, the latest chapter of this long and treacherous general election campaign between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. But in this final showdown, hosted by Chris Wallace of Fox News, the two candidates fit in a little bit of policy alongside their attacks on each other's weaknesses and scandals.

At the University of Nevada, Trump, who has been badly trailing Clinton in polls, delivered a more focused performance than any of the previous debates. But an eye-popping comment he made questioning the legitimacy of the election will likely overshadow his other statements.

Here are our five major takeaways:

1. Trump Will Still Not Agree to Accept Election Results

Trump refused to say he would accept the outcome of the election on Nov. 8, after traveling the country for days insisting the process is “rigged.”

“I will look at it at the time,” Trump told Wallace, eliciting a gasp from the audience in the debate hall and in the media filing center.

Clinton called Trump’s answer “horrifying” and said it was part of Trump’s pattern to play the victim and blame the system when he’s down.

She noted that after he called the outcome rigged after losing the Iowa GOP caucuses, and that when his television show didn’t win an Emmy, he blamed the system.

Trump didn’t deny but interjected that he should have won an Emmy.

2. Clinton Again Ties Trump to Russia

When Wallace asked Clinton about a statement she made in a paid speech about wanting an open hemisphere of open borders and open trade, Clinton quickly pivoted to WikiLeaks and evidence the Russian government is hacking emails to influence the election. Clinton's speeches were part of a wide release this week by the organization believed to be connected to Russia and its leader Valdimir Putin.

She reminded voters that Trump has actively encouraged Russia to commit espionage and that he hasn’t since acknowledged that the U.S. intelligence committee believes Russia is the culprit.

“The most important question of this evening,” Clinton said, is if Trump “rejects Russian espionage against Americans.” She also asked Trump to admit that Russia was responsible for the hacks.

He refused, insisting as he has at previous debates, that he’s not sure if Russia is culpable.

Trump said that Putin “doesn’t respect” Clinton or President Obama and insisted anew that he doesn’t know Putin, which is counter to his previous claims. He noted again that Putin has “said nice things about me.”

Clinton said Putin would “rather have a puppet for president of the United States," prompting Trump to insist, "You're the puppet."

3. Trump Denies Allegations By Accusers

Trump denied the claims of the nine women who have come out in the past week alleging unwanted groping and sexual advances, saying falsely the claims had been “debunked.”

“I didn’t even apologize to my wife,” Trump said, “because I didn’t do anything.” That contradicted comments from his wife, Melania, earlier in the week, when she told interviewers he had apologized for boorish comments on the Access Hollywood video.

“Nobody has more respect for women than I do,” Trump added.

Clinton used the topic to make a broader appeal to women, noting that Trump’s denial had extended to attacking his accusers at campaign rallies and saying they’re not attractive enough for him to grope.

“Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger,” Clinton said.

“This is pattern of divisiveness,” Clinton added, calling it “a very dark and dangerous vision for our country.”

Trump pivoted from the allegations to invoke a video released this week by conservative activist James O’Keefe that claims that Clinton supporters were paid to incite violence at his rallies. The video has not been substantiated by NBC News.

At a Chicago rally earlier this year where numerous fights broke out, Trump said they were “possibly or probably started by her or her sleazy campaign.”

4. Trump Says the Mosul Operation is Political

Trump suggested that the new military operation to reclaim the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS was a political move by President Barack Obama to help Clinton.

Clinton, who says she supports the president’s decision, derided Trump’s claim.

“That’s how Donald thinks. He’s always looking … (for) conspiracy theories,” Clinton said.

She said that when she was watching the attack on Osama bin Laden, “he was hosting 'Celebrity Apprentice.'”

5. Clinton Suggested Trump Can’t be Trusted with Nuclear Weapons

Trump flatly denied he had ever suggested that countries like Japan could arm themselves with nuclear weapons, even though he had done so in a Fox News interview with Wallace himself.

Clinton said Trump's contradictions on that issue proved anew that Trump couldn’t be trusted with that responsibility for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“The bottom line on nuclear weapons is that when the president gives the order it must be followed,” Clinton said.

Trump noted he has the support of more than 200 military leaders and criticized the U.S. for slashing its nuclear arsenal (Caldwell “Third” 1-4).

Works cited:

Caldwell, Leigh Ann, “Six Major Takeaways from the Second 2016 Presidential Debate.” NBC News. October 10, 2016. Web. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-presidential-debates/top-six-moments-second-presidential-debate-n663371

Caldwell, Leigh Ann, “Five Major Takeaways from the Third and Final 2016 Presidential Debate.” NBC News, October 20, 2016. Web. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-presidential-debates/5-major-takeaways-third-final-presidential-debate-n669831#anchor-strong2ClintonAgainTiesTrumptoRussiastrong

Fernholz, Tim, “How Hillary Clinton Blew It.” Quartz, November 8, 2016. Web. https://qz.com/831141/2016-presidential-election-results-how-hillary-clinton-blew-it/

Seitz-Wald, Alex, “Six Keys Moments in the First 2016 Presidential Debate between Trump and Clinton.” NBC News, September 26, 2016. Web. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-presidential-debates/6-key-moments-first-presidential-debate-between-trump-clinton-n655121 6