On Wednesday, Donald Trump released the first of what we assume will be many Hillary Clinton attack ads.
The video – which is admittedly amusing – begins with footage of judo Putin body slamming a sparring partner, and then cuts to a clip of Jihadi John’s successor pointing a pistol at the camera. Next, the ad cuts to a looped clip of Hillary barking like a dog before closing with a short video of Putin laughing. Of course in the original clips, Hillary was telling a story about a dog and Putin was laughing at a question about Syria, but that doesn’t matter. Political attack ads live and die by the degree to which they can effectively take things out of context and convey something to the electorate.
The jury is still out on how voters will react but we now know what Vladimir Putin thinks.
“[Our] attitude is negative,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a teleconference with reporters. “It’s an open secret for us that demonizing Russia and whatever is linked to Russia is unfortunately a mandatory hallmark of America’s election campaign,” Peskov continued. “We always sincerely regret this and wish the (U.S.) electoral process was conducted without such references to our country.”
Peskov also said he “didn’t know for sure” if Putin had seen the clip, but something tells us he wouldn’t have spoken for the Kremlin if Putin hadn’t approved the message.
Russia is exceptionally sensitive to what it views as rampant Russophobia in American politics, culture, and film and generally accuses the US media and political establishment of deliberately turning the American people against anything Russian. Of course this has been going on on both sides since the Cold War, but that’s beside the point.
In any event, The Kremlin’s take on the ad underscores something peculiar about Trump’s ad. Generally, Trump has taken an upbeat tone on relations with Russia. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we got along with Russia?,” he asked a frenzied crowd last year. He also called apparent praise from Putin “a great honor.” In that context, calling Moscow one of Washington’s “toughest opponents” seems a bit out of place.
Meanwhile, China is also ratcheting up the rhetoric as a Trump nomination seems more likely. In an “Op-Ed” (i.e. a Party statement) published in the Global Times, the GOP frontrunner is branded “ a rich, narcissist , a clown, big-mouthed, anti-traditional, and abusively forthright.” It then tacitly compares him to Hitler and Mussolini.
Although there’s a veiled attempt at real analysis, the message China is trying to send is laid bare in the final sentence: “The US had better watch itself for not being a source of destructive forces against world peace, more than pointing fingers at other countries for their so-called nationalism and tyranny.”
In other words: “Hey America, don’t be a nation of hypocrites.”
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Trump Opens Pandora’s Box In US
Donald Trump, front-runner to be the GOP’s candidate for the upcoming US presidential election, encountered a major protest at his campaign event in Chicago on Friday evening. Over a thousand people, both his supporters and opponents engaged in a physical confrontation, which was quelled by police who arrested a number of people.
Fist fights among voters who have different political orientations is quite common in developing countries during election seasons. Now, a similar show is shockingly staged in the US, which boasts one of the most developed and mature democratic election systems.
Trump’s mischief has overthrown a lot of conventional norms of US political life.
His remarks are abusively racist and extremist, which has left an impression on the US public that he is intentionally overthrowing political correctness.
Trump’s rise was not anticipated by most analysts and observers. At the beginning of the election, Trump, a rich, narcissist and inflammatory candidate, was only treated as an underdog. His job was basically to act as a clown to attract more voters’ attention to the GOP. However, knocking down most other promising candidates, the clown is now the biggest dark horse.
Trump is the last option for the GOP establishment. If he wins the primaries, the GOP will face a bitter dilemma. On the one hand, it will be a big compromise to GOP values, and the party takes a major risk of losing the game if they choose Trump as their candidate for president; on the other hand, if the GOP refuses to choose Trump, he might run as an independent candidate and split the vote, in which case, the GOP will also stand no chance in the final game.
The rise of Trump has opened a Pandora’s box in US society. Trump’s supporters are mostly lower-class whites, and they lost a lot after the 2008 financial crisis. The US used to have the largest and most stable middle class in the Western world, but many are going down.
That’s when Trump emerged. Big-mouthed, anti-traditional, abusively forthright, he is a perfect populist that could easily provoke the public. Despite candidates’ promises, Americans know elections cannot really change their lives. Then, why not support Trump and vent their spleen?
The rise of a racist in the US political arena worries the whole world. Usually, the tempo of the evolution of US politics can be predicted, while Trump’s ascent indicates all possibilities and unpredictability. He has even been called another Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler by some Western media.
Mussolini and Hitler came to power through elections, a heavy lesson for Western democracy. Now, most analysts believe the US election system will stop Trump from being president eventually. The process will be scary but not dangerous.
Even if Trump is simply a false alarm, the impact has already left a dent. The US faces the prospect of an institutional failure, which might be triggered by a growing mass of real-life problems.
The US had better watch itself for not being a source of destructive forces against world peace, more than pointing fingers at other countries for their so-called nationalism and tyranny.
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