“The Stuff He’s Saying Is Just Incendiary”: Gary Johnson, Toughening Rhetoric, Says Donald Trump Is ‘Clearly’ Racist
Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson on Sunday went where Hillary Clinton has refused to go, saying Donald Trump is “clearly” racist.
“Based on his statements, clearly,” Johnson said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I mean, if statements are being made, is that not reflective?”
Critics of Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — including some in his own party — have said that he makes racist statements, such as when he argued that a Hispanic judge is incapable of presiding fairly over a case involving Trump University. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called that the “textbook definition of a racist comment.” But most have stopped short of declaring that Trump is racist.
Clinton, too, has distinguished between what Trump says and who he is. When MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow asked last month whether Trump is racist, this was Clinton’s response:
Well, I don’t know what’s in his heart, but I know what he’s saying with respect to the judge, that’s a racist attack. With the attacks on so many other people, he is calling them out for their ethnic background, their race, their religion, their gender. I don’t know what else you could call these attacks other than racist, other than prejudice, other than bigoted.
For Johnson, averaging about 8 percent in national polls, calling Trump racist represents a notable ratcheting up of campaign rhetoric. The mellow former governor of New Mexico said during a CNN town hall on June 22 that he did not plan to “engage in any sort of name-calling” aimed at either of the leading major-party candidates. His running mate, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, called Trump a “huckster” at that event, though.
On Sunday, Johnson initially tried to focus only on Trump’s comments — specifically his recent statement that he is “looking at” replacing Muslim Transportation Security Administration agents with veterans.
“He has said 100 things that would disqualify anyone else from running for president, but [it] doesn’t seem to affect him,” Johnson said. “And just turn the page, and here’s the page turn: Now we have another reason that might disqualify a presidential candidate. That statement [about TSA agents] in and of itself — it really is, uh, it’s racist.
Johnson added that “the stuff he’s saying is just incendiary.”
“Incendiary, but do you think he himself is racist?” asked CNN’s Brianna Keilar.
At that point, Johnson said Trump “clearly” is.
By: Callum Borchers, The Washington Post, July 3, 2016
“The Deed Is All, And Not The Glory”: Solving The Mystery Of The Unknown Flag Raiser Of Iwo Jima
On June 23rd, the Marine Corps publicly acknowledged that a previously unidentified Marine named Harold H. Schultz was one of the six men pictured in what is arguably the best-known image of the last century: Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the 1945 flag-raising on Iwo Jima.
In making the announcement, Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Robert B. Neller noted that while the “image is iconic and significant, to Marines it’s not about the individuals and never has been.”
As a Marine, I most certainly agree. Marines always put the mission first, fighting to win, and Rosenthal’s famous photo symbolizes everything that we believe to be right and good about our Corps. But as one of the filmmakers behind the documentary that unravels the confusion and misidentification of the flag-raisers, I also feel strongly that acknowledging Schultz—even 20 years after his death—is immensely important for America.
When the photo first appeared in newspapers across the country on Feb. 25, 1945, Marine Corps leadership must certainly have recognized the value of the image, particularly in terms of recruiting men for the planned invasion of Japan. But the idea that the figures in the photo should be identified came first from the Treasury Department, not the Marines. Rosenthal’s photo had been received as a gift by the ad men responsible for promoting “The Mighty Seventh” war loan, and they seized upon the image as precisely what was needed to sell more than $14 billion in bonds.
While the photo made Rosenthal an instant celebrity in the U.S., no one back on Iwo had given the flag-raising a second thought. In the words of retired Marine Col. Dave Severance, then a captain in command of the company that had taken Mt. Suribachi, “I don’t remember thinking of flags during the battle, because my hands were full. Until President Roosevelt sent word that he wanted to bring back the survivors of the flag-raising—for a bond tour—the business of the flags held no priority at all.”
In fact, the Marine Corps took no action to identify the men in the photo until nearly a month after the event, and only ordered the survivors home in response to what one public information officer described as “a personal request by President Roosevelt, who considered their return and public appearance a public morale factor.”
Several times over the past decade, as I pored over the images shot by the seven different photographers who were on Suribachi that day, I’ve wondered if our national leaders—particularly those closest to the president—ever paused to ask, “Is it necessary to identify these men?” It’s no secret that, in the eyes of many, the image’s power lies in the fact that the men are virtually faceless, symbolizing the sacrifices of every American who fought there. Would it not perhaps be best if they remained unknown?
