The Phrase Putin Never Uses About Terrorism (and Trump Does) - New York Times

The Phrase Putin Never Uses About Terrorism (and Trump Does)
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
FEBRUARY 1, 2017
MOSCOW — Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s president, hardly misses a chance to talk tough on terrorism, once famously saying he would find Chechen terrorists sitting in the “outhouse” and “rub them out.”
He and President Trump, notably dismissive of political correctness, would seem to have found common language on fighting terrorism — except on one point of, well, language.
During his campaign, Mr. Trump associated Islam with terrorism and criticized President Obama for declining to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”
However, Mr. Putin, whom Mr. Trump so openly admires for his toughness, has, for more than a decade, done exactly what President Obama did. He has never described terrorists as “Islamic” and has repeatedly gone out of his way to denounce such language.
“I would prefer Islam not be mentioned in vain alongside terrorism,” he said at a news conference in December, answering a question about the Islamic State, a group he often refers to as “the so-called Islamic State,” to emphasize a distinction with the Islamic religion.
At the opening of a mosque in Moscow in 2015, Mr. Putin spoke of terrorists who “cynically exploit religious feelings for political aims.”
In the Middle East, Mr. Putin said at the mosque opening, “terrorists from the so-called Islamic State are compromising a great world religion, compromising Islam, sowing hatred, killing people, including clergy,” and added that “their ideology is built on lies and blatant distortions of Islam.”
He was careful to add, “Muslim leaders are bravely and fearlessly using their own influence to resist this extremist propaganda.”
And, this being Russia, the failure to adhere to this Kremlin-determined interpretation is a prosecutable offense: The Russian news media are required by law to note in any mention of the Islamic State that the reference is to a banned terrorist organization of that name, lest it be misconstrued as denigrating religion.
Mr. Putin does not take this stance to soothe the feelings of Western liberals, a group he dismisses as hypocritical in any case.
“Putin prides himself on Russia’s intelligence capabilities,” the Brookings Institution wrote in a study of the early formation of his counterterrorism policies. “Russian leaders think they know their enemy,” and it is not the governments of majority Muslim countries such as Iraq and Iran, or the majority of Muslims living in Russia.
Instead, Russian counterterrorism strategy focused on financing and militarily backing moderate Muslim leaders, with the breakthrough in the Chechen war coming when the region’s imam, Akhmad Kadyrov, allied with the Russian military. His son, Ramzan Kadyrov, leads the region today.
While embracing Islamic leaders as a centerpiece of its counterterrorism strategy, however, the Kremlin did not avoid drawing distinctions along religious lines.
The Russian government backed the Kadyrov family’s campaign to revive traditional Sufi Islam in Chechnya as a counterweight to the more austere Wahhabi denomination professed by many separatists. The Wahhabi strain was outlawed in another restive, predominantly Muslim province, Dagestan, and its adherents are persecuted in Russia, rights groups say.
Still, the alliance with moderate Islamic religious leaders became important in pacifying Chechnya and other North Caucasus regions, which have ceased to pose a serious security threat to Russia.
“Putin rules a multiconfessional country,” Orkhan Dzhemal, a commentator on Islamic affairs, said in a telephone interview, noting that in the United States, in contrast, Muslims are not a powerful political force. “He cannot say ‘Islamic terrorism’ for a simple reason. He doesn’t want to alienate millions of Russians.”
The term preferred in Russian political parlance is “international terrorism.”
In a phone call on Friday, President Trump and Mr. Putin discussed “real cooperation” in fighting terrorist groups in Syria. They could agree on an enemy. But the Kremlin statement described a “priority placed on uniting forces in the fight against the main threat — international terrorism.”
Follow Andrew E. Kramer on Twitter @AndrewKramerNYT.

