Welcome to this week’s trawl through the Euro-press’s comments on the US election. Links take you to Google Translate versions of non-English sources - if you get messages about malformed requests, clearing cache and cookies often helps — but the excerpts below have had human intervention.
Trump’s Mexican excursion and follow-up have dominated the coverage, and nearly all the coverage of HRC has been about emails and other non-stories, and I’m afraid that balance is rather reflected in what follows. But nobody in Western Europe is buying any of the softening story bar the execrable Tim Stanley in the Daily Telegraph and other papers dim enough to reprint his garbage. (The Irish Independent has some fine writers of its own, so why they reprint both Stanley and the abysmal Maureen Dowd is quite beyond me.)
But we’ll begin with the obvious, and we’ll start off in the company of my favorite commentator on this election, Veit Medick of Der Spiegel:
Donald Trump gave a speech. He has done that often in recent weeks, but the one in Phoenix on immigration was different. It was, one has to say, probably one of the vilest speeches that has ever been given by a presidential candidate in the United States….
With the speech he made clear his strategy decision for the last two months of his campaign: he is indifferent to the voters of the center, and similarly to the votes of immigrants. The billionaire gives a wide berth to the voters of Barack Obama’s colorful coalition, in the apparent belief that it is a waste of time to try and get a foot in the door there.
... last time, out of 235 million eligible voters more than 100 million Americans did not vote. When Trump speaks of the "silent majority", he means folks who stayed at home in the past. His strategy is that sufficient hatred and outspokenness can tap this vast reservoir, and so can revolutionize the electorate. His calculation is simple: if he can drag more former non-voters to the polls than people he loses from the conservative camp, it could possibly end up being irrelevant how many moderate Republicans and immigrants vote for Clinton. The sleepers are to rescue him.
Roberto Festa in Il Fatto Quotidiano gives a more comprehensive account of the trip to Mexico and speech in Phoenix, and then concludes:
Overall, the trip to Mexico and Phoenix's speech (strongly pushed by the new chief executive of the Republican campaign, Stephen Bannon) allowed Trump to show on the one hand a more peaceful and authoritative side, on the other to again harp on the fears and insecurities of Americans on immigration. Mexico City and Phoenix showed one thing that appears very clear at this point. Faced with increasingly unfavorable polls (the average compiled by RealClearPolitics puts the Republican candidate more than four points behind Hillary Clinton) Trump is trusting to a gloomy outlook and illegal immigration as his last chance to win in November.
Matt Lewis in The Independent looks at the erratic nature of Trump’s policy stances:
Donald Trump is neither a statesman nor an everyman. He’s a political schizophrenic. Anyone who doubts this need only look back to Wednesday (August 31, 2016) as a microcosm of his mercurial campaign. It was a tale of two Trumps: one, the aspiring statesman, and the other, the demagogic hero of the American workingman.
…
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a sovereign nation wanting to control its borders. But statesman Trump had disappeared, only to be replaced by a populist rabble rouser. He even joked that Hillary Clinton might be deported. It was almost as if there were two Donald Trumps. South of the border, he was civil and irenic—north of the border, he was a vulgarian.
But this isn’t just the story of an image torn asunder. Trump’s campaign team, like his campaign message, is a house divided against itself. His two top aides couldn’t be more different: Steve Bannon (the newly hired, hard-charging CEO of the campaign) has no campaign experience, and Kellyanne Conway (his campaign manager) is a veteran political operative who wants a kinder, gentler Trump.
To be scrupulously honest, the real reason for including the above article is that there’s a gallery of British Trump cartoons at the bottom, some of which are very good.
Even Russians have noticed that Trump is a little, um, inconsistent. This article in Vzgliad explores the problem:
The well-known showman and playboy Donald Trump paid a visit to the president of Mexico, proving that he can handle the role of diplomat. The same day, former chief US diplomat Hillary Clinton delivered a pompous patriotic speech in the spirit of the Republicans, calling America "the last hope" of humanity. It looks like the rivals in the presidential race have decided to switch roles in playing the electoral field.
Contenders in the presidential race in the United States, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, are making several moves on the eve of the election, trying … to split off voters from each-others’ base…. Clinton delivered a pompous patriotic speech in the spirit of an orthodox Republican, and Trump tried to take away from his opponent a small percentage of black voters….
Donald Trump said on Thursday that if elected, he will build a US missile defense system. "We will restore our depleted armed forces and will create a missile defense system based on the latest technologies," promised Trump….
Retired Major General Pavel Zolotarev, Deputy Director of the Institute of USA and Canada Studies, does not believe that Trump’s promise on missile defense somehow contradicts his previous promises to improve relations with Moscow: "These were words spoken to a particular audience in a particular situation….”
