Meet Sebastian Gorka, Another Sick, Dangerous Nazi Trump Has Brought Into The Government

Fox's pajama boy Nazi Sebastian Gorka never tells the truth about anything-- never

Elizabeth Warren is being pummeled by Republicans trying to demonize her. I imagine this will go on not just from now until her 2018 reelection, but from now 'til her 2020 presidential nomination. Yesterday she told her supporters why the attacks from the far right don't phase her-- her beliefs are strong and clear. Here's what she laid out as why the GOP attacks don't get to her:

• I believe that the big banks need tougher rules and more accountability-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for Wall Street reform, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that students should be able to get an education without getting crushed by debt-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for debt-free college, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that nobody who works full time should live in poverty-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to raise the minimum wage, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that after a lifetime of hard work, seniors should be able to retire with dignity-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to protect and expand Social Security and Medicare, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe in climate change-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to protect our air and water, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe in common sense gun reform-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to keep our kids safe from military-style assault weapons, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that a woman has a right to make health care decisions over her own body and I support Planned Parenthood-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for women’s health, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that millionaires and billionaires should pay at least the same tax rates as their secretaries-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to stop the special breaks and loopholes, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• And I believe that powerful corporations and billionaires have too much influence over our politics-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for campaign finance and ethics reform, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

Sounds good for America, right? At the same time CNN was outlining why right-wing money bags and Vegas/Macao gambling mobster Sheldon Adelson was braying about why Trump would be the best American president ever-- for Israel. Adelson ponied up over $80 million to Republicans and right-wing causes in the 2016 cycle. He's the agent for Israel's political right in America. Funny, because while Adelson was talking with GOP donors about how good Trump would be for his version of Israel, Lili Bayer was writing at the [Jewish Daily] Forward about how one of the fascist shits surrounding Trump, Sebastian Gorka, is an actual Nazi, not someone playing pretend.

When photographs recently emerged showing Sebastian Gorka, President Donald Trump’s high-profile deputy assistant, wearing a medal associated with the Nazi collaborationist regime that ruled Hungary during World War II, the controversial security strategist was unapologetic.

“I’m a proud American now and I wear that medal now and again,” Gorka told Breitbart News. Gorka, 46, who was born in Britain to Hungarian parents and is now an American citizen, asked rhetorically, “Why? To remind myself of where I came from, what my parents suffered under both the Nazis and the Communists, and to help me in my work today.”

But an investigation by the Forward into Gorka’s activities from 2002 to 2007, while he was active in Hungarian politics and journalism, found that he had close ties then to Hungarian far-right circles, and has in the past chosen to work with openly racist and anti-Semitic groups and public figures.

Gorka’s involvement with the far right includes co-founding a political party with former prominent members of Jobbik, a political party with a well-known history of anti-Semitism; repeatedly publishing articles in a newspaper known for its anti-Semitic and racist content; and attending events with some of Hungary’s most notorious extreme-right figures.

...In the United States, Gorka, who was appointed deputy assistant to the president on January 20, is known as a television commentator, a professor and an “alt-right” writer who describes himself as a counterterrorism expert. A close associate of Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, Gorka is now part of Bannon’s key in-house White House think tank, the Strategic Initiatives Group. The newly formed group consists of figures close to Trump and is seen by some as a rival to the National Security Council in formulating policies for the president.

Gorka, who views Islam as a religion with an inherent predilection for militancy, has strong supporters among some right-leaning think tanks in Washington. “Dr. Gorka is one of the most knowledgeable, well-read and studied experts on national security that I’ve ever met,” Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, told the Forward. Humire has known Gorka for nearly a decade, and considers him “top-notch.”

Born in London to parents who fled Hungary’s post-World War II Communist regime, Gorka has had a career that’s marked by frequent job changes and shifting national allegiances. The U.S. government is the third sovereign state to hire him in a national security role. As a young man, he was a member of the United Kingdom’s Territorial Army reserves, where he served in the Intelligence Corps. Then, following the fall of Communism in Hungary, he was employed in 1992 by the country’s Ministry of Defense. He worked there for five years, apparently on issues related to Hungary’s accession to NATO.

Gorka’s marriage in 1996 to an American, Katharine Cornell, an heir to Pennsylvania-based Cornell Iron Works, helped him become a U.S. citizen in 2012.

It was during his time in Hungary that Gorka developed ties to the country’s anti-Semitic and ultranationalist far right.

During large-scale anti-government demonstrations in Hungary in 2006, Gorka took on an active role, becoming closely involved with a protest group called the Hungarian National Committee (Magyar Nemzeti Bizottság). Gorka took on the roles of translator, press coordinator and adviser for the group.

Among the four Committee members named as the group’s political representatives was László Toroczkai, then head of the 64 Counties Youth Movement. Toroczkai founded that group in 2001 to advocate for the return of parts of modern-day Serbia, Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine to form a Greater Hungary, restoring the country’s pre-World War I borders.

In 2004, two years before the Movement’s involvement in the 2006 protests, Hungarian authorities opened an investigation into the Movement’s newspaper, Magyar Jelen, when an article referred to Jews as “Galician upstarts” and went on to argue: “We should get them out. In fact, we need to take back our country from them, take back our stolen fortunes. After all, these upstarts are sucking on our blood, getting rich off our blood.” At the time of the article’s publication, Toroczkai was both an editor at the paper and the Movement’s official leader.

Toroczkai currently serves as vice president of Jobbik and is the mayor of a village near the border Hungary shares with Serbia. Last year, he gained notoriety in the West for declaring a goal of banning Muslims and gays from his town.

In January 2007, inspired by the 2006 protests and his experience with the Hungarian National Committee, Gorka announced plans to form a new political party, to be known as the New Democratic Coalition. Gorka had previously served as an adviser to Viktor Orbán, now Hungary’s right-wing nationalist prime minister. But following Orbán’s failed attempts to bring down Hungary’s then-Socialist government, Gorka grew disenchanted with Orbán’s Fidesz party.

In his email exchange with the Forward for this article, Gorka explained: “The Coalition was established in direct response to the unhealthy patterns visible at the time in Hungarian conservative politics. It became apparent to me that the effect of decades of Communist dictatorship had taken a deeper toll on civil society than was expected.”

