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OPINION
®h t Unties
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Monday, December 3, 2018
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Link between
Trump, Russia
getting clearer
BY NOAH FELDMAN
Bloomberg News
The key revelation of Michael Cohen’s new
guilty plea is this: Justice Department Special
Counsel Robert Mueller is one step closer to show
ing links between Donald Trump’s business inter
ests in Russia and his conduct as a candidate for
president.
The criminal information filed by Mueller’s
prosecutors in the Southern District of New York
states that in a period that lasted until the middle
of June, 2016, Cohen was negotiating with the
press secretary to Russian President Vladimir
Putin for a meeting with Putin in Russia as part
of a deal that would have led to a Trump Tower
being built in Moscow.
And according to the document, Cohen spoke to
Trump about the deal more than three times dur
ing that period, and asked both Trump and other
senior campaign officials about a Trump trip to
Russia in connection with the deal.
Cohen is pleading guilty to lying to Congress by
saying these negotiations had ended by January
2016 and by denying that he spoke to Trump about
them.
The details that emerge in the document are
fascinating and rich.
But the main takeaway is that Cohen and others
in the Trump organization were actively doing a
Russia deal that linked Trump’s emerging presi
dential candidacy with his business interest in a
Moscow Trump Tower. And Trump knew about it,
to a degree yet to be revealed.
Until now, many have speculated that there
must be some link between Trump’s business
interests in Russia and his campaign conduct. The
Cohen plea provides more concrete evidence of
such a link.
Now for the specifics.
The story told by the criminal information runs
like this:
Starting in September 2015, the Trump Organi
zation was pursuing a deal to build a Trump Tower
in Moscow. Cohen was working on making the
deal happen.
In mid-January of 2016, someone described
as “a U.S. citizen third-party intermediary” and
identified only as “Individual 2” suggested to
Cohen that he contact Putin’s press secretary for
“approvals” from the Russian government.
Cohen emailed Putin’s press secretary twice, on
Jan. 14 and Jan. 16,2016.
On Jan. 20, Cohen got a call from the press sec
retary’s assistant. They spoke for 20 minutes, and
Cohen described the deal.
The next day, Jan. 21, Individual 2 wrote to
Cohen that he should call them about Putin,
because “they called today.”
That began a period of negotiations lasting six
months. Apparently, the Russians’ goal was to
get Trump to visit Russia and meet Putin. Cohen
asked Trump and other campaign officials about
Trump traveling to Russia for the meeting. Cohen
would go to Russia ahead of time to negotiate the
details.
In May, things heated up. Individual 2 emailed
Cohen explaining the state of play. “I had a chat
with Moscow,” he wrote. “ASSUMING the trip
does happen the question is before or after the
convention... Obviously the pre-meeting trip (you
only) can happen anytime you want but the 2 big
guys where [sic] the question. I said I would con
firm and revert.”
This email makes clear that there was a close
connection between Trump’s status as a candidate
and the visit.
Cohen wrote back about “My trip before Cleve
land” — where the Republican national conven
tion would be held starting on July 18. Trump
would travel to Russia “once he becomes the
nominee after the convention.”
Individual 2 then told Cohen that Putin’s press
secretary “would like to invite you as his guest to
the St. Petersburg Forum which is Russia’s Davos
it’s June 16-19. He wants to meet there with you
and possibly introduce you” to Putin or the Rus
sian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev.
Over the next month, Individual 2 sent Cohen
the paperwork for a visa, which Cohen seems to
have filled out.
The trip looked like it was a go to Cohen, but it
was called off around June 14,2016, when Cohen
met Individual 2 at Trump Tower to tell him it
wasn’t happening. According to Cohen, the real
estate deal was also off at that point.
The document doesn’t say how or why Cohen’s
trip was canceled. The most logical possibility is
surely that Trump’s campaign advisers told him
that he couldn’t go to Moscow after becoming the
Republican nominee.
So what does it all mean?
Trump and his supporters will no doubt insist
that Cohen and Individual 2 were freelancing, not
really representing Trump or the campaign. But
the fact that Cohen kept Trump in the loop by ask
ing him about possible travel to Russia strongly
suggests that Trump knew that the negotiations
over the Moscow Trump Tower were continuing
during this period.
Trump supporters might add that it isn’t surpris
ing to discover that Trump didn’t stop his business
negotiations with Russia just because he was run
ning for president. Yet it remains significant that
those negotiations were happening with Putin’s
office directly, not just with real estate developers
in Moscow.
