Category: Saved web pages

Not only does the Times denounce Trump as an individual, it places Trump and the Republican Party as one in the same ahead of the upcoming convention. “A once great political party now serves the interests of one man, a man as demonstrably unsuited for the office of president as any to run in the long history of the Republic, a man whose values, temperament, ideas and language are directly opposed to so much of what has made this country great,” they wrote.

Nearly two weeks ago, the board also wrote that President Joe Biden should step aside as the presumptive Democratic nominee after his startling debate performance, writing that leaving the presidential race would be the “greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform.” Their reasoning for calling on Biden to leave hinged on the same beliefs as the editorial published Thursday: Trump cannot and should not be president, in their eyes.

“The burden rests on the Democratic Party to put the interests of the nation above the ambitions of a single man,” the editorial said. They doubled down on Monday, calling on elected Democrats to “speak forcefully to the president and the public about the need for a new candidate.”

“President Biden clearly understands the stakes. But he seems to have lost track of his own role in this national drama,” the board wrote. “As the situation has become more dire, he has come to regard himself as indispensable. He does not seem to understand that he is now the problem — and that the best hope for Democrats to retain the White House is for him to step aside.”

On Thursday, they called directly on voters to use their power at the ballot box against Trump, regardless of who is ultimately on the ballot opposing him. “We urge voters to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it.”

“When someone fails so many foundational tests, you don’t give him the most important job in the world,” the board concludes.

Republican presidents and presidential candidates have used their leadership at critical moments to set a tone for society to live up to. Mr. Reagan faced down totalitarianism in the 1980s, appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court and worked with Democrats on bipartisan tax and immigration reforms. George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act and decisively defended an ally, Kuwait, against Iraqi aggression. George W. Bush, for all his failures after Sept. 11, did not stoke hate against or demonize Muslims or Islam.

As a candidate during the 2008 race, Mr. McCain spoke out when his fellow conservatives spread lies about his opponent, Barack Obama. Mr. Romney was willing to sacrifice his standing and influence in the party he once represented as a presidential nominee, by boldly calling out Mr. Trump’s failings and voting for his removal from office.

These acts of leadership are what it means to put country first, to think beyond oneself.

Mr. Trump has demonstrated contempt for these American ideals. He admires autocrats, from Viktor Orban to Vladimir Putin to Kim Jong-un. He believes in the strongman model of power — a leader who makes things happen by demanding it, compelling agreement through force of will or personality. In reality, a strongman rules through fear and the unprincipled use of political might for self-serving ends, imposing poorly conceived policies that smother innovation, entrepreneurship, ideas and hope.

During his four years in office, Mr. Trump tried to govern the United States as a strongman would, issuing orders or making decrees on Twitter. He announced sudden changes in policy — on who can serve in the military, on trade policy, on how the United States deals with North Korea or Russia — without consulting experts on his staff about how these changes would affect America. Indeed, nowhere did he put his political or personal interests above the national interest more tragically than during the pandemic, when he faked his way through a crisis by touting conspiracy theories and pseudoscience while ignoring the advice of his own experts and resisting basic safety measures that would have saved lives.

He took a similar approach to America’s strategic relationships abroad. Mr. Trump lost the trust of America’s longstanding allies, especially in NATO, leaving Europe less secure and emboldening the far right and authoritarian leaders in Europe, Latin America and Asia. He pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, leaving that country, already a threat to the world, more dangerous, thanks to a revived program that has achieved near-weapons-grade uranium.

In a second term, his willingness to appease Mr. Putin would leave Ukraine’s future as a democratic and independent country in doubt. Mr. Trump implies that he could single-handedly end the catastrophic war in Gaza but has no real plan. He has suggested that in a second term he’d increase tariffs on Chinese goods to 60 percent or higher and that he would put a 10 percent tariff on all imported goods, moves that would raise prices for American consumers and reduce innovation by allowing U.S. industries to rely on protectionism instead.

