Trump and Clinton are nothing alike IMHO
Here's something posted today from BozzeBurge spinning the Web.
They're not the same, but they are too alike.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-18/what-donald-trump-and-bill-clinton-have-in-common
April 18, 2018, 11:00 AM GMT+2
Watching Donald Trump's presidency lunge and wobble from scandal to crisis, a Bill Clinton deja vu sets in. We've been here before. The
independent prosecutors. Corruption probes that turn up adultery. The
lies and the
pardons. The cover-ups and the
payoffs.
Friday's missile strikes in Syria encapsulate the Trump-Clinton parallel universe. HBO host Bill Maher called it "
Operation Desert Stormy," suggesting the military operation was meant to distract from the FBI raid of Michael Cohen's office, home and hotel room. Cohen is alleged to have paid for the silence of Stormy Daniels, the former pornographic performer who says she had a steamy evening with Trump back in 2006.
It's reminiscent of the chatter about Clinton's airstrikes against an aspirin factory in Sudan and some al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan back in 1998. It was the same day his former intern
Monica Lewinsky returned to testify before a grand jury. Even the weapon used was the same: the cruise missile.
There's also the self-pitying paranoia. As first lady, Hillary Clinton famously described her husband's pursuers as a "
vast right-wing conspiracy," arguing the political opponents set out to destroy him from the beginning. Trump rants on Twitter about the "
deep state" trying to do the same thing.
Feminist leaders, who would never have excused Clinton's harassment and predations in other contexts,
defended him in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal. Today it's evangelicals who
debase themselves and sacrifice their principles to excuse away the same moral failings they decried in Clinton.
Make no mistake: Clinton and Trump are not equivalent. Clinton was a wonk who mastered the details of policy. Trump often makes policy on the fly, surprising even his cabinet. Just see the president's tweets about punishing Syria for the chemical weapons attack before his military had finished drawing up options for a response. Clinton had some strained relationships with his cabinet, particularly in his first term. But he trusted his top officials as they pursued a coherent policy agenda, unlike during Trump's term so far.
And while both presidents had fraught relationships with the FBI, Clinton restrained his resentment while Trump’s spirals out of control. Clinton was dogged by his second FBI director, Louis Freeh, who investigated everything from his sex life to his campaign's financing. But Clinton never fired him, as Trump did with his first FBI director, James Comey. Clinton never publicly called for him to be jailed either, as Trump has done this week with Comey.
What the two men do share are character flaws that rise to the surface and curdle their presidencies. Trump is not Clinton, but a grotesque echo. This manifests in two ways: how they lie and how they are corrupted.
Let's start with lying. Clinton lied like a lawyer. He parsed. Under oath, he answered the accusation that he lied about his affair with Lewinsky by saying it depended on the meaning of the word "
is." This kind of dissembling is nauseating, but it's also familiar. Omissions, elisions and faulty memory now count as conventional deception in Washington.
Trump lies like a late-night infomercial. He spews hyperbole and nonsense. He promises to build a wall and he promises that Mexico will pay for it. He compels his supporters and staff to repeat his lies, like instructing his first White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, to insist his inauguration had the
largest crowds in history. He assures us that his campaign had no contacts with Russia, even though he was seeking to build a
hotel in Moscow when he was running for office.
This brings us to how Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are corrupted. For Trump, there is a real prospect that the sitting president is making public policy to advance his private interests. He declined to
divest from his real-estate empire upon taking the office. This sort of concern appears to be the
direction of Mueller's investigation. He is now probing the influence of the
United Arab Emirates on Trump's inner circle, though the inquiry was initiated to focus on Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. And while there is still the possibility of collusion between the Trump circle and the Russian state, so far the Trump administration's relatively tough
policy record challenges the theory that Moscow got something in return for its electoral assistance.
The U.S. certainly must brace for the nightmare that Trump is monetizing his presidency. In at least one case, in fact, he is under scrutiny for accepting a cash donation to his charitable foundation from the same Ukrainian oligarch who has given millions of dollars to the Clintons' since 2006.
Clinton didn’t cash in while in the White House, but his fundraising after leaving office has tarnished American politics nevertheless. In the case of Clinton, fundraising as an ex-president smelled particularly bad because his wife was a senator and then secretary of state. She was also running for president in this period, both in 2008 and 2016.
To bring this full circle, the
New York Times reported last week that Mueller is now investigating a 2015 contribution of $150,000 from that oligarch, Victor Pinchuk, to Trump's charitable foundation in exchange for Trump appearing by video at a conference in Kiev. Pinchuk has also made contributions in excess of $13 million to the Clinton Foundation. He attended
a dinner for the foundation's donors with Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state.
Trump's supporters have seized on this, implying that the obvious hypocrisy somehow excuses Trump. But that misses the point.
Twenty years ago, resurgent House Republicans impeached Clinton for lying under oath. And Democrats defended a president with the same sort of moral failings they insist make Trump unfit for office.
Also Billboy and Hilary were hangout (or hiding out) in Ireland and other Euro countries for time.
Bill Clinton on sleepless nights in 1998, Bertie trying to keep him up till dawn and Northern Ireland's similarities with Black Panther
TheJournal.ie
Bill Clinton shared his memories of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, 20 years ago today.
http://www.thejournal.ie/bill-clinton-ucd-northern-ireland-3949056-Apr2018/
Apr 10th 2018, 7:05 AM
Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair (Left) and former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern signing the Good Friday Agreement.
