Greg Sargent:
On Morning Joe today, Donald Trump staked out another position that could — or at least should — force a real debate among Republicans that previously might have remained mostly walled off from discussion by GOP orthodoxy. This time the topic was Iran.
Trump all but ridiculed his GOP rivals for their claim that on Day One, they would promptly tear up the Iran deal into little pieces and flush them down the toilet, along with the rest of the Obama presidency. Trump said that “life doesn’t work that way,” and vowed instead to do a better job implementing it than anyone else, claiming: “I will be so tough.”
Asked by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius how he’d approach the Iran deal as president, here’s what Trump said:
“I think that it is a disastrous deal in so many ways…we have a horrible contract. But we do have a contract. I love to buy bad contracts when people go bust and I make those contracts good….
“I know it would be very popular for me to do what a couple of them said, ‘we’re gonna rip it up, we’re gonna rip it up.’…
“Iran is gonna be an absolute terror, and it’s horrible that we have to live with it. Nevertheless, we have a contract. We lost the power of sanctions because all of these other folks, these other countries that are with us are gone now, and by the way, making money…everybody is involved now with Iran selling themselves. We’re probably going to be the only ones that won’t be selling them anything….
“I will make that agreement so tough. And if they break it, they will have hell to pay….Politically, and certainly for the nomination, I would love to tell you that I’m gonna rip up this contract, I’m going to be the toughest guy in the world. But you know what? Life doesn’t work that way.”
Buried in that rambling monologue is an actual argument: unilaterally scrapping the Iran agreement is a pipe dream that would have all kinds of negative consequences, leaving the U.S. isolated, as our allies would not see it in their interests to reimpose sanctions; claiming you’d rip up the deal is politically pleasing, but it is an illusory posture of “toughness”; the more responsible and genuinely “tough” position is to vow to implement the deal with extreme vigilance against Iran cheating.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Reihan Salam:
Fear of “white nationalism” is very much in vogue. To Thomas Edsall, writing in the New York Times, the rise of Donald Trump is a predictable consequence of the fact that the Republican Party is “the home of an often angry and resentful white constituency,” which fears that discrimination against whites is a growing problem. Evan Osnos of the New Yorker, in a similar vein, seeks to explain the Trump phenomenon by viewing it through the lens of radical white nationalists, who warn that white Americans face cultural genocide as their numerical majority shrinks. Ben Domenech, publisher of the Federalist, argues that Republicans face a choice: They can build their coalition around a more inclusive libertarian vision, the path that he prefers, or they can follow Trump and redefine themselves as the defenders of white interests in a bitterly divided multiracial society.
Does Donald Trump represent the ascendancy of white nationalism on the American right? I’m skeptical, for a number of reasons. While anti-immigration rhetoric is certainly a big part of Trump’s appeal, it is also true that he fares particularly well among the minority of Republican voters who identify themselves as moderate or liberal. As a general rule, moderate and liberal Republicans are more favorably inclined toward amnesty and affirmative action than their conservative counterparts. Moreover, as Jason Willick of the American Interest has observed, the leading second-choice candidates are Ben Carson, the black neurosurgeon, and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both of whom are senators of Cuban descent, the latter of whom played a leading role in crafting immigration reform legislation. Granted, it could still be true that Trump is benefiting from white racial resentment. It’s just not clear to me that Trump is anything more than Herman Cain with an extra billion or so dollars in the bank and over a decade’s worth of experience as host of one of network television’s most popular reality shows.
The Hill:
[Kareem] Abdul-Jabbar has been feuding with Trump following a Washington Post column he penned critical of the New York business mogul.
Trump reportedly responded by penning a handwritten note on the offending article and sending it to the former professional athlete.
“Kareem – Now I know why the press always treated you so badly – they couldn’t stand you,” he wrote, according to The Washington Post.
“The fact is that you don’t have a clue about life and what has to be done to make America great again."
WaPo:
Call him Europe’s Donald Trump.
Hungary’s maverick Prime Minister Viktor Orban is emerging as the straight-talking voice of right-wing Europe, vowing to block a wave of desperate refugees from seeking sanctuary in the region. Continuing a string of blunt statements of a sort rarely heard from heads of state on this side of the Atlantic, he warned Friday that Europeans now stand to become “a minority in our own continent” if the floodgates are not immediately closed.
Trump dreams of building a wall to keep migrants out. But Orban, 52, has actually done it — erecting 109 miles of razor wire to stop them. Authorities in Hungary, a key transit nation for asylum-seekers aiming for generous European nations offering shelter including Germany and Sweden, have been preventing them from moving on and shuttling them to camps, in part to dissuade more from coming. Under international pressure Friday, Hungary agreed to bus some of the blockaded asylum-seekers to Austria. But it remained unclear whether the Austrians would accept them and what would happen to the thousands of refugees stuck in Hungarian camps.
WaPo:
Orban, a right-wing populist, has been one of the most outspoken voices against resettling tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in Europe. He has used this crisis to cast himself as the legionary on the parapets, staring down the alien hordes that threaten to overwhelm European civilization.
"We shouldn’t forget that the people who are coming here grew up in a different religion and represent a completely different culture. Most are not Christian, but Muslim," Orban wrote in a column printed in a German newspaper Thursday. "That is an important question, because Europe and European culture have Christian roots," he added.
As WorldViews noted earlier, Orban's embrace of Christian nationalism is a relatively recent turn for a once-avowed atheist. But it is in keeping with Hungary's political present, where critics decry Orban's mixture of strong-man demagoguery and xenophobic rhetoric.
Ah, I knew something was missing with Trump. The Ottoman Empire! Not enough Ottoman Empire in his speeches. That's what we need to fear!
Let's go through this again. One reason Trump is up is because everyone else sucks.
Take a look at Bush and Walker since the debates. Ouch.
Reuters:
Saudi Arabia is satisfied with assurances from U.S. President Barack Obama about the Iran nuclear deal and believes the agreement will contribute to security and stability in the Middle East, a senior Saudi official said on Friday.
Saudi King Salman met with Obama at the White House on Friday to seek more support in countering Iran, as the Obama administration aimed to use the visit to shore up relations after a period of tensions.
The visit is the king's first to the United States since ascending to the throne in January 2015, and comes after the United States agreed to a nuclear deal with Iran in July.
Ah, well. Another talking point down the drain.
James Warren:
When Mary Panzer saw the photos that have at least momentarily focused world attention on a long-term tragedy, she wondered about what the images didn’t make clear.
She wondered about the partial story they told.
Panzer, a New York photography expert, curator and historian, was troubled “that we don’t see pictures of the mothers. This makes it seem as if their parents have abandoned them, deliberately put them in danger, which is partly true. But why did they do it?”
“To escape unendurable conditions? Where are they coming from? What did they leave? Why have they no resources better than a boat that’s sure to sink?” asked Panzer, the former curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
But the photos also were consistent with a long history of gripping photos of children, she notes, especially as they attract attention to atrocities.
Justin Peters [warning: graphic photo at link]:
News Organizations That Chose Not to Run the Most Horrific Photo of the Dead Syrian Boy Were Wrong