Orange Meltdown, Con't

Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena for Trump's foreign business dealings during his White House tenure, implying that Trump's illegal trove of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago may not have only been shown to foreign entities, but that Trump directly profited from them, something I've been saying was a distinct possibility from the start.

 

Federal prosecutors overseeing the investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents have issued a subpoena for information about Mr. Trump’s business dealings in foreign countries since he took office, according to two people familiar with the matter.

It remains unclear precisely what the prosecutors were hoping to find by sending the subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, or when it was issued. But the subpoena suggests that investigators have cast a wider net than previously understood as they scrutinize whether he broke the law in taking sensitive government materials with him upon leaving the White House and then not fully complying with demands for their return.

The subpoena — drafted by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith — sought details on the Trump Organization’s real estate licensing and development dealings in seven countries: China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, according to the people familiar with the matter. The subpoena sought the records for deals reached since 2017, when Mr. Trump was sworn in as president.

The Trump Organization swore off any foreign deals while he was in the White House, and the only such deal Mr. Trump is known to have made since then was with a Saudi-based real estate company to license its name to a housing, hotel and golf complex that will be built in Oman. He struck that deal last fall just before announcing his third presidential campaign.

The push by Mr. Smith’s prosecutors to gain insight into the former president’s foreign business was part of a subpoena — previously reported by The New York Times — that was sent to the Trump Organization and sought records related to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of his golf clubs. (Mr. Trump’s arrangement with LIV Golf was reached well after he removed documents from the White House.)

Collectively, the subpoena’s demand for records related to the golf venture and other foreign ventures since 2017 suggests that Mr. Smith is exploring whether there is any connection between Mr. Trump’s deal-making abroad and the classified documents he took with him when he left office.

It is unclear what material the Trump Organization has turned over in response to the subpoena or whether Mr. Smith has obtained any separate evidence supporting that theory. But since the start of their investigation, prosecutors have sought to understand not only what sorts of materials Mr. Trump removed from the White House, but also why he might have taken them with him.

Among the government documents discovered in Mr. Trump’s possession were some related to Middle Eastern countries, according to a person familiar with Mr. Smith’s work. And when the F.B.I. executed a search warrant in August 2022 at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, among the items recovered was material related to President Emmanuel Macron of France, according to court records.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to emails seeking comment. A Trump Organization spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

If there is such a link, and Jack Smith is definite;y digging into it, Trump will have literally been caught selling out his country to foes like China and to NATO allies like France and Turkey to line his own pockets, and that's not going to end well for him at all. Even the MAGA faithful will have to find some hesitation to back Trump selling state secrets to Beijing.

Which would mean of course that all of Trump's "China Joe" talk was -- surprise! -- projection of his own criminal activity.

If Smith's excavation pans out, this is how Trump gets what he deserves. And if Trump gets re-elected, killing this probe is his first order of business.

Chinese Firing Drill

Chinese military forces off the coast of Taiwan are making it very clear they believe they can take the "rogue province" without a fight, spending the weekend simulating "precision strikes" on the island that would cripple infrastructure and leave Taipei vulnerable to further action.

 

China's military simulated precision strikes against Taiwan in a second day of drills around the island on Sunday, with the island's defence ministry reporting multiple air force sorties and that it was monitoring China's missile forces.

China, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, began three days of military exercises around the island on Saturday, the day after Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a brief visit to the United States.

Chinese state television reported that the combat readiness patrols and drills around Taiwan were continuing.

"Under the unified command of the theatre joint operations command centre, multiple types of units carried out simulated joint precision strikes on key targets on Taiwan island and the surrounding sea areas, and continue to maintain an offensive posture around the island," it said.

The Chinese military's Eastern Theatre Command put out a short animation of the simulated attacks on its WeChat account, showing missiles fired from land, sea and air into Taiwan with two of them exploding in flames as they hit their targets.

A source familiar with the security situation in the region told Reuters that China had been conducting simulated air and sea attacks on "foreign military targets" in the waters off Taiwan's southwestern coast.

"Taiwan is not their only target," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media. "It's very provocative."

Taiwan's defence ministry said that as of 0800 GMT on Sunday they had spotted 70 Chinese aircraft, including Su-30 fighters and H-6 bombers, as well as 11 ships, around Taiwan.

The ministry said they were paying particular attention to the People's Liberation Army's Rocket Force which is in charge of China's land-based missile system.

"Regarding the movements of the Chinese communists' Rocket Force, the nation's military also has a close grasp through the joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system, and air defence forces remain on high alert," the ministry said.

It reiterated that Taiwan's forces will "not escalate conflicts nor cause disputes" and would respond "appropriately" to China's drills.

The security source said about 20 military ships, half from Taiwan and half from China, were engaged in a stand-off near the Taiwan Strait's median line, which has for years served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides, but did not behave provocatively.

China's aircraft carrier Shandong, which Taiwan has been monitoring since last week, is now more than 400 nautical miles off Taiwan's southeast coast and is carrying out drills, the source said.

Zhao Xiaozhuo of China's Academy of Military Sciences told the Chinese state-backed Global Times newspaper this was the first time China had openly talked of simulated attacks on targets in Taiwan.

 

Meanwhile, Beijing is continuing economic and political warfare in Europe, the latest blow making France an offer it can't refuse. 

Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on his plane back from a three-day state visit to China.

Speaking with POLITICO and two French journalists after spending around six hours with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his trip, Macron emphasized his pet theory of “strategic autonomy” for Europe, presumably led by France, to become a “third superpower.”

He said “the great risk” Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy,” while flying from Beijing to Guangzhou, in southern China, aboard COTAM Unité, France’s Air Force One.

Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have enthusiastically endorsed Macron’s concept of strategic autonomy and Chinese officials constantly refer to it in their dealings with European countries. Party leaders and theorists in Beijing are convinced the West is in decline and China is on the ascendant and that weakening the transatlantic relationship will help accelerate this trend.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron said in the interview. “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” he said.

 

Macron is wisely hedging his bets. A full-blown NATO conflict in Ukraine is something France, and the entire NATO alliance, cannot afford, and does not want. Macron doesn't believe Joe Biden can keep walking that tightrope, especially if China comes in for Taiwan.

 

We could have a second front in this mess very quickly. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin both have their hands full right now.

Things are bad out there, and there's a very good possibility it gets worse.

 

The French Disconnection, Con't

French President Emmanuel Macron's party will remain in power in the legislature after National Assembly elections on Sunday, but it will need a coalition government with second-place leftist coalition party NUPES to do so, and rival Marine Le Pen's authoritarian National Rally party had its best showing ever winning nearly 90 seats.

