Trump Criticism In Review

The same was true of Obama though. Can you imagine an A2K thread on "Obama Criticism in Review", that would have asked its contributors to make "rational cases"?... Ha ha ha!

The White House had released a statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day that did not mention Jews or anti-Semitism. Instead it bemoaned the "innocent victims".

I do think that such was okay, if that day had been the "millions of innocent people whom the Nazis killed in many horrific ways day".
The Holocaust, however, was an organized program with the goal of wiping out a specific people: Jews (In German "Endlösung der Judenfrage", literally translated Final Solution to the Jewish Question)

There has been noting similar with the Socialists, Communists, Roma, homosexuals, dissidents of any kind, Jehovas Witnesses, disabled, "useless eaters", ...

And your point is?

And your point is?

Do you believe the statement was "soft Holocaust denial" or anti-Semitic?

I don't know. Maybe that the thread's remit is too broad. Should be focused on the Holocaust story me think.

From what I know, Jews here call it soft Holocaust, mainly because Holocaust can't be "addressed in more general terms" (it's just about Jews and not about other victims of the Nazi period).

To be honest, I didn't know that until I made some researches in a nearby KZ decades ago and met (non-Jewish) surveyors there.
This was confirmed by Jewish surveyors I've met later.

It might be a narrowed view, due to their past. But I accept it and think that it is correct.

Edit: I just looked it up again: Priebus, on Meet The Press, declared that "everyone’s suffering in the Holocaust, including obviously, all of the Jewish people… [was] extraordinarily sad". (Source)
It seems, my understandin of the term Holocaust (and what it means to many others) is different. (That's why other victims here got [and should get] different memorials to the Holocaust Memorial - Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin.

Finn, did you see this?

There might be something to that but after seething at the steady rise of "political correctness according to liberals" over the past decade or two, it seems to me that being blunt — even crass — is now seen as a good way to prove your Trumpian meddle.

Now, I'm not convinced there was that much strategic thinking in the statement; it's possible that specifically calling out the Jews didn't even occur to the staff members who wrote it. But let's say it did and was rejected — they might have thought that avoiding the laundry list of victims was a good way to distinguish the hard-headed approach of the new administration and that moving the embassy to Jerusalem, threatening Iran, and backing Israel in the UN was sufficient. "Watch what we do, not what we say," is the classic line used by John Mitchell.

I didn't even know this was a thing til I read it here.

If someone says holocaust, what is the first thing that comes to mind? If it is not that millions of Jews died horribly, then you have something wrong with you. The very word has Jew implied in it.

If I say it's night time, do I also have to say that it is dark? Wouldn't that be implied?

I do believe, as I think you do as well, that no matter what Trump does or says, there will be a squad of people who devote themselves to finding something wrong with both the action and the man.

How doesn't Trump's statement adopt this overt anti-Semitic theme other than not explicitly stating that Jews make the Holocaust all about them?

I don't see why he'd leave out mention of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust since they suffered more murders than any other group of people. If he wanted the statement to be more inclusive he could have referred primarily to the Jewish victims and then the other victims of the Holocaust, like the Slavic peoples who the Nazis also murdered because they were seen as an inferior race. Their elimination was a part of the Nazis' Generalplan Ost, Master Plan for the East in the name of Nazi Lebensraum, Living space. Had the Nazis succeeded in conquering Eastern Europe, the genocide of Slavic peoples they would have carried out would have paled any they had accomplished during the war.

Agreed, but all criticism can't be unfounded.

My intent with this thread to invite review of each topic of criticism and see if some consensus can be obtained as to whether it has any substance or is just howling at the moon.

It will probably get wildly out of control, but we'll see.

I had thought that the Holocaust was the totality of the Nazis' murder of entire populations of various peoples and that The Final Solution was a major part of those mass murders. Here you're describing The Final Solution as synonymous with the Holocaust. What then, designates the mass murder of the non-Jewish populations that the Nazis carried out that amounted to about 11.5 million murders?

Good points

It is hilarious to see a conservative whine about obstruction. The Republicans would never do that . . . oh, no. I would be interesteed to know precisely how libruls are obstructing anything.

Some historians call the murder of Roma "Roma-Holocaust" to give it an eual level with the Holocaust. (See: David M. Crowe: The Roma Holocaust. In: F. C. DeCoste, Bernard Schwartz (Editors)): The Holocaust’s Ghost: Writings on Art, Politics, Law and Education. The University of Alberta Press, 2000. - That's otherwise known as "Porajmos".)

