Presumptuous Politics : Jun 12, 2016

Sunday, June 12, 2016

Trump takes on Obama, Clinton over ‘radical Islam’ as candidates condemn terror

The terror massacre at a packed Orlando nightclub reverberated across the presidential campaign trail Sunday, as the candidates condemned the deadliest shooting in U.S. history -- and Donald Trump ripped President Obama and Hillary Clinton for avoiding the term “radical Islam” in doing so.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee went so far as to say Obama should “step down” for not using the term and Clinton should “get out of this race” if she won’t either.
“If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said in a statement. “Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen -- and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore.”
Obama, speaking from the White House on Sunday, said the nightclub massacre in which 50 people were killed and at least 53 others were wounded is being investigated as an “act of terror,” though did not say whether it was tied to radical Islam.
The gunman, Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, was heard shouting "Allahu Akbar" while engaging officers, law enforcement sources told Fox News.
Mateen also called 911 during the shooting to pledge allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Fox News has learned.
ISIS reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack, though it’s unclear if the shooting was actually directed by the group or only inspired by it.
All these details, surrounding the deadliest terror attack on the U.S. homeland since 9/11, have fueled tensions in the presidential race at an already-combustible time.
Trump has faced intense criticism from members of both parties for his calls to temporarily ban Muslim immigration to the U.S.
In the wake of the Orlando attack, Trump again defended his proposals, saying on Twitter: “What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough.”
Trump originally was planning to deliver a speech Monday in Manchester, N.H., focused on the Clintons.
In the wake of the Orlando attack, it will also focus on security and immigration issues, Fox News is told.
Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders also condemned the attack, while speaking to reporters outside his home in Burlington, Vt.
Earlier Sunday, Clinton released a statement unequivocally calling the massacre an “act of terror.”
“For now, we can say for certain that we need to redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad. That means defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home. It also means refusing to be intimidated and staying true to our values,” she said.
She also called it an “act of hate” -- a term Obama also used -- since the attacker targeted an LGBT nightclub during Pride Month. And she said the country needs to “keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals.”
Clinton did not reference radical Islam.
Meanwhile, a joint campaign rally with Clinton and Obama set for Wednesday in Green Bay, Wis., has been postponed in light of the attack, according to a White House official.
Obama also ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff “as a mark of respect for the victims of the act of hatred and terror perpetrated on Sunday, June 12, 2016, in Orlando, Florida.”
Florida GOP Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency, which will make additional resources available for local authorities.
He offered “thoughts and prayers” to all those affected by the attack, particularly the victims and their families, and praised the efforts of the first-responders.

Romney Cartoons

Herman Cain breaks down Trump, Clinton presidential race (Video)

Trump, and what he might say next, is burning up GOPs political capital in Washington