Voters in France’s legislative elections dealt President Emmanuel Macron a serious blow on Sunday as his centrist coalition lost its absolute majority in the lower house of Parliament to a resurgent far-right and a defiant alliance of left-wing parties, complicating his domestic agenda for his second term.

With all votes counted, Mr. Macron’s centrist coalition won 245 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, the lower and more powerful house of Parliament. That was more than any other political group, but less than half of all the seats, and far less than the 350 seats Mr. Macron’s party and its allies won when he was first elected in 2017.

For the first time in 20 years, a newly elected president failed to muster an absolute majority in the National Assembly. It will not grind Mr. Macron’s domestic agenda to a complete halt, but will likely throw a large wrench into his ability to get bills passed — shifting power back to Parliament after a first term in which his top-down style of governing had mostly marginalized lawmakers.

Mr. Macron’s government will likely have to seek a coalition or build short-term alliances on bills, but it was unclear Sunday night how it might go about doing so.

The results were a sharp warning from French voters to Mr. Macron, who just months ago convincingly won re-election against Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader. “The Slap” was Monday’s headline on the front page of the left-leaning daily Libération.

Élisabeth Borne, Mr. Macron’s prime minister — who won her own race in Normandy — said on Sunday that the results were “unprecedented” and that “this situation constitutes a risk for our country, given the challenges we must face.”

“Starting tomorrow we will work on building a majority of action,” she said, suggesting, without giving details, that the government would work with other political parties to “build good compromises.”

Mr. Macron appeared disengaged from the parliamentary elections and did little campaigning himself, seeming more preoccupied by France’s diplomatic efforts to support Ukraine in its war against Russia — which Sunday’s results should not impact, as French presidents can conduct foreign policy mostly as they please.

Speaking on an airport tarmac before a trip to Eastern Europe that took him to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, this past week, he had urged voters to give him a “solid majority” in the “superior interest of the nation.”

But many French voters chose instead to either stay home — only about 46 percent of the French electorate went to the ballot box, according to projections, the second-lowest participation level since 1958 — or to vote for Mr. Macron’s most radical opponents.

Several of Mr. Macron’s close allies or cabinet members who were running in the election lost their races, a stinging rebuke for the president, who had vowed that ministers who failed to win a seat would have to resign. Richard Ferrand, the president of the National Assembly, and Amélie de Montchalin, his minister for green transition, were both defeated.

“We disappointed a certain number of French people, the message is clear,” Olivia Grégoire, a spokeswoman for Mr. Macron’s government, told France 2 television on Sunday.

“It’s a disappointing first place, but it’s a first place nonetheless,” she said, adding that Mr. Macron’s coalition would work in Parliament with “all those who want to move the country forward.”

Final results gave the alliance of left-wing parties — which includes the hard-left France Unbowed party, the Socialists, Greens and Communists, and is led by the leftist veteran Jean-Luc Mélenchon — 131 seats, making it the biggest opposition force in the National Assembly. The National Rally, Ms. Le Pen’s far-right party, secured 89 seats, a historic record.

 

Ironically 46% turnout for a midterm election here in the states would be pretty good.

Macron will now have to make major concessions to the left, and considering both NUPES and National Rally want France to wash its hands of Ukraine and hand it off to Putin, things could get very interesting in the days ahead in Paris.

We'll see.

Le Pen, French Pressed

Emmanuel Macron has easily been re-elected in France, staving off right-wing French nationalist Marine Le Pen in Sunday's election.

 

Emmanuel Macron won a second term as president of France, triumphing on Sunday over Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger, after a campaign where his promise of stability prevailed over the temptation of an extremist lurch.

Projections at the close of voting, which are generally reliable, showed Mr. Macron, a centrist, gaining 58.5 percent of the vote to Ms. Le Pen’s 41.5 percent. His victory was much narrower than in 2017, when the margin was 66.1 percent to 33.9 percent for Ms. Le Pen, but wider than appeared likely two weeks ago.

Speaking to a crowd massed on the Champ de Mars in front of a twinkling Eiffel Tower, a solemn Mr. Macron said his was a victory for “a more independent France and a stronger Europe.” At the same time he acknowledged “the anger that has been expressed” during a bitter campaign and that he had duty to “respond effectively.”

Ms. Le Pen conceded defeat in her third attempt to become president, but bitterly criticized the “brutal and violent methods” of Mr. Macron. She vowed to fight on to secure a large number of representatives in legislative elections in June, declaring that “French people have this evening shown their desire for a strong counter power to Emmanuel Macron.”

At a critical moment in Europe, with fighting raging in Ukraine after the Russian invasion, France rejected a candidate hostile to NATO, to the European Union, to the United States, and to its fundamental values that hold that no French citizens should be discriminated against because they are Muslim.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, the foreign minister, said the result reflected “the mobilization of French people for the maintenance of their values and against a narrow vision of France.”

The French do not generally love their presidents, and none had succeeded in being re-elected since 2002. Mr. Macron’s unusual achievement in securing five more years in power reflects his effective stewardship over the Covid-19 crisis, his rekindling of the economy, and his political agility in occupying the entire center of the political spectrum.

Ms. Le Pen, softening her image if not her anti-immigrant nationalist program, rode a wave of alienation and disenchantment to bring the extreme right closer to power than at any time since 1944. Her National Rally party has joined the mainstream, even if at the last minute many French people seem to have voted for Mr. Macron to ensure that France not succumb to the xenophobic vitriol of the darker passages of its history.

Ms. Le Pen is a longtime sympathizer with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom she visited at the Kremlin during her last campaign in 2017. She would almost certainly have pursued policies that weakened the united allied front to save Ukraine from Russia’s assault, offered Mr. Putin a breach to exploit in Europe, and undermined the European Union, whose engine has always been a joint Franco-German commitment to it.

If Brexit was a blow to unity, a French nationalist quasi-exit, as set out in Ms. Le Pen’s proposals, would have left the European Union on life support. That, in turn, would have crippled an essential guarantor of peace on the continent in a volatile moment.

 

The Gallic Republic endures, if only just. If Brexit was the beginning of the end of the EU, a Le Pen win would have been the end of that beginning and would have immediately signaled to the world that the transition into nationalist Europe at war was inevitable, not to mention the end of NATO and the rise of Putinism across the continent.

That still may very well happen in the future, but for now, the stoic and overly pragmatic French have decided that the crook they know if better than the devil they don't, a lesson we Americans had to learn the hard way and are still paying for.

