Trump's Foreign Policy: Baffle 'Em With ...

In the first post today I presented Trump at his pandering worst. Trump’s not a dumb guy. He knows that he can easily win without the Jewish vote—but that he can’t win without Jewish money. And so his frankly disgraceful pandering is obviously intended to raise large amounts of Jewish money. A lot of what he says in that regard is clearly BS, such as the broad hints that he’ll turn America over to an AIPAC led witch hunt to find and deport anti-semites, whether on campuses or anywhere else. Well, after 2016-20 Trump knows all about witch hunts, for sure, and he knows the type of crazies you need to run them. But does he sincerely believe nonsense of that degrading sort? Or is it all just a fund raising shtick? Commenter Cassander speaks for many conservatives when he writes:

I can't give Trump a pass on the grounds that its just campaign rhetoric. I don't want to win the election by voting for a candidate who doesn't have the integrity to stand up for the bedrock rights of free speech and open debate that must be upheld if we are going to survive as a country.

This is deeply disturbing.

That Trump feels obliged to engage in a type of political theater rather than straight talk speaks volumes about where America is as a country and a society. Fortunately we have Russia Times when we need real news to restore our hope. So here we have Trump doing his patented simultaneous good cop - bad cop routine. Readers or listeners will take away what they want to hear or read, and hopefully validating Trump’s obvious belief that he can fool enough of the people …

Trump vows to play nice with Iran, maybe

Republican Party nominee has pledged to build a good relationship with Islamic Republic of Iran if he’s returned to Oval Office

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he hopes Washington will be friendly with Tehran if he returns to the White House.

He made the remarks on Thursday while speaking at a press conference in New Jersey about his plan to restore world peace.

“I’m not looking to be bad to Iran, we’re going to be friendly, I hope … maybe, but maybe not,” Trump said, after accusing Tehran of funding the Palestinian militant group Hamas. “But they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump stressed.

[I omit the portion regarding the Iran nuclear deal that Trump backed out of. We’ve discussed that, and it appears to be the case that Trump’s main objection was that it didn’t allow Boeing to sell their crappy planes to Iran.]

Earlier this week, Trump’s campaign team claimed that Iranian cybercriminals have stolen internal US documents, their goal being influencing the 2024 election. A previous cyber-intelligence report by Microsoft had warned that hackers and fake-news sites allegedly linked to Iran could be targeting an unidentified official related to a US presidential campaign.

Trump later posted on his Truth Social platform that he believed Iran was behind the attack, writing “We were just informed by Microsoft Corporation that one of our many websites was hacked by the Iranian Government – Never a nice thing to do!”

Iran’s permanent mission to the UN has denied the Trump campaign’s allegations, in a statement to Reuters, writing that “the Iranian government neither possesses [the documents alleged] nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States Presidential election.”

First. If Iran decides it want’s a nuclear weapon, how will Trump stop them? Answer: He won’t, because he can’t. So what’s the takeaway? Uhhhh. That Trump wants to be friends with everyone, including Iran? But this is an interesting time to be saying that. What’s the message, and who are the intended recipients—the Iranian government or … is this a wink and a nod to Arab and Muslim Americans? To balance his “encouragement” to Netanyahu to stop the killing. But go for the victory—however that’s defined and whoever defines it, which are two sides of the same coin.

Second. How dumb is Trump? Does he really believe that Microsoft can give him the real dope on the Iranian “hack”, if there was one? Whoever came up with this story, and whatever their reason—I personally believe it was the CIA—it probably was supposed to paint Iran as an international boogey man that should be nuked forthwith. Which just goes to show you. Trump a victim of the Teheran terror regime? Works for him! For the record, I believe the Iranian government on this one, rather than Microsoft and/or the CIA—who are probably working together, after all.

For now I think Trump will continue throwing changeups, until someone shows they can hit him. That time may come before the election, the way things are going on the international scene. If it doesn’t, well …