Gorka co-founded his political party with three other politicians. Two of his co-founders, Tamás Molnár and Attila Bégány, were former members of Jobbik. Molnár, a senior Jobbik politician, served as the party’s vice president until shortly before joining Gorka’s new initiative, and was also a member of the Hungarian National Committee during the 2006 protests, issuing statements together with extremist militant figures such as Toroczkai.

Jobbik has a long history of anti-Semitism. In 2006, when Gorka’s political allies were still members of Jobbik, the party’s official online blog included articles such as The Roots of Jewish Terrorism and Where Were the Jews in 1956?, reference to the country’s revolution against Soviet rule. In one speech in 2010, Jobbik leader Gabor Vona said that “under communism we licked Moscow’s boots, now we lick Brussels’ and Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s.”

In founding the New Democratic Coalition, Gorka and the former Jobbik politicians aimed to represent “conservative values, decidedly standing up to corruption and bringing Christianity into the Constitution,” according to the party’s original policy program. At the time, Hungary’s constitution was secular.

The party’s founders did not see themselves as far right or anti-Semitic.

“I knew Gorka as a strongly Atlanticist, conservative person,” Molnár, the former Jobbik vice president and co-founder of Gorka’s party, told the Forward in a phone conversation. He added that he could not imagine Gorka having anti-Semitic views.

...In December 2004, the U.S. State Department reported bluntly to Congress that, “the weekly newspaper Magyar Demokrata published anti-Semitic articles and featured articles by authors who have denied the Holocaust.”

Who wrote Trump's CPAC speech yesterday?

In the summer of 2007, Bencsik became one of the founders of the Hungarian Guard, a now-banned paramilitary organization known for assaulting and intimidating members of Hungary’s Roma community. The perpetrators in a spate of racially motivated murders of Roma in 2008 and 2009 were found to have connections to the Guard.

Gorka’s articles for Magyar Demokrata focused not only on decrying Hungary’s then-Socialist government, but also on highlighting the perceived injustices of the Treaty of Versailles, the post-World War I agreement that led to the loss of two-thirds of prewar Hungary’s territory.

“We fought on the wrong side of a war for which we were not responsible, and were punished to an extent that was likely even more unjust-- with the exception of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire-- than any other punishment in the modern age,” Gorka wrote in a 2006 article in Magyar Demokrata.

Asked about his choice of journalistic outlets, Gorka wrote, “I am […] unfamiliar with Bencsik. I believe it was one of his colleagues who asked me if I wanted to write some OpEds.” Gorka told the Forward that his writing at the time shows “how everything I did was in the interests of a more transparent and healthy democracy in Hungary. This included a rejection of all revanchist tendencies and xenophobic cliques.”

Gorka’s claim to be unfamiliar with Bencsik must be weighed against his deep immersion in Hungarian politics and Benscik’s status as a major figure in Hungary’s right-wing political scene. At the time, Gorka gave public interviews as an “expert” on the Hungarian Guard, which Bencsik helped to found. In one 2007 interview, Gorka clarified his own view of the Guard, saying, “It’s not worth talking about banning” the group. Despite its extreme rhetoric against minorities, Gorka said, “The government and media are inflating this question.”

It was in mid-February that Gorka’s affinity for Hungarian nationalist and far-right ideas first came to the American public’s attention. Eli Clifton of the news website Lobelog noticed from a photograph that the new deputy assistant to the president had appeared at an inauguration ball in January wearing a Hungarian medal known as Vitézi Rend [up top]. The medal signifies a knightly order of merit founded in 1920 by Admiral Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s longtime anti-Semitic ruler and Hitler’s ally during World War II. Notwithstanding this alliance, and the group’s designation as Nazi-collaborators by the U.S. State Department, many within Hungary’s right revere Horthy for his staunch nationalism during the overall course of his rule from 1920 to 1944.

Breitbart, the “alt-right” publication, where Gorka himself served as national security editor prior to joining the White House staff, defended his wardrobe choice, writing on February 14 that, “as any of his Breitbart News colleagues could testify, Gorka is not only pro-Israel but ‘pro-Jewish,’ and defends both against the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.”

“In 1979 my father was awarded a declaration for his resistance to a dictatorship, and although he passed away 14 years ago, I wear that medal in remembrance of what my family went through and what it represents today, to me, as an American,” Gorka told Breibart on February 15, as the controversy regarding his choice to wear a Horthy-era medal intensified.

But the medal was not the first time Gorka expressed appreciation for symbols that many associate with Hungary’s World War II-era Nazi sympathizers. In 2006, Gorka defended the use of the Arpad flag, which Hungary’s murderous Arrow Cross Party used as their symbol. The Hungarian Arrow Cross Party killed thousands of Jews during World War II, shooting many of them alongside the Danube River and throwing them into the water. Gorka told the news agency JTA at the time that “if you say eight centuries of history can be eradicated by 18 months of fascist distortion of symbols, you’re losing historic perspective.”

After the failure of his new party in 2007, Gorka moved to the United States and over the past 10 years has worked for the Department of Justice, Marine Corps University, National Defense University, and Joint Special Operations University. Former colleagues in the States questioned the quality of Gorka’s work on Islam, and said that he shied away from publishing in peer-reviewed journals, according to the Washington Post.

Retired Lt. Col. Mike Lewis told the Post that when Gorka was lecturing to members of the armed forces, he “made a difficult and complex situation simple and confirmed the officers’ prejudices and assumptions.”

...Over the past few weeks, Gorka has become an informal spokesman for the White House, appearing on radio and television shows to defend Trump’s rhetoric and policy choices-- including those that are relevant to the Jewish community.

Asked during a February 6 talk show to acknowledge that it was “questionable” for the White House to leave out any specific mention of Jews as the Nazis’ target in its Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, which referred only to “innocent people” being victimized, Gorka called the criticism “asinine."

“No, I’m not going to admit it,” he said. “It’s absurd. You’re making a statement about the Holocaust. Of course it’s about the Holocaust because that’s what the statement’s about. It’s only reasonable to twist it if your objective is to attack the president.”

It remains unclear whether the White House ever took a deep look into Gorka’s activities in Hungary. Six White House staffers have reportedly been dismissed for failing FBI background checks; Gorka was not among them.

In 2002, Hungary’s intelligence service denied Gorka a security clearance. Gorka was nominated by the right-wing Fidesz party as its candidate to be an expert in an investigation into allegations that then-Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy had served as a counterintelligence officer during the Communist era. At the time, Gorka’s earlier ties to British intelligence were considered a concern, and he was ultimately not allowed to take part in the investigation.