By the way, If Biden had gotten 58% of the popular vote, along with 58 Dem Senate seats and 58% of the House, we'd still be hearing about how Biden had to work with Senate Republicans partners to "pass anything lasting" and that he "must go out of his way to include the views of his opponents" in bill after bill. If Trump had won, his opponents would be jailed.

Weekend At Jeffrey's, Paris Edition

Another major Jeffrey Epstein associate has been found dead in a jail cell, this time it's Epstein's former modeling business partner Jean-Luc Brunel, who provided the European connection for the Miami Beach sex predator's "supply" of young girls.

Jeffrey Epstein’s former business partner and alleged accomplice in trafficking and sexually abusing girls, Jean-Luc Brunel, was found dead Saturday in his French jail cell, according to French authorities.

The death of Brunel, once a fixture in Miami Beach’s modeling industry, resembles Epstein’s death by hanging in a New York prison cell in August 2019 that was ruled a suicide. The two men once collaborated in forming a local modeling agency, MC2, that some models said was a pretext for luring girls and young women into Epstein’s orbit.

Brunel, 76, had been arrested in December 2020 and was under investigation on rape and sex trafficking charges.

And just like Epstein, Brunel had also attempted suicide earlier, the Herald and the French daily newspaper 20 Minutes have learned.

Jailed since his 2020 arrest, Jean-Luc Brunel had tried to kill himself several times, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. One of Brunel’s, lawyers, Mathias Chichportich, confirmed to the Herald and 20 Minutes that his client committed “several suicide attempts“ over 14 months.

Yet, the modeling agent was not under active suicide watch, known in France as “emergency protection.” These types of cells, with rounded corners, paper clothes and tearable bed sheets, are very rare and only meant to be used for an “imminent risk” for up to 24 hrs, until an inmate can be transferred to a psychiatric facility.

Brunel was, however, held in the “vulnerable people area,” nicknamed “VIP quarters,” for people deemed at risk of facing violence, which is common for sexual assault charges or famous detainees. In these areas, guards generally check on inmates four to six times per night.

After a new appeal from his lawyers, Brunel was briefly released following a suicide attempt last Christmas.

“The custody judge ruled his detention was no longer justified given the status of the prosecution,” Chichportich said.

But the decision was overruled, and Brunel went back to jail a few days later.

Prosecutors in Paris confirmed Brunel was found hanging in his cell in La Santé, in south Paris, in the early hours of Saturday morning.

“I can confirm that Mr. Brunel was discovered at 1:30 a.m. last night dead in his cell. He was alone in the cell. According to the first findings, it is a suicide by hanging. An investigation in search of the causes of death is however opened,” said Antoine Pesme, a spokesperson for the Paris public prosecutor’s office.

British and French media reported that no cameras recorded the alleged suicide at the jail, one of the toughest facilities in France, which has both high security and VIP wings that have housed some of the country’s most infamous prisoners.

Brunel’s death also comes as a judge in New York is weighing the release and unsealing of documents that could shed more light on Epstein’s trafficking operation and who was involved. Several people, labeled as “John Does,” have been fighting for years to keep their names redacted from the documents.

Brunel was being held for investigation into allegations that he and others sexually abused and trafficked young women in France over several decades. He was considered a key part of the case, and had reportedly been cooperating with authorities. He had also been speaking to U.S. authorities.

“It almost seems like the entire ring of people who were doing this that their conscience is getting the better of them now that they are being held accountable for their actions,” said Spencer Kuvin, an attorney who has represented several of Epstein’s victims. “Of course, the alternative conspiracy theory is that it’s like someone is trying to clean up shop.”

Since Brunel’s arrest, many women came forward to French authorities to report abuse, including Thysia Huisman, a Dutch former model who said she was raped by Brunel as a teen.

“It makes me angry, because I’ve been fighting for years,” Huisman told the AP. “For me, the end of this was to be in court. And now that whole ending — which would help form closure — is taken away from me.”

 

I'm not the one who has to judge Brunel for his acts here, but the people who wanted closure are clearly upset with this. Brunel maybe wanted the pain to stop, but so did his many, many alleged victims.

 

The French Correction

France is so unhappy with America's decision to sell Australia nuclear sub technology that for the first time in the history of the US and France, Paris has recalled its Ambassador to Washington for consultations, in what amounts to yet another major international incident on President Biden's plate.

The rift between the Biden administration and the oldest U.S. ally widened Friday, as French President Emmanuel Macron ordered the recall of France’s ambassador to Washington in response to this week’s announcement of a secretly negotiated U.S.-British deal to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called the unprecedented move an “extraordinary decision” that “reflects the exceptional seriousness” of the situation.

What he called “a new partnership” excluding France, and the resulting cancellation of a $66 billion Australian contract to buy diesel-powered French submarines, “constitute unacceptable behavior among allies and partners,” Le Drian said in a statement.

France also recalled its ambassador to Australia.

In a statement, the White House played down the breach. “We have been in close touch with our French partners. . . . We understand their position and will continue to be engaged in the coming days to resolve our differences, as we have done at other points over the course of our long alliance,” National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said in a statement.

“France is our oldest ally and one of our strongest partners, and we share a long history of shared democratic values and a commitment to working together to address global challenges,” Horne said.

 

France is pissed, and if you're wondering why, well, here you go.  

There are a number of reasons. For one, the deal was of virtually unrivaled economic significance to France’s defense sector, said Pierre Morcos, a French visiting fellow at the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The deal was crucial for “a whole network of small and medium enterprises” in France that were supposed to benefit from it, he said. The economic significance of the Australia deal has been compared to a landmark 2015 agreement between India and French company Dassault Aviation to supply 36 Rafale fighter jets.

Second, France stands to lose strategically as a result of Australia bowing out of its previous commitment. When the deal was struck, the French government celebrated a “strategic partnership … for the next 50 years.”

“This overall framework is now jeopardized,” Morcos said.

A third key reason for the French anger is the way the deal between Australia, Britain and the United States was announced. A French official said Thursday that Paris learned of the decision only through media reports — even though it had been negotiated among the three participants for months.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that France was “aware in advance” of the new agreement, although Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated that awareness came only in the past day or two.

The fact that the Biden administration did not apparently anticipate the furious French reaction means that “we are heading toward difficult times between Paris, Canberra and Washington,” Morcos said.

France’s unusually blunt reaction to the deal suggests that it could have longer-term implications for President Biden’s pledge to reset transatlantic relations after four tumultuous years under President Donald Trump.