The worst of the Trump administration’s policies were often blocked by Congress, by court challenges and by the objections of honorable public servants who stepped in to thwart his demands when they were irresponsible or did not follow the law. When Mr. Trump wanted an end to Obamacare, a single Republican senator, Mr. McCain, saved it, preserving health care for millions of Americans. Mr. Trump demanded that James Comey, his F.B.I. director, pledge loyalty to him and end an investigation into a political ally; Mr. Comey refused. Scientists and public health officials called out and corrected his misinformation about climate science and Covid. The Supreme Court sided against the Trump administration more times than any other president since at least Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A second Trump administration would be different. He intends to fill his administration with sycophants, those who have shown themselves willing to obey Mr. Trump’s demands or those who lack the strength to stand up to him. He wants to remove those who would be obstacles to his agenda, by enacting an order to make it easier to fire civil servants and replace them with those more loyal to him.

This means not only that Americans would lose the benefit of their expertise but also that America would be governed in a climate of fear, in which government employees must serve the interests of the president rather than the public. All cabinet secretaries follow a president’s lead, but Mr. Trump envisions a nation in which public service as Americans understand it would cease to exist — where individual civil servants and departments could no longer make independent decisions and where research by scientists and public health experts and investigations by the Justice Department and others in federal law enforcement would be more malleable to the demands of the White House.

Another term under Mr. Trump’s leadership would risk doing permanent damage to our government. As Mr. Comey, a longtime Republican, wrote in a 2019 guest essay for Times Opinion, “Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from.” Very few who serve under him can avoid this fate “because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites,” Mr. Comey wrote. “Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values. And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.” America will get nowhere with a strongman. It needs a strong leader.

Republican presidents and presidential candidates have used their leadership at critical moments to set a tone for society to live up to. Mr. Reagan faced down totalitarianism in the 1980s, appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court and worked with Democrats on bipartisan tax and immigration reforms. George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act and decisively defended an ally, Kuwait, against Iraqi aggression. George W. Bush, for all his failures after Sept. 11, did not stoke hate against or demonize Muslims or Islam.

As a candidate during the 2008 race, Mr. McCain spoke out when his fellow conservatives spread lies about his opponent, Barack Obama. Mr. Romney was willing to sacrifice his standing and influence in the party he once represented as a presidential nominee, by boldly calling out Mr. Trump’s failings and voting for his removal from office.

These acts of leadership are what it means to put country first, to think beyond oneself.

Mr. Trump has demonstrated contempt for these American ideals. He admires autocrats, from Viktor Orban to Vladimir Putin to Kim Jong-un. He believes in the strongman model of power — a leader who makes things happen by demanding it, compelling agreement through force of will or personality. In reality, a strongman rules through fear and the unprincipled use of political might for self-serving ends, imposing poorly conceived policies that smother innovation, entrepreneurship, ideas and hope.

During his four years in office, Mr. Trump tried to govern the United States as a strongman would, issuing orders or making decrees on Twitter. He announced sudden changes in policy — on who can serve in the military, on trade policy, on how the United States deals with North Korea or Russia — without consulting experts on his staff about how these changes would affect America. Indeed, nowhere did he put his political or personal interests above the national interest more tragically than during the pandemic, when he faked his way through a crisis by touting conspiracy theories and pseudoscience while ignoring the advice of his own experts and resisting basic safety measures that would have saved lives.

He took a similar approach to America’s strategic relationships abroad. Mr. Trump lost the trust of America’s longstanding allies, especially in NATO, leaving Europe less secure and emboldening the far right and authoritarian leaders in Europe, Latin America and Asia. He pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, leaving that country, already a threat to the world, more dangerous, thanks to a revived program that has achieved near-weapons-grade uranium.

In a second term, his willingness to appease Mr. Putin would leave Ukraine’s future as a democratic and independent country in doubt. Mr. Trump implies that he could single-handedly end the catastrophic war in Gaza but has no real plan. He has suggested that in a second term he’d increase tariffs on Chinese goods to 60 percent or higher and that he would put a 10 percent tariff on all imported goods, moves that would raise prices for American consumers and reduce innovation by allowing U.S. industries to rely on protectionism instead.