Gorka’s friends and close associates in the United States do not believe that he is ideologically part of Hungary’s far right.

...Gorka’s former political partners in Hungary are pleased with his successes in Washington.

“I am happy, because this could be good for Hungarian-American relations,” said Molnár, the former Jobbik vice president and co-founder of Gorka’s short-lived party, in his conversation with the Forward. “But I was surprised…No Hungarian public figure has ever been so close to the White House.”

Does Nazi iconography indicate someone might be a Nazi?

Why Most Jews Don't Seriously Consider Voting For Republicans

Not many Jews vote for right-wing political parties. Jewish families usually put a huge premium on education and equality and, let's face it, right-wing political parties couldn't exist without ignorance and bigotry. All through history, however, there have always been a minority of Jews steeped in the same kind of ignorance and prejudice that afflicts other communities. Even if Obama isn't terribly popular among Jews, the vast majority of them voted against Romney and his crackpot, extremist Party of Hatred. Most Jews-- at least outside of Israel-- have learned, and learned the hard way, that the kind of Hatred and Bigotry at the core of the Republican Party, and at the core of all fascist-oriented parties, sooner or later and always works out badly for the Jews. Obama's 70% support among Jewish voters was down 4% since he creamed McCain in 2008 but the 4% drop in the Jewish vote for Obama in the 2012 versus 2008 race is consistent with the modest percentage drop Obama experienced with several other constituencies-- including college graduates, whites, independents, voters under 30 and Catholics.

I bet you didn't know that Budapest has the second biggest synagogue in the world, the Dohány Street Synagogue, second only to Temple Emanu-El in New York City. At one point Jews made up 23% of Budapest's population. That point was just before the rise of fascism in the 20th Century, a time when the right-wing mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, nicknamed Hungary's capital Judapest. Before Hitler came to town, Hungary's homegrown fascist, Admiral Miklós Horthy, had a series of full fledged pogroms against Hungarian Jews on increasingly aggressive levels. By 1941 there were only 861,000 Jews left in Hungary, and there were massacres and widespread murders but it wasn't until German troops occupied Hungary that Horthy allowed deportation of Jews to German death camps. 437,402 Jews were deported by the Hungarians, 90% of whom died in German death camps, particularly Auschwitz. Winston Churchill was getting intelligence that led him to write to his Foreign Secretary that "There is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world." Of the 861,000 Hungarian Jews in 1941, there were about 200,000 survivors by the time Horthy was saved from the Soviets by Americans, which allowed him to live out the rest of his life in luxury in Portugal (which was still a fascist dictatorship until 1974).

In case you're wondering why all the background on Hungarian Jews, there's been a little incident in Budapest recently. Hungary's third biggest political party is the Jobbik party, very much Hungary's Tea Party and widely considered neo-fascist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, although they describe themselves in a way that would make any Fox News viewer feel perfectly comfortable: "a principled, conservative and radically patriotic Christian party." The party got going in 2003 as a protest movement against-- believe it or not-- "the war against Christmas."

Earlier this month one of Jobbik's Parliamentary leaders, Márton Gyöngyösi, told the legislature it is time “to assess ... how many people of Jewish origin there are here, and especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who represent a certain national security risk.”

Jeb Bush with Republican Jew counter Fred Malek

That's why Jews tend to shy away from right-wing parties. I mean have you heard anyone talk like that since... since... since Richard Nixon hired Fred Malek as his official "Jew counter." Malek, by the way, is still an extremely powerful Republican Party operative and was National Finance Committee co-chair for John McCain in 2008. This year he ran the American Action Network, a fascist-oriented SuperPAC, which had considerably more success than Karl Rove's various PACs, money laundering operations and scam outfits did. Malek's American Action Network spent $$11,660,232 ($4 million of which was contributed, ironically, by America's top Kapo group, the Republican Jewish Coalition) on behalf of a repulsive batch of right-wing hatemongers very much like himself who are trying to win congressional races. His 4 biggest efforts were to try to reelect fanatics Jeff Denham-- successfully smearing former astronaut Jose Hernandez with $2,508,581 in patently false ads-- Chip Cravaack ($1,668,529) and Daniel "Taliban Dan" Webster ($1,119,279) and to elect John Shimkus' horrifyingly corrupt chief of staff Rodney Davis against progressive champion David Gill ($1,482,562). Other miscreants whose campaigns Malek was funneling money to included Gambino Crime Family congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm of Staten Island ($16,930), pro-rape Republican Richard Mourdock ($645,151), and deranged California wingnut Tony Strickland ($168,717), who lost.

Hungary Blocks Refuge For Syrians Seeking Asylum In Europe

Trump's wall will be much fancier

Hungary's right-wing Fidesz Party won enough parliamentary seats in 2010 (263, more than two-thirds) to be able to ride roughshod over the country's post-Communist democracy. They were even able to change the constitution, although they have since lost two by-eletions and no longer have that power. The really far right party-- a neo-Nazi outfit called Jobbik-- came in third and won 47 seats. 

Right after the election Oszkár Molnár, Fidesz member of parliament, told the media that "I love Hungary, I love Hungarians, and I prefer Hungarian interests to global financial capital, or Jewish capital, if you like, which wants to devour the whole world, but especially Hungary," and, later, that gypsy women deliberately try to induce birth defects for financial gain. "I have checked this," he said, "and it’s true; they hit their bellies with a rubber hammer so that they’ll give birth to handicapped kids." The party is anti-Semitic, homophobic and nationalistic. You can imagine what their friends in the fascist Jobbik-- who are far more anti-Semitic, homophobic and nationalistic-- have to say. Things like "we must prepare for armed battle against the Jews."

No doubt you read the grisly news about the Hungarian grocery truck filled with 71 corpses that was found over the border in Austria. The dead are Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS and the country's civil war.

Migrants fearful of death at sea in overcrowded and flimsy boats have increasingly turned to using a land route to Europe through the Western Balkans. They start in Greece, which they can reach via a short boat trip from Turkey, then move on through Macedonia, Serbia and into Hungary, where thousands have been crossing the border every day, crawling over or under a razor-wire fence meant to keep them out.

Most go from there to other countries in the European Union, sometimes paying smugglers to drive them, but the discovery of the bodies in the truck showed there is no truly safe path.

