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Amid Recount Effort, Donald Trump Eyes Foreign Policy, Defense Jobs

[email protected] (Agencies)
November 27, 2016

West Palm Beach, Nov 27: His inauguration less than eight weeks away, President-elect Donald Trump was confronted by new developments Saturday in recount efforts in three states pivotal to his Nov. 8 victory, even as he worked to fill foreign policy and national defense jobs in his incoming administration.

Donald

The New York billionaire, whose defeat of Democrat Hillary Clinton surprised even some loyalists, has scrambled to fill his Cabinet as the Jan. 20 inauguration approaches. Still, in many ways, he has barely scratched the surface of creating the massive team needed to run the government.

Experts say presidential transitions are periods of great vulnerability for the nation, and among the vacancies on the Trump team are leaders of the departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security.

Trump, who has virtually no experience in foreign affairs, offered a one-line tweet Saturday morning in reaction to the death of Cuban leader Fidel Castro - "Fidel Castro is dead!" - before issuing a more detailed statement.

"While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve," Trump said.

His transition team did not immediately respond to requests to clarify his Cuba policy, which was inconsistent during the campaign.

Also Saturday, Clinton's camp said it was supporting Green Party candidate Jill Stein's push to force recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania in Michigan. Trump narrowly carried those Democratic strongholds.

Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but Trump won 290 electoral votes to Clinton's 232, with Michigan still too close to call. It takes 270 to win the presidency.

Wisconsin officials are moving forward with the first presidential recount in state history following Stein's formal request. Stein, who drew 1 percent of the vote nationally, is raising millions of dollars to pay for the effort.

"Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves," Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias wrote Saturday in blog post. "But now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides."

Elias said Clinton would take the same approach in Pennsylvania and Michigan if Stein were to follow through with recount requests those states, even though that was highly unlikely to change the election outcome.

"Regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself," Elias wrote.

Trump was spending the Thanksgiving holiday weekend with family at his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago. On Friday, he named Fox News analyst Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland as deputy national security adviser and appointed campaign attorney Donald McGahn as White House counsel.

McFarland has worked for three presidents, although none since Ronald Reagan. Fox News said Saturday that her contract has been terminated in light of the appointment.

Trump planned to return to his New York home on Sunday ahead of a series of Monday meetings with prospective administration hires, including Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. He's seen as a possible Homeland Security pick. Clarke's vocal opposition to the "Black Lives Matter" movement has made him popular with many conservatives.

Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence also have Monday meetings scheduled with Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., former Security and Exchange Commission commissioner Paul Atkins, World Wide Technology chairman David Steward and General Growth Properties CEO Sandeep Mathrani.

Internal divisions over his choice for secretary of state have delayed that critical decision. The options include former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who lacks foreign policy experience, but was intensely loyal to Trump, and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who aggressively opposed Trump's candidacy but is largely regarded as more qualified. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker is also a possibility.

With the world's attention on Cuba on Saturday, Trump indicated his administration would do "all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty."

During the campaign, Trump initially suggested he supported President Barack Obama's moves to loosen the US trade embargo.

Trump reversed himself less than a month before the election, and said he would reverse Obama unless Cuba met demands including "religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of political prisoners."

His Saturday statement offered no more clarity.

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Agencies
August 4,2020

Washington, Aug 4: US President Donald Trump gave popular Chinese-owned video app TikTok six weeks to sell its US operations to an American company, saying Monday it would be "out of business" otherwise, and that the government wanted a financial benefit from the deal.

"It's got to be an American company... it's got to be owned here," Trump said. "We don't want to have any problem with security."

Trump said that Microsoft was in talks to buy TikTok, which has as many as one billion worldwide users who make quirky 60-second videos with its smartphone app.

But US officials say the app constitutes a national security risk because it could share millions of Americans' personal data with Chinese intelligence.

Trump gave the company's Chinese parent ByteDance until mid-September to strike a deal.

"I set a date of around September 15, at which point it's going to be out of business in the United States," he said.

Whatever the price is, he said, "the United States should get a very large percentage of that price because we're making it possible."

Trump compared the demand for a piece of the pie to a landlord demanding under-the-table "key money" from a new tenant, a practice widely illegal including in New York, where the billionaire president built his real estate empire.

"TikTok is a big success, but a big portion of it is in the country," he said. "I think it's very fair."

But Trump also threw a surprise new condition in any deal, saying the sale of TikTok's US business would have to result in a significant payout to the US Treasury for initiating it.

"A very substantial portion of that price is going to have to come into the Treasury of the United States, because we're making it possible for this deal to happen," Trump told reporters.

"They don't have any rights unless we give it to them," he said.

Sell or shut down

The pressure for a sale of TikTok's US and international business, based in Los Angeles, left the company and ByteDance facing tough decisions.

Trump has made TikTok the latest front in the ongoing political and trade battles between Washington and Beijing.

