Welcome to the weekly dip into what the European press are saying about the US elections.
The translations below have been done by humans, but the links to non-English language sources take you to the GoogleTranslate version, which is not always amazingly good. If you get messages about malformed requests, clearing cache and cookies seems to get rid of them.
Now that we’re past the conventions, the reporting has exploded into life, so there is a lot more of the sort of stuff I always hoped to feature — the stuff that the foreign reporters are turning up to make the election seem more interesting. This week at least, it’s a bumper edition, most of which hasn’t been discussed much on DKos other than the spectacle of Republicans complaining about their nominee.
Having headlined this as Hillary and Tim for the last couple of weeks, I’m relieved that I can at last feature Tim, because Austria’s Der Standard has a portrait of him. (I’m annoyed to realize this is actually a couple of weeks old, but still.)
Clinton decided on an old party soldier - and thus against young, fresh faces in Washington political circles. Cory Booker would have been one such. Though much talked about recently, the senator from New Jersey fell short, just as did Julian Castro, only 41 but Housing Minister under Barack Obama.
Foreign policy experience
Clinton set the bar high for the choice of her Veep. He must not only be a good number two - in an emergency, he must be able to step in to take over the Oval Office and lead the country. In former chief diplomat Clinton’s view, that makes foreign policy experience especially important - which Kaine can undoubtedly demonstrate. Kaine is fluent in Spanish — a particular advantage with the constituency of Hispanic background growing in the US. In probably the most important swing state, Florida, the population of Hispanic immigrants is now over 20 percent.
Well connected
As a trained Harvard lawyer who was in practice for some time, Kaine is well connected in the political structure of Washington as well as in his home state. In private, the married father of three is considered quiet. Before major policy decisions, he likes to go hiking or play bluegrass music in the forest.
Not a particularly exciting piece, but at least some Austrians know a bit about him. Let’s move on and join Hillary in Denver, as reported by Anne-Sophie Naslund in Sweden’s Expressen:
Hillary's new weapon - Trump's own ties
In Denver, Colorado, Clinton visited a factory to prove that Trump is wrong when he says that all US factory jobs have been forced out.
The factory manufactures ties and Hillary therefore made a point of Trump previously saying that he cannot have his products made in the United States because factory jobs moved abroad.
According to PolitiFact. many of Trump's "Make America Great Again" products are manufactured in California, but the ties with his name, according to Hillary Clinton, are to be made in China. Trump also said himself that he tried in vain to find plants that can manufacture his clothing but it was impossible.
“I wish that Trump was able to meet all of you, see what you manufacture here and hear the stories from people who have come together, produced products and created more opportunities for more people”, she said, and held up a Trump tie to the photographers as well as another, locally made, with her own campaign-H.
“I would really like Trump to explain why he paid Chinese workers for manufacturing ties instead of letting the production take place here”, said Hillary Clinton. The Clinton campaign has also launched a new website that lists possible 100 factories for Trump.
Now that we’ve mentioned the Human Cheeto, we might as well get on to the schadenfreude of the Republicans panicking.
First, Spain’s El Mundo:
It's too early to know whether this blunder will leave the controversial businessman with no chance of winning the White House. But it certainly is a turning point in his presidential campaign, because one thing is that Trump has turned himself into an icon of anti-politics and taken advantage of the antipathy millions of citizens feel about the system, and the other, very distinct, is that a person who wants to become president of the United States is trifling with patriotism. That is something a society like the US simply will not tolerate. Trump thus becomes each time more and more a caricature of himself, and the number of people who could not in their worst nightmare imagine him as Commander in Chief of the most powerful army in the world expands.
This explains why in a matter of days the polls have changed radically. Yesterday some gave Clinton a lead of as much as nine points. Some Republicans are weighed down with the worry that Trump will end up giving up his presidential aspirations. However the situation is not simple, as much because the candidate himself would have to voluntarily give up, as because of the effects such a move would have on the electorate three months before the election.
Among conservatives a chasm is beginning to open up, of course. Trump's latest great controversy has been to not endorse two heavyweights in the fall elections, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and former presidential candidate Senator John McCain. No wonder many Republicans are considering suicide so they don't have to face up to the uncontrolled explosion of their entire party.
Having attracted the Spanish-speakers’ attention, I’m going to give a few direct links to things I didn’t really feel worth including.
1 A rather dry analysis of Trump's campaign finances which I didn’t find particularly enlightening
2 An article in El Pais which is very similar to the German one I link to next.
Now, the Berliner Morgenpost:
The party leadership is infuriated by a series of Trumpish missteps within a few days, culminating in the day-long dispute with the parents of a Muslim US soldier who had been killed in Iraq. Party chief Reince Priebus is rumored to be "bursting with rage" at Trump. After the negative headlines Trump had nothing better to do, than to refuse to endorse leading figures of his own party, including House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, in important primaries.