Keeping in mind the nature of the right-wing nationalist government in Budapest, it should come as no surprise that the Hungarians aren't exactly facilitating the movement of Syrains refugees through their country. No one wants to stay in the close-minded little fascistic state, but the Hungarians don't want them even traveling through. The Hungarians have built a fence along their southern border-- although not the big beautiful one Trump envisions on our own border. Tens of thousands of refugee families are fleeing for their lives, and the Hungarians are extremely hostile to them and have been accused of inhumane treatment.

Surveying a section of the razor-wire barrier that Hungary has built along its 110-mile border with Serbia, Mr Baloch [a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] said: “This is Fortress Europe coming into being. “It’s a reminder of the Iron Curtain. Can Europe really hide behind walls and fences when these desperate people need help? Seeking asylum is not a crime.”

Meanwhile the chief of staff for Viktor Orban, Hungary's rightist prime minister, told a local newspaper, "If we do not take meaningful steps"-- presumably steps beyond the teargas Hungarian soldiers are using on refugees-- "we will become a lifeboat that sinks beneath the weight of those clinging onto it." And this despite the fact that none of the refugees want to stay in Hungary any longer than it takes to pass through to Austria, Germany and beyond. Orban gins up resentment against the refugees with wild claims that there are risks of terrorism, crime and unemployment. 

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says he is "horrified and heartbroken" and that a "large majority" of people undertaking such dangerous journeys are refugees who have the right to protection and asylum. He called on all governments to act with compassion and humanity.

Would You Trust Trump With National Security Secrets? Should Obama?

There are a lot of Americans nervous about the prospect of the Trumpanzee getting national security briefings. Harry Reid even suggested that the intelligence services prepare "fake" briefings for him so that if he sells them to the Russians or whomever else, it doesn't endanger the country's security. Carl Bildt, the former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, a country Trump used to routinely-- and falsely-- claim as part of his ancestry, tweeted last week that he "never thought a serious candidate for US President could be a serious threat against the security of the West. But that’s where we are." He wasn't referring to Hillary.

David Cicilline (D-RI), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote President Obama a letter urging him to deny the briefings to Trump, who, he wrote "urged Russian intelligence services to conduct cyber espionage operations into the correspondence of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton... [a] call for hostile foreign action represents a step beyond mere partisan politics and represents a threat to the Republic itself... With this in mind, I respectfully ask that you withhold the intelligence briefing to Mr. Trump in the interests of national security."



Trump is due to start receiving briefings as soon as today. His campaign manager-- or whatever title Paul Manafort holds-- was a longtime political operative for Ukraine's bandit-preseident (and Putin puppet) Victor Yanukovych, and several close Trump associates, as well as his own Trump Organization, are heavily in financial hock to Putin.

Is it feasible to prevent Trump from getting the briefings from James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence? Technically, yes. It's just a courtesy and a tradition started by Harry Truman, not a law or rule. It would, however, be exceedingly awkward for Obama and there's no reason to think Obama has the stomach for a fight with the Trumpanzee over this. Reid's idea of "fake" briefings are patently absurd but there's no reason Clapper couldn't give intelligence-lite briefings that don't compromise national security or give Trump access to any sensitive national secrets. Remember, we're talking about this guy:



A newly released Pew survey from May of 10 European countries, Canada and 4 Asia-Pacific powers, shows Obama and Clinton with high ratings and Trump with extremely low ratings across the board.

European attitudes toward President Barack Obama remain very positive. Across the 10 EU nations polled, a median of 77% have confidence in Obama to do the right thing in world affairs, including more than eight-in-ten in Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and France.

Europeans are somewhat less enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton, although her ratings are still mostly positive: A median of 59% have confidence in her. In contrast, ratings for Donald Trump are overwhelmingly negative. A median of just 9% trust the wealthy real estate developer to do the right thing in world affairs; 85% lack confidence in him.

In the four Asia-Pacific nations surveyed-- Australia, China, India and Japan-- Obama also receives relatively positive marks. Most Australians and Japanese give Clinton a positive rating and Trump a negative one. The major party nominees are less well-known in China and India.

...People surveyed in Europe and Asia generally have a negative opinion of Russian President Vladimir Putin. This includes more than eight-in-ten in Spain (88%), Sweden (87%), Poland (86%) and the Netherlands (84%), which have little or no confidence in the Russian leader’s handling of international affairs. Likewise, Putin is mistrusted by most in Australia (70% no confidence), Japan and Canada (both 65%).

Only in Greece and China (both 53%) do more than half have a positive impression of Putin’s role on the world stage.

...Having served as secretary of state from 2009 to early 2013, U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton receives positive support in most of the countries surveyed in Europe and Asia. This includes 83% in Sweden who have confidence in her ability to deal with world affairs and 79% who say this in Germany. Overall, half or more in seven of the 10 EU countries surveyed have confidence in Clinton, although many in Hungary and Poland express no opinion. Clinton receives her worst marks from Greece, where 78% have little or no confidence in her ability to handle world affairs.

Clinton also gets positive marks from Canadians (60% confidence) and Australians (70%), as well as from the Japanese (70%). Views of her among the Chinese are mixed, with 37% saying they have confidence in her, 35% saying they do not have confidence and 28% with no opinion. And in India, a majority (56%) has no opinion of the former secretary of state.

...Less than a quarter of people across all 15 countries surveyed express confidence in Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for U.S. president. In fact, overwhelming majorities in most of the countries surveyed have little or no confidence in his ability to handle international affairs. This includes 92% of Swedes, 89% of Germans, 88% of Dutch and 85% of both the French and British. This distaste is especially strong in Sweden, where 82% have no confidence at all in him.

Among people in Poland and Hungary, views of Trump also tend to be negative, although many people do not offer an opinion in these countries.

Most Australians (87%), Canadians (80%) and Japanese (82%) also lack confidence in Trump. In China, there is a split between those who have no confidence in Trump (40%) and those who do not offer an opinion (39%). And in India, 67% do not offer an opinion.

In Europe, positive opinions about Trump vary by political party support in many nations. For example, in Italy, supporters of Forza Italia, a center-right party founded by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (who, like Trump, is independently wealthy), show more confidence in Trump (31% confidence) than do followers of the country’s Democratic Party (15%). Trump also receives greater support among those Italians who have a favorable view of the anti-immigrant and Euroskeptic Lega Nord party.

