Welcome to another trawl through the Euro-press to see what they’re saying about the US elections.
Links to non-English language sources go to GoogleTranslate versions of the articles, while the excerpts below were rendered by humans. Messages about malformed requests can often be resolved by clearing cache and cookies and then refreshing.
The earthquake in Italy has for obvious reasons dominated the column-inches for the last few days, which has squeezed the space for opinion and analysis pieces. A decent amount of factual reporting, most of it considerably less hysterical than cable news, but not a lot you don’t already know. So I’ve picked out a rather random selection of items I found interesting for one reason or another.
But I’ll begin with something serious. Yes, it's the damn emails. Most of us reckon that the emails are a big nothingburger served with lashings of Clinton Hot Sauce, but I know I’m not alone in thinking that the Clinton campaign hasn’t handled the issue all that well. I think this leading article from Le Monde says a lot of what I feel:
Nobody in the United States can count the hours of investigations and hearings, nor kilometers of reports that have been inscribed by the judiciary and various political entities about the Clinton “affairs” over twenty-five years. Bill and Hillary Clinton have a habit of not finishing by saying "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" when pushed into a corner with their backs to the wall. If they always eventually escape the firing squad, they never come out completely unscathed, neither condemned nor clearly exonerated. In their eyes, these incessant prosecutions are a persecution policy from obsessive right-wing haters; this argument is not unfounded, but they do themselves no favors with their negligence or ambiguities towards these prosecutions which can do so much damage.
The Clintons have proven throughout their ascent they have thick skins. But it is now imperative for Clinton the candidate to sort out her campaign. Its inability to anticipate this type of controversy, and the lack of vigilance on potential conflicts of interest with the foundation and her husband, partly funded by generous foreign donors, undermine voter confidence. They also raise questions about her determination to change her way when she is in power . And, worse, being at the mercy of a new scandal at any time, they pose a constant threat to her chances of beating Donald Trump.
I don’t underestimate the difficulty of shutting the vast right-wing conspiracy up, but Le Monde are, I think, correct to say that the Clintons’ handling of these issues has not been as adroit as it could have been. In practice there has been no personal corruption, but they haven’t gone out of their way to ensure that accusations of improper behavior couldn’t be levelled.
One of the more amusing stories is the one about Hillary being at death’s door. In the Basler Zeitung, Martin Kilian has some fun with it:
Trump came up with the second option himself, as he apparently offered his rival for shooting. She'll certainly take away the gun-freaks’ toys if she were to become president, Trump ranted. The shooting aficionados would have to put a stop to it. They have had enough of restrictions.
Trumps comments went too far for the public, which is why they started to attack him. So assassinating Clinton won’t work. One must make do instead with the third option, claiming Clinton is very ill and can therefore not be President. She is a total wreck, only a shell, barely functioning any more. A few days ago Trump said she lacked the "mental and physical stamina to take up the fight with the Islamic State and other enemies."
So it has been for months. Here Clinton looks suspicious, there she has convulsions and seizures, sometimes she suffers from this or that niggle. Daily Trump’s friends in the American media come up with new diagnoses and are amazed that Clinton is still alive. Of course, she is keeping secret how poor her condition is. It is a well thought-through campaign against Clinton even so: definitely don’t vote a sickly old woman into the White House!
Though Hillary isn’t the only one being targeted by Republicans on health issues, as Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten reports:
Did you think that the tone between Trump and Clinton was ugly? Then meet Kelli Ward.The rhetoric may be tough in American politics. That has been true of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the presidential campaign. But in the state of Arizona is the tone, if possible, even tougherer. Here former presidential candidate John McCain is fighting against fellow party member Kelli Ward to become the Republican candidate for the state’s Senatorship.
Kelli Ward is far behind John McCain in the polls. But it certainly has not dampened the rhetoric. [She] is a doctor. And it’s the title she uses in her criticism of John McCain.
"I am a doctor. I have seen how aging creates physical changes again and again over the past 20-25 years. I know what happens to the body and the mind at the end of one's life, "she says. Kerri Ward was then asked if she was quite confident about diagnosing John McCain without having him as a patient. To this she replied:
"With diagnosing him as a 80-year-old man, yes, I am. '
But, as I think we’re agreed, Hillary’s speech on Thursday was the big event, so let’s have at it. Simon Carswell in the Irish Times gives it a good review:
As part of Hillary Clinton’s continuing strategy to turn the US presidential election into a referendum on Donald Trump, the Democrat struck a heavy blow on the New Yorker in a speech on Thursday that sought to place the billionaire firmly on a far-right perch. Clinton’s speech in Nevada, a battleground state with a large Hispanic population, was part of an exchange of racially loaded accusations this week with the Republican nominee. Her speech, one of the best of her campaign, was aimed at pre-empting any efforts by the Trump campaign to rebrand itself.
