RUTHFULLY YOURS

The phrase “follow the money” is supposed to help explain human behavior, especially in politics. So why has Donald Trump embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin? Why has he denied the evidence of Putin’s killing of Russian journalists and dissidents? A savvy businessman, Trump is certainly not dumb. There must be something else to it.

Reports dating back to 1987, during the time of the old Soviet Union, reveal that Trump has been seeking business in Russia and attempting to build a “Russian Trump Tower” in Moscow and perhaps other Russian cities.

At this particular time in history, with Putin’s cronies under financial sanctions because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s praise for Trump may signal another attempt to get the capitalists and their money back into Russia. Such a ploy depends on Trump and others rehabilitating Putin by claiming that he is fighting terrorism in Syria, not bolstering a long-time Soviet/Russian client state. Thanks to the effectiveness of the Russia Today (RT) channel, which saturates the U.S. media market, especially cable television, Putin is indeed looking like a statesman on the world stage.

Trump’s relationship with Russia goes far back. In 1987, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was meeting with Soviet officials and negotiating the building of “luxury hotels” in Moscow and Leningrad. A story [1] at the time said Trump had met Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, who mentioned how much his daughter had admired the “opulent” Trump Tower in New York City. This led to an invitation to Trump to visit the USSR. The story said Dubinin wrote a letter to Trump, who hosted a meeting with Soviet officials in New York.

‘She was favored to win — and she got schlonged. She lost, I mean she lost,” Donald Trump said, describing Hillary Clinton’s 2008 White House bid at a Grand Rapids campaign event Monday night.

This is our presidential race in 2015: “linguistic investigations” into whether the term “schlonged” is accurate Yiddish, consternation over whether it’s unacceptably sexist or vulgar, and the Clinton campaign’s insistence that the remark requires a response from “everyone who understands the humiliation this degrading language inflicts on all women.”

Trump is the race’s shock-jock, a master at gleefully overstepping boundaries we didn’t even know were there, and there’s little reason to think that the “schlonged” comment will hurt his standing in the polls. Nor will we see immediate fallout from Trump’s lengthy assurance on Monday night that he wasn’t going to discuss the “disgusting” bathroom break Clinton took during last Saturday’s Democratic debate. While he’s bobbled the lead in Iowa, Trump is still ahead nationally and in the other early states; so far, the cycle of controversy, outrage, and denunciation hasn’t hurt him.

But does this sort of talk help Trump at all? If it brings him closer to the Republican nomination, what does it say about Republicans? And is there any way it won’t repel a significant number of voters who might otherwise consider supporting the Republican standard-bearer in November 2016?

The proposition that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a committed liar hardly need be litigated in the fact-check columns. It is as plain as her surname. It is practically syllogistic: All Clintons are liars, Herself is a Clinton, ergo . . .

The specific lie here is Herself’s claim that Donald Trump’s boobish pronouncements are used in ISIS recruiting videos. This isn’t true. Even Trump, a habitual liar who wouldn’t know the truth if it were printed in gigantic gilt letters across a second-rate hotel tower in Las Vegas, knows that this isn’t true. So: Habitual liar lies habitually about habitual liar, who demands apology. Not the most edifying spectacle in American public life, but what the hell do you expect from an encounter between these two great hemorrhoids on the body politic?

Here’s the thing, though: You can’t tell lies. Even about a lying cretin like Donald Trump.

Never mind the question of personal character: Judging a Clinton–Trump conflict on character grounds is like judging the Iran–Iraq war on human-rights grounds — one wants both sides to lose. Never mind what this says about Herself’s fitness for the presidency: We all know that she is morally, ethically, and intellectually unfit for the job. She’s unfit to manage a Walmart in Muleshoe, Texas. She’s unfit to have a route delivering the Buck County Courier Times. From cattle futures to bimbo eruptions to Internet auteurs inspiring terror attacks in Benghazi, anybody who is paying any attention understands that Herself’s relationship with the truth is a lot like her relationship with the Big Creep: all politics, a marriage of convenience.

The 2016 presidential race will be defined by the relationship between two titans of American politics: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. For the first time in more than two decades—since President Reagan campaigned with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush—an incumbent two-term president will be an active player in the campaign and possibly even an active presence at events.

Right now, President Obama is free to be the designated partisan attack dog for Mrs. Clinton, allowing her to remain above the nastiness likely to arise in a race with a sharply divided electorate. Bill Clinton has played that role for her in past races. This time Mr. Obama’s presence allows Mr. Clinton, with his high poll numbers, to lead a chorus of nostalgia-stirring reminders of good feelings about the last time a Clinton was in the White House.

The Obama team is already backing her. John Podesta, Mr. Obama’s former adviser, runs her campaign. President Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, once a Hillary Clinton critic, is now supporting her, writing Oct. 24 on Medium.com that, “She’s the right person to protect President Obama’s legacy.”

Las Vegas — Ted Cruz can see himself on a collision course with Marco Rubio, barreling toward a head-to-head battle with his fellow senator for the Republican nomination — that is, if Rubio can deliver on his end of the deal.

In a wide-ranging interview here Thursday, Cruz predicted that the GOP race will boil down to the familiar dynamic of an establishment favorite squaring off against a conservative challenger after they claim victories in New Hampshire and Iowa, respectively. “I believe I will be that conservative candidate,” Cruz says. “I don’t know who the moderate candidate will be.”

The Texas senator says he has consolidated the conservative “lane” of the race — thanks to the exits of Scott Walker, Rick Perry, and Bobby Jindal as well as to the fade of Ben Carson — and is confident he will win Iowa and become one of the two finalists. “I don’t believe we have peaked,” he says when asked about surging to the top of several Iowa polls this week, and about the potential danger in taking the lead there seven weeks from the caucuses.

In Saturday’s Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton claimed that Donald Trump “is becoming ISIS’s greatest recruiter.”

It’s a self-evidently ludicrous claim, unsupported by even the tiniest shred of evidence, as PolitiFact, CNN, and even Vox were quick to point out. But when Meet the Press host Chuck Todd pressed Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta about the claim on Sunday, Podesta pointed to a little-noticed report from NBC News.

“Well look, Chuck, your own network ran a piece citing the most important organization that follows ISIS on social media that said that they are using social media, that they are using Donald Trump as a recruitment tool,” Podesta said. “So that’s what she was referencing and that’s the interpretation we made.”

The report’s headline — “Donald Trump’s Muslim Bashing Aids Cause of Terror Networks, Say Experts” — would seem to give Clinton cover, but its contents are entirely speculative: It never references any specific video or message from the group.

Come on, you were all wondering about this…

Days after pushing back on allegations that Russian President Vladimir Putin has killed journalists, Donald Trump assured a rally here that despite his hatred of the press, he would “never kill them.”

Holding his second Christmas themed rally where he spoke flanked by lighted wreaths and entered and exited the stage to the tune of Christmas classics, Trump assured that he “would never kill” journalists. He then sarcastically added:

“Uhh, let’s see,” pausing as if to think if there would be circumstances under which his unequivocal “never” would change.

As the crowd laughed and turned their eyes to the media, Trump became serious once more: “No I wouldn’t. I would never kill them, but I do hate them. And some of them are such lying, disgusting people, it’s true.”

The longest traveling bad stand-up open mic performance in history continues without the audiences ever getting tired, it seems. I’m no full time Trump scold, and there’s never a bad time to take the press down a peg or two, but at some point one has to worry about what this guy would do with the launch codes and the Joint Chiefs at his disposal.