And in the UK, followers of the Euroskeptic, anti-immigrant party UKIP are also much more likely to voice confidence in Trump (30%) than those who follow the Conservative (13%) or Labour (8%) parties. However, it should be noted that while confidence for Trump is higher among these groups, it still represents very low levels of confidence in the presumptive GOP candidate.

Higher levels of confidence in Trump among Euroskeptic and anti-immigrant parties extend to other countries as well. In Germany, for example, people who have a favorable view of Alternative for Germany (AfD), a right-wing and increasingly anti-immigrant party, are more likely to have confidence in Trump (19%), compared with those Germans with an unfavorable view of AfD (3%). And in Hungary, people who have a favorable view of Jobbik, a far-right nationalist party, are more likely to have confidence in Trump (28%) compared with those who have an unfavorable opinion of Jobbik (17%).

Additionally, positive views of Trump are tied to confidence in another international leader tested: Russian President Vladimir Putin. In all the countries surveyed with a large enough sample size to permit analysis, people who have confidence in Putin are more likely to express confidence in Trump. For instance, among those in Italy who have confidence in Putin to handle world affairs, 44% express confidence in Donald Trump. Meanwhile, among Italians who express little or no confidence in Putin, only 12% have confidence in Trump.

So What Happened In Europe Yesterday? Voters Fired A Warning Shot Over The Heads Of Their Political Elites

Alexis Tsipras, the Bernie Sanders of Europe?

The natives are restless… in Europe. There were elections in 21 countries for the European Parliament's 751 seats yesterday, the culmination of a 4-day process including all 28 member countries. Early reports indicated inordinately large numbers of voters didn't bother going to the polls. These are the countries in the U.E. and how many members they have:

• Germany- 96 (50 on the left/46 on the right)
• France-74 (31 on the left/43 on the right)
• Italy- 73 (34 on the left/39 on the right)
• U.K.- 73 (27 on the left/46 on the right)
• Spain- 54 (25 on the left/29 on the right)
• Poland- 51 (5 on the left 46 on the right)
• Romania- 32 (22 on the left/10 on the right)
• Netherlands- 26 (14 on the left/12 on the right)
• Belgium- 21 (15 on the left/6 on the right)
• Czech Republic- 21 (7 on the left/14 on the right)
• Greece- 21 (10 on the left/11 on the right)
• Hungary- 21 (3 on the left/18 on the right)
• Portugal- 21 (10 on the left/11 on the right)
• Sweden- 20 (13 on the left/7 on the right)
• Austria- 18 (9 on the left/9 on the right)
• Bulgaria- 17 (8 on the left/9 on the right)
• Denmark- 13 (8 on the left/5 on the right)
• Slovakia- 13 (5 on the left/8 on the right)
• Finland- 13 (8 on the left/5 on the right)
• Ireland- 11 [still counting]
• Croatia- 11 (5 on the left/6 on the right)
• Lithuania- 11 (5 on the left/6 on the right)
• Latvia- 8 (1 on the left/7 on the right)
• Slovenia- 8 (2 on the left/6 on the right)
• Estonia- 6 (5 on the left/1 on the right)
• Cyprus- 6 (4 on the left/2 on the right)
• Luxembourg- 6 (3 on the left/3 on the right)
• Malta- 6 (3 on the left/3 on the right)

As expected, opposition parties-- whether on the left or the right-- fared well, as voters took an opportunity to slap their governments around a little. France's fascist party, the overtly racist National Front, came in first with a stunning quarter of the vote, President François Hollande's Socialists in third place with 14%. The abstention rate was around 60%. In Greece, Syriza, the anti-fascist, solidly working people's party came out ahead. Greece's fascist party, New Dawn, barely took a third of the votes Syriza did. Of course, the fat, content Germans-- where the fake-left party and the mainstream conservatives have a coalition anyway-- were the big exceptions. In Holland, Geert Wilders' fascist party also ate sand, coming in 4th behind mainstream, anti-fascist parties. And in the U.K, where only 33.8% of voters even bothered, the racist and fascist-oriented UKIP took the most seats, beating both the Conservatives and Labor and all but annihilating the Lib-Dems (which is now left with just one seat). In fact, the Greens beat the Lib-Dems as well!

Austria's fascist party, the FPÖ, saw big results-- around 20%, up from their 7.3% haul in 2009. Hungary was worst of all. 53% went to the fascist Orban party and 15% went for that country's outright Nazi/teabaggers, the Jobbik.

Bottom line is that the European equivalents of the Democrats (center left) and Republicans (center right) are losing the confidence of their populations, both having completely sold out to the banksters, kicking their own core supporters to the curb, just like the Democrats and Republicans here in the U.S. The Guardian hit it on the head when explaining the results in Spain.

The People's party of Spain narrowly beat out the Socialists in the European elections, but with smaller insurgent parties winning two out of every five votes the Spanish media dubbed the result a "punishment" for Spain's two dominant political parties.

The two parties together lost more than five million votes compared to the 2009 election. The governing People's party won 16 seats, eight less than 2009, while the Socialists came out with 14 seats, nine less.

The big story of the night were the many smaller parties. Newcomers Podemos (We Can), a political movement that emerged from Spain's indignados, earned 7.9% of the vote, enough for 5 seats. "We can't talk about the end, but we can talk about the beginning of the end of bipartisanship. We have to throw them out because they're the one who have ruined the country," Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias told journalists on hearing the results. The leftwing coalition United Left increased their seats from 2 to 6 while the Union, Progress and Democracy went from 1 to 4 seats.

Although the European Parliament has more powers than ever before, voters still don't take it nearly as seriously as they do when voting for their own governments. It's looked at primarily as an opportunity to "send a message," without having to worry about consequences. The racists UKIP won in the U.K., for example, but it isn't an indication that they will be able to win any actual seats in the British Parliament-- despite racist sociopath Nigel Farage's fondest hopes. And And LePen's crackpot teabagger daughter isn't about to be elected President of France. I'm a lot more hopeful that workers, pushed to the wall in Greece and Spain, didn't turn right, but turned hard-- not corporate-- left. I'd worry about Hungary though. That's an actual nascent fascist state on a level of Texas or Mississippi. Very dangerous situation.