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Clinton went for the jugular in Nevada. Questioning again whether Trump has the character to be the US president, she highlighted his ties to the “alt-right” (alternative-right) movement that peddles white nationalism, misogyny, anti-Semitism and xenophobia, describing the movement as “an emerging racist ideology”.
Most Americans are fortunate never to have heard of the odious Nigel Farage, but he’s all too familiar to us in Europe. Naughty children all over the continent are offered the choice between going to bed or having Nigel Farage come and get them.
So a part of Hillary’s speech which went largely unreported in the US media got a lot of attention over here, such as in The Scotsman:
HILLARY Clinton has launched a vicious attack on Nigel Farage after the outgoing Ukip leader said he would not vote for the Democratic presidential-hopeful even if he was paid to do so.
Mrs Clinton addressed a campaign rally and said: “Farage has called for a bar on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services, has said women are and I quote ‘worth less’ than men and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race. That’s who Donald Trump wants by his side when he is addressing an audience of American voters.” But Mr Farage suggested Mrs Clinton’s comments showed she was “running scared”. He told Breitbart London: “Her attacks on me are completely baseless. She sounds rather like Bob Geldof and can’t accept Brexit.”Talking of Farage having appeared with Trump — that made just about every paper — Trotskyist-but-happy-to-work-with-any-brand-of-socialist Mark Steel speculated on the future of this unholy coupling:
If Nigel Farage and Donald Trump continue this new alliance, it could be a thrilling contest as they fight to outdo each other. Trump will open a rally with “Let me tell you, Muslims frighten potatoes, their beards make them go mouldy – and that’s a fact. So if you want to stop a famine, you better vote for Donald Trump.” Then Farage will respond: “That’s right Donald, and they go every year to Mecca to squirt Domestos at pandas. That’s what they’re doing out there and it has to stop.”
Corriere della Sera talks to General Flynn, Trump’s foreign policy adviser:
"All these leaders in Europe and frankly in the United States, who continue to complain ...," says General Michael Flynn to Corriere. Those who continue to complain? "Understanding them, it's not my job. I'll tell you that I give a positive vote to Hollande in France because they at least recognized, belatedly, that there is a problem and that the French need to do more. But others who are trying to be politically correct on terrorism .... " And Renzi?Does he know what he’s doing?"No". Is Merkel the problem, because she wanted to accept refugees? "I do not know - [smiles] - is it a mistake?".
El Periodico have a piece on the kid running a Trump office:
"My name is Weston Imer, I’m 12 years old and I am a Republican and fierce defender of Donald Trump." Thus one of the youngest advocates of the billionaire candidate for the White House began his speech on Aug. 3 in Denver, Colorado.
"You have to get involved , " said the boy, who is also known as the founder of ‘Colorado Kids for Trump ', which aims to unite the kids in the State in favor of the billionaire, whom he defined as "a kind and caring man, honest and a great entrepreneur."
The young Weston knows what the Trump audience likes to hear. "If you do not vote for Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence, shootings in schools could triple in the next four or eight years," he said in Denver, entering one of the controversial issues of the campaign: gun ownership.
There have been several pieces about how the Republicans need to realize that they built Trump. In Politism, Tomas Hemstad goes into detail. He is rebutting an earlier column by someone called Peter Wolodarski, which attempted to say that Trump is an aberration.
Decoupling Trump and his racist cohorts from the Republicans, and the racism that since slavery has been part of the American soul, is politically both dishonest and dangerous. Trump agitating against Muslims, for example, is largely a product of George W. Bush's war on terror. After Bush's term of office the Tea Party movement was formed within the Republicans.This entryism by a group which in Swedish politics would be called extreme right, was met by the party with kid gloves and concessions. Political analysts of all sorts of different political persuasions warned of what consequences can follow when trying to satisfy populists but the Republicans refused to listen.
Treating Trump as an outsider is to misunderstand, consciously or not, a development that has taken place over many years.
Wolodarski takes its leader column as an example to Trump founded conspiracy theories that Barack Obama is a Muslim and was born outside the United States. What he forgets to mention is that position - as in the US debate called "birther" - also represented in various ways by other well-known Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin. The latter was known as John McCain's choice as Vice President in the elections of 2008.