McConnell: This is the worst economic recovery since WWII

Everyone’s a little bit racist sometimes.
Doesn’t mean we go around committing hate crimes
-- “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist” from the Tony award winning Broadway musical “Avenue Q”
Congressional Republicans might not be capable of directly measuring their tolerance of Donald Trump. But there is certainly a metric that helps them gauge the amount.
Most Republicans have gone along grudgingly with Trump -- if they support the presumptive presidential nominee at all. Some of those lawmakers are now reviewing that political quotient as they wonder what Trump might say next.
They ponder how many more times they’ll have to condemn Trump’s remarks. They ask themselves if they’ll again have to awkwardly criticize Trump’s comments about a judge or women or Muslims -- yet reaffirm allegiance to him in the next breath.
Only Trump knows what lies in his heart when it comes to race, ethnicity and religion. But some of his comments give people pause and perhaps make them think of the lyrics in the Avenue Q tune. No, Trump doesn’t “go around committing hate crimes.” But his comments certainly sound “a little bit racist” to some and “a lotta bit racist” to others.
House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, says he’ll vote for Trump. But he adds that Trump needs to alter his rhetoric. And if Trump keeps it up?
“It causes a lot of us to think,” Sessions responded.
Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune, South Dakota, said Trump’s “going to have to adapt. … This is not working for him.”
This has been an unconventional election year because it flips political norms on their ear. But political capital still exists and isn’t unlimited.
Republicans cannot repeatedly find themselves crossways with the top of their ticket, blasting Trump’s provocative language yet failing to disavow that person and their ideals. Political capital is fungible, and some of Republicans could see their own stock plunge if they are linked too closely to Trump.
“I’m not going to be sucked into talking about Trump 24/7,” protested Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, when asked about the Trump’s views that federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel is incapable of fairly adjudicating a lawsuit involving Trump University because he is “Mexican.”
Never mind that Curiel was born in Indiana to Hispanic parents.
Cornyn says Republicans should focus instead on policy and the issues. But try as they might, the GOP fights a powerful political news vacuum that insists on focusing on Trump and his missteps “24/7.”
At the Senate Republican leadership press conference Tuesday afternoon, just outside the Senate chamber, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke about plans to finish a defense bill this week (which didn’t happen).
The leader mentioned opioid and energy measures. Cornyn then spoke about defense and North Korea. Thune cited the Iran nuclear deal and ISIS. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, discussed the economy and job numbers.
And then reporters ignored the leadership boilerplate and asked four consecutive questions about Trump.
“I’m going to let you all try one more time,” beseeched an exasperated McConnell to the press corps.
Naturally, journalists fired a fifth sidewinder interrogative at McConnell about Trump’s invective “overshadowing” the GOP agenda and the ability of Congress to legislate.
“OK. I’m going to wrap it up with this,” huffed McConnell, who turned his ire on Trump. “It’s time to quit attacking various people that you competed with or various minority groups in the country and get on message. He has an opportunity to do that. This election is eminently winnable.”
McConnell left the scribes with a parting shot.
“We’re all anxious to hear what he might say next,” said the Kentucky Republican.
Or dreading?
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., didn’t fare much better when he spoke Tuesday in inner-city Washington at an event rolling out the GOP’s anti-poverty plan.
Naturally, the first question focused on Trump, forcing the speaker to characterize the remarks about Curiel as “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
One Republican lawmaker hit the ceiling with Trump earlier in the week.
Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., faces perhaps the most-challenging re-election campaign of any GOP senator this fall.
Kirk this week dropped his support for Trump. He said the first-time candidate and billionaire businessman “has not demonstrated the temperament necessary to be president.”
Kirk also said he wouldn’t support Hillary Clinton for president. When asked who he might back, Kirk initially said “no one” before quickly adding he would “write-in David Petraeus.”
Trump then published a statement that failed to extinguish the flames on the Curiel comments. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., doesn’t support Trump. The new statement vexed the senator.
“This is a new level,” Flake said. “He needs to retract.”
A reporter asked Flake whether he thought Trump had sufficiently “walked back” the Curiel remarks.
“Keep walking,” replied Flake, sounding like a pitchman for Johnnie Walker Blue Label.
Not all congressional Republicans are able or willing to tell Trump to take a hike.
Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., says Trump would throttle Clinton in his district on eastern Long Island. Zeldin wants reporters to focus on the issues and not Trump’s words.
“It’s a disservice for any presidential campaign and those following it who is not doing a deep dive on substantive issues,” argued Zeldin.
But it was Zeldin who found himself crossways in a CNN interview about his own word choice.
“You can easily argue that the president of the United States is a racist with his policies and rhetoric,” he said.
When confronted by reporters in a congressional hallway the next day, Zeldin wanted to revert to substantive issues.
“There’s a lot more to this presidential race then just analyzing what the most provocative thing of the day was said,” Zeldin said.
Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., defended Trump when reporters asked whether the candidate’s statements disqualified him for president.
“Absolutely not,” he answered.
Reporters pressed Perdue on whether Trump’s comments could wound him with voters.
“People back home aren’t worried about that,” said Perdue, noting that he disagreed with Trump’s “tonality.”
Tone is indeed an issue for Trump. And as McConnell and even Zeldin suggested, so is substance.
After the weekly Capitol Hill huddle of the pro-Trump caucus Thursday morning, Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., remarked that Trump would “be on message on policy.
He’s going to take the fight to Hillary Clinton.” Collins also asserted “we’re going to be disciplined.”
Exiting the same session, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., said that Trump was now playing ball in “a much tougher league.”
“You’ve got to be more careful and you’ve got to think through
what you’re going to say,” he said.
Within hours, Trump reverted to name-calling. He upbraided Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and called her “Pocahontas,” referring to a 2012 dispute about whether she has Native American roots.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, had an idea on how to fix things for Trump.
“You folks in the media need to give him a little more leeway,” suggested Hatch, third in line to the presidency as the Senate’s resident pro tempore.
Sen Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., isn’t supporting Trump. He argues there’s a limited threshold for how much political capital some GOPers are willing to burn if Trump continues the trash talk.
“If he keeps doing this he’s really dishonoring that support,” Graham said.
That’s the political risk Trump poses to his own supporters -- especially in Republicans in Congress.
Lawmakers don’t want the public to perceive them like someone out of Avenue Q. As the song goes, no one’s going around “committing hate crimes.”
But if Trump continues the rhetoric, lawmakers worry voters could label Republicans “a little bit racist.”