His political opponents have now lost all respect for Trump and his party. "He has a screw loose," says William Weld, vice-presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party (who have no chance) and once Republican governor of Massachusetts, bluntly on NBC. "He can maybe run a business, real estate or perhaps a laundry, but not the White House." The New York Times wrote on Thursday about Trump’s "behavior of a small child." The newspaper consciously did not write “baby” because Trump can already use a few words.
The Republicans are also now paying the bill for a policy that began with George W. Bush and led to a blockade attitude towards President Barack Obama. The confidence of loyal voters in the political capacity of the party is at a low point, the political achievements after years of parliamentary majority in the House and Senate can be counted on one hand. The electorate was screaming for an anti-establishment candidate, and the heterogeneous field of primary candidates then made the showman Trump look viable.
Even in Googlish, the rest is worth a read.
But don’t think that Trump is without friends. Caroline Simon in The Independent begins:
Donald Trump may have yet to win endorsements from top Republicans like Mitt Romney and former President George W. Bush. But he has earned the support of several major politicians around the world.
Many of these figures, though, are controversial. Some run authoritarian regimes or seek elected office on extreme platforms. While a number identify with Trump's tough stance on immigration, others appear to support him because Trump's isolationist foreign-policy plans would benefit their own ambitions.
Here's a look at eight controversial politicians who are backing Donald Trump.
No prizes for guessing that the first one’s Putin. Consider yourself very well-informed if you knew about all eight. I didn’t.
Some other friends he has apparently include Americans working for Swiss companies, somewhat to the puzzlement of Adrian Lobe and Sebastian Bräuer in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung:
The Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump contradicts himself time and again. But there is hardly a field in which the contradictions are so confusing and as fundamental as in economic policy. Trump wants to abolish regulation. But he says, for example, that the Dodd-Frank legislative package made by the financial sector after the 2008 crisis to secure consumer protection should be strengthened. He also proposes to introduce punitive tariffs, even though — or because — he would thus provoke a trade war with China, and to withdraw from the World Trade Organization. At the Republican convention, one of his chief advisers went one better: he called for the reintroduction of the Glass-Steagall Act. The radical idea is also in the Republican Platform for 2016.
The Glass-Steagall Act was a reaction to the Great Depression. In 1933, commercial banks with customer deposits were prohibited from engaging in investment banking. In 1999, the two-tier banking system was abolished, thus enabling the creation of today's big banks. A reintroduction of the law would be a historic break with the credo of the US Republicans to be a pro-business party. And it would be a frontal assault on Wall Street. The existence of universal banks would be threatened. Both UBS and Credit Suisse would be extremely concerned.
But it can’t be asserted that in the face of this scenario Swiss business would distance themselves from Trump. On the contrary, employees of large Swiss companies have donated more to Republican candidates than their Democratic rivals.
I hadn’t picked up that the Rethugs were now calling for the reintroduction of Glass-Steagall, I must admit.
And of course there’s the Russians. Contenius has come up with some great stuff:
With the conventions over, the Russian press is now focused on the allegations that Trump is in Russia’s pocket. Here is an example from Pravda, though the link is to the original because GT can’t parse the page well enough to produce any text. (This also happens, rather annoyingly, with the main Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende, especially so this week because it had an article which seemed pretty interesting from the four or five sentences I could just about get the gist of.)
USA: The People for Trump, the Elites for Clinton
In the political battles that have erupted [in the US], the Russian factor is really central. This is partly due to Donald Trump’s statements about reversing the American position on Crimea and recognizing the desire of the inhabitants of the Crimea to live in Russia.
Perhaps it is also due to the fact that, according to some reports, the Russian special services were allegedly involved in the seizure and disclosure of Clinton’s emails…. “The majority of the ruling class, the Wall Street establishment, the Pentagon, and the military-industrial complex are betting on Hillary Clinton, but her many scandals have tarnished her reputation…. It is necessary to distract from [these scandals] and give Americans a false cause for anger….
Putin and Trump, in the opinion of Clinton and her supporters, are in bed together. They claim that Trump has interests in Russia. In general, they cling to whatever little things they can, trying to portray Trump almost as Putin's right hand. Of course this is ridiculous, because Trump has no relationship with Russia, he and Putin have not even spoken on the phone. By claiming that Trump is almost a Kremlin agent, they are trying to divert attention from Clinton’s weaknesses.
