RUTHFULLY YOURS

Maybe it should be a verb: To be Guccifered. Though maybe, in Hillary Clinton’s case, it would be better phrased as a crime. As in: “They got her on a Guccifer.”

Guccifer is the nom de Internet of the Romanian hacker Marcel Lehel Lazar. Few people realize it, but the Eastern European anti-hero is why the world knows that Hillary Clinton maintained a private email server while secretary of state. This week he may have made Mrs. Clinton’s road to the White House a lot rougher.

It’s a case study in why governments have rules about online security. Guccifer’s specialty was hacking top officials and their relatives—with an eye toward mayhem and humiliation. He hacked the account of Dorothy Bush Koch and circulated photos of her father, former President George H.W. Bush, in the hospital. He hacked years of Colin Powell’s correspondence, including personal financial information. He went after FBI and Secret Service agents, senators and the wealthy.

In March of 2013, Guccifer released hacked AOL email correspondence of Clinton crony Sidney Blumenthal, revealing numerous memos he’d sent to Hillary while she was the nation’s top diplomat. Mr. Blumenthal had sent these notes to Mrs. Clinton at a private, nongovernmental email address. Security experts tut-tutted about the risks, though the assumption was that Mrs. Clinton used the private account for the occasional interaction with friends or political operatives. It wasn’t until early 2015 that the nation found out Hillary was using the home-brew server to conduct every bit of her state business.

But that timing is by the by. What matters is that Guccifer knew, at least by March of 2013, that the third-highest official in the executive branch of the most powerful nation of the world was using a private server. Does anyone think a man devoted to hacking politicians and Federal Reserve bankers would ignore that opportunity?

In interviews from his federal jail cell this week (he was arrested in 2014 and extradited to the U.S. earlier this year), Guccifer claimed to have easily and repeatedly hacked Mrs. Clinton’s server. “It was like an open orchid on the Internet,” he told NBC News. “There were hundreds of folders.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Though Donald Trump has wondered aloud why most Jews voted for President Barack Obama – and why they are likely to cast ballots for presumed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton – he is more “puzzled than furious,” his executive vice president and chief legal officer said on Wednesday, in the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal from the GOP race of remaining rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich.

Jason Greenblatt, an Orthodox Jewish real estate lawyer from Teaneck, New Jersey — who has been working for “The Donald” for the past two decades – made this comment during an hour-long interview with The Algemeiner at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan.

Making it clear at the outset that the views he was expressing were his own and assessments of his employer’s, Greenblatt – whom Trump “appointed” as his Israel adviser during a press conference last month with members of the Jewish media — gave The Algemeiner an overview of what the United States, American Jews and Israel can expect if his boss wins the White House in November.

The Algemeiner: Pro-Israel conservatives are worried that Trump’s “America First” pronouncements indicate a tendency toward isolationism. Are they right to be concerned?

Greenblatt: I don’t think he’s an isolationist. His concept of putting America first is more in keeping with his whole slogan, “Make America Great.”

He needs to create more jobs here; he needs to secure our borders; he needs to prevent terrorism at home. But at the same time, though he views America’s role in the world as a very important one, he does not want to shoulder the burden himself – meaning that the US has been paying for the defense of so many countries that are not supporting their share of the cost. So it’s not as though he’s saying he’s going to put a wall around the whole country; he’s just saying that others have to pay their share.

Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech has created expectations that he will match Marco Rubio’s pledge to stand by the commitments made by President Bush to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Bush’s letter dated 14 April 2004.

Rubio made his unequivocal pledge on 3 December 2015 at the Republican Jewish Coalition Presidential Forum during his unsuccessful race to secure the Republican Party’s endorsement as its Presidential nominee:

“I will revive the common-sense understandings reached in the 2004 Bush-Sharon letter and build on them to help ensure Israel has defensible borders”

President Obama and his then former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did everything in their power to wriggle out of those Bush commitments – despite their having been overwhelmingly endorsed by the Senate 95:3 on 23 June 2004 and by the House of Representatives 407:9 on 24 June 2004.

Trump clearly had Obama and Clinton’s betrayal of Israel in his sights – when stating:

“… your friends need to know that you will stick by the agreements that you have with them. You’ve made that agreement, you have to stand by it and the world will be a better place.”

The Bush-Congress endorsed commitments made in that 2004 letter undoubtedly represent such an agreement.

After the departure of Ted Cruz and John Kasich, Donald Trump is now the Republican candidate for president. For many in the party, this will be the “Trumpacolypse,” as a Twitter hashtag has it. His unfavorable ratings are at 65%––70% with women, and up to 80% with blacks and Hispanics. With those numbers, a Clinton victory is assured, according to three-quarters of Republican “political insiders” polled by Politico.

Such hysteria six months out from the general election is premature. Much of it reflects the Republican political class’s distaste for the New York real estate developer, reality television star, and braggadocios conspicuous consumer. Trump has violated every canon of presidential campaigning, and scorned all the received wisdom that pundits and prognosticators reflexively dispense. He says what “you can’t say,” and says it in a brutal manner ––“lyin’ Ted” and “crooked Hillary”––that gives many “political insiders” the vapors. In their darker moods, they brood over the possibility of fascism coming to America, or a return of Joseph McCarthy. His biggest offense, though, is that he wins without their help.

They may be right about Trump losing the general. But such a prediction at this point is a guess. Polls record the transient impressions of the people who are polled. Then there’s the “shy Tory” phenomenon, the reticence of people to state their true preference even to an anonymous pollster, leading to a mismatch between the poll numbers and the actual votes. In the last six primaries before Indiana, Trump’s percentage of the vote averaged eight-and-a-half points higher than the polls, according to the New York Times. Of course, if Trump’s favorability numbers are still as dismal on in Octoberr, his defeat will be more certain.