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JULY 21,  2016

REPUBLICAN CONVENTION – FINAL NIGHT

Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination in a speech lasting more than an hour, applause included.

It was widely recognized before the speech that this was a critical moment.  Trump, who has very high negatives, had to sell himself to the American people as a president, not simply a candidate for the nomination.

Did he succeed?

Partly.  Only partly.  On paper the speech was pretty well written, covering all the basic points that Trump has been making.  But it was dark, lacking in any soaring quality, much less Reagan's "shining city on a hill" than "it's 11 p.m. and things are falling apart."  Yes, it was serviceable, and informative in parts.  And I disagree with critics who said that Trump was fear mongering.  It's not fear mongering when there are so many things out there that reasonable people should seriously fear.

But a speech is called a speech because it's designed to be spoken.  And that's where the serious problem came in.  Trump is a poor speechmaker.  No doubt about it.  He has an abrasive, almost intimidating manner.  He shouts.  He's angry.  He seemed as if he was constantly out of breath.  He speaks in a kind of monotone, wherein his description of crushing ISIS had the same tempo and character as his telling us that he loves his family.  He's hard to listen to for more than a short period.

So, overall I'd give the event a B-minus.  I do wish that Trump had gotten the proper kind of voice training.   It would have made all the difference. 

In truth, a few quick polls after the speech showed that it was generally well received, and will do Trump some good.  I'm surprised, but it's an unusual election year.

More on this tomorrow.  We'll probably have more polls.

July 21,  2016     Permalink

NICE GOING, PAL – AT 10:52 A.M. ET:  The Iranian foreign minister is openly mocking a weak United States.  There isn't even a hint of subtlety about it.  From the AP:

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Tuesday scorned US global influence as impotent, boasting that Iran got its way in a landmark nuclear deal and that the “US cannot do a damn thing” to intervene in its affairs.

“The US which, by relying on its hegemonic power, demanded that Iran shouldn’t have even one centrifuge and imposed different types of sanctions against the country, was faced with 20,000 centrifuges,” Zarif said, referring to uranium enriching machinery, which was a key negotiating point in talks leading to the deal signed last year with world powers.

“The US that once said Arak’s heavy water reactor should be destroyed, has not only accepted the heavy water reactor but also purchases heavy water from Iran today and contributes a role in efforts to redesign it,” he added during a meeting with university and school students in Tehran, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

America, he asserted, is powerless to influence Iran.

“Despite spending billions (of dollars) in countries like Afghanistan, the Americans have not been able yet to understand this reality that the era of pressure and imposition of their will has ended; our people have imposed this reality on the Americans,” he said. “As the late Imam (Khomeini) said, the US cannot do a damn thing and we can thwart any plot against the country by relying on our people’s power.”

Zarif also claimed that divine intervention had preserved Iran’s stability in a volatile Middle East: “It is because we have understood the basics of power and the most powerful power in the world is God.”

Zarif’s bragging came after he earlier defended a provision of the nuclear deal that allows Tehran to begin ramping up its nuclear program after 10 years.

The foreign minister said the secret document, submitted by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency and outlining plans to expand Iran’s uranium enrichment program, was a “matter of pride.”

COMMENT:  Zarif is a shrewd, tough operator.  He easily got the best of us by sensing that he was dealing with a weak American president and secretary of state.

An American child born today will, on his or her tenth birthday, face Iranian nuclear weapons mounted on missiles that can reach the United States.

Thank you, President Obama.

July 21, 2016       Permalink

MAJOR PROBLEM FOR TRUMP – AT 9:58 A.M. ET:   The Republican National Convention is being held in Cleveland, Ohio.  But we've all noticed the absence of the governor Ohio, John Kasich, who competed against Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.  The governor of the state always greets the convention of his party.  I've not seen what is happening this week happen before.  Byron York notes that it can have sever consequences for Donald Trump in November.  From the Washington Examiner:   

CLEVELAND — Walk around the Republican convention and talk to Ohioans, to Republicans from around the country, and to party strategists about the feud between Donald Trump and John Kasich, and here's the short version of what you'll hear: Kasich is being a jerk, but Trump is crazy to fight with him.

The Trump-Kasich spat is more than a sideshow. It's at the very heart of the presidential campaign. Of the various ways, none of them easy, for Trump to win the White House, the most direct is: Win all the states Mitt Romney won in 2012, and then, on top of that, win Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. Any other path starts to get really complicated. So a Republican who loses Ohio loses the presidency.

This fall, and especially in October, the GOP presidential candidate will need a huge assist from the Republican power structure in Ohio. He simply has to have it. And at the moment it looks very much like that won't happen.

"The governor has said that the nominee has to have a positive, inclusive vision, and unless there is a Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus conversion, he is not going to support [Trump]," Kasich spokesman Chris Schrimpf told me in a phone conversation Tuesday. "Whatever happens in Ohio for Donald Trump is a choice that Donald Trump will make, based on how he chooses to campaign."