Within the European Union, the fallout could play into the hands of those calling for the bloc to boost its defense capabilities and to be less reliant on the United States. Such demands had already gained momentum over the past weeks amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen endorsed calls for a 5,000-person rapid-deployment force and announced two new measures: a forthcoming declaration from the E.U. and NATO, and a summit focused on European defense with French President Emmanuel Macron, who has been one of the most persistent proponents of “strategic autonomy” for the bloc. 

Of course, the big winner in all of this diplomatic mess is China, who is licking its chops and looking right across the Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan is a "sea fortress" blocking China's expansion into the Pacific and is willing to share with other democracies its knowledge of countering Beijing's efforts to undermine it, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told a U.S. audience on Wednesday.

The United States, like most countries, does not have formal diplomatic ties with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, but is the democratically ruled island's most important international backer and arms supplier.

China has stepped up military and diplomatic pressure against Taiwan since President Tsai Ing-wen first won office in 2016, seeking to force Taipei to accept Beijing's sovereignty claims, to the alarm of both Taipei and Washington.

Addressing an online forum organised by the Global Taiwan Institute on Taiwan-U.S. relations and attended by several former senior U.S. officials, Wu said Taiwan played a "significant role" in ensuring freedom of navigation in the strategically important Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

"Both of them are critical to peace and stability in the Indo Pacific region," he said. "Most importantly, a democratic Taiwan serves as a sea fortress to block China's expansionism into the wider Pacific."

China claims Taiwan as its territory to legitimise its aggression and expansionism, Wu said, adding: "Isn't this irredentism precisely what gave rise to the Second World War?"

Taiwan faces not only military threats from China, but also cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns and other "grey zone" tactics, he added.

"Taiwan has learned valuable lessons and developed various means to tackle the threat to democracy, and we are more than willing to share this knowledge with fellow democracies."

There was no immediate response to his comments from China.

Earlier on Wednesday, China's Taiwan Affairs Office repeated warnings for Taipei's government not to try and seek formal independence for the island, saying such "wanton provocations and evil acts" would only threaten peace and stability.

 

France is throwing a fit, but the country's time of being a major naval power has been over for basically all of my life. The only folks who didn't know it were, well, Paris.

We'll see how Biden handles this. It seems like amazing Gallic pique, but okay then.

Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The Trump regime has decided that openly supporting the online speech rights of white supremacists directly outweighs the rest of us getting hurt or killed, so America refuses to back New Zealand's call for dealing with online extremism.

The United States on Wednesday broke with 18 governments and top American tech firms by declining to endorse a New Zealand-led response to the live-streamed shootings at two Christchurch mosques, saying free-speech concerns prevented the White House from formally signing onto the largest campaign to date targeting extremism online.

The “Christchurch Call," unveiled at an international gathering in Paris, commits foreign countries and tech giants to be more vigilant about the spread of hate on social media. It reflects heightened global frustrations with the inability of Facebook, Google and Twitter to restrain hateful posts, photos and videos that have spawned real-world violence.

Leaders from across the globe, including British Prime Minister Theresa May, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, pledged to counter online extremism, including through new regulation, and to "encourage media outlets to apply ethical standards when depicting terrorist events online.” Companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter, meanwhile, said they’d work more closely to ensure their sites don’t become conduits for terrorism. They also committed to accelerated research and information sharing with governments in the wake of recent terrorist attacks. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was among those who attended.

The call is named after the New Zealand city where a shooter killed 51 people in a March attack broadcast on Facebook and posted afterward on other social-media sites. Facebook, Google and Twitter struggled to take down copies of the violent video as fast as it spread on the Web, prompting an international backlash from regulators who felt malicious actors had evaded Silicon Valley’s defenses too easily. Before the attack, the shooter also posted a hate-filled manifesto that included references to previous mass killings.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron organized the call to action, part of Ardern’s international plea this year for greater social-media accountability. Along with New Zealand and France, countries such as Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom endorsed the document, as did tech giants Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

And I know, the First Amendment protects vile speech, and the Supreme Court has made this clear.  But the fact this regime openly engages in the very practices this pact tries to stop is the much larger problem.

Last Call For Faster Than The Speed Of Lies

The alt-right did everything they could in order to tie Monday's devastating fire at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris to "Muslim terrorism" and they did it at record speed thanks to the power of social media.

As a conflagration spread through the ancient timbers of Notre Dame Cathedral’s attic on Monday, a parallel fire was spreading on social media. This one was willfully set, a series of conspiracy theories neatly slotted into preexisting cultural biases. And soon enough, willing believers were aflame with hate.

The conspiracy theorizing began almost as soon as the blaze did, right when people saw the shocking, transfixing video of the cathedral’s spire toppling. While French authorities began to assert almost immediately that the fire was apparently accidental, the brief gap between the startling images’ generation and their explication was enough for far-right figures to exploit with their own sinister insinuations. Their prevailing view was nearly identical and, apparently, completely false: that the fire was deliberate and most probably set by Muslims.

Conservative gadflies on social media were among the first to leap to dark conclusions about the blaze, even as it raged: Matt Walsh, a conservative blogger who identifies himself as a “theocratic fascist” in his Twitter bio, wrote, “I don’t understand how a fire of this magnitude could happen accidentally,” accumulating nearly 9,000 likes. Infowars, a conspiracy-oriented outlet helmed by Alex Jones, immediately publicized unverified rumors claiming the fire had been “deliberately started” and linking the blaze to “anti-Christian attacks.” Katie Hopkins, a racist British provocateur, was far more explicit, claiming that “Jewish and Christian Parisians” are being “hunted out of the city by Islamists, fleeing in their thousands,” and affixing the hashtag #NotreDame.

Many figures on the right took the opportunity to turn Notre Dame into a metonym for Western civilization as a whole, intimating that far more than a cathedral was in peril. Just as the fire hit social media, conspiracy theorist and brain-supplements salesman Mike Cernovich dramatically tweetedthat “The West has fallen.” Shortly thereafter, fast-talking far-right pundit Ben Shapiro called Notre Dame a “monument to Western civilization” and “Judeo-Christian heritage.” Given the already-raging rumors about potential Muslim involvement, these tweets evoked the specter of a war between Islam and the West that is already part of numerous far-right narratives; it was also a central thread in the manifesto of Brenton Tarrant, the alleged Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter. (On Tuesday, Shapiro called this article “simply gross” and said he called Notre Dame a monument to Western civilization “because it is,” not because of “malicious intent.“) Richard Spencer, professional racist and coiner of the term “alt-right,” openly advocated for such warfare, stating (and misspelling) his hopes that the fire would “spur the White man into action — to sieze power in his countries, in Europe, in the world,” and declaring such an insurgence a “glorious purpose.” And, as Buzzfeed’s Jane Lytvynenko reported, other, more oblique figures managed to go even further, from provocation in the abstract to more concrete incitement. A parody account masquerading as Fox News fabricated a tweet from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) that said, “They reap what they sow #NotreDame.”
Omar, under relentless attack by the right — including the president — became something of a totemic figure for those on social media already predisposed to see the fire as a Muslim conspiracy. Blogger David Futrelle, an expert on the worst of the Web, gathered dozens of tweets claiming that Omar was either celebrating the fire (variously “smiling inside,” “happy as a muslim terrorist,” “giddy and laughing”) or, somehow, had caused it. Multiple accounts questioned whether Omar was in Paris and whether her relatives had set the fire or asserted falsely that she was affiliated with a Muslim group that had set it.

