President Barack Obama on Friday questioned Donald Trump’s qualifications for the presidency, arguing that the businessman’s recent comments on foreign policy suggest he “doesn’t know much” about global politics.
Obama, who has intensified his criticism of Trump in recent weeks, laid into him at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, when asked about the GOP front-runner’s remarks in a March 26 interview with The New York Times. Trump proposed withdrawing U.S. troops from Japan and South Korea, where tens of thousands of Americans are stationed, and suggested those countries should manufacture their own nuclear weapons — a reversal from decades of bipartisan consensus on nuclear disarmament.
Trump’s comments “tell us that the person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula or the world generally,” Obama said.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
The Pentagon released a long-anticipated plan outlining the steps the Obama administration will take to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
The document released Tuesday morning contained few surprises and failed to remedy conflicts between President Barack Obama’s aspirations to shut down Guantanamo during his final year in office and legal restrictions imposed by Republicans in Congress that prevent the president from sending any of the remaining detainees to the U.S. It was released not because of a breakthrough agreement between the White House and Congress but because of a deadline set by lawmakers for “the details of a comprehensive strategy” on how to detain current and future people captured as part of the broad-reaching war on terror.
Speaking from the White House, Obama reminded Americans that closing Guantanamo Bay was once a bipartisan goal, backed by former President George W. Bush.
A POLITICO review of Barack Obama’s domestic policy legacy—and the changes he made while nobody was paying attention.
On March 23, 2010, President BarackObama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the 906-page health care reform law known as Obamacare. It was, as a live microphone caught Vice President Joe Biden exclaiming to his boss, a big deal, with Biden memorably inserting an extra word for emphasis—and for history—between “big” and “deal.”
Obamacare would cover millions of the uninsured, a giant step toward the Democratic dream of health care for all. It also included dozens of less prominent provisions to rein in the soaring cost and transform the dysfunctional delivery of American medicine. It was the kind of BFD that the most consequential presidencies are made of, even though it had squeaked through Congress without any Republican votes, and few Americans truly understood what was in it.
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Obama Portrait | Herb Williams, Crayola crayons, 2008
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Click link belowfor entire review (please note: this is a six page review)
Bashar Assad’s presidency looks likely to outlast Barack Obama’s.
As the United States has turned its attention to defeating the Islamic State group, it has softened its stance on the Syrian leader. More than four years ago, Obama demanded that Assad leave power. Administration officials later said Assad did not have to step down on “Day One” of a political transition. Now, they are going further.
A peace plan agreed to last weekend by 17 nations meeting in Vienna says nothing about Assad’s future, but states that “free and fair elections would be held pursuant to the new constitution within 18 months.” To clarify the timeline, the State Department said this past week that the clock starts once Assad’s representatives and opposition figures begin talks on a constitution. The vote would determine a new parliament, though not necessarily a new president.
Twenty-nine of the nation’s top scientists — including Nobel laureates, veteran makers of nuclear arms and former White House science advisers — wrote to President Obama on Saturday to praise the Iran deal, calling it innovative and stringent.
The letter, from some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in the fields of nuclear weapons and arms control, arrives as Mr. Obama is lobbying Congress, the American public and the nation’s allies to support the agreement.
The two-page letter may give the White House arguments a boost after the blow Mr. Obama suffered on Thursday when Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a Democrat and among the most influential Jewish voices in Congress, announced he would oppose the deal, which calls for Iran to curb its nuclear program and allow inspections in return for an end to international oil and financial sanctions.
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President Obama and Michelle Obama arriving on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., on Friday.Credit Susan Walsh/Associated Press
Sometime in the next few weeks, aides expect President Obama to issue orders freeing dozens of federal prisoners locked up on nonviolent drug offenses. With the stroke of his pen, he will probably commute more sentences at one time than any president has in nearly half a century.
The expansive use of his clemency power is part of a broader effort by Mr. Obama to correct what he sees as the excesses of the past, when politicians eager to be tough on crime threw away the key even for minor criminals. With many Republicans and Democrats now agreeing that the nation went too far, Mr. Obama holds the power to unlock that prison door, especially for young African-American and Hispanic men disproportionately affected.