Andrey Bezrukov, an adviser to the President of Rosneft, lecturer at MGIMO, and member of the Foreign and Defense Policy Council, commenting on Trump’s statement, said that any US politician has to defend the greatness of the United States: "No one who does otherwise could possibly be elected. The difference between Trump and Clinton is that Clinton will defend the U.S.’s international position, while Trump is calling for defending the US position in the United States itself. Not worldwide, but only within the United States, without any claims to universality….”
Of course, Putin is entirely neutral in the election, as Argumenty I Fakti's report of Vlad’s Bloomberg interview shows:
The Russian leader said that their mutual attacks are part of the “political culture of the United States….”
In an interview with Bloomberg, Putin said that both candidates are behaving shockingly…. [He] said that both candidates … are smart people who understand what works to get votes. The Russian leader said that mutual attacks are “part of the "political culture of the United States." He added that Russia is ready to work with any elected US president.
However, Putin said, he thinks it is short-sighted to play the anti-Russian card…. Still, he said, this is a common practice for American presidential campaigns.
Here’s another article in the Irish Times which mentions Trump and the building of walls. It has very little to do with the election, but it’s a lovely read:
What I had come to check – my excuse, at least, on a rare and glorious day – was the summer’s due gift of sediment. I stepped into it on cue in a generous band above the highest tide, boots and poles piercing a surface as fluffy and soft as snow. This early the strand was empty end to end but for an angler who had taken his jeep to the very bottom of the tide. He made great casts that flew like birds on the stiff offshore breeze and landed with bright splashes. I stood a long way off, at the last lapping of the waves, lost in the play of light through the shallows: shades of jade and turquoise deepening into indigo.
I was thinking, begrudgingly, of the appalling Donald Trump and the wall he wants to build to save his golf course on the dunes down in Co Clare. Actually, not strictly a wall but a revetment: a sloping scarp of three-tonne chunks of local limestone 2.8 kilometres long and rearing up to 5m high. If it goes ahead it will cost him up to €9 million – “small potatoes”, as he smirks.
Most of the local community, understandably enough, want it built, protecting their jobs along with the dunes, parts of which were indeed deeply gnawed in the last big storms. Its NGO opponents point to the downsides of such hard and monstrous engineering and urge the softer measures of a “managed retreat”.
Oluwakemi Aladesuyi is an editor with NPR who is currently working in Berlin. She has written a piece for Der Spiegel in which she says that Americans have been lying to themselves about Trump:
I think you should not try to understand the how of Donald Trump, but the why. I freely admit that I, as a journalist do not have the answer. But I have a word that helps to explain: denial.
The Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton , is a long way ahead almost everywhere. Trump is extremely unpopular especially with women, according to demographers; in some parts of the country zero percent of African Americans in polls are for him. As for Latinos, he has attacked them so much in his election campaign that it would be impossible for him to win the election with their votes.
All that’s fine. But it is still denial.
We have tried to understand Trump, to expose his policy and to assure ourselves that he cannot win the election. We deny what the populism of Trump, as well as the alt-right movements in Europe and elsewhere, means for the world as a whole.
We want Donald Trump convincingly beaten with logical arguments. But we repress the fact that people do not always vote for logical reasons - and do not always do what would be good for them. Even worse: we do not accept that some people believe it would be best for them to live in a country where other people look like they do, speak the same way and have the same beliefs and experiences.
In a piece headlined “This candidate lies”, taz’s Bettina Gaus recounts her experience of Trump’s grifting:
A few months ago I had to send a few details to register with his campaign team to attend a public meeting of the candidates. Political declarations were not required, no affiliation. Only name, date of birth and email address. Since then, I’ve been receiving mail. Touching, but also somewhat confusing mail.
...
About two weeks ago Donald Trump offered me a leadership position in his election campaign, to wit, a privileged membership. For a bargain price. "I used to ask supporters for a one-time introduction fee of 100 dollars," wrote the candidate. But because of my supposed "outstanding generosity" in the past, I can join the campaign’s “highest ranks” for a payment of only $ 35.
This honor is bestowed only on the chosen few. "It is a right, a duty and a responsibility that is reserved only for those supporters who have shown unwavering dedication to our movement."
Bloody hell. That people lie in election campaigns is not new. But that a candidate lied directly to me about my own actions is pretty astonishing. "Unwavering dedication?" Really not, certainly not. I can prove it.
...
No, bullshit like these e-mails is not common in US election campaigns. I can say that because eight years ago I registered myself with both the then Democratic candidate Barack Obama as well as with his Republican rival John McCain, for similar reasons as I registered with Trump. Neither bothered me with such nonsense.
He really has the bestest organization.