It's pretty clear that any disaster like this is going to be repurposed in order to cause the violent right to cause bloodshed, either they inspire another Christchurch or Las Vegas shooter and terrorize the rest of us, or they constantly mark Muslims and their allies on the left for violence.  After a while, the numbing despair exacts a psychic as well and health toll.

They're winning this war.  They have a playbook ready to go for disasters of all shapes and sizes and it will be used again and again and again.

French Toast For Breakfast

Despite Russia's best efforts to destabilize the French government in the same way it has the US and UK, the Yellow Vest protests in Paris are now running out of steam and popularity as finally people are realizing they're being played by Putin.

France’s “yellow vest” protests are part of a humanist movement aimed at improving the lives of everyone in the country, one demonstrator said on Saturday, defending those who took to the streets for the 14th weekend in a row.

A poll this week showed dwindling support for the demonstrations, named for motorists’ high-visibility jackets, which began in November over fuel taxes and morphed into a more general revolt against politicians and a government they see as out of touch.

More than half of those surveyed said they wanted the occasionally violent protests to end.

“I can understand that some people have had enough, but we’re not doing this just for us,” said Madeleine, a 33-year old unemployed protester. “It’s a very humanist movement and we’re doing this for everyone. So if right now they’re fed up, then too bad for them.”

There has been infighting between leaders of the grassroots movement, although some have outlined plans to extend the weekly protests to Sunday.

The number of protesters have fallen from highs of over 300,000 nationwide in November to around 50,000 last week, according to government estimates.

French interior ministry said around 10,200 protesters took part in demonstrations across the country by 1300 GMT on Saturday, including 3,000 in the capital, compared with 4,000 in Paris last week.

The Macron government will survive, I can't say the same for the May government in the UK or the Trump regime here, but hopefully this is a turning point.  A destabilized Europe with a crumbling European Union is exactly what Putin wants in order to rebuild the old Soviet Bloc states and rise as the next superpower.  After all, he's already got the Crimea in his pocket and the world did nothing.

More efforts will be coming.

French Toast For The Weekend

French President Emmanuel Macron may have backed off from the green fuel tax as the Yellow Vest protesters said they wanted, but the protests against his government have not stopped, and they probably won't anytime soon.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of French cities on Saturday in the fifth weekend of demonstrations against Emmanuel Macron’s government, ignoring calls to hold off after a gun attack in Strasbourg this week.

In Paris, police were out in force to contain outbursts of violence. But the demonstrations were noticeably smaller than in previous weeks, possibly a response to the Strasbourg attack or to the cold, rainy weather.

Police fired water cannon and teargas in the afternoon to disperse groups of protesters in sporadic, brief clashes with riot police on the Champs-Elysees and adjacent streets.

Topless feminist activists braved the cold to face off with security forces, a few meters away from the Elysee Palace, the president’s residence.

And French media showed footage of clashes between police and protesters in Nantes, western France, and further south in Bordeaux and Toulouse.

The ‘yellow vest’ movement started in mid-November with protests at junctions and roundabouts against fuel tax increases, but quickly became a wider mobilization against Macron’s economic policies.

Successive weekends of protests in Paris have lead to vandalism and violent clashes with security forces. Despite the protests, several major stores, such as the Galeries Lafayette, opened to lure in Christmas shoppers.

Loic Bollay, 44, marching on the Champs-Elysees in a yellow vest, said the protests were more subdued but the movement would go on until the demonstrators’ grievances were addressed.

“Since the Strasbourg attack, it is calmer, but I think next Saturday and the following Saturdays...it will come back.”

The Macron government remains wildly unpopular and Macron himself seems to be doing everything in his power to get tossed out of office.  Eventually the only thing that will sate the Yellow Vests is Macron's resignation, and it's going to happen pretty soon, I would expect.

I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.
 

Last Call For The French Connection (To Russia)

Russian social media attacks on French President Emmanuel Macron are stoking violence as protests against the government continue in Paris and other cities.

Emmanuel Macron successfully dodged cyberattacks and fake news reports that were widely blamed on a Kremlin effort to destabilize his 2017 presidential campaign.

Now, with France convulsed by violent protests, the Russians appear to be back – and may be hitting closer to their mark. Among 600 Twitter accounts known to promote Kremlin views, the top hashtag now is #giletsjaunes, the French name for the so-called Yellow Vests protest movement, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a unit of the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. that monitors those accounts and other pro-Kremlin activity.

The Twitter accounts monitored by the alliance usually feature U.S. or British news. But the French protests “have been at or near the top” of their activity for at least a week, says Bret Schafer, the alliance’s Washington-based social media analyst. “That’s a pretty strong indication that there is interest in amplifying the conflict” for audiences outside France, he says.

A major theme of recent tweets is that French law enforcement is on the verge of mutiny. That assertion – which doesn’t appear to be supported by facts – resembles other Kremlin-backed disinformation campaigns that have tried to engender mistrust in Western governments and show that liberal democracies are in decline, Schafer says.

Much of the tweeted material comes from Russian state media outlets including the Sputnik news website, the RT television network, and Ruptly, a German-based video news agency that belongs to RT. These outlets are covering the French crisis closely; RT has said that 12 of its journalists have been injured in the protests, far more than any other news organization.

Sputnik and RT have reported in recent days that most French police no longer support Macron and are siding with the protesters. Their sources: representatives of two small police unions that together won less than 4 percent of votes in nationwide union elections this month. Sputnik and RT also have shown a video – widely shared on French social media -- of police in the southwestern town of Pau removing their helmets in what was described as a sign of solidarity with protesters. Local police and journalists on the scene said the description was untrue. They said some officers had briefly removed their helmets to talk with protesters before putting them back on.

Sputnik and RT didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

No reason to ask why Putin's state media outlets are trying to destabilize Macron. A weakened EU helps Putin with his real goal: a fully reconstituted Soviet bloc with a compliant America under his heel.