But even as he exercises authority more assertively than any of his modern predecessors, Mr. Obama has only begun to tackle the problem he has identified. In the next weeks, the total number of commutations for Mr. Obama’s presidency may surpass 80, but more than 30,000 federal inmates have come forward in response to his administration’s call for clemency applications. A cumbersome review process has advanced only a small fraction of them. And just a small fraction of those have reached the president’s desk for a signature.
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Even though President Obama is expected to commute dozens of sentences, he will barely make a dent in clemency applications.Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the U.S. and Cuba have struck a deal to open embassies in each other’s capitals and re-establish diplomatic relations for the first time in half a century.
“The progress we make today is another demonstration we don’t have to be imprisoned by the past,” Obama said.
Obama emphasized that the U.S. and Cuba have some shared interests, such as strong anti-terrorism policies and disaster response. But he acknowledged that the two nations still have “very serious differences” on issues like free speech.
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U.S., Cuba Will Reopen Embassies in Havana and Washington Within Weeks
President Barack Obama on Saturday declared his refusal to refight the Cold War battles while Cuban President Raul Castro rallied to his defense, absolving Obama of fault for the U.S. blockade in a stunning reversal of more than 50 years of animosity between the United States and Cuba.
“In my opinion, President Obama is an honest man,” Castro said – a remarkable vote of confidence from the Cuban leader, who praised Obama’s life and his “humble background.”
Turning the page on the longstanding U.S. policy of isolation, Castro and Obama were expected to meet later Saturday on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas – the first substantial meeting between a U.S. and Cuban president in more than five decades.
U.S. President Barack Obama assured Americans on Saturday that a newly negotiated framework for a nuclear pact with Iran was a “good deal” as he sought public support for a diplomatic breakthrough that many in Congress oppose.
A day after placing calls to top U.S. lawmakers to urge support for the agreement, Obama pressed his case that the deal would ensure Washington’s longtime foe would not be able to build a nuclear weapon.
“It’s a good deal, a deal that meets our core objectives, including strict limitations on Iran’s program and cutting off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address, broadcast on Saturday.
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President Barack Obama salutes as he arrives on Air Force One at Hill Air Force Base, Thursday, April 2, 2015, in Hill Air Force Base, Utah. On the tarmac saluting and greeting the president are Brig. Gen. Carl Buhler, third from left, Col. Ronald Jolly, second from left, and Chief Master Sgt. Rhonda Miller, left. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) | ASSOCIATED PRESS
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction on Monday that will temporarily prevent the Obama administration from moving forward with its executive actions on immigration while a lawsuit against the president works its way through the courts.
The order, by Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas, was an early stumble for the administration in what will likely be a long legal battle over whether President Barack Obama overstepped his constitutional authority with the wide-reaching executive actions on immigration he announced last November.
While the injunction does not pronounce Obama’s actions illegal, it prevents the administration from implementing them until the court rules on their constitutionality.
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Reform Would Save $410 Billion Over The Next 10 Years – The immigration reform bill proposed by the “gang of eight” senators would save $410 billion over the next decade, according to an analysis from Gordon Gray, the director of fiscal policy at the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. The savings would come largely from a boost in GDP resulting from undocumented immigrants gaining citizenship and in turn likely making more money.
Explore the dynamic relationship between faith and science, where curiosity meets belief. Join us in fostering dialogue, inspiring discovery, and celebrating the profound connections that enrich our understanding of existence.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
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Obama Portrait | Herb Williams, Crayola crayons, 2008
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Reform Would Save $410 Billion Over The Next 10 Years – The immigration reform bill proposed by the “gang of eight” senators would save $410 billion over the next decade, according to an analysis from Gordon Gray, the director of fiscal policy at the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. The savings would come largely from a boost in GDP resulting from undocumented immigrants gaining citizenship and in turn likely making more money.
James' World 2 