In today's German, we call it Vernichtung ("extermination") of ... or Euthanasie, the latte referring mainly to Aktion 4, as it was called officially during the Nazi-period.

When you look at the various institution doing Holocaust research/Holocaust study academically, you'll find out more.

The kerfuffle of the day:
U.S.-Australia Rift Is Possible After Trump Ends Call With Prime Minister
What's interesting here is that the story was obviously leaked from the White House. Where an Obama or Bush (or HRC) administration would probably take steps to avoid publicizing an acrimonious exchange with an ally, Mr. Trump (and presumably his advisors) apparently see it as a political tool, effectively putting allies on notice and appealing to his base.

I haven't abandoned this thread so soon after starting it. Just caught in the middle of laborious and time consuming, business related project.

I'll be back.

Oy gevalt (woe is me!). First let me explain that in the NYC area there are many non-Jews that wonder when Jews will stop bemoaning the Holocaust (Jews do not talk of the Final Solution as the Holocaust, unless they are discussing specific events in Nazi history). I asked this question to a nice person who is quite philo-Semitic, compared to many of his contemporaries, in my opinion. My rhetorical answer was, "Maybe never, or in 500 years or so" (thinking of the 500 years after the Inquisition where Jews have no problem with vacationing in Spain). The reason I said, "Maybe never," was because I have read an authors opinion (I agree) that the Holocaust was the single DEFINING existential historical fact for Jews since the fall of Jerusalem, or some other deluge in Jewish history. So, it appears to me that many Gentiles are sort of covertly petulant about the ongoing Holocaust lamenting that is going on, almost a century after the fact, by very assimilated Jews that otherwise do not seem any different than other folks.

So, is it possible that this all inclusive Holocaust statement, that didn't make Jews the central theme of the Holocaust, done on purpose to make Jews seem more like those that also lost fellow citizens during the war? It is, in my opinion, that many other demographics like to promulgate the myth that just about everyone liked them in history, wanting to give no one a reason to think they were ever the object of mass scorn. In this regard I offer two parades, the Columbus Day Parade, and the St. Patrick's Day Parade, that seem to be in deep denial of the persona non grata existence ancestors dealt with in just the last century or two.

I think the problem isn't that Jews want to remain the central focus of the Holocaust, since Jews really amongst themselves, in my opinion, do not look for Gentile guidance to codify their history, but the problem might just be that Gentiles do not deal well with the reality of the WWII mass Jew hunt that the Holocaust reflected, as part of their collective psyche. This includes the fact that many non-Germans were quite happy to assist the occupying Germans, not to mention that many were quite happy to see Europe belonging once again to the descendants of those pagan tribes that settled in Europe in the early Middle Ages. And, to make matters worse, Israel changed its image from being the proverbial "timid Jew" to a metamorphosis where all single girls go into a peace time draft. Even the U.S., with many military involvments do not draft women.

I would just offer the advice to stop meddling in Jewish concerns, since it's getting a little hackneyed, from pagan times to the common era, when a world of billions of people are so concerned about 14 million? The yiddish phrase perhaps should be, "Mischegoyim" (mixed up Gentiles). Now that's not an adhominem; just the facts, a la Joe Friday (from TV's Dragnet).

This is why the media can't be trusted. This is why Blatham can't be trusted, not that he lies or anything. Just in general, he is too swarthy to be trusted.

Errors From The Press Are Piling Up In The Opening Weeks Of The Trump Administration

Journalists can’t seem to get their stories straight in the opening weeks of the Trump administration, whether in tweets or in articles where falsehoods have been spread almost daily.

The mistakes have not just been from newer liberal news outlets such The Huffington Post or BuzzFeed, but from legacy media like Reuters, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

What follows are several botched stories or conflicting reports since President Trump took office.

The Trump administration eases sanctions on a Russian intelligence agency.

NBC reported Thursday that the Trump administration was easing sanctions on the FSB, one of Russia’s primary intelligence agencies. Peter Alexander, NBC’s national correspondent, tweeted, “US Treasury Dept easing Obama admin sanctions to allow companies to do transactions with Russia’s FSB, successor org to KGB.”

Less than an hour later, he wrote, “Source familiar w sanctions says it’s a technical fix, planned under Obama, to avoid unintended consequences of cybersanctions.” His initial and incorrect tweet received nearly seven thousand retweets and the correction has less than 300 retweets.

Vanity Fair is still running the uncorrected article: “Russian Stocks Surge As Comrade Trump Eases Relations With Vlad.”

The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice were blindsided by Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees.