The app has been under formal investigation on US national security grounds because it collects large amounts of personal data on all its users and is legally bound to share that with authorities in Beijing if they demand it.

Both its huge user base and its algorithm for collecting data make it hugely valuable.

But being forced by the US government to sell at least its US business or be shut down -- and to then split the sale price with the US Treasury as Trump is demanding -- was an almost unheard-of tactic.

Shutting down could force users to switch to competitors, and many content creators are already encouraging followers to follow them on other social media platforms.

"The most obvious beneficiaries are Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter, with Snapchat likely being the biggest beneficiary," said investment analysts at Lightshed Partners.

Earlier Monday, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming acknowledged the hefty pressure and said in a letter to staff, reported by Chinese media, that they were working around-the-clock "for the best outcome."

"We have always been committed to ensuring user data security, as well as the platform neutrality and transparency," Zhang said.

However, he said, the company faces "mounting complexities across the geopolitical landscape and significant external pressure."

He said the company must confront the challenge from the United States, though "without giving up exploring any possibilities."

According to Britain's The Sun newspaper Monday, as a possible consequence of the pressure, ByteDance is planning to relocate TikTok's global operations to Britain.

Pushing back

China's foreign ministry pushed back Monday, calling Washington hypocritical for demanding TikTok be sold.

"The US is using an abused concept of national security and, without providing any evidence, is making presumptions of guilt and issuing threats to relevant companies," said spokesman Wang Wenbin.

"This goes against the principle of market economy and exposes the hypocrisy and typical double standards of the US in upholding so-called fairness and freedom," he added.

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News Network
June 1,2020

Jun 1: The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday.

"In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy," said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy's coronavirus contagion.

"The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago," he told RAI television.

Italy has the third-highest death toll in the world from COVID-19, with 33,415 people dying since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21. It has the sixth-highest global tally of cases at 233,019.

However new infections and fatalities have fallen steadily in May and the country is unwinding some of the most rigid lockdown restrictions introduced anywhere on the continent.

Zangrillo said some experts were too alarmist about the prospect of a second wave of infections and politicians needed to take into account the new reality.

"We've got to get back to being a normal country," he said. "Someone has to take responsibility for terrorizing the country."

The government urged caution, saying it was far too soon to claim victory.

"Pending scientific evidence to support the thesis that the virus has disappeared ... I would invite those who say they are sure of it not to confuse Italians," Sandra Zampa, an undersecretary at the health ministry, said in a statement.

"We should instead invite Italians to maintain the maximum caution, maintain physical distancing, avoid large groups, to frequently wash their hands and to wear masks."

A second doctor from northern Italy told the national ANSA news agency that he was also seeing the coronavirus weaken. "The strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today," said Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at the San Martino hospital in the city of Genoa.

"It is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different."

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News Network
February 19,2020

Washington, Feb 19: Sri Srinivasan, a prominent Indian-American judge, has created history by becoming the first person of South Asian descent to lead a powerful federal circuit court considered next only to the US Supreme Court.

Srinivasan, 52, became the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

An Obama appointee who has already been considered for a Supreme Court seat twice, donned the mantle of the chief judge of the DC federal court circuit on February 12.

Srinivasan succeeded Judge Merrick Garland, who has been a member of the DC Circuit since 1997 and Chief Judge since 2013. He will remain on the bench, a press release said.

Notably, Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court by the then president Barack Obama was blocked by Senate Republicans in 2016.

Srinivasan, was appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in May 2013.

He was the first ever Indian-American to be appointed to the second most powerful court of the US.

Neomi Rao, nominated by President Donald Trump, is the second Indian American on this powerful judiciary bench.

History being made on the DC Court of Appeals. Congratulations, Judge Srinivasan! Senator Mark Warner said.

Congratulations to Judge Sri Srinivasan on becoming the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit! A milestone for the Indian-American/Kansan community (and yet another piece of evidence my family can use that I'm underachieving), US Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai said.

According to The Washington Post, Srinivasan spoke recently about his path to the bench at an event celebrating women in the law, a field where men still dominate leadership positions.

"Everybody doubts their belonging and worthiness in some measure. I definitely did and still do. This is just going to be a part of the thing when you're looking out in the world in which everyone isn't like you. It's natural to doubt whether you belong and whether you're worthy, he said, "but you do belong and you are worthy.

Born in Chandigarh, and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, he received a B.A. from Stanford University, a J.D. from Stanford Law School, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Following graduation, he served as a law clerk to Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, as a Bristow Fellow in the Office of the US Solicitor General, and as a law clerk to US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

From 2011 until his appointment to the US Court of Appeals, Judge Srinivasan served as the Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States.

He has argued 25 cases before the US Supreme Court. He has also taught appellate advocacy at Harvard Law School as well as a seminar on civil rights statutes and the Supreme Court at Georgetown University Law Center.

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