Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 350, Ed. 1 Tuesday, July 18, 2017 Page: 4 of 14
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OPINION
4A
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Denton Record-Chronicle
Denton Record-Chronicle
Trump forces
GOP retreat
over Russia
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Published by Denton Publishing Co.,
a subsidiary of A.H. Belo Corporation
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and the Denton Record, established in 1897.
WM Published daily as the Denton
Record-Chronicle since Aug. 3,1903.
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“There’s no question hut that the presi-
dent’s naivete with regards to Russia,
and his faulty judgment about Russia’s
intentions and objectives, has led to a
number of foreign policy challenges that
we face. And unfortunately, not having
anticipated Russia’s intentions, the presi-
dent wasn’t able to shape the kinds of
events that may have been able to pre-
vent the kinds of circumstances that
you’re seeing in the Ukraine, as well as
the things that you’re seeing in Syria....
This is not Fantasyland. This is reality
where they are a geopolitical adversary.”
— Mitt Romney, March 23, 2014,
on Barack Obama
23
/ \
EDITORIAL BOARD
Bill Patterson
Publisher and CEO
Scott K. Parks
Managing Editor
Mark Finley
City Editor
Mariel Tarn-Ray
News Editor
PAST PUBLISHERS
William C. “Will” Edwards
1903-1927
Robert J. “Bob” Edwards
1927-1945
Riley Cross
1945-1970
Vivian Cross
1970-1986
Fred Patterson
1986-1999
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Editorials published in the Denton Record-Chronicle
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f there has been any defining trait
among modern Republicans, it’s their
ingrained distrust of Russia. For de-
cades, the GOP made a habit of accusing
its opponents of being weak-kneed and
gullible about Moscow’s intentions. If Don-
ald Trump had been elected president as a
Democrat, they would be painting him as
the most craven appeaser since Neville
Chamberlain.
But he was elected
as a Republican,
which has required
some reorientation in
the GOP. A lot of
Republican voters
have simply turned
their worldview upside
down. One recent poll
found that only one in
four thinks Russia
should be treated
mainly as a threat - with the rest pre-
ferring warmer ties.
GOP officeholders, caught in the mid-
dle, are generally wary of Trump’s policy
toward Moscow. By a 98-2 vote, the Re-
publican-controlled Senate passed a bill to
tighten the sanctions imposed by the Oba-
ma administration, which the president
opposes. But the measure has stalled in the
House. And most of the party’s members of
Congress have done their best to downplay
or excuse Trump’s strange fondness for
Vladimir Putin.
That remained true even after the reve-
lation that Donald Trump, Jr. met last year
with someone he believed was a Russian
government lawyer offering “sensitive in-
formation” on Hillary Clinton as “part of
Russia and its government’s support for
Mr. Trump.”
If this was not collusion between the
Trump campaign and the Russian govern-
ment, it was a conscious attempt at collu-
sion with a hostile government on the part
of the candidate’s son. No wonder Donald
Jr. lied about it until his emails were ex-
I
Claims about transparency
are actually quite deceptive
ahbelo.com NYSE symbol: AHC
Editorial: Our View
“ime to fix state
Democratic Party
he White House seems to have
settled upon a talking point to de-
fend Donald Trump Jr.: Look at how
transparent he’s being! After Trump Jr. on
Tuesday publicly released those old emails
in which he arranged a meeting with a
Russian lawyer, he and his dad couldn’t
stop using that word.
■ “To everyone, in
order to be totally
transparent, I am
releasing the entire
email chain of my
emails with Rob Gold-
stone [publicist for a
Russian pop mu-
sician] about the
meeting on June 9,
2016,” Trump Jr. said
in a statement accom-
panying the emails.
■ “My son is a high-quality person and
I applaud his transparency,” President
Donald Trump said in a brief statement
later Tuesday.
■ “My son Donald did a good job last
night. He was open, transparent and in-
nocent,” the elder Trump tweeted Wednes-
day morning after Trump Jr.’s Fox News
appearance.
■ “I’m more than happy to be transpar-
ent about it, and I’m more than happy to
cooperate with everyone,” Trump Jr. said in
that interview.
If this is the best argument the White
House has, they are really in trouble. First of
all, Trump Jr’s actions in this whole matter
have been markedly nontransparent When
The New York Times reported on his meet-
ing with the Russian lawyer, he said it was
primarily about adoption — conveniently
leaving out that the meeting was arranged as
a means to obtain Russian government dirt
on Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. has also said in
the past that he never met with any Russians
about the campaign, which has now been
directly and completely contradicted.
And secondly, saying Trump Jr. has
been transparent is a little like saying
someone who forfeited their wallet while
being mugged was being generous. It may
have sped up the process and saved some
drama, but handing over the emails/mon-
ey wasn’t really a choice.