Fascism Is On The March In Europe-- Elections Tomorrow In Austria And Italy

Tomorrow Italy votes on a package of complex referendums that are extremely difficult for voters without post-graduate degrees to understand. But rejection could be another devastating blow the EU. The BBC tried sorting out what it means and why it's important. The reforms Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is trying to impose on his fractious country are tied up in the referendum and he says he'll step down if they lose-- the 3rd domino after Brexit and Trump in "he onward march of the right-wing (neo-fascist) populists. Italy's been there before-- and it worked out badly for them. Unfortunately by making the referendum about himself, Renzi has put the country in unnecessary danger with plenty of voters looking at the referendum as nothing but an opportunity to punish a government they have beefs with.

Renzi has had strong support from global leaders... The concern is that if Renzi goes, Italy's politicians will squabble, the country's fragile economy will suffer, borrowing costs will spike and once again Europe will be facing a crisis in the eurozone.

Waiting in the wings are anti-establishment parties like the Five Star movement which is promising that if it eventually wins power, it will offer a referendum on retaining the euro. The very idea of another vote sends shivers down the spines of Europe's leaders.

Five Star's leader, the former comedian Beppe Grillo, has spoken of an "era going up in flames." It is a similar sentiment to that expressed by Nigel Farage, UKIP's former leader, who declared after Mr Trump's victory that the "democratic revolution" is only just beginning.

If polls retain any credibility after this year of political shocks then a No vote is expected on Sunday. The financial markets, caught out by both Brexit and Trump, have already factored in a Renzi defeat.

There is no doubt that Italy needs reforming. The tangle of bureaucracy and judicial delays snares investment projects, reforms get diluted or blocked in the two houses of parliament and the Senate, with its 315 members, needs shrinking.

But there are legitimate concerns that Renzi's plan will lead to a centralising of power. The winning party will gain a premium of seats, ensuring an absolute majority. Five Star campaigners argue that the "reforms serve to give more power to those who are already in power."

...The risk is that a No vote and a Renzi resignation would tip Italy into an early election. And that might give the Five Star movement and the anti-establishment Northern League an opportunity of success at the polls.

The prospect of two Eurosceptic parties gaining ground in the eurozone's third-biggest economy might well rattle the markets.

Government ministers will tell you that unemployment is inching down, that the deficit is falling and that labour markets have become more flexible. But the economy is 12% smaller than when the financial crisis began in 2008.

Italy's banks remain weak. The problem of non-performing loans has not been sorted out and the country's debt-to-GDP ratio, at 133%, is second only to Greece's.

The Italian vote is not about Europe or the EU but it will be interpreted as an indicator of the strength of the anti-establishment winds blowing through Europe in the aftermath of Mr Trump's unexpected victory.

Obama has been very supportive of Renzi's referendum and made a big deal about a recent trip to DC which played well in Italian media back home. Trump's not on the same side-- to put it mildly. Meanwhile European socialists met in Prague today to figure out how to deal with the rise of neo-fascism-- they call it populism-- in the western democracies. Jeremy Corbyn had his hands full, admitting "that populists have been successfully identifying many of the problems faced by people across the country, but their solution-- to attack minorities-- was not the answer... It's clear that there is a problem of the alarming rise and acceleration of the populist right all across this continent. Be it UKIP in my country, Donald Trump and the language he used in the presidential election in the United States, or what's happening in Hungary with Jobbik or Marine Le Pen in France, with her National Front. Politics has been shaken across the world. We know why the populist right is gaining ground and it's increasingly hard to get our message heard. It's up to us to give a real political alternative."

The European left-- much like the old and clueless out-of-touch Democrats in DC-- is grappling to effectively frame an alternative explanation for the problems they face and come up with solutions, that include increasing social justice and inclusion. Corbyn should sound familiar on this side of the Atlantic:

"The gap between rich and poor is widening. Living standards are stagnating or falling. People feel left behind by the forces unleashed by globalisation. They feel powerless in the face of deregulated corporate power.

"We have to deal with those issues and we have to deal with them quickly and seriously.

"The populist right do identify many of the problems but their toxic solution is actually a dead end. It's about attacking minorities rather than facing the real issues that many communities face.

"So, unless progressive parties across Europe are prepared to break from the political establishment of the past, which has sought to manage the change of globalisation, then we are going to have problems."

Mr Corbyn went on: "We have to offer a different economic message. It's about convincing the long-term unemployed that the reason there is no work for them is not because of migrants, it's because of an economic programme of deindustrialisation and insecurity.

"We have to make clear that our public services are being run down because of austerity and often very predatory privatisation.

"We cannot and must not abandon socialist principles, because many tell us that is the only way to achieve power.

"We have to put forward a very clear economic message-- one of social justice and inclusion."

Polls show that tomorrow's presidential vote in Austria could well go to the neo-fascist candidate Norbert Hofer, an anti-immigrant gun nut, said it be backed surreptitiously by Putin. Polls show him leading Alexander Van der Bellen, the Green Party-backed independent by double digits. The two mainstream parties were eliminated in the first round. His Freedom Party (FPÖ) was founded by Nazi SS officers in 1956.

[A] win for Mr Hofer would also be a blow to Europe’s political mainstream. It would mark a grim milestone: the continent’s first democratically elected far-right head of state since 1945. It would also present a headache. In the past its neighbours isolated and upbraided Austria for its flirtations with nationalist extremism: like when in 1986 it elected as president Kurt Waldheim, whose wartime Wehrmacht unit had been involved in war crimes; and when, on the formation of the 2000 coalition, other EU member states imposed sanctions. Now, with authoritarian populists on the march in much of the continent (take Viktor Orbán across the border in Hungary), it would be harder to single the country out.

Europe would also be subject to such an election result’s global significance. Mr Hofer may represent an old party, but his political style is somewhat new and part of a bigger trend. Like Donald Trump in America, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and Marine Le Pen in France, the FPÖ leadership has sanded off the most overtly racist edges of traditional far-right politics and blended flag-waving, anti-migrant social policies, a redistributionist economic credo and the language and style of anti-establishment insurgence. So notwithstanding the distinctive aspects of Austria’s election, it is the latest test of this formula’s ability to create electoral upsets; perhaps even another omen of a strong showing by Ms Le Pen next spring. These phenomena may have their differences but they are also intertwined: each populist success in one country emboldening, enlightening and maybe even detoxifying counterparts in others. Once Austria was ostracised. Now others are Austrianising.

