Condoleezza Rice chides Trump for criticism of judges, media

[webfact]

Rice chides Trump for criticism of judges, media

By Arshad Mohammed

REUTERS

 

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice poses for a portrait while promoting her new book "Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom" in New York, U.S. May 8, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday she would prefer that President Donald Trump not criticise judges and the media but that U.S. democratic institutions can withstand such comments.

 

Speaking in an interview, Rice also described Trump as having a somewhat "transactional" view of foreign relations but she broadly endorsed his approach of seeking to enlist China's help to get North Korea to rein in its nuclear programme.

 

Asked about Trump lashing out at judges when rulings go against him and describing the media as "the enemy of the people," Rice replied: "It’s language that I would prefer not to hear.

 

"But I don’t think that you can erode the scaffolding of democracy in the United States," she added during a tour to promote her book "Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom."

 

Rice, national security adviser and secretary of state under Republican former President George W. Bush, is now a professor at Stanford University.

 

She described U.S. institutions as "very strong" and said Trump "may have even found himself a bit surprised by how constraining that scaffolding really is."

 

Courts have blocked parts of two Trump executive orders that sought to temporarily ban entry to the United States for people from six Muslim-majority countries.

 

In a 30-minute interview, Rice said the United States needed to find a way to punish Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. election but without engaging in 'tit-for-tat' retaliation by meddling in Russian elections.

 

She suggested prosecuting anyone in the United States who took part in what intelligence agencies believe was a deliberate effort to sway the presidential election in Trump's favour, and to consider putting sanctions, such as visa bans, on people who did so from abroad.

 

'TRANSACTIONAL VIEW'

 

Rice, who has interspersed periods in public service with academic posts, suggested Trump, a New York real estate magnate, may see foreign policy more in terms of striking deals than finding common interests.

 

Before meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping last month, Trump suggested China might get better trade deals with the United States if it put more pressure on North Korea to restrain its nuclear and missile programs.

 

"The president still has a kind of transactional view of international politics but, in fact, interests are more enduring than transactions," Rice said.

 

However, Rice endorsed Trump's policy of trying to enlist Chinese help against North Korea, which is believed to have conducted five nuclear tests since 2006 and to be developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike the U.S. mainland.

 

China, the North's main trading partner and the closest thing it has to an ally, has historically been unwilling to tighten the economic screws on Pyongyang for fear of triggering a collapse and sending millions of refugees across the border.

 

Rice said the U.S. task was to convince the Chinese that they had to choose between doing "really hard things to bring this regime into line or we will have to do harsh things."

 

The former secretary of state also said North Korea's current leader, Kim Jong Un, is far less predictable than his father, Kim Jong Il, and may not be fully rational.

 

"Kim Jong Un is far more reckless than his father ... I wonder if he is not a little unhinged," she said. "I wonder if the Chinese aren’t beginning to reconsider their view that ... a stable North Korean regime, even if it is nuclear-armed, is better than an unstable one."

 

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Frances Kerry)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-05-09

[Traveler19491]

When you have someone as far to the right as Rice is slamming Trump's "approach" to foreign affairs, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement for his understanding of the complexities of diplomacy. "Who knew foreign relations were so complicated?" Trump's "transactional view" is precisely why you don't want a businessman in charge of the government. Government never has, never will, and can not be run as a business. The objectives of the two are mutually exclusive. Government's objective is to serve the broadest range of people possible, providing them with defense, security, economic stability, opportunity, protection against abusive practices, enforcement of laws and regulations, intervention when necessary to eliminate the excesses of the greedy and dishonest, and protection of their rights. Business, on the other hand, is diametrically opposed to the majority of those objectives. The objective of business is to maximize profit. Period. The majority of government's objectives stand in direct contrast to those aims. Maximization of profit necessarily comes at the expense of workers, the consuming public, and the environment. Maximization of profit endorses such things as child labor, unsafe labor practices, pollution, exploitation of consumers, and the valuing of short-term advancement over long-term strategy. Trump's endorsement of this philosophy is apparent in his rolling back of environmental regulations, his push to eliminate oversight of Wall Street, his bringing back of student debt collectors, his desire to eliminate the provisions of Dodd-Frank, his willingness to embrace the permitting of Wall Street to engage in unethical practices with average investors, and his appraisal of world affairs as an either/or scenario, refusing to recognize the myriad shades of gray that compose global interactions. His desire to be the biggest bully on the block and "force" every other world body to accept our way might work in business where money rules, but in the international affairs arena it's no longer about money. It's all about power and positioning. And while the US might have the greatest military might in history, the fact that we could wind up isolated with no allies could easily mean we would have a difficult time utilizing that might. When our allies no longer permit us to use their ports or force us to withdraw our air and army bases that will have a huge negative impact on our ability to use our military should we ever need to. It can be argued that doing so would not be in the best interests of those same allies, but when they determine that maintaining those strategic alliances are no longer beneficial to them, or that they can band together on their own and provide the same benefits without the aid of the US, that will only harm us. In short, Trump is a person of limited vision and a clear inability to grasp how government is supposed to function, which means that he poses a very real existential threat to the well-being of America.

[thaibeachlovers]

Hmmmm. Given that she was a terrible Sec State she's got a cheek coming out of the shadows where she has been since Obama got elected. IMO she was as bad as Bush, and he was as bad as it would be possible to be.

[thaibeachlovers]

8 hours ago, Traveler19491 said:

 When our allies no longer permit us to use their ports or force us to withdraw our air and army bases that will have a huge negative impact on our ability to use our military should we ever need to. It can be argued that doing so would not be in the best interests of those same allies, but when they determine that maintaining those strategic alliances are no longer beneficial to them, or that they can band together on their own and provide the same benefits without the aid of the US, that will only harm us. 

I hope they do kick the US out. The whining ingrates don't deserve the US to protect them. None of them pay their fair share of the cost to the US to protect them. Sth Korea should grovel in gratitude to the US, but they just complain and expect the US to pay for the anti missile system.

Trump should use the money saved to build his wall.

[Elfin]

Combination Fried Rice surfaces again 

[Traveler19491]

On 5/9/2017 at 8:30 PM, thaibeachlovers said:

I hope they do kick the US out. The whining ingrates don't deserve the US to protect them. None of them pay their fair share of the cost to the US to protect them. Sth Korea should grovel in gratitude to the US, but they just complain and expect the US to pay for the anti missile system.

Trump should use the money saved to build his wall.

 

 

Sorry, you'll have to give me a minute. I just spit coffee out my nose. "Wall". Now that's genuinely funny. The wall. The "big, beautiful wall" that he can't get any money from Congress for. The "wall" that has now become a fence. The "wall" that some in the so-called administration are now saying could be "euphemistically" referring to drones and increased ICE presence. The "wall" that dozens of property owners along the border are now suing to prevent after discovering their homes will wind up on the Mexico side. The "wall" that not one single Republican in Congress from the border areas is supporting. That wall. Thanks for the comic relief. Give the clown an oversized box of Legos and send the idiot down to Texas. At least that might keep him away from his Twitter account for a few days.

Edited May 10, 2017 by Traveler19491

[tonbridgebrit]

Condoleezza Rice ??
Condoleeza, most people regard you as some black woman who made it big in a White House that had right-wing Republicans headed by George W Bush.  The Republicans today, lead by Trump, they want to distance themselves from the Republicans of the George Bush era.

So, the New Republicans today, they don't actually want to know you.

And the Democrats ?  They didn't like you during the Bush era. And they still don't like you, today. Please, just stay away from the newspapers.