Of course Putin is moving to cause as much chaos as possible.  He'd love nothing more than to see Paris come under control of someone like Marine Le Pen.  And I honestly don't know if the Macron government will survive much longer.  Between France, the UK May government coming apart due to Brexit, and the German government's changing of the guard, all three of the EU's major leaders may be gone within the next few months.

Putin couldn't be happier.

Trump Trading Blows, Con't

Yesterday I talked about how Donald Trump was planning to ditch the G-7 summit to go hang out with his new dictator pals in Singapore, and today he made good on that threat, but not before storming out with the ultimatum that all nations wanting to do business with the US must drop tariffs, or else.

President Trump told foreign leaders at the Group of Seven summit that they must dramatically reduce trade barriers with the United States or they would risk losing access to the world’s largest economy, delivering his most defiant trade threat yet to his counterparts from around the globe.

But there were numerous signs here that other leaders stood their ground, having stiffened after months of attacks and insults. Each leader now faces crucial decisions about how to proceed.

Trump, in a news conference before leaving for Singapore, described private conversations he held over two days with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada. He said he pushed them to consider removing every single tariff or trade barrier on American goods, and in return he would do the same for products from their countries. But if steps aren’t taken, he said, the penalties would be severe.

“We’re like the piggy bank that everybody is robbing,” Trump said. “And that ends.”

The U.S. leader described the meetings with his counterparts as cordial, and he repeatedly blamed past U.S. leaders for what he views as a trade imbalance. He also said other nations had taken advantage of decades of U.S. complacency with regards to trade, something that he planned to end.

The two-day session under crystalline blue skies in Charlevoix, Quebec, put Trump’s transactional view of alliances, economic leverage and trade relationships into sharp focus for other nations often frustrated by Trump’s ad hoc decision-making.

At this second G-7 gathering of Trump’s presidency, the question of whether the U.S. leader would follow through on campaign boasts about punishing international freeloaders has been largely answered.

He did not back away or blunt his critiques, and despite first-name references to “Angela,” and “Justin,” Trump did little to disguise his distrust of the international consensus model of world affairs that the G-7 represents.

The thing is, our allies?  They're going to chose "or else".   They're not putting up with Trump's crap, and they are calling the bluff of a wildly unpopular elected official whose party is about to get crushed at the polls in five months.  When the economic damage of these tariffs starts to show up in jobs reports about September or October or so, you'll know what caused it.

Meanwhile, Trump is more than happy to go meet his actual boss Vladimir Putin in Vienna later this year, all while telling the G-7 allies to go to hell.

He's the best agent Putin could have asked for.

Trump Trading Blows, Con't

Donald Trump's trip Thursday to the G-7 summit in Quebec -- or as French President Emmanuel Macron called it "the G-6 plus 1" -- was such an unmitigated disaster that Trump is picking up his ball and leaving early.

President Donald Trump continued to criticize Canada early Friday morning after the White House announced he will leave the G-7 summit before its conclusion following a day of back-and-forth with fellow world leaders that foreshadowed confrontations during the meeting of the world's largest advanced economies.

Trump will be depart the summit in Quebec at 10:30 a.m. Saturday and head directly to Singapore, the site of his June 12 meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. The G-7 summit is scheduled to wrap up later on Saturday.

Before the Thursday night announcement, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada both promised to confront Trump over his recent decision to impose tariffs on U.S. allies.

Trump, in response, laid into the two leaders on Thursday evening and Friday morning over those plans.

“Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “The EU trade surplus with the U.S. is $151 Billion, and Canada keeps our farmers and others out. Look forward to seeing them tomorrow.”

On Friday a little after 6 a.m., he tweeted, “Canada charges the U.S. a 270% tariff on Dairy Products! They didn’t tell you that, did they? Not fair to our farmers!” and “Looking forward to straightening out unfair Trade Deals with the G-7 countries. If it doesn’t happen, we come out even better!”

By pulling out early, Trump will skip sessions focused on climate change, the oceans and clean energy. He will also miss the traditional group-photo opportunity among fellow heads of state. The president may also miss the opportunity to host a summit-ending news conference, something world leaders traditionally do. The leader of the host nation, in this case Trudeau, also takes questions and gives closing remarks. Trump chose not to hold a news conference last year, becoming the only G-7 leader not to do so before leaving Italy, according to The Hill. He opted instead for a speech at a nearby naval air station.

The summit traditionally concludes with a joint statement spelling out the areas of agreement on the wide range of policy issues discussed. But before Trump's announcement, Macron urged the other five nations to hold strong and not let potential U.S. opposition water down their communiqué.

The 2017 statement, for example was notable for its explicit mention that the U.S. did not share its allies‘ support of the Paris Climate Accord. Less than a week later, Trump announced in the White House Rose Garden that the U.S. would be exiting the climate agreement.

“Maybe the American president doesn’t care about being isolated today, but we don’t mind being six, if needs be,” Macron said, part of his plea to confront Trump head-on.

Trump is such a petulant child, and his utter failure to even remain on the same continent with the G-7 leaders, our closest economic and military allies, proves beyond a doubt that the North Korean "summit" he's heading to next week in Singapore will be one of the most comical crash-and-burn cockups in US diplomatic history.

Our isolation from the world is proceeding at a brisk pace, and clearly the rest of the planet is willing to and prepared to operate without our "leadership" anymore.  It's probably the best option given the circumstances.

Oh, and Trump's biggest complaint?

Russia wasn't invited.  They haven't been since they, you know, invaded the Ukraine and took the Crimea region.

I wonder when we get kicked out?

Iran It Into The Ground

Tang the Conqueror is about to unilaterally blow up President Obama's Iranian nuclear deal, wrecking our relations with the nations that supported us on the agreement and absolutely putting Iran on a North Korea-style path to a nuclear weapon.

President Trump plans to announce next week that he will “decertify” the international nuclear deal with Iran, saying it is not in the national interest of the United States and kicking the issue to a reluctant Congress, people briefed on an emerging White House strategy for Iran said Thursday. 

The move would mark the first step in a process that could eventually result in the resumption of U.S. sanctions against Iran, which would blow up a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear activities that the country reached in 2015 with the U.S. and five other nations. 

Trump is expected to deliver a speech, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 12, laying out a larger strategy for confronting the nation it blames for terrorism and instability throughout the Middle East.

Under what is described as a tougher and more comprehensive approach, Trump would open the door to modifying the landmark 2015 agreement he has repeatedly bashed as a raw deal for the United States. But for now he would hold off on recommending that Congress reimpose sanctions on Iran that would abrogate the agreement, said four people familiar with aspects of the president’s thinking.