The worst of the Trump administration’s policies were often blocked by Congress, by court challenges and by the objections of honorable public servants who stepped in to thwart his demands when they were irresponsible or did not follow the law. When Mr. Trump wanted an end to Obamacare, a single Republican senator, Mr. McCain, saved it, preserving health care for millions of Americans. Mr. Trump demanded that James Comey, his F.B.I. director, pledge loyalty to him and end an investigation into a political ally; Mr. Comey refused. Scientists and public health officials called out and corrected his misinformation about climate science and Covid. The Supreme Court sided against the Trump administration more times than any other president since at least Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A second Trump administration would be different. He intends to fill his administration with sycophants, those who have shown themselves willing to obey Mr. Trump’s demands or those who lack the strength to stand up to him. He wants to remove those who would be obstacles to his agenda, by enacting an order to make it easier to fire civil servants and replace them with those more loyal to him.

This means not only that Americans would lose the benefit of their expertise but also that America would be governed in a climate of fear, in which government employees must serve the interests of the president rather than the public. All cabinet secretaries follow a president’s lead, but Mr. Trump envisions a nation in which public service as Americans understand it would cease to exist — where individual civil servants and departments could no longer make independent decisions and where research by scientists and public health experts and investigations by the Justice Department and others in federal law enforcement would be more malleable to the demands of the White House.

Another term under Mr. Trump’s leadership would risk doing permanent damage to our government. As Mr. Comey, a longtime Republican, wrote in a 2019 guest essay for Times Opinion, “Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from.” Very few who serve under him can avoid this fate “because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites,” Mr. Comey wrote. “Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values. And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.” America will get nowhere with a strongman. It needs a strong leader.

Not only does the Times denounce Trump as an individual, it places Trump and the Republican Party as one in the same ahead of the upcoming convention. “A once great political party now serves the interests of one man, a man as demonstrably unsuited for the office of president as any to run in the long history of the Republic, a man whose values, temperament, ideas and language are directly opposed to so much of what has made this country great,” they wrote.

Nearly two weeks ago, the board also wrote that President Joe Biden should step aside as the presumptive Democratic nominee after his startling debate performance, writing that leaving the presidential race would be the “greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform.” Their reasoning for calling on Biden to leave hinged on the same beliefs as the editorial published Thursday: Trump cannot and should not be president, in their eyes.

“The burden rests on the Democratic Party to put the interests of the nation above the ambitions of a single man,” the editorial said. They doubled down on Monday, calling on elected Democrats to “speak forcefully to the president and the public about the need for a new candidate.”

“President Biden clearly understands the stakes. But he seems to have lost track of his own role in this national drama,” the board wrote. “As the situation has become more dire, he has come to regard himself as indispensable. He does not seem to understand that he is now the problem — and that the best hope for Democrats to retain the White House is for him to step aside.”

On Thursday, they called directly on voters to use their power at the ballot box against Trump, regardless of who is ultimately on the ballot opposing him. “We urge voters to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it.”

“When someone fails so many foundational tests, you don’t give him the most important job in the world,” the board concludes.

Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire who this week paid £400m for a 3% stake in BT, has traversed some of life’s highest peaks and lowest ebbs.

He claims that in 1997, aged 57, he was briefly declared dead after suffering a massive haemorrhage on the operating table at the Texas Heart Institute during surgery to replace a faulty heart valve.

Thirteen years later he was named the world’s wealthiest man by the American business magazine Forbes, his fortune estimated at $73bn.

While Slim, the son of Lebanese immigrants, has fallen off the list of the top 10 richest people in the world amid the rise of tech bros such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, his net worth has swollen to $93bn.

What’s more, his investment in BT shows that at the age of 84 he has not lost his renowned appetite for opportunistic investment, swooping on the company’s shares at a time when many analysts are predicting a brighter future under the new chief executive Allison Kirkby.

Investors appeared cheered by Slim’s latest move: BT’s shares rose 4% on Thursday. He’s not the only billionaire on the share register: Altice, the group controlled by Moroccan-born telecoms mogul Patrick Drahi, is its largest shareholder.