Trump supporters can also point out that the
deal was canceled. Nevertheless, it seems likely
that the deal was killed not because Trump real
ized it was wrong but because outside advisers told
him it would look bad.
Cohen’s latest revelations on their own don’t
constitute evidence of a crime or impeachable
offense by Trump. However, they do show that
Trump was part of a negotiation that linked his
status as a candidate to his business interests in
Russia. They bring Mueller’s team an important
step closer to explaining Trump’s Russia ties dur
ing the campaign.
Vaping is not a health crisis
E-cigarettes let people get a hit of nico
tine without burning tobacco.
Avoiding burning tobacco is the single
greatest preventative health measure
human beings can take, given the dis
eases conventional cigarettes cause.
Unfortunately, our government and
media now act as
if vaping e-ciga-
rettes is the health
crisis.
“Your kids are
not an experiment!
Protect them from
e-cigarettes,”
warns former Sur
geon General Dr.
Vivek Murthy in a
CDC PSA.
My former
employer, ABC News, which never finds
a risk it doesn’t hype, has run more
than a dozen scare stores on vaping. A
“Nightline” reporter warned about kids
“addicted to nicotine before they even
graduate from middle school!”
Yet compared to regular cigarettes,
e-cigarettes are “extraordinarily less
harmful,” says Michelle Minton of the
Competitive Enterprise Institute. In my
new newest video she says, “We should
really be encouraging people to use
vaping.”
Calling vaping safer than smoking
doesn’t mean the risks are zero. Vapor
contains harmful chemicals, too. But
scientists say it’s far less harmful than
smoking. If smokers switched to e-ciga-
rettes, that would save millions of lives.
Nicotine is what makes both e-ciga-
rettes and regular cigarettes addictive.
But nicotine itself isn’t that bad. Like caf
feine, it’s a stimulant.
“On the spectrum of drugs that you
can become addicted to,” says Minton,
“nicotine and caffeine are very similar.”
The big health risks come from the
7,000 other chemicals generated by
burning tobacco leaves.
By contrast, e-cigarette smoke is
mostly just flavored vapor, which is less
likely to harm anyone.
It doesn’t even smell as bad as
cigarettes. “Somebody who’s vaping a
huge cloud of Vanilla Cherry Blast, or
whatever they’re vaping, is way more
pleasant than standing next to somebody
exhaling smoke from a combustible
cigarette,” observed Minton.
Full disclosure, Minton’s think tank
received some money from companies
that make e-cigarettes. Nevertheless,
she’s right. Vaping is a much safer
alternative.
“While there are a few lunatics who
say e-cigarettes are more harmful —
based on zero evidence — every legiti
mate scientist who’s investigated this
issue has said, ‘We don’t know all the
risks, but we can say they are less harm
ful than smoking.’”
Nonetheless, America’s health police
have gone to war against vaping.
Some cities want to ban vaping.
The CDC funds ads that say, “Young
people should never use these kinds of
products!”
But kids will. Kids experiment with all
sorts of things. Far better that they vape
than smoke.
Actually, CDC data show kids had
been vaping a little less since 2014, but
recently there was a spike.
“The only explanation I can come up
with,” said Minton, “is that the CDC and
FDA have advertised these products by
talking about them so much! The CDC
telling children you shouldn’t do this is
not necessarily going to make many of
them say no. Maybe it makes it more
attractive to them.”
Minton acknowledges that it’s bad if
kids become addicted to nicotine but
says that’s a risk worth taking.
“Do we want children to become
addicted to anything? No. But keeping
a small percent of teenagers from try
ing e-cigarettes is not worth sacrificing
adults whose lives could be saved.”
About half of teens who take up
regular cigarettes will never quit. About
a third of those users will die from
smoking-related illnesses. Smoking is
America’s leading preventable cause of
death.
So banning alternatives is not a wise
move for public health. Minton points
to the example of snus, a moist tobacco
chew popular in Sweden. Snus is not
completely harmless, so the rest of
Europe banned it. But “Sweden cur
rently has the lowest smoking and lung
cancer rates of any EU country.”
Banning snus in Europe was a public
health tragedy. Now the U.S. is doing
something similar with e-cigarettes.