Remember, the US didn't go into this alone, all five permanent members of the UN Security Council supported this deal, plus Germany (the so-called P5+1) which means if we sink the deal, we leave them in the lurch too.

That would start a 60-day congressional review period to consider the next steps for the United States. On its own, the step would not break the agreement among Iran, the United States and other world powers, but would start a clock on resuming sanctions that the United States had lifted as its part of the deal.

The administration has begun discussing possible legislation to “strengthen” the agreement, congressional aides and others said. That is the “fix it or nix it” approach suggested by both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a leading Republican hawk on Iran.

It is an uncertain prospect, and many supporters of the deal consider it a dodge.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said last month that he will not reopen the deal for negotiation. 

Separately, representatives of Iran, China and Russia told Secretary of State Rex Tillerson the same thing during a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session, two senior diplomats familiar with that meeting said.

So the deal would fall apart for sure, and there would be no reason for anyone to trust the Trump regime or the word of the US again in future negotiations, not that anyone would after Trump sank the Paris Climate Agreement.

We're rapidly joining the ranks of international pariahs, easily making us the most dangerous rogue state on Earth with our massive military and huge nuclear arsenal, not to mention our dangerous loose cannon of a leader.

As I've said before, when does the rest of the world move to act to contain us?

The French Connection Election

Chalk up one time where our Gallic friends have shown wisdom far beyond their American counterparts as not only did the French media not fall for Putin's obvious last-minute WikiLeaks screw job to help Marine Le Pen, the French voters didn't fall for it either, and while turnout was low for French standards at about two-thirds of those eligible, the French overwhelmingly elected Emmanuel Macron to be France's next leader.

Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron has decisively won the French presidential election, projected results say.

Mr Macron defeated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen by about 65.5% to 34.5% to become, at 39, the country's youngest president, the results show.

Mr Macron will also become the first president from outside the two traditional main parties since the modern republic's foundation in 1958.

He said that a "new chapter of hope and confidence is opening".

Mr Macron's supporters gathered to celebrate in central Paris after the bitterly fought election concluded on Sunday amid massive security.

The Macron team said that the new president had had a "cordial" telephone conversation with Ms Le Pen.

In a speech she thanked the 11 million people who had voted for her. She said the election had shown a division between "patriots and globalists" and called for the emergence of a new political force.

Macron looks like he'll end up winning by 30 points, far exceeding even the rosiest poll projections.  If I didn't know any better, I'd say Putin's win in America backfired miserably in France.  The good guys (and the EU) needed a win badly here, and got it.  Le Pen's win, combined with May in the UK, would have left Germany in an untenable position and the future of the EU in extreme doubt, without two of its three strongest economic and political members.

By the way, WikiLeaks is now pushing the story that Obama ordered the CIA to help Macron (they still work for Obama you see, because chapeau de papier peint) in the best case of projection since the Cannes Film Festival.

Viva la Revolution, indeed.

Last Call For Viva La Revolution

The French took to the polls today for presidential elections and, as the joke goes, are revolting.  But it's no joke here. The French liberal Socialists and conservative Republicans who have traded off for decades are now complete also-rans, and the French government will not be led by either of them I suspect for quite some time.

Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the far-right National Front, is through to the second round of the French presidential election, where she will face Emmanuel Macron, the independent, who won Sunday's first round with 23.7 percent of the vote. Le Pen won 21.7 percent. It's the first time in French history that neither candidate from a major political party is in the second round runoff. It's also the first time a far-right candidate is in the second round since 2002 when Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, lost to Jacques Chirac.

Macron and Le Pen’s strong showings Sunday, which saw an approximately 77 percent voter turnout (slightly lower than the 79 percent who voted in the first round in 2012), signaled a rebuke of the political establishment that has dominated French politics for decades. Macron launched his centrist party in August 2016 after he quit his role in President François Hollande’s Socialist government, and despite the party’s youth it boasts a quarter of a million members. Meanwhile, Le Pen’s FN secured the most votes it has ever received in its nearly half-century history, surpassing the 18-percent first-round finish it saw in 2012.

Even Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left candidate who ran under a movement called La France Insoumise, or “Unsubmissive France,” had his strongest performance to date. Though his last-minute surge in the polls wasn’t enough to propel him to the second round, he still managed to claim 19.5 percent of the vote, far surpassing the 11 percent he won during his first presidential bid in 2012.

Republican candidate François Fillon also earned 19.5 percent of the vote, tying Mélenchon for third place. The center-right candidate and former prime minister enjoyed a comfortable lead early on in his campaign, but support wavered in January after his candidacy was embroiled by allegations he misused public funds to pay his wife, Penelope, and two of their children for parliamentary work they are alleged not to have performed. Fillon denied any wrongdoing, although the launch of a formal investigation into both him and his wife prompted several of his Republican allies to quit his campaign.

Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon, who came in last of the main contenders with 6.2 percent of the vote, also suffered from fissures within his own party. Despite clinching a decisive victory during the January primary, Hamon failed to command the support of Socialist party leaders, many of whom, including former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, endorsed Macron instead. This, paired with the deeply unpopular presidency of Hollande and the competition of similarly far-left Mélenchon, made the ruling party’s poor showing all but certain. The results prompted the losing candidates to urge their supporters to back Macron. Hamon said there was a distinction between a political adversary and an “enemy of the Republic,” referring to Le Pen. Fillon warned that Le Pen would lead France to “ruin.”

The Socialists and Republicans got only 25% of the vote combined.  They're both pretty much cooked.  Now we'll see if centrist Macron can hold against the onslaught of Russian election foul play, for if Le Pen's racist National Front party claims victory in two weeks, things are going to go very, very badly for the future of the European Union.

Less than a month before the fiercely contested French presidential election, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen was campaigning not in Nantes or Lyon but in Moscow, where she had an unannounced meeting with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. After exchanging pleasantries with Russia’s leader, a politician for whom she is not shy in expressing her admiration, Le Pen pledged that one of her first actions as president would be to cancel sanctions against Russia.

“A new world has emerged in the last few years,” Le Pen told VICE News and other journalists after the meeting. “It’s the world of Vladimir Putin, it’s the world of Donald Trump in the United States, it’s the world of Mr. [Narendra] Modi in India, and I think I am the one who shares this vision of cooperation, and not a vision of submission or a vision of warmongering, like the one which is put forward far too often by the European Union.”