UPDATE: Good News From Österreich

Despite polls showing neo-fascist Norbert Hofer 10 points ahead, savvy Austrian voters elected independent Green-backed Alexander Van der Bellen president today. There is general rejoicing all over Europe as this is seen to be a set-back for the Putin-backed neo-Nazi revival that has been gaining strength everywhere across the continent (not to mention Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania). Estimates show Van der Bellen besting the Nazi 53-46%. During the campaign, Van der Bellen's comment on Trump's victory was that "his campaign style, the sexist attacks were unacceptable. As regards content he has raised concerns-- let's give him several months."

Will A Worldwide Depression Cause Fascism To Rise In Europe Again? Can It Be Stopped?

Europe moves right... again

I've had friends who have been saying we've been in a Depression since the last year of Bush's disastrous term. But they don't have Nobel Prizes in economics. NY Times columnist/Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman is a Nobel laureate and he's managed to not call it a depression-- until this week. And not just a depression, but one that is already starting to inspire a fascist reaction, the way the Great Depression of the 1930s did in much of the world. He points out that the euro crisis "is killing the European dream. The shared currency, which was supposed to bind nations together, has instead created an atmosphere of bitter acrimony." Spain just elected a far right government. Italy and Greece had far right governments imposed on them by banksters backed by Germany.

[D]emands for ever-harsher austerity, with no offsetting effort to foster growth, have done double damage. They have failed as economic policy, worsening unemployment without restoring confidence; a Europe-wide recession now looks likely even if the immediate threat of financial crisis is contained. And they have created immense anger, with many Europeans furious at what is perceived, fairly or unfairly (or actually a bit of both), as a heavy-handed exercise of German power.

Nobody familiar with Europe’s history can look at this resurgence of hostility without feeling a shiver. Yet there may be worse things happening.

Right-wing populists are on the rise from Austria, where the Freedom Party (whose leader used to have neo-Nazi connections) runs neck-and-neck in the polls with established parties, to Finland, where the anti-immigrant True Finns party had a strong electoral showing last April. And these are rich countries whose economies have held up fairly well. Matters look even more ominous in the poorer nations of Central and Eastern Europe.

Last month the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development documented a sharp drop in public support for democracy in the “new E.U.” countries, the nations that joined the European Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not surprisingly, the loss of faith in democracy has been greatest in the countries that suffered the deepest economic slumps.

And in at least one nation, Hungary, democratic institutions are being undermined as we speak.

One of Hungary’s major parties, Jobbik, is a nightmare out of the 1930s: it’s anti-Roma (Gypsy), it’s anti-Semitic, and it even had a paramilitary arm. But the immediate threat comes from Fidesz, the governing center-right party.

Fidesz won an overwhelming Parliamentary majority last year, at least partly for economic reasons; Hungary isn’t on the euro, but it suffered severely because of large-scale borrowing in foreign currencies and also, to be frank, thanks to mismanagement and corruption on the part of the then-governing left-liberal parties. Now Fidesz, which rammed through a new Constitution last spring on a party-line vote, seems bent on establishing a permanent hold on power.

The details are complex. Kim Lane Scheppele, who is the director of Princeton’s Law and Public Affairs program-- and has been following the Hungarian situation closely-- tells me that Fidesz is relying on overlapping measures to suppress opposition. A proposed election law creates gerrymandered districts designed to make it almost impossible for other parties to form a government; judicial independence has been compromised, and the courts packed with party loyalists; state-run media have been converted into party organs, and there’s a crackdown on independent media; and a proposed constitutional addendum would effectively criminalize the leading leftist party. [Sounds like he's describing the Republican Party in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida.]

Taken together, all this amounts to the re-establishment of authoritarian rule, under a paper-thin veneer of democracy, in the heart of Europe. And it’s a sample of what may happen much more widely if this depression continues.

It’s not clear what can be done about Hungary’s authoritarian slide. The U.S. State Department, to its credit, has been very much on the case, but this is essentially a European matter. The European Union missed the chance to head off the power grab at the start-- in part because the new Constitution was rammed through while Hungary held the Union’s rotating presidency. It will be much harder to reverse the slide now. Yet Europe’s leaders had better try, or risk losing everything they stand for.

And they also need to rethink their failing economic policies. If they don’t, there will be more backsliding on democracy-- and the breakup of the euro may be the least of their worries.

Uh, oh-- is America in any kind of shape to stand up to the rise of fascism overseas, the way FDR did in the 1930's and '40's? This calls for someone who understands the reactionary mind. Who better than The Reactionary Mind author Corey Robin? In 2002 Corey wrote a paper, Remembrance of Empires Past: 9/11 and the End of the Cold War for a conference at NYU, "Cold War Triumphalism." He starts out talking about three of the most prominent contemporary reactionary minds, William F. Buckley, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz. Buckley and Kristol told him in interviews that the problem with the triumph of "free" markets was not that it promoted instability or dissolved tradition; "it was that it did not provide the passion and élan, the gravitas and authority, that the exercise of American power truly required, at home and abroad. Simply put, the free market was too bloodless a notion upon which to found a national order, much less a global empire.

Kristol confessed to a deep yearning for an American empire: “What’s the point of being the greatest, most powerful nation in the world and not having an imperial role? It’s unheard of in human history. The most powerful nation always had an imperial role.” But, he continued, previous empires were not “capitalist democracies with a strong emphasis on economic growth and economic prosperity.” Because of its commitment to the free market, the United States lacked the fortitude and vision to wield imperial power. “It’s too bad,” Kristol lamented. “I think it would be natural for the United States... to play a far more dominant role in world affairs. Not what we’re doing now but to command and to give orders as to what is be done. People need that. There are many parts of the world-- Africa in particular-- where an authority willing to use troops can make a very good difference, a healthy difference.” But with public discussion moderated by accountants-- “There’s the Republican party tying itself into knots. Over what? Prescriptions for elderly people? Who gives a damn? I think it’s disgusting that... presidential politics of the most important country in the world should resolve around prescriptions for elderly people. Future historians will find this very hard to believe. It’s not Athens. It’s not Rome. It’s not anything.” Kristol thought it unlikely that the United States would take its rightful place as the successor to empires past.