THE NIGHT BEFORE the Good Friday Agreement was signed former US President Bill Clinton said he didn’t get to bed until 2.30am as he was up making last-minute phone calls.
Gerry Adams, David Trimble, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair were all on his call list.
The deadline to get a deal over the line was Holy Thursday – and that deadline had passed.
Speaking at a packed out UCD event yesterday, which included guests such as businessman (and close friend to the former president) Denis O’Brien, former Irish Ambassador to the US Anne Anderson, and Irish hotelier John Fitzpatrick, Clinton said the former US Senator George Mitchell – who had been appointed to chair the Belfast talks – woke him up again at 5am urging him to get back on the phone.
“Damn it George, I’ve been up all night,” Clinton told Mitchell.
“You were the one that gave me this part-time job. You swore it was a part-time job. We may as well make the best of it,” replied the senator.
In the end, the landmark 35-page deal which brought about an end to the violence of the Troubles was agreed. Today marks the 20th anniversary of its signing.
“And it was not free,” Clinton told the crowd last night. “These deals require sacrifice and compromise. It’s never easy and it’s not free.”
Sacrifices
Former US President Bill Clinton during his speech to the University College Dublin last night.
He said many made sacrifices had been made, not least the people of Northern Ireland, who he said had grown weary of children being killed on the streets and weary of “deprivation bourne of a dog-eat-dog world”.
Politicians took a leap too, he said. Many knew it would be unpopular with voters. He referenced the decline of the UUP and the SDLP in the wake of the agreement.
“David Trimble was not a dummy and John Hume certainly wasn’t. They knew they were putting their political parties at risk, and they did it.”
He also paid tribute to former UK Prime Minister John Major who he said put the issue on the agenda, and risked his narrow parliamentary majority in the early 1990s “to start this”.
“Oftentimes it is the people that stick their neck out that don’t get the credit they deserve,” he told the packed-out auditorium.
Just six weeks after agreement was signed off, a referendum was held in both the North and the Republic. Catholic voters in the North passed it by over 90% – but Clinton said it was notable that the Protestant community also voted in favour of the agreement.
“It was going to change everything,” said Clinton.
He said the unionists signed up to the accord as they knew that, in years to come, when they were no longer in the majority, they would be treated fairly under the agreement.
“That was the leap they took,” he said.
In order to honour the risks people took in the past, Clinton urged the people of Ireland not to take peace for granted, and urged the leaders in the North to get the Stormont institutions back up and running again or face the possibility of returning to the
“hell” of the Troubles.
The great struggle of the 21st Century is over identity, said Clinton. People are seeking to define questions, such as ‘who am I? How do I relate to you?’.
He said the oldest conflict in human society is “us versus them – my identity is so separate from yours, what separates us is more important that what we have in common”.
He pointed out that this is exactly what the Good Friday Agreement aimed to tackle head-on, two decades ago.
“The Irish peace agreement is how to get from here to there,” he said.
The Good Friday Agreement is a “beacon of hope” according to the former president. He said the world was watching on 10 April 1998 – adding that they are watching now too.
Comparisons with Black Panther (The Movie)
In a rather interesting departure from the usual rhetoric surrounding politics and the peace agreement, the former president told the UCD students last night that there were similarities to be drawn between the agreement and the blockbuster movie Black Panther.
The audience weren’t sure where Clinton was going with the comparison at first – but he explained there was a lot of
debate Stateside about the movie’s success.
Clinton said the film operated on a lot of levels, but that ultimately it is “an African morality tale”.
“Black Panther is what I would call inclusive tribalism. They are all proud of their identity. The good guys aren’t all perfect and the bad guys aren’t all that bad and they have to find a way to come together,” said Clinton.
Clinton and Ireland
Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, Clinton has returned to Ireland on many occasions over the years.
In 2000, this reporter remembers being pressed up against a shop window when Bill, Hillary and their daughter, Chelsea, brought Dublin to a standstill when they decided to stop by and do a
bit of shopping in the Blarney Woollen Mills.
Last night, Clinton recalled an event in 2001, when he travelled to Ireland to celebrate the establishment of the Clinton Institute in UCD, which recognises the role the US played in the peace process in Northern Ireland.
Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern was someone the president had become fast friends with during the talks. Clinton told the student audience yesterday evening that Ahern said they had to mark the momentous occasion by staying up until at least 3.30am to celebrate.
Clinton said he couldn’t as he was due to fly back to the US. He argued that the dinner had to finish by 1.15am, but the former Taoiseach was having none of it.
“He said the Irish cannot give you a proper celebratory dinner unless we go on till fifteen minutes to three in the morning and he was dead serious. I said ‘Bertie, we’ll just have to cram it in,’” recalled Clinton.
“Bono introduced me with his wife, less than 24 hours after their last child was born. It was your typical Irish event,” he said, through laughter, adding:
I remember everything about it. At that time it was sort of fun to stay up half the night, though I felt bad I cheated Bertie out of an hour and a half of celebrations. Then, twenty years ago, when we did stay up till 2.30am, we ended up with a fine piece of work.
“20 years ago, some brave people cleared a space for the miraculous,” he concluded.
“You should fill it.”