The feud started as bad blood during the primary campaign. It continued after Kasich dropped out and refused to support Trump. And now, Kasich has made history by boycotting his own party's convention in his own state. Finally, on Monday, came the shots from Team Trump.

"He's embarrassing his party in Ohio," Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort said of Kasich during at a breakfast meeting, reported by the New York Times. "Negotiations broke down because John Weaver thinks that John Kasich will have a better chance to be president by not supporting Donald Trump."

COMMENT:  I suspect that's true, but read the rest of  York's well-reported story.  I'm sure Kasich has legitimate grievances against Trump – just about every opponent does – and some of Trump's foul behavior is now coming back to haunt him.  But I still think Kasich should have greeted the convention.  He is looking small.

July 21, 2016        Permalink

THE WARNING – AT 9:14 A.M. ET:  An Al Qaeda group has issued a warning targeted at the Olympics, which start in less than three weeks in Rio.  From the Daily Mail:

Jihadi groups linked to terror network al Qaeda are urging their followers to carry out 'lone wolf attacks at the Olympics in Rio targeting American, British and French athletes.

The 2016 Games are set to begin in just over two weeks in Brazil where security is set to be tight throughout the event.

It comes after it was revealed last week that a Brazilian group has become the first organisation in South America to pledge allegiance to ISIS.

However, now it has emerged that al Qaeda fanatics are issuing a number of directives on social media urging attacks against athletes.

In material obtained by The Foreign Desk, the jihadis are told: 'One small knife attack against Americans/Israelis in these places will have bigger media effect than any other attacks anywhere else in sha Allah.

'Your chance to take part in the global Jihad is here! Your chance to be a martyr is here!'

They are also told that it is easy to obtain a visa to travel to Brazil and that guns are widely available in the slums of Rio.

Among the ideas for attacks, they include poisoning food, using small drones with explosives and kidnapping athletes.

They also suggest pouring oil on to roads in a bid to cause road accidents.

COMMENT:  We recall the 1972 Olympics in Munich, when Israeli athletes were murdered by Palestinian terrorists. 

I would take these threats very seriously.

July 21,  2016     Permalink

JULY 20,  2016

REPUBLICAN CONVENTION - DAY THREE

Donald Trump does it again, and that's not a compliment.

The day began with a speechwriter in the Trump campaign taking responsibility for the few plagiarized lines in Melania Trump's Monday night speech.  It sounded like a perfectly believable set of blunders.  But the campaign's stonewalling over two days diminished the admission, and turned what could have been a minor stumble into a semi-crisis.  The speechwriter offered her resignation, but it was refused, showing at least some graciousness in the Trump camp.  There was almost no more talk about the issue.

The rest of the day went surprisingly well for the Trump campaign.  Mike Pence gave an excellent acceptance speech for the vice-presidential spot, showing how valuable his political skills are.  So did Newt Gingrich, who made the best case yet for the Trump candidacy.  Eric Trump, another Trump child, continued the rhetorical winning streak for the Trump children, one more articulate than the next.

Ted Cruz was the bump in the night.  He made, in his usual way, a brilliant speech supporting conservatism, but he did not endorse Trump, bringing a chorus of boos from the crowd.  He was essentially booed off the stage.  Many felt that Cruz was acting the sore loser, more concerned about himself and his feelings than party unity.  Others believed he was expressing true principles.  I frankly think this will hurt him in his political career, especially if Trump loses by a slim margin in November.   But I was once again impressed by his eloquence and his devotion to the Constitution.

The atmosphere, with the exception of the Cruz bump, was remarkably positive.  The hall was alive with the feeling of victory, if not complete unity.

And then...kaboom.

Toward the end of the evening it was revealed that Donald Trump had just given an interview on foreign policy to The New York Times.  As David Axelrod, former campaign strategist for Barack Obama, and a CNN commentator, immediately asked, why would a presidential candidate give an interview on complex subjects to a hostile newspaper on the eve of the most important moment of his campaign – his acceptance speech at his national convention?  An absolute blunder.

And the interview, which we'll discuss tomorrow, was a disaster.  Trump came off as incoherent, lacking knowledge and depth, and given to absurd statements, like questioning whether he'd come to the aid of a NATO country under attack until he looked up how that country met its obligations.  Sorry, Donny, it's a treaty obligation.  He also suggested that the United States, because of its own internal problems, should not be pressuring other countries on human rights – a position negating more than a half century of Republican foreign policy, and a view held by such worthies as Russia and China.

The interview will be used against Trump, to the extent that we can figure out what he was saying.

Trump will formally accept the Republican nomination tomorrow (Thursday) night.  It will be the speech of a lifetime.  For the first time in memory, a presidential candidate will have to give a speech in which he exhibits more intelligence, poise and maturity than his own children.  It's a tall order for Donald Trump.  He's been built up as this fatherly captain of industry.  He'd better come off that way.

July 20,  2016     Permalink

DRAMA AT FOX NEWS – AT 12:46 P.M. ET:   One of the great boosts to conservatism in the last 20 years has been the growth of Fox News as a journalistic powerhouse.  While Fox's slogan is "We report, you decide" and its sub-slogan is, "Fair, balanced, and unafraid," Fox tilts right and has given conservatives a voice they don't have on other networks.  We can see stories on Fox that the others simply won't carry because they don't fit into the approved narrative."