Though Kristol and Buckley do not represent the entire conservative movement, much less elites as a whole, their anxious meditations about the tensions between imperial politics and market ideology speak to a genuine problem that America’s leaders have been wrestling with since the end of the Cold War – a problem, these leaders hope, resolved by the events of September 11. The collapse of communism left the United States defending the most powerful empire in history with an ideology-- the free market-- resolutely hostile to all forms of politics. According to its visionaries, the free market is a harmonious, virtually self-reproducing order, promising an international civil society of voluntary exchange and non-coercive rule, requiring little more from the state than the occasional enforcement of laws and contracts. Reconciling this free-wheeling vision with the reality of imperial over-reach-– the United States today has a military presence in more countries than at any time since the Second World War-- has proven to be an inordinately difficult task for America’s leaders. Not only does the idea of a global free market fit uneasily with the coercive exercise of imperial power, but it also fails to provide the home population of that empire with a compelling reason for participating either in its defense or in the reproduction of its civic life. Perhaps for that reason, the lead item of American intellectual complaint throughout the 1990s has been that the United States is insufficiently civic-minded or martial, that its leaders and citizens are too distracted by glittery prosperity and showy affluence to take care of its inherited institutions, common concerns, and world-wide defense.

It's very much worth reading Robin's whole book, or at least this entire paper, which you can find here.

Trump And Putin Sittin' In A Tree?

The case being made that Putin successfully swung the U.S. election to Trump isn't proven yet-- at least not for a court. But it is for me. And it has nothing to do with claims from Hillary Clinton and her campaign operatives. Putin's interference in European elections and the tactics that he's used there to help destabilize NATO and to bolster the cause of far right extremists isn't a secret, although many Americans-- including progressives-- can't imagine that it could happen-- could have happened-- here. In January, Congress asked James Clapper to investigate clandestine Russian funding of extremist parties and politicians over the last decade with any eye of promoting disunity in Europe. Significant amounts of Russian money has found its way into far right parties in France, Holland, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldava and the Czech Republic. Last February's feature in Foreign Policy woke up many Americans to what the Russians were up to in this regard and why, although not everyone agrees and some naively see it as old fashioned, anti-Russian propaganda.

Prior to 2010, one would be hard-pressed to find public statements in praise of Putin by far-right leaders. Today, they are commonplace. UKIP’s Nigel Farage is a self-proclaimed fan of the Russian president. Jobbik’s head, Gabor Vona, is a frequent invited guest in Moscow. And, of course, Madame Le Pen, whose party was the beneficiary of a 9.4 million euro loan from a Russian-owned bank, is a consistent voice of support for Russian foreign policy in Ukraine and the Middle East.

...As European far-right leaders openly voice their support for Moscow, it would be wise to remember that Putin’s Russia is not just another “meddling power” lobbying for its interests. It is a government hostile to the West and the value system-- democracy, freedom of expression, political accountability-- that it represents. For proof, one must look no further than Russia’s national security strategy, in which the Russian government explicitly names NATO as a threat and accuses the U.S. and its allies of operating “military-biological” labs on Russia’s border.

Calling the West’s response to the love affair between Putin and the far right an overreaction greatly underestimates the extent to which the Kremlin and its state-controlled media use support of European politicians to legitimize Moscow’s explicitly anti-western foreign policy agenda: far-right politicians not only vote for pro-Kremlin policies in the EU parliament, they also take part in election observation missions-- most notably the referendum for the annexation of Crimea and the “elections” in Ukraine’s Russian-controlled “people’s republics.” The Russian media uses these events and far-right leaders’ visits to Moscow to tout European support for Putin. Even Le Pen was an unknown in Russia until the Ukraine crisis and her outspoken public support for Putin. Now she is paraded as proof that there is some support for Putin’s policies in Europe.

...[T]here is no evidence that these parties’ pro-Putin stance is hurting them at the polls or that it has discredited them in the eyes of voters. If anything, their pro-Russian turn has coincided with their rise in the polls.

It certainly seems to have worked out for Putin in the U.S., spectacularly so. This morning, McClatchy reported that since his election, the easily-manipulated buffoon who is now President-elect has talked to Putin more than any other world leader. Trump has spoken with Putin twice since Nov. 8 and the two leaders' aides are in more more contact, including Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Russian news outlets reported Wednesday that Trump and Putin already are negotiating how Russia and the United States will act in the Middle East next year.

Putin cultivates an image as a stern-faced tough guy with a black belt in judo who rides horses bare-chested and exiles political foes. But it appears he can hardly contain his joy at Trump’s ascension to the presidency.

Putin discussed his most recent talk with Trump at a briefing in Lima, Peru, on Sunday.

“The president-elect confirmed he is willing to normalize Russian-American relations,” Putin told reporters. “I told him the same.”

Putin said he and Trump had not set a date for a personal summit, but he noted that their representatives will be meeting soon.

At a meeting of the 21 member nations in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group, Putin also met with President Barack Obama, inviting him to Moscow after he leaves the White House.

Putin, however, noted the two countries’ ties have been strained under Obama.

“We acknowledged that despite the fact that our dialogue was not easy-- if truth be told, it was difficult to work with each other,” Putin said.


...On Wednesday, Russian officials continued to push the line that Trump would lead to better, more cooperative relations between the two nations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that Russia wants ties with the United States “to return to a constructive course,” adding “it would be hard to make them worse.”

He voiced support for Trump’s own disparagement of the “reset” with Russia that Clinton had promoted in 2009 after becoming secretary of state with a symbolic red button that she gave Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, her Russian counterpart.

“As for a reset, we can only agree with the president-elect because this word has embarrassed itself, since the consequences of that reset are not the ones we would like to see,” Peskov said.


Peskov’s comments came as the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect’s eldest son, had held private discussions in Paris last month with about 30 diplomats, business leaders and politicians who support Putin, including several who have close ties with the Kremlin.

Among them was Syrian-born Randa Kassis, who leads a Russia-backed Syrian opposition group that is not demanding the immediate ouster of Moscow ally President Bashar Assad. She told the Journal she’d pressed the younger Trump to work with Russia to help defeat the Islamic State.

“We have to be realistic,” Kassis was quoted as saying. “Who’s on the ground in Syria? Not the U.S., not France. Without Russia, we can’t have any resolution in Syria.”

Some of Putin’s domestic critics have expressed dismay at Trump’s election, suggesting it would embolden the Kremlin leader.

“Winter has come,” tweeted chess champion Garry Kasparov, who published an anti-Putin book earlier this month called Winter is Coming. In a separate tweet, he called Putin “Trump’s idol.”