How Trump benefited from the White House - New York Times

PETE GAMLEN
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
FEBRUARY 1, 2017
As a candidate, President Trump spent contributors’ money for office space that he owned, stays at his resorts and food at his restaurants. He spent contributors’ money on Trump-branded wine and water. He displayed Trump merchandise at campaign events. Now he seems determined to milk the presidency, apparently synonymous with his brand in his eyes, for a fortune.
“The brand is certainly a hotter brand than it was before,” Mr. Trump observed, with satisfaction, shortly after the election.
Last week, an executive of the Trump Organization, Eric Danziger, said it would open Trump-branded hotels in the 26 largest metropolitan areas in the country, up from five. The business, he said, would focus its expansion domestically for “the next four or eight years.” The fee to join the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., which Mr. Trump calls the “Winter White House,” just doubled to $200,000.
This news came less than a week after Mr. Trump and his inauguration committee hosted parties and other events at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, in the government-owned Old Post Office. Even his press secretary, Sean Spicer, has become a pitchman: “It’s an absolutely stunning hotel,” he said recently. “I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by.”

Self-dealing is such standard procedure for this White House that a cynic (or satirist) might say it’s time to give in and try to put Mr. Trump’s conflicts of interest to work for the public. Maybe if he had hotels in every nation, he’d have a financial interest in being less bellicose, and more supportive of the free flow of trade and of people, even if they happen to be Mexican or Muslim.
But we really prefer the old-fashioned approach in which presidents put the public interest ahead of their own finances. Federal ethics officials have told Mr. Trump that he should divest his business interests to avoid allegations of bribery and to assure Americans that their needs are his only concern. Mr. Trump argues that he can put a “firewall” between his businesses and himself by having his eldest sons manage them. The president and the Trump Organization last week hired lawyers to keep an eye on the Trumps, a laughable ploy that doesn’t meet ethical or anti-corruption standards and constitutional requirements.
Mr. Trump has argued that the law permits the president to keep his business — even though no modern president has done so, and far poorer ones than he have sold off business interests to serve. He and his lawyers have played down the importance of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which prohibits government officials from accepting gifts or income from foreign governments without the approval of Congress. And he refuses to release his tax returns and divest his assets and put the proceeds in a blind trust, as his cabinet nominees are doing right now.
Consider the Trump Hotel. Mr. Trump has a 60-year lease on the property with the General Services Administration. That contract states that no elected federal official “shall be admitted to any share or part of this lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.” That unambiguous clause exists to prevent corruption and self-dealing by government officials.
Since Mr. Trump officially violated the lease when he assumed office, the agency is clearly obligated to cancel the lease or require that it be sold to another hotel operator. Ranking Democrats on the House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over the agency have for weeks been asking it to address the lease violation. So far, the agency, which reports to the president, appears to have done nothing. Mr. Trump’s lawyers preposterously contend that because he was not an elected official when the lease was signed, he hasn’t broken it.
Aside from violating the lease terms, Mr. Trump is very likely violating the emoluments clause by holding on to the hotel. His lawyers have said that he will donate profits from rooms rented to foreign governments to the Treasury, but that’s no cure. Experts say it would be next to impossible to account for foreign “profits” — which, of course, would be based on the hotel’s own calculations. Is the hotel prepared to open its books so the public can judge those numbers for itself?
Congress ought to demand that the G.S.A. uphold the terms of the hotel lease and shame Mr. Trump into selling his other businesses, the fortunes of which are now hitched to the presidency. Democrats have been trying to do this, but the Republicans who run the House and Senate have not joined them. So far, they lack the spine to challenge the president. Just imagine how they would have reacted if Hillary Clinton had been elected and the Clinton Foundation were merely leasing a government building, let alone using it to generate revenue.
If the agency doesn’t act, a competing hotel could sue to demand that it cancel the lease because the president’s control of the hotel represents unfair competition. The Trump Hotel has been drawing business away from other hotels, precisely because its proprietor occupies the White House. Indeed, the hotel has promoted itself on Twitter with an image of a man relaxing in one of its rooms, gazing out upon a building that looks very like the White House (it’s actually the Environmental Protection Agency, which Mr. Trump campaigned to abolish). Since the election, embassies from countries that include Bahrain, Kuwait and Azerbaijan have held receptions at the hotel, and diplomats say it’s important that they be seen patronizing it.

A tweet from Trump Hotels makes it clear that proximity to power is part of the sales pitch.
Mr. Trump has boasted that the presidency boosts his brand. He should focus instead on how his commercial ambition is tarnishing the image of public service. If he continues to reduce the most powerful office in the world to a marketing scheme, ethical public servants, in Congress and across the government, can’t stand by and watch.
New York Times