The Googlish presentation of the article is a little confusing: unfortunately for Mr Hemstad, his surname is the normal Swedish word for “home town”, and Google translates him.
Changing the subject completely, Dana Heide in Handelsblatt (page 2 here) considers the possibility that soon Germany, the UK and the US will all be led by women:
Studies have shown that female politicians do more campaigning for women, family and children's rights, says Michele L. Swers, professor of political science at Georgetown University in Washington DC and author of acclaimed books on the subject."Throughout her career, Clinton has fought for these issues," said Swers. Although due to the expected make-up of Congress she will find it difficult to then get these issues through. Nevertheless, "it is likely that we will see more of it," predicts Swers.
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The research has also shown that female executives are more likely to try and achieve consensus than men.One reason: If they deviate too far from the image society has of them, they seemed unsympathetic. They try to avoid that with a more cooperative attitude.
Does that mean that the world would be more peaceful if more women came to power? That depends on circumstances, say experts. "There is evidence that a country uses military force less often and spends more money for social security and charity when women are in government positions," says Conor Seyle, head of the think tank OEF Research, which is part of the US non-governmental organization One Earth Future Foundation.
El Mundo reports on Hillary’s fund-raising tour of Hollywood:
The highlight of her visit was hosted by Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, which served to raise another 3 , 34 million.There were Jennifer Aniston, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Meyer — wife of Tobey Maguire - and vice president of NBC, Ron Meyer, to name a few.
Moreover, the list of her supporters with mass mobilization capacity has not stopped growing. Will Ferrell, Beyoncé, America Ferrera, George and Amal Clooney, Robert DeNiro, Jane Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, Drew Barrymore, Cher, Matt Damon, Jessica Alba, Harvey Weinstein, Carole King, Cyndi Lauper and Lady Gaga are among the more than 200 stars that have endorsed former Secretary of State, with exceptions in Hollywood by those who chose option Bernie Sanders in the primary.
Her opponent in this race to the White House, Donald Trump, has also found support in the entertainment industry. But Jon Voight, Angelina Jolie's father, Kristie Alley or Tila Tequila are in a much less popular list. If you stick to those numbers, it seems that California is already all fish sold.
My Spanish isn’t up to translating that last phrase, although it’s fairly obvious what it means. Spanish-speakers may also enjoy a handy questionnaire which will help you make up your mind who to vote for. I should vote for Hillary, I’m pleased to say.
I know, I know. You want your Russians. Take it away, Contenius:
Here is an initial reaction from Vesti to Clinton’s “alt-right” speech. Naturally it largely ignores the core issues and focuses on Russia:
Clinton Calls Putin the “Global Godfather of Nationalism”
At a meeting with voters in Nevada, US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called Putin "the global godfather of extremist nationalism…."
In a campaign speech in Nevada on August 25 … Clinton accused her rival Donald Trump of racism and said that, as president, he would neglect the interests of U.S. people of color…. She promised to serve all the citizens of the United States, regardless of their [race]. Talking about racism in America, Clinton said that it has now become a global problem. The global godfather of extremist nationalism is the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. According to Clinton, Trump is dangerous because he will have pro-Russian policies, and [she stressed that] he often praises Putin. Also, Clinton’s rival has called for recognition of the Crimea as part of the Russian Federation.
"American presidents from Truman to Reagan rejected the approach that Trump wants to use against Russia, and we should do so too," Clinton said.
In her speech, Clinton also denied that she has any serious illnesses. Recent media reports suggest that the Democratic Party has concerns about the health of its candidate. In particular, journalists have noticed that she is always accompanied by a person with a syringe.
And here is a strange RIA Novosti article that captures much of what the Russian press is talking about: it accepts that Clinton will inevitably win, mocks her efforts to prove she is healthy, reprises accusations about the emails, and fear-mongers about the alleged dangers of her presidency.
“It’s All Over: Hillary Clinton has it in the Can”
I think we can all agree that it’s strange that a presidential candidate has to prove that she knows which direction to turn the lid on the jar to open it. Or that, by opened that jar of pickles, she somehow feels like a champion.
“Is my health in order? Thanks, it’s excellent.” Hillary Clinton, live on a popular American television show, declared herself a "pickle" .… The task was - in full view of all – to open a jar of pickles, in order to close all the talk about the weakness of old age and other symptoms of senility…. Her competitors claim that she "lacks mental and physical endurance." Also, an excerpt from her sick leave two years ago is passing from hand to hand, with a diagnosis of "dementia."