Why? Because even as Trump Jr. was
releasing those emails on Twitter, the New
York Times was publishing a story based
upon them; it already had them in its pos-
session. In its story on them, the Times said
it sought comment from Trump Jr., but he
didn’t respond and then released the emails
on his own. This is called getting ahead of
the story. It may be a neat trick politically,
but it’s not transparent And the emails were,
in all likelihood, going to come out regard-
less of what he did.
“They said they were working on a
statement,” Times reporter Adam Goldman
told Erik Wemple. “The next thing we
know, Donald started dumping the emails
on Twitter.”
About the only argument that this had
some transparency benefit is that it con-
firmed the Times’s reporting — making it so
people would believe the emails were genu-
ine. Basically, Jr. was forfeiting the ability to
claim that the Times’ story was “fake news.”
But that’s a really low bar for transparency.
The final point is that, however trans-
parent this move might have been, that’s
apparently not the White House’s MO
going forward. At the daily White House
press briefing just hours after Trump Jr.
tweeted his emails, deputy press secretary
Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeatedly
turned aside questions about the matter,
saying she wouldn’t expand upon the brief
statement in bullet point No. 2 above. It
happened over and over and over again,
with Huckabee Sanders not even touching
things tangentially related to that meeting.
At one point, she was asked whether
there were other meetings with Russian
nationals that the White House might now
disclose. “There’s nothing that I’m aware of
at this time,” Huckabee Sanders said.
The media has reported for months on
meetings with Russians after the White
House and its allies failed to disclose them
or misled about them. Yet the Trump team
apparently hasn’t done a full accounting of
such meetings or doesn’t want to share
that information. Until it does — and until
it doesn’t take four days of New York Times
stories for Trump Jr. to come clean about
such meetings — that transparency claim
rings pretty hollow.
And in fact, you can make a pretty
strong argument that claiming transparen-
cy like this is the opposite of transparency:
It’s deceptive.
AARON BLAKE is senior political
reporter for The Fix, The Washington Post’
s political analysis blog.
T
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21
omeone needs to reinvent the Democratic Party of
Texas.
Maybe that someone is Dallas billionaire and
television personality Mark Cuban, who floats periodic
trial balloons about running for president as a Democrat
in 2020.
Maybe Cuban should stay home and rescue the state
Democratic Party from obscurity. We hear that Demo-
crats are having trouble fielding a good candidate for
governor against Greg Abbott. Perhaps Cuban and his
money could give Abbott some stiff competition next year.
We were taught in school that two political parties
competing against each other is a good thing. Competi-
tion between Ford and Chevrolet spawns innovation and
creativity. The same is true in sports.
We currently have a one-party political system in Tex-
as. The Democratic Party in Texas is moribund and irrele-
vant in all but a few urban strongholds such as Dallas and
Travis and Harris counties. Democrats are still strong in
the predominantly Latino Rio Grande Valley.
We are a red state through and through. A few key
statistics tell the tale better than words.
A Democrat has not won a statewide election since Lt.
Gov. Bob Bullock was re-elected in 1994. During the 23
years between then and now, Republicans have won ex-
actly 100 percent of the contests for U.S. senator, gover-
nor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, agriculture
commissioner, land commissioner, railroad commissioner,
state comptroller, Texas Supreme Court and Texas Court
of Criminal Appeals.
Yes, the GOP has pitched a shutout for more than two
decades.
The state’s congressional delegation consists of two
Republican U.S. senators, 25 Republican members of the
U.S. House and 11 Democratic House members.
In the Texas Legislature, the GOP holds a dominant 95
to 55 majority in the House and a 20 to 11 majority in the
Senate.
The Democratic Party desperately needs an infusion of
new leaders and new ideas. For more than 20 years, the
party has been waiting for large numbers of Hispanic
voters to turn out at the ballot box and save the party.
Counting on them is not a strategy. It’s an excuse for
losing. When the next elections are lost in 2018, the same
Democratic mouthpieces will blame Hispanic citizens for
not voting.
To be successful, Democrats must craft messages that
appeal to white suburban and rural voters. They already
have blacks, Hispanics, gays/lesbians, feminists, environ-
mentalists, prison reformers, marijuana legalizers and
organized labor in their camp. All of those constituencies
combined have not won elections.
So the question becomes how to craft an appeal to
white Republican moderates and political independents
without taking positions on issues that alienate the party’s
existing base.
And this brings us back to Mark Cuban. If Trump’s
election tells us anything, it is that we have entered a
political era marked by the cult of personality. No longer
is it necessary for a candidate to work her way up from
state representative to state senator to governor or U.S.
senator.