Paperback version of Clinton's 'Hard Choices’ omits her former TPP trade pact support

The paperback version of Hillary Clinton’s memoir “Hard Choices” fails to include her support of the international trade pact TPP that rivals Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have opposed, raising criticism about Clinton “reinventing herself” for the general election race.
The paperback version of Clinton’s 2014 book, which details her work as secretary of state for President Obama, omits the passage in which she touts her efforts to get the country to support the 12-nation trade deal, which she once referred to as the “gold standard” for such agreements.
“We worked hard to improve and ratify trade agreements with Colombia and Panama and encouraged Canada and the group of countries that became known as the Pacific Alliance -- Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile -- all open-market democracies driving toward a more prosperous future to join negotiations with Asian nations on TPP, the trans-Pacific trade agreement,” Clinton says in the hardback version about a 2009 effort.
However, Clinton changed her position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in October 2015, about a month after the deal was signed and after weeks of being pressed by the news media for an answer.
A total 96 pages were trimmed from the hardback version. Publisher Simon & Schuster said a “limited number of sections” were cut to “accommodate a shorter length for this edition," according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which reported on the changes shortly after the paperback edition was released in April.
“That Clinton's own memoir is reinventing itself for the general election shows the lengths she will go to mislead the American people," Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Short told DailyMail.com, which along with The International Business Times earlier this week picked up on the changes and reported them.
The Clinton campaign declined Saturday to comment.
The Obama administration says TPP attempts to help American entrepreneurs, farmers and small business owners sell products on the international market by eliminating roughly 18,000 taxes and others “trade barriers” that “put American products at an unfair disadvantage.”
Democratic primary candidate Sen. Bernie Sander has said the deal and its accompanying Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are “disastrous” and need to be renegotiated -- in large part because of their potential to kill millions of U.S. jobs and negative environmental impact.
Clinton, now the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, also supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed by husband President Bill Clinton in the 1990s and criticized by Trump, the GOP’s presumptive nominee.
Trump, a billionaire businessman, says he supports free trade but has been highly critical of the TPP, calling it a “horrible deal” in part because, he argues, it continues to allow such countries as China to continue “currency manipulation.”
“This is one of the worst trade deals,” Trump said during the Fox Business Channel/ Wall Street Journal debate in November 2015. “I’d rather make individual deals with individual countries. We will do much better. ... We’re losing now over $500 billion in terms of imbalance with China.”

Trump's no-apologies campaign tour hits hard on Romney, Warren

Warren

Supposedly Republican Romney.

Donald Trump on Saturday kicked his unapologetic presidential campaign into high gear -- saying he won’t apologize for his personal attacks on Sen. Elizabeth Warren and extending his feud with GOP establishment leader Mitt Romney.

“The guy’s a stone cold loser, a choker,” Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, said about Romney at a rally in Tampa, Fla.
Also on Saturday, Romney, who this weekend is holding an ideas summit in Utah, suggested that Trump’s misogynistic and racially insensitive remarks have opened the door for generations of Americans to engage in similar behavior.
Trump told the crowd of about 5,000 in Tampa that Romney, the GOP presidential nominee who lost to President Obama in 2012, “doesn’t even know what a misogynist is.”
Trump and Warren, a leading progressive voice in the Democratic Party, have attacked each other increasingly in recent weeks, with the exchanges appearing to intensify now that Clinton has become the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
On Thursday, Warren endorsed Clinton and accused Trump of “race baiting” and using “racism” toward the federal judge of Mexican heritage who is presiding over a civil fraud suit against the Trump University real estate school.
Trump has suggested the American-born judge won’t give him a fair trial, considering Trump’s disparaging comments about Mexican immigrants.
Trump has not apologized to the judge, despite widespread calls for him to do so.
On Saturday, Trump sarcastically suggested he’ll apologize for referring to Warren as “Pocahontas,” in response to Warren apparently attempting to use Native American heritage to further her academic and political career.
Trump said he’d apologize because his name calling “is an insult to Pocahontas, not Warren.”
Romney, at his summit Saturday in Park City, likened the impact of Trump's words to former President Bill Clinton’s sexual “dalliances in White House,” which he said have “impacted generations.”
“Now we have kids in elementary schools joking about the size of their hands,” Romney said about one Trump comment, in a question-and-answer session with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
Romney, nevertheless, credited Bill Clinton with correctly articulating that a candidate’s views on jobs and the economy largely decide elections when Clinton said: “People vote with their pocketbooks.”
He appeared to give a mixed message about how he’ll deal with Trump through November, saying he’s not going to spend the next six months arguing his point of view.
“I’m not going to be an attack dog,” said Romney, who then made clear that he’ll call out Trump for comments with which he does not agree.
Trump, who also held a rally Saturday in Moon Township, Pa., told supporters that former GOP House Speaker Rep. Newt Gingrich, Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions and former Secretary of State Condleezza Rice appear popular choices to be his running mate.
He dismissed Clinton’s recent line of attack that he lacks the temperament to be president and said, “She’s got the bad temperament.”
Trump said the recent tell-all book by a former Secret Service agent referred to the former first lady as a “total mess.”
“We need strong temperament,” Trump said. “I have a strong temperament.”