To spite her enemies, Clinton issued a new medical report. The doctor characterizes her health as "excellent." To remove all questions, she offered to have her pulse checked. In answer, the show’s host handed her a jar of pickles…. Clinton played the part with zeal. But who can believe that she is in her right mind, if the evidence of political sanity is not found in a bottle, but in a jar? A welded-shut soup-can would have been a better test….
It is strange that Clinton did not offer more persuasive evidence, i.e. offering to do bench presses, or, say, bending a poker. She could have said that she will do the same to terrorists. Though in truth, this image [of opening the jar], in symbolic terms can be said to have the same meaning. And it has potential. A single image can spawn hundreds of memes. For example, that in her hands was not a jar with a lid, but a rocket with a warhead, or the hatch of a submarine. Or it could become her strong hand mussing Trump’s hair. Or plucking the star from the Kremlin tower. Yes, little things can have a global impact. Clinton wants to think that she is capable of cranking out great deeds and turning everything to her will….
She already is the "goddess of the Internet." And now they say that it’s for the better if she doesn’t open up the can with the 15 thousand documents of correspondence that she herself hid there. I had a look at the FBI site, and guess what I found? On the eve of the court decision she decided to open public access to the letters. Everyone will be able to decide for themselves whether the emails were private, as Hillary claims, or whether she was blending her personal interests with those of the state. She believes that she has covered her tracks successfully. But no one explained to her that that her decision is a trap….
Now she is hoping to escape this trap. She has decided to hit her opponents with their own weapons. Suddenly she remembers that Colin Powell recommended that she use a private server. This is the guy that the younger Bush ordered to … erase Iraq. Dodgy Hillary apparently hoped that the Republicans in Congress, hearing about Powell’s statement, would say, "Why didn’t you just say so,” and leave her alone. Still, Powell is a Republican, so this did not work. “Good old Colin … took out Hussein,” they say, “and Clinton opposed it….”
Clinton undoubtedly remembers that Hussein crawled out of the same sewer pipe at the UN Security Council as ISIS. Trump said that Clinton and Obama are the parents of the "Islamic State." Thus in firmly removing the lid from the pickle jar, she could not have intended to symbolically reference terrorism. Still, the opportunity for such a metaphor offers itself. With such a grip she will not push the red button, or hold onto the baton for a full hundred meters. Well, maybe at the Paralympics. And now, there's no one to stand in the way.
This next is a long article in Portugal’s Expresso, which is fascinating and well worth the time. The author appears to be a Portuguese lefty who’s rather disappointed Bernie didn’t get the nomination, but he tracked down Portuguese-Americans of all political persuasions at the conventions and got them to talk interestingly. Including Mark Pacheco, a Dem state senator in MA, and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA).
But it is not easy to believe in the return to normality. Is it possible to resolve the Democratic psychodrama, as Tony Cabral and Marc Pacheco think? Although there are millions of Bernie Sanders voters to convince, the protests of his supporters were already residual by the end of the convention. ... Is it possible to believe that an explosive-tempered billionaire, is a lesser evil or can be integrated into the Republican mainstream, as Rosa Rebimbas and Devin Nunes believe? The campaign will tell, but the first post-convention signs are not encouraging. Basically, it all comes down to the question I heard from Richard, a retired 73 year old from North Carolina who I met at the Philadelphia airport: "How does a country with more than 300 million people choose between two people that no one likes? "
I’m going to finish on a more sombre note, which underlines that Trump’s very candidacy is already threatening global stability, as Politiken reports on recent remarks by the Danish foreign minister:
In an interview with New York Times, Donald Trump became the first major American politician to ever say that the Balts and other Nato countries cannot necessarily count on the US military if they do not 'pay their bills "and" live up to their obligations."
It has got politicians in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on their feet and sparked a new debate about whether Eastern Europe can count on Nato if Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November. The turmoil of our neighbors on the other side of the Baltic Sea has now prompted the Danish government to warn against Trump undermining confidence in NATO's basic promise of collective defense, formulated in the North Atlantic Charter Article 5.
"Nato alliance is only as strong as its partners in the alliance will make it. One should not invite any opponents to test our solidarity pact, "said Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen (V).
"What Donald Trump said,was an invitation to test whether we were in solidarity with each other. It is a dangerous road. Therefore, I hope that it is a road that he will leave both as a candidate - and especially if he should happen to be elected president, "he says.
Yes, Hillary, Tim and the rest of you: the world is counting on you.
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