A few years of intense exposure on a network reality
show replaces political entries on the candidate resume.
Someone must rejuvenate the state Democratic Party
to bring the Lone Star state’s body politic back into bal-
ance.
S
Steve
Chapman
-4
Aaron
Blake
posed.
That the Russian failed to produce what
she promised doesn’t make the meeting
any less incriminating for Trump. If you
give money to someone you believe is a hit
man to kill your spouse, you can’t claim
innocence when he disappears without
doing the job.
But many Republicans who should have
been objecting couldn’t bring themselves to
speak up. Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan
were practically mute. When asked if the
news was cause for concern, Sen. Bob
Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee, said, “No.”
Only a few longtime Trump critics,
notably John McCain and Lindsey Gra-
ham, were vocally disgusted by what they
had learned. Many of their colleagues are
just hoping Trump and those around him
are not obviously guilty of major felonies.
The standard for presidents used to be
higher. In 1980, Ronald Reagan accused
President Jimmy Carter of “cozying up” to
the Soviet Union. In 1992, President George
Bush attacked Bill Clinton for traveling to
Moscow as a student in 1969. Even after
Letters to the editor
When will Trump pay price?
Those who voted for Trump are good peo-
ple. Even those who attack the other side with
“Democrap” and “Iibtard” are good people.
They believe in country, honesty, loyalty and a
man’s word is his bond. They are fiercely loyal
to their cause and firmly believe what they are
doing is right The changing world has, for the
most part, left them behind with loss of jobs,
migration to the cities, and a shrinking world
full of people who don’t look or think like
them. None of these things detract from the
fact they are good people.
I wonder why, given that strong loyalty
and sense of honor, they still stick with a
man who has lied to them from the start? He
was to help them get jobs; that has not hap-
pened. He was supposed to make healthcare
affordable; that has not happened. He was
supposed to “Make America Great Again,”
and all he has done is isolate the U.S. He was
supposed to be honest with the people who
elected him, but he joined forces with our
worst enemy against the very system that
SUBMISSIONS
Letters for publication must include the writer’s
name, address and telephone number.
The Record-Chronicle reserves the right to edit
letters for length. Letters should be typed or
legibly handwritten and be 250 or fewer words.
We prefer email submissions.
Send to: drc@dentonrc.com.
Otherwise, fax to 940-566-6888, or mail to:
Letters to the editor
P.0. Box 369
Denton, TX 76202
communism collapsed and the pro-Amer-
ican Boris Yeltsin was elected president, Sen.
Bob Dole ran in 1996, charging that Clinton
“cherishes romantic illusions about the soul
of a former adversary”
Romney flayed Obama in 2012 for
telling Russian President Dmitry Med-
vedev he would have “more flexibility’ on
policies affecting Russia after the election.
“I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses,”
Romney vowed.
In the past, the GOP demanded that
presidents recognize the threat posed by
the Russian government, understand the
policies needed to counter it and have the
backbone to stand up to any challenge.
Trump, by their own criteria, has failed
each of these tests.
Obama was vilified as a Russian patsy
for actions that don’t remotely approach
what we know Trump and his circle have
done. Today, all but a few congressional
Republicans avert their eyes and swallow
their tongues. Most of them, however, must
be appalled to see the nation’s security in
the hands of someone so willing to over-
look Putin’s malicious behavior.
It may not be clear to them that Trump
should be impeached. But by now, they
have to know he can’t be trusted.
STEVE CHAPMAN writes for the
Chicago Tribune. His column is distrib-
uted by Creators Syndicate Inc.
made America great in the first place.
At what point will these good people (and
I really believe they are good people) decide
they have been duped and turn away?
If their neighbor had lied to them, the
neighbor would have paid a price. At what
point will Trump pay a price for disloyalty to
those he gave his promise?
This day in history: July 18
William Reed,
Denton
Today is Tuesday, July 18,
the 199th day of 2017. There
are 166 days left in the year.
On July 18,1947, President
Harry S. Truman signed a Presi-
dential Succession Act which
placed the speaker of the House
and the Senate president pro
tempore next in the line of suc-
cession after the vice president.
In A.D. 64, the Great Fire of
Rome began, consuming most
of the city for about a week.
(Some blamed the fire on Em-
peror Nero, who in turn blamed
Christians.)
In 1536, the English Parlia-
ment passed an act declaring the
authority of the pope void in
England.
In 1927, Ty Cobb hit safely
for the 4,000th time in his ca-
reer during a game between the
Philadelphia Athletics (his new
team) and the Detroit Tigers
(his old one) at Navin Field.
(The Tigers won, 5-3.)
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 350, Ed. 1 Tuesday, July 18, 2017, newspaper, July 18, 2017; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1131653/m1/4/?q=green+energy: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .