US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6368

On December 06 2016 03:17 Leporello wrote:
I gave Trump a chance.
It lasted about 24 hours, though.
Appointing a climate-change denier to lead the EPA was basically the first thing Trump did.
"Drain the swamp!" Brought to you by Exxon-Mobil.

Former vice president Al Gore and Donald Trump met Monday to talk about climate change.

"I had a lengthy and very productive session with the president-elect. It was a sincere search for areas of common ground," Gore told reporters after the meeting at Trump Tower.

"I had a meeting beforehand with Ivanka Trump. The bulk of the time was with the president-elect, Donald Trump. I found it an extremely interesting conversation, and to be continued, and i'm just going to leave it at that," Gore continued. He had been scheduled to just meet with Trump's daughter and earlier in the morning Trump spokesman Jason Miller said Trump had no plans to meet with Gore.

The meeting came the same day The Guardian published an interview with Gore where he said that the threat of climate change is too pressing for people to “despair” over Trump’s election.

“My message would be that despair is just another form of denial. There is no time to despair. We don’t have time to lick our wounds, to hope for a different election outcome,” Gore wrote. “We have to win this struggle and we will win it; the only question is how fast we win. But more damaged is baked into the climate system every day, so it’s a race against time.”

Gore, the 2000 Democratic presidential nominee, was a recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in raising awareness of the dangers of climate change.

Trump has previously said that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese and vowed to cancel the Paris climate deal. After being elected president, though, he signaled at least some openness to modifying his views.

In a meeting with The New York Times last month, Trump said there is “some connectivity” related to humans and climate change.

Asked if he’d pull out of the Paris Climate deal, the president-elect said, “I’m going to take a look at it."

Politico recently reported that Ivanka Trump planned to focus on climate change during her father's presidency.

On December 06 2016 03:05 zlefin wrote:xdaunt -> to me, it seems very rude of you to insist that so many don't even give trump an ounce of fairness; plenty have given him at least that much fairness imho.

On December 06 2016 03:05 zlefin wrote:
Interesting to hear it claimed that the whole thing was intentional; or at least parts of it were.

Still not entirely convinced of that.

On December 06 2016 03:19 xDaunt wrote:

This should make you feel better:



Source.

On December 06 2016 03:21 xDaunt wrote:

Anti-China policy doesn't necessarily mean war with China. Frankly, Trump's trade war rhetoric is far less dangerous than Obama's brinkmanship in the South China Sea.

On December 06 2016 03:21 xDaunt wrote:

Anti-China policy doesn't necessarily mean war with China. Frankly, Trump's trade war rhetoric is far less dangerous than Obama's brinkmanship in the South China Sea.

On December 06 2016 03:48 Logo wrote:


Could an anti-China push start resulting in more meddling and destabilizing of regimes that are favorable to China (say in Africa) as part of such a confrontational strategy?

On December 04 2016 14:04 Slaughter wrote:
The Chinese probably aren't really that offended, they know Trump is a know nothing. Just gives them an excuse to lodge a complaint.

I'm also kinda confused as to where this confidence in Trump's savy in FP comes from to consciously pull off such a thing that XDaunt attributes to him.

Donald Trump’s protocol-breaking telephone call with Taiwan’s leader was an intentionally provocative move that establishes the incoming president as a break with the past, according to interviews with people involved in the planning.

The historic communication — the first between leaders of the United States and Taiwan since 1979 — was the product of months of quiet preparations and deliberations among Trump’s advisers about a new strategy for engagement with Taiwan that began even before he became the Republican presidential nominee, according to people involved in or briefed on the talks.

The call also reflects the views of hard-line advisers urging Trump to take a tough opening line with China, said others familiar with the months of discussion about Taiwan and China.

....

Several leading members of Trump’s transition team are considered hawkish on China and friendly toward Taiwan, including incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus.

Indeed, advisers explicitly warned last month that relations with China were in for a shake-up.

In an article for Foreign Policy magazine titled “Donald Trump’s Peace Through Strength Vision for the Asia-Pacific,” Peter Navarro and Alexander Gray described Taiwan as a “beacon of democracy in Asia” and complained that its treatment by the Obama administration was “egregious.”

The article, flagged to China experts as a significant policy blueprint, described Taiwan as “the most militarily vulnerable U.S. partner anywhere in the world” and called for a comprehensive arms deal to help it defend itself against China.

Friday’s phone call does not necessarily mean that will happen, but it does look like the first sign of a recalibration by a future Trump administration, experts say.

It was planned weeks ahead by staffers and Taiwan specialists on both sides, according to people familiar with the plans.

Immediately after Trump won the Nov. 8 election, his staffers compiled a list of foreign leaders with whom to arrange calls. “Very early on, Taiwan was on that list,” said Stephen Yates, a national security official during the presidency of George W. Bush and an expert on China and Taiwan. “Once the call was scheduled, I was told that there was a briefing for President-elect Trump. They knew that there would be reaction and potential blowback.”

Alex Huang, a spokesman for Tsai, told the Reuters news agency, “Of course both sides agreed ahead of time before making contact.”

....

At the Republican National Convention in July, Trump’s allies inserted a little-noticed phrase into the party’s platform reaffirming support for six key assurances to Taiwan made by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 — a priority for the Taiwan government. Also written into the 2016 platform was tougher language about China than had been in the party’s platform in its previous iteration four years ago.

“We salute the people of Taiwan, with whom we share the values of democracy, human rights, a free market economy, and the rule of law,” the platform said, adding that the current documents governing U.S.-Taiwan relations should stand but adding, “China’s behavior has negated the optimistic language of our last platform concerning our future relations with China.”

Yates, who helped write that portion of the platform, said Trump made clear at the time that he wanted to recalibrate relationships around the world and that the U.S. posture toward China was “a personal priority.”

On December 06 2016 02:16 xDaunt wrote:


Sure enough....



Source.

None of this is a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to what Trump has been saying since he began his campaign. All it takes is listening to what he says with an ounce of fairness. His campaign was staunchly tough on China, and he's actually doing what he campaigned on. Shocking, I know. Obama campaigned on "Hope and Change," and certainly failed to deliver the "Change." We're about to see what a real "Change" president looks like -- for better or for worse.