Minton says that in “states that
enacted (age restrictions) on e-ciga-
rettes, teenage smoking rates go up
because when teens who want to do
something like smoking can’t get ahold
of e-cigarettes, they just go to smoking.”
Thanks to government’s paranoid
warnings and media hype, Americans
who might make the rational choice to
pick e-cigarettes over burning tobacco
are now more likely to be killed by con
ventional cigarettes.
John Stossel is author of “No They Can’t!
Why Government Fails — But Individuals
Succeed.”
A Jl
JOHN STOSSEL
www.johnstossel.com
WNICE /
WALT HANDELSMAN I Tribune News Service
Identity politics is nothing new in US
I’ve spent much of the last year
promoting, debating and — let’s just
be honest — hawking my latest book,
“Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of
Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism and
Identity Politics is Destroying American
Democracy.”
An interesting
pattern has devel
oped. Of the terms
in the subtitle,
everyone from my
friends in right-
wing talk radio to
invariably polite
liberal NPR hosts
— and the audi
ences that listen
to each of them
— agrees that
“tribalism” is bad. I think it’s because no
party or faction has adopted the term,
so each side thinks only their opponents
are guilty of it. Similarly, liberals tend to
be sympathetic to the idea that populism
is bad, largely because they so closely
associate it with Donald Trump, though
a few remember that Bernie Sanders is a
populist, too, and so want to offer caveats
about “good” populism and “bad” popu
lism. The same holds for conservatives,
only in reverse.
On nationalism, I get the most push-
back from the right and the least from
the left.
On identity politics, it’s the other way
around. It’s hard for many liberals to
understand (or at least admit) that there
might be something pernicious about
dividing everybody up into categories
of race, sex, ethnicity, etc. Meanwhile,
many on the right struggle to see how
their side might be guilty of doing the
same thing.
Because I’ve been so mired in these
conversations for so long, I’m always
intrigued when someone from the other
team, or tribe, breaks the pattern.
Enter former President Barack
Obama. This week he said something
very interesting. At an event celebrating
the 25th anniversary of the Baker Cen
ter at Rice University, Obama decried
“politics based on a nationalism that’s
not pride in country but hatred for some
body on the other side of the border. And
you start getting the kind of politics that
does not allow for compromise, because
it’s based on passions and emotions.”
Former Secretary of State James
Baker interjected, saying, “It’s identity
politics.”
To which Obama responded: “Which is
why, by the way, when I hear people say
they don’t like identity politics, I think
it’s important to remember that iden
tity politics doesn’t just apply when it’s
black people or gay people or women.
The folks who really originated identity
politics were the folks who said three-
fifths clause and all that stuff. That was
identity politics.... Jim Crow was identity
politics. That’s where it started.”
Obama is right — with two caveats.
The three-fifths clause of the Constitu
tion, which held that blacks in slave
states be counted as three-fifths of a
white person for purposes of representa
tion in Congress, is widely misunderstood
(though of course it was part of the
larger evil of slavery). It was the slave
holders who wanted slaves to be counted
as whole persons. The anti-slavery
forces, mostly in the North, didn’t want
them to be counted at all, because to
count slaves as citizens would empower
the slave states.
Second, the framers didn’t “start”
identity politics — it’s been around for
thousands of years. Aristocracy was
among the first, and most pernicious,
forms of identity politics. It derives from
the Greek word aristokratia, or “rule of
the best-born.” It held that some people
were simply born better than others.
Some humans were “slaves by nature,”
according to Aristotle, and for thousands
of years all around the world, people
believed that lower orders were born to
be peasants, serfs, slaves, etc., and other
people were born to be rulers.
Where Obama is right, however, is
more important than where he is wrong.
Slavery and Jim Crow were indisput
ably manifestations of identity politics.
America’s system of legalized racism
was just another form of aristocracy
under a different name. And as such, it
was a violation of the best ideas of the
founding. Perhaps the single most radi
cal thing about the American Revolution
was the decision to reject all forms of
hereditary nobility.
It took longer — far too much longer
— to recognize the rights and dignity
of all Americans, but the idea that you
should take people as you find them, and
judge them not as a member of a group
but as individuals, remains perhaps the
greatest part of the American creed,
regardless of whether you’re a liberal or
a conservative.
Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of
National Review Online and a visiting
fellow at the American Enterprise
Institute.
JONAH GOLDBERG
goldbergcolumn@
gmail.com
Che Ctmes
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