Just for some fun, here is another article on the same topic, featuring the right-wing lunatic Vladimir Zhirinovsky, which you can read in the original at this link, though this is just about the whole thing anyway:
Clinton Called an Alcoholic
Vladimir Zhirinovsky has likened … Hillary Clinton to an alcoholic. According to [Zhironovsky], the former Secretary of State revealed her inadequacies when she rejoiced at the brutal murder of Muammar Gaddafi….
"She rejoiced at the death of a head of state, she rejoices at death. Female fanaticism, like female alcoholism, is the most dangerous kind" he said.
According to the Russian politician, women who are alcoholics cannot return to normal life.
Documents from [Clinton’s e-mails] have made the public aware of the reasons why America so actively supported the overthrow of the Libyan leader. It turns out it was Libya’s large gold and oil reserves, as well as the expansion of French influence in North Africa….
A few days ago, Clinton's rival, the controversial billionaire Donald Trump, accused her of taking money from Russia…. The conservative Government Accountability Institute published a report that accused Clinton of secret ties with Russia. The authors of the report claim that the former first lady solicited US investment in the Russian Skolkovo Institute for Science and Technology, and thereby dealt a huge blow to US national security.
This Skolkovo Institute story is getting lots of play in Russia. Here is another example. It describes the scandal – and then suggests that the whole thing might just be part of a Russian disinformation campaign to help Trump:
Some Common Sense about Hillary Clinton and Skolkovo”
The flagship of American capitalism, the Wall Street Journal, has stabbed Hillary Clinton in the back. [They] accuse Clinton of undermining US national security and actually working for the Russian military-industrial complex. And it's not a joke. For the candidate of the Democratic Party, who has built her entire campaign on prosecuting Donald Trump for his love of Vladimir Putin, this scandal will be an extremely unpleasant problem….
The charges brought by the Wall Street Journal can be reduced to political corruption. The bribe givers were Russian companies and near-state structures, and the bribe takers were Hillary Clinton and her entourage. According to the famous American NGO Government Accountability Institute, the Hillary Clinton Family Foundation and its associates received money from Russian companies associated with "Skolkovo," and in gratitude for the donations the State Department (led by Hillary) gave the green light for top-end US companies to cooperate with Skolkovo….
[The story] is indirectly confirmed by a report from the FBI, which says in black and white that Skolkovo is a big cover up operation for Russian technology espionage and that Russia receives via Skolkovo technology relating to "information security, biomedicine, satellite engineering and nuclear fuel." … Because nobody believes that the former former first lady is foolish, it can be assumed that she has received a generous kickback from the family foundation….
If all of the above is true and Russian structures really were able to drag dual-use technologies out of the tenacious paws of the US through organized bribery of a senior US administration official, this operation is worthy of awards and extraordinary titles. But not incidentally, it turns out that now the Russian special services have the chance to greatly damage the Hillary Clinton campaign simply by feeding some of the details of this operation to the US media or to Trump’s PR managers. I must say that it is very likely that the scandal could well have been organized from Moscow, just as a friendly gesture to the candidate who is going to recognize the Russian Crimea. [Russia] cannot lose by this scandal because our relationship with the State Department and American IT companies has already been spoiled by the sanctions.
Russian interlude over.
Let’s move on to Arild Færaas in Norway’s Aftenposten talking about the Donald and climate change:
If Republican billionaire and reality TV star Donald Trump becomes president, he will .. be the only head of state in the world that refuses to believe in this science.
Trump has also called anthropogenic warming "non-existent", "fiction", "fraud" and "bullshit."
On Twitter he also accused the Chinese of being behind the "concept of global warming." Something Trump later claimed was merely a joke on his part.
Sierra Club has found that even notorious dictators like Syria's Basher Assad, North Korea's Kim Jong-un and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe believe climate scientists.
- The foreign minister of North Korea said last year on behalf of Kim that they will initiate a large tree planting project as a contribution to stopping climate change.
- Before the civil war in Syria began, the Assad regime entered int agreements with Finland and Romania to combat climate change.
- Robert Mugabe last year made a statement on behalf of Zimbabwe where he called climate change a massive global challenge.
Trump creates great unrest in the Baltics: "He is a danger to the entire world order"
Another foreigner less than impressed with Trump is Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, as reported in Der Spiegel:
US President Barack Obama considers Donald Trump “unfit” as his potential successor. Republican heavyweight Newt Gingrich finds the billionaire "unacceptable." And even in Germany the tone against the highly controversial American presidential candidate is getting rougher.
Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier ( SPD ) has repeatedly warned aboutt Trump. Now he is resorting to words that have nothing to do with diplomacy. At question time on foreign policy in Rostock he called the candidate for the White House a "hate preacher". Steinmeier stated that he views the worldwide growth of the "monster of nationalism" with great concern.