BT and Slim seem a good fit. The Slim empire was founded on telecoms, in particular América Móvil, which secured a virtual monopoly on the telephone business in Mexico, a country of more than 100 million people.

But Slim also has interests in a sprawling array of sectors, including manufacturing, retail, energy and aviation.

Many of his investments are housed within Grupo Carso, a holding company whose title is a portmanteau of the first letters of his own name and that of his late wife, Soumaya Domit, with whom he had six children.

Slim cuts a divisive figure in Mexico, according to his biographer, Diego Enrique Osorno, author of Slim: A Political Biography of the Richest Mexican in the World. “There are Mexicans who look at Slim with pride and see him as an aspirational figure … and there are those who consider him to be the symbol of our inequality,” said Osorno.

Slim is known for taking a simple but effective approach to investing, swooping on undervalued assets in times of economic turmoil and picking up bargains amid market panic.

Amid the global financial crisis that began in 2008 he snapped up a $150m stake in the Wall Street bank Citigroup and loaned $250m to the New York Times – saving it from bankruptcy, by some accounts.

He is said to have picked up his shrewdness for a deal from his father, Julián Slim Haddad, who arrived in Mexico in 1902 in order to avoid conscription into the Ottoman army. The Lebanese immigrant is said to have given his children ledgers to help them understand how to interpret financial transactions.

skip past newsletter promotion

Get set for the working day – we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

after newsletter promotion

The young Slim, who was a keen baseball player in Mexico City’s middle class Polanco suburb, would trade baseball cards in the playground, keeping a weather eye on his accounts. By 11 he had already bought his first government savings bonds. By 15 he had invested in Banco Nacional de México. Upon leaving university, he became part of a clique known as “los Casabolseros” – a group of slick young stock market players.

According to Osorno and the political commentator Denise Dresser, the mathematical nous Slim gleaned during his childhood, together with his vision for a deal, have played a part in his success, but so too has an instinct to stay on the right side of political elites at opportune moments. Many of his business interests were picked up at rock-bottom prices during privatisations by a cash-strapped state.

“Slim emerged as a Mexican prototype of the Russian oligarchs, as someone who multiplied their fortunes under the shadow of power,” said Dresser.

Unlike some Russian oligarchs, though, Slim developed a reputation for maintaining a low profile, eschewing flamboyance or showy megamansions, with the possible exception of the Duke Semans mansion, an eight-storey home on New York’s Fifth Avenue which he bought for $44m in 2010.

Slim does spend some of his vast fortune on art, though; his home has sculptures by Rodin, and paintings by Renoir and Van Gogh. In 1999, his wife died. Slim built an art museum and named it in her honour.

This audio is created with AI assistance

WASHINGTON, July 9 (Reuters) – The U.S. has not seen Russia shift on its preference from previous U.S. presidential elections on who it prefers to win this year, a U.S. intelligence official said on Tuesday, indicating that Moscow again favors Republican Donald Trump.

The official, briefing reporters on U.S. election security, did not name the former president and presumptive Republican nominee when asked who Moscow wants as the next U.S. president.

But he indicated that Russia favored Trump, saying the U.S. intelligence community had not changed its assessments from previous elections.

“We have not observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections, given the role the U.S. is playing with regard to Ukraine and broader policy toward Russia,” said the official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Trump campaign responded by saying Biden was weak on Russia, as evidenced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“When President Trump was in the Oval Office, Russia and all of America’s adversaries were deterred, because they feared how the United States would respond,” Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s press secretary, said in a statement.

Trump frequently has criticized the scale of U.S. military support for Ukraine – some $60 billion since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 – and called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy “the greatest salesman ever.”

The NATO charter obliges members to come to the defense of members that are attacked.

The ODNI official conducted the briefing on condition of anonymity with ODNI colleagues and officials from the FBI and the National Coordinator for Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, an agency that conducts cyber defense for the government and works with private industry.

He defined election influence as efforts to shape the outcome of polls or undermine democratic processes, while interference constitutes efforts to disrupt the ability of the U.S. to hold a free and fair vote.