But the Nation called them home anyway, putting a name to each of the figures in the photo, and ultimately casting their faces in bronze.
Despite the fact that the president had answered the question more than 70 years ago, our production team found ourselves regularly challenged with, “Does it really matter who these men were?” And in Schultz’s case, I can say with confidence it absolutely matters—though not for the same reasons cited by the president in 1945.
Schultz helped raise a flag on the fifth day of a month-long battle. It was a small thing. Yet he was captured in an image that symbolized much more, and despite what the photo would come to mean, he never said a word about it to anyone beyond his own dinner table.
Some have suggested Schultz would not be pleased to now be named. He never sought attention in life, so perhaps we should let him remain unknown? But it is precisely this reluctance to be recognized that makes him so worthy of our respect.
At one point in Goethe’s Faust, the hero argues, “The deed is all, and not the glory.” I know it only because it’s the kind of heady sentiment that resonates with warriors, and because those very words hang over the entrance of a select few U.S. military units as a reminder that those most worthy of honor are the ones who do not seek it.
Harold H. Schultz personifies this ideal: He was a Marine who answered his country’s call, served honorably in the bloodiest battle in the Corps’s 240-year history, and was immortalized in 1/400th of a second on a tiny bit of rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, seven thousand miles from his Detroit home.
Despite this, Schultz never sought glory for himself, and in so doing became worthy of our honor. That is why his name matters, and why we must remember.
By: Matthew W. Morgan, Lt. Col., USMC (Ret.); The Daily Beast, July 3, 2016
“Let’s Make Torture Great Again”: Donald Trump Thinks America Must Commit War Crimes As A Matter Of Principle
Hours after Tuesday’s massacre at Ataturk International Airport, Donald Trump called on America to “fight fire with fire.” The presumptive GOP nominee told supporters in Ohio that, while he likes waterboarding, it probably isn’t “tough enough.”
“We have to be so strong,” Trump said. “We have to fight so viciously. And violently because we’re dealing with violent people viciously.”
On Thursday night in New Hampshire, Trump reiterated his belief that America should hold itself to the same standard as a fascist death cult. Asked by local station NH1 to respond to Senator John McCain’s claim that torture is “not the American way,” Trump replied:
Well it’s not the American way to have heads chopped off and have people drowning in steel cages … And so we can have our disagreements, but we’re going to have to get much tougher as a country. We’re going to have to be a lot sharper and we’re going to have to do things that are unthinkable almost.
It’s worth remembering that, for the Republican standard-bearer, ordering the military to hunt down and kill the wives and children of suspected terrorists falls under the “thinkable” column.
That Donald Trump will happily court human beings’ worst instincts for political gain is not breaking news. What’s interesting about his renewed support for deliberate war crimes is that there’s no evidence such heinousness even has a political upside. In the wake of the Orlando shooting, the American people were scared. Eight in ten told pollsters from the Washington Post and ABC News that they were afraid of lone-wolf terrorism. But those respondents also overwhelmingly preferred Clinton’s response to the tragedy over Trump’s, and had more faith in her capacity to handle terrorism than they did in the mogul’s. This marks a departure from past campaign cycles, in which Republican candidates have consistently enjoyed higher marks than their Democratic rivals on matters of national security.
Part of this change can be explained by the unusually stark discrepancy between the two presumptive nominees’ levels of foreign-policy experience. But in the previous Washington Post–ABC News poll, taken in May, Trump was only three points behind Clinton on the issue of terrorism; he fell 11 points behind her in the wake of Orlando. Thus, it appears that the American people find a former secretary of State calmly laying out a detail-oriented plan for reducing terrorism to be more comforting than a real-estate mogul shouting that the nation must chose between his radical agenda and certain doom.
In light of this finding, it seems unfair to assume that Trump’s pledge to do the “unthinkable” is motivated by crass political calculations. Rather, pundits should give the presumptive GOP nominee the benefit of the doubt, and assume his support for war crimes is a genuine expression of a deeply held faith in the cleansing power of sadistic violence.
By: Eric Levitz, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, July 1, 2016
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