The New York Times came out with a report this past week titled: “How Trump’s Rush to Enact an Immigration Ban Unleashed Global Chaos.”

It stated: “Gen. John F. Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, had dialed in from a Coast Guard plane as he headed back to Washington from Miami. Along with other top officials, he needed guidance from the White House, which had not asked his department for a legal review of the order. Halfway into the briefing, someone on the call looked up at a television in his office. ‘The president is signing the executive order that we’re discussing,’ the official said, stunned.”

Secretary Kelly, however, later strongly denied this report during a press conference Tuesday. “We knew it was coming. It wasn’t a surprise,” Kelly said.

NBC had their own story about Trump blindsiding officials. John Harwood tweeted, “senior Justice official tells [NBC News] that Dept had no input. not sure who in WH is writing/reviewing. standard NSC process not functioning.” This tweet received over 3,000 retweets.

A few days later, CNN reported that an internal memo showed that the DOJ had in fact approved Trump’s executive order.

Steve Bannon went to visit Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly to convince him to temporarily ban certain green card holders.

The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin forgot to ask the White House for comment about the movements of a White House official for a story he published Saturday.

Rogin reported Saturday: “White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon wanted to stop Kelly in his tracks. Bannon paid a personal and unscheduled visit to Kelly’s Department of Homeland Security office to deliver an order: Don’t issue the waiver. Kelly, according to two administration officials familiar with the confrontation, refused to comply with Bannon’s instruction.”

The report was spread by journalists on Twitter and picked up by New York magazine, The Week, and Mother Jones.

However, an editor’s note was later added to Rogin’s story. It states: “Prior to publication of this column, The Post sought comment from the Department of Homeland Security but not from the White House. We should have done both. After publication, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told The Post that Stephen Bannon did not travel to see Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on the evening of Jan. 28.”

It was also Rogin who reported that the entire senior administrative team at the state department resigned in the opening week of the Trump administration. The columnist failed to mention that only one undersecretary of state stayed in the transition from the Clinton to Bush administration.

The Trump administration forces the resignations of several senior Secret Service officials.

The Atlantic’s Washington editor-at-large Steve Clemons tweeted Friday that Secret Service management level personnel were forced to resign Thursday night and escorted out of the Eisenhower executive office building. He subsequently tweeted that one of these “fired” Secret Service agents “speculates” that Trump is “restructuring the service.”

A Secret Service spokeswoman told The Daily Caller that Clemons’ reporting is “completely false.” The Secret Service even tweeted at him “Still waiting for you to contact us for official statement.” Clemons has not deleted his false tweets which have received thousands of retweets.

Trump thinks Sean Spicer overdid it in his first appearance. Or does he?

White House press secretary Sean Spicer used his first appearance behind the podium on Jan. 21 to scold the press for what he perceived as dishonest reporting about the crowd size at Trump’s inauguration. Spicer was aggressive and loud during his statement, and The New York Times subsequently reported that day that Trump believed Spicer went too far.

Two days later, The Washington Post reported: “In Trump’s mind, Spicer’s attack on the news media was not forceful enough.”

The Associated Press and CNN can’t agree whether Trump threatened to send troops into Mexico.

The AP, arguably America’s most reputable news source, reported Wednesday that President Trump threatened to send troops into Mexico while on the phone with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. “You have a bunch of bad hombres down there,” Trump told Peña Nieto in the excerpt provided to the AP. “You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”

Hours later, however, CNN would report that the AP excerpt was an internal readout of the call and not the actual transcript. CNN said Trump actually told Peña Nieto, “You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with. We are willing to help with that big-league, but they have be knocked out and you have not done a good job knocking them out.”
“The excerpt of the transcript obtained by CNN differs with an official internal readout of the call that wrongly suggested Trump was contemplating sending troops to the border in a hostile way,” the CNN report said. This report by CNN came shortly after Jim Acosta, CNN’s White House correspondent, tweeted, “Source on Trump foreign leader calls says POTUS offered EPN the help of US troops to help get the ‘bad hombres.'”

The White House denied that the AP report was true, but the following day said that Trump’s comments were “lighthearted,” making it unclear if he indeed threatened to send troops into Mexico.

Reuters screws up the timing of Trump’s executive order.

Reuters confidently reported two weeks ago: “U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign executive orders starting on Wednesday that include a temporary ban on most refugees and a suspension of visas for citizens of Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries.”

The order from Trump, however, came that Friday. Reuters also reported Thursday that, “Yemeni officials say warships, likely American, shell al Qaeda positions.” Another Reuters reporter subsequently stated that “US officials say this is not true.”