Le Pen’s surprise trip to Moscow at the height of a raucous French campaign, in which she has been jostling for the lead with more traditional candidates Emmanuel Macron and Francois Fillon, was indicative of the outsized role Russia has played in the election, endorsing France’s right-wing candidates while smearing Macron. So was the knowing grin that crept onto Putin’s face as he told Le Pen on camera that Russia didn’t “want to influence” the vote in any way.

Putin’s smile couldn’t disguise the fact that Russia has financed Le Pen’s National Front party in the past and has been accused of surreptitiously backing her this go-around. Unlike Le Pen and the center-right Fillon, who have both called for closer relations with Moscow, the pro-EU Macron has been the target of smear pieces in Russian state media and cyberattacks that his campaign says originated in Russia.

We'll see if the French made the same mistake we did.  There's some hope that they have learned, but I'm thinking that the next two weeks are going to be brutal.  After all, Hillary was winning too, right up until she didn't.

The Neighbors Are Worried About Us

Europe certainly has enough problems to deal with right now with the EU disintegrating, a stagnant economic picture at best, and the rise of violent ultra-nationalism. Needless to say, the problems we have here in the US aren't helping them one bit, and our friends across the pond are spooked, particularly in Paris where the wounds of terrorism are still fresh.

French President Francois Hollande told a NATO conference on Saturday that the U.S. presidential election should not put into question transatlantic relations.

Hollande said a European defense separate from NATO would not make any sense.

Of course, Donald Trump calls NATO obsolete and as president, says he would consider pulling out of the organization completely, so guess what, Francois? The US presidential election will definitely affect transatlantic relations.

Savage asked, “What would your first priority be as president?”

Trump’s answer was that, “Number one would be knock out some of the executive orders from Obama.” He said he would “start Keystone right away” because “we need jobs,” regardless of the fact that Keystone XL won’t create any jobs, as has been well-documented. Talking points know no facts, however.

That’s when Trump launched into his plan to turn the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into a pay-for-protection racket:

“I’d contact countries and I’d say, ‘folks, we love protecting you, we want to continue to protect you,’ but they’re not living up to their bargain. You know, you’re talking about billions and billions of dollars, Michael, numbers that you wouldn’t even believe. But they’re not living up to their bargain and you know we cannot continue to be the policeman for the world. Now, I don’t mind, but they have to pay, they have to pay. If you look at the NATO countries – 28 countries – they’re not living up to what they’re supposed to be living up to. They’re not paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which is very little by the way. So what are we supposed to get into World War III over a country that doesn’t respect us enough to even pay what they’re supposed to be paying?”

This alienating our allies, Trump assured Savage, will make “America a very strong country again.”

That’s right: Trump’s “What’s in it for me?” approach to life directed at foreign policy. At our allies. Nations with which we share a long mutual interest in security and a stable global economy. Republicans have long said the country should be run like a corporation, and Donald Trump intends to do just that.

Yeah, if I were France, I'd be pretty goddamn nervous too.

Bringing Bankrupt Ideology To A Pastry Fight

John Oliver sums up in two minutes my feelings on Paris and the monsters who perpetrated the attack.  Needless to say, you're in for some outstanding premium cable profanity, so this is very NSFW for language.

Experience Matters

Republican presidential candidates in the back of the pack behind Donald Trump and Ben Carson may finally have their best reason yet to attack the frontrunners, both of whom have never held public office. In the wake of Paris, they say, now's not the time for an untested GOP candidate without foreign policy "experience".

“Well obviously, extending, you know, our support to the French,” he said Sunday on Fox News when asked what a President Carson’s first steps would have been following the Paris terror attack. When host Chris Wallace pressed him three times on who he would call first to put together an international military coalition, Carson demurred three times before saying he would call "all of the Arab states" and "all of our traditional allies."

"I don't want to leave anybody out," Carson said.

Donald Trump, who before the attack had said his ISIS policy would be to "bomb the s--t out of them," was unusually absent, not just from the Sunday interview circuit but the discussion. He had spent the weekend shouting on Twitter in all-caps: "When will President Obama issue the words RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM?" "He is just so bad! CHANGE." "We need much tougher, much smarter leadership - and we need it NOW!"

The violence in France comes at a time in the cycle when numerous 2016 operatives say voters are starting to shift from not just deciding who they like, but who they want to serve as president. Even before the attacks, for instance, a super PAC supporting John Kasich held a focus group in New Hampshire last week and reported that every attendee mentioned "experience” as important to them.

It was the first time that had happened, according to Matt David, a strategist for the Kasich super PAC.

On Sunday, Kasich, who has been almost alone in touting his congressional committee experience on the campaign trail, was rushing to get out all his specific prescriptions on Fox: arming the Kurds, putting in a no-fly zone, tying in the Saudis and Jordanians, coordinating intelligence better internationally.

"There’s so many things we need to do and, frankly, we’re behind the curve,” Kasich said.

Bush, Kasich, Rubio and Sen. Lindsey Graham were among those who spoke fluently on foreign affairs on the Sunday shows.

In other words, Republican foreign policy now consists solely of how quickly each candidate wants to get us back into a Middle Eastern invasion.  It's 2003 all over again, and the supposed "moderates" like Kasich are calling for heavily military intervention in Syria.  Suddenly, Ben Carson and Donald Trump's ignorance on global affairs might actually matter to GOP voters.

But it's just another reminder than in many ways, the Republican alternatives to Trump and Carson are even more dangerous to have in power.

The Disunited States Of Europe

French President Francois Hollande believes the Greek financial crisis indicates that it's time for a central European government.

“Circumstances are leading us to accelerate,” Hollande said in anopinion piece published by the Journal du Dimanche on Sunday. “What threatens us is not too much Europe, but a lack of it.”

While the euro zone has a common currency, fiscal and economic policies remain mostly in the hands of each member state. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi made a plea this week for deeper cooperation between the euro members after political squabbles over Greece almost led to a rupture in the single currency.

Countries in favor of more integration should move ahead, forming an “avant-garde,” Hollande said.

“Europe has let its institutions weaken and the 28 European Union member countries are struggling to agree to move ahead,” Hollande said on Sunday in a text which was also a homage to his mentor Jacques Delors, a former European Commission President who proposed similar ideas.

Draghi called for the creation of a shared treasury within 10 years in a joint proposal with politicians including European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem last month.

The call for a central, ruling EU government that would have binding control over all EU member states isn't new by any means, but in the wake of the massive fracturing of Europe between pro union forces like Hollande in France and "fix your own damn problem" Chancellor Merkel and Zee Germans, I don't see how this has any realistic chance of working.

If anything, the disintegration of the eurozone and the EU seems far, far more likely at this point.