"Preachers of hate" like Trump, those responsible for Brexit and the AfD are at one in that they play politics with people's fears. This is a "tinder-box for society". Referring to the AFD and the upcoming state election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on September 4, Steinmeier said: "This tinder-box can, indeed must be, extinguished in the voting booth."
Back to Austria’s Der Standard now, where Katja Ridderburg is surprised at how small a part religious issues are playing:
And so religion is also largely absent from this campaign - as well as the related issues that are otherwise reliable inflamers of passion, from abortion to gay marriage. This is astonishing, because America is - in a strictly secular political system - a deeply religious country.
While Hillary Clinton likes to express her personal beliefs - she is a Methodist and stresses: "My family and my faith has taught me do as much good in as many ways for as many people as is possible." It sounds rehearsed, it sounds lukewarm - and given the well-known political style of the Clintons, that mixture of cold careerism and rock hard calculus, somewhat bigoted.
I’ll interrupt to say that is one of the worst cases of Clinton Derangement Syndrome I’ve ever seen.
But Donald Trump's religious ties are even worse….
And yet they chose him - the majority of the religious right, who have a strong voice in the Republican Party. Religious candidates like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio had to leave the field defeated; Trump, the loud, vulgar, scintillating sinner powerfully dispatched them from the primaries.
Conservative Christians justify their vote very differently. Some, completely irony-free, praise Trump’s "family values"; others will readily admit to supporting Trump for pragmatic reasons. "I want to see the meanest, toughest types in the White House," says the Baptist minister and televangelist Robert Jeffress. Someone like Trump, who promises "to make America great again" - specifically white Christian America.
Apart from the offensive sideswipe at Hillary, the whole thing is actually quite good.
Now let’s move on to some more frivolous stuff, and debunk the assertion that Hillary Clinton will be the first American female President. Belgium’s Het Laatste Nieuws has the story:
If Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election, she will make history as the first female US president, it is often said and written. But that's not entirely true. American Janet Rosenberg preceded her as president of Guyana in South America.
Janet Rosenberg, born in Chicago in 1920, met Cheddi Jagan, who was studying dentistry at Northwestern while she was training as a nurse. The two married in 1943, though all their parents disapproved of interracial and inter-faith marriages. They moved to Guyana, which was then still under British rule. They settled in the capital, Georgetown, where they founded a dental office.
…
Her husband was elected President in 1992, the first free elections in the country. In 1997, she succeeded him after he succumbed to a heart attack. Thus she is the first American woman who became President.
Not quite one of aphra behn’s excellent herstories, but an interesting enough tale. For reasons best known to themselves, Scottish and Irish people seem to love claiming Americans are one of theirs. So here’s The Scotsman claiming Hillary as Scottish.
Lt. MacDougall fought in the American Revolution in 1765, as part of the Royal Highland Emigrants regiment.
How is Hillary Clinton descended from Lt. George MacDougall? Hillary Clinton’s grandmother Della Murray (1902 - 1960) is the great-granddaughter of Jacques ‘James’ MacDougall, son of John Robert MacDougall (Lt. George MacDougall’s elder son) and Marie Archange Campeau. Mrs Clinton is therefore the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Lt. MacDougall.
Donald Trump’s Scottish ancestry is a little more recent - his mother Mary Anne MacLeod was born in Stornoway in 1912, and emigrated to the US in 1930, travelling to America from Glasgow on board the SS Transylvania. Trump plays up his Scottish roots and is a fairly frequent visitor to the country. At the end of last year, the Republican presidential hopeful said: “I have done so much for Scotland, including building Trump International Golf Links which has received the highest accolades, and is what many believe to be one of the greatest golf courses anywhere in the world.
If you’ve made it this far, you must be tired, so I’ll finish with the most bizarre piece I’ve seen this week, which comes from Germany’s business paper Handelsblatt. It’s about a German election candidate using the dating app Tinder in his campaign (pleasingly, for a change, clicking on the page 2 arrow gets you to the second page, which is moderately interesting) :
Alexander Free-Winterwerb had the idea using the app in his election campaign when he was sitting with friends in a pizzeria. He wanted to try something new. Something with which he could reach the people who work all day and then want to relax on the couch at home. "Because Tinder is the ideal way", says the young politician.
However, the idea is not actually new. In Switzerland, Austria, Spain, the Netherlands, UK, Canada and the US, politicians have been trying to win votes over the popular dating app. The most prominent politician on Tinder is currently probably the Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Yeah, OK, so that passing reference is just an excuse to include it. Sue me. Trump would, after all.
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