Now Fox is going through convulsions.  The man who built it, Roger Ailes, appears to be on his way out.  From the New York Post, which is owned by the same corporation as Fox News: 

Roger Ailes’ 20-year reign as the boss of cable TV’s No. 1 news outlet could soon be coming to an end as he negotiates his departure from Fox News Channel.

Ailes, 76 — who built Fox News into an influential, $3 billion business — is reportedly being shunted aside in the wake of a sexual harassment suit filed against him by former anchor Gretchen Carlson.

Ailes has strongly denied the accusation.

And while most FNC female staffers lined up to support Ailes, one did not: Megyn Kelly.

Kelly, a prime-time anchor, has remained publicly silent on the matter. On Tuesday, however, New York magazine reported that she told Fox lawyers conducting an internal probe that Ailes had sexually harassed her, too, in the mid-2000s, when she was a Washington correspondent. It was not clear what kind of harassment she alleged.

After the article emerged, several news outlets reported that negotiations on Ailes’s exit were under way. Late Tuesday, his lawyer, Susan Estrich, confirmed that the discussions were in the advanced stages, according to the New York Times.

She told CNN, “There’s lots of cross talk, but no agreement has been reached.”

FNC referred all calls to its parent, 21st Century Fox.

A departure by Ailes could bring chaos to the Fox News Channel.

Several of the network’s biggest stars — Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren — have clauses in their contracts that would allow them to leave if Ailes exits, according to a report in the Financial Times.

COMMENT:  This is a convulsion.  If Ailes is out, who is in?  For what it's worth, and I claim no inside information, I believe the sexual harassment charge, which is unproved, is simply being used as an excuse to retire Ailes.  Ailes was hired by, and protected by, Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corporation, which owns Fox News.  But Murdoch is aging, and is gradually turning power over to his two sons, at least one of whom does not share Ailes's conservatism.

I fear there will be an attempt to move Fox left.  I think it will fail, and Fox will become just another number on the dial.

That's my theory.  I hope it's wrong. 

July 20, 2016       Permalink 

ON THIS DAY – AT 11:22 A.M. ET:  On this day in 1969, a man walked on the Moon.  I recall putting our two-month-old daughter in front of our black-and-white TV just so she could say, later in life, that she'd seen the first Moon walk.

How blasé we've become about it all.  I don't hear the space program even referred to in American politics today.  No one seems to care.

In 1969, crowds would gather in Grand Central Terminal in New York to watch space events on a huge TV screen.  Today, I wonder if you'd get a foursome.  Young people don't seem aware that we even have a space program.  They certainly aren't aware of the vast technology that the space program developed, technology we use in our own lives.  Today's iPads have more computing power than the computers used in our 1960s space capsules.

Under Barack Obama, the head of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was told that "Muslim outreach" should be one of his main goals.  We depend today on Russian rockets to get us to the International Space Station.  Obama has not shown the slightest interest in the great spiritual adventure that defines the exploration of space.

We need to restore the dreams of the space program, to reignite the excitement we felt that day in 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon and announced a "giant leap for mankind."  We sometimes seem to have lost that spirit in this country, replaced by the heavy-handed lectures of pseudo-intellectuals.  I think that spirit is still there, waiting for a new leader to let it fly.

July 20, 2016       Permalink

UNBELIEVABLE – AT 9:55 P.M. ET:  Little by little, the American media is slipping into its usual mode, as promoter of the Democratic Party.  I was just watching Carol Costello's program on CNN.  Costello is a hardened liberal and should simply say so, just as Sean Hannity makes no bones about being a conservative.  But liberals very rarely admit their prejudices.  It's part of their condescending attitude toward their audience.  Those peasants would never understand, would they?  Yeah, they would.

Costello's show tried to extend the narrative about Melania Trump borrowing some lines from Michelle Obama, without attribution.  As I said yesterday, it was a serious mistake, and the campaign has erred by not confronting it directly, apologizing, and showing class.  Okay, blunder.  But it wasn't World War III, yet you'd think it was by watching CNN this morning.  It was their main story – not terrorism, not the murder of police officers, not our weak economy.  Melania and her few sentences – that was the headline.

I will be comparing coverage of this convention with coverage of the Democratic Convention next week.  What do you think I'll find?  Don't hold your breath.

It isn't just the news media that's gone into vulgar mode.  The entertainers have gone berserk.  Bill Maher has said that Donald Trump's wonderful, accomplished sons "look like the date rapist in every after school special ever."  I hope an apology is forthcoming.

Joy Behar, another genius, compared Rudy Giuliani to Mussolini, a particular slur because Rudy is Italian-American.

A film critic called the Republican convention the "world's largest lynch mob."

The coastal elites have raised the rhetoric a few notches since calling Ronald Reagan "an amiable dunce" or a warmed-over movie actor. 

July 20,  2016     Permalink