One more piece on Trump. Kjettil Hanssen in Aftenposten examines exactly how unpopular Cheeto Benito is:
Trump is 7 percentage points more popular than mosquitoes. This may seem like a narrow victory, but especially among Democratic voters, the bloodsucking insects score better than the presidential candidate. Among independent voters Trump wins the mosquito fight 51-38. But even among Republicans about one in seven chooses the mosquito over Trump.
...
Trump is set against 11 opponents presumed to be unpopular. He beats two of them relatively easily: bedbugs and bubonic plague. Against them, he wins the popularity poll by respectively 22 and 26 percentage points….
It is a dead heat between Trump and lawyers who specialize in personal injury. These lawyers are keen to advertise heavily for their services and are often called "ambulance chasers" as the American Bar Association has rules prohibiting signing up clients at accident sites.
I’ll leave you to click through and find out what’s more popular than Trump.
Since you’ve only had toast and marmalade, you may be getting hungry again.
If there’s one more complaint from gchaucer2…But of course we have to cope with how unpopular Hillary is alleged to be. In Die Welt, Ansgar Graw makes some sensible comments.
In a very establishment-critical mood it is chalked up against her that she is a member of both the wealthy and the political elites. But the same is true of Bill Clinton, and in spite of his affairs, the ex-president is popular. What really drives people mad is that we know Hillary only ashomo politicus. Bill loves women, Barack Obama golf, George W. Bush his cowboy ranch .
And Hillary? She meets party members, donors, lobbyists, voters. Drafts policy programs. A power robot. Nobody knows that she regularly goes to Bible classes and has a Bible in her purse. She is considered hostile to religion. E-mails that she destroyed allegedly showed yoga appointments. It would have been better to publish them. Or sometimes tell a few more jokes.
Hillary Clinton is not liked because the human being has been overshadowed by the highly talented careerist.
I think that’s an insightful comment. Within a day or two of Tim Kaine being tapped as VP, I’d learned that he plays bluegrass in the woods, and we keep seeing him playing harmonica with the musical guests at rallies. I’ve not paid an awful lot of attention to Theresa May before, but becoming PM didn’t change her summer holiday booking — walking in the Swiss Alps, which is the sort of thing that she has always done, apparently. But after 30 years of reading about Hillary, I still have very little idea what she does for fun. I’ve seen lots of pictures of her in informal (but just about always political) settings where she’s obviously enjoying herself, but she’s also obviously on duty. Even if all she does is a bit of yoga and then flops on the sofa to binge-watch MST3K or Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman, it’s a detail which is missing from most people’s picture of her, and that lack is what Graw calls attention to.
On the other hand, there’s a sense in which her baked-in unpopularity makes Trump’s task more difficult. In Le Monde, Audrey Fournier considers Trump’s new attack ads:
Above all, she says, Mr. Trump's campaign team has nothing to gain by producing negative ads.
"These ads do not change voter opinions on candidates who are already known, such as Hillary Clinton. Trump’s problem is that he is seen as not having the temperament required for the presidency. He should produce ads that show his fitness for the job rather than lashing out at his opponent. "Moreover, his attacks against Mrs Clinton have already been widely publicized through his public speaking engagements, she points out. “He does not need to pay for it." The Trump camp just spent $ 10 million for the dissemination of the video "Two Americas Economy" in a dozen states key to the presidential election of November 8, and 4 million dollars to broadcast the ad on immigration in four "swing states". It won’t be easy, in this policy-free election, to get back on course.
That applies across the board, if you ask me. When the MSM come up with a “NEW SCANDAL”, try thinking how many people are likely to decide not to vote for her because of it, given all the other things that have already been flung at her. Some of them may well deter people who were thinking of crossing over, but can any of them really peel people off who are prepared to vote for her despite everything else they already (think they) know?
The latest ripple of Shock Horror Scandals to emerge have been pathetic. So pathetic that even other parts of the Beltway media have taken potshots at the people who’ve floated them as big Issues. The Clinton-smearing industry isn't going to shut down for a long time, if at all, but the latest products to roll off the line are nowhere near as exciting as the ones from the days of Vince Foster or even Benghastly. Unless the press get wind of the fact that she arranged Antonin Scalia’s assassination, the anti-Clinton industry has just about run out of ammunition.
Which doesn’t leave many candidates for the press to investigate in any depth, or who can have scandals raised which may well damage them. There are two months to go, and I’ll bet HFA have got an arsenal for that period which will far out-batter Trump’s remaining artillery.
Naturally, Russia is still all over the corruption stuff. Radio Svoboda:
Clinton still leads in the polls, but she needs to make every effort to neutralize the new stream of negative stories about her.
In a recent speech … Donald Trump with forceful eloquence accused Clinton of misconduct during her time as Secretary of State. "It is impossible to determine where the Clinton Foundation ended and the State Department began. It is now more than obvious that [Bill] Clinton started his business in order to benefit from the civil service. They were selling access to and favors from the Secretary of State, presumably for large sums. How much they received for their crimes is beyond the scope of this speech," said Trump.
The activities of Bill Clinton’s foundation was the subject of a thorough study after it became clear that Hillary Clinton’s subordinates did work for the Secretary of State that was unrelated to their official duties, but connected with the affairs of the foundation. The New York Times has published an article alleging that the Clinton Foundation received multimillion-dollar donations from governments that violate human rights.
The other non-story is the one about Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin separating. Why am I going there? Because of this, which is about the most sensible piece I’ve read on it:
Without selfie-respect….
I interviewed Weiner once at the airport in Washington just before Congress passed Obama's health care reform in 2010. He was a smart, energetic politician. A favorite among the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. He was well aware of Norway and the Scandinavian health models and was in many ways like a young version of Bernie Sanders.
He had a good marriage with a forgiving, understanding wife, and he had a great future in American politics. But he was and is governed by urges which have destroyed many male politicians through the ages.
Now he is free to send pictures of his erection to whomever he likes, because he has nothing left to lose. One can only hope he thinks it was worth it.
In Tagesspiegel, Christoph von Marschall has an article to reassure the bed-wetters. I haven’t been able to get GoogleTranslate to show anything because there’s some popup, so the earlier link is direct to the original.
Second, he moderates his rhetoric sometimes to see if he can make gains in the middle without losing the right. For example, now with his trip to Mexico and the speech on immigration policy. But can it make us forget that he described immigrants from the south as rapists, criminals and drug dealers, and wanted to “deport” millions of illegals and to build a wall? How many believe him when he speaks differently now? Will the many who admired him for his harsh words now turn away? And are there really enough frustrated white men to compensate for his poor performance with Latinos, blacks and women with higher education?
He relies on frustrated whites from the lower class in the "Rust Belt" with economic structural problems: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin. In these states, however, Clinton currently leads, sometimes by a lot. Worse, she is threatening him in states that Republicans regarded as secure such as Georgia and Arizona.
Clinton has not yet won the election. But Trump needs the proverbial "October Surprise": a surprising event just before the election of sufficient importance to give a new direction to the dynamic. Perhaps Vladimir Putin will help him.
And let’s not forget she’s raking in the dosh, as Het Laatste Nieuws reports:
Hillary Clinton announced she raised a record amount in August, especially thanks to exclusive receptions to raise funds by celebrities like Magic Johnson and Justin Timberlake….
Hillary Clinton in August did 37 private events for fundraising. Her running mate Tim Kaine did at least 35 receptions and President Barack Obama two. Guests at such events pay between $500 and $250,000 to be present. The more exclusive the event, the higher the entrance fee for guests. So in Los Angeles you had to come up with $33,400 to be among the hundred guests at a luncheon at the home of Justin Timberlake and his girlfriend Jessica Biel.
I’ll finish with an inspiring piece in La Stampa recalling HRC’s previous history in Texas and how it might just be coming into play:
Hispanics and blacks in those regions, then, had not seen many blondes from Chicago and they did not trust her. If the barrio is poor today, then it was hell. Yet Hillary never stopped: I was driving, Franklin Garcia acted as interpreter, and she knocked on the doors. Sometimes they were slammed in her face, accompanied by insults screamed in Spanish. I'm Sicilian, but those people were tough: she and Franklin only just got out. But she went on knocking. It was dangerous, but we were naive, unaware idealists. "
Garry discovered that Hillary and Bill were in another league when one morning they asked him to take them to the airport: "They had to go back to Yale to sit exams. While I was studying law, those tests terrorized me. They had not opened a book for months, and yet passed as top of the class. "
The elections, however, were a disaster: Nixon thrashed McGovern in Texas. "After the defeat I went to a Willie Nelson concert, and then went drinking at Scholz, the historic German brewery in Austin. It went on a long time, I can tell you: we were all drunk, drowning our sorrows. At about two in the morning amid the alcohol fumes, I saw Hillary and Bill arguing heatedly under a tree in the beer garden. I walked over to see what was happening: she was trying to convince him that it was not over there, that they could still change the world. "
This prophecy may be realized in November, maybe even in Texas: "If I said now that the state is in play I would be crazy. But there are polls that give us hope: if Trump’s lead continues to shrink, Hillary will invest here. Texas is trending back to being Democratic, thanks to the minorities. When it gets there, adding to California and New York, it will close the doors of the White House to the Republicans for a generation. "
Let’s hope.
Text, join, 47426, go to HillaryClinton.com. To Be part of Hillary and Tim’s campaign.Check out Hillary News & Views in the mornings, Hillary Hangouts, weekdays, in the afternoon, and the #ImWithHer evening open thread.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have the 2016 meme locked down now