The U.S. has not monitored plans by any country to “degrade or disrupt” the country’s ability to hold the November elections, he said.

But Russia, he continued, through social media and other means has begun trying to influence specific groups of U.S. voters in battleground states, “promote divisive narratives and denigrate specific politicians,” whom he did not identify.

“Russia is undertaking a whole of government approach to influence the election, including the presidential, Congress, and public opinion,” he said.

Moscow “determines which candidates they’re willing to support or oppose largely based on their stance toward further U.S. aid to Ukraine and related issues,” said the official. “It’s all the tactics we’ve seen before, primarily through social media efforts” and “using U.S. voices to amplify their narratives.”

A new intelligence community assessment published this week on the ODNI website said Russia “remains the primary threat to our elections” and that unidentified “Russian influence actors” secretly plan to “sway public opinion” in swing states and “diminish U.S. support for Ukraine.”

Russia recently has been seeking to influence U.S. audiences through “encrypted direct messaging channels,” said the official. He did not elaborate.

China is assessed as currently not planning “to influence the outcome of the presidential race,” the official said.

The U.S. views China as its leading geostrategic rival. Beijing and Washington have been working to ease strains. The Chinese embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Beijing is trying to expand its ability to collect and monitor data from social media platforms “probably to better understand and eventually manipulate public opinion,” the official said.

The official called generative artificial intelligence a “malign influence accelerant” being increasingly used to “more convincingly tailor” video and other content ahead of the November vote.

Sign up here.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

WASHINGTON, July 9 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden pledged to forcefully defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion at the NATO summit in Washington on Tuesday, using the global stage to try to show allies at home and abroad that he can still lead.

“(Vladimir) Putin wants nothing less, nothing less, than Ukraine’s total subjugation … and to wipe Ukraine off the map,” Biden said in his welcome to NATO member states to the summit, referring to the Russian president. “Ukraine can and will stop Putin.”

The White House is hoping he can turn the page on a difficult period in his presidency with his highest profile policy speech since the debate, although some diplomats at the summit said the damage was hard to erase.

On Tuesday, Biden spoke off of a teleprompter with a strong and confident voice and largely avoided the verbal flubs and signs of confusion that marked his debate performance.

Biden was framed by the gilded walls of the federal hall where the treaty creating NATO was signed, his speech bookended by stirring musical performances by the U.S. Marine Corp band.

“Today NATO is stronger than it’s ever been in its history,” he said.

The U.S. president has made restoring traditional alliances abroad the centerpiece of his foreign policy after Trump challenged allies as part of an “America First” approach. The election winner in November could have a substantial impact on the future of NATO, Europe and the rest of the world.

“We don’t see how he can come back after the debate,” said one European diplomat, who dismissed Tuesday’s speech as evidence of Biden’s endurance because it was scripted. “I can’t imagine him being at helm of the U.S. and NATO for four more years.”

Biden closed his remarks by surprising NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, clasping the highest U.S. civilian award around the Norwegian politician’s neck and crediting him with reviving the 32-member alliance.

The centerpiece of the NATO summit is set to be new commitments of military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the summit would “further strengthen” the war-torn country’s path to NATO membership.

Biden and the leaders of Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Romania issued a joint statement with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announcing the delivery of five additional Patriot and other strategic air defense systems to protect Ukrainian cities, civilians and soldiers.

They said additional strategic air defense systems would be announced this year.

“We are fighting for additional security guarantees for Ukraine – and these are weapons and finances, political support,” he said on social media.

Ukraine ultimately wants to join NATO to ward against further future attacks by Russia but candidates have to be approved by all of the alliance’s members, some of which are wary of provoking a direct conflict with Russia.

Biden will hold a rare solo press conference on Thursday, also aimed at quieting concerns.

But he estimated Russia would be able to sustain its war economy for three to four more years and also said “it will be some time” before Ukraine has amassed the munitions and personnel it needs to mount its own large-scale